Neil McMahon - Revolution No.9

“A tic?”

“Yeah. You know.” He fluttered his eyelid clumsily.

“Well, what about it?”

Hammerhead swallowed hard. “It means I’m gonna die.”

Shrinkwrap stared at him, hands coming to rest on her hips. “He told you what?”

Monks had discovered, twenty-some years earlier, that he made a pretty good mattress whale-stretched out on a bed, rising and falling in undulating motions, with much thrashing and loud blubbering sounds. The clowning had delighted his own kids, and now, for the first time, Mandrake was sitting up and giggling.

“Okay, hop on my back,” Monks said. “We’re going to dive down really deep and try to find a treasure. But the only thing I’m worried about is, there might be a mermaid guarding it. You know what those are?”

Wide-eyed, Mandrake shook his head.

“They’re very pretty ladies who are half fish,” Monks said solemnly. “And they’re usually really nice, but if they catch somebody coming after their treasure…”

Mandrake started to look worried. Monks feared that he had pushed too far. He was doing his best to maintain a humorous face, but he knew that as he had gotten older his smile had taken on a crocodilian look.

“They’ll tickle us-like this,” he declared, and gently scrabbled his fingertips along the little boy’s rib cage.

Mandrake chortled gleefully, grabbing at his hands.

“So you have to tell me if you see a mermaid, okay?” Monks said. “We can get away, but we’ll have to go really fast.”

“Okay,” Mandrake agreed, in a very small voice.

It was the first time that he had spoken to Monks.

Three or four minutes later, whale and rider took a breather. It had been a harrowing journey. A treasure had been sighted, but just before they could seize it-there was a mermaid! They’d escaped, but not without a desperate battle, both of them being tickled to the limits of endurance.

“We’ll go again, real soon,” Monks promised the panting little boy. “Now you have to drink some water.” Getting Mandrake active and engaged was good; tiring him out was not.

Monks got up to get the water pitcher. The blanket hanging in the doorway moved aside. Monks stared, in unpleasant shock, at the etched, intense face of Taxman. There was no telling how long he had been standing there behind the blanket.

“Freeboot wants you,” Taxman said.

“Mandrake needs attention.”

“It won’t take long.”

Monks hesitated. He had already decided that he could check the boy’s blood sugar level every two hours now-it had remained stable, and Mandrake clearly was feeling better.

“Let me just get him to drink first,” Monks said.

Taxman nodded and stepped back, letting the blanket fall into place again.

Monks gave Mandrake the water cup. “Think you can do this yourself now, buddy?” he said. Mandrake took it in both hands and drank thirstily.

“Good boy,” Monks said. “I’ll be right back. We’re going to eat some more soup and rest up. Then we’ll go get that treasure.”

Outside, the night sky was thick with impending rain. The erratic breeze had turned cold, and the treetops waved restlessly. When they reached the camp’s perimeter, Monks realized that they weren’t headed toward one of the buildings. Instead, they kept walking on a trail into the forest. Monks blundered along at first, barely able to see the path beneath his feet. Except for the wind and the rustling trees, the woods were silent, without the night birds and creatures that he was used to at his home’s lower, warmer altitude. Taxman flanked him silently. Unlike the other guards, Taxman did not carry a gun. But Monks had no doubt that he was very quick with his knife.

By the time they’d gone a quarter of a mile, his eyes had adjusted. Then, another few hundred yards ahead, he saw what looked like flames. They vanished and appeared again, flickering like a will-o’-the-wisp, hidden and revealed by the trees as he wound his way through them. When he got a good look, he realized that he was seeing a bonfire in a clearing at the base of a rocky cliff. There were dark human shapes gathered around it, some crouching and some standing.

His sudden overwhelming sense was of being a captive, brought to a barbaric camp for torture and death at the hands of his enemies. Fear verging on panic clogged his throat. He stopped and turned to face Taxman, tensing to fight or run.

Taxman was gone.

Monks stood still, breathing deeply. He didn’t think the figures around the fire had spotted him yet. He could slip away into the woods, move stealthily until he was out of earshot, then take off in all-out flight.

But his rational mind started to regain the upper hand. He would almost certainly be caught within minutes. This might even be a test-Freeboot pushing to see how far he could be trusted-and if he failed it, he’d end up back in chains. There didn’t seem to be any reason that Freeboot would want him harmed.

Unless he had decided that Monks was no longer useful, or that Monks had offended his giant ego beyond forgiving. Then this might be Freeboot’s idea of a joke-having Monks walk freely to his own execution.

He forced himself to turn back toward the fire and continue.

The men in the clearing watched him as he came in, but no one spoke. They were all dressed as if for nighttime military operations, in black fatigues and combat boots, with paint-darkened faces and web belts bristling with equipment. All wore large-caliber semiautomatic pistols in holsters and carried assault rifles. Monks counted nine men, including the thick shape of Hammerhead near the fire, standing stiffly like a Marine on guard, and farther away, the handsome profile of Captain America. He didn’t think that he had seen any of the others before. Glenn wasn’t there, nor was Freeboot.

They waited in silence broken only by the crackling of the fire, the rustle of shifting bodies, and the wind, rising and falling like the breath of a sinister god. A minute passed, then another and another, each lasting sixty very long seconds.

Then came a sudden disturbance, a sense of movement rather than sound, from the cliff above. Monks just had time to look up and see a large object plummet down. It landed in the fire with a crash, scattering an explosion of embers and sparks. He stumbled backwards, aware of the other figures doing the same, some hitting the ground and rolling, others swinging their weapons around into play.

He hit the ground, too. As the sparks settled, he strained his vision to identify what had landed in the fire. It was an animal, a big one. An acrid burning smell was starting to rise, overpowering the pleasant piney scent of woodsmoke.

“You can dress ’ em up. But can you take ’em out?”

The voice was Freeboot’s, coming from outside the clearing. It had a chiding, sardonic tone. “You assholes let anybody else come up on you like that, you’re all going to need wigs before this night’s over.”

He walked into view with his barefoot, easy stride. The men lowered their weapons and shifted uneasily, like children being scolded. Monks got up off the ground. He saw that the animal was a young mule deer buck, three or four point, its antlered head twisted at a radical angle from its body courtesy of its gaping slashed throat. Freeboot’s hands and torso were streaked with blood, and the right leg of his jeans was soaked with it. Apparently he had carried the buck over that shoulder while its veins emptied out, then thrown it off the cliff.

“There’s just two ways you can live in this world,” Freeboot announced, his voice strident now. “You take control of it, or it takes control of you. Most of those people out there”-he swept his arm in a gesture that included the rest of the world-“are like this deer. But you few men here, you got the chance to be above all that.”