Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (24 page)

“Maybe this day won't turn out to be so bad after all,” she said aloud.

She limped as quickly as she could toward the canoe. Not only was it the first sign of civilization she'd stumbled across, it was her ticket to freedom. No way Manuelito could catch her if she took to the water—

A great wild beast, a huge cat of some kind, suddenly reared out of the tall grass from where it'd been lurking not twenty yards away and glared at her, fanged jaws slavering and evil intent in its baleful eyes.

“Holy c-c-crap!” Doc stuttered.

It padded forward a step or two, growling dangerously, eyes boring into her, and Doc went into action. She unslung her crossbow with lightning speed, cocked it, popped an iron bolt into place, raised it to her shoulder . . .

... and literally out of the sky a whirling lasso fell over her head, slid past her shoulders, and jerked tight, pinning both her arms to her side, causing her to drop the crossbow. A powerful tug yanked her upward and left her dangling and kicking two feet off the ground. The big cat approached relentlessly as she twisted helplessly like a side of beef strung up in a butcher's shop.

It didn't make her feel any better as she revolved around to see a tall, hard-muscled naked guy with flowing black hair and the greenest eyes she'd ever seen glaring at her. She had no idea where he'd come from. Veins stood out in his neck, beating time in accord with another in his forehead. His face was clenched in an expression of fury and murder was in his eyes.

*   *   *

“You were going to shoot my cat!” Bernie shouted, glaring up at the woman twisting in the loop of his lasso.

And then, he realized that he was looking at a woman and she had an expression of utter terror on her face. But that expression was gone in a moment, as if a shutter had slid down over her features.

“I'm sorry,” she said in an utterly controlled voice. “I didn't know that it was your cat.”

“He,” Bernie automatically corrected.

“He,” she agreed.

Bagheera reached his side and sat down next to him. He automatically put his hand on the cat's head, scratching behind his ears. Bagheera purred like a distant motorboat. Bernie watched the woman's eyes flicker with something. He wasn't sure what. They were blue.

The rest of her was tall and slim. Her hat had fallen off, exposing tousled blond hair cut much shorter than his own. Her features were finely chiseled with a snub nose, high cheekbones, and expressive mouth. It twitched, Bernie saw, and he realized that she was probably hurting. All the anger drained out of him. He reached out and grabbed her around the waist. She flinched, but remained steady in his arms.

“Sorry,” he said, trying not to sound contrite.

Something else moved in her eyes and across her face. Bernie looked away from her, back over his shoulder.

“Let go of the rope!” he yelled, and her entire weight suddenly pressed against him.

He relaxed his grip a bit and she slid down his body. She felt like a feather rippling across his chest. He set her down on the ground and saw that he was only a couple of inches taller than her, and he was six two. She moved her eyes from him to Bagheera, who was already looking bored.

“Is he really your cat?” she asked.

“Oh, sure,” Bernie said. “I raised him from a cub. His name's Bagheera.”

She looked like she might say any number of things, but finally settled on, “Who were you talking to?”

“Oh”—he gestured over his shoulder, pointing briefly to the tree—“just Cheetah.”

She looked at him blankly.

“My ape,” he explained.

Cheetah stuck his head out from the tree's leafy branches and chittered. She looked blank for a few more moments and then it was like a light dawned. Her expression turned guarded.

“You know—” Bernie said, beginning to explain, then noticed the stains on her jeans and the flesh beneath. “Hey, you're bleeding.”

He turned back to Cheetah. “Get the first aid kit from the canoe!” he shouted and Cheetah went down the tree quick as a monkey.

“Oh.” She seemed to rouse herself from a daze. “I'm all right. I just scraped my leg when I fell from my bike—”

“We should take a look at it,” Bernie said. “Wounds turn septic out here, fast.”

She nodded. “Yes, of course.”

“I'm Bernie, by the way.”

“Bernie?” She seemed surprised. “I thought it'd be—”

He frowned, slightly. “I'm not delusional,” he said.

She nodded. “No, of course not.” She thought it over for a moment. “I'm Doc.”

Bernie nodded stiffly. He didn't want to give the game away immediately.

“Well,” he said. “Fine. I'll get you bandaged up and then you can just go on your way. Doc.”

He said the name doubtfully and looked around, almost suspiciously. No one else was on the road. She was probably one of their scouts.

“Wherever that may be.”

Doc grinned weakly. “I'm sorry,” she said. “You're being . . . most kind. I'm afraid that we've gotten off on the wrong foot. It was my fault. About the cat and all.”

She looked at Bagheera lying at Bernie's feet, his big black-tipped tail flipping about impatiently. He yawned hugely and the girl flinched again at the size and nearness of his teeth.

Bernie sighed inwardly. “No, I understand. My lifestyle is not . . . usual. Most people don't get it.”

Cheetah arrived, brandishing the first aid kit, a white, medium-sized plastic box adorned with a red cross. Don Carlos had been something of a survivalist. He'd stockpiled all sorts of useful equipment and supplies. Ironically, the space he'd dedicated to guns and ammo had turned out to be totally wasted.

Cheetah handed the kit to Bernie, and then grinned hugely at Doc.

“This is Doc, Cheetah. Doc.” The chimp nodded energetically.

“You may feel more comfortable doing this yourself,” Bernie added, and gave her the kit.

“Thanks,” she took it and sank to the ground, wincing.

She tore the jeans away from the thigh wound, the worn denim parting easily, and frowned at the sight of it. Suddenly she looked up, glancing at Bagheera.

“The smell of blood won't, um, affect him, will it?”

Bernie sighed, again. “No. He's really not used to eating people,” Bernie explained.

Doc nodded. “Yes, of course not.”

The skin of her leanly muscled thigh was pale, Bernie noticed. Apparently she didn't get out in the sun much. The sight of it might not be affecting Bagheera, Bernie thought, but he wasn't too sure about himself.

“So, uh, what,” he asked, “are you doing out here, anyway?”

She didn't look up as she swabbed her scraped thigh with antiseptic and flicked away bits of gravel and dirt.

“Running away from a biker gang,” she said.

*   *   *

He wasn't, Doc thought as she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, naked after all. Quite. He wore a pair of really nice moccasins with some great beadwork and fringe and a plain loincloth with front and back flaps. Nothing else was left to her imagination.

In her three years in Florida she'd seen a lot of near-naked male bodies and even a few naked ones in her day—

Though that day seems like quite a while ago,
she mused—

And she had to admit that Bernie's was pretty much near the top of the list. His skin had been turned a deep bronze by the Floridian sun and his face was rather pleasant, too, as he studiously looked anywhere and everywhere except right at her, except when he was looking right at her. Not like when she'd first seen him, burning with raw emotion, veins standing out in his neck like cords, visible even in his forehead, throbbing in time with his pounding heart, pressing her against his hard body . . .

She lost track for a second, then caught herself, finished bandaging her thigh and repacked the supplies. She held the box out to Bernie, but the monkey snatched it away with a curiously human-looking expression of suspicion on his face.

“That's all right, Cheetah,” Bernie said smoothly. “Doc is a friend.”

Bernie, standing behind the animal, gestured discreetly at her with his chin.

“Oh,” Doc said, smiling rather more widely than normal. “Yes. Me—I mean, I, I'm your friend, Cheetah.”

Bernie nodded encouragingly and made an encircling gesture with his arms.

Her smile faltered, but she caught it before it could entirely slip away and she opened her arms. The monkey waddled forward and put his rather long and ungainly arms around her and pulled her to him. Doc could feel the ungodly strength in those limbs and had the sudden uncomfortable realization that Cheetah could tear off her arms and beat her to death with them without really exerting himself. His big, white, strong-looking teeth were damn close to her throat. The hair on his thickly furred body was coarse against her skin. He smelled a little less terrible than she thought he would.

“See, he likes you,” Bernie said. Cheetah pulled back and grinned widely, too close to her face. Doc looked up to see him smiling smugly down at her. “Okay, Cheetah, let's go.”

Cheetah released her and waddled over and put an arm around Bagheera's neck. The big cat came lithely to his feet and they walked off together. Bernie extended his hand toward her and automatically she took it. He lifted her, utterly, she was sure, unconscious of his strength. It felt almost as if she were being pulled toward him by some completely previously unknown variety of gravitic force. They stood closer together than she normally liked to be, especially to a stranger, and then Bagheera made a strange huffing sound. Bernie looked away at him.

“Right,” he said to the cat. He looked back at Doc. “We have to get going. Lots to do today.”

“Of course,” Doc said.

Neither made a move. Bernie frowned at her. Not at her, actually, but clearly something was bothering him.

“You'll be all right?” Bernie asked.

“Sure,” Doc said, and cursed silently.

What's wrong with me?
she wondered.
I'm certainly not all right, stuck out in nowhere with no food no supplies no transportation nowhere to go with nothing to do, but I'll be damned to admit it to this big ape—

“I don't want to pry,” Bernie said thoughtfully, “but a moment ago you said something about escaping from a biker gang? What was that all about? Because I don't like the idea of those hombres roaming around here on the loose.”

“Oh.” Doc felt vaguely disappointed. “Them. They'll get tired of the country quickly enough and head back to Miami soon. Just . . . just keep out their way and you'll be fine.”

She hoped. Bernie himself seemed to have doubts about her explanation, but she didn't feel like going into detail because it was a long story and none of his business. But his eyes had narrowed and she didn't like the look in them.

“Okay. Here's the story. Short version. Soon after things had Changed, I was with my boyfriend in Miami, and you know how bad it was—”

Bernie shrugged. “No, not really. I was up here at Jungleland—”

“Jungleland? You mean, the safari park?”

“Sure. Me and Cheetah and Bagheera and the rest. Yeah, it was tough, but—”

“You want to hear my story?” Doc was getting a little angry.

She wasn't sure why, but here was something she rarely—well, never—spoke about and at his request she was trying to tell him—

“Sure,” he said, calm as a pond on a windless day. “Go ahead.”

“All right.”

He nodded, made a gesture to continue.

“All right.” Doc gathered herself. “Anyway, in Miami it was bad, really bad.” She looked at him as if expecting him to dispute her statement, but he just gestured again. “So, after a while, Chad, my boyfriend, traded me to this biker gang for a case of canned chili—”

“Wait—Chad? Canned chili?” Bernie seemed somewhere between bemused and outraged. “What for, I mean, why did—”

“I'm getting to it.” The memories threatened to derail her narrative.

At the time the humiliation and the terror had nearly broken her, so she'd put it all behind a wall she'd built in her mind and never looked at it, ever again.

“I told you, it was awful. There wasn't enough food, so Chad sold me to them.” She frowned grimly. “Sometimes I wonder whatever happened to that bastard. His trust fund has surely gone the way of my engineering degree, so I suppose that he's out there somewhere peddling his latest line of horseshit. Unless someone killed and maybe ate him. Sometimes that thought cheers me up when things are looking gloomy.”

Doc looked up to see Bernie staring at her.
Have I overshared?
she wondered. She hurried on.

“Anyway—I had almost gotten my engineering degree and the gang figured that they could use me. Like I said, everything in Miami had fallen apart. The center could not hold. Nothing worked anymore. Chaos, crazy shit you can't even imagine. These bikers were big in the drug trade. Cooked most of the meth in southern Florida. But their stuff started breaking down and it just got worse. They knew how to cook meth, sure, but the theory, the science, crap, it might as well have been nuclear physics to them. I found work-arounds, held things together for a while. But eventually even that all went to hell. They started looking for something else to exploit to keep their little empire together, because almost by default they'd become The Man. When the jefe died and his moron son took over, I knew I had to split, so I came up with this scheme.”

Bernie was listening intently. “Scheme?”

“Yeah. I had an idea.” Doc was proud of this part. “Sugar, man. Sugar.”

Bernie's frowned. “Sugar?”

Doc nodded eagerly. “Of course. Everyone likes sugar. I sold the gang on the idea. I knew that there was a cane-growing area near Okeechobee with a refinery and everything. I thought we could head out into this wilderness, check out the setup, see if we could salvage anything from the refinery, whatever—but I actually planned to run off. But Manuelito, the old jefe's son, gummed up the works. He has a brain like cement. Once it congeals around an idea it becomes hard as rock and impossible to change. He insisted on coming along, with a looting party. The boys were getting bored and to tell the truth supplies were running out. He also, well, he had a liking for me. He kept his hands off when Chito was alive, but when the old jefe died, well . . . I finally managed to slip . . . away . . . early . . . this . . . morning . . .”