“Tell me where you got this stuff,” the Beast said.
“I…I found it.”
“You found it, huh?”
The Beast stomped the heel of his boot into Mortimer’s forehead. Mortimer grunted.
“I know you fucking found it, cocksucker. Now tell me where.”
Mortimer shook his head. “A long way from here. I’ve been gathering it up, saving it.”
“Bullshit.” The Beast lifted him a foot off the floor by a fistful of hair. “Nobody carries that much food and booze and doesn’t eat and drink it. What? You just like lugging it around?” He brought his other fist down hard, knocked Mortimer’s head around.
Mortimer blinked, colored lights dancing in front of his eyes and a hot buzz in his ears. He tried to curl into a ball, but the Beast still held him fast.
“Where’d you get it? Someplace close, right?”
Mortimer shook his head.
The Beast punched again, and Mortimer felt his lips flatten against his teeth, skin ripping. He spit blood, coughed.
“Shit.” The Beast let go, and Mortimer’s head knocked against the floor. The Beast left the room again.
Mortimer lay on the cold floor, reeking of piss, face throbbing. This had been a mistake, coming down the mountain, trying to reconnect with whatever remained below. He’d been safe, comfortable. There had been no need to leave his sanctuary, only the imagined necessity of human companionship, only the vain notion that he must know what had become of the world.
The world had broken, and there was nothing left of humanity but the dregs, dumb sons of bitches in bear skin.
Mortimer opened a swollen eye, saw the girl standing over him, her face expressionless.
“Help me,” Mortimer pleaded.
She stood frozen.
“Untie me,” he croaked. “I’ll go away. I won’t do anything, I promise. I’ll just go.”
She didn’t say a word, didn’t blink. A few moments later she started at the Beast’s return and slunk away.
The Beast knelt next to Mortimer, held up a gleaming bowie knife. “Like it? It ain’t quite as sharp as I’d like, so the cut won’t be clean. I’ll have to saw a bit.” He grabbed Mortimer’s bound hands, pulled them close to his thick body.
Mortimer gasped, tried to jerk away.
The Beast shifted, pinned Mortimer’s wrists under his arm. Mortimer tried to squirm away. The Beast selected the pinkie finger on Mortimer’s left hand, stretched it out. Mortimer tried to make a fist and pull away, but the Beast was too strong.
“P-please.” Saliva flew from Mortimer’s lips. He shook so badly he couldn’t talk.
“I think we’re gonna have a more productive conversation after this.” The Beast put the blade against the finger. Mortimer renewed his struggles, but the Beast held him.
“Here we go.” The blade bit deep, dark blood flowing over the metal.
Mortimer howled, kicked, screamed. The Beast sawed the blade back and forth. So much blood. Within ten seconds he was down to bone. The Beast leaned his weight into it, sawed bone. The finger came off, blood squirting over both of them.
Mortimer lay covered in sweat, limp in the Beast’s lap, like a spent lover deep in swoon. The Beast splashed water on Mortimer’s face, shook him until he woke.
“Okay,” the Beast said. “Let’s take it from the top.”
VII
The Beast led Mortimer on an eight-foot length of thin rope back down the road toward the entrance of the pocket wilderness. The girl walked silently behind them like the dead, wagless tail of an old dog.
Mortimer had lain on the office floor of the dilapidated firehouse and told the Beast all, his secret cabin and the cavern and his storehouse of old-world commodities. The Beast demanded to be taken there. Mortimer had agreed, lying there bleeding and weak.
But now, treading the frozen road, Mortimer burned with hate and humiliation and plotted the Beast’s demise. The wind tore at his eyes, face and ankles. A six-foot length of hickory lay across his neck, his wrists tied to the wood in crucifixion fashion. He wore his boots and his pants and shirt. The Beast had taken his parka and socks, marched in front of him holding the rope in one hand, the police special in the other.
The Beast wore his bear skin over the parka, and walking along the road, Mortimer on the leash, they looked the grotesque reverse of some old-west traveling carnival act, the dancing bear leading his trainer. Mortimer desperately looked for his opening but did not expect one. He’d have to make some kind of move before they reached the cavern. The Beast would not want to keep and feed Mortimer after he’d been led to the stash.
Even in the worst throes of torture, Mortimer had kept his weapons stash a secret. Somehow he’d make a break for it or maybe fake needing to take a shit. If Mortimer could just get his hands on the Uzi, he’d chop the Beast in half with a spray of nine millimeter.
They had taken Mortimer’s medical kit too, the iodine and hydrogen peroxide and bandages. They’d used none of it to bind Mortimer’s mangled hand. The girl had splashed the wound with dirty water, wrapped the finger stump in a tattered pink rag. His hand throbbed but bothered him less than the biting cold. He staggered and shook and lurched forward at the Beast’s insistent yank on the rope.
Mortimer took another fifty steps, shivered and collapsed.
“Get up.” The Beast yanked the leash.
Mortimer shook his head, panted. He didn’t have the energy to form words.
The Beast took two quick steps toward Mortimer, then kicked hard, caught Mortimer in the ribs. Mortimer wheezed and heaved dry.
“I said get up.” The Beast drew his leg back for another kick.
“Stop.”
The Beast froze, looked for the source of the new voice, which had echoed along the mountain road. Mortimer looked up too. What now?
“Show yourself!” the Beast yelled.
Forty yards up the road, a man stepped out of the bushes, planted himself in the center of the road, legs apart. Mortimer blinked, not sure if he was seeing right. The newcomer wore a black cowboy hat, long leather coat swept back to reveal a pair of pistols hanging on his hips. A blue bandana pulled loose around his neck. A forked beard yellow as the sun, long hair the same color, hands hovering dangerously over the pistols.
The Beast squinted. “What the fuck are you?”
“Cut that man loose,” ordered the cowboy.
“Kiss my ass.” But the Beast’s eyes flicked to the man’s twin six-shooters.
“Mister, I’m gonna tell you just one more time.” He eased forward as he spoke, one deliberate step at a time. “Let that man go and piss off. That’s your only chance to live.”
The Beast dropped to the ground, rolled, came up behind Mortimer in a kneeling position. He grabbed Mortimer’s face and pulled him close until the two were cheek to cheek. He pulled the police special, put it against Mortimer’s head. “I don’t know what your interest is in this guy, but I’ll splatter his brains all over the mountain if you don’t stop right there.” With his arms spread along the length of hickory, Mortimer provided good cover. Only half the Beast’s face and a bit of shoulder showed.
The cowboy froze. He squeezed his fists so tight, Mortimer heard the knuckles crack. They all waited for something to happen.
A split second later it did.
The cowboy dropped into a kneeling position, one six-shooter flashing from its holster. His arm shot out straight, and he sighted along the barrel, one eye mashed closed, biting his lip in concentration. It all happened in a heartbeat.
Bang.
The Beast screamed, a high-pitched mix of surprise and pain. He stood, staggered, blood trailing from his shoulder. He swung the police special to return fire.
The cowboy was already on his feet. He fanned the six-shooter’s hammer twice, and the Beast fell dead in front of Mortimer. Blood pooled in the Beast’s empty eye sockets.
The girl, Sheila, who’d been twenty paces behind the whole encounter, turned and screamed
back up the road and out of sight.
The cowboy trotted to Mortimer and knelt next to him, began to untie his wrists. “Hold on, mister. We’ll get you free shortly.” He had a yellow handlebar moustache to go with the forked beard.
“Thanks,” Mortimer said. “Who are you?”
A smile across the young face, under thirty years old. “Who do I look like?”
“George Custer.”
The smile fell. “Damn. I was going for Buffalo Bill.”
VIII
After Bill had cut him loose, Mortimer lay in the road, groaning and rubbing the circulation back into his wrists. His finger stump throbbed. The cowboy squatted next to him muttering encouraging things like “You’ll be okay, partner” and “Live to fight another day” and so on.
Mortimer didn’t mind. He’d give Buffalo Bill a big wet kiss on the lips if that’s what he wanted. Mortimer Tate was alive. He’d escaped the Beast.
He stood, looked down into the Beast’s hollow and bloody eyes before taking back his parka and other belongings. He kicked the dead man into the shrubs on the side of the road, tossed the bear skin on top of him.
“This yours?” Bill held the police special toward Mortimer butt first.
Mortimer hesitated. If this insane cowboy had wanted Mortimer dead, then he’d already be dead. He took the pistol. “Thanks.”
They stood in the middle of the road among the frayed rope and the splotches of blood and the cold wind lifting the cowboy’s yellow hair.
“Now what?” asked Buffalo Bill.
“You tell me,” Mortimer said.
“I’m going to Spring City.”
“I was thinking Evansville,” Mortimer said.
Bill shook his head. “Red Stripes on that side of the mountain. Not too many. Enough to worry.”
Mortimer frowned, recalled the three men he’d killed up the mountain who wore red armbands. “Red Stripes?”
“Jesus, you don’t know about them? What? You been in a cave for nine years?”
“As a matter of fact…”
“It might snow soon.” Bill squinted at the dark clouds gathering overhead. “Maybe we should find a roof.”
“I need to get something first,” Mortimer said. “It’s not much farther.”
“Okay.”
Bill retrieved a battered backpack from behind a stump, and both men set off toward the entrance to the pocket wilderness. They walked in silence, and at last the snow began to fall gently, silently dusting their heads and shoulders.
Mortimer broke the silence first. “Why did you save me?”
“Can’t let an innocent man be dragged along like an animal. Ain’t right.”
“How do you know I’m innocent? Maybe I’m a criminal. Maybe I was being taken to trial. I could be a murderer.”
Bill’s head jerked around to look at Mortimer, eyes wide. This possibility clearly hadn’t occurred to him. “Hell.”
“Don’t worry.” Mortimer grinned. “You did the right thing.”
Bill exhaled, shook his head. “Damn. It’s a hard world to be good in.”
The snow was a foot thick on the ground by the time they reached Mortimer’s stash. He cleared away the shrubs and accumulated snow, pulled the tarp off the sled.
Bill whistled appreciatively at the weapons, and Mortimer assumed Bill was looking at the formidable Uzi, but the cowboy reached for the lever-action rifle. Bill stopped mid-reach, raised an eyebrow at Mortimer.
“Go ahead.”
Bill picked up the rifle, ran his hand over the stock. He looked right holding it, like it completed his costume.
“Take it,” Mortimer said.
“What?”
“It’s yours. Least I can do after you saved my ass.”
Bill grinned big, worked the lever and sighted along the barrel. He held the gun in both hands, held it away from his body, looked at it like it was a sacred relic. “This is how the world was built, and how it was destroyed, and how it’ll be built again.” He cradled the rifle in one arm like a puppy. “You got shells for it?”
Mortimer handed him a box of ammunition, then showed him a bottle of Johnnie Walker. “Help me pull this sled, and I’ll buy you a drink.”
“Amen to that, brother.”
They found an abandoned house, all the windows broken out, but there was a large fireplace. They hauled in wood, started a fire. Soon it was dark, snow falling thick outside, wind blowing the ragged curtains in the windows like the wispy nightgowns of ghostly orphans.
Mortimer had cleaned and wrapped his finger stump with the extra first aid supplies from the sled.
They sat on a fake leather couch and passed the bottle between them; the whiskey lit up amber in the firelight. The house creaked in the moaning wind.
“Goddamn, that’s good,” Bill said. Another big slug and he held it in his mouth an extra moment before swallowing, smacked his lips.
“I miss Burger King.” Mortimer took the bottle, drank. It was so warm and good going down, Mortimer marveled he’d been able to leave the bottles unopened for nine years. “I like Whoppers.”
“SONIC,” Bill said. “I liked to pull up and eat in my car, listen to the radio and eat foot-long chili dogs. I could eat two and Tater Tots in the space of an Avril Lavigne song.”
“Do people still drive cars?”
Bill shook his head and took the bottle back, sipped. “Gasoline goes stale after a while and nobody’s refining anymore. Horses are coming back. Man, I’d love to get me a horse.”
“Coming back?”
“People ate them.”
“Jesus.”
“You really don’t know any of this?”
Mortimer shook his head, took the bottle and gulped.
Bill said, “Goats too. Dogs and cats. Rats. Meat is meat. I heard tell they turned cannibal in some places, but I don’t know if that’s true or not.”
I could turn around right now, thought Mortimer. I could go back to the cave. There’s no Burger King down the mountain, no world I remember.
“Why are you dressed like a cowboy?” Mortimer was curious as hell.
“Does it seem weird?”
Mortimer shrugged. “I don’t know the standard of weird anymore.”
“I’m always afraid people will think it’s weird.”
“Do they?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want.”
“I don’t know why I did it at first,” admitted Bill. “I always liked westerns, John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, you know? Think about what a cowboy is, what he represents. The new order rolling across the prairie, right? Even when he was slaughtering buffalo and red Indians, he still left civilization in his wake, towns and railroads and all that. I guess maybe I thought we needed cowboys again. Maybe not. Hell, I don’t know. Probably sounds stupid.”
“No it doesn’t.” Yes it did.
“Anyway,” Bill said. “Everyone else looked like a refugee, dressed in rags. Everyone looked lost, like they’ve got no place to go. If you’re a cowboy, you’re not a refugee. You don’t need anyplace to go. Cowboys are supposed to drift, ride off into the sunset. If you’re a cowboy then you ain’t lost.”
The man had found his purpose through costuming. Sure. Whatever helps a guy cope. Buffalo Bill was an un-lost non-refugee.
“I want to find my wife.” Mortimer belched. It tasted like barfy booze.
“You didn’t take your wife into hiding with you?”
“It’s complicated.”
“No it’s not,” Bill said. “Everything’s real simple now. She’s either alive or dead.”
Mortimer thought about that. Outside the wind howled. Inside the fire crackled and snapped. Mortimer’s eyelids grew heavy, and he faded into whiskey dreams.
IX
“You okay?” There seemed to be genuine concern in Bill’s voice.
Mortimer leaned into the rope, trudged in the shin-deep snow, one foot in front of the other, every step an effort of
titanic proportions. His head throbbed. His stomach rebelled. He had not been this hungover in…how long?
A decade.
Abruptly, Mortimer dropped the rope, dashed to the side of the road and went to his knees. Heaved. The puke was acidic, made his eyes water. He hurled three times in quick succession, splattering the snow. Steam rose. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
“I’m a little fuzzy myself this morning,” Bill said.
“Get bent,” Mortimer muttered, then spit.
“What?”
“I said I’m fine. Let’s go.”
They made their way down the mountain. Landmarks began to look familiar. A flood of memories. Mortimer found himself hurrying. He wanted to see his town, his old office, his old house.
His old life.
The gas station and convenience store at the bottom of the hill was a charred husk, blackened and hollow. He’d bought beer and newspapers there. Toilet paper, Slim Jims, ice cream, unleaded. In an odd way, Mortimer was relieved. He would have felt like a grade-A jackass if he’d hidden in a cave for nine years and then come down the mountain only to find the convenience store selling cigarettes and lotto tickets like nothing had happened.
“I want to find my old house,” Mortimer said.
“Wait!” Bill grabbed Mortimer’s sleeve and tugged, pointed at the side of a brick building across the street. “It’s true. They have one here. Thank God. I didn’t know if it was true or not.”
Mortimer looked at the wall. Spray-painted in three-foot, neon-pink letters were the words JOEY ARMAGEDDON’S SASSY A-GO-GO. An arrow painted underneath pointed toward downtown.
Mortimer squinted at the sign. “What the hell’s that?”
“Paradise, partner, paradise. Come on.” Bill began to pull the sled in the direction indicated by the sign.
“Wait.” Mortimer pulled back on the other rope. “I told you I want to find my house.”
“Just for an hour.” Bill dug into his pockets, came out with a handful of silver coins. “I’ll buy you a drink. I have six Armageddon dollars.”
Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse: A Novel Page 3
