Steven Gould - Jumper:Griffin _s Story

Oh.

I made myself turn, walk forward, and sit on the edge of the bed.

The light was already on so E.V.'s face, as I'd sketched it in Regent's Park, was there, relaxed, innocent-unmarred, unmarked by tragedy, by horror. The shape of her collarbone, the dip of the sweater's neckline, the tracery of lace at the edge of her bra, the outline of her breasts.

And her eyes.

Those eyes would never look at me like that again.

I tore it into pieces and then I tore those pieces and then I tore those pieces. I ended up with a pile of coin-sized scraps on the table, flecks of art stock. My traitor hands started sorting them, looking for fragments that matched, like a jigsaw puzzle.

In the Empty Quarter I made a fire of dead mesquite out in the middle of the wash, adding more and more wood until it was like a pyre.

When the flames were taller than me, I threw the fragments of the sketch into the fire and watched them vanish almost immediately-flame, ash, and then sparks drifting into the sky.

Triangulation.

Honesty is the best policy, that's what they say, but it was a disaster for me. I should never have mentioned Borrcgo Springs. But I had plenty of warning. They drove around listening. Waiting for me to jump so they could figure out where my lair was.

The sheep farmers had started throwing coyotes down my shaft again and I was getting ready to make another visit, though this time I was considering taking the baseball bat.

I'd jumped to a ridge near Fish Creek campground with my binoculars, trying to catch the Keyhoe brothers on their ATVs, when a truck kicking up a dust trail in the wash below suddenly swerved and braked.

I stepped behind a boulder and took a look with the binoculars.

Three men. Kemp and the big man from Oaxaca and someone I didn't know. They'd felt the jump. They were looking up the ridge.

I walked away, down the other side of the ridge toward the gypsum mine. I was considering just walking away until I was at least eight miles out of range, but I didn't know what direction they'd drive their truck.

And anyway, if they were this close, they'd already felt me jump from the Hole multiple times. They were probably taking bearings, triangulating.

I jumped away, to the park headquarters, then to the Keyhoe ranch, where I smashed a window and riled up the dogs, then jumped away to New York and had a hot dog in Battery Park.

After thirty minutes I sighed heavily.

Time to move.

On the outskirts of Rennes I found a farmer with a shed to rent. It was dry with a good roof and a stone floor well off the damp ground and he took a year's rent in cash without asking for an ID of any kind.

"Dmuges?"

"Bien sur que nonl"

Drugs indeed!

I jumped back to the Hole and transferred the wall of sketches, my dresser, and the weapons I'd taken from them so far. I looked at everything else-the batteries, the generator, the lights, the bed, and the furniture and decided against it. I hesitated over the shelf of self-study materials, then 1 shook my head.

I jumped to San Diego and stole six barbecue canisters of propane gas from a gas distributor and brought them back.

Then I spent three hours doing nothing but jumping from one end of the Hole to the other end.

If the bastards didn't feel that, then what good were they?

Every hour I jumped to the surface, right above the Hole. It wouldn't feel much different to them compared to underground, unless they were already there, but they weren't.

But I heard them coming.

I walked away, back into the boulders, and made my way up the hill. I had my binoculars and the baseball bat, and I was ready to play.

There were six of them in two different all-wheel-drive trucks and when they left the vehicles they fanned out in two groups of three. They looked inward, toward each other, and I realized it was a way to watch each other's back, because if your enemy could materialize in your midst, you had to look everywhere.

I waited until the two groups were well apart and took out one of Kemp's group, smashing his knee, taking advantage of his fast reflexes and hitting him as he lashed out.

Both Kemp and his other teammate fired their spikes toward me, but they missed because I'd jumped away, and they missed their teammate because he'd fallen on his ass.

I snagged Kemp by the collar while he was reloading, and dropped him in the Hole. When he twisted and fired at me, I jumped to the other end of the cave where I'd left my own equipment.

My spikes and cable caught him across his chest and pinned him to the plywood wall. It was ironic. That was the sheet that still said "Sensitives" on it, though the sketches were in France now.

He was struggling out from under the cable and I wondered if the charge was gone. Or if he was just tough. I fired another, lower, across his thighs, and saw him spasm. I put another across his chest and arms, and then another, shoulder high.

He carried his knife in a sleeve sheath, a mechanical thing that popped it into his hand. He had a shock stick in his back pocket and six cartridges for his gun in the loops of his belt. I took his cell phone and his wallet, too, and put them on the table.

There were three different IDs. None of them for Kemp. I guess I'd made it too hot for him under that name. I took a jump back to the surface, and then to the metal ladder leading down into the mine. It stank-the dead coyotes were still there-but I didn't mind somehow.

I returned to Kemp and jabbed him with the shock stick.

Oh, good. I'd been thinking he had some sort of immunity. The plywood, thick, three-quarter-inch stuff, flexed like cardboard.

While he spasmed, I got a chair and straddled it, arms resting across the back.

His twitching lessened and I said, "Paladin. Hmph. That's an odd name for someone who goes around killing children."

I had his full attention suddenly. He hadn't been looking particularly good but when I said that he went pasty white.

"Am I not supposed to know that?" I asked innocently. "Which part am I not supposed to know? That you guys are paladins? Or that you spend most of your time offing little kids?"

He was staring at me like he'd made a mistake, like he'd thought I was one thing, and he'd discovered I was another. "Listen, boy-"

I jabbed him in the stomach with the shock stick, jumping forward past the chair.

As he went into another set of convulsions, I walked back around to the chair. "We got off on the wrong foot, I think. Probably when you killed my parents. Maybe you thought I didn't like my parents but I gotta tell you, you were wrong about that. Then there was Sam and Consuelo… now I'm confused. Why did you kill them? Wouldn't it have been better to leave them alive, to see if I'd make contact again? Would Roland have done it that way?"

He began thrashing again, but it wasn't the shock stick. He was trying to get out of the cables. Was it the mention of Roland's name? This time I kicked him in the bollocks.

"Christ, would you settle down!" I shouted. He was having trouble breathing and he was making little groaning sounds. I pointed at his groin. "Oh, yeah. And then you had to go and mess with my love life! That was really the last straw."

I looked back over at my books, the schoolwork, the novels I loved.

"I used to be a nice kid. Probably the kind of kid you're used to, the kind of kid who dies nice and quiet when you show up with your knives and spiky guns and cables and shock sticks and all."

I jumped away, back to the other side of the cave, where it led out to the vertical shaft. They'd broken open the grating and I could hear them coming down the ladder.

I returned to Kemp and began stacking the propane tanks on top of the table, two rows of three. When I was done, I went down to the other end of the room, to my little twelve-volt refrigerator, and took out a pack of dinner candles.