This Is Not The End: But I Can See It From Here (The Big Red Z Book 1) (8 page)

Chapter  24

The whole thing was so unexpected that for a moment not one soul in the room drew a breath.  Then Addly sprang up with the bellow of an enraged bull, overturning the table in his rush.

A dozen guards were pulling him back from Tyler.

“Tyler!” Doc yelled, unsure what to add

But Tyler stood motionless as if he saw none of them.  Except for being out of breath now, he wore precisely the same strange, distracted air.

“Hold him back!” Doc implored.

Old Addly was striking every nose and noggin around him to get free from the guards. 

“Calm the hell down, there’s a mistake!  Something’s fucking wrong!”

“Glad the mistake landed where it did, all the same,” Uncle Jickie whispered in his ear.

“Demon!” Addly roared.  “Cowardly fuck, you will pay!”

“Hellfire, but get him out of here,” his uncle said.   “Side room—here—lead him in—he’s gone fucking crazy!”

“Never,” Doc said.   Doc knew both Tyler and his girlfriend too well; they were stout people with stout minds.  But they led the poor, dazed being into a side office, where Jickie promptly turned the key and took up with his back against the door.

“Tyler, what the hell!” Jick broke out sternly, “if it’s not scotch or madness—” There, he stopped because Tyler, utterly unconscious of them, moved automatically across the room.  Throwing his Z Company helmet down, he bowed his head over both arms on the mantelpiece.

His uncle and Doc looked at each other.  Raising his brows, Jickie touched his forehead and whispered across to him, “Fucking crazy.”

At that, Tyler turned slowly round and faced them with bloodshot, gleaming eyes.  “Crazy,” he muttered.  His voice had changed.  Part of his tongue was gone, giving him a whispery rasp like some Brooklynite Clint Eastwood.

Tyler took a breath, framing his next words with great effort.  “Fuck me, boys, you both should know him better than to mouth such rot.  Tonight, I’d sell my soul, sell this fucking soul to be crazy, to know that all I think has happened, hadn’t happened at all—” and a sharp intake of breath broke his speech.

“Frozen hell, out with it, boy!” Jickie shouted.   “We’ll stand by you!  Has that fat ass red-cheeked bastard—”

“Shit, Jick!  Spare your fucking curiosity a moment,” Tyler cut in.  He put his gloved hand to his forehead.

“What the—what did you strike him for?”

“What?  Did I strike somebody?” he asked, speaking with the slow, icy self-possession bred by a lifetime of danger.  He almost seemed to chuckle. 

Again, his uncle flashed a questioning look at him.

“Did I strike somebody? Wish you’d apologize—”

“Apologize!” thundered his uncle.  “Fuck.  I’ll do nothing of the kind!   Served him right.   That was an ugly way, an ugly damn way, to speak of any man’s woman—” But the word “woman” had not been uttered before Tyler threw out his hands in an imploring gesture.

“Don’t!  I can’t get away from it!  It’s no nightmare.   Boys, how can I tell you?  There’s no way of saying it!  Such things don’t—couldn’t—to her—of all…  But she’s…”

“See here, Tyler,” his uncle said, suddenly and utterly beside himself.

“See here, Tyler,” Doc said, stupidly heedless of the brutality of their consol.   

But he heard neither of them.

“She was there, Jick—She waved to me from the garden as I rode in.   She was waving to me, and then she was gone!   The curtain moved and I thought she was being playful or something but it was only the wind.   I’ve searched every nook from cellar to attic.  I heard her voice everywhere, but no!  No—no—I’ve been hunting the house and garden for hours—”

“And the forest?” Jickie asked, the cutter instinct of former days suddenly re-awakening.

“The forest is ankle-deep with snow!  I beat through the bush everywhere.  There wasn’t a track or a broken twig where she could have passed.” 

His torn clothes bore evidence to the thoroughness of that search.

“Nonsense,” his uncle burst out, beginning to bluster.  “She’s been driven to town without leaving word!”

“No.  No way.  For fuck’s sake, boys, suggest something!”

Jick nodded, and in spite of Tyler’s entreaty, the excitable uncle subjected the frenzied soul to a storm of questions, none of which helped.  Doc stood back, listening, and pieced the distracted, broken answers into some sort of coherency: 

That morning, Tyler had arrived.  He had purged a Shado nest, unusually close the Jick’ hall, where Em had been staying.  It was so close she actually came out when she heard the shots.  He had seen Emily on the porch.  She had stood, braced herself, nearly feinting, then had run inside because apparently she thought he was a ghost.  He followed.  The great hall, Jick’s Bass Pro Shop turned cabin, was deathly still. 

He was positive she was amusing herself, hiding, and he reassuringly bustled off to find her in the next room, and then the next, and yet the next, all to discover each was empty.  Utterly.  Empty.  Alarm spread to the corners of his mind.  At first there was only was white-faced, blank amazement.   But then all the superstitions of hillside lore added to the fear on his anxious face.   He began mumbling.  Maybe you didn’t see here, his mind whispered.  Tyler had torn outside the fortifications, but from the hill in the center of the glade-ne-parking lot to the encircling border of snow-laden barb-wire fencing there was no trace of her.   He could see for himself that the snow was too deep and crusty that footprints could be traced from the garden to the bush.  

Then, suddenly, Tyler had laughed at his own growing fears.   She must be in the house, he had thought.  The search of the old hall began again.  From the hidden chamber in the vaulted cellar to attic rooms above, not a corner of the hall was unexplored.   The alarm now became a panic. 

Tyler, half-crazed and unable to believe his own senses,
began wondering whether he was in a nightmare.  It was as if he thought he might wake up and find the dead weight smothering his chest had been Emily, snuggling too close.  He was vaguely conscious that it was strange of him to continue sleeping with the noise of the horse and snapping branches going on in the forest.  But the din of the terrified search, rushing through the woods and of echoes rolling eerily back from the whitened hills, called him back to an unendurable reality—that, in broad daylight, his woman had disappeared in seconds.  As suddenly and completely as if blotted out of existence… or spirited away by the gods…

“The thing is utterly impossible, Tyler,” Doc said, afraid to give the thought any reins whatsoever.   

“Would that it were, dammit!”

“It was daylight, Tyler?” Jickie asked.

He nodded moodily.

“And she couldn’t be lost in the forest?” Doc added, taking up the interrogations.

“No trace—not a footprint!”

“And you’re quite sure she isn’t in the house?” his uncle said.

“Fuck yes!  Quite!”

“And there was a zombie nest just a click down the road?” Jickie asked.

“What has that got to do with it?” he asked, springing to his feet.  “Shado don’t run off with women.   They eat them!  Haven’t I spent half this miserable life killing them?  I should know their fucking ways!”

“But if she isn’t in the hall, or the woods or in the garden, can’t you see, the nest is the only possible explanation?”

The lines on his face deepened.   Then a sort of blackness overcame his brow.  He made a noise you might hear in the shadows of a forest, and if ever Doc had ever seen murder written on a face, it was on Tyler’s.

“The fucking blackwaters...”

And they all just stood there a moment.

It might seem like a strange leap in logic, were it not for the fact that the blackwaters were not only mercenaries, but professional kidnappers.  They often used old zombie nests as bait, pulling high-ranking officers in, then pulling them out through an alternate entrance before holding them for ransom

Jickie was the first to pull himself together.  “Come on,” he said.  “Gather up your fucking wits!  We have to retrace your steps to the nest.”

The three of them flung through the pub room, much to the astonishment of the gossips who had been gathering around Tyler’s other uncles for developments in the quarrel with Addly.

There was no time to explain themselves.  

At the outer porch, Tyler halted.

Slowly, he turned.

“Guys, I’m begging you.  Don’t come,” he said, looking them all in the eye for the first time.  “There’s a storm blowing.  It’s rough weather and a rough road, full of frozen-over drifts.”

“Nonsense!”

“Please, Jick.   Make my peace in there with that bastard I struck.”

And with a huff, Jickie nodded. 

Then Tyler and Doc whisked out into the blackness of a boisterous, windy night.  A moment later, their horses laden with samurai swords and shotguns, the two men were riding over snow-packed broken pavement that resembled cobblestones.

Chapter 25

“It will snow more,” Doc said, already feeling a few flakes driven through the darkness against his face.  “The wind’s veered north.  After the sleet, it will come thick as feathers.  They need to get out to the nest before all the traces are covered.  How far by the High Dog Road?”

“One and a half miles,” he said, and Doc knew by the sudden scream and plunge of his horse that heels were dug into raw sides. 

They turned down that steep, tortuous street leading from Goback toward the Hill of the Leaf.   The wet thaw of midday had frozen and the road was slippery.   They reined their horses in tightly, and by zagging and zigging from side to side, they managed to reach the foot of the hill without a single fall. 

Here, they again gave them the bit, thundering across the bridge without stopping, which brought the keeper out, cursing and yelling for his toll.  Doc tossed an old silver quarter over his shoulder and they galloped up the elm-lined avenue leading to that a fortified compound that Kenzo called home.   Turning suddenly to the right, they followed a seldom frequented road, where snow was drifted heavily.  Finally, their beasts sinking to their haunches and snorting through the white billows, they had to slacken pace.

Tyler had not spoken a word.  Clouds were still massing on the north.   Overhead a few stars glittered against the black, but the wind had the most mournful wail Doc had ever heard.  

“Doc—listen!  Do you hear anything?  Do you hear someone calling for help?  Is that a woman?”

“I don’t hear nothing but the wind.”

But his hesitancy belied the truth.   They both heard sounds that could have easily been wailing.   It was impossible to discern anything in the gathering storm.  And the wind burst over them again, catching his empty denial in a mean sound, like the howling of a woman.  

Then there was a lull, and Doc discerned the noise:  It was Tyler. 

The stout man by his side, who had held iron grip of himself before other eyes, was now giving in fully to grief.

Doc looked away.  For a moment above the ragged edge of a storm cloud, and for a moment all the snow-laden evergreens stood out, spectral and still, like mourners.   Snow was beginning to fall in great flakes that obscured the air. 

Then they rode, until at last the short journey, which had seemed to take eons, was over.  A bit of the moonlight gleamed from the snow on Jick’s roof to their right, just uphill, as they approached the nest. 

With lanterns they brought them, they examined every square inch of the gut-soaked rocks and bloody meat heaps.  Bits of hide or bone were scattered here and there, along with stones, and the ends of fingers and tattered clothes lay everywhere over the black patch.  

In the end, they found nothing, not one single thing to indicate any trace of the lost woman, until Doc caught sight of a tiny, blue ribbon atop a piece of rusty metal.  

Kicking it aside, Doc picked it up.  

On the lower end was one of Tyler’s old dog tags. 

Doc would confess it took him a moment to reveal it.  He would have rather had felt the point of a dagger, shoved in his ear, than have shown that simple thing to Tyler. 

But Doc did. 

Tyler nodded, grimaced maniacally, then just nodded again.

Then the sky fell out.  The snow broke upon them in white billows, blotting out everything.  They spread a sheet on the ground to preserve any marks of the little camp, but the drifting wind drove them indoors and they were compelled to cease searching. 

All night long, Tyler and Doc sat before the roaring fire of the hunting room.  Both of them were at a loss for what to do.   He just leaned forward with his scarred chin in his palms, saying few words.  

Doc could only offer futile suggestions, uttering mad threats. 

Chapter 26

They spent a long, melancholy night waiting amid the roaring of the northern gale, driving through any gap it could find in the hall.  It seemed as if it would wrench all the eaves from the roof.   It shrieked across the garden like malignant spirits.  And all the while poor Tyler kept rushing into the blinding whirl. 

Outside, though, he could not see twice the length of his own arm, and the servants and Doc begged him to come back. 

As long as the storm raged, he would pace back and forward the full length of the hunting-room until his eye would be caught by some object Emily had cleaned with or otherwise handled.   He would put this carefully away, as one lays aside the belongings of the dead.  

Then he would set himself down, gazing at the leaping flames of the log fire. 

Doc felt nothing but the agony of their utter helplessness. 

Afterwards, the lanterns that they had placed on the oak center table, began to smoke and give out a pungent, burning smell, and morning revealed an ocean of billowy drifts, crusted over by the frozen sleet.  It reflected the white dazzle and burned the eyes shut.  Great icicles hung from the naked branches of the sheeted pines, and snow was wreathed among the cedars.

After lifting the canvas from the camping ground, they sought in vain for more trace of his girlfriend or a ransom note. 

There was none.

They dispatched a dozen different search parties that morning, Tyler leading those who were to go downriver.  Doc took some well-trained rangers upriver.  They were picked from the municipal guard, who could track the forest to every Zombie haunt within a week’s march of Goback. 

A few of Addly’s men came.  They both knew they showed up more out of curiosity than to help, but they needed help.  Doc put them on a boat with a dredge with instructions to report back that night.

As soon as they left out, Doc hunted up an old Chinese fellow.  Batt was a hunting guide Doc used now and again.   Grizzled, stunted and chunky, he was not at all the picturesque figure of grace that Doc had once thought typical of Asians.  He wore a stocking cap with earflaps tied under his chin.  His long shirt was an ill-fitting garment, and his trousers slouched in ample folds above the beaded skin shoes favored by mountain men four centuries prior.  The old fellow was as silent as an animal, named Bat, but the men hereabouts had nicknamed him The Mute.  Or perhaps his name was Mute, and they called him The Bat.  Doc could not recall which.   Doc just knew that what he lacked in speech, he made up in an almost animal-like acuteness of the senses.  It was commonly believed that Batt possessed some nameless sense that big game possess, by which he and they could actually feel the presence of a zombie before ordinary folk could. 

For his part, Doc would be willing to pit that “feel” of Batt’s against the nose of any hound dog.

“Batt, old man.  Good to see you,” Doc said.  He was puffing one of the old Marlboros to calm his nerves.  “I wish I could say I called you it was for one of our regular hunts.”

The old man nodded.

“Listen, let me get right to it.  Somebody took Emily a day ago.  And they did it without so much as a foot print.  We need to find them.”

As Batt digested the information, he began lick the air, as if tasting it for an answer.

Doc raised his eyes imploringly, hoping he had something.  

Batt just fixed his eyes on an invisible spot in the snow and ruminated even more.  In time, he hitched the baggy trousers up, pulled the red scarf that held them to his waist tighter, and, taking his eyes off the snow, looked up for him to go on.

“Um… well, yes.  Let’s see.  We think the blackwaters took them.  We found a blue ribbon she used to wear.  It was intact, um, like she took it off.  So we’re pretty sure she didn’t get chewed—”

“The girl drop it you think?” Batt asked, speaking for the first time Doc had ever heard.   “Maybe she wasn’t wanting ribbon eaten too.”

“Maybe.  That would have been a clever trick for someone getting eaten alive.”

The Mute’s eyes went back to the snow.

“Listen, Batt, let me get to it.  Before we take off after these bastards, we need to make sure that you’re not right.  We need to know if she’s Shado now. I’ll make you a rich man if you help.”

Batt’s eyes looked up with the question of how much.

“Rich,” Doc said. 

No sooner was the word out of his lips than he darted off into the forest like a rabbit.

“Well, damn it, man.” 

Doc did not follow before he lost sight of him; but he knew his strange, silent ways, and Doc confidently awaited his return. 

How he could get two pair of binoculars inside of five minutes, Doc would not attempt to explain.  At any rate, he was back again, equipped now for a recon hike.  He and Doc laced on the binos, Doc having to watch and imitate him.

And before long, they were skimming over the drifts like a boat on water. 

In the maze-like confusion of snow and underbrush, no one but Batt would have found and kept that tangled path.  At places, there were great trunks that had fallen across the way, but Batt planted his pole and took the obstacles in a leap.  Then he raced on at a gait which was neither a run nor a walk, but an easy trot common to soldiers.  Doc had been schooled to a swift pace from boyhood, growing up with the McCarthys, and he kept up with him at every step.  However, to be honest, they were going so fast Doc lost all track of his bearings. 

They might have been in some crystal-walled cavern as they pressed over the brushwood, now packed with snow and crusted ice.  Snow-crusted branches snapped like glass when they brushed past.  

Doc tried to discern a trail by the broken thicket on either side, but that was in vain.  Then he noticed that his guide was keeping his course by marks, which were cut into the trees.  At one place, they came to a steep, clear slope.  The earth had fallen away from the sheer hillside and snow had filled the incline. 

Prodding forward to feel if the snow-bank were solid, Batt promptly sat down on his rear end and slid quick as a hiccup down to the valley. 

Doc came leaping clumsily from point to point with his pole, risking his neck at every bound.  Then they coursed along the valley, the Mute’s eyes still on the trees.  Once, he stopped to emit a gurgling laugh at a badly hacked trunk, beneath which was a snowed-up sap trough.

Honestly, though, Doc could not tell what Batt’s mirth was about.

“Where to, Batt?” Doc asked with a vague suspicion that they were heading for a compound that many suspected had been infiltrated by the blackwaters near Leafy Lore.  “To Leafy Lore?”

Batt agreed with a grunt. 

Then he whisked suddenly around a headland up a narrow gorge, which seemed to lead to the very heart of the wooded hills and might have sheltered any number of fugitives. 

In the gorge, they stopped to take a light meal of dried herrings and biscuits.  By the sun, Doc knew it was long past noon and that they had been traveling southeast.  Doc also vaguely guessed that Batt’s object was to intercept the Longmongers, if they had planned to slip away from the Red River through the bush, where they could meet southbound mini barges.  But not one syllable got spoke on the matter. 

Or any other matter.

Clambering up the steep, snowy banks of the gorge, they found themselves in the upper reaches of a mountain-like hill, where the trees fell away in scraggy clumps and the snow stretched up clear and unbroken to the crest.  Batt grunted, puffed on of Doc’s cigarettes significantly and pointed his pole to the hilltop. 

Suddenly, Batt shoved him backward with the end of his pole and a curious expression showed on the dull, pock-pitted face. 

“What?”

“You right.  The nice blackwaters no get them.”

“What?  I don’t… the traders?  You think the Shado chewed her?”

“No.  I thinks
mean
blackwaters came!  And they no came by the river.”

“Walked?”

“No, uh ugh.  Gone too fast.  No tracks.  They fly.”

Doc stood on the embankment and peered into the lengthening shadows of the valley.

“To Nashville.”

“Yes.  You go, Mister Doc.  Go get boat and go downriver.  Get them.”

The Mute, wise old bastard, then began to cry.  He seemed to understand Doc did not want to get them back.  He
needed
to get him back.  Perhaps this was the truth, or he may have just felt the disturbing tension of Doc’s half-wild
heartbeats, but whatever the truth, the old man sat back on its haunches , lifted his head, and let out the most miserable howl imaginable.

Doc hurried down the gorge as fast as his boots would carry him. 

“Oh!  Goooo!  Mister Doc,” the guide said.  “Gooo or he die, mister.  Oh, he die if you no get her back!