“Bastard!” someone next to him cried.
Eric felt a large fist strike him in the cheek. It glanced off the cheekbone, but he could feel a tender knob rising under the skin. He pulled at his crossbow, trying to wrestle it from whoever was clutching it. No good.
There were two of them, that much he knew. And they felt pain like living men, not zombies.
The grave was dug like an overturned telephone booth. Long and narrow. Eric couldn’t turn without bumping them, without them grabbing at him. He felt a handful of fingers claw at his face, the stubby thumbs trying to gouge out his eyes. Eric swung his left knee around, felt the kneecap sink into the soft flesh of a stomach, graze a protruding rib cage. The fingers at his eyes fell away.
Eric twisted round and felt the hot rancid breath of the other man puffing on him. Instantly he rammed his head forward. The man’s nose flattened against his face and blood snorted out of each nostril. The man’s sticky blood splashed onto Eric’s forehead. Eric rammed him again. The man moaned and his grip loosened on the crossbow.
In one swift movement, Eric straddled the man’s chest, shoved the crossbow against his throat, released the safety, and pulled the trigger. The bolt speared through the man’s jugular and burrowed into the ground, nailing the attacker to the bottom of the grave.
Eric turned. His eyes had adjusted enough that he could barely make out the outline of the other man struggling to his feet, hugging the wall of the grave for support. But before Eric could get up, the man launched himself, knocking Eric off the dead attacker and into the other wall of the grave.
Two hard blows to the back of Eric’s head sent him face-first into the dirt wall. He tasted the dry soil mixed with his own blood like a gritty paste. A heavy fist sank into his kidney. He tried to hold himself up by digging his fingers into the dirt wall of the grave.
“Fucking piece of shit,” the man said and threw another punch into Eric’s spine. Eric dropped to his knees.
One hand was still sunk knuckle-deep in the dirt wall. He tried to pull himself up. Some of the dirt flaked loose and pelted his hair and face. As he slowly rose, Eric reached back and pulled a bolt from the quiver strapped to his belt. The arrow was handmade, carved from the branch of a pine tree, tipped with a point hammered from copper tubing he’d ripped from an abandoned refrigerator, and fixed with vinyl feathers cut from the dashboard of a rusted Datsun. He turned just as another punch slammed into his sternum, throwing him hard against the dirt wall. He thrust the bolt straight out into the darkness and leaned into it with all his weight.
At first he thought he’d missed altogether. The arrow passed through several feet of darkness without touching anything. Then there was a slight resistance. Just a little, like biting into Jell-o.
“Ahhh!” the man yowled as the arrow poked into his abdomen, just a few inches above the crotch. The man was standing at an angle, his fist cocked, so the arrow scraped along the pelvic bone before lodging in the spine in the lumbar region, wedged between two vertebrae. A long raspy exhale of sour breath washed over Eric as the man fell to his knees, reached for Eric, then collapsed. Dead.
Eric knelt next to the corpse, yanked the bolt free, and reloaded his crossbow. Next he twisted the bolt from the other man’s throat. Each arrow had taken him half an hour to make and he wasn’t about to leave them behind.
For an instant it flickered through his mind that he had just killed two men whose faces he never saw clearly, even in death. If he was shown a high school class photo of either, he wouldn’t be able to pick them out.
He stood slowly, peering over the edge of the grave. The lantern was now lit so he could see each of them clearly.
Three men were dragging D.B. by her legs toward the large open grave she’d spotted earlier. She slid along on her back, her sweat shirt bunched up around her breasts, her arms flailing uselessly, clutching at the dirt. Her glasses were askew.
D.B. kicked out at one of them, the heel of her New Balance running shoes tearing a three-inch gash in his cheek.
“Got you that time, Carl,” one of the others laughed.
“Admit it, Carl,” the other one said. “Girls just don’t like your face.”
“I know I don’t,” the first one chuckled.
Carl dabbed at the blood on his cheek. “Dumb cunt!” he spat and kicked D.B. hard in the stomach. The impact flipped her over, face-down. The two men, each pulling one leg, exchanged legs and continued dragging her backward, face-down in the dirt. D.B. vomited, leaving a trail of half-digested squirrel stew leading to the grave.
“You dumb fuck, Carl. You better not have damaged her.” The man pulling her left leg shook his head. He was bare-chested but wore leather driving gloves. His hair was short and spiked, as if it had been cut by a dull knife. “If you’ve cracked a rib, we won’t get as much.”
“How much is she worth, Tommy?” the other man asked. He wore a white tuxedo jacket over his t-shirt and jeans. He had wavy blonde hair that he was obviously very pleased with.
Tommy shrugged. “She’s young, that’s good. But she’s bony, that’s bad. Deena will know better. She’ll bring at least six cans of beans and a couple of cartons of cigarettes. We’ll be able to tell more once we strip off her clothes and give her a workout.”
“Me first,” Carl barked, rubbing his bloody cheek.
“You first,” Eric said to himself as he crawled out of the grave. He dashed for cover behind a nearby gravestone, his ankle still sore with every step. He dropped to one knee and shouldered the crossbow. “Here, Carl. Catch.” He fired.
The bolt punched into Charl’s chest, knocking him off his feet. “Goddamn!” Carl shouted. He sat up, stared at the bolt, and started tugging on it as if it were nothing more than an annoying splinter. With a powerful jerk, he pulled it out of his chest, stood up, took two shaky steps, and died in mid-stride. He flopped to the ground.
Tommy released D.B.’s left leg and reached for one of the shovel handles stuck in the dirt mound next to the huge grave. But when he plucked the handle from the dirt, it wasn’t a shovel but a spear. A long serrated knife had been lashed to the handle with rawhide shoelaces. “Over there!” he shouted, throwing his spear in Eric’s direction.
Eric ducked back behind the gravestone just as the spear thunked into the polished marble. He cocked his crossbow again and slipped in another bolt.
The man in the white tuxedo dropped D.B.’s other leg and pulled her 9mm Astra A-80 from his drooping jeans and blasted away at Eric. Chips of stone flicked down on Eric’s back.
Eric dove to the other side of the gravestone, somersaulted once and came up with the crossbow jammed against his hip for steadiness. He fired the bolt, which stabbed into the gunman’s side, twirling him around and dumping him on the ground. Even so, he kept wildly firing the gun, at Eric, at the air, at anything. “Get him!” he shouted between rounds. “Kill the son of a bitch!”
Eric ducked behind the gravestone again and cocked his crossbow.
Only this time when he reached back for a fresh bolt, he felt a sudden sharp pressure in his back, something hard and painful digging into his shoulder blade. The pain rocked him off-balance and the hard sharp thing pulled free.
Eric looked up, saw the spear tip dripping with his own blood. Saw the young boy, maybe sixteen, standing there grinning, his face smeared with dirt and mud. The spear was a mop handle with a brass letter opener strapped to it.
Behind the boy he saw others coming, each jumping up out of an open grave. Some ran, some walked slowly.
All were armed with crude weapons.
All were coming at Eric.
* * *
3
The one-eyed woman frowned. “Is he dead?”
The young boy poked his homemade spear at the unconscious body. “He looks dead.”
“Is he dead?” she repeated impatiently.
The boy dropped to his knees and suctioned his ear against the broad chest. He listened carefully. “There’s something thumping arou
nd in there.”
The one-eyed woman knelt next to the prone body. She pressed her fingertips under his jaw bone, feeling for a pulse. The kerosene lantern next to the open grave lit her face with an orange glow. Aside from the missing eye, she was also missing an ear. The other had been removed neatly and close to the face. That and having the missing eye on the same side of her head made one side of her face look streamlined, slightly reptilian. She wore her blonde hair pulled back into a tight pony tail as if daring someone to comment on her face. She wore no eyepatch over the scarred socket of the missing eye. The thick ridges of white scar tissue crisscrossed the empty crater like the footprint of a hawk.
She tried the pulse. “Not dead,” she said. She reached out and touched his face, her long slender fingers stroking over his closed eyes. Slowly they trailed down his cheeks, his jaw, down to his neck. There she curled her hands around his throat. She squeezed. Her hands wrung tightly, the thumbs denting the jugular. His eyes snapped open for a desperate moment and he struggled weakly, pawing at her hands. But she kept her grip tight, her teeth grinding as she throttled him. Finally his eyes closed and his mouth went slack.
The one-eyed woman stood up and wiped her hands on her jeans. “Well, he’s dead now,” she said brightly.
There was only silence from the twenty or so people gathered around.
The kid with the spear nudged her. “Can I have the tux?”
She nodded. “Why not?”
The kid yelped excitedly and dove into the body. He pressed one knee against the chest for leverage and yanked Eric’s bolt out. It popped free with a slurping sound. Then he tugged the dirty white tuxedo, only slightly damaged by the arrow hole and blood stain, from the corpse.
The one-eyed woman walked over to Eric and D.B., who stood quietly in front of a dozen ragged guards armed with clubs, spears, hoes, and shovels.
“My husband,” the one-eyed woman said, nodding at the dead man. She shrugged. “He lasted longer than the last two. The first died of something we never did figure out. Food poisoning, I guess. Bad can of Hormel chili. The second, Jake, well, he got in a fight with Larry here over that tux. Larry killed Jake. The tux we got from some stiff we dug up over there. Big headstone so he must’ve been somebody important. Now that I think about it though, it really fit Jake better than Larry.”
“Fits me,” the young boy said, jumping to his feet and pulling on the tuxedo. He rolled up the too-long sleeves.
“Let’s get on with it, Deena,” said Tommy, the man who’d been dragging D.B. “What do we do with these two?”
Deena scratched the scar tracks of her missing eye. She merely glanced at D.B., dismissing the young girl instantly. But Eric she studied hard and with interest. She pulled a pair of pliers out of her back pocket, knelt next to her husband’s body, and pried open his mouth. Quickly she worked the pliers in, clamped them on a rear molar, and twisted and yanked until the tooth ripped from his mouth trailing bloody saliva. “Gold caps,” she explained to Eric. “Gold still has some value even now.” She tossed the tooth to the kid in the tux. He opened a felt Seagrams bag and dropped the tooth in. It clacked against others like a bag of marbles.
“Well?” Tommy said, tugging his leather driving gloves tighter.
“Check their teeth,” Deena said.
Tommy prodded Eric’s chest with the point of his knife. Eric stared back but didn’t budge.
“Open it or I’ll cut it open,” Tommy said.
Eric opened his mouth. The man probed around with his fingers, peeling back Eric’s lips for a better look. “A couple fillings, that’s all,” he reported to Deena.
“Check the teeny-bopper,” Deena said.
The man stood in front of D.B. “Open.”
“Fuck yourself,” D.B. said.
The man slapped her twice, forehand and backhand. Her face swelled with splotchy red welts.
“That all you got?” D.B. sneered. “I’ve been hit harder by a heavy rain.”
Deena chuckled. “You need help, Tommy?”
Tommy spun around, glared at Deena. Obviously a candidate for husband number four, Eric thought. Tommy then turned back to D.B. and socked her hard in the jaw, sending her sprawling backward to the ground. She lay there, dazed, her body barely moving. Tommy squatted beside her, forced her mouth open, and checked her teeth.
“One,” he said happily.
“Tote that tooth, lift that biscuspid,” Deena said.
Tommy jammed his pliers into D.B.’s mouth. He started tugging, lifting D.B.’s sluggish head from the ground.
Eric watched a moment. He looked at Deena, at the others, all rapt in Tommy’s actions like hungry wolves watching a rabbit being disembowled. It would be stupid to try anything against them. Too many. What was one lousy tooth compared with their lives? He had been trained to ignore emotion, he reminded himself. But watching Tommy’s gleeful attack on helpless D.B., Eric decided to indulge himself. His movements were swift and sudden, too quick for anyone to stop him.
Eric took three running steps forward, brought his right leg back, and kicked Tommy’s jaw as hard as he could. Tommy’s head snapped back with a terrible crack, flipping him in a backward arc away from D.B. The pliers flew into the dirt.
A dozen guards quickly thrust their weapons against Eric’s chest and back, but Eric had stopped moving anyway. He stood and waited as D.B. struggled to her feet, rubbing her jaw. She winked at Eric. “My hero. Kinda like the tooth fairy in reverse.”
The young boy in the white tuxedo squatted over Tommy, listening at his chest. He shook his head. “Not a peep. I think his neck is busted.”
Deena sighed. “He couldn’t do much right.”
“Can I have the gloves,” the boy asked, already tugging them off Tommy’s limp hands.
Deena walked up to Eric. “Pretty soon you’re going to have made a complete wardrobe for the boy.”
“Let us go,” Eric said. “We don’t want anything from you.”
Deena laughed. “But we want something from you.” She gestured to the others. “Strip them naked,” she commanded.
Dozens of hands began pulling at Eric and D.B.’s clothing.
* * *
4
“Not bad,” Deena said, staring at Eric’s naked body. Her eyes drifted from the thick chest muscles down the narrow waist, the cubed stomach muscles. She lingered on his penis and grinned. “You got a name?”
“You asking me or my penis?”
Deena laughed. “You’re funny. It would be a shame to kill you without sampling the goods.”
“As long as you share,” a bearish bearded man from the crowd said. He stepped forward wearing a high school letter sweater with a hole above the heart. An ancient dark stain ringed the hole. The letter was a large white L with a basketball embedded in it. He tapped a long machete against his thigh. His cold eyes stared into Eric’s. “Sharing is the sign of a wise leader, Deena.”
“Which do you want, Edgar?” Deena asked him. “Him or her?”
Edgar’s smile curled his lips, revealing small yellowed teeth. “Both.”
“You’re too greedy, Edgar. Always have been.”
“Always will be,” Edgar chuckled.
Deena said to Eric, “Usually he settles for the bodies we dig up, if they’re not too ripe. You can see why it’s so tough to find a good husband around here.”
“Dating is hard,” Eric said.
Deena laughed. “I’m going to hate to lose you.”
“But you will. Right?”
She shrugged. “Eventually. Either you try something stupid again and we’ll have to kill you. Or we sell you off with her. No offense, but sexy young girls bring a lot more than guys, even guys in your kind of shape. Finally a society that recognizes a woman’s true worth.”
Eric watched her strut in front of him, reminding everyone who was in charge. Actually she was quite attractive, even with the missing eye and ear. Her face had the lean sharp lines of a model, the angles that all led to her mout
h, full and wide and cruel. Her body was long, slim-hipped but not boyish. She wore bib overalls with nothing underneath. The bib part barely covered her large breasts. Hard muscles were layered across the top of her chest and down her arms, hinting at the power beneath. The scars over her eye and ear seemed almost decorative, exotic marks, like beauty spots or punk make-up. Maybe he’d just seen too many scars by now to be affected. Or maybe he had too many of his own.
He stood with his hands at his sides, not wanting to appear afraid or ashamed. The object now was to stay alive. Not just for his sake or D.B.’s, but for Tim. Someone had to steal Tim back from Fallows. And no one else but Eric would be crazy enough to try.
Deena stood in front of him now, barely brushing his body as she reached up and let her finger trace the long scar that started at the base of his neck, sprouted straight up, hung right along the jawbone, edging up over the jaw and ending on his cheek in a white splotch like a burst skyrocket. “Nasty,” she said. “How’d it happen?”
“Clipping my toenails. One sliver flew up and sliced me clean open.”
Her finger lingered on his face. She leaned close enough now that her hip brushed across his penis. She was trying to arouse him. Humiliate him.
Thing is, Eric thought, it was working. She was sexy and her touch was just right. He could feel himself stirring. He had to concentrate. Control himself. He thought back on Big Bill Tenderwolf, the Hopi Indian who had trained him as a teenager. Big Bill dumping a bag of charcoal on the ground, soaking it in lighter fluid, then tossing in a match. Watching it burn while he sipped his beer.
Eric had sat on the porch not knowing what today’s lesson was, but feeling cocky, a little arrogant. “That the way your ancestors did it? Lighter fluid and Quick-Start charcoal?”
Big Bill had just smiled and tossed on more charcoal. When the flames had died down and there was nothing left but fiery red coals, Big Bill had waved Eric over. “Take off your shoes.”
Jason Frost - Warlord 05 - Terminal Island Page 2
