“You know the basic story,” Correll replied, his eyes darting from the track ahead to the box on his lap.
“Yeah, mebbe, but there’s more to it than what you’ve told us so far, right?” she continued gently.
“Mebbe.” Correll was silent for a second, but Krysty didn’t respond. She wanted to let him tell the story in his own time. The Hellbenders in the wag stayed silent, not knowing quite how to react. Ryan, for his part, kept his own counsel. He figured that Krysty knew what she was doing, and that she would draw the secret of the box from Correll when the gaunt man was ready. He didn’t have to wait long, for in the empty silence, Correll chose to begin his story.
“Thing is, friends, I told you something of what happened, but not all of it. Because there are some things that are hard to speak of, even when you want to explain. Some things that seem to stick in your throat, and no matter how hard you try to force them out, they just won’t come. And they gather within you, festering like a poison in an infected wound, until there comes a time when you just cannot keep it in any longer. You have to force it out, break the skin and bleed the wound so that the pure blood can start to run free once more, and the healthiness can return to the wound. And that’s what I’m trying to do now. That’s what this is—for all of us except you and your friends—to our different levels. We all have those wounds. I figure that mine are worse than anyone else’s, but then that’s because they’re mine. Any one of us on this convoy could say the same thing.
“But if you knew why, if you understood the depths of degradation and despair, the very bottom of the pit that I feel that I’ve been staring up from for so long, this is my chance to clean the slate, to climb up the sides of that pit and get out where the air is fresh and sweet again. And if I buy the farm in the attempt? Well, what have I done but buy a way out of this misery and my own hell? Oblivion cannot be any more painful than what has been before.”
He stopped, almost as though exhausted by the outburst, and Ryan cast his eye over Krysty. Her hair clung to her neck and shoulders in long tendrils, and his suspicion was confirmed. The man was raving, and on the verge of losing all control. If he did, then where would they stand when the firefight began?
The one-eyed man had rarely felt less in control of a situation than he did at this minute. His people were spread out over three wags in a convoy bound for a full-scale firefight with two other convoys, and at the helm was a madman. There had to be some way of pulling this together, if only he could communicate with J.B., Mildred and Doc, with Jak and Dean…and Danny, whose warnings were proving only too prophetic.
Before he had a chance to formulate any kind of plan, Correll had begun once more.
“See, I was head of sec in Charity, and I was real diligent. I did my job properly, not from any great sense of loyalty or duty, but just because that’s the way I’m made— I couldn’t do it any other way, it just wouldn’t feel right. And I was real careful. My people were good, because I made damn sure they were. I wouldn’t have any screwing around that could reflect badly on me, or put anyone in danger of Jourgensen’s wrath,’ cause he was a mean bastard, and I just wanted to keep him happy and do the job. If any of my people got in the shit, he’d have their tits or balls in a vise. He was an evil asshole, and still is. But I didn’t know just how fucking evil until he thought I’d done him wrong.
“See, there was a breach of sec when we were overseeing a trading convoy that passed through. The trader tried to rip off Jourgensen by selling him some shit rat poison instead of jolt, and it’s only because Jourgensen’s personal drug taster took some and died puking out his own intestines that we knew it was shit. Hell, looking back, I wish it had been Jourgensen himself who tried it, greedy asshole that he is. But no, he couldn’t even oblige us on that.