Jason Frost - The cutthroat

"What?" Tracy smiled, as if she really hadn't heard him or had thought he was joking. She had the look of most people when told they had a permanent disability, no matter how minor. The pale gaze of disbelief, the ashen expression as all of their confidence drained out of their bodies. If one thing could go wrong, then anything might. Their aura of invincibility was shattered forever.

"It might have been worse," Blackjack explained. "You might have lost the leg."

Tracy glared at the bandage on her hip, then suddenly tore it off as if that were the cause of her injury. "Goddamn it," she screamed. "Goddamn this place." She threw the bloody bandage in Blackjack's face. He didn't try to stop her, nor did he protect himself. He let it hit, leaving a spongy splotch of her blood on his forehead. The bandage tumbled down his chest and onto the ground. He picked it up, crawled over to Tracy, and silently reattached the bandage. She let him.

"What do you want from us?" Eric asked Blackjack while he was hunched over Tracy's hip.

"Huh?"

"You didn't tell us all this just for friendly conversation. You want something."

Blackjack tucked the flaps of Tracy's pants over her bandage and looked up at Eric. "I know who you are, Ravensmith. I didn't at first, but Rachel recognized you from the news on TV. When you testified at Fallows' trial. I know a little bit about your background. I don't mean the history professor jazz, I mean that Night Shift stuff in 'Nam. No matter how much I act like a pirate, I know a hell of a lot more about medicine. But you know about soldiering, I mean real fighting. And we could use you for what we have in mind."

"Just what do you have in mind?"

He rocked back on his heels and hugged his knees, his dark eyes shining with intensity. "We've got to figure Rhino will need to recruit a few more crew members after what we did to him earlier. And he'll want to try to pick up a line on Alabaster. There's only one place he can go to do both. Liar's Cove. A little fortress of scum where anything goes. At Liar's Cove there is no law, and nothing is too weird or kinky."

"Get to the point."

"I figure that's where Angel will try to slip away and recruit her own crew, then head for the weapons." He picked up a loose screw from the cement floor, threw it out the broken window next to the Piper. A second later they heard the splash. "I want to go to Liar's Cove and kidnap Angel. We get the map from her and find the weapons ourselves."

"Jesus," Tracy said. "Talk about limping for the rest of your life. Your brain must be limping along on one cylinder."

Eric's lips twisted into a grim smile. "And what do we get out of it if we agree?"

"Eric!" Tracy said.

Encouraged, Blackjack leaned closer, speaking quickly like a conspirator assuring a reluctant ally that the alarm systems have been cut. "You can have your pick of the weapons. All both of you can carry. And passage to wherever you want. You must have been heading somewhere in that canoe. We'll deliver you there in our ship. Safe and sound. And heavily armed."

Eric stood up, offered a hand to Tracy. He pulled her to her feet and handed her the spear for a cane. They started walking back toward The Runway, Blackjack trailing behind them.

"We'll think about it," Eric said.

"Sure, that's all I ask."

"California," Tracy mumbled, as if that said it all.

"Are you nuts?"

The question struck Eric as funny so he laughed, his head, thrown back, the.38 he'd taken from Blackjack stuffed into his waistband. The butt dug into his stomach as it jumped from his laughing, rubbing the skin underneath raw. He let it.

"I mean it, Eric," Tracy continued, easing herself to the floor of the Xerox room which Blackjack had turned over to them. It was one of the few actual rooms in the building with a real door that even locked from the inside. Eric locked it behind him. Blackjack had called this the settlement's honeymoon suite because its use was alternated every night by different couples. They had a sign-up sheet attached to a clipboard hanging on a nail outside the door.

"What's to think about, for Christ's sake," Tracy added. "Let's get our canoe and get the hell out of here."

Eric didn't answer her right away. He was thinking. Not about Blackjack's offer or Angel or Rhino or Alabaster or Liar's Cove. He was back to The Centurion and that woman he'd killed. Crow, they'd called her. She'd been singing outside their stateroom door.

"Every day, it's a gettin' closer, goin' faster than a roller coaster…"

Eric backed against the long wooden table with its three-hole Hunt-Boston paper punch and green paper cutter still resting where it had before the quakes. He couldn't get that song out of his head.

"Love like yours will truly come my way…"

He remembered Buddy Holly, his mom sneaking him into a concert when the Crickets played Tucson. Eric was nine. Everybody else's mother was always dragging him to hear Frankie Laine or Pat Boone. But Eric's mother liked to dance, to move. That night his father had remained on the Hopi reservation to haul a few more wheelbarrows of rocks from the mountain he was carving to resemble one of their legendary chiefs. His father didn't like Buddy Holly because of his black thick-rimmed glasses. "Makes him look like a busboy in an Oklahoma roadside diner."

"Come what may, do you ever long for true love from me-ee-ee?"

That was 1959. Three months later Buddy Holly died in a plane crash. Also on board was Ritchie Valens and J. P. Richardson. Eric's mother had cried, worn a black arm band while teaching her archeology class at the university that afternoon. At the end of class she played "Rave On" on a tinny old record player from the audiovisual department. That night Eric's father brought out his finest block of granite and started sculpting a bust of Buddy Holly for her. It took three years for him to finish and it was not very good because, though he was an enthusiastic artist, he was not very talented. But Eric's mother kept it on her piano long after Eric's father died.

Eric smiled at the memory, savoring it a bit. Good memories were so hard to recall these days, when one came he sometimes couldn't decide if it was of something that really had happened or if he was just making it up.

"Hey, earth to Eric. Come in, please." Tracy was waving at him.

"A little static, Houston Control. Can't copy."

She smiled. "Try an emergency landing, pal, 'cause Rod Serling has taken over down here. He's got us holed up in some flooded building that's been transformed into a farm. He's got us negotiating with some giant ex-pediatrician who claims he's a pirate, while avoiding an ape with a melted face and his companion, a Vietnamese Mata Hari with a kinky streak. And now-boy, Rod's really outdone himself this time-now he's got our heroes, Eric and Gimpy, discussing the possibility of kidnapping the aforementioned Vietnamese vixen from under the nose of said custard-faced ape in the midst of some thieves' and murderers' hideout called Liar's Cove. California just ain't the mellow place it once was. On second thought, don't return to earth. Catch us on the rerun." She sighed, adjusting her hip for some comfort.

Eric laughed again, clapped his hands in appreciation. "I can't wait to read your book on this whole experience when we get off of here someday. A combination of Franz Kafka and Woody Allen."

"Well, I can't believe you actually told him we'd consider his scheme."

"Why not? It makes sense. We help out, in a purely advisory capacity, and get a free ride up to Santa Barbara on his ship. That alone will save us a lot of paddling. Think about your scabby little knees kneeling in that canoe for a few more days, paddling until your arms ache as if they'd been gnawed on by an alligator."