The Extinct (15 page)

“I told her not to tell anyone where I am.”

“As I said, she’s worried.”

“Why’d she call you?”

Thomas crossed his legs and looked out the sliding glass doors at the sky. With the pipe in between his lips and his eyes turned upward, Eric thought he looked like a sitting Buddha in contemplation.

“I knew your mother before your father. That’s how I and your father met actually, though, that’s a story for another time.”

Eric filled the hypodermic and stuck it in between his toes on his right foot. The drug warmed him, but, something he’d realized only recently, brought him no pleasure. It didn’t make him happy in any way but he couldn’t go more than a handful of hours without it. “What do you want?”

Thomas took the pipe out of his mouth and held it in his hand. “The truth of it is boy that I owe your father a life, and I intend to pay him back by saving yours.”

Eric chuckled softly as he fell back on the couch, warm and content. “I don’t need saving.”

“Oh? Pardon me, but I beg to differ. I’ve seen men where you are and they don’t last very long.” They watched each other and Thomas rose to his feet and walked toward the balcony, looking over the city through the open sliding glass door. He leaned against the wall with one hand and put the pipe back into his mouth. “I came to this city once before you were even born. It’s far different now; crueler. Perhaps that’s just what happens when large masses of people live together.” He turned toward Eric. “We are a malicious species boy, and I don’t normally care for us outside of those close to me, but I repay my debts.”

Jalani walked in and Eric got a good look at her. Everything about her permeated sensuality, from the way she crossed her feet in a relaxed stance, to the smell of jasmine emanating from her wrists and neck. She stared at Eric with a detached curiosity. Then, abruptly, she walked out of the hotel room. Thomas sat back down and filled his pipe with tobacco from a small cherry wood carrying case he kept in his pocket. He lit it with a silver lighter and the sweet smell of tobacco filled the air.

Eric was nodding off, his head bobbing painfully slow up and down in an effort to stay awake. He didn’t notice when Jalani walked back in carrying a length of chain and cuffs and threw Lily out of the room.

Thomas and Jalani picked Eric up and he only nominally protested.

They lay him down on the bed and shackled his right wrist and then ran the chain around the bed, locking the two ends together with a padlock. Thomas tore the phone line from the wall, tearing apart the wires and rendering them useless.

They walked out of the room together, neither looking back.

CHAPTER

27

Eric slept for six hours and woke in the afternoon. The sound of the river was in the distance, fleets of car engines beyond that. He thought he’d dreamed of Thomas coming to his room and smiled at the dream. When he went to itch his arms, he heard the rattle of chains.

He was shackled tightly with a thick metal cuff halfway up his wrist. He followed the chain with his eyes and saw that it was wrapped around the bed. Leaning down and looking underneath, he saw that it ran around the bed frame, locking him to the bed.

Eric scrambled and tried tearing at the cuff and then pulling on the chain. He reached down and tried to pull the chain off the bed-frame and then started trying to open the padlock. He stood and was almost growling as he violently yanked the chain over and over. Finally he sat down on the floor, his arms exhausted and heavy. He had enough length to reach the bathroom and halfway into the living room, but no more. The phone was disconnected.

He walked into the living room. His money was still on the coffee table, untouched, but his drugs were gone. Panic gripped him and he began pulling on the chain again, trying to break apart the bed. He was too weak for anything more than making a loud clanking sound, and gave up.

He lay on the floor until nightfall. He was starting to feel sick. It was making him jittery and he felt sharp stabs in his stomach. As he lay flat on his back staring out at the glittering lights past the balcony, the door opened and Thomas walked in. He held a small brown bag and a large jug of water and placed them next to Eric.

“There’s some turkey and plums in the bag.”

“Fuck you!” Eric screamed.

Thomas seemed not to notice and only walked into the kitchen, checking to see if anything useful was in the fridge. Finding only beer, he took the bottles out and poured the golden liquid down the sink, throwing the empty ones in the garbage and walking out the door.

Eric was on the floor all night, unable to sleep. There were waves of pain that came and went like electric shocks. Drops of sweat covered his body and formed a wet ring around him on the carpet. He tried to pull on the chains again and when he failed, he simply curled on the floor and cried.

The next few days Eric was in full withdrawal. He was vomiting constantly and had diarrhea. Stomach pains toppled him over whenever he’d try to stand and he found himself screaming for help, but no help came. His tongue bled from the multiple times his shivering caused him to bite it and he’d go between extremes of freezing cold and scalding hot.

The days slowly melted into each other; images and sounds and sensations. Thomas or Jalani would bring food and water and juice in the morning and at night, but otherwise they kept away. On several occasions Eric had screamed himself hoarse but no one from the hotel came.

He spent his days watching television or staring out the balcony doors. He woke once to find a few books next to the nightstand, some Hemingway and a dog-eared copy of The Iliad, but he was usually too sick to concentrate long enough to read. The apartment stunk like a sewer, but after a couple weeks the craving started to subside. He thought about shooting up but it wasn’t as urgent anymore. But he had a new enemy to contend with as well: boredom.

Eric got out of bed to go to the bathroom one night and saw Thomas sitting in a chair with his pipe looking out at the city. The gray smoke formed a tunnel above him and slowly made its way to the open doors of the balcony and out into the night air.

“How do you feel?” Thomas asked.

“I didn’t need to be saved.”

Thomas gave a wise grin. “You’re welcome.”

Eric urinated in the bathroom and came back out, sitting in the living room and leaning against a wall. “When you gonna let me go?”

“A couple more days. You look much better.”

“You know I’ll just use again as soon as you let me outta here. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

Thomas shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. I’ll at least know I did all I could.”

“I don’t suppose I could have some of that?”

Thomas looked down at the pipe, and then handed it to Eric. “It’s tobash caruit from Herat. A very special kind of tobacco.”

Eric took a puff and felt the smoke going down into his lungs, silky with almost a cherry flavor. “It’s good.”

Thomas nodded as he took the pipe back. They sat in silence, enjoying the smell of the smoke mingling with the salty air.

“You said you knew my mother,” Eric said.

“I did.”

“How?”

“We were lovers, a long time ago. Before she met your father.”

“What happened?”

Thomas handed the pipe back to Eric. “I was always away on my hunts; it’s no life for marriage. Your mother and I parted ways and she met your father. I came back to the States after a particularly long tour and wanted her back, but she was already married by then. But, she did introduce me to your father and we became friends. One of my most loyal clients as well.” Thomas put a little more tobacco into the pipe. “The animal that killed your father is becoming quite the legend.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s killed at least thirty others, mostly children from the more remote villages who wander off. I’ve been hired to kill it. I want you to come with me.”

“Taking me prisoner isn’t the best way to ask. Besides, I don’t know anything about hunting.”

“I assure you, you don’t need to; I’ll be doing the hunting. But just being out there, living on the plains and in the jungle out of a tent, it’s purifying. It cleanses you.” He took a long pull from the pipe, his emerald eyes focused on Eric. “Do you need to be cleansed?”

Eric looked away without saying anything. Thomas rose, and left.

CHAPTER

28

Jalani brought breakfast for him the next day: poached eggs and toast with orange juice. Eric ate on the floor of the living room as Jalani sat on the couch, her smooth legs neatly crossed, revealing muscular thighs.

“Do you speak English?” Eric asked, taking a bite of egg.

Jalani stared in silence, piercing Eric, looking through him rather than at him. Despite her cold behavior she had warm eyes.

“Are you married?” Eric asked. “Kids?” He guzzled some orange juice and wiped at his lips with the back of his bare arm. “I used to want kids. Lots of ‘em. Didn’t really work out that way though.”

“I do not have kids,” Jalani said, her voice metallic from disuse. “But I have brothers and sisters.”

Eric was surprised at an answer and didn’t respond immediately. He took another sip of juice and then said, “How many?”

“Twenty.”

“Really? Your mother must be a tiger.”

Jalani gave a quizzical look.

“No,” Eric said, “it’s an expression . . . just saying that she must be strong, like a tiger.”

“She was very strong. That is why my father traveled so much.”

Eric grinned. “Your English is good.”

“I studied in school. Thomas has taken me to London many times as well.”

He finished his breakfast and leaned back against the wall.

“The Bushman in my country believe,” Jalani said, “that when a lion kills a man, the lion takes the soul of the man and it corrupts him. The lion is pure until the soul of man enters him. He does not know of good and evil until he has eaten a man. When this happens, the lion becomes evil because it cannot tell the difference. It will always hunt men.”

“Are you talking about the animal that killed my father? Thomas said it’s killed thirty people.”

Jalani scoffed. “Is that what he said?”

“Why? It’s not true?”

“Thomas is a good hunter and a man of the world. But he only believes what his eyes tell him. He has no imagination so he cannot believe that an animal can become evil. He says thirty, but I have seen animals kill many more. A lion near my village killed nearly two hundred before it was shot.”

“Wow, that’s probably some sort of record.”

“Record?”

“Yeah, like the most any animal’s ever killed.”

“No, there have been others. But this one in India will soon surpass them. People that have seen it say that his eyes glow red in the night. They think it is the devil.”

“Do you think that?”

“No. Not the devil. But it is evil. And it needs to die.”

“Are you going with Thomas to kill it?”

“Yes, and so will you.”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“No,” Jalani said confidently, “you will go.” She rose and gave Eric a warm smile. “I knew your father. He was a good man. I see that goodness in you too.” She shut the door and Eric was left alone again in the ever shrinking room.

Thomas came later in the afternoon with a bag full of new clothes and some shoes. Eric was lying in bed watching television. Thomas walked to him and took a key out of his pocket, undoing the cuff chaining him to the bed.

Eric began rubbing the skin on his wrist. It was tender and moist and he could still feel the weight of the cuff clinging to him. “Thanks.”

Thomas nodded and laid the bag of clothing down on the bed. “Shower and dress, we’re leaving here today,” Thomas said as he walked off.

“The hotel?”

“No,” Thomas said from the front room, “Thailand. And I took the rest of your money and donated it to a nearby orphanage. I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

Eric looked over at the clothes. He could leave right now if he wanted, some of his strength had returned to him and he could probably make it away from Thomas if he protested. But the truth was this place had been hell. He’d seen things he could never have imagined seeing, and unwittingly become a part of them. That was the most sinister aspect of evil, he decided. That it could pose as necessity and disarm you. Before you even knew what was happening, you would be fully in its embrace.

Eric took the clothes, and walked into the bathroom.

CHAPTER

29

The Indian Ocean is at some places black as tar and at some places a shining turquoise blue. The third largest body of water on earth, it has highly important sea routes connecting the Americas with the Middle East, India and Asia. The traffic is mostly used for petroleum from the Middle East though hydrocarbons in the ocean floor itself are being tapped more often.

To be over such a vast expanse of water and nothing else felt a little like tight-rope walking without a net; one slip up and it would lead to your death. But the beauty of the water wasn’t lost on Eric. There was just something about the sea that could make you forget everything else. Looking at it from high above, he felt that it’d always been a part of him. Each wave like an emotion flowing through him.

The plane ride had been long and claustrophobic. They went from luxury planes on Air Asia to rickety private planes in India that rattled and shook at high speeds. Their pilot out of Calcutta had been drunk, but flew more competently than some of the sober ones. There were only a handful of people on the plane from the port of Goa India to Andhra Pradesh, most of them laborers being sent to this or that mine to slave for little wages.