No one said anything. Well, nothing intelligible, anyway; even the Old Man was stunned dumb. Around them, the only noise was the steady drip of water. Justin felt like he might faint; the world itself sort of swirled around, his knees felt very weak, and he almost pissed his pants.
“Pl… please,” he heard himself saying. “Please don’t hurt anyone else.”
The man grimaced and spat a thick glob onto the ground.
“Goddamn it!” he growled, scowling fiercely. He seemed to wrestle with his emotions for a long moment, and then hissed out a pent-up breath and nodded stiffly. “OK, OK. The deal’s just the same, folks. Ain’t nothin’ changed. Me and the old geezer and the big lady are leavin’. And I still ain’t decided what to do with what’s left of the rest of you. You, the long-haired kid, come’re and take these binders.”
Bowler, after a moment’s hesitation, shakily did as asked and picked the plastic strands from the sodden ground.
“Now,” said the man, speaking slowly, “go lash the Doc to the girder.”
Bowler looked helplessly at Justin, who shrugged and offered his wrists.
“I suppose we’d better,” he had to pause to swallow, “do as this man says, hadn’t we?”
The younger man, eyes very wide and face gone ashen white, nodded woodenly.
“Yeah… I guess so.”
The restraints weren’t complicated; even Bowler had no trouble securing Justin’s hands to either side of the twisted steel girder.
“Nice an’ tight,’ now,” cautioned the man. “I’m gonna check them binders, so make sure they’s tight.”
Bowler, a torn, pained expression on his thin face, complied and Justin felt the straps dig into his wrists, just to the point where he would lose circulation in his hands.
“OK,” said the man and motioned at Erin Swails. “Now do this here lady, same way, other side of that thing.”
And so, before long, there they were, the five of them, all firmly lashed to the same fifteen-foot piece of twisted steel. The stranger, having checked Bowler’s work, had Cass truss up Bowler and the Old Man and then personally did the same for Cass. By the time they were all done, some hour or so later, thanks to their captor’s careful, methodical movements, most of the adrenaline in Justin’s system had worked its way through and he felt drained. Also hungry and thirsty, despite the danger, but mostly just drained, emotionally and physically, like a battery run down and ready to quit.
Having made sure that he and the others weren’t going anywhere, the stranger promptly strode away and seemed to look for something in the matted grass and wind-strewn garbage. This went on for some time and Justin finally wondered aloud what the man was up to.
“He mentioned a bike,” answered Erin, her voice flat and dead. “Maybe he’s looking for that.”
Presently this became evident, as the man stopped looking, shook his head sadly, and kicked something laying bent and twisted in the debris. He swore once, took some things from what was left of a motorcycle, and then went over to their car and began to go through its contents. After a few minutes, he came away from the vehicle with some clothing and donned a pair of black cargo pants, a dark brown shirt, and a long, light brown duster coat over his strange, ultra-camouflage suit. The clothes were too big for him (because, Justin realized with a sharp pang, they were Cornell’s) but the man used a knife to slash off the extra lengths of sleeves and pant legs, readjusted the straps and belts beneath, and shrugged a few times experimentally. At Justin’s side, the Old Man clucked and sighed.
“That’s low,” he said softly. “Killin’ a man and then takin’ his clothes? Man. I mean, I’ve seen some pretty harsh fuckers on this trip, you know? But this dude pretty well takes the cake!”
“Mr. Lampert, please,” said Justin. “He’s coming back. Please be quiet now, alright?”
“Just low, is all.”
The strange, terrifying glow in the stranger’s eyes was gone, but the utterly dead aspect to his normal stare was, Justin decided, bad enough. It was like staring into the eyes of a shark. A five-foot, seven inch, scrawny, bullet-headed, homicidal shark with lots of guns. Suddenly, though, the stark reality of Cornell’s death setting in, anger cut through the fear Justin was feeling and he straightened up (as best he could, tethered to a girder) and tried to stare right back.
“Sir, please,” he said, as calmly and firmly as he could manage. “All of this is completely unnecessary. You don’t need to kidnap Mr. Lampert or hurt anyone. We’ll cooperate, with whatever you want to do. There’s no need for violence.”
The man’s face was utterly expressionless. “Sorry, Doc,” he said, not sounding the least bit sorry. “I already got a plan an’ I aim to stick to it.”
“But if you would just listen!” pleaded Justin. “This man, Mr. Lampert, represents perhaps the only hope of humanity’s survival! If we don’t get him to California, where they can make a vaccine, the Plague will return, over and over again, until everyone is dead. Don’t you understand?”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, I heard about all that,” he said. “And it don’t mean shit to me. I gotta job to do, plague or no plague, and that’s that. Maybe you’re right. Maybe you ain’t blowin’ smoke up my ass an’ the Sick will come back and wipe everybody out. But that ain’t my thing, Doc. Get me? I don’t give a fat rat’s ass about it.”
“But it does concern you!” Justin spluttered. “Don’t you see? The plague will return, and then, sooner or later, you will contract it!”
“Eh,” said the man with a slight shrug. “I’ll most likely be long dead by then. So whatta I care? Naw, Doc, it’s like I said: Sorry to mess up your plans, but this old dude is worth… well, let’s just say he’s worth a lot. And now he’s mine. End of story.”
“Worth a lot?” said Justin. “To whom?”
“Never mind that,” the man said. “But if it’s any consolation, I can tell ya it ain’t a cannibal outfit.”
“Oh, thank God for small favors!” the Old Man suddenly cackled. “Geez, Doc, this dude’s worse than your girlfriend! I mean, at least she was good-lookin’, you know?”
“Mr. Lampert, please,” said Justin, still hoping to reason with their captor.
“Please, nothin’!” Lampert wheezed. “This guy is a fuckin’ psycho! He don’t care about anyone but his precious self. Well let me tellya, Mr. Sociopath, you have met your match with me!”
“Shuddup, old man,” glowered the stranger ominously.
“Or what?” sneered Lampert. “Huh? What are you gonna do, kill me? Shit I been beggin’ these poor egghead bastards to do that for a month! And besides, you know as well as I do that I’m no good to anybody if I’m dead. Gotta be the whole package, get it? So there, loony-tunes. Suck on that.”
Justin cringed as the stranger’s expression clouded and his hand strayed to within his new garments, but the man was too smart to be so easily baited. After a moment, he grinned mirthlessly and barked something like a laugh.
“Oh, you’re good, old dude,” he said. “But that ain’t gonna work. I ain’t fallin’ for it.” He paused and eyed Mr. Lampert for a second. “But how about if I just sedate you, huh? You guys got all kinds of drugs and shit in that car. How about if I just juice you up and be done with it?”
“No good,” said Barb Cass, shaking her head. “You don’t want to do that.”
“Why not?”
“At his age?” said Cass. “Hell, just about too much of anything could kill him. No, you don’t want to sedate him. You can’t gag him, either, since he could suffocate. Believe me, I’ve had to take care of him for almost a month; you just have to put up with him.”