Jason Frost - The cutthroat

"Maybe you're right," she sighed, collapsing on one of the bunks. She lazily picked at a magazine next to her called Blue Boy. All naked men. "We could screw during the whole attack," she said bitterly. "Then we won't notice what's happening."

Eric moved quickly around the cabin, stacking the magazines.

Tracy watched him a minute. "Did you notice?"

"Notice what?"

"Your friend, uh, Angel."

"Her real name is Phan. Suzette Phan. Her father was a high official in the Diem government, her mother the wife of a French diplomat."

"Whatever. Did you notice what she was wearing?

"Not much."

"I mean her jeans. The brand."

Eric tossed Blue Boy on the pile and looked at Tracy. "The brand of her jeans?"

"Yeah, they were Lee's. Same as mine."

"So?"

Tracy shrugged. "So nothing. Just an observation, that's all. Even in hopeless situations like this you notice the dumbest things. Suddenly I'm fashion conscious. First Goldie Hawn, now Gloria Vanderbilt." She pounded her fist into the wall with frustration. She wouldn't let him see any tears, never again. "Shit!"

Eric glanced out the porthole, watched the helpless ship get closer and closer. Above them they heard Rhino bellow out a greeting, joking with the passengers as they hugged each other and thanked him. Within minutes they would be there. Then the carnage.

He looked past the ship now, trying to get a fix on their location. There wasn't much to see out there anymore. The ocean water was splashed with an orange sheen from the Long Beach Halo. A quarter of a mile to the left a dozen tops of buildings stuck out of the water like half-submerged milk cartons. Some of them had as much as five or six stories showing, others just barely one. "We're in downtown Los Angeles, near Third and Grand."

"How do you know?"

"That's the Crocker Bank Building. Used to be fifty-four stories tall. Now it's about four."

She stood up enough to peek through the porthole, then flopped back down again shaking her head. "Jesus."

Eric stared out at the important office buildings once occupied by members of the Fortune 500. They looked decapitated, little boxes made of stone and steel and glass, floating on an orange ocean.

"It looks like a toilet bowl out there," Tracy said.

He smiled, sat next to Tracy on the bunk. "In 'Nam I knew a man pinned down in a foxhole, laid on the stinking corpses of his buddies for almost thirty-six hours before figuring it was safe enough to crawl away. Later he told me all he thought about the whole time he was lying there, smelling the stench of their rotting bodies, was where he might have torn his high school-letter sweater one night three years before. Kept playing back that whole evening over and over while lying there with his face pressed against the bleeding guts of his sergeant, retracing his steps, mentally searching everyplace he'd been that night for a nail or something that might have ripped his sweater."

"Spooky. Did he figure it out?"

"Yeah. He remembered a piece of metal trim that was bent back on the door of his girl friend's Buick. Snagged it after a marathon necking session when she dropped him off at home. Pictured the car perfectly. The Gumby doll hanging from the mirror, the empty 7up bottle on the floor, the Cliff Notes for Scarlet Letter wedged in the back seat. Only trouble was, he couldn't remember what sport he'd played to win that letter. Or the name of his school. Not even the name of his girl friend."

"And the moral is?"

"What moral?"

She gave him a look and nodded. "Right. I'll be okay."

Overhead they heard the pounding of footsteps running for position.

Tracy popped up, pressed her face to the porthole, waving desperately at the passengers. They didn't notice her. She started to unfasten the porthole. "Maybe they can hear me now."

Eric reached over her shoulder and slammed the porthole shut.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, trying to pull his hand away. "We can warn them!"

"Not without Rhino and Angel hearing you. They'll be down here in half a minute performing open heart surgery on us."

"But all those people, Eric. We've got to try."

"Right now those people are my only hope for escape."

"Again with escape. You haven't forgotten we're not alone, have you? That this whole damned ship is crawling with armed maniacs?"

"That's why that ship out there is so important. Everyone topside will be occupied with them. That leaves only the guard they posted outside for me to deal with."

Tracy backed away from him, her face pinched with emotion. "God, Eric. Sometimes I forget."

"Forget what?"

"Forget how cold and ruthless you can be. I mean I know all about your past, your hitch in 'Nam with that group of assassins. And all that Indian crap you learned from the Hopis when you were a kid. But this." She shook her head, took a deep breath. "You're willing to use the slaughter of all those people as a diversion for your escape?"

"Yes," he said, returning to the pile of magazines he'd stacked.

Tracy followed him. "What do you think the world will think about us? I mean if we ever get out of here, back to the mainland. You were a history professor, what will history say about what we've done?"

"They'll say we acted like savages, selfishly and with little regard for human life other than our own. And they'll be right." He fixed his sharp reddish-brown eyes on her. "But as long as Timmy's alive, I don't care what they think or say. Besides, it's the survivors who write history, so in the end they'll think what we tell them."

She looked out the porthole, read the name of the ship. Home Run. The passengers were leaning over the rails, reaching out. She could see the smiles on their faces. She wondered briefly if any of them were wearing Lee jeans.

Behind them the tops of the office buildings peeked out of the flat ocean like gravestones. Here lies Los Angeles, AKA Tinseltown, The Big Orange, Sin City, Cocaine Gulch. Rest In Soggy Peace.

"I'm going with you," she said quietly.

"I thought you didn't like the odds."

"They've improved. Besides, I don't think I want to stay to see the show." She shrugged. She wanted to add oh yeah, I happen to love you more than my own life. To say that she hadn't really wanted to stay behind here without him before, but had made the grand gesture, knowing he'd have a better chance without her. But she didn't say any of that because he'd just stare at her embarrassed, with the memory of Annie knotting his tongue.

She clapped her hands together enthusiastically. "Well, I made my big humanity speech, now let's get the hell off this zoo."

"Okay, give me a hand with these magazines."

"Those? What for?"

"They're going to get us out of here."

Rhino had two memories of childhood, both of them bad.

First, his name. His real name, that is.

John Smith.

Not even a middle initial, for Christ's sake. Just John Smith, as if his parents had used up all their creativity coming up with John.

"It's bad enough we're stuck with the last name of Smith," he once complained to his parents over morning Rice Krispies. "But couldn't you have been a little more imaginative with my first name?"

His father, James Smith, had looked confused as he sliced a banana into his cereal. "I don't understand."

"He doesn't like his name," his mother, Jane Smith explained.

"He doesn't like John? What's wrong with John? Strong tradition, John is. John Hancock, John Milton, John Kennedy, John Updike, John, uh, uh…"

"John Wayne," Jane Smith added. "Johnny Carson, John Travolta, Elton John. The list goes on and on."

Fearing that his parents would too, young John Smith just shook his head, pushed the soggy cereal away, and took the shortcut back to school for football practice. He was team manager. Which meant he got to haul water when the players were thirsty and toss towels to them when they trotted dripping out of the shower. He didn't mind. It gave him access to the lockers while the others were out on the field grunting their guts out. During his three years of junior high and three years of high school, team manager had translated into a lot of emptied wallets and missing watches. Locks were changed twice during his tenure there, but he'd never been caught.