Stoneskin's Revenge (31 page)

Death:
that
brought back memories of Allison. He almost couldn't stand the thought of that pretty little girl lying dead, got an awful sick feeling in his stomach every time that image paraded across his inner eye. But at least he'd never known her when she was alive. Brock, though, and Robyn, and Don—and Dave—them he
did
know: had talked to them, laughed with them, touched them, and felt them aflame with the supple energy of life. The notion that they too might now be lying cold and stiff and empty almost made him gag. That it would be his fault
was
more than he could tolerate. Against his will, he felt his eyes misting.

For God's sake, get a
grip
on yourself, McIntosh!
he told himself firmly.
Self-pity won't do
anybody
any good.

With that, he began once more to consider his options. If he was extremely lucky, the legal system would grind along and get him in contact with a lawyer. (Had they said something about one coming from Jesup? He hardly remembered.) Hopefully, there'd be bail. (Could Sandy afford to post bond for a murderer?) But he had no idea how long that would take, and he imagined Spearfinger would have accomplished her goal long before then.

That left him back at escape, and
that
seemed extremely unlikely—unless he could get thirty seconds alone with his uktena scale.

But
it
was sequestered as evidence, so Hardface had intimated.
Lord,
he hoped they didn't fool with it too much. He could just imagine some lab tech somewhere trying to do analysis on it and cutting himself while he was wishing he was one of the humpin' bunnies in the next cage—and then slam, bam… The idea struck Calvin as ludicrous enough to prompt a chuckle, but then noises reached him from the floor below, only a little muffled by distance: doors slamming, shouting, and footsteps running on tile, while a woman (maybe Old Hardface the Food-bringer?) shrieked hysterically, “The little son-of-a-bitch bit me! The little son-of-a-bitch bit the goddamned shit out of me!”

Calvin wondered who the little son-of-a-bitch was and whether the woman had had her shots. More to the point, he wondered whether the “little son-of-a-bitch” had had his.

Chapter XXIII: Frayed Nerves

(Whidden, Georgia—mid-morning)

“Catch him!”

“Where'd he go?”

“Damn! Shit! Fuck! He
bit
me, goddamn it!”

“There he is!”

“Shit!”

Calvin couldn't help perking up at the explosions of shouts and profanity that were wafting their way up from the downstairs offices to his cell. He couldn't tell for certain what was going on, but more doors were slamming and (apparently) being locked; things were falling over (or being pushed)—and at least one of them had to have been a file cabinet, to judge by the volume of the metallic crash and the wails of an unfamiliar female voice shrieking, “I just finished alphabetizin' them records!”

There was also a veritable cacophony of footfalls, one fairly rhythmic and light-sounding, the others (usually accompanied by heavy, uncomfortable grunts) those of larger bodies bouncing off things and each other. Calvin heard glass shatter; the lights flickered and went out—and then, abruptly, there was silence. Curiosity having gotten the best of him, he padded to the cell door and peered outside.

“Where'd he go?” a man yelled from somewhere directly beneath Calvin's feet. Calvin had no trouble understanding him, though his words were muffled by a thump and the rattling of a lock a fair bit closer.

“Shit if I know, I thought
you
had 'im.”

“Where'd he come from, anyway?”

“Hell-if-I-know!”

“Hell, you
better
know!”

“I—”

“Shit! He's locked the goddamned door!”

An alarm began to shriek and bells to clang, all accompanied by the nasty buzz of something electrical shorting out. The sharp, bitter odor of ozone filled the air even on the second floor, and Calvin found himself gazing out into a gloomy corridor bathed only in the dim light of the thunderous sky diffusing through cell windows. Even the red-eye of the electronic security system on the barred stairwell door was out, and Calvin could tell by the crack of light dimly visible at one side that it hadn't been closed properly in the first place, which meant it had probably
never
worked correctly—which in turn implied that the locals rarely dealt with really dangerous prisoners. That
might
give him an advantage.

And below, chaos exploded once more:

“What the
fuck
?”

“Little son-of-a-bitch must've pulled the fire alarm.”

“Fire alarm,
hell
!
Must've pulled the
circuit
breaker!”

“My computer!” the woman wailed again.

“Marvin, you get that goddamned door open an' I'll check downstairs. Abner, you get a flashlight and investigate up top. Shit…son-of-a-bitch! We gotta get some friggin'
light
in here!”

“I ain't
got
no friggin' flashlight!”

Calvin couldn't resist a grin. Someone had evidently set his captors into a top-notch tizzy.

That was when he saw the stairwell door slowly open and a hunched-over shadow appear there.

For a moment Calvin's heart stuck in his throat, for the outline was humpbacked and shrunken, exactly like Spearfinger. He suddenly realized, too, that the walls of his prison were stone and there was probably no reason in the world that the hag couldn't make her way there through the earth, rise up through them, and come at him that way. But then the shadow moved again, and he heard its steps, and they sounded too light, too sure, to be his adversary's.

And then a boy's voice whispered hoarsely from the wall beside his door. “Calvin? Hey, Cal, man it's me, Brock!”

“Brock! Jesus, guy, what're
you
doin' here?”

“Tryin' to rescue you,” the boy replied breathlessly, glancing over his shoulder. “I've locked 'em out downstairs, but I've only got about a minute 'fore they do in the door.”

And with that the shadow moved to the other side of the bars and Calvin got a good look at the boy.

He was wearing the oiliest, scuzziest jeans and T-shirt Calvin had ever seen, had smeared every visible bit of skin with either dirt or ashes—and had somehow become a brunette in the bargain, probably by the application of spray-dye, to judge by the trace of chemical odor that lingered around his dull-looking hair.

“Like my disguise?” Brock asked eagerly, grinning like a fool. “I was afraid they'd recognize me, so I had to kinda switch things around.”

“You better get the hell outta here!”

“No, man, I've gotta get
you
out. The”—he swallowed nervously—“the ground's poundin' again!”

“Shit!”

“Yeah. It's part of it, ain't it? The ground poundin'? Part of the magic.”

“Yeah.”

A pause, then: “I know about you. I—”

A lock clicked, a door creaked, and footsteps sounded in the hall, slow and fumbly. Calvin and Brock held their breath, but the steps receded down the stairs—evidently in quest of the fuse box.

“What'd you
do,
anyway?” Calvin wondered.

A low chuckle. “Knocked the water cooler over into the computer terminal. It wasn't grounded or nothin'. Then zipped into the hall, locked the door behind me, and pulled a bunch of switches. And
then
I locked—”

“
All
that?”

“Don told me how. I—”

More steps, and a light flared fitfully at the foot of the stairs. Abner had apparently located a flashlight.

“Quick! How can I help?”

“Find the scale,” Calvin whispered urgently. “It's in the basement somewhere: room marked STORAGE. There's some kinda secret tunnel between here and the court-house—that's where they interrogated me. Now get the hell
outta
here!”

“Figured as much.” Brock nodded. “I—”

The flashlight beam lanced up toward the second-floor landing. Brock flung himself in one smooth leap to the sliver of wall beside the stairwell door, just as a head poked cautiously into the corridor. The boy flattened against the stone, melting into shadow.

Calvin wrenched off a shoe and flung it skittering down the hall in the opposite direction from the stairs.

The figure—sure enough, it was Abner—dashed into the corridor: revolver poised in one hand while his flashlight prodded the far shadows with the other—and thereby missed Brock, probably because Abner was not expecting his quarry to be so close.

Until it was too late.

As soon as Abner's back had cleared the doorway, Brock dived for the opening, careening into the startled deputy with enough force to set him staggering. The man swore, half-danced a series of steps farther into the hall, then whirled, sending flashlight beams everywhere. Calvin caught the glint of a .38 and hoped Brock wasn't so foolhardy as to go up against something like that.

But the boy was gone, though a final explosion of shouts from downstairs gave proof that he was not forgotten: “There he is
again
!”

“Catch him!”

“Damn, I
missed
!”

And then the lights came on, only to flicker off once more and stay that way.

“You're
still here, anyway,” the deputy growled, when he saw Calvin staring calmly through the cell door. “Get back over there and set down!”

Calvin complied obediently, but he could tell that the man was giving the whole corridor a thorough once-over.

In less than a minute he was back, holding Calvin's decoy shoe at arm's length as though he expected it to bite him.

He dropped it onto the floor outside the cell and kicked it through the bars to him.

“You know anything 'bout this?”

Calvin picked up the sneaker and scrutinized it with exaggerated care before slipping it back on. “It's my shoe,” he stated flatly. “Or technically, the shoe you gave me to wear.”

“Don't get smart, boy!” the deputy snapped. “You mind tellin' me what it's doin' at the end of the hall?”

“I threw it at something.”

“At what?”

“The floor and the wall.”

“I'm warnin' you boy! Mr. Police Chief ain't 'round here now.”

“I'm tellin' you the exact truth.”

“You know that boy that 'uz up here?”

“Yes.”

“Who is he?”

“A friend of mine.”

“What's his name?”

“I don't know.” Which was the truth: Calvin had never learned Brock's legal name, but he hoped this grilling ended quickly, because he was afraid that sooner or later this dim bulb would ask him something he couldn't answer with an evasion and still be truthful.

“What'd he want?”

“To see me.”

“He some kind of accomplice?”

“Not by my choice.”

“Shit! You a
liar,
boy!”

“No,” Calvin countered calmly. “I absolutely am not.”

“You got a plan?”

“No.” Which was also true, technically. He had desires, but no clear idea how to execute them. That did not constitute a plan in his book.

“What'd you tell him?'

“I can't remember, exactly.”

The man's eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What about
other
than exactly?”

“It wouldn't be smart for me to say.”

“I'll tell you what'd be
smart
,”
Abner snarled, pushing his face up close to the bars. “It'd be
smart
for you to watch your mouth. It'd be
real
easy to mistake you for a rat in this light. And we
shoot
rats 'round here.”

“You'd have a problem, then.”

“Why's that?”

“'Cause then who'd you blame when folks kept turning up dead without their livers?”

“Abner, you okay?” a voice shouted up from the floor below.

“Yeah, I reckon,” Abner called back.

“Then get your skinny ass down here and help us pick up this goddamn file cabinet!” A pause, and then nearly as loudly, to the folks in the sheriff's office, “No, that's okay, sheriff; reckon the little son-of-a-bitch got clean away.”