David Wiltse - Prayer for the Dead

Maybe Dyce was here above him, caught in the web of roof and rafters, flailing like an insect. Be there, Becker urged. He willed him to be there.

At last lightning struck again, followed by a roar so loud and instantaneous it seemed to come from the earth under his feet, and in the flash Becker saw it clearly, a specter in white, thirty feet up, arms raised and flecks of snow or dust wafting down. It was looking straight at Becker.

When the light faded, Becker moved, knowing he had already been seen. The only way up was the walls themselves. He removed his shoes whose soles would be as dangerous as if he had greased them. Although he hadn’t paid any attention to the weather for several minutes, Becker realized now that the rain was still coming in torrents. Slender cascades of water rippled off the stones and into his face. He felt for his first handhold, pulled himself off the ground and began to climb.

Dyce had seen the headlights on the county road minutes earlier, had seen them disappear behind the screen of the corn, and had not seen them reappear. They’re coming to try again, he thought, but still he had not been ready to see the man crouched beside the wall. He was there too soon-but then Dyce realized who he was. He did not recognize him, but he knew, remembering the sense of dread and respect from the hospital bed.

“He’s here,” Dyce said softly to Tee. “Your friend is here.”

Once past the turnoff to the access road. Hatcher had the three vehicles shut off their lights. Agent Reynolds was sent to walk ahead with a focused flashlight to lead them on the dirt road, but even with a guide the road was treacherous with mud. The panel truck with the electronic equipment slid into the ditch and had to be pushed out, wasting valuable time.

Did they bring ladders this time? Dyce wondered. He was safe if they did not. The policeman would need another injection to insure his cooperation in any case. Dyce looked at himself and saw that his erection was still huge, despite the dangers. He giggled at himself as he sought his syringe.

It would have been an easy climb without the rain, an ascent so simple that Cindi would not even deign to make it. Even now, with the stone face as slick as if it had been iced, Becker could imagine her lithe body shooting upwards as if each irregularity in the rock was a rung on a ladder. But for Becker, the climb was torturously slow and difficult. He felt horribly exposed, clinging by his inexpert fingertips to holds awash with pouring rain. If Dyce looked down the walls, if Dyce had a weapon of any kind-a loose board would do-Becker was finished. It was only the darkness that lent any safety and that could vanish in an instant if Dyce happened to be looking in the right direction when the lightning flashed.

He climbed looking upward toward the gaps in the roof squinting against the rain in his face. There was no point in looking for handholds; he couldn’t see them anyway. The climb had to be made solely by feel. He was looking for Dyce, hoping to see him peering down in the next flash of lightning to give Becker time enough to do something to save himself. There was little he could do but let go of the wall and fall to the ground below. He might break a leg in the fall, but at least it was an action, something better than clinging to the stones like a fly to be swatted.

Becker’s hands reached a wide flat space and he pulled himself into a hole in the wall that had once encased a window. He sat there for a moment to rest. arms and legs dangling. His muscles were dancing from the strain. He was halfway up.

The technician from the panel truck was trying to explain, but Hatcher was no longer interested.

“It was that last bolt of lightning, the one that was so close. It screwed up all the electronics.” The technician had his mouth close to Hatcher’s ear to be heard over the storm.

“I’ve lost the signal,” the technician said. “I don’t know if it’s the beeper that got hit or my equipment, but it’s dead flat.”

“I’m not concerned with your excuses,” Hatcher said.

“It was the lightning.”

“What you’re saying is you’ve lost him,” Hatcher said.

Reynolds had signaled a halt and vanished into the darkness in front of the convoy just as the technician ran forward to rap on Hatcher’s car window. Hatcher felt the operation turning bad in his hands. Things involving Becker always seemed to turn bad; it had to do with the man himself. He would not submit to control.

“Christ,” Hatcher thought, “if he gets Dyce here, if he gets him in a place I’ve already looked-if I’m not there when it happens…” He didn’t want to think about it, but there would be plenty of necks on the chopping block in front of his if things did go rotten. This technician’s, for one.

Reynolds reappeared, his thin beam of light pointed at the ground, approaching Hatcher’s car.

“It’s Becker’s car,” Reynolds said, leaning in through the window. Water dripped from his head and nose onto Hatcher’s pant leg. “He left it about ten yards ahead and to the right. The driveway to the farm is just past that.”

They all huddled around Hatcher’s car now, awaiting instructions. Hatcher was the only one still dry as the others hunched their shoulders against the ram.

Hatcher grabbed the binoculars and slipped their battery pack around his neck.

“We don’t need your beeper,” Hatcher said to the technician dismissively, as if the faulty equipment had been the man’s idea.

Lightning cracked close by and Hatcher winced, then recovered himself, wondering if the others had noticed.

“I’ve got a feeling Dyce is here,” Hatcher said, getting out of the car. “Let’s go find him.”

Tee watched the white blur in the darkness that was Dyce move around the framework of rafters, looking for something or someone coming at him from the ground below. “Your friend is here,” he had said. Did he mean Becker? Please, God, let it be Becker. The hope was almost enough to overcome the lethargy that gripped him, and Tee renewed his efforts to move his foot. It was so strange; he felt as if he could move, he could sense the movement within his limbs like an itch-but nothing moved. As if his nerves had been severed but not deadened. They wanted to move but could not relay the message.

Dyce moved close to Tee now and Tee could see the whites of his eyes standing out starkly within a small. dark circle Dyce had missed with the talcum powder. In a burst of lightning Tee could make out something in Dyce’s hand, small and glistening. A hypodermic syringe. Tee remembered the needle in his own arm, but by the time he glanced down to see if the blood was still dripping from it, the light was gone.

Dyce had looked down within the cavern of the house when the lightning flashed, and Tee recognized the fear in his face. The snowy shape hovered close to Tee for a moment and Tee was certain that the hypodermic was intended for him, but then the shape moved off with surprising agility across the rafters and Tee understood that the needle was meant for Becker.

Tee prayed that the stories he had heard about Becker’s prowess were true.

Hatcher scanned the area slowly with his night-vision binoculars, seeing the invisible yard come into view in shades of eerie green. Stored heat from the day made the barn glow slightly in the infrared sensing binoculars. Hatcher scanned toward the house, seeing only variations in emanated heat but no movement. And then, leaping out at him from the roof of the house like a flame from a sea of green, the shape of a man, arms upraised and gesticulating.

“Got him,” Hatcher muttered triumphantly. “Bring up the vehicles and fan them out with their headlights pointing toward the farmhouse. We’re going to need light, but none until I give the word. Not so much as a spark, you got it?”