Hardbingers rj-10

by F. Paul Wilson

  "Come on, come on."

  He kept moving and clicking and freezing, then he spotted a flash ahead. He homed in on it.

  10

  When Jack reached the Jeep he jumped inside, started her up, and maxed the heater. He put her in gear and started back, hugging the shoreline. A longer trip, but safer.

  As soon as he had the lights of the Wauwinet in sight, he picked up his cell and speed dialed the hospital.

  "Trauma," said a woman's voice. "Pedrosa speaking."

  "Maria," he said—he knew a lot of them on a first-name basis by now, and vice versa. "This is Jack. Any—?"

  Light suddenly bathed the Jeep and then something crashed into its rear bumper, snapping his head back.

  Jack didn't wait to find out what had happened—he had a pretty good idea. He hit the gas. Since he was already rolling from the impact, he picked up speed quickly, though the Jeep slewed and yawed this way and that. He glanced in the rearview and recognized the grille of a Hummer.

  Davis? Jack doubted it, but it didn't matter who was behind the wheel. Probably followed his footsteps along the shore and come out on the ice after him.

  He heard the crack of a gunshot but nothing hit the Jeep. Leaving his lights off he turned away from the shore—the Hummer would catch him before he'd cleared the Wauwinet property—and headed out on the ice as fast as the Jeep could manage. If he could lose them in the snow, maybe he could make it back to land unseen.

  Then he remembered the cracking ice.

  And that gave him an idea.

  With the Hummer hot on his trail he headed due north as he had before. As soon as he saw the first glow of the yeniceri house he slammed on the brakes and went into a sliding spin. A second later the Hummer did the same. But it slid past and kept on going, its occupants firing wildly as it sailed by.

  It had to weigh at least twice as much as the Jeep. Jack didn't know much about physics but knew more weight meant more momentum, and more momentum meant a longer stopping-distance.

  He turned on his lights so he could watch it slide into the area where the ice had cracked. If it had started to give way under a two-ton Jeep, what would it do under a four-ton Hummer?

  Jack had the answer almost immediately. When the Hummer finally slid to a stop, it paused for a second as the driver spun its wheels to resume the chase. A second was enough: Its front end dipped as the tires broke through the ice. Then the rear sagged. Then it was gone.

  Just like that.

  Might have lasted a little longer if the windows had been up, but you need them down to shoot.

  Jack watched the Hummer's headlights glow beneath the ice as it sank, then he turned the Jeep south and headed for land.

  As soon as he was moving he called the unit again, and got hold of Pedrosa.

  "Any news?"

  He'd held a forlorn hope that he'd hear a wild commotion in the background and cries of wonder because Gia and Vicky had suddenly emerged from their comas.

  But all sounded quiet.

  "No, Jack. Still hanging on but…"

  "No improvement? None at all?"

  "Sorry. You coming in soon?"

  "I'm stuck out of town in the snow."

  "Get here as quick as you can, Jack. I don't think there's much time left."

  He broke the connection.

  If the Ally had heard the offer—a big if—it hadn't taken it. No deal. Jack's move.

  His foot fell off the gas pedal and he let the Jeep roll. He closed his eyes as his head fell forward against the steering. He was tapped out. Nothing left. This had been his last chance, his last hope. He'd given it his best shot and had come up empty.

  Nothing to do now but wait for the inevitable.

  Get here as quick as you can…

  For what? To stand by helplessly and watch them die? He didn't know if he could do that. And yet what else was left to him? He owed it to Gia and Vicky to be there when they were declared brain dead. So they wouldn't breath their last among strangers when Stokely turned off the respirators.

  He understood now why people went postal. He could see himself listening to the last wheeze of their powered-down respirators, watching the last rise and fall of their chests, flinching at the wail of their flat-lined cardiac monitors, then pulling out a pair of Mac-10s and starting to shoot, and keep on shooting until every living thing and every piece of equipment in the unit was dead, until he stood alone in the echoing silence.

  And then he'd flip the Ally the bird and follow through with his threat.

  But that had to remain an unfulfilled dream. He'd have to stand quietly by as his already crumbling world turned to ash. And then he'd have to hunt down Gia's folks and break their hearts. And then he'd have to stand and watch as Gia and Vicky and Emma were ushered into their graves.

  Only after all that could he allow himself the luxury of bird flipping and promise keeping.

  By that point he'd be looking forward to it.

  SATURDAY

  1

  "New York Hospital on East Sixty-eighth. Fast."

  Jack slouched in the cab's backseat and closed his eyes. He felt like hell.

  The storm had blown out to sea around two a.m., heading for Nova Scotia, leaving behind a flawless winter sky for sunrise.

  He'd paced the tiny Nantucket airport terminal all morning waiting for the plows to clear the runways. The Ashe brothers were snowed in, but the plowing in Nantucket proved to be less of a job than expected. The airport sat right on the beach, and the wind off the Atlantic had scoured the main runway—there were only two—while piling drifts along the tree-lined perimeter.

  The real problem had been finding a flight. The commercials were either canceled or way behind. By noon LaGuardia had a few runways open and he found a charter pilot willing to take him.

  All through the night and morning he'd made repeated calls to the unit. No change. Still hanging on by their fingernails.

  Waiting for him?

  I'm coming. Don't let go till I get there.

  Fast didn't appear to be an option. The city had taken eight inches and was only partially plowed out. Good thing it was a Saturday. Anyone with a brain who didn't have to go out was staying home.

  As soon as the cab neared the hospital, Jack felt a growing sense of urgency; by the time he stepped out at the entrance it had become an icy fist squeezing his heart.

  Was he too late?

  He ran inside and passed through the security check. The elevator ride seemed an eternity. When he stepped out on the trauma unit's floor he found a funereal silence. Three glum people sat in the patient lounge, staring either at the TV or into space.

  Jack went directly to the unit's doors and stepped through—

  —into a chaos of frantic activity as nurses and aides ran back and forth, shouting orders to each other.

  Was this it? Had Gia and Vicky sensed his arrival and given up just as he'd arrived?

  But the expressions on the staff—no grief, no concerned urgency, more like…joy and wonder.

  Dr. Stokely spotted him just as he spotted her. She fairly ran up to him.

  "Mister Westphalen—Jack—it's a miracle! A fucking miracle. I almost never use the f-word but that's all that fits: fucking miraculous!"

  Jack's tongue turned to sand. "Gia? Vicky?"

  Stokely nodded, her expression gleeful. "They came out of it—simultaneously! It's impossible, but a few moments ago they began moving their limbs and turning their heads. Their EEGs show increased and increasing brainwave activity. Vicky's seizures have stopped, Gia's cerebral edema has vanished, and her cardiac rhythm is normal sinus. And just before you walked in they simultaneously pulled out their endotracheal tubes—they're breathing on their own! I've never seen—I've never even heard of anything like it. It's un—"

  Jack dodged around her and fairly leaped to the bedsides. He pushed the nurses and aides aside and stared down at Gia first, then Vicky. They looked peacefully asleep. Their color was good, and yes, they were breathing on
their own.

  Jack grabbed their hands and dropped to his knees, not in prayer, not in thanks, but because for a second there they wouldn't support him. When they regained their strength he was on his feet again, leaning over Gia.

  "Gia? Can you hear me? Gia?"

  Stokely laid a gentle hand on his back and said, "She may very well be able to hear every word we say, but she's not yet capable of response."

  Jack straightened and looked at her. "But she will be?"

  "I hate to make predictions, as you know, but I'll go out on a limb and say yes. She'll have some neurological deficits—that's unavoidable—"

  "Twenty-four hours ago you were telling me death was unavoidable."

  "Yes, that's true, but no brain can undergo an ordeal like theirs and come away unscathed."

  We'll see about that, Jack thought as he turned back toward the beds.

  Obviously the Ally had accepted the deal, but why had it waited so long to do its part?

  "When did you say they started coming around?"

  "About half an hour ago, right after Gia's mother left."

  Jack swung back on her. "Her mother?"

  How had Gia's mother found out?

  "Yes. Why, is something wrong?"

  "I don't know."

  "She said she was her mother. An elderly blind woman—looked old enough to be her grandmother, really."

  Jack had never met Gia's mother but was pretty damn sure she wasn't blind.

  And then he knew.

  "Did she have a dog with her?"

  "Yes. A big, beautiful, seeing-eye German shepherd. She wanted to bring him in with her but we couldn't allow that."

  That was it. The Ally had withdrawn, allowing one of the Ladies to come in and work her healing.

  "What did she do?"

  "Just spoke to them. I wasn't close enough to hear myself, but one of the aides said she overheard her telling each of them that it was time to wake up and—" She broke off, frowning as she looked past Jack. "What on Earth are those?"

  Jack turned and saw what she meant. Leaning against the head of each bed was a three-foot tree branch with a tin can painted with odd red-and-yellow squiggles resting atop it.

  Jack had seen one of those before—behind his father's hospital headboard in Florida.

  Stokely grabbed the arm of a passing nurse and pointed to them.

  "Where did they come from?"

  The nurse looked and shrugged. "I don't know. Never saw them before. Maybe the old lady—"

  "Well, get them out of here."

  "Don't touch them," Jack said.

  Stokely and the nurse must have sensed something in his tone because they both stopped and stared at him.

  Jack thought fast, looking for a way to keep those talismans or charms or fetishes or whatever they were in the room. He didn't know what they did but he knew that one of them had been nearby when his father had come out of his coma.

  "They're religious—part of my wife's religion."

  Stokely said, "What religion is that?"

  Good question. He picked something she'd mostly likely know nothing about.

  "Wicca."

  "She's a witch? Well, whatever, those things have to go. God knows what kind of bacteria they're carrying."

  "They stay," Jack said, letting an edge creep into his tone. "Does this hospital make accommodations for orthodox Jews and Muslims and vegans? You'd let a Roman Catholic keep rosary beads and a Virgin Mary statue at bedside, wouldn't you?"

  "Yes, but—"

  "No buts. Unless you want to be responsible for the hospital being slammed with a religious discrimination suit, they stay."

  Stokely stared at him. "I thought you were a different sort of person."

  "I am. I'm a very different sort of person. You'll never know how different. But the religious objects stay, right?"

  Stokely sighed. "Okay, okay."

  Jack smiled. "Great. Now, do you have any idea where I can find the La—Gia's mother?"

  "As she was leaving I heard her mention something about a baby but—"

  Good Christ! Emma! Could she…?

  Jack pushed past Stokely and hurried for the doors.

  "Wait? Where are you—?"

  And then he was out and running for the closing elevator doors. He caught them and pushed them open with such force that he frightened the old couple inside.

  "Sorry."

  The morgue was in another wing. One of those can't-get-there-from-here situations where he had to go down to the main floor and switch to another elevator bank.

  He watched the descending numbers as they stopped on every goddamn floor.

  Come on, come on, come on!

  Finally the main level, a dash to the other elevators, another excruciatingly slow ride, and then he was on the morgue floor, running down the hall. He burst through the doors and headed straight for the coolers.

  "Hey!" said the attendant—younger and stockier than the guy he'd met before. "Where's your pass?"

  Jack ignored him. He beelined for the drawer where they were keeping Emma and pulled it open. The black bag was still zipped, the lump still settled in its center. But something new had been added: a stick with a decorated tin can at its end lay beside the bag.

  Back to the lump: Was it—was that movement he just saw?

  A hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.

  "Hey, buddy. You can't just walk in here. You gotta have a pass."

  Jack turned on him, ready to rip his heart out and feed it to him.

  "This is my baby!" he gritted through his clenched teeth. He gave him a shove. "Get out of here!"

  The guy staggered back, his belligerent expression morphing to fear.

  "I-I'm calling security."

  "Knock yourself out."

  Jack turned back to the body bag and reached for the zipper.

  Emma, alive. Thank you, Lady, whoever, whatever, and wherever you are.

  He pulled the zipper, spread the edges, ready to take her in his arms and wrap her in the warmth of his shirt.

  He froze.

  Emma lay exactly as he'd left her: stiff… white… lifeless.

  "No… oh, no…"

  He lifted her, held her against him. This couldn't be. He'd made a deal. All three of them back… as alive and as well as before. What had happened? The Lady had been here—the stick and the can were proof of that. Why wasn't Emma alive? Why hadn't she come back?

  "Sir," said a gruff voice behind him. "You're going to have to leave."

  Jack ignored him and held on to Emma.

  "We're sorry for your loss, sir," said another, softer voice. "But we have to escort you out of here."

  Jack realized he didn't have any fight left in him. Not trusting himself to speak, he nodded. He kissed Emma's cold, fuzzy scalp, then laid her back in the bag and zipped it closed. He let his hand linger on the lump that was his baby, then turned to let them kick him out.

  2

  He found the Lady in the main waiting area, sitting and seemingly staring at nothing through her dark glasses. A German shepherd in a seeing-eye harness sat at her feet, its tongue lolling. It looked at Jack as he dropped into the seat next to her.

  "Thank you," he said.

  She nodded. "You have questions. Let's walk."

  Questions was putting it mildly.

  They rose and Jack waited while she unfolded her white cane.

  "Are you really blind?"

  She turned her face toward him so he could see his reflection in her black lenses.

  "What a question."

  What a non-answer, but he let it slide.

  He took her arm and guided her out into the cold, bright afternoon. They sat on one of the benches near the roundabout driveway. Neither spoke for a few moments, then Jack could wait no longer.

  "Emma… the baby… I guess it was expecting too much to think you could raise the dead."

  "Not too much. It has been done."

  "She was dead too long then?"<
br />
  "Perhaps. But even if not, the Ally would not allow her return."

  Jack stiffened. "But the deal was—"

  "I know about your threat."

  "But how could you?"

  "That does not concern you. What does is that you should know that you have some value to the Ally, but you are not irreplaceable. I think it may have amused the minor molecule of its being that pays attention to this sphere to partially comply."

  "Partially…"

  "Yes. Allowing me to return your Gia and your Victoria to you, but not the baby, was its way of sending you a message."

  "That I don't call the shots."

  "Precisely."

  "But the deal was for all three."

  "There was no deal. Only your threat."

  Jack was beginning to see, and what he saw became a crushing weight on his shoulders.

  "A threat I can't follow through on now that Gia and Vicky are back."

  No way he could eat a hollow-point and leave them to face the coming apocalypse without him.

  She nodded. "Yes. It has negated your threat without fully acceding to your demands…"

  He felt his throat tighten. "Why not fully? Why couldn't it simply free Emma too? It would've cost it nothing and… and she's just a baby."

  "You are thinking emotionally about a force with no emotion." She turned her dark lenses toward him. "You had to be shown who is boss."

  Utterly spent, Jack slumped on the bench and stared at the naked trees within the roundabout, the steady stream of cars dropping off and picking up patients and visitors.

  He'd been outflanked, but at least his battles with the MV hadn't been for nothing. At least he had Gia and Vicky back.

  "How am I going to tell Gia?"

  "She will know something is wrong as soon as she awakens and realizes there is no baby in her belly. Her first hope will be that it was somehow saved, that her infant awaits her in the neonatal ICU. You must be there to comfort her when she learns it is not."

  She cocked her head as if listening.

  "What?"

  "They will be conscious soon. Do you wish to be there when they wake?"

  "Of course."

  He wanted to be the first person Gia and Vicky saw when they opened their eyes.

  "Then you must go now."