The Fear In Yesterday's rings

Chapter Ten

Our most immediate need was to put as much distance between us and our pursuers-human, at least-as possible, and so we rode through the night, traversing vast fields planted with corn, wheat, and sorghum, avoiding farmhouses. Mabel was finding this vast cornucopia very much to her liking: she would frequently stop to graze and then drink whenever we came to a river or stream, which was fairly frequently. Clouds covered the moon, which was to our advantage-at least in the few remaining hours of darkness left to us. Occasionally, I thought I heard the distant whump-whump-whump of a helicopter, but it might have been my imagination; whatever was making the sound never came close to us, and there were no searchlights piercing the velvetlike darkness. We remained shrouded in night.

Dawn found us on the gently sloping bank of a shallow river, with Mabel sucking up gallons of water to wash down her recent, predawn repast of a quarter ton or so of hay. Harper's head was resting on my back, her arms locked tightly around my waist, even in sleep. Mabel continued to be completely cooperative and responsive to my commands, and even seemed to be aware of the tawny death following us; throughout the night, she had occasionally stopped of her own accord, turned to raise her trunk and flare out her enormous ears-the clear warning signals of an African elephant.

Across the river, to the northeast, a forest of the giant silos of a grain elevator complex rose into the gold-streaked blue sky of what looked to be the beginning of a clear, dry day. The lobox that had been trailing right behind us through the night now brazenly emerged from the dawn shadows and tall grass a hundred yards or so to our right, ambled unconcernedly up to the river's edge, and began to drink. When it finished, it lay down on its belly and fixed me with its eerie, humanlike gaze. Perhaps instinct, a kind of racial memory percolating in its retrieved genes, told it that it wasn't a good idea to get too close to a beast that was even bigger than a mammoth or mastodon, which meant that we had a kind of standoff. The lobox seemed to be smart enough to know that sooner or later I was going to have to get off the elephant or fall off in sleep, and then it would have at me.

Whether or not Garth and Harper might be able to get off with impunity was an open question that seemed better left unanswered, especially in light of the fact that by now the animal probably associated the two of them with me, and it simply liked human flesh. In any case, there was no place to go even if they could get off.

What it could not know, this creature waiting patiently to kill me, but what I was certain of, was that it would not have its home, and customary sexual reward, to return to.

"Where is everybody?" Garth asked.

"A good question," I replied, gazing around me at the empty fields, sky, and horizon.

There was a pause, then: "How do you suppose a formidable critter like that lobox ever managed to get itself extinct?"

"How the hell do I know? What am I, the answer man? You're just full of good questions this morning."

"Oooh. Do I detect a note of crankiness?"

"Sorry, Garth. If that little old guy down there was waiting around to eat you for breakfast, you might be a little cranky too. I know you're having a great time, and I don't mean to spoil it."

"I think "somebody here woke up on the wrong side of the elephant."

"I said I was sorry."

When Mabel had drunk her fill, she sucked up one last twenty-gallon load of water, curled back her trunk, and proceeded to spray all twenty gallons over the riders on her back. It was a trick she'd picked up during the night, and judging from the deep, vibrating rumble that shook her belly each time she did it, I guessed that it gave her enormous pleasure. Only Harper, curled up behind me, had managed to stay relatively dry.

"Hey, Mongo."

I glanced back at my brother, who was wiping his wet face with a sodden shirt sleeve. His long, wheat-colored hair was pasted to his forehead, his shoulders. It was my turn to smile. "Yes, dear older sibling?"

"I'm getting a bit tired of this spraying shit. Is there any way you can get your gray lady friend here to shut off the tap?"

"She's just playing," I said, turning back and looking over at the lobox; if I didn't know better, I'd have sworn the creature with the saber teeth was amused.

"Well, how about getting her to play some other game? I'm soaked. I'd hate to think that I'd escaped from whatever peril Zelezian had planned for me only to die of pneumonia on the back of an elephant wandering through Nebraska. It's positively undignified."

I shrugged, replied, "I don't know how to get her to stop-and I'm not sure it would be a good idea to try. Mabel only does what she wants to do, and I wouldn't want to get her irritated. If it wasn't for her, we'd all be back there somewhere in cages, waiting for the Zelezians to dispose of us at their convenience. You shouldn't look a gift elephant in the mouth."

"Jesus, brother, half the time you're whacking the shit out of her to get her to do what you want her to do. So why don't you just whack the end of her trunk the next time she shoves it up here to squirt us?"

"You weren't listening, Garth. She might not like it if I did that. Mabel only thinks I'm whacking the shit out of her. Actually, she hardly feels it. The whacks are commands which she only obeys if she's in the mood. I've never known Mabel to be this mellow, but don't ever forget that she's an African elephant. The showers may be her way of reminding us-me-who's really in charge. If she gets cranky, we're all liable to end up on the ground as lobox food."

Garth grunted. "Your point is well taken, Mongo." He paused, and I could sense that he was looking around. "Besides, it probably won't be too long before we have more serious things to worry about-like being shot off Mabel's back."

"You got that right."

Harper stirred, then hugged me tight, sat up, and glanced around her. "Shit," she said when she saw the lobox. "He's still there."

"Oh, yeah."

"Where are we, Robby?"

"Somewhere in Nebraska."

"What are we going to do?"

"Now, there's a subject Garth and I were just warming up to."

Garth said, "The lobox is only part of the problem, Harper. The police don't seem to be after us; maybe they were called off. If they were after us, there'd have been helicopters with searchlights after the first hour, and we'd be in custody right now. If that was a copter we heard during the night, it was privately owned. It might have belonged to the people Mongo keeps referring to as Zelezian's sponsors. It wasn't really equipped for night flying."

Harper shuddered. "I wish we were in custody."

"That makes three of us," I said, shielding my eyes against the rising sun as I glanced again toward the northeast. My attention kept wandering back to the grain elevators. "With that lobox trotting along behind us, we'd have the proof we need-and an explanation for two snakebitten gunmen, one squashed Zelezian, and disturbing the peace with a purloined elephant. That's why the cops aren't after us. But, for sure, Luther and the people backing that whole weapons development operation are going to be seriously on our case now that the sun is up. We certainly won't be hard to track, considering the stomped crops and the tons of elephant droppings we've left behind. If they use a plane or helicopter, they'll pick up our trail two minutes after they're in the air."

"Maybe we should start looking for a phone," Harper said, and laughed nervously. "Since we can't get down, we'll ask Mabel to make the call."

"Luther closed down that circus five minutes after we disappeared into the corn field," Garth said, half to himself. He was musing, thinking like the cop he had been for so many years. "Since troopers aren't swarming all over the countryside, Mon-go's right about their being protected by some powerful people. There'll probably be an established escape route for getting Zelezian, his people, and the lobox breeding stock out of the country-probably into Canada by tractor-trailer and then a plane back to Switzerland. Everything else in the circus would be abandoned, the animals left in pens or trucks. The breeding stock may already be on its way to Canada, but Luther and a posse of gunmen will most definitely be searching for us."

"Why would Luther take a chance on being caught?" Harper asked. "Why wouldn't he just leave too, while the leaving is good?"

"Maybe because I killed his father," I said, "but certainly because of that lobox over there." The beast raised its head, as if it knew it was being discussed, and yawned lazily; at that moment, except for its six-inch-long canines, it could have been mistaken for somebody's family dog. "Luther's the only one who can control it. He trained it too well-or he never fully realized just how really tenacious a lobox can be when primed to track and kill. He might be willing to leave us alive as long as we had no proof to back up anything we might say, but a live-or even a dead-lobox changes the whole equation. That's too much of a loose end to leave behind. He needs to either get it back or see it destroyed completely-say, by fire, or any other method that will ensure there won't be an autopsy.

"A lobox is a multimillion-dollar weapons system, valuable in its own right-in some ways, probably a lot more valuable than your average missile. But even more important than the dollar value of a single lobox is the fact that they can't allow that weapons system to fall into the wrong hands-meaning anyone's but their own. Also, if we have a live lobox for show-and-tell, the entire Zelezian weapons empire could fall apart; Switzerland will turn a blind eye to a lot of things involving money, but not for a resident or citizen who embarrasses them by running a Swiss company that would turn a savage, wild beast loose on innocent people just to see what will happen. Interpol would probably get involved, and in this country, congressional committees will probably be falling all over themselves trying to find out who's responsible for the fact that a band of foreign assassins slipped into this country so easily and then had virtual free rein of the place. If it turns out that the CIA is involved, which it probably is, all hell will break loose. For those people, an awful lot depends on getting that lobox back and seeing us dead. Which leaves us with the problem of finding someplace safe to hide with an elephant, and doing it quickly."

Garth asked, "What about those grain elevators over there?"

"I've been looking at those," I replied, giving a noncommittal shrug. "An empty grain elevator, or maybe some other building in a grain storage complex, could certainly solve our problems, at least for a while. But what about the people there?"

"Don't you think somebody would call the police if they saw three people riding around on the back of an elephant?" Harper asked. "That's what we want, isn't it?"

"Sure," I said, reaching behind me to squeeze her thigh. "But more innocent people could die if we go over there. So far, the lobox only seems interested in me, but that could change. Nobody really knows what a lobox will do. This one's been out of the barn a long time now, and Nate Button said that its natural instinct is to kill people. If it gets bored hanging around waiting for me to get down, and there are other people around, it might just start ripping them up. As far as we know it hasn't eaten for a couple of days, so it's got to be hungry. I don't see how we can take a chance with other people's lives."

"Agreed," Garth said. "But I'd say there's a better than even chance there's nobody there. You don't come home to these parts as often as I do, Mongo. Farms are in bad shape. I'll bet that half those farmhouses we passed during the night are abandoned. There are a lot of empty grain elevators in the Midwest, so that complex we're looking at may not even be in use. By the time we're within a mile or so, we should be able to see if there's anybody around. If there is, then we turn Mabel around and ride away. The way that lobox has been dogging you, there's no reason to believe it will run off now. If the silos are empty, we take up residence in one; if there are people around, at least somebody may call the police. It seems like a reasonable course of action. We're going to have to do something quick, Mongo, because we're running out of time."

"Right," I said, and tapped Mabel low on the forehead with the end of the hickory trapeze bar.

Mabel still seemed to be enjoying her strange outing and feeling cooperative, because she unhesitatingly lumbered forward into the river. The water in the middle reached her chest, but then began to grow shallower. It was the deepest body of water we had forded, and it certainly would have been a pleasure to discover that loboxes couldn't swim, or positively hated water, but there was no such luck; when I leaned out and looked back, I could see that the creature was still tracking us at a distance of fifteen yards, swimming through the water with powerful strokes.

"It looks like loboxes are good swimmers," Garth said wryly. "You might want to write that down in your notebook."

"If I did have a notebook, I'd probably throw it at you. If and when we do find a safe place to hole up before the bad guys come and shoot us all, we have to start giving some serious thought to what we're going to do about that damned thing behind us."

Harper yawned, then once again wrapped her arms around my waist and rested her head on my back. "Make him yours, Robby," she mumbled sleepily.

"Say what?"

"Make him yours; take control away from Luther. Tame him."

"You've got to be kidding me."

I could feel her shaking her head. "You know I'm not."

"That sounds like a hell of a good idea to me, Mongo," Garth said.

"Hey, brother, are you still enjoying your elephant ride? Anyone who ever met the Fredericksons always said you were the biggest kid in the family, always making jokes like that. I was always too busy being a dwarf to have any fun."

Harper laughed. "Do you two always go at it like this?"

Garth said, "Mongo always acts like this when he thinks there's some beastie that wants to eat him. He can't take pressure." He paused, then added seriously: "I do think it sounds like a good idea, Mongo."

"That's because she didn't suggest that you tame him."

Naturally, Garth paid no attention to me. "Now, that would really be something, you managing to put that thing on a leash. It would also solve a lot of our problems. Can it be done?"

"No," I said curtly. "It already has a master. I'm just a meal to it, and it has to be getting very hungry by now."

"Yes," Harper said in her dreamy voice. "Robby could do it if he really put his mind to the problem, Garth. You've never seen him work with animals; I have. I've seen him work tigers, bears, elephants-you've seen what he managed to do with this big thing that's our current mode of transportation."

"I didn't work them," I said tersely, glancing up at the sky for signs of a plane or helicopter, "I played with them. It was just a hobby, Harper. They were dangerous, sure, but their primary instinct wasn't to look on me as an entree. Those animals hadn't been trained to kill, and they certainly hadn't been specifically primed to kill me."

"My money's on you, Mongo," Garth said, and I didn't have to look around to see the grin on his face; it was in his voice. "The more I think about it, the more I like the idea. I'd love to see the look on Luther's face if you brought his pet back to him. The son-of-a-bitch would probably have a stroke."

"I'd love to see the look on his face just before the lobox he trained bites his face off. Harper said. She no longer sounded sleepy.

"I don't have the time or inclination to explain to you people the dozen or so good reasons why it can't be done," I said impatiently. "You're both out of your minds."

Garth had been right about the grain elevators. When we were still at least two miles away, it was possible to see not only that the complex was abandoned but that it hadn't been used in years. Half of the enormous silos were crumbling or had holes in them. All the windows in the various buildings had been boarded up.

We came out of a field onto what had once been the main access road to the complex; it was now mostly washed out and filled with potholes. Mabel rambled up the road, and we entered the complex at almost the same time as a black speck that was a small airplane appeared on the horizon, to the south. The plane could have been a crop duster, but somehow I doubted it.

We moved around a network of dirt roads through the complex, past broken ramps and conveyor belts leading into broken silos, rotting buildings, rusting equipment, enormous chutes hanging uselessly in space. It was beginning to look as if the grain elevator complex, which looked so promising from a distance, was a false Eden. It would, of course, be rather foolish to try to hole up in a building pocked with holes that the lobox could come through anytime it chose.

Mabel seemed to be having some racial memory of her own working for her; she apparently sensed that the lobox was an enemy. The lobox, for his part, seemed to be suffering from hubris; it had been following us at an ever-decreasing distance throughout the night; since there had been no consequences, it had decided to close that distance even further. It was now trotting alongside Mabel's left flank, occasionally looking up at me as it raised its ruff and bared its teeth. It's a mistake to threaten an elephant's mahout; without warning, Mabel abruptly stopped, pivoted to her left, swinging her trunk and murderous tusks around. The lobox, despite its lightning reflexes, was caught off guard. First, Mabel's trunk whacked the creature hard on the right shoulder, and then one of her capped tusks caught the lobox in the ribs, the force of impact lifting it off its feet and hurling it through the air. It landed hard on its side, twenty feet away. It immediately got to its feet, but it swayed unsteadily for a few moments. I hoped to see it start coughing blood from a punctured lung and go down, but it didn't happen; the lobox was shaken, but not severely hurt. It shook itself, moved off even further, then raised its head and screamed in fury and pain. When it looked at me, I thought I detected something new in its expressive, golden eyes-fear. The lobox wasn't going to come too close to Mabel again, and that was to our advantage.

But that was all the good news there was.

We could survive without food for a few days, but lack of water was entirely another matter. Mabel could always wander off on her own to forage for food and water in the elephant heaven that surrounded us, but we would essentially be stuck in the place we set ourselves down in. Neither Garth nor Harper had said anything, but I knew they had to be as thirsty as I was-and I was very thirsty. Aside from an occasional spray from Mabel, we hadn't had any water in hours; we'd all been dehydrated by the physical and emotional stress of escaping from the circus, and we would be in deep trouble very soon. We not only needed a hiding place big enough to contain an elephant, but one that had water, and I wasn't at all sure we were going to find it in the grain elevator complex. I just didn't savor having to choose between dying of thirst, in a hail of bullets, or under the fangs and claws of a lobox.

It appeared that all of the water for the complex had been supplied by wells, and there were plenty of these around-but the electric pumps that had driven them had been shut off long ago; even if they could be manually operated, we didn't have any water with which to prime them. To make matters worse, almost all of the pipes leading from the wells into the silos and buildings looked to be broken. It was not a happy situation.

Twenty minutes later we came to three silos connected to one another by covered passageways. The structures appeared to be intact; a tour around the buildings didn't turn up any holes in the silos or connecting passageways, and the pipes leading into the buildings also seemed intact. It didn't mean that we would be able to find a way to draw water from the wells, or that the lobox wouldn't manage to find a way to get in, but we were rapidly running out of real estate, time, and options.

There were huge double doors cut into each of the connected silos, but the doors on two of the silos were padlocked; the third set of doors was held closed only by a length of rusted chain wound around two bolts. It took some doing, but by balancing on the upper part of Mabel's curled trunk I was able to stay out of lobox range while at the same time using the end of my hickory trapeze bar to unwind the chain, which I slung over my shoulder. I got Mabel to partially open the doors with her tusks, then turned her around and backed her through the opening.

The lobox, under Mabel's baleful gaze, kept a respectful distance away. We found ourselves inside a huge, circular bin, its floor covered with an inch or two of grain. Above us, the various levels of the silo were spiderwebbed with scaffolding holding rusting equipment. Tools were strewn about, and it appeared that this particular silo, at least, had ended up being used as a kind of gigantic toolshed and garage.

The next step was tricky and dangerous, considering the amply demonstrated quickness of the lobox, but it had to be done, and I was in the best position to do it. Without indicating to Garth or Harper-or Mabel-what I intended, I slid down Mabel's trunk, grabbed the edge of the open door on the right, and pulled. The door had rusted on its hinges, and it closed with agonizing slowness. The lobox had begun to quiver as it stared at me, now on the ground and helpless before it-helpless except for Mabel, towering in the air right behind me. She lifted her trunk and trumpeted a warning just as the creature sprang forward, running at full tilt at me. The doors gave, and I slammed them in the lobox's face just as it leaped. As I secured the doors with the chain I had brought in with me, there was the sound of furious scratching and growling just outside. Although it seemed to me an eternity, only a few seconds had passed. When I looked back and up, I found both Garth and Harper balanced far forward on Mabel's head, staring down at me. They were both ashen-faced.

"You're out of your fucking mind, Mongo," Garth said tightly. "That wasn't necessary. That thing is after you, not me. You should have let me close the doors."

"We can't be sure that it's not after you too by now," I said as I reached out to help Harper as she slid down Mabel's trunk, "and you don't climb an elephant the way I do. Besides, you have a more important job. You're the mechanic in the family. While Harper and I check this whole place out, you see if you can't find a way to get the water flowing. I don't know about you people, but I'm a little parched."

It took Harper and me three quarters of an hour to investigate the three silos and their connecting tunnels. The walls all seemed whole-a very good thing, since I could hear the lobox outside scratching, sniffing, and growling its way right along with me as I inspected our sanctuary. That animal, I thought, was really getting to be a pain in the ass, and I was having to give ever more serious thought to what it was I planned to do about it. The lobox could go off for food and water anytime it wanted, if it wanted, and we would remain trapped inside the silos.

There was the sound of a plane passing overhead, low to the ground. We tensed, waiting to hear it start circling, but it continued into the distance.

The problem of the lobox had to be solved as quickly as possible. I didn't much care for the only solution I could think of, but there it was.

When we returned we were most pleased to find that Garth had found a way to use a bucket of rainwater to prime a pump and then get it to work manually. Water was gushing from a tap, and he was filling the first of three empty barrels he had found and rolled over to the tap. When the barrel was full, Mabel, without any prompting, ambled over, pushed me aside, thrust her trunk down into the cool, clear water inside the barrel, and promptly emptied it.

Garth, Harper, and I slaked our thirst as Mabel waited patiently for the barrel to fill again. I kept on drinking after Garth and Harper finished, sucking up water until my belly was distended and sore. I stopped just as I began to feel the urge to vomit.

"Jesus, brother," Garth said, "you must have been really thirsty. You're going to burst if you drink any more."

"I need all the water I can store," I replied, and decided that it would serve no purpose to tell Garth and Harper just why it was I wanted to tank up, and save myself repeated trips to the well.

I also decided it would serve no purpose to tell them that my primary sensation at the moment was not thirst, but fear.