CHAPTER THREE

THE VOICE IN GERMAN

 

 

DUKE HAD A story he used to tell. Kind of a story about a story.

There was a fella once up Russian River way, and Duke always said how dumb they were up Russian River way. But anyway, this fella made his money driving a big rig, an eighteen-wheeler, from a supply depot in Jenner down through the woods to Sausalito. Electrical goods for the most part, there and sometimes back – repairs, Duke figured – and occasionally he’d run a little coke down there from his cousin, or bring a load of reds back to Jenner with him if the Sausalito boys gave him a good deal. Usually his route took him through the Muir Woods area which, by a coincidence, were the same woods Cade was headed through now.

One time, this fella, the dude from Russian River, saw a body laying in the road in a pool of blood. Just laying right in the road and looking deader than hell. So this fella stopped, got out of his cab and went to check, whereupon the dude laying in the road got himself right up and pulled a Mac-10 out from under his belly, stuck it in the dumb fella’s face, jacked his truck and drove off into the sunset with a hundred thousand dollars worth of Japanese cameras and half a kilo of coke under the front seat. They found the truck abandoned in Tiburon with the coke still sitting there, and the fella ended up doing about fifteen in San Quentin. War on drugs and all.

Turned out the blood on the road was ketchup.

Now this wasn’t the end of Duke’s story; it was just the point at which he got in another round of whiskies and maybe took a trip to the head if he had a mind to. The rest of the story went like so: one time Duke was taking the Mustang on a road trip down to Daly and the best way to get there was on the road through the Muir Woods, ’less you wanted to carry on down the highway and get backed up for your trouble. It’s worth mentioning at this point that it’d been ten or eleven years since dumb-fella-whose-name-Duke-forgot got jacked up and busted, and in all that time Duke hadn’t ever heard of anyone else having any kind of a similar experience – not in the Muir Woods, anyhow.

Lo and behold, as Duke would say, he’d driven roughly about a mile into the woods when he saw a body laying in the road. Not looking deader than hell so much this time, but laying on his front with one hand under his belly, like he’d hidden something there. Duke stopped the Mustang and got his shotgun out from under the blanket on the back seat. Then he walked towards the fella in the road, real slow, checking the situation out. There wasn’t even any blood on the road this time, and Duke figured he’d best shoot first before the guy got his Mac-10 or Uzi out or whatever else he had and sprayed Duke with a few hundred rounds.

That was when the man vomited up his breakfast all over the road, which was evidently two bottles of bathtub liquor. Damn fool had just passed out in the road.

“I damn near shot up a drunk ’cause of that dumb Russian River bastard,” Duke would say, ordering another round of whiskies. “What the hell was that fella’s name anyway?”

The lesson according to Duke was that if it’s a choice between taking the Muir Woods shortcut and going around the highway, you should go around the highway.

Cade didn’t feel like going around the highway.

So he ran the truck on the road through the woodland, letting the giant redwoods rising up either side pass him by. Cade figured they hadn’t much noticed the human folks dying, but they’d take advantage just the same. Gradually, those redwoods were going to spread out, first of all obliterating this little road, then the big highway, then any of the empty towns in their way, until they’d reached a size big enough for them to feel comfortable in. Muir Woods had been hemmed in by the people for too long.

Cade wasn’t what you’d call an environmentalist, on account of how he didn’t get too involved in politics on a general principle. He didn’t figure he needed any more excuses to kill folks. Life provided enough as it was. Still, he figured it was only right that the great redwoods would take their land back over the generations, for practical reasons if nothing else. People wouldn’t be gone forever. Those trees needed to get their numbers back up a little, if only so that men could come and chop them down again when the time came.

That was about all the thought Cade gave the subject.

He drove the woodland road in silence.

There wasn’t much point in having the truck’s radio on, since there were no stations to pick up anymore. On the few occasions he and Woody had clustered around Bobby Terrill’s radio set – Bobby Terrill had boasted back before the bad times that he could get any station in the world with his setup, and Woody believed it – they’d heard nothing but crackle and static, apart from one voice in German, talking about who knew what.

Woody had been excited at that, and Cade had let him be. It’d lasted about half an hour, and then Woody realised that neither of them knew German and while it was nice to know that some German guy had gotten hold of a radio, they didn’t have any way of talking back. Still, Woody took Bobby Terrill’s radio set into his home and listened to the German voice sometimes on dark nights, long after Cade had lost interest in who else might be wandering around out there, and after the Duchess had decided it was better not to hope too hard.

Once, Woody’d turned up at Muldoon’s during one of Cade and the Duchess’s drinking sessions, all excited. “He was speakin’ English today! Kinda, anyhow. See, I couldn’t figure what he was talking about at first, but it was all thees and thous and it had a kind of rhythm to it and I figured it out pretty quick – it was Shakespeare! The man was reading Shakespeare, can you believe it? Out loud, I mean.”

Cade had shrugged, and the Duchess had smiled maternally. “That’s real nice, Woody.”

“Ain’t it? I figure he’s been reading stuff over the radio to maybe keep himself sane. It’s a good idea, y’know? I mean, maybe I could do that. Read books to whoever’s listening. If we could broadcast, I mean.”

“That sounds like a real good idea, Woody,” slurred the Duchess, lifting up her eighth whisky. “So, you worked out how to do that? I’d like to hear it. You got a good voice. Ain’t he got a good voice, Cade?”

Cade shrugged. Woody shook his head, not losing his smile.

“Nope. I figure, uh, we need a transmitter or an antenna or something. I dunno, I’d need to look it up, and I don’t think we’ve got the books here. Still, it would be nice, wouldn’t it? Sending all that literature out into the world. I got some Ed McBains I could read – you know, like those old detective plays that used to come on the radio. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

The Duchess had laughed, and poured him a tall whisky, and they’d talked into the small hours about the books they liked to read. Turned out the Duchess had a thing for Harlequin Romances and J.P. Donleavy, of all people. Woody liked crime novels, most especially Donald Westlake in his Richard Stark days, the Parker novels.

Cade didn’t read, at least not fiction. Nobody was surprised.

A few shots of whisky after that, with the Duchess passed out on a couch in back, Cade had asked Woody if he’d ever tried tuning in and finding something from the States. Maybe there was someone reading books in American. Maybe, said Cade, coming to the real point of the matter, the Government had managed to get themselves together again. Maybe they were organising, or broadcasting. Maybe there were some good times coming.

Woody had been laughing and playing with the dead shot-glasses, making cracks about old brat pack stars he’d have liked to take to bed, but with that question he suddenly sat up straight, all the good humour draining out of him like someone had pulled a plug at the bottom of his soul. Woody’d looked at Cade, pale and drawn, and downed his next whisky in one gulp. “Good times ain’t coming, Cade.“

Cade blinked. Woody swallowed, trying to clarify. “I mean they ain’t organising, Cade. Folks are broadcasting, but... they – they ain’t organising.” His eyes were suddenly wet. “And they ain’t reading no great literature out either, or any Harlequin Romance books or Parker novels or anything else. Trust me on that, Cade. They ain’t.”

Cade had shrugged and let it go. He had a pretty good idea of what Woody had heard when he’d tuned away from that calm voice of Germany, and he figured it wasn’t anything he needed to trouble himself too much about, and especially not something he needed to burden Woody any further with.

Anyway, he’d know for sure now, or soon enough at any rate.

Cade left the radio off, and the only sound was the dull growl of the truck’s engine and the occasional rustle from the trees as a bird took off and flew. Cade kept alert – in these woods, it wasn’t uncommon for a deer to head onto the road, and if he wrecked the truck it was going to be a long walk. Not to mention the possibility of dying from being crushed to death by a dead deer.

Cade wasn’t a man afraid of dying, but that’d be a pretty damn foolish way for a man to go.

In the event, he didn’t see any deer. What he did see in the road was a man. Or a boy. Young adult probably fit him best, Cade figured.

The young adult in question was all of eighteen years old, certainly not much older than that. He was dressed in old, grubby jeans, boots, a t-shirt with a confederate flag on it and a lumberjack shirt. He had sandy hair, close-cropped, and a pronounced overbite. And he was laying in the road, looking like he was injured. But there wasn’t any blood.

Cade thought about Duke’s story – that time Duke nearly shot the drunk because of what had happened to the fella from Russian River.

Guess things did come in threes at that. Funny how it works out.

The young fella had his hands on his belly and his face suggested real pain. His posture as he lay suggested maybe a couple of cracked ribs, like he’d been beaten and left there to die, although there weren’t any marks on his face beyond dirt.

He was laying right in the path of the truck. He didn’t look to the layman’s eye like he could move himself. If Cade didn’t want to roll right over that boy and splatter him on the trail, he was going to have to slam on the brakes. Then he was probably going to have to get out of the car, keeping one of his knives ready at hand, and check to see if the boy was all right or if he was faking. And he wasn’t exactly trained as a doctor.

Hell with it, thought Cade.

Then he slammed his foot down on the accelerator.

The boy’s eyes went wide in shock and he had just about enough time to let out a squealing cry, like a pig in an abattoir, before the front left tyre hit his head and burst it open like a melon, spraying blood, brain and skull fragments across the dirt roadway. The truck skidded slightly, the front wheel churning in the boy’s face as Cade gripped the wheel, fighting the swerve – then the neck cracked as the head went under the wheel. There was a jolt as the limp body thudded under the back wheels and was left behind.

Cade had figured the truck’s shocks could take the collision, and he was happy to see he hadn’t been wrong. He probably couldn’t have hit a deer head-on that way, but then again, a deer was a sizeable animal. A kid wasn’t going to do as much damage, especially when he’d been laying down.

It wouldn’t have troubled Cade much if the young fella had been what he appeared to be. Things like guilt or remorse weren’t especially in Cade’s nature, although there were nights he had bad dreams, especially on the subject of Fuel-Air and Sergeant A.

But all the same, there was a certain satisfaction when it came to being proven right about something.

So when the two men charged out from behind the tree with the shotgun, Cade felt a little better. He could keep his foot on the accelerator, keep going, but there was a good chance they were going to blast away with that shotgun, maybe take out one of the back tyres. Then he’d have to abandon the truck. That’d be a real shame. Not to mention the fact that if he drove off now, they’d be waiting for him on the return leg.

And he’d gotten a little rusty. It’d do him some good to get back in practice on these folks.

Hell with it.If he was going to go to the trouble of justifying it to himself, he might as well just do it. At least driving over the kid had thinned them out some.

Cade put his foot on the brake and the truck came to a screeching halt. And then he stepped out of the truck and raised his hands.

The man with the shotgun had sandy hair in the same shade as the young feller’s, grown down into a mullet, along with the same pronounced overbite and the addition of a ratty moustache. The other man had the same. There were some physical differences – mullet a little longer in front on one, belly a little pronounced on the other – but the only real difference was in their t-shirts. The one without the gun had a stained BURN THIS FLAG tee, the other was wearing one advertising the Scorpions on their last tour. Scorpions’s face was red and there were tears running down his cheeks, so Cade figured he was related to the boy somehow, but it was pretty obvious both these men were kin of some kind. Brothers maybe.

The man with the shotgun opened his mouth and screamed.

“Y’all killed my boy! Y’all drove over him like he was nothing!”

It was like an animal howling. The barrel of the shotgun was pointed right at Cade’s chest. This was the moment. If Cade ran, or flinched, or looked like he was going to do something, Scorpions was going to pull the trigger. Cade just stared.

He figured Scorpions had a bit more to say on the subject.

“We was just going to rob you, you know that? We was just gonna take your fancy truck and your stuff, and then you killed my boy! My youngest! I dunno how I’m gonna tell Maw her youngest boy’s dead...”

Cade wondered if Maw was a term of endearment or if Scorpions had gotten his mother pregnant. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Scorpions had the barrel pointed at Cade’s face now, and he was moving closer.

Not quite close enough, though. Cade waited.

He could be patient when he had a mind to be.

“...but I reckon the tellin’s gonna be a mite easier if’n I blow your head off and take her your goddamn brains in my hand, you son of a bitch! Look at me! Look at me when I’m talking to you! Look at me!”

Cade wasn’t looking at Scorpions. He was looking over at Burn This Flag, sizing him up. Burn This Flag was looking back, a little wary. His mouth was half-open, like he was trying to work out what was going on.

Cade figured Burn This Flag wasn’t the smartest in the family.

“Look at me! I wanna see your eyes! Look at me!”

The barrel of the shotgun was nudging Cade’s chin.

“Look at me! Look at me, goddamn you...”

Cade made his move.

His right arm moved suddenly, almost a blur, grabbing the end of the barrel and twisting it to the left, while his left hand grabbed it further down, twisting it right. The gun went off, discharging close to his left ear, leaving nothing in it but a ringing noise. Cade hoped that wasn’t permanent. He hadn’t figured on the gun going off.

Rusty.

The shotgun landed on the ground between them as Scorpions clutched at his hand. His trigger finger was bent upwards, at a right angle. He stumbled back, looking at Cade with wide eyes, his mouth open in shock.

His face stayed that way while Cade took the combat knife out of his belt and cut his throat with it.

Cade sidestepped most of the blood, but still felt a wet gush of it hit his side. He’d probably need a change of shirt later. Burn This Flag was still looking at him, blinking, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. His legs were shaking a little. He wanted to run, Cade could tell. But he just couldn’t make his legs do it.

Cade had seen that happen to people he’d killed before.

As he walked up to Burn This Flag, the redneck let his bladder and bowels go, soaking the front of his jeans with a growing dark stain as the back sagged under the weight of his mess. His eyes were still staring ahead and his mouth was still opening and closing, trying to form even one word, when Cade drove the point of the combat knife through his forehead and into his brain.

Burn This Flag took one step backwards and crashed down, convulsing on the floor. Cade figured he’d let the man thrash a little and then get his knife back. Then he’d carry on the way he’d been going, past what was left of Sausalito and into San Francisco. Not much point hanging around.

He didn’t hear the growl.

His left ear was still ringing, and they came on his left. It was the big shape in his peripheral vision that warned him, but he wasn’t expecting what he saw.

An old woman of about eighty or ninety, with wispy grey hair and that same damn overbite, standing in a worn polka-dot dress. That wasn’t so surprising to Cade. He figured there’d be more from the family around these woods. What was surprising was what she had with her.

On the end of a chain leash, there was a brown bear – a grizzly. Up on its hind legs, teeth bared, eyes red. A grizzly bear in a killing mood, and this old girl had domesticated the damn thing somehow.

Cade was rarely surprised by anything. But this was one of those times.

After all, bears weren’t common to the Muir Woods.

Cade scratched the back of his neck. The combat knife was stuck in Burn This Flag’s skull, and he’d need a second to pull it out. He figured he most likely didn’t have a second.

He looked at the bear.

The bear looked back at Cade.

The old lady looked around at the three bodies. Then she let go of the leash. Her voice was high, reedy and a little raspy. Cade figured this was Maw.

“Sic ’im, Yogi.”

And Yogi did just that.