Nightlife (56 page)

Kerebawa watched the ground spin better than twenty feet below, and even though he pinwheeled his arms, he knew balance could never be regained. The only consolation was that Mendoza was faring no better.

They dropped, and Kerebawa lashed out blindly with frantic arms.

The bluff was built so that a stone lip overhung it at the top. One hand caught, and he clawed peeling fingernails into rock. Swaying, dangling. He sensed the tigers pacing below, two whites and an orange, heard the rumbling of their primal throats. Heard the cries of the watchers somewhere behind him. His free arm flailed to stabilize him, sought to grip the overhang.

He then dared to look beyond his own predicament, saw Tony hanging two-handed, not four feet away. Grinning like the demon he was. The raw, blackened face, further erupting into the image of his
noreshi,
the blunted snout pushing out, out. The wound Justin had fired into his head had already quit bleeding. Razor teeth snapped at the air, and he lunged for Kerebawa’s shoulder. Missed by a foot.

Webbing began to sprout between the man’s fingers, the change near completion, and he raked out an arm to seize a fistful of Kerebawa’s shirt. Next time, those teeth would not miss.

Kerebawa recalled so many vastly different things in those fractions of the next second. His wife Kashimi, the son she bore him who still nursed at her breast. The son he had someday hoped to teach to fire an arrow straight and true, into food and enemies alike. He remembered Angus, the man who had opened his eyes to a world never before dreamed of. And Justin, even April—with whom he would likely never make peace—who had become his only friends in this world of far greater peril than any rain forest.

But the perils of home could sometimes not be escaped, even in the heart of a city.

Piranha teeth, parting wide as Tony readied to strike . . .

Kerebawa knew the mythology, the legends.
Hekura
who ate the souls of men, kept them in turmoil, kept them from ascending to that next layer of the sky. God-teri.

It would have no piece of his.

His soul felt the wintery cold of sorrow as never before.

Tony lunged . . .

And Kerebawa shut his eyes as he released his hold on the rock. He dropped with a tearing of shirtsleeve. Free, eternally free, as he fell toward white fur, white claws, white teeth.

• • •

Justin crawled painfully across the rock, on hands and knees, out of the crevice and toward the edge. There was a chance, always a chance. His shoulder throbbed, his cheek throbbed. Behind him he heard a scrape, and turned. April was coming up, draped over the lip of the slippery rocks. She’d found the Beretta, held it clenched by the barrel in one hand.

His arm buckled. He coughed, breathed rain. Ran prayers through his head in one endless sentence. And then heard the horrified outcry from spectators who were getting more theme-park show than they had ever expected, followed immediately by a renewed roar of beasts that rocked the evening air.

He knew precisely what had happened. The only question was
who.

Kneeling, bloody and spent. Close to the edge. Drenched in the downpour that had sent everything to the brink of ruin and beyond.

He watched the arms of the sole survivor as they hurriedly clawed up and over the edge, saw the rising head. And cried out, half mourning, half mortal dread.

Justin toppled backward, in no shape to fight, not now, not with
that.
Not when the scent of his blood would send the thing into a frenzy that would end only when its hunger was sated.

They’d lost. Life. Hope. Everything.

Justin tumbled back, past April as she pedaled her feet against the incline. He fell down the curving slope, thudding into the gravel at the rocks’ base, just inside the fence. He heard the crunch of April’s shoes as she dropped back down, and then she was kneeling, helping to pull him up and over the fence, just as Tony reached full height on the plateau overhead.

Justin reeled backward, halfway supported against April as she aimed into the risen Tony’s midsection. She fired. Again. Again. Again. Tony jerked, was knocked off his feet. Mere inconveniences.

Justin wavered, feeling steady enough to run, and locked hands with her. He heard the wet spatter of approaching footsteps along the walkway, on the run. He wheeled around and saw a trio of soggy guys in the Indiana Jones outfits, quickly ascertained they did not carry guns. April wasted no time in letting them know she did.

“Back off!”
she shouted, and they froze.
“Damn you, just back off!”

They shifted into slow motion, raising empty hands and backstepping out of the way. And did not interfere as he and April rushed past them. They would find plenty of cause to move in a few moments. Tony was struggling to his feet atop the rocks, dragging that canvas bag of money.

So they ran, he and April. Determined not to look back.

The rain was beginning to ebb, and the more adventurous were leaving their shelter. Busch Gardens steamed, worked its way inside clothes. You got wet no matter what, but at least rain was cooler than sweat. The walkways were beginning to fill with life once more. Parting like the Red Sea when Justin and April came charging along the paths.

The inconvenienced were irritable, or curious, or just plain did not know what to think at all, this bruised and bleeding man rushing past in headlong stumblebum gait, the woman beside him with a gun.

Wait a minute or two,
he thought sourly.
Then you’ll really be curious.

They lurched past rides and animals, gift shops and food stands, along wide thoroughfares and narrow curving paths. Everywhere, trees dripped the sky’s burden. He could hear distant sirens by the time they reached the main entrance, voices in the early-evening gray that he knew would prove no help. Where understanding was limited, reliance could be suicidal.

A parking-lot tram was loading just outside the main gates, but they bypassed it. They’d move faster on foot. They had a death-grip on each other’s hands as they pounded onward, beneath a sky whose indifference was etched into every rolling cloud. They were halfway across the entry drives when Justin broke his new cardinal rule and looked behind. Tony was wheeling through one of the desert-toned portals. From this distance, he appeared to have reverted back to the old Tony they knew and loved so well.

They sprinted across McKinley Drive, playing a dangerous game of chicken with hydroplaning cars that skidded and fishtailed and blew angry horns. Into the auxiliary parking lots, row upon row, so many cars. For a moment he blanked, could not remember. It came to him a few seconds later, and he twisted them on course for the rented Aries.

Mendoza was relentless, all the worse for his concentrated silence, total bloodlust focus breathing steadily closer down their necks. And then he branched, going his way while they went theirs. A reprieve was too blindly naive to expect; it was a race to get to a car first. And Justin knew Tony could cover far more ground and do a lot more damage in something the size of the Lincoln than they could in their little rolling box.

Justin was wheezing by the time they got to the Aries, fumbling with the key while April slipped and slid around to the other side. He fell behind the wheel, let her in. Threw his head back in pain and clamped a hand over his bleeding shoulder while jamming the key home. Let it rev, throw it into gear. They kicked up a plume of spray in their wake across the asphalt.

“Justin!” April cried out, pointing.

Tony was paralleling their path one row over, fenced onto the other side by parked cars. The separation wouldn’t last long though.

Thanking the deities of Detroit for power steering, Justin spun the wheel right when they came to the lot’s main drive. They skidded, spun halfway beyond control, and he battled to bring it under rein while shooting for the exit. Behind them, Tony had just careened out of his own row.

Justin gunned for the exit, the lines of cars already waiting to turn onto McKinley. Tony’s grillwork loomed steadily closer in the rearview mirror, and Justin knew if they had to wait in line, they might as well roll belly-up here and now.

He saw his chance. Went for it.

He threaded the needle between the two rows of exiting cars, the right- and left-turn lanes. The fit was tight as a wedge; sheet metal flexed and scraped paint and primer down to bare steel. More horns, more angry faces. He stomped the gas and shot out across the northbound lanes, realizing if he stayed there a couple more seconds, devastating collisions with oncoming cars were inevitable. Once he swung left into the clear southbound lanes, he let out a breath he’d been holding for what must have been minutes.

Behind them, they heard a grinding crash as Tony tried to bull the Lincoln through. Justin looked back, saw the cars ahead of Tony furiously maneuvering out of his way rather than sustain more damage. Their lead on him was minimal; he was out of the exit and after them a lot sooner than anticipated.

Justin gunned it south, hung a screeching right onto Busch Boulevard. Veering from one lane to another and back like a stock-car driver jockeying for the winner’s slot. April leaned over to buckle him into the seat belt and shoulder harness, then secured herself afterward.

He raged and pounded the wheel when they reached their first traffic light intersection. Red light, and too clogged to do anything but wait. He brought the Aries to a skidding fishtail stop, two cars between them and Tony.

“You’re bleeding,” April said, and he looked at his arm. The drops pattering to the seat. He had a crazy fleeting thought that it was good they’d taken the insurance option when renting the car.

April hunted for a cloth, found nothing, ended up ripping her shirt bottom into a long strip. She wound it around his shoulder, knotted it snug. Not perfect, but better than leaking.

“Does it hurt bad?”

“It was worse earlier.” He spared the bandage a second look, then one for her. Gave her a softly grudging “Thanks.”

The sirens he had heard minutes before grew as loud as an air raid; police cars in the eastbound lanes, rocketing toward Busch Gardens. The timing couldn’t have been better, for they at least inspired Tony to keep his cool during the rest of the red light. While sidearms and shotguns may have been limited in effectiveness, they could still introduce him to new realms of inconvenience.

The police rolled past just after the light turned green, and Justin wasted no time exploiting the compact size of the Aries to thread back and forth through every gap opening ahead of them. The Lincoln may have had momentum on its side, and sheer V-8 battering-ram power, but no way could it boast the same maneuverability.

“I did something I didn’t tell you about,” Justin said. He took a hand off the steering wheel long enough to reach beneath his seat, pull out a familiar shape, and rest it on the dashboard. April blinked at it. One last kilo of skullflush.

“I thought you blew it all up.”

He shook his head. “I held out on him. Just in case. So think fast. Come up with a way to use that against him, sing right out.”

If his years in the ad game had taught him anything, it was to never, but
never,
go into a potentially hairy situation with only one idea to pitch. The more you had up your sleeve, the better off you would be, and the people at the top had the roomiest sleeves of all. Not that he had any idea how to turn one final kilo to an advantage, but better a little leverage than none.

Option number two lay in the rear floorboard beneath a blanket swiped from the motel. Fully loaded and ready to roar. A minute later, when the motel flicked past, he felt a kind of passing nostalgia. It had served its purpose well. We who are about to die salute you.

I-275 was less than two miles from Busch Gardens, and Justin breathed easier once they reached it. No more red lights to blow, no more intersections where disaster could be courted. He veered onto the circular on-ramp and let it slingshot him around into the southbound lanes. Tony followed fifty yards behind and closing.

Justin kicked the speed higher, saw Tony do likewise. No way to peer through that reflective glass. It was as impassive and impenetrable as the shades he wore earlier. And as they both pressed south, they played deadly games of hound-and-hare, wolf-and-stag among the traffic. The highway led them steadily closer to the towers of downtown, past exit turnoffs for quiet suburban neighborhoods, the likes of which Justin feared he would never know. He remembered them from the previous trip with Erik. He got a lump in his throat when shooting past a billboard for a radio station promoting its traffic reports. A yellow monoplane sat atop the sign, angled as if on crash course for the highway, and Erik had told him it was responsible for a lot of stained underwear in those seeing it for the first time.