Текст книги "Foodchain"

Автор книги: Jeff Jacobson

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

Once out of the line of sight of Sturm’s binoculars, Frank felt a little better. He kept following the fence until the monkeys’ screeching sounded the loudest, then he used the wire cutters he’d stolen from Sturm’s toolbox. After snipping a four-foot gash in the chain links, he peeled it back and slipped inside. He tucked the heavy tool into the small of his back and double-checked the tire iron was carefully secured in his right sleeve.

He moved slowly through the deepening shadows. He didn’t have a plan. Part of him wanted to wait until the zookeeper opened one of the lion or tiger cages for feeding, and then shove the sonofabitch inside and lock the door. But the zookeeper was too cautious; he never opened any of the doors.

So Frank crouched in the gloom under an empty flatbed truck and waited.

Twenty minutes later, he knew the zookeeper was on his way because the animals started in with their symphony of savage hunger. And before long, he saw the swinging light and the waddling zookeeper carrying a bucket full of pieces of dead greyhounds. Frank squatted lower, curling his fingers around the tire iron, but strangely, he felt no fear. He just felt tired. The zookeeper shuffled past, wheezing like a gutshot tractor.

Frank still didn’t have a plan. He’d thought about maybe skirting ahead of the zookeeper and opening one of the big cat cages, but figured he’d never able to open it far enough in advance. The cats would almost certainly stalk Frank instead. He followed at a distance, waiting for some kind of opportunity to present itself. The zookeeper shambled down through the lanes, never getting close to the cages, flinging chunks of meat at the animals. Soon the bucket was empty. Frank’s fist got tighter and tighter around the tire iron, but he never moved from the shadows until the zookeeper was a long ways down the roads.

He followed him back to a small house trailer sitting at the edge of a quarter-acre clearing. A dusty La-z-boy recliner waited next to a fire pit as if waiting for its turn to be burned. The fire was lit, cracking and snapping happily at an iron bar erected over the pit as a makeshift spit. Thick wooden tables flanked the trailer. Frank realized that if the zookeeper made it back into the trailer, that was it. He’d never be able to get inside and keep the man from making a phone call. And Frank had no way of knowing what kind of weapons were stashed inside the trailer.

The zookeeper dropped the empty bucket near one of the tables. He bent over, opened a battered red and white ice chest under the table, and pulled out a cut of meat wrapped in white butcher paper.

Frank circled around the clearing, then dropped to his knees and wriggled under the trailer. He had to pick his way over tangles of barbed wire, fence posts, and rolls of chain link fence. The only thing he could think to try was to maybe get close enough to the zookeeper while the man’s back was turned and crack him across the skull with the tire iron. It had worked for the truck driver.

As Frank crawled closer, holding his breath, watching the trunks of the zookeeper’s legs walk back forth from the table to the fire pit, his left hand came down on something heavy. In the flickering glow of the pale yellow light and the flames from the fire pit, Frank saw that it was a T-square fence post, a thick red steel one, six feet tall, with raised notches along the length for wrapping wire, and two flat blades two feet from the bottom for anchoring it into the earth.

Frank waited for a moment, watching the shuffling legs kick up dust as they approached the table. He tucked the tire iron back into his sleeve, and gently slid the fence post forward. He rose a little, waiting to see if his knees would crack. They didn’t, and he watched the wide legs amble back to the fire pit. Frank burst smoothly and silently from under the trailer like a white shark snatching a sea lion from the surface, whipping the fence post up and over his head.

As the zookeeper stood facing the fire, squeezing ketchup onto a plate of steaming lion steak, Frank brought the fencepost down like he was splitting open a stubborn chunk of firewood. He buried the blade three inches into the man’s skull, driving the jawbone into the collarbone, blowing out all of those chins like an underripe zit.

The zookeeper wobbled a moment. The lion steak landed in the dust. The paper plate drifted into the flames. The zookeeper dropped to his knees and fell face first into the fire. Blood boiled and popped.

The body shivered and twitched for a while. Frank left the fencepost stuck in the head and collapsed into the La-z-boy. He knew he needed to drag the body out of the fire; the smell of burning flesh would get the animals’ attention, and Frank didn’t want any of them getting loose like last time. The zookeeper’s ears were burning now and creamy blue smoke curled around the fencepost as it rose.

Frank left the burning man behind and went into the trailer. When he came out, he was holding a bottle.

“Hell, son.” Sturm’s voice came from the shadows. “I’d say that you killing horses is understatement. You got yourself a genuine talent for killing damn near anything alive to start with.”

“Yeah.” Frank wasn’t surprised to hear Sturm. He tilted the bottle and drank for a solid fifteen seconds, then sat down heavily on the trailer’s steps. The smell of burning flesh filled the air, sweet and rotten at the same time, reminding Frank of a can of frozen orange juice concentrate about a year on the wrong side of the expiration date.

* * * * *

It was Sturm’s idea to feed the zookeeper to the animals.

They dragged the burnt corpse out of the fire and hoisted it onto one of the tables. The clothes and the rubber boots went into the fire. The butchering didn’t take long, only about half an hour to chop the zookeeper into pieces no bigger than a football. It helped that the tools had been well maintained, kept sharp. They dumped the pieces into the five gallon buckets; the fatty meat filled seven of them.

When they were finished, Sturm handed Frank two buckets and said, “Here. Go feed them animals. They could use it. I got a call to make.”

* * * * *

Frank took it slow. He’d ease up to a cage, talking in a relaxed, low voice. “Easy, that’s it, easy does it. Easy girl.” He called all the animals “girl” whether they were female or not.

The big cats watched him warily from a distance, but their flicking tails and attentive noses gave away their hunger. Frank would spear pieces with a long BBQ fork and gently flick the meat through the bars and watch as the cats snatched at it with scary speed and accuracy. Then they’d settle into the darkest corner of the cages and rip at their chunk.

When Frank got back to the trailer, he found Sturm in the La-z-boy, talking on the cell phone. Frank wondered if he was the only person in the west without a cell phone. He kind of wished he hadn’t tossed out the one he found in the car.

Sturm looked up. “Any suggestions for a tranquilizer?”

Frank thought for a moment. “We used Acepromezene at the track. If it’ll calm down a goddamn thoroughbred, it should work here. Ketamine, too, if you can get it.”

“How much?”

Frank shrugged. “As much as you can get.”

* * * * *

Frank returned for the last bucket. Sturm was waiting. The cell phone had disappeared. “Have a seat.”

Frank tossed the bucket under the table, but remained standing. Sturm leaned back, folded one leg over the other, adjusted his jeans, and clasped his hands across his groin. It looked awful prim and proper coming from a guy in a black Stetson. “So. What should I call you? Mr. Winter? Or maybe Mr. Winchester?”

“Call me Frank.”

“And how am I supposed to know what’s true here?”

“The name I gave you is my real name.”

“Is that so.”

“Look, there’s some…people after me. Some connected people, if you follow. Men with friends. Powerful friends. A lion, from here, killed one. Another went into the alligator tank. I don’t know what happened to him. And this,” he nodded at the last bucket, “is the rest of the men who knew I was here. When I was at the fight, at the time, I didn’t think it was smart to give my real name.”

“Hell son, you can call yourself Mary fucking Poppins for all I give a shit. When someone makes money off me—I don’t give a flying shit how much it is, twenty bucks or twenty thousand—I’m going to know how. And why. I make it my business. All I really want to know right now is why you bet against me and my son.”

Using the fencepost, Frank arranged the logs in the firepit into a pyramid shape, then jammed the end of the post into the center of the fire. “Well. You have to understand that it was nothing personal. I’m not exactly from around here.”

Sturm waited patiently.

As he talked, Frank heaped more wood, solid chunks of oak, onto the fire, keeping the fence post in the very heart of the fire. “Your son, he looked liked he worked hard, that’s for damn sure. But it looked like he’d spent a lot of hours in the gym, instead of…” Frank took a deep breath, and shoved the end deeper into the fire. “That other kid, he looked like he’d spent a lot of time getting the shit kicked out of him.” He twisted the fencepost slowly, and deep in the fire, the blades slowly broke away. “You have to understand, when I got to the fight, I didn’t know anything about you, anything about this town. Didn’t know any history.”

Sturm nodded and glanced over his shoulder at the animal cages. “So all that time you were drinking and driving all over God’s creation, them boys never said anything. Okay. Fine. So all I want to know is why.”

Frank shrugged. “It looked like the other kid knew how to fight.”

Sturm looked pained, as if each word was a tooth being pulled out slowly with a pair of pliers. “So what you’re saying is, if I’m understanding this right, from an outsider’s point of view, it looked as if that little Glouk pissant was tougher than my boy.”

              “I don’t know about tougher. It looked like he’d been in more fights, yeah.”

Sturm looked like he might throw up. “Jesus humping Christ.”

Frank kept twisting the fencepost, sinking it deeper and deeper into the fire, ignoring the heat that seared his face. The fire burned hotter and the silence grew, stretched thin. But neither said anything else.

* * * * *

Sturm walked with Frank to empty the last bucket. When the meat was gone, they stopped for a while, watching two lionesses gulp it down. Sturm took off his hat and held it at his side as he crept slowly up to the cage. He breathed out long and slow, letting the cat smell his breath. Her ears flicked. “Whoooeeeee,” he said, a low, awed voice. “Look at her. Just look at her. You know the thing about lions? The females? They’re the ones that hunt. Males don’t do shit. They just sleep and fuck. The females, they’re the tough ones. They’re the ones that deserve respect, the ones to watch out for.” Sturm reached out, put his hand flat against the bars. The lioness snarled, suddenly vicious, ears flattened, head low.

Sturm laughed delightedly. “Goddamn. Goddamn! Look at them teeth. That’s something.” He cocked his head. “Those canines, oh boy, they’re bigger’n your thumbs. That’s something all right.” He glanced back at Frank. “Did you see them teeth back in my office?”

Frank thought of all the picture frames that surrounded the large window and shook his head.

“When we get back, I’ll have to show you ’em. Just got a whole set of Moray eel teeth. Goddamn needles. Vicious. Mean, you know? Not like these.” He nodded at the lioness. “These are…I don’t know. Honorable. Proud.” He stepped back and replaced his hat. “You can tell everything about an animal by its teeth. How it lives. What it eats. Anything.” Sturm was excited. “They tell us everything about evolution. God’s plan. Those with the biggest teeth dominate. See, you being a vet and all, you oughta understand this.”

“Her teeth are bigger than mine. Yet she’s in a cage and I’m out here.”

“Don’t mean shit. Her being in a cage. That’s missing the point. Physically, she has bigger teeth, yes. But I’m talking about the bigger picture here. Your opposable thumbs there, those’re nothing but longer, sharper teeth.” Sturm nodded again, then shrugged. “We’re nothing but predators. That’s all there is to it. We’re nothing special. We’re just like them. Oh sure, we’re at the top. But it’s a tenuous hold, make no mistake. Long as we got our thumbs using tools, we’re set, but take those tools away, and we ain’t shit. Makes me sick sometimes, the arrogance I see. People thinking that humans are some kinda’ higher life form. That we’re meant for some kind of enlightenment. Bullshit. We’re just efficient eaters. That’s all. And we’re just gonna keep eating and killing every goddamn thing until something else comes along and takes our place at the top.”

Frank wondered just how big that tumor in Sturm’s head had gotten.

The cell phone rang. It was the clowns, and they were on their way.

DAY FOUR

“That’s one big pussy,” Chuck said when he saw the tiger.

Sturm was giving everyone the grand tour. The three clowns and two other drivers, quiet Mexicans that worked at the auction yard as well, had brought damn near every truck in Whitewood. Frank counted three semis with livestock trailers, plus Chuck’s pickup. Frank was kind of surprised it had managed to make the entire trip. They even brought the tow-truck, just in case. The only large vehicle that Frank could think of that wasn’t here was the ancient fire engine that rested in the park in the center of town.

While the two Mexican men smoked cigarettes and kept an eye on all the trucks that were parked along the narrow, twisted road that ran through the center of the zoo, Sturm introduced the clowns to all of the animals, providing a running commentary on the strengths, predatory instincts, and pretty much anything else that popped into his mind. Frank was impressed with the depth of Sturm’s knowledge. Those books back in the office hadn’t been just for looks.

Sturm had even found places in the zoo that Frank hadn’t seen. Frank was surprised and sickened to find out that two chimps also lived at the zoo, locked away in a cinderblock storage shed. The door was a length of chain-link fence, stretched sideways. Black shit coated the walls. The two chimps huddled together in the far corner and watched the men through heavy-lidded eyes. Much of their hair was worn down to white skin pockmarked with seeping, open sores, like infected blisters that had finally popped.

“Shit, Chuck. So this is where you been hiding them sisters you keep telling us that you fucked last year,” Pine said.

“That’s fuckin’ funny. Absofuckin’ hilarious, cuntwipe.” Chuck leaned over, peering at Pine’s piss poor excuse for a mustache. Unlike his chin, Pine’s mustache was sparse, sprouting in embarrassed fits and starts. Chuck kept going. “Considering whatever the hell that is on your lip there. Fuck is that? Pubic hair? Looks like you’re the one’s been smoking monkey dick.”

“Ape dick,” Sturm corrected, and nobody was sure if they should laugh or not. “Those in there are apes, not monkeys. Monkeys got tails, see?”

* * * * *

In addition to being educational, Sturm had also been thinking ahead. He instructed the clowns to bring raw hamburger and bananas. During the ride, Pine had injected Ace into the bananas and soaked the hamburger in the drug. And as they’d wandered through the zoo, they’d doled out the hamburger to the cats and bananas to the monkeys. When they walked back, they found the monkeys dropping out of trees. The clowns went around picking them up by the long, sinewy tails and dropping them into gunnysacks.

The whole loading process didn’t take nearly as long as Frank had expected; once the tour was over, he was impressed with how serious the clowns acted. There was no horsing around, no calling each other names, no laughing, and no drinking. The animals were sluggish after their extra meal, and the tranquilizers didn’t hurt. The cats got most of the drugs. They tied the sleeping cats’ front and back paws together with duct tape, and wrapped it around the cats muzzles for good measure. Then two of them would hoist a cat onto their backs and walking stiffly, legs moving in unison, they carried the cats out to the cattle trailers and laid the unconscious animals gently in the thick straw. It took four of them to carry the tiger.

As the sun rose, Frank got the rhino into the first truck by himself; he held a flake of hay and loaded the majestic, sad creature into the trailer. The head, bigger than an engine block, swung towards Frank and she heaved and puffed for a while, before taking a step forward. It took the old girl a while to make it up the ramp. Sturm said, “Son, you take all the time you need with that animal. It’ll be something special, to put this one down.”

Before they left, Frank set the zookeeper’s house trailer on fire.

* * * * *

He rode in the truck that carried the rhino. Jack was driving. They were second in line, just behind Sturm’s pickup. The other three trucks followed, with Chuck and the tow truck bringing up the rear. Although it was now early morning, the sun was already hot and hellish.

Sturm reached the front gate, got out and opened it. As he drove on through, the CB crackled with his voice. “Chuck, close that gate behind you. No point in advertising nobody’s home.”

As Jack eased the massive semi through the narrow gate, Frank caught a glimpse of a dark smudge, far down the highway. “Hold it,” he snapped and jerked the binoculars up.

But instead of a squad car, Frank stared at a turd brown station wagon that had been manufactured sometime during the Carter administration. Someone had jacked it up into a four-wheel drive, and now the doors sat nearly four feet off the ground. It looked like some six-year-old’s idea of a really cool Matchbox car. Frank was suddenly acutely aware of the black smoke he could see in the semi’s side mirror. The smoke bled up into the nearly white sky, growing thicker and darker by the second as flames consumed the cheap insulation and pressboard of the house trailer. “Shit. Somebody’s watching us.”

“Who? Cop?” Jack asked.

“No. Some kind of four wheel drive station wagon.”

Jack snatched the CB from the cradle as Sturm pulled out away from them, picking up speed on the blacktop. “We got a problem here, Mr. Sturm. Don’t know how, but them fucking Gloucks followed us. They’re watching.”

Brake lights flashed on the back of Sturm’s pickup.

Pine’s voice broke in. “Those fuckers. Let’s go say howdy.”

Jack nodded slowly, watching the car, maybe a mile distant. “Might be a good opportunity here, take care of that goddamn family once and for all,” he said into the mike. “Nobody’s around.”

Chuck agreed. “Fuck yes. Let’s go settle them right now. Nobody’ll know.”

But Sturm voice came back, quick and harsh, “No. Leave ’em be. We got these animals to get back home. Worry about them people later. They’ll get what’s coming to ’em. Don’t you worry. Now let’s go home.”

And with that, the pickup accelerated, and slowly, slowly, the convoy followed, gathering speed as they rolled through the desert. For the first time, the zoo was quiet, empty except for the alligators. Frank hoped the starvation took a long time, until they finally started to turn on each other, boiling the tank in the frothing madness of hunger and blood.

* * * * *

They followed the highway north, along Frank’s original route, without incident. Once, they had spotted a sheriff’s car, coming the opposite way, but it had sped past without slowing. Frank was glad once they hit I-80, because of the extra traffic. A few semis with livestock trailers would blend in with the blur of all of the other trucks. Around noon, Sturm’s right blinker began to flash, and the convoy took the off ramp, pulling into the same rest stop where Frank had cracked the trucker in the head.

“Why are we stopping?” he asked, keeping his voice level and unconcerned.

“Can’t cross the state line in daylight,” Jack said. “We’re gonna have to stop here and wait it out. Soon as its dark, we’ll cross.”

They parked all over the place so as not to make it obvious the trucks were traveling together. The place was busier than last time, full of semis, tourists squeezing in one last trip of the summer, and students headed for college. Frank hoped the tranquilizers would hold; he didn’t want some family in a minivan getting curious and one of the big cats chewing off a toddler’s groping hand.

Frank got out to stretch. He slowly walked along the line of rumbling semis, easing the kinks out of his back and shoulders. There was a sharp, twisting pain in his right side and he wondered if he’d pulled something while whipping the fence post over his head. It didn’t feel serious, but it was enough to make him catch his breath.

He squatted in the thin shade of a few dusty trees and looked back at the semi. Heat waves danced on the trailer’s roof. Frank realized the temperature inside the trailer had to be over a hundred and ten. Maybe a hundred and twenty.

He found Jack eyeballing a carload of sorority girls. “We gotta cool these animals down somehow,” Frank said. “They’re gonna cook.”

The girls giggled and cast tentative glances at Jack, eyes full of lust and fear. Jack never looked away from their car. “Then take care of it. You’re the vet.”

Frank couldn’t argue with that. He should have known better. He walked the length of the grassy area on the outskirts of the parking lot and found what he needed. After grabbing a wrench, a hammer, and a screwdriver from Sturm’s toolbox, he had the automatic sprinklers on in under a minute. Like machine guns, the sprinklers spit arcs of water out in precise bursts, first spraying the grass, then the trucks once Frank adjusted their aim.

The cats weren’t happy. Still not fully awake, they pressed themselves into corners, turning their faces away from the water. Except one. It lay sprawled near the back and never flinched even as drops of water rolled down the matted fur. Frank watched the sharp ridges and valleys of the cat’s rib, but it wasn’t breathing. “Shit,” Frank whispered.

He went looking for Sturm and saw the poster instead.

It was up near the vending machines, tacked up over the maps. Frank recognized the trucker’s face from over fifteen feet away. Glancing around, he saw that the posters had been put up everywhere. Something cold grabbed at his heart. People pushed past, ignoring the poster and Frank. He went and stood next to it, pretending to study the map. Above the stark red “INFORMATION WANTED” was a grainy, black and white picture of the trucker’s face, apparently from his driver’s license. Below, it read, “Please contact the Nevada State Police with any information regarding the death of Randall James Stark, 32, murdered on August 13th.” There was a phone number, but Frank had turned away, ice spreading throughout his body despite the sizzling midday temperature. Three men in three days.

When he finally looked up, he saw Sturm, on the far side of the rest stop, taking down one of the posters, carefully folding it and stowing it safely away in the inside pocket of his duster.

* * * * *

Someone yelled. Frank heard honking and saw a woman wave a chicken nugget towards one of Sturm’s trucks at the far end of the parking lot. The two chimps were scrambling across the top of the trailer in their swaying, bowlegged run. They swung down from the exhaust stack, nimbly scurrying away from a diving tackle from Jack, and darted across the parking lot before disappearing behind another truck.

Frank half-jogged through the vehicles and met up with the clowns. The chimps had taken off in a loping run through the sprinklers and across a dry field beyond the rest stop. Chuck burst around the corner of the trailer, panting, holding a rifle. He jerked it to his shoulder, but Sturm stopped him with a sharp whistle. They turned, and saw Sturm standing at the edge of the parking lot, maybe thirty yards away. He shook his head, patted the air in front of him.

Chuck mumbled, “Shit,” under his breath and lowered the rifle, looking around to see if anyone had seen him. But everyone’s attention was focused on the bounding figures, now just hazy specks in the distance.

Frank inspected the trailer doors. One was slightly ajar, but the rest of the monkeys were still sleeping soundly, bound in their canvas sacks. He had no idea how the chimps had managed to get the door open, and he wondered how pissed this would make Sturm. And even if it did affect his final payment, Frank was glad the chimps had escaped. He wished them luck as he refastened the wide doors. Pine didn’t waste any time jumping in the cab and pulling away, just to avoid any questions. He’d wait for the rest of the trucks farther down the road.

The rest of the afternoon and evening passed quietly. Sturm went and picked up some burgers and fries and brought them back for the clowns. A flask was surreptitiously passed around, scratching the itch in the back of Frank’s throat. He even managed to forget about the poster of the dead trucker in Sturm’s pocket for a while.

* * * * *

Around ten that night, they started leaving in fifteen-minute intervals. Somewhere before the border, the trucks left the freeway and followed a series of dusty gravel roads that cut through farm fields.               Frank felt exhaustion creeping through him, filling his pores like spongy seaweed that was revealed at low tide after the high, surging adrenaline-filled waters had receded. He stared out at the moonlit fields, watching the sprinklers, giant wheels, each connected by a long, thin axle, slowly rolling across the alfalfa fields, feebly spitting out warm water, turning slower than the second hand of Sturm’s pocket watch. Frank’s head bobbled with the rhythm of the dirt roads, and he finally fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, sleeping even through the twisting, turning logging roads where the trucks crossed over the mountains.