“We need to get away from here,” Gus said as forcefully as he could without raising his voice above a whisper.
Shawn didn’t seem to hear. “So why would he bring four five-gallon cans of the stuff to our campground?”
“Maybe he was worried something would go wrong with one of them,” Gus said. “Who cares?”
“That might explain bringing one extra, but four?” Shawn said. “Even if we all doused our breakfasts in the stuff, there’s no way four lawyers, two detectives and one grumpy FBI agent could make it through a single gallon of ketchup, let alone twenty. And since everything they used had to be brought up by helicopter or pack mule, weight would have been a major issue.”
“I promise we’ll solve that mystery,” Gus said desperately. “Right after we figure out how to get out of this road show version of The Hills Have Eyes.”
“And that brings me right back to the question of pillows,” Shawn said. “There were far more on every bed than we needed. So why were there stacks of extras in that supply tent?”
The whole slapping thing was beginning to look a lot more attractive to Gus. There didn’t seem to be any other way to bring Shawn back to reality. First ketchup, now pillows. Gus couldn’t even imagine what sort of fevered fantasy was running through his friend’s brain that would lead him to connect the two.
“Shawn, you’ve got to focus,” Gus said. “We’re here in the woods; we’re being held captive by murderers. You’ve got to stop thinking about pillows and ketchup.”
“But they’re the key,” Shawn said.
“They’re a headrest and a foodstuff,” Gus said. “There’s no way you can put them together to make a key.”
“A pillow isn’t just for resting your head,” Shawn said. “You know that as well as anyone else.”
It took Gus a moment to realize what Shawn was saying. Actually, it took more than a moment. It took his accepting the idea that his friend was not raving the incoherent babblings of the hopelessly schizophrenic, but was actually making a point. Once he accepted that, there was still a brief period when he had to piece together what that point could be.
And even then, he could barely bring himself to believe it.
“That can’t be,” Gus said. “That’s just crazy.”
“Crazier than holding a bunch of lawyers hostage to force the government to stop all logging?”
“It’s a hard call, but just about,” Gus said.
“I might have thought so, too,” Shawn said. “Until I started thinking about something the fat guy said. And then I saw something that convinced me.”
“What’s that?”
For a moment, Shawn didn’t say anything. Gus was going to ask again, but Shawn held up his hand for quiet. They waited in silence until they heard pine needles crunching in the woods to their right.
It was one of the guards. He was patrolling carefully, his gun extended, ready to mow down anyone who thought about running or fighting.
“What are we going to do now?” Gus whispered.
“Get proof.” Shawn scrabbled around in the needles at the base of the tree and came up with a small, tight pinecone. “Okay, now this may be fast, so you’re going to have to watch carefully.”
“What for what?”
“You’ll know.”
Shawn lobbed the pinecone towards the guard. It flew just behind his head and thumped into a tree. The guard whirled around, leveling his gun at the source of the sound.
And Gus saw.
And Gus knew.
Chapter Forty-Two
Gus ran.
That was the plan, anyway. Gus was supposed to run through the forest making as much noise as possible and luring all four of the guards to chase him.
But several hours on his knees in the stifling air had sapped most of his energy, and the best he could manage was a brisk shuffle through the pine needles. That might have been a problem, because it could let one of the guards catch him before he’d attracted the attention of the rest of the hostages. Fortunately, while the guards might have been revolutionaries for the cause of the wilderness, they didn’t seem to have any more experience than Gus in working outside in the blazing heat. As Gus shuffled, they shuffled along behind them.
Of course they couldn’t afford to leave their captives alone as they gave chase. So by the time Gus found himself back in the clearing with four automatic rifles aimed at him, the lawyers were all in the circle, too. After a moment the red-haired leader puffed his way to join them.
“I warned you what would happen if one of you attempted to escape,” the leader said between gasps for breath. “What happens next is not our fault. It is his.”
“Actually, that’s not precisely true,” Balowsky said. “Not in a legal sense, anyway. California has what’s called a felony murder statute, which says that if anyone is killed during the commission of a crime, no matter who is directly responsible, fault attaches to the perpetrators of the original crime.”
“Another law written to protect the powerful,” the leader said. “Here I am the lawgiver, and my law says whatever happens next is his fault.”
“As long as you know it isn’t mine, we’re cool,” Gwendolyn said.
The leader raised his gun. As Gus saw its bottomless black barrel pointing at him, he started to wonder how he had let Shawn talk him into this. Yes, everything Shawn had explained seemed perfectly rational at the time, but there could be a vast gulf between perfectly rational and actually true, and if Shawn had been wrong, that gulf was about to be crossed by a bullet.
“I am the lawgiver,” the leader repeated as his finger tightened on the trigger.
Before the leader’s gun started spitting out lead, there was a rustling from outside the clearing, and Shawn pushed his way between two of the gunmen.
“If you’re the lawgiver, then tell me, is it ‘ape shall never kill ape,’ or ‘ape shall never kill Abe’?” Shawn said. “Because I never trusted that little suck-up chimpanzee.”
“What are you talking about?” the leader shouted.
“If you were truly the lawgiver, you’d understand,” Shawn said. “In the beginning God created beast and Man, so that both might live in friendship and share dominion over a world at peace. But man waged bloody wars against the Apes, whom they reduced to slavery. Then God in his wrath sent the world a savior, miraculously born of two Apes who had descended on Earth from Earth’s own future. And he rose up an army of Apes and gave them speech, and won freedom from their oppressors.”
The leader stared at him, stunned. So did the guards. And the lawyers. Up in the trees, Gus was pretty sure, so did the squirrels.
Finally the leader seemed to shake off his surprise. He thrust his gun in Shawn’s face and screamed at him, “You get down on the ground right now!”
“Did you know your stomach jiggles when you get mad?” Shawn said.
“Get down or I will shoot you!”
“I think we’re done here,” Shawn said. He turned to the lawyers. “You kids coming?”
Shawn turned and started towards the edge of the clearing. Gus followed him. This was the moment. Either Shawn was right or-well, if Shawn wasn’t right, Gus would never find out.
“I am ordering you to stop,” the leader said.
“And I’m ordering you to get down on your knees and do Moritz’ monologue from Spring Awakening, ” Shawn said. “And no cheating by using the song from the musical. I want the original Wedekind. Oh, and Archie Kane sent me.”
Gus sneaked a look at the lawyers. Most of them were too caught up in the impending execution to register what Shawn had just said. Most of them had looks of horror on their faces, although Gwendolyn’s half-smile suggested that she wouldn’t be too sorry to witness what was going to happen next.
Gus felt all the muscles in his back tense as he waited for the first bullet to strike.
But there were no bullets. The leader dropped his gun on the ground. The four guards threw their own weapons into the woods. Gwendolyn dived into the trees and came back leveling one at her former captors.