Люциус Шепард - The Best of Lucius Shepard

“Give it up,” I said.

He just blinked.

“Let him go and I’ll help you,” I said. “But if you cut him, you on your own. That how you want it?”

“Un-unh.”

Well, turn him loose.”

“I can’t,” he said, a catch in his voice. “I’m all froze up. If I move, I’ll cut him.” Sweat dripped into his eyes, and he blinked some more.

How ’bout I take it from you? If you keep real still, if you lemme ease outta your hand, maybe we can work it that way.”

“I don’t know… I might mess up.”

The clerk gave a long shuddery sigh and squeezed his eyes shut.

“You gonna be fine,” I said to Randall. “Just keep your eyes on me, and you gonna be fine.”

I stretched out my hand. The clerk was trembling, Randall was trembling, and when I touched the blade it was so full of vibration, it felt alive, as if 11 the energy in the room had been concentrated there. I tried pulling it away from the clerk’s neck, but it wouldn’t budge.

“You gotta loosen up, Randall,” I said.

I tried again and, gripping the blade between my forefinger and thumb, managed to pry it an inch or so away from the line of blood it had drawn. My fingers were sweaty, the metal slick, and the blade felt like it was connected to a spring, that any second it would snap back and bite deep.

“My fingers are slippin’,” I said, and the clerk whimpered.

“Ain’t my fault if they do.” Randall said this pleadingly, as if testing the waters, the potentials of his guilt and innocence, and I realized he was setting me up the way he had Moon’s killers. It was a childlike attempt compared to the other, but I knew to his mind it would work out the same. “The hell it ain’t!” I said. “Don’t do it, man!”

“It ain’t my fault!” he insisted.

“Randall!”

I could feel his intent in the quiver of the blade. With my free hand, I grabbed the clerk’s upper arm, and as the knife slipped, I jerked him to side. The blade sliced his jaw, and he screeched; but the wound wasn’t mortal.

I plucked the knife from Randall’s hand, wanting to kill him myself. But I had invested too much in his salvation. I hauled him erect and over to the window; I smashed out the glass with a chair and pushed him through.

Then I jumped after him. As I came to my feet, I saw the painted men closing in from the front of the PX and—still towing Randall along—I sprinted around the corner of the building and up the slope, calling for help. Lights flicked on, and heads popped from tent flaps. But when they spotted Randall, they ducked back inside.

I was afraid, but Randall’s abject helplessness—his eyes rolling like a freaked calf’s, his hands clawing at me for support—helped to steady me. The painted men seemed to be everywhere. They would materialize from behiind tents, out of bunker mouths, grinning madly and waving moonstruck knives, and send us veering off in another direction, back and forth across the hill. Time and again, I thought they had us, and on several occasions, it was only by a hairsbreadth that I eluded the slash of a blade that looked to be bearing a charge of winking silver energy on its tip. I was wearing down, stumbling, gasping, and I was certain we couldn’t last much longer. But we continued to evade them, and I began to sense that they were in no hurry to conclude the hunt; their pursuit had less an air of frenzy than of a ritual harassment, and eventually, as we staggered up to the mouth of the operations bunker and—I believed—safety, I realized that they had been herding us. I pushed Randall inside and glanced back from the sandbagged entrance. The five men stood motionless a second, perhaps fifty feet away, then melted into the darkness.

I explained what had happened to the MP on duty in the bunker—a heavyset guy named Cousins—and though he had no love for Randall, he was a dutiful sort and gave us permission to wait out the night inside. Randall slumped down against the wall, resting his head on his knees, the picture of despair. But I believed that his survival was assured. With the testimony of the clerk, I thought the shrinks would have no choice but to send him elsewhere for examination and possible institutionalization. I felt good, accomplished, and passed the night chain-smoking, bullshitting with Cousins.

Then, toward dawn, a voice issued from the radio. It was greatly distorted, but it sounded very much like Randall’s.

“Randall J.,” it said. “This here’s Delta Sly Honey. Do you read? Over.”“ Randall looked up, hearkening to the spit and fizzle of the static. “I know you out there, Randall J.,” the voice went on. “I can see you clear, sitting with the shadows of the bars upon your soul and blood on your hands. Ain’t no virtuous blood, that’s true. But it stains you alla same. Come back at me, Randall J. We gotta talk, you and me.”

Randall let his head fall; with a finger, he traced a line in the dust. “What’s the point in keepin’ this up, Randall J.?” said the voice. “You left the best part of you over here, the soulful part, and you can’t go on much longer without it. Time to take that little walk for real, man. Time to get clear of what you done and pass on to what must be. We waitin’ for you just north of base, Randall J. Don’t make us come for you.” It was in my mind to say something to Randall, to break the disconsolate spell the voice appeared to be casting over him; but I found I had nothing left to give him, that I had spent my fund of altruism and was mostly weary of the whole business… as he must have been.

“Ain’t nothin’ to be ‘fraid of out here,” said the voice. “Only the wind and the gray whispers of phantom Charlie and the trail leadin’ away from the world. There’s good company for you, Randall J. Gotta man here used to be a poet, and he’ll tell you stories ’bout the Wild North King and the Woman of Crystal. Got another fella, guy used to live in Indonesia, and he’s fulla tales ’bout watchin’ tigers come out on the highways to shit and cities of men dressed like women and islands where dragons still live. Then there’s this kid from Opelika, claims to know some of your people down that way, and when he talks, you can just see that ol’ farmboy moon heavin’ up big and yellow over the barns, shinin’ the blacktop so it looks like polished jet, and you can hear crazy music leakin’ from the Dixieland café and smell the perfumed heat steamin’ off the young girls’ breasts. Don’t make us wait no more, Randall J. We got work to do. Maybe it ain’t much, breakin’ trail and walkin’ point and keepin’ a sharp eye out for demons…but it sure as hell beats shepherdin’ the dead, now don’t it?” A long pause. “You come on and take that walk, Randall J. We’ll make you welcome, I promise. This here’s Delta Sly Honey. Over and out.”

Randall pulled himself to his feet and took a faltering few steps toward the mouth of the bunker. I blocked his path and he said, “Lemme go.”

“Look here, Randall,” I said. “I might can get you home if you just hang…”

“Home.” The concept seemed to amuse him, as if it were something with the dubious reality of heaven or hell. “Lemme go.”

In his eyes, then, I thought I could see all his broken parts, a disjointed miring of lights and darks, and when I spoke I felt I was giving tongue a vast consensus, one arrived at without either ballots or reasonable discourse. “If I let you go,” I said, “be best you don’t come back this time.” He stared at me, his face gone slack, and nodded.

Hardly anybody was outside, yet I had the idea everyone was watching us as we walked down the hill; under a leaden overcast, the base had a muted atmosphere such as must have attended rainy dawns beneath the guillotine. The sentries at the main gate passed Randall through without question. He went a few paces along the road, then turned back, his face pale as a star in the half-light, and I wondered if he thought we were driving him off or if he believed he was being called to a better world. In my heart I knew which was the case. At last he set out again, quickly becoming a shadow, then the rumor of a shadow, then gone.