“But when she screwed up, they needed me. Or thought they did. To see what the future held.”
Sensing a pending revelation of an ugly truth, I said, “Shut up,” but I spoke in little more than a murmur, perhaps because I knew I needed to hear whatever he had to tell me, even if I’d no desire to hear it.
To Doogie, Randolph said, “Ask me what the stakes are.”
The word stakes spiraled around the ovoid room, still whispering back to us even as Doogie dutifully asked, “What are the stakes?”
“Conrad and I play to see who gets to soak each of these tykes in gasoline.”
Conrad mustn’t have been in possession of a gun in the warehouse the previous night. If he’d had one, he would have shot me dead the moment that I touched his face in the dark.
Moving his hands as if dealing imaginary cards, Randolph said, “Then we play to see who gets to light the match.”
Looking as if he might shoot first and worry about ricochets later, Doogie said, “Why haven’t you killed them already?”
“Our numerology tells us there should be five in this offering. Until recently, we thought we had only four. But now we think…” He smiled at me. “We think the dog is special. We think the dog makes five. When you interrupted, we were playing cards to see who lights the mutt boy.”
I didn’t think that Randolph had a firearm, either. As far as I could remember from my hasty scan of his gallery of hellish achievement, his father was the only victim he’d dispatched with a gun. That was forty-four years ago, probably the first murder he’d committed. Since then, he preferred to have more personal involvement, to get right into the wet of the work. Hammers and knives and the like were his weapons of choice—until he started to make his burnt offerings.
“Your mother,” he said, “was a dice woman. Rolled the dice for the whole human race, and crapped out. But I like cards.”
Pretending to deal cards again, Randolph had moved one hand close to the storm lamp.
“Don’t,” Doogie said.
But Randolph did. He snapped the lamp switch, and suddenly we were blind.
Even as the light went off, Randolph and Conrad were on the move. They got to their feet so fast that they knocked their chairs over, and these hard noises rattled repeatedly around the room like the sharp rat-a-tat produced by a running boy dragging a stick along a picket fence.
I was instantly on the move, too, following the curve of the room toward the children, trying to stay out of Conrad’s way, since he was the one closest to me and would most likely go hard and fast for the place where I had been when the lights went out. Neither he nor Randolph was the type to run for the exit.
As I sidled toward the kids, I slipped the infrared goggles off my forehead, over my eyes. I yanked the special flashlight from my belt, clicked it on, and swept the room where Conrad might be.
He was closer than I’d expected, having intuited my attempt to shield the children. He held a knife in one hand, slashing blindly at the air around him, hoping to get lucky and cut me.
How very strange it is to be a man with sight in the kingdom of the blind. Watching Conrad seeking without finding, flailing in mindless rage, seeing him so confused and frustrated and desperate, I knew one percent of what God must feel like when He watches us at our furious game of life.
I quickly circled Conrad as he ambitiously but ineffectively sought to disembowel me. Employing a technique sure to elicit the righteous indignation of the American Dental Association, I gripped the butt of the flashlight between my teeth, to free both hands for the shotgun, and I slammed the stock of the gun into the back of his head.
He went down and stayed down.
Apparently, neither one-name Conrad nor the inimitable John Joseph Randolph had realized that our goggles were part of infrared sets, because Doogie was almost literally dancing around the most successful serial killer of our time—excluding politicians, who generally hire out the wet work—and beating the crap out of him with a natural-born enthusiasm and with a skill honed as a bouncer in biker bars.
Perhaps because he had a greater concern for dental safety and oral hygiene than I did, or perhaps just because he didn’t like the taste of the flashlight handle, Doogie had simply placed the infrared light on the card table and then herded Randolph into the primary path of the beam with a relentless series of judiciously delivered pokes, punches, and chops with his fists and with the barrel and butt of the Uzi.
Randolph went down twice and got up twice, as though he really believed that he had a chance. Finally he dropped like a load from a dinosaur: prepared to lie there until he fossilized. Doogie kicked him in the ribs. When Randolph didn’t move, Doogie administered the traditional Hell’s Angel first aid, kicking him again.
Unquestionably, Doogie Sassman was a Harley-riding maniac, a man of surprising talents and accomplishments, a true mensch in many ways, a source of valuable if arcane knowledge, perhaps even a font of enlightenment. Nevertheless, no one was likely to structure a new religion around him anytime soon.
Doogie said, “Snowman?”
‘Hey.’
“Handle some real light?”
Slipping off my goggles, I said, “Fade me in.”
He switched on the storm lamp, and the copper-lined room was filled with rust-colored shadows and shiny-penny light.
The pre-cataclysmic rumbles, cracks, squeals, and groans that shook through the vast building continued to be muffled here, more like the embarrassing noises of digestive distress. But we didn’t need a fifty-page directive from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to know that we should vacate the premises as soon as possible.
We quickly determined that the children were not merely bound with rope or shackled. Their wrists had been wired together, as had their ankles. The wires were drawn cruelly tight, and I winced at the sight of bruised skin and dried blood.
I checked Orson. He was breathing, but shallowly. His forepaws were wired together, his hind legs, too. A makeshift muzzle of wire clamped his jaws shut, so he was able to issue only a thin whine.
“Easy, bro,” I said shakily, stroking his flank.
Doogie stepped to the gate valve and shouted along the tunnel to Sasha and Roosevelt: “We got’em. All alive!”
They whooped with delight, but Sasha also urged us to hurry.
“We’re shakin’ and bakin’,” Doogie assured her. “Keep your guard up.” After all, there might be worse than Randolph and Conrad in this labyrinth.
A couple of satchels, backpacks, and a Styrofoam cooler were stacked near the card table. Under the assumption that this gear belonged to the tandem killers, Doogie went in search of pliers or any other tool with which we could free the kids, because the wires had been braided and knotted with such obsessive care that we couldn’t easily unwind them.
I gently pulled the tape off Jimmy Wing’s mouth, and he said he needed to pee-pee, and I told him that I did, too, but that we would both have to hold it for a little while, which shouldn’t be any trouble because we were both brave guys with the right stuff, and this earned his solemn expression of agreement.
The six-year-old Stuart twins—Aaron and Anson—thanked me politely when I untaped their mouths. Anson informed me that the two unconscious kooks on the floor were bad men. Aaron was blunter and less clean-spoken than his brother, calling them “shitheads,” and Anson warned him that if he used that forbidden word in front of their mother, he would be toast.
I had expected tears, but these weeds had cried all they were going to cry, at least over this weird experience. There’s a natural toughness in most kids that we seldom acknowledge, because we usually view childhood through glasses of nostalgia and sentimentality.
Wendy Dulcinea was, at seven, a glorious reflection of her mother, Mary, from whom I’d been unable to learn the piano but with whom I’d once been in deep puppy love. She wanted to give me a kiss, and I was happy to receive it, and then she said, “The doggie is really thirsty—you should give him a drink. They let us drink, but they wouldn’t give him anything.”
The corners of Orson’s eyes were crusted with white matter. He looked sick and weak, because with his mouth wired shut, he had not been able to perspire properly. Dogs sweat not through pores in their skin but largely through their tongues.
“Gonna be okay, bro,” I promised him. “Gonna get out of here. Hold on. Going home. We’re going home. You and me. Out of here.”
Returning from a search of the killers’ gear, Doogie stooped by my side and, using lineman’s pliers with sharp side cutters, snipped the bonds between my brother’s paws, pulled them off, and threw them aside. Cutting the wires around Orson’s jaws required more care and time, during which I continued to babble that everything was going to be cool, primo, sweet, stylin’ and in less than a minute, the hateful muzzle was gone.
Doogie moved to the kids, and though Orson made no effort to sit up, he licked my hand. His tongue was rough and dry.
Empty assurances had poured glibly from me. Now I wasn’t able to speak, because everything I had to say was important and so deeply felt that if I started to let it out, I would be laid low by my own words, emotionally wrecked, and with all the obstacles that remained in the way of our escape and survival, I couldn’t afford tears now, maybe not even later, maybe not ever.
Instead of saying anything, I pressed my hand against his flank, feeling the too-fast but steady beat of his great, good heart, and I kissed his brow.
Wendy had said that Orson was thirsty. His tongue had felt dry and swollen against my hands. Now I saw that his flews, scored from the pressure lines left by the muzzling wire, appeared to be chapped. His dark eyes were slightly filmy, and I saw a weariness in them that scared me, something close to resignation.
Although reluctant to leave Orson’s side, I went to the large Styrofoam cooler beside the card table. It was half full of cold water in which floated a few chips of ice. The killers appeared to be health conscious, because the only drinks they had brought with them were bottles of V8 vegetable juice and Evian water.
I took one bottle of water to Orson. In my absence, he had struggled off his side and was lying on his belly, though he seemed not to have the strength to raise his head.
Cupping my left hand, I poured some Evian into it. Orson lifted his head barely enough to be able to lap the water from my palm, at first listlessly but soon with enthusiasm.
As I repeatedly replenished the water, I reviewed the physical damage he had endured, and my increasing anger ensured that I’d be able to hold back my tears. The cartilage of his left ear appeared to be crushed, and the fur was matted with a lot of dried blood, as though he had sustained a blow to the head with a club or a length of pipe. Blunt instruments were one of Mr. John Joseph Randolph’s specialties. In his left cushion, half an inch from his nose, was a blood-caked cut. A couple of the nails in his right forepaw were broken off, and his toes were sheathed in hardened blood. He had put up a good fight. The pasterns on all four legs were chafed from the wire, and two were bleeding, though not seriously.
Doogie had finished snipping the wires that bound the kids and had moved on to Conrad, who was still out cold. Using a spool of the killers’ wire, he had shackled the man’s feet. Now he was using more wire to cuff his wrists behind his back.
We couldn’t risk taking the two men with us, back through the maze. Because crawling was required in some of the tunnels, we wouldn’t be able to bind even their hands, and without restraints, they would be completely uncontrollable. We would have to send the police back here for them—assuming the entire structure didn’t collapse from the stresses of the time-shifting phenomena occurring overhead.
Although I might have changed my mind later, at that moment I wanted to immobilize them, seal their mouths shut with tape, put a bottle of water where they could see it, and leave them here to die painfully of thirst.
Orson had finished the Evian. He struggled to his feet, wobbly as a baby, and stood panting, blinking the filminess out of his eyes, looking around with interest.
“Poki akua,” I told him, which is Hawaiian for dog of the gods.
He chuffed weakly, as though pleased by the compliment.
A sudden pong, followed by a nerve-jangling squeal, as of metal torquing violently, passed through the copper room. Both Orson and I looked at the ceiling, then around at the walls, but there was no evident distortion of the smooth metal surfaces.
Tick, tick, tick.
I dragged the heavy cooler across the floor to Orson and opened the lid. He looked in at the icy water sloshing among the bottles of Evian and vegetable juice, and he happily began to lap it up.
On his side, curled in the fetal position, Randolph was groaning but not yet conscious.
Doogie clipped off a few feet of wire, all he needed to finish binding Conrad, and passed the spool to me.
I rolled Randolph facedown and hurriedly wired his wrists together behind his back. I was tempted to cinch the bonds as tight as those on the children and Orson, but I controlled myself and made them only tight enough to ensure that he could not free himself.
After securing his ankles, I looped wire from the shackles at his feet to those at his wrists, further limiting his ability to move.
Randolph must have awakened as I began to apply this final restraint, because when I finished, he spoke with a clarity not characteristic of someone just regaining consciousness: “I’ve won.”
I moved out from behind him and hunkered down to look at his face. His head was turned to the side, left cheek against the copper floor. Lips split and bleeding. His right eye was pale green and bright, but I saw no evidence of animal eyeshine.
Curiously, he appeared to be in no distress. He was at peace, as if he weren’t trussed and helpless but were merely resting.
When he spoke, his voice was calm, even slightly euphoric, like that of someone coming out of a light Demerol sleep. I would have felt better if he’d ranted, snarled, and spat. His relaxed demeanor seemed to support his unnerving contention that he had won in spite of his current circumstances. “I’ll be on the other side before the night is gone. They stripped out the engine. That wasn’t a mortal wound. This is a sort of…organic machine. In time, it has healed. Now it powers itself. You can feel it. Feel it in the floor.”
Those rumblings, like passing trains, were louder than before, and the spells of calm between were shorter. Although the effect in this room had been less than elsewhere in the structure, the noise and the vibrations in the floor were at last gaining power here, too.
Randolph said, “Powers itself with the littlest help. A storm lamp in the translation chamber two hours ago—that’s all it took to get it running again. This is no ordinary machine.”