Jason Frost - The cutthroat

"This will never work," Tracy frowned. "Sure it will." "You'll get us killed."

"Want to bet?"

She finished tying her knot around one stack and looked up at him. "What if you're wrong?"

"Then you win the bet." He tossed her a couple more magazines. "I don't need these."

Using the prong from her belt, Tracy pried the staples out of the spines of each magazine, but otherwise left them intact. Her right thumbnail was torn and bleeding from pulling on stubborn staples. She bit the jagged piece of nail off, spitting it onto the floor. "You owe me a manicure, buster."

"Tonight," he said.

Eric tore another strip of cloth from the filthy sheet he'd taken from one of the bunks. He knotted it in place to the stack he'd been working on. "All done," he announced. "Let's do it."

"Suddenly I wish we'd decided to make love instead."

"Tonight. After the manicure."

"Before."

"Before and after. Okay?"

She took a deep breath, lifted her stack of stapleless magazines. "Right."

Eric had two stacks of magazines, both thicker than Tracy's, both with their staples still intact. Each was bound as tightly as possible with two parallel strips of linen that compressed the pages until they were hard as steel. Each strip had a loop tied at it. Eric slid each arm through a loop and grasped the other with his hands. He stood there with the solid stacks of skin magazines strapped to each arm like two small shields.

"I don't know, Eric," Tracy said, shaking her head. "I still think you'd be better off with a hunk of wood or something."

"There isn't enough wood in the room, nor enough time to get to it. And what little that's here is too thin, even stacked. Paper actually absorbs the shock better. It'll be like trying to shoot through the Manhattan phone book."

"In theory, damn it. Theory."

Eric pressed his ear to the door.

He heard Crow singing to herself. "'Everyday, it's a gettin' closer…"

Softly he ran his fingers along the edge of the door looking for the right spot. When he found it, he stepped back, measuring the distance with his leg. "Ready?"

Tracy's voice was raspy, hollow. "Ready."

"You've got to move right away, Trace. Before she gets a second shot off."

"It's the first one I'm worried about."

"That makes two of us," he said and snapped his foot into the door just above the lock. It sprang open in a shower of shattered wood and he dove through.

It reminded Eric of one of those 3-D movies where things are always flying out into the audience. Only this arrow was real. And it was flying right at him.

He'd bashed through the door and immediately curled into a tuck-and-roll position, making the smallest possible target. After all, his "shields" weren't very large, and he'd only have one chance. He hoped Tracy was ready, because there was no way he'd be able to block a second shot. Maybe not even the first.

He bumped up against the wall, felt his chest wounds tearing open under the bandages. Suddenly the magazines seemed heavy as iron, much too heavy to lift. How could he ever have thought this would work?

But somehow he wrestled them up in front of his chest just as Crow's aluminum shaft slapped into the glossy pages, burrowing through Penthouse, two Playboys, Beaver, Club, and three Hustlers, barely poking through the left breast of the cover girl for Platinum before stopping with a Penthouse and Swank to spare.

Crow didn't pause. She pulled another arrow from her hip quiver, nocked it into the string, and began the smooth draw, the palm of her hand anchoring at her chin as she took aim.

Tracy jumped screaming and whooping through the doorway like a Hollywood Indian, the three stapleless magazines raised over her head. She flung them at Crow like Moses hurling the Ten Commandments and quickly stepped back into the stateroom. The magazines burst apart in midair, each page fluttering in a confetti cloud of naked bodies.

Crow released her arrow, but by now her line of vision was so impaired, the arrow zipped off down the passageway and into the galley wall. She was reaching for another arrow when she felt Eric's hands closing around her throat.

Eric yanked her off her feet, tossing her over his hip. The corridor was too narrow for proper leverage, and her head and feet banged into the wall on the way down to the floor. But she punched and clawed at him all the way down.

He felt as if a rabid rat were gnawing through his chest where he'd been wounded, but he hung onto her throat, digging his thumbs into her windpipe.

Crow brought her right hand down, wriggling it into the small of her back where her knife was sheathed. Her fingertips grazed the handle, closed around it. Awkwardly she eased it out of the leather sheath, mentally picking the spot on his back where she'd plunge it.

"Nope," Eric said, grabbing the thin gold chain strung between her nose and ear with its grizzly dancing teeth, and yanking it hard. She screamed as the chain tore through the skin of the nostril and ear lobe. In that spasm of pain, her hand uncurled from the knife.

Leaning his weight into his thumbs, Eric felt the cartilage give way in her windpipe. In the time it took for Tracy to help him to his feet, Crow choked to death.

"It worked," Tracy said, marveling at the arrow sticking out of the stack of magazines.

"Yeah," Eric said, clutching his chest. "How about that."

They started for the stairs, listening to the sounds of the battle raging overhead.

Eric nocked an arrow into Crow's bow. "Now for the hard part."

His hand reached for the doorknob just as an explosion thundered outside. The ship tilted to the right, slamming Eric into Tracy and both of them into the wall. As they scrambled to their feet, bracing themselves on the rocking walls, they heard the clunking sound of hunks of debris raining on deck. A man's pitiful scream mixed with a loud whooshing sound.

"What's going on?" Tracy asked.

"Only one way to find out," Eric said, pulling open the door.

The man was running straight at them, his sweater lively with flames. The fire leaped from his sweater up his neck and lit his long blond hair like a torch to a hay stack. Wildly he began slapping at the flames with his hands. Then they, too, caught fire. Next his face. Now he was clawing at his eyes, running blindly toward Eric and Tracy.

Eric didn't know whose side the flaming man was on. It didn't matter anymore. He quickly drew back Crow's bowstring and fired the arrow into the man's heart. He flopped to the deck in a smoldering smoking heap.

One of Rhino's men-Eric recognized him as Griffin-ran over, grabbed the fiery corpse by the heels, and dragged him to the edge of the ship, flipping him over the side. A sizzling hush steamed from the ocean when he hit.

Griffin didn't seem to notice Eric and Tracy. After dumping the body, he spun around and leaped onto the Home Run, snagging one of its escaping passengers by the collar. Eric saw his own crossbow riding on Griffin's huge muscular back with a rope strap he must have rigged. Eric raised Crow's bow for a shot, but Griffin disappeared amidst the smoke.

The Home Run's deck was a dense jungle of flames. Eric glanced around, trying to figure out what had happened. Most of the passengers from the Home Run were in rafts and dinghies, paddling heartily away from their burning ship. A few had not managed to get off in time and were being butchered by the savage crew of The Centurion. A leggy black woman and a lanky man were hacking at the ropes binding the two ships together.

Rhino stood at the bow of his ship, leaning over the railing and watching the action aboard the Home Run. He didn't look worried, rather somewhat amused. And a little impatient, as if anxious for it all to be over, not because it was dangerous to his ship, but because he was becoming bored and restless.