Defender

by G X Todd

  ‘Search parties for what?’ the Boy Scout asked.

  ‘People? Who can hear stuff? Boss wants ’em rounded up.’

  ‘Why, Posy?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he whined. ‘I don’t get told nothin’.’ Two fat tears welled, making the Zippo’s light split into twin reflected flames, one in each of his eyes, dancing and flickering as his gaze shuffled between them. ‘He’ll . . . he’ll hurt me if he knows I talked.’

  They look like fire devils, she thought, the Zippo hot in her hand.

  He’s another empty soul, Voice said sadly.

  The Boy Scout drew the shotgun away, no longer pressing it to Posy’s throat. He kept it aimed at him, though.

  ‘We won’t tell him,’ Lacey promised.

  But the man wasn’t looking at her any more, his attention fixed on the man knelt beside her.

  ‘W–what happened to your eye?’ Posy whispered. One tear spilled over and left a silvery track on his cheek, disappearing into his beard.

  Lacey watched the Boy Scout cover his left eye, hiding it from view, and then drop his hand again to meet the man’s gaze steadily. He said very quietly, ‘When I was dead, I only dared open one eye. It saw Hell.’

  Lacey nudged him in the side with her elbow, silently admonishing him for teasing the poor man. ‘He’s just kidding,’ she told Posy.

  ‘Am I?’ the Boy Scout said, arching an eyebrow at her. The flicker of firelight added a wicked gleam to his eyes, especially the bloodied one.

  She shook her head at him, giving in to a small smile, and got up.

  Posy didn’t speak much after that. When the Boy Scout pulled the man’s laces free from his shoes and tied his hands behind his back, he began to weep, but his snuffles and drooling remained quiet, and Lacey was grateful for that: she didn’t want the Boy Scout to scare him any more.

  She attempted to reassure Posy that he wouldn’t be hurt, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

  CHAPTER 6

  They located a cleaner’s closet and Pilgrim sliced a strip off Posy’s shirt, stuffed his dirty sock in his mouth and tied him into silence. Only when the girl went to shut the door did Posy sit up and shake his head violently, so hard to the left and right that tears and snot flew from his face.

  ‘What?’

  A strangled whine came from his throat and his gaze dropped to the handle, where the girl’s hand rested.

  ‘Shut the door,’ Pilgrim told her. ‘We can’t leave it open.’

  Posy gave a pathetic, guttural mewl, his eyes big and wide and terrified.

  ‘Is it the dark?’ Lacey asked him. ‘Are you afraid of the dark?’

  Looking miserable, more tears sliding down his face, Posy nodded quickly.

  The girl looked at Pilgrim, and Pilgrim could read her thoughts as plainly as if they had spilled from her lips.

  ‘We need the flashlights,’ he told her.

  ‘We don’t need two.’

  They did. There were two of them. One for him and one for her. But he said nothing when she stepped into the small closet and flicked on the flashlight they had taken from Posy. As the beam flashed across him, his front awash in light, an arc of bright colour blotted out his features for a second, his face hidden behind an iridescent rainbow made up of blues and purples – the exact colours of a new bruise. Pilgrim blinked, momentarily taken aback, and then the colours were gone, the flashlight now standing upright between the man’s legs so that it beamed a perfect white circle on the closet’s ceiling.

  ‘There,’ the girl whispered. ‘No need to be scared.’

  They shut and secured the door by wedging a stool under the handle. They were gambling on it holding the man inside long enough for them to get upstairs. Pilgrim didn’t like to gamble, but he had little choice under the circumstances. The man was too pathetic to kill but too dangerous to let go. Once Posy was out, he would go straight to one of his people and announce they had unwanted visitors.

  They didn’t have much time.

  Pilgrim glanced at the red fire extinguisher as they hurried past and headed for the far end of the huge casino floor. It seemed its colour had indeed been a warning, for if they had decided to go through that door they would have undoubtedly come across a group of Dumont’s people in the buffet hall.

  They made quick progress, the plush carpeting muting their footfalls and allowing them to move at a jog, weaving in and out of the gaming machines, the beam from the flashlight he had taken out of his pocket picking out their lurid names, none of which Pilgrim could read, but their colours covered the spectrum from spectral red to violet.

  Why the limp?

  There was no pain or discomfort in his left leg, his thigh muscle felt only weakened somehow, shaky, like his arm did, and he found it put a weird hitch in his stride. He paid it no mind and paused just long enough at the threshold of the casino floor to gauge the way ahead as safe. The new lobby they entered was smaller than the entrance lobby downstairs. As the map on the wall had indicated, two more escalators slanted up to the next floor. A pair of elevators waited on the far side of the escalators, along with another group of restrooms. To the north, a main corridor branched off, leading to the buffet dining hall – the more standard route for gamblers and visitors to take. (A faint murmur of voices came from that direction, proving that at least part of Posy’s information was accurate and that some of Dumont’s men were in there.) And to the east, a wide walkway opened on to another thoroughfare that travelled all the way back to join with the parking garage on its second floor.

  Past the dual, motionless escalators to the south, the thick carpeting stopped and became the warm, honeyed wooden flooring of a saloon-type bar. Empty booths and a square central bar dominated the view, with numerous blank flat-screened TVs bracketed to the ceiling. There were no lights back there, so Pilgrim wasted no more time on it – he clicked his flashlight off and, keeping the wall to his left, crossed to a door marked with an unlit green sign with a man running towards a white doorway on it. He briefly pressed his ear to the cool door leading to the emergency stairs. Hearing nothing, he pulled it open and went through into the pitch-black stairwell.

  When the door clicked shut behind them, all he could hear was the girl’s panting. It made a ghostly wind-like whistling that echoed around his ears. His shirt under the arms was soaked with sweat, and more trickled down his ribs and along his spine. He waited, the girl beside him gradually catching her breath, and they listened for furtive, sneaking noises approaching.

  After thirty seconds, Lacey nudged him and he clicked the flashlight back on. Together they stepped over to the railing and he shone the light up into the gloom above their heads. Pilgrim expected to see a line of white faces staring down at them with wide eyes and silent mouths, but none greeted them.

  ‘Up we go,’ he murmured.

  His knee folded on the first step, and he grabbed for the railing, dropping the flashlight. The light rolled around in a disorientating circle, flashing white on the walls before Lacey bent and picked it up. It took a great effort to pull his weight on to his left leg.

  ‘You OK?’ the girl whispered, concerned.

  ‘Fine. Just a slip.’

  It’s lies that slip so easily from your lips. Nothing more.

  He let the girl hold on to the flashlight and kept his hand on the railing, gripping it hard as he took the steps quickly but jerkily. When he reached the door to the third floor, he had to wipe sweat from his eyes. More than his arm and leg were shaking now. His entire body trembled.

  He felt the girl’s eyes on him.

  Again he pressed his ear to the door. He heard nothing, but there was something out there. A tension lined the door frame like an invisible barrier, unbroken but tightly stretched.

  Something alive? he was asked.

  Yes. Alive.

  He motioned for the girl to turn off the light and, a second later, with a soft click, the world went dark.

  Pilgrim didn’t immediately move, not even when the girl pre
ssed closer against him. He waited for a break in his trembling, although the sickly beat of his heart didn’t calm, before slowly unlatching the door and easing it open.

  A warm rush of air blew in his face and along with it came the brassy stench of blood. It entered his nostrils and fused inside his brain, lighting it up in a sharp, crackling snap, all colours leaching away except for RED. Even in the darkness, a wall of red dropped over his eyes, a pall of colour so rich and thick it was like he could reach out and touch it, inhale it, taste it. He saw the floors below them rapidly filling, silently churning with floodwater, except it wasn’t the murky overspill from the river but the colour of burgundy wine, and it was hot and salty and as viscous as syrup. The blood gushed up the dead escalators leading to their floor, the serrated steps running red, the tide rising in a rush that exploded at the top in a cresting wave that burst into the air, splattering the gleaming floor in a messy, vibrant claret. The flood quickly pooled outwards, expanding in a growing lake, reaching out to him, reaching for the door he stood behind, blood seeping through the gap and touching his boot.

  He stiffened and, when he stiffened, the girl did, too. She said his name in an unsteady whisper, a whisper that roared in his ears like a gale, and the red veil over his vision blinked out and all was dark again. Black, velvety darkness. The smell of blood receded quickly, still there but fainter, copper-tinged. The floods retreated from his mind.

  He breathed in a trembling breath, and the girl whispered his name again.

  Pilgrim.

  Not Boy Scout.

  He really needed to speak to her about that when they got out of here.

  His instincts were to withdraw, to find another way around, that entering a place which smelled so much of fresh blood, that had triggered such a strong reaction in him, would be a dangerous mistake.

  But he couldn’t retreat. The woman waited for them. And the girl waited on him. Lacey had already lost her sister – he’d noticed the blurred redness of her eyes when she’d come back downstairs to him. He didn’t want her to lose anyone else.

  Maybe it’s the woman’s blood that has been spilled.

  Possibly. Even likely. But they couldn’t leave without finding out.

  Pilgrim put his boot in the opening and let the door rest on it. He leaned the shotgun against his leg and turned to the girl, cupping her head in both his hands, tilting her ear up to him. Her face was very hot and sweaty between his palms. His words when he spoke them were a mere breath, barely a sound at all, and he breathed the instructions directly into her ear: to keep the flashlight off, to put it away, that they must proceed in darkness, mustn’t be spotted, mustn’t be heard. That if he tapped the top of her head it meant he wanted her to get down and to stay down until he came back for her (he felt her rebel at that, her body tensing, but he tightened his grip on her head and she was still). He told her to keep a grip on the back of his belt if she couldn’t see well enough to follow him, and that if she understood everything he’d said she should nod.

  A second later, she nodded.

  He didn’t immediately let her go but leaned his brow against the side of her head and closed his eyes. He was so tired. All he wanted was to go back to her sister’s warm kitchen, lie down by the stove and fall into a deep, exhausted sleep.

  The girl had already put the flashlight away, her hand empty when she laid it over the back of his. Her fingers curled around his hand and held fast. He lifted his head and looked down at her. They stood in pitch-blackness, but he knew she was looking him dead in the eyes, just like she had when she’d looked over her lemonade stand at him that first day. He had always liked her directness.

  Keeping hold of her hand, he brought it down, turning himself and placing it under his jacket at the back of his belt. He felt her fingers curl around it, gripping on to him, effectively tethering them together. He picked up the shotgun and touched the edge of the door. He took a deep breath, deliberately drawing that heavy, wet stench of blood into his lungs, and silently pulled the door wider and stepped through.

  With a gentle tug at his belt, he took the girl with him.

  In his head was a clear diagram of the map he had seen on the first floor. He knew that if he were to keep left, the wall would lead him past an expansive room that housed something to do with high-stakes gambling (he had recognised a number of dollar signs on this part of the map). Next would be a corridor that led from this main part of the building to a series of smaller rooms – around ten – most likely guest suites. Then another set of restrooms (three in total, including one for the handicapped). On the east side of the escalators were the non-working elevators. There was no walkway leading out to the neighbouring parking garage, like on the floor below; they were now effectively on the large bridge level of the steamboat, where access was reserved for only the most affluent of guests.

  Finally, in the north section, was the Lounge of Stars. Pilgrim knew this because there had been numerous stars imprinted all over that section of the map, the only ones in evidence on its entirety, at any level.

  It wasn’t completely dark when he stepped into the third-floor lobby, but it was a near thing. There was some natural light filtering in from somewhere because his night vision was able to pick out vaguely the black rubber escalator handrails that rose up from the floor below and the marginally darker recesses that marked doorways and the opening to the corridor. However, all the doors were closed, as far as he could tell, which prevented any ambient light from entering.

  Pilgrim kept the wall at his left shoulder and started forward, his and the girl’s shoes making faint squeaks on the floor. He held the shotgun down at his side and ran his left hand along the wall, pausing only for a moment when he reached the first set of double doors (to the unknown gambling room), and passed over it. The black maw of the branching corridor, leading off into the guests’ suites, gaped a few feet ahead of him, and he had the awful feeling someone was standing in the dark opening, a handful of steps back, waiting for him and the girl to pass in front. Maybe the unknown assailant would reach out and drag them into the unyielding blackness with him. Or maybe he had an axe that was even now held high, ready to chop down into Pilgrim’s skull as soon he stepped into view. He knew that, however indistinct, he and the girl would be faintly backlit to anyone looking out at them from the corridor. Two black, shifting shadows, detached from the surrounding darkness, visible by their movement.

  The smell of blood grew stronger with every step. His fingers ran along smooth wall and stopped as they reached the corner that turned into the corridor. He crouched down against the wall, and his movement translated to the hand holding on to his belt and the girl crouched with him.

  You’re letting your fear control you.

  It wasn’t fear for himself. It would be foolhardy simply to walk into this without caution.

  Holding the shotgun by its stock, he lifted it and held it out in front of him into the opening of the corridor. He expected something to grab it, or hit it, to try to knock it from his hand, and was tensing already, his muscles burning from holding on to the gun so tightly.

  But nothing happened.

  Pilgrim dared to lean his head around the corner. Let his eyes probe hard at the darkness, scrutinised it so intensely that flashes of colour danced in his vision. But no amount of staring made the darkness open up.

  Only thing to do is chance it.

  He remained mostly crouched as he went forward, keeping low, and stepped in front of that sucking blackness, in front of the dark unknown. His heart was a hammer-beat in his chest, and he was acutely aware of Lacey’s hot hand clutching at the back of his belt as she followed.

  They almost made it, too.

  Pilgrim’s left hand was stretched out, reaching, and it touched the far corner, his palm sliding thankfully back on to the cool surface of the wall, when a door burst open nearby, smacking into the wall with a flinchingly loud CRACK.

  Behind him the girl gasped, but already he was turning and grabbing
her off her feet and taking them both into the corridor that had only a second ago been a threat. He slid them into the darkness and flattened them against the wall, covering the girl’s mouth with his palm as a storm of controlled rage crashed on to the third-floor landing. Energy crackled, but there was no sound other than the quick march of footsteps. A wash of light had spilled out from the newly opened doorway, a muted yellow that slunk outwards and crept into their corridor. It revealed they were alone, no axe-wielding maniac waiting to decapitate them. It also meant that, if anyone glanced over, they would immediately be seen. The footsteps had originated from the Lounge of Stars and were now crossing the lobby, heading towards them.

  Pilgrim turned his head. There was a door to a suite no more than ten feet away, a potential place to hide, but there was a black box stuck to the wall beside it. A card-activation slot. He couldn’t trust the door would open if he went for it.

  ‘My dear, why the dramatics? You know this is what I do.’

  Two hot streams of breath blew hard on to the back of Pilgrim’s hand. He didn’t need the girl’s reaction to know the man who had spoken was Dumont. The cultured New Orleans drawl was exactly how Lacey had described it.

  The footsteps stopped, presumably so the person could turn and reply to Dumont, who had remained near the lounge. This voice when it came was clipped and coldly precise.

  ‘It is not dramatics on my part, Charles. It is a little something called reprisal. You owe me more than this.’

  All the warmth left Dumont’s voice. ‘And what exactly do I owe you, Joseph?’

  Lacey had told him of another man. Pilgrim had watched her chew at four of her fingernails, one after the other, while she spoke about him. For reasons the girl couldn’t articulate to Pilgrim, this bowler-hatted man had scared her more than his actions towards her had warranted.