Selection Event (14 page)

“They made me do it,” Max said quietly. He pumped a little more life into his voice. “They said they'd kill me if I didn't do what they said.”

Martin ignored him. He said to the two men, “Move back to the wall.”

Stewart's fear overcame his modesty — he waved his hands slowly in front of his chest. “Be real careful, guy, okay? Don't even think about the trigger, okay? Okay? I'm not going to do anything, okay?” He soft-stepped over behind Max.

“Marty,” Curtiz said, “you're messing up the program. We're the only line of defense between you and a whole shitload of trouble out there. You think the world used to be a jungle? You kill us, and what's left but barbarism?”

“You're protecting me from barbarism? If you weren't insane, you'd laugh at yourself. I just want to get the woman out of here.” Keeping the shotgun trained on Curtiz, Martin reached toward the woman's shoulder and gave her a shake. She lazily turned her head and looked at him. “Get up,” he said. “We're going to leave.”

“Leave her alone, Marty. She'll like it here,” Curtiz said. “We'll feed her well, keep her warm and happy. Why don't you just get lost, Marty, we'll call it even.”

Martin shook her shoulder hard. “Get up. We can get out of here.” She looked at him.

“See, Marty? She's got no problem with civilization.” Curtiz looked down at the small table beside him where his holster and sidearm lay. “You're an educated idiot, Marty, that's all. You don't understand Thing One about human nature. I, on the other hand, do.”

“
Get up
,” Martin said to the woman. He took a handful of her blouse and tried to pull her toward his side of the bed.

“Watch this, Martin. I'm going to prove to you that you've got no future. You should have died when the disease came through. Your type is extinct.” Curtiz openly looked down at the .45 in the glossy black holster. “I'm going to pick up that gun, and I'm going to put your ignorant ass away if you aren't out of here by the time I get it leveled on you. I have a mission, Marty, and it's bigger than you.” He looked at Martin straight in the eyes and tapped his teeth behind his lips. “Way bigger than you.”

In the other corner of the room, Max was breathing audibly in short hiccuping gasps and Stewart's eyes were wide and his mouth hung open.

Martin pulled hard on the woman's blouse. “Come on,” he said, trying to maneuver her and keep the shotgun aimed. She looked back at him with empty eyes.

Curtiz unsnapped the strap over the hammer and wrapped his fingers around the grip.

“Come on!” Martin begged the woman. “Get up, get up!” The woman lay inert, like a watery bag of bones and soft muscle.

Curtiz lifted the .45 out of the holster. “You're just pathetic. Now evolution is going to take its intended course.”

Martin touched the trigger and the shotgun went off twice very fast. The noise was so loud it seemed to blank his vision and scramble his thoughts. Then, through the smoke and stink, he saw Curtiz, most of Curtiz, lying on the tipped-over table, and the rest of him, his legs, were blown back against the wall. Tremendous quantities of blood ran out of the seat of the chair and the smoke rose lazily and seemed to gather around the ceiling light. On the bed, the woman still gazed impassively at him.

Gradually he became aware of Max, huddled in his chair making soft “Eee, eee, eee” sounds, and crouched behind him, Stewart panted as though he had just run several miles.

“Stewart, you and the kid, I'm going to take you outside, you're going to get one of the cars, and you're going to leave. Let's go.”

“But—” Stewart wheezed through his open mouth as he moved slowly around the chair. “we — don't have any — clothes.”

“Stewart, if I ever hear the sound of your voice again, I'll kill you. Do you understand? If you say Yes, I'll kill you. Come on, Stewart, you're stupid enough not to believe me. Do you understand? Say yes.”

Stewart said nothing and peed down his leg.

“Move quickly,” Martin said. He was thinking of Ryan now — he didn't know how far out of it he would be, but he expected to see him at every corner.

Stewart moved faster but Max sat huddled, staring across at the blood and mess of Curtiz.

“He was a bad guy, Max. He didn't mind hurting people. And you're old enough to know what a mean little shit you are.” He didn't move or make a sound.

“Stewart, take him with you.”

He came back and dragged the boy after him.

The lights from the house cast vague shadows across the driveway. The rain had stopped but water pooled everywhere. As he herded the two of them toward Stewart's Corvette, Martin sidled up to the lighted window of Ryan's room. He was still sprawled on his bed in the same position Martin had last seen him.

Behind the wheel of the Corvette, nude except for his two wrist watches, Stewart looked milky white and frail. His chest was sunken and he shivered on the leather seats. Max huddled in the seat beside him, and Martin noticed that in the back seat were four or five cardboard boxes of hard liquor, a wide-screen TV, and half a dozen boxes of audio-video add-ons.

Martin wanted to make a good final impression on Stewart before he left.

He rested the barrel of the shotgun on the window ledge and then shoved it forward so the opening of the barrel jammed into the side of Stewart's neck, just below his jaw. He pushed it in firmly.

“You should go somewhere far away, like Maine, because if I ever think you're anywhere near me, Stewart, I'll hunt you down and I will kill you. Anything you want to say, Stewart? Good. Now, leave.”

Martin stood back, the Corvette rumbled to life, moved out of the driveway and down the street and was gone.

Back in the house, Martin checked on the woman — but she was no longer in the bedroom — and for a moment he panicked, but then he saw a light under the bathroom door and heard water running.

Ryan, he thought, what should he do about Ryan? Nothing, he suspected. With no one holding his dope for him and making him do tricks, Ryan would have no reason to do anything but feed his habit and bliss himself to death.

And the woman? He would take care of her, he supposed. Maybe someday she would talk. Maybe not. But he couldn't leave her.

The water continued to run in the bathroom sink.

Martin looked at the closed door a moment longer and had an uneasy feeling. He knocked and said, “Hello? Are you all right?”

No answer.

He turned the knob, expected that it would be locked, but it wasn't. The light on the white tile and porcelain was so brilliant he had to squint, but from the first moment, he knew what he was looking at. There was red everywhere.

She had used double edged blades and had badly cut up her fingers in doing her job, but she had done it thoroughly. She sat on the floor of the shower stall, leaning against the wall, blood red from the neck down. Eyes closed, the only color in her face were the smears of blue eye shadow. No pulse. She looked, as she always had, at peace.

Martin wondered how sane she had been. She had been sane enough to know that her life had become a nightmare.

He closed the door of the shower stall, turned off the water in the sink and the light overhead, and left.

Outside in the driveway, he wondered what he should do about Billy and the others. If he left them, tomorrow they could be slaves again, this time belonging to Ryan and the others. But right now they were free and didn't know it.

He found them in the house next door, sleeping under thin blankets in a row of army cots. Martin turned on the lights and shook Billy hard and got him awake. His eyes focused slowly.

Martin threw the blanket off him, pulled his legs off the edge of the bed, and then pulled him to a sitting position. “Billy, are you awake?”

“Yes.” He blinked quickly five or six times and rubbed his eyes. “Yes, yes, awake.”

“You're free to go.”

“Free?”

“Yes, free. Curtiz is dead. You're free and you and the others should get the hell out of here right now. You can come with me. I have a place.” From there they could figure what to do next.

“Mr. Curtiz have our medicine.”

Martin tried to explain to him but he wasn't sure Billy understood. One of the Hispanics had opened his eyes and was listening. “Do you understand what I'm talking about?” Martin asked him.

“Sure.”

“Curtiz told me you didn't speak English.”

“He wrong, man.”

Martin grinned and shook his head. “You guys, all of you, get up, get in the van, and I'll take you someplace safe. By morning, Ryan and the others could start causing you problems.”

“We want to go to LA,” one of them said.

“LA, yes, good,” Billy said, coming to life. “Family have store there.”

“You all want to go to LA?” Several of the others were coming around now and Martin saw a couple of their heads nod.

“All right. There's an extra can of gas in the back of the van.”

Martin reached out and shook Billy's hand. “Good luck. You guys are going to have some rough days ahead.”

“Yes, we be sick, but we be okay. Only two months he give us heroin. We be sick, but no sweat.” He beamed.

Martin left them, and now he was going home once more. Once more, he thought, starting over.

Chapter 23

Isha loped in a wide circle, her head low from exhaustion, the rain dripping from her muzzle. Turn here, something told her, and she turned, not knowing why, just moving, keeping moving, and turning when urged to do so. She did not notice when the rain slacked off and finally stopped altogether. Turn again, something told her, turn again and keep going, keep going, and then she heard a car noise.

She listened carefully. It was not a car she remembered hearing before. She had no sooner heard it than it grew fainter and was gone.

She lowered her head again and kept moving, turning here, turning there, and suddenly she smelled something familiar. She raised her head and breathed in... yes, now she knew where she was.

She broke into a trot, and two blocks further on, she turned and was on her street. When she got to her own front porch, shivering from the cold, she shook her hair out, nosed the door open, and went inside.

The young cat came out of the bedroom and met her in the middle of the living room and sniffed her nose. Isha lay on her belly in front of the open door and the cat lay beside her and purred quietly.

Perhaps the man would soon return. She would be here waiting if he did. Within moments, she was asleep.

....

Some time later a car came down the street, growing louder until it blotted out all other noises. At its first sound, Isha's head was up and her eyes open. When the car turned into the driveway, its lights slashing across the front of the house, she banged open the screen and pranced out to meet him, wagging her thick tail and already panting with delight.

He spoke to her and stroked her wet fur and then he knelt and looked into her face and stroked her some more and spoke nicely to her.

This was so very good, as it always was when her people returned. She leaned against him and pressed her nose into his clothes. She remembered his smell; she breathed him in and everything was right again. He carried a metal thing that smelled bad and he carried another metal thing that gave off light.

She remembered her pet and wanted him to know about it and bounded toward the house. He called her to him, but she ran only halfway back and stopped. He called her to him again, and Isha wanted to obey... she wanted to go to him... but she wanted to show him.

She bounded away from him and clawed open the screen and nudged the cat awake and then pushed her nose under its belly and got it on its feet. Then she carefully put her jaws around it and carried it to the front door, pushed it open with the side of her head and put her pet down at her master's feet.

It looked up at him with wide yellow eyes, and the man knelt and made soft noises and stroked it as he held Isha next to him and stroked her. This was good. The man liked her pet and he was there with her again and once more everything was the way it was supposed to be.

Chapter 24

“So you have yourself a friend?” he said, kneeling beside her.

Isha threw back her head and licked the side of his neck.

“A manx, even. I've never seen one before. Have you named her?” The young cat fell on its side and let him stroke its vibrating belly. “Have you two been having animal parties while I've been gone? Is that how you got so wet?”

Isha pawed at his knee and licked him again. She couldn't hold herself still.

“You have? Well, now we're going to have a human party.”

Martin went back to the car and lifted out the bag of food he had collected at a neighborhood market on his way home. It had been only 10:30 when he had driven away from Curtiz', and on his way back, he had been haunted by the image of the dead Curtiz, his body blown across the corner of the room with his feet sticking out at an awkward angle, one shoe off. He had been wearing one brown sock and one blue one. And Martin kept remembering the woman's razor-sliced fingers — not the gash where she had cut at her neck. It was her lacerated fingertips he kept seeing.