West and south. Not far. A few miles.
The pull is exigent, strangely pleasant at first but then almost
painful. He feels as if, were he to get out of the car, he would
instantly levitate off the ground and be drawn through the air at high
speed directly into the orbit of the hateful false father who has taken
his life.
Suddenly he senses that his enemy is aware of being sought and perceives
the lines of power connecting them.
He stops imagining the magnetic attraction. Immediately he retreats
into himself, shuts down. He isn't quite ready to re-engage the enemy
in combat and doesn't want to alert him to the fact that another
encounter is only hours away.
He closes his eyes.
Smiling, he drifts into sleep.
Healing sleep.
At first his dreams are of the past, peopled by those he has
assassinated and by the women with whom he has had sex and on whom he
has bestowed post-coital death. Then he is enraptured by scenes that
are surely prophetic, involving those whom he loves--his sweet wife, his
beautiful daughters, in moments of surpassing tenderness and gratifying
submission, bathed in golden light, so lovely, all in a lovely golden
light, flares of silver, ruby, amethyst, jade, and indigo.
, Marty woke from a nightmare with the feeling that he was being
crushed. Even when the dream shattered and blew away, though he knew
that he was awake and in the motel room, he could not breathe or move so
much as a finger. He felt small, insignificant, and was strangely
certain he was about to be hammered into billions of disassociated atoms
by some cosmic force beyond his comprehension.
Breath came to him suddenly, implosively. The paralysis broke with a
spasm that shook him from head to foot.
He looked at Paige on the bed beside him, afraid that he had disturbed
her sleep. She murmured to herself but didn't wake.
He got up as quietly as possible, stepped to the front window,
cautiously separated the drapery panels, and looked out at the motel
parking lot and Pacific Coast Highway beyond. No one moved to or from
any of the parked cars. As far as he remembered, all of the shadows
that were out there now had been out there earlier. He saw no one
lurking in any corner. The storm had taken all the wind with it into
the east, and Laguna was so still that the trees might have been painted
on a stage canvas. A truck passed, heading north on the highway, but
that was the only movement in the night.
In the wall opposite the front window, draperies covered a pair of
sliding glass doors beyond which lay a balcony overlooking the sea.
Through the doors and past the deck railing, down at the foot of the
bluff, lay a width of pale beach onto which waves broke in garlands of
silver foam. No one could easily climb to the balcony, and the sward
was deserted.
Maybe it had been only a nightmare.
He turned away from the glass, letting the draperies fall back into
place, and he looked at the luminous dial of his wristwatch. Three
o'clock in the morning.
He had been asleep about five hours. Not long enough, but it would have
to do.
His neck ached intolerably, and his throat was mildly sore.
He went into the bathroom, eased the door shut, and snapped on the
light. From his travel kit he took a bottle of Extra-Strength Excedrin.
The label advised a dosage of no more than two tablets at a time and no
more than eight in twenty-four hours. The moment seemed made for living
dangerously, however, so he washed down four of them with a glass of
water drawn from the sink tap, then popped a sore-throat lozenge in his
mouth and sucked on it.
After returning to the bedroom and picking up the short-barreled shotgun
from beside the bed, he went through the open connecting door to the
girls' room. They were asleep, burrowed in their covers like turtles in
shells to avoid the annoying light of the nightstand lamp.
He looked out their windows. Nothing.
Earlier, he had returned the reading chair to the corner, but now he
moved it farther out into the room, where light would reach it.
He didn't want to alarm Charlotte and Emily if they woke before dawn and
saw an unidentifiable man in the shadows.
He sat with his knees apart, the shotgun across his thighs.
Although he owned five weapons--three of them now in the hands of the
police although he was a good shot with all of them, although he had
written many stories in which policemen and other characters handled
weapons with the ease of familiarity, Marty was surprised by how
unhesitatingly he had resorted to guns when trouble arose. After all,
he was neither a man of action nor experienced in killing.
His own life and then his family had been in jeopardy, but he would have
thought, before learning differently, that he'd have reservations when
his finger first curled around the trigger. He would have expected to
experience at least a flicker of regret after shooting a man in the
chest even if the bastard deserved shooting.
He clearly remembered the dark glee with which he had emptied the
Beretta at the fleeing Buick. The savage lurking in the human genetic
heritage was as accessible to him as to any man, regardless of how
educated, well-read, and civilized he was.
What he had discovered about himself did not displease him as much as
perhaps it should. Hell, it didn't displease him at all.
He knew that he was capable of killing any number of men to save his own
life, Paige's life, or the lives of his children. And although he swam
in a society where it was intellectually correct to embrace pacifism as
the only hope of civilization's survival, he didn't see himself as a
hopeless reactionary or an evolutionary throwback or a degenerate but
merely as a man acting precisely as nature intended.
Civilization began with the family, with children protected by mothers
and fathers willing to sacrifice and even die for them.
If the family wasn't safe any more, if the government couldn't or
wouldn't protect the family from the depredations of rapists and child
molesters and killers, if homicidal sociopaths were released from prison
after serving less time than fraudulent evangelists who embezzled from
their churches and greedy hotel-rich millionairesses who underpaid their
taxes, then civilization had ceased to exist.
If children were fair game--as any issue of a daily paper would confirm
they were--then the world had devolved into savagery. Civilization
existed only in tiny units, within the walls of those houses where the
members of a family shared a love strong enough to make them willing to
put their lives on the line in the defense of one another.
What a day they'd been through. A terrible day. The only good thing
about it was--he had discovered that his fugue, nightmares, and other
symptoms didn't result from either physical or mental illness. The
trouble was not within him, after all. The boogeyman was real.
But he could take minimal satisfaction from that d
iagnosis. Although
he had regained his self-confidence, he had lost so much else.
Everything had changed.
Forever.
He knew that he didn't even yet grasp just how dreadfully their lives
had been altered. In the hours remaining before dawn, as he tried to
think what steps they must take to protect themselves, and as he dared
to consider the few possible origins of The Other that logic dictated,
their situation inevitably would seem increasingly difficult and their
options narrower than he could yet envision or admit.
For one thing, he suspected that they would never be able to go home
again.
He wakes half an hour before dawn, healed and rested.
He returns to the front seat, switches on the interior light, and
examines his forehead and left eye in the rearview mirror. The bullet
furrow in his brow has knit without leaving any scar that he can detect.
His eye is no longer damaged--or even bloodshot.
However, half his face is crusted with dried blood and the grisly
biological waste products of the accelerated healing process. A portion
of his countenance looks like something out of The Abominable Dr.
Phibes or Darkman.
Rummaging in the glove compartment, he finds a small packet of Kleenex.
Under the tissues is a travel-size box of Handi Wipes, moistened
towelettes sealed in foil packets. They have a lemony scent.
Very nice. He uses the Kleenex and towelettes to scrub the muck off his
face, and he smooths out his sleep-matted hair with his hands.
He won't frighten anyone now, but he is still not presentable enough to
be inconspicuous, which is what he desires to be. Though the bulky
raincoat, buttoned to the neck, covers his bullet-torn shirt, the shirt
reeks of blood and the variety of foods that he spilled on it during his
feeding frenzy in McDonald's rainswept parking lot last evening, in the
now-abandoned Honda, before he'd ever met the unlucky owner of the
Buick. His pants aren't pristine, either.
On the off chance he'll find something useful, he takes the keys from
the ignition, gets out of the car, goes around to the back, and opens
the trunk. From the dark interior, lit only partially by an errant beam
from the nearby tree-shrouded security lamp, the dead man stares at him
with wide-eyed astonishment, as if surprised to see him again.
The two plastic shopping bags lie atop the body. He empties the
contents of both on the corpse. The owner of the Buick had been
shopping for a variety of items. The thing that looks most useful at
the moment is a bulky crew-neck sweater.
Clutching the sweater in his left hand, he gently closes the trunk lid
with his right to make as little noise as possible.
People will be getting up soon, but sleep still grips most if not all of
the apartment residents. He locks the trunk and pockets the keys.
, The sky is dark, but the stars have faded. Dawn is no more than ,
fifteen minutes away.
Such a large garden-apartment complex must have at least two or three
community laundry rooms, and he sets out in search of one.
In a minute he finds a signpost that directs him to the recreation
building, pool, rental office, and nearest laundry room.
, The walkways connecting the buildings wind through large and
attractively landscaped courtyards under spreading laurels and quaint
iron carriage lamps with verdigris patina. The development is well
planned and attractive. He would not mind living here himself. Of
course his own house, in Mission Viejo, is even more appealing, and he
is sure the girls and Paige are so attached to it that they will never
want to leave.
The laundry-room door is locked, but it doesn't pose a great obstacle.
Management has installed a cheap lockset, a latch-bolt not a dead-bolt.
Having anticipated the need, he has a credit card from the cadaver's
wallet, which he slips between the faceplate and the striker plate. He
slides it upward, encounters the latch-bolt, applies pressure, and pops
the lock.
Inside, he finds six coin-operated washing machines, four gas dryers, a
vending machine filled with small boxes of detergents and fabric
softeners, a large table on which clean clothes can be folded, and a
pair of deep sinks. Everything is clean and pleasant under the
fluorescent lights.
He takes off the raincoat and the grossly soiled flannel shirt. He wads
up both the shirt and the coat and stuffs them into a large trash can
that stands in one corner.
His chest is unmarked by bullet wounds. He doesn't need to look at his
back to know that the single exit wound is also healed.
He washes his armpits at one of the laundry sinks and dries with paper
towels taken from a wall dispenser.
He looks forward to taking a long hot shower before the day is done, in
his own bathroom, in his own home. Once he has located the false father
and killed him, once he has recovered his family, he will have time for
simple pleasures. Paige will shower with him.
She will enjoy that.
If necessary, he could take off his jeans and wash them in one of the
laundry-room machines, using coins taken from the owner of the Buick.
But when he scrapes the crusted food off the denim with his fingernails
and works at the few stains with damp paper towels, the result is
satisfactory.
The sweater is a pleasant surprise. He expects it to be too large for
him, as the raincoat was, but the dead man evidently did not buy it for
himself. It fits perfectly. The colon-cranberry red--goes well with
the blue jeans and is also a good color for him. If the room had a
mirror, he is sure it would show that he is not only inconspicuous but
quite respectable and even attractive.
Outside, dawn is just a ghost light in the east.
Morning birds are chirruping in the trees.
The air is sweet.
Tossing the Buick keys into some shrubbery, abandoning the car and the
dead man in it, he proceeds briskly to the nearest multiple stall
carport and systematically tries the doors of the vehicles parked under
the bougainvillea-covered roof. Just when he thinks all of them are
going to be locked, a Toyota Camry proves to be open.
He slips in behind the wheel. Checks behind the sun visor for keys.
Under the seat. No such luck.
It doesn't matter. He's nothing if not resourceful. Before the sky has
brightened appreciably, he hot-wires the car and is on the road again.
Most likely, the owner of the Camry will discover it's missing in a
couple of hours, when he's ready to go to work, and will quickly report
it stolen. No problem. By then the license plates will be on another
car, and the Camry will be sporting a different set of tags that will
make it all but invisible to the police.
He feels invigorated, driving through the hills of Laguna Niguel in the
rose light of dawn. The early sky is as yet only a faded blue, but the
high formations of striated clouds are runneled with bright pink.
It is the first day of December. Day one. He is making a fresh start.
From now on, everything will go his way because he will no longer
underestimate his enemy.
Before he kills the false father, he will put out the bastard's eyes in
retribution for the wound that he himself suffered. He will require his
daughters to watch, for this will be an important lesson to them, proof
that false fathers cannot triumph in the long run and that their real
father is a man to be disobeyed only at the risk of severe punishment.
( , Shortly after dawn, Marty woke Charlotte and Emily. "Got to get
showered and hit the road, ladies. Lots to do this morning."
Emily was fully awake in an instant. She scrambled out from under the
covers and stood on the bed in her daffodil-yellow pajamas, which
brought her almost to eye-level with him. She demanded a hug and a
good-morning kiss. "I had a super dream last night."
"Let me guess. You dreamed you were old enough to date Tom Cruise,
drive a sports car, smoke cigars, get drunk, and puke your guts out."
"Silly," she said. "I dreamed, for breakfast, you went out to the
vending machines and got us Mountain Dew and candy bars."
"Sorry, but it wasn't prophetic."
"Daddy, don't be a writer using big words."
"I meant, your dream isn't going to come true."
"Well, I know that, " she said. "You and Mommy would blow a basket if