me.' He lifted his head, showed the bruises on his neck.
'Want me to cut him or kill him or what?' Flex asked.
'Neither yet. I want you to bring his friends here.'
'What for?'
'Because they're too dangerous to keep around. I want to kill them all here and now. Except him. Him we trade to Fallows. After all, we're still in business.' He laughed, which came out a nasal whine.
'Okay.' Flex started for the door, had a better idea. He walked over to Eric, hacked up some mucus, and spit into Eric's face.
'Flex!' Savvy said anxiously. 'We don't want him hurt. Fallows wouldn't like that.'
Flex thought of Fallows, felt a shiver of fear, nodded. 'Right. But when I get back, I'm gonna take it out on your friends. You can watch, Slim.' He tipped his cowboy hat and walked out the door laughing.
Eric waited a few seconds before speaking. 'Okay, Savvy, place the gun on the desk top. That's good.' Eric shook the rope from his wrist; he'd wrapped it around his wrist, but hadn't tied it. With his hands free, he bent over to unfasten the string that he'd tacked to the bottom of his shoe and which ran to the crossbow trigger, wedged under Savvy's desk and pointing directly at Savvy's crotch. One sudden jerk of Eric's foot and the bolt would have sprung from the bow and into Savvy within the same second.
Once the string was disconnected, Eric recovered his bow, removed the eight-shot clip from his pocket, and slammed it into the handle of the gun.
'Now what?' Savvy said, his face suddenly very small and childish under that baseball cap. He looked the way others must have seen him at the office. Timid, conservative, pliable.
'We wait.'
'Then what?'
'We'll see.'
The wait wasn't long. Flex's gruff voice barking orders at the others carried crisply through the trailer walls. 'C'mon, you scumbags. We're gonna have a little party. A going away party.'
Eric turned to Savvy and smiled. 'Mum's the word.'
Savvy nodded, Eric sat in the metal folding chair, arranging it so he was facing the door, his hands hidden behind his back. His knife was gripped in his hand, while his crossbow leaned against the side of the desk, the side that couldn't be seen from the door.
A shoulder bumped the door and it opened, spilling in Tracy, Rydell, Molly and Season,
'Move in there, cunt,' Flex said, booting Season in the buttocks. She lurched forward into Rydell, who caught her as she fell.
'Eric!' Tracy's voice was a mixture of relief to see him, despair at his situation.
Rydell looked sheepish. 'Guess you were right, Coach. A sucker play.'
'Shut up, asshole!' Flex said. 'Move over to the sofa.'
As they squeezed past him toward the sofa, Flex tilted his gun at the roof to make room. That's when Eric moved.
The knife was poised waist-high as he dove between Molly and Rydell, elbowing both roughly aside. Flex caught the movement immediately, but his reflexes got the better of his thoughts. Because Eric was almost on top of him, it was a more economical motion to use the gun as a club rather than shoot it. With a loud crack, the barrel smacked into Eric's wrist, knocking the knife out of his hand.
Eric grabbed Flex's gun with both hands, twisting it counterclockwise until it broke free from Flex's fingers and bounced off the wall. Flex snapped his knee toward Eric's groin, missed, tried again, caught him in the hip.
Behind them, Savvy was reaching around the desk for Eric's crossbow. But Season and Rydell were on him too quickly. Season bent his arm behind his back while Rydell wrapped his hands around his throat and squeezed.
Tracy had been knocked to the floor by a punch Flex had thrown at Eric but missed. Molly was scrambling on the floor for the gun, but it had fallen behind Flex and she couldn't reach it.
'The knife, Molly!' Tracy yelled.
Eric found it more difficult to fight with so many people inhibiting his movement. A missed kick or punch might kill Molly or Tracy. He felt Flex's stale breath in his face, the stubby thumbs digging at his eyes.
Then Flex's eyes widened with surprise. His fingers went limp. He staggered backwards, stepped on the gun, tripped, fell against the wall. Blood pumped from the hole in his stomach, soaking through the thick, curly body hair, matting it even more. He put one hand over the hole to stop it. When that didn't work he changed hands, as if there was some fault with the first one.
He looked down at the wound again, then at Molly's hands. They were empty. Slowly they turned to Tracy's hands. Both her hands trembled as they clutched Eric's bloody knife.
'You killed me,' Flex said as he sagged to the floor, his hands no longer bothering to dam the flowing blood. 'You cunt.' Then he died.
'I guess he told you,' Molly said, her voice toneless, like a telephone company recording.
Eric turned to Rydell. 'What about Savvy.'
'Passed out.'
'Okay, grab your weapons from over there. We won't have time to find your packs. We've got to get out of here fast.'
They scrambled to the wall next to the sofa where Fallows had dumped all their weapons. Molly slipped into her dart belts, tossed Rydell his quiver.
'What about him?' Season asked, nodding at Savvy,
'What do you think we ought to do?'
'Kill him,' Rydell said simply.
'Now you're learning.' Eric walked over to Savvy, frowned, felt the carotid artery for a pulse at the neck. 'Except he's already dead.'
'What?'
'Dead. You killed him.'
'I thought he'd just passed out.'
'Yeah, out of this life into the next. Which is where we'll be if we don't move. You did the right thing, now live with it the way we all do.'
'How?'
Tracy answered, handing Eric his knife. 'With regrets.'
Eric nodded at her, then abruptly turned to the others. 'Fallows and Cruz are only forty minutes ahead of us. We can catch them this time.'
Eric opened the door a crack, waited until the road was clear, then hustled them all into the dark. They ducked behind the trailer.
'We'll take the east road out of town, then cut south. There's too much activity at the south end of town.'
They nodded agreement and followed him around one trailer and onto the road, quickly jogging past another trailer where a crap game was in full swing, and another where someone was loudly demanding to examine the cards. When they finally made it to the edge of town, Tracy gasped suddenly and fell to her knees.
'What's wrong?' Eric asked, kneeling beside her.
'My God, Eric,' she sobbed, hugging her stomach. 'God, no!' Her hand shook as she pointed at the trailer across the road.
Eric looked to where she pointed, felt an explosion in his stomach as powerful as if he'd swallowed a grenade.
Pinned to the door was a long mane of dark hair, gathered into a pony tail and swaying in the warm evening breeze.
Annie's.
28.
