The Survivor: A Novel Part 30

He did not know what had drawn him here.

The memory returned, less a thought than a primal impulse, a fury of clawed impressions scratching at his spinal cord. Around midnight he'd entered her room to check on her. Those pale thin legs, the swaying feet-a familiar prison tableau. He'd stood breathless in the doorway, all the wrong details coming into painful focus. The dusting of drywall across her shoulders from where the fan had been wrenched from the ceiling. The rasp of the pull chain, still swaying. Those perfect teeth, gleaming above her slack jaw. The next he recalled, he had her down and across his lap. One of his hands rested beneath her slender, bruised neck, the other clutching his heart as if to hold it together. His chest convulsed, a silent shaking. He thought he might be dying. Choking on his own air, he felt the moisture on his cheeks. He had not cried since his boyhood and had forgotten the sensation. He made not a sound.

After the parade of paramedics and firemen, the cops with their endless questions and looks of thinly veiled suspicion, that spic Abara had arrived with another agent to sit on the couch-his couch-and make phone calls. The house was no longer his own; medics and officers stomped about and used the toilet and left the hand towels on the counter. Nastya was conveyed out finally in a white body bag, strapped to a gurney, and Pavlo was given a phone number to call in the morning.

He'd closed the door on the last intruder, listening to it click shut, the dividing line between the present and the rest of his life. He walked back into the kitchen, filled a gla.s.s with water, and drank it down. For seventeen years, every gla.s.s of water he'd had, each piece of bread, every bit of nourishment, he'd taken as a father. No more.

He rinsed the gla.s.s, dried it carefully with a towel, and set it back in the cupboard. When he turned, his men had materialized behind him. It was safe now that the officials were gone.

With its seams and bulges, Yuri's face looked like a rotted piece of fruit. Dima and Valerik remained behind the big man, as was their habit. But Misha, Misha stood to the side, clear-eyed and well rested. His round, boyish face held a quiet contentment. He'd waited his turn, and now the bell was about to ring.

Pavlo walked over to him and brought his face close to Misha's. Misha did not flinch, didn't so much as blink.

"There is no trial now," Pavlo said. "No witness list. There is one thing only, one thing left in this world."

"I understand," Misha said.

"My daughter is gone. And his daughter lives." The skin of Pavlo's face tightened like a stretched hide, bringing a dull ache to his temples. "You take from him what he has taken from me. And then you keep taking, piece by piece."

"That is what you brought me here for," Misha said.

"There is no more here," Pavlo said. "No more America. There is only vorovskoi mir."

Misha nodded, keeping his head bowed an extra beat, a show of respect. With both hands Pavlo cradled his chin and lifted his head. He kissed him on one full cheek, then the other. Still he did not release Misha's face. Not until he'd leaned in and hissed, "Let them hate as long as they fear."

Now, sweating in the dense air of the banya, he pa.s.sed several valets gathering plates and mugs from the night and preparing for the new day. All of them stepped aside and lowered their eyes as Pavlo walked by. Word had spread.

He entered the rows of lockers and stood before his own, removing one loafer, then the other. He laid his suit jacket beside them on the wide bench. A door banged open, and drunken voices echoed around the tile-club revelers, here to detoxify after an all-night drunk. They stumbled around the corner, unshaven and reeking of alcohol. Pavlo stood, facing his locker, pus.h.i.+ng the b.u.t.tons of his dress s.h.i.+rt through the holes.

"Move your s.h.i.+t over," one of the young men said in Russian. "You don't own the whole bench."

Keeping his eyes forward, Pavlo pulled off his s.h.i.+rt, revealing his blue arms and chest. At the sight of his tattoos, the young man backpedaled so violently that he lost his footing on the slick tile and fell back into his friends, who propped him up. Kowtowing, they retreated, calling out apologies and expressions of remorse. Pavlo kept undressing, his eyes never leaving his locker, and a moment later the door boomed a second time and it was silent again.

Once naked, Pavlo reached for a comb he kept on the top shelf of his locker and sc.r.a.ped back his hair, already wet from the humidity. He did it again and again, pressing the comb hard enough to bruise the scalp, feeling the plastic teeth scour his skull.

Then he padded through the antechamber, past the claw-foot tubs and icy plunge pools. Beneath a dripping faucet, a heap of thin birchwood branches soaked in a wooden barrel. He chose one with especially dense foliage and shook it in a.s.sessment, cool drops dotting his cheeks. It would do.

In the banya itself, the firebox glowed, the throat of a demon. A worker, half invisible in the steam, hurled logs in.

"Hotter," Pavlo said, and the mist-draped form nodded and fed the monster some more.

Pavlo set down the branch and stretched, first his hamstrings, then his groin. Leaning into the burn, he emitted a deep open-mouthed exhalation, expunging the swamp gas from his belly up through the tube of his throat. On the hiss of his air, he could smell his own insides, cigarettes and mortality. His skin was aflame, the heat at him with its pitchfork and horns.

"Hotter!" he roared.

The form bent and rose, hurling more logs into the mouth of the firebox.

Sweat beading on his skin, Pavlo s.n.a.t.c.hed up the birchwood branch and slapped it against his legs. The sting was unearthly, divine, bringing up the toxins, releasing them through his skin.

He flailed and whipped at the tattooed shackles clamped around his ankles, purging the poisons of his body. That was what the birchwood was for, of course, but he knew now, in the hot center of the pain, why he had come.

In the Zone the worst sin a vor could commit was breaking the thieves' code, disgracing the brotherhood. If he did not stand by his decorations, they were taken from him. With sandpaper. Shards of gla.s.s. A lump of brick. Sometimes the offender was held by five men, a red-hot frying pan pressed to the back of his hand to black out the pigment beneath. So this, then, was why Pavlo had been drawn to the inferno.

With the branch he continued to strike at himself. His hands, the ring tattoos. Slapping at his chest, beating the eight-pointed star, the ornate church domes marking his internments, the scrolled lettering across his ribs-LET ME BE DEAD TO YOU. Sweat flew from his nose, his chin; it puddled at his feet. He flailed harder, slashed at the tulip thrice wrapped with barbed wire, tried to carve the bare-toothed scowl from the wolf capping his shoulder. And then, doubling over, whipping the branch over his shoulder, raking the leaves across the inked eyes on his back. His screams turned to animal roars, cords standing out on his neck, each blow intensifying the heat until it seemed his entire body glowed like an ember.

"Hotter!" he cried, but the form was now lost entirely to the thickening steam.

The leaves shushed and rattled, a primitive instrument beating an age-old rhythm. Bits of foliage broke off, sticking to his red flesh. His sinuses burned; his lungs pulsed. He gasped in the heady scent of released pain and fresh-peeled skin, intoxicated on the taste of his own agony, choking on the knife-sharp purity of the air. He lashed at the abrasions, the sharp leaf edges finding greater purchase, rending the ink from his flesh. Screaming, he battered at his grief, beating the imperfection from himself, blood weeping from his brands.

Finally he paused in heart-arresting exhaustion, his chest heaving, his face awash with tears and sweat, and let the stained birchwood branch fall from his fist. Burgundy drops spattered the tile at his feet.

He stared down at himself through the swirling steam. His decorations moved, alive with veins of blood. They drifted on his skin, rippling and breathing, and the revelation lit him from within: He hadn't gouged the decorations from his body.

He had reclaimed them.

Chapter 47.

"Nevada?" Cielle offered.

"Dude, the Grand Canyon is epic."

Janie rubbed her temples. "First of all, Jason, the Grand Canyon is in Arizona-"

"Really?"

"Last I checked. And second, we're not really embarking on a sightseeing tour."

Leaving just before first light, they'd driven a short ways up State Route 2 toward Eagle Rock before pulling over to convene at a roadside diner. They required a game plan, but there was another reason Nate had opted for the early rest stop; his hands had grown loose and sloppy on the steering wheel, and he doubted his ability to hold the Jeep on the road. Forced to make a frank a.s.sessment, he had to concede that his body felt worse than it had yet, more in thrall to the illness. And not just the muscles, but dizziness, weakness, a dull throbbing in his stomach.

On the way to the corner booth now, he lagged behind with Janie to tell her softly that he needed her to take over at the wheel, and she nodded her solemn consent.

"Maybe we shouldn't risk going on the road," she said in a low voice. "We can't be running around with you if-"

"No way," Nate said. "If it gets to that, leave me at a bus stop."

At this, Janie grimaced, unamused.

"We have to get out of the state," he continued quietly. "As far away as possible. Besides, where the h.e.l.l would we stay around here? Breaking and entering is too dangerous, as we just learned."

Cielle and Jason reached the table ahead, Cielle watching the heated if hushed exchange across the restaurant, and so Nate and Janie cranked neutral expressions onto their faces, forged forward, and sat down to order breakfast.

Sitting with his back to the wall, handgun in his jacket, and several thousand dollars in cash stuffed into his pockets, Nate kept watch of the truckers and postal officers at the counter, sipping their coffee and forking hotcakes. Cielle picked at her food. Jason stuffed another giant bite into his mouth; after asking if the eggs were organic (no) and if the biscuits were made with lard (yes), he had sanctimoniously settled on a salad. With bacon.

Nate set his pills next to his coffee mug in a neat line. The antibiotics again, another five-hundred-milligram surge to ravage his stomach further, and good old reliably ineffective riluzole. The Lovin' Spoonful caroled from the vintage-style jukebox: Be-lieve in the magic that kin set you freee. Would that he could.

Cielle looked across at Nate. "Why are you so quiet?"

"Don't mean to be." Troublingly, his voice was weak; he couldn't get any power behind it. With shaking hands he reached for the pills. It took some concentration to bring them to his mouth. He washed them down with a sip of decaf.

"He's fine," Janie said, too quickly. "Just exhausted like the rest of us."

The coffee's bitter aftertaste lingered, and instinctively he reached for the sugar packs. It wasn't until he had one in his weak, trembling grasp that he realized the challenge before him-of tearing it open, pouring the crystals, stirring. He flapped the pack against his knuckles, trying for casual, but Cielle's brown eyes remained on him, not buying the routine. He let the sugar fall, and her stare dropped to his shaking fingers. Too obvious now to take his hands off the table. He strained, willing them to be still, but was rescued by Janie, who reached over and clasped them as if romantically, firming them and hiding the tremor.

Thankfully, Jason's obliviousness could be counted on. "I still can't believe that chick-the dude's daughter-offed herself."

Behind the counter, sausage links landed on the grill with a sizzle and a puff of steam. "She was just seventeen," Nate said.

Cielle said, "She was a drunk-driving psychopath."

"She was still a kid," Nate said. "Like both of you."

Cielle looked away sharply.

Freeing his hands from Janie's, Nate reached for his coffee again but only succeeded in slopping some over the rim. He dried his hands on a napkin, all too aware of his daughter across from him. He did not want to look up, but finally he did. Sure enough, she was lasered in on his hands.

"There's this experimental therapy." She jerked in a breath. "In Switzerland."

"Oh, honey," he said. "No."

But she drove on. "I looked it up on the Internet."

"No, Cielle. There's nothing that'll-"

"No? Just no? If we live through this, you can't f.u.c.king try it?"

"Watch your language," Janie said.

Cielle glared at Nate. "G.o.d, you wonder why I hate you." She banged her fist on the table, making the plates and cups jump. A spoon bounced off into Jason's lap. The diner silenced, the patrons' collective focus pulling toward the corner booth, and then Cielle stormed out, leaving the door jingling cheerily. Nate tracked her through the window. Casper awaited her in the Jeep, tail knocking the headrests.

"At least she hates you," Jason said quietly.

Nate said, numbly, "Huh?"

Jason tugged his collar down in the front to reveal a necklace tattoo formed of words and letters: OLD b.a.s.t.a.r.d 1.23.70-5.10.2010. "Cirrhosis," he said. "Dying just made him meaner. I told myself I hated him, but I really wanted him just to f.u.c.king recognize, you know, something in me...." He shook his head. "Never mind. I'm just saying. Hate's an emotion, you know?"

He scooted out and went after her.

Nate drank a sip of water. His face was twitching, and it took a moment for him to realize that it was not from being upset.

Janie's voice, as if from a deep well: "-okay?"

Hand pressed to his cheek, he nodded. He could feel the muscle jumping beneath his palm. Fasciculation, the doctors called it. He had been warned.

"Just need ... bathroom." His voice, even weaker than before.

He weaved a bit on his feet but managed a course for the men's room, closing the door behind him with his hip. The room was dank, swirling with black flies. He regarded his face in the rust-flecked mirror, the twitch just below his right eye. He squinted, trying to make it stop, but still the skin rippled. A swell of light-headedness came on, static dotting his view along with the flies, and he staggered, banging into the hand-towel dispenser. The room blurred.

Fresh air. He needed fresh air.

Shoving through the bathroom door, he took a hard right and moved swiftly through the kitchen, nearly knocking the rear screen from its hinges. The smell from the Dumpster swarmed him, and he took a knee next to crates stuffed with rotting heads of cabbage. He tried to rise, but nausea kept him down. Refuse crowded in on him, his view swirling drunkenly, and then the ground came up hard against his cheek.

His blinks grew longer. Each breath rocked the crumpled napkin an inch from his mouth. A masculine figure approached, off kilter and blurry, hoisting up his jeans like a cowboy. Blood pattered the ground before his combat boots. He had a hole straight through the middle of him, intestines dangling like marionette strings, the sun s.h.i.+ning right through him. When he crouched, the hole disappeared and a shadow fell across Nate, the shadow of death. He looked up and saw Charles's face peering down, a hint of sorrow hiding behind the wise-a.s.s scowl.

"See ya soon, podnah." Charles reached out and thumbed Nate's eyelids closed.

Chapter 48.

"No hospital," Nate murmured, slumped in the pa.s.senger seat, the window cool against his cheek. The view outside scrolled by, a blur.

Janie honked and stomped on the gas pedal, veering around a Mercedes. "You lost your say in the matter when you pa.s.sed out in an alley."

Cielle's voice, high and tremulous, came from the backseat. "Are you okay, Dad? Is he gonna be okay?"

"I'm ... fine, honey," Nate said.

Jason: "He doesn't sound fine."

The noise of Cielle smacking him. "Shut the f.u.c.k up, Jason."

"... where...?" Nate managed between swells of nausea.

"We're going to my hospital," Janie said, "if this a.s.shole in an Audi in front of us ever learns to drive."

"No ... first place they'll look...."

"I know the doctors, the intake nurses. I can get you in without putting you in the system. You'll be John Doe. It's our best bet."

Already they were redlining up smog-drenched Van Nuys Boulevard. Sure enough, the long white block of the Sherman Oaks Hospital zoomed past. Despite its unpromising location, the community hospital had top-notch staff who serviced a full gamut of the injured and the ailing. Meeting Janie here for lunch early in their marriage, Nate was as likely to stumble across a gardener cradling a severed, hankie-wrapped finger as a celebrity walking her kid out of the world-cla.s.s burn unit.

"... Cielle shouldn't ... with us..."

"She can wait in the park up the street."

"I can drive," Jason said brightly.

"Fine." Janie tugged a wad of hundreds from her pocket and tossed it back at Cielle. "Take the Jeep and the dog. I'll call you every hour."