Eldorado (9 page)

He continued east. Occasionally he saw other people as he walked, though both he and the others kept their distance. Some were entire families – mother, father, children. Others were individuals, young and old. He saw children and old people alone. Learning from his previous encounters, he scrupulously avoided contact.

He walked for several hours. Somehow his watch had broken, but the sun indicated that it was late in the afternoon. Finally, exhausted, unused to the grueling terrain and still stunned from the incident with Keller, he scouted for a place to sleep. After another twenty minutes of hiking he spotted an abandoned building surrounded by trees. He approached and saw no sign of other people.

From closer in it was clear that the building would provide no shelter. Two of the walls had collapsed, but a section of the roof, about six feet square, was still intact. One of the collapsed walls formed a natural staircase, and after a difficult climb he made it to the top. The fragment of roof was just big enough for him to lie down, and he was partially hidden by the surrounding trees.

“It’ll have to do,” he said. He wolfed down a couple of strips of dried meat, pulled a thin blanket from his pack, and collapsed under it, exhausted. He spent a sleepless night, jumping at every sound and tortured by nightmares of Keller and the Food Train. Several times during the night he was certain he heard the insistent pawing of a wild animal at the walls of his perch.

Next morning, still exhausted after minimal sleep, he set out once again for King George station. He gave up on learning the names of any intervening stations – it was far too dangerous and, he realized, unnecessary, since King George was the last one. Keeping the Sky-train track in sight, he continued east, watching for the terminus station that would indicate that he’d reached his goal.

He almost didn’t notice when, several hours later, he finally arrived. The station structure was almost completely obscured by a massive tangle of trees, vines, and weeds, even though, like most Sky-train stations, it was positioned high off the ground to be aligned with the elevated railway track.

Unlike the stations closer in, which had all been occupied by homeless or squatters, King George looked abandoned. Apparently even the number of homeless dropped off considerably this far from town. What he could see of the station was covered with the usual aging graffiti. There was no sign indicating the name, but it must be the right place. There was nothing beyond this station – it was the end of the line.

There was an open space underneath – probably once a parking lot or a bus turnaround. It too was completely overgrown – so much so that he would have had to hack his way through the shoulder-high brush to reach the stairs. Since the station itself wasn’t his final destination anyway, there was no point in trying to get any closer. Instead, he sat down in a clear area and hunted through his pack for the notes he’d made from Danny’s journal.

So whatever it was he found is nine blocks east and twenty blocks north of this spot,
he thought, re-reading the entries.

He headed north and east, trying, sometimes with difficulty, to keep track of where one block ended and the next began. Few of the street signs were still intact, but there was usually a metal post, or the remnants of a street light – some landmark to indicate a new block.

He moved through the remains of crumbling retail stores and strip malls. There wasn’t an unbroken window anywhere, and most accessible walls were covered with the inevitable fading graffiti, more ominous and desperate than what he’d seen closer to ‘civilization’. One line scrawled in huge letters across the side of a building read,
Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here
. Another read,
Behold the Wrath of God
. Another,
The Kingdom of Hell is At Hand
.

In a few buildings, the windows had been boarded up, evidence that someone either lived there now or had lived there in the past. He hadn’t seen another soul for more than an hour – he wasn’t sure whether that was a good or a bad thing. Finally, according to his count, he reached the spot.

“Nine blocks east, twenty blocks north,” he said. “I hope.”

It resembled every other block he’d passed – empty buildings and dusty streets. After twenty minutes scouring the area he’d found nothing. There was no indication that Danny had ever been there, and no sign of any of the landmarks Danny described in his journal.

Richard sat down on a broken curb with his head in his hands. All that had happened – the train, Keller’s shooting, the trek through the wilderness – all for nothing. There was the possibility that he’d gotten the block count wrong. He considered returning to King George station to try again.

Another thought occurred to him – a horrifying one. What if he’d been mistaken about the initials – KG? What if they didn’t stand for King George after all? The journal never explicitly mentioned King George. What if the journal entries had nothing to do with this place? He sat for several minutes, a black cloud of disappointment and failure descending on his mind.

Finally he made a decision. He was here. If he was right about the initials and had just gotten the block count wrong, the place he was searching for should be nearby. If he was wrong he’d have to deal with that, but first he’d exhaust every option. He chose a direction at random – north – and started walking. After about ten minutes he came across several gravel hills topped with crumbling cement structures. He climbed the nearest one to scout around.

Below him, to the north and west, were a series of lanes and abandoned buildings – a mixture of private residences and storefronts. To the east was a distinctive section of open ground that might once have been a parking lot or bus stop. In one corner stood the remains of a tiny boxlike structure fronted by a cement slab, and in the center of the slab lay a pile of unrecognizable debris. A few yards to the left of the debris stood a rusting metal pole about twenty feet tall.

Nothing matched any of the entries in Danny’s journal, but he climbed down anyway. He walked around the boxlike building which, like most of the others in the area, was plastered with fading graffiti. There was nothing.

He climbed another hill to the north to view the area from a different angle. The ground under his feet was uneven; stepping on a loose rock near the top he lost his balance and tumbled several yards down the slope. As he stood up and brushed off the dust, he glanced down at the tiny structure below and noticed something from a height that had escaped him earlier.

It was difficult to separate what must have originally been painted there from the graffiti, but he could make out the petals of a flower, and a thin green stem curling toward the ground. Richard smiled. He hauled off the pack and dug out his notes. The painted flower on the building matched the one he’d copied from Danny’s notebook perfectly.

Ecstatic at his discovery, the first concrete evidence linking the writings in Danny’s journal with something real, he bounded down the hill, kicking up gravel as he went. On reaching the wall he ran his hand slowly over the faded markings, as if hoping to coax some psychic insight out of the bricks and mortar. He was so preoccupied that it was as if he was awakened from a dream when he became aware of movement somewhere above and behind him.

Two Kidnappings

He heard a low growl and turned. Not more than ten yards away, partly up the gravel hillside so that they were about even with his head, stood a pair of wild dogs.

The leader, a huge Pit-Bull/German Shepherd cross, glared at him – muscles flexed, nape hair standing straight up, purple lips pulled back to expose a massive set of drool-glistening fangs. The pair stood motionless. Chilling snarls continued to emanate from the leader. Fixing his eyes on the lead dog Richard carefully removed his pack, opened it and groped blindly for the gun.

His hand had just touched it when the leader exploded down the hill and sprang for his throat. Desperately he held out the pack like a shield. The dog clamped its jaws on it, shaking it violently and almost tearing it out of Richard’s hands. The impact knocked the gun from his grasp; he lifted pack and dog together, all the while groping for the precious gun.

Finally his fingers made contact with a hard metal object, and he gripped it like a holy crucifix. Maintaining his hold on the gun, he swung the pack with all his strength, and flung both it and the dog several yards away. His attacker immediately released the pack and pounded back toward him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the second dog moving into position.
The safety…
he thought as he lifted the gun.

Frantically he released the safety and fumbled to aim just as the first dog launched itself into the air, fangs bared. He pulled the trigger – the monster was so close that he was firing straight down its throat. His arm was thrown back by the recoil and the attacking dog collapsed in a heap at his feet.

The second dog slowed its approach and slunk toward him, wary after the gunshot and the death of the leader. Richard backed up slowly, tracking its path with the gun in his violently shaking right hand. The second dog leapt and again Richard fired. The bullet grazed its shoulder but it continued its attack, bounding over the body of its dead companion. Richard scrambled to his left and the dog overshot its position, landing a few yards away.

It circled back quickly, preparing for the next attack. Desperate to control his shaking, Richard grasped the gun with both hands straight out in front of his chest. The dog rocketed toward him and he fired. It yelped pitifully as the bullet snapped its body backward and blood gushed from a massive wound in its chest. With a final whimper, it collapsed and died.

Still shaking, Richard braced for the next wave of attackers he was certain would come at any second. To his relief none appeared, and after several minutes he began to relax. He lowered the gun and shoved it into his belt.

As he walked over to retrieve his pack he heard the whine of a motorbike from the other side of the hill, approaching fast. He shrugged on his pack, and was fiddling for the gun when a voice behind him yelled, “Drop it on the ground beside you.”

He spun around. A ragged man with a droopy mustache stood a few yards away, pointing a gun at his head.

“Slow,” the man said. “Try anything and you’re dead.”

Richard lifted the gun from his belt and dropped it on the ground. Seconds later another biker came screaming down the hill, did a sideways drift, and stopped within a few feet of where Richard stood.

The rider dismounted and stomped up to Richard. Like the first he was dressed in rags and covered in dust. He bent and picked up Richard’s gun. His beaten-up leather jacket bore the fading stylized image of a set of fangs tearing a beating heart from someone’s chest.

The man straightened and shoved his face inches from Richard’s own. “Who the fuck are you!” he said.

“My name is Richard Hampton,” said Richard.

The biker stared at him like he was some alien species.

“I’m out here looking for someone,” Richard continued. “You might have seen him, he’s seventeen and he’s got…”

“Shut the hell up!” yelled the biker. He straight-armed Richard in the chest, almost knocking him over. “You know this is Ripper territory.” He shoved Richard again. “You wanna die? You must, or you wouldn’t be here. Who sent you?”

“Nobody sent me,” said Richard. “I didn’t know whose territory this was. I’m not from here.”

“Well you’re gonna die here,” said the biker, waving Richard’s own gun in his face.

“Don’t kill him now,” said the other. “Snake’ll wanna talk to him. He’s gotta be workin’ for the Dragons or somebody. Snake’ll find out.”

“Yeah,” laughed his partner. “Yeah – I’ll guess he will.”

He pushed Richard toward the bike, “Get on.”

Richard sat astride the bike, and his captor got on behind him. They sped off and were soon joined by the other on his bike. To Richard’s dismay, they headed in the exact opposite direction he’d come, erasing in minutes the distance he’d spent hours covering on foot. They rode through the remnants of civilization, past collapsed buildings and torn-up streets, until they finally reached open country.

They had just crested a hill when the rider behind Richard said “shit!”, and suddenly accelerated, hauling the bike sharply left. The whine was deafening. Richard glanced to his right and saw the reason for the direction change. A group of three other bikers was speeding toward them.

Richard’s added weight was too much for the puny bike, and his captor was quickly losing ground to their pursuers. Desperate to escape, he slowed almost to a stop, pushed Richard off, and screamed away in a cloud of dust. Richard staggered to his feet just as the three pursuing bikers surrounded him and all three pulled guns.

“Put your hands over your head!” One of them screamed. “Now!”

Richard did as he was told.

They dismounted. One of them, a thickset man with several days’ growth of beard, strode over to Richard and, without hesitation, drove a punch full-force into his stomach. Richard doubled over and collapsed to his knees.

“Doyle,” yelled one of the others. “Leave him alone.”

“Come on, Josh,” said Doyle, “can’t I have some fun?”

Josh strode over and elbowed Doyle aside.