Brink of Extinction

by Nicholas Ryan

  The boy took his palm away from the wound. His hands were covered in blood up to his wrists. “I’m sorry!” he said again and again, crying as though he could wash the burden of his guilt away with his tears and apologies. “Please forgive me.”

  The dying man drew one final breath, and his face creased into dreadful pain. He was choking on his own blood. A froth of pink bubbles gurgled at the corner of his mouth, staining his lips and teeth red. His eyes suddenly blazed with fierce urgency and he hooked a finger into the boy’s shirt and drew him down so that their faces were just inches apart. The boy stiffened. He could smell the man’s foul breath, see the white rims of his nostrils where the skin was drawn tight, and the little beads of perspiration that had been squeezed from the pores of his skin. The man struggled to swallow, his throat convulsing, and then his breath snagged. He began to cough and the blood flooded in his throat. He cried out with his last breath in pain and in fear.

  “Murderer!”

  The boy blanched, and then the last shreds of his senses unraveled. He stumbled to his feet and staggered out through the door, ashen faced, the accusation flung at him as a dying curse and seared like a brand in his mind. He bent over and retched his nausea in the snow. It came up into his throat, rancid and scalding hot. He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, peering numbly at the soft steaming vomit at his feet. He stared about him wild-eyed and crying. Across a wide ice-covered parking lot he saw the strip of single story shop fronts and he went floundering towards them, unaware that he was screaming… unaware that dark and dangerous eyes were watching him with a predatory gleam of anticipation.

  * * *

  “What the hell…?”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a man... or a boy. He’s just come from out of the gas station, running this way.”

  “Let me see.”

  Glittering dark eyes studied the shape of the boy through the lens of the binoculars as he staggered, disorientated, across the snow covered expanse of the parking lot. “Wasn’t Jarvis posted in the gas station?”

  “Yeah. A couple of hours ago, before the clients began arriving for the auction.”

  “Any sign of him?”

  “No.”

  “And now this guy appears, looking like… like he’s running from a fight…”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you got him covered?”

  There was a pause, then, “Yeah, I’ve got a bead on him. Want me to shoot?”

  “No. Just cover him.”

  “He… he’s not wearing a jacket or anything. He doesn’t even have a bag. Nothing.”

  “Can you see a gun? Is he carrying?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  There was another long thoughtful pause. The boy was blundering through the knee-deep snow, the tread of his steps as staggering and wayward as a man dying of thirst in an endless desert.

  “One hundred yards. He’s getting closer. If you want him killed, now is the time.”

  “No. I don’t want him killed.”

  “He could be a problem.”

  “Yes. He could be. But he could also be an opportunity.”

  “Fifty yards. Are you sure about this?”

  “Yes. Let him keep coming. Let him stumble into the web. We’ll set a trap for him. When he is close enough I want him captured – uninjured.”

  “And then?”

  “Put him in the auction,” Gideon Silver said, and flickered the tip of his tongue obscenely around the burned and ruined slash of his mouth.

  * * *

  The man came down the museum steps and stood for a long moment on the snow-covered sidewalk. He could see the wavering trail of the boy’s footsteps heading away into the grey swirling gloom and he ran with his head bowed over. The snow was swirling in flurries before the gusting wind and already the deep depressions of each footfall were filling over, losing their definition.

  He followed the trail for fifty paces, moving as fast as he dared without compromising caution, his eyes always concentrated on the ground. He came to a narrow junction where the road he was following intersected a mean little alley. The boy had leaped off the curb and his heavy footed landing had left a clear impression.

  The mantle of ice and snow was broken through, the crust around the impression cracked so that he could see through to the black tarmac of the road. Driven snow had built up around the print, but not yet obscured it. The man recognized the corrugated pattern in the sole, the tread worn down around the heel. The man went down on one knee and examined the footprint carefully, running the tips of his fingers over the icy impression.

  He was relieved. The boy was running straight, following the road away from the museum. He had feared the boy might look for shelter in one of the abandoned factories that were set back from the street, and the thought of tracking him in the urban wreckage had filled him with apprehension. As long as he stayed in the open, the man could follow – provided the snow storm became no worse.

  The man lifted his face into the biting wind and listened for a moment to the howl of the gusts through the bare branches of the far away trees and through the empty dilapidated factories and warehouses. Somewhere nearby a loose sheet of corrugated iron was rattling in sympathy with each new gust. The sound was somehow menacing.

  “Where are you?” the man frowned. He cast his eyes in a slow circuit, past the narrow factory-lined laneway, across an open field, then towards the trees that lay ahead. To his right was an area of bush land, filled with low scrub and stunted trees. Even the snow could not take the harsh edge of the vista – it was a barren wasteland filled with silent, eerie menace.

  “Which way did you go?”

  He set off again, moving with fresh urgency and grim purpose, following the boy’s footsteps across the alleyway and then back along the sidewalk. From time to time the footprints became closer together as though the boy had slowed to a walk, and on another occasion he found the two footprints side by side, scuffed and muddied as if the boy had come to a complete halt and turned to get his bearings.

  He reached a wide intersection gasping for breath, his lungs aching and his hands stiff and frozen, but still he retained the presence of mind to stay low, to stay close to cover. He was acutely aware that a running man on the white blanket of a snow field was an easy target. He went, looking for cover and concealment, making the most of each bush, each burned out car, each mound of rubble, as the tracks wavered and then finally came to an abrupt halt.

  The man stood, sucking in deep lungsful of the biting air, feeling the sweat across his brow and along the back of his neck. The canvas bag in his hand dragged like a lead weight. He let it drop into the snow and flexed and massaged his fingers until he could feel fresh blood circulating. He touched his fingers to his ice-cold cheek and felt nothing. The old injuries and tight whorls of scarred skin across his back ached deeply. He hunched over and then straightened again, breathing through the pain.

  He imagined how cold the boy must be. He had run from the museum in just his shirt and jeans, without a heavy coat, without his duffel bag of food and supplies. The man pressed his lips into a thin grim line and shook his head slowly, disconcerted.

  He crouched down on his haunches and brushed away the powdery top layer of drifting snow from the corner of the sidewalk. He could make out a shuffle of confused prints, all of them the boy’s, but he sensed that here he had hesitated.

  He unzipped the canvas bag, reached into the open mouth and found his water bottle. He drank thirstily. He could feel the stains of sweat soaking through the back of his shirt and from beneath his armpits. The cold was biting, the wind constantly lashing at him as he hunched exposed and vulnerable in the open. He swallowed quickly, stoppered the bottle, and then stared down again at the footprints.

  There was no obvious trail leading from beyond this point. The roadway was several lanes wide, the area exposed and unprotected from the howling wind and snow. Without the hulking shelter of the huge factory edifices, the t
racks had all but been obliterated.

  The man stared to his left, following the straight line of the road.

  “He wouldn’t go that way,” he muttered to himself. “It would lead him back to the expressway, back along the way we have already travelled. There is nothing worth going back for.”

  He came to his feet and peered directly across to the far side of the blacktop. There was a dense grove of trees that grew almost to the verge of the roadside. The man gnawed at his lip, his brow deeply creased. He stepped out into the middle of the road and paused again amidst a couple of burned out carcasses of old abandoned cars, half-hidden under the drifting banks of snow. He could see two more of the blackened shapes against a guard rail. He went down on one knee, brushing at the snow powder, casting outwards for any sign of the boy’s footprints. He worked patiently, but with rising alarm until he was on the far side of the road, and then he came back to the intersection sidewalk where he had left his bag and then worked the same meticulous pattern back left, along the road leading to the expressway. After thirty fruitless yards he was convinced the boy had not turned back, nor had he crossed the road and disappeared into the dense line of trees.

  The man looked right. He swung his eyes in a slow careful traverse, using the sidewalk as his marker, and then working across the ground that now lay before him. It was a white rolling landscape of stunted black shrubs smothered into submission by the relentless falling snow.

  Nothing moved. There was no sound above the flute and swirl of the wind.

  Up ahead, built back from the line of the road, the man could see the shape of an outdoor shopping mall, built around a vast parking lot. The buildings were all single story, dark and shapeless, and closer stood another dark square of a building set apart, and somehow sagged and isolated.

  He glanced up into the sky. Afternoon was fading quickly into darkness – the sun just a pale smudge sitting low on the distant horizon as if it had been beaten down by the cold. The man knew he was running out of time. If there were still exposed footprints to be discovered, he must find them before darkness fell.

  He picked up the canvas bag and went right, towards the distant cluster of buildings, walking in a veering diagonal pattern that took him across the broken ground in the hope of intersecting the boy’s tracks. He went forward, hunched over, with the dark demons of his fear breathing hoarsely over his shoulder, urging him to go forward with greater haste despite the risk and the rising danger of missing the boy’s trail, or that he might blunder unwittingly into his own peril.

  The man worked a ragged zig-zag pattern across the undulating snow, and then began to focus on the hulking black shape of the ruined building that lay two hundred paces ahead, through a thickening cluster of trees. He fixed his eyes on the shape, walking suddenly with greater caution. The light was fading fast, the night crashing down across the land. He could see a long straight line of roof, and beyond it a square-blocked building.

  Suddenly the ground went from beneath the man – his foot fell into empty space and he went tumbling down into a shallow ravine. He rolled over on his shoulder, had the presence of mind to let the bag slip from his grip, and came to a soft thudding halt on his back. He was lying in the frozen-over bed of a creek. Long brown reeds sprouted up through the snowy bank. The man blinked his eyes, ran a quick mental check for broken bones, and then scrambled upright.

  The bag was nearby. He reached inside for the binoculars and polished the glasses quickly, using the tail of his shirt.

  It was a shallow depression, perhaps six feet deep from the ice of the frozen creek to the lip of the bank. Carrying the binoculars, the man crawled between two clumps of compacted snow as he lay on his stomach and edged forward by digging the points of his elbows to the very lip of the crest.

  Through a final filter of brown wind-stripped trees he could see the building more clearly now, even in the fast-fading light. It was an abandoned gas station, the roof of the square block collapsed, but the awning structure over the ranks of old gas bowsers still standing, slightly askew.

  “Is that where you are?” the man asked softly. “Are you hiding up in the gas station, boy?”

  He scanned the ground between the tree line and the brick building with infinite patience, and then repeated the procedure with the binoculars held against his eyes. He could see several dark squares of broken window and a door that swung ajar. Along the sidewall of the building was a wooden door that was closed.

  The man discarded the side door immediately. “There will be eighteen inches of snow and ice around that door,” he thought darkly. “The boy would know that. He wouldn’t even try it.”

  The man swung the binoculars back onto the closest window. It was broken. Jagged shards of glass, like shark’s teeth, still glinted in the watery light. “The window,” he said. “He’d try the window first and then go for the door.”

  The man wriggled back from the crest and propped his back against the snow of the embankment. He reached into the waistband of his jeans and felt for the Glock, inspecting it and checking the magazine was full. He chambered a round, and as he worked he stared at the canvas bag and wondered what he should do.

  To cross between the fringe of trees to the shelter of the gas station meant a dash through soft snowy ground of perhaps sixty or seventy yards. Carrying the canvas bag would slow him down and make him more vulnerable as he sprinted across the no-man’s wasteland. But if he left the bag behind, and the boy was not hiding inside the building, he would have to come back for it. Or if the boy was hiding up, and injured, he would need to retrieve the bag before he could render assistance. The man lifted his face to the sky as if for inspiration – and received none.

  “Fuck it,” he growled. “I’m damned if I do, and I’m damned if I don’t. Either way, I’m going to Hell.”

  He reached for the bag and slung the short straps over his shoulder. It was uncomfortable for the bag was heavy and the narrow straps were not designed for carriage this way. The thin canvas strips bit deep into the thin flesh over his collarbones. He settled the dead weight as best he could, and then turned round to face the embankment. Like a soldier from the Great War about to charge from the trenches, the man dug his toes into the soft snow of the embankment for purchase – and then burst out over the lip and through the fringe of trees, before fear and further doubt had time to burrow their treacherous way any deeper into the necessity of his resolve.

  The man ran hunched under the heavy burden, his feet breaking through the crust of powder-covered ice and his legs sinking deep in the snow. He ran with his arms pumping in a high knee-lifting run like a man through waist deep surf, while the weight of the canvas bag dragged him back like an anchor. He could feel the frigid cold air burning deep in his lungs, shorting each breath to a painful wheeze, and he could sense himself cringe physically, each nerve strung tense and tight, expecting at any instant to feel the punch of a bullet and the agonizing pain of a wound that would leave him bleeding out on the pure white snow.

  He reached the corner of the gas station building with his legs trembling beneath him and his vision beginning to burst into bright pinwheels and blackness. He was panting for air, his body beneath the thick layers of clothes a lather of exerted and nervous sweat. He slammed against the wall, not slowing his run until the hard cold brickwork brought him up short and the first wave of light-headed relief washed over him.

  He needed to rest, his body desperate for breath, but instinct told him that he remained still vulnerable. If there were someone other than the boy inside the building, they would be ready for him. He needed to move now – to give them no more time to prepare.

  He slid the bag off his shoulders like he was shedding the heavy weight of a waterlogged cloak, and he glanced down at the Glock as if to reassure himself that it was still in his fist. He could not feel the flesh of his fingers nor his cheeks, and the trembles of surging adrenalin were like an overdose of drug-like energy coursing through his bloodstream. He sidestepped to
the frame of the window, leveled the handgun, then pirouetted off his heel and thrust the barrel of the weapon, double-fisted, through the broken glass. The muzzle of the Glock followed his eyes, left, right, then back to the left. The man felt his breath seized in his chest. He blinked away the sting of trickling sweat past his eyes and down his cheek.

  The shadow struck darkness of the interior was empty.

  The man withdrew the gun from the opening, and swung his body quickly back against the wall. He was seething, frustrated, still treading the tightrope of jangling tension. He let out a raspy rattle of breath he hadn’t even realized he had been holding – and then his eye caught the faint smudge of a partial footprint in a drift of snow beside the door. He went down onto one knee and ran the palm of his hand over the marks. He felt the familiar corrugation and recognized it as the boy’s boot. It was only one part of a right-footed print, as though the boy had gone up onto his toes in the split second before flinging himself through the breach of the doorway.

  The man thrust the Glock back out in front of him, stiff-armed, and came instantly alert once more, every instinct re-strung, quivering tight as a bow. He pulled the glass door slowly open; feeling the sluggish spread of dread weigh down his legs as his senses became assailed by a sickening premonition of despair. His mouth turned as dry as parchment, and the flesh along his forearms slithered with little serpents of fear.

  The building was just four broken walls, with part of the collapsed roof and ceiling plaster filling one corner with a jumble of rubble and blackened roof beams. The man’s eyes swept the gloomy interior, past steel display shelves, to where a service counter had been built against the back wall. That was when he saw the blood, and his dread filled eyes slowly followed the tentacles of dark brown ooze to where a dead body lay stretched out on the concrete floor.