Neil McMahon - Revolution No.9

Then he traded the bolt cutters for the big pipe wrench, clenching his shaking hands around its steely shaft and hefting it to gauge its balance.

Everything was going to have to go right the first time.

The driving rain slashed at his face, blurring his vision as he eased out the lodge’s door. He stared into the night, crouching, waiting for his eyes to adjust. The bathhouse was about forty yards away. Within half a minute, he could see two entwined figures. Hammerhead was shoving Marguerite up against the wall, his hands working at the waist of her jeans, revealing her pale skin as he pushed them down. His rifle was slung over his shoulder.

The wrench handle was getting wet and slippery. Monks wiped it under his arm and moved forward, quickly closing the forty-yard gap. The rain helped to cover the sound of his steps, and there was no doubt that Marguerite was right about Hammerhead’s mind being far from anything but her just now.

Monks slowed, taking the final steps in a mincing prowl. He was close enough now to hear the big man’s grunts as he worked to rid her of her jeans. He rose out of his crouch, planted his feet, and cocked the wrench like a medieval executioner with a mace. The blow might crush Hammerhead’s skull, but mercy was something that Monks could not afford.

Then he realized that Marguerite had frozen in place, and was staring fearfully at him over Hammerhead’s shoulder.

With ferocious speed, Hammerhead shoved away from her and started to turn, head lowering and hands rising.

Monks swung with all the strength in his arms and shoulders, but it was not the well-placed slam that he had counted on. The wrench caught the side of Hammerhead’s thick skull above the right ear, glancing upward and almost flying out of Monks’s grip.

Hammerhead reeled back but stayed on his feet. With a blood-chilling sound that was part roar and part snarl, he charged at Monks, coming in low with outspread arms like a linebacker.

Monks pivoted off his left foot in a boxer’s slip, and brought the wrench down hard across Hammerhead’s shoulders as he lumbered past. This blow drove him to his knees. Incredibly, he kept slogging forward, clawing at his rifle to unsling it.

Monks leaped after him, boots slipping in the mud. This time, he swung the wrench at Hammerhead’s right upper arm. He felt the snap of the humerus all the way up in his teeth.

Hammerhead roared again and fell onto his side, the broken arm flopping. Monks stepped in and yanked the rifle off his shoulder, then made a quick 360-degree sweep of the camp. Nothing else visible was moving.

His fingers traveled over the rifle’s breech, identifying safety and selector switch. It was similar to the AK-47s he had seen in Vietnam. The only times that he had ever fired assault rifles were a few sessions with AR-15s in basic training. Weapons expertise was not a high priority for medical officers on hospital ships. But after treating enough wounds from larger-caliber weapons like this one, he had familiarized himself with them out of some sort of superstitious dread, as if the guns themselves were the enemy.

Marguerite was still against the wall, eyes wide with shock and jeans pushed down to her hips. Her last-second panic might have saved Hammerhead’s life.

“We need a place to lock him up,” Monks snapped at her. “Come on, quick.”

She started to move like someone coming out of a dream, pointing at a dark shed another twenty yards away, then fumbling to button her pants.

Monks stepped back to Hammerhead and pressed the muzzle against his head.

“All I need is an excuse,” Monks said. “Get up and drop your gear belt.”

Hammerhead got heavily to his knees, then to his feet. Clumsily, with his left hand, he unhooked his web belt and let it fall. Besides the radio, it had a survival knife and extra clips of ammunition. Monks scooped it up and slung it over his shoulder.

“Now get inside there.”

Hammerhead staggered toward the shed, left hand clasping his dangling right arm. Marguerite hurried ahead, unhooking the door’s hasp and swinging it open. Monks could just make out the ghostly shapes of workbenches and machinery inside.

Hammerhead stopped, his face tight with rage and pain.

“You’re dead, motherfucker,” he muttered, and Monks’s meth-charged brain almost ordered his trembling finger to tighten that final quarter inch on the trigger.

Instead, he said, “Turn around.”

Slowly, breathing hard, Hammerhead turned to face the shed.

Monks stepped up behind him, raising the rifle as he moved, and slammed the butt into the back of Hammerhead’s skull. He crashed to the ground like a fallen oak and lay still.

This time, Monks had not had the slightest hesitation. In fact, it had been thrilling.

He dragged Hammerhead into the shed and slammed the door shut. Marguerite dropped in the half-inch bolt that secured the hasp. Her rich black hair was slick and shining with rain like a wet animal pelt, and her eyes shone with an unknowable range of emotions. Monks gripped her shoulders and hugged her hard.

“Let’s get Mandrake,” he said, and sprinted toward the lodge.

Monks jogged along behind Marguerite, the warm inert weight of Mandrake bobbing gently on his back, like a child who had fallen asleep in his carrier. She led them to a steep, narrow ravine a quarter of a mile from the main camp. It looked like a giant ax split in a cliff face-the kind that was usually dry, but could become cascades during storms.

“The sensors don’t work when it floods,” she said into his ear, half yelling to be heard over the rushing water.

He shined the flashlight on the muddy, frothing stream, looking for a place to ford. It was about ten yards wide, the depth hard to estimate. The banks were slick and steep, but there were small trees that would serve as handholds.

“What happens when we get across?” he yelled back.

“There’s a trail. But we have to be careful, they’ve got ATVs.”

“Do you know the country out there?”

“Not really. Just right around here.”

Monks decided to worry about that when and if they got that far. He slung the rifle over his shoulder, easing it beside Mandrake’s head.

“Hang on to my belt,” he told her.

They made their slippery way down the near bank, bracing themselves against the trees. At the bottom, he took a tentative step into the stream. It tore at his boot, filling it instantly with a powerful drag that tried to pull his foot out from under him. He crouched, hands outspread in case he fell, then started across.

There was plenty of tangled deadfall underwater that tripped their feet, but gave them more handholds. At midstream, Monks realized with relief that the water was only thigh deep. They floundered the rest of the way across and pulled themselves up the far bank. In the shelter of a big fir, they dropped to the ground, soaked, panting-

But out of the camp.

Monks emptied out his sloshing boots, wishing bitterly that he’d at least had had the intuition to put on lug-soled hiking boots when he’d left his house.

He checked his watch. It was 7:28 P.M. Hammerhead would be missed when he failed to call in at 8 P.M.-maybe earlier, if he came to and his shouts attracted someone, or he managed to kick his way out of the shed. With luck, the sentries would spend some time trying to figure out which way they had gone, but that could not be counted on. Monks figured that they had half an hour at most before they would have to abandon the road and strike off into the wilderness. The going would be much rougher then.

He took the small jar of meth and the paper tube out of his jacket’s zippered inside pocket and handed them to Marguerite. He was acutely aware that their head start was dwindling fast, but an energy charge was worth the extra minute. The next hours, however they turned out, were going to be brutal.