Game Of Cages (2010) (11 page)

"Sshh!" she hissed. "There are still men out here, hunting around. I saw you coming but couldn't tell who you were. So I hid. I sent the license plate photos already, and I've been waiting for you. What did you find out?"

"Stuff," I answered. "But the most important thing is that one of the bidders in that house summoned a predator."

"What?"

"They stuck a lightning rod through an old woman's heart and there was this flash of light and ... the old man sent it out to kill everyone on the property."

"Well, let's get out of here then."

She unlocked the car and we climbed in. My flannel jacket was lying on the front passenger seat. I put it on, getting mud on the lining; my shoes and pants smeared mud on the car seat. "I'm sorry," I said.

She clipped her seat belt and turned the key. "You're wearing wet clothes on a winter night? Not smart. You'd last longer with nothing on."

I imagined myself lying out in the bramble, shot to death and wearing only smears of mud and underwear. To hell with that. I'd rather freeze.

She backed toward the road, taillights glowing. When all this was over, maybe I'd install a kill switch on her lights so they wouldn't light up the mountainside.

At the driveway she turned toward the gate and hit the gas.

We came around a twist in the road and saw two men blocking our way. Both were Asian, dressed in dark, expensive suits, and held pistols. Yin must be desperate, if he was having his men search every vehicle leaving the estate.

The taller one had no hat; maybe he didn't want to muss his high, moussed-up hair. He held out his hand like a traffic cop, expecting the weapons to make us obey.

Catherine gunned the engine and flicked on her headlights. The men scurried aside. The taller one shouted something to the other and fired two quick shots into the grille.

"Shit!" Catherine shouted. "Those bastards shot me!"

They didn't fire again. It took a moment to realize Catherine hadn't really been hit, just her car. The engine rattled. We began to slow down. I glanced back and saw that the two gunmen were following us, but they didn't appear to be in a hurry. "We were lucky," I said.

"Lucky? I love my car and those bastards killed it."

"We weren't going all that fast," I said. "They could have shot us both in the head. Easily. We're lucky they still haven't found the predator."

We crested the top of a hill and started down. The engine suddenly made a loud grinding noise. The car was dying.

Catherine put the car in neutral so we could drift to the bottom of the hill. "Shit!" she said again. She sounded close to tears. "Those assholes shot at us! Should I have stopped for them and let them search the car?" For the first time, I heard uncertainty in her voice.

"No," I told her. "After they searched, they would have held on to us, and I don't think we would have liked it."

She took a deep breath. "Right. Of course. I knew that." The Acura reached the bottom of the slope and lost momentum against the next rise. Catherine twisted the wheel so it blocked the road. "I'm sorry. The gunfire has me a little rattled. We run for the gate, don't we?"

"I think so. Those guys will be coming up behind us, and the old man ordered the floating storm to kill everyone it found between the house and the fence. Although ..."

"Although what?"

"He didn't seem to have complete control over it."

She sighed again. "Let me get my jump bag." She grabbed a small, stuffed duffel bag from the floor behind her and got out of the car. Then she began jogging up the road. I followed her but spared a glance behind us. The two gunmen hadn't made it over the hill yet. We didn't sprint because we weren't sure how far we had to go, but we did hustle.

"Ray," she said. She was not breathing hard, but she didn't look comfortable. "I'm sorry for what I said. You've been a solid guy. You didn't have to come out here to warn me, but if you hadn't ..."

"Thanks," I said, feeling a tremendous sense of relief that I couldn't really explain. It was hard to admit how much I wanted her acceptance, and through her the acceptance of the society as a whole.

And that hadn't been easy for her to say.

"Too bad you're a wooden man."

"Let's save our breath, okay?" But I knew what she meant. A wooden man didn't come with a long life expectancy.

The treetops cast long shadows across the road. The woods around me seemed to become more clear. My eyes were adjusting, I thought, but something didn't seem right. The shadows were too sharp. I grabbed Catherine's sleeve and pulled her to a stop. She cringed just a little, and I let go of her.

The long, crooked shadows of the trees were slowly moving toward us. I glanced up. Ahead and to the left there was a light in the sky. It was dimmer and smaller than a full moon, but it was growing brighter.

"Lord above," Catherine said. "It's coming right toward us."

I heard hissing, like water drops boiling in a skillet. It was, in fact, coming right toward us.

Catherine bolted for the downhill slope at the edge of the road. The bramble was thick there and the ground uneven. "No!" I shouted. "This way!" I ran back up the road.

I glanced back once to see that she had followed and that she could keep up. The floating storm passed over the trees onto the road. We ran around the Acura and up the hill.

"Where are we going?" Catherine called.

I slowed down to let her get next to me. An old joke popped into my head about running away from a bear, but I didn't think she'd find it funny. Catherine's mouth was set in a determined frown, and her forehead was a mass of wrinkles. She already had streaks of sweat down the side of her face.

Ahead of us, the two gunmen had reached the top of the slope. They had already seen the floating storm, of course. The tall one with the elaborate hair was talking very excitedly on his cell. His partner was short and round, with a Moe Howard haircut that made him seem like comic relief. He didn't have a fearful expression; he looked like he was seeing the awful end he'd always expected.

I risked one glance back at the creature behind me. It was traveling along the road now, but I couldn't tell if it was gaining or not.

The gunmen glanced at Catherine and me. I could see their indecision.

"Run for your lives!" I screamed at them, letting my face show some of the terror I was feeling. They shrank away from me, understanding the tone of my voice if not the words. Fear is contagious. The men in the basement had proved that.

They turned their attention back to the predator. Haircut pulled his cellphone away from his ear and winced as though it had stung him.

We were fewer than ten yards from them now. I grabbed Catherine's elbow and shoved her toward a deer path on the side of the road.

It was a steep drop-off. We hopped partway down the hill until I slipped in the mud and fell, body-sledding into the back of Catherine's legs and knocking her on top of me.

We struck a tree trunk at the bottom of a shallow ravine and tumbled into the mud. I jumped up, pulled Catherine to her feet, and followed her up the slope ahead.

Gunshots. We both stopped at the top of the little slope and looked up at the road.

The two gunmen were holding their ground, standing in two-handed firing stances: shoulders squared, legs spread, one hand supporting the other. The shots went quickly, popopopop--it takes surprisingly little time to empty a handgun.

The floating storm was about fifteen yards off the ground and nearly above them. Moe Howard dropped the magazine out of his pistol and slapped in a new one with well-practiced speed. He started shooting again, and I knew he was hitting his target even though I couldn't see any effect. Haircut didn't bother to reload. He began to back away.

Beside me, Catherine said, "Oh, God. No."

The floating storm was above Moe now. There was a tremendous flash of reddish light and a thunderclap louder than anything I'd ever heard in my life. A blast of air staggered me. Haircut was close enough to be knocked down. When I blinked away the lights in my eyes, I saw him struggling to his feet, still half stunned.

The floating storm moved straight toward Haircut. He didn't have a chance.

I turned to run and saw Catherine giving me a withering stare of raw hatred. I was startled, but when she took off downhill, I followed.

We ran, aiming mostly northward because it was downhill. Where the ground was rough, we angled toward one side of the path or the other, trying to keep to flat ground. We also kept to the trees, hoping they would force the predator to stay high and out of range. And the ground was clearest where the trees were thickest. Where they were thin, the way was choked by vines and bramble.

It stayed on our tail, never getting too close and never falling far behind. Would a ball of churning gas and electricity toy with its prey? I figured not.

So we ran. The light from the predator cast long shadows ahead of us. Whip-thin tree branches, nearly invisible in the dim electric light, stung my face, neck, and arms. As we topped a ridge and slid down the other side, the light the predator gave off was suddenly blocked. We had to pick our way through the moss-covered branches by touch until the floating storm came close enough to light the way again.

We were never going to survive this way.

We came to a little stream--not deep, but the banks on both sides were pretty near vertical and too far to jump. Catherine bolted to the right, running along the gap until she came to a place where the bank on the far side was more gentle.

She jumped, hitting the ground with a loud whuff. I landed beside her and a little farther up. I grabbed her jacket to help her up the hill, but she shook me off angrily and ran by me. Her breath was coming in labored heaves.

I glanced down at my shadow and realized how short it had become. I sprinted after Catherine, trying to keep close without passing her.

I watched her. It was obvious that she was tired, but she never let up the pace. She ran on willpower, hurdling broken branches and exposed roots. It was barely running--more like hopping through an obstacle course. I didn't think either of us had the stamina to outrun the predator. I glanced back at it again. If it was becoming tired, I didn't know how I'd tell. At least we were putting a little more distance between it and us.

Catherine suddenly angled to the right, and I followed. She'd found a footpath that was clear of broken branches, although the moss was still slippery. The wind chilled the sweat on my face. We made better time on the footpath, and the forest grew darker around us.

"The town is down there," Catherine wheezed. I looked in the direction she pointed. Through the trees, I could see a cluster of faint, distant lights.

We could never run that far. We kept running anyway.

Then we came to the thing I was most afraid of--the ground dropped away in front of us. We had reached the edge of a fifty-foot cliff.

At the bottom was a little pine forest, all laid out in perfect rows. A Christmas-tree farm.

"Shit," Catherine said. "I can't run any more. Boy, you said you had a weapon that could kill a predator."

"I said maybe. And it won't work on this one. My spell is made of paper, and that thing is made of lightning. My spell would just burn up."

"Are you sure? You won't even try?"

Of course I would try--as a last resort. To the left of us, there was a section of cliff that had collapsed, making a very slight slope. A couple of trees grew nearly sideways out of the dirt. "Can you climb down this cliff?"

The electric hum of the predator was growing louder, and the woods were growing brighter. "Not fast enough," she answered.

"I'll give you time. Get down to the farm. Find something to kill an electricity monster. I'll lead it to you."

She ran to the left. "What if it catches you?"

I almost answered: Then when it comes for you, I won't be leading it, but the predator was close and it was time to run.

I followed the path along the top of the cliff, lengthening my stride to stretch out my legs. I'd already run a couple hundred yards over rough ground, and I didn't have a lot of gas left in my tank. The predator fell behind, but at least it was chasing me, not Catherine.

The woods to my right became steeper, sloping higher and higher until it was a wall of ferns and mud above me. If this trail dead-ended, I would be dead-ended, too. I was too damn tired to run uphill.

A couple of the trees ahead looked strange--too regular, and stripped of their branches. As the floating storm lit the woods around me, I realized they were power poles.

I picked up the pace. The power line came up the cliff below at a slant, ran along the trail for a few hundred feet, and then continued uphill to the right at a rocky point. The nearest pole on the trail was just ahead. The cliff drop to the left was still steep but looked manageable if I had a little time to work at it. I stepped around the pole and backed away from it, gasping to catch my breath.

As I'd hoped, the floating storm went for the power line. It moved carefully through the trees, avoiding branches when it could, setting them alight when it couldn't go around them. It reached the top of the pole and began to draw power slowly, sipping instead of gulping. Blue arcs flashed out of the top of the pole to the predator.

At the edge of the cliff, the muddy ground beneath me shifted. I fell, sliding with the mud down the slope. I had a sudden image of myself lying at the base of the cliff with a broken back while the predator moved toward me.

I managed to grab hold of a cluster of woody brush and stop my slide. I struggled to my knees, but the angle of the slope was too steep for me to hold myself in place, so I let go and stretched out flat. I slid slowly down the hill, finding one foothold after another in tree roots, trunks, and clumps of bushes. There were a couple of sketchy moments, but I survived.

At the bottom of the hill, I scrambled to my feet. The wind was gentle, but it still chilled me. Maybe Catherine was right, but I left my shirt on. I didn't like throwing away resources.

I crossed under the power line. The predator was still up there at the top of the cliff, still feeding. It had apparently learned that it could trip the breaker by feeding too fast. I didn't like that. I wanted it to be like a shark--dangerous but basically stupid. The smarter it was, the harder it would be to kill.