The Survivor Page 23

  Chapter 38

  Casper sprang before Nate did, swiping at the glass, barking furiously. Nate unlocked his legs and charged, crashing into the sliding door with his shoulder and bouncing back, landing on his ass. In the pane, he saw only a few feet of reflected patio, the uniform black sky, and his own expression of abject terror. Rising, he shoved his face to the glass to see inside, his breath clouding the view at quick intervals.

  Indistinct in his massive dark coat, Yuri reached the door to the garage just as Janie passed into the house again, gun in hand, nearly colliding with him. Her expression clicked instantly from worry to horror, and then Yuri’s massive hand palmed her face like a basketball and shoved her out into the garage, the gun spinning from her grip. She tripped, striking the still-opening door, tumbling off the step and out of sight. The door banged wall and wobbled back, slamming shut. Calmly, Yuri reached over and threw the dead bolt.

  Crouching to retrieve the fallen gun, he turned and looked across the kitchen, fixing his glinting possum eyes on Nate.

  Then he rose and headed up the stairs.

  Nate’s skin caught fire, every nerve ending, every cell.

  Casper’s barks elongated into rumbling howls as he jabbed at the sliding door with his front paws, gouging up curls of wood from the frame. Nate spun, grabbing the nearest thing he could lay hands on—a wrought-iron patio chair. He hurled it with all his strength. It struck the pane, rippling the reflection, sending out a warbling sonar cry and bouncing back, narrowly missing his head. A thumbnail-size chip marred the perfect pane. Nothing more.

  In a fury Nate swatted aside another chair, then kicked over a table, at last laying eyes on the cast-stone umbrella base waiting patiently for springtime. Squatting, he hoisted it, his compromised left hand useful only as a grappling hook. His back straining, he lifted the base above a shoulder and barreled at the sliding glass door, rotating to let the cast stone hit first.

  The sound was limp, a muted cracking as the safety glass webbed. He punched through, sprawling onto his back, the umbrella base rocketing dangerously to bite up a chunk of kitchen tile.

  From upstairs he heard Cielle’s scream, “Dad, help me!”

  Her voice, the terrified plea, the word at last—Dad—had him back on his feet as if he’d been yanked up by the collar. Trapped in the garage, Janie slapped and pounded on the door. Hurtling past to the foyer, he leaped at the stairs. In full gallop, trying to make the turn behind him, Casper skidded out, nails scrabbling helplessly across the floorboards. Nate seemed to fall up the stairs, four, five at a time, and then Cielle’s door rocked into view, funhouse-tilting back and forth as his legs pounded the carpet. “Dad! Daaad!” He crashed through, catching one frenzied glimpse of Cielle recoiled against her window before Yuri’s fist swung into view from nowhere, firmed around the handle of Nate’s own gun, reverse brass knuckles flying at his forehead with dizzying speed.

  A blip of blackness.

  Then Cielle’s ceiling staring down, a blank screen. Somewhere a fuzzy voice. Blood in his eyes. He tried to lift a hand to wipe it away, but his muscles did not respond. Blinking away the blood seemed to be the only movement he could muster. On the far side of the closed door, Casper was at the wood like a vampire, fangs and nails. The unique agony of face pain and the stunned moment of laid-out paralysis transported Nate to that dune, his mouth pressed to the sand, his eardrums thrumming, the heat of the helo explosion roiling across his back.

  But no. This was worse.

  Even over the snarls, Nate could make out the voice now, across the room, addressing Cielle: “I am bigger. I hold the power. This is way of the world. You will learn.”

  His head felt filled with concrete, the weight pulling at him. He let it fall to the side. The stepstool carved with his daughter’s name had been kicked over, the letter puzzle pieces crowding his field of vision. Across the room Cielle was sobbing, black eyeliner streaking. Her round face lit with disbelief and shock.

  Yuri spun her and pushed her brusquely against the window. “Undress.”

  She tried to look over her shoulder, a crescent of flushed cheek coming visible. A tiny voice. “Dad?”

  Nate moved to rise, and daggers of pain shot through his skull. He coughed up a mouthful of vomit.

  Yuri pushed the steel gun barrel against Cielle’s shoulder blade so the skin dimpled. “Your father not help you now. Undress.”

  She crossed her arms weakly, gripped the hem of her sweater. Then she stopped, sagging against the wall, her knees giving out. “No,” she said. “No.”

  “Relax.” Yuri lowered the pistol’s tip, grazing her kidney, menacing her. “I just want to see your insides.”

  Nate shoved himself up on his elbows, but static blotted his vision, and he knew that if he rose too quickly, he’d black out. He paused on trembling muscles, panting, the scene unfolding right across from him.

  “I come right back, pryntsesa.”

  Yuri’s footsteps creaked the floor, and then an enormous boot pressed down on Nate’s trachea, pinning his head to the carpet and denting his windpipe closed. A long view up to that expressionless, tilted face. Nate gagged for air, his legs writhing like snakes. Nausea swelled, blotting out sensation, the breath gone from his lungs. His fingers curled around Yuri’s boot, but his grasp was weak, his left hand worthless. In seconds he’d lose consciousness. Cielle’s sobs kept on, a horrible background murmur.

  Helpless, he rolled his head an inch or two toward the door, an arm’s length away. The dog hurled himself against the far side, snapping and howling, but there was no way Nate could reach the knob to let him in. A rush of white noise hummed in his ears. The static came again, filling his eyes. Through the black and white specks, he noted a band of color running down, kissing the carpet.

  Cielle’s purple-and-green scarf. Hooked around the doorknob.

  The lever doorknob.

  He strained to reach the scarf. The tips of his fingers brushing the soft wool. Yuri smirked, amused. “You are going to hit me with scarf?”

  He shoved down harder, and Nate’s throat ignited. He could see nothing now but static, a great wide field of it. With a final burst of strength, he stretched, clinched the ends of the scarf in his weakened left hand. He commanded his fingers to close. They slid uselessly down the fabric, then finally clamped, the grip just firm enough.

  Too late, Yuri realized what Nate was doing. The boot lifted, oxygen screeching into Nate’s lungs even as he tugged. The scarf pulled the lever knob down, releasing the latch bolt. Before Yuri could take his first step, the door blasted open, an explosion of animal.

  Chapter 39

  It seemed at first that the dog was flying. His paws didn’t touch so much as skim the carpet. There was a single superhero bound, a coiling of flanks and legs, and then 110 pounds of Rhodesian ridgeback went airborne. As Yuri swung the gun around, Casper rocketed directly up into his face.

  The Beretta fired into the wall and the floor beside Nate’s cheek, before kicking free from the big man’s grasp. Casper didn’t reestablish contact with the ground. His paws digging into thigh and throat, he stayed in a horror-movie flotation, driving himself continually up into Yuri’s face. The big man stumbled, bellowing, swinging blindly, crashing into the bed, the wall. He finally managed to bat the dog away, and he lurched toward the door, his flailing arm throwing an arc of crimson drops against the stark white wall. Casper landed on his side but rotated immediately onto his paws, and then he was gone, shot from a cannon down the hall, clawing up the fleeing man’s back.

  There came a crashing on the stairs, a tumble of man and dog, then a high-pitched animal yelp. Thunderous footsteps, the front door swinging open. A masculine shout outside and a secondary crash. Nate was on hands and knees, hacking, the air so fresh it burned. He forced himself up, wiping at his face. Cielle was slid down beneath the window, balled up, hugging her knees, her face streaked with tears. He went to her and held her, and she clutched at his arm hard, finally sobbing, letting go.
He cradled her head and arm even as he pulled her to her feet, her dark hair sticking in the blood of his forehead.

  “Baby, we have to go. We have to go.”

  She nodded rapidly, like a little kid. On the way out, he snatched up the pistol. Her legs were loose beneath her, but he braced her down the hall. Casper waited at the base of the stairs, one leg raised and bent delicately back to protect the injured paw. His snout gleamed darkly with liquid. There was blood on the stairs, the walls.

  Not his.

  Casper turned to trot beside them. Calling for Janie, Nate rushed to check the garage. It was empty, the Jeep there and loaded, the big door raised. As they spun back for the kitchen, Janie shoved through the jagged mouth in the sliding door, glass pebbles cascading over her shoulders. She ran to them, grabbing Cielle’s face, checking her.

  “You’re okay,” Janie said. “You’re okay.” Her knuckles glittered white, skinned from hammering at the locked door to the kitchen before she’d thought to open the big garage door.

  “The Jeep,” Nate said. “Right now. Let’s go.”

  They rushed to pile in, Casper hopping into the backseat with Cielle. Nate reversed, leaving streaks of rubber on the concrete.

  As they blasted backward into the driveway, a body came into view in the bed of azaleas, mashing down the magenta blossoms. Yuri? Nate hit the brakes. The body stirred. Rolling her window open, Janie pulled the lever on her seat, dropping back to clear the way. Nate lifted the pistol, taking aim past her face through the open window.

  Next to Cielle, Casper licked his paws, a moist lapping. They watched, waiting, Nate aligning the sights, casting his mind back to the shooting range during basic. Slow, steady pressure. Even exhale.

  The flowers rustled again, and then Shithead Jason pulled himself up from the bed, brushing dirt from his flannel. He spotted Nate and threw his hands in the air, stickup style. “What the fuck! Don’t shoot me!”

  Even from that distance, it was clear his eye was swelling, mauve creeping in around the socket. His lip was split, too, probably from the fall. A guitar case and overnight bag lay in the flowers where they’d dropped.

  Nate thought of that masculine shout he’d heard outside. The secondary crash. Yuri punching the boy and knocking him off the porch as he’d fled.

  Nate lowered the gun, exhaled through clenched teeth as Jason grabbed his stuff and bounded toward them. “Where’d that big fucking guy go?”

  “I don’t know,” Nate shouted. “But you’ve got to split. Go home.”

  “Where are you guys going all loaded up? Are you … are you just taking off?”

  Nate craned his neck, looking around, expecting Yuri to lunge from the bushes, snarling saw in hand. “Jason, it’s not safe here. Get the hell gone.”

  Cielle was leaning out her window, crying. “Jay, you have to go!”

  Nate started to reverse again, but Jason was jogging alongside the vehicle, guitar case rattling against his knee. “Hang on! I’m going with you.”

  The Jeep chirped to a halt again, Nate shouting out the window, Janie now chiming in. “You can’t.”

  “Go, Jason. You have to get out of here.”

  “Wait!” He banged the side panel. “Just wait. If you don’t take me, I’ll camp out right here. And I’ll tell those guys and … and I’ll say who I am, and they’ll kill me, and it’ll be on your head. I’ll sleep on the porch. I’m not leaving.” He was blubbering, snot and blood streaming down his chin. “I love her, okay? I love her.”

  Cielle made a noise in her throat indicating, somehow, that she found this romantic.

  Jason stood there hunched pathetically in the driveway with his bag and guitar case and sad-sack eyes. “If you leave me here, you might as well kill me yourself.”

  Nate looked at him a moment longer, then stomped on the gas pedal. The Jeep lurched backward out of the driveway, leaving Jason there, his hands extended plaintively.

  When Nate stopped in the street to yank the gearshift into drive, Janie was looking across at him. “What?” he said.

  “They’ve seen him now,” she said. “They could come after him. No matter how much of a pain in the ass he is, it’s our fault.”

  “He’s a kid!” Nate said. “He’s got parents. We can’t just—”

  Cielle now, from the backseat: “He’s emancipated. His dad’s dead. He hasn’t talked to his mom in months.”

  The words flying. There was no time to discuss this and even less to decide. Jason was shuffling toward them, his hands still out as if catching rain.

  “Mom, please,” Cielle said.

  “Oh, for the love of Christ.” Janie cranked down her window. “Get in.”

  The waterworks shut off immediately, and Jason hopped in, tossing his bag and guitar into the back. Grimacing, Nate took off, eyes rotating from wing mirror to rearview. Five blocks away. Ten. On the freeway now, exits sailing past.

  He almost dared to breathe normally.

  “So what went down back there?” Jason asked, one hand covering his eye. Silence. He glanced around. “O-kay.” He leaned forward, taking in Nate’s face. “You’re all bloody.”

  Nate’s mouth was sour, laced with the bitterness of spent adrenaline. “Yes, Jason. I’m all bloody.”

  “Dude, you can call me Jay already. Jason sounds like you’re all angry.” He blinked a few times, awaiting a response that Nate withheld. “Where we going anyway?”

  “We,” Nate said. “Great.” A big green freeway sign flew by overhead. He squeezed the steering wheel, the nerves of his fingers giving off a worrisome tingle. On the lam with a deteriorating medical condition. Hardly ideal. “We can’t use credit cards. Can’t make reservations. Can’t book flights. So just this second, Jason? I don’t know.”

  “Huh.” Jason chewed his lip. He turned to Cielle. “Gimme your phone.”

  She passed him her iPhone, and he clicked around. Nate watched in the mirror, irritated. Janie kept her thin arms crossed, doing her best to stop them from shaking. Cielle cried silently, tears slipping down her cheeks. The trauma catching up to them.

  The gentle iPhone tapping continued, and finally Nate said, “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Facebook, dude.”

  “Do you really think this is the best time for—”

  “I’m looking up my friends in the Los Angeles network. Well, it used to be a network, but now it’s listed as ‘current city.’ Lame.”

  “Quiet would be good right now, Jason,” Nate said.

  “Like this dude. Status update: ‘Can’t wait for two weeks in Maui.’ Then it links to his Twitter account for the real-time skinny. See? Cool. Here’s his latest tweet: ‘Rocking it with the Ps at the Grand Wailea.’ Ps stands for ‘parents.’”

  “Yes. I figured.”

  “Then there’s the location-map icon with the tweet. Here. Yup. Dude’s in Maui all right.”

  “Fascinating, Jason. We just squeezed out of that house with our lives, and now you’re—”

  “And I’ll scroll back a few tweets to find an old one. Like this. ‘Dear Funky Smell in my sock drawer. Please go away.’” He brayed a quick laugh. “Now I’ll click this location-map icon. And here.” He shoved the phone at Nate.

  “What?”

  “It’s a house in Silver Lake,” Jason said. “With no one home for the next nine days.”

  Nate took the iPhone, glanced down at the screen. A neat little map. Janie looked across at the device, too, and then they looked at each other, and her eyes reshaped themselves with a touch of amusement, though they were still wet.

  Cielle wiped her tears, leaned over, and kissed Jason on the cheek. He leaned back, crossing his arms, gangsta style. “Boo-yah!”

  Janie, deadpan, her eyes still glassy: “He was kinda growing on me till the boo-yah.”

  “I hope they have a hot tub,” Jason mused.

  “I thought you said this was your friend,” Nate said.

  “Don’t you know anything?” Jason snickered. “No one
’s really friends on the Internet.”

  * * *

  They drove east in silence, Janie reading the electronic map and issuing directions in a flat, almost lifeless voice. Jason took Cielle’s hand, giving her knuckles a quick kiss, and Nate was surprised to feel not disapproval but a tremor of appreciation. His daughter had endured an edge-of-hell scare, and Shithead at least knew to offer a bit of comfort. Drinking in the silence, they tended their private worries, the thrum of the tires carrying them into the unknown.

  Nate exited at Silver Lake. Home to hipsters, slackers, aspiring artists, indie musicians, and other redundancies, the hilly, tree-intensive neighborhood sits east of Hollywood and north of downtown. Nate navigated through a gauntlet of cafés, boutiques, coffee shops, Pilates studios, gay bookstores, and martini clubs, each crowded with a full rainbow of patrons. They drove past the famous flight of stairs where Laurel and Hardy had lugged that player piano up and ridden it down a time or twelve, and then they were winding up toward the reservoir and the address marked on Cielle’s iPhone by a virtual guitar pick.

  The architecture varied, Spanish bungalows interspersed with sleek Neutra knockoffs and a few actual Neutras. They reached the house, a modern structure of glass and concrete, and Jason let out a whistle. Leaving the Jeep up the street, they zombie-shuffled back toward the front yard, bruised and bloody and hollowed out, dead on their feet. Circling like predators, they assessed the doors, windows, and gates for vulnerabilities.

  In the side yard, Nate found an unlatched window letting into the laundry room and jiggled the pane up. No alarm. The smells of detergent and fabric softener wafted through the gap, a reminder of normal lives lived normally. Turning to call to the others, he found his voice missing. The circumstances had dawned, reality riding in on the household scents, rattling him into speechlessness. He swallowed hard, dried blood crackling at his hairline, and tried again.

  Chapter 40

  The sun broke the horizon, sending a plane of yellow through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Light crept across the great-room floor, claiming the Oriental rug, the paisley-shaped coffee table, Shithead Jason sleeping in a swirl of blankets, finally reaching the base of the couch, Nate’s bare toes, shins, knees. At last he was squinting into the glare rather than watching it stalk him. After a fitful few hours of sleep, he’d awakened as if jolted by a live wire, and sat silent watch as Jason snored at his feet and his wife and daughter slumbered in the bedroom up the hall. He’d left the house only once, creeping outside to swap the Jeep’s license plates with those from the Range Rover parked in the garage.