Dark Advent

by Brian Hodge

  Kids and dogs. How long had it been since he’d seen such a beautifully mundane sight? More than the clean little houses of Heywood and their neat little yards, more than the visitors who’d dropped by to wish him well, more than the lake and the spreading trees and the peaceful coexistence of civilization and nature evident out here…it was the scene by the jungle gym that convinced him this was indeed the place, that Tomahawk had done him right. Because in a world gone insane, here was one little corner that had kept its wits intact.

  “I feel like I’ve finally come around again,” Jason said. “I don’t mean getting out after being shot. I mean it’s like I just woke up after a bad dream that’s lasted more than a year. I could be happy here.”

  Tomahawk stroked his chin. “Could you die here?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “Valid.” He scraped at the table’s bench with his boot, flaking away peeled paint. “Spend your existence here? Day in, day out. Knowing you’ll be looking at it for the rest of your life?”

  “Good a place as any, I guess.” Jason scratched gently at his leg. Beneath the bandages, the healing skin itched. “With the right people, I could probably be happy just about anywhere.”

  “Erika.”

  “Yep.”

  Jason had met, by a conservative estimate, thirty people since he’d awakened on Saturday. Including three women within four or five years either way of his age. All three had had reasons for dropping by that sounded valid enough, but after the first one, Molly had explained that gender ratios were a little lopsided among the younger demographic. Word had spread fast about him. Flattering, sure, he was only human. But he was in no shape to succumb to any temptation even if he hadn’t been thinking about reuniting with Erika.

  “I maybe could be happy here too,” Tomahawk said quietly.

  Jason paused with his beer halfway to his lips. “Seriously?”

  He nodded. “Maybe destiny did talk to me that day on the highway. Maybe it was telling me it was time to settle down somewhere.”

  Jason held his bottle aloft in celebration, beaming. “Excellent! I expected you to try to find the Highway King and the rest.”

  “I thought about it. But…I don’t know. Our paths’ll probably cross again someday.” He sat for a moment, picking at the Coors label, stripping away paper and foil. “Had an idea last night, Jason. You’ve been hurt, you know. Not just a little scratch either. Getting your people down here’s gonna be a big responsibility. It sounds easy enough, but you shouldn’t push yourself to get it done. You oughta rest up a while. So how’s about me going up to St. Louis and bringing ’em back down?”

  Jason sat in contemplation several moments. An unexpected turn, this, but it made sense. “I don’t want it to look like I’m ditching my obligation to those people.”

  Tomahawk frowned. “Ah, bullshit, you’re not ditching anything. You’ll do ’em more good alive and well down here than if you screw yourself up on the road again.”

  “They wouldn’t know you.”

  “So write them a letter, and I’ll give it to them. Draw me a map of how to get there. And we’ll see if anybody’s got an instant camera, get a picture of us together. It’ll work out.”

  Jason fingered little shapes on the top of the picnic table. He owed a lot of people for a lot of good done to him. In St. Louis, across the Southern states, here in Heywood. But Tomahawk…he had to say he owed Tomahawk most of all. For giving him his life back, in more ways than one. To refuse his help now, so selflessly offered, would be an insult.

  “Well,” Jason said, “I guess it would be good to have you around when I first see Erika. For moral support. She’s really gonna be pissed when she finds out I’ve got more scars.”

  Tomahawk reached a hand across the table to Jason’s good shoulder. “Bear them proudly, Jay. You know what you went through to get them. You know what it took.”

  He pointed to the one by his eye. “We don’t tell her that one’s from you.”

  “Oh hell no,” said Tomahawk.

  He pulled out a pen and a folded sheet of paper, and Jason began to write.

  * *

  The sentry on I-44 hated to admit it to himself, but the new duty he’d drawn had turned into the pinnacle of boredom. Ordinarily, Greely was a patient man. He could sit and wait and watch for hours, like a lizard on a sunny rock. Peter Solomon had chosen him for that very trait. But a week of watching for cars twelve hours a day could erode even a mountain of patience.

  Greely looked out at the sky. The sun was straight overhead. He heard nothing from either direction along this stretch of interstate that sliced through the St. Louis suburbs, so he stepped down and out for a stroll. Here he’d been spending his days, in a stalled and cockeyed Mack semi-cab. Looking for a car from the southwest. They had the girl, and that seemed like enough, but Solomon wanted to cover every base. Thus the sentries posted in concealed lookouts on every likely route that Jason Hart might use if and when he returned.

  Greely strolled over the hot pavement. He stood well over six feet, and had lost a lot of weight in the last year, but in all the right places. His skin looked cadaverously pale and he kept his hair buzzed close to his skull. His smile could frighten young children into fits of screaming.

  He left in a red Mustang, so watch for that, Solomon had told the lookouts. But he could’ve switched cars. You never know. So look at the plates of anything that passes through. If he switched, they’ll probably be Southern.

  After stretching his legs, Greely climbed back into the cab and toyed with his two tools for this assignment: a powerful pair of binoculars and a walkie-talkie.

  Tedious. He’d never guessed that doing nothing would turn into such a challenge. But if Solomon had anything, he had uncanny instincts.

  It would pay off in time.

  3

  It had been a couple of years since Tomahawk had been through Missouri, except he’d never been this low to its roads before. He was used to seeing places from behind the wheel up in a Peterbilt cab, not from a puny blue Chevy Cavalier. Sometimes you really had to sacrifice to do good in the world.

  It had been almost as tough saying goodbye to Jason for several days as it had been getting used to the fact that he no longer rode with the King and the rest of the clan. He looked at the Polaroid taken just before he’d left Heywood: he and Jason, arms around one another like college buddies, all smiles, hair past their shoulders. Tomahawk kept the picture on the dash, corner tucked into the crack over the ashtray.

  He recalled the last thing Jason had said before leaving in the Cavalier: “You touch Erika, and I’ll kick your ass. Again.”

  Wouldn’t be long now before he got to see this wonder woman in the flesh. A half-hour, maybe.

  Tomahawk was still grinning over Jason’s parting words when he steered past a cockeyed semi-cab, a reminder of better, more predictable days.

  * *

  The sentry on I-44 grabbed his walkie-talkie as soon as he’d set down his binoculars.

  “Greely here,” he said into the transmitter. “Got a car heading your way, blue Chevy, I think. Texas plates. Interested?”

  “Was it Hart?” Hagar’s voice crackled back. “Could you tell?”

  “Couldn’t see that well. But it was only the driver, and it looked like someone with long hair.”

  “Barricades up, then. We’ll check it out.”

  * *

  Three or four minutes after passing the truck cab, Tomahawk rounded a curve and saw another crippled dinosaur from the gasoline age. This time it was a mass transit bus, parked straight across the northeast-bound lanes. No way to steer around it either. A concrete divider separated him from the opposite lanes, and jumble of junker cars filled the shoulder at the right. Scratch this route. Now he’d have to wing it.

  Tomahawk was slowing the Chevy and preparing to tur
n around near the bus when three men strolled toward his car from both front and back. All of them had guns at the ready, and were set up to put him in a major crossfire. One man lifted his hand in peace.

  Slow and eeeeasy, he told himself, gearing the car into park. He looked at the converging men. No worries, they don’t know me.

  “You wanna step out of the car?” one called, a redheaded troll of a man. “Routine checkpoint, that’s all.”

  Slowly, deliberately, Tomahawk complied. He left his gun in the car; bringing it would be a sure way to escalate the situation. But maybe they wouldn’t notice the stone ax at his belt. The three of them sauntered closer, looking him over, as well as the car.

  “Where you headed?” asked the troll.

  “Upstate New York,” Tomahawk said. “Wanna find my old family, see if anybody’s left.”

  “Indian, by the look of you?” asked the third, a harsh-voiced young man.

  “Iroquois. Cayuga Nation.”

  The troll nodded, musing it over. The others were circling like wary vultures. It was impossible to keep an eye on all three.

  “Sanchez,” the troll finally said. “Check the car.”

  A squat, muscular man with a heavy moustache and all the charm of a bulldozer shouldered past and bent inside the car.

  Go ahead, thought Tomahawk. I got nothing in there to hide.

  Except…

  AW SHIT!

  Sanchez, a moment later, came popping back out with the picture in his fingers, and then Tomahawk spun around, trying to get one arm around Sanchez’s neck and the other hand on the ax, his only hope now, and even that was slim at best, because they knew, they knew, he’d blown it all for stupid sentimental reasons, and —

  And somebody walloped him a good one along the side of the head with something hard, and then Tomahawk knew nothing.

  * *

  “Hey. Wake up. Wake up and show me what you’re made of.”

  The Indian hung limply before him, head limp and lolling as he gradually swam back to consciousness.

  “Come on, come on, I haven’t got all day. Wake up.” Peter Solomon lightly slapped the man’s face as four others watched from the background, near the entrance to the automotive service garage bay where he’d met them. One of the Indian’s eyes opened and Solomon grinned. He rolled a road atlas from the blue Chevy into a tight shaft, poking one end under his chin and lifting his head up. “Come out come out, wherever you are…”

  Tomahawk blinked and grimaced his darkly ruddy face. A thread of blood glistened in his glossy black hair. But neither blood nor hair were quite so shiny as his eyes had suddenly become, focusing and glaring with a hatred whose intensity even Solomon had to admire.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, and the man told him.

  Solomon moved back a step, watching as Tomahawk took stock of his situation…looking up at his arms, stretched overhead so that each hand cupped its opposite elbow, both forearms bound by heavy nylon rope to the crossbrace of a hydraulic lift used to hoist cars. Looking down at his feet, bound to the iron guide rails running along either side of the grease pit. Looking past Solomon to the other four, framed in the open doorway as dust swirled by outside. They slouched and toyed with their guns. Finally looking back at Solomon with contempt.

  Solomon narrowed his eyes and stepped closer, ever so slowly pacing from one side of the Indian to the other, feeling those dark, hawkish eyes following him.

  “Where did you leave him?” Solomon asked, voice rising over that of the hot wind outside.

  Silence.

  “You know who I’m talking about, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes you know exactly who I’m talking about.” He stared patiently at Tomahawk, hearing only the wind. He held up the picture, and, when he got no response, ripped it in half and fourths and eights, and the pieces fluttered down. “Hmmm…looks like your jaw needs a little loosening.”

  Solomon clamped his hand under Tomahawk’s mouth. His thumb and middle finger worked their way into the crevices where jawbone met skull, and went rigid, and squeezed…and squeezed…and squeezed…until blood trickled from inside the cheeks, then outside. He continued the pressure, the Indian clenching his eyes shut, and finally Solomon felt and heard the cracking of molars, bending from their sockets.

  Solomon already had what he wanted, after a search of their unconscious captive had turned up a letter from Jason Hart himself. In fact, Solomon had the next few days already planned out. He would send Lucas and Hagar and Greely and Sanchez to Heywood. At the same time, he’d make a trip with Earl Masters to Kansas City, to inspect the power plants there.

  As far as information went, this man known as Tomahawk had already served his purpose. But there’d been no sport. No breaking of his will, no sense of shame when all the betraying facts spilled forth.

  And this time he’d picked one tough nut to crack: an Iroquois, once upon a time among the most feared of Indians. Better to be killed early by them rather than captured, because they’d known some of the most ghastly methods of torture ever devised. Yet the Iroquois might nonetheless speak kindly to their suffering enemies, encouraging them to show bravery, to meet pain and death with courage and dignity. The age of the Indian wars was long gone, and certainly this specimen knew nothing of them firsthand, but still, his ancestors were in his heritage, his soul, his blood.

  The eyes of an eagle, burning with hatred, refusing to be intimidated…

  Come on, damn you, let me feel your fear.

  Tomahawk worked his tongue inside his mouth, then craned his head forward and spat out the two molars, a pair of bloody dice that stained Solomon’s cream-colored shirt. Solomon’s eyes widened and his breath rushed in and out of flaring nostrils. He stalked over to a post standing between the service bays, and his fingers pressed a big green button. Without electricity, it had been only so much grimy decor.

  Now it brought a grind of old machinery stirring to life, heavy and clanking. The lift began to rise, an inch, two, three. Writhing as the dull steel pillar behind him lifted higher, Tomahawk became elastic. Muscles bunched thickly underneath his clothing, as tendons popped and ligaments strained. Sweat poured down his knotted body as Solomon’s hand left the button. Tomahawk panted for breath, hair clinging wet to his cheeks and throat.

  The men behind Solomon watched with an uneasy mix of fascination and revulsion, but he’d forgotten they even existed. He stepped over to Tomahawk again, patted one rock-hard shoulder.

  “No need to let this go any further. Just tell me what I want. As simple as that.” At best, he would let the Indian hang there to die of asphyxiation or heat prostration or dehydration, whichever claimed him first, but his eyes glittered with the promise of release. “Simple. As. That.” He leaned tantalizingly forward.

  Tomahawk pursed his lips and spewed a thin stream of blood and saliva. It dribbled down his chin as Solomon wiped furiously at his eyes and stumbled back to the button. Glaring, he pressed it, hearing the satisfying grind of hydraulics. Tomahawk bared his teeth in strain as his body pulled as tight as a bridge cable. His eyes went skyward, and his lips may have moved in prayer.

  “Last chance, red man!” Solomon shouted, giving the button a quick peck that sent another shudder rippling through Tomahawk’s body. “Next time you go to the happy hunting ground in two pieces!”

  With a bloody rictus grin, Tomahawk nodded.

  “GIVE ME WHAT I WANT, YOU FUCKER!” Solomon shrieked.

  The man knew as well as he did that he meant more than Jason’s location, and knowledge was power. With Tomahawk’s blood and spit streaking his face, Solomon glared across the garage and wondered how all this could’ve happened, things had gone so smoothly until now. And now this strung-up bastard without a hope in the universe was looking as if he were the one in charge.

  “GIVE IT TO ME!”

  The breaking point…


  “I hope you do find him,” Tomahawk rasped. He dribbled more blood through clenched teeth. “It’s your ass then, little man.”

  Solomon’s fingers stabbed for the lift button.

  The clashing grind of machinery…

  The first sharp crack of bone…

  And this time he did not let up.

  4

  All talk and no action. For a week and a day, that’s the way it had gone. Ever since Colleen had come running in, out of breath and barely coherent, though they’d all managed to figure out that the Union Station Hospitality Committee had come and taken Erika away.

  Diane McCaffrey had contented herself with watching from the sidelines, nurturing weary disgust at the daily discussions that accomplished little more than deciding that something had to be done. Hawks and doves, that seemed to be the way things were dividing up. There were those ready to give Erika up for dead or converted or brainwashed, so maybe they should all just quietly pack up and fade away to someplace else so something like this didn’t happen again. Diane almost applauded when Rich Patton actually rose and punched a guy who suggested letting them keep her, that it wasn’t worth the risk of trying to get her back.

  And then there was the small faction who preached armed invasion. That was a peach of an idea, about as sensible as a game of Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun. Even so, she noticed these Rambos-in-the-making were talking a good game, but stopped short of volunteering to lead the mission.

  “Yep,” she muttered to herself. “Badass bunch of survivalists we are.”

  “Say again?” It was Caleb. The late afternoon sun was burning outside in the streets and she’d been daydreaming against the bank of windows. It wasn’t much more comfortable here inside. Her entire body felt coated with a sticky film.

  “Nothing,” she said. But didn’t she really want to talk to him? She’d known it was Caleb behind her without turning around. Of course she wanted to talk to him. Because there weren’t a lot of people left in this place she did feel like talking to. The sentiment seemed to be contagious, more so as the days went on. “Erika, that’s all. Poor thing, she could rot in that place before anybody here would lift a finger to do something about it.”