by Mark Dawson
Salvation Row was safe, and the way was clear for the charity to continue with its work. There would be no mall now.
Alexander was back in rehab, and he had seemed happy to go.
All of those things had looked so desperate before Milton had arrived. He was a complicated man, and she knew there were depths to him that she did not want to disturb, even to know about, but without him things would have been very different. Babineaux would have driven his bulldozers straight through the middle of all of their hard work.
And Alexander might have been dead.
She couldn’t get that out of her head.
She couldn’t abandon Milton, no matter what he had said.
She drove on, nudging seventy and then eighty as the roads cleared. She headed to the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge. The spectral silhouettes of the park’s taller rides were limned in silver by a half moon and, as she drew nearer, she saw Milton’s Toyota Corolla parked at the side of the road.
She slammed on the brakes, rolled up behind it, killed the engine and the lights.
The chain-link fence rattled in the breeze. She looked through it and into the darkened park.
She remembered. The place was like an open sore, a reminder to those who had the temerity to thumb their nose at Nature. The city was here at the whim of the ocean.
Deserted.
Eerie.
They called it Zombieland now.
Izzy stepped through the gash in the fence and hurried inside.
#
THEY FENCED for the first few moments, each firing out exploratory jabs, keeping a safe distance between them. A couple of Milton’s right-handers slid between Bachman’s defences, cracking off his cheek and chin. They had no effect. Bachman moved with studied ease, his weight balanced perfectly so that he could dodge left and right without having to think about it. Milton had been a decent regimental boxer when he was younger, and he still recalled much of it, but he remembered again that the Mossad trained their agents in Krav Maga and he knew that would be a very big problem. The discipline eliminated all superfluous movements. You never turned your back on your opponent, there was nothing fancy, each strike delivering maximum power. He remembered that Bachman was good at it and, if he allowed him to get too close, he would be at a severe disadvantage.
He didn’t want to get in too close.
“Your wife,” Milton said between breaths.
Bachman didn’t reply.
“—didn’t kill her… didn’t shoot her.”
Bachman’s face darkened and he threw out a big roundhouse that Milton took on his shoulder, the blow sending a spider web of pain along his nerves. Bachman used the momentum of his body, using the hips rather than the torso, to generate quick and effective force. The power of it took Milton by surprise, staggering him a half-step to the right.
“—not lying.”
Bachman grunted, firing out Muay Thai elbows and knees. Milton caught a knee strike against his side and responded with a stiff left hand that knocked Bachman back again.
Milton stood away, gasping for breath. “Your shot—ricochet—killed her.”
Bachman roared and rushed him. Milton tried to sidestep, but his foot caught against a loose plank that had been discarded in the square and he could only stumble. Bachman grabbed him, both hands around his shoulders as he drove him back. Milton managed to pivot as they collapsed and he fell atop him. He tried to wrestle Bachman down, to hold him against the ground, but he was strong. He butted Milton in the face, a dizzying blow that gave him enough space to strike up with his elbow. Milton lost the grip with his right hand, opening up more space between their bodies so that Bachman could strike him again, and then again, with his elbow. Milton felt the bones in his nose snap and the blood rushed down to run across his lips. He tried to fire out a left-handed punch, but Bachman jerked his head aside and his fist glanced against his temple and hit the concrete. Pain flared again. A broken knuckle?
Bachman swung his elbow again and Milton fell off, rolling onto his back.
Bachman sprang to his feet with a nimble kip-up.
Milton’s vision darkened, a black fringe that fell down like the drawing of a curtain. Bachman’s face was concentrated and his eyes glittered with black fury. Milton rolled his neck as Bachman stamped down on his head, the treads of his boot scraping down the side of his crown. He scrambled upright again, his feet slipping and sliding on the mossy cobbles. He was still too dazed to get his arms up in time as Bachman swept out a wide kick that crunched into the junction of his neck and shoulder, whiplashing his head to the side.
Bachman hammered down a big right. Milton recovered just in time, blocked it on his forearms, rolled away, and tottered to his feet.
He floundered back until there were ten paces between them.
There was blood in his mouth. He spat it out.
Bachman shook out his arms. There was the first purpling of a contusion around his right eye socket, but that was it.
They both circled warily.
“Want to know something?” Bachman opened and closed his fists, rolling his shoulders. “When we were in Egypt, before the operation, I thought you were an arrogant prick. Big reputation. Full of it. I heard it from the others, even the fucking Americans were scared of you. But I wasn’t. Nothing to back it up, Milton. All hot air.”
He was barely out of breath. Milton was gasping.
“This isn’t necessary,” he said between pants. “Just go, Bachman.”
Bachman hopped, two quick steps that closed the distance before Milton, dazed, could react. He fired out a flurry of rights and lefts. Milton covered up, but Bachman switched his aim and started to pummel his ribs and torso with short, abbreviated kicks. The air was thumped out of his lungs and pain fired out, thunderclaps of it. When Milton lowered his guard to try to block the kicks, Bachman clocked him with a huge right cross.
He staggered away.
He couldn’t trade with him.
He fell back.
#
IZZY WALKED through the empty fairground.
That’s right, Zombieland.
She tried to remember how long ago it was since she had been here. Ten years? Maybe fifteen. Her parents had taken her and Alexander here, years before, and she remembered the happy time that they had spent. The long, endless, hot days, the park just a long bowl of concrete with nowhere to shelter from the tropical sun. She remembered the synthetic taste of the hot dogs, the sugar rush from candy apples and cotton candy and the sugary soft drinks. The pictures of what Katrina had done to the park had been some of the hardest for her to bear. Her friends felt the same way. The water that had lain atop it for weeks, brackish and corrosive, was a slur upon her most cherished memories.
She looked around with a shiver of discomfort. There were the ghostly silhouettes of the rides, abandoned to nature. The Mega Zeph roller coaster, the Big Easy Ferris wheel. All the empty concession stands. She passed a wheelchair, washed out of whichever building had stored it, and left there, forgotten, to corrode.
It was humid, sticky with heat.
A jet passed overhead, its engines rumbling through the dark night.
She thought she heard voices.
She stopped, closed her eyes, and listened.
Yes. Voices.
A man, speaking. Too far away to discern the words, but the tone was evident. Confident.
She felt a knot of tension in her stomach. She tried to ignore it.
She turned in the direction of the voices and started to trot.
#
THEY WERE next to the carousel now. Milton felt it against the back of his legs, fell back against it, shuffled along, reached his hand up for the nearest chained seat, and used it to haul himself aboard. He retreated backwards, putting a line of seats between them. Bachman vaulted up easily and came on, sweeping the chairs aside, the chains rattling. Milton staggered back, through the chairs, until he felt the central spindle behind him.
Bachman closed. Mi
lton tried to get his guard up, but his arms were sluggish.
Bachman drilled him.
He stumbled.
Bachman drilled him again.
The black curtain descended again, more pervasive, and Milton was unable to defend himself as Bachman stepped up, jackhammering a right and then a left to the head. He fired a big cross into his ribs, another blow with the point of his elbow that spun him around and dropped him, face up, across the rotten wooden floor of the carousel.
Bachman dropped down onto the ground, taking Milton’s right wrist, looping his arm beneath his shoulder and then immobilising the limb by clasping both of his hands together. He pulled the arm up, Milton’s elbow yanked towards his head, and then twisted his body to apply intense pressure to the shoulder. Milton knew the hold: it was a Kimura, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu submission move, and Bachman had cinched it in tight. The pain was indescribable. It burned through the fugue like a white hot sun. Milton knew, in a distant part of his brain, that his tendons were being stretched out and his joints pulled apart. It wouldn’t be long before the fibres snapped and his shoulder dislocated.
Somehow, on instinct alone, Milton reached around with his free hand and stabbed Bachman in the eye.
He released the lock.
Milton tried to crawl away from him. He slid off the carousel and onto the cobblestones, but, as soon as he put weight on the shoulder, he collapsed. His chin scraped against the rough stone.
There was no respite. Bachman straddled him from behind, took a fistful of his hair and crashed his forehead against the ground.
And again.
And again.
The darkness was complete now. It felt permanent. Each blow registered less and less.
Milton felt the life ebb out of him.
And then they stopped.
—felt something hard against his chest—his muscles limp, his arms dangling—
“—away from him—”
—heard the words, tried to string them together, make sense out of them—
“—the way back—”
—blinked until he could see again. He was spread across the edge of the carousel, his head lolling, looking down at the ground below—
“—and get—”
—pushed himself backwards and fell onto his backside, one of the suspended chairs bouncing against the back of his head—
He looked up.
Isadora Bartholomew had his Sig Sauer in her hand.
She was pointing it at Bachman.
“—hands up.”
Milton reached up and touched his forehead. The blood was warm and tacky against his fingers. He felt a surge of vomit and had to fight to keep it down.
Bachman was at the edge of the carousel, too, his hands half-heartedly raised to the height of his head.
“Put your hands up, now.”
“Come on.” Bachman’s voice was relaxed. “You’re not going to shoot me.”
Izzy kept the gun trained on him.
“I can see it in your eyes. Look at you. You’re scared.”
Milton pushed himself up to his knees. Dizziness buffeted him.
“There’s nothing wrong with being scared. Most people would be, a situation like this. Just listen to Milton. You don’t want to shoot me.”
“I will if you don’t keep your hands where I can fucking see them.” She jabbed the gun at him, as if that might be enough to make up for the doubt that was so evident in her voice.
Milton knew she wouldn’t shoot. He had moments to save her life.
“You’re not a killer,” Bachman said. “Look at you. You haven’t got it in you. You shouldn’t worry. Not many people do. I do. Milton does, don’t you, John? He tell you what he used to do?”
“Stay there,” she said.
“Used to be an assassin. That’s right. He tell you that? British government. Ten years. A whole decade of murdering. How many people have you killed, John? You tell her that? Fifty? A hundred?”
“Izzy,” Milton groaned.
“Me, too. Him and me, not too different. Not when you come down to it. But not you. I reckon I could just come over there and take that gun from you right now. What do you think? Could I do that?”
Bachman took a step closer to her.
Izzy backed away.
Another step.
Izzy was terrified.
Milton pushed himself upright and managed to slide down to the ground.
There were six feet between Izzy and Bachman.
Bachman took another step.
“Avi,” Milton called.
“Stay there, Milton.”
He swayed back and forth. “Want to… you want to go again?”
Now Bachman turned his head. He looked at him, an expression of amused curiosity on his face. “Look at you. You’re crazy.”
He lowered his hands and formed fists.
“Put them up,” Izzy shouted.
He turned back.
Milton had barely anything left. He could only just raise his arms. There was a crank resting on the lip of the carousel. It must have been used in the mechanical workings and left there when the park was evacuated. Milton’s fingers closed around it, the metal cold in his palm, and he lifted it up.
Bachman didn’t notice. He was walking over to Izzy. She was backing away, unable to shoot.
Moments left before he would take the gun.
Milton followed after them.
“Hey!”
Bachman stopped, turned, and Milton swung the crank.
It struck him on the forehead, just below the line of his scalp.
Bachman stopped, his hand drifting up to his head, frowned, and then, as his eyes rolled back into his head, he toppled over onto his side.
The crank slipped from Milton’s fingers and rang against the cobblestones. He felt an enervating wave of lethargy, and he fell to his knees and then onto his side.
The darkness fell again.
“Milton—”
The sound of sirens could be heard from Michoud Boulevard.
“—are you okay?”
He heard his name and saw the blurred tracing of Izzy’s face shimmer above him, as if he were underwater.
And then, he was.
Chapter Fifty-Six
MILTON WAITED in the manager’s office. The business of the bank continued outside, cashiers quietly and efficiently dealing with the small, shuffling lines of customers. It was a little before midday. This was his third, and final, stop of the day. Each stop had taken an hour.
He stretched out his legs. The beating that he had taken from Avi Bachman had left bruises all the way across his body. His nose had been broken, too, and three ribs. His shoulder had been dislocated. He had pushed it back into place again himself, and it had hurt like hell. Milton had never been bested like that in all his life. Bachman—or Claude Boon, his given name when the police booked him for kidnap and assault—had thrown him around like a rag doll. If it wasn’t for Izzy, he would have been killed. There was no doubt about it in his mind.
Izzy.
She had tried to persuade him to stay in town for a few weeks. He had been tempted. He had enjoyed working on the houses, and it would have been rewarding to help them get construction going again. But, he eventually decided, he didn’t want to be around when the press started to get hold of what had happened with Babineaux and the others who had been caught in his web. He had a natural aversion to publicity. It was partly a hang-up from his past, but also the sure knowledge that a low profile was better for a man like him. It was better for those around him, too. There were people in the world who would take great interest in him, were they ever to discover where he was and what he was doing. He knew that likely meant that he could never settle down. He had reconciled himself to that possibility. A peripatetic, vagabond lifestyle suited him. He could live with it.
The police had asked Milton to stay in town, too. He had given a statement, explaining how he had helped Izzy and the charity. The prosecutor would be
able to lay out the details without him. Bachman was hired by someone at Babineaux Properties to kill Izzy, Milton had intervened, and he had abducted Ziggy to exact revenge.
Open and shut.
Milton had no interest in being in New Orleans for the trial. The idea of a clever lawyer skewering him on the stand, drawing out the kind of information that was much better kept secret, filled him with disquiet. And, anyway, he wasn’t needed. The main charge was the aggravated kidnapping, and Ziggy and Izzy were around to give evidence for that. Bachman hadn’t brought Ziggy across state lines, so federal charges had not been brought, but, because he had beaten him, he was looking at a felony. A serious one.
Milton had asked Izzy what Bachman was facing. She said life imprisonment in Angola with no prospect of parole and that was if he was lucky. If the feds got involved, tied him to other murders, he might be looking at the death penalty. Either way, he didn’t have much to look forward to.
The manager returned with a sheaf of papers and sat on the other side of the desk.
“Well, Mr. Smith,” he said. “It’s all in order.”
“Very good,” Milton said.
“Two hundred thousand dollars, cash. Don’t see deposits like that every day. Hoops to jump through, you know.”
“Of course. I understand.”
“Well, it’s all done. You want to tell me where you want it to go?”
“Yes. There’s a charity building houses in the Lower Ninth.”
“Build It Up? Sure. I know it.”
“There. I’d like the money to go there, please.”
“All of it?”
“Yes, please.”
The man tapped out the details. “A very good cause,” he said. “You see the news this week? They got into a dispute with the guys who wanted to build that big mall down there. Dug up all kinds of dirt. The papers are saying that those people are going to go to jail.”
“I did,” Milton said.
