—except for the huge arm that was already swinging at my face and sweeping me back against the wall, and I had time for only one quick glimpse of the massive bouncer with the shaved head, as he pinned me with a forearm across my throat, and Bobby Acosta standing behind him yelling, “Kill the fucker!”
And then the bouncer swung a fist the size of a grand piano at my chin and I was gone into darkness.
TWENTY-NINE
I WAS FAR AWAY IN A PLACE WHERE TINY SPARKS OF LIGHT flittered through a great sea of darkness and Dexter swam through it with legs made of lead and arms that did not move at all with a very unpleasant buoyancy that seemed to float up from a queasiness in my center and there was no other thought or feeling of any kind except for mere being for a very long time until finally, from far away, an urgent sound came in to me and carried on its back a very strong idea that tumbled into focus in one crystal-clear syllable: Ow! And I became aware that “ow” was not a mystic word for use in meditation, nor a lost land of the Bible, but, in fact, the only way I could succinctly sum up the State of Dexter, from shoulders upward. Ow …
“Come on, wake up, Dexter,” a soft female voice said, and I felt a cool hand on my forehead. I had no idea whose hand, nor whose voice, and in truth it really did not seem nearly as important as the fact that my head was an endless ocean of pain and I could not move my neck.
“Dexter, please,” the voice insisted, and the cool hand patted my cheek a great deal harder than seemed to be polite, strictly speaking, and each little pat-pat sent an echoing wave of ow rolling through my head, and at last I found the controls for my arms and moved one up to brush away the hammering hand.
“Ow,” I said out loud, and it sounded like the distant cry of a large and weary bird.
“You’re alive,” the voice said, and then that damned hand came back and patted my cheek again. “I was really worried.” I thought I might have heard that voice before, but I couldn’t say where, and it wasn’t a high priority at the moment, considering that my head was filled with flaming oatmeal.
“Owww,” I said again, with a little more force. It was really all I could think of to say, but that didn’t matter, since it summed things up so nicely.
“Come on now,” the voice said. “Open up your eyes, Dexter. Come on.”
I thought about that word: “eyes.” I was pretty sure I knew that one. Something to do with, um—seeing? Located somewhere in or near the face? That sounded right, and I felt a dull and dim glow of pleasure; I got one right. Good boy.
“Dexter, please,” the female voice said again. “Open up, come on.” I felt her hand move again, as if to pat my cheek, and the sheer annoyance of that idea sparked a memory—I could open my eyes like this. I tried it. The right one popped open while the left fluttered a few times before finally coming open to a blurry world. I blinked them both several times and the picture settled into focus, but it did not make any sense.
I was looking straight up at a face only a little more than a foot away from my own. It was not a bad face, and I was pretty sure I had seen it before. It was young, female, and creased with concern at the moment, but as I blinked at it and tried to remember where I had seen it, it broke into a smile. “Hey, there you are,” she said. “You had me so totally worried.” I blinked again; it was an awful lot of work, and it was just about all I could manage. Trying to think at the same time was just too hard, so I stopped blinking.
“Samantha,” I croaked, and I was very pleased with myself. That was the name that went with that face. And her face was so close to mine because my head was resting in her lap.
“The one and only,” she said. “Nice to have you back with us.”
Things were slowly filtering into my throbbing brain: Samantha, cannibals, refrigerator, giant fist.… It took some work, but I began to connect the separate thoughts and the picture came slowly together into a memory of what had happened—and it was far more painful than my head and I closed my eyes again. “Owww …” I said.
“Yeah, you said that already,” Samantha said. “I don’t have any aspirin or anything, but this might help—here.” I felt her turn a bit under me and I opened my eyes. She held a large plastic water bottle up and twisted the top off. “Take a sip,” she said. “Slow. Not too much, you might hurl.”
I sipped. The water was cool, with a very faint taste I couldn’t identify, and as I swallowed I realized how parched and sore my throat was. “More,” I said.
“A little bit at a time,” Samantha said, and she let me take another small sip.
“Good,” I said. “I was thirsty.”
“Wow,” she said. “Three whole words together. You’re really coming around.” She took a sip, too, and then put the water bottle down.
“Could I have a little more?” I said, and added, “That’s six words.”
“It sure is,” she said, and she sounded happy with my wonderful new talent for using multiple words. She held the bottle to my lips and I took another sip. It seemed to ease the muscles in my throat and brought a slight relief to my headache, as well as a growing awareness that things were not entirely as they should be.
I turned my head to look around, and was rewarded with an electrifying stab of pain running from my neck right up through the top of my head. But I could also see a little bit more of the world than Samantha’s face and shirt, and the picture was not encouraging. There was a fluorescent strip light overhead, and it lit up a light green wall. In the place where reason said a window migh
t have been, there was a plain, unpainted piece of plywood. And I could see nothing else without moving my head some more, which I very definitely did not want to do, considering the searing pain I had just experienced moving it this far.
I slowly rolled my head back to where it had been and tried to think. I did not recognize my surroundings, but I was no longer in the refrigerator, at least. I could hear a mechanical rattle nearby, and I knew it, as any Floridian would, as the sound of a window air conditioner. But neither that nor the plywood told me anything important.
“Where are we?” I asked Samantha.
She swallowed a sip of water. “In a trailer,” she said. “Way out in the Everglades somewhere, I don’t know. One of the guys in the coven has like fifty acres out here with this thing on it, trailer, for hunting. And they brought us here, like, totally isolated. Nobody will ever find us out here.” She sounded happy about that, but at least she remembered to look a little guilty about it and tried to cover it with a sip of water.
“How?” I said, and it sounded croakish again, and I reached for the water bottle. I took another swig, a bigger one this time. “How did they get us out of the club?” I said. “With nobody seeing us?”
She waved a hand, and the movement jolted my head—a slight jolt, but a much larger pain. “They rolled us up in rugs,” she said. “These two guys in overalls come in and carry out the rugs, with us inside, and dump ’em into a van, and just drive us out here. ‘Gonzalez Carpet Cleaners,’ it said. Easy.” She gave a half smile, half shrug, and took a sip of water.