The Russians had been careless. He had seen them coming, watching in the rearview as they hung three or four cars back, occasionally overtaking when it was necessary to keep him in sight. He had pulled over at one point to see if they would pass him, and they had, keeping their eyes fixed straight ahead, scrupulously ignoring him as he spread a map upon the steering wheel and pretended to trace his route with a finger, too many trucks passing for them to be able to take him while he was stopped. He had let them go, then pulled out after a few minutes had gone by. He saw them ahead, hanging back in the slow lane, hoping that he would pass them again, and he obliged. After a couple of miles, he turned onto Stream Road, and from there found a dirt track that would suit his purpose. He followed it for over a mile, past abandoned shacks set back from the road, past a double-wide trailer and cars slouched on tireless rims, until even those humble tokens of human habitation disappeared, and the road became rougher yet, bouncing him in his seat and causing his spine to ache. When there was only forest before and behind, to north and south, east and west, he cut the engine. He could hear them approaching. He got out of the car, leaving the driver’s door open, and moved into the trees, heading back in the direction in which he had come until the Russians appeared. They stopped when they came to his abandoned car. He could almost guess the conversation that was taking place within. They would have known that they had followed him into a trap. The only question for them was how to free themselves from it while ensuring Merrick’s death and their own survival. Crouched in the undergrowth, Merrick saw the one in the passenger seat, the man with red hair, look over his shoulder. Their options were limited. They could reverse and leave, hoping to catch him again on the road, whether he tried to escape on foot or by car; or they could get out, one from each side, and try to hunt him on foot. They would be at their most vulnerable when they opened the doors, but their reasoning would be that if he opened fire on them, he might hit one of them at most, if he was lucky, and in doing so he would expose his position.
In the end, Merrick did not wait for them to open the doors. As soon as the redheaded man looked away Merrick lunged out of the bushes and began firing through the rear window; once, twice, three times, and as it disintegrated he saw a wash of blood appear on the windshield and the driver collapse sideways. His partner opened the passenger door and dropped to the ground, firing at Merrick as the older man advanced, for there was no retreating now. Merrick felt a tug at his side and a sensation of numbness, followed by a searing, red-hot pain, but still he fired, experiencing a surge of satisfaction as the body of the second Russian jerked on the ground, and the shooting stopped.
He advanced on the slumped figure slowly, feeling the blood flowing down his side, soaking his shirt and his pants. He kicked the Russian’s gun away and stood over him. The redheaded man was lying on his side against the right rear wheel. There was a wound beneath his neck and another almost dead in the center of his chest. His eyes were half-closed, but he was still breathing. Gasping at the pain of his injury, Merrick bent down, picked up the Russian’s Colt, then searched the pockets of the man’s jacket until he found a wallet and a spare magazine for the pistol. The name on the driver’s license was Yevgeny Utarov. It meant nothing to him. Merrick took the $326 from the wallet and jammed it into his own pocket, then tossed the wallet on the dying man’s lap. He spit on the ground and was happy to see that there was no blood in the sputum. Nevertheless, he was angry at himself for being wounded. It was the first time he had been hit in many, many years. It seemed to speak to him of the slow march of time, of his age and his impending mortality. He swayed slightly on his feet. The movement seemed to distract the man named Yevgeny from the fact of his own dying. His eyes opened wider, and he tried to say something. Merrick stood over him.
“Give me a name,” he said. “You got time in you yet. Otherwise, I’ll leave you here to die. It’ll be slow, and that pain you’re feeling will get worse. You give me a name, and it’ll go easier on you.”
Utarov whispered something.
“Speak up, now,” said Merrick. “I ain’t bending down again.”
Utarov tried once more. This time, the words sounded like blades being whetted against rough stone deep in his throat.
“Dubus,” he said.
Merrick shot the Russian twice more in the chest, then staggered away, leaving a trail of blood behind him on the road like squashed berries. He leaned against his car and stripped to the waist, exposing the wound. The bullet was lodged deep in the flesh. In the past, there were men whom he could have called upon to help him, but they were all gone now. He tied his shirt around his waist to stem the bleeding, then put his coat and jacket on over his naked torso and got back in the car. He slipped the Smith 10, with only three rounds left, back under the driver’s seat, and placed the Colt in the pocket of his coat. Turning the car back toward the main road was agony, and the ride along the trail caused him to grit his teeth so that he would not have to hear himself cry out, but he managed it. He drove for three miles before he found a veterinary practice, and there he made the old man whose name was on the sign outside remove the bullet while Merrick held a gun on him. He did not pass out from the pain, but it was a close thing. Merrick knew who Dubus was. Somehow, all of this had started with him, had begun the first time Dubus forced himself upon a child. He had brought his appetites with him to Gilead, and from there they had spread. Merrick held a gun to the veterinarian’s head and asked him if he knew where Mason Dubus lived, and the old man told him, for Dubus was well-known in the region. Merrick locked the veterinarian in the basement, with two pint bottles of water and some bread and cheese so that he could keep body and soul together. He promised the vet that he would call the cops within twenty-four hours. Until then, he would just have to amuse himself as best he could. He found a bottle of Tylenol in a medicine cabinet and helped himself to some rolls of clean dressing and a pair of fresh pants from the old man’s closet, then left and continued on his journey, but driving was hard. The Tylenol took some of the edge off the pain, though, and at Caratunk he turned off the 201 again, as the vet had told him to do, and came at last to Mason Dubus’s house.
Dubus saw him coming. In a way, Dubus had been expecting him. He was still talking on his cell phone when Merrick shot the lock from the front door and entered the house, already dripping the spots of blood on the pristine floor. Dubus pressed the red button to end the call, then dropped the phone on a chair beside him.
“I know who you are,” he said.
“That’s good,” said Merrick.
“Your little girl is dead.”
“I know that.”
“Soon, you’ll be dead too.”
“Maybe, but you’ll be dead sooner.”
Dubus pointed a trembling finger at Merrick. “You think I’m going to plead with you for my life? You think I’m going to help you?”
Merrick raised the Colt. “No, I don’t,” he said, and he shot Dubus twice. As the old man lay spasming on the floor, Merrick picked up the cell phone and redialed. The phone was answered after two rings. There was no voice, but Merrick could hear a man breathing. Then the connection was ended. Merrick put the phone on the floor and left the house, Dubus’s final breaths slowly fading from hearing as he left him to die.
Dubus listened to Merrick’s footsteps, then the noise of a car driving away. There was a great weight on his chest, studded with pain, as though a bed of nails had been laid upon him. He stared at the ceiling. There was blood in his mouth. He knew that he was only moments away from death. He began to pray, to ask God to forgive his sins. His lips moved soundlessly as he tried to remember the right words, but he was distracted by memories, and by his anger at the fact that he should die this way, the victim of a killer who would shoot an unarmed old man. He felt cold air, and there came a sound from behind him. Someone approached, and he thought that Merrick had come back to finish him off, but when he moved his head he saw, not Merrick, but the end of a filthy tan coat, and old brown shoes stained with dirt. There was a stench in the air, and even in the time of his dying it made him gag. Then there were more footsteps to his left, and he was aware of presences behind him, of unseen figures watching him. Dubus tilted his head, and saw pale features, and black holes gaping in withered skin. He opened his mouth to speak, but there were no more words left to say, and no more breaths left in his body. And he died with the Hollow Men in his eyes.
Merrick drove for miles, but his vision began to blur, and the pain and the loss of blood had weakened him. He made it as far as the Old Moose Lodge and there, fooled, like so many others in the past, by the name’s false promise of a bed, he stopped.
Now he was sitting at the deuce, drinking Jack Daniels on top of the Tylenol, snoozing a little in the hope that he might recover some of his strength so that he could continue on to Gilead. Nobody bothered him. The Old Moose Lodge actively encouraged its customers to take the occasional short rest, as long as they got back to drinking when they were done. A jukebox played honky-tonk music, and the glass eyes of dead animals stared down at the patrons from the walls, while Merrick drifted, unsure if he was sleeping or waking. At some point, a waitress asked him if he was okay and Merrick nodded, pointing to his whiskey glass to order another, even though he had barely touched the first. He was afraid that they might ask him to move on, and he wasn’t ready to do that yet.
Waking. Sleeping. Music, then no music. Voices. Whispers.
daddy
Merrick opened his eyes. There was a little girl sitting across from him. She had dark hair, and her skin was broken where the gas had erupted from within. A bug was crawling across her forehead. He wanted to brush it away, but his hands wouldn’t move.
“Hi, honey,” he said. “Where you been?”
There was dirt on the little girl’s hands, and two of her fingernails were broken. waiting
“Waiting for what, honey?”
for you
Merrick nodded. “I couldn’t come until now. I was—They had me locked up, but I was always thinking about you. I never forgot about you.”
i know. you were too far away. now you’re near. now I can come to you.
“What happened to you, darlin’? Why’d you go away?”
i fell asleep. i fell asleep, and i couldn’t wake up.
There was no emotion in her voice. Her eyes never blinked. Merrick noticed that the left side of her face was cherry red and purple, marked by the colors of lividity.
“Won’t be long now, honey,” he said. He found the strength to move his hand. He reached for her, and felt something cold and hard against his fingers. The whiskey glass toppled on the table, distracting him for a moment so that when he looked back the girl was gone. The whiskey flowed around his fingers and dripped onto the floor, and the waitress appeared, and said, “I think maybe you ought to be heading home now,” and Merrick nodded, and replied, “Yeah, I think maybe you’re right. It’s time to go home.”
He stood, feeling the blood squelch in his shoe. The room began to spin around him, and he gripped the table to give himself some support. The sensation of giddiness went away, and he was aware once again of the pain in his side. He looked down. The side of his trousers was soaked a deep red. The waitress also saw the stain.
“Hey,” she said. “What—”
And then she looked into Merrick’s eyes and thought better of asking the question. Merrick reached into his pocket and found some bills. There was a twenty and a ten among them, and he threw them all on the waitress’s tray.
“Thank you, darlin’,” he said, and now there was a kindness in his eyes, and the waitress was uncertain whether he thought that he was talking to her or to another who had taken her place in his mind. “I’m ready now.”
He walked from the bar, passing through the ranks of dancing couples and noisy drunks, of lovers and friends, moving from light to darkness, from the life within to the life beyond. When he stepped outside, the cool of the night air made him reel again for a moment, then cleared his head. He took his keys from his jacket pocket and headed for his car, each step forcing more blood from his wound, each step taking him a little closer to the end. He stopped at the car and used his left hand to support himself against the roof while his right fitted the key into the lock. He opened the door and saw himself reflected in the glass of the side window, then another reflection joined his, hovering behind his shoulder. It was a bird, a monstrous dove with a white face and a dark beak and human eyes buried deep in its sockets. It raised a wing, but the wing was black, not white, with claws at the end that held something long and metal in their grip.
And then the wing began to beat with a soft swishing sound, and he felt a new, sharp pain as his collarbone was broken by a blow. He twisted, trying to get to the gun in his pocket, but another bird appeared, this time a hawk, and this bird was holding a baseball bat, a good old-fashioned Louisville Slugger designed, if held in the right hands, to knock that baby right out of the ballpark, except now the Slugger was aimed at his head. He couldn’t duck to avoid the blow, so he raised his left arm instead. The impact shattered his elbow, and the wings were beating and the blows were raining down upon him, and he dropped to his knees as something in his head came apart with a noise like bread breaking, and his eyes were filled with red. He opened his mouth to speak, although there were no words for him to form, and his jaw was almost torn from his face as the crowbar swung in a lazy arc, felling him like a tree so that he lay flat on the cold gravel while the blood flowed and the beating went on, his body making strange, soft sounds, bones moving inside where bones had no right to move, the framework within fracturing, the tender organs bursting.
And still he lived.
The blows stopped, but the pain did not. A foot slid under his belly, levering him upward so that he flopped onto his back, resting slightly against the open door, half in, half out of the car, one hand lying useless by his side, the other thrown back into the interior. He saw the whole world through a red prism, dominated by birds like men and men like birds.
“He’s gone,” said a voice, and it sounded familiar to Merrick.
“No he ain’t,” said another. “Not yet.”
There was hot breath close to his ear.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” said the second voice. “You should have just forgot about her. She’s long dead, but she was good while she lasted.”
He was conscious of movement to his left. The crowbar struck him just above the ear and light shone through the prism, refracting the world in a red-tinged rainbow, turning it to splinters of color in his fading consciousness.
daddy
Almost there, honey, almost there.
And still, still he lived.
The fingers of his right hand clawed at the floor of the car. They found the barrel of the Smith IO, and he tugged it free of the tape and flicked at it until he could reach the grip, pulling it toward him, willing the blackness to lift, if only for a moment.
daddy
In a minute, honey. Daddy’s got something he has to do first.
Slowly, he drew the gun to him. He tried to lift it, but his wounded arm would not hold the weight. Instead, he allowed himself to fall on his side, and the pain was almost beyond endurance as splintered bone and torn flesh shuddered from the impact. He opened his eyes, or perhaps they had always been open, and it was just the new waves of pain provoked by the movement that caused the mist briefly to lift. His cheek was flat against the gravel. His right arm was outstretched before him, the gun lying on the horizontal. There were two figures ahead of him, walking side by side perhaps fifteen feet from where he lay. He shifted his hand slightly, ignoring the feeling of his fractured bones rubbing against one another, until the gun was pointing at the two men.
And, somehow, Merrick found the strength within himself to pull the trigger, or perhaps it was the strength of another added to his own, for he thought he felt a pressure on the knuckle of his index finger as though someone were pressing softly upon it.
The man on the right seemed to do a little jog, then stumbled and fell as his shattered ankle gave way. He shouted something that Merrick could not understand, but Merrick’s finger was tightening on the trigger for the second shot and he had no time for the utterances of others. He fired again, the target larger now, for the injured man was lying on his side, his friend trying to lift him, but the shot was wild, the gun bucking in his hand and sending the bullet over the recumbent figure.
Merrick had the time and the strength to pull the trigger one last time. He fired as the blackness descended, and the bullet tore through the forehead of the wounded man, exiting in a red cloud. The survivor tried to drag the body away, but the dead man’s foot caught in a storm drain. People appeared at the door of the Old Moose Lodge, for even in a place like this the sound of gunfire was bound to attract attention. Voices shouted, and figures began to run toward him. The survivor fled, leaving the dead man behind.
Merrick exhaled a final breath. A woman stood over him, the waitress from the bar. She spoke, but Merrick did not hear what she said
daddy?
i’m here, Lucy.
for Merrick was gone.