by Poss, Bryant
Once Alice had demonstrated no fewer than a dozen times that she could handle the backhoe, Ben led them around the front of the national guard armory that Marshal called home. Across and up the street from the armory was a gas station. Likely it had been tapped dry from the frequent use of Marshal’s men, but it would still go up if lit. They stayed in the trees where Ben pointed it out then they walked the road back so Alice would know the route she’d take in the backhoe.
“What do I do with the acetylene torch?” Cillian asked.
“Will you be able to carry it to the rear door?” Ben nodded at him as if to answer for him. “We could take it over there and leave it, but I didn’t want you to get that close before the party started.”
“I can carry it.”
“Good,” Ben grabbed his shoulder and squeezed. “As soon as the commotion starts, you start cutting.”
Ben wished them luck then took off through the woods, carrying the container of diesel at his side. After he disappeared in the moonlight, Cillian stepped into Alice and pulled her to him, his confidence far more than it had been before. Like some old movie where a fedora-sporting man grabbed a sexy dame, he looked her squarely in the eyes and kissed her. They kissed for a long time, and he pulled back to speak.
“Nothing you say can be better than this,” she said and kissed him back. He nodded and watched her mount the seat of the backhoe then he turned and picked up the same torch he and Lo had used to open the lock box at the school and made his way through the woods toward the back of the armory.
There were two guards in the back that Cillian could see, and he kept in the trees, setting the torch beside him, a wadded shirt stuffed between the tanks to keep them from clanging together. All eternity seemed to fall on him as he waited for Ben to set the match. One of the guards said something and the other laughed then went back inside the rear door. Once gone, the other began to relieve himself against the fence. Cillian watched despite feeling awkward. He didn’t want to lose position of anyone. The noise to his right got his attention, and Cillian slowly turned his head toward the three pokies wandering aimlessly in the woods. Unmoving, he made out their shapes in the moonlight, shadows falling everywhere from the trees. It looked to be two females and one male, what used to be. He couldn’t tell if he was downwind or not, but he couldn’t smell them, and that was a bad sign. Looking back, he saw that the guard had finished his business but he was still in the yard. A light shone from the open door to where he knew the children were kept. When he looked back to his right, one of the females stopped moving, her head tilting back and shifting ever so slowly from side to side. She smells me he thought over and over, holding his breath in a futile act to keep his smell on him. What used to be a woman lowered her head and turned in his direction. It walked between the other two, forcing them to move out of its way, and it started for him. Cillian grabbed the torch, thought better of it and let it go, then stood watching the poky.
Matching the poky’s steps in retreat, it wasn’t more than two or three steps back that the others saw him as well. They made their way toward him in the dark of the trees. He tripped several times, but he didn’t want to turn around for fear of not being able to find the torch. Instead he began moving to the side, the four of them moving in a circle through the trees. Death would grab hold of him if the next tree couldn’t be avoided. Their feet were so noisy in the leaves he thought for sure the guard would come investigate, but he didn’t. After a time, Cillian realized that the pokies were gaining ground. If he didn’t turn around soon, they would have him, particularly the females that seemed especially determined. The sleeve of his coat snagged on the stump of a broken limb of a sweetgum tree, and for a moment he panicked entirely. There was a rip as he pulled away, but they’d closed the distance all they needed now. His face was cold, cheeks starting to pain him, and he wondered what it would be like to have to fight like this, cold and in the woods at night. Would it even be considered a fight? There was no time left for these questions. Once he turned to run from here, he had no idea if he could find the cutting torch again. Turning and planting his foot to run, he glanced back, trying to get an idea where he was in the woods, to remember this place. That was when the first explosion shook the ground.
Falling forward, he clenched his jaws preparing for the fierce grip of the poky, but it didn’t come. He looked back to see them all roaming away toward the glow of the fire, the sound of the explosion Thank you for being dumbasses. After watching them a few seconds and counting himself as probably the luckiest person alive, he got up and tried to find the torch, and it was then that the panic set back in. He knew he’d made a circle, tried to stay close to where he set it, but the torch wasn’t beside any tree. Suddenly the tree line was flooded with light, and he thought for sure it was for him, that he’d been seen, but it was the armory itself settling into its own state of panic at what had caused the explosion. In the midst of the chaos, the shouting of men running out the front, Cillian could hear the rumble of a Diesel engine through the trees. The pokies would go toward that noise too, or worse a spazzo. The sight of the torch took his worry away for the moment.
The fence had been reinforced from where they’d entered last, but he pulled out the wire cutters and made quick work of it. Once at the door, he considered going around the side to see if Alice was still on the backhoe or if she’d abandoned it yet, set it on a straight path for the building then jumped off as was the plan, but he knew he didn’t have time. This was going to be tough enough as it was.
Cillian made his way inside the open door in such a hurry that he walked right in without looking around. A man stood in front of the line of cells and turned at the footsteps. Cillian dropped the torch on the floor and reached for the Glock Ben had given him.
“No!” One of the girls yelled from behind him. “Don’t shoot Frank!”
It was that name Cillian recognized. Ben had spoken of him before.
“You the one did that out there?” Frank asked motioning up the stairs toward the gas station.
“One of us did,” Cillian said cautiously, keeping the gun trained on the man.
“That would be Ben then,” Frank chuckled.
“Do you have the keys?” Cillian asked, taking a step forward.
“Only one person holds the keys to these,” he said with a frown. Cillian picked up the torch and moved forward.
“I don’t have much time,” Cillian said taking Frank by surprise with his forceful tone. “Get down on your knees and face the wall over there.”
With everything going on, Cillian had forgotten about the sound of the backhoe, but it got everybody’s attention now. The crash through the outside wall upstairs was deafening even down in the basement. He wanted so desperately to go see if she was alright. There was a rumble of brick and siding that could be heard crashing to the floor even after the engine died.
“Cillian!” Ben was standing in the door now trying to catch his breath. He motioned toward the man on his knees. “It’s okay, Cillian, he’s okay.”
Without any further discussion Cillian lowered the gun and lit the torch, adjusting the gas flow as quickly as possible before working on the lock to Slayton’s cell first. Pulling his goggles from his neck and over his eyes, he saw the quickest solution in cutting the crude clasp of the lock rather than the hardened stainless still of the lock itself that was rounded to make cutting with bolt cutters harder. The heat was rough on his hands, but he didn’t stop, making the work of the first clasp a matter of barely a minute. Once he was through, Cillian went directly to the next without even acknowledging the freed captive. Bailey was next, and she shied away from the light of the heated metal.
“Someone’s at the door!” Frank’s voice came from the top of the stairs, and Cillian looked up to see the man’s head rock back nearly at the same time he heard the bang of the shotgun on the other side. A hole the size of a cantaloupe suddenly appeared in the middle of the door, and as far as Cillian could make out, the hole contin
ued through what used to be Frank’s head.
“Keep cutting!” Ben screamed, and miniature explosions from his own guns rang out in Cillian’s ears.
Glancing behind him midway through cutting for Jasmine, Cillian watched as Slayton made his way to the wall in the back and grab a gun. He took one of the assault rifles from the wall, loaded it with a clip, and covered the door to the outside giving Ben a nod. Cillian kept at his work. It was when he reached Daja on the next to last cell that he heard the last thing he wanted to hear. The gunshots subsided, only his cutting making a sound with the low crying of children in the background. He heard a booming voice from the other side of what was left of the door upstairs call to those below.
“Ben! Ben!” The voice was deep and strong. “I know that’s gotta be you, my boy! I’ve got your tractor driver up here! Damn girl ruined my compound! What say we talk about this!”
With that, the cutting of the torch paused. Cillian looked up through his goggles as he watched Alice being pushed through the door at the top of the stairs, her face black with dirt and soot, her hair tangled endlessly around a hand, one the size of her head. Before too many seconds passed by, he saw the owner of that hand creep around the threshold of the door, a large man with a disgusting smile on his face. His shirt was bloody from what looked like a wound he’d sustained somewhere on top of his head. The blood was crusting on the side of his face, solidifying in the stubble on his cheek.
“Let’s just everybody hold on a goddamn minute, shall we?” He said in that blaring voice that cancelled out everything else around. “I think we’ve just skipped the negotiation stage and jumped right into the situation. I think as of right now we can all see that we have something that the other wants.” The man seemed confident, but he kept at least one foot on the other side of the threshold, his other hand as well. “What say we make a deal?” This was the man Marshal, Cillian understood immediately, the torch still burning in his hand as he listened. He soon heard the girl inside, Daja, begin kicking at the door he’d halfway weakened with the torch. “I’ll let you take what you’ve claimed to this point, and you can have your little albino angel back.” He snatched Alice’s head fiercely, and she whimpered.
“What you think, Ben?” He grinned even wider. “You’ve got me on the sinkin’ end of the boat to be sure. All my men are out handling the fire and the breached gate thanks to this little darlin’” he shook her head again, his thick, leathery hand clashing harshly against her gentle hair and face, her skin of thin satin. “So let’s say what needs to be said. There’s only a matter of minutes now!”
Cillian glanced at Ben for the briefest of moments then he looked back at the girl kicking at the clasp of the lock. There was so much desperation here. Here and in the world itself. He watched her then looked up to catch Ben’s eye that seemed to be questioning him.
“Save her,” Cillian mouthed more than said. With that, Ben turned back to Marshal.
“They’re children!” Ben practically screamed over the sporadic shooting coming from the outside. “If everything else in the world is gone, they are children!”
“She’s no more a child than you or I,” the big man said with surprising eloquence. “Make your decision now. Let’s all walk away and never tread the same ground again!” His words were final as he brought the blade of a machete into view from behind the threshold with his free hand. The shotgun that had obliterated the door and Frank’s head was unaccounted for. “I won’t say it again.”
Cillian looked over to the back of Ben’s head until he turned to him, and what he saw there were not eyes of confidence and reassurance but eyes of dread and defeat. And this chilled him, raised the hair on his scalp, his neck, his entire body, he looked back up to Alice. It seemed like only a few minutes ago—indeed it was not much more than that—he had kissed her so long and hard before she got onto the backhoe to carry out this safest part of the plan. She looked at him with a slight smile on her face but complete terror in her eyes as she jerked futility against the grip of the large man who held her.
“Now!” Marshal yelled, still looking at Ben.
“Wait!” Ben yelled, holding out his free hand, palm out. And with that, the clasp on the most recent gate gave way with the effort of Daja who sat in front of Cillian. The half-cut clasp broke under her fear, her desperation, and her rage. The gate clanged open with the ringing sound of freedom, while she scurried out like a freed animal.
“Wait!” Ben’s words slurred with force. “Wait! Let’s talk!”
“No!” Cillian found himself yelling as the smile dropped from Marshal’s face, and the big man swung the machete overhand bringing the blade into the hard, vulnerable skull of the girl he held. Alice’s eyes looked bright then glazed, as they focused on nothing into the place past Cillian. It seemed to take minutes for her to fall, the world around her a forty-five record playing on thirty-three, and all he could do was watch with mouth open, trying desperately to understand the difference between this instant and one sixty seconds ago. It seemed to him that now his life could be measured in two parts: before this moment and after, like a fulcrum of misery. Her arms dropped to her side, lifeless as the rest of her, and she hit the floor, the metal of the blade clanging against the concrete.
“Ahhhh!” Ben yelled as he opened fire with the pistol, hitting the cinderblocks of the area surrounding the retreating Marshal. As for Cillian, he could only crouch there as he had been when cutting the clasp and watch as the body of Alice fell limp to the floor of the platform at the top of the stairs. His expression blank, his mouth open, Ben’s grip on his shoulder didn’t faze him.
“Run!” Ben screamed in his face, but there was no response. He shook Cillian violently until the boy finally looked into his eyes. The world sounded like he was under water. “Cillian, you need to run! They’re coming!”
Ben snatched the torch from his grip and began cutting the final cell, Emily backing away from the device while looking at it with pleading eyes. The smell of the cutting torch and gunpowder filled the room now. Ben’s eyes were wet either from this or from what just happened. Cillian couldn’t stop wondering why it was that Ben might be crying. He felt upset himself. Something was gnawing at him, weighing heavily on his mind, yet he couldn’t quite place what it was, what it could be. He found himself watching Ben cut, fascinated by the ease at which the flame separated the metal. He tried to envision it on the molecular level, imagining the excitement of the atoms from the heat, the moving overwhelming the fixation as they slid apart. Did they move apart willingly because of the heat, or were they forced? Was it against their will? He felt like an atom himself in the room, vibrating, excited by the goings on within his proximity. It was hot in here as a matter of fact, hot despite the cold that came through the door at his back.
“Cillian!” Ben yelled but there was no response.
Cillian stood at the sound as if called to cue then made his way to the foot of the stairs. The cutting of the torch ceased, and Cillian turned to see Ben yelling at it now, turning knobs, trying desperately to get it to come back to life. Turning farther, he saw the boy who looked about his age, the one who’d been in the first cell. Standing now at the door, he desperately wanted someone to come into his line of sight to receive his hate from the end of the barrel. Cillian turned back, the stairs taking him a little off guard with their subtle rise in elevation. He stumbled up the first two, losing his footing and catching himself with both hands, the Glock still in the grip of one then he made his way up more conventionally.
He pointed the pistol at the empty doorway then down at the stairs. Up again then down as if he were trying to protect himself from the very world around him. His legs wobbled underneath his own weight, and he saw the golden hair spilling over the edge of the topmost step, but he didn’t stop, continuing forward so sure and steady on shaky legs. When he reached the top, he dropped his hands to his side and looked down at what would plague him for the rest of his life, a long life filled with struggle and
pain, regret and joy, a memory that his soul would ask his body on many occasions why he would fight to keep it. Alice lay with her head at an angle, the blade of the machete propping it up to look at him as he approached. There was no name for the color of her eyes, so vividly green, nearly translucent, like glowing algae. Alice’s hair was clean and gold up to the top where the blood spoiled it on so many levels. Already clotting and congealed where it was thin, the blood was like a living thing all its own, something that had escaped from her to consume everything it touched. There was no life there. Her pupils had no response, and her skin already looked too pale even for her. Cillian couldn’t help but kneel down to brush the back of his knuckles against her cheek, and already she was cool, or so it seemed to him. He remembered now why he was so upset, why Ben’s eyes were wet, why the world around him no longer seemed to spin. He looked down at her eyes and tried to close them, but the lids wouldn’t stay down like in the movies. Here everything was real. The blade clanked against the floor as he moved her head from trying to close her eyes. It made a sickening sound. A smile escaped his lips despite everything that had happened today. Here everything was real, and he found comfort in that. This was the world without the blinders. Here be dragons? No, here be people, and they were so much worse. Far worse than the mythical they’d tried to use to replace them. It all came back to them: gods, monsters, demons, goblins. They were just all distortions of people. The images that looked back at them in still water.
Cillian looked at the blank spot of the doorway then he looked down at Ben who still struggled with the torch, cried at his dilemma. At this very moment, Ben was pulling frantically at the last gate that he couldn’t open, the boy Slayton shooting outside at something or someone that could not be seen. Cillian raised his gun hand to help then stopped himself. He looked down at the unresponsive eyes of the girl he had kissed, had confided his insecurities in not more than a few hours before. He had laid with in that office and loved, his life raft away from Lotus. Then he moved forward, through the blank doorway, trying to see what could be seen next. He knew what he was looking for now, knew the purpose of his existence, and he vowed to himself that he would not stop until it was found, until the man Marshal was made to pay for what he had done to a world already too shitty to live in.