by Schow, Ryan
“You call me first. Let the law handle it.”
“I’ll call you a bitch, that’s it. No phones, no formal complaints, and you won’t see nothin’ from me less’n whoever keeps bothering me refuses to piss off.”
The scumbag smelled like pot, and his eyes were like glazed donuts. He wasn’t even making sense.
“Yo, Booger! Get out here!” he called around back. “Booger’s gonna escort you out, make sure you find your way back to the main road.”
“I can find it just fine.”
Another scumbag waltzed into the living room, looking just as stoned as Keaton.
“Booger, make sure he gets to the road. Any dilly-dallying, you start chucking rocks at his cruiser. I think it’s already got a busted window, so he won’t mind. It’ll just be a reminder.”
This was the idiot who ran the Honda Pilot off the road, the same idiot who threw a beer bottle at his cruiser.
“You ran a silver SUV off the road coming into town a few days back,” Garrity said between gritted teeth.
Keaton stepped into Garrity’s face fast and growled, “You got someone that can back up that accusation? Because I’m a law abider and that’s it. You want to tarnish my reputation, we can go knuckle-to-knuckle right now, cocksucker.”
“I’ll be on my way,” Garrity said, chewing on his anger.
“Best you do.”
He left the house, got into his car, and started it up. By then, that idiot Booger started throwing rocks at the car. This was just about all he could take, yet he had the feeling this was far from over.
Chapter Ten
Colt McDaniel
Colt had been working in the garden when he first began to suffer the effects of having the Hayseed Rebellion as neighbors. Loud music, gunfire, someone breaking glass, and a girl’s laughter traveled up the slight grade of the hillside. The distance the sound traveled was a bit unnerving.
He glanced at Faith; she just shook her head.
Later that afternoon, he grabbed the M82 and headed up to Gator’s place to shoot for an hour. When he was finished, he felt much better. But when he got back home, he found the guys across the street were still shooting, and their music was still playing just as loud.
He found Faith inside the house. She was on the phone with Rowan. Seeing him, she put their son on speaker as he talked about the Hayseed Rebellion offshoot and how they were burning down parts of downtown Columbus.
“But they’re not near your building, are they?” Faith asked, concerned.
“No, but I have security, so it’s okay.”
“How’s Constanza?”
Constanza Navarro was Rowan’s fiancée. She was also eight months pregnant.
“She’s hoping her parents will be able to come up from Mexico for the birth,” Rowan said. “Her brother’s in Virginia, so he’ll be there, too, but we may have to head to his house or down to yours if things get too dicey here.”
In the background, Colt heard an explosion deep enough to rattle the phone’s small speaker.
“What was that?” Faith asked, leaning closer to the phone.
“Mom, I gotta go,” he said. “These idiots just blew up a gas tanker.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I think, but it’s close to us. Too close.”
“I love you,” she said, worried.
Colt quickly said, “Love you, son. Be safe, and call if you need me to come up there.”
“Will do,” he said. “Love you guys.”
Rowan hung up, leaving them both speechless. Faith tried not to crack, but it was inevitable. Slowly but surely, he watched her unravel. Wanting to be there for her, he folded her into his arms as she began to cry.
Sobbing into his chest, she said, “I wish I could just bring them all back home.”
“I know,” he said.
“Why do these criminals keep getting free passes?”
“I don’t know,” he said, even though he knew exactly why they were getting a free pass on looting, rioting, and murder.
“We can only hope they’ll exhaust themselves, or that maybe the governors, mayors, or whatever, will start prosecuting these crimes.”
“They won’t,” she said.
“I know.”
Outside, they heard the pop-pop-pop of gunfire. He looked up but didn’t let go of his wife.
“Walker was right,” she said into his chest.
“The war is already here,” he replied, echoing his brother’s sentiment, “it just hasn’t hit critical mass.”
Standing up, wiping her eyes, she looked at him and said, “But it will, Colt. You know that, right? It’s going to hit critical mass.”
“We’ll be ready when it does.”
“We’re not ready at all,” she said. “We only think we are. Can you check the news? See if there’s anything about Columbus on TV?”
He turned on the TV to breaking news in Columbus. “Anarchists set a gas tanker on fire just minutes ago, causing a huge explosion. The flames have spread to two nearby buildings. Matt, back to you.”
Colt felt his heart clench, all his muscles pulling taut. The news switched from the man on the street view to an aerial shot. Looking at these scumbags swarming the streets like ants—watching them throw garbage on the fires to make them burn hotter—he felt his inner-beast tugging at him from deep inside.
Soon enough—if this persisted—the dark side of him would crash through his internal defenses, and after that, he would be lost again.
More gunfire echoed down the hill, and then he heard a small explosion.
“This is ridiculous,” he said.
He fetched the M82, stalked out to the front porch, then scoped the scene below. Whatever it was those idiots had blown up, it had started a small brush fire. One of the guys was out there in white boxers and combat boots, trying to stomp out the flames. He had a baseball hat on backward and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
Colt went to the edge of his porch, set the bipod up on the rail, then scoped the guys again. The guy in the boxers stomped out the fire to the applause of the others. He then went and sat down, took a long pull on a beer bottle, then watched his buddy stand up and try to shoot a watermelon from a hundred yards out.
Colt guessed the distance from his location to the fruit was about nine-hundred yards out, maybe a thousand.
That was the distance he’d practiced for at Gator’s range.
The malevolent creature he’d denied for so long was waking up inside of him, poking him, letting him know he was still there. He tried to push the emotions away, but the beast was ravenous, so pissed off at having been starved for so long.
When he thought of this thing inside of him—this monster—he thought of it as his “old self.” But it was more than someone he’d been in his youth. He didn’t want to acknowledge this in his early years, but the restlessness in him—the dark aggressor—was something more than a fit of deep-seated anger or the result of strict military training. This thing was generations old, some sort of corrupt DNA taking shape inside of him.
With each infraction he’d suffered of late, with each and every violation of the peaceful order of things, he felt his new self warring against his old self. Standing there, looking at those idiots, he found himself thinking about the war he left behind, and the war that seemed to lie ahead of them all.
He shook off the thoughts, tried to bury the emotions. This was his old self laying seeds, watering them, then opening the drapes to let in the sunshine.
Through the scope, he saw another guy trying unsuccessfully to shoot the watermelon from less than a hundred yards out.
He was staggering around like he was half drunk. The other guys were laughing at him because he couldn’t shoot for shit. He popped off two more shots, missing it completely. As he was lining up the next shot, one of the other guys grabbed his pants and pulled them down, causing everyone to fall into fits of laughter he couldn’t hear but could see through the scope.
Stand
ing there with a full moon, he took the shot, nicking the edge of the enormous fruit. Without further delay, he bent down and pulled up his pants. Red-faced and wasted, he turned and handed the pistol to one of the other guys. He ejected the mag and thumbed in a few rounds.
Colt lined up the shot with the Barret, stopped to consider the ramifications, then eased the scope around and set the crosshairs on the back of the guy’s head. This was the maggot who beat him up, the same maggot still wearing his favorite hat.
He slowly worked the action, feeding the fifty caliber round into the chamber.
“You want me to be this person, Walker?” he muttered to himself.
It wasn’t his older brother who answered that question, though. It was his old self, the beast inside, the thing he never again wanted seeing the light of day. You’ve always been this person, the beast said.
He slid his finger over the trigger, felt himself slipping a little further into that dark place. Inside his mind, inside his body, he felt the beast stop squirming. It went really still, except for the smile forming on its face. But then the beast frowned because it knew Colt was not there yet, that it was not free.
“Settle down,” Colt said. The beast responded with a heavy sigh.
He then adjusted the barrel enough to put the watermelon into his crosshairs. He let out his breath, squeezed the trigger.
Down the hill, the watermelon exploded.
Walker’s famous expression came to mind, almost like the words arrived on their own: Try to take my stuff, see what I do to your hand.
Through the scope, he saw the maggot with his hat turn and look at him. The M82 auto-fed the next round. He put the crosshairs on the man’s left eye, the bead moving ever so slightly around the target.
Inside of him, the monster wanted out. It grabbed the bars of its cage. The beast began to grunt and shake the cage; it let out a mighty roar. But then the maggot looked away and Colt managed to take a breath.
Slowly, he moved his finger off the trigger and found he’d stopped breathing altogether.
“No,” he said to the beast who had since let go of the bars, stepped back into the shadows, and sat down to wait for the next opportunity.
“What are you doing?” Faith asked.
He realized he’d broken into a light sweat. “Just watching those guys.”
“No, you fired a shot. I heard it. The whole countryside heard it.”
“I might have fired off a round.”
She stared at him, trying to see him, trying to see the beast inside. “You have that look on your face,” she said. Then: “No, not on your face. I see it in your eyes.”
“What look?”
She furrowed her brow, stared deep into his eyes, almost like she was unable to put her finger on it.
“Intense focus,” she said. “Like you get when you’re shooting. What did you shoot, Colt?”
He felt the beast turn an ear in Faith’s direction. “Those idiots down there were trying to shoot a watermelon. They kept missing it.”
“A watermelon?” she asked, a look of dread on her face.
“I didn’t miss.”
“So you shot the watermelon?” she asked.
He nodded.
“You’re kicking an awfully big hornet’s nest.”
“Maybe.”
“You sure you’re ready for that?”
“These guys can’t shoot for squat, so yeah, I’m ready. Besides, you’re the one trying to coax this side out of me, so I’m not sure what you’re worried about.”
“I spoke to Marley while you were out here. She was just promoted to deputy chief of staff of communications under the president’s chief of staff.” She said this with a creeping smile on her face.
“So does that mean she’s going to be working with the president?”
“I don’t know,” Faith replied, hearing more gunshots popping off down the hill. “I didn’t ask because she said she had to go.”
“She didn’t ask us to come to D.C., did she?”
“No.”
“Because I’m not going there.”
“I know that.”
“Good.”
“She knows, too,” Faith said.
“Of course she does,” he replied. “I made it perfectly clear.”
Shaking her head, she said, “You don’t like the president, I get it. But what has she really done to live up to the things they’re saying about her?”
“No politics,” he said irritably. “That was our agreement.”
“It’s kind of tough when our firstborn is working in the White House next to the president’s right-hand man.”
He turned and fired her a look. “I’ve been doing tough things all my life. There’s nothing tough about not talking politics.”
She drew a deep breath, leveled him with a deep appraisal. “I love you, Colton McDaniel, but you are turning into an old crank about ten years too early.”
“This isn’t me being a crank, it’s just…look at the state of the nation.”
“That’s the governor’s decisions,” she said. “Not the president’s decisions. State’s rights and all.”
“Yeah, well, our governor is crap.”
“A lot of them are,” she replied. “Now, go put that thing away before someone gets killed.”
Chapter Eleven
Colt McDaniel
The call came in after Colt pulled his “watermelon” stunt. Faith picked up the phone, talked to the person on the other end of the line, then took down an address, and said, “We can be there shortly.”
When she hung up and he saw that raw delight on her face, he felt bad for having behaved the way he did. But that was his old self brushing shoulders with the new and improved Colton McDaniel.
“He’s ready,” Faith said.
“I thought we were getting him next week.”
“We can pick him up later today. If you’re okay with that, you’ll have to do it yourself because I have classes to teach and a few bucks to bring in.”
“And that body to keep toned.”
She laughed. Sculpturing bodies in boot camps was her job and she was good at it. He had watched her run a class once and it wore him out for a week. Or so he said. The woman was a drill instructor on the mat, and the men and women taking her courses were better off for it.
He worked in the garden for a few hours, came in for a late lunch, then looked at Faith in her workout clothes. She said, “I’m ready to go, but you’re the one sweating.”
“We all work out in our own ways,” he said. “What about naming him Roscoe?”
She seemed to think about this. “I was thinking we name him Lester, but I’m pretty sure you’d just end up calling him Lester the Molester.”
“Because I’m acting like I’m in college again?” he challenged.
Frowning playfully, she said, “I like Roscoe.”
“Roscoe it is.”
After she left to run her boot camp, Colt hopped in the truck and fired it up. Guns ‘N Roses was on the radio; he cranked the dial.
As he was driving out the driveway, something hit the side of his truck. He hit the brakes and looked around. He was idling a hundred feet past Vitaliy’s house. Backing up, he saw a lemon sitting in the street, its belly split from the impact.
A man walked out of the bushes, looked right at him. It was the idiot with the hat. For a long moment, they looked at each other, then the idiot snickered, turned away, and disappeared behind the thick foliage. It seemed he was going back to the redneck hideout.
He was halfway down Watts Mill, heading to Sugar Creek Pike when he saw Faith’s car. He pulled up beside her; they rolled down their windows at the same time.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Classes canceled,” she said. “Someone has a temperature.”
He felt a pang of frustration with all this Covid crap. Even worse than this—in the darkness that used to be cool, black, and empty—his old self expressed its frustration, too.
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br /> “Don’t say it,” she said.
“This is bullshit,” he barked. Yeah, he’d said it anyway. Honestly, he couldn’t help it anymore.
“Are you picking up Roscoe?” she asked.
“I’m headed that way.”
“I want to go.”
Now he felt himself smiling. He’d wanted her to go in the first place, so maybe the stupid rules had finally worked in their favor for once.
A few minutes later, they headed into town, followed the directions on his phone—even though he knew the way from last time—then parked in front of a small house that had seen better days.
Inside the small house, the green shag carpet was pounded flat by age and use, and the sour stench of dogs and puppies was biting. Faith smiled. She didn’t care about the smell. She just saw the puppies and all logic and reason went out the window.
Faith’s friend let her into a larger pen, then opened the cage and let the puppies out. A pile of miniature hound dogs flooded into the larger pen where Faith had knelt down with open arms. She started talking to them in her best puppy voice.
Colt couldn’t help the smile on his face. They were adorable, even to him. Running around with their huge ears, their short legs, and their long snouts, they created quite a scene!
“Go ahead and go in,” Faith’s friend said. She was a Polish widow with a daughter who was now in the other room skimming Wayfair online.
He stepped inside the larger pen, sat down next to Faith, and waited for the puppies to do their thing. Then one of them came forward, started sniffing Colt’s knees. He held out a hand. The pup looked up, then he licked Colt’s hand and sat down.
“I like him,” Colt said.
“He likes you, too, it seems,” Ludmila said. “He’s the one your wife responded to, the one she took pictures of.”
“I guess it was meant to be,” he said.
Faith started petting the hound dog. Looking down at him, she smiled and said, “Roscoe.”
Colt glanced over at her and whispered, “Better than Lester the—”
“Don’t say it!” she laughed.
“Roscoe is perfect.”