Nothing Short of Dying (17 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

H
alf an hour later, as the white sun sank low in the sky, I found what I'd been looking for. We crested a little knoll ringed by craggy limestone slabs. The slabs formed a circular natural wall, like that of a crumbling castle, and I could see only one way in and out. At the knoll's peak, inside the wall, there were patches of crusty snow interspersed with grass and young daisies.

I reined in my horse outside of the rock ring and said, “We'll wait here. And hope he shows before dark. If not we'll camp and wait for him to make an appearance in the morning.”

“Okay,” Allie said wearily. “I'll take the horses.” Even tired and scared, she was ready to help instead of talk. I realized how much I depended on her.

“Thanks,” I said. I got Jen unstrapped and lifted her down off the horse. With me holding her under one arm, we clambered through a narrow slit in the gray-and-white rocks.

I hauled her to one of the drier spots in the circle, sat her down, and asked her if she was all right. She didn't reply, just mumbled with her eyes still closed. I sat down next to her and took her hand in mine. It was cold, but she didn't try to rip it away.

Allie came into the circle, saddlebags thrown over both shoulders and dragging packs. She threw them down at our feet, then sat down hard next to Jen, whose pretty face and dull black hair were streaked with sweat. “We need a fire,” Allie said.

I stood up and went to gather wood. As I was walking away I said, “Keep her company, will you?” Allie rolled her eyes and said, “What else am I gonna do?”

I limped down the hill, slipping sometimes in shadowy places where snowmelt kept the soil slick, and started picking up dead pieces of pine for the fire. It was a task that came easily and helped settle my mind. I remembered a book I'd read in Nairobi about Zen Buddhism. It said that one of the best ways to keep a calm mind is to do important, simple, physical work. Like raking rocks or carrying water or chopping wood. The book said that these things helped because they felt good and had an immediate result.

I had quite a big pile of dry sticks in my arms, but something kept telling me I needed more. Or maybe it was just that the sticks I was carrying weren't big or dry enough. I wandered around in the dense undergrowth of the pines, talking to myself and picking up and throwing down wood, until I realized I was stalling.

I didn't want to go back up there. There were people up there, and pretty quickly they'd want to talk. At least
one
would. It might take a while before Jen would be gabbing. Down here it was simple. Finally, grudgingly, I headed up the hill.
Time to take your medicine, Barr.

When I drew to within twenty yards of the campsite and heard a conversation going on, I dropped the firewood in surprise.
What the—
Quickly I regathered the wood and headed into our rocky alcove.

“I don't understand why you're here,” Jen was saying. “Is Lance here, too?”

Allie was telling her no, that it was a long story.

“Where is Clyde?”

“Right here, Sis,” I said as I walked into camp.

I set the wood down and started building a fire: putting the smallest sticks into a tepee shape, then laying the larger logs around them to look like a log cabin. Jen shook her head slowly. “Clyde, how did you . . . I mean. Sorry”—she ran her hands through her hair—“my brain's all fogged. Tell me who this Zeke guy is.”

I shot Allie a look. She glared at me. “I'll explain later, when you're safe. I'm just glad that whatever they gave you is wearing off. Why were you at that compound, Jen? What did Alvis want with you? Why was he keeping you all drugged up?”

“It was a nightmare,” Jen said. “I remember Lance and drinks. He seemed interested in my job. Then I was waking up in a hotel room with guards. Lance made me take pills. I spit some of them out and sneaked away and called you. Then a guard caught me and forced the pills down my throat.”

“Did it have something to do with a break-in?” Allie asked.

As I waited for Jen to answer, I held my Bic lighter to the kindling and watched the flames hungrily eat their way to the larger pieces of wood. The fire slowly took on a life of its own and I sat down wearily on the ground, resting on my elbow in the black loam.

Jen shook her head slowly, her black hair swaying over her face. “A break-in? Yeah, maybe. He needed something from this place I work at—needed me to get him inside the main storage area. He was waiting for my shift to start back up in . . . a couple days? . . . What day is it? . . . And then—”

“Where do you work?” I asked, watching the flames.

“I work for the government. At the Department of Energy depot outside Junction. I clean.”

That made sense. Government building, probably really secure. And as a custodian she'd have access to the whole building.

“What would Lance want from
there
?” Allie asked, puzzled.

Jen mumbled to herself, then pressed both hands against her temples. “I'm still fogged in. It had something to do with . . . with . . . a chemical. In barrels. Big black barrels. They use it to clean up uranium mines.” She mumbled again, and her eyelids started to droop.

The sibling in me said,
Enough.
She was too tired, and too drugged, for us to keep pressing. We'd get more out of her after she had some sleep.

While I was away searching for wood Allie had sorted the gear. I grabbed my sleeping bag, unzipped it, and rolled it out next to Jen. I fluffed it, and when Jen's eyes were fully closed, I slowly rolled her into the puffy fabric. An image flashed in my mind of Jen as a kid lying on her bed in the mornings, gripping the big stuffed tiger she'd won at the fair.
So long ago.

Allie noticed the look on my face. “You okay?”

I nodded. “It's just been a long day.”

“She's still out of it,” Allie said, “but she's alive. And she's going to be all right. You kept your promise, Barr.”

I put my head in my hands, then stared past the fire into the gathering dusk. “This isn't a win until we get away from Zeke and Lance. We've kicked up a hornet's nest and the hornets are flying our way.”

“So what do we do?”

I thought for a few seconds. “In a way, it may be easiest to
stop Lance. Somewhere in that ruckus back there, I lost my phone. I just need to use your phone to call those Feds who followed us and tell them where the compound is.”

“Sounds good, Barr,” Allie said. “Just one little problem.”

“That being?”

“My phone's with our gear in the Jeep.”

“Why didn't you put it in your saddlebag?”

“Because you said just take the essentials. Plus Zeke said the service around here sucks.”

“Oh,” I said. “Right.”

My saddlebags were near a clump of snakeweed next to Allie, so I limped over and grabbed them, rummaging around until I found the shells and my hunting knife. The knife went on my belt. It took me only a minute to reload the pistol and the rifle.

I handed the pistol to Allie. “Time's up. Zeke should be here soon. I'm going to climb up on one of those boulders and watch. I want you to stay in these rocks with Jen, keep her safe. If Zeke somehow gets inside, shoot him, okay?” She nodded.

I looked at my sister, watched her sleep with the same fitful murmurs and leg twitches she'd exhibited growing up.

Then I turned, hefted my rifle, and went to find a rock.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

T
he hard granite was cold as I bellied down on it and jacked a shell into the .375. The sun was gone, well on its way to the other side of the globe, and the planets were starting to twinkle in the gray sky. In another half hour it would be full dark, and if Zeke wasn't here already, then he'd have to use a flashlight to find our tracks. It would make for an easy target. But if he was
already
here . . . well, then it would be a little more complicated. I should have given Allie the pistol earlier, so she could have shot him when we were at the ranch. If she had, we'd all be on our way back into town now, instead of sitting on a hill, waiting for a madman to come to us.

There were no unusual sounds in the hills below us, only the regular shift change of the forest denizens. There were owl hoots, the conversational croaking of ravens, and the far-off lonely calls of coyotes. When I was little I imagined the chipmunks and squirrels punching tiny time cards in tiny clocks, putting their tiny hard hats on little hooks and wearily climbing the trees back into their little houses and snuggling down next to their loving little wives. Their shift was over now, and everything seemed normal down below.

As I stretched out on the rock, cradling my well-worn rifle,
I couldn't help but chuckle at how unlikely this situation was. I'd finally come home to the Land of Plenty, and here I was getting involved in the same old shit.

It was fun in the beginning, all those years ago, when I was young and the world was simply a wide-open adventure. A stint in the Merchant Marine, then I jumped ship and traipsed across Africa, naive but lucky, camping and hiking my way south. But the money from my year at sea had run out, and so I'd been forced to take a number of dreary jobs. I grabbed the only ones my skills allowed, meaning I spent months watching cows and building fences and digging wells. In a developing country you'd have to work for
years
doing things like that to get out of the country.

So I turned to jobs that paid a little more. Like hunting poachers in animal reserves. Or guiding hunting safaris. Good work, outside, but it still didn't pay much. Then I began helping the underdogs in coups and revolutions, picking the side I approved of. That kind of work proved to be a golden ticket—at least, relative to the other options available.

Eventually I got out. I took a job crewing aboard a ship sailing out of Cape Town and headed for Chile.

In South America I began with a little more money so I wandered around the jungles and deserts, heading north, until the money got thin. And at that point I fell back into old routines, like helping the natives fight against the oil companies. But there wasn't any money in those types of wars, so I started copying the natives, taking a little here and there from the rich companies that came to pillage.

Months became years and one day I woke up in Mexico. Like before, I tried to help the little guys, but it was hard to know
who
I was helping. Eventually my luck ran out and I was thrown into a Mexican prison. Where I met Zeke.

Zeke had been a part of this thing from the beginning, I now realized. Been around the world, have you, Barr? Think you're pretty smart? So why doesn't it smell to high heaven that your old prison buddy just happens to know where this man you're looking for can be found? Zeke had been told in advance that I might be headed his way, and like a spider he lured me into his web.

I must have drifted off to sleep. I jerked my head off the rock when one of the horses nickered and stomped far below me. I looked out and found that it had gotten too dark to see them; there was nothing but a sea of blackness under blinking stars. Needles rustled on the ground near the horses. Could be a deer, an elk, or any of the numerous animals that chose this time of night to come out and graze. But I didn't think so. I put the rifle up to my shoulder, looked hopefully through the scope, and wasn't surprised when I saw nothing but black.

Behind me I heard the faint sound of Allie saying something comforting to Jen, and in front of me more needles swished in response.

I slung the rifle onto my shoulder, slowly slid off the rock, and climbed down silently, heading toward the horses.

No moon had yet appeared, but the stars shining in the cloudless sky provided just enough light to see the ground beneath me and a couple of feet in front, enabling me to creep slowly toward the horses and pick a spot where I could crouch and watch them. It took me ten minutes to make it that far, and it turned out to be a little too long.

Something blurred through the trees, and I heard the slapping of horse flesh. Three horses thundered off down the hill, back toward the ranch. Our horses. As I groggily wondered how they came to be untied, a branch snapped somewhere close. I couldn't determine the source of the sound because
of the louder pounding of hooves, and I stood still, waiting for my senses to wake up.

My senses failed, because the source of the sound found me.

“Howdy, you son of a bitch,” Zeke whispered as his cable-­like arm snaked around my neck and cool steel bit into my throat.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I
tensed, feeling the old feelings surge through my body. My heart raced, my muscles bunched, time slowed, and bile rose from my stomach and turned to acid.

It wasn't the first time I'd had a knife at my throat. If it were, I would have been panicked instead of pissed off. My hands shot up instinctively to the knife, and I pinned the hand holding it against my chest. After that I shot my right arm to the sky, lifting the shoulder and forcing the blade away from my neck. Then I twisted out and away from the crazy bastard, shoving him as I escaped.

He still had the knife. And I hate knives. The primal emergency-­alert system in my skull was screaming for me to run away, but I couldn't. I had nowhere to run to, and I wasn't about to abandon the women. My hands searched for the rifle sling, but the weapon had fallen off my shoulder in the scuffle.

“You shouldn'ta shot at me, hombre,” Zeke said, holding the knife low and advancing.

Allie must have heard the scuffle. “Barr?” she shouted from behind the walls of our camp.

I shuffled and put myself between the madman and the
camp. Shouted over my shoulder, “Stay put, goddammit. Watch Jen.”

I went for my own knife but didn't reach it before Zeke smiled and leaped, jabbing his blade up as he flew at me. I plowed into him, grabbed the knife arm, and tried to drive an elbow into his head. I couldn't connect but managed to use the force of the charge to drive him into the ground.

This wasn't a calculated, testing, playful fight like before. This was now an animal rite, a savage, writhing, biting, clawing, rolling battle. Zeke kept trying to stick me, and I kept a hold on his arm. No one gained any ground; we just clung and rolled and jerked until he somehow managed to get his arm free and stick the knife hard into the outside of my shoulder. Luckily my muscles were hard with exertion, and it only peeled a small chunk off the outside.

I grabbed an ear and twisted and ripped, feeling the flesh pull away like warm taffy. Zeke screamed and I dropped the ear and rolled away, jumping to my feet.

He came up fast, screaming obscenities, one hand pressed to the side of his head as he tried to stanch the flow of blood streaming down his face. The other hand held his knife, and it shone in the starlight as he waved it in circles. He yelled something about my mother being a member of the oldest profession and that I'd die and burn in hell. I didn't really listen, couldn't because of the sound of my heartbeat pulsing in my ears.

“Barr!” Allie screamed from the camp. She sounded closer. “I can't see to shoot.”

“Don't,” I yelled. “Get back with Jen.” I heard her say something, her tone telling me I'd have more to apologize for later.

I pulled out my own knife, took a deep breath, and prepared for the worst kind of fight.

This is something the movies always get wrong. They show two guys waving steel, dancing around and lunging at each other with a string of near misses. Hell, even in Olympic fencing it doesn't work that way. Points are scored quickly, sometimes faster than the eye can see. That's why they rig the fencers with electronic sensors.

And that's how most knife fights are. Quick and dirty and bloody. Most stabs are faster than the eye or brain can register. And the worst part is that your body won't even realize that it has been stuck until much later. It will feel like a pinch, then feel as if you're sweating. You'll look down and realize that the pinch is a deep knife gash and the sweat is blood. Then later, if you're still alive, it'll hurt like hell.

It was too dark to make out Zeke's facial expressions, but I'm sure that if I could've, there would've been a lot of smiling. Even after getting his ear ripped off. He held his knife low, against his leg, and said, “Okay, Barr. One last go-around. You? Or me?”

I was pretty sure I'd been in more of these stab contests than he had. But he was good, and I didn't want a straight-up fight that would end with one of us dead and the other almost that way. So I decided to cheat. “You,” I said, and turned as if to run back toward the women.

He moved to follow and I pretended to stumble, put both hands on the ground. He rushed after me, raised his knife, and I kicked hard at his ankle, twisting him off his feet. He landed hard on his face, then rolled to his back, moaning. I jumped up and slammed down on top of him, pinning his knife arm with my knee, the way you would pin a calf's neck during a branding.

And here's another place where Hollywood has it wrong. I didn't hold him down and let him struggle. I didn't try to
have one last conversation with him, telling him I was sorry it had to end this way, that I wished we could be friends again. I didn't because those things don't happen in real life when someone is trying to kill you. With a knife. Especially if this someone's next act after killing you will be to rape your sister and friend.

No, there was none of that heart-wrenching sappiness, just me bearing down on him, one hand fighting off his flailing arm, and the other jamming the knife down into his neck, his chest, his stomach, then back up. Again and again until he stopped moving and I was left breathless, retching, covered in blood, on top of someone I used to call a friend. Someone I'd fought with before, side by side, but had always known deep down could
never
be a friend. Because he'd lost his soul.

I pulled myself off the body, then sat back on the hard earth. I wiped the blood off my knife onto my pants, waiting for my heart and lungs to slow. After my body had calmed down, after my knife was shiny again, after I'd dry heaved for the last time, and after I'd wiped blood off myself using sand and leaves, I went back to Zeke's body. I took his gun and five hundred in cash out of his wallet. Then I kicked sand over his face.

I somehow managed to drag my tired, broken, and exhausted body back to the campfire and the women. Jen was still asleep, nestled deep in my sleeping bag against a rock by the dying fire. Allie clambered down off one of the rocks and sprinted over to me. She put her arm under mine and helped me limp to the fire.

“Are you hurt?” Allie asked, wide-eyed.

“I've been better,” I said. I swayed by the dying fire.

“Zeke?”

“Dead.”

I heard her sigh. Then, “What do we do now?”

“We get some sleep.”

“Shouldn't we alternate, in case someone else followed us up here?”

I couldn't imagine how anyone else could. Zeke knew this place, and he knew me, so it was easy enough for him to find us. I doubted anyone else could. “I'll take first watch,” I said. “Come and get me when you wake up.”

“You should crash first, Barr. I've slept twice as much as you in the last couple of days.”

She had a point, but I had the experience and the rifle. “Sleep next to Jen. Make sure she doesn't wander off if she needs to use the bushes. I'll be on a rock.”

She was about to argue again but gave up with a yawn. “Fine. But just a few hours; then we'll switch.”

I nodded and found a spot in between rocks where I could see in the direction of the faraway road. I went prone and cradled my rifle. Every time I blinked I saw blood, and the blinks came more and more frequently. I heard Allie's and Jen's soft snoring and murmuring, heard the grass swish in the breeze, and stared at the stars.

Just a few hours, and I'd finally get some goddamned sleep.