Timothy Hallinan - Everything but the Squeal
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- Название:Everything but the Squeal
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The chain didn't move easily. Bruner was hauling himself off his feet to pull it downward, and he shouted something that I couldn't understand. A moment later, Mrs. Brussels came around the front of the truck and joined him. She'd stopped looking chic some time ago. She added her weight to his, and the door began slowly to rise.
Pete was pushing the kids into the back of the truck. Jackie was outside, looking for me, and God only knew where Marty was. Things weren't going to get any better.
I steadied the yellow plastic bucket with one hand and used the other to fumble in my pocket. When I had the little box I wanted and when I had slid it open, I said, “Hey, Max,” and tossed the contents of the bucket over his head.
He looked up at me as though I'd risen from the dead. Mrs. Brussels backed away like she was on wheels, and I grabbed five of the Mountain's wooden matches all at once, lit them, and threw them at Max Bruner.
He exploded into flame with a scream like a jet landing. I smelled the cashmere burning as he wheeled around, still screaming, and flailed his immaculately tailored arms in a useless attempt to beat out the fire. With his hair on fire he gave me a horrified look and stumbled against Mrs. Brussels. She was his last hope in life, and he wrapped his flaming arms around her, spending his final breaths on a confused mix of prayers and curses. The skin on his face was beginning to melt, and he clung to Mrs. Brussels in an embrace of desperation and fire. There was a little pattering sound, like rain on a roof, as they toppled to the floor and Maalox tablets from Bruner's pocket skipped over the pavement.
She clawed at his eyes with her long nails, but he didn't feel it. The spots where the diesel fuel had splashed onto her linen jacket blossomed into blue flame, and the two of them rolled over the floor like the man and wife in a Hindu funeral pyre. Her screams mingled with his, an octave above, and more profane.
They crackled and fizzled as I climbed down from the truck. Their tortured voices punched holes in the sound barrier. Pete was long gone, running for dear life toward the other end of the warehouse. Bruner and Mrs. Brussels had stopped rolling and were burning like a bonfire of autumn leaves as I wrenched open the door in the back of the truck and said to the kids, “Go. Get out of here. Wait outside. Damn you, scram .”
The far door of the warehouse opened and closed. Marty and Pete were gone. The kids stared up at me with eyes that had seen everything. I was nothing new. I had blood dripping from my forehead and vomit all over the front of my shirt, but I was nothing new. They had seen two of me every day. Marie, closest to the door, shook her head and summoned up a word. “No,” she said.
“It's over,” I said, fighting a rising sense of futility. “They're dead. Beat it. The door's over there.”
Marie extended blood-streaked arms to restrain the others.
“Please,” I said. I could smell fire in human hair and Bruner's burning jacket. Bruner's lungs emptied with something that was too late to be a word. It was the rattle at the end of the world. “Go,” I said. “Get out of here. Damn you, it's over. You're safe now.” They looked up at me with the hopeless eyes of sacrificial lambs. They knew what happened to someone who ran away, and they weren't budging.
“Fine,” I said, giving up, “if you're not going to go, wait right here.”
I left them there and headed for the circular stairway leading to the foreman's office. As I climbed the iron stairs I found myself replaying a conversation I'd had with Jessica a century ago and wondering what had become of the softy who wouldn't light fire to Junko's pimp.
30
The stairs were steeper than they'd seemed, or maybe I was just weak. I had to stop part of the way up and catch my breath. The sound of cars starting outside told me that Marty and Pete and Jackie had abandoned ship and were heading for whatever hidey-holes they thought they'd be safe in. Bruner and Mrs. Brussels were flaming away, producing an extravagant amount of foul-smelling smoke. I hoped the tongue of the belt was securely wedged into the bottom of the truck's fuel tank. Otherwise, my next surprise would be an explosion that could spread both me and the kids over the neighborhood like peanut butter.
At the top of the stairs was an iron door. It was ajar. I shouldered it open and found myself in an office that was awful in its normalcy. A gray metal desk faced the window overlooking the warehouse. With an almost hallucinogenic sharpness I saw the paper blotter positioned dead center on top of it and a wicker wastebasket at the left corner. There was a Pirelli Tire calendar, at least ten years old, on the wall. A naked girl hugged a large black tire as though it were the second coming and she hadn't had her first.
Bruner must have been left - handed , I thought irrelevantly as I stepped into the room. The son of a bitch had wadded papers up with his left hand and tossed them into the basket to the left. Two of the desk's drawers were gaping open. Both of them had locks and keyholes, the worthless residue of past security. That was where the cash had been, the cash that was now burning in Bruner's and Mrs. Brussels' pockets.
Other than the desk and the wastebasket and the calendar, the office contained nothing more than an old wooden coat rack, a map of the U.S. pinned to the back wall with brightly colored thumbtacks, and four pairs of rubber galoshes lined neatly against a yellow line on the floor. Beyond the galoshes was a door. Like the one I'd already come through, it was made of iron.
She , they'd said, she was up here. The one missing child. Well, she wasn't here, so she had to be on the other side of the door. And maybe she was Aimee and maybe she wasn't, but there was no way to find out without opening the door.
My hand was shaking so badly that I had to pull it back and flex it before I turned the knob.
The room on the other side of the door was bigger than a closet, but just barely. It was also dark. I slapped at the wall to the right of the door and finally hit the switch. That was when I saw the cage.
When you want to ship a dog on an airline, they give you a cage. If you don't have a very big dog, the cage is large enough to let it sit down without scraping its head against the top. Or maybe not. The cage I was looking at was of the latter variety. Woofers might have found it spacious.
Actually, I smelled it before I saw it. Even before the light flooded the little room I smelled the stench of abandonment and desolation. My eyes adjusted to the light and I found myself staring through wire mesh at the crouched figure of Aimee Sorrell.
Her mother wouldn't have recognized her. Bent double on knees and elbows, she wore a diaper that was fastened with an oversize safety pin, a final humiliation. Her knotted hair obscured her face even though she was looking up at me. There were three bright orange dog dishes in the cage. One held what looked like dog food, one held water, and the third was overflowing with human waste. Aimee obviously hadn't been a good girl by Mrs. Brussels' standards, and my heart overflowed with a jumbled mixture of grief and pride.
“Aimee,” I said to the yellow-haired thing on its hands and knees, “we're going home.”
Aimee narrowed her eyes and yelped in panic. I remembered what I looked like. Aimee's eyes through the bleared tangle of yellow hair were as blue as a summer sky and as empty. She backed away into the far corner of the cage, her hands clawing at her face, at her eyes, trying to banish me to the land of nightmares.
“I’m your friend,” I said. “I’m going to take you home.” I got down on my hands and knees so I wouldn't be taller than she was: it's a trick you do with dogs. Very slowly, so as not to frighten her further, I unfastened the catch on the outside of the cage and pulled the door open. “Come on out,” I said very softly.
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