Hunter (9780698158504) Page 6

  “I’ll tell you how he did it,” Lance said. “He was there. It happened. He recorded it. The tape is real; our memories have been faked. Now, we . . .” He slammed his hand, palm down, on the table. “James, look at me. Look at me!”

  James Klaus finally raised his head.

  Lance nodded, and turned to Abby. “You too. I know I haven’t known either of you very long, but I trust you, and I hope you trust me. So listen. Max has been altering our memories. Maybe even changing our feelings, for all I know. He probably believes he’s doing the right thing, that in the greater scheme of things the memories of a bunch of teenagers don’t count for much. But he’s wrong about that.”

  James said, “So you’re on Casey’s side?”

  “No, I’m on my side.” Lance sat back. “I know Max messed with my brain before, and I know that because I let him. I wanted him to do it. Slaughter murdered my parents and my brother. I couldn’t cope, and Max asked me if I wanted him to help. He didn’t take away the memories, but he took away some of the pain.”

  Abby dropped the metal fork on the table, and it began to roll away; as she’d been listening, she’d twisted it into a knot and then squashed it into a ball. She caught it before it reached the edge of the table, then flattened it into a crude disk between her thumb and forefinger. “But if you asked him—”

  “I’m not blaming him for that. I’m just saying that proves he can do it.”

  “What about Cord?” James asked. “He’s freaking out that you disappeared. I think he sees you as a little brother or something. Should we tell him we’ve seen you?”

  “Not yet. If you tell Sol, and he sees Max before you do . . . Look, I hate myself for doing this to him—and to you guys too—but what else can I do? I can’t go stay with my relatives, because that’s just putting them in danger. And I don’t really know them anyway. My folks were never very close to their families.” He forced a smile. “Don’t worry about me. I can look after myself. I got this far on my own, didn’t I?”

  “You can stay with me for a few days,” James said, “but after that, what’s your plan?”

  “Mostly it’s to stay alive and stay out of Max’s way. But my long-term goal is the same as it’s always been. To find Slaughter and make her pay.”

  “Then you’re just proving that you’re an idiot. She’ll tear you apart. Literally. She’s stronger and faster than any of us. And a thousand times stronger and faster than you.”

  “I know.” Lance grinned. “But I’m smarter.”

  LANCE SPENT FIVE DAYS in James’s home, and hated almost every minute of it. James’s mother, Shawna, and Rufus, his stepfather, had been immediately suspicious of him, and initially they’d refused James’s request that he stay with them.

  “Not gonna happen,” Rufus said, looking from James to Lance and back. “This isn’t a hotel. You can’t just decide that this friend of yours is staying here without asking us.”

  “I am asking,” James replied. “That’s what I’m doing right now. Some teenagers are constantly bugging their parents for stuff, but I almost never ask for anything. So now I’m asking for this.”

  Rufus shook his head. “And I’m answering: No.”

  “How’s the hand, by the way?” James asked.

  Rufus glanced down at the cast that covered his hand from his knuckles to his elbow, then looked back at James for a moment. “It’s a lot better.”

  “Must have been painful, though. Remind me how it happened again? Closed the car door on it by accident, right?”

  The man nodded, still staring at James. “That’s right.” After a short pause, he said, “I guess it wouldn’t do any harm to have the kid around for a day or two.”

  Shawna said, “Well, I’ve never even heard of him. James, you never mentioned a Lance before.”

  James did his best to look shocked and annoyed. “What? I’m always talking about him! You never listen to a word I say!”

  Shawna ignored that. “What about his own family?”

  “They threw me out,” Lance said. “My dad left home when he was fourteen, and he said I have to do the same. Said it’ll make a man of me.”

  At that, Rufus looked up at James. “Not the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

  “It’ll just be for a couple of days,” Lance said. “I’ll work for my keep. I can clean all the leaves out of the rain gutters and wash them down. That’ll take more than a day, though.”

  “The gutters don’t need to be washed down,” Rufus said. “Guy did it last week. But you can stay in the shed if you clean it out first.” Nodding at James, he added, “I’ve been trying to get this lazy brat to sort it out for months.”

  “This isn’t a home for delinquents,” Shawna said. She still hadn’t directly looked at Lance. “He’s not allowed in the house.”

  Later that day, as they were sitting on the back lawn, taking a break from clearing out the shed, James told Lance, “I don’t know what my mother sees in that guy.”

  “Yeah, well, they’re a good match. Your mother’s not exactly a bucket of sunshine and roses, is she?”

  “Hey, that’s my mom!”

  Lance shrugged. “If it’s any consolation, I’d apologize if I was wrong. But I’m not.”

  “What were your folks like?”

  “They were cool, most of the time. They were always on my case about me not being a clone of Cody. He was . . .” Lance smiled. “He was a good brother. We drove each other crazy when we were small, but I adored him. Never told him that, of course. I was jealous of him too, kinda, because he was good at everything. Seriously, if he wanted to do something, he just did it. He was sailing through school without even trying very hard, and he was great at any kind of sports he tried.”

  “So, what, you realized you’d never match up to him so you became a slacker?”

  “I never thought of myself as a slacker,” Lance said. “But, yeah, I guess I started looking for the easy path. There was a show on TV about hoaxes and fraudsters and con men. It was supposed to warn people what to look out for, but as soon as I saw it, I thought, ‘That’s what I wanna do.’ The key to a good con is acting. You have to learn how to fake looking sincere. Once you’ve nailed that, the rest is just confidence. What about you? What’s your real dad like?”

  James pulled up a long strand of grass and chewed at the end for a few seconds. “He’s all right. Gets a bit grumpy sometimes, especially if you say you’ll do something and you forget. His new wife, Faith, is like ten years younger than him, but she’s cool.”

  “My parents are dead, so are Roz’s, yours are divorced, and so are Abby’s. Is it just a coincidence, or is there something about being a superhuman that screws up your family life?”

  “You’re not a—”

  “I know, I know! But I’m not a pure human either.”

  “Brawn’s parents are still alive, and still together. At least, they were last I heard. I don’t think it’s a big deal. Half of all marriages end in divorce, and—”

  “And the other half end in death. Yeah, that’s an old one.”

  The back door opened and James’s mother strode out, dragging his little sister behind her. “James, tell your friend to get back to work. And me and your dad are going out, so you have to look after Shiho.”

  James pushed himself to his feet, muttering, “He’s not my dad.”

  On the morning of his fifth day in the Klaus household, Lance packed his bag and left before dawn. The previous night—having spent the day mowing the lawn, raking the gravel on the drive, and washing the cars—he’d overheard Shawna and Rufus referring to him as “the help” and he decided he’d had enough.

  He’d briefly considered leaving a note for James, but instead he talked to James as he walked away from the house. “You awake?”

  “I am now. You’re leaving?”

  “Yeah. Listen,
thanks for everything. I’ll see you around sometime.”

  “Next time Max meets me or Abby, he’ll find out you were here. And you know what that entails.”

  “I know. Memory-wipes. Try to avoid meeting him in person for as long as you can, OK?”

  “Lance, you can’t find Slaughter on your own. Even if you do, she’ll kill you without even thinking about it.”

  “I promise I won’t confront her until I’m ready. And maybe you can help me out with that too. You’re the master of sound, and you’ve heard Slaughter’s voice, so you know her accent. Where does she come from?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. She’s traveled a lot—well, she can fly, so why wouldn’t she travel?—so her accent now isn’t the same one she grew up with. There’s a bit of east Texas in there, some Alabama, Mississippi. All over the southern states, really. That’s where you’re headed?”

  “Maybe. Thanks for that. Listen, tell Abby I said good-bye, huh?”

  “Sure. You still nuts about her?”

  “Yep. You?”

  “What do you think?”

  Lance smiled to himself. “Well, that’s not something she’s going to change her mind about. Take care, man. And look after her.”

  “You too. And I will.”

  • • •

  From Abby and James’s town of Midway, Lance had continued west, traveling mostly on foot but occasionally managing to ride trains for a few stops before being caught by the ticket inspectors.

  Mostly he kept to the side roads, stopping in small out-of-the-way towns for a couple of days at a time.

  In the years that followed, what he remembered most about his time on the road was the ever-present hunger. Sometimes he’d had to go for days without eating, when he couldn’t find berries or edible leaves.

  After three months, the soles of his sneakers had worn paper-thin, and Lance had taken to stuffing them with scraps of cardboard.

  Outside a town on the western border of Wyoming, in the depths of winter, two men in a beat-up truck stopped to offer him a lift. But Lance saw the look in their eyes and kept walking. When they got out of the truck and made a grab for him, Lance kicked one in the knee and slammed his elbow into the other’s throat. Before they could recover, he’d taken their wallets and was driving away in their truck with little skill but at considerable speed.

  In the next town, Lance sold the truck to a group of street racers for two hundred dollars, and used the money to buy a pair of hiking boots.

  He worked his way west, sometimes earning money as a day laborer when he was able to convince the bosses that he was a lot older than he looked. He swept floors, hauled furniture, poured cement. In Idaho he spent a week digging graves in a cemetery, two days collecting golf balls at a driving range.

  He spent a month tending the flower beds in the grounds of a church. The church’s pastor told Lance that a permanent job might be possible, but when he suggested that the likelihood of Lance being given that job would be greatly increased if he converted to the church’s religion, Lance declined the offer.

  He moved on, walking from town to town, sometimes sleeping in shop doorways or hedgerows, working occasionally as a dishwasher for restaurants or a fence mender for farmers.

  Many times throughout his journey, particularly on cold nights or when the hunger became almost too much to bear, he came close to giving up. He was sure that if he just found a phone and called Max Dalton, then in a matter of hours he’d be in a plane on his way back to Manhattan, where a safe and comfortable life awaited him.

  But even on the worst days, Lance couldn’t allow himself to fall under Max’s spell again. He wasn’t like Abby, Roz, Thunder, or even Solomon Cord: They had abilities that were useful to Max. All Lance had was his mind, and that was far too susceptible to Max’s manipulation. With Max around, Lance couldn’t trust his own thoughts, and a person was nothing more than the collection of his memories.

  So he moved on, putting the miles and the months behind him.

  He never used his real name, never told anyone anything about his past. In his backpack he had a large beat-up envelope containing an old map of the USA and dozens of newspaper clippings about Slaughter. He read the clippings over and over, hoping to find a clue, a pattern to her actions that would give him an advantage over her. He knew her real name—Suzanne Housten—and that she most likely grew up in one of the southern states. That wasn’t much to go on. The newspaper clippings reported sightings of her all over the country. On his map, Lance marked the locations of the sightings, but so far no recognizable pattern had emerged.

  In the spring of the following year, on the coast of Oregon, Lance stood knee-deep in the Pacific Ocean, and—for the first time in longer than he could remember—he wondered what he was doing.

  He hadn’t had a shower or a hot meal in more than a month. The clothes James had given him had long since turned to rags, and he was now wearing jeans and a sweater he’d taken from a clothing bin outside a Goodwill store.

  He had been on the road for almost a year, and no one had found him. Or maybe, he realized with a suddenness that caused him to shiver, no one is looking.

  He stayed in Oregon until the fall—in the height of summer he’d managed to get a few weeks’ work on a fishing boat—then as the winter approached, he began to move south into California.

  In Hollywood, Lance struck a deal with a one-man tour bus operator: For twenty dollars a day, plus tips, he stood at the front of the tour bus and told the passengers extravagant but entertaining lies about the movie stars whose homes the bus passed.

  More than once, tourists told him he should have his own TV show. They tipped well, and by the time Lance quit the job the following March, he’d saved eighteen hundred dollars. Enough to buy a motorbike.

  “NINETEEN, HUH?” The owner of Circus Fantabulosa wiped his nose on the back of his bare, hairy arm, then sniffed and looked up at Lance. “Sure you are. You strong?”

  Lance McKendrick shrugged. “About average, I guess.”

  “Average ain’t good enough, kid. Lotta work bein’ a carny. It ain’t all about cotton candy and flirtin’ with the honeys. You got any idea how many hours a day we put in?”

  The man had told Lance his name was Morton Ponichtera: “Everyone calls me Morty.” Lance guessed that Morty’s age was somewhere north of sixty, and though considerably overweight he was clearly strong. The coarse dark hair on his arms extended all the way up to his shoulders, and Lance found it hard not to stare at it.

  “I dunno, kid,” Morty said. “I could always use a couple more hands, but the funds ain’t there. Back in my pop’s day, sure, folk’d be happy to pay a dime to see a guy sleep on a bedda nails or swing outta a trapeze, but them days are gone. Who wants to see that when they can turn on their TV an’ watch some superhero guy actually flyin’ or walkin’ through a hail of bullets?” He inclined his head toward one of the booths. “Walk an’ talk at the same time, only way to get stuff done around here.”

  Lance flipped up the kickstand on his Suzuki and pushed the bike after Morty.

  “You been on the road awhile?” Morty called back over his shoulder.

  “A few years. Is that a problem?”

  “Problem? Hah! We spend a hundred, hundred fifty days a year on the road. Be a problem if you were used to cushy hotel rooms.” He stopped at the booth, placed his meaty hands on the side, and pushed. “Solid enough. Jerry! Hey, Jerry!”

  A tall, thin gray-haired man with a thick mustache came around from the far side of the booth. He was carrying a small sledgehammer and wore a long coil of rope around his shoulder. “Yeah?”

  “When you’re done here, head over to Mary-May. Back panel’s gone missin’ offa her booth. See what you can do for her, huh?”

  The thin man nodded. “Will do. Who’s this?”

  “Kid lookin’ for a job. What do you reckon?�
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  Jerry looked Lance up and down. “Kinda skinny. Rough hands, shows he’s worked somewhere at least. Old boots—look a size or two too large. Same with the jeans. Been a few years since you ran away from home, hasn’t it? What are you, kid? Seventeen?”

  “Nineteen,” Lance lied.

  “No kidding? So am I. What are the odds?” He took a step back and examined Lance’s motorbike. “If he’s any good on that thing, we could resurrect the wall of death.”

  Lance began, “I’m not sure I—”

  Morty said, “Yeah. Yeah, not a bad idea. Kid, what sort of stunts can you do?”

  “That’s not really my thing,” Lance said. “I’m not a performer.”

  Morty grinned. “You are if we need you to be. You think everyone here’s got only one job? Jerry here’s our chief foreman an’ he does sword-swallowin’ and fire-eatin’ when Nigel’s not up to it, an’ he writes our press releases an’ does his shift workin’ the gate or the candy stalls.” He laughed, and nudged Jerry with his elbow. “One job! That’s priceless!”

  Jerry asked Lance, “If you can’t do stunt riding, what can you do? We’ve got all the clowns we need, and you look too normal for the freak show, unless those giant boots are hiding a collection of extra toes. Can you ride a unicycle and juggle at the same time?”

  “I don’t know, I never tried,” Lance said.

  “Then you can’t.”

  Morty said, “Normally I’d tell you to take a hike, kid, but . . . You got somethin’ about you. You look trustworthy. Tell you what . . . Jerry, take him around with you for a coupla hours. See if he’s got any useful skills.”

  The thin man nodded. “Right. We walk and talk, kid.” He looked at his watch. “It’s almost four twenty, and we open at six thirty. We got a lot of work to do and not much time to do it. Follow me, watch where you step—guy ropes and cat crap can be hard to spot if you’re not paying attention—and generally keep outta the way.”