Victim Prime Page 2

  “Don’t try to find out,” Harold said.

  Tag laughed. “Goddam, he’s a mean one. The meaner they talk, the less cartridges they got. Dilsey!”

  The dog lunged for Harold. Harold fired once, a chest shot which knocked the dog down. Dilsey lay kicking and whining on the ground until Tag knelt down and cut her throat with a clasp knife.

  “Poor old Dilsey,” Tag said, wiping the knife blade on the grass as he got up. “She was our ammo tester. You’re the first pilgrim we come across with ammo and the guts to use it. You got any more shells for that thing, or was that it?”

  “I’ve got all I need,” Harold said. “It’s getting dark now, Tag, and I don’t want you boys messing with me. I hate to use up cartridges, but you leave me no choice.” He raised the gun.

  “Hey, hold on!” Tag said.

  “Turn around,” Harold said in a quiet voice.

  “Sure,” Tag said, “we’ll turn around. You’re not about to shoot us in the back, are you? It’s OK, boys, we’ll just turn around and walk away quiet-like. OK, Harold?”

  Tag turned around, then swung around suddenly toward Harold, the knife in his hand held low, coming in for the kill. Harold had been expecting something of the sort. There were bushwhackers in upper New York State—not too many, because the pickings were too thin, but everybody knew they were hard to bluff. Bandits figured that ordinary citizens were reluctant to shoot, even with a gun in their hands, and when they did come across someone who was armed, they counted on a moment’s hesitation. As Tag came at him, whooping, Harold shot him in the shoulder, the big old .44 bucking hard in his hand. The brothers yelled as if they’d been hit instead of Tag and took off running. Tag was spun off his feet and knocked down by the impact. He got up quick and ran after the brothers.

  Harold let them go. It was getting too dark to shoot, and anyway, he didn’t want to kill anyone. Not without getting paid for it, like people said was how they did in Huntworld.

  He gathered up his stuff. He stood for a moment over the body of the dog.

  “Well, Dilsey,” he said, “I’m sorry. But you didn’t give me no choice. Now I’ve got to find another place to sleep, because I sure as hell ain’t going to share this hollow with a dead dog.” He moved about half a mile away, found another hollow, and camped again. They used to say back in Keene Valley that Harold didn’t have a mean streak in his body. But he was determined, very determined, and he didn’t push worth a damn.

  5

  The next day he got a ride into Albany. There he found that he’d have to wait four days for the bus south. He found lodging with the Salvation Army. They had taken over an old warehouse and put a couple hundred men and women in it. They were doing their best to feed everyone, but the soup was getting pretty thin. There was no room inside, but they gave Harold a bowl of soup and told him he was welcome to camp outside.

  At last the bus arrived. It was a beat-up old Greyhound with armor plating along its sides. There had been trouble with bandits and hijackers along lonely stretches of the Interstates. The dispatcher said the state police had the situation pretty well in hand, but you could never tell.

  The heavy, overburdened old bus made pretty good time down I-95. There was no trouble until they got to Suffern, near the New Jersey state line.

  The bus pulled in at the depot outside of town. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. Then a little guy in ragged clothing came running out of the depot and hammered at the door. “Open up!” he shouted. “Trouble!”

  The driver opened the door for him. “What’s the trouble?”

  “I am,” the guy said, taking a big automatic from his pocket. “Everybody put your hands on your head and stay quiet, nobody gets hurt.”

  Harold obeyed, like the other passengers. He had his gun in his belt, but the knapsack was in his lap on top of it and there was no way he could get at it quickly. The guy called out something in a foreign language—Spanish, it turned out to be—and two more guys came into the bus. They were both carrying automatics. One of them had on a big Stetson hat, once gray, now dirt-colored like everything else. His leg was wrapped in bloody bandages, and he could only walk with the help of one of his friends.

  He hobbled in, grinned, swept off his hat, and announced, “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is a stickup. Please do what my men tell you and nobody gets hurt. Comprende?

  He was a skinny little dude and ugly to boot. A face like a monkey only not so hairy. He looked like he had the kind of body that was made for shapeless rags. But he had a nice smile.

  “Juan Esteban Lopez, the Catskill Kid, at your service,” he said. “I guess you’ve figured what this is all about. My friends will now go among you and take up a collection. Give generously and give quick, friends, because you don’t want to rile us up. You there.” He was talking to Harold.

  “What is it?” Harold asked, wondering if he should go for his gun anyway.

  “Stand up, amigo. Put on your knapsack. You’re coming with us. But I’ll take the gun.” Lopez had spotted Harold’s revolver. He took it and put it into one of his own pockets.

  “What do you want me for?” Harold asked.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” the Catskill Kid said. “I just need some help with this leg.”

  They finished robbing the bus and went outside, bringing Harold. The Catskill Kid whistled. One more skinny guy came running out of the depot.

  “Now, amigo,” the Catskill Kid said to Harold, “just lift me up onto those big strong shoulders of yours and we’ll get out of here.”

  The Catskill Kid gestured with his gun and smiled. Harold lifted him gently to his shoulders. The Catskill Kid let out a hiss of air at the pain of moving that leg.

  “Chato,” he called out, “get to the car. Start it up. As for you—” He tapped Harold on the shoulder. “Vamos, caballo!”

  They ran to the parking lot. The one named Chato, a fat kid of about eighteen, sprinted ahead to a beat-up Buick parked near the depot’s exit. When the others got to the car Chato was grinding away with the starter motor, but the engine wouldn’t catch.

  “No time for jokes,” the Catskill Kid said. “What’s the matter?”

  “I told you about the distributor,” Chato said. “I told you it needed new points.”

  “You said it’d hold out until we got another car.”

  “I said I thought it would hold out.”

  The starter motor turned more slowly. The battery was about used up. They could hear shouting from the direction of the depot. Men were running out of it. Some of them had rifles.

  “We better get out of here,” Lopez said. They all scrambled out of the car. On command Harold lifted Lopez back onto his shoulders. They began running toward a low ridge behind the parking lot. Harold could hear firing behind him.

  “Goddam,” the Catskill Kid said, “Esteban, how come you didn’t find those rifles?” Then, to Harold: “Keep your eyes ahead of you, amigo. We don’t want to stumble and fall now.”

  Harold hurried on in a full gallop, up the slope. He ran into a thicket of secondary growth and tore through it, with Lopez ducking down to keep the branches out of his eyes. A thin vine whipped Lopez across the head, and then a branch knocked the automatic out of his hand.

  “Hey!” Lopez cried.

  “Forget it,” Harold said. He kept on going, full speed over the ridge, down into pastureland on the other side, across another road and into woods. He settled down to a steady trot. After another half mile he slowed and came to a stop. He lifted the Catskill Kid off his shoulders and carefully put him on the ground. He took back his own revolver and put it in his belt. He asked, “You got any way of calling those buddies of yours?”

  Lopez nodded.

  “Better do it. I don’t figure those fellows back at the depot are going to follow this far—they’ll wait for the state police—but we’d better get together and figure what to do next.”

  The Catskill Kid cupped his hand around his mouth and made a pierc
ing sound. “Magpie,” he said. “Pretty good, huh?”

  “Might be, if there were any of them around anymore.”

  The other three hadn’t been far off. They came up, guns out. The Catskill Kid motioned to them to put away their weapons.

  He said to Harold, “When I lost the gun, you could have dumped me, gone back to your bus. How come you didn’t?”

  “Two reasons,” Harold said. “First, I got the idea you were a pretty fair fellow even if you are a bandido. I couldn’t just leave you there for those passengers. If they caught you they’d string you up.”

  “And the second reason?”

  “When folks get riled up like that,” Harold said, “they get hotheaded and hasty and apt to act first and think later. I figured they just might not remember I wasn’t one of you. Might even think I was working with you on the inside.”

  The Catskill Kid looked at him steadily. “Good reasoning. But you do take chances, friend.”

  “Life’s a risky business,” Harold agreed.

  “You want to come with us?”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Harold said, “if you’re going anywhere in the direction of Florida.”

  The Catskill Kid laughed. “Of course, south. What’s there in the north but starvation? You come along. We gotta get to La Hispanidad, this commune we heard about down near Lake Okeechobee. Plenty of Cubanos there, they take care of my leg. We’re going to have to get a car. You up for that?”

  “As long as no one gets hurt,” Harold said.

  “That’s up to them,” Lopez said. “Me, I don’t want to hurt no one. Esteban, give me a gun. Let’s get going.”

  Harold lifted him up to his shoulders. “Andale, caballo!” Lopez said. Harold didn’t need a Spanish-English dictionary to tell him that that meant giddyap.

  6

  They crossed the hills to a secondary highway. There was a gas station just outside of a little town called Lakeville, and a boy in a beat-up Ford had just finished gassing up. Before he could pay and drive off, he suddenly found four skinny little guys and one big one standing around him with guns out. The gas station attendant took one look and got inside his station fast and locked the door.

  “Hey, boy,” the Catskill Kid said, “this your car?”

  “No, sir,” the boy said. “Belongs to Mr. Billings, who’s got the grain store in town.”

  “Nice sort of guy?” the Kid inquired.

  The boy shrugged. “He’s OK, I suppose.”

  “Well, he’s going to have to be OK without his vee-hickle. Get out of there, boy, and stand aside.”

  The boy got out, handed the keys to Lopez, watched as the five men got in. The boy said, “Hey, how about taking me along?”

  “You gotta be crazy,” Lopez said. “Bandidos don’t live long.”

  “Don’t nobody live long. I’d like to come along.”

  “You’ll have to join the next bunch,” Lopez said. “Five’s about all this car’ll take, what with our gear.” He turned to Harold. “I could have recruited an army for all the guys asked me could they join. I’d do it, too, if there was anything to take over. Ain’t nothing around but more like this. People who still have real money have it too well hid for us to get at. All that’s left is the poor hitting on the poor.”

  They got in and drove off, leaving the boy watching.

  “Yippee,” Lopez said. “The Catskill Kid rides again. I’m the Hispanic Jesse James, baby. If only I didn’t have this shot-up leg. Never mind, we’ll get where we going and there’ll be a sawbones to patch it up. I hope.”

  The fat one called Chato did the driving. Lopez had a bunch of roadmaps. He directed them in a southwesterly direction along secondary roads toward Pennsylvania. Harold wanted to know why that way when Florida was due south.

  “Simple, baby. You don’t want to get anywhere near what they call the Northeast Corridor. We’re swinging wide around New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, all that mess. Over that way, state cops and paramilitary patrols stop and check the cars all the time. It’s a bad deal. And closer in to the coast, there’s a lot of radioactivity from something that happened in New Jersey before I was born. I don’t want to get anywhere near that radiation stuff. Not with my delicate cojones.”

  It took them the better part of two days on back roads to cross Pennsylvania and get down into Virginia. At night they turned into old logging roads and slept near the car. The weather continued mild and they had a fair supply of food. They had to stop at least once a day to gas up, and that was always a dangerous time. It wasn’t that the police would be after them for the stolen car, Lopez explained. The cops had more stuff to take care of than a lousy little auto theft.

  “So what’s the problem?” Harold asked.

  “The way it is these days, the cops stop you on routine roadblocks, find you have guns, find you’re not local, and that’s it.”

  “What do you mean, that’s it? Prison?”

  ‘“They don’t want to put people in prison where they’d have to feed them. You see bodies along the roads every day, and most of them weren’t put there by bandidos.”

  “I’ve heard stories, but I never really believed the police kill people,” Harold said.

  “Better believe it, baby, ’cause that’s how it is.”

  Lopez did a lot of talking about La Hispanidad, the place they were going to. “Heard about it back in Union, New Jersey. That’s where we’re from. This commune in Florida, near Lake Okeechobee. Lot of communes down there, but this one’s Cuban. It’s run like an Israeli kibbutz—a council, everybody has a vote, everybody does lots of hard work by day and dances at night. Sounds pretty good, huh? That’s what I hear. That’s for me.”

  They stayed with the back roads and kept on going through the middle of Virginia and across North Carolina. Then they swung southeast toward the coast. Everything went all right until they reached Leesville, South Carolina, right on the Intracoastal Waterway.

  They had gone into a diner in Leesville to get something to eat. It was an ordinary little town, big old trees, some of them still living. They had hamburgers and fries. When they got out to their car there was a police car angled in front of them. A fat cop with a two-day stubble on his jowls was leaning back against the fender of their car, waiting for them.

  “You boys mind showing me some ID?”

  National ID cards had been in use for some time. They showed theirs. The cop paused for a while over Lopez’s card. “OK, boys, turn around, go lean against that car, and spread your legs. I’m going to have to search you.” He had his gun out, a Police Positive .38.

  “What’s the matter?” Lopez asked. “We’re just passing through.”

  “Just do what I tell ya,” the cop said. He had a high-pitched good-old-boy voice. “It seems that you boys, or somebody looks a whole lot like you guys, have been pulling some bank jobs north of here.”

  “We never robbed no bank!” Lopez said with genuine indignation.

  “Then you got nothing to worry about. Spread ’em and don’t make me ask you again.”

  “Like hell,” Lopez said. He’d had his gun in his pocket with his hand on it. Now he fired through the pocket. The cop staggered back and fell down, a bullet in his thigh.

  And then all hell broke loose. Harold couldn’t believe how fast armed men were out on the street. Seemed like people in Leesville had nothing to do but sit home with their rifles waiting for trouble. They were shooting and there was no way of getting back to the car.

  Harold and the bandidos ducked around a corner and ran. Harold was carrying Lopez on his back and running toward the woods in back of town, and Chato was running beside him. Then Chato said, “Damn!” and blood came out of his mouth and he fell down. Manolo went down next, and then they were in the woods, Harold running full out, and Esteban was to his right, and then Esteban went down and Harold was running alone, pumping with one hand and hanging on to Lopez’s legs with the other.

  He ran through the woods into swampl
and. He plodded on through ankle-deep muck and after a while there was no sound of pursuit behind him and he stopped.

  He was near a little river or bayou or whatever they called it, and there was a sort of pier out into the water and a rowboat tied to it and nobody around.

  “OK, Lopez,” he said, “we are now about to become sailors.”

  Lopez didn’t answer. Harold examined him. The Catskill Kid’s eyes were lifeless and staring. As far as Harold could tell he had taken about three slugs in the back, saving Harold’s life, though he couldn’t be said to have planned it that way.

  “Well, damnation,” Harold said. He put Lopez down gently. “I’m sorry, buddy,” he said to the corpse. “I tried. I’m sorry you won’t get to that commune. Somebody else’ll have to bury you, Otherwise I sure as hell will never get to see Esmeralda.”

  He untied the boat, shipped the oars, and started off.

  7

  Harold rowed all day. The water was green and slimy and overhung with trees and vines, not like the crystal-clear but sterile lakes back home. Harold was new at this rowing game, but he soon picked it up. He had his gun and his knapsack. He wasn’t planning on stopping again. If this piece of water went all the way to Florida, he was going to go there with it.

  But rowing was slow. He kept up a good stroke, but he figured he was only doing a couple of miles an hour. He’d be all year getting to Florida this way. Still, he thought he’d better stay on the water until he was well away from Leesville.

  That night he tied up to a mangrove and slept in the boat. Next day he finished the last of his beef jerky and started rowing again. He rowed most of the day. By nightfall he was hungry and his food was used up. He finished what remained and slept.

  The next day he started off again, but soon found himself in a marsh. The going got slower and slower, and there were corpses in the water, lying like half-submerged logs. Harold saw a deserted landing alongside the river or bayou or whatever it was. He rowed toward it. He left the rowboat tied to the dock and started walking.