The Talisman

commandos. Good old Jack Sawyer, King of the Vagabond Dishwashers, and His Comatose Sidekick, Richard. Jack wondered if he had gone crazy. He supposed he had, because that was exactly what he was planning – it would be the last thing any of them would expect . . . and there had been too much, too much, too goddam much. He had been whipped; Wolf had been killed. They had destroyed Richard’s school and most of Richard’s sanity, and, for all he knew, Morgan Sloat was back in New Hampshire, harrying his mother.
    Crazy or not, payback time had come.
    Jack bent over, picked up one of the loaded Uzis, and held it over his arm as the tracks unrolled in front of him and the smell of salt grew steadily stronger.
    5
    During the small hours of the morning Jack slept awhile, leaning against the accelerator bar. It would not have comforted him much to know such a device was called a dead-man’s switch. When dawn came, it was Richard who woke him up.
    ‘Something up ahead.’
    Before looking at that, Jack took a good look at Richard. He had hoped that Richard would look better in daylight, but not even the cosmetic of dawn could disguise the fact that Richard was sick. The color of the new day had changed the dominant color in his skin-tone from gray to yellow . . . that was all.
    ‘ Hey! Train! Hello you big fuckin train! ’ This shout was guttural, little more than an animal roar. Jack looked forward again.
    They were closing in on a narrow little pillbox of a building.
    Standing outside the guardhouse was a Wolf – but any resemblance to Jack’s Wolf ended with the flaring orange eyes. This Wolf’s head looked dreadfully flattened, as if a great hand had scythed off the curve of skull at the top. His face seemed to jut over his underslung jaw like a boulder teetering over a long drop. Even the present surprised joy on that face could not conceal its thick, brutal stupidity. Braided pigtails of hair hung from his cheeks. A scar in the shape of an X rode his forehead.
    The Wolf was wearing something like a mercenary’s uniform – or what he imagined a mercenary’s uniform would look like. Baggy green pants were bloused out over black boots – but the toes of the boots had been cut off, Jack saw, to allow the Wolf’s long-nailed, hairy toes to protrude.
    ‘Train!’ he bark-growled as the engine closed the last fifty yards. He began to jump up and down, grinning savagely. He was snapping his fingers like Cab Calloway. Foam flew from his jaws in unlovely clots. ‘Train! Train! Fuckin train RIGHT HERE AND NOW!’ His mouth yawned open in a great and alarming grin, showing a mouthful of broken yellow spears. ‘ You guys some kinda fuckin early, okay, okay! ’
    ‘Jack, what is it?’ Richard asked. His hand was clutching Jack’s shoulder with panicky tightness, but to his credit, his voice was fairly even.
    ‘It’s a Wolf. One of Morgan’s.’
    There, Jack, you said his name. Asshole!
    But there was no time to worry about that now. They were coming abreast of the guardhouse, and the Wolf obviously meant to swing aboard. As Jack watched, he cut a clumsy caper in the dust, cut-off boots thumping. He had a knife in the leather belt he wore across his naked chest like a bandoleer, but no gun.
    Jack flicked the control on the Uzi to single-fire.
    ‘Morgan? Who’s Morgan? Which Morgan?’
    ‘Not now,’ Jack said.
    His concentration narrowed down to a fine point – the Wolf. He manufactured a big, plastic grin for his benefit, holding the Uzi down and well out of sight.
    ‘Anders-train! All-fuckin-right! Here and now!’
    A handle like a big staple stuck off from the right side of the engine, above a wide step like a running board. Grinning wildly, drizzling foam over his chin and obviously insane, the Wolf grabbed the handle and leaped lightly up onto the step.
    ‘Hey, where’s the old man? Wolf! Where’s—’
    Jack raised the Uzi and put a bullet into the Wolf’s left eye.
    The glaring orange light puffed out like a candle-flame in a strong gust of wind. The Wolf fell backward off the step like a man doing a rather stupid dive. He thudded loosely on the ground.
    ‘Jack!’ Richard pulled him around. His face looked almost as wild as the Wolf’s face had been – only it was terror, not joy, that distorted it. ‘Did you mean my father? Is my father involved in this?’
    ‘Richard, do you trust me?’
    ‘Yes, but—’
    ‘Then let it go. Let it go . This is not the time.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘Get a