'And you?'
'None of my business. I'm just a hired gun.' But as they passed Lila's shriveled body, Blackjack stooped over and tucked the bedding around her shoulders. She didn't seem to notice.
The last patient was a young woman in her early twenties.
'Worst case of exposure I've ever seen,' Blackjack whispered as they approached.
Eric looked into her face and was surprised she was still alive. Its skin was blistered into crusty flakes and scabs. He thought a slight breeze might blow her whole face away. Her lips were swollen, baked into black strips resembling bark. She breathed through her mouth, the air raspy as it puffed in and out. Her eyes were open slightly, and seemed to perk up a bit when she saw Blackjack.
'You look much better, Christine. No, no, don't talk anymore. Just rest. Nurse Hatchet will look after you.'
She moved her lips, but nothing came out.
'He's fine, Christine. Resting in another room. We want to keep him isolated to reduce risk of infection. You just worry about yourself for now, okay?'
Christine blinked her eyes in response.
Mark Sterling woke up from his nap and started to cry.
'Coming, Mark,' Nurse Havczech said and waddled over to him.
Blackjack gestured with his head for them to follow him. They went through a door at the back of the room which led to the executive conference room where the three partners had held court every Tuesday morning at 11:00 A.M., delivering notes on how to improve office profitability. The image they most liked was that they were coaching their team on to the World Series. However, today the office was empty, except for a body lying in the middle of the conference table with a beach towel draped over it. The rancid smell hit them like a blast furnace. Tracy cupped her hand over her mouth and nose.
Blackjack grabbed the edges of the towel and with the exaggerated flourish of a master chef, swept the towel off the body. Voila. Flounder б la Alabaster.'
'Eric,' Tracy said, forgetting the smell a moment as she leaned closer to the body. 'That's the guy. He's the one.'
There was no mistaking the doughy skin, the half-eaten face, the hole through the skull where Eric had pried loose the stubborn arrow. It was the man he'd fished out of the ocean last night. It was Alabaster.
They were standing next to the Piper Cub where Tammy Sterling had had her breasts massaged by Phil Rubin while her little brother bit bugs in half. The plane was wedged tight into the building.
'It was here when the others arrived,' Blackjack explained. 'No one knows what happened to the pilot or why it crashed. There was a little fuel in it, but they drained it long ago. I guess as long as it plugs the hole, they'll just leave it there.' He patted the plane's fuselage. 'This is one of the few places we can talk and not be overheard. Some of what I'm going to tell you only Rachel and I know.'
'So why isn't she here?' Tracy asked. She was still limping, but the medication and bandage Nurse Havczech had provided reduced the pain.
'Rachel tends to the farming and daily life of the community. She says security is up to me.'
'She didn't feel that way when she rigged the Home Run to blow,' Eric reminded him.
Blackjack forgot about Eric's gun for a moment and stepped angrily toward him. 'I tried to talk her out of it, told her I'd do it. But she insisted, said that if it didn't work the settlement would need me more than it would her. She's nuts, man.'
Eric could see he'd probed a nerve, that Blackjack's feelings about Rachel Loeb were deeper than he wanted to admit. He changed the subject. 'Tell me about Alabaster. What's the fuss about his map?'
Blackjack removed a small leather pouch from his pants pocket and a packet of Zig-Zag cigarette papers. Deftly he sprinkled some of the contents of the pouch on the paper, spit-sealed it, and lit it with an almost-empty Bic lighter. He inhaled deeply, held the smoke in his chest for a long minute, his eyes blinking rapidly as if he were in some pain, then exhaled the sweet smoke at the Piper Cub. 'BLACK EX-DOCTOR DOPE FIEND PIRATE.' He smiled, sweeping his hand across the air as if underlining a newspaper headline. He shook his head. 'If we ever get off this island, we're going to spend the first six months just being interviewed by reporters. Ebony magazine's going to be disappointed in me.' He looked at Tracy and Eric as he expected some disapproving remark.
Neither said anything. Eric had never really gotten a foothold in the drug culture of his peers. He'd popped a few uppers in college, smoked some grass to be sociable at parties, ingested an LSD sugar cube because he was curious. The uppers had given him a headache; the pot had only made his tongue taste dry and trampled-on; the LSD had been one pleasant euphoric dream, none of the screaming demons he'd expected to encounter. Nevertheless, he avoided all-how did the cops put it now?- 'controlled substances,' not so much out of disapproval, as out of fear. Fear that he would not be in total control of himself when he needed to be.
There it was. That word. Control. Annie had often accused him of wanting to control every situation, even harmless social gatherings. 'Not overtly,' she'd complained after one Sunday brunch with some of her friends from jazzercize class. 'Just somehow, even when you don't say anything for hours, we all get the feeling we're doing just what you want us to. Oh, hell, I'm being silly.'
But she was right. He scrutinized everyone, no matter how subtle and smiling he tried to be. And eventually most wilted under his gaze, as if they feared he had discovered a terrible secret about them. Their friends had been few, a fact that sometimes disturbed Annie, who'd been brought up to be a much-more social creature. 'Even without saying anything,' she'd said, 'you ask too much of people. You judge them.' But the friends they'd cultivated over the years were fiercely loyal, the way Eric thought they should be.
Blackjack leaned against the fuselage of the Piper Cub and slid his back along the metal hull until he was sitting on the ground, flicking the ashes from his joint on a jagged piece of glass at his feet. Eric helped Tracy to sit, arranging her legs so the hip was less painful.
'You remember,' Blackjack began, 'when the cops and military got together after the first quake and did their door-to-door thing? Confiscated everybody's guns because of all the looting and panicking neighbors shooting each other.'
Eric saw the jeep parked outside his house, the men brandishing rifles on his doorstep; Annie and the kids frightened; Eric's crusty old mother demanding proof of their authorization, studying the piece of paper they reluctantly handed her as Eric arrived. All dead now. Except Timmy.
'I remember,' Eric nodded.
'Well, all those guns and ammunition were sent to secret stockpile locations where they were heavily guarded. Even though they'd given receipts for the weapons and promised to return them after the situation returned to normal, orders had come down to destroy all the guns. They managed to do just that at most of the stockpiles. But not all.' He took another deep drag on his joint, sucking air between his teeth. A think film of sweat had popped out along his forehead. 'Each one of those stockpiles contained enough firepower to start a small army. And considering the state of most the weaponry on this island right now, whoever gets ahold of those caches could storm across California and rule it anyway they see fit.'
'Things are tough enough around here without that kind of thing,' Tracy said.
'Damn right, lady. But business is business, at least that's the way Alabaster saw it. He was a computer programmer who was also in the National Guard. His unit had been called up after the first quake and he was assigned as one of the guards at a weapons stockpile. When the next quakes hit, everyone at the stockpile was killed.'
'Except Alabaster,' Eric said. 'And he made a map.'
'Yeah. He hid them all at a new location, just in case anyone was alive who knew about the stockpile. He was the only one who knew where all those glorious weapons were. He didn't have the stomach or ambition to use them himself in a conquering march across California, but he knew there were plenty of others who'd gladly take up the banner. He approached Rhino.'
'I'll bet he did,' Eric said. 'And Rhino probably peed his pants at the thought of all those guns.'
Blackjack laughed. 'He does run around like a nervous poodle with a jet up his ass. I've seen some cases of manic depression in medical school, and treated hyperactive children at the hospital, but I've never seen anything quite like Rhino. He's like an overwound spring.'
