"I think we should be right here, staying
alive. Fortunately for me, I've got the gun."
Lou took out his cell phone. "I'm going to
check on George."
"Whatever. You know what, I don't even
care anymore."
George picked up on the first ring. "Lou, get
over here! Now!"
"We're on our way," Lou assured him. The line
went dead. "George? You still there?"
"He hang up on you?" asked Sam.
"They need help," Lou said. "Let's go."
"Uh-uh. What did he say?"
"He said to get over here! What else does he
need to say?"
"Your partner isn't the one giving the
orders."
"Fine." Lou slid open the side door.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"I'm going to help him."
"No. You're staying here. I may still need
you."
"You said I could leave!"
"Yeah, because I didn't think you'd
actually try to go out there." Sam kept his gun pointed at Lou, but
adjusted the aim a bit, as if trying to center the target between
Lou's eyes. "Close the door."
"Just let me go."
"Close the door."
"You already said I was very expendable. What
difference does it make?"
"If you die, it's going to be as bait, not as
a wannabe hero."
Having a gun pointed at him was always
a scary thing, despite his earlier attempt to convince Sam
otherwise, but realistically, Lou knew that if Sam was unwilling to
risk the ire of his boss by letting him run out and get killed by
Ivan, he probably wasn't going to just shoot him in the head. That
would be more difficult to explain.
Lou jumped out of the van. After a moment of
hesitation, Sam fired.
Damn. He wasn't quite as reluctant to
use the gun as Lou had expected.
Lou's leg buckled beneath him as he stepped
onto the ground but he maintained his footing and did a fast limp
to the back of the van. He winced as he did so--if he'd actually
had any stitches in, they definitely would have torn at that.
Hopefully Sam would waste a few precious seconds trying to work up
the courage to get out of the van and come after him.
He threw open the back doors and
grabbed the first thing he saw. He pulled the pin out of the
grenade and tossed it over the van. He'd used a couple of
fragmentation grenades before, but strictly for recreational
purposes out in the New Mexico desert and never in a moment of
extreme urgency. He couldn't remember how much time he had between
pulling the pin and the explosion--not that it mattered, since it
wasn't as if he could leisurely stand there waiting for the optimum
moment to throw.
He slammed his hands over his ears and
ran.
The grenade went off. Over the explosion, Lou
heard Sam's cry.
The questionable wisdom of throwing a grenade
near a van containing a wide variety of explosives was not lost on
Lou, but what else was he supposed to do?
Sam lay on the ground, half of his face black
and charred. Though his limbs all remained intact, the bone was
visible in several places on his body. The sight was grisly and
sickening enough that Lou didn't immediately notice that Sam still
held the gun.
The bullet grazed Lou's left thigh. He
clutched at the wound and dropped to his knees.
Sam shouted something incoherent that might
have been "I'll get you" and fired another shot. Thank God he'd
been so badly injured--the shot missed by almost nothing, and Lou
was confident that it would have been an easy kill shot
otherwise.
He forced himself to get back up. At least
three of his bandages turned red all at once. He quickly stepped
over to the right back corner of the van, which put him out of
Sam's sight unless Sam dragged himself across the ground a couple
of feet. That seemed unlikely.
Lou hastily looked over his weapon
selection. He didn't want to kill Sam if he didn't have to, but he
couldn't have the guy shooting at the van as he drove off. There
had to be another tranquilizer rifle.
There were a couple of normal-looking rifles,
and a few handguns, but nothing that seemed to be a
tranquilizer.
There were several more grenades. A box
labeled "Dynamite." Another crossbow.
Sam fired another shot. It didn't come
anywhere close, and he couldn't possibly see Lou, so he was just
firing wildly. Lou didn't blame him for losing his mind.
Screw it. There was no time to make a careful
selection of weaponry or mentally debate the moral elements of the
situation. He had to take Sam out of the equation, get in the van,
and drive off to help George.
He picked up one of the handguns, then limped
the long way around the van, focusing on not passing out. He peeked
around the corner, saw that Sam was still looking toward the rear,
and shot him in the head.
Lou immediately dropped the gun, leaned
against the van, and let out a violent dry heave.
Fuck.
He'd seen a lot of awful things today, but
that didn't change the fact that he'd never murdered a human being.
Even a cowardly little shit like Sam.
Focus.
Since he'd been forced to take a life,
it was very important that he not waste it. If he used this
opportunity to save George's life, things would balance out, sort
of. If he let George die because he was too busy wallowing in his
guilt, well, that was a pretty lousy reason to guarantee himself
eternal damnation.
The grenade had really done a number on the
side of the van, but the tires looked okay. He offered a silent
apology to the dead kid, got in the driver's seat, and started up
the engine.
He couldn't wait to see how
well Ivan did against
this
arsenal.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Caged Madness
"Do you know what I'm going to do to you,
George?" Ivan inquired.
"Something antisocial?"
George asked, trying not to give away that he was in incredible
pain and was scared out of his mind. Being Ivan's prisoner like
this was bad enough, but Michele was most assuredly
not
doing well. Her skin
color had gone from pale to looking almost jaundiced, and he
thought her eyes had become a much darker shade of brown. She
reminded him of a druggie having a massive overdose, except that
instead of heroin coursing through her veins, she had werewolf
spit.
"You cannot even imagine what I'm going to do
to you," said Ivan. "Not even in your worst nightmares can you
conceive of what's going to happen."
"That's pretty vague," George noted. "I'd
expect more from you. When a guy like you is reduced to threatening
me in generalities, I can't help but feel less frightened than I
was before you started running your mouth."
"Is that so?"
"Yeah."
"Then let's just drive in silence, so you can
think about what I might do to you instead."
"That completely works for me."
George needed full concentration for this
next part, anyway. It was really going to suck. He pressed his
dislocated shoulder against one of the cage bars, trying to line
the ball up with the joint socket. Of course, he couldn't see the
bones inside his shoulder, so he wouldn't know if this was correct
until the unpleasant moment of truth.
Thank God Ivan couldn't see what he was doing
in the rear-view mirror. He'd purposely swerve or hit a bump.
"So what are you thinking about?" Ivan
asked.
"You know, when you keep talking like this,
it makes you seem insecure," George said. "Why are you insecure,
Ivan? It seems to me like you've got the upper hand. Is there
something you're not telling me?"
"Just keep talking. You're only making it
worse for yourself."
"You're not even listening.
My point is that
you're
talking too much. It indicates a lack of confidence. I'm
supposed to be sitting here thinking 'I'm gonna die! I'm gonna
die!' but when I hear all of that jabber from you I can't help but
believe that you're worried about something."
"Let's say for the sake of
argument that I
was
talking because I was worried. How does pointing that out work
to your advantage? I'm curious."
"You might get so mad that you make a
mistake."
"Like you did right before I escaped
from the cage?"
"Exactly."
"Well, Georgie, I hate to break this
to you, but not only am I not going to stop the van so I can go
back there and try to scare you, but you're unlikely to do a
surprise transformation into a wolfman. You're at quite a bit more
of a disadvantage than I was."
"I understand that."
"But if you find my chatter reassuring, hey,
that's your decision."
"It's not really a decision. More of a
mood."
"Fuck you."
"Now, when I said 'fuck you' before,
you made a big deal out of it, like it was a sign of weakness. I
don't want to be a jerk about this, Ivan, but my theory about your
lack of confidence is still holding up."
Ivan was silent for a moment. "I'm taking
your eyelids first."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You wanted specifics? The first thing I'm
going to do is very carefully slice off your eyelids. Then we're
going to play a fun little game where we each get one of the
eyelids, and we flick them against the wall, and we see whose falls
off first. It's really kind of a fun game. You'd be surprised how
long an eyelid will stick to the wall if it hits with the wet
side."
"What if it doesn't?"
"Then it drops to the floor, and it's
not a very fun game at all. You have to flick it just
right."
George had nothing else to say to that. He
took a deep breath, worked up his courage, and then slammed his
shoulder against the metal bar as hard as he could.
He bellowed in pain. Michele looked at him
with mild curiosity.
"Whoa! What're you doing back there, George?"
Ivan asked. "That sounds like it hurt."
George flexed his fingers. His shoulder was
throbbing but his arm hurt much less now. One dislocated shoulder
fixed.
"You got any aspirin?" George asked.
"Sorry."
"No problem. So where are we
going?"
"It's a surprise."
"It's a surprise because you have no
idea."
"Hey, George, what was that chick's
name I killed? Diane, right? Do you think her kids are home from
school yet? I bet the older one got a hundred percent on his
spelling test--no, let's say a ninety-five--and he ran all the way
home because he was so excited. And he rushed inside, thinking he
was going to get a big hug and a kiss and maybe a new video game,
and instead he just found a dead mommy."
George clenched his fists and didn't
respond.
"What's the matter, George? Decided to
stop playing along with our clever repartee? I saw the way you
looked when I cut her throat. That was a life-changing moment for
poor little Georgie. If you were going to live long enough to
experience nightmares again, you'd have a doozy of a bad dream over
that."
A trickle of what might have been pus was
leaking from one of Michele's eyes. She looked totally out of
it.
"Still nothing to say?" Ivan
asked. "You know, George, all that stuff you've been saying about
how me talking is a sign of insecurity? That's how I see
your
lack
of
talking. What's the matter? Is the big bad thug all sad because of
the dead mommy's kids?"
"I'm sad about everybody you killed. It
doesn't make me weak."
"I say it does. I think you own a vagina
now."
"Funny."
"There's nothing funny about vaginas. Some of
them have teeth--did you know that? Whenever you've slipped
yourself inside one and you're thinking about how nice it feels,
there's been about a one-in-ten chance that sharp teeth will close
on you."
"What the hell are you even babbling about,
Ivan?"
"Just making conversation with the dead
man."
"Well, Jesus Christ on a crutch, now
you sound stoned. How did vaginas with teeth ever become part of
this discussion? Those bullets in your head are starting to mess
with you."
"Aw,
shit
!"
The way he said those words, George
knew that they were not Ivan's response to a sudden realization
that the bullets in his brain were indeed impeding his thought
processes. George couldn't get a good view out of the front of the
van from his cage, but it was enough to see that the path had
dead-ended in front of a small wooden house.
Now this was a development that George could
get behind...unless it was a house full of innocent victims.
Ivan slammed his fist against the steering
wheel. He uttered a string of profanity that made even George's own
liberal use of expletives sound like baby talk, and then put the
van into reverse.
Ivan couldn't possibly know that there
was another van on the path. If Lou and Sam were following them,
there'd be nowhere for the werewolf to go.
Fantastic.
The front door opened. A large greyhound
bolted outside and ran at the van.
"Aw, for God's sake," Ivan muttered.
The dog jumped against the front of
the vehicle, barking furiously. But it wasn't a psycho-rabid dog
bark; just the regular old bark of a dog that was way too excited
to see strangers.
A thin man in filthy overalls came out
of the house. "Roxie!" he shouted. "Get back in here!"