The Goodbye Man

“Yessir,” Gray wheezed, still not recovered from Shaw’s love tap. He and Squat turned and hurried south.

Hugh noted his boss’s dismay. He touched Eli’s arm and repeated softly, “We’ll find something else, David.”

“Something good,” the cult leader muttered absently. He was still numb.

“Yes. It’ll be good. Overseas. Somewhere. Just as good as this.”

His eyes wet with tears, Eli glanced at Shaw once more. His bewildered gaze was perhaps more chilling than the livid hatred of moments earlier.

Eli gestured to Timothy, the Journeyman who had accompanied Shaw to the Square, who stepped close. They had a brief conversation. The man nodded. Eli and Hugh walked into the woods to the hidden path to go to the Administration building and collect any incriminating evidence and either destroy it or escape with it and dump it later.

Shaw turned toward Thomas, still holding the gun. “I need that weapon.”

“What you need doesn’t matter to us.” He put his arm around Carole’s shoulders. He gestured at the gun. “Don’t try to take it.”

Shaw didn’t try to take it.

He jogged into the forest and turned up the trail after Eli and Hugh. In a few minutes they would pass Building C, behind which his war club was hidden. That — and the element of surprise — would give him some advantage.

“David!” a woman’s voice behind him called. Shaw glanced back. It was Anja. “Please, David. Let me explain!”

Eli stopped. His face was emotionless as he looked back, seeing both Shaw and, about thirty feet behind, Anja. Eli’s eyes cut to the other side of a row of brush — where Timothy had been walking parallel. He was about even with Anja.

It was at that moment that Shaw noted that Timothy had removed his sweater. He was not wearing an amulet.

He was a Select, a suicide killer.

Master Eli’s training me himself...

The man nodded to his boss, pulled a box cutter from beneath his tunic and charged into the brush.

“Anja!” Shaw sprinted toward her too.

Before he got close, Timothy was on her, grabbing the woman by the hair.

She gasped, “No... Please, Timothy.”

Without hesitating, he drew the knife across the pale flesh of her throat. Blood cascaded and the woman dropped to her knees, then onto her side, her voice keening in horror.

Timothy glanced toward Shaw. Then the man who laughed at sitcoms and who loved to hum and was perhaps hoping for a spot on a choir in Omaha come the advent of autumn took a deep breath and gave the farewell salute — the double-arm cross. He called, “Goodbye... until tomorrow.” And slashed his own jugular.

With a perfunctory look back at the woman who had been his longtime lover, Eli turned and hurried north, accompanied by Hugh.

Shaw sprinted to Anja. He’d been trained in the procedure for combat neck trauma. The classic treatment formula of “ABC” — airway, breathing, circulation — went out the window. There’s no point in clearing an airway if there’s no blood getting to the brain because it’s flowing onto the sidewalk. This procedure was HABC. Hemorrhage, airway, breathing, circulation. The only way to save a victim of a wound like this is pressure, a lot of pressure, which was what Shaw dropped to his knees and applied now.

“Please,” she gasped.

“Shhhh, I’ve seen worse. You’ll be okay.”

He hadn’t, and she probably wouldn’t.

She grew more ashen yet beneath her carefully painted-on makeup.

Shaw glanced up the trail and saw Eli and Hugh disappear toward the Administration building. He could only watch them hurry away.

Goddamn.

A voice called, “I’ll do it. You go after him.”

It was Steve.

“Get down here,” Shaw instructed.

The man crouched.

“No. You need to be on your knees or sitting. This could be a while.”

The slim young man did as instructed.

Shaw said, “Follow my fingers.”

This he did too, tentatively, as the blood coursed rich and red over his skin. Then with more confidence.

“He...” Steve was whispering. “Master Eli. He...”

“I know. It’s tough. But you need to concentrate.”

“Okay.”

“Feel the flaps of skin?”

“There? Yes.”

Anja started to speak, then fell silent. Her eyes closed.

Shaw said to Steve, “It’s not severed all the way. We can keep her alive. Clamp the slash. It’ll be slippery but you’ll have to do it. Use your nails for a grip. As hard as you can.”

“All right.”

“There.”

“I’ve got it.”

Shaw looked over the wound. “Good.”

He rose, wiping blood from his hands, and saw movement nearby, a couple. Apprentices. Shaw called them over.

“We need help,” he said.

“My God, what happened?” the man asked, as they joined him.

“Get somebody from the clinic here. Now.”

“We will,” the woman said. They turned and jogged away quickly.

To Shaw, Steve said, “Go. Stop him.”