She gave him a look and nodded. 'Right. I'll be okay.'
Overhead they heard the pounding of footsteps running for position.
Tracy popped up, pressed her face to the porthole, waving desperately at the passengers. They didn't notice her. She started to unfasten the porthole. 'Maybe they can hear me now.'
Eric reached over her shoulder and slammed the porthole shut.
'What are you doing?' she demanded, trying to pull his hand away. 'We can warn them!'
'Not without Rhino and Angel hearing you. They'll be down here in half a minute performing open heart surgery on us.'
'But all those people, Eric. We've got to try.'
'Right now those people are my only hope for escape.'
'Again with escape. You haven't forgotten we're not alone, have you? That this whole damned ship is crawling with armed maniacs?'
'That's why that ship out there is so important. Everyone topside will be occupied with them. That leaves only the guard they posted outside for me to deal with.'
Tracy backed away from him, her face pinched with emotion. 'God, Eric. Sometimes I forget.'
'Forget what?'
'Forget how cold and ruthless you can be. I mean I know all about your past, your hitch in 'Nam with that group of assassins. And all that Indian crap you learned from the Hopis when you were a kid. But this.' She shook her head, took a deep breath. 'You're willing to use the slaughter of all those people as a diversion for your escape?'
'Yes,' he said, returning to the pile of magazines he'd stacked.
Tracy followed him. 'What do you think the world will think about us? I mean if we ever get out of here, back to the mainland. You were a history professor, what will history say about what we've done?'
'They'll say we acted like savages, selfishly and with little regard for human life other than our own. And they'll be right.' He fixed his sharp reddish-brown eyes on her. 'But as long as Timmy's alive, I don't care what they think or say. Besides, it's the survivors who write history, so in the end they'll think what we tell them.'
She looked out the porthole, read the name of the ship. Home Run. The passengers were leaning over the rails, reaching out. She could see the smiles on their faces. She wondered briefly if any of them were wearing Lee jeans.
Behind them the tops of the office buildings peeked out of the flat ocean like gravestones. Here lies Los Angeles, AKA Tinseltown, The Big Orange, Sin City, Cocaine Gulch. Rest In Soggy Peace.
'I'm going with you,' she said quietly.
'I thought you didn't like the odds.'
'They've improved. Besides, I don't think I want to stay to see the show.' She shrugged. She wanted to add oh yeah, I happen to love you more than my own life. To say that she hadn't really wanted to stay behind here without him before, but had made the grand gesture, knowing he'd have a better chance without her. But she didn't say any of that because he'd just stare at her embarrassed, with the memory of Annie knotting his tongue.
She clapped her hands together enthusiastically. 'Well, I made my big humanity speech, now let's get the hell off this zoo.'
'Okay, give me a hand with these magazines.'
'Those? What for?'
'They're going to get us out of here.'
Rhino had two memories of childhood, both of them bad.
First, his name. His real name, that is.
John Smith.
Not even a middle initial, for Christ's sake. Just John Smith, as if his parents had used up all their creativity coming up with John.
'It's bad enough we're stuck with the last name of Smith,' he once complained to his parents over morning Rice Krispies. 'But couldn't you have been a little more imaginative with my first name?'
His father, James Smith, had looked confused as he sliced a banana into his cereal. 'I don't understand.'
'He doesn't like his name,' his mother, Jane Smith explained.
'He doesn't like John? What's wrong with John? Strong tradition, John is. John Hancock, John Milton, John Kennedy, John Updike, John, uh, uh…'
'John Wayne,' Jane Smith added. 'Johnny Carson, John Travolta, Elton John. The list goes on and on.'
Fearing that his parents would too, young John Smith just shook his head, pushed the soggy cereal away, and took the shortcut back to school for football practice. He was team manager. Which meant he got to haul water when the players were thirsty and toss towels to them when they trotted dripping out of the shower. He didn't mind. It gave him access to the lockers while the others were out on the field grunting their guts out. During his three years of junior high and three years of high school, team manager had translated into a lot of emptied wallets and missing watches. Locks were changed twice during his tenure there, but he'd never been caught.
He had been a big boy even then, with a thick body that had no particular shape. It wasn't fat exactly, but neither was it muscular. No clothes seemed to fit right. It was a misshapen blob of flesh, formless like his name.
For a couple years the coach pleaded with John to try out for the team, but he always refused. He could see no profit in banging heads and eating dirt. Not compared with what riches awaited him in the silent lockers.
At first, the members of the team had teased him, calling him Fatty, Blimp Boy, and such. It didn't bother him much; at least it was better than John Smith. But once, after a particularly bad practice in which the coach had really chewed their asses off, they'd come back cranky and surly and ganged up on John, trying to force him into the shower with his clothes on.
John Smith had not wanted to go.
Before the coach finally came in to investigate the ruckus, John had broken the quarterback's thumb, twisted the halfback's ankle, cracked the center's ribs, and bruised a tackle's eye. The worst thing that had happened to John had been a torn pocket on his shirt, which his mother sewed that night during The Fugitive.
Breaking the thumb had been the most fun. He'd straddled Tom Jenkins' chest, pinning his arms to the concrete floor. Then, while fighting the others off, he'd yanked back on Tom's thumb so hard the web of skin between the thumb and index finger tore. Bone ground against bone like squealing brakes until the thumb snapped. Tom's scream bounced eerily around the shower stalls.
John had not been punished by the school. After all, he had only been defending himself. Nor did the team members try to gain revenge. The coach's only reaction was again to encourage John to try out for the team.
But John had learned a valuable lesson. About himself and others. He learned that he was not afraid to administer pain to someone else if necessary. He realized that he could just as easily have snapped Tom Jenkins' neck as thumb. It didn't matter. He felt no guilt.
And he learned that public displays of power go a long way toward controlling others. Before the incident, although he'd been ranked third in his class academically, no one had paid any attention to him. But after word got around school of what had happened in the showers, no one called him any names again. Younger boys talked to him with respect and awe. Older guys nodded hello. Girls giggled and whispered, but with curiosity.
The second childhood memory was about sex.
His first time.
It was after a football game. They were celebrating their 27-14 victory over arch-rival University High. The party, as usual, boasted a couple kegs of beer that some of last year's grads brought, and some joints supplied by Dennis Bedlow, proud holder of the worst attendance record in the school.
The party was at Valerie Rhinehart's house because her parents were at a fat farm for the weekend. Valerie, the head cheerleader, had been dumped last week by Tom Jenkins after going steady for two years. She got drunk almost immediately, threw up on Tom's date, and passed out in the bathroom. A couple guys carried her up to her bedroom, discussed jumping her, but chickened out. That's when John went up.
