He was under the witness of moonlight, and he would take them down!
Peering into the cracks of the coated office windows, he saw that Jim and the two flunkies weren’t there. A smell about the shed that he couldn’t name set him to more animal stealth than even before.
He heard voices, tuned to them. Moving toward them, he wondered how he himself would not be heard, boots cracking the surface of the dry earth.
A pile of yellow tape was coiled by a rod used for a stake at the left. To the right of the picture, which could have had a frame, sat a bulldozer, inert, gleaming dully in the moonlight. The three men were about the same height, but Mark could identify by heft the one on the eastern end as Eugene, and then Aram by his monotone. “It’ll fit two,” Aram said.
A beat, then Jim D said, “May have to fit more than that.”
“Pee-yew, it stanks,” Eugene said. “That’s nasty, I mean nasty.”
Mark detested the air, the air he breathed the same as those beings did, whether it was putrid or not, but the stench made itall the more pernicious, generating the first turn of fear he’d felt so far.
The men started on their way back. Aram said to Jimmy, “One thing. I want you to know I’s the one who clocked her. Cowboy here was staring off the balcony like a pure idiot. You think you could have yanked Bo back, dummy, by looking over like that?” Now to Jim again: “She’d have shoved him over too, I swear, if I was not on my toes.”
“Congratu-fuckin’-lations, Twinkle Toes,” Jimmy said. “You’re both fuckups, so quit shootin’ your faces.”
“Hm,” Aram said, halting in his stride. “She quit makin’ noise. Wonder why.”
Eugene said, “I can hear her now.”
Mark, hunched down by a Toyota SUV with its top half-sheared off, knew they meant Tiffany, even with so little to go on. She was alive, then!
Jimmy said, “Get her out.”
They were so close now. Mark wanted them now!
Eugene, on the end of the row of men closest to Mark, went down by the force of the MP baton against his collar bone. Crack! He screamed in agony, collapsed, rolled, and appeared to be paralyzed, still moaning.
The two others scattered, Jim running down the aisle for the office. Aram hustled behind a car, but he couldn’t escape Mark’s sight. “Who the hell is it?” Aram yelled.
Mark closed on him and felt the wind of a thrown object blow by. The rat scampered. Again, the rat called out: “It’s you. Come get me, cocksuckah! See what you’re made of.” He dared to move out from the shadows, up against a wimp actor who had got lucky once. He moved on him with a bar of some kind, some detritus with length and weight, and it did catch Mark’s baton and send it flying. Aram swung again. Mark dodged, ran two cars down the aisle, ripped an antenna off its rusted base, yanked on it to see if it would extend. Two inches. Two inches more was what he had, and two inches more is what he used. As Aram swung the next time, the moonlight showed a softened pleasure in Aram’s face as if the deed was done, the act was closed, the curtain down. But illusion is what the game is about, asshole, is what Mark felt as he whipped the antenna across his assailant’s face. “Ya!” Aram exclaimed, and droppedthe rod or post or whatever it was that clamored noisily over the hood of a car.
Mark whipped again and again, yet Aram managed to rise and run, swearing death threats and torture unimaginable upon Mark when the time would come.
Now Mark heard the sounds from afar, the “ummmming” and the clunking, and knew it was Tiffany, bound or buried or both, somewhere. His adrenaline kicked into even higher gear to pursue his prey: Aram, slipping again into the shadows as he zigzagged through the yard. A spotlight from atop the office pinned Mark, blinding him before he could turn away. He ducked behind a car carcass, blinking residual blots away.
Then all was quiet, and Mark realized he’d lost his foe. Worse, Mark had dropped-when?-the stainless-steel antenna whip. He still had the Ranger. His hearing was tuned to what had to be its finest. Every whisper of wind, every far-off passage of a wheeled object, the creak in the power lines as they rocked in the breeze, was claimed. Aram could not take him by surprise. The knife he held was at the ready, out of its holster, gripped sideways for slashing, as he had seen it done in the action films.
“Oo-oo-oo-oo.” Jimmy D spoke quietly in her ear. “Hop along, Little Miss Hopalong Cassidy. Or shuffle, if you please. Hurry! Hurry, or it will be worse for your Markie boy.”
That, too, Mark heard, though not distinctly. But he knew that Jimmy had moved her. She was up. Moving. Life!
Jimmy had to be taking her to the shed because there was no other structure around. He’d get to her. Think Swagger. Swagger would not go off half-cocked, expose himself. Take out Aram first. Aram on a Stick: take-out. Jesus, he was getting looney and he knew it.
Up popped the head, as if on cue. Checking. Aram didn’t see Mark. Didn’t mark the Mark.
A wheel-cover leaning against a Caddy caught Mark’s eye. He dashed for it. Aram would hear the thumping feet. Markcouldn’t help that. All the better. When his opponent rounded a pickup, Mark was ready. Three minor belts earned in Tae Kwan Do while in acting school is all Mark had, but hey, he’d always been a good student and a hardy kid. He didn’t even see Aram’s head. It was the shoulders he saw reflected in the windshield of a vehicle, but that was all he needed. He used the hubcap as a heavyweight Frisbee as Aram lurched into the space. The hubcap struck him hard on the temple, and he went down. Straight down; no motion in the mound.
Funny how you can have all this going on, Mark thought, and balance so many images in your mind. I see the cops who aren’t here to help me but should be. I see the boat, the way it cut through the sun’s reflection on the surface water. I see myself, decked out in camo gear, and I am proud! Proud to be a Marine, or what the devil it is they say. Man, where’s a casting maven when you need one?
“You’re thinking I’m a rotten guy,” Jimmy D told his captive. “I know you do. But, dear, I am a misunderstood guy. Really. Don’t believe?” He started laughing. “Neither do I!”
“But see? Am I hurting you? No. I’m letting you sit, like a person, not a bag. Now, I can’t unbind your feet because I heard what a hellion you are. I can’t unbind your wrists, ’cause, well… you know.”
The single overhead light inside was off. The spotlight he had turned on Mark only for that one moment was out. Now it was only his role to wait. Wait for The Mark to come. “Daddy, are we there yet?” he said, grinning.
Mark took his time. Ten minutes. Fifteen. He’d peeked inside. Black, of course. But Mark had played a blind man once. He’d learned about echolation, cramming for the part, and he knew he could enter, go anywhere, without sight, and know withoutseeing; feel, on his face the things which surrounded him.
When Mark turned the door handle and opened the door, he heard Tiffany going “Mmm-mmm,” in warning. He said, “Shhhhh.”
Jimmy D, the Evil One, said nothing, nothing at all. Mark held up a car mat with a waist, the shape of a man. Jim Daniels let go a round. Blam! God, it was loud! Tiffany screamed behind her tape.
Blam! Blam!
Instantly Mark moved in, knowing that Jimmy D would himself be sight-impaired from the flare where the cylinder shot out a circle of flame upon firing.
Mark wrist-flicked the Ranger into Jim D where he stood prepared to fire again. The gun barrel pointed at the floor, the shoulders sagged, and the whole weight of the man collapsed, the knife deep in his chest by the heart. The eyes, when Mark stood over him, shone like eggwhites without a yolk to surround.