Tracy shrugged the rough blanket off her shoulders and stood shivering in her bra and panties. She squeezed the leg of her jeans, the shoulder of her sweat shirt. Damp, but better than standing around naked in a smelly blanket. This way she felt less vulnerable.
She pulled her clothes from the bunk where they'd been drying and climbed into them. The wet denim scraped against her unshaven legs. Not having to shave her legs and armpits was the only advantage of living in California now-the way making a right turn on a red light used to be.
C'mon, Tracy, she scolded herself, don't flip out now.
There was a rustling behind her, a low moan.
"Am I dead?" Eric asked quietly, his eyes opening.
"Too soon to tell."
He grinned, figuring the effect was worth the pain.
Tracy's cool fingers pressed against his forehead, holding him down. He could have told her he wasn't going anywhere. Not until someone removed the Plymouth from his chest. In a minute or two he'd worry about the situation. Right now he closed his eyes, let the ship's swaying lull him for a moment. He slipped into a dream and saw Annie smiling, waving, her neck twisted at an unnatural angle. Behind her stood Fallows, smirking, holding Timmy's hand. Timmy's mouth curved into an evil leer. Eric forced his eyes back open. His own grin was gone.
He looked down at his chest, recognized the blue cotton material used to bandage his wound. "I see your sweat shirt's missing a hood and some sleeves. You getting into the punk look?"
Tracy snorted. "On this ship who would notice?"
He looked around the cabin. It was a double stateroom with extra sleeping bags lying in twisted heaps on the floor. Enough bedding to sleep an expanded crew. A sloppy crew by the looks of things. Dirty clothes were thrown everywhere, tattered skin magazines spread-eagled on several bunks. Eric turned his head to the wall. Ragged pages torn carelessly from the magazines were tacked to the wall. Naked women. Naked men. Naked boys with girls no more than eleven or twelve.
"How you feeling?" Tracy asked.
"I wish you wouldn't try to sound so chipper. Makes me think I've got only minutes to live."
"Sorry," she said. She wasn't talking about now.
Eric reached out, traced her jawline with his finger. "Forget it. Really."
"Guess I couldn't hold my breath as long as I thought."
He gestured with his chin at the messy stateroom. "If you lived in this room long enough, you'd learn to hold it indefinitely."
It got a slight smile.
Eric struggled to prop himself onto his elbows. A flaming spear skewered his chest.
"Don't move, Eric. Without our clothes from the canoe, I can't afford to lose any more of this sweat jacket to make fresh bandages."
With the sleeves ripped off the jacket, her long smooth arms hung naked to her sides. The skin was tan from weeks of exposure to the sun, the muscles sharply defined from the exercise. A few scabs and scratches in various stages of healing decorated her arms. Broken blisters and callous pads clumped on her palms. Her face remained pale, though Eric thought he noticed a gradual building up of freckles across the bridge of the nose. The nose itself was still a little crooked from a fall from a horse a month ago. To him, she was more beautiful than ever.
Eric walked his fingers across his bandaged chest, probing the sore and tender spots. When they touched the rim of the wound he winced, clenching his face like a fist. "Christ!"
"You were lucky it wasn't worse. The water probably slowed the arrow some. Not to mention your chipped rib."
"Take the bandage off," he said quietly.
"What?"
"Take it off." He swung his legs over the side of the bunk, swallowing the pain. His head pulsed with electrical shocks. He clawed at the jersey bandages, unwinding them.
Tracy clutched his hand, trying to stop him. "What are you doing? You want to bleed to death?"
He shook his head, not wanting to squander his waning energy on words. "Tighter. Make it tighter."
"Okay, okay. Tighter." She grabbed the cloth, began rewinding it, pulling it tighter, watching him swoon under the pressure. "Jeez, Eric…" She hesitated.
"Tighter!"
She finished wrapping it. The hard muscles of Eric's chest bulged slightly over the edges of the bandage. The stony ridges of his flat stomach shone with sweat.
He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. "Good. Now at least I can move."
"Move? Move where?"
"Escape."
"Escape?" She stomped over to the narrow porthole of the cabin, pointed out through the glass. "Unless you're planning to squeeze through there, forget escape. After they fished us out last night, I counted ten men and three women up there. All armed. All who would have trouble deciding which would be more fun, killing you or twisting the legs off a puppy." She spun back to face him. "Get the picture now?"
"Yeah." He stood up, naked. "Where are my clothes?"
She threw up her hands, yanked his still-damp clothes from the bunk where she'd hung them to dry, and threw them at his chest. The impact knocked him back onto the bunk with a groan. "Escape, huh?" She shook her head. "My hero."
Eric dressed slowly, each movement like some elaborate mime. Tracy didn't offer to help him. She stood with her arms crossed staring out the porthole. It was dawn outside, the sun just beginning its ascent somewhere behind the Long Beach Halo. The sky was already the hazy-orange yellow color it would remain for the rest of the day. The ship was moving along at a pretty decent clip.
"Did you get a look at our captain?"
"No. He must've been below when they brought us aboard."
"How about the oriental woman?"
"Yeah, she was snapping out a lot of orders, throwing me dirty looks as if I'd stolen her last pair of pantyhose."
"She get a good look at me?"
Tracy laughed. "What balls. I hate to crush your ego, Eric, but she didn't seem interested. Maybe you're not Chinese enough."
"She's not Chinese; she's Vietnamese."
"Whatever." Tracy paused, turned to stare at him. "How do you know? You were unconscious."
"I know her. That's why we've got to escape as soon as possible. I don't know why they didn't kill us last night, but once she sees me, they won't hesitate."
"Why? What'd you do to her?"
He stood up, zipped his pants. "I killed her."
"You what?"
"Or at least I thought I had. Back in 'Nam, when I was with the Night Shift. She'd been selling military secrets to the Cong out of Saigon. Orders came in that she was supposed to disappear. Fallows sent me." He walked over to the porthole, watched the orange-crested waves whip by. Last night they'd been so black and cheerless as they'd closed over him like a coffin lid. "Guess, I blew it. But I know I killed somebody."
But who? Who belonged to the body he'd pumped two 7.62-mm sniper slugs into fourteen years ago? Whose arms had flailed in the air, clutching at the wounds before flopping onto the floor of her bedroom, her winter coat buttoned to the neck as she'd prepared to go out at the usual time. He'd framed her face in his scope seconds before pulling the trigger. It had been her.
"Just take my word for it, Tracy. We're better off making a run for it than waiting for her to recognize me."
Tracy sat on the edge of the bunk and shook her head. "I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"Yeah. I'm not anxious to be auctioned off to some slimy sex-starved men, Eric. But I'm not sure certain death is better. I want to live."
He nodded. She was right. It was one of the things he liked about Tracy, her practicality. None of that save-the-last-bullet-for-me-rather-than-let-the-Indians-get-me bullshit. She's learned fast. It's better to live. It's always better to live.
But Eric had other considerations. They would definitely kill him; there was no profit to be made in keeping him alive like there was with Tracy. And he had to stay alive. Timmy was still out there, a prisoner of Dirk Fallows. Eric had to do something about both of them.
"Okay," he said. "I'll go on my own. If I make it, I'll try to catch up with you later."
"Sorry, Eric." She shook her head. "Guess I'm saying that a lot lately."
"No need to. In your place I wouldn't risk it either."
The door banged open and a squat thick-necked man jumped into the cabin aiming Eric's crossbow at them. He was shorter than Tracy, but with huge bulging muscles and a nasty sneer. A long ponytail hung like a question mark from his otherwise bald head. A.45 M1911A1 was holstered to his hip.
"Okay, Cap," Griffin said, stepping away from the door to make room.
"Thank you, Griffin," the deep voice intoned as he entered.
Eric stared silently at the captain's face. He thought he'd seen bodies ravaged in every way possible in 'Nam and lately in ways he didn't think were possible in New California. But this sight stunned him, made his stomach tumble. He heard a low moan of panic gurgle in Tracy's throat as she recoiled a few steps, her back pressed to the cabin wall. She gazed fixedly at his face, mesmerized by its grotesqueness.
The left half of the face was almost normal, perhaps once even handsome. But it was the right half that knocked the air out of you. The rough gray skin swirled in thick twisted lumps as if the flesh had once begun to melt, then changed its mind. The heavy brow sagged over the right eye almost blocking it out entirely. Yet under the thick canopy of gnarled skin shone that moist black eye. Intelligent, yet cruel, like some swamp creature's. The crusted mouth twisted into a thin slit that seemed partially frozen, stuck together on the right side. He wore a clean white skipper's cap to complement his flamboyant blue double-breasted blazer, its brass buttons buffed to a high polish. But the head peeking out of the hat was almost bald, flecked with clumps of wispy colorless hair the consistency of parched prairie weeds. The right ear was nothing more than a leathery hole, almost reptilian.
The captain smiled, but only the left half of his mouth moved. "I take it from your stares you don't like my hat?"
Tracy didn't answer, swallowed loudly.
Eric glanced at Griffin, the crossbow pointing at his already damaged chest. No sense in trying anything yet. Wait for an opening.
"Guess you weren't expecting such a natty dresser, eh?" The disfigured captain laughed, the damaged side of his face shifting into islands of wrinkled scars. He looked at Eric. "In the meantime, there's someone dying to meet you." He held out a hand like an emcee introducing a new act. "Heeere's Angel."
The slender Vietnamese woman walked into the room. She was short, barely clearing five feet, but her face was just as beautiful as when Eric has last seen it, magnified through the lens of his M-84 scope. The royal tilt of the head, the long black hair cascading around her face. The slits of olive skin encasing eyes gleaming like stainless steel ball bearings. The pouting lips hiding small delicate teeth. But the hate in her face as she stared at Eric was almost as disfiguring as her companion's deformity.
"So, Eric," she said, not smiling, her accent still heavy and halting, "once again you are my guest."
The captain smiled at Eric. "I understand you've already met my little Angel."
"Yes," Angel answered for Eric. "The last time Eric was my guest he made love to me all night. Then tried to kill me in the morning."
"How rude," the man said, clucking his tongue, half of his face crinkled with amusement, the other half a desolate moonscape. "Well, I suppose we will be forced to return the favor, eh, Angel?"
Angel reached behind her back. When her hand reappeared it was clutching a Philippine balisong knife. She flicked her wrist and the double handles unfolded to reveal a sharp blade. She stepped toward Eric.