The Last Rakosh Read online

  He just hoped the performers and roustabouts would arrive with their extinguishers in time to keep the whole tent from going up.

  He didn't like this, didn't like endangering the tent or anybody nearby, but it was the only scheme he could come up with on such short notice. He would protect Vicky at any cost, and this was the only sure way he knew.

  He approached the "Sharkman" area warily from the blind end, then made a wide circle around to the front. Scar-lip was stretched out on the floor of the cage, sleeping, its right arm dangling through the bars. It opened its eyes as he neared. Their yellow was even duller than this afternoon. Its talons extended only part way as it made a half-hearted, almost perfunctory swipe in Jack's direction. Then it closed its eyes and let the arm dangle again. It didn't seem to have strength or the heart for anything more.

  Jack stopped and stared at the creature. And he knew.

  It's dying.

  He stood there a long time and watched Scar-lip doze in its cage. Was it sick or was something else ailing it? Some animals couldn’t live outside a pack. Jack had destroyed this thing’s nest and all its brothers and sisters along with it. Was this last rakosh dying of loneliness, or had it simply reached the end of its days? What was the life-span of a rakosh, anyway?

  Jack shifted the gas can in his hands and wondered if he was needed here. He’d torch a vital, aggressive, healthy rakosh without a qualm, because he knew if positions were reversed it would tear off his head without a second thought. But it seemed a pretty sure bet that Scar-lip would be history before long. So why endanger the carny folk with a fire?

  On the other hand . . . what if Scar-lip recovered and got free? It was a possibility. And he’d never forgive himself if it came after Vicky again. Jack had damn near died saving Vicky the last time—and he’d been lucky at that. Could he count on that kind of luck again?

  Uh-uh. Never count on luck.

  He began unscrewing the cap of the gasoline can but stopped when he heard voices . . . coming this way down the midway. He ducked for the shadows.

  "I tell you, Hank," said a voice that sounded familiar, "you should've seen the big wimp this afternoon. Something got it riled. It had the crowd six deep around its cage while it was up."

  Jack recognized the bald-headed ticket seller who'd prodded him back behind the rope this afternoon. The other man with him was taller, younger, but just as beefy, with a full head of sandy hair. He carried a bottle of what looked like cheap wine while the bald one carried a six-foot iron bar, sharpened at one end. Neither of them was walking too steadily.

  "Maybe we taught it a good lesson last night, huh, Bondy?" said the one called Hank.

  "Just lesson number one," Bondy said. "The first of many. Yessir, the first of many."

  They stopped before the cage. Bondy took a swig from the bottle and handed it back to Hank.

  "Look at it," Bondy said. "The big blue wimp. Thinks it can just sit around all day and sleep all night. No way, babe! Y’gotta earn your keep, wimp!" He took the sharp end of the iron bar and jabbed it at the rakosh. "Earn it!"

  The point pierced Scar-lip's shoulder. The creature moaned like a cow with laryngitis and rolled away. The bald guy kept jabbing at it, stabbing its back again and again, making it moan while Hank stood by, grinning.

  Jack turned and crept off through the shadows. The two carnies had found the only other thing that could harm a rakosh—iron. Fire and iron—they were impervious to everything else. Maybe that was another explanation for Scar-lip’s poor health—caged with iron bars.

  As Jack moved away, he heard Hank's voice rise over the tortured cries of the dying rakosh.

  "When's it gonna be my turn, Bondy? Huh? When's my turn?"

  The hoarse moans followed Jack out into the night. He stowed the can back in the trunk, and got as far as opening the car door. Then he stopped.

  "Shit!" he said and pounded the roof of the car. "Shit! Shit! Shit!"

  He slammed the door closed and trotted back to the freak show tent, repeating the word all the way.

  No stealth this time. He strode directly to the section he'd just left, pulled up the sidewall, and charged inside. Bondy still had the iron pike—or maybe he had it back again. Jack stepped up beside him just as he was preparing for another jab at the trapped, huddled creature. He snatched the pike from his grasp.

  "That's enough, asshole."

  Bondy looked at him wide-eyed, his forehead wrinkling up to where his hairline should have been. Probably no one had talked to him that way in a long, long time.

  "Who the fuck are you?"

  "Nobody you want to know right now. Maybe you should call it a night."

  Bondy took a swing at Jack's face. He telegraphed it by baring his teeth. Jack raised the rod between his face and the fist. Bondy screamed as his knuckles smashed against the iron, then did a knock-kneed walk in a circle with the hand jammed between his thighs, groaning in pain.

  Suddenly a pair of arms wrapped around Jack's torso, trapping him in a fleshy vise.

  "I got him, Bondy!" Hank's voice shouted from behind Jack's left ear. "I got him!"

  Twenty feet away, Bondy stopped his dance, looked up, and grinned. As he charged, Jack rammed his head backward, smashing the back of his skull into Hank's nose. Abruptly he was free. He still held the iron bar, so he angled the blunt end toward the charging Bondy and drove it hard into his solar plexus. The air whooshed out of him and he dropped to his knees with a groan, his face gray-green. Even his scalp looked sick.

  Jack glanced up and saw Scar-lip crouched at the front of the cage, gripping the bars, its yellow gaze flicking between him and the groaning Bondy, but lingering on Jack, as if trying to comprehend what he was doing, and why. Tiny rivulets of dark blood trailed down its skin.

  Jack whirled the pike 180 degrees and pressed the point against Bondy's chest.

  "What kind of noise am I going to hear when I poke you with this end?"

  Behind him Hank's voice, very nasal now, started shouting.

  "Hey, Rube! Hey, Rube!"

  As Jack was trying to figure out just what that meant, he gave the kneeling Bondy a poke with the pointed end—not enough to break the skin, but enough to scare him. He howled and fell back on the sawdust, screaming.

  "Don't! Don't!"

  Meanwhile, Hank had kept up his "Hey, Rube!" shouts. As Jack turned to shut him up, he found out what it meant.

  The tent was filling with carny folk. Lots of them, all running his way. In seconds he was surrounded. The workers he could handle, but the others, the performers, gathered in a crowd like this in the murky light, in various states of dress, were unsettling. The Snake Man, the Alligator Boy, the Bird Man, the green man from Mars, and others were all still in costume—at least Jack hoped they were costumes—and none of them looked too friendly.

  Hank was holding his bloody nose, wagging his finger at Jack. "Now you're gonna get it! Now you're gonna get it!"

  Bondy seemed to have a sudden infusion of courage. He hauled himself to his feet and started toward Jack with a raised fist.

  "You goddamn son of a—"

  Jack rapped the iron bar across the side of his bald head, staggering him. With an angry murmur, the circle of carny folk abruptly tightened.

  Jack whirled, spinning the pike around him. "Right," he said. "Who's next?"

  He hoped it was a convincing show. He didn't know what else to do. He’d taken some training in the martial use of the bamboo pole and nunchuks and the like; he wasn’t Bruce Lee with them, but he could do some damage with this pike. Trouble was, he had little room to maneuver, and less every second: the circle was tightening, slowly closing in on him like a noose.

  Jack searched for a weak spot, a point to break through and make a run for it. As a last resort, he always had the .45 caliber Semmerling strapped to his ankle.

  Then a deep voice rose above the angry noise of the crowd.

  "Here, here! What's this? What’s going on?"

  The carny folk quiete
d, but not before Jack heard a few voices whisper "the boss" and "Oz." They parted to make way for a tall man, six-three at least, lank dark hair, sallow complexioned, his pear-shaped body swathed in a huge silk robe embroidered with Oriental designs. Although he looked doughy about the middle, the large hands that protruded from his sleeves were thin and bony at the wrist.

  The boss—Jack assumed he was the Ozymandias Prather who ran the show—stopped at the inner edge of the circle and took in the scene. His expression was oddly slack but his eyes were bright, dark, cold, more alive than the rest of him. Those eyes finally settled on Jack.

  "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

  "Protecting your property," Jack said, gambling.

  "Oh, really?" The smile was sour. "How magnanimous of you." Abruptly his expression darkened. "Answer the question! I can call the police or we can deal with this in our own way."

  "Fine," Jack said. He upped his ante by throwing the pike at the boss's feet. "Maybe I had it wrong. Maybe you pay baldy here to poke holes in your attractions."

  The big man froze for an instant, then slowly wheeled toward the ticket seller who was rubbing the welt on the side of his head.

  "Hey, boss—" Bondy began, but the tall man silenced him with a flick of his hand.

  The boss looked down at the pike where sawdust clung to the dark fluid coating its point, then up at the crouching rakosh with its dozens of oozing wounds. Color darkened his cheeks as his head rotated back toward Bondy.

  "You harmed this creature, Mr. Bond?"

  The boss’s eyes and tone were so full of menace that Jack couldn’t blame the bald man for quailing.

  "We was only trying to get it to put on more of a show for the customers."

  Jack glanced around and noticed that Hank had faded away. He saw the performers inching toward the rakosh cage, making sympathetic sounds as they took in its condition. When they turned back, their cold stares were focused on Bondy instead of Jack.

  "You hurt him," said the green man.

  "He is our brother," the snake man said in a soft sibilant voice, "and you hurt him many times."

  Brother? Jack wondered. What are they talking about? What’s going on here?

  The boss continued to pin Bondy with his glare. "And you feel you can get more out of the creature by mistreating it?"

  "We thought—"

  "I know what you thought, Mr. Bond. And many of us know too well how the Sharkman felt. We've all known mistreatment during the course of our lives, and we don't look kindly upon it. You will retire to your quarters immediately and wait for me there."

  "Fuck that!" Bondy said. "And fuck you, Oz! I’m blowin’ the show! Ain’t goin’ nowhere but outta here!"

  The boss gestured to the alligator boy and the bird man. "Escort Mr. Bond to my trailer. See that he waits outside until I get there."

  Bondy tried to duck through the crowd but the green man blocked his way until the other two grabbed his arms. He struggled but was no match for them.

  "You can’t do this, Oz!" he shouted, fear wild in his eyes as he was none too gently dragged away. "You can’t keep me here if I wanna go!"

  Oz ignored him and turned his attention to Jack. "And that leaves us with you, Mr. . . . ?"

  "Jack."

  "Jack what?"

  "Just Jack."

  "Very well, Mr. Jack. What is your interest in this matter?"

  "I don't like bullies."

  It wasn’t an answer, but it would have to do. Wasn’t about to tell the boss he’d come to French fry his Sharkman.

  "Does anyone? But why should you be interested in this particular creature? Why should you be here at all?"

  "Not too often you get to see a real live rakosh."

  When he saw the boss blink and snap his head toward the cage, Jack had a sudden uneasy feeling that he'd made a mistake. How big a mistake, he wasn’t quite sure.

  "What did you say?" The glittering eyes fixed on him again. "What did you call it?"

  "Nothing," Jack said.

  "No, I heard you. You called it a rakosh." Oz stepped over to the cage and stared into Scar-lip's yellow eyes. "Is that what you are, my friend . . . a rakosh? How fascinating!" He turned to the rest of his employees. "It's all right. You can all go back to bed. Everything is under control. I wish to speak to this gentleman in private before he goes."

  "You didn't know what it was?" Jack said as the crowd dispersed.

  Oz continued to stare at the rakosh. "Not until this moment. I thought they were a myth."

  "How did you find it?" Jack said. The answer was important—until this afternoon he’d been sure he’d killed Scar-lip.

  "The result of a telephone call. Someone phoned me last summer—woke me in the middle of the night—and told me that if I searched the waters off Governors Island I might find ‘a fascinating new attraction.’"

  Last summer . . . the last time he’d seen Scar-lip and the rest of his species. "Who called you? Was it a woman?"

  "No. Why do you ask?"

  "Just wondering."

  Besides Gia, Vicky, Abe, and himself, the only other living person who knew about the rakoshi had been Kolabati.

  "Something in the caller’s voice, his utter conviction, compelled me to do as he said. Came the dawn I was on the water with some of my people. We found ourselves vying with groups of souvenir-hunters looking for wreckage from a ship that had exploded and burned the night before. We discovered our friend here floating in a clump of debris. I assumed the creature was dead, but when I found it was alive, I had it brought ashore. It looked rather vicious so I put it into an old tiger cage."

  "Lucky for you."

  The boss smiled, showing yellow teeth. "I should say so. It almost tore the cage apart. But since then its health has followed a steady downhill course. We've offered it fish, fowl, beef, horse meat, even vegetables—although one look at those teeth and there's no question that it's a carnivore—but no matter what we've tried, its health continues to fail."

  Jack now had an idea why Scar-lip was dying. Rakoshi required a very specific species of flesh to thrive. And this one wasn't getting it.

  "I brought in a veterinary expert," Oz went on, "one I have learned to rely on for his discretion, but he could not alter the creature’s downhill course."

  "Well . . . " Jack said, trying to sound tentative. "I saw a picture of one in a book once. I . . . I think it looked like this. But I'm not sure. I could be wrong."

  "But you're not wrong," the boss said, turning and staring into his eyes. He lowered his gaze to Jack’s chest, fixing on the area where the rakosh had scarred him. "And I believe you have far more intimate knowledge of this creature than you are willing to admit."

  Jack shrugged, uncomfortable with the scrutiny, especially since it wasn’t the first time someone had stared at his chest this way.

  "But it doesn’t matter!" Oz laughed and spread his arms. "A rakosh! How wonderful! And it's all mine!"

  Jack glanced at Scar-lip's slouched, wasted form. Yeah, but not for long.

  He heard a noise like a growl and turned. The sight of one of the burly roustabouts standing in the exit flap startled him. He looked like he was waving good bye to his boss.

  "Excuse me," Oz said and hurried toward the exit, his silk robe fluttering around him.

  Jack turned to find Scar-lip staring at him with its cold yellow eyes. Still want to finish me off, don’t you. It’s mutual, pal. But it looks like I’m going to outlast you by a few years. A few decades.

  The longer he remained with the wasted creature, the more convinced he was that Scar-lip was on its last legs. He didn’t have to light him up. The creature was a goner,

  Jack kept tabs on Oz out of the corner of his eye. After half a minute of hushed, one-sided conversation—all the employee did was nod every so often—the boss man returned.

  "Sorry. I had to revise instructions on an important errand. But I do want to thank you. You have provided a bright moment in a very disappointing st
op." His gaze drifted. "Usually we do extremely well in Monroe, but this trip . . . it seems a house disappeared last month—vanished, foundation and all, amid strange flashing lights one night. The locals are still spooked."

  "How about that," Jack said, turning away. "I think I’ll be going."

  "But you must allow me to reward you for succoring the poor creature, and for identifying it. Free passes, perhaps."

  "Not necessary," Jack said and headed for the exit.

  "By the way," Oz said. "How can I get in touch with you if I wish?"

  Jack called back over his shoulder. "You can’t."

  A final glance at Scar-lip showed the rakosh still staring at him, then he parted the canvas flaps and emerged into the fresh air again.

  A strange mix of emotions swirled around him as he returned to the car. Glad to know Scar-lip would be taking a dirt nap soon, but the very fact that it still lived, even if it was too weak to be a threat to Vicky, bothered him. He’d prefer it dead. He’d keep a close watch on this show, check back every night or two until he knew without a doubt that Scar-lip had breathed its last.

  Something else bothered him. Couldn’t put his finger on it, but he had this vaguely uncomfortable feeling that he never should have come back here.

  3

  The following night Jack drove out to Monroe for another look at Scar-lip.

  The rain started as soon as he stepped out of the car. It came in tropical style. One minute simply threatening, the next Jack was treading through a waterfall. He arrived at the gate soaked and mud splattered and in a foul mood. At least the main tent was still up, although the front flap was down and no one was selling tickets. Place looked pretty much deserted.

  Jack slipped through the flap. The stale air trapped under the leaking canvas was redolent of wet hay and strange sweat. His feet squished within his wet deck shoes as he made his way toward Scar-lip’s cage, but stopped short, stopped stone cold dead when he saw what was behind the bars.

  Scar-lip, all right, but the creature he'd seen last night had been only the palest reflection of this monster. The rakosh rearing up in the cage and rattling the bars now was full of vitality and ferocity, had unmarred, glistening blue-black skin, and bright yellow eyes that glowed with a fierce inner light.