Dead and Alive

CHAPTER 46

Toward the end of a long incline, out of the darkness to the right of the roadway, a white-tailed doe bounded into the headlights and froze in fear.

Ignoring speed limits and periodic roadside pictographs of the silhouette of a leaping antlered buck, Carson had forgotten that at night in rural territory, deer could be no less a traffic hazard than drunken drivers.

Being a city girl out of her element was the lesser part of the problem. Having spent the past few days immersed in the twisted world of Victor Helios Frankenstein, she learned to fear and to be alert for extraordinary, preposterous, grotesque threats of all kinds, while becoming less attuned to the perils of ordinary life.

In spite of her complaints about the Honda, she had pressed it to a reckless speed. The instant she saw the deer in the northbound lane, she knew she was maybe five seconds from impact, couldn’t lose enough speed to avoid a disastrous collision, might roll the car if she braked hard.

Speaking on behalf of the Dumpsters, Erika Four said, “… but there’s something we want,” just as the deer appeared.

To free both hands for the wheel, Carson tossed the cell phone to Michael, who snared it in midair as if he’d asked for it, and who at the same time reached cross-body with his left hand to press a button that put down the power window in his door.

In the split second she needed to throw the phone to Michael, Carson also considered her two options:

Pull left, pass Bambi’s mom by using the southbound lane and south shoulder, but you might startle her, she might try to complete her crossing, bounding hard into the Honda.

Pull right, go off-road behind the deer, but you might plow into another one if they were traveling in a herd or family.

Even as the phone arced through the air toward Michael’s rising hand, Carson put all her chips on a bet that the doe wasn’t alone. She swung into the southbound lane.

Directly ahead, a buck bolted from where she least expected, from the darkness on the left, into the southbound lane, returning for his petrified doe.

Having tossed the phone from right hand to left, having snatched the pistol from his shoulder rig, Michael thrust the weapon out the window, which was still purring down, and squeezed off two shots.

Spooked, the buck sprang out of harm’s way, into the northbound lane, the doe turned to follow him, the Honda exploded past them, and hardly more than a hundred feet away, a truck appeared at the top of the incline, barreling south.

The truck driver hammered his horn.

Carson pulled hard right.

In an arc, the truck’s headlights flared through the Honda’s interior.

Feeling the car want to roll, she avoided the brakes, eased off the accelerator, finessed the wheel to the left.

The truck shot past them so close Carson could hear the other driver cursing even though her window was closed.

When the potential energy of a roll transferred into a back-end slide, a rear tire stuttered off the pavement, gravel rattled against the undercarriage, but then they were on pavement once more, and in the northbound lane where they belonged.

As Carson accelerated, Michael holstered his pistol, tossed her cell phone back to her.

When she caught the phone and as he put up the window in his door, she said, “That settles it. We’ll get married.”

He said, “Obviously.”

Remembering the dog, she said, “How’s Duke?”

“Sitting on the backseat, grinning.”

“He is so our dog.”

When Carson put the phone to her ear, the former Mrs. Helios was saying, “Hello? Are you there? Hello?”

“Just dropped the phone,” Carson said. “You were saying you wanted something in return for helping us.”

“What are you going to do to Victor if you can get your hands on him?” Erika asked. “Arrest him?”

“Nooooo,” Carson said. “Don’t think so. Arresting him would be way too complicated.”

“It’d be the trial of the millennium,” Michael said.

Carson grimaced. “With all the appeals, we’d spend thirty years giving testimony.”

Michael said, “And we’d have to listen to a gazillion really bad monster jokes for the rest of our lives.”

“He’d probably get off scot-free anyway,” Carson said.

“He’d definitely get off,” Michael agreed.

“He’d be like a folk hero to a significant number of idiots.”

“Jury nullification,” Michael said.

“All he wanted was to build a utopia.”

“Paradise on Earth. Nothing wrong with that.”

“A one-nation world without war,” Carson said.

“All of humanity united in pursuit of a glorious future.”

“The New Race wouldn’t pollute like the Old Race.”

“Every last one of them would use the type of light-bulb they were told to use,” Michael said.

“No greed, less waste, a willingness to sacrifice.”

“They’d save the polar bears,” Michael said.

Carson said, “They’d save the oceans.”

“They’d save the planet.”

“They would. They’d save the solar system.”

“The universe.”

Carson said, “And all the killing, that wasn’t Victor’s fault.”

“Monsters,” Michael said. “Those damn monsters.”

“His creations just wouldn’t stay with the program.”

“We’ve seen it in movies a thousand times.”

“It’s tragic,” Carson said. “The brilliant scientist undone.”

“Betrayed by those ungrateful, rebellious monsters.”

“He’s not only going to get off, he’s going to end up with his own reality-TV show,” Carson said.

“He’ll be on Dancing with the Stars.”

“And he’ll win.”

On the phone, the former Mrs. Helios said, “I’m hearing only half of this, but what I hear is you aren’t handling it like police detectives anymore.”

“We’re vigilantes,” Carson acknowledged.

“You want to kill him,” Erika said.

“As often as it takes to make him dead,” Carson said.

“Then we want the same thing. And we can help you, those of us here at the dump. All we ask is don’t just shoot him. Take him alive. Help us kill him the way we want to do it.”

“How do you want to do it?” Carson asked.

“We want to chain him and take him down into the dump.”

“I’m with you so far.”

“We want to make him lie faceup in a grave of garbage lined with the dead flesh of his victims.”

“I like that.”

“Some of the others want to urinate on him.”

“I can understand the impulse.”

“We wish to buckle around his neck a metal collar with a high-voltage cable attached, through which eventually we can administer to him an electric charge powerful enough to make the marrow boil in his bones.”

“Wow.”

“But not right away. After the collar, we want to bury him alive under more garbage and listen to him scream and beg for mercy until we’ve had enough of that. Then we boil his marrow.”

“You’ve really thought this through,” Carson said.

“We really have.”

“Maybe we can work together.”

Erika said, “The next time he comes to the new tank farm—”

“That’ll probably be before dawn. We think he’ll retreat to the farm from New Orleans when the Hands of Mercy burns down.”

“Mercy is going to burn down?” Erika asked with childlike wonder and a tremor of delight.

“It’s going to burn down in …” Carson glanced at Michael, who checked his watch, and she repeated what he told her: “… in eight minutes.”

“Yes,” the fourth Mrs. Helios said, “he’ll surely flee to the farm.”

“My partner and I are already on our way.”

“Meet with us at Crosswoods, at the dump, before you go to the farm,” Erika said.

“I’ll have to talk to our other partner about that. I’ll get back to you. What’s your number there?”

As Erika recited her number, Carson repeated it to Michael, and he wrote it down.

Carson terminated the call, pocketed the phone, and said, “She sounds really nice for a monster.”