Triage: A Thriller (Shell Series) (17 page)

I managed to drive my right knee into Shepard’s lower back, left side. It was corded with muscle, but I dug in deep. A kidney shot.

Muscle memory.

He dropped the sap and hammered my ribs with his fists. Hard and powerful as the strike from a sledgehammer.

I fell to the ground for an instant, before making it back to my feet. The world tilted and whirled around me.

I fell again and caught a foot to my side.

The pain deadened my right arm.

Literally.

I couldn’t lift it to fend off Shepard’s blows.

I reached across and grabbed his ankle with my left hand.

A good grip and twist and I could flip him.

But he had other ideas. His knee caught me under the chin, rattling my teeth in their gums. The fight was over before it ever really started.

I dropped to my knees, too weak to stand, just as Rad reached us.

“Toss him back in,” he said, and I thought I was hallucinating.

Shepard moved quickly, rumbling across the ground and gathering me under my arms, forcing me to my feet.

I tried to break free of his grasp, but he was too strong, and worse, I was too weak.

Rad’s laughter pierced the silence of the night. 

“I hate that it had to go this way,” he said, almost tenderly. “I really do.”

I gritted my teeth and said, “If I find out you’ve harmed one blonde hair on Nevada’s head you’ll—”

“I haven’t,” he said cutting me off. “If you must know, I haven’t. You have bigger worries right now. Shep do your thing.”

Shepard tightened his crushing grip on my arms and started to drag me toward the river. I fought it briefly before giving up and letting my body turn to dead weight, upper torso and legs slack. Shepard seemed untroubled by my efforts. His breathing remained calm and efficient.

Rad trailed behind us like a cloud of dirt on a country road. All I thought of was that he hadn’t corrected me, hadn’t said that Nevada didn’t have blonde hair, which meant he wasn’t involved in her disappearance, had never met her. Oddly, that brought me a measure of comfort.

“You did well, my friend,” he said. “Did yourself real proud. You couldn’t tell me you weren’t Michael Phelps out there. Must be an angel watching over you.” He paused, expecting that last bit about an angel to get some kind of reaction from me.

It didn’t.

 “I suppose I’ll see you in hell,” he said. “Keep a spot warm for me.”

Laughter.

Shepard reached the mouth of the water, cleared his throat, and let out a sigh. I cannot swear to it, but I believe he hesitated long enough to glance at Rad for final confirmation that this was how it should end.

The confirmation must have come because he gripped the back of my waterlogged shirt and tossed me over the small cement wall and into the Passaic.

 
Nothing to hold on to. No life jacket. I struggled to keep my head above water.

 The first shot barely missed my shoulder. I realized immediately that Rad and Shepard had graduated from rocks to bullets.

 No choice but to drift out further into the river.

 My chest seized up as I struggled to deeper waters. No purchase below my feet.

 Another shot plunked the water. I swam out even further. Rad’s laughter was just a faint sound on the air, and then gone completely. I had heard of out-of-body experiences and until that moment I cannot say I trusted the validity of the recollections. But it wasn’t
me
floating there in the frigid water. It wasn’t
me
refusing to dip below the water line. It wasn’t
me
surviving.

 I hovered there, broken, for what felt like an eternity.

 Each time the water splashed my face and threatened my nostrils I was able to reposition myself, able to float just out of the clutches of a certain death. It took a numbing amount of effort, a surreal effort I can’t even begin to describe, but somehow I managed to keep afloat. And, after some time, hearing nothing in the area where Rad and Shepard had been, I decided to swim back in that direction.

Out-of-body, for sure.

 I remember stroking my way toward land.

 Remember reaching it finally and pulling myself out of the water.

Remember falling on my back, panting, looking up at the night sky.

No Rad. No Shepard.

 Remember thinking it couldn’t be real. I couldn’t have survived.

After just a moment, I realized that it was not real, that my thoughts of survival were premature. I sat up and frowned. I cannot say for sure where Shepard came from—he just appeared. For the first time ever I saw him smile and I think he might have said, “Boo!” Then his powerful fist materialized from the gloom.

 And everything went black.

THE DARK FOG DIDN’T lift completely, rather parts of my senses slowly returned. No sight as of yet, but the clarity of sound and some feeling. I knew I had suffered a devastating blow, to the head no less, and yet I perceived no actual pain. That couldn’t possibly be right, I thought.

“
Don’t mark his face
,” a floating voice said. “Wasn’t that just priceless, Shep? Did you happen to notice his eyes when I said it? I almost shit my pants right then. Our friend here makes it very interesting.”

Rad’s voice and laughter were dual punches further weakening my resolve.

“Wrap his ankles up good with duct tape,” he went on. “TUFF-TIES for the wrists again. Pin his arms to his sides with the tape. And then…”

And then…

ELEVEN

I WOKE FULLY FROM a concussed sleep in a watery bed. Shepard had restrained my wrists in TUFF-TIES, and my ankles and knees with several yards of duct tape. My movement severely limited, I was a block of gray cinder sinking to the bottom of the river.

Gasping as water swam into my mouth and nostrils.

I held my breath while searching for an exploitable weakness in the bonds.

Finding none, I finally dipped below the surface.

So this is how it ends?

I pictured myself drowned in the shallow water, skin wrinkled, eventually rotting to a gaseous stink. Chum for indiscriminate blue crabs, worms, and white perch. Some unwary soul discovering my early remains, the eyes pecked out by birds, or, later, as a knoll of brittle bones tangled in weeds.

Undoubtedly it was an awful end.

By some morbid, last days’ reasoning my brain fixed on those I had killed, riffled through the catalogue seeking a worse fate than my own. Despite serious thought, I couldn’t come up with one. Most had stumbled to the next world with a knife buried to the hilt just below their sternums, some with ragged bullet holes leaking crimson blood, a few with their necks snapped by my bare hands. I’d put up little opposition to Shepard’s onslaught, but at least I hadn’t begged for my life. I had nothing else to cling to but the false sense of pride resulting from that last defiant act.

I closed my eyes and exhaled, then quickly inhaled and let the breath inflate my chest and hold steady. My lungs burned from the effort, and my chest ached, all of my muscles constricted in such a way that suggested I was actually shrinking. Momentum from the quiet river flipped me over on my stomach, and the back of my belt was seized by something. Whatever it was, it jarred and jerked me. I released another breath and this time didn’t bother resisting the inevitable any longer. More water gushed into my nostrils and mouth.

One good thing rose to the surface: the realization that soon it would be over.

Instead of sinking deeper though, I was pulled above level again by the current. Jostled and sloshed through the water. At some point my body righted itself so that I was looking up at the obsidian sky splotched with twinkling stars.

Being dragged.

Not by the river flow, I finally grasped, but by a man. He was panting and soaking wet as we reached the cement wall. His clothes were rich with unpleasant odors: urine, cheap liquor, the dirt and grime and mildew of an outdoor existence. Unlike the vagrant from earlier, outside the Panda House, the streets had not completely broken him down into a physical shell of his former self. He wasn’t stooped and did not move with a limp. Even without seeing them, I knew his hands were powerful. His body cast a shadow the length of a Cadillac. He rolled me over the cement wall in just one attempt. I coughed up polluted water as he stepped away to look back through the grove of trees.

A quick inventory and he was back, looking down at me. It was too dark to distinguish his features but for some reason I suspected he was frowning.

“
Dammit
,” he said. “I can’t see a thing. I need a flashlight.”

Another difference from the Panda House derelict. His voice wasn’t touched by madness. In fact, it was a voice that would have been at home in most any corporate boardroom.

“Can you speak?” he asked.

“I’d rather not,” I said.

The shadow nodded. “The shit seriously hit the fan for you this morning.”

“Where did you come from?”

“I was relaxing in my boat,” he told me.

“Boat?”

“Yeah. It’s up on cinderblocks and rusted, but it suits me just fine. You passed it on the way in, probably didn’t even notice,” he said, and cleared his throat. “Like I said, I was relaxing. No one comes down here. So when the car drove past, my imagination got the best of me and I had to check it out. I’m glad I did.”

“That makes two of us.”

“You’re okay?”

“I’ll heal,” I said.

“You mind me asking just what it was you did to those gentlemen?”

“They aren’t gentlemen.”

“Not by the usual definition. I suppose not.”

“What time is it?” I asked.

A big, booming laughter erupted from deep in his chest. “That’s precious,” he said. “What time is it? A couple hours before sunrise. That precise enough for you?”

“You don’t have a watch,” I said, and nodded in understanding.

“The bailout seemed to have missed me,” he explained.

“You have something to cut me loose?”

“A sharp new set of Ginsu knives.”

“Wonderful. Would you—”

“Just how much water got into your ears and flowed straight through to your brain?” he said, cutting me off. “I was being sarcastic about the knives.”

“Oh.”

Another boom of laughter.

“I can’t stay like this,” I said.

“Considering how it was going, this isn’t so bad.”

“You have a point.”

“Often I do,” he said.

“Still,” I said. “I’d prefer not to stay like this.”

“I understand.” He shrugged out of a layer of clothing—a jacket or shirt—and rung water out of the garment, then put it back on. “Despite my oceanfront property I hate the fucking water. I don’t know how you could stand it out there.”

“It wasn’t pleasant,” I said.

“Mmm.” He raised a hand to his face and cleared something from his nostril with a hard snuff. “You know that old joke about water?”

“Enlighten me.”

“Don’t drink it because…fish fuck in it?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that a time or three.”

“This is the dirty ass Passaic. Fish
get
fucked in this water. There’s a distinction.”

“A distinction?” Despite everything I almost laughed.

“What’s your name, friend?” he asked.

“Shell.”

“I’d shake your hand but…”

“Sarcasm,” I said.

“Now you’re catching on,” he said, laughing once more. “Must’ve attended college.”

“
Graduated
,” I said. “There’s a distinction.”

Another boom of laughter.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“My friends call me Dutty.”

“Dutty?”

“Yes, sir. Rhymes with slutty.”

“What’s the plan here, Dutty?”

“Cut you loose,” he said.

“With your Ginsu knives?”

“Nah,” he said, and bowed down to pull something from his boot. A hunting knife, I quickly realized. “With this sharp motherfucker
right’cheer
.”

“You’ve had that on you this entire time?” I asked, incredulous.

“You can’t just go pulling a knife on a man,” he reasoned. “Even one who’s tied up like rush hour traffic in Washington, D.C.”

“I’m glad it was you that saved me, Dutty. I mean that.”

He grunted and crouched down to cut me free. The duct tape sheared easily enough, but the TUFF-TIES were stubborn, and he had to maneuver in such a way as to not scratch my expensive watch. He paused several times to wipe beads of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hands. Halfway through the ties I was able to assist the process. After awhile the ties parted.

I made it to my feet and stretched my fatigued muscles. Dutty stood smiling at me. In the dim light of the moon, I noticed the blue ugliness of his poor dental work. He took inventory of me just as I did of him.

“I appreciate this,” I said.

He shrugged and reached out with his left hand. I took it and grabbed his right wrist with my left, squeezed until the bones cracked and Dutty’s fingers loosened from around the hunting knife and his knees began to buckle.

Split second reaction. Violence was often as immediate as a flash rain.