Blood-Stained Kings

by Tim Willocks

  Most of those who had died need not have. Grimes could have left Lenna to the mercy of Jack Seed. He could have left his father to the fate that in the end he had failed to alter. Did it matter that some had died for power and money and others for belief? Would the former always push the latter to that pass? Apart from George and Holden Daggett he did not mourn for the fallen; they had made their choices, as had he. But somehow, through a succession of slithering and unacknowledged moments of decision, he sat here now with more lives yet to be lost weighing in the balance of his say-so. If he told Titus Oates, whose blood it was on the floor, that they were backing off and going home, then Oates would protest but he’d give in. So would Ella. And Lenna, if she was still alive, wouldn’t thank him for what he planned to attempt. The suitcases stacked beside him meant no more to him now than they had the day before; Grimes refused to let death give them value. And Clarence Jefferson, the player of games: why did Grimes yearn for him so? Perhaps in order that the wasted fatman weigh the balance for him?

  Grimes told himself: you’re fucked-up, exhausted and scared. Go back to your pit, your floor of garbage, where you belong. But he no longer wanted to.

  If he was stained with blood now, it was because of his original refusal to weigh the balance that Jefferson had thrust upon him. He could hear the wheedling argument of civilization, of the safe and smugly knowing, buzzing around the outer skin of his brain. He cared nothing for them anymore. There was no longer any logic to be articulated concerning either the law or the good or even how best to protect himself from the wrath of Filmore Faroe. There was simply a primal imbalance demanding redress: a righting of never-to-be -calibrated scales; a judgment invited from an ancient court. If that represented justice, then fine and comforting; if not—if, rather, something else, closer to bloodlust—then so it was and would be, comforting or otherwise.

  He wondered how he could claim the right to think in such terms. In the cool of the morning, civilization would condemn him; and so, perhaps, would he. But this was not the cool of the morning; it was the heat of a monstrous night. Here he could no longer shelter beneath the shady palms of ethical debate. Here he could only act: and throw all their lives upon the wheel once more; and bear within himself, now and afterward, the burden of the outcome of its spinning. Or not, as he chose. For both endeavors insist upon the spilling of blood: whether blood of vein or blood of soul; your own and that of others, too.

  Such were the thoughts that turned through the mind of Cicero Grimes as he stared at the blood on the floor.

  “It’s sound and ready,” said Titus Oates.

  Grimes looked up. Oates was swinging his weight from the rope he had lashed to the rail above the open door. Grimes stood up and bent forward into the cockpit. Through the glass shell he saw the gray bulk of the Stone House looming toward them from the lightless plain.

  In Spanish Grimes said, “You know what to do?”

  Mariano nodded without taking his eyes off the target.

  “Grimes?” said Ella. “I don’t want you to go.”

  Ella’s face was drained. It was the first time Grimes had seen her look scared.

  “Me neither,” he said.

  He glanced at Gul, sitting up between her knees.

  “Hold on to him,” said Grimes. “He’s known to be an asshole at times.”

  The Stone House was now only a hundred yards distant. Grimes turned and went back to Oates. Grimes stood close and lowered his voice.

  “Titus? I need another favor.”

  “Doc?” said Titus. “You’ve got a lotta nerve for a guy who’s done jackshit for me.”

  “When I’m clear I want you to get Ella out of here.”

  “No way, man.”

  “You’ve got the suitcases. If you really want to kick some ass, take a look inside. Ella knows what to do.”

  Oates pursed his lips sullenly.

  Grimes said, “And because I like to think I’m a guy who pays his way, you can hang on to Gul, too. If he’ll have you.”

  “I guess that would settle all debts.”

  Oates pulled out one of his automatics and put it in Grimes’s jacket pocket.

  “Glock. Seventeen rounds. Just pull it out shooting.”

  The Sikorsky was hovering motionless. Grimes put a hand on the rail and looked straight down into a wide glare of fluorescence. A bare six feet below, on the western slope of the Stone House roof, was a wide, frosted glass skylight. Grimes pulled on the rawhide gloves and looked at Oates.

  “Remember,” said Grimes. “I want chaos.”

  Oates glanced menacingly at Atwater. “You’ll have it.”

  Grimes took the rope in his gloved hands.

  Behind him, Rufus Atwater said, “You’re crazy.”

  Grimes looked at the prosecutor. “I’m glad you think so,” he said. “ ‘Cause you’re coming in there with me.”

  He turned from Atwater’s blanching face and nodded to Titus Oates.

  Grimes said, “Such is the recompense of unbelievers.”

  Titus Oates said, “Amen.”

  Then Oates threw his shotgun to his shoulder and pumped two loads of double-aught bucks through the skylight.

  Grimes jumped through the door and dropped.

  Impression: his guts coming up into his throat. Intense heat on his palms. Glaring light. Steel bars. Falling. Too fast. Squeezing. Burning. Look down.

  Impression: Corrugated iron speeding toward him. Bend knees. Squeeze. His feet hit the iron, legs buckling. His hip. His shoulder. His breath knocked out of him. The burning eased. Sliding down, twisting onto his back. The edge of the iron loomed. He squeezed the rope with all his might.

  Impression: a white bang to the back of his skull. Dangling. Still sliding. The snap of the rope’s end. His palms suddenly empty. Grimes dropped six feet onto a wooden platform, crashed knees and shoulder, rolled. The platform disappeared. He tumbled three feet onto hard tiles. Winded. He opened his eyes.

  Before him gaped the platform’s understructure. He rolled under, lay prone, fought for air. His ears were ringing. From his pocket he dragged the Glock. His fingers were too thick. He ripped his right-hand glove off with his teeth. The sting of the skin that came with it forced some structure on his senses. The rotor noise: diminishing slightly. His position: lying head toward the rear of the building.

  Behind him, then, was the cage wall. On the far side of the shack above him was the door into it. He threw a twisting glance back toward the cage wall. His view was blocked by the platform. Floor and concrete wall, nothing else. He looked across the underside of the platform: too many supports and cross-spars, a death trap; he couldn’t go that way. He heard wild shouts in Spanish. Running footsteps bounced on the platform. Behind him, at the far end, the cage end. Fear gripped him. Where was his chaos? He wriggled onto his back. Think. The footsteps stopped. They don’t know where you are. What would you do? A picture leapt before him: someone peering around the cage-end corner of the shack. Let them eome softly. He took his weight on his right elbow, Glock in his fist. With his left hand he grabbed hold of a stave under the platform’s outer edge. He gave them a count of three. Don’t blink. Point and fire.

  Somewhere above, the second skylight imploded in a blast of buckshot.

  Grimes heaved on the stave and swung himself out and up. He saw a figure, face upturned to the commotion above. Ten feet away. Grimes pointed and fired—a flash came from the figure’s hand—and fired and fired. Five shots. The figure spun into the shack wall and fell to his knees. Grimes wormed out from under the platform, gun pointing at the kneeling man, and climbed to his feet, pointing, pointing. Gunfire blazed from the second skylight. Grimes—pointing—closed on the kneeler on the platform. Beyond: the cage wall; emptiness. The kneeler turned his face and Grimes fired into it once. The head slammed into the shack and fell, leaving bone fragments embedded in the rough timbers. The gunfire above stopped. Grimes looked up at the sound of a penetrating scream.

  Limbs flailing, Rufus
Atwater plunged shrieking through the roof and crashed from sight on the far side of the shack.

  As the rotors pulled away above, Grimes walked backward toward the rear of the room, his gun covering the cage-wall end, stealing glances over his shoulder. At the rear corner of the shack he snatched a glimpse behind it: clear. He moved forward to the opposite rear corner, stopped, listened. Obscure noises, maybe voices. He looked: between where he was and the closed gate of the cage wall there was no sign of life. He paused, uncertain.

  Lenna had to be inside the shack; Faroe too.

  He waited.

  He asked himself: would he let Lenna die, if necessary, in order to kill Faroe? He answered: no. In a different world than this one, she was a woman he could have loved; and would have been honored to love. Maybe he already did. He asked himself: what would Lenna want? Before he could answer for her there was a disturbance inside the shack and Grimes crouched behind the platform’s edge. He leveled the Glock at the doorway.

  Slowly, Lenna’s face appeared. Her head was pulled back by her hair. She couldn’t see him. A gun appeared against her left cheek. To her far side a second gun appeared and was pressed against her right cheek. Then, from the same side, a pair of black, intelligent eyes peered at Grimes. Grimes took this to be Colonel Herrera. Lenna stepped out onto the platform. Her arms were jacked up behind her. She was crammed between Herrera to her right and, to her left, Filmore Faroe.

  It could only be him: the instant Faroe’s eyes met his, Grimes recognized that this was a mind crazed beyond reasoning. One half of his upper lip was missing in a raw, ragged crescent, exposing his teeth. Grimes’s eyes met Lenna’s.

  She said: “Kill him.”

  Grimes blinked.

  “Grimes, kill him now.”

  Herrera jacked her arm up some more. Lenna clenched her jaw. Grimes looked at Faroe.

  “The good doctor Grimes,” said Faroe.

  Despite the pain he had to be in from his torn mouth, Faroe’s voice was steady and clear.

  “You know, Doctor, there are a lot of questions I’d like to ask you. About myself. I imagine that the time and conditions I experienced in these accommodations might make me a fascinating case study.” His mouth curled in a grotesque smile.

  Grimes wondered if a response was worth the breath.

  He said, “We can sit down right now if you want.”

  “Another time, perhaps,” said Faroe. “Will you give us the road, Doctor?”

  Grimes suddenly realized that his father, George, would have done it: he would have shot Faroe right now and taken a ten percent chance on Lenna surviving. But, for better or worse, Grimes wasn’t his father.

  Grimes said, “Another time then.”

  Herrera went down the steps first, pulling Lenna with him, his gun still at her head. Faroe, similarly, followed. As Faroe reached the tiled floor Herrera snapped his gun from Lenna’s head.

  Grimes, waiting for it, dived behind the shack. The bullet chopped out a cloud of splinters. He waited as he heard their footsteps walk away As he listened he realized he could still hear the chopper somewhere outside: Oates and Ella hadn’t left as he had asked. He stepped out from the shack.

  Lenna and her captors were almost at the gate.

  Grimes started after them.

  From under the platform a pair of arms encircled his legs; but too weakly to bring him down. Grimes staggered. A battered, knobbly face appeared at his waist, babbling incoherently with hatred. Desperate hands clawed their way up his jacket, seeking his throat. Grimes threw his left arm around Atwater’s chest and half lifted him and squeezed. Ribs already broken by his fall crunched inward. Crimson drool blurted over Atwater’s lower lip and down Grimes’s lapels. Grimes looked over Atwater’s shoulder toward a clank of the gate.

  He saw Herrera unlock the gate and pull it open and Faroe shove Lenna out through the cage wall. As Herrera followed them, he pulled the key from this side of the lock. They were going to seal him in.

  “Lenna!” yelled Grimes.

  Grimes put the Glock to Atwater’s wobbling head and, without letting go of him, blew away the vault of his skull. Atwater’s chin flopped over Grimes’s left shoulder.

  Lenna hurled herself sideways, taking Faroe with her, away from Herrera, out of the line of fire.

  Grimes fired twice around the edge of Atwater’s body; he missed.

  Herrera in the doorway: firing back.

  Grimes felt thuds against the body clutched in his left arm.

  Grimes sighted carefully on the shape in the gateway, fired twice more.

  Herrera’s leg jerked out from under him and he dropped to one knee.

  Grimes flung Atwater aside and charged, pointing the Glock but holding his fire, his feet clacking brittle echoes from the tiles. Herrera started to bring his gun up again. Grimes waited; another yard; another; he opened up. Running, firing, closing.

  Herrera’s spleen and ventricles disintegrated in a violent paroxysm. He pitched forward and exsanguinated onto the tiles.

  Grimes’s gun snapped empty. He threw it aside.

  Faroe fired at him once, missed. He thrashed his pistol across Lenna’s head, dragged her into the antechamber. They disappeared from view.

  Grimes splashed past Herrera’s corpse. As he entered the short steel-lined antechamber a bullet ricocheted around its walls. He paused at the outer end; no more shots. He dived out among the stacked crates, wove his way toward the exit: the doorway gaped out onto the night and the yard. He stopped on the threshold, his ears ringing from gunfire, his eyes blinking to recover from the glaring light he’d just left behind.

  Outside the door at his feet lay a corpse in combat fatigues, its throat slashed clean to the bone. A few yards to the right was sprawled another, similarly slaughtered. At the left extremity of the yard stood the Jessups’ house; between that and the Stone House was a stretch of open field; opposite Grimes was the line of silver birch trees; to his right the dirt road. In the center of the yard sat the black chopper, motionless and, as far as he could see, empty. The night seemed impossibly silent. Then through the silence came the pit-pat-pit of padded feet.

  Gul trotted out from the silver birch trees and across the yard toward him. Grimes stepped out of the doorway. Gul stood quietly at his side. Grimes turned to his left and saw them.

  Filmore Faroe stood by the edge of the field, the barrel of his gun jammed beneath Lenna’s jaw, his left hand threaded under her arm and wrapped around the nape of her neck in a half nelson. His paranoiac eyes flitted here and there; his half-lip trembled. He seemed stranded in an infernal darkness. He turned and looked at Grimes, at Gul, back at Grimes.

  Grimes started walking toward him.

  Grimes hoped that Titus Oates was out there in the trees. He hoped that Oates had a weapon trained on Faroe’s head. He hoped that Faroe would be panicked into aiming a shot at him. Or at Gul. He hoped that Titus Oates’s bullet would get there first. But Faroe neither budged nor wavered. He just stared at Grimes, the eyes in his shaven cranium as dead as marbles. As the distance between them closed Grimes wondered what he would do when he got there. There was nothing left that Faroe could be threatened with. The man had nothing left to lose.

  When Grimes was ten feet short, a voice rang from among the silver birch trees.

  “Mr. Faroe!”

  Grimes stopped. Gul stopped too. The voice was Ella’s. For a moment there was stillness and silence. Faroe blinked, as if the voice had dragged him, confused, from another world.

  Then he said, “Who goes there?”

  Ella stepped out from the trees. Her hands were empty. In the moonlight her face was solemn but calm.

  She said, “I’m Ella MacDaniels. I’m the reason we’re all here.”

  Faroe’s eyes cleared, then shone with an intense curiosity.

  Ella said, “I thought we might talk.”

  Grimes bit his tongue.

  Lenna struggled. Faroe wrestled her savagely.

  “Lenna, please,�
� said Ella.

  Lenna stopped fighting.

  Ella walked across the yard toward them. Faroe stared at her as if mesmerized. Ella held his gaze. Three paces short she stopped. For a moment she met Lenna’s eyes. Tears began to roll down Lenna’s cheeks; she didn’t move. Ella turned her dark, open gaze back on Faroe.

  Ella said, simply: “Lenna is my mother.”

  The lines around Faroe’s eyes crimped deeper.

  “I didn’t have a father,” said Ella. “But in a way—the way I see it—I had many. Some that I never knew, and some that I did. Some that are living and some that are dead. You’re one of them, Mr. Faroe.”

  The muscles of Faroe’s face fluttered with mystery and, within the mystery, dread.

  Ella said: “I’m the child you tried to kill.”

  Grimes felt his spine shiver. Faroe tried to turn away from her eyes; couldn’t.

  Ella said: “You could have stopped me from being born. But you didn’t, did you?”

  Faroe didn’t answer. In Ella’s face was something he could not have seen in anyone’s face before: pity. And not that pity which tinged itself with contempt but, rather, with sadness: for the immeasurable anguish that Faroe too had borne.

  “You wanted me to be yours,” said Ella. “Didn’t you? That’s why you allowed me to be born.”

  Faroe opened his mouth but still could not answer. It was as if the malice leaking from his pores were being crammed back inside by Ella’s naked innocence. Faroe seemed on the verge of exploding. Grimes dared not move. By his leg he sensed Gul, taut as a bowstring, ready to attack. Grimes dared not speak.

  “You wanted me to be yours and you would have loved me. I know that.”

  Faroe shook his head, numbly, as if trying to deny a truth he couldn’t bear to hear.

  Ella said, “When I wasn’t your child, you wanted me to be killed. Do you still want to kill me, Mr. Faroe?”