The Upright Man

by Michael Marshall

  She crawled forward, feeling out with her hands. Her head was still liquid and rocking from the fall and she was finding it hard to lock herself in space. Cold gravel under her hands. Wet. Sharp. Blackness, hard to differentiate. Was that thing ahead just more darkness, or was it a wall of rock?

  There was something that sounded like groaning, over on the right. Not close. She couldn’t see anything up there. Groaning can’t be good. Unless it’s him. Unless Phil got him. Or unless it’s just the wind. If it’s not the wind or the Upright Man, then it’s not good.

  Was she even sure that was Phil’s direction? What if it was where Ward was? Was she near the gully? Was this it?

  Where’s the gun? Where’s the fucking, fucking gun?

  She saw something ahead, pale but not snow. She looked harder and made out what it was. An old woman, scrunched up small in a big coat. She was sitting on the other side of a low wide stream, her back tight against high rock.

  She was staring at Nina, eyes wide, unblinking, not making a sound. Her head and shoulders were covered in snow, like a hidden statue in an overgrown graveyard, way off the beaten track.

  The woman’s shape and position finally gave Nina a visual reference, a key to understanding the space. She was near the bottom of a gully—the gully, it must be—with steep walls but a fairly flat bottom maybe fifteen feet across, narrowing rapidly to both sides.

  She blinked to lock it in her head, then looked for the gun again, forcing herself to do it slowly this time, as if it didn’t matter a bit, as if it was just an earring she’d dropped back in Malibu and the cab wasn’t due for a quarter hour and the night’s big question was whether to have an entrée or two appetizers or maybe just a big bucket of wine.

  There it is. Thank God.

  Nina scrambled over to the stream, picked her gun up out of the shallows. Shook it, changed clips. She ran in a low crouch to the other side and dropped down on her haunches next to the woman. She spoke very quietly, trying to control her breath, to keep it steady.

  “Are you Patrice Anders?”

  The woman kept staring at her. She had ice in her eyelashes. She was two steps away from a popsicle. Her head seemed to move a little. Was that a nod?

  Nina shook her shoulder gently. “Ma’am?”

  “Yes,” she said, loudly.

  “Shh. Is someone with you? Is he still here?”

  More quietly: “He’s here. Somewhere.”

  “Who? This guy Tom, or is it Henrickson?”

  “Him. That’s not his real name.”

  “Actually, it is.” Nina squatted down beside her, looked back the way the woman’s head was facing. She couldn’t see anything except the rock sides of the watercourse, leveling out a little up on the left side.

  Then she heard the sound of pain again.

  “Don’t move,” she said. Then she realized why the woman’s posture looked so weird. He’d tied her hands behind her back. She fumbled at the knot with her own numb fingers. The rope was frozen with ice and it seemed to take forever to start to move. She finally got it undone. The woman slowly, slowly pulled her hands around in front, as if afraid her arms would shatter.

  “Still don’t move,” Nina said. “Seriously.”

  She slipped around the bush shield and kept low as she made her way along the side of the gully. She wasn’t going to let go of her gun, not ever again, but she kept slipping on the wet rocks with only one hand to steady herself. She grabbed at the branch stumps, tried to pull herself along, and it worked but wasn’t very fast. Small rivulets of water turned her hands to ice. She slowly made it about fifty, sixty feet upstream, every step a bad adventure.

  She hoped Ward was coming. She really, really hoped so.

  Up ahead the walls were only six to eight feet high. She could see something lying sprawled at the bottom.

  It was Phil.

  He was alive but holding his thigh very tightly with both hands, his body twisting in a slow roll. He was trying so hard not to make a noise, eyes bulging like white marbles with the pain, but another groan escaped when he saw her.

  “Shot me,” he said, like a wheezy cough. “Henrickson. Took my gun.” With a jerk of his head he indicated back the way she’d come, along the streambed.

  Nina looked behind him instead, scanning the tops of the gully walls. The fact that he’d gone the way Phil indicated meant nothing at all. He could be back up at the top there now.

  Or she could be, in fact. . . . She quickly considered going upriver past the deputy, trying to clamber up one of the walls, getting back on higher ground, above all this, and hope the Upright Man came back down below. Make him the fish in the barrel instead of her.

  But she knew she wouldn’t be able to climb while holding a gun, and knew also that her back was a very wide target for someone who knew how to kill.

  “Keep holding the wound,” she said, and crept back the other way.

  She stayed away from the walls this time and went straight down the middle through the stream, the water up nearly to her knees, cold as anything she’d ever felt. Cold and loud; lapping, rushing water and more of that howling wind, the drifting curtain of the endless snow. It looked like it was just going to keep falling until it covered everything forever.

  She couldn’t turn and look around because the pebbles and rocks of the stream were too loose underfoot. So she maintained a straight course down the center line, squinting ahead, trying to spot the Anders woman so she’d know how close she was to where she’d started. She thought about shouting in case Ward could hear, but the Upright Man could be a lot closer, and she realized with painful clarity what a stupid idea the “shoot and shout” plan had been and wished someone else had made that decision instead of her.

  She still couldn’t see the woman yet and that freaked her and she pushed ahead more quickly.

  Then out of the corner of her eye she saw someone standing on the left side of the gully. In a space of time too small to measure, she saw he had a rifle locked in his shoulder and so she knew it wasn’t Ward—and with a speed that bypassed her conscious mind altogether she swiveled and lifted her hands and fired three times.

  Two of the sounds disappeared in handclaps. The last returned a dry, rustling slap. The shape slipped, came sliding down the low slope of the gully.

  She ran up through the water, the cold forgotten, everything tangential and of no interest except the man on the ground in front of her. She kept her gun pointed at him, edging closer until she was ten feet away.

  Once was never enough. She should shoot him again.

  Her trigger finger was tightening when he pushed himself upward and showed his face.

  “Oh, Christ,” she said, aghast. “John . . .”

  Then there was the sound of someone landing lightly behind her. The gun was knocked out of her hand and an arm wrapped tight around her neck and a cold circle of metal pressed into her temple.

  “Hello, Agent Baynam,” said a voice. “Excellent work.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I NEARLY RAN OFF THE END OF THE WORLD.

  If I hadn’t grabbed out at the last minute with my left hand, it would have happened. I would have gotten right up to that high rocky place and taken one long step too many and just gone sailing into forever night. As it was my stomach bowed outward, hanging out over space, and I got a horrifying split-second glimpse of a huge drop, and felt the branch bend, and heard the roar of water landing somewhere a very, very long way beneath me.

  I pulled myself back and turned my back on the drop quickly, desperate and terrified. My lungs were crying, aching as if full of ground glass. My lungs hated me a lot.

  I lurched over and saw that, yes, I’d made it to the gully but it couldn’t be anywhere near the right place. It was forty feet across here and had sides so steep and deep they looked like they’d been made with a single violent sweep from a giant’s ax.

  Yet this had to be the one. So I had to go back.

  I kept a couple of yards back from the
edge and shoved through the bushes. The trees were a little smaller here but that didn’t help much: all it meant was the undergrowth had room to expand and really get into its stride. Before long I was drifting farther away from the gully again, forced back up the way I’d come.

  I kept struggling forward, running when I could, but always fighting against the tide. I was beginning to think I was going to have to go all the way back around, when I stopped dead in my tracks.

  I had been looking through the ranks of trees between me and the ravine, and I thought I saw something, a glimpse of something at the gully edge. I pushed my way over toward the spot, knowing the gap would still be too wide.

  But when I got there I understood what I’d seen.

  There was a big tree trunk lying across the gully. It had fallen plumb across, in fact. It looked weirdly like a bridge. The other side was much more open. It was hard not to see it as an invitation.

  I pushed my way through to the end of the log, kicked it. It was solid. The bank on the other side looked like it would give me a clear run back down to where I was supposed to be, or at least a lot nearer than I was now.

  Assuming I could get ten feet or so over a nasty drop down to cold and jagged rocks, across a trunk four inches deep in snow.

  Screw that. I’d be no use to anyone with a smashed skull. I turned away.

  Then I heard three more shots. Something that sounded like Nina’s voice, making a noise that was not a cry of triumph.

  I jumped up onto the log. Took a deep breath.

  I didn’t know what else to do but take it at the run.

  PATRICE WATCHED WHAT WAS HAPPENING IN FRONT of her. She had seen Henrickson drop down into the river like a piece of film run backward. She’d never seen someone so unlikely to stumble or fall. In one smooth movement he’d disarmed the woman and put a gun to her head.

  He knocked the other man’s rifle into the water with his foot, then pulled the woman back a few yards, until they were standing in the middle of the streambed.

  The man on the ground looked in pain but was trying not to show it. Patrice knew it was that way with men. Except sometimes, when they whined like hell. Even Bill had. Cancer will kick the grit out of most anyone.

  “How did you get here, John?”

  “Dravecky,” the man told him, not without satisfaction. “Even the psychopaths of the world want to be rid of you. You’re the outcast’s outcast. You’ve got nowhere to go.”

  “There’s always somewhere,” Henrickson said. “Finding Dravecky and killing him will be item one. Item two will be his NSA buddy down in L.A. You run into him yet, Nina?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thought you might have. Don’t worry. They’re a lot less important than they think.”

  Patrice saw the man on the ground move suddenly, and then he had a gun in his hand. But Henrickson had moved at the same time, back two more yards, and now he had the woman right in front of him: his body behind hers, his head behind hers.

  “What are you going to do, John? You going to shoot her to get to me?”

  Patrice watched the woman’s face and knew she didn’t actually know what the man would do. The woman tried to move, to give him a shot at something that wasn’t part of her own body, but the man behind her was graceful and quick.

  “What’s more important to you? Getting a bullet in me for Karen’s sake, and killing your agent friend in the process? Maybe I should just save you the decision and kill her right away.”

  The man on the ground had pulled himself upright. The hand holding the gun out didn’t look too steady.

  “You shoot her and I’ll shoot you,” he said.

  Patrice thought he had not a chance in hell of getting the guy, even if he showed him an inch. She knew Henrickson thought this too, and knew also that might not stop the man from trying.

  Then she realized: He hasn’t looked at me.

  Henrickson hadn’t done so much as glance her way since he’d been back in the gully. She didn’t think that meant he’d forgotten about her. She guessed he was a man who’d know how much small change he had in his pockets to the nearest cent, assuming something like him even had a need for small change. But maybe she wasn’t the first thing on his mind.

  Could she do it? Could she leap forward, throw herself either at him or somewhere near? Just throw him off-balance enough to let the guy with the gun take his shot?

  She didn’t know for sure. But she thought she could try.

  She slowly unfolded her arms. They hurt like someone was pushing hot wire into her bones. She tried to move her feet and not much happened, but that didn’t matter. She didn’t need to actually get to him. She just needed a moment of surprise.

  She pushed herself forward.

  She didn’t move. She pushed again. She couldn’t move. It was like something was holding her back. She was so frozen in place, her legs so locked, that . . .

  No. Something was holding her back.

  She swiveled her eyes. Something had its hands on her shoulders. She slowly turned her head.

  Tom Kozelek was crouched behind her. He smelled warm and strange. He was gently gripping her shoulders with big hands, holding her back, stopping her from moving.

  Be safe, he said, in her head. A man comes.

  Then he let go of her and melted back away, and was gone. She thought she heard a quiet sloshing sound in the water behind.

  But she still couldn’t move. It had just been her frozen legs, after all.

  I MADE IT THREE-QUARTERS OF THE WAY ACROSS and then my foot slipped. It slipped like I’d stepped onto ice while wearing shoes made of ice. I threw both my hands forward and prayed.

  I crashed into the top with bushes in both hands. I hauled myself up, hands and feet scrabbling like a dog’s. I pulled up through more rocks and roots and snow—and then something I could stand on.

  I ran. My lungs didn’t hurt anymore; nor did my ribs or back or shoulder. My feet found every step as if I were running across a flat field of mown grass; bushes melted back like misty dreams and the trees yielded up a path that had always been there, as if the mountains had long ago shaped themselves to provide it. I couldn’t see much through the falling white, but I knew where I had to be—if I could get there fast enough.

  I had to dodge upward briefly, but only for fifty yards. Then I carved back right and round, and straight at the lip of the gully I could now see. I ran fast and low, not caring about noise. It was too late to worry about that or anything else.

  At the top I slid up to a tree and pushed myself to the side, dropping down to a crouch. I got my gun out, cracked in a fresh clip. Took a breath and stood up.

  “Hey, Ward,” said a voice from below. “I waited for you.”

  I took a half-step forward, then a half-step back nearer to the tree. I looked down into the gully. I saw someone lying on the ground down at the bottom of the gully wall below me, a gun held out in front. At first I thought it was Paul, then I saw it was John, and realized it hadn’t been he who’d called out to me.

  Maybe thirty feet away was Nina, on a diagonal up the river. She was standing in a very odd way, right in the middle of the water. Then I saw this was because a man’s arm was around her neck and there was a gun held up to her head. It was Paul.

  “Let her go,” I shouted.

  “Not until I drop her.”

  “I’ll shoot.”

  “I don’t think so. John can’t, and neither will you.”

  I saw he was right. He’d angled himself with his back to the opposite side of the gully. With John and I on the same side, neither of us could take a shot without it going through Nina first.

  I looked at her. “Do it, Ward,” she said.

  I took a step back nearer cover. Paul fired and I thought he’d killed Nina but then I realized he’d flipped the gun out front, for just a second. The bullet sang through the wind right past my head. The gun was immediately back in place at Nina’s temple.

  “Yes, do it,” he said. “Come
on, your turn.”

  “Ward, for God’s sake, shoot him,” John shouted.

  “I don’t have the angle.” I didn’t know what to do. I tried moving up the bank a little, but Paul could see me. He altered his position just enough, still keeping himself shielded from both John and me.

  “What are you going to do?” I shouted. “Back up all the way to Seattle? It’s a long fucking hike, I’ve got to warn you.”

  He just laughed.

  It was just a game. He’d known I was coming. He’d waited. He wanted it to be one of us who did this, goaded to the point of making a horrible mistake.

  If not, he’d do it himself without blinking and then it would be him against me and a man who was lying on the ground as if he’d been shot. I didn’t feel very positive toward John right then but I couldn’t do something that would get his head blown off.

  Just then John fired.

  He missed. The Upright Man took another step back, pulling Nina with him.

  I glanced up the gully and saw that if he killed her now and ran straight upstream, he could be away before I got anywhere near him. I knew time was running out.

  He was going to kill Nina and get away.

  Her eyes were on me still. I saw her hand over the decision. I felt her tell me that this was a time where I had to do what I thought was the best thing, and see how it panned out.

  I took a step back the way I’d come, letting my arms drop for a moment. My hands were getting cold. My head was cold too, sharp and empty and full of one simple decision.

  All I could see was Nina’s face.

  Then something moved in the very corner of my vision, right at the top of the far side of the gully. Not quite at the edge, a little way back. I saw something moving, very low.

  I stood up straight.

  “Fuck you, Paul,” I said. “I’m not doing this for you.”

  “Whatever,” he said. He looked me right in the eyes, pushed the gun harder into the side of Nina’s head. “I’ll do it for you.”

  The shape on the other side slipped a little closer, now nearly up to the edge of the wall. I kept looking at Paul, not letting my eyes flicker at all.