A Season for the Dead

Fifteen

When Jay Gallo came to, it was night. Lying on his back on the hard sand, he could see the lights of the planes descending into Fiumicino airport, hear the roar of their engines. It was the only sound around him. He awoke knowing full well where he was: by the banks of the dead river, with its stink of chemicals, and worse, miles from anywhere. It would be a long walk back to the road and, perhaps, a long time before any motorist would pick up a hitchhiker in his present state.

Gallo’s mouth was full of blood. His head felt as if it had been split open. His nose was shattered and his face ached like hell. But he was alive. His hands moved around his body, feeling for broken bones. He raised himself from the sand on a single arm. He could see only through one eye. He could taste the dead river in his mouth. The water seemed stagnant, poisonous with the scum of algae.

“Bastard,” Jay Gallo spat through broken teeth, wondering who, of the many people he had pissed off over the years, had arranged this particular lesson. It seemed rather pointless without that piece of information.

Gradually his senses began to return. His sight improved, enough to see the lights of the coast at Ostia. He began to hear the shriek of seagulls, the far-off sound of a dinghy’s weak motor. And, behind him, breathing.

“Oh, Jesus,” Gallo groaned, and began to turn.

The man was still sitting there on the bank, looking as if he had been waiting patiently for hours. He no longer wore the dark glasses.

He had removed the jacket to reveal a plain white shirt. There was a reason for this, Gallo thought. The night was desperately close, so hot it was hard to take in sufficient air in a single breath. Then he cursed his own stupidity. The man had shrugged off the jacket because it was part of some disguise, a way of concealing his identity when they had met, in the presence of others. Now that they were alone, and his intent was clear, it was no longer needed.

Gallo fixed his attention on the figure in front of him. He was much younger than he first thought, possibly about his own age. He was muscular too, in a way that spoke of workouts and gyms. Oddly, there was sympathy in his face, as if some part of him regretted what was happening.

It was a face that was familiar somehow, which both surprised and irritated him.

“Who the hell are you?” he croaked.

The seated figure looked closely at him. The hint of compassion was there. “Just a cog in the wheel,” he said. “Just a part of the mechanism.”

“We’ve met.” His head hurt too much to think straight. But the memory was there. He’d done something with this man. Picked up a package maybe. Or delivered one. “If I ever offended you in some way…” Gallo wanted to plead with this odd, taut figure in the dark, though he knew it was useless. And there was another thought in his head, one that kept getting bigger.

If the man intended to kill him—and Jay Gallo could think of no other reason why they had come to the dead river—why had he waited? Why had he sat hours by his unconscious figure on the sand, risking discovery, just to see him wake? Was there something he wanted? Something Gallo could still provide, maybe barter with?

“You want to trade?” Gallo asked.

The seated man turned. His face came into the harsh moonlight. It was an exaggerated face, one that would turn from beauty to ugliness with a simple change of the light. He had dark, alert eyes glinting in the moonlight, pale skin and full cruel lips. The face of a bit player in a canvas by Caravaggio, Gallo thought randomly.

“What’s there to trade?”

“You tell me.”

“Nothing.”

To Gallo’s dismay he was rising to his feet. Jay Gallo tried to struggle to join him but his head hurt too much, his mind was just too woozy. “Hey,” he said, desperate for anything that could delay what was coming. “Why did you wait? Why?”

The strange face was cut in half by the moonlight. It was shocked, offended by the question. “You think I kill sleeping men?”

Gallo’s hands went up in front of him, two outstretched palms trying to ward off this big, black figure overhead.

“You think,” the man repeated, his voice beginning to rise, “I’d send you to glory without you knowing?”

“Don’t,” Jay Gallo whimpered. “I’ll do anything.”

The black figure nodded. “I know,” he said, calm once more.

The pale disk of the moon disappeared behind blackness. A stone-hard fist came down out of the high dark, punching. The meager light began to fade, began to be subsumed by blood and shattered bone.

He found himself moving, lifted by two strong arms above. Then there was some final relief: He fell into something cold, something that stank but woke him all the same. Jay Gallo choked on the stagnant water, wondering whether it made him feel better or worse. Then, under the unrelenting pressure of the hands that gripped his shoulders, his head went below the surface, his eyes stared into black nothingness.

The cold poison began to fill his lungs, no matter how much he struggled against the fists that held him down, how often he tried to vomit out the dank water. The chill left the dead river and raced into his mouth. Jay Gallo fought it for as long as he could, but at some stage the body needs to breathe even if there’s nothing out there to pass as oxygen. When he thought his lungs might break he coughed once, felt the coldness win some bitter victory in his chest, and then was still.