Ransom X

  Chapter 50 The Choice

  Across the continent, spires of lodge pole pines rose around a clearing. In the clearing, a compound of wooden cabins and outlying huts signaled the only human presence for miles around. It would have been a rustic scene of frontier living were it not for the line of rectangular trailer cabs that lined the dirt parking lot, connected by electrical conduits terminating in large heating and cooling units in what used to be the supply shaft breach in the ceilings. Also, the huge oval satellite dish that adorned the large central recreation center hardly seemed the kind of comfort endemic to such an outlying area.

  When someone works so hard to get away from people, it seemed odd that they would open the floodgates of television and essentially invite all of it back into their living room, along with commercials.

  This was no longer a camp for children. The entire compound had been leased to a survivalist group before the current occupants bought it in a cash deal so quiet that it hadn’t entered the books of the rural mountain county, nor had it even been heard by the falling trees. Property taxes were billed in the name of a fake corporation, and paid in cash, so nobody complained.

  The former occupants had made modifications to the property. The place looked like a military training camp. A trail down the middle cut through sections of tall metal pipe then under barbed wire traps elevated twelve inches above the dirt, finally ending in a firing range – it was an obstacle course meant to be run with an automatic weapon slung until the final sprint to the “kill zone.”

  The first time Blade had seen it he pictured overweight middle aged men plodding through the course only to fire colored point balls at a series of weathered targets. The targets a rainbow of circular paint layers under which some danger once had been outlined. Maybe it was a tax collector, or an environmental lawyer. Blue extinguished his cigar on the heel of his boot then walked into the community room.

  The group was all assembled. A punch bowl filled with pomegranate juice and everclear sat in the middle of a long table. It was his favorite drink. He loved the irony of feeding his soul and killing his mind at the same time.

  “I heard on TV, we’ve all been captured.” A roar of laughter went through the room. “Gave some time for Sean to get his dick straight again.”

  Mac chimed in, “When do we go back on the air?”

  “Initiation. Which leads us to a little window shopping.”

  Mac picked up a chicken wing from an obscene mountain of freshly barbecued meat, and pointed to the rows and stacks of thrift store televisions that lined the wall; he pulled an imaginary trigger “Bitches, bitches, and more bitches.” His open-mouthed growl left no mystery about where all the extra sauce went. A fraternity-like atmosphere meant that anything could be said, no matter how ignorant, arrogant or incendiary. The sound of an organ over a southern Baptist ministry program spilled from the TV at the bottom front of the pile. All the rest of the sets were quiet, giving a soft spiritual hum underneath the raucous discussions.

  The word ‘fuck’ was used more than ‘amen’ at a revival meeting, but the bravado of the group milling about the Cheetos and bean dip was misleading. They were all posturing around their leader, hoping that one of their inane remarks would call attention to themselves, put their own relationship in a special light with Blade. It could be that the word ‘brunette’ would conjure up a memory of the second girl, the one whose hair Blue cropped short and slicked back lovingly before every session.

  A simple comment such as, “Fucking brunettes, I want fucking brunettes this time.” like the one spouted by Feely indeed did garner a sidelong smile from their leader.

  Their secret society originally bound by blood and suffering had shifted into a less urgent emergence of family-like relationships. Everyone had begun to seek the approval from a dominant male, which Blade only gave out sparingly. His long fingers brushed Feely’s shoulders. Feely positively flushed with pride which instantly turned to shame as he noticed that Blade had used him like a napkin, leaving lines of hot wing sauce across his skin. Mac was the first to laugh, joined by Stones who always used the selection process as a time to get bulging-eye drunk. Vorest snorted, happy that Blade had chosen a target.

  Vorest’s failure to find Darci was not a disaster – it was the fucking end of the fucking world. Blade knew that Darci was an open door, and whoever came upon her could walk right through into their living room. All of his designs to keep them cut off from the world could be toppled by the stroke of luck that was Darci landing in the feds lap. On his arrival, Blade had slapped Vorest so hard that in the cup of his hand where the air pressure had broken the capillaries just under the skin and a scattered pattern of bright red dots marked one cheek. Blade had almost shut down the entire operation. Then he’d heard Voret’s report: he had overheard one of the FBI agents talking about their reassignment. They hadn’t turned up anything and they were following a new lead in Wyoming. Vorest suggested that maybe she was dead. Blade didn’t like suggestions, but he figured that their door would have already been busted down if they had the slightest inkling of the whereabouts of Darci. If that stupid girl had been laying low this effectively for this long, dead was a good bet.

  Blade looked across the room at Vorest. His bright red cheek had faded to violet, like a bruise. The snarl on his face probably kept an unhealthy amount of blood circulating around the curves of his facial articulation. He was a mean bastard, but he’d done what he was told, and he hadn’t slept an hour under a roof since Blade had ordered him down to Provo. He deserved a little recognition. Blue waved him over.

  Blade asked him to put his palm flat out on the table, right beside the sour cream dip. Vorest complied, not knowing what to expect from Blade. However, he could see something in Blade’s expression that invited him to play along rather than be ordered. A whisker’s width difference between the two, but like a nick in an artery, that can mean all the difference. Everyone gathered around as the pipe organ chimed at a quicker pace, like it was building to some kind of crescendo.

  Blade pulled out one of his razor sharp spike daggers from his boot and let the tip rest gently in the center of Vorest’s hand. “If you can grab it without shedding a drop of blood, it’s yours.”

  This was a gift from on high. Stones openly gaped at the thought of Blade giving away his signature knives. Mac and Shane closed the circle around Vorest urging him to pull his fingers up and around the metal blade and claim it as his own. Blade snapped his fingers and spun the hilt, setting it into motion like a top. The smooth tip glided on the flat surface of his palm searching for an imperfection in which to dig in and churn a gushing well of blood, he had to do it quickly. Vorest concentrated waiting for that moment when the flat of the blade presented itself slowly enough to – he took a deep breath – grab.

  He turned his hand like he was grabbing the handle on a coffee cup, and snatched the cold silver metal. It hovered above the dip, and a wide smile crossed Vorest’s face. He would be keeping his prize.

  A drop of blood fell into the white creamy dip below his hand, a visual representation of the contradiction of innocence or victory. A paper thin line of bright red crossed the length of his hand, creating a spillway at the end where more drops collected, then leaked down the tip of the dagger. Vorest licked the blade clean with a snarl then handed it back to Blade, who slapped his hand with his dirty palm. He then offered him a chip dipped in his own blood. He spit a brown pulp of chewing tobacco lazily out of his mouth, and then ate the chip. The place erupted.

  Fists pounded shoulders, thick boot heels, bone-like extensions of their feet assaulted the floorboards and a mixture of anger and joy mingled in their voices sending up noisy mixed signals swirling in tobacco smoke. Blade patted Vorest on the shoulder a signal that he was again his brother. Blade couldn’t hide his respect for brutality and Vorest was the only face in his gang that had no room for mercy. It gave him power. He would never be able to combine his talents the way Blade had and lea
d his people to the perfect symmetry of sex, violence and money, but he the kind of henchman who would avenge his death equal parts out of loyalty and the excuse to kill. It brought a shimmer of added saline to his sunken eyes.

  A static laced voice called the gathering to the far wall. It came from the television.

  “Have you sinned?” His southern twang lent a musical interpretation to every stressed vowel sound.

  “He’s early.” Stones looked at his watch.

  A hand raised by Blade demanded silence. It was time. The boys gathered around the sets, each of them knew to say nothing. It was even a bad idea to chew loudly. Mac pulled the tap on the keg the minute the selection began. Blade had a three and a half hour sermon to choose one face out of an exponentially weighted, ever changing crowd. His eyes twinkled in the cloudy gleam. His eyes no longer had the capability of detecting the colors that poured into his sockets – but that hardly mattered because Blade somehow looked directly into their souls. The beauty and consequence of a much greater mosaic, an unconventional canvas of human domination, which he alone saw.

  The preacher croaked out the opening stanza of a familiar verse. “Someone out there is in pain.”

  Blade smiled inwardly, the corners of his mouth drew together as his eyes widened soaking in every last ray that radiated from the wall of monitors. Where was she? He moved his lips in exact time with the preacher’s.

  “Someone out there is searching.”

  And somewhere in the next three plus hours, an image would be plucked off of one of the screens and chosen as the next victim. Blade thought ahead to the course of events that tonight would set into motion. He would select two of his men to ride into the night, one of them straddling a motorbike, the other driving a conversion van. Their orders would be strict, wheels would spin across asphalt without halt, and their engines would not be turned off until they were back at the compound. He protected his men the way he protected his property, with a strict doctrine designed to minimize risk. These forays out into the world were their only necessary contact, and therefore left the only opening to those who wanted to track them.

  He would send his men tonight, and they’d be back in two days. With the take of the sales counters on his video empire reaching near a hundred million, he predicted Laura would double it leading into the next girl. That was enough. Anyway, dumping their bodies together right after the initiation would end their exposure. This was their last pass as predator on society and with the dawn, two days in the future, he could see their identities melt into the rocky mountains splashing off the rocks like a spring run off.

  A close fit on a screen in the upper left brought him back to the moment. Her smile asserted a kind happiness not echoed in a perturbed flicker of her eyes. The conflict between how she felt and how she wanted to be perceived fascinated Blade for a moment, but he knew it was a brief flirtation only. The perfect girl had eyes that knew what her mouth was doing and approved. His eyes read the annoying logo that lived in the left hand corner of the image. The perfect girl wasn’t on channel five Boston tonight.

  The room flinched as they saw Blade’s interest spike. In the silence they waited for the command that would set everything in motion. It didn’t come, in fact the energy stored in Blade’s clenched fist released and he grabbed for a beer. He loved to sit in his seat surrounded by the warm bodies of his friends and proceed to fill his bladder until it nearly exploded. It gave him the sensation of an unconventional yearning. The smell of this group would never wash out of the curtains; they were the component parts of human wrong. Blade was their brain and conscience. He was saying no to girl after girl, but there would be more, and anyway it gave him time to be with his men. He could feel their attention upon him. It wasn’t so bad to let this part of the ritual continue. His last choice had to be his grandest stroke, but how could he do better than the daughter of the FBI director? Even as the question flashed through his mind he knew the answer, he knew it would come. The perfect girl was already streaking toward him on the airwaves. The image alone remained to be seen.

  Blade pulled the flame of his lighter toward the tip of his unlit cigarette with a long intake of breath.

  Several cigarettes later, Blade rose from his seat. He was standing taller than he ever had in his life. Two fingers extended toward one of the screens, a pronouncement, a proclamation, a damnation coming to his lips in a single invective syllable “go.”