Revolution No.9

by Neil Mcmahon

  Taxman stopped his knife work and turned toward her. But it was a younger man, standing farther away, who answered:

  “On a mission.” He inflated the word mission with importance, but his voice had a nervous, blustery edge.

  Monks recognized it, deep in his bones, a voice that he had heard make its first newborn squall-Glenn’s.

  Monks quietly turned his head toward the talkers. He could just make out the figure of a small slender woman, walking closer with folded arms. Glenn was standing beside the SUV, fidgeting.

  “So, you lied to me?” she said, still with that dangerous sweetness.

  Taxman answered this time. “Stay cool, Shrinkwrap. It was Freeboot’s call.” His voice was quiet, but hard-edged and authoritative.

  “Really? Something too important for me to know about?”

  Taxman hesitated, then said, “Freeboot decided to get a doctor. So we got one. Coil’s old man.”

  “What?” Her voice rose sharply in disbelief. “You brought his father here?”

  Then she seemed to realize that there was someone lying on the ground. She took three or four quick steps toward Monks and bent forward to stare at him, arms held away from her body in a posture of shock.

  “Oh, my God,” she breathed. She whirled and spoke furiously to Glenn. “Why didn’t you tell me, you little shit? I could have stopped it.”

  “Hey, you can work it out with Freeboot, okay?” Glenn retorted, his own voice heated and sullen.

  “Are you insane? This is serious trouble. You think people aren’t going to be looking for this guy?”

  “It’s all going to be cool.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because,” Glenn said, “he owes me, bigtime.”

  An instant of crystalline stillness followed in Monks’s mind, an interlude when all sound and motion seemed to stop completely, even the beating of his heart.

  A dining room littered with broken dishes and food on the floor, from another of Glenn’s endless tantrums. Monks, trembling with anger, left hand clenching the taunting boy’s collar, right hand raised to slap him. Gail, Glenn’s mother, clinging to Monks’s arm and screaming at him to stop.

  He pushed the memory back into the ugly shadows where it lurked, along with too many others. But it went a long way toward explaining this. By Glenn’s lights, Monks had it coming.

  Glenn started walking away. The woman called Shrinkwrap said, “Wait a minute, pet, we’re not done talking,” and strode after him. Monks heard their voices for another half minute-hers, harsh and controlling; his, defiant. Then they faded with distance.

  She had called him “pet” twice. Monks had not been able to see her clearly, but he was sure that she was in her thirties, and maybe older. Glenn was twenty-two.

  Taxman was busy with his knife again. He finished slicing through the tape, and finally unlocked the handcuffs. Monks rolled onto his back and rubbed his sore wrists, grimacing at the hot shooting pain of returning circulation.

  “Empty your pockets,” Taxman said. Monks could see now that he was built like a ferret, his body as thin as his face. With his light, close-cropped hair, his head was a pale orb, giving him a spectral presence.

  Monks rose stiffly to his knees and dropped his possessions on the ground: wallet, keys, Kershaw folding knife, and a few coins.

  “Your watch, too.”

  Monks unstrapped it and added it to the other items. It was a sturdy Casio diver’s watch, which he liked because it remained unscathed by punishment and occasional dousings of body fluids in the ER. It had a small compass on the wristband, an affectation in most circumstances, but useful if you took a wrong turn on a back road. He tried to get a glimpse of the compass to orient himself, but there wasn’t enough light.

  “You want to take a piss, go ahead,” Taxman said.

  Monks managed to stand up, staggering as the stinging prickles shot down his legs. Marguerite was still standing beside the SUV. She seemed anxious, as if she were waiting for something. He hesitated, expecting her to at least turn away as he unbuttoned his fly, but she paid no attention to him. Apparently, those kinds of social graces were not an issue here. He turned his own back and urinated copiously.

  He could see now that he was in a clearing the size of a football field, with the dim shapes of several buildings scattered around. One, made of logs, had the lit windows that he had seen earlier. The others were dark. The air was significantly colder than at his own place, and heavy with the scent of conifers. He could just make out the trees’ tall shapes around the clearing. The fresh wind rustled their branches and blew against his face, bringing the smell of woodsmoke.

  What it all added up to was that they were somewhere deep in the mountains of north-central California. There were thousands of square miles of alpine forest up here, most of it far from any town or even a paved road.

  Monks buttoned up and turned back. The possibility had also occurred to him that a member of this band was sick or hurt, maybe even wounded in the course of committing a crime, and they didn’t want to risk going to a hospital. It still seemed extreme to kidnap a physician; there were easier ways to get medical care while staying anonymous. But maybe using Glenn as a buffer figured in there, too.

  “If somebody needs a doctor, why don’t you take me to them,” he said.

  Taxman ignored him, instead watching a figure that was trotting closer, out of the darkness. It was the big man, Hammerhead.

  “Freeboot wants you to wait in the lodge,” he said to Marguerite. “He’s giving a training session.”

  She recoiled in shock. “That fuck.” The word came out in a harsh expulsion of breath.

  “He wasn’t expecting us back so soon,” Hammerhead said. He sounded unhappy, apologetic, as if trying to mollify her.

  “Why should I care?” she said. “He has the right to do what he wants.” She tossed her hair, defiant now, then stalked toward the building with the lit windows.

  “Marguerite,” Hammerhead said, taking a quick step after her.

  But Taxman interrupted with his hard-edged drawl. “You done good tonight, HH. Don’t fuck it up.”

  Hammerhead, Monks thought. Taxman. Shrinkwrap. And Glenn, it seemed, was called Coil.

  Hammerhead turned back, with his heavy jaw clamped tight. The name fit, Monks had to agree. His head was large, square, and seemed to bulge slightly at the temples, an effect that was accentuated by jug ears.

  “He said for us to come on,” Hammerhead said.

  Taxman looked at Monks and pointed with his knife to one of the unlit buildings fifty yards away.

  The two men flanked Monks as they walked to it.

  This structure was small, about half the size of a one-car garage, and made of peeled logs that were weathered with age. There were no windows, only a door of heavy planks. The smell of woodsmoke was strong here, and Monks could see a thin plume rising from a stovepipe in the roof.

  Taxman motioned Monks to wait. Hammerhead pulled the door open.

  A cloud of warm damp air spilled out, carrying the pungent scent of heated cedar. At the room’s center rear, a huge old iron stove blazed, with dancing flames showing through cracks in the casting. A metal bucket of water and a dipper sat on the floor in front of it. Crude three-tiered benches had been built against the walls. Monks realized that it was a sauna.

  There were two people in it. One was a woman sitting sideways on a bottom bench, nude, leaning back against the wall. She was young, perhaps twenty, and quite pretty, her hair touseled and damp from steam. Her feet were up on the bench, her knees at her shoulders and apart. Her head was turned to one side, her eyes closed. Her right hand was poised between her thighs, wrist arched delicately, fingers touching her vulva.

  The other was a man of about thirty-five, sitting against the opposite wall, watching her intently. He was naked, too, and also an impressive sight-tightly muscled, with corded forearms and knotty veined biceps. His skin, glistening with steam and sweat, seemed to glow in
the firelight like molten bronze. He had a thick dark stubble of beard and hair.

  Monks’s instant impression was of the blacksmith god Vulcan, taking time away from his forge to sport with a nymph.

  So this was Freeboot. Deeply involved in a training session.

  Freeboot’s head turned sharply toward the open door. The woman turned more slowly, her eyes opening and fingers pausing.

  Hammerhead said, “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Freeboot nodded. Hammerhead closed the door.

  The woman came out alone a minute later. She moved as if she was in a dream, groping for a robe that hung from a peg on the log wall, slipping it on, then fading off toward another nearby building. If she was aware of the three men watching her, she gave no sign of it. The aroma of cedar lingered in her wake like perfume.

  Taxman opened the door again and nodded to Monks.

  Monks stepped inside, expecting the guards to follow. But the door closed behind him. The air was sweltering. Immediately, he felt the flush of blood rising to his skin, and started to sweat.

  Freeboot was still sitting on the bench. His body was relaxed, but his eyes stared at Monks with hypnotic intensity. Monks noted again his superb musculature. He was not tall, nor thick like a weight lifter, but he looked like he was strung together with cables. It came home to Monks that the guards hadn’t come in because there was no need for them. Trying to attack this man would be like taking on a cougar. His arms and upper body sported large dark blotches, which Monks at first thought were birthmarks. Now he realized that they were tattoos that apparently had been filled in solid.

  “Sorry we had to bring you here like that, man,” Freeboot said.

  “Nobody had to do anything to me.”

  “I can understand that you’re pissed off.”

  “If Glenn had just asked me to come here, I would have.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Freeboot said. “We don’t know if we can trust you.”

  Monks’s mouth opened in outrage. This was the second time he had heard that what had happened to him was, essentially, his fault.

  “If you can trust me?” he said.

  “We’d like to treat you right. It’s up to you.”

  Freeboot stood in a quick fluid motion, vibrant with strength and grace. He lifted the full dipper out of the bucket, and flicked the water onto the blazing stove. Steam poured off the iron with an explosive hiss. Monks threw his forearm across his face to shield himself from the blistering heat. A few seconds later, another hiss sounded, and a wave of even hotter steam wrapped around him, clawing its way inside his clothes. The hiss came a third time. Monks backed into the sauna’s corner and spun away from the stove, head buried in both arms, barely able to breathe the scorching air.

  Over the next seconds the heat subsided, though not much, like a menacing presence that had taken a step back but was liable to attack again. Monks wiped his streaming eyes on his sleeve and turned around.

  Freeboot was standing in front of the stove, looking entirely at ease, smiling slightly.

  “Lose your clothes and hang for a while,” he said. “Sweat out the bad vibes.”

  “Just tell me what you want,” Monks managed to say, half-choking on the words.

  Freeboot kept watching him steadily for a long fifteen seconds. Then he strode past Monks, pushed open the door, and stood aside.

  Monks stumbled out into the fresh cool night and crouched, hands on his thighs, working on getting his breath back. Another explosion of steam sounded inside the sauna, this one louder and longer than any of the others, as if Freeboot had emptied the rest of the bucket onto the stove.

  Half a minute later, the sauna door swung open. Freeboot stood framed in the firelight, damp and shining, like a burnished statue.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s get down to business.”

  He stepped out, took jeans and a shirt from pegs on the wall, and, still wet, pulled them on.

  “Coil-your kid, we call him Coil ’cause he’s wound so tight,” Freeboot said, “he tells me you’re a medieval scholar.”

  Monks had started feeling sharper. The shock of sudden heat and then coolness had helped.

  “I’m not a scholar of anything,” he said.

  “But you know about the Free Companies, right?”

  “I don’t understand what that has to do with me being here.”

  Freeboot’s gaze hardened into a stare. “I’m trying to get around to that, if you’ll give me a chance.”

  Monks hesitated, unwilling to enter into a genial discussion. But to be overly stubborn would be childish and could backfire.

  “Yes,” he said. The Free Companies were bands of brigands, loosely organized into private armies, that scourged Europe during the Middle Ages, preying on the undefended populace.

  “You think that could happen these days? Here, in the States?”

  “I’ve never thought about it,” Monks said.

  “Well, do think about it, man. There’s twenty million people out there who got nothing. Outlaws, or just one step away. And zillions of guns.”

  Freeboot nodded for emphasis, apparently satisifed that he had made his point. Then, barefoot, he started across the clearing with a rangy feral stride.

  Monks and the guards followed, this time to the large cabin with lit windows that they called the lodge. He guessed that it was close to a hundred years old. Its logs were almost three feet thick, the kind of old-growth Doug fir you hardly ever saw anymore. They had settled with age, and the chinking was gone in spots, but the structure and metal roof looked intact.

  When the door opened, Monks had the sense of looking into a tableau from hundreds of years ago, the kind on display in museums. A fire crackled in the big stone hearth, lighting the room. The air was thick with the smell of generations of roasted meat. There was a long table of rough-hewn wood, strewn with liquor and beer bottles.

  The two women in the room were also frozen, tableau-style, in their poses, but their clothing put them into modern times. Marguerite had changed into tight low-cut jeans and a skimpy blouse, the outfit that seemed to be a uniform for young women these days. Her long black hair and Mediterranean face gave her a look that could have graced a Renaissance portrait, if you ignored the exposed midriff and pierced navel. She looked forlorn, adding to the sense of a lady pining for a lover. Monks recalled her obvious upset at hearing that Freeboot was giving “training.”

  He recognized the other woman as Shrinkwrap. She was in her late thirties, small and thin, with an aura of no-nonsense intelligence. Like everyone else, she was wearing blue jeans and had a red bandanna tied as a hippie-style headband, but her shoulder-length hair was professionally cut and well cared for. She didn’t seem happy, either, with a hostile gaze that was fixed on Monks.

  There was no sign of Glenn.

  Freeboot crossed the room to stand beside Marguerite, his hand sliding down, with automatic familiarity, to caress her rump. She lowered her eyes, with the deferential air of a consort in the presence of her lord. He was not much taller than Marguerite, under six feet, and with his taut body hidden by clothes, he looked less fearsome than he had when he was glowing in the sauna. But his eyes still commanded.

  “We’ve got somebody who’s sick,” Freeboot said to Monks. “You willing to help?”

  So: that was it.

  “It depends,” Monks said warily.

  “On what?”

  “On a lot of things. I’d have to look them over and see if I can help, for starters.”

  “What I’m asking you is, are you willing?”

  Monks hesitated, then said, “I’ll give you my opinion on the best course to take.”

  “Let’s quit the word-game bullshit, man. You took the Hippocratic oath, right?”

  Monks’s mouth opened in astonishment that Freeboot both knew the term and what it entailed. And he was right. Monks had had a vague notion of using his skills as a bargaining chip. But the truth was, there was no way he could not treat som
eone in need, insane though the circumstances might be.

  “I’ll do what I can,” he said. “Have you got any medical supplies?”

  “Tell us what you want. We’ll get it.” Freeboot seemed confident of this, and Monks decided not to point out that obtaining things like prescription medicines might not be easy or even possible.

  Freeboot walked to a doorway that opened off the cabin’s main room. There was no door, only a heavy wool blanket hanging in the opening.

  “In here,” he said. He pulled the blanket aside and waited for Monks to go first.

  Monks did, cautiously, fearing the sight of a wound that had gone untended for days.

  This room was very dim, the only light coming from a single kerosene lamp turned down low. The rustic impression was enhanced by an old-fashioned enamel pitcher and basin on a dresser. There was a jumble of clothes on the floor, and two beds, with someone asleep in one of them. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out a bare arm and long fair hair splayed over the pillow. He stepped closer, assuming that this was the patient.

  “Not her,” Freeboot said. “Him.”

  He pointed at the other bed, and Monks realized suddenly that there was someone in that one, too, scrunched back into the corner, almost hidden in the shadows.

  He felt his scalp bristle when it hit him that he was looking at a little boy, about four years old, staring back with hollow eyes in his small, pale face.

  3

  Monks felt the surge of adrenaline that he usually only got when something really bad came through the ER doors. He knew already that this child was very sick. His first, worst fear was meningitis.

  “Hi,” Monks said, managing to smile. “What’s your name?”

  The little boy did not answer. His hair seemed colorless, his eyes sunken and dull, and his cheeks were too thin-the terrifying look of old age in a face that was just forming.

  “He can talk pretty good when he wants to,” Freeboot said from the doorway. “His name’s Mandrake. The root of mystical power.”

  Monks grimaced. For adults to take on absurd names was one thing; to burden a child with one was another. He was vaguely aware that the mandrake root had occult significance. He wondered if Freeboot knew that Mandrake had also been a comic-strip magician of a few decades before.