Eric shook his head again but the haziness wouldn’t clear. His sight was a little fuzzy, as if he were staring through gauze pads. He looked around for his crossbow, saw it lying on the other side of the hurricane fence topped with barbed wire.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Fallows said from the other side of the trailer. “Showdown at high noon?”
Eric smelled gas. A gunshot blasted, followed by a muffled whoosh and Eric could see the smoke streaming upward. Flames peeked over the edge of the trailer.
“Uh oh,” Fallows said. “We’ve got a problem here, Eric. I accidentally discharged a firearm near spilled gasoline. Now the trailer’s on fire. Oh, did I mention? Tim’s handcuffed to the trailer. Looks like you’re batting 0 for 3 in the family-saving department.”
Eric froze. Fallows wanted to lure him out into the open. If he went, Fallows would kill him. If he didn’t, Tim would die.
Fallows felt the burn of adrenalin pumping through his body. He inhaled deeply, enjoying the smell of burning gasoline, the feeling of lives teetering, the weight of the gun in his hand heavy and powerful as a broad axe.
Tim struggled against the handcuffs, his wrists raw and bleeding. The fire seemed to grow bigger with each inch it took closer to him. Tim’s clothes were soaked with sweat from the heat, from fear. “Don’t worry, Tim,” Fallows said. “I’ll finish him off before the fire gets you. I hope.” He winked and ducked around the side of the trailer, stalking Eric. No one was there, though he could see fresh blood where Eric had fallen. Not much. A scraped elbow’s worth. He moved cautiously, keeping his eye on what was now the roof of the trailer. At the far corner of the trailer, he spotted the toe of Eric’s shoe barely visible.
He laughed. “Old trick, Eric.” He shot the toe and the empty shoe flew to the side. “Is that your best? Hell, I taught you that one, remember?” Fallows kept walking, slowly moving around the trailer. “All you’ve proved so far is you can walk barefoot — ”
The door to the trailer, which was now the roof, popped open and smoke and flame billowed up, and amongst the smoke and flame, Eric lunged out at Fallows like an escapee from hell. He rammed Fallows in the chest with his head, sending both of them sprawling to the ground. The Walther spun out of Fallows’ hand and skidded across the pavement. The flames consumed most of the trailer now and lit their battleground brightly.
Blows were exchanged, fancy kicks, leg sweeps, reverse side kicks, plain old right hooks. Both men fought expertly, trying to use the hundred ways they knew of to kill a man on each other. Eric could only think of finishing it quickly in time to save Tim. But Fallows was too good to finish quickly. Eric might win the fight but lose Tim. He would have his revenge then, but Tim would be dead. But if Fallows won, he would save Tim. Maybe that was Tim’s only hope, for Eric to lose this fight.
They were locked together, hands choking each other when a bullet zinged off the pavement near their feet.
They looked up.
Tim stood holding the Walther, aiming it at both of them. Soot covered his face and there was a nasty burn on his arm.
Eric and Fallows both took a step toward him. Tim fired another round at the ground between them. “Don’t. Either of you.” He kept changing the position of the gun between Eric and Fallows. “I don’t care which of you wins. I could have fried there for all either of you cared. From now on I’m on my own. I’ve learned enough from both of you that I could raise my own army, an army of kids like me. We could take whatever we want, whenever we want. And no one will stop us.”
“I like the sound of that, Tim,” Fallows said. “Let me help you. Like I said, there are a couple of things I still haven’t taught you.”
Tim smiled and Eric recoiled. His smile no longer resembled Annie’s. It was a cold indifferent smile like a burrowing animal who’s lucked into a nest of insects.
“Tim,” Eric said.
“What?”
But he had nothing to add. There were no words that could convince a boy in Tim’s condition. It surprised Eric, saddened him deeply, but he had nothing to say to his own son.
Tim turned and fled.
Eric and Fallows faced each other.
“This changes things,” Fallows said. “I guess the winner goes after him.”
Eric answered with a left hook that rocked Fallows. But Fallows recovered quickly and struck Eric with a hard blow. Again the two men struggled, their fighting taking them around the trailer to the burning jeep. Both men were tired, battered, staggering slightly as they clashed again and again. Their faces were splotched with dark knobs. Ribs were cracked, fingers broken, knuckles fractured.
Finally, Fallows faked a leg sweep which Eric dodged, and instead blasted out with a roundhouse kick that swiveled Eric’s head around to the sound of crackling vertebrae. Eric fell to the ground and Fallows leaped on his back.
“I told your kid I had a few tricks left,” he said, pulling out a strand of barbed wire and looping it around Eric’s neck. He yanked hard and the sharp barbs punctured Eric’s throat, spurting blood from each hole.
Eric felt the wire tightening. As his own strength weakened, Fallows seemed to get stronger. Eric gulped for air, but the wire cut any off. He tried to stand, but he had trouble distinguishing between his legs and his arms. He wasn’t sure which did what. He searched his mind for a memory, a good one to die on. A time when he was with his family and they all smiled like people, not animals.
The image of Tim’s feral smile ballooned in his mind. The greedy glint in his eyes as he described what he was going to do, his army of scavengers, crusaders without cause except their own gratification. And Tim would do it. He had the ability, the brains. He would someday run an army worse than Fallows’.
And that Eric couldn’t endure.
He owed Annie better. He owed Tim better.
Eric felt the power starting somewhere deep within him, so deep it seemed to come from the center of the earth, traveling along some wire attached to Eric’s navel. Wherever it came from, it grew and grew like a fireball until Eric was consumed in its energy. He let out a growling roar and shook Fallows from his back.
Fallows still hung onto the wire, but Eric grabbed him by the belt with one hand and the throat with the other. The movement caused the barbs buried in his flesh to rake away lines of skin. Eric didn’t notice. He hoisted Fallows into the air over his head and looked for someplace to hurl him.
The trailer was completely in flames now. There, on its underbelly, a few sharp rods of twisted metal stuck straight out like the horn of a giant unicorn.
Eric ran toward that horn.
Holding Fallows high over his head, Eric thrust Fallows back-first onto the sharp end of the rods, impaling him there. Fallows’ cried out in pain, but his grip on the wire around Eric’s throat never loosened. Incredibly, the pain seemed to give him even greater strength.
Eric pushed harder. Fallows arched in agony, pulling even tighter. Eric felt his legs going numb but he pushed with all his might until the tip of the rods poked through Fallows’ chest. Fallows looked down at the metal sticking out of his chest and smiled ruefully. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He sagged into death, eyes open, hands still frozen to the barbed wire. Eric pried Fallows’ hands from the wire, saw the deep holes where the barbs had burrowed into his palms.
Eric unwrapped the wire from his neck and breathed in deeply. He stared at Fallows’ body suspended from the trailer, half-expecting him to climb down, laugh, and continue the fight. Even as the flames swept over Fallows’ clothes and ignited him, melting him down to sizzling flesh, Eric stared, waiting.
Finally he accepted that Fallows was indeed dead. He waited for some kind of feeling to enter his body. Relief. Joy. Justice. Vengeance.
Nothing came.
A great fiery explosion sounded behind him and Eric turned and saw the white shack with the missile and transmitting equipment go up in flames.
And even louder than the explosion came D.B.’s triumphant, “Yaho
ooo!”
Eric smiled.
* * *
25
“What’s the problem?” Eric asked.
Wendy hobbled around the unconscious elephant and picked up the sledgehammer. She carried it back and placed it next to the chisel and crowbar. She picked up the quarter-inch electric drill and checked the connection to the battery. “No problem. Dizzy has a bad tooth that has to come out.”
“So this is how you do it?” Eric moved closer, impressed with the deftness with which Wendy examined the elephant’s mouth.
“You a hands-on observer, or just a commentator?”
Eric knelt next to the elephant. “What do you want me to do?”
“Hold his mouth open. This is a rush job. The tranquilizer won’t last forever.”
“Where’s D.B.?”
“Practicing sign language with Madonna. She wants to teach her the lyrics to ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand.’ ”
Wendy positioned the drill against the elephant’s tooth. Suddenly she stopped, looked up at Eric. “You’re going, aren’t you?”
“And leave poor Dizzy with a cavity?”
“I mean soon. Today, tomorrow?”
Eric nodded.
She turned back to the tooth. Thin blue veins stood out in her temple. “Things too quiet for you around here?”
“Quiet? You call capturing Siberian tigers and a Komodo monitor quiet? I’d rather face graverobbers any day.”
“It’s only been two days.”
“I can’t risk any more time. Each day takes Tim further away. Most of the animals are caught again here. You’re doing better. D.B.’s fine.”
“Right, nothing to hold you here.” She flicked on the drill and pressed it into the tooth for a few seconds.
Eric pulled her around. “He’s my son.”
“Why? Because you raised him? Maybe he’s who he wants to be now. Maybe he isn’t brainwashed or conditioned. Maybe he’s just who he would have been anyway. You aren’t the first middle-class parent whose kid has gone bad.”
“Hey, guys, watch!” D.B. called excitedly. She ran up, pulling Madonna by the hand. “Watch this.”
The ape sat down and picked at the fur on her arm.
“Fascinating,” Eric said.
“Come on, Madonna. Show them.” D.B. made some hand gestures. Finally, Madonna repeated them. “There! See? ‘I’ and ‘hold.’ I’m telling ya, kid, I’m gonna make you a star.”
Eric and Wendy laughed.
“Tomorrow we work on ‘hand,’ ” D.B. said. “I think I can get her to use all three in the right order in a week.”
Neither Eric nor Wendy commented.
“What’s up?” D.B. asked. “Oh. It’s time to go, huh? And you’re gonna tell me I’m better off staying. Right?”
“Right.”
“And you think I’m gonna beg you to come along, don’t you. That I’m crazy enough to leave this place where there’s food and walls and water and go with you hunting your kid who punched me in the mouth and swiped my Playtex slingshot.”
Eric didn’t say anything.
“Are you?” Wendy asked her. “Are you going to go with him? I’ve told you you’re welcome to stay.”
Loud banging on the wood barricade at the front of the zoo interrupted them.
Eric and D.B. grabbed their weapons and ran for the gates. Wendy limped quickly behind them using the crutches Eric had made for her.
Eric stood at the gate with his crossbow cocked. Several fists pounded on the door.
“What do you want?” Eric said.
“Let us in,” the voice begged. “We have wounded.”
D.B. shouldered her SMG.
Eric held up his hand for her to hold her fire. He opened the peephole he’d put in yesterday. A skinny old man carrying a spear stood in front of the door. On the ground sat a young girl of six or seven. A woman in her late-thirties wore a harness and was dragging an Indian-style sled made from branches and a sheet. In the sled lay an unconscious boy in his late teens. He looked feverish.
“Can you help us?” the old man said. “My grandson’s in bad shape.”
Wendy hobbled up to the gate. She closed the peephole without looking through it. “I’m sorry. We have no help for you here.”
“He’s in bad shape,” the old man repeated. He didn’t seem to know what else to say.
Wendy looked at Eric. “I don’t have supplies for everybody who comes this way. We take them in, we’ll have to take everybody in. Soon they’ll be slaughtering my animals.”
“Your zoo, your decision,” Eric said.
Wendy shook her head. “Why’d you come here?” she called.
“That kid sent us.”
“What kid?” Eric asked.
“The one who shot my grandson. Sneaked into our camp last night and stole a bunch of food and clothes. Jimmy here took after him with a shotgun, but the kid shot Jimmy and took the shotgun too. Told Jimmy you folks might help.”
Eric swung the gates open.
“Once,” Wendy said. “Just this once.”
Wendy and Eric took the boy to the infirmary and treated him immediately.
Afterward, the old man asked how the boy was doing.
“We’ll know better in the morning.”
The old man nodded and his daughter sat next to the boy and watched him sleep.
Outside, Eric gathered his gear. Wendy and D.B. watched.
“He’s my son. I brought him into this world. But if this is what he’s going to do, I’ll take him out.”
“He’s a boy,” D.B. said.
“He almost killed another boy.”
“But he sent them here. He could have left the kid to die. He didn’t. He sent them here.”
Eric nodded. Tim still had some of Eric and some of Fallows in him. He would have to find him before what was Eric and Annie were gone forever. Digging that bullet out of the young boy made Eric feel almost as if he’d shot the boy himself.
Eric hefted the pack on his back and slung the crossbow on his shoulders. D.B. turned and ran into the trailer where Madonna now lived. When she came out again, she had her backpack on.
“I’ve been packed since yesterday.” She looked at Eric. “No arguments?”
“None.”
Eric and Wendy didn’t kiss. They didn’t shake. He hugged her close and she hugged him back and for that time they seemed closer than if they’d been making love.
As she let them out the front gate, Wendy hooked a thumb over her shoulder toward the room where the family kept watch of the wounded boy. “Paradise will never be the same with people in it.”
“Then it isn’t paradise.”
They left, Eric leading the way. D.B. waved back at Wendy and Madonna for nearly ten minutes as they hiked away from the zoo.
Four hours later Eric and D.B. were eating a cooked rabbit and sipping catnip tea.
“I may go back there someday,” D.B. said. “I mean to live.”
“I may too,” Eric said.
“Yeah? That paradise stuff is catching, huh?”
Eric cut a piece of rabbit off and handed it to her. “Right now this is all you need to know of paradise.”
“And all I want to know,” D.B. said, sinking her teeth into the meat.
* * *
* * *
Scanned and proofed. TK Jul 2013 (v1.0)(html)
Jason Frost - Warlord 05 - Terminal Island Page 18
