“Your mother,” he said, “was a dice woman. Rolled the dice for the whole human race, and crapped out. But I like cards.”
Pretending to deal cards again, Randolph had moved one hand close to the storm lamp.
“Don’t,” Doogie said.
But Randolph did. He snapped the lamp switch, and suddenly we were blind.
Even as the light went off, Randolph and Conrad were on the move. They got to their feet so fast that they knocked their chairs over, and these hard noises rattled repeatedly around the room like the sharp rat-a-tat produced by a running boy dragging a stick along a picket fence.
I was instantly on the move, too, following the curve of the room toward the children, trying to stay out of Conrad’s way, since he was the one closest to me and would most likely go hard and fast for the place where I had been when the lights went out. Neither he nor Randolph was the type to run for the exit.
As I sidled toward the kids, I slipped the infrared goggles off my forehead, over my eyes. I yanked the special flashlight from my belt, clicked it on, and swept the room where Conrad might be.
He was closer than I’d expected, having intuited my attempt to shield the children. He held a knife in one hand, slashing blindly at the air around him, hoping to get lucky and cut me.
How very strange it is to be a man with sight in the kingdom of the blind. Watching Conrad seeking without finding, flailing in mindless rage, seeing him so confused and frustrated and desperate, I knew one percent of what God must feel like when He watches us at our furious game of life.
I quickly circled Conrad as he ambitiously but ineffectively sought to disembowel me. Employing a technique sure to elicit the righteous indignation of the American Dental Association, I gripped the butt of the flashlight between my teeth, to free both hands for the shotgun, and I slammed the stock of the gun into the back of his head.
He went down and stayed down.
Apparently, neither one-name Conrad nor the inimitable John Joseph Randolph had realized that our goggles were part of infrared sets, because Doogie was almost literally dancing around the most successful serial killer of our time — excluding politicians, who generally hire out the wet work — and beating the crap out of him with a natural-born enthusiasm and with a skill honed as a bouncer in biker bars.
Perhaps because he had a greater concern for dental safety and oral hygiene than I did, or perhaps just because he didn’t like the taste of the flashlight handle, Doogie had simply placed the infrared light on the card table and then herded Randolph into the primary path of the beam with a relentless series of judiciously delivered pokes, punches, and chops with his fists and with the barrel and butt of the Uzi.
Randolph went down twice and got up twice, as though he really believed that he had a chance. Finally he dropped like a load from a dinosaur: prepared to lie there until he fossilized. Doogie kicked him in the ribs. When Randolph didn’t move, Doogie administered the traditional Hell’s Angel first aid, kicking him again.
Unquestionably, Doogie Sassman was a Harley-riding maniac, a man of surprising talents and accomplishments, a true mensch in many ways, a source of valuable if arcane knowledge, perhaps even a font of enlightenment. Nevertheless, no one was likely to structure a new religion around him anytime soon.
Doogie said, “Snowman?”
‘Hey.’
“Handle some real light?”
Slipping off my goggles, I said, “Fade me in.”
He switched on the storm lamp, and the copper-lined room was filled with rust-colored shadows and shiny- penny light.
The pre-cataclysmic rumbles, cracks, squeals, and groans that shook through the vast building continued to be muffled here, more like the embarrassing noises of digestive distress. But we didn’t need a fifty-page directive from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to know that we should vacate the premises as soon as possible.
We quickly determined that the children were not merely bound with rope or shackled. Their wrists had been wired together, as had their ankles. The wires were drawn cruelly tight, and I winced at the sight of bruised skin and dried blood.
I checked Orson. He was breathing, but shallowly. His forepaws were wired together, his hind legs, too. A makeshift muzzle of wire clamped his jaws shut, so he was able to issue only a thin whine.
“Easy, bro,” I said shakily, stroking his flank.
Doogie stepped to the gate valve and shouted along the tunnel to Sasha and Roosevelt: “We got’em. All alive!”
They whooped with delight, but Sasha also urged us to hurry.
“We’re shakin’ and bakin’,” Doogie assured her. “Keep your guard up.” After all, there might be worse than Randolph and Conrad in this labyrinth.
A couple of satchels, backpacks, and a Styrofoam cooler were stacked near the card table. Under the assumption that this gear belonged to the tandem killers, Doogie went in search of pliers or any other tool with which we could free the kids, because the wires had been braided and knotted with such obsessive care that we couldn’t easily unwind them.
I gently pulled the tape off Jimmy Wing’s mouth, and he said he needed to pee-pee, and I told him that I did, too, but that we would both have to hold it for a little while, which shouldn’t be any trouble because we were both brave guys with the right stuff, and this earned his solemn expression of agreement.
The six-year-old Stuart twins — Aaron and Anson — thanked me politely when I untaped their mouths. Anson informed me that the two unconscious kooks on the floor were bad men. Aaron was blunter and less clean- spoken than his brother, calling them “shitheads,” and Anson warned him that if he used that forbidden word in front of their mother, he would be toast.
I had expected tears, but these weeds had cried all they were going to cry, at least over this weird experience. There’s a natural toughness in most kids that we seldom acknowledge, because we usually view childhood through glasses of nostalgia and sentimentality.
Wendy Dulcinea was, at seven, a glorious reflection of her mother, Mary, from whom I’d been unable to learn the piano but with whom I’d once been in deep puppy love. She wanted to give me a kiss, and I was happy to receive it, and then she said, “The doggie is really thirsty — you should give him a drink. They let us drink, but they wouldn’t give him anything.”
The corners of Orson’s eyes were crusted with white matter. He looked sick and weak, because with his mouth wired shut, he had not been able to perspire properly. Dogs sweat not through pores in their skin but largely through their tongues.
“Gonna be okay, bro,” I promised him. “Gonna get out of here. Hold on. Going home. We’re going home. You and me. Out of here.”
Returning from a search of the killers’ gear, Doogie stooped by my side and, using lineman’s pliers with sharp side cutters, snipped the bonds between my brother’s paws, pulled them off, and threw them aside. Cutting the wires around Orson’s jaws required more care and time, during which I continued to babble that everything was going to be cool, primo, sweet, stylin’ and in less than a minute, the hateful muzzle was gone.
Doogie moved to the kids, and though Orson made no effort to sit up, he licked my hand. His tongue was rough and dry.
Empty assurances had poured glibly from me. Now I wasn’t able to speak, because everything I had to say was important and so deeply felt that if I started to let it out, I would be laid low by my own words, emotionally wrecked, and with all the obstacles that remained in the way of our escape and survival, I couldn’t afford tears now, maybe not even later, maybe not ever.
Instead of saying anything, I pressed my hand against his flank, feeling the too-fast but steady beat of his great, good heart, and I kissed his brow.
Wendy had said that Orson was thirsty. His tongue had felt dry and swollen against my hands. Now I saw that his flews, scored from the pressure lines left by the muzzling wire, appeared to be chapped. His dark eyes were slightly filmy, and I saw a weariness in them that scared me, something close to resignation.
Although reluctant to leave Orson’s side, I went to the large Styrofoam cooler beside the card table. It was half full of cold water in which floated a few chips of ice. The killers appeared to be health conscious, because the only drinks they had brought with them were bottles of V8 vegetable juice and Evian water.
