Jonathan Nasaw - Twenty-Seven Bones

Around two in the morning the rain finally began to show signs of slackening. The drumming on the tin roof grew less frenzied. Roger the Dodger raised all the tarps, all the way. Most of the cops had already left, assigned to scour the roads, and most of the Corefolk had gone back to their huts and cabins.

Save for the principal mourners, Roger was the last to leave. He hugged Holly from behind, walked around the table, patted Marley on the head, waved good night to Dawson, tossed the Chief a salute, and stepped out into the drizzle.

Marley twisted around on the bench, watched the Dodger trudge head down toward his cabin. He saw him raise his head, step into the middle of the lane, take off his rimless glasses, shelter his eyes from the drizzle with his hand, squint into the darkness at a pair of oncoming headlights, then turn and race back toward the kitchen, stiff-kneed like a stork, his long hillbilly beard streaming out behind him over his shoulder.

Marley was off the bench, splashing barefoot through the mud toward the approaching vehicle, before Holly had even raised her head.

“It’s the Rover,” Roger told Marley, as he and the boy passed each other. “It’s the Rover,” he shouted to the others, windmilling his arms.

The flaw in his plan had made itself apparent to Lewis almost immediately. If he played hero and brought the little girl back, they’d want to know where the others were, they’d want him to lead them back to the cave. But even if he’d blown Bennie and Pender to kingdom come, the Epps might still be alive down there. It might take days for them to die-weeks, if they found water.

His mind worked feverishly at the problem as he and the girl hiked back down to the Rover. It wasn’t until he felt something warmer than rainwater trickling down the back of his neck, and realized that he’d somehow reopened the wound Bennie had given him Wednesday night that it came to him. A head injury-yes indeedy doody, a head injury would be just the thing.

He knew he’d have to sell it, though. He dropped to his knees halfway down the trail. The girl helped him to his feet, concern in her eyes. Stooped almost double, one hand leaning heavily on her little shoulder, her thin arm around his waist, her piping voice cheering him on-c’mon, mistah, it ain’ much farther, mistah, please doan die, mistah-they stumbled through the rain until they reached the Rover.

The performance continued. Lewis drove slowly, squinting, half-draped over the steering wheel. He pretended not to know which way to go when they reached the Circle Road. She pointed to the right.

When they passed the airport turnoff he pulled over, pretended to lose consciousness. She patted his hands urgently, chafed his wrists. Please, mistah, please. He recovered, drove on, around the east end, south past the mangrove swamps, west past the turnoff for Estate Apgard, until they reached the turnoff marked Estate Tamarind.

Here, turn here, she told him. He told her to buckle up, and when the Core gate came in sight, he slumped back in his seat, took his foot off the accelerator, closed his eyes and braced himself.

The Land Rover kept coming, but at idle speed, moving like a dying animal, wobbling slowly from side to side across the lane, until just outside the gate it veered off the road entirely and crashed into the back of the patrol car Pender had abandoned in the ditch hours earlier. Or perhaps crashed is too strong a word-it bumped the cruiser from behind, then nudged against it insistently, like a dog trying to sniff another dog’s crotch.

Marley reached the car first, saw Apgard slumped over the wheel. Beside him, Dawn fumbled with her seat belt. The front and side passenger doors were blocked by the wooden fence beside the drainage ditch. He tried to open the driver’s door with his foot, fell backward. Roger the Dodger scooped Marley up and set him on his feet. Chief Coffee yanked the door open, pushed Apgard back from the steering wheel, switched off the ignition. Dawn scrambled over Apgard’s lap and into the Chief’s arms. She didn’t start bawling until he handed her to Holly, who was already bawling. So was Dawson. Women, thought Marley-then he started bawling, too.

The wall of debris sealing off the passageway must have been unstable-it had collapsed again after the second grenade. Phil, who’d been scrabbling away at the face of the wall, had turned away at the sound of the explosion, but another section of the roof and walls had fallen on him before he could escape, burying him to the waist.

The worst part wasn’t being trapped, though; it wasn’t even the pain in his legs, severe as that was. The worst part was knowing that there was something crushed and broken inside, around his pelvic region. Movement was agony. As Emily and Bennie worked feverishly to dig him out from under what must have been several tons of earth with their bare hands, he couldn’t help swearing at them every time he was jostled.

Toward the end, Phil started pleading with the other two to shoot him. Bennie, who was just starting to regain his hearing as the buzzing in his ears died away, had to tell him he’d left the gun behind. Phil raised his head. “You’re a worthless piece of shit, you know that? You’d had the brains to wipe down that machete-”

Phil stopped, turned his head to the side as if someone were whispering into his ear. He looked puzzled, opened his mouth to speak, but vomited a copious amount of dark clotted blood instead.

Bennie flattened himself against the ground, turned Phil’s head toward him, forced Phil’s lips open, reached into his mouth, cleared his airway, pinched his nostrils shut, and bent his head to Phil’s. At first Emily thought he was giving Phil mouth-to-mouth; when she realized what he was actually doing she shrieked, shoved him away, and covered her husband’s lifeless lips with her own. She was too late to capture his dying breath.

Bennie sat back against the wall of the cave, his eyes glazed, a foolish smile playing across his blood-smeared lips. Emily threw herself on him, beating at his chest with the sides of her fists, sobbing and swearing. He looked startled, then grabbed her hands. She continued to struggle. He hauled off and belted her one, open-handed, right across the chops. A woman without a husband, a childless widow from a non-bride-giving clan, had no status whatsoever, so far as Bennie was concerned.

On the other side of the wall of debris, Pender couldn’t hear the commotion-he couldn’t hear anything over the ringing in his ears. But the brain fog was lifting, his nose had stopped bleeding, and by continuous pressure of the toilet paper against the back of his head he’d finally managed to stop the bleeding there. Afraid that tugging it free would open the wound again, he left the toilet paper stuck to his scalp.

His most immediate problem handled, Pender leaned back against the wall. He felt oddly detached from the proceedings. Probably the concussion, he decided. Concussions. Plural. He tried to take stock. He was in a cave. There’d been an explosion. Somebody fired a shotgun. Or maybe it was a second explosion. He seemed to be alone. He couldn’t hear anybody breathing. But then, he couldn’t hear his own fingers when he snapped them next to his ears.

He dumped the contents of the backpack out onto the sandy floor of the cave, and felt around until his hand closed around a flashlight. He shined it around the chamber, came to two quick conclusions. One, he was alone. Two, there was no apparent way out.

Interesting statistic about Antisocial Personality Disorder: it has the lowest suicide rate of any major psychiatric illness. Psychopaths don’t get the blues, they give them, and their will to live is an extraordinary thing to behold-ask any cop who’s ever cornered one.