He pulled his sweat pants up to his hips and considered. Was she here for sex? He pulled the elastic of his boxer shorts forward and looked down at himself. Maybe he should chub up? Nah, no time. And if she was taking him outside in the cold it would defeat the purpose. He pulled his sweat pants up the rest of the way and hastily laced his boots.
He found the 9mm but left the holster on the dresser, sticking the pistol instead in the back of his pants. He slept in a white t-shirt, so he pulled a light flannel shirt on over it.
When he stepped out into the hall it was empty. There was a low electrical hum from somewhere in the dormitory.
“Lauren?”
There was no reply.
Maybe she was waiting for him up ahead or outside in the night. With a smile spreading across his face, he strutted across the hallway like a rooster. The pockets of his sweat pants were inside-out, flopping at his hips like a dog’s ears. He passed Gwen’s closed door and stepped into the common area they all shared.
The blow to the back of his head knocked him down.
He managed to push himself up, getting most of his upper body off the carpet, his is head throbbing, not comprehending—
The second blow put him down.
When Mickey regained consciousness he was very cold and couldn’t see anything. There was something pulled down across his eyes and nose. His mouth was bound with tape. He tried to talk but couldn’t. Instead he mumbled futilely, moving his head side to side. They had a hood or something over his face.
He was in a vehicle of some sort. He could feel it moving beneath him. His hands were bound at the wrists. Try as he might he could not free them.
There were two voices talking in front of him but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.
When the Jeep stopped, Eva put her hand on his neck and dragged him from the backseat. He tripped and fell from the vehicle, landing in the snow. He protested behind the tape and hood.
“Shut up,” she said, pushing him forward with the barrels of her assault rifle.
Mickey staggered forward a few steps unseeing, tripping and falling again.
“Get up.”
“He can’t see, Eva,” Lauren said.
“You want to see? You want to see where the fuck you are?” Eva ripped the hood from his head.
They were standing on the side of a road, trees stretching out on either side of it. Someone must have plowed in the last couple of weeks because there were mounds of snow packed on the sides. Mickey thought this was strange. The sky above and behind them was purple-black. The horizon in front of them lightened with the dawn.
The Jeep was parked in the road. Eva and Lauren stood looking at him. Eva had murder in her eyes and the assault rifle at her hip. Lauren looked bewildered and had the MP-40 at her side on its sling.
“Looking for this?” She held his 9mm in her hand. “Say bye-bye.” She winged it off into the trees on the opposite side of the road.
Eva reached to his mouth and tore the tape off. It felt like his lips came off with it and he gasped.
“Scream if you want,” Eva said. “No one is around to hear you. No one who can help you.”
“What is this place?”
“Miller’s Crossing,” Lauren said before Eva told Mickey to shut up.
“Move.”
Eva prodded him forward. This time he kept his footing. He climbed through the piles of snow, unable to use his hands, which were cold and taped in front of his body. His boots had come untied and the laces dragged through the snow. As they walked, he spotted birds in some of the trees.
“Keep walking.”
Mickey was terrified. Miller’s Crossing. He’d seen the movie, god knew how many times. Written by the Coen brothers, directed by Joel. There were three scenes in that movie set out in the woods. In the first Gabriel Byrne walked John Turturro out into the trees on an autumn day, then made him stop. Turturro’s character, Bernie, turned and faced Byrne’s Tommy Reagan. He fell on his knees.
Look in your heart, Tommy. I’m praying to you. I can’t die. I can’t die Tommy!
“Here,” Eva said. “Stop.”
Mickey halted and looked ahead into the new day. The birds were cawing.
“Get down. On your knees.”
Slowly, he bent one leg and knelt, then followed suit with the other. He bent over crying. His tears were cold on his face. They dripped to the snow and dirt.
Before he’d followed Bernie into the woods, Tommy had received some advice from Al Mancini’s vicious—if short—hit man, Tik-Tak. You gotta remember to put one in his brain, Tik-Tak had counseled. Your first shot puts him down, then you put one in his brain. Then he’s dead. Then we go home.
Eva was behind him.
“Pl-please, please-please-please—”
“Shut up. Shut up! Have some dignity now at least!”
“I-I-I—”
“You helped that baby killer escape. That’s what you did. And you should have escaped when you had the chance, stupid motherfucker.”
“No, I.” Weeping as he was, he couldn’t continue.
Caw caw.
The second scene in the woods brought Tommy’s turn to be taken for a walk. Tik-Tak was there, his breath a plume in the autumn day. His sidekick, the much larger thug Frankie, sang in Italian, his voice echoing through the trees. The ferocious Eddie the Dane was with them. Tommy had known he was going to die. He had looked up at the trees and the sky. Then he had leaned against a tree and vomited, fell on his knees. The Dane had taken the hat from Tommy’s head and tossed it aside…
Eva leaned over his shoulder and spoke to him.
“I’m going to kill you here, now. You should thank me. You ever see what happens to people with the plague? Your fingers, toes and dick will fall off. You selfish bastard, did you think you’d keep it secret?”
Mickey sucked in the snot threatening to drip down his face—an ugly, pathetic snort—and stared into the snow before him.
“When we’re done here I’m going to go and see your friend, Gwen, and then—”
“No, she didn’t know—”
“Fuck what she knew—”
“Gwen didn’t like Buddy, she—”
“Then I’m heading back out here. I’m going to find that pregnant bitch and that baby killer, and that goddamn doctor too. It won’t be as pretty for them as it will be for you.”
Her voice receded. On some level Mickey knew she was stepping back from him, raising the M4/M26, aiming it at his back.
Caw caw.
The third and final scene in the woods occurred at the end of the film, when Gabriel Byrne meets his one-time friend and boss, the Irish gangster, Leo, at a graveside. Leo and Tommy had had a falling out, but Leo was looking to make things good by inviting his former confidant back into the fold. Good bye, Leo, Gabriel Byrne tells him. As Albert Finney’s Leo walks off down the road in the woods, Byrne’s Tommy leans against a tree and adjusts his hat.
“I’ll do it,” Lauren said behind him.
“Then do it,” Eva said.
There were fresh buds on some of the trees. Spring was coming.
Behind him Lauren racked the slide on her MP-40, chambering the first round.
He raised himself up on his knees, straightening out his back, puffing out his chest. He lifted his head and looked towards the horizon, towards the day.
The submachine gun ripped. The birds in the trees took flight, squawking.
“You going to invite me in for a drink?” Steve asked Gwen.
“Not tonight. It’s too late.”
“Come on, invite me in. Like Billy Crystal says, we’ll do things I’m going to tell my friends we did anyway.”
She laughed. “I had a good time tonight. Thanks.”
“I did too.”
“What do you look like without those sunglasses?”
He shrugged.
“Take them off?”
He did so and she looked into his brown eyes.
“You’ve got
nice eyes.”
“Appreciate it. So, how’s your sex life?”
“You’re incorrigible.” She laughed. “Get out of here.”
“Okay. But if you need anything…”
“I know. I will.”
She closed the front door to the dorm behind her. Standing in the common room, she was aware of something in the darkened building aside from herself and Mickey in his bedroom. A presence.
She left the light off and dug her pistol out of its holster. She flicked the safety off and waited, her broken arm pressed tight to her in its cast.
As her eyes adjusted to the dark she discerned a much larger, darker mass among the shadows in the area of the couch.
“Gwen.”
“Bear.” She sighed. Relieved, she lowered the pistol. She didn’t bother to turn on the light. There was a chair near the door and she sat down in it.
“Where are Julie and Buddy and Mickey?”
“Oh God.”
She told him about Sonny’s daughter going missing. About Sonny heading first to the medical center, finding a dead guard, then finding Buddy and all his stuff gone. She told him of Sonny coming to the dorm and waking Mickey and herself, of the scene in the commons, of Julie shooting Sonny and absconding with Buddy, the doctor and Mickey in tow.
When he asked her how they escaped Clavius City, she told him about Panas being stationed on watch that night—how he let them walk out. She told him how Mickey had stayed behind to try and straighten things out with everyone in Clavius, to try and help to find Sonny’s daughter, and how Singh had accompanied Julie and Buddy to care for them. She told Bear the direction they were headed and where they might be found.
She didn’t tell him why she had stayed behind; how the thought of leaving had never crossed her mind; how she had no intention of leaving this place.
“Where’s Mickey now?”
“What do you mean? He isn’t in his room?”
He didn’t answer. He must have stood and turned, because she saw the shadows shift, and heard the floor creak under his feet as he walked towards the back of the dorm.
“Bear.” He did not respond but she knew he had stopped. She wanted to ask him why he was back—why he was back so soon—why he was alone. Instead she said, “Take care of yourself.”
She sat there after he left, thinking and listening. After awhile she holstered the gun and turned the light on in the common room. She checked Mickey’s room. Bear was right. He wasn’t there. She turned on all the lights in the dorm and thought about going and getting Steve.
Eva was bent over Mickey, whispering in his ear.
Caw caw.
Lauren considered the MP-40 in her hands. Mickey had his back to her.
“And I’m going to find that pregnant bitch and that baby killer,” Lauren heard every word Eva said, “and that goddamn doctor too. It won’t be as pretty for them as it will be for you.”
She stepped away from the man on his knees and raised her M4/M26, aiming it at his back, ready to blast him from behind.
Caw caw.
“I’ll do it.”
Eva turned and looked at her. Lauren motioned with the MP-40.
“Then do it.”
Mickey straightened himself out where he knelt, lifted his chin and looked straight ahead.
Lauren shifted over a few steps behind him. Eva looked on approvingly. Lauren raised the MP-40 to her hip.
She couldn’t see his face, but imagined he must look as much at peace with himself and the world as he was ever going to be.
She swiveled at the hip and triggered the MP-40.
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrppppppppppppppp
A stream of lead stitched Eva from crotch to clavicle, knocking her off her feet. Her assault rifle landed a yard away from her body.
The birds in the nearest trees took flight.
“Enough,” Lauren said it like it was a curse. “Enough already.”
Mickey kneeled there. He blinked. Was he dead?
Lauren walked up to him, lowering the MP-40.
“Get up you dumb son of a bitch,” she said, tears in her eyes.
Mickey stood and turned. Eva lay there, one leg bent under her, the blood from the ragged holes in her draining into the snow and the earth underneath.
“Lauren, oh Jesus.”
“God, you’re a dumb fuck,” Lauren said. “I tried to give you a fucking hint.”
Miller’s Crossing. Each time he’d gone out in the woods, Tommy Reagan had walked away.
Eva gurgled and gasped.
They stood and looked down on her.
Eva stared towards space then focused on Lauren’s face.
“If you can hear me, Eva,” she said. “I’ll make sure Sonya and the kids are okay.”
Eva convulsed and blood welled up out of her mouth and nose. Her eyes glazed over and she lay there with a blank stare, seeing nothing.
Mickey stooped to retrieve her assault rifle.
Back in the Jeep, Lauren turned the engine over and cranked the heat up as high as it would go.
“Are you okay?” she asked him, putting the vehicle in drive, executing a three-point turn.
“My head hurts.”
They drove in silence for several minutes. Mickey watched the scenery pass—trees and the road, the sky lightening as dawn arrived. He thought of Julie in the woods somewhere with Buddy, of Bear atop an armored personnel carrier heading down into the city, of Fred Turner, Larry Chen, Keara and Phil back in Eden, of Gwen asleep in their dorm inside Clavius City, of Eva dead in the snow, crumpled and bloody.
“Stop the Jeep,” he said.
Lauren slowed the vehicle to a halt in the middle of the road.
“What is it?”
“Give me a kiss.”
She leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. He kissed her back, hard. When they pulled away, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“That was a smooth line. Hey, where…”
Mickey had opened the door and stepped outside the Jeep.
“This is it for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, this is it. You head back to Clavius.”
“But what about you?”
“I’ll be fine. Who’s going to mess with me? The undead?” He scoffed.
“No, we can go back together and—”
“You know we can’t. Even if we could…” He thought of the plague infecting him, of how his end would be.
A lone zombie stumbled through the trees towards the road and their Jeep.
“But what will—what will you do?”
“Me? I’ll be okay,” he said. “Back in my room, in my bag, I have a collection of DVDs. I want you to have them, okay?”
“Mickey, I—”
“No, Lauren. I love you.”
“Don’t tell me that.” She cried.
Crusade (Eden Book 2) Page 30
