Scavenger

by Tom Savage

  It was Christmas morning thirteen years ago, all over again. There were the couches and chairs, and the blue carpet and drapes, the bookshelves crammed with religious tomes, and the home entertainment center in the corner dominated by the enormous television screen. And they had been augmented: the twinkling Christmas tree, the shimmering garlands around the walls and fireplace, the red and green candles shining on the coffee table, even the little sprig of mistletoe hanging in the archway to the foyer. And the music, emanating from a portable CD player on the end table nearest to the tree, washing over the scene: the Boston Pops recording of “Jingle Bells,” over and over. Only the people were missing: the bodies of his family, and the housekeeper, and the dog, Sam.

  But not quite completely missing.

  He took it all in, every sparkling detail. Then, because he could not resist it, as if drawn to it by some overwhelming magnetic force, his gaze moved slowly back over to the Christmas tree and down. And there, in a black-lacquered box that had been red all those years ago, nestled in soaking wet red tissue, staring up at him through glassy, vacant eyes, was his father’s severed head.

  The baseball bat was the first thing to go. It sailed slowly down from his numb, useless hands to land with a soft thud on the blue carpet at his feet. His body followed it, suddenly limp, rubbery, sagging, sinking, blind. He landed hard on his knees, sending a jolt of pain up his legs and spine to his neck. His head snapped forward, then lolled, nearly touching the carpet as he doubled over, gagging. The first hot, acid torrent of vomit spewed out of him onto the carpet, but the second heave caught in his throat, burning, choking him, cutting off his respiration. He knelt there, coughing and spitting, forcing the vomitus from his mouth to dribble down his chin onto his clothes as he gasped for oxygen. He pressed his forehead down into the soft carpet, gradually becoming aware of the warmth spreading outward between his legs, and he realized that he had wet himself. He stayed in that position mortified, terrified, breathing in the smells of his vomit and urine, waiting for the room to stop spinning around him.

  Only when his vision cleared did he notice the odd silence. The song had stopped, but it had not begun again, as if …

  As if someone had turned it off.

  He shuddered, processing the information. When he was finally able to move again, he pressed his hands down into the carpet and pushed himself slowly, painfully up from the floor. He immediately noticed two things.

  The baseball bat was no longer lying on the carpet in front of him.

  It had been replaced by a big pair of black boots.

  Still nauseated, still disoriented, he rose to his knees, raising his gaze as he went. The black boots became a pair of black pants, the edges of the long black coat swirling around them. The massive thighs, the sparkling silver belt buckle, the black shirt. And then, at long last, the pale gray eyes in the face with the long white scar down one side. Scavenger: all six feet eight inches of him, towering over him, glaring down at him, holding something up above his head in both hands.

  What happened next seemed to be in slow motion. The baseball bat whispered down toward him, coming closer, closer, finally smashing into his forehead just above his left eye. The room exploded in a burst of dazzling white. Somewhere very close by, a woman cried out. He sagged over sideways to the floor, landing hard on the carpet. A jolt of excruciating pain tore through his head, and he briefly lost consciousness. When he was aware of his surroundings again, he felt a warm, sticky wetness cascading down the side of his face. He opened his eyes, but he could barely see the figure leaning over him through a curtain of red. The woman’s voice came to him again, much nearer now, reverberating as if in an echo chamber.

  “You you didn’t have to hit hit him so hard hard.”

  And then the man’s voice replying, deep, cold, thickly accented:

  “Sorry sorry I I couldn’t resist resist.”

  Scavenger. But…

  Mark blinked, and the red curtain fell away. He moaned, trying to roll away from them, to reach up with his arms and protect his head from the inevitable second blow, the one that would kill him, but he was too weak to move. He stared up at the figure above him as it loomed nearer, his aching brain suddenly filled with the image of the beautiful face and blond hair of Tracy Morgan.

  Good-bye, Tracy, he thought. Good-bye.…

  But it wasn’t a dream. It was Tracy! Tracy was here, now, leaning down over him, her blond hair shining, her grave face mere inches from his own. But—but…

  But it wasn’t Tracy. It was—it was …

  It was the woman from the plane this morning, the woman he had helped to get her bag from the overhead luggage compartment. The woman who had smiled at him as she got into her rental car beside his.

  And now the woman was reaching for him. She turned her head and said something over her shoulder, to someone else farther back in the room, out of his line of vision, but he couldn’t make out the words, only the sound. The deep, accented voice replied with something equally unintelligible, a monosyllabic grunt.

  Scavenger. But…

  Mark felt the tug as the left sleeve of his coat was pulled down and off of him. Then his left shirtsleeve was being rolled up. He felt a dab of something freezing cold against the flesh just below his shoulder, followed almost immediately by a sharp pinprick. He cried out, trying to push her away from him, but there was no strength left in him. His blurry gaze traveled down from her face to her hand. She was holding a needle, a hypodermic syringe, emptying its contents into his arm.

  He was going to die now. Here, on the floor of the living room of his father’s house. With his father’s head staring up from a blood-soaked box not ten feet away from him.

  He lay there blinking at the blond woman who was not Tracy, feeling the icy numbness as it crept slowly up his arm to his shoulder and over to his chest. He sank heavily down into the carpet, feeling every individual strand of the soft pile pressing into the side of his face. The numbness was descending into his stomach, his legs, his feet. Finally, inevitably, it rose up through his neck into his face and his head, filling his eyes and his brain with water. Cool blue water, the bluest water he had ever seen.

  In his last moments of consciousness, he was thinking of his family in the cemetery this afternoon. No, not his family, not his family at all. It had been the Webster family in the other cemetery, yesterday in Los Angeles, in the rain. He had been watching a funeral nearby, a funeral for somebody named Fitzgerald. Rain. Umbrellas in the rain. Then, mere minutes later, a dead police officer, the sightless eyes in his startled young face staring up at the rain. Always rain, falling as it had fallen that Christmas morning when his family had died. And he had been wondering what the weather would be like when he died, if it would rain, if at the moment of his death—this moment, right now—there would come soft rains.…

  45

  “You didn’t have to hit him so hard,” the blond woman said again.

  He looked over at her for a moment, affording her the briefest of glances, dismissing her opinion as he had dismissed the woman herself. She was a mere employee. As was her husband, or her partner, or whatever he was, back in New York. The less they knew about all this, the better. When their services were no longer required—well, there were plans for that.

  Then he went over to stand above Matthew Farmer. He studied the unconscious man on the floor, checking to see that he was still breathing. Yes, his chest rose and fell at slow but regular intervals. He lay on his back, his arms flung straight out at his sides in a manner reminiscent of Christ on the cross. But there the similarity ended: Matthew Farmer had vomit on his upper clothing and a dark stain on the front of his pants. He grimaced as he gazed down at the writer, thinking, Hardly the stuff of martyrs.

  He turned now to gaze slowly around the room, admiring his handiwork. Yes, it had been perfect. Just as it was in the photographs he’d spent so many hours studying, poring over, while he had been preparing. Everything, right down to the window curtains, had bee
n carefully sought out and selected to be brought here. This was the room where this unconscious man’s family had died, the exactly reproduced setting where he had found them that morning.

  At last, he went over to stare admiringly down at the black-lacquered box.

  Yes, he thought. Perfect. A true work of art.

  Matthew Farmer had been sent to Brooklyn, and to Washington, and to New Orleans, and to Los Angeles. And then here, to his own home. For this. His reaction to this room had been all that could have been wished. And hitting him with his own weapon had been icing on the cake.

  Looking back across the room at the inert form on the floor, the man smiled.

  But it isn’t over, he mused. Not yet. There is still one more setting, one more article to retrieve. One more shock to the writer’s delicate system.

  The biggest shock of all.…

  And now they had to move, to get all this out of here and leave Evanston for the next phase. The final phase. He signaled to the blond woman, who nodded. Then he pulled his cellular phone from his black coat and raised it to his face.

  “Yo,” he heard.

  “Done,” he said into the receiver. “Bring the truck around to the driveway.”

  “You got it,” came the reply.

  He returned the phone to its inner pocket, reaching briefly up to finger the knife in its sheath under his left arm. He was looking over at Matthew Farmer again.

  It would be so easy, he thought.

  He shook his head, dismissing the fantasy. It would be easy, yes—but nowhere near as much fun as what was planned for tomorrow night.

  Tomorrow night…

  At that moment he heard the rumbling approach in the drive. He glanced over at his assistant, who was placing the black envelope—the only thing they would leave behind—where the unconscious man would be sure to find it. Then he unplugged the Christmas tree and reached carefully, reverently down to pick up the wet black box beneath it.

  SATURDAY

  46

  From somewhere very far away he heard a man shouting. He came up from the void slowly, slowly, gradually becoming aware that he was lying on a floor. A carpet. There were rough hands on him, pressure on his shoulders, and he was being shaken. The shouting seemed to be coming closer, closer, and now he could just make out the words.

  “… up! Wake up! Come on, Mark!”

  The shaking was more violent now, and something hard was slapping his face, over and over. A hand. But why? And where was he?

  “Mark!”

  He could not identify the voice, although he thought it sounded familiar. All that registered was the obvious desperation in it.

  “Mark, wake up!”

  Mark? he wondered. Who is Mark? My name is Matthew Farmer.…

  “Mark!”

  Then, with a sudden rush of clarity, it all came back to him. Mark … Matthew … the house … the Christmas tree …

  The head.

  He burst up from the floor, a strangled cry escaping his lips. He was in a sitting position now, and strong arms were holding him, propping him up. There was a sticky wetness on his face, and a throbbing pain in his forehead. He remembered the baseball bat. There was a vile taste in his mouth, and he remembered that, too. He had been sick, vomited, and his bladder had failed, when he had seen the box under the tree.

  His father’s head.

  He gasped, drawing air into his heavy lungs, trying to lift his heavy arms. He blinked his heavy eyelids several times, and the room around him slowly came into focus. The dark blue carpet, the light blue walls. Robin’s-egg blue, his mother had called the color. The Farmer living room. But there was something wrong with it. He blinked again, and then he knew.

  The room was empty. The furniture, the bookshelves, the Christmas decorations. The box. Gone, all gone. He was lying on the floor of an empty room, but he was not alone. The strong arms continued to hold him. When he slowly turned his heavy head to see who it was who knelt beside him, he nearly passed out again.

  Former FBI Special Agent Ronald O’Hara.

  Ron!

  A dead man. Here, in this room in Evanston, holding him up in his massive arms. Calling his name.

  “Thank God!” the specter cried. “Oh, thank God! I thought you were dead!”

  Mark blinked again and took in another deep breath, staring up at him. He made an attempt at speaking, but all that emerged was a dry croak. He licked his lips and tried again, and this time he was successful. “That—that makes two of us.”

  Ron O’Hara—yes, it definitely was Ron O’Hara—stared down at him. Then he burst into laughter. It was the booming bass sound Mark remembered from Georgetown five thousand years ago. After a moment, Mark began to laugh, too. He raised his arms, which now responded to his command, and hugged the man.

  “Whoa, there!” O’Hara bellowed, still laughing. “You’re a mess, man! Don’t get too close, okay?”

  Then O’Hara stood up, and Mark felt himself being lifted to his feet. He slumped momentarily, almost falling to the floor again, but he was borne up by the huge man beside him, lifted up into his arms. He was carried across the room and through the archway to the front door. When they got there, the big man inclined his head toward the electronic alarm beside it. Mark peered over and saw the wires sticking out of the side, carefully cut. Scavenger.

  “The door was wide open when I got here,” O’Hara said.

  Then the door was opened again, and Mark was carried out into dazzling brightness. It had apparently rained during the night, but now the rain clouds had gone, and the sun was—

  Wait a minute, he thought. The sun?

  “What—what time is it?” he slurred.

  O’Hara chuckled as he carried him over to a gray sedan parked beside the house. “Eight o’clock. You must have had yourself quite a nap. When did you come here, anyway?”

  “I—I think about nine last night. They—they drugged me.…”

  “Yeah, you junkies are always blaming other people.”

  “No, Ron, they really—”

  “Hush, now,” O’Hara said. “You can tell me later, after we wake you up.” He put Mark down, still keeping him firmly on his feet, and helped him into the passenger seat of his car. He went around, got in the driver’s seat, and started the engine. “Where to?”

  Mark thought a moment, getting his bearings, then pointed. “Four blocks … that way … Red … Rose … Inn.…”

  And he was asleep again. The next thing he knew, he was standing, still firmly held up by O’Hara, in the lobby of the inn, and he heard snatches of conversation between the former agent and the proprietress.

  “… visiting us … old friend of his father’s … too much to drink … fell and bumped his head … stayed at our house last night … room?”

  “Upstairs, first door on the left.”

  “… clean him up a little … breakfast?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  “Thanks. Whatever’s available—and coffee. Lots of coffee. Let’s go, Mark.” And then he was being helped up the stairs.

  “Mark?” came the woman’s voice from below. “That’s Mr. McKinley. Mr. Jared McKinley.”

  “Well, of course it is!” he heard O’Hara bluff. “Mark is an old family nickname!” As he was all but dragged up the stairs and into his room, he heard O’Hara mutter, “Jared McKinley, eh? Is Jared McKinley a blond, by any chance? Nice dye job.”

  Then he was lying on the bed, and his clothes and shoes were being removed, and he heard the roar of rushing water, and he was being helped across the room into—

  “Yikes!” he cried, coming fully awake. He was naked in the shower, under a torrent of freezing cold water. He lost his balance again, colliding with the tile wall, but he was still being held up. He turned around to see that O’Hara, also naked, was actually standing in the stall with him, handing him a bar of soap.

  “Here, use this. A lot. Then give it to me.”

  Mark did as he was told, washing the blood and the vomi
t and the urine and the whole episode in the Farmer house from him. By the time he was finished rinsing, he could stand up unassisted. The moment he stepped out of the shower, he noticed that O’Hara immediately turned on the hot water for himself.

  “That’s better,” O’Hara sighed. “Now brush your teeth, Mark. Several times.”

  He did, seeing in the mirror that there was a small cut on his forehead, surrounded by a large black bruise. Then he went out into the bedroom. By the time O’Hara emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed in a fresh suit, Mark had managed to put on clean clothes without any help. He frowned, realizing with embarrassment that O’Hara must have gotten his blood, vomit, and urine all over himself. Mark cleaned off his leather jacket, but he rolled everything else he’d been wearing last night up into a ball and stuffed it in his bag for later disposal. He never wanted to see those clothes again. He picked up the bag, and O’Hara picked up a folding suit bag he must have brought with them from the car, and they went downstairs.

  “But you didn’t even use your room the first night!” Mrs. Baker protested when he checked out, telling her to keep the money for the second night.

  “It’s okay,” Mark told her, smiling. “It isn’t my money, anyway. I’m on … an expense account. I insist.”

  “Well, thank you very much. Your breakfast is ready, gentlemen, just through there. I—I hope you’re feeling better, Mr. McKinley.”

  “Yes, much better.”

  “Good. You certainly look better.”

  They thanked her and went into the little dining room off the lobby. An elderly lady was just emerging as they went in. The only other guest, Mark remembered. Good: they’d have the room to themselves. What he had to tell O’Hara—and what O’Hara presumably had to tell him—was not fit breakfast conversation for elderly ladies. Nor anyone else, for that matter.

  A table had been laid for them next to a window facing the street and the church parking lot across the way, where Scavenger’s green car had been. They sat down, and a friendly teenage girl immediately brought them huge plates of scrambled eggs, bacon, home-fried potatoes, and toast. There was a pitcher of orange juice as well, and two pots of coffee. Mark fell ravenously upon the food, washing it down with the juice and coffee. He could actually feel the energy returning to his body as the aftereffects of the drug dissolved.