by Weston Ochse
Starling couldn’t help rolling his eyes as he deposited the bag and the empty forty in a trash bin, then opened the door to the back.
McQueen was dressed in a skin-tight pink company shirt with the image of a raised fist over his breast and the words COME YANK AT HANK’S. He wore jeans and combat boots. On his hands were fingerless gloves. He had a full head of brown hair with a hipster beard and mustache. When Starling opened the door, he said, “Close the door and take off your shirt.”
“Bet you say that to all the guys,” Starling said.
“You wish.” McQueen opened a combat medic bag and pulled out alcohol and some swabs. He’d tugged off his fingerless gloves and pulled on rubber ones. “You’re not my type.”
“What? You like tall, dark and handsome?” Starling said, wincing as McQueen turned him.
“I’ll take them as tall, dark and clean. Jesus, Starling, what happened to you?”
“No reason to call me Jesus.” He winced again. “Just been down on my luck, I guess.”
McQueen had been an 18D in the army—MOS designator for Special Forces Medic. He’d retired as a warrant officer after commanding two ODAs in Iraq. All his men and fellow operators had known about his sexual preferences. A few made jokes, which he’d never minded, but none really cared. Starling understood that Special Forces was a brotherhood much like his rangers, and there were few things that could disturb that. Certainly, who you went to bed with wasn’t one of them.
“‘Down on your luck,’” McQueen repeated. “That another way to say alcoholic?”
“I’m not an alcoholic. That was a disguise.”
“You wear it pretty well, my friend.” McQueen applied bandages to Starling’s back, then handed him a T-shirt to match his own.
Starling furrowed his brow but couldn’t think of any reasonable excuse not to wear it. Grimacing, he shrugged it on. “There. How do I look?”
McQueen cocked his head and twizzled an end of his mustache. “Like someone I used to know.”
Starling felt his smile drop a little. He hadn’t seen McQueen in person for five months, and seeing him now brought back a lot of good memories and a lot of missions they’d been on in Afghanistan. McQueen was the most solid person Starling knew. They weren’t friends. They were closer than that. Starling felt that McQueen could have easily been the TST commander. That he’d never fought or argued for the assignment had always made Starling wonder. That was why Starling had made him second in charge. Now, seeing how normal McQueen looked compared to himself made Starling realize how hard he’d fallen.
“How have you been doing since you got back?” Starling asked. “I got to tell you, you’re looking pretty good… in a purely heterosexual way.”
“Is this a serious question or are you just giving me a yank?”
“Serious.” Starling gestured to himself. “You can see what happened to me, but you look the same as you did.”
McQueen shook his head. “Anything but.” He ran a hand through his hair and began to put away the medical supplies. “Can’t sleep, and then when I do, I see shit.”
“What sort of shit?”
“Weird, dreamy shit.” McQueen shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m no shrink.”
“Like a girl and a goat, maybe.”
McQueen gave Starling a startled look, then swallowed. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You have seen them,” Starling pressed, but he couldn’t get McQueen to respond. “Brother, I can’t even nap without seeing them.” Starling whistled the theme music to The Twilight Zone. “What about other things? Have strange things been happening to you?”
“I bounce the door of a gay bar. My definition of strange might not be the same as yours.”
Starling barely heard the comment as he remembered the faces of the two Koreans that had morphed. It wasn’t something he was prepared to share. He was already close to looking stupid and didn’t want to be the one who shoved himself over the edge.
Starling shook his head and changed the subject. “Thanks for coming out.”
“Anything to help an old friend. Where are they now?”
“Hopefully still holed up. Ready to enact Plan B?”
“Let’s get it rolling.”
“Got that burner phone I ordered?”
“One better.” He handed Starling a pink-cased iPhone.
“Whose is this?”
“A little asshole who keeps selling Special K and X over at the club. I swiped it from him last night after I beat his ass. We can make all the calls we need on this puppy.”
Starling stared at McQueen. The guy was normally quiet to the point of being taciturn. Starling wasn’t used to seeing him this animated, much less this free with his language. Starling shrugged inwardly, then made the call.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“There are intruders in the house across the street. Looks like a whole Korean gang is doing a number there.”
“Are you safe, sir?”
“Oh, sure. I’m just down by the window… oh shit. They have guns.”
“Did they see you, sir?”
“I don’t think so… shit!”
“Can you give us the address, sir?”
He gave the address, then said breathlessly, “I think they might be coming for me. I gotta go.” He hung up and tossed the phone to McQueen.
“What now?” McQueen asked, tossing the phone out the window.
“Let’s find a place down the street to watch the fireworks.”
By the time they found a spot a block down Harvard Street, all hell was breaking loose at Joon’s old house. Four squad cars had pulled in front of it and the cops had their weapons trained on those inside, screaming for them to come out. McQueen and Starling were wondering if they might have created a standoff, but after about fifteen minutes and the arrival of five more squad cars, the men filed out of the home, hands on their heads and were soon eating the street as they were segregated, frisked, and cuffed.
After about an hour all but one squad car left the area. From watching police procedurals, Starling guessed it was waiting for the crime scene techs to arrive. Not enough to bother anything they’d be doing.
After another fifteen minutes, he said, “Okay, let’s go.”
They pulled around the block and then up to the front gate of the house next door, where hopefully Joon and Freddie were still safe. The officer watched them warily, but when Starling got out of the van and waved, the cop couldn’t help smirk at the day glow pink shirt and the Come Yank at Hank’s logo.
McQueen honked the horn and flashed his lights.
Starling went to the gate and rattled it.
This got the cop’s attention. He headed over, thumbs hooked in his belt.
“Hey, Joon! It’s me. Ready to go?” Starling glanced nonchalantly at the officer, then shouted, “Joon, open up!”
The cop kept coming.
Where was she? Larrson hadn’t figured it out, had he? Starling remembered seeing a stack of mail in the kitchen of Joon’s house. Had that been hers or the neighbor’s? Would Larrson have been smart enough to realize she might be next door?
“What’s going on?”
Starling spun and met the policeman, Office McKinney by his nameplate.
“I asked a question.”
“Just waiting on my sister,” Starling said regretting the words the moment they left his mouth.
“Your sister?” the cop said, his eyes unreadable.
“Yes sir, officer.”
“Show me some ID,” the cop said.
“Right now?”
The cop took a step back, the equivalent of a threat.
Starling’s eyes widened. This was the last thing he needed. He glanced at McQueen, who sat steadfastly behind the wheel… like he should. At this point any movement could result in something bad. Starling knew that if he was in the TST and was presented with a man who wouldn’t cooperate, depending on the circumstances, he was cleared hot to kill.
>
He swallowed. “No problem, officer.” He reached for his wallet, moving slowly, nothing in his stance aggressive.
Just then the front door to the house opened. Joon pushed Freddie out onto the porch, left him there, then ran down the stairs and to the gate.
“I was wondering what happened to you,” she said to Starling.
“Just getting a van, sis,” he said, not taking his eye off the police officer.
Starling watched as the cop assessed Joon, then turned back to Starling, an eyebrow raised in question.
“Adopted,” Starling said. He shrugged.
“Can you help us with my son, officer?” Joon said, unlocking the front gate, keys and chain rattling against the metal.
The cop turned toward the front porch.
“It’s my nephew,” Starling said. “We’re taking him to Disneyland tomorrow. He’s always wanted to go.” Lies piling on top of lies.
Joon swept open the gate.
Starling stopped reaching for his wallet. “We’ll bring the van into the driveway to load him in. We might need help, though, getting him down the steps.”
He waved and McQueen slowly drove the van up, stopping so the headlights illuminated Freddie, who was in his wheelchair on the wide front porch of the Craftsman. A set of four stairs rose from the ground to the porch.
Starling walked forward, putting his back to the cop, trying to pretend that loading a hand- and footless kid into the back of a pink van advertising a gay bar in the middle of Koreatown was the most natural thing in the world.
“Hold on a minute,” the cop said, stepping towards them.
Now Joon, McQueen, and Starling turned, all with their hands on the wheelchair.
The cop watched them for a moment, then nodded. “Let me give you a hand with that.” He approached the boy in the wheelchair. “What’s up, kid,” he said, ruffling the boy’s hair. “You doing okay?”
“Awesome, officer. Gonna see Mickey tomorrow.”
Starling knew then that the Oscar was going to Freddie.
The cop grabbed one side of the wheelchair while McQueen grabbed the other.
Joon hurried to the back doors of the van and opened both of them.
Starling climbed inside and squatted, waiting to receive the chair. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the remnants of his bloody shirt and hastily shoved it under the passenger seat.
Another few minutes and the chair was inside and strapped down, and they were driving away from the residence.
No one said a word for five blocks.
Finally, Joon said from the back, “I didn’t know if you were coming back.”
“I promised,” Starling said. “I don’t break promises.”
McQueen shot him a look but didn’t say a word, then introduced himself using the rearview mirror.
After the introduction, she asked, “What now?”
“Now we find somewhere to stash you. I know the perfect place.” Starling turned to McQueen. “And you’ve spoken to Lore about this?”
The bigger man shook his head. “Been trying to get ahold of her, but no luck. When’s the last time you talked to her?”
Starling thought about it and couldn’t remember. That was so odd. He’d always remained in contact with his TST members. He still knew the phone numbers of old members of his regiment he hadn’t seen in a dozen years. But for the life of him, he couldn’t recall Lore’s number, her address, or even what she was doing these days. He said as much.
“It seems to me that you haven’t been in touch with anyone. No offense, Starling, but the only reason we’ve been in contact was because you owe me money.”
The embarrassment of the situation struck Starling and he felt the heat of Joon’s and her son’s gazes on the back of his neck. “I’m trying to fix that. What’s up with Lore these days?” he asked, trying to shift the attention away from him. The embarrassment was bad enough, but the disappointment was something he couldn’t bear.
“She’s fallen farther than you, I’m afraid.” Then McQueen added, “No insult intended.”
Starling sighed.
“She has a trailer east of Corona,” McQueen said. “Supposed to be raising vegetables and living her crazy yoga-vegan lifestyle.”
Supposed to be. “So she’s not then. What happened?”
“Drugs, man. She’s been back and forth from detox, but the last two times I spoke with her she was clean as a whistle and even considering another tour back in the box.”
“What’s the box?” Freddie asked, making Starling realize that he might be too young for some of the things they were saying.
“The box is downrange,” he said, then realized he needed to explain it. “Downrange means a deployment, usually to a warzone, so when we say take a tour in the box, we mean some place like Afghanistan and Iraq.”
“Have you been there?” Freddie asked.
“Been to both places,” Starling replied. He wanted to add and they were both shitholes, but he kept that to himself.
“You mean you were in the army?” Freddie asked a little too incredulously.
Starling bit back another sigh and caught the grin on McQueen’s face. “Yeah. I was in the army. In fact, I was a US Army Ranger. Do you know what rangers are, son?”
“I played them in Call of Duty. They’re special-ops forces.”
“Call of Duty? You mean the game?” Starling remembered it being pretty damned gory, stopping just short of slasher movie SFX. The profanity was also over-the-top, however realistic it might be. Most civilians had no idea how much cursing really went on in the military. Then he remembered the kid had no arms, so how was he… oh. The steering mechanism must pull double duty as a game controller.
“It’s pretty bad,” Joon admitted from the back. “But we talk about it and he realizes that real life isn’t as graphic.”
Starling flashed back to the aftermaths of a dozen real battles and bit his tongue.
“I liked the scenarios they have, especially the one where I become a spy in Russia. I think that’s cool.” Freddie paused, then added, “And they help kill zombies.”
Starling furrowed his brow, wondering.
McQueen stepped into the conversation. “Starling here was in charge of a team of us.”
“I thought you were in charge,” Freddie said.
“Me? I’m just the driver and the muscle.”
“The muscle?” Freddie asked.
“I keep anything bad from happening to my friends, and now that you’re my friend that means you too.”
As they headed south and east, Starling kept trying to contact Lore. Once they hit I-15, the going got faster. They stopped to get some food at an In-N-Out Burger, then continued on their way. They finally reached Lore’s house by 23:15 hours. It was a double-wide amid hard scrabble about a mile off a side-road. The nearest house was several acres over. Like the driveway, the road was unlit, but the interior of the house was flashing like a rave was going on inside.
McQueen pulled to a stop near the home and turned off the ignition, the slamming sound of techno replacing the engine noise. They sat and listened to the THUNKA THUNKA THUNKA beat emanating from the home. The music was so loud that the trailer seemed to pulsate. Odd sequences of colored lights flashed furiously to the music. It was like the trailer was a living thing, screaming for its life.
“Well, that explains why she never answers her phone,” McQueen said.
Then a face slammed against the nearest window of the trailer, leaving a long, bloody smear.
Chapter Six
Corona Regional Medical Center
STARLING SAT IN the hospital waiting room, his eyes wide, still not believing what he’d seen, the words zaxhem mahal keh dar ahn noor shoma vared ast still ringing in his ears. It sounded Middle Eastern, but it could very well have been Martian. All he was certain of was that he’d never forget them, each syllable screamed from the bloody mouth of Lore as she was thrown back and forth across the trailer by a giant, invisible hand.
As crazy as it sounded, it had to have been a hand, because that’s exactly what it had looked like when they entered. Lore, once a fierce army lieutenant, being rag-dolled back and forth, absolutely not in control of her limbs. The only thing he’d ever seen like that was years ago when he’d fallen asleep with the television on, only to wake up to The Exorcist on television, the gory face of the girl leering into the TV camera with green bile dripping from her lips.
Starling shook his head to free himself of the image and sipped the tepid coffee he’d scrounged from the nurse’s station. McQueen was in the room with Lore. He’d told the hospital staff he was her brother, which sort of made sense since it was him who’d brought her to the hospital. The ride to the emergency room had been terrifying; Lore had fought against Starling as he’d restrained her—spitting, snarling, and gouging, her trying to break free while he held her on the floor of the van.
Poor Freddie had cried the entire way, with Joon trying desperately to calm him.
Starling’s wrists had withstood the worst of Lore’s struggles, scratches from mid-arm all the way down to his hands, bloody red trophies of where he’d held her down. It should have hurt, but all he could think of was that first moment when they’d broken down the door to her doublewide. The inside was completely devoid of furniture except for a wall unit holding a stereo and speakers affixed to the far wall. A multicolored light was wired to a corner of the room with a fan in front of it to continually shutter the light. The carpet had been ripped away, revealing wooden flooring that had been drawn on with strange sigils and letters. These markings matched those on the walls, which covered almost every inch of the once white surface along with images of various triangles with rays shooting from them in every direction. Everything that had been done had essentially transformed the room into one immense, mystical mosh pit.
But what he saw of Lore was much worse. Her hair had been cut on the sides in what he could only describe as a punk haircut. The back of her head still had long hair, but it had been tied into intricate braids interspersed with sticks and pieces of garbage. Her face had been marked like the walls, with hundreds of tiny letters and sigils written helter-skelter across her features. And that’s where all normality stopped. Beneath her chin was another matter altogether. Her breasts and groin were wrapped with black duct tape. It looked like an entire roll had been used. Beneath the tape and covering every other inch of skin except for her hands and feet, she was wrapped with tinfoil. The shiny metal crinkled as she moved. Atop everything else, she’d wrapped herself in cellophane. This had made it hard for Starling to hold her down, his hands constantly slipping.