Last Days (11 page)

"Yes."

Borchert smiled. "Knowledge is the most valuable of commodities," he said. "Shall we trade? I'll trade you knowledge for a limb."

"What?"

"You heard me," said Borchert. "Knowledge for a limb. You choose the limb. Or even just a hand or foot. That should be enough."

"No," said Kline.

"That's you're problem," said Borchert. "You don't want to know badly enough."

"I want to know," said Kline.

"Truth or flesh," said Borchert. "Which is more important?"

Kline didn't answer.

"Or say just a digit," said Borchert. "A single finger or toe. What does a finger or toe matter? You've already lost eight digits. What difference would one more make?"

Kline stood up, made for the door. He could hear Borchert behind him, chuckling.

"The offer stands, Mr. Kline," he said. "Come back any time."

He lay in bed, thinking. With the light off he kept seeing Aline's mutilated face, the head riding up on the pillow, blankets tucked just below the chin. Eventually he got up and turned the light on.

His foot ached. It was still weeping blood and fluid where the toes had been, and the foot itself was oddly dark, seemed swollen. He put it on a pillow, kept it elevated, which seemed to help a little.

What was the truth? he wondered. How important was it to know? And once he knew, what then?

He looked at his stump. He could still, sometimes, feel the hand there. And, when Borchert had drugged him, he had been able to see it as well, half-present, like a ghost. He tried to will himself to see it again, could not.

Maybe there was someone who could give him something for his foot, he thought, an anti-inflammatory or perhaps something more, before the foot became too swollen, too painful, to walk on. He would take that, and then stay in bed, waiting for the toes to heal.

Why? he wondered, again seeing Aline's face despite the light still being on. Why had Borchert lied to him? What did he have to gain by pretending Aline was dead when he was actually alive?

He kept turning the question around in his head.

And when, at last, he came up with an answer, he realized he was in very great trouble indeed.

IX.

The guard at the gate didn't want to admit him when he arrived, but Kline told him he was coming for an amputation, that Borchert had invited him to return. The guard consulted his fellow behind the door and then waited with Kline at the gate in the dark while the latter guard went upstairs to consult Borchert.

"It's very late," said the guard.

"He'll see me," said Kline. "He told me to come."

And indeed, when the other guard returned, he was admitted.

He went with the other guard up the stairs to Borchert's room. The guard knocked. When Borchert called back, the guard opened the door and allowed Kline to enter alone.

"Well," said Borchert. "Truth is important to you after all, Mr. Kline."

He was sitting in his chair, a gun in his hand gripped awkwardly with his remaining fingers. "Please stay right there, Mr. Kline," he said.

"It's not loaded," said Kline.

"No?" said Borchert. "What makes you think that?"

"The gun you gave me wasn't," said Kline.

"No, it wasn't," said Borchert, "but wasn't that perhaps because I was giving it to you?"

Kline didn't answer.

"Care to tell me what you know?" asked Borchert.

"You're planning to kill Aline," said Kline.

"And?"

"And planning to make it look like I killed him."

"You've been most obliging in that regard," said Borchert. "You've acted your role nicely. A documented penchant for violence. A certain obsession with Aline, dead or alive. You're only wrong in one particular, that being that I've already killed Aline."

"When?"

"Not long after you last left. For a limbless man he put up quite a fight."

"Why?"

"Ah," said Borchert. "Mr. Kline, I doubt if I can make you understand."

"Try me."

"
Try me
, Mr. Kline? How colloquial of you. It was a matter of belief. Aline and I disagreed on certain particulars, questions of belief. Either he or I had to be done away with for the good of the faith in a way that would leave the survivor blameless. Otherwise there would have been a schism. Naturally, I, in my position, preferred that he be done away with rather than I."

"You were enemies."

"Not at all. Each of us admired the other. It was simply an expedient political move, Mr. Kline. It had to be done."

"Why me?"

"Why you, Mr. Kline? Simply because you were there, and because God had touched you with His grace, had chosen you by removing your hand. You'll of course be rewarded in heaven for your role in all this. Whether you'll be rewarded in this life, though, is entirely another matter."

"Perhaps I should go," said Kline.

"A good question, Mr. Kline. Do I kill you or do I let you go? Hmmm? What do you think, Mr. Kline? Shall I let you go? Shall we flip a coin?"

Kline did not answer.

"No coin?" asked Borchert. "Do you care to express an opinion?"

"I'd like to go," said Kline.

"Of course you would," said Borchert. "And so you shall. Today shall be a day for mercy, not justice. Perhaps, with a little luck, you'll even be able to make it out the gate and past the guards to the so-called freedom of the outside world."

Kline turned toward the door.

"But then again," he heard from behind him, "surely justice must temper mercy, Mr. Kline. Am I right? So perhaps you'd care to leave a little something we can remember you by."

Kline stood still. And then, without turning around, he reached slowly for the door handle.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said Borchert. "I hate to shoot a man in the back."

Kline stopped, turned to face him.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"You know exactly what I want," said Borchert, his eye steady. "Flesh for knowledge."

"No," said Kline.

"You told the guard you'd come up here for an amputation," said Borchert. "There's a cleaver on the counter. The same cleaver you used on my finger. Where the hand is gone, the arm shall follow. Otherwise I shoot you. It makes honestly no difference to me, Mr. Kline. You've accomplished your purpose. Technically, you're no longer needed."

Kline started slowly for the back of the room. Borchert watched him go, pushing at the floor with his foot to turn his chair around.

The cleaver was there, imbedded in the butcher's block.

"Go ahead, Mr. Kline. Take it by the cronge and tug it free."

He took the cleaver by the handle. "What's to stop me from killing you?" he asked.

"Do you really know how to throw a cleaver, Mr. Kline? Where does one learn such skills? Some sort of Vocational and Technical school? Can you imagine you'd be able to hit me, let alone hit me so that the blade itself will stick? And even if you did, I imagine I'd be able to squeeze off a shot beforehand--"

"Assuming the gun is loaded."

"Assuming the gun is loaded," agreed Borchert affably. "A shot that would bring the guards running and that would get you killed. So, Mr. Kline, you'd be trading the possibility of killing me for your own life. Is that really what you want to do? No? Now be a good boy and cut off your arm."

He turned on the burner in the countertop, waited for it to heat up. The cleaver seemed sharp enough, though he realized it might have some difficulty cutting through bone. If he hit the joint just right it probably wouldn't matter, though he shouldn't forget he was cutting left-handed; did he have sufficient force in his left hand to cut all the way through in a single blow?

He lined the cleaver along the crease of his elbow, found the flesh to run almost from one end of the blade to the other. He would have to hit it exactly right.

In his mind's eye, the cleaver is already coming swiftly down, beginning to bite through skin and flesh and bone. He will be washed over with pain and will stagger, but before going down he must remember to thrust the new end of his arm against the burner to cauterize it, so that he doesn't bleed to death. And then, if he is still standing, he may manage to stagger from the room and down the stairs and eventually out of the compound altogether, where, limping, feverish, in pain, he will make his way out into the lone and dreary world.

And this, he realizes, is only the best possible outcome. In all probability it will be much worse. The hatchet will strike wrong and he will have to strike a second time. He will wooze and fall before cauterizing the wound and then lie on the floor bleeding to death from the wound. The guards will catch him at the gate and kill him. Or even worse, all will go well, the arm coming smoothly off, but Borchert, smiling, will say "Very good, Mr. Kline. But why stop there? What shall we cut off next?"

He raises the cleaver high. His whole life is waiting for him. He only needs to bring the cleaver down for it to begin.

LAST DAYS

You've only got one finger left,
And it's pointing toward the door.

--Beck, "Lord Only Knows"

PART ONE

The second time was worse than the first, both because he already knew how it would feel and because of how much thicker an elbow is than a wrist. Still, he managed it, left-handed, despite Borchert's pistol trained at his head. First he carefully tied a tourniquet around the upper arm and then brought the cleaver down hard, chopping all the way through on the first try, and then he thrust the stump against the burner. The stump sizzled and smoked, his vision starting to go. He shook his head and took two steps toward Borchert, and then collapsed.

After that, it became more complicated. He came conscious to find Borchert kneeling beside him, still aiming the pistol, grinning eagerly down.

"And what," Borchert asked, eyes glittering, "shall we cut off next?"

He struck Borchert as hard as he could in the throat and the man fell back, gasping. Kline dragged his way on top of him, managing to get to Borchert's gun in time to jam a thumb into the guard behind its trigger. He bore down with his full weight, working his way slowly up Borchert's body while the latter kept squeezing the gun's trigger, trying to tear off his thumb. A moment later, Kline broke Borchert's nose with his forehead.

It took a few more blows before the man was unconscious and Kline could wrest the gun away. Then he stuffed Borchert's mouth with the sash of his robe. Straddling the man's chest, he slapped him softly until his eyes opened.

I feel fine
, he tried to tell himself while it was going on, though he felt as though he were some distance from his body.
I've never felt better
. His missing arm didn't even hurt. He wondered idly how long it would be before he died of shock.

"Hello, Borchert," he said, when the man's eyes focused, and then he reached out and strangled him with his single hand. It was hard to get a good grip, and hard to keep hold. At a certain moment, he began to feel dizzy, and was afraid he might pass out. But by the time that moment had passed, Borchert seemed mostly dead.

After that, it became more complicated still.

I.

Light, then dark, then light again. Something pressing into his cheek. Sounds dopplering toward him and away, cars maybe. The taste of blood in his mouth and then his mouth filling with blood and he had to make an effort to cough it up so as to breathe. Slowly his mouth filled with blood again. Almost certainly he was bleeding to death. He kept taking slow breaths and then coughing blood and then taking slower and slower breaths. After a while he stopped hearing anything and it was nothing but dark. He tried to keep breathing anyway.

Once he'd stopped breathing, he opened his eyes. He was in a hospital bed, tubing running from an IV into his arm. He thought he should get up, but when he tried it felt like a knife was being driven hilt-deep into his eye. So he stopped trying.

Instead, he lay there, staring first at the curtain screening the bed off from the rest of the room and then into the bank of fluorescent lights above him. When he closed his eyes, the lights were still there, gathered behind his eyelids, sharp and clear.

Probably really a hospital
, he thought, eyes still closed.
Which could be good or bad. But never as bad as if it isn't really a hospital
.

It took him awhile to notice that the rest of his arm was now missing, lopped off at the shoulder joint. Awkwardly, he unwrapped the dressing, peeling the stained gauze away. Whoever had done it had done a professional job, the stump's end smooth and expertly blocked off, evenly cauterized, suppurating just slightly.

When he flexed his shoulder, the absent arm throbbed and the stump seeped a little faster. His missing hand throbbed less, almost not at all. Worst of all was the stretch between wrist and elbow that he had cut off himself as Borchert watched. The missing flesh and bone above that, from elbow to shoulder, removed without his knowledge, just tingled slightly.