Splicer (35 page)

Rusty came to first. Even before he raised two swollen eyelids, he could make out the difference now between the sky and the horizon. It must be nearing morning.  And the rain had slowed to a drizzle. Drops the size of quarters, building under the tent of the pine stand, fell on his face and chest. He moved his arm, the left one, and a dull jolt shot through his shoulder. It felt numb, swollen, and distant. A prickly sensation made his palm itch. He pulled a pine bow off his chest and tried to sit up.

The depression at the base of the rock outcropping had been collecting wind blown pine needles and discarded branches for centuries. A spongy thick mass of humus and moss formed a cushion, which broke their fall. Rusty was scraped and bruised from the sharp descent through the branches, but his bones appeared to be unbroken. He rolled over on the wet ground and found Jayne's hand. At first she appeared to be face down on the ground, but her head, on its side, was covered in a mass of stringy curls. He pushed her hair aside and felt her cheek. He could feel her breath on his hand. A long ugly gash trailed across her forehead. Her jeans and jacket were torn in several places. As he touched her, her mouth parted and she coughed. He placed his finger to her lips to quiet her.

Above them, through the crown of the trees, he could just make out the rim of the rock where they had hung before the fall. Rusty had no idea how long they had laid on the ground. If Grieves had heard them, seen them fall, there would be no reason for him not to take a path down the slope a few hundred yards to their right and finish them off while they lay dazed. They must have crashed down through the trees out of his sight. From a distance it might have sounded like a hasty retreat. He could be close or he could be at the other end of the lake. There was no way he could know. Jayne sat up, touching her forehead with her fingers. There was dried blood on her hand. Another injury courtesy of the needle-like conifer branches. She moved stiffly.

"How long have we been here?" she asked, her voice low and throaty.

"I wish I knew," he whispered. "But somehow, we managed not to break our necks."

"No, but everything else hurts, my face is cut to ribbons, I've chipped a tooth ...  and I have to pee so bad ... I don't suppose you know where the ladies room is?"

He pointed randomly into the trees. She got up awkwardly and limped away behind him.

"Careful, Jayne.  We don't know where he is, and we don't want to be caught with out pants down." He heard her stop. She was right behind him, no more than six to eight feet away.  "Great!" she whispered. "Now I know how a deer feels during hunting season."  She unzipped her pants and crouched awkwardly. Over the sound of a loon's call he could hear her urinating on the soggy ground. Then he felt the call of nature himself.

"Hurry up," he whispered. "We've got to get moving."

She crawled back when she was done and looked at his arm.  "The rain has kept it clean ...  but you've lost a lot of blood. How does it feel?"

"Numb. Like a slab of wood. My knee feels like a football."

She felt it through his gray sodden slacks.  "Must have happened when you fell. Now what?"

"Hear that loon? That means the lake is close by. I think we should head for the shoreline. Follow that. Forget the road. There's got to be other people around."

"Can you walk?"

He stood up but he needed her help. His head was spinning. He heard a soft buzzing sound like a swarm of insects floating around his head. He wanted to lie down on the ground again, but then he'd wet himself for sure.

"Now it's my turn," he said, and stumbled over the dead fall about twenty yards to a clump of scrawny tamarack trees. He unzipped his fly with his good arm and began to empty his bladder. As he felt the release of pressure, he groaned slightly with relief then sucked in his breath. To the right, distantly, he heard the snapping of a twig. He looked through the mist, the far trees like ghosts in the flat early morning light. A figure, obviously Grieves, was standing in a small clearing, his rifle pointed into the sky. He was still hunting them. Rusty froze. Muscles tensed. A barrage of pain sent messages to his brain and he grew dizzy again. The picture of Grieves wavered and slid across his vision. Now he couldn't tell if Grieves was heading in his direction or away. He stepped back slowly, mindful of the broken branches underfoot, his balance uncertain. If he fell into the thick deadfall, within seconds Grieves would have him in his sights. He lumbered back towards Jayne who was rubbing her neck muscles, brown pine needles tangled in her hair.

"It's Grieves,” he whispered.

"Shit!"

"Time to head to the lake." Trouble was, he didn't have any idea where the lake was. The echoey loon calls seemed to come from every direction. They clambered over a ridge of decayed logs then headed down, deeper into the forest, towards a theoretical shore. Behind them they heard the sounds of what they imagined was pursuit.

:

Grieves had never hunted as a child, only plinked at tin cans and bottles with a pellet gun. He had imagined though what a hunt would be like. He knew this property, knew its boundaries, knew its gullies and rises. And his quarry didn't, which gave him a surge of energy. Three parts of the long rectangle of the land that the Last Resort sat on were surrounded by water. Red Lake. Deep and cold with a barren rocky shore. A few distant islands. The fourth side narrowed and met the access road, which opened into an inhospitable forest of pine, tamarack and swamp. A rail line, the last remaining active connection with several northern Ontario mining towns, crossed one corner of the property.

Grieves’ quarry might head to the lake and that would trap them on a barren exposed shore. Once he dumped their bodies into the cold lake water, the fish would erase the evidence. The other option was the road. If they headed in that direction, in the daylight, he would retrieve the Yamaha three-wheeler they kept in the tool shed and track them down. But for some reason, likely confusion, they appeared to be headed east, towards the rail line. They were obviously lost.

He carried the gun, like his father had always trained him, aimed high. He felt better now. His head hurt but his vision had cleared. It was a distant throbbing. His memory was spotty - in fact he couldn't remember exactly how he even got to the cabin. But wasn't that common in a concussion? Short-term memory loss? He felt the jumble of shells in his coat pocket. Lots of ammo. So let's try it out again. He lowered the gun.

The bullet traveled in front of a blistering shock wave that broke through the branches just above their heads. It skipped like a supersonic stone. Rusty and Jayne lowered their heads and continued down into the darkness of the ravine. There was no sense that they were traveling in the right direction. In fact, they felt the opposite was true. Something felt wrong. They heard another shot.

"I wish I knew how many bullets he had?" snarled Jayne, who was ragged, sweaty and bent over from the constant challenge of the cluttered forest floor.

"I think he's finally snapped. Weeks ago he acted demented. That crowbar to the head must have really rocked his boat," said Rusty.

Jayne dwelled on that thought for a moment. It was no consolation. She wanted to believe that she could think her way out of this problem, the way she did in the courtroom, her wits her best survival weapon.
But if Grieves is a mad man, did logic have any currency out here in the sticks?
  "I think he's shooting wild," she finally said, under her breath. They were loping now, the forest growing thinner and the ground rising up again.

"Good. Once he uses up his ammunition, all he is to us is a fat little guy in the bush with a hole in his head. I'd love to take him back and throw him off that rock. He'd probably land a little harder than we did."

Jayne swore and pulled her torn pant leg away from the grip of a fallen branch. "Why didn't you just leave me?" asked Jayne.

"What? And have all this fun without you?"

"That was a really stupid thing to do. Endanger both of us. You could have been killed."

They heard another shot, this one ringing off the rock around them. "Can we have this discussion later?" asked Rusty, beginning to pant.

"We may not have time. What you said up there ... was that shock? Delirium?"

"Hey. I was trying to take advantage of you. I had you in a spot. A typical male thing.”

"If you wanted to cop a feel, you could have just asked." Rusty was just behind her, slowing. "I don't know if I would have had the courage to do what you did up there. Not ask, I mean. But to just let myself go," she said, pulling herself up the incline.

"You've always had that problem, counselor. I'd do it again," he said. She stopped for a second, turned, and their eyes met across a muzzy dawn. Then the hill they were on seemed to shake with the vibration of a giant footstep. It felt like the end of the world. He was beginning to wonder if there was another deeper reason for naming this place after the world's final clash.

All at once, the sky opened up again. A thunderhead roared across the lake, a deep low explosion that pressed down on the three humans like the hand of God. At the same time, the Central 815, a freight train, 122 cars loaded with bauxite ore from Pickle Lake, bore it's weight down onto the steel track that lay just north of the intersection of the cut-in road that crossed the entrance to
Ragnarock
. What Jayne and Rusty felt was the rocky shelf they were clinging to, moving with the surging multi-tonned weight of the approaching train. They resumed their climb and came to a rail bed, created on a shelf of granite, a step carved out of the Canadian Shield. Beyond the rail bed, the granite continued like a wall, which rose another thirty to forty feet. It looked climbable, but only with great difficulty. And they would be exposed to Grieves' sights. Like ducks in a shooting gallery.

To their right, a hundred yards away, the rail line disappeared into a ragged mouth in the wall of the slope. A train tunnel.

Rusty signaled to Jayne and they ran, their heads down, towards the black entrance. Once there, they felt momentarily safe. The idea of disappearing into the dark of the tunnel was appealing to both of them. The rail line in the other direction would only take them back in Grieves' direction, as would a return down the slope they just climbed. This was an easy decision.

The tunnel was low and narrow - rough-hewn. It appeared to curve around the inside of the hill. There was no visible light at the other end. There was also no way to determine its length. A hundred yards? A thousand? Perhaps, the longer the better. The need to escape into it was strong. Grieves would be close, although the incline would slow him down, especially with the rifle he was carrying.

The thunder boomed again but they heard another sound, which made them jump. Now they could hear the train more than feel it. It was still distant, but the sound they heard told them it was powerful and moving fast.

"Which way was it coming from?" asked Jayne, her hand on his right arm.

"I can't tell," he said. "But you know what? It doesn't matter. We don't have a choice."

"What if it goes through the tunnel?”

He shrugged. "It's too narrow. We'd have to lay on the track."

"You're crazy!" she looked frightened.

"Come on. Before Grieves sees us." He started into the tunnel but moved slowly, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. The walls and roadbed were covered in soot and diesel oil, sucking up what meager light made its way into the entrance. The sharp smell of creosote was everywhere. Rusty noticed for the first time that Jayne was holding his hand. They began to jog together slowly. Shapes becoming more discernible. Still, they could see no evidence of another entrance to the tunnel.

:

Grieves stopped at the bottom of the rise and squinted. When he heard the rumble of the train he smiled. The 3:15. A thundering, sulfur-stained monster that shook the rocks and made the pictures fall off the walls of the cabin in the early morning hours. The shelf above him was only wide enough to contain the train. His escapees would have to either climb the cliff beyond it, or jump back down into his waiting sights. And there was no way they would risk the tunnel. As a small boy he had wandered into it, then felt his blood turn cold when he heard the roar of the engines in the distance. Once in the tunnel there was no escape. His father had warned him.

Sometimes the boxcars, wavering slightly would actually touch the cave walls, leaving deep telltale claw marks. He had seen them. And the tunnel was long. He put the butt of the gun down against a patch of moss and rested. They would be back.

The roar and the rumble of the diesel engines was growing louder but neither of the two tiny humans, groping their way through the tunnel, could discern the direction the train was coming from. If they could, they would be faced with a tough decision. The tunnel was as dark and foreboding as a coffin. There was still no clue to its length. It could run for miles, Rusty surmised, his head aching from the adrenaline pumping through his tired frame. Then they heard a long, wavering whistle. It was ominous, strident, awful. Jayne hesitated and stumbled. Rusty lost her for a moment in the dark. He called her name but the throaty whine of the trains whistle roared again and covered it. It was closer. Very close. Do they run back or ahead? Or just wait for a speeding mass of steel to roar over them, end their misery?

Rusty groped for Jayne in the dark. If she were unconscious, he would have to carry her. They would never make it. Could a human crouch down on the track, bury one's head in his arms and wait for the train to pass? Rusty doubted it. He had crawled under a parked train as a boy - saw the heavy brake cables and connectors hanging down, some only inches from the ground. Their heavy steel braiding traveling at sixty miles an hour would beat a human to a pulp. Suddenly he found Jayne's back. She was trying to stand.

"I think I've twisted something. We're not going to make it are we?" Her voice sounded child-like but calm.

"Any minute now we'll see the other end. And we'll be out of here." He put his arm around her waist and they limped forward, one agonizing slow step at a time. Rusty pictured the exit in his mind. Then the smoking train heaving into view, headed into the tunnel. That would be the worst, he thought. No hope. Just stand there and wait for it to come. Your whole universe a screaming, roaring, nightmare. From the back was better. At least we would be running, escaping. At least we'd have a chance.

:

Grieves waited for a few moments, then picked up the rifle and clumsily climbed up the slope. It was easier because he had done it several times before. He knew where the handholds and steps were. He hesitated at the crest, looking for the train. Its roar was increasing by the second. His two guests were nowhere in sight. The fools had gone into the tunnel.

Grieves swore. He had never had the nerve to walk from one end of that smoky tube in the rock to the other, so he had no sense of its length. It could be only a few hundred yards for all he knew. His father’s warnings may have only been exaggerated to cool his fascination. Beyond the other side, the track flattened out, cut through the forest and headed for a small town about fifty miles away. If they made the end of the tunnel, they were free.

Grieves slapped his head in frustration and felt a dull curious pain. It was deep inside.
Something
was deep inside. Like water in an ear. Something was in there. Rain? Infection? A virus floating about in his machinery? Snipping and cutting? He looked dazed for a moment. Then the rage returned. Rusty had put the virus there. Cracked his skull with the crowbar and while he hunched over, his head filled with mad musk, Rusty had infected him. A worm was in there. Unraveling. Unraveling
him
.

Grieves howled, the veins in his neck extended. He grabbed the rifle and ran into the screaming mouth of the tunnel.

:

For Jayne the world had gone mad. She was moving through a nightmare, one step at a time. She heard a scream of madness. Then the terrible shrill whistle, this time almost upon them. She could feel it's steamy breath on her neck. She could smell decay and the oily stink of creosote on her skin. But something was there, compelling her to move.

Rusty heard the train this time and knew that it was close. The sound of its awful progress was no longer an echo but the real percussion wave hurtling down the tunnel, striking his ears. The ground was shaking. Still there was no light. He studied the distance from track to tunnel wall trying to imagine standing there, clinging to the wall, the incredible roar and scream of the train buffeting them. Was it possible? And when to decide to stop running?  Would there be a headlight?  He was shaking now, pulling on Jayne's body, urging them forward while someone kept turning up the volume, turning up the volume.

:

Grieves worst fears came tumbling back down at him. The tunnel. The roar of the train. The smell. He looked back and saw it then and he froze. The train. It was curving around the bend, steam and smoke pouring out of the stacks, it's baleful eye pinning him. He knew then that he was no longer the predator. But he raised the gun anyway. He fired at the eye. The train moved toward him, almost blocking the tunnel. He fired again, his legs opened to support his aim. The ground was moving. He fired once more, the wall of steel almost upon him. The light flashed, flared, and then went out. There was a puff of vaporized glass and tungsten. He had put out its eye. The train was now blind. Grieves smiled and raised his gun in triumph. Then the engine struck him, flattened him - then flung him aside like an insect. The train ground him into inconsequential bone and gristle beneath its wheels and moved on.