She scans the landscape, a full circle, but there’s not much she can see beyond tree-shadow and gravestones. She crawls toward the base of the nearest tree and looks around, then starts a crouched, small-step run toward the train car. She moves less than twenty yards when her left foot plants into a pile of dried leaves and catches on something buried underneath. She falls to her knees, lets her body go all the way to the ground, then rolls on her side, swinging the Uzi around to her front. She stops a second, stays on the ground, takes a breath, and sweeps a cautious half-circle in front of her with the Uzi’s barrel. Then her eyes spot something protruding from the leaf pile and it’s another second before she realizes it’s a human hand. She leans back to the pile and pushes leaves aside until she finds what she’s tripped over.
It’s Charlotte Peirce’s body.
There’s a black hole in the center of her forehead. The diameter is somewhere between a quarter and a half-dollar. There are charred burn marks visible around the outer edge of the hole. The bottom half of the face is obscured by a heavy coating of dried blood. Fat streaks of blood run everywhere down the neck. The bottom lip looks to be missing from the face. Rust-colored, blood-soaked leaves bulge from an uneven gap that was once the mouth.
Lenore spots a small pink and red mound next to the head and avoids looking closely. The odds are good it could be a human tongue.
Though she knows it’s a futile gesture, Lenore reaches to the neck and feels for a pulse. The flesh is cold to the touch, already turning into something else. Lenore retracts her hand. She knows there’s another, much larger hole in the back of her head. And that a lot of blood and skull-bone and brain matter have exited into the dry earth below.
She freezes for a minute, tries again to concentrate on breathing. But words come through the earpiece.
CORTEZ: I’m already a motivated buyer. There’s no need for a display. My time here is limited.
WOO: Duk [finger snapping sound], the tape. [Muffled, shuffling noise] [A voice, high, breathless, possibly hyperventilating]
VOICE: Rourke [gasp] don’t [gasp] let this [garbled speech].
WOO: Put him on his knees.
Lenore’s body starts to shut down. Calculation and strategy run from her brain. Her breathing is inaudible. Her feet feel like stone, like if someone lifted them, they’d break away from her ankle in a soft, granular rain.
They’ve got Ike. Ike is the guinea pig, the demonstration model. The Paraclete is Woo. And he’s got Ike, on his knees, on the floor of an abandoned train car. He wants to stuff Ike full of Lingo and watch the display. He wants to put on a show for a customer.
CORTEZ [annoyed]: I’m not interested in sideshows, here. I’m on a very rigid schedule.
ROURKE [nervous]: Really, Mr. W—
WOO: Gentlemen, trust me, it is as much for my benefit as your own. I need to believe in a product, to truly get behind it, to know days, weeks, years down the road that I’ve supplied a worthy item. It’s something of a matter of family pride. [Sharp clap of hands] Duk, my case.
IKE [hysterical, wheezing]: Rourke, you can’t, Billy, Donna — [choking sound]
ROURKE [edgy]: This was not part of the—
WOO [to his assistant]: Watch your fingers, Duk. We can’t be too careful these days.
WILSON [pleading]: Billy—
ROURKE [through teeth]: Shut the fuck up.
CORTEZ: With all due respect, sir.
WOO: This will take just a moment.
[Various sounds, possibly including: a zipper pulled open, subdued male or female crying-noise, throat-clearing, whispers]
WOO: Rub the throat, Duk. Just like you’ve done with the dogs. He’ll swallow.
She gets to her feet, lets her fingers find and set the Uzi for use, takes deep breaths. Then she starts running, not a sprint but a serious jog, surefooted, planting and pushing off, rhythmic, no undue danger to the ankles, the whole time calculating timing, when she’ll reach the open door, who she’ll cut down with the first blast. The whole time in her ear there are the sounds of gurgling, gagging, small choking noise.
CORTEZ [quietly]: I don’t believe in showmanship.
WOO [mimicking his tone]: There’s nothing but showmanship.
She pulls the receiver from her ear and lets it fall. She makes the leap from the ground to the train’s interior in the space of a last running stride. Her presence is sounded by the heavy clump of her feet hitting floor. She comes down in the middle of the whole group, parallel to Rourke and his girlfriend, Cortez to her left, Freddy Woo to her right. All the faces are lit only by the yellow gleam of swaying lanterns suspended above their heads on some unseen hook. They all look like they’re badly made up for some shoestring slasher movie. She sees the huge, bald Oriental next to Woo, must be Duk, start to bring his hand around to his back. She pulls in on the Uzi’s trigger like it was made of rubber, like the right kind of touch could flood her with pleasure. It makes a siege of firecracker pops, made odd and loud by the acoustics of the train car. She releases the trigger at once. Duk’s body is knocked back and down, hits the floor with a sound she knows she’ll recall in dreams.
“Spit it out, Ike,” she screams.
Ike’s on all fours now, like he was someone’s father ready to play Bronco. He comes downward in the front, onto his elbows, his back slanting, shoulders practically touching the floor. His face is obscured. She can see only a thick line of saliva arcing from mouth to floor.
“Spit it,” again, screaming.
She pokes at Woo’s chest with the stunted barrel of the gun and says, “You’re a fucking dead man,” then without taking her eyes off him, she takes a step, brings a leg up until she’s straddled across Ike’s back, brings a free hand down and around to his face, and forces a long finger into the mouth and down toward the throat. There’s a fraction of a second of pause and then she feels the heaving start to build in the chest. In a single motion she pulls hand and arm free and dismounts. Ike begins to vomit onto the train floor.
Sounds start to become recognizable. First, there’s the halting whimpering from the girl, Donna, interlaced with small slapping noises from Rourke, trying to silence her.
“Hit her again, asshole,” Lenore says, and Rourke looks up, face all shock and fear, to see the Uzi swing toward him.
No one speaks for a second. Lenore lets the situation sink in, then says, without looking at him, “Here’s your big chance, Freddy. You’ve got people out there. A waiting car. Go ahead.”
Woo says nothing. He looks quickly to Cortez, who stays rigid, arms folded across his chest.
Lenore lets a hand fall down, sweeps Ike’s hair up off his forehead, wipes away sweat with her palm.
Woo’s mouth opens, closes, opens again. “There’s a tremendous amount of money …”
“Oh, Christ,” she says, almost rolling her eyes.
“More than you would think.”
“I can’t believe you can’t do better. Mr. Language. Jesus.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Wilson says.
“Help her out,” Lenore says to Rourke, looking at Woo. The girl starts to fall toward the floor, slowly, still in the grasp of Rourke’s awkward arms.
“Excuse,” Cortez says, clearing his throat and motioning toward the graveyard with a slight tilt of his head.
Lenore exhales, then nods back to him. Cortez lightly touches Jimmy Wyatt’s shoulder and the mute picks up the briefcase of money and jumps out of the boxcar.