Very Bad Deaths

by Spider Robinson

  By the time Allen suggested to me that we didn’t want this to become ugly, I had run out.

  So that was when the rock came through the living room window.

  It was a fairly large rock, one of the ones that stretch between the green toadstool lights to define my driveway. He must have lobbed it underhanded. It pulverized the window, sending shards of glass flying all around the room, and smashed the coffee table on landing.

  I thought it a poor choice. A smaller rock could have been thrown from much farther away, would have given him much more lead time.

  Fortunately he hadn’t consulted me. If he’d just broken the window, Allen would have looked up at once and seen him, would have marked his silhouette and last known direction at minimum. Because he demolished the window, Allen must have thought of SWAT bursting in. Instinctively he dove away from the window and scrambled for cover without stopping to take inventory. By the time he realized his mistake, recovered, figured out that the assailant out there was armed with nothing worse than rocks, and broke for the door, I couldn’t see Zudie out there anywhere.

  So I’d have been reasonably happy watching Allen go out the door, feeling at least pretty good about the way things were going, if he hadn’t stopped at the doorway, picked up a backpack I had failed to notice on the floor there, and taken out a huge 6-battery flashlight and a small handgun before running out into the night.

  Run like a motherfucker, Zudenigo!

  3.

  Forget the big picture. Forget the small picture. Think about one tiny step at a time.

  Fold injured thumb over, toward palm.

  Trap folded end of paper clip between pressed-together ring finger and fuck finger.

  Yank thumb violently away, pulling paper clip out from under thumbnail.

  Go ahead, scream; no reason not to.

  Manipulate paper clip around until it can be grasped firmly between fingers and thumb.

  Discover how much thumb still hurts. Throbs. Strobes.

  Scream some more but don’t drop paper clip.

  And don’t stop working; we have a bit of a time problem.

  Use sharp, bloody tip of paper clip to score duct tape securing wrist, at edge.

  Fail to reach far enough.

  Unbend last fold of paper clip, for maximum length.

  Success this time. Rub; continue until—

  —tape parts at edge, a small but definite rip.

  Strain at tape with whole upper body until vision starts to grey out.

  Fail to part tape, or even noticeably widen the small rip at its edge.

  Try to lengthen rip with paper clip.

  No luck. More than a half inch or so from the edge, there are just too many layers of tape to cut through with a paper clip, without better leverage.

  Keep trying, harder.

  Drop paper clip.

  Suppress moaning sound.

  Try a convulsive whole-body spasm.

  No good.

  Bellow hideous obscenities.

  No help.

  Scream appalling blasphemies.

  No help.

  Try to bend over and bite through fucking tape.

  Fail.

  Shriek bloodcurdling maledictions.

  Shut the fuck up and think.

  Have rush of brains to head: your ankles are secured to each other…but not to the chair. (Don’t even think about why he wanted it that way.) Therefore it is possible to use them to shift your ass way over sideways in your chair, halfway out of the seat—

  —so far that now, you can bend over enough to bring your teeth to bear on that fucking tape!

  Bite me, tape. No wait, I’ll bite you…

  Chew a third of the way through the tape.

  Tear hand free with a punching motion, accompanied by a wordless roar of triumph.

  Endure fresh burst of agony from damaged thumb.

  Is nail clipper still in usual place, right front pants pocket, in special compartment up at top? Yes.

  Use nail clipper to cut through tape at left wrist, half an inch at a time, ignoring an unbelievable amount of pain from damaged thumb.

  Leap triumphantly to feet, run to door.

  Pick self off floor, ignoring an unbelievable amount of pain from damaged face.

  How long is goddam pain-enhancing drug going to keep working?

  Untie ankles.

  Scream. Moron.

  Untie ankles again, using left hand this time.

  Too fucking long, that’s how long.

  Survey room; inventory weapons.

  Of several choices, choose wood stove’s heavy, pointed andiron, good for whacking, stabbing, throwing, or—ideally—rectal insertion.

  Sprint for door.

  As I reached the doorway I wondered if I should stop and call the police.

  But no. A step later, I realized what a dead end that would be. All I could do was dial 911. That would raise a 911 operator somewhere on the mainland. Assuming I could coherently communicate my location, situation and needs in something under ten minutes, the best she could do would be to pass the word to the relevant agency with jurisdiction: Corporal McKenzie. It would be his call whether to contact mainland RCMP for backup, and he wouldn’t. I could call them myself directly, if I took the time to find the number in the Greater Vancouver phone book—but at this time of night, I would raise only an answering machine, advising me that if my call was urgent I should consider phoning 911.

  (Think that’s inadequate coverage? Then you must live someplace where crimes occur routinely. Like Vancouver.)

  I summoned up the mental map of my property that I had sent Zudie a square at a time, and—now that I had time for it—tried to work out the best possible escape route for a man on foot. That would probably be what Zudie had picked: he was at least as smart as me, and would be using my opinions about the territory.

  The trouble was, he’d been well on his way before he had learned—if he had ever learned, if he hadn’t already gotten out of range of me by the time I found out—that Allen had a gun.

  That changed things. If I’m running away from a man with a gun, then all other things being equal, I’d prefer to run uphill; I’ve read again and again that firing uphill sucks. If I’m running away from a man armed only with his admittedly deadly hands, I’d rather run downhill for the speed that’s in it.

  I decided to assume the worst. (That way all surprises are pleasant ones.) He had started downhill before he knew Allen was armed, did not know he was in a footrace with bullets.

  So: west. I ran flat-out. There was a little moonlight. Past the garden—the place that had been a garden while Susan was alive. Past the previous owner’s collapsed goat shed and never-finished barn. Beyond that point there was a rough rocky trail that wound back and forth downhill through the woods, crossed a stream, and eventually struck the road. I dove down it as fast as I dared in the dark.

  Zudie would certainly have reached the road well ahead of Allen—he knew where the rocky parts of the trail were and where it was safe to open up, and the stream would not come as a nasty surprise to him. But if he didn’t know Allen had a gun, he might well feel the flat road surface was an irresistible speed advantage, and—

  Gunshot ahead.

  Shit.

  I wanted to speed up. I had to slow down.

  The good news was, I was going the right way. Dumb luck.

  The bad news was, my chest was starting to hurt.

  I hadn’t run this hard or far in over thirty years—since the day I’d raced to meet Susan at Grand Central. Or Penn. So my chest began to ache. And the goddam drug saw to it that it ached a lot. Maybe there’s some sensation that scares you more, but that’s what it’s like inside my own personal worst nightmare. I found that I was making a little whimpering sound, and cut it out.

  I knew the gunshot would be no help to me. I don’t have many neighbors, and two of those I do have believe the myth that a lone puma still survives on Heron Island, and occasionally pop away at shad
ows in the woods. Besides, even unexplained gunshots will only cause alarm in places where they have crime.

  As I came to the stream I had an idea. I crossed it, left the path and headed south along its bank, paralleling the road perhaps fifty meters from it. I tried to make as little noise as possible, and listen as hard as I could for sounds from the road.

  I didn’t need to listen that hard. Zudie’s moan of pain was a good two hundred meters ahead of me when I first heard it, but it carried clearly. So did Allen’s answering giggle.

  I slowed even further, tried to gain control of my breathing, placed my feet with care.

  Zudie made a long, drawn out, inarticulate sound of utter heartbreak and despair. Allen chuckled. It was obvious from the chuckle that he understood simple proximity to his foul thoughts was killing Zudie, and he just loved that. The thing he had so feared, telepathy, undoing itself. The chuckle went on and on. So did the wail.

  I used the masking effect of both sounds to cover distance quickly. I was close when I had to slow down again.

  Zudie drew in his breath in a great gasp of horror. Not loud enough for good cover. I believe he intended to expel it in a scream. But Allen must have thought something truly horrendous at him: he guffawed outright—and Zudie must have fainted: the air left his lungs without engaging the vocal cords.

  I was so close now that when he hit the pavement I spotted the movement to my right. By random chance, there was a break in the trees big enough to give me a view. Allen’s flashlight provided the necessary light.

  It looked to me as if Zudie had frozen like a deer at the gunshot, and then as Allen approached, had first gone down to a sitting position, and then into a fetal curl, hammered flat by a cresting wave of mental filth. He was lying on his side, breathing noisily, but I saw no blood anywhere on or under him, so I was pretty sure he hadn’t caught a bullet.

  I checked the time, nearly swearing aloud when I forgot not to push the light button on my watch with my thumb. Damn. At best, Nika was still ten minutes away; at worst…well, at worst she was taking in a movie somewhere on the mainland with her cell and pager switched off, and wouldn’t check her messages for hours.

  Allen came into view, through the gap in the brush. I’d been warned by the changing angle of his approaching flashlight, but I still had to suppress a small animal sound of terror when I actually saw him. He moved close to Zudie, stood with his back to me. I made myself begin creeping forward, placing my feet with great care. The flashlight had not been enough to ruin my night vision.

  “Can’t take it, eh?” He prodded Zudie with a shoe tip. “Pussy.” He poked him somewhere with the same foot, then stepped on something and rocked back and forth on it, and finally kicked him in the head. It was that last one that finally did it for me.

  I don’t know exactly what the current record is for the 50-meter dash, but it’s something on the order of six seconds. I had cut the distance from fifty to perhaps thirty meters by the time I heard Allen’s foot impact the side of Zudie’s skull. It was at that point that I raised my andiron high and began to run. So round off all the fractions and say that Allen had a maximum of something like three and a half seconds’ warning of my arrival.

  He probably wasted at least a second believing it was some animal that was coming his way. As far as he knew I was still way back up the hill, safely secured to my armchair, waiting for the torture to resume. But he had the instincts of a wild animal himself: when I kept coming he decided whatever I was I needed a bullet in me, and fired. He missed widely. He got off one more shot, but he was a hair too fast: he fired just before I burst from cover to give him a target. The slug tugged hard at the hair at the top of my head as it went past; with the drug assist, it felt as though it had taken a piece of my scalp with it.

  I didn’t care. He was not going to have time for another shot before I caved his head in. I was already into my swing—

  Zudie screamed and convulsed. A literal convulsion: one second he was out cold and the next he was up on his shoulder blades and heels, spine arched, beating the backs of his hands against the pavement, like a man dying of cyanide poisoning. It wasn’t the noise, the ghastliness, or even the unexpectedness that threw me off, so much as the instant understanding of what was happening to him.

  He was receiving my thoughts. Me, the one guy whose thoughts had always been tolerable for him. And what he was receiving from me was really not thoughts at all but feelings—ugly feelings—evil feelings—a tidal wave, unstoppable as nausea, of fear and rage and pain and hatred and bloodlust such as I had never imagined myself capable of.

  Proximity to Allen, he could endure, by becoming unconscious. Proximity to both of us was more than even his stupefied brain could bear. The moment he spasmed, I understood that my presence was killing my friend Zudie.

  For the fraction of a second left to me, I was sorely tempted to accept that as the new price of killing Allen. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I slammed on the brakes. Instead of hitting him with the andiron, I threw it—past him, a foot to the left of his head, clear across the road. Then I put my hands up and waited for him to shoot me dead.

  Of course he didn’t. He just wasn’t that nice a guy.

  When I understood he wouldn’t, I began to back away from him slowly. I knew he wouldn’t let me get far, but the further I was from Zudie right now, the better his chances got of maybe waking up someday with his mind intact.

  I’d backed off maybe twenty-five meters when Allen said, “My SUV is in your driveway.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  He tossed something at me, and I ducked away. Car keys. “If you’re back with it in one minute, I won’t shoot your friend through the head. Tempted as I am—he is your telepath, isn’t he?”

  “What the hell do you want your car for?”

  “We’re all going back to your place to continue the party, and you don’t look strong enough to carry him that far, and I have no intention of trying. Now are you going to get the vehicle? Or shall I shoot you in one of your legs, and go get it myself to haul the both of you in?”

  I picked up the keys and began plodding up the road toward my place.

  “One minute,” he called after me. “No more.”

  “I’m going to need at least a minute and a half, asshole,” I snapped back.

  “One second longer and I’ll know you’re cheating,” he said.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  The road ran uphill and around a bend before reaching my land. The moment Allen and Zudie stopped being in sight behind me, I could see the end of my driveway ahead of me. And there was indeed an SUV of some kind visible in it, tail out. But beyond the driveway, just past the mailbox farm, I saw something unexpected at this time of night: a car. No, even more puzzling than that, I saw as I got closer: it was my own car.

  If you live in rural British Columbia, you might have to walk as much as a kilometer or two to get your mail—from one of the fifty or sixty padlocked drawers in a huge standardized green metal roadside installation I’ve always called the mailbox farm, about the size of the box a couple of refrigerators would come in. I happen to have been as lucky as possible in the draw: my own mailbox farm is just next to my driveway. For obvious reasons there’s a gravel parking area just past it, and in that parking area now sat my Honda.

  Why would Allen have taken the trouble to move my car out of my driveway before pulling into it himself? He’d have had to hotwire it, and then risk me hearing him start it from the house. I couldn’t see any sense in a backup getaway car that was inferior to his own, and whose registration would not match his name.

  Then suddenly I got it, and began to run uphill.

  It was Nika’s Honda past the mailbox farm. She was here, a good ten minutes before she could possibly be here. As I saw her, I heard the horn of the arriving ferry in the far distance.

  Later I would learn the dumb mistake in my calculations. She had not, as I’d assumed was best-case, gotten in line for the last ferry, f
ailed to get a berth, and then lined up a charter boat that would actually be ten minutes or so faster. Instead she’d arrived at Horseshoe Bay in plenty of time for the last ferry—and found that the next-to-last ferry was running so late that it was just now about to depart. She waved her cop credentials and drove straight aboard, and the skipper piled on the coals. She must have arrived at my driveway just about the time I came bursting out my door and bolted off into the woods.

  Christ knew where she was now, presumably up at the house, inspecting the scraps of duct tape on the arms of my chair and the little collection of mundane household objects nearby. If she wasn’t right here in front of me it didn’t matter where she was: there was no time.

  For a start, her car had to disappear. Instantly, and without a sound. Since I drove a nearly identical model I had no trouble at all finding the gearshift or getting it into neutral. Cranking the wheel over without power assist was a little more difficult. Getting the damn car moving was a lot more difficult, but adrenaline is a wonderful thing. Soon Nika’s car was, if not invisible, at least completely occulted from the direction Allen would be looking.

  Rushed as I was, I paused then, spending the time necessary for three deep slow breaths to reassure myself that I still hadn’t blown a lung. Then I sprinted to Allen’s SUV—I have no idea what kind it was; I’m color-blind in that range—clambered in, fired it up, revved it as loudly as I dared, backed it out of the driveway, and backed it downhill to where Allen and the catatonic Zudie were waiting. I hate SUVs; it was like driving a bus.

  But I have to admit it made a passable ambulance.

  Even though my chest was throbbing with the unaccustomed strain, I got between Allen and Zudie and somehow managed to manhandle his bulk into the back of the SUV by myself. I don’t know how I got away with it without busting a lung. I just found the idea of Allen touching him again more than I could bear. I was aware that he’d picked up on that, and knew he would use it against me as soon as he got the chance.

  “What’s his name?” he asked me.

  I was too tired to lie, and he’d only catch me if I did. “Zandor Zudenigo.”

  “My. What is that, Polish?”