by J. D. Barker
“There’s no way they followed us. Did you tell anyone we were coming?”
Dunk shook his head. “Only Reid, Truck, and Adella, and they don’t talk to nobody but me. Word is probably spreading now, though. Not much we can do about that.”
“Somebody tipped them off,” Preacher said.
I thought about the phone call from Fogel back at my father’s house in Whidbey.
Two men paused at Dunk’s door. When I turned, they continued down the hallway. “Why does everyone keep staring at me?”
“Gossip,” Dunk said. “They all heard about the crazy show you put on with Reid the last time you were here. Guess they’re hoping for an encore.”
Preacher frowned. “What happened with Reid?”
Dunk smacked me on the back. “My boy here came out on the right side of a crazy game of Russian Roulette. He didn’t tell you?”
Preacher’s eyes narrowed. “No, he didn’t tell me.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t fuck with him,” Dunk said. “The guy deflects bad mojo like Superman and bullets.”
Pinching his nose with the handkerchief, Preacher changed the subject. “How defendable is this place?”
Dunk went back to the window. “I’ve got a hundred and six people here, all armed. Lookouts in town, too. If someone tries to pedal up on a white bicycle, they’ll have a dozen weapons trained on them. One road in, one road out, with the Monongahela River at our backs and open fields all around us. See that tree line way out there? I’ve got people in blinds watching every inch. There are two sets of railroad tracks, with a deep gully between the trees and the furnace grounds. No way they get vehicles through there, and if by some miracle they make it on foot, it would be slow-moving. We’d pick them off before they even got close to any of the buildings. Between all the hills and the scraps of machinery scattered around, the property is covered with places to hide, and I have people stationed at all of them. We’ve got a solid perimeter. They’d have to airdrop into here to get any kind of jump on us. If by some crazy miracle they get past the outer defenses, we fall back on the mill. This place is a fucking metal maze, and my people have trained here for years. They know every inch. We’d slaughter them.”
“We start shooting, how long before the cops show up?” Preacher said.
Dunk laughed. “Who do you think I have running lookout in town? Our finest in blue, that’s who. Don’t need to worry about them. We’re too isolated, anyway. We set up a shooting range out back almost two years ago, and not a single person has ever reported gunfire out here. The sound doesn’t carry far enough. If this goes all out World War III, ain’t nobody coming to help us, and nobody coming to stop us. We’re on our own.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said softly.
The look in Dunk’s eyes told me he kinda hoped it did. He crossed the room and went to a wooden crate in the corner. “I’ve got a Plan ‘B,’ too, for that David character you mentioned.”
Dunk opened the lid and handed me a pair of over-the-ear headphones. “I picked up a truckload of these babies back in January. They were heading to the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas from the factory in Massachusetts. They won’t hit the market for at least another year, so I’ve been sitting on them.”
“Bose Quiet Comfort?” I said, reading the box.
“Noise-canceling headphones,” Dunk said. “You put these on, hit the switch, and they block out all outside noise. Pickford can scream at the top of his lungs, and you won’t hear shit.” He took a Motorola radio from his pocket and plugged it into the dangling headphone cord. “We communicate with these. All other sound will be blocked out. We’ll be able to hear each other but nothing coming from him.”
When I made the phone call to Dunk back at my father’s house on Whidbey, I put my conscience in check. More accurately, I locked it away in a cold room somewhere in the back of my head. I knew he was mixed up in some horrible things, and by asking for his help, I’d find myself in the thick of those horrible things. When he said he ‘picked up a truckload,’ I was under no illusion he paid retail, and I told myself not to think about the driver of that truck or what may have happened to him. I sure as shit couldn’t think about Gerdy while I was around him. Not her, not the others at Krendal’s, either, none of that. When those thoughts popped into my head, I forced myself to think of Stella and the people with me, the ones I needed to keep alive today, not the ones I couldn’t bring back from my past. I’d mourn them again tomorrow. I told myself this man was my friend, had been for most of my childhood. He stood by and helped when my aunt was dying of cancer—nobody else did that. When I called Dunk and asked him for help, I didn’t outright sell my soul, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel like the devil signed a short-term lease. When this was over, I’d find some way to wash my hands of it. That’s what I told myself, although I knew I’d be scrubbing away the grime for the rest of my life. Some stains don’t come out.
Dunk’s phone rang.
When he hung up the call, he was back at the window. “We’ve got two more white vans out there. Four now. One of my guys approached them, and they scrambled and regrouped a block away.”
Preacher lowered the handkerchief from his nose. The bleeding had stopped. Although it was swollen, I don’t think Dunk broke it. “If they know they’ve got all of us here, they may move tonight, or they might try to wait us out. No way to be sure.”
“Either way, we’re ready.” Dunk turned back to the crate. “Adella said you’ve got four others back at the barracks, right? Here—”
He handed me six boxes of headphones.
“—batteries are in the box. They’re good for about forty hours. We’ve got more, if we need them. Take these back with you, and hang tight. I need to check in with my lieutenants.”
I said, “Are you sure you want to do this? It could be bad for you.”
Dunk smiled. He was missing a tooth on the left side of his mouth. “You saved my life, pulled me out of that fire. Saying no was never an option.” He lowered his voice. “I know you have reservations about what happened. I know you don’t believe me, I’ve made peace with that. Maybe someday you will, too. I wouldn’t let you down back then, and I’m not about to do it now. You’re my brother, man. Family.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I only nodded.
He leaned in closer. “Can I meet her? She’s crazy hot, right?”
18
Dunk said he’d stop by the barracks after he updated his people. Maybe an hour.
As Adella led us back, Preacher whispered, “I’m gonna put a bullet in that shit.”
“Wouldn’t be the first,” I told him.
Someone had dropped off food while we were gone. A basket of fruit sat on one of the tables, along with several bags of McDonald’s, a case of bottled water, and a half-eaten pizza.
Darby watched us enter the room, tomato sauce all over her mouth. My father was still sleeping, Hobson still in the chair where we left him, his blindfold on.
Stella wasn’t in her bunk.
Cammie came through a door at the back and nodded at me. “Thank God, come on—”
Preacher started to follow after us. I told him to stay and eat.
Cammie led me into a bathroom. I heard water running in the back.
Stella sat on the floor of a large shower, still clothed, her knees pulled tight against her chest, her face buried between them. The water rolled over her, steaming hot. She was shivering horribly.
I turned to Cammie. “Get me the latex gloves.”
She ran out and returned with them a moment later.
I pulled out a pair, tugged them on, and crouched down low. “Stella? What can I do?”
She drew in a breath and attempted to speak, but nothing came out but a garbled gasp.
“Are you cold or hot? Do you have a fever?”
“F…f…freezing,” she stammered.
Her left glove was still on, but she had peeled off the right one and left it
bunched up in the corner of the shower. Her fingers flexed—stretching out, balling into a fist, then back again.
Stay back, I mouthed toward Cammie.
She nodded, pressing further back into the doorway.
I reached out with my gloved hand and brushed Stella’s hair back over her shoulders. Her head swiveled, twisting fast, feral. Her eyes wide and bloodshot—all at once distant and fixed on me. “You…need to…leave.”
The words came out as a growl, a voice unrecognizably deep. She drew in a series of quick breaths through her mouth, then hid her face again in her knees. Pulled her knees against her tighter still.
I leaned in closer. I was getting soaked, the hot water turning my skin red. I didn’t care. “You’ve got to fight it, Stella. You’re stronger than whatever this is. You can beat it.”
“Go!” Stella shouted. “Get away from me!”
“No.”
Her gloveless right hand shot out and gripped my arm just below the elbow.
I was wearing a sweatshirt. Her skin didn’t contact mine, but when she realized what she had done, she released me and squirmed back into the corner of the shower. She got as far from me as she could, pressing tight against the tile. She looked childlike, frail. Frightened and broken.
Without looking up, I said to Cammie, “There’s a basket of fruit on the table out there. I saw it when we came in. Can you get it for me?”
“Are you serious?”
“Please.”
Cammie rolled her eyes, shrugged, and went back to the bunk room. She returned a moment later with the basket. “I don’t think she’s hungry.”
I sat the basket down on the floor beside me and took a large, red apple from the top of the pile. I held it out to Stella. “Take this.”
Stella looked out from behind her arm. She reached out tentatively with her right hand, her quivering fingers wrapping around the apple. Her thumb and index finger passed right through the plump fruit and met as if it weren’t even there—the red skin and yellow flesh beneath turned black and crumbled away, the core withered and her fist closed in the space where the apple had been seconds earlier, the entire thing dropping to the tile floor in a pulpy mess.
“Holy shit,” Cammie breathed.
I handed Stella a banana. It also crumbled away with her touch—drying, rotting, all life leaving the fruit in an instant.
I gave her an orange after that.
Another apple.
Half the bowl was gone before Stella’s erratic breathing began to slow and even out. When I handed her what was probably the sixth or seventh apple, the fruit still died, but it took nearly twenty seconds.
“Better,” Stella said softly.
I glanced at Cammie, still hovering over my shoulder. “Can you give us a minute?”
“We need to tie her up. Like Hobson.”
“We’re not tying her up. Not her.”
Cammie sighed and stomped out of the bathroom.
I turned off the shower, helped Stella stand, and wrapped a fluffy, white towel around her.
“Thank you, Pip. Thank you for being you.”
I lowered my voice. “Somebody back at my father’s house called Charter.” We hadn’t been alone. This was the first chance I had to tell her. The first time in days she was coherent enough to understand.
“What?”
“That’s not the worst of it.” I told her how Fogel had dialed back, what she said. How I had been in the woodshed with my father and had no idea who placed the call to Charter. “It could be any of them.”
“Hobson was tied up, right? Your father, too. That only leaves Cammie and that Preacher fellow.”
Stella looked around the room, seemingly for the first time. “Where are we now?”
“You don’t remember leaving Whidbey?”
She shook her head.
I told her about the second call from my father’s lookout. His seaplane. The drive from Devil’s Lake back to Pittsburgh.
She took all this in. “What is today’s date?”
“August 13.”
Her mouth fell open. “Five days,” she said softly. “I’ve never gone five days.”
Although the fruit had helped, Stella was still horribly pale. Her eyes were sunken and red. When her legs became wobbly, I grabbed her with the towel and held her up.
“I shouldn’t be near the others,” she said in a quiet voice. “Can you bring one of the cots in here?”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. “It will be safer.”
Using the towel as a buffer, I helped her to an aluminum bench so she could sit. “Wait here.”
I went back out to the bunk room and grabbed her duffle bag, one of the cots, and a thick comforter I found folded up on top of one of the other cots. My father was awake now. They all watched me but said nothing.
I set up the cot in a small alcove behind some lockers.
Stella’s legs were weak. I worried they might buckle with each step, but I got her there.
She peeled off her wet clothes, dropped them in a pile on the floor, and put on a long-sleeve black dress I found in her duffle.
I had picked up her black gloves, both dripping wet. When I gave them to her, she wrinkled her nose. “These are disgusting. I need to wash them properly.”
The box of latex gloves was on the floor back at the shower. I retrieved it and handed her a pair. “Here. They’re not stylish, but at least they’re dry.”
She put them on, then climbed back into the cot, tugging the comforter over herself. “All will be over soon, Pip.”
Stella fell asleep then, and for that moment at least, she seemed at peace.
I washed her black gloves in the sink using some liquid soap, then I hung them over a towel rack to dry.
Before leaving her, I placed the remains of the fruit bowl within reach on the ground beside her, and I brushed her wet hair from her face and brow.
Then I peeled off my own gloves and went back to the others.
Back in the bunk room, Cammie sat with her daughter, watching her work in a coloring book. She looked up at me wearily. Preacher huddled over a table of weapons with two of Dunk’s men—I spied everything from AR-15 assault rifles to handguns and knives. He had added our own guns to the pile along with all the headphones, unboxed and lined up.
Hobson sat in one of the chairs, his blindfold off. My father sat in a chair, facing him with a bottle of Jägermeister perched between them on an old wooden milk crate. Hobson’s hands were no longer bound. Both raised shot glasses to their lips and drank. I spotted another shot glass on the floor next to Cammie and an empty one in Preacher’s hand.
“Seriously? You’re all drinking right now? Why’s he untied?”
“Do you want one?” my father said, refilling both him and Hobson.
“No, of course not.”
For some reason, this drew looks from everyone.
My father cocked his head. Over the past few days, the bruising on his face had transitioned from reds and purples to blues and blacks. Now it appeared yellow and green. The swelling around his eyes had eased, and both were open again. “You don’t need a drink?”
I thought about this for a second. Only a few days ago, I would have jumped at that bottle and chugged the contents. Between tremors, cravings, and an all-out dependency after years of drinking, alcohol had become a necessary part of my life. No different than water or food. I couldn’t survive without it. But now, “I haven’t needed a drink for a few days now. I’m good.”
And I was. No shakes. No cravings or dizziness. Like Stella’s hunger, this was probably only some kind of reprieve, but I’d take it.
My father drank his shot, then set the glass down on the milk crate. “Alcohol dependency is a side effect of the shot. None of us drank heavily prior to the shot, but after it was administered, we all went out to a bar to celebrate our newly-acquired riches. A few days later, we began to realize we craved alcohol. Soon, we had to have it. The people from Charter said it
was just a side effect and would wear off. A metabolic thing. It didn’t, though, just got worse with time. Odd thing is, none of us really get drunk anymore. Haven’t really since the shot. We can, if we really push it, but for the most part, it does little to us—only keeps the withdrawal symptoms at bay. After you were born, Charter ran a series of blood tests and concluded that you would most likely suffer from the same dependency when you got older. All the children would.”
Hobson slowly lifted his glass to his mouth and drank. When the glass was empty, he handed it back to my father and wiped his lips on the bank of his hand.
“Okay, but that doesn’t explain why he’s untied,” I said.
“Come here,” my father said. “I’ll show you.”
I took a few steps closer.
My father leaned in toward Hobson. “What did David Pickford tell you?”
“He told me to go to Cammie’s house and say hello for him, then kill her. Shoot her dead. He also said he loves Stella, and he’s cleaning up the whole mess, just for her. Like it never happened.”
My father said, “But you don’t want to hurt Cammie, do you?”
Hobson shook his head.
“And you understand you do not have to do what David Pickford told you to do, right? You have free will?”
“That crazy little shit tried to hijack my head. If I put a bullet anywhere, it will be in him,” Hobson said. He nodded at his glass. “One more.”
My father poured him another shot. “Is Cammie safe?”
Hobson drank and turned to Cammie. “I’m sorry, Cams. Are we good?”
Cammie smiled and nodded. “You don’t kill me, I don’t have to kill you. I think we’re good, and the world is better for it.”
My father turned back to me. “David’s ‘suggestions’ are just that. His ability causes them to become necessary actions in the mind of the person he speaks to, but they’re not carved in stone. You can talk someone out of what he may have told them to do if you phrase yourself properly, if you break through. I think the alcohol may help to speed that up, cut through to the subconscious, but it’s tough to say for sure.” He looked back at Hobson. “What do you say, can we trust you with a gun?”