Jonathan Nasaw - Twenty-Seven Bones

Anything else? Call Layla, get her out to the Core.

Anything else? He kept asking the question until he ran out of answers, then went back up to the bedroom to get dressed. Ziggy was sitting on the side of the bed loading her little pearl-handled twenty-two revolver, which she’d happily unloaded when he’d called her that afternoon with the good news that the Machete Man scare was over.

She glanced up. “Don’t blame yourself,” she told him, though he hadn’t said a word.

“Do I have a clean uniform?”

“In the closet.” Ziggy put the gun back in the drawer, slipped a shawl over her nightgown, found her slippers under the bed. “I’ll make you some coffee.”

“Don’t bother.”

“It’s no bother.”

“The little girl-it’s Marley’s sister.”

“Marcus’s friend Marley? The…?” She waved her arms ineffectually, discovered it was impossible to indicate Marley’s condition by using your hands.

He nodded.

“Why?”

“Maybe she saw them. Maybe they’re just sick bastards.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” she said again.

“Woman, I heard you the first time,” he told her.

Lewis watched Emily receding down the narrow passageway, the light from her headlamp casting a squat shadow behind her. With her gingery hair squashed down and sticking out from under the miner’s helmet, she had sort of a Bozo the Clown look going, at least from behind.

Now! he told himself-there won’t be a better chance. “Look, Bennie, I have to get out of here before somebody spots the Rover. Tell them I’ll be back sometime tomorrow, as soon as-”

“No.” Bennie had hunkered down to light a Coleman lantern. He glanced over at Pender, who was still breathing, still bleeding, then back up at Lewis. “Ina Emily say you stay, wait ’til they come back.”

Lewis slipped his right hand into his trench coat pocket. “If somebody spots the Rover, me son, we’re all screwed.”

“You wait.” Bennie turned back to the lantern.

“Sure, whatever.” Lewis angled around to keep his body between Bennie and the grenade he had just removed from his pocket, and found himself looking down at the girl in the red slicker huddled against the wall. She stared up at him. Her pale eyes, enormous in that little heart-shaped face, met his. Behind him, the Coleman hissed, flared white, casting a giant black shadow-Lewis over the girl and onto the shiny wall. Forget her, he told himself, just bail. Lewis angled around a little farther, so Bennie couldn’t see the shadow of the grenade, squeezed the striker lever against the barrel-shaped body the way Bungalow Bill had showed him, then pulled out the pin.

Lewis glanced over his shoulder, saw that Bennie had put his gun down while he adjusted the lantern flame. He turned back to the girl, who was staring at Bennie. Forget her, he told himself, but when she looked up and their eyes met again, he jerked his head ever so slightly in the direction of the tunnel. Go, he mouthed. Run.

The next portion of Bennie’s life would be measured out in seconds. Maybe eight seconds, total. Not a long time, except perhaps to a professional bull rider.

Begin: he’s turning the tiny wheel on the Coleman to lower the flame. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees movement. He glances up, sees a flicker of red: the girl is crawling toward the tunnel. One second elapsed.

Bennie reaches for the gun next to him as Apgard begins to whirl to his left. Two seconds.

Bennie’s hand closes around the gun. As he raises it, he sees a dark roundish object in Apgard’s right hand. Apgard bowls it underhand; it rolls in Bennie’s direction. Three seconds.

Bennie throws himself to the side, tries to squeeze off a shot, but the gun is on safety. The grenade, its striker lever released, has rolled across the floor of the cave toward the inner passageway. The striker has ignited the percussion cap inside the grenade; the fuze has begun to burn. Four seconds.

The girl is scrambling up the tunnel on her hands and knees, Apgard behind her. The grenade comes to rest in the mouth of the inner passageway. Bennie glances back and forth between the grenade to his left and the tunnel to his right. In about the time it takes a synapse to fire, Bennie grasps the magnitude of the choice that now confronts him. To the right, up the tunnel, safety, freedom; to the left, down the passageway, Ina Emily and the spirits of his ancestors. Five seconds.

Bennie drops the gun, grabs his knapsack, throws it ahead of him into the passageway, dives over the grenade-six seconds-hits the ground rolling, scrambles down the passageway dragging the knapsack behind him. Seven seconds.

Bennie throws himself flat, using the bulky knapsack for as much cover as it will provide. He hears a tick-boom! behind him-that would be the fuse inside the grenade setting off the detonator that in turn set off the plasticized PETN explosive. Eight seconds have elapsed, but it will be another ten seconds or so before Bennie looks up to see Ama Phil and Ina Emily standing over him. Their mouths are moving, but no sound emerges over the roaring in his ears.

No matter. On the other side, his ancestors will make him whole again. Providing, naturally, that he has crossed the bridge with enough tribute. That’s why he’d risked one-eighth of what might have been the remainder of his life in order to bring his backpack along: for Bennie, all that mattered in this world was his money, his hands, and of course Ina Emily’s dying breath.

Holly’s life had not been without its difficulties, even tragedies. She had been outed-humiliatingly-in high school by a girl she’d loved and trusted. She had buried both parents. She’d left behind everything she knew and loved in California to bury her sister and care for her niece and nephew.

But this-knowing your child had been kidnapped while you were locked in your room smoking dope-this was despair. Biblical, tear-your-hair-out and rend-your-garments despair.

If possible, Marley was in an even deeper circle of hell. Watching out for Dawn had only been Auntie Holly’s job for a couple years-it had been Marley’s ever since he could remember. And he was the one to whom their mother had whispered, Take care of your sister -it was practically the last thing she’d said.

When he’d heard Holly screaming in the Crapaud he had raced out into the storm in his pajamas. He’d banged on doors with his feet until there were no doors left to bang on, gone as deep as he dared into the forest, calling for his sister until his voice was hoarse, then searched the Core with his flashlight in his mouth until he spotted Pender’s gun by the side of the path behind Andy’s A-frame. And when Officer Winstone draped the yellow SLPD slicker over his shoulders and told him to watch over the gun, a team of oxen couldn’t have dragged Marley away, at least until Marcus Coffee’s Auntie Layla arrived to take charge of the crime scene.

For Dawson, who’d loved Dawn since birth and Pender since last night, Mysterianism just wasn’t cutting it any longer-she found herself praying for the first time in years to a God/Goddess/Whatever.

“Listen,” she told the God/Goddess/Whatever. “This isn’t about me. But I’ll make you a deal anyway-let them live, let them be okay, let this just be some kind of a misunderstanding, I don’t care how you work it, and I’ll…I’ll…”

But there was only one thing Dawson had to offer that any G/G/W she could have respected or believed in would have accepted. So she offered it-then she put on her poncho again, grabbed her twelve-volt lantern, and walked back out into the rain to search for her friends.