Moondogs - Alexander Yates [158]
The pain was bad but he managed to keep the shakes away. Heat flowed out over his shirtfront. Men stumbled across his chest and belly as they ran for safety. Reynato watched them go. He saw wounds bloom on their foreheads like Ash Wednesday crosses. He saw Elvis pitch his arms forward to become a black dog as big as a pony. He saw the dog gallop for the treeline and get skewered through the neck by Efrem’s flashing Tingin. He saw Racha square off with Efrem atop the rock ledge, watched as they rolled downhill. Racha filled with holes, Efrem yelling in a language Reynato never heard him speak before. They landed hard on the beach and beat each other’s faces with rocks. Efrem scrambled away, took up a dropped rifle and unloaded it into Racha. Racha kept coming. Efrem found another and unloaded that also. Racha swayed and fell to his knees, his remaining eye still full of fight. In the end Efrem had to pile stones on him just to stop him crawling.
And that was it. Efrem stood alone on the beach and Reynato lay near his feet, pretending to be dead among everyone who really was. Reynato felt himself go cold. Volcanic ash drifted out of dark sky and landed on his cheeks and lips. He hadn’t known it was the work of his beloved bruha at the time—he’d put this together later, in the hospital, when he started to get over his paralyzing fear. Efrem breathed heavily just above him. He walked out into the water and knelt to wash his dark forearms and face. He didn’t turn when Reynato stood and leveled Glock. Not when the first shot hit his back. Not when the second. Reynato watched him fall into the ashy waves. He curses himself, now, for not wading out and dragging Efrem’s corpse ashore. To be sure.
But Reynato didn’t go into the water. His self-inflicted wound was bleeding heavily, and he had money to hide. He grabbed the sack of bills and rushed into the undergrowth. He followed footprints up the slope—Howard’s chubby feet and Elvis’s paws. At the top he came to a concrete pavilion filled with meticulously preserved World War II mortars, their twelve-inch mouths gaping up in shocked silence, gulping ash. With some stretching Reynato hurled the money sack down the tallest barrel. He was fading, but he knew that if they found him here the pavilion would be searched, so he kept following the footprints. The ash thickened. The tracks, leading through the sagging jungle and out onto the road, started filling in. Reynato didn’t see Elvis till he tripped over his haunches and landed across his big wet neck. They lay eye-to-eye, Elvis’s big and bulging, all pupil the way Efrem’s would get sometimes. Howard was a few paces down the road, struggling to breathe. A pale bright form stood over him. A woman. A tourist. Flashlight in one hand and old-fashioned film camera in the other, she stood horrified and halogen bright.
DOCTORS AT MAKATI MEDICAL INSIST that Racha’s coma is permanent. The parts of his throat that make words are still in the ocean somewhere. His mouth is a doomsday mess of gauze, rubber tubing and metal. But none of that keeps him from making himself understood when Reynato visits that evening. He snaps his fingers until Reynato gives him a little pad and pencil.
You find it?
“Find what?”
Racha pauses, drumming the eraser against his body cast. You’re playing dumb with a man in my condition? After all we’ve been through? He draws a little unhappy face below his lopsided, loopy sentences.
“You mean the money?”
Racha adds horns and little fangs to the face.
“Sure,” Reynato smiles despite himself. “I found it.”
All there?
“Every bit.”
Good. How many ways are we splitting?
“Just two.”
Racha draws a question mark and when Reynato doesn’t say anything