Part 32 (1/2)

All he could see of the rec.u.mbent figure directly next to him was a pair of boots. Muddy and b.l.o.o.d.y, fastened over tattered combats and the hem of a raggedy coat. Blazing, from the corner of his eyes, with a warm fiery glow.

The Stranger.

Beyond him was Malice. Her face was gone. Her skin was charred and burnt, her hair singed away in great b.l.o.o.d.y patches all over her scalp. If she was still alive, she didn't look it. Her eye was open. Unblinking. Staring straight at him.

Next to her were Nate's feet. Crazy red sneakers with army regs tucked into them, tied-together with a single loop of wire. He couldn't see past Malice's charred body to check if the old junkie was still alive or not.

All three lay, like him, on their bellies; arms twisted into the smalls of their backs, where pairs of black cuffs held them in place. Rick tried to move his own arms, unsurprised to feel a fresh tsunami of agony (all a million miles away, not worth worrying about) swarming along his left wrist. They felt impeded, sure, but there was something loose about the whole arrangement, a sort of dried, gluey stickiness rather than metal solidity.

Weird.

He tilted his head as best as he could, to peer down towards his own feet; hogtied, just like everyone else. Next to them, the Stranger was looking at him. Eyes open and alive, jaw clenched. Blood and flesh covered his face, and it was difficult to tell how much of it was his. They stared silently at each other for a moment or two, then the Stranger's eyes flipped downwards towards Rick's back.

Then back up again.

”Your hand's gone.” He whispered.

”Shut the f.u.c.k up!” One of the Clergymen screamed, stamping hard on the Stranger's head and mas.h.i.+ng one lacerated cheek against the grille. Rick barely noticed, exploring his own body with a morbid sense of certainty.

The stranger was right. His left hand. His left hand was gone.

Well, s.h.i.+t.

It felt like they'd bound it up, maybe. Rags or bandages, tied at pressure, holding the arteries closed. Then they'd slapped the same old cuffs over the top of it and left him to it, maybe expecting him to die from blood loss, maybe just not caring.

He could move his wrist. He could unglue it from the sticky mess of dried blood and pull it free from the cuff. And if he could do that, it meant his other hand - no, his only hand - would be free to move.

Hiawatha sang a new song. The wind against the back of his head, from that great drop beyond, tousled his long hair and whispered strange things in his ear. Something about... about a gift?

He s.h.i.+fted his weight, trying to determine if any other interesting parts of his anatomy were missing. The pockets of his leathers had been chock-full of ammunition and handguns before the blast knocked him out, but now all he could feel about his person was a s.h.i.+tload of bruises and something tiny - sharp, but swaddled-up - in the zip-pocket on his a.s.s.

The wind giggled.

The gift, it told him. Remember?

And then he knew what to do.

Poor kid.

Sh.e.l.l-shocked, I thought. He's been blown up. He's woken-up dangling over an abyss surrounded by fanatic goons, and he's got a b.l.o.o.d.y hand missing.

s.h.i.+t, I'd be sh.e.l.l-shocked.

Outside, the green blur of land streaking past began to turn sooty and black. A sharp smell - like burning oil - filled the chopper, and above my head the three Choirboys muttered to one another, shuffling discreetly towards the open bay to see below.

The Haudenosaunee camp, I guessed, set-up far back from the war zone at the bridge. I couldn't see past the edge to whatever they were marvelling at, but I could imagine it. Blackened vans and charred wagons. The Tadodaho's weird mobile-home collapsing in embers and smoke. What else could it be?

We'd been roundly beaten; us plucky idiots with our ambush and our rebellion. Slaughtered and routed for our hubris. Taken prisoner. Taken away.

The smoke got thicker. I decided not to look.

Nor, evidently, did Rick. With the guards distracted his arms were moving slowly, gingerly releasing the swaddled stump of his left wrist from the cuffs and, thus freed, his right hand easing - inching - towards the pocket of his trousers.

What did he have in there, I wondered? What had the idiot-goons missed when they went through our stuff, rifling for weapons? What cunning escape plan was he cooking up?

”Lord Almighty,” one of the Choirboys grunted, half reverential, half cursing, staring out into s.p.a.ce, now almost completely choked with black smoke. The dancing light of flames lit his face from below, giving him and his comrades an eerie, devilish look. I imagined the tribal Matriarchs screaming as they burned. The Tadodaho coughing on the thick pall. Malice's baby, left in their care, breaking its silence and starting - briefly - to wail.

Rick drew a folded rag from his pocket. Manipulated it with careful fingers, unwrapping it millimetre by millimetre. The cloth fell away with a dreamlike slowness, and I discovered myself holding my breath; desperate to see what he'd squirreled away.

My heart dropped.

It was a silver needle. Long and sharp, barely thicker than a hypodermic, slightly distorted by its time in his pocket. Not quite the weapon of ma.s.s destruction I'd envisaged.

There was a time, once - somewhere in the Middle East, I recall, on business - when I got into some bad s.h.i.+t and found myself up against a knifeman with nothing to defend myself but a table fork. Don't laugh. This s.h.i.+t happens.

For the record, he perforated my right lung before I got close enough to stab him through his eyeball - and that was without having a bruised and battered body up-front. Without gun-wielding maniacs watching. Without sodding handcuffs. With a f.u.c.king hand missing.

Good luck, kid.

Rick was staring at me again, needle held concealed in his hand.

”Sorry.” He whispered. Then: ”Trust me.”

And then he was moving. Sudden and unexpected, face contorted, hefting himself off the floor and onto my back, flexing his legs to get towards me.

”f.u.c.king limey a.s.shole!” He snarled. ”f.u.c.king p.r.i.c.k! You said you'd stop them! You said you'd save us!”

”What? I hissed. ”But...”

”Kill you, sonuvab.i.t.c.h! Look what they did! You said you'd stop them! Just f.u.c.king die!”

And then he was pressed over me, and his mouth was next to my neck, and oh my G.o.d he was biting me. Trying to rip out my b.l.o.o.d.y throat. I shouted and hollered - more confused than anything - and tried to shake my body to get him off. The guards were reacting slowly, turning back from their sightseeing in a chorus of curses and exclamations, throwing horrified glances up and over my shoulder to the bulkhead that led into the chopper's c.o.c.kpit.

From where - cold and forced, like steel sc.r.a.ping cobwebs - there came a voice.

”What.” It said. ”The f.u.c.k. Is going on?”

Rick's teeth dug in further, but in an abstract section of my brain - not actively shrieking and demanding answers of this ludicrous situation - it occurred to me that by now he could have killed me if he'd wanted to. He wasn't even biting that hard.

The guards grabbed him and tried to wrestle him off.

And between us, in the secret concealed shadows of the ruckus, something sharp and tiny punched into the fleshy meat of my right b.u.t.tock, buried itself there, and went still.

What the-?

And then Rick was gone, hauled away, severed hand squirting blood through its disarrayed bandages. The guards clung to rails and handles, bracing him, facing the owner of that cold, grating voice.

”Sir?” one said.

”Hold him,” it hissed. I recognised it, sort of. It was sharper than before, more strained, like it'd been pushed through a filter of trauma and hate.