They found Brant guilty and the judge sentenced him to imprisonment with mandatory medication for three years at which point he'd be re-assessed.
I felt a strangely blank rage. Like being stuck in a traffic jam, all the muscle in the world couldn't help him. The officers closed in and put him in the thickest restraints I had ever seen–bands of metal seemingly welded together at the wrist.
Brant stood taller than the police. His smug, infantryman face showed shocked indignation as he looked from judge to peace officers and back. Sadness clung to his features as he looked down at his feet. But then he raised his head high and favored me with one of his cocksure smiles. The muscles on his forearms stood out and I shook my head in terror and in protest.
The restraints snapped apart with a clank and a squeal. He demolished the mirrored helmets on both sides of him with his metal encased arms, then turned to leap out the third story window. The two remaining officers nearby activated the devices they held that glowed with a sharp, sickening red light. They looked like small handguns and they swept the points of them up and down Brant's body from just a few feet away.
His knees buckled under him and he never made it to the window. He writhed on the floor and the two cops came closer to him, firing their implements repeatedly. Grotesque sounds came from Brant's insides as his skin changed colors.
From across the room, the tip of the weapon passed in my general direction and an unsettling discomfort took hold in my chest. I felt like I might vomit, and couldn't breathe, making me briefly dizzy before the beam moved away again. No one else in the courthouse seemed to be affected, though the cops must have caught the bystanders in the beams just like they caught me.
There were two more of these things leveled at me from close range and I didn't give the cops any reason to use them. I stayed still and watched them disintegrate Brant from the inside out. Knowing I was guilty of the same crime was the hardest part as I put my hands up.
That day my shift went by slowly. I was able to stay focused. The other guys didn't seem to notice a change, but I felt more alert. My mind wandered, but it had a good reason for wandering for once. An old friend was dead.
The guys were talking about it. There was some kind of fascination among firefighters in talking about other firefighters, especially dead ones. The news made Brant out to be some kind of a freak, a villain.
"He wasn't like that, you know." I said as we watched the TV that night in the upstairs kitchen of the firehouse.
"You probably knew him, didn't you?" Ben asked.
"Yeah I knew him. I was at the trial when they killed him. Can you guys keep your mouths shut about something?" I said.
"Yeah," they said. It was a pointless oath, however, firefighters were the worst gossips I'd ever met–there were no secrets.
"He looked at me first. He gave me this dumb smile like he had everything all figured out. Then he busted those big-ass handcuffs and smacked the two of 'em and ran for it. He should have taken out the other two. But what kills me is the way he seemed to know what he was doing. Maybe he knew they would kill him. Maybe he wasn't trying to get away."
"Why do you think he did it? Three years in jail hardly seems worth it."
"It wasn't the jail time, it was the pills." I said darkly. When they looked at me searchingly, I said. "I guess they were gonna make him take some pills he didn't want. Pills that change a man into someone else. I guess he thought that life wasn't worth living, even for three years."
The guys didn't seem to know what to say to that.
A tour of kids came through the firehouse in the morning. Five year olds. The chief had me come down and put my gear on. I was like a history exhibit, right next to the horse-drawn, hand-pump fire engine out front. The whole class, twenty or so kids climbed on a bench and I lifted them all up over my head and the teacher took pictures.
I was a salesman too, I guess, because I smiled at them and ruffled their hair so, so gently when they said they wanted to be like me even though I should have told them. No you don't, child. Be like you.
I drove home with a lot on my mind and I listened to the radio. Damn radio men got on my nerves so much that I kept scanning through the frequencies until I found a voice unlike the rest. He was slow and smooth–nothing urgent or titillated about him. He had no agenda and didn't seem to be talking about anything too important. There was passion in him though. I could hear it even across the miles of airspace between the transmitter and my car radio.
I turned it up. I leaned in close. A snare drum riff kicked off a jazz ballad that brought a smile to my lips and made me think of dancing slow with my woman. It was music so heartbreaking I wanted to make things right with my parents. I wanted to get on one knee and ask my wife to marry me again.
The soloists came and went, taking turns of improvisation, elaborating on the soulful theme of the music and making it their own. I could see them in their suits and ties sweating on stage with the red and blue lights shining through cigarette smoke.
I barely noticed the traffic, though it was bad this morning. Tune after tune paraded by, each one surprising and thrilling me more than the last. Where was this before? Where was this music? I would never have found it with those poisons in my blood. Was this what Brant heard to make him decide death was better than medicated half-life? I took the long way home. I had to laugh at myself. What had gotten into me? I didn't want the drive to end because I had discovered jazz radio.
The door was already open to my unit when I got there. I strolled inside and said, "Sweetness, guess what. I'm gonna buy a saxophone. One of those big ones ha ha!"
But she was talking to someone else in the other room. She said, "Oh here he is, you can ask him yourself, officer."
She came around the corner with two peace men. "Oh hello, officers," I said scanning them for those deadly pistols. The normal bullet slinging ones didn't scare me so much as the silent ones they used on Brant that cooked him, or tore him apart, or as my imagination had begun to suspect, forced his body to reject all the implanted organs and grafts at once. "How can I help you?"
"We are here to look into how you're doing on your meds, sir. Just a routine inspection."
"Routine, huh?" I said. "Nothing to do with that guy from yesterday? Brant?" I wouldn't have bothered questioning them if the pills were in effect. The pills would have just about answered the cops' questions for me and all I would have had to do was listen to them speaking with my voice, and hope I was numb enough on the inside that I could stand it.
"You are Captain Glen Proctor, right? Call sign X14, from the Lionsdown station? Are you taking the meds or not?"
"I'm sure my wife already answered your questions. Cara has to remind me, you know how it is…" I said.
"Except lately," the officer said.
My smile faded and I looked at Cara, who shrugged with a strange look on her face. "Excuse me?"
"She hasn't been helping you lately, you've been locking the bathroom door. She told us."
"Hey I'm sure it's just because he's been remembering lately. He's been really good lately officers. Really good."
"But you said he was sick. Stayed in bed all day, sweating, shaking…"
"Look," I said. "Gentlemen, just count the pills, all right. This is outrageous, but if you have to count 'em go ahead."
"We already did, Mr. Proctor. It looks like you missed this morning's doses."
"Now, that's because of the school kids," I said. "I was supposed to get off at eight, but the tour came through and–and I got held up. I was going to take them when I got home." I smiled and Cara looked relieved.
"All right, then go ahead," the peace man said.
"What?"
"Go ahead and take them, then we'll be out of your way."
"Can I at least take my boots off? It's been a long shift." My mind was jumping from outcome to outcome as I tried to put a coherent plan together. I bent down, untying my boots slowly to give myself time. I heard jazz piano rumbling softly in my
mind and it made me smile.
"All right," I said. "If it will get you off my back." Cara urgently rubbed my arm as I walked past her. I looked at her and nodded reassuringly, humming to myself a melody that spoke of the blues.
I went into the bathroom with the two cops. I came out of the bathroom alone, not one pill-weight heavier.
"Don't go in there, sweetness," I said. Washing my hands in the kitchen sink.
She didn't take my advice and opened the bathroom door. This was it. This was the moment that would force the issue. Was she with me, truly? Or was she with them? I turned off the water to hear Cara hyperventilating in the bathroom.
"Sweetness?" I called.
When she finally came back she was holding one of the dead men's handguns, the kind to shoot bullets. She looked tearful and afraid.
I went to her. "It's okay, Cara, don't worry."
"Stay back." She said. "You really have lost it. Why'd you stop taking them? Take them right now! Take the pills before you hurt someone else!"
"Put that thing down, Cara." I said and I stepped closer. "It was all a lie. You know how good I've been lately. The pills are poison. They're just chemicals to keep me dead inside. To control me and my kind."
"Baby, you've gone crazy." She said. "That's crazy talk."
I put my hand on hers and pushed the gun down so, so gently. "Let's talk about this. Come with me. I love you more than I've ever loved you before and I know you're scared, but this is the least crazy I've been in years. Since they did this to me. Since they changed me."
"Let go of my hands, Glen," she said.
"You trust me, right?"
"You're hurting me," She said. I was horrified to see the knuckles of both hands had gone white under my grip. I almost opened my hand just a little, but there was that gun.... "You need to take the pills, Glen. Please. Just do it. For me. I don't want them to kill you."
Sirens were approaching. Every peace officer's heartbeat was linked to the dispatch system. Whenever one of them died it was an instantaneous call for backup. "You love them so much why don't you take them?" I said. She winced, looking in horror down at her hands that made a cracking sound.
The gun blast was beyond loud, but it sounded sort of empty and high pitched, not like the deep thunderclaps they used in the movies.
I pushed her hands away, softly, but not so softly that she could stay on her feet. She thrashed away, kicking at the carpet to push herself back in the corner like I was a poisonous snake.
I put two fingers to the bloody bullet hole between my ribs and the ache there built steadily, like I was being squeezed. She kept saying she was sorry, but didn't point the gun away. "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry," she said. I took a deep breath. Blood dripped onto the carpet, but then stopped. I could feel the fibers of my skin reaching out for each other across the gap of the wound. Dear God my wife shot me, I thought. And it wasn't that bad.
I cut off her apologetic babble. "I heard music today that made me want to dance with you for the rest of my life. I haven't felt that way in so long. It's those pills. But it's more than that. It's this place, this life. Everything's the same–the traffic, the housing units, the grind, the shit on TV… all day every day someone's trying to sell you something. I hate that. I've always hated it, but up until Brant told me what was going on I didn't know how to say it. I didn't know what to do about it. Don't you hate those things too?"
"Yes," she whispered. "But did you have to kill them?"
"It was them or me, Cara. Forgive me, but it was them or me."
"It was a pill! They weren't trying to kill you! Can you hear how crazy you sound?"
"They might as well have killed me, sweetness. You can either be alive or you can take those pills, but you can't do both. I don't care how short my life is. I don't care how painful, but I'm done with being numb. I'm done with being caged up. You don't get it. Look at you you're ready to kill me right now. I'm your husband. I love you! That's got to count for something! Come on. We'll get out of here."
"They'd catch us," she said quietly.
"I know," I smiled. "But until then, baby we can listen to jazz and we can fuck and we can dance for the rest of our lives."
We laughed a private little laugh together and she looked like she wanted to kiss me again for the first time since I came home. "Jazz?" she asked slyly.
The cops stormed in and she dropped the gun. I jumped off the balcony followed by chunks of lead that missed me narrowly. The weightlessness was exhilarating, but all good things come to an end. The car I landed on was not gentle with me, nor I with it. But I swam my arms until I was clear of the wreckage and the extra adrenal glands must have kicked in because the sheet metal parted like a brown paper bag. I got up and ran without feeling the pain.
A cop stuck his arm out the window of his chaser and a red glow bled from the small black pistol in his grip. I felt that sickness and dizziness, but I must have been just at the edge of his range and the discomfort vanished when I ducked around a corner.
I ran so fast! Why had I not thought to go out and run for the sheer joy of it after all these years? The pills had made me want to watch TV. They had made me want to put my feet up and be subdued. But dear God could I run.
It was months later that I finally found her address in a directory on a library computer. I had run on foot across most of the continent, leaving Esperanza far behind me without a word of goodbye to anyone I knew. I still had a little cash left from the bail bond that was returned to me at the courthouse on the day of Brant's trial. My beard was coming in.
I was in a northern New England town with icy sidewalks, a place I could have called home if I weren't a fugitive. Something in me leapt when I saw a yellow fire truck go by, and it brought back memories of another man's life. That was when I decided I needed to say thank you.
I was grateful she agreed to meet me. We ate at a little diner that she said would be good, but wasn't, and I made small talk with her until my slice of pie came on a small dish.
"Where are you from young man?" she asked. It had been a long time since anyone had called me that.
"Esperanza," I said.
"Hope," she said. "Esperanza means hope."
"Did your mother die on New Year's eve?" I asked. It was blunt, but I had to chance it.
"Yes. She did. How did you know that? Did you know my husband?" Selena said. I couldn't help staring at her. She was as exotic and beautiful as she had been in the dream, but a wedding band adorned her finger now and there were new wrinkles in her face.
"And did you meet Ed that same day?" I asked.
She leaned in close, staring into my face, trying to read me. "Yes," she said, "but I don't understand…"
"When firefighters join up, we sign these organ donor cards, probably something that Ed wouldn't even have mentioned. Just another piece of paper to sign when you're fresh from the academy and you're just excited to start knocking down fires." We shared a mutual chuckle. "Well, your husband, he died years ago, didn't he?"
"Yes, he did. It was terrible."
"Your husband signed one of those cards. He must have had my blood type… I may not look like it, but I have a lot of extra parts in here. I don't know if it's a lung, a liver, a kidney, but… I remember you. I've got something of Ed's in me. Maybe his heart. I remember you, from a long time ago. He loved you very much." I touched my chest. "He still loves you."
There were tears in her eyes. "It wouldn't be his liver. The way he drank you wouldn't want it." I laughed with her politely.
"Well I wanted to say thank you, to yourself and to Ed. I wouldn't be alive without him. He must have been a good man. You obviously loved him well."
She put a hand over my heart in a lingering way as we said our goodbyes. I wondered if my signature was still valid on the donor card since I'd abandoned Esperanza Five months ago and was a wanted man. Would somebody get Ed's heart when I was gone? Would it be a hand-me-down and would the next sap who needed it fall for Selena on New Year'
s Eve all over again?
When they finally take me down, I thought, will there be anything left of me to give or will those eerie red beams turn my insides to jelly?
The program was supposedly shut down now, which was why mine was a dying breed. My research had told me that the project had relied on the theory that latent memories were stored in the tissues of internal organs. That's why firefighters signed the donor cards; to ensure that my kind would have more than parts to keep us alive, but also some vestige of the skills acquired by our predecessors. Exceptional, but nonetheless dead firefighters had been picked clean in order to make me. Their imagined faces and their infrequent memories became my companions. I owed them everything I had.
The law eventually caught up with me and I had the bullet holes to prove it. It was some back woods cop precinct that got me. They weren't equipped with those deadly devices. I counted myself lucky on that count. There were a few bandages slapped onto my ribs and my left leg. I could tell one of my lungs was no longer functioning from the bullet hole in it, but I had others and could breathe well enough.
I looked over the cop's shoulder at the screen that displayed my mug shot. My hair was puffing out and my curly beard had started coming in. I was in one of those lumberjack shirts and smiling at the camera. That was me. I knew that was definitely me.
"I look like a dumbass in this shirt don't I?" I said conspiratorially to the officer processing my belongings into storage. "Just wanted to know what it was like to wear one," I smiled.
"How is it?" he asked.
"Worth it," I said. "Careful with that," I said, pointing to the hydrogen battery radio. "That thing became my best friend, and I'm going to need it when I get out." The sleek, red radio had survived the gunfire, tuned all the while to the local jazz station in my pocket, belting out a big band horn melody with a drum solo. until the peace men had turned it off while they cuffed me.
The Stroke of Midnight: A Supernatural New Year's Anthology Page 28