The Language of Cannibals

by George C. Chesbro

  This did not please me. Suddenly the identity of the shadowy figure moving in the smoky light was nowhere near as important to me as the rage I felt toward Trex. I pushed Garth’s supporting hand away, staggered over to where the wide-eyed Trex was thrashing on the floor, and sat down hard on his chest. There was a strong odor of feces; with the tables turned, with somebody shooting at him, the young killer had lost control of his sphincter.

  “Who sent you?” I screamed into his battered face.

  Trex, saliva streaming from his mouth, moved his lips in an effort to speak, but he wasn’t making enough progress to suit me. I punched his wounded shoulder, and he screamed; I raised my fist, threatening to punch him again, and he stopped.

  “Who ordered you to do this, Trex? Was it Jay Acton?”

  He shook his head back and forth, bubbled up some more saliva, and tried to reach across his body to grip his damaged shoulder. I stopped him.

  “Who?! You’d better find your voice fast, kiddo, or I’m going to rip your fucking shoulder off! Who sent you?! Who gave you those weapons?!”

  “… hane,” he finally managed to croak. “Mr. Culhane. We’ve been … helping him clean the trash off the streets and fight the communists. He said it was the only way left, because the leftists had taken over the government and the courts. He said what we needed was a death squad like they have in other countries. When he found out you were gone, he called me. He said I should get the other two and go after you. He said that you were probably hiding out here and that we should kill everyone because it was time to get serious about what we wanted to do. He said that you two and these people were just like the communists and that the only way to deal with you was to kill you.”

  “He gave you the guns?”

  Trex nodded, then reached up with his left hand and wiped spittle off his chin. “He gave them to us a few weeks ago. He said first we’d kill some of the scum on the streets, like drug dealers, and then we’d go after communists.”

  “How did Culhane find out so fast that I was gone from the hospital?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose the police told him. Mosely’s scared shitless of Mr. Culhane; he tells him everything.”

  “Did you people kill Michael Burana and Harry Peal?”

  “No.”

  “Who did? Acton?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said, and raised my fist again.

  A voice close beside me said, “I think he’s telling the truth.”

  In my seething rage at Gregory Trex, in my need for answers, I had virtually forgotten all about the man who had saved our lives. Now I raised my head, glanced to my left, and found myself looking into the dark eyes and deeply tanned face of Jay Acton. His razor-cut brown hair was covered now by a black seaman’s cap; instead of one of his custom-tailored suits, he was dressed in black—boots, jeans, a turtleneck sweater. In his right hand he carried an Uzi automatic rifle. Under his left arm he carried the three automatic pistols originally wielded by the recently disbanded death squad. Garth’s Colt was stuck in the waistband of his jeans.

  “Damn,” I said.

  “What the hell have you two been up to?” he asked curtly, glancing back and forth between Garth, who had come over to stand beside him, and me. “Who have you been talking to, and what have you been saying?”

  “What have we been up to?!” I swallowed hard, again used the sleeve of my shirt to wipe blood away from my eyes. “Listen, you lying, spying, Russian son-of-a-bitch, I—!” I stopped in midsentence when I heard the distant wail of approaching police sirens. “This should be interesting,” I said, grabbing Garth’s outstretched hand and hauling myself to my feet.

  Jay Acton glanced quickly toward the front of the house, then back at us. “If you wait for the police, you’ll be taken into custody,” he said tersely. “If that happens, the chances are good that you’ll born end up dead within seventy-two hours. We have to go.”

  “Why?” Garth asked, studying Acton through narrowed lids. He pointed at the two dead gunmen, then at the writhing, whimpering man on the floor at my feet. “You put the death squad out of business.”

  Acton shook his head impatiently, again glanced anxiously toward the front of the house. The sirens were much closer. “These were amateurs,” he said quickly, in the same curt tone. “Clumsy boobs manipulated by Culhane to act out Culhane’s fantasy of operating a death squad like the political death squads they have in his beloved Guatemala and El Salvador. I know because I put the idea in his head.”

  I blinked, stared into the other man’s glacial black eyes. “You put—?!”

  “There’s no time to explain now,” Acton interrupted. “I’m here because a few hours ago somebody tried to kill me—and that person was no amateur. I have reason to believe there’s a KGB assassin after me, which means that the same assassin, or assassins, will also be after you now that this attempt has failed. You’ll have no chance out in the open. You have to come with me.”

  “Where?” Garth asked.

  The dark-eyed KGB officer with the high cheekbones and strong chin abruptly shoved one of the automatic pistols into my brother’s hands. “We have to trust each other now; all our lives depend on it. I need you to tell me precisely what’s been going on and to walk me in; you need me to stay alive.”

  Garth and I glanced at each other, and I could see my own thoughts reflected in his eyes; considering the fact that everyone in the mansion would now be dead if it weren’t for Jay Acton, it seemed the man had proved his bona fides. “It’s your show, Acton,” I said.

  “Who else knows about me?”

  “I do.” It was Mary. I hadn’t heard her come up, but she was now standing directly behind me, and it was obvious that she’d overheard most of our conversation. “I’m coming with you.”

  “And we’ll take him,” Acton said, pointing to Gregory Trex. “He’s been witness to a lot of things we’ll need to prove—but he’ll end up a dead witness if we leave him here.”

  Garth grunted, stepped over to Trex, and reached down. He grabbed the front of Trex’s shirt, rudely hauled him to his feet.

  “Let’s go,” Acton said as he grabbed one of Trex’s arms. “Follow me. Down to the river.”

  Garth grabbed Trex’s other arm, and together they half dragged, half carried the thoroughly terrified young man across the glass-strewn floor of the ballroom toward the gaping hole at the far end. Mary offered me her hand. I gratefully took it, and together we followed along through the clouds of sunlit dust and smoke. As I stepped up and over a jagged ridge of glass and dropped to the lawn outside, I thought I heard the police come crashing in at the other end.

  Tightly holding on to Mary’s hand for support, I stumbled along over the grass down toward the river and the Community’s dock. Garth was already removing a canoe and paddles from the wooden rack nearby. Acton abruptly swung the stock of his Uzi around, catching Gregory Trex squarely on the jaw. Trex crumpled to the ground. Acton helped Garth put the canoe into the water, where Mary and I steadied it while they went back to the rack for a second canoe.

  I glanced up toward the mansion, but saw no one in the space where the windows had been. Either I had been wrong about hearing the police coming in just as we were leaving, or everyone was too busy attending to the wounded to bother about us, or the Community members—sensing, if not understanding, our need to escape—were providing some kind of distraction.

  Garth and Acton lifted the unconscious Trex off the ground and unceremoniously dumped him into the bottom of the canoe Mary and I were holding steady. Acton handed me a paddle and motioned for me to get into the bow, and I did. He got in behind me. Mary climbed into the second canoe, with Garth in the stern, and we shoved off, heading straight out into the river.

  I had no idea where we were going, but since I didn’t have to steer, it didn’t make any difference; my job was simply to paddle, and that’s what I did. Every time I dipped my paddle in the water and pulled, pain shot thr
ough my entire body, especially my head, but the hurt was bearable; despite me and my circumstances, my body seemed to be healing itself, and I vowed to give it a healthy dose of Scotch as a reward as soon as I got the opportunity. I scooped up a handful of river water to wash the sticky blood from around my eyes, then looked back over my shoulder. Our mini-armada would be clearly visible from the shore, but there was no sign of anyone there to see us. Garth’s steady, powerful strokes were keeping the canoe carrying him and Mary a few feet off our stern and slightly to starboard.

  Then we passed beneath the looming prow of a three-masted sloop into a veritable thicket of sail- and powerboats that were anchored a hundred to a hundred and fifty yards offshore up and down the river. Acton trailed the edge of his paddle off the port gunwale, and the canoe turned that way, the bow pointing upriver. Now we were hidden from view and would stay that way as long as we continued to thread our way through the anchored boats.

  Suddenly I was very, very tired, as if the healing body I had been so pleased with a few moments before had decided that enough was enough and was shutting down for an indefinite period of time. I splashed some more water on my face, and when that didn’t help I laid my paddle across the gunwales, leaned on it, and took a series of deep breaths in an attempt to reenergize myself.

  “I can handle it, Frederickson,” Jay Acton said from behind me. “We’re in the clear now. Take it easy.”

  I nodded, leaned even harder on my paddle. “How did you know we were in the mansion?”

  “I didn’t; I just knew that Culhane thought you might be, and, if you were, that his boys would kill you, and everyone else in there, so that you wouldn’t be able to expose me. I have a tap on his phone.”

  “What did he tell Trex and the other two?”

  “Culhane always talked to Trex, and left Trex to talk to the others. Nothing complicated. He just said you were all communists, naturally, and that it was time for the real patriots in this country to take some drastic action. I don’t imagine it took much to get Trex moving; he’s been aching to kill Community members anyway, ever since Culhane gave the three of them those automatic pistols.”

  I half turned in my seat, looked down at the unconscious man sprawled in the bottom of the canoe, sniffed, and wrinkled my nose. “I don’t think our boy here would have made out too well in combat. I really wish he hadn’t shit in his pants.”

  Acton grunted. “You and your brother are something else, Frederickson.”

  “Garth and I owe you our lives. Thanks for what you did back there, Acton.”

  “You’re welcome. But I’ve told you that I need you alive for my own purposes.”

  “To explain to you how you were found out?”

  “That and more.”

  “I don’t understand. What use can Garth and I be to you?”

  “I suggest you rest now. Save your energy. We’ll talk later, when we’re all together.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  The fact of the matter was that, for the moment at least, I didn’t really care where we were going; I was simply happy that Garth and I were alive, that the pain in my head and the double vision had eased somewhat, and that I could rest. Leaning forward on the paddle, I kept nodding off.

  When I lifted my head and looked around after yet another brief nap, I was surprised to find that we had cut back out of the pack of anchored boats and were almost ashore. Above us, soaring into the sky, was the scarred, gouged, naked stone face of the abandoned rock quarry.

  Suddenly the bow of the canoe scraped against the fine gravel that formed a narrow beach at the base of the mountain. I tried to get out, intending to pull the canoe up on the beach and steady it, but wobbled and sat down hard on the damp gravel. I gripped the gunwales with both hands and tried to pull myself to my feet, but couldn’t. Finally I just leaned back on my elbows and supervised as Garth and Acton unloaded the now semiconscious Gregory Trex. With Garth holding his arms and Acton his feet, they sloshed the helpless would-be hunter of communist men, women, and children in the river in an attempt to get some of the stink out of his clothes, then unceremoniously set him down hard on a rock a few yards away from me. His milky green eyes, filled now with shock and terror, kept darting around, as if he were looking for someone to come to his rescue. He kept clutching at his wounded shoulder, but otherwise remained still.

  Mary came up, knelt down beside me, and put her arm around me as Garth and Jay Acton waded both canoes back out to chest-deep water, then used sharp-edged rocks to punch holes in their bottoms. As the canoes slowly sank out of sight, I slowly sank my head onto Mary Tree’s left breast and promptly fell asleep again.

  Chapter Nine

  A little sleep did wonders. I awoke to the tantalizing aroma of coffee with a merely dull headache and only slightly blurred vision. My right eye was beginning to open. With the help of a little bouncing around on a hardwood floor while being shot at, followed by a scenic canoe ride, my condition just kept improving. Talk about physical therapy. My sprained wrist, sore knee, and bruised arm seemed healed. I was a medical marvel.

  I touched my head, found it covered with a fresh bandage, as was the gash over my right eye. I threw back the lightweight wool blanket covering me, sat up, and looked around. I’d been laid to rest on an inflated air mattress in a corner of a large cave. A naked light bulb hung on its cord from a steel cleat driven into a crevice in the rock ceiling; the cord snaked down a wall and then around a corner into another, smaller cave where I thought I heard the hum of a gasoline-driven electric generator. Another wire, which appeared to be an aerial, snaked along the ceiling and out of the entrance; it was connected to a large shortwave radio console set up on a plain wooden table directly under the light bulb. Also on the table were a cardboard carton and the new cellular telephone that had been in it. Toward the front of the cave, to one side of the entrance, was a large foot locker, with its lid open. There was also a camp stove, and a pot of coffee was being kept warm over a flaming Sterno can. There was an ample supply of bottled water, pots and pans, kerosene space heaters for colder weather, and even a chemical toilet toward the rear. It looked like the perfect spy’s pied-à-terre, with virtually all the comforts of home.

  And more. When I rose, walked to the front of the cave, and looked in the foot locker, I found an assortment of weapons inside, including a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Also ammunition, electronic eavesdropping equipment that appeared to be state-of-the-art, code pads, a well-stocked medical kit, Styrofoam cups, and a half carton of Campbell’s chicken soup.

  I took one of the Styrofoam cups, filled it to the brim with steaming black coffee, sipped at it as I made my way out of the cave in search of my spymaster host and his other guests. I found Gregory Trex, his wrists and ankles tied with nylon rope, in a wide rock channel just outside the cave where he had been put to air out. His shirt around his bullet-damaged shoulder had been torn away, and the wound bandaged. He appeared to be in a state of shock; his eyes were dull and unfocused as he looked in my direction, and he didn’t speak. His breathing was rapid and shallow; his mouth was half open, and dried saliva flecked his lips and chin. He still stank.

  Prolonged exposure to the rapidly deteriorating young man was almost, if not quite, enough to make me feel like a bully for what I’d done to him. It was the kind of thinking, I mused, that could lead to my application for membership in the Community of Conciliation. I gave him a wide berth as I headed toward the mouth of the channel.

  I recalled my conversation with Elysius Culhane on Friday evening at the art exhibition. Now I realized that he’d had a lot more on his mind than the desire to pump me for potentially damaging information on President Kevin Shannon; he’d been concerned that my visit to Cairn might somehow be connected to his death squad. As things were turning out, his concern had not been totally unfounded.

  At the end of the channel I emerged onto a relatively narrow rock ledge high above the Hudson, close to the top of the mo
untain. Below, off to the south, I could see the plateau and picnic area where Dan Mosely took me for our chat two days before. To my immediate left was the beginning of a rough, brush-covered trail that appeared to go nowhere, but that I suspected led to other parts of the quarry, and perhaps to the top of the mountain as well.

  Still sipping my coffee, I moved off to my right on the ledge, and before long came to a rather deep and wide plateau that had been gouged out of the side of the mountain. Garth and Mary stood across the way, and they seemed to be involved in a heavy conversation. Mary was standing very close to my brother, both of her hands resting on one of his heavily muscled forearms. They definitely looked like an item to me. I sipped some more coffee, loudly cleared my throat; the two of them started, turned, and looked at me.

  “The coffee in this establishment is okay,” I said, “but I have to tell you that the nursing care sucks.”

  “You don’t need a nurse, Mongo,” Garth said, concern in his voice and face as he and Mary quickly walked across the stone to me, put their hands on my shoulders, “you need a goddamn keeper. We thought you’d sleep around the clock. What the hell are you doing walking around?”

  “Mongo?” Mary said, frowning in obvious disapproval. “You shouldn’t be up. You could have gotten dizzy and fallen off the ledge.”

  “I’m all right. Where’s our KGB friend?”

  Garth stepped back, pointed above my head. I turned around, looked up. Jay Acton, his chestnut-brown hair blowing in the breeze coming down off the mountain, was sitting on a ledge about ten feet above my head, staring out over the river. His Uzi was resting across his knees. It was impossible to tell from his impassive features what he was thinking, but from this angle he bore an even more striking resemblance to his father.