A Soft Barren Aftershock by F. Paul Wilson
What am I gonna do?
As suddenly as they started, the AKs stopped. The cries of the wounded and the terrified filled the air in their place.
Now was the time to get out.
Patsy looked at Tram’s mottled, dusky face. If he could stopper up that sucking chest wound, maybe Tram could hang on, and maybe tell him the way back to town. He slapped the heel of his hand over it and pressed.
Tram’s body arched in seeming agony. Patsy felt something too—electric ecstasy shot up his arm and spread through his body like subliminal fire. He fell back, confused, weak, dizzy.
What the hell—?
He heard raspy breathing and looked up. Air was gushing in and out of Tram’s wide-open mouth in hungry gasps; his eyes opened and his color began to lighten.
Tram’s chest wasn’t sucking anymore. As Patsy leaned forward to check the wound, he felt something in his hand and looked. A bloody lead slug sat in his palm. He looked at the chest where he’d laid that hand and what he saw made the walls of his stomach ripple and compress as if looking for something to throw up.
Tram’s wound wasn’t there anymore! Only a purplish blotch remained.
Tram raised his head and looked down at where the bullet had torn into him.
“The Dat-tay-vao! You have it now! Trinh passed it on to you! You have the Dat-tay-vao!”
I do? he thought, staring at the bullet rolling in his palm. Holy shit, I do!
He wouldn’t have to get some gook back to the States to make his mint—all he had to do was get himself home in one piece.
Which made it all the more important to get the hell out of this village. Now.
“Let’s go!”
“Fatman, you can’t go. Not now. You must help. They—”
Patsy threw himself flat as something exploded in the jungle a hundred yards behind them, hurling a brown and green geyser of dirt and underbrush high into the air.
Mortar!
Another explosion followed close on the heels of the first, but this one was down by the waterline south of the village.
Tram was pointing out to sea.
“Look! They firing from boat.” He laughed. “Can’t aim mortar from boat!”
Patsy stayed hunkered down with his arms wrapped tight around his head, quaking with terror as the ground jittered with each of the next three explosions. Then they stopped.
“See?” Tram said, sitting boldly in the clearing and looking out to sea. “Even they know it foolish! They leaving. They only use for terror. Cong very good at terror.”
No argument there, Patsy thought as he climbed once more to his feet.
“Get me out of here now, Tram. You owe me!”
Tram’s eyes caught Patsy’s and pinned him to the spot like an insect on a board. “Look at them, Fatman.”
Patsy tore his gaze away and looked at the ville. He saw the villagers—the maimed and bleeding ones and their friends and families—looking back at him. Waiting. They said nothing, but their eyes . . .
He ripped his gaze loose. “Those Cong’ll be back!”
“They need you, Fatman,” Tram said. “You are only one who can help them now.”
Patsy looked again, unwillingly. Their eyes . . . calling him. He could almost feel their hurt, their need.
“No way!”
He turned and began walking toward the brush. He’d find his own way back if Tram wouldn’t lead him. Better than waiting around here to get caught and tortured by Charlie. It might take him all day, but—
“Fatman!” Tram shouted. “For once in your life!”
That stung. Patsy turned and looked at the villagers once more, feeling their need like a taut rope around his chest, pulling him toward them. He ground his teeth. It was idiotic to stay, but . . .
One more. Just one, to see if I still have it.
He could spare a couple of minutes for that, then be on his way. At least that way he’d be sure what had happened with Tram wasn’t some sort of crazy freak accident.
Just one.
As he stepped toward the villagers, he heard their voices begin to murmur excitedly. He didn’t know what they were saying but felt their grateful welcome like a warm current through the draw of their need.
He stopped at the nearest wounded villager, a woman holding a bloody, unconscious child in her arms. His stomach lurched as he saw the wound—a slug had nearly torn the kid’s arm off at the shoulder. Blood oozed steadily between the fingers of the hand the woman kept clenched over the wound. Swallowing the revulsion that welled up in him, he slipped his hands under the mother’s to touch the wound—
—and his knees almost buckled with the ecstasy that shot through him.
The child whimpered and opened his eyes. The mother removed her hand from the wound.
Make that former wound. It was gone, just like Tram’s.
She cried out with joy and fell to her knees beside Patsy, clutching his leg as she wept.
Patsy swayed. He had it! No doubt about it—he had the goddamn Dat-tay-vao! And it felt so good! Not just the pleasure it caused, but how that little gook kid was looking up at him now with his bottomless black eyes and flashing him a shy smile. He felt high, like he’d been smoking some of his best merchandise.
One more. Just one more.
He disengaged his leg from the mother and moved over to where an old woman writhed in agony on the ground, clutching her abdomen.
Belly wound . . . I know the feeling, mama-san.
He knelt and wormed his hand under hers. That burst of pleasure surged again as she stiffened and two slugs popped into his hand. Her breathing eased and she looked up at him with gratitude beaming from her eyes.
Another!
On it went. Patsy could have stopped at any time, but found he didn’t want to. The villagers seemed to have no doubt that he would stay and heal them all. They knew he could do it and expected him to do it. It was so new, such a unique feeling, he didn’t want it to end. Ever. He felt a sense of belonging he’d never known before. He felt protective of the villagers. But it went beyond them, beyond this little ville, seemed to take in the whole world.
Finally, it was over.
Patsy stood in the clearing before the huts, looking for another wounded body. He checked his watch—he’d been at it only thirty minutes and there were no more villagers left to heal. They all clustered around him at a respectful distance, watching silently. He gave himself up to the euphoria enveloping him, blending with the sound of the waves, the wind in the trees, the cries of the gulls. He hadn’t realized what a beautiful place this was. If only—
A new sound intruded—the drone of a boat engine. Patsy looked out at the water and saw the Cong gunboat returning. Fear knifed through the pleasurable haze as the villagers scattered for the trees. Were the Cong going to land?
No. Patsy saw a couple of the crew crouched on the deck, heard the familiar choonk! of a mortar shell shooting out of its tube. An explosion quickly followed somewhere back in the jungle. Tram had been right. No way they could get any accuracy with a mortar on the rocking deck of a gunboat. Just terror tactics.
Damn those bastards! Why’d they have to come back and wreck his mood. Just when he’d been feeling good for the first time since leaving home. Matter of fact, he’d been feeling better than he could ever remember, home or anywhere else. For once, everything seemed right.
For once, something was going Patsy’s way, and the Cong had to ruin it.
Two more wild mortar shots, then he heard gunfire start from the south and saw three new gunboats roaring up toward the first. But these were flying the old red, white, and blue. Patsy laughed and raised his fist.
“Get ’em!”
The Cong let one more shell go choonk! before pouring on the gas and slewing away.
Safe!
Then he heard a whine from above and the world exploded under him.
9
. . . a voice from far away . . . Tram’s . . .
“ . . . chopper coming,
Patsy opened his eyes and saw the sky, then saw Tram’s face poke into view. He looked sick.
“Fatman!’ You hear me?”
“How bad?” Patsy asked.
“You be okay.”
Patsy turned his head and saw a ring of weeping villagers who were looking everywhere and anywhere but at him. He realized he couldn’t feel anything below his neck. He tried to lift his head for a look at himself but didn’t have the strength.
“I wanna see.”
“You rest,” Tram said.
“Get my head up, dammit!”
With obvious reluctance, Tram gently lifted his head. As Patsy looked down at what was left of him, he heard a high, keening wail. His vision swam, mercifully blotting out sight of the bloody ruin that had once been the lower half of his body. He realized that the wail was his own voice.
Tram lowered his head and the wail stopped.
I shouldn’t even be alive!
Then he knew. He was waiting for someone. Not just anyone would do. A certain someone.
A hazy peace came. He drifted into it and stayed there until the chopping thrum of a slick brought him out; then he heard an American voice.
“I thought you said he was alive!”
Tram’s voice: “He is.”
Patsy opened his eyes and saw the shocked face of an American soldier.
“Who are you?” Patsy asked.
“Walt Erskine. Medic. I’m gonna—”
“You’re the one,” Patsy said. Somehow, he bent his arm at the elbow and lifted his hand. “Shake.”
The medic looked confused. “Yeah. Okay. Sure.”
He grabbed Patsy’s hand and Patsy felt the searing electric charge.
Erskine jerked back and fell on his ass, clutching his hand. “What the hell?”
The peace closed in on Patsy again. He’d held on as long as he could. Now he could embrace it. One final thought arced through his mind like a lone meteorite in a starless sky. The Dat-tay-vao was going to America after all.
TRAPS
Skippy Super Chunk peanut butter worked best.
Hank smeared it on the pedals of the four traps he’d bought. Victors. Something about the way the big red V in their logo formed itself around the shape of a mouse’s head gave him a feeling that they knew what they were about.
Not that he took any pleasure in killing mice. He may not have had the bumper sticker, but he most certainly did brake for animals. He didn’t like killing anything. Even ants. Live and let live was fine with him, but he drew the line at the threshold of his house. They could live long and prosper out there, he would live in here. When they came inside, it was war.
He’d had a few in the basement of their last house and caught them all with Skippy-baited Victors. But he always felt guilty when he found one of the little things dead in the trap, so frail and harmless-looking with its white underbelly and little pink feet and tail. The eyes were always the worst—shiny black and guileless, wide open and looking at him, almost saying, Why? I don’t eat much.
Hank knew he could be a real sentimental jerk at times.
He consoled himself with the knowledge that the mouse didn’t feel any pain in the trap. Better than those warfarin poisons where they crawl off to their nest and slowly bleed to death. With a trap, the instant the nibbling mouse disturbs the baited pedal, wham! the bow snaps down and breaks its neck. It’s on its way to mouse heaven before it knows what hit it.
Hank was doing this on the sly. Gloria wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink if she thought there were mice overhead in the ceiling. And the twins, God, they’d want to catch them and make them pets and give them names. With the trip to Disney World just three days off, all they could talk about was Mickey and Minnie. They’d never forgive him for killing a mouse. Best to set the traps before they came home in the afternoon and dispose of the little carcasses in the morning after everyone was gone. Luckily, this was his slack season and he had some time at home to take care of it.
He wondered how the mice were getting in. He knew they were up there because he’d heard them last night. Something had awakened him at about 2:30 this morning—a noise, a bad dream, he didn’t remember what—and as he was lying there spooned against Gloria he heard little claws scraping on the other side of the ceiling. It sounded like two or three of them under the insulation, clawing on the plasterboard, making themselves a winter home. He was ticked. This was a brand new two-story colonial, just built, barely lived in for six months, and already they had uninvited guests. And in the attic no less.
Well, they were in a woodsy area and it was fall, the time of year when woodsy things start looking for winter quarters. He wished them all a safe and warm winter. But not in this house.
Before setting the traps, he fitted a bolt on the attic door. The house had one of those swing-down contraptions in the hall ceiling right outside their bedroom. It had a pull-cord on this side and a folding ladder on the upper side. The twins had been fascinated with it since they moved in. The attic had always been off-limits to them, but you never knew. He had visions of one of them pulling the ladder down, climbing up there, and touching one of the traps. Instant broken finger. So he screwed a little sliding bolt in place to head off that trauma at the pass.
He took the four traps up to the attic and gingerly set the bows. As he stood on the ladder and spaced them out on the particle board flooring around the opening, he noticed an odd odor. The few times he had been up here before the attic had been filled with the clean smell of plywood and kiln-dried fir studs. Now there was a sour tint to the air. Vaguely unpleasant. Mouse b-o? He didn’t know. He just knew that something about it didn’t set well with him.
He returned to the second floor, bolted the ceiling door closed, and hit the switch that turned off the attic light. Everything was set, and well before Gloria and the girls got home.
Kate crawled into Hank’s lap as he leaned back in the recliner and watched the six o’clock Eyewitness News. She was holding her well-thumbed “Mickey’s book.” As soon as Kim saw her, she ran in from the kitchen like a shot.
So with his two pale blonde seven-year old darlings snuggled up against him, Hank opened up “Mickey’s book” for the nightly ritual of the past two weeks. Not a book actually, just a brochure touting all the park’s attractions. But it had become a Holy Book of sorts for the twins and they never tired of paging through it. This had to be their twentieth guided tour in as many days and their blue eyes were just as wide and full of wonder this time as the first.
Only three days to go before they headed for Newark Airport and the 747 that would take them south to Orlando.
Hank had come to see Disney World as a religious experience for seven-year olds. Moslems had Mecca, Catholics had the Vatican, Japanese had Mount Fuji. Kids had Disney World on the East Coast and Disneyland on the West. Katie and Kim would start out on their first pilgrimage Thanksgiving morning.
He hugged them closer, absorbing their excitement. This was what life was all about. And he was determined to show them the best time of their lives. The sky was the limit. Any ride, any attraction, he didn’t care how many times they wanted to go on it, he’d take them. Four days of fantasy at Mickey’s Place with no real-world intrusions. No Times, no Daily News, no Eyewitness Special Reports, no background noise about wars or floods or muggings or bombings . . . or mousetraps.
Nothing about mousetraps.
The snap of the trap woke Hank with a start. It was faint, muffled by the intervening plasterboard and insulation. He must have been subconsciously attuned for it, because he heard it and Gloria didn’t.
He checked the clock—12:42—and tried to go back to sleep. Hopefully, that was the end of that.
He was just dozing back off when a second trap sprang with a muffled snap. Two of them. Sounded like he had a popular attic.
He didn’t know when he got to sleep again. It took a while.
He took a deep breath and stepped up a couple of rungs.
Yes, two of the traps had been sprung and two sets of little black eyes were staring at him. Eyes and little else. At first he thought it was a trick of the light, of the angle, but as he hurried the rest of the way up, he saw it was true.
The heads were still in the traps, but the bodies were gone. Little bits of gray fur were scattered here and there, but that was it. Sort of gave him the creeps. Something had eaten the dead mice. Something bigger than a mouse. A discomforting thought.
And that odor was worse. He still couldn’t identify it, but it was taking on a stomach-turning quality.
He decided it was time for an inspection tour of the grounds. His home was being invaded. He wanted to know how.
He found the little buggers’ route of invasion on the south side of the house. He had two heating-cooling zones inside, with one unit in the basement and one in the attic. The compressor-blowers for both were outside on the south side. The hoses to the upstairs unit ran up the side of the house to the attic through an aluminum leader.
That was how they were getting in.
There wasn’t much space in the leader, but a mouse can squeeze through the tiniest opening. The rule of thumb—as all mouse experts knew—was that if it can get its head through, the rest of the body can follow. They were crawling into the leader, climbing up along the hoses inside, and following them into the attic. Simple.
But what had eaten them?
Up above the spot where the hoses ran through the siding, he noticed the triangular gable vent hanging free on its right side. Something had pulled it loose. As he watched, a squirrel poked its head out, looked at him, then scurried up onto the roof. It ran a few feet along the edge, jumped onto an overhanging oak branch, and disappeared into the reddening leaves.