The Upright Man (31 page)

“Oh yes?” Phil said, suspiciously. “And who’s that?”

“An ex-cop. The Upright Man fucked up his life pretty bad,” Nina said. She tramped a couple of yards in the direction Connelly was looking, also peering hard between the trees. “He wants him as much as we do.”

“Is this guy dangerous?”

I nodded. “But not to us, I hope.”

Suddenly Nina called out, startling the rest of us.

“John!” she shouted. “John—are you there?”

Four pairs of eyes were open wide, watching the spaces between the trees. Nothing seemed to move.

She tried again. “If you’re there, John, come up here. We want him too. Do this the right way. Come with us.”

Nothing stirred. Nina shook her head.

“Just shadows,” she said. She frowned, then looked up. “Oh, Jesus, great. Now it’s starting to snow.”

She was right. Tiny little flakes of white had begun to spiral down.

“Wish you hadn’t done that,” Connelly said. “Sound travels out here. Can do, anyhow. I wouldn’t want this guy to know we’re coming.”

“Oh, he’ll know,” she said. “Right, Ward?”

“Yes. And I’ve got to warn you, Sheriff, it won’t make any difference. He won’t run, he won’t hide. He’ll just do what he was going to do.”

The policeman reached across his shoulder and pulled his shotgun over into his hands. He stood with it in the port arms position and looked down at me. Though Connelly was ten, fifteen years younger than he’d been, there was something of my father in his eyes; a cool appraisal, and a sense of not really understanding the concept of backing down.

“Okay,” he said. “Then that’s the way it will be.”

The wind was picking up now, and snow swirled around his face.

PATRICE
WAS COLDER THAN SHE HAD EVER BEEN
before in her life. The man had let her put a coat on before leaving the cabin, and for most of the journey she wished she hadn’t. When you’re moving, a coat is no use to you: it’s the parts it doesn’t cover, the face and hands—especially hands tied behind you—that get the coldest. All a coat does is sweat you up. But for the two hours they’d now been sitting, waiting, she’d been very grateful for it. Probably dead without it, she knew. Her nose had run a little, and the water had frozen into little icicles in her nose. She’d asked if he could retie her hands in front, so she could keep them warmer, but he’d said no. She knew why. Her arms and shoulders were beginning to hurt. A lot. This was the start of what she knew he would do if he didn’t get what he’d come for by sitting still. He thought this would make some difference to what happened here. She thought he was wrong.

The snow began to fall just after four o’clock. The light had begun to die and though some of the flakes sparkled as they fell, others looked like tiny floating shadows. She knew that some of the locals regarded snow as a cross to bear. She didn’t. Even after three years, to her it still seemed like magic. It made her sad, sometimes, bringing
memories of Bill, and the children when they were much younger; but nobody said all magic was of a happy kind.

The man had seated her close to the steep wall of the gully, which was something. At least she only got the wind from one direction. Meanwhile he sat up on the low bank on the other side of the stream, with his gun on his lap, in utter silence. If he was cold, he didn’t show it.

The snow had been falling for maybe twenty minutes, and getting harder, when she saw him suddenly look up. He listened for a moment.

“Hear something?”

“Long distance away,” he said.

“I really have no idea what you’re talking about, you know. Tom saw a bear. That’s it. I led you out here because you’re a very bad man and I think it would be best if you froze to death somewhere you’d never be found.”

“Maybe,” he said. “I could see you doing that.” He smiled. “I like you. You remind me of someone.”

“Your mother?”

“No,” he said. “Not her.”

“Is she still alive?”

He said nothing, and she knew suddenly and with certainty that this man’s mother was dead, not buried in a conventional place, and that he knew where the bones lay.

“Were you an only child?”

Henrickson’s head swiveled toward her.

She shrugged. “I’m just moving my mouth to keep my face from freezing solid.” This was true. In teaching she had also discovered that very occasionally, you could get through to a child by just talking and talking at them. This man wasn’t a child, she knew that. He was a psychopath. Perhaps they worked the same. “Hey—and maybe they’ll hear us. Come see what we’re talking about. So were you, or not?”

“I became one,” he said, without emotion. “I had three mothers. All of them are now dead, which gave me strength. I was born in a forest, my father killed my mother, and then people came and killed him too. They kept me and my
brother for a little while, and then they kept him and got rid of me. People tried to make me live in places, but I didn’t, until in the end I lived with my final mother not far from here.”

“Did she treat you badly?”

“Patrice, I am so far beyond pop psychology you wouldn’t believe.”

“So who do I remind you of?”

“The woman who was my grandmother for a while.”

Patrice supposed that was something like a compliment, for what that was worth. “Why do you want to do this?”

“Killing is what animals do. Carnivores kill to eat. Wild dogs kill the young of other wild dogs. Flies lay their eggs in the flesh of dying mammals. They don’t care and neither should we. Arab slave traders in Zanzibar would throw sick men and women into the waters of the bay, so as not to pay duty on goods they couldn’t sell. Russian peasants in Siberia sold human cuts in the killing winters of the 1920s. We are the animal that will invent flying machines and then crash them into buildings full of our own kind. We are the ones that will rigorously attempt genocide. Humans are animals and we kill and we destroy.”

“I’d like to hear you sounding more like you thought these were bad things.”

“It’s neither good nor bad. It’s merely the truth. A gun is just a bridge that kills. It’s one of our machines. Our species walked into Europe, where beings had lived for hundreds of thousands of years, and within a few millennia it was ours. How do you think that happened?”

“We were better adapted.”

“In one way only. Our advantage was the willingness to kill other humanlike creatures. We killed the Neanderthals until we ran out of them and then we started on each other. We don’t respect animals like hyenas and vultures—scavengers. We glorify lions, tigers, sharks—animals with fresh blood around their mouths. The fact we have words and thumbs and delusions of spiritual grandeur makes no
difference. There is no evil. There is no good. There is only behavior, and this is ours.”

“So go kill someone already. You obviously have before, right?”

He didn’t answer, which was somehow worse. Frozen though she was, Patrice felt the flesh on her neck crawl. She knew she was with someone who did not understand what others understood. “So go kill some other
human.
There’s millions of us. Why not go kill some more of them?”

“Because it’s time to do this.”

“So say the voices, right?”

“No one has done this for many lifetimes. They’ve killed other things. Symbols of power, women, babies. They’re all just standing in for the wild man, the real sacrifice.”

“For God’s sake—and just how is that supposed to work?”

“Because it does.”

“You kill something, and somehow that retunes the music of the spheres? You really
believe
that?”

“It’s true, and if you’d been born only a few hundred years ago, you’d know it. Now we believe in good dental hygiene instead. We believe it matters which long-distance operator we choose. We try not to tread on the cracks.”

“You’re insane,” she said.

“I don’t think so.” His eyes were sharp in the gathering gloom. “And your opinion is of no interest to me.”

“Don’t tell me anything else then. I don’t want to hear it.”

“Fine. But you should know this. The grandmother I mentioned?”

She swallowed.

“I killed her. I pushed her down the stairs when I was twelve years old. I know it’s what she really wanted. She died fast and well. If your friends don’t show up soon, you’re going to die too. But it’s going to be very, very slow. People ten thousand miles away will turn in their sleep.”

Without even realizing she was doing it, Patrice had scrunched herself a foot farther away from the man, which was as far as she could go. She still felt far too close. She
had sometimes thought, over the last couple of years, that she was ready for Death. She didn’t want to play his game, but without Bill there wasn’t a great deal to keep her here and maybe it was time to dance with the Man. Huddled in the snow with someone who seemed both less and more than human, she now knew that wasn’t true. When you met the Man himself, you realized that to dance with him would never be something heroic or meaningful. It would just make you dead. She didn’t want to join their silent ranks.

She wondered what to say next. It was snowing harder now, and nearly full dark, and she was trapped in the forest, hands tied, with a lunatic.

She decided to say nothing at all.

Suddenly he stood.

He looked up at the top of the gully wall behind her. Then turned and stared behind him. His head was cocked, his mouth open very slightly. He stepped over the stream and vaulted to the top of the gully wall as if making a single step.

“They’re coming,” he said.

He didn’t seem pleased. Patrice wasn’t even sure who he was talking about. He stood there a moment, as if smelling the wind, and then disappeared like the moon passing behind cloud.

Patrice thought about running, but her legs had gone dead and she knew there was nowhere to go. Instead she curled up small, closed her eyes, and thought of Verona.

THIS
TIME WE ALL HEARD IT
.

A brittle snapping sound, not close. It was sharp enough to cut through the swelling wind and the hot, ragged sound of breathing in my head. Connelly turned quickly.

“Get down.”

Nina put her hand on my back and pushed. The two of us broke sideways, bent over. Tried to run, but ended up in a fast stumbling shamble through foot-deep snow. We split behind two trees, close by a six-foot outcrop of rock, guns now in our hands.

We watched as Connelly and his deputy backed toward us, rifles in shooting position. Phil’s voice was low and cracked a little, but his backward steps were measured and tight. “You see him?”

Connelly shook his head; kept his gun moving in a smooth, thirty-degree arc.

They made it round to our side of the outcrop. When they were in place I glanced behind us—it’s not always easy to tell sound direction in the woods, and I’ve seen all those movies. I couldn’t make out much. The land rose darkly, more trees, rocks, bushes, snow. The contrasts turned everything into one of those Escher drawings where different interpretations flip back and forth before your
eyes, and then coalesce into muddy I-don’t-know. Nothing was moving that I could see.

I looked ahead again. Nothing was moving there either, except for falling snow. All of us turned our heads, slowly, nothing but eyes and ears. Seconds came and went.

The moment burst. The tension in my legs began to slacken off. My right hand, ungloved, felt cold and useless. I swapped the gun to the left and rubbed my right under my armpit, wincing as the shoulder took the strain of the abrupt movement. I felt better when I had the gun in the right hand again, even though it felt like the heavy metal might just freeze right to it.

“It’s not John out there,” I said. “Surely.”

“No. We’re close now. It’s the Upright Man.”

“So what now?” Phil whispered.

“We keep going,” Connelly said. He revealed a small device hidden in the palm of his hand. I’d wondered how he was keeping track of where we were in the dark. He thumbed a button and a tiny screen lit up for a moment, then went off. “Can only be three, four hundred yards ahead.”

“He must have heard us coming.”

“There’s four of us and one of him,” Nina said. “He’s not going to come right at us. He’s going to wait until we split up—or move without thinking. Then he’ll take us one at a time.”

Connelly nodded. “So how do you want to do it?”

“Stay tight. You think it’s directly ahead?”

“Pretty much.”

“So let’s head up around this side, climb left, go at it from the side. What are we headed for exactly?”

“It’s a gully. We’ve come at it from the top. The land’s gentler to the north, where we are, steeper the other side. Banks flatten out to the right, get a lot higher out to the east, on the left.”

Nina looked at me. “What do you think: pull round right, try and come up the course?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Let’s do it.”

WE
MOVED MORE SLOWLY NOW
,
AND TOOK OUR
breaths quietly. Suddenly I was seeing every piece of wood sticking up out of the snow, making sure I went nowhere near it. We moved tightly together, in a rough square, six feet apart, each keeping watchful eyes on our own quadrant.

Connelly kept us bearing left. The ground started to rise sharply into a craggy ridge and I had to use my hand to steady myself against the rocks as we climbed. I felt dog tired, brain wiped, my head fuzzy. My foot slipped on wet rock and I cracked my knee but barely noticed. Most of me hurt in one way or another. When I made the top I turned at the waist and reached down; Nina grabbed my hand and pulled herself up.

The forest floor curved down away on both sides, as if we were making our way along some huge animal’s spine.

We slipped among the trees, crouched low, barely breathing now.

Suddenly a howling wind whipped in, swirling up at us from the miles of forest below. It came with a coldness that was like a nail hammered into both ears, and it shook the branches all around us.

“Jesus,” Nina whispered.

The sound went on and on, a vast shivering wrapped around a frigid shriek. It felt like an object, hard to push against, and perhaps one of us straightened up a little, maybe even more than one. Just enough.

There was a flat
crack
and a grunt and I saw Connelly turn with a jerk and fall over on his back.

“Oh, shit, Chief, no . . .”

I was dimly aware of Nina and Phil moving fast around me, taking cover behind trees. I threw myself forward on the ground and pulled myself level with the sheriff.

Connelly’s face was tight. “I’m okay,” he said.

I pulled open the front of his coat and saw a dark blotch swelling over the lower left side of his chest. I put his hand over the wound, pressed it down tight. He was breathing deep and steady. He was tough.

I looked down and saw Nina crouched three yards away, arms locked, pointing her gun back down the way we’d come. The deputy squatted with his back to a tree. The wind was fading to a tidal roar.

“Phil, come up here,” I said. He stood. There were two more flat cracking sounds. “Keep DOWN!”

He dropped flat on his stomach and crawled quickly up to me, combat-style. Nina fired two rounds in the direction of the noise.

“Shit, Chief,” Phil said when he saw the blood.

“Stay with him,” I said.

I scooted along to Nina. “You see him?”

She shook her head. “Too dark. He could’ve been tracking us for half an hour, waiting until it got like this.”

“From the direction Connelly was hit, the shot had to come from somewhere over there,” I said, pointing down and right. “He’s trying to come around behind us.” I glanced up at the rock face behind. “I’m going to head up that crest there, loop back down, try and do the same to him. You see anything move, shoot at it. Knock yourself out.”

“Be careful,” she said.

“I’ll try.” I started to move but she grabbed my arm. I looked at her cold, white face. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll do better than that.”

I waved at Phil, indicated what I was going to do. He nodded, and turned so his rifle was pointing the same way as Nina’s gun.

Then I clambered quickly up the rocks. As I reached the top there was another cracking sound from below, followed quickly by two more shots from Nina. I heard her swear, then start to reload.

I crawled ten yards and then lay flat on my stomach, looked down. The mountainside cut away sharply here, cold and empty. There was nothing to lock on to below, no pattern to recognize. The shapes of trunk and branch and rock were endless and random and as soon as you moved your eyes you lost track of where you were. All you could do was take it steadily, move your head slowly . . .

I saw him.

The glimpse was so faint it could have been just a shadow, a fleeting artifact imagined out of the darkness and the drifting snow. But then I saw it again, and I knew I’d seen him move.

He was about thirty yards away, just where we’d thought he’d be.

I crawled a few feet farther along the ridge until I was masked by a small stand of trees. Got up onto my knee and one foot. Looked ahead, and judged it. If he hadn’t seen me get into this position, I could probably make it. I could sprint from behind this stand, head quickly out right and down, making for a pair of big, thick trees I could make out ahead. Reckon on emptying my gun on the way. Assuming I made it there without being cut down, reload in the cover of the trees, ready for stage two. Then it would be him and me, close quarters, and I would just have to make sure it was me who remained upright.

One against one: there was no reason it couldn’t go my way. Maybe. I put my hand in the right-hand pocket of the thick coat, to check the clips were where I thought. They were. My heart was beating hard, knowing this was one of those moments when you just have to go, when planning is less important than speed and belief.

I edged a little farther right—slowly, four feet, five—and that was going to have to be enough; I was teetering to go, leaning forward into the run. I took a final checking glance to the side.

Someone was standing there.

It was a young woman. She was ten feet away, on higher ground. She was wearing floral pajamas and had bare feet. She stood between two trees, half in shadow; snow spiraled down around her and I saw some of it land on her shoulders and in her long hair. I could just make out her eyes, the lines of her cheekbones.

It was Jessica Jones.

“Careful,” she said. “There are many.”

Then she was gone.

I was off-balance in readiness to run forward, and
instead fell back against the rock. I froze there for a moment, blinking fast, staring up at where she’d been. I looked left, right. She’d vanished.

I quickly scrabbled up to where I thought I’d seen her standing. There was no one there, but the snow on the ground was messed up. I thought I saw something that could have been a footprint, maybe even two of them, but they were far too big. And who on earth would be out here in bare feet?

I suddenly couldn’t do what I’d been going to. I headed back, slid over the ridge and ran back up to Nina in a crouch. She stared. “What the fuck?”

“I think there’s more than one of them,” I said, avoiding her eyes.

“
What?
How do you know? Who’s with him?”

“I don’t know.”

“So what did you see? What happened to you, Ward?”

I didn’t answer, couldn’t. I didn’t know what to tell her. Instead I scooted halfway to where Phil was holding his position next to the sheriff.

“How’s he looking?”

“I’m fine,” Connelly said. He didn’t look it. “I don’t need baby-sitting. Just go take this asshole down.”

“There’s at least two of them,” I said. “So, Phil, we are going to need you back down here.”

Phil glanced down at his boss, who nodded curtly. “Just don’t get yourself killed,” Connelly muttered. “Day’s gone enough to hell without me having to talk to your mother.”

Phil came back with me in a half-crouch. “I thought I smelled something weird just then,” he said. “Did you smell anything?”

“No,” I said. “What kind of weird?”

He just shook his head.

When we got back to Nina she was looking at me hard. “What is it, Ward? What happened up there? You look strange.”

“Nothing. I just got a feeling. Now . . .”

Then it came. A shot from up and to the left.

“Shit,” she said. “You were right.”

“He’s got someone with him?” Phil said. “Who?”

“I don’t . . .” For a second the ludicrous idea of John and Paul joining forces crossed my mind. Of course not. So who . . .

Then the thinking was over, because a man was running up the hill toward us like a fleet shadow, firing as he came.

Nina and I fired at the same time. Both of us missed. Phil threw himself in a roll and bumped hard against a tree. Dodged around to fire, but hesitated a beat too long. I stood straight up and pulled the trigger twice.

The man did something like a spinning hop and dropped to the ground. I fired twice more at him, heard a grunt.

“Nina, hold her,” I said. “Phil, come with me.”

She looked up, signed O.K.

I pointed Phil back up along the ridge. Ran behind him in a crouch, the two of us splitting to go around Connelly. A series of clapping sounds echoed up to us from the original shooter’s position.

“Shit,” Phil said. “I thought you just
got
that guy.”

“There’s three of them, then,” I said. “Jesus Christ.”

We held tight and still for a moment. Looked ahead. The forest seemed yet darker and thicker up there. I was shivering and felt odd. My neck tickled and I whipped my head to the left and thought I saw someone running through the trees about twenty yards away; but it couldn’t have been, because again it looked like they were wearing nothing more than pajamas, and that would be madness out in a place like this when it was so cold and dark. I was exhausted, amped up, and making patterns in the shadows, projecting pictures that made no sense. I needed to be careful. I dropped my head and took a couple of deep breaths.

I looked up again when there was a single crack out front, and something whined through the air right between our heads to ricochet off the rock behind. Phil and I returned fire.

Then I heard Nina start shooting back down below us.

“Christ,” I said, panicky. “Phil—hold position there. Take that guy out if you can. I’m going back.”

“I’m on it,” Phil said. He went down on his stomach again and squirted quickly forward along the ground. I got
the sense he’d watched a few war movies in his time. That was cool by me.

I straightened up more than I should have and went stumble-running back down toward where Nina was supposed to be. I couldn’t see any sign of her, but I could hear firing in the trees over to the left. I passed the first man’s body on the ground and saw his face: cold, lean, hard. I didn’t recognize him.