by Neil Mcmahon
“I don’t know how.” Her voice was muffled, a little frightened.
“I’ll show you. Just don’t fight me.”
Freeboot had learned a long time ago, using LSD, that he could separate a part of his mind from the rest-like a tentacle, like a snake-and send it into other minds. The younger and more stoned they were, the easier it was. It was like opening the door to somebody’s living room and seeing them sitting on the couch watching TV, so wrapped up in it, they’d forgotten where they were. There were several screens, broadcasting the different channels of thoughts, memories, feelings, everything that went on in their heads.
Feelings were the most important. They were what ruled. Freeboot could see them, beaming out from that TV set-fear, hate, love, doubt, all the pressures that built up in people’s lives, mixing together to push them into what they did and said.
And he knew how to push those feelings. He didn’t know how he knew, he just did. He shone his energy, his power, on the ones he wanted-love for the women, aggression for the men, jacking up fear in a maquis who was getting cocky or devotion in a bride who was restless.
When he went back out that door and closed it again, they didn’t know what had happened, didn’t even know that he’d been in there. But that energy he pumped in was him. As those feelings got stronger, Freeboot was the hidden essence of them, like oxygen in air. Every breath they took contained him.
When he finished with Circe, she was trembling a little.
“That was good,” he said. “You’re going to be a sweet bride. But one thing you got to understand-some of the other girls are going to be jealous of you. You have to keep yourself above that.”
“Okay,” she breathed.
“Good girl.” He petted her once more, then stood. “I’ve got to step out a while. Go ahead and toke up some more of that hash. I’ll be back.”
He pulled on his jeans, then took a money clip from his pocket and laid five one-hundred-dollar bills beside her on the bed.
“When you get back to town, buy yourself something pretty,” he said. Devotion might be a matter of the spirit, but it rolled more smoothly on wheels well greased with things that could be touched.
Circe got up, too, and slid luxuriantly into the stone bath. Lying back, with the clear water rippling over her young body, she was a luscious sight.
“Freeboot?” she said. Her face was childlike with seriousness. “Can you make me stop dreaming about flunking out of high school?”
He grinned. “Don’t worry, baby. Pretty soon you won’t even remember it.”
5
Monks’s shackles were locked around his ankles, with an eighteen-inch chain connecting them, like a slave would have worn. The chain was locked again to a cable bolted to the floor, giving him just enough slack to move around the room. He’d had to take off his boots to put them on. They weren’t tight enough to hurt, but they weighed. He wondered where you would find something like that these days. A specialty shop. Or maybe on e-Bay.
There was no window he could see out of to watch the sky, no way to tell the time, but he guessed that it was around three A.M. by now. He and Mandrake had been alone for the past couple of hours. He had thought about trying to escape, but the shackles cut off any hope, and it was clear that the camp was being guarded. Ludicrous as this bunch might seem-adopting the term maquis, for Christ’s sake, the sterling French resistance fighters of World War Two-they were at least organized. Captain America had been on duty, then had been relieved by someone called Sidewinder, announcing this in a ritualistic fashion: Take this, brother, may it serve you well. Whatever that meant.
Monks sat again on Mandrake’s bed with a cup of water, as he’d been doing every half hour or so. The bed’s other occupant was the only stuffed animal that the little boy seemed to have, a fat, four-foot-long lime-green snake with a happy grin. The small pile of books on the dresser had a few old children’s standards-Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, Dr. Seuss-but was mainly made up of more modern works, like copies of Heavy Metal magazine and Angry Blonde, the rap lyrics of Eminem.
Monks cupped the back of Mandrake’s neck with one hand, then poured a slow trickle of water into his mouth.
“Come on, buddy,” Monks said. “You need this. Attaboy.” Mandrake sputtered, but swallowed. Monks kept the water coming until his head twisted aside.
“This must be a pretty neat place to live, huh?” Monks said. “Up here in the forest? I bet there’s deer that come around.” His hands drifted gently over Mandrake’s body as he spoke, absorbing information about his condition. The boy’s eyes had opened a little while he was drinking the water, but then closed again.
“You know, what those deer really like is bread,” Monks said. “That’s a good way to make friends with them. You want to try feeding them tomorrow?”
No response. Monks reached under the covers and felt the diaper. It was wet. There was a box of Huggies beside the bed, another bizarre touch in this rustic scene. He pulled off the wet one, tossed it into a slops bucket, and got two fresh ones, using one to dry Mandrake and putting the other on him. It took Monks a moment to figure out the self-adhesive strapping arrangement. Back in the days when his own kids were in diapers, his wife had mostly used the washable kind.
His mouth twisted. He had been trying not to think about Glenn.
He covered Mandrake up and walked across the room to a crude wooden chair. The cable dragged behind him on the floor.
Monks had been dredging up everything that he could find in his memory about diabetes. It was a condition he encountered frequently in the ER, but usually as a complication or a contributing factor to the presenting ailment. He had diagnosed it enough times in children to recognize it tonight. And he seen plenty of people come into the ER deathly ill from it-usually because they hadn’t taken their insulin, or had ignored dietary rules. He knew that it was easy for diabetics to get very sick very fast, and much harder for them to pull back out.
But extended treatment of diabetes lay in the realm of specialists-internists, endocrinologists, and pediatricians. Even under ideal conditions, in a hospital setting, he wouldn’t have considered himself qualified, let alone in a situation like this. And without the all-important lab workups to measure blood sugar and electrolytes, he felt as helpless as a soldier going naked into battle.
He was sure that he was looking at juvenile-onset diabetes, technically known as “Type 1,” or “insulin-dependent” diabetes mellitus-usually called IDDM. Patients who did not get insulin died.
And there were other complications. Mandrake’s dehydration was advanced. He was drinking as much water as he could, but the sugar in his urine was carrying out even more than he could take in. Soon he wouldn’t be able to drink enough to keep up. That would bring on a coma and, eventually, death.
He was also losing potassium, which had its own spectrum of ugly side effects, including paralysis and respiratory failure. That, too, could be fatal.
Then there was a rarer nightmare, but perhaps the worst of all, and one seen most often in kids-cerebral edema. The brain swelled, compressing the brain stem, and causing death within a few hours. It was treatable if caught in time, but that required sophisticated equipment.
Monks had no accurate way to measure how close Mandrake was to a crisis, either. But his gut told him that even if he had insulin, even if he could deal with all those factors and stabilize the boy’s condition, it would only be for a matter of days. And something as simple as a cold or an infection could quickly destroy the precarious balance.
He was staring at Mandrake in the room’s dim light when he heard the lodge’s door open, then footsteps cross the main room. The old wooden floor telegraphed the sounds, a series of creaks and hollow thumps.
Monks moved quietly to the bedroom doorway and peered through the hanging blanket. The newcomer was Marguerite, apparently done with Captain America. She was kneeling at the fireplace, setting a metal cook pan on the glowing coals.
She stood
, shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, and paced, her head bowed as if in concentration. After half a minute, she went to the table and poured a glass of wine. She drank it down in a few fierce swallows, then poured another.
It seemed that she was troubled.
Monks went back to his chair. A few minutes later, he heard her footsteps approach the bedroom. She stepped into the doorway, carrying a tray with a covered plate and a mug. But she did not come in. It occurred to Monks that she was staying beyond the radius of his fetter, as if he were a vicious dog.
“I warmed you up some food,” she said.
He hadn’t eaten since lunch, and the savory smell of roasted meat started his belly growling. But he was not yet ready to succumb. It added to the mean edge he was harboring toward his captors.
“You don’t feel strange about serving dinner to somebody who’s chained to the floor?” he said.
“Look, this wasn’t my idea.” She kept her head half turned away, as if to hide behind the long hair that covered the side of her face.
“That’s what the Nazi camp guards claimed after World War Two. Watch a movie called Night and Fog sometime.”
“You don’t understand, man,” she said, dropping back into the defensive mode that he had seen earlier.
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Freeboot’s not like other people.”
“I understand that.”
“I mean-he doesn’t go by the same rules.”
Monks thought about pointing out that people who made up their own rules tended to be called “felons,” but he decided to back off-not out of compassion, but in the hopes that he might be able to win her confidence and use it to his advantage.
“You’re the only one here who seems to give a damn about him,” he said, nodding toward Mandrake.
“It’s not that they don’t care. It’s just that everybody’s…wrapped up in other stuff.”
“So I’ve gathered,” Monks said.
Monks got the water cup and sat on the bed, coaxing Mandrake to drink. Marguerite hesitated a little longer, then walked in and set the tray on the table.
“If you want to crash, I can take over that,” she said.
“I’m all right for now.”
She went to the doorway, but lingered, one hand resting against the jamb.
“I couldn’t believe what you did back there,” she said. “Tasting pee.”
“Practicing medicine’s not always pretty.”
“It freaked Freeboot out totally,” she said. “It was like you read his mind. He’s terrified of diabetes. He had an uncle who went blind. The doctors didn’t help him any.”
Monks registered the information. That probably figured into why Freeboot had reacted so strongly.
“Sometimes there’s nothing that can be done,” Monks said.
It took him another minute to get an adequate amount of water into the little boy. Marguerite was quiet, and he thought she had gone, but when he stood up, she was outside the doorway, watching. She beckoned to him with a timid wave.
“Could that happen to Mandrake?” she asked quietly. “Going blind?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Monks said. “Unless he gets to a hospital, he’s not going to live anywhere near that long.”
Twenty minutes later, the blanket was pulled roughly aside again. Monks was surprised-he hadn’t heard footsteps approach this time. Freeboot strode into the room with a small duffel bag full of stuff, which he dumped on the table. He was still barefoot.
“Here’s your insulin,” he said triumphantly.
Monks was surprised by this, too. After the couple of hours of driving on back roads, he had assumed that the nearest town big enough for an all-night pharmacy would be a long round trip.
He got up from his chair to look. There were two bottles of insulin, both manufactured by Eli Lilly. One was Humulin RU-100-regular insulin, 100-units-per-milliliter strength. The other was longer-acting Humulin NPH. There were also a handheld glucose meter and strips for measuring blood sugar, disposable lancets for drawing the blood drops-and packets of Monoject 1-cc syringes, available only by prescription.
The explanation came clear fast. The plastic caps that sealed fresh insulin bottles were missing. The bottles and packets all had been opened and were partially empty.
“You got this from a diabetic patient?” Monks said.
“Somebody we know. Don’t sweat, we paid for it.”
“I’m not worried about that. This medicine is that person’s lifeline. They need it.”
“We need it, man. She can get more.”
Monks hesitated: push had come to shove. Now was the last moment when he could simply refuse to cooperate. It might call Freeboot’s bluff-force him to take Mandrake in for treatment.
If not, Mandrake was as good as dead.
Reluctantly, Monks hefted the two bottles, one in each hand, as if that could help him gauge the dosage. In the ER, when someone came in critically ill with IDDM, the insulin was administered intravenously, with the blood sugar constantly monitored. There was always the grave danger of the insulin driving the sugar level too low, which could bring on hypoglycemia, convulsions, and brain damage.
He knew the appropriate dosages and procedures for those situations, and in the ER he carried a personal digital assistant for calculations and information that wasn’t at his fingertips. But here, it was going to be a very dicey affair.
Freeboot was watching him intently. “You got a problem?”
“This isn’t straightforward, like an antibiotic,” Monks said. “There’s a lot of factors involved. How about finding me some rubbing alcohol.”
Freeboot’s eyes narrowed, and Monks realized again that even such a mild demand was an affront to that huge ego. But he had plenty to worry about without having to pussyfoot around.
“We don’t keep anything like that around here,” Freeboot said.
“Vodka, then.”
Freeboot stalked to the door. “Marguerite!” he barked into the other room. “Bring me a bottle of vodka.”
Monks went through the flow chart in his head once more. An adult patient would typically take both kinds of insulin together, morning and evening-perhaps ten units of the regular, to help metabolize meals, and twenty units of the NPH long-term, for general stabilization. But the NPH was of no use to someone in crisis, and ten units of the RU-100 would be way too much. Mandrake weighed no more than fifty pounds, and, sick as he was, the risk of overlowering his blood sugar outweighed the possible benefit of a high dose.
Monks decided on three units, injected subcutaneously rather than intravenously. If there was no adverse response, he would repeat it in two hours, then start lengthening the interval.
The vodka arrived, handed silently through the doorway by Marguerite. The smell of marijuana smoke wafted in with her. The vodka was Stolichnaya. Apparently Freeboot wasn’t roughing it when it came to liquor.
Monks didn’t bother to ask for cotton swabs. He wadded up a few tissues, soaked them with vodka, then sat on the bed again. Mandrake still seemed to be asleep, and didn’t stir when Monks pricked his finger with a lancet.
Monks squeezed a drop of blood onto one of the strips and fed it into the meter. The LED readout showed 326 milligrams per deciliter-severe to dangerous. Normal was 80 to 120.
Mandrake’s eyes fluttered as Monks eased him onto his back. Monks rubbed his shoulders and started talking, trying to soothe him.
“What about fishing?” Monks said. “You ever go fishing? I bet there’s some monster trout up in these streams.”
Mandrake’s eyes drifted shut. His diaper was wet again. Monks unfastened it, then peeled the wrapper off one of the pre-calibrated syringes and drew three units of the RU-100 into it.
“Maybe that’s what we ought to do tomorrow,” he said, swabbing Mandrake’s abdomen with fresh vodka-soaked tissues. “We’ll dig up some big fat worms and catch a trout for your mom to cook. How’s that?”
He pinched up a roll of unresisting flesh and made a quick stab with the needle, slowly depressing the plunger as he kept talking. The shot was subcutaneous, not penetrating into muscle, but still a sting. Mandrake did not react at all.
Monks withdrew the needle and swabbed the spot again, then eased the diaper free. He tossed it in the bucket and got a couple of fresh ones.
“I’m starting to take you seriously,” Freeboot said, watching him dry the little boy.
“That warms my heart,” Monks said curtly.
This time Freeboot didn’t seem offended. He leaned back against a wall and took a flat round can from his pocket- Copenhagen chewing tobacco, Monks observed, the kind favored by cowboys. But instead of taking a chew, Freeboot dipped in the point of his knife, and brought it out mounded with white powder. He inhaled it with a quick, harsh snorting sound.
He dipped the knife in again and offered it to Monks.
“Biker crank,” Freeboot said. “Keep you going.”
Monks shook his head.
“You a law-and-order guy?”
“If I was judgmental about what I saw in the ER, I’d have shot myself in the head a long time ago,” Monks said.
Freeboot lifted the knife to his nose and inhaled again, then wiped the back of his hand under his nostrils and put the can away.
“I’ve got a couple of questions,” he said.
“I’m not much for polite conversation when I’m chained up.”
Freeboot ignored this barb, too. “About what’s going on with the kid. I want you to help me believe you, man.”
Monks reminded himself that stubbornness wasn’t going to do either Mandrake or him any good.
“I’ll tell you what I can,” he said.
“It gets passed on by bad genes, right? The diabetes?”
“My understanding is that there’s some genetic predisposition, but it’s not cut and dried. Diabetic parents can have nondiabetic kids, and vice versa.”
“But it isn’t something you catch, like AIDS or hepatitis?”
