Iron Mike (32 page)

March 19

Kari

They got on the road before 1400, figuring on another good six hours of daylight before stopping for the evening.

“We can make it to Olive Hill easily, and if we get super lucky and don’t have any delays at all, maybe even Morehead,” Mike smiled. “Honey, we are so close to home I can smell the KFC right now!”

Kari laughed. “I’ve been hungry, Mike Sanderlin, but I don’t think I’ve ever been
that
hungry. Not for KFC or White Castle - no way!”

Mike mounted his bike, one hand held to his chest in mock horror. “You wound me!” he cried pathetically. “You slay me in the heart, you mudblood traitor, you!”

Kari tossed an empty MRE bag at him, which he dodged easily. “That’s
Harry Potter,
doofus!” she giggled. “It’s not fitting for a barbarian like you to even speak the Holy Words of Potterdom! And besides, I’m no blood traitor to Kentucky - I was born in North Dakota, remember? Daddy only got stationed here a few years ago.”

They continued to quibble until they were moving too fast to keep the argument alive, both laughing and determining by mutual consent neither surrendered the point. They set out with high spirits, homing instincts lifting their mood as they realized tonight would absolutely be their last night on the road. They would be home by tomorrow, late morning or early afternoon.

They’d been traveling less than an hour and were making outstanding time. Most of the wrecks in this area were pushed over to the sides of the highway, making high-speed travel almost possible. Kari frowned as she saw Mike raise a fist in front of her, even though there seemed to be nothing to impede their passage. Mike slowed the bike gradually, looking intently at the woodland off to his right. What was he -?

Her stomach tightened as she saw the small dirt turn-off ... the one that led to a disgusting little hunting cabin set off in a clearing about two hundred feet from the highway. Mike pulled slowly in to the dirt road and Kari followed unwillingly. They drove about thirty feet up the road, far enough to hide the bikes from the highway. Mike killed his engine and Kari did the same, her face pale and angry.

“What are you -?”

“Shh!” Mike insisted sharply. “I heard something!”

Kari glared at him. It was a bare-faced lie. There was
no way
he had heard anything over the roar of the Harleys!

Hershey leapt gracefully from the sidecar, and Butterball followed with a bit less grace but just as much enthusiasm, landing with a plop on the soft pine needles. Kari wondered, with a moment of envy, what it must be like inside the dogs’ heads, where all the time spent traveling and stopping and traveling must be just one great adventure - a grand game the humans prepared solely to entertain Hershey and Butterball.

Kari shook her head and jogged several paces to catch up with Mike who was, as she knew he would be, heading directly for the cabin. “What are you doing?” she whispered when she caught up with him. Her heart was pounding in her chest and not, she admitted to herself, from the exertion of the jog. She was terrified in some deep, primal place, and she wanted to leave this place, NOW.

Mike turned to her sharply, but then he actually stopped and looked at her, his face softening. “I have to look, Kari,” he said gently. “This isn’t anything you have to do, honey, but ... I just have to see if the son-of-a-bitch left anything. You know, like a big map saying ‘Mayhew is here.’ I have to see if he even buried his own men.”

Kari wrinkled her nose. “I’m thinking not so much,” she said drily.

Mike nodded and they looked at each other for a long moment. “I just need to see if there’s any way to bring this scumbag to justice without impacting our mission.”

Kari raised an eyebrow incredulously. “
Any
time, any minute, any second you spend hunting Mayhew impacts our mission.”

Mike nodded, a bit abashed. “Okay, I grant you that,” he said with a slightly crooked, charming smile. “On the other hand ... once we turned the handhelds over to Major Hardin and blew the HRBT, we were pretty much expendable from that point on. The rest is just reporting in, maybe for a commendation. Oh, yeah, and you have that Article 86 waiting for you.”

Kari’s eyes narrowed. “You fight mean, mister,” she said, her tone slightly dangerous. “I will remember that!”

Mike looked down, pretending a shame he didn’t feel. “I’ll keep Hershey, and you ta -”

“I’m not going back to the bike to wait like a good little girl,” Kari bristled, her tone brooking no argument at all. “Hershey will take point with you. Butterball and I will cover your six. And keep in mind, Captain Vengeance ... this whole thing could well be a trap.”

Mike thought about that for a second and his eyes followed Kari’s. In little less than a week, the underbrush was already starting to reclaim the back road, which meant the path wasn’t being ridden as often, and the brush wasn’t being cut back. Kari saw that as a better opportunity for entrapment, but Mike looked at it with a hunter’s eye. No one had ridden here in four days. That meant Mayhew had lost his gang of supporters and hangers-on. And that meant the likelihood of finding Mayhew, or any clue to his whereabouts, was slim to none. He glanced at his watch, calculating silently. 1045. Damn. He opened his mouth to tell Kari she’d been right, and they should just get back on the road when he really did hear something. By the look on her face, Kari heard it, too.

They moved quickly toward the sound, Hershey on point. About forty yards in, Hershey stopped, his hackles raised and a low, quiet growl in his throat. Mike carefully moved the branches of a bush aside, looked for a long moment, and then stepped back to allow Kari to see.

Big Pete Mayhew was facing away from them, moaning and sobbing and ... praying? He was up to his waist in Feeder.

Kari stepped back abruptly, letting the brush swing forward. It wasn’t a loud sound, but it was damning. Any woodsman would recognize it as out of place.

“Susan!” Mayhew screamed, his voice pleading and pathetic. “Susan, baby, is that you, darlin’? I didn’t mean nothin’ by what I said, you know I didn’t! You know how I get, baby! Come on, don’t leave me like this!”

Kari looked at Mike for a long moment, and then she sighed in resignation. “I’ll go get the bottle and rope,” she murmured.

A defiant, angry expression flitted across Mike’s face, but it was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared. “Take Hershey,” he said. “I’ll keep watch.”

Kari returned a minute later with the bottle of Maker's Mark and a coil of rope. She started to step forward, but Mike held up a hand, stopping her. He nodded for her to hand him the bottle, gesturing for her to wait. She arched an eyebrow in question, but he nodded emphatically so she conceded ... for now. She could always step out of the brush later and help drag the man’s sorry ass up if Mike needed the assistance.

Mike slowly, deliberately, stepped on a dry twig.

“Who’s there?” Mayhew cried out, now certain someone was behind him. “Susan, is that you?”

“Not Susan,” Mike replied, stepping carefully around the Feeder with Hershey following close on his heels, growling softly. When he was certain Kari had a perfect view, Mike stopped walking and squatted in front of Mayhew. He met Kari’s eyes and nodded infinitesimally. Kari nodded back, questioningly, and Mike held up the bottle of Maker’s Mark. Mayhew’s eyes locked onto the whiskey as though drawn by magnets, then went back to Mike’s face, recognition flaring.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said, his voice hoarse but affable enough. “Guess the joke’s on me, huh, buddy? You really did have a stash. How you doin’?”

Mike raised an eyebrow at Mayhew’s amiable tone. “I’m doing a lot better than you are, it seems,” he said, his tone equally pleasant and conversational. He slowly opened the bottle and took a long, deep swallow. Kari couldn’t see Mayhew’s face well from her angle, but she heard him swallow audibly as Mike re-capped the bottle. “But we still ain’t ‘buddies,’ Mayhew. You’re a mean-spirited, bullying piece of shit.”

“Yes, sir, yes, sir, I was. I agree, I sure was. But sittin’ here in this thing all morning gets a man to thinking, you know? I been consid -”

“You’ve been in this Feeder all morning long?” Mike interrupted.

Mayhew nodded. “Since right at dawn, yes, sir. I was chasing - well, never mind that, but I got sucked into this damn thing and haven’t been able to get out.”

Mike nodded thoughtfully. “Who’s Susan?”

Mayhew shot him a defiant scowl, so Mike smiled and took another sip of the whiskey.

What the hell was he doing? Kari wondered from her hidden place in the brush. She knew he was interrogating the shitbag, but what were his objectives? Kari smacked a mosquito on her neck with a grimace, almost hoping the sound would get her noticed. No such luck. With a sigh, she scooted a bit closer to the sleeping Butterball and continued to watch.

“Susan?” Mayhew almost sounded surprised at the question. “Oh, she ain’t nobody. Just some skanky gash I picked up at Wendell’s Watering Hole. Say, mister, you mind sharing a drink of your whiskey? This thing is burning me awful bad. It’d be decent of you.”

“Decent?” A flicker of emotion crossed Mike’s face on hearing the word, but he masked it quickly. “So ... let me get this straight. You bring this girl - this ‘gash’ - up to your cabin - the cabin that still has two corpses rotting in front of it, by the smell of things - and she takes off on you. Then, when you go to chase her down, the Feeder gets you. That about right?”

“Yeah, that’s right, but boy, that don’t
matter!
” Mayhew’s voice rose to a whine, his eyes still locked on the bottle. “She’s nothin’ but a whore. I’m telling you, man, she’s spread her legs so many times they open more often than a ‘frigerator door on Thanksgiving! It don’t matter what I done to her, cuz she’s done it all before. Please give me some of your whiskey, boy. This hurts like hell, you gotta know that!”

Mike stood with a nod and gestured down at his own legs. For the first time, Mayhew noticed the bandages and uncovered acid burns. He looked puzzled for a moment, and then his eyes widened in recognition. “What the ...?”

“Oh, I know how bad it hurts,” Mike said with a sympathetic smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. “I know exactly how bad it hurts, Mayhew. See ... I was right about where you are now just ... oh ...” he looked at his watch, “about seven hours ago. And that’s why it just really confuses me why it’s taking this Feeder so long to eat you. Normally, fifteen minutes to an hour, and it slurps you right under.”

Mike made a loud slurping sound, and Mayhew flinched at the emphasis. After a long moment, Mike spoke again. “See, you called us buddies, Mayhew, and I don’t know if that’s true or not. I mean, not enough to share what may be the last bottle of Maker’s Mark in Kentucky, you know?”

“I got a cabin,” Mayhew said eagerly. They were negotiating now, and that was territory he was familiar with. “It really ain’t no good for hunting - too close to the highway - but I got all kinds of valuable shit in there. Things you can trade for. I got batteries and porn mags - oh, man, must be hundreds of porn mags, all different kinds. I even got a few gallons of water. You can have it all, son, just for one good swallow of your whiskey.”

Mike smiled coldly and shook his head, as if in regret. “Ah, come on, man. You gotta do better than that. If your little gash has a brain, all that shit’s gone by now. And even if she didn’t take all your shit, I could just leave you here and go help myself when you’re dead. Or hell, even before you die. It’s not like you’d be able to follow me.”

Mayhew’s voice became desperate. Kari winced at the shrill tone. “What do you want, man? I’m just asking for one swallow!”

Mike knelt down again, as close to Mayhew as he could get yet still be out of the man’s reach. “I want to know,” he said very, very quietly, “what kind of man tells a woman that he’ll burn her so badly with a hot poker she’ll never have children, and then, after days or weeks, he will impale her and let her bleed to death?”

Mayhew barely flinched. He’d been expecting the question. “Aww, I was never gonna -”

Mike rose, and started to walk away, Hershey quickly jumping up to follow him.

“No, wait!” Mayhew wailed. “Yeah, okay, I was gonna kill her. But I wouldn’t’a done it that way!”

Mike turned. “I’m listening,” he said.