F. Paul Wilson - Quick Fixes - Tales of Repairman Jack

“I don’t know.”

“Damn! Where’s Hank?”

“Hank? What would you want with that imbecile?” His eyes narrowed. “Unless–”

“You got it.”

The boss slammed a bony fist into a palm.

“I thought he’d learned his lesson before. Well, he’ll learn it now.” He turned and called into the night. “Everyone – find Hank! Find him and bring him to me at once!”

But no one brought Hank. Hank was nowhere to be found.

“He must have run off when the rakosh got free,” the boss said.

“Or got carried off.”

“There was no blood found anywhere near the truck, so it’s quite likely that the young idiot is still alive.”

It occurred to Jack that Hank might be stupid enough to chase after the rakosh. If he had, he wouldn’t be alive for long.

“We’ve got to find it,” Jack said.

“Nothing I’d like better,” said the boss, “although I have a feeling you’d prefer to see it dead.”

“You’ve got that right.” Jack looked around in the darkness. “Where are we anyway?”

“Southeast New Jersey, on the edge of the Pine Barrens.”

Jack cursed under his breath. The Barrens. Swell. A million or so acres of unsettled land. If the rakosh was loose in there they’d never find it.

“We’re not too far from Leeds Point, you know,” Oz said, pointing east across the road. “The birthplace of the Jersey Devil.”

“Save the history lesson for later,” Jack said. “Are you sending out a search party?”

“No. I can’t risk the men. Besides, we’ve got to be set up in Cape May for a show tonight. But maybe tomorrow–”

“Tomorrow will be too late.” Jack said, turning away.

“Well, you certainly can’t go after a rakosh in the dark.”

“I know,” Jack said through his teeth.

He headed back toward his car, afraid that if he stayed a minute longer he’d break the man’s neck. The traffic was starting to move now, so he drove to Exit 44 and followed the winding back roads through the area. The Parkway seemed to act as a time warp down here. Traveling east he found a nuclear power plant and typically quaint but unquestionably twentieth century towns like Smithville and Leeds Point. West of the Parkway was wilderness – 2,000 square miles of pines, scrub brush, vanished towns, hills, bogs, creeks, all pretty much unchanged in population and level of civilization from the time the Indians had the Americas to themselves. From the Revolutionary days on, it had served as a haven for people who didn’t want to be found. Hessians, Tories, smugglers, Lenape Indians, heretical Amish, escaped cons – at one time or another, they’d all sought shelter in the Pine Barrens.

Now a rakosh was loose in the pines. And if Scar lip got too much of a head start, it would be lost forever.

Jack drove around until he found an all night 7 11. He bought half a dozen bottles of Snapple, drank one, then emptied the rest onto the side of the road. He put all the empties into a duffel bag in his trunk. When dawn began to lighten the low overhang of clouds that lidded the area, he took 9 north until it intersected the Parkway, then got back on southbound until he came to the site of the accident. He pulled off the shoulder onto the grass just past the truck tire ruts. He took one of the gallon cans of gas and placed it in the duffel bag along with some old rags in the trunk. The bottles clinked within as he headed for the trees. It seemed logical Scar lip would have traveled directly down the slope and into the trees rather than cross the highway.

Jack looked for a break in the brush – a deer path or the like – and found it. The sand was wet. He saw what looked like deer tracks, and more: the deep imprints of big, alien, three toed feet, and work boot prints coming after. Scar lip, with Hank following – obviously behind because the boot prints occasionally stepped on the rakosh tracks.

As soon as he was out of sight of the road Jack filled the Snapple bottles with gas and stuffed their mouths with pieces of rag. Then he began following the tracks.

The trail wound this way and that; the scrawny pines closed in around him as he followed the tracks. He’d gone maybe half a mile when the trail changed.

The otherwise smooth sand was kicked up ferociously for a space of about a dozen feet, ending with two large, oblong gouts of blood, drying thick and brown on the sand, with little droplets of the same speckled around them. A cloud of flies hovered over the spot. A twelve gauge Mossberg pump action lay in the sand. Jack lifted it and sniffed the barrel. Unfired. Not that firing it would have changed the outcome here.

Only one set of prints led away along the trail – the three toed kind.

Jack crouched, staring around, listening, looking for signs of movement. Nothing. He glanced at the flies partying on Hank’s blood, then started again down the trail. His foot slipped on something a few feet further on. The sharpened steel rod Bondy had used to torment the rakosh lay half buried in the sand. He switched the duffel bag to his left hand, picked up the rod, and carried it in his right like a spear. He had two weapons now. He felt like an Indian hunter, armed with an iron spear and a container of magic burning liquid.

Half an hour later, as he was stepping over a fallen log in the center of a small clearing, his foot handed on something soft and yielding. Jack glanced down and saw a very dead Hank staring up at him. He let out an involuntary yelp, then whirled and scanned the area for signs of the rakosh. Nothing stirred. He dropped the iron spear and pulled one of his Molatov cocktails from the bag. He held his butane lighter ready before he chanced a closer look at Hank. Dead blue eyes fixed on the overcast sky; the pallor of his bloodless face accentuated the dark rims of his shiners and blended almost perfectly with the sand under his head; his right arm was missing at the shoulder; flies taxied around the stump.

A noise behind him. Jack whirled. Scar lip stood at the edge of the clearing, Hank’s arm dangling from its three fingered right hand. The rakosh held it casually, like a lollipop. The upper half of the arm had been stripped of its flesh; pink bone dragged in the sand.

Jack lit the tail on the cocktail and moved to where he could straddle the duffel bag. He pulled out a second bottle and lit it from the first. His heart was turning in overdrive, his lungs pumping to keep up. He knew from past encounters how powerful these creatures were, how quick and agile in spite of their mass. But he also knew that all he had to do was hit it with one of these flaming babies and it would all be over.

With as little warning and as little wind up as he dared, he tossed the one in his right hand, saw the rakosh duck left, threw the other left handed to try to catch it on the run. Both missed. The first landed in an explosion of flame, but the second skidded on the sand and lay there intact, its fuse dead, smothered. As the rakosh shied away from the flames, Jack pulled out a third cocktail. He had just lit the fuse when he sensed something hurtling toward him through the air, close. Too close. He ducked but not soon enough. The twirling remnant of Hank’s arm hit him square in the face. As he sprawled back, he felt the third cocktail slip from his fingers. He turned and dove and rolled. He was clear when it exploded, but he kept rolling because it had landed on his duffel bag. He was back by Hank’s body when the other three went up.

As soon as the initial explosion of flame subsided, Scar lip charged across the clearing. Jack was still on his back in the sand. Instinct prompted his hand toward the Semmerling but he knew bullets were useless. Instead he reached for the iron spear, swung it around so the butt was in the dirt and the point aimed toward the onrushing rakosh. Jack’s mind flashed back to his apartment rooftop last summer when Scar lip’s mother was trying to kill him, when he had run her through. That had only slowed her then, but this was iron. Maybe this time....