by J. D. Barker
“Darby!” Cammie shouted out from somewhere above me. Possibly on the roof, maybe a level below. Unable to not answer him.
The barrel of a shotgun appeared from the coat of one of the people in white about ten feet from the GTO. He took aim and fired off a thunderous round. Glass shattered as a window blew out.
“Oh, they sure are trigger happy, aren’t they? The whole lot out here!” David beamed. “Everyone okay in there?”
From the roof, three shots rang out in quick succession. Two of the people in white dropped, large, red stains growing on their coats.
The rest of the people in white shuffled again. Faces hidden under the cowls.
David yelled, “That was impressive! Got to be Hobson, right? Burn-pain be damned, got to shoot the Pickford kid, right? Hey, Dewey, take a running leap from wherever you are—come on down here and say hi!”
I’m sure Preacher or someone else tried to stop him. I could picture a dozen people all grabbing at Hobson and trying to hold him back, but it happened too fast.
Dewey Hobson tumbled through the air and landed in the center of the concrete pad outside Blast Furnace #7 with a sound too horrible to describe. His right leg bent out at an angle that was all wrong. His rifle was still in his hand, a handkerchief wrapped around the trigger and stock.
Only one of the people in white turned to look.
Pickford.
I pulled the sleeve of my sweatshirt down over my hand and grabbed my Ruger from the ground, took aim, and pulled the trigger. I couldn’t hold the gun long enough to get a second shot off.
I missed.
The people in white shuffled again, David lost among them.
“What do you want?” I screamed out the window.
“For starters, I want all of you to stop shooting at us,” David said. “That’s no way to treat your guests. The next person to fire a weapon from that steel mill of yours will forget how to breathe, and I don’t want that. Suffocation is a horrible way to die.”
“You stop killing us, we’ll stop killing you!” I offered.
David, wherever he was among the crowd of white, simply said, “I want Stella.”
I glanced down at her, huddled in the corner near my feet. She was unconscious again, glistening with sweat, curled up in a tight little ball.
“She’s not here.”
David said, “Come out here, Stella.”
Stella twitched but didn’t move. She hadn’t heard him.
“Come out, Stella, come out, come out wherever you are!”
She didn’t move.
“We left her in North Dakota, after the seaplane. Someplace far away from you. Told her to run. Wouldn’t let her tell us where. We knew you’d follow the rest of us,” I shouted back.
“She’s five days overdue, Jack. She’s not running anywhere,” David said. “She’s sick, dying. You know she is. I can make her better. I can help her. We don’t have a lot of time, though. Is she so far gone she can’t come out on her own? I bet that’s it. I could tell you to carry her, Jack. I could order you to do that, and you know you’d have no choice, but I don’t want to do that. I want you to bring her out here all on your own. I bet she’s right there next to you. It must be agonizing watching her wither away so quickly. Such a beautiful girl, wasting away to nothing. If you want to save her life, all you have to do is carry her out here so I can help her. Let’s start there. And once I help her, I can tell you how I plan to help the rest of you. I’ve cleaned house, and I’m nearly done.” If it’s possible for someone’s voice to brighten, his did. “Oh! I nearly forgot! I brought a present for you!”
Thirty feet from me, from the center of the people in white, David Pickford reached up and took down his cowl. The large white and red burn scar on the left side of his face caught the light, and he made no attempt to conceal it.
I found myself looking down at my gun, wanting desperately to kill him, yet I knew what he said moments earlier would prove true—anyone else who fired a shot would forget how to breathe and suffocate. As much as I wanted to take the shot, I knew I couldn’t, and I hoped to God nobody else was trying at this very moment, either.
Stella stirred. Her heavy eyes opened.
David walked through the crowd of people back to the Pontiac. He nodded at the man in white standing beside the driver’s door.
He reached inside and pressed the trunk release.
The GTO’s trunk popped open, and David leaned inside. He appeared to be whispering to someone.
That’s when I spotted Latrese Oliver.
She had been gagged. The sling that once held her injured arm was gone, and the black appendage dangled loosely at her side. Blackened flesh trailed up from the arm over the side of her neck, to her face, the death slowly spreading. David forced her first to sit up, then climb out. He and one other helped her to the ground. I could tell by the awkward way in which she stood, whatever was spreading from her arm had worked its way down to her leg, too.
“You see, Jack. When I was a kid, the fine people at Charter used me to knock off the participants of Project Leapfrog. That’s what they called the shot they gave to all our parents: Leapfrog. I’ve got the file, if you want to take a look. I’ve read them all. Every scrap of paper. The adults were expendable once they had us kids. We were what they wanted. They used Stella, too. This woman here saw to that. Used us both, really. You too. Your father can tell you all about that.”
Latrese Oliver glared at him. David smiled back. “I’ve wanted to kill this woman for years, but I didn’t. I kept her alive just for you, so you could watch. Think of her as a peace offering. You, me, Stella, and now Darby, we’re 2.0, we’re next generation. We need to stick together. Latrese here is part of the problem, though, part of the mess. She’s got to go. I cleaned up the mess back at old Charter corporate. Now it’s time to sweep the last of the dirt into the pan.”
Stella tried to get up and nearly fell. I reached down and helped her to her feet. She drew in a sharp breath when she saw Oliver out there, the condition she was in.
David rubbed at his temple with his thumb. “I’m not gonna lie to you, Jack, the adults need to die. There’s no way around that. I frankly don’t want any more of us, and they can make more. Can’t have that.” He looked up at the building, his eyes scanning the dozens of people looking back at him. “It’s getting late, and I need my beauty rest. I think it’s time we get on with things, don’t you?”
I had one arm around Stella’s waist, the other on the edge of the windowsill. Her shallow breathing was the only sound in our little room.
“Not gonna come out, Jack? Oliver not enough for you? You need a bigger carrot?” David shook his head. “Do you know the name Penelope Maudlin? Our friend Dewey Hobson sure did.” He nodded toward Dewey’s broken, lifeless body on the concrete.
Stella’s hand went to her mouth. “That’s Dewey?”
I nodded.
“Your dad, Cammie, Dalton—or is it Preacher?—they all knew her well, college chums. Long before her unfortunate accident in 1992, she got herself knocked up and had a kid, too. A little boy, born the same year as you and me. She was a bit unstable, though. For the most part, the boy’s father raised him. Then that went to shit, too. I guess he’s a bit of a half-breed—his mother took the shot, his father didn’t…” David held out both his hands, weighing this. “Not sure what that means for him. Charter’s files said with only one affected parent, he exhibited no special abilities. They wrote him off. He does have a sense for business, maybe that’s what he walked away with, who knows. You know him pretty well, I gotta wonder—you ever see anything special there?”
Stella looked at me.
I shrugged my shoulders, not sure who he was talking about.
David tilted his head and swept his arm at the building like a game show host. “Will the son of Penelope Maudlin, please come down!”
Nearly a minute passed before Dunk stepped from the mouth of Carrie Furnace and hobbled on his cane through the crowd of
white to David.
Dunk never mentioned his mother.
When he moved to Pittsburgh from Chicago, it had only been him and his father. Many of the kids in school came from broken homes. I figured if he wanted to talk about it, he would. He never did, though. Not once.
Dunk moved like a zombie through the crowd, fighting his body with each step, David’s summons, his words more powerful than Dunk’s own free will.
When he reached David, David told him to kneel and he did, the lines of his face tight as he tried to fight that, too.
David took the small Motorola radio from Dunk’s free hand and pressed the transmit button. “Edward Thatch, Cammie Brotherton, and Jeffery Dalton, I want all of you to come out and join us. Leave your weapons behind, only you.”
I heard David’s words echo through the tiny speaker of the radio attached to my belt. He followed this first request with a second that chilled my bones.
“For the rest of you, if you’re involved in illegal activities with Mr. Duncan Bellino, take a look around you, find one of your coworkers, and kill them. Another after that. Last one standing, takes home the prize!”
At first, nothing happened. And I hoped to God nothing would. Then I heard the first gunshot. That was followed by another and another after that. Several bodies fell from the catwalks and roof and crashed to the concrete below, a rain of people, some still clutching their guns, some still wearing headphones which did little to protect them from whoever had been standing at their side.
There were no shouts in anger, no cries of pain, only silent death.
Stella closed her eyes, pressed her face against my chest.
David said, “Geez, I completely forgot about my previous instruction—the whole thing about forgetting how to breathe if you fired your gun. I imagine that finished off a few more of you. So sorry about that!”
David’s ability was frightening. The fact that he was enjoying himself scared the shit out of me.
My father was first to step outside and cross over to David. Preacher and Cammie followed about a minute later, Darby clinging to her mother’s hand, her pink little cheeks streaked with tears.
David told each of the adults to line up next to Dunk and kneel. They did as they were told, no other choice. He grinned at Darby, the pink and white burn on the side of his face stretching awkwardly.
Darby cowered behind her mother.
“You must be Darby!” David beamed. “Come say hello to your Uncle David!”
Darby didn’t want to. Even over this distance, I saw her grip tighten around her mother, but her body betrayed her—her arms broke free, her legs shuffled toward him.
David took her hand. “You’re not going to say hello?”
“She doesn’t speak,” Cammie said. “Please don’t hurt her. Please, David…”
David cocked his head. “She doesn’t speak at all?”
“No.”
“Has she ever?”
“No.”
He thought about this for a moment. “What is her ability?”
“If she has one, I’ve never seen it.”
David leaned down and smiled at the little girl. “Do you have any special abilities, sweetie? I bet you do.”
Darby shied away from him, her eyes fixed on his scar.
David reached to his face and stroked the ruined flesh. “This is nothing to fear. It’s beautiful. I’m the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen.”
“Whatever you’re going to do to us,” Cammie said, “please don’t make her watch.”
David turned back to her. “Me? I’m not going to do anything to you. What would be the point of that? Remember what we talked about? Your promise to me? It’s time.”
Stella twisted from my arm and started toward the door.
“I’m so sorry, Jack. My dearest Pip,” she paused there long enough to say. Then she disappeared around the corner, and I was alone.
I went after her.
I knew I shouldn’t. I should have let her go as I should have let her go so many other times during my life, but I couldn’t. I left the Ruger on the floor in that little room and followed her down the hallway and out the wide open door into the sea of people in white.
They parted as she approached, those candles still in their hands. Heads and faces hidden beneath white cowls. Stella and I stepped around the bodies of the dead, so many, haphazardly strewn around the concrete. The dark blood of all those dead in stark contradiction to the white of those who still lived.
“There you are!” David said as we approached. “I was beginning to think you didn’t love me anymore.”
Stella moved slowly, and when she was about ten feet away from David and the others, she nearly collapsed again. She clutched at her stomach, and all around us, shrill static burst from the radios.
I ran to her, tried to help her, but she shrugged me off. “Don’t touch me, not now.”
David didn’t make a move toward her. He knew better than to put himself within her reach.
Stella stood, ignored the weak, shakiness of her knees, and smoothed her dress.
Over the years, weeds had worked their way through the cement, sprouting up between the cracks and crevices. All those where Stella had landed were now black, shriveled, and dead. A small circle of death around her.
On the ground at David’s feet, a kneeling Latrese Oliver watched. The others, too. Oliver looked so old. She aged a hundred years since we were children. The death from her arm had crept up the side of her face and into her white hair, leaving bald blotches behind. The eye on that side was cloudy with cataracts. The left side of her mouth frozen, as if she suffered a stroke. Even through all this, she smiled up at Stella. Her good hand reached out. “I love you, Stella. I forgive you for what you did to me. I know it wasn’t your fault. Put an end to this little shit.”
David laughed. “Stella can’t hurt me. Right, Stella? You won’t hurt me.”
“I would never hurt you, David Pickford.”
She said this with the same robotic flatness Dewey Hobson had spoken.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
I realized it then.
Something I probably knew for days but wouldn’t admit to myself.
Stella had been the one to place the call from my father’s house to Charter. No one else. Probably the result of a command issued by David long ago, lying dormant until the day it wasn’t.
She seemed to know what I was thinking. “He told me to call when everyone was together.” She didn’t face me. Her eyes fell to the ground. “David is right. This is the only way to truly end all of this. All traces of Charter need to disappear, traces of their program, the people involved. Anything left behind will be like the seed of a weed. It will only grow back, maybe stronger than the first. We will forever run. They will always be behind us. All of it needs to end.”
“Stella, these people are our friends, our family.”
“Your own father stood by and watched as they tried to kill you. As you’ve pointed out many times now, this woman, those people made me kill. Made David kill. We were only children. How could we know it was wrong?”
David said softly, “Remember what I told you, Stella? That day in my cell? What I whispered to you?”
Stella peeled the glove from her right hand and dropped it at her feet. “You said when the time came, I’d get to kill them all.” She took off the left glove and dropped that one, too. “My God, David, just how long did you think I could wait?”
“All of it will be over soon. Then you and I can finally be together,” David said.
She smiled at him, a smile that was like the sharpest stake through my heart. “That’s all I’ve ever really wanted.”
Stella hobbled past Latrese Oliver to Dunk and knelt in front of him.
“Get the hell away from me,” he growled.
“This one killed your friend Gerdy, didn’t he, Jack? The man who owned the diner, too. All those people inside. Just to get rich. To line his pockets. Won’t you
be happy to see him die? Isn’t that what he deserves?” She reached out and ran her finger along the edge of his shirt, millimeters from the skin of his neck. “How many others died because of his actions since? The poison you push?” She looked back at me. “In a way, Jack, their blood is on your hands. Why didn’t you let him burn in the diner?”
Dunk remained still, unable to move. David’s doing, no doubt.
“It wasn’t me,” Dunk forced out, fighting Pickford’s spell. “It…was all…Alonzo. Never…me. I…wouldn’t.”
David looked up at me, saw the uncertainty in my eyes. “You don’t believe him?”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
“If I tell him to tell the truth, he’ll have no choice. I’ll make a wager with you, a gentlemen’s bet, if you will. I will make him tell you the truth, but if he really was responsible, if he just lied, then he dies first. I’ll even let you kill him.”
“I’m not killing anyone.”
“But you want the truth, don’t you?”
I said nothing.
David shrugged, “Well, now I’d like to know. You’ve got my curiosity piqued.” He turned back to Dunk. He cleared his throat in some grand fashion. “Did you do what Stella accused you of? Are you responsible for the deaths of those people?”
Without hesitation, the single word flowed this time, unhampered by David’s former instruction of silence. Trumped by this new command.
“No,” Dunk said.
His eyes met mine, and I knew he was telling the truth.
He always had been.
I knew I had been wrong.
Dunk said, “My friends, my true friends, are the only family I’ve ever really known. Those people were my friends. I’d do anything to bring them back.”
Stella buckled over again. This time, she did collapse. She fell to the ground, clutching her stomach. She let out a horrible shriek, and the radios screamed with her, a choir of pain.