Wild Meat (25 page)

“At this point it’s really mostly a matter of – and I know I’m sticking my neck out by saying this – mostly a matter of faith. We have to believe not only that it is right, but that it can be done. There are a lot of technological solutions out there, so of course it can be done. But the essential first step is to open up to…to something that comes from inside us and all around us, and exists in all other organisms. Not only in humans, but in the rest of the living world, and in the air a
nd water and soil we depend on.”

“And you feel that we, as a society,” the interviewer said, spreading meaty hands to encompass the world, “are at a point where this realization has expanded to a critical volume? That the green movement will succeed just because so many people see that it must?”

Before answering, Hugh shifted his facial muscles just enough to make his face explode with beatific radiance.

He had not memorized t
onight’s spiel. A few hours before the interview, the world had begun to shine. These days it was no longer just the tropical green glow, but fire and blue jade, and other colors so slight, so
fragile,
that he could not even have named them. And the shapes formed by those colors had assured him that the thing to do was to wing it. He knew what needed to be said, and it would sound much more natural if he did it without memorizing a script.

He had taken a marvelous ride on the ruby highway the previous day, and today,
once the painkillers kicked in, the glow of ruby-aftermath had come. That glow always made activities like this TV interview a lot more palatable.

For the cameras, he managed to weave with his words a shimmering, primordial, spiral staircase that led up and up and up to greater
consciousness, and he gently dared the audience to ascend with him. “…and we need only to extend a hand down to our friends and loved ones and say,
take this wonderful journey with me
….”

The interview did not make Hugh Sanderson a superstar. It merely
revived the low-level fame he’d acquired during the green campaign’s first round, extending his name recognition a little beyond those who had already heard about him through environmentalist mass emails. Because his fame was minor, it caused him no security risk. He attracted no stalkers and, in spite of his good looks and marital status, only a couple of gold diggers.

His days on the green tour were a cycle of speaking engagements, hotel
rooms, gyms, and Jacuzzis. There was also a ride on the ruby highway once or twice a week. It was not an unpleasant routine.

It no longer bothered him to be the focus of attention from the strange, multi-generational array of latter-day flower children who turned out for his speaking engagements. He even had a handful of groupies. Five or six of the same faces seemed to show up nearly everywhere he went. The person Hugh thought of as Bluto
attended every single event, always wearing the same too-tight, striped shirt; it was probably the shirt as well as the man’s beard and bulk that made Hugh think of Popeye’s nemesis. This same freak had turned up at the Free Forest Campground during Hugh’s several visits there this summer – always alone, always turning to stare at Hugh as he rolled by in his open-topped Land Rover. Bluto would keep staring after him as long as they were in each others’ line of sight. Once, Hugh had driven close enough to him to see that he was holding one of the little airline bottles in which boof was sold. The guy had seemed even more out of place among the travelers at the campground than in the audiences full of eco-people.

But n
ot all of his fans were unpleasant to be near. After every event, there was usually at least one attractive young woman willing to spend time with Hugh Sanderson, eager to show him around whatever town he was in. If it turned out that she had no interest in seeing the inside of his hotel room, a quick, surreptitious application of well-perfumed ruby to the tender side of her forearm would render her compliant. It had worked plenty of times with robust, nicely toned young trail-hiking girls at the Free Forest Campground, and it worked just as well in the city. He had learned how to do this without getting any of the stink juice on his skin, saving his own ruby rides for when he was alone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Amy screamed, and the sound made Stephen pull
himself back out of the car. He was nearly upright when the attacker kicked the back door with furious strength. Then it was Stephen’s turn to scream, howling in pain and shock as the door slammed hard on his left hand.

He looked as though he hadn’t really grasped that he was being assaulted. He backed several feet away from the car, holding his injured hand, but didn’t look around for who might be responsible.

Amy had let her keys fall to the ground and now held the pistol in the same two-handed grasp that the blond cop had used earlier. The attacker was only three feet from Stephen, holding something that might have been a blade

“Get away from him!” she shouted.

None of the nearby streetlights worked, but there was enough ambient glow for her to get a sense of what the man looked like: a couple inches shorter than her, and not heavily built. He was white, or at least light, with an absurdly pointed beard that would have looked silly on a guy who had not just smashed someone’s hand.

“Get back,” she shouted again, leveling the pistol at his chest.

About seven feet separated them, and even someone who had no skill with a gun could have hit that target – if not with the first shot, then with the second or third.

But the elf-bearded man did not move. He looked at Amy and at Stephen, who had sized up the situation and was backing away. She wondered if she needed to prove that the gun was loaded.

“Don’t get too far from the car, Steve,” Amy said. “In fact, come grab the keys off the ground behind me, and get in the driver’s seat. You can start it up.”

Stephen turned to walk past Amy, and Elf Beard suddenly moved so that he was directly in a line with Stephen and Amy, keeping her from getting a clear shot at him. Then he moved closer to Stephen And yes, it was a knife in his right hand, about six inches long and slim. He was going to hold it to Stephen’s neck and make her drop the gun. And then probably kill them both.

Amy had no choice but to try and get to Stephen before Elf Beard, then reach around the schoolteacher and shoot the attacker. It was risky getting that close, putting herself within slashing range.

She took two fast strides – and suddenly Stephen tripped and fell, then rolled away, shouting in pain again. There was nothing between Amy and the assailant but four feet of open air.

The attacker lunged and she fired.

Elf Beard knocked her backwards onto the sidewalk. She managed to break her fall slightly with her right hand, but that was also her gun hand, and she lost the weapon as she went down. The back of her head hit the sidewalk hard enough to set off a starburst behind her eyelids.

Then Elf-Beard was on top of her, trapping her right arm between their bodies. She tried punching with her left, but only had room for very short jabs at his bearded jaw line. 

In the next instant, he seemed to be crawling off of her, rather than holding her down. It took a moment to realize that he wasn’t trying to stab her, and must also have been disarmed. She pushed with her left arm, and then her right was free and she shoved hard with both.

Then she feared that he was going for her gun, and tried to wiggle herself at least onto all fours so she could try to beat him to it. She pushed harder still at his side, and Elf Beard gave a short bark of pain. Amy’s hand was suddenly slippery, and she understood that she’d shot him after all, and had just now pushed on his wound.

There was a scuffling at her side, and fast movement. Elf Beard screamed and rolled completely off of her. She sat up, looking around frantically for the gun, just in time to see the assailant scoop something a few paces away, then scramble off. The blade glinted in his hand as he ran.

Amy sat on the sidewalk. Stephen was coming off the small lawn in front of his building, holding the grip of her gun between his thumb and index finger, as if though carrying a dead mouse by its trail. The toe of his right sneaker glistened very slightly in the faint light.

A big engine started half a block away, and the sound disappeared down some side street and was lost.

“You kicked him?” she said.

Stephen nodded, then went into a noisy series of dry heaves before speaking. “I got him right where you shot him. In the side of the chest. You must have just grazed him, but it got rid of him.”

Her head was still spinning from the fall and the struggle. A siren was already yowling somewhere in the neighborhood. She looked up at Stephen’s left hand and saw fingers splayed in unhealthy-looking angles.

“Some of the fingers are broken, aren’t they?” she said.

“Along with some of the bones in my hand. Those’ll probably be a bigger deal to straighten out.”

“We’ve got to get you to an emergency room right away.”

She took the gun, wiped all its surfaces down with her shirt, and slid it far under her car. “I’ll pick it up after the police are gone, unless they find it.” She looked into his eyes. “Either way, are you willing to lie to the cops and say that it was that thug’s own gun that went off when he jumped on me?”

“I’ll say whatever you need me to say. I’m sure you saved my life just now.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Hey, did you actually trip when you were between him and me? Or did you drop down to give me a shot at him?”

“I dropped down on purpose. I’ve seen it in a million movies, and it was the first thing I thought of. I figured he was about half a second from stabbing me”

“And then you booted him where he was wounded. That was pretty fast thinking, especially since you were reeling from getting your hand smashed.”

“I’m still reeling plenty.”

* * *

Amy
spent a good part of the night going between the emergency room and her car, where the edgy cats and iguana waited. Stephen was finally released with a ponderous cast on his left hand, a head full of Demerol, and a couple bottles of lesser painkillers. The doctor said healing would take several weeks, and physical therapy several months after that. He also warned that the cast was going to start itching like crazy after a few days, especially if this heat kept up.

Amy paid for another room for Stephen at the suburban hotel she had checked into earlier that day, then stole a couple of his extra-strength hydrocodone tablets just to make sure sleep would come. She spent the last of her waking energy smuggling Stephen’s animals into her room.

CHAPTER TWENTY-
SEVEN

Stephen was in the hotel restaurant around eleven o’clock the next morning, feasting on the best pancakes in history – or maybe it was just the painkillers making him gushingly agreeable – when Amy sat down across from him. Her cheeks were flushed as though she’d already been up and active for a while.

“I just got back,” she said. “When you weren’t in your room, I was afraid maybe you’d forgotten everything that happened last night and gone back to your apartment.”

The flush made her tan shine, and that somehow made her green eyes even more striking than before. Again she wore a tank top that exposed her arms and shoulders, their flowing muscles every bit as attractive as the rest of her curves. It wasn’t the pills telling him she looked great. He’d felt the same way last night
in the diner, watching her take off that baggy shirt to show the scars on her shoulder.

“Where’d you just get back from?” he asked.

“Buying a car for the second time in a week. The bastards know what my Buick looks like now, so I ditched it and got something else. So far, I think the cats approve.”

Stephen smacked his forehead. “I can’t believe it. I
’ve been so zoned that I hadn’t even thought about them until now. Thanks for looking after them.”

“My pleasure. If I didn’t travel so much, I’d have cats. I’d be one of those crazy ladies who lives alone with ninety cats. And your iguana’s gorgeous. I’m completely in love with her.”

“What kind of car?” he asked.

“
A five-year-old Camry something-or-other. Great sound system. And I made sure to get an automatic in case you need to borrow it for anything.” She nodded at his cast. “With your left hand on sick leave, I mean.”

“Thanks.”
He finished off his pancakes and took a slug of coffee. “So where’d you get the gun?”

She told him about one of her late husband’s friends, a guy whose family had collected guns for generations.

“Andre and I got practice with other kinds of guns, too,” she said. “Even tranq rifles.”

“Tranq?”

“Tranquilizer. Andre used to insist on going into the field with some of the researchers whose work we funded. A few times it involved darting animals so they could clip transmitters on them. It’s a lot trickier than it looks on the wildlife shows.” She signaled the waitress for coffee. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about your friend who found the drawings in Baja,” she said. “How’d you get mixed up with a Mexican priest?”