Nirvana Effect (40 page)

There were fires starting at the northern edge.  It would only take his boys half an hour before the whole
village
was up in flames.  They were quite efficient.
  They had been trained in efficiency.

Nockwe found himself at the temple.  He walked inside.  The throne was bare, its ornaments
stripped
for the erection of the
secret
temple on the mainland.  He
reflected on
all his
meetings
with Tomy, now just Tome, and Manassa. 

He walked behind the raised area with the throne.  He’d only seen Manassa’s quarters a few times.  He wondered what
the Onge god had
left to burn.

His priests
had taken his mattress.  They’d taken his books.  The furniture
,
Manassa’s
servants had left. 
Footprints were everywhere
- there had been quite a few people in here emptying the room to prepare for the move. 

A glint of metal caught Nockwe’s eye.  It was situated in the dirt under where the mattress had been, near the wall.
C
urio
u
s, he picked it up.  He had nothing to do until the village b
ecame ashes
.

Then there will be a lot to do
.

Nockwe
dusted
off
the metal.  It was a ring of sorts.  It was octagonal, fashioned of
polished brass
.  A memory flashed to
his mind
.  It
came easily;
e
verything about Glis
was too easily remembered.

Glis stan
d
s
at the front of the tribe.  Nockwe and the medicine
man bless
his marriage with whomever he so cho
o
se
s
, so
long as she be willing.  He choos
e
s Lila.  She walks
to t
he front of the tribe.  She says she i
s
willing.  The medicine man says other words.  She walks away with him. 

The tribe si
ng
s
the marriage s
ong.  Nockwe, watching them, sees
him h
and her a shiny octagon.  She ho
ld
s
it up
to the light, admiring it.  It i
s quite a fo
rtune, quite a find.  He slips
it onto her finger
, in the Western way.  He says
somethin
g to her in her ear.  She smiles and kisses his cheek. 

She gives a long glance
to Mahanta, who stands next to Nockwe.  The
newlyweds leave for t
heir hut.  The tribe
sings on
.

Nockwe stared at the ring. 

Nockwe
felt as though the trinket were wrapped
tight
around his neck.  He didn’t know how long he was st
ood
there. 

H
e felt heat.  The temple was burning.  He was tempted to throw the ring down, but instead pocketed it.

Nockwe burned
far hotter than the temple. 
I am
a fool.

James weighed his options as he watched Edward jog to the
entrance
of the abandoned establishment. 
Is he just going to go to the front door and knock?  Ask for his girl back?

The most sane impulse James felt was to run.  There was an idiotic, honorable side to him that was winning out, however.  He tapped the steering wheel of the car nervously and checked the windows
above
for guns. 
None yet
.  He checked the other side of the street for guns. 
None yet.

He’d abandoned plenty of chumps in his lifetime. 
It
would actually be quite intelligent to abandon chump #74, who apparently had a death wish.

He considered his position.  It would be nothing for one of those men to pop out of the shadows and pump him and his car full of holes.  On second thought, they would probably just shoot him and save the car.  He’d
heard of
it happen enough times
.  He’d cleaned up the messes from plenty car chases and drive-bys
. 
H
e’d tended to the wounded of both sides.

This priest is no priest.  And these natives are no natives.  Drugs?  Guns?  I don’t know.

He knew what he was seeing.  It was the same sort of pattern he’d played out
in Melbourne
.  It was the same game he’d tried to play in Sri Lanka. 

Was this white man one of them?  Certainly things weren’t as they seemed if he was just going to walk into the warehouse unarmed.

The more Edward explained to James, the more questions he was left with.
 

James
thought about Callista.  Edward had said Callista was in there. 
I
do
care about Callista.
 
Maybe Edward was just playing him. 
How could he even know that she was in there? 

The door
to the building
was unlocked.
Edward opened it, about thirty meters away
from Seacrest
. 

“
Actually,
I ju
st need something to care about,” James said aloud.  It was the first genuine sentence he’d uttered in a while.

He promised himself that if anything came out of the warehouse besid
es Edward or Callista, he’d jet, all handshakes to the contrary.

James could no longer see Edward
, but
h
e
heard gunfire. 
The ricochet of bullets echoed through the street
.  James tensed and gripped the gearshift. 

More gunfire.  He saw
flashes of light
and heard odd screams, shouts in the Onge tongue.

The
struggle
moved deeper into the building, muffled now but far more intense.
It sounded like a full-blown war in there.  The
noise moved up to the second floor
.  More
shots. 
What the hell is going on?

Surely, the priest was dead. 
What the hell was he thinking?

James
eased
up to the open door.  The
interior lighting
cast a soft glow into the dark street. 
He
kept his feet just centimeters from the pedals, ready to jam the accelerator at the slightest motion. 

Let’s have a see. 
James craned his neck to get a glance inside without having to leave the car. 
Two dead Onge lay just inside the door
.
Jesus Christ. 
He saw no sign of Edward.

James put the car in park.  He fumbled in his glove box for his gun.  The Onge had stolen that one.  He groped under his seat
.
  His
backup
was still
taped
there
.  He yanked it out and checked the street again.  It was empty.

The
gun
shots
grew sporadic and seemed to emanate from a higher point in the building. 
James got out of the car and
scrambled
to the side of the door.  He p
oked
his head around the side
and got no reaction
.  He
lowered his body and
swung out
into the doorway
for a full view, gun
at the ready
.

The room was large, originally a shipment receiving area.  Huge, decaying pallets full of boxes made up the pathway he had to navigate.  James counted
eight bodies in the room
, but no Edward
.  All the bodies were Onge, all were armed, all but two had shots to the head.

Jesus Christ.  Styles never was a priest. 
James had no idea
what he was.

The spatter of guns
ceased
.  The screaming
stopped.  James heard a car start in the distance.  It seemed to be on the other side of the building.

“Here we go,” muttered James.  Other cars
revved
.

James ran back to the Corvette.  He sent it roaring around the corner of the
warehouse
. 
Several cars were ripping down
the road ahead.  He had a feeling Callista was with them. 

Edward ran out to the sidewalk with an assault rifle
looped around
his back.  J
ames braked as hard as he could.  T
he car fishtailed.  He almost hit Edward, but the man did not even react or move.  The car stopped just inches from him.  He got in.  “Go,” he said.  “They have Callista.”

James started driving.  He suppressed his thousand questions.  A man such as this was not asked questions.  Rather, he divulged information when he wished.  That was just the way it was.  James had run into a few of such men in his lifetime, and had survived because he understood the nature of such relationships.  He found it odd that he did not feel threatened in any way by
Edward.

“Get behind them.  Get closer,” said Edward. 

There were two sedans, then three Jeeps. 

“They’ll be going off-road,” said Edward.
 
“
There are no highways in that direction.  They’re goi
ng away from port.  We’ll need one of those
Jeep
s
.  Get closer.”

They drew near the first sedan.  Edward stood up in the Corvette despite the bumps and swerves.  James checked him.  Somehow,
Edward
kept his body
steady. 
He reacted to every motion of the car at the moment it happened
, almost as though he could anticipate what
bump or
swerve
was next. 
His legs and hips were like shock absorbers
. 
James had never seen anything like it. 

Edward lined up his shot and fired twice.

The two back tires of the sedan popped.  The car spun out of control.  The corvette zipped past.  James was able to stay cool, not unused to gunfire, but this was a bit up close and personal for even him.  He
took care of business
after
all the shots were fired
.

They travelled
a long, ill-
used road that ran alongside the eastern side of the city, northwest to s
outheast.  It led to nowhere before looping back into town.

“Get behind that second one,” said Edward, concentrating on the car ahead.

A man stood from inside the
sedan
with his head out the sunroof.  He brought a rifle to bear on the Corvette and started firing.  The man only got out two errant shots before Edward took him out with another bullet. 

James stopped trying to figure it out.  May
be he would wake up in a minute, hopefully still alive.

Two more shots
from Edward
.  The
second sedan
spun out, too. 

“Duck,” said Edward.  This time, James
heeded
with no argument.  He was glad he did.  He heard bullets whiz directly over his head.  “Clear.”

James looked back.  There had been several Onge in the sedan who had fired at them from the window as they passed, even as their car still spun.

James realized these Onge were strange like Edward.  Their shots were fired so well they would have killed
them both
, even though they’d been aimed from a vehicle doing a 360 spin on two wheels. 
James
swallowed his panic. 
Panic
would do him no good.  For now, at least, he was joined to th
is crazy
American
’s hip.

“The J
eep,” said Edward.  James accelerated.  The Onge had already started firing at them. 
Pots
hots
whizzed
by.  “Just a little closer
.
”
  They were still a hundred meters away.  James closed the distance
cautiously
.  He had no desire to have three Onge with semi-automati
c rifles filling his Corvette
with holes.