The Survivor

Chapter 39

It seemed at first that the dog was flying. His paws didn’t touch so much as skim the carpet. There was a single superhero bound, a coiling of flanks and legs, and then 110 pounds of Rhodesian ridgeback went airborne. As Yuri swung the gun around, Casper rocketed directly up into his face.

The Beretta fired into the wall and the floor beside Nate’s cheek, before kicking free from the big man’s grasp. Casper didn’t reestablish contact with the ground. His paws digging into thigh and throat, he stayed in a horror-movie flotation, driving himself continually up into Yuri’s face. The big man stumbled, bellowing, swinging blindly, crashing into the bed, the wall. He finally managed to bat the dog away, and he lurched toward the door, his flailing arm throwing an arc of crimson drops against the stark white wall. Casper landed on his side but rotated immediately onto his paws, and then he was gone, shot from a cannon down the hall, clawing up the fleeing man’s back.

There came a crashing on the stairs, a tumble of man and dog, then a high-pitched animal yelp. Thunderous footsteps, the front door swinging open. A masculine shout outside and a secondary crash. Nate was on hands and knees, hacking, the air so fresh it burned. He forced himself up, wiping at his face. Cielle was slid down beneath the window, balled up, hugging her knees, her face streaked with tears. He went to her and held her, and she clutched at his arm hard, finally sobbing, letting go. He cradled her head and arm even as he pulled her to her feet, her dark hair sticking in the blood of his forehead.

“Baby, we have to go. We have to go.”

She nodded rapidly, like a little kid. On the way out, he snatched up the pistol. Her legs were loose beneath her, but he braced her down the hall. Casper waited at the base of the stairs, one leg raised and bent delicately back to protect the injured paw. His snout gleamed darkly with liquid. There was blood on the stairs, the walls.

Not his.

Casper turned to trot beside them. Calling for Janie, Nate rushed to check the garage. It was empty, the Jeep there and loaded, the big door raised. As they spun back for the kitchen, Janie shoved through the jagged mouth in the sliding door, glass pebbles cascading over her shoulders. She ran to them, grabbing Cielle’s face, checking her.

“You’re okay,” Janie said. “You’re okay.” Her knuckles glittered white, skinned from hammering at the locked door to the kitchen before she’d thought to open the big garage door.

“The Jeep,” Nate said. “Right now. Let’s go.”

They rushed to pile in, Casper hopping into the backseat with Cielle. Nate reversed, leaving streaks of rubber on the concrete.

As they blasted backward into the driveway, a body came into view in the bed of azaleas, mashing down the magenta blossoms. Yuri? Nate hit the brakes. The body stirred. Rolling her window open, Janie pulled the lever on her seat, dropping back to clear the way. Nate lifted the pistol, taking aim past her face through the open window.

Next to Cielle, Casper licked his paws, a moist lapping. They watched, waiting, Nate aligning the sights, casting his mind back to the shooting range during basic. Slow, steady pressure. Even exhale.

The flowers rustled again, and then Shithead Jason pulled himself up from the bed, brushing dirt from his flannel. He spotted Nate and threw his hands in the air, stickup style. “What the fuck! Don’t shoot me!”

Even from that distance, it was clear his eye was swelling, mauve creeping in around the socket. His lip was split, too, probably from the fall. A guitar case and overnight bag lay in the flowers where they’d dropped.

Nate thought of that masculine shout he’d heard outside. The secondary crash. Yuri punching the boy and knocking him off the porch as he’d fled.

Nate lowered the gun, exhaled through clenched teeth as Jason grabbed his stuff and bounded toward them. “Where’d that big fucking guy go?”

“I don’t know,” Nate shouted. “But you’ve got to split. Go home.”

“Where are you guys going all loaded up? Are you … are you just taking off?”

Nate craned his neck, looking around, expecting Yuri to lunge from the bushes, snarling saw in hand. “Jason, it’s not safe here. Get the hell gone.”

Cielle was leaning out her window, crying. “Jay, you have to go!”

Nate started to reverse again, but Jason was jogging alongside the vehicle, guitar case rattling against his knee. “Hang on! I’m going with you.”

The Jeep chirped to a halt again, Nate shouting out the window, Janie now chiming in. “You can’t.”

“Go, Jason. You have to get out of here.”

“Wait!” He banged the side panel. “Just wait. If you don’t take me, I’ll camp out right here. And I’ll tell those guys and … and I’ll say who I am, and they’ll kill me, and it’ll be on your head. I’ll sleep on the porch. I’m not leaving.” He was blubbering, snot and blood streaming down his chin. “I love her, okay? I love her.”

Cielle made a noise in her throat indicating, somehow, that she found this romantic.

Jason stood there hunched pathetically in the driveway with his bag and guitar case and sad-sack eyes. “If you leave me here, you might as well kill me yourself.”

Nate looked at him a moment longer, then stomped on the gas pedal. The Jeep lurched backward out of the driveway, leaving Jason there, his hands extended plaintively.

When Nate stopped in the street to yank the gearshift into drive, Janie was looking across at him. “What?” he said.

“They’ve seen him now,” she said. “They could come after him. No matter how much of a pain in the ass he is, it’s our fault.”

“He’s a kid!” Nate said. “He’s got parents. We can’t just-”

Cielle now, from the backseat: “He’s emancipated. His dad’s dead. He hasn’t talked to his mom in months.”

The words flying. There was no time to discuss this and even less to decide. Jason was shuffling toward them, his hands still out as if catching rain.

“Mom, please,” Cielle said.

“Oh, for the love of Christ.” Janie cranked down her window. “Get in.”

The waterworks shut off immediately, and Jason hopped in, tossing his bag and guitar into the back. Grimacing, Nate took off, eyes rotating from wing mirror to rearview. Five blocks away. Ten. On the freeway now, exits sailing past.

He almost dared to breathe normally.

“So what went down back there?” Jason asked, one hand covering his eye. Silence. He glanced around. “O-kay.” He leaned forward, taking in Nate’s face. “You’re all bloody.”

Nate’s mouth was sour, laced with the bitterness of spent adrenaline. “Yes, Jason. I’m all bloody.”

“Dude, you can call me Jay already. Jason sounds like you’re all angry.” He blinked a few times, awaiting a response that Nate withheld. “Where we going anyway?”

“We,” Nate said. “Great.” A big green freeway sign flew by overhead. He squeezed the steering wheel, the nerves of his fingers giving off a worrisome tingle. On the lam with a deteriorating medical condition. Hardly ideal. “We can’t use credit cards. Can’t make reservations. Can’t book flights. So just this second, Jason? I don’t know.”

“Huh.” Jason chewed his lip. He turned to Cielle. “Gimme your phone.”

She passed him her iPhone, and he clicked around. Nate watched in the mirror, irritated. Janie kept her thin arms crossed, doing her best to stop them from shaking. Cielle cried silently, tears slipping down her cheeks. The trauma catching up to them.

The gentle iPhone tapping continued, and finally Nate said, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Facebook, dude.”

“Do you really think this is the best time for-”

“I’m looking up my friends in the Los Angeles network. Well, it used to be a network, but now it’s listed as ‘current city.’ Lame.”

“Quiet would be good right now, Jason,” Nate said.

“Like this dude. Status update: ‘Can’t wait for two weeks in Maui.’ Then it links to his Twitter account for the real-time skinny. See? Cool. Here’s his latest tweet: ‘Rocking it with the Ps at the Grand Wailea.’ Ps stands for ‘parents.’”

“Yes. I figured.”

“Then there’s the location-map icon with the tweet. Here. Yup. Dude’s in Maui all right.”

“Fascinating, Jason. We just squeezed out of that house with our lives, and now you’re-”

“And I’ll scroll back a few tweets to find an old one. Like this. ‘Dear Funky Smell in my sock drawer. Please go away.’” He brayed a quick laugh. “Now I’ll click this location-map icon. And here.” He shoved the phone at Nate.

“What?”

“It’s a house in Silver Lake,” Jason said. “With no one home for the next nine days.”

Nate took the iPhone, glanced down at the screen. A neat little map. Janie looked across at the device, too, and then they looked at each other, and her eyes reshaped themselves with a touch of amusement, though they were still wet.

Cielle wiped her tears, leaned over, and kissed Jason on the cheek. He leaned back, crossing his arms, gangsta style. “Boo-yah!”

Janie, deadpan, her eyes still glassy: “He was kinda growing on me till the boo-yah.”

“I hope they have a hot tub,” Jason mused.

“I thought you said this was your friend,” Nate said.

“Don’t you know anything?” Jason snickered. “No one’s really friends on the Internet.”

* * *

They drove east in silence, Janie reading the electronic map and issuing directions in a flat, almost lifeless voice. Jason took Cielle’s hand, giving her knuckles a quick kiss, and Nate was surprised to feel not disapproval but a tremor of appreciation. His daughter had endured an edge-of-hell scare, and Shithead at least knew to offer a bit of comfort. Drinking in the silence, they tended their private worries, the thrum of the tires carrying them into the unknown.

Nate exited at Silver Lake. Home to hipsters, slackers, aspiring artists, indie musicians, and other redundancies, the hilly, tree-intensive neighborhood sits east of Hollywood and north of downtown. Nate navigated through a gauntlet of cafes, boutiques, coffee shops, Pilates studios, gay bookstores, and martini clubs, each crowded with a full rainbow of patrons. They drove past the famous flight of stairs where Laurel and Hardy had lugged that player piano up and ridden it down a time or twelve, and then they were winding up toward the reservoir and the address marked on Cielle’s iPhone by a virtual guitar pick.

The architecture varied, Spanish bungalows interspersed with sleek Neutra knockoffs and a few actual Neutras. They reached the house, a modern structure of glass and concrete, and Jason let out a whistle. Leaving the Jeep up the street, they zombie-shuffled back toward the front yard, bruised and bloody and hollowed out, dead on their feet. Circling like predators, they assessed the doors, windows, and gates for vulnerabilities.

In the side yard, Nate found an unlatched window letting into the laundry room and jiggled the pane up. No alarm. The smells of detergent and fabric softener wafted through the gap, a reminder of normal lives lived normally. Turning to call to the others, he found his voice missing. The circumstances had dawned, reality riding in on the household scents, rattling him into speechlessness. He swallowed hard, dried blood crackling at his hairline, and tried again.