"This here's my brother, Rake," Bass said as the bald one unlocked Matt's manacle. "He's been sick for a couple a weeks with like a cancer on his back. If you're really a doctor, fix him up. If you ain't, I'm gonna put yer eyes out, for starters."
"You're going to kill me anyway," Matt said.
The moment he spoke the words, he knew they were a mistake. Moving like a cobra strike, Bass snatched him by the shirt again, this time lifting his toes clear of the floor.
"Don't fuck with me," he rasped. "And don't fuck with my brother neither."
"Okay, okay. Put me down."
Praying his instincts about Rake's problem were correct, Matt walked around the bed and drew down the sheet. It was as he'd suspected, a gigantic abscess of a congenital remnant, known as a pilonidal cyst, located directly over the tailbone just above the crack between Rake's enormous buttocks. Partially obscuring the abscess, which was six inches from top to bottom and almost certainly down to bone, was a large, geometric tattoo that looked like something drawn with a Spirograph.
"I can fix this," Matt said.
"Ain't no one can fix cancer," one of the bikers said.
"Shut up," Bass snapped.
"This isn't cancer," Matt replied. "It's infection. I need to open it up and wash the pus out. You have anything like a bathtub here? I mean one with hot water. It's got to be big enough for him to fit into."
"Tub's back there," Bass said. "We kin get plenty a hot water from… we got it."
"And soap, like the kind you wash dishes with."
Bass looked over at the nursing mother, who nodded.
"We got that," he said.
"And some rags, a lot of them — the cleaner the better."
Another look, another nod, this time in the direction of the kitchen. One of the bikers went in there and returned quickly with a small armload of rags. He set them where Matt indicated at the foot of the bed.
"Okay, I need a knife — a sharp one."
In an instant, all three bikers had produced blades from nearly invisible sheaths, the smallest of which was half a foot or better.
"Pick one an' don't do nothin' stupid," Bass warned.
Matt chose the smallest knife and hefted it in his hand, examining the point at the same time.
"Finally, I need some hot, soapy water," he said. "Half a pail."
Bass grunted something, and in a minute, the bald biker had left, returned, and set a bucket half filled with sudsy water at Matt's feet.
"Tell him this is going to hurt like hell," Matt said. "A little while after I'm done, much of the pain he's been having should go away."
"You hear that?"
"Tell him to do whatever the fuck he has to," Rake groaned.
Given what awaited within Rake's infected pilonidal cyst, there was no sense in bothering to sterilize the knife or his skin. Matt wrapped a cloth around the blade and held it in place about an inch from the tip.
"Okay, Rake. Ready… and… now!"
He thrust the knife straight in and pulled it straight down through the tattoo, almost two inches. Rake hissed through clenched teeth, but made no other sound. Bloody, foul-smelling pus, under tremendous pressure, spewed from the wound. Much of it hit the cloth surrounding the blade. Some of it actually spattered Matt.
"Soon as he can move, get him into the tub of hot, soapy water," Matt ordered, cleaning the wound out as best he could and rinsing his hands in the bucket of water. "It might sting, but it'll help a lot. Does anybody here have any antibiotics? Now that the infection is open, they might help."
"You're a shitty liar," Bass said. "Becky already told me what you did with Samuel."
Obviously anticipating the need, he tossed over the pillowcase of purloined medications, and Matt selected out the most powerful of them.
"Two of these four times today," he said, wondering if being caught in this particular lie was a minus or a plus, "then one four times a day. He really should be seen at a hospital, but even if you don't take him, this cavity should heal from the inside over two weeks, three tops. Send someone to a store for ten or twelve bottles of peroxide and some gauze bandages. You can wash out the hole with the peroxide and then pack it with the gauze." He glanced down at his unprotected hands and added, "Get a few boxes of rubber gloves, too."
He hesitated, carefully choosing the words to make a sort of deal with Bass. Before he could speak, though, without a word of thanks or warning, Bass motioned with a jerk of his head, and Matt was unceremoniously pulled, almost dragged, from the house and returned to the shed.
"Wait a minute," he complained as Shaved Head locked his cuff back onto the copper pipe. "Wait one fucking minute. I just saved that man's life. No questions asked. Listen, I need to get out of here. My friends are going to die if I don't. Tell Bass I won't ever say anything to anyone about having been here. I promise." The bikers were already headed out. "Stop! This isn't fair! I saved your friend's life!" He was railing at the inside of the closed door. "Goddamn it."
Matt kicked the wall and made yet another fruitless attempt to pull the pipe free. No chance. He was as good as dead. If they let him live, it would only be to care for the cavity he had created in Rake's back.
"You bastards!" he yelled. "Ungrateful bastards!"
He slumped down onto his bed of oily rags, pulled the blanket over him, and closed his eyes. Nikki and the others had virtually no chance now, either. For a time he thought about slow suffocation. Breathing gets more difficult, you feel sleepy, you lay down and close your eyes, you don't wake up. There were certainly worse ways to die, probably including whatever the bikers had in store for him.
Time passed. He might have actually dozed off when the door flew open again. Bass stood there as he had initially, all but blocking out the scene behind him. But this time there was a difference. This time his left hand was behind his back and his massive right paw, dangling loosely at his side, had a gun nestled in it.
"Shit. Bass, don't do this," Matt begged in a half whisper. "I won't tell anyone about you. I promise."
"You better mean that," Bass growled. "It's a good thing fer you yer such a crummy liar."
He bent down and skimmed Matt's pistol across the floor to where he lay. Matt hadn't fully absorbed the significance of the gesture when the key to the handcuffs followed along with a pair of dry jeans and a work shirt. Without another word, Bass turned and left the shack.
Standing in his stead, taking up considerably less space, was Frank Slocumb.
CHAPTER 35
"Ain't it jes the balls, Lewis? Har this boy survives a friggin' mine cave-in, goes o'er a thirty-foot unnerground waterfall, an' then ends up gittin' hisself captured by Bass Vernon an' his lunatic gang."
"Y'are somethin'," Lewis Slocumb said to Matt.
Lewis, his jury-rigged chest tube pinned to his shirt, sat crammed between his brother Frank and Matt in the cab of their battered 1940-something red Ford pickup. In the back, amidst boxes and tarps, was younger brother Lyle. Kyle had been left to guard their farm.
"Frank," Matt said, still giddy from his close call with the bikers, "except maybe for when you popped out of your mother's womb, I swear no one has ever been happier to see you than I was back there."
"Who sez Mammy 'uz happy?" Lewis chimed in. "She 'bout slit her throat when she first saw him."
"An' she 'bout slit yourn when she saw yew."
Matt joined in their laughter. It was just past ten on a heavily overcast morning. The truck had been jouncing up a steep, rutted dirt road for nearly half an hour, circling the mountain that contained both the Belinda mine and the toxic storage dump.