Rich was a big guy, and wounded or at least confused. He wouldn’t be terribly stealthy.
Kate took a few steps away from him. “Rich!” she called. He’d have to be an idiot to respond to something like that. She moved away, and Val gritted his teeth, he didn’t want to see her grabbed, or shot, or anything. Maybe they should get in the truck and drive. He wondered if they could get across the border into Mexico, live out the rest of their days on the beach. Probably not. The cops were the least of his worries.
He moved up next to Kate. “Is the gun still in Mom’s room?” he asked, his words a breath on her neck. She nodded. “I’m going to go get it.” She nodded again, but he didn’t move. Was he supposed to leave her here, exposed, and out in the open? “Come with me.”
And they moved towards the trailer together. The shovel he’d used on Maria was with her in the trunk. It wasn’t worth it to get it. He didn’t want to see or smell that. He dismissed the idea of getting a kitchen knife, Rich had always been better than he was with knives. The gun was where it was at, either that or something big and blunt. He had an aluminum baseball bat in the cab of the truck.
Val went for it, leaving Kate’s side, opening the door as quietly as he could, trying to quiet the grinding sound the truck’s door made. It felt good and sturdy in his hands, and he couldn’t wait to place it upside Rich’s skull. Wanting it almost made him salivate, the fucker had made every day of his life miserable for the past six years.
He turned back to Kate, who stood in the middle of the driveway. She gestured towards the trailer with her head. He wasn’t sure if it meant “let’s go get the gun” or “Rich is over there.” He went to her.
“I saw the curtain move.”
“The AC is on.”
“Or he’s in there.”
“Let’s go find out.” Val took the lead, hefting the bat in his hands. He threw open the door. It looked very dark in the trailer, in contrast with the sun. The curtains were all drawn to keep the heat out, and there were no lights on inside. Advantage there would go to Rich.
It was even darker than he feared. The familiar shapes of the sofa, the counter where the boy had died were hulking shadows, and the air smelled of bleach and blood. They were getting out of here as soon as this little problem was taken care of. Val hefted the bat in his hands, his grip firm but not too tight. Kate turned the light on. Everything looked normal, except the counter was too clean. As a pair they moved down the hall. The back door hung open, kicked in, the latch busted.
“That’s how he got in,” she whispered.
They checked the bathroom. Val’s room, with the shower curtain on the floor? He looked at Kate, questioning. She looked away. He squeezed the aluminum, his knuckles going white. No more playing. This was it.
Only his mother’s room was left. Was her ghost inside? That inspired a whole new level of paranoia, would her ghost help Rich, since he’d been such a shitty son?
Kate opened the door and clicked on the light while he brandished the bat. Nothing. Kate went for the gun while Val covered the door.
Rich wouldn’t have gone away, would he?
As soon as Kate got her security blanket, they went back outside. The sunlight flared in their eyes, reflected from the truck’s windshield.
Rich hadn’t gone away.
Kate pointed the gun at him and fired, cringing as she did so. There was a miserable click, and Val knew it was because he’d left the stupid thing loaded all those years. He’d kind of been amazed it fired the first time.
Val didn’t get a chance to swing his bat before Rich was upon him. His head bounced off the trailer wall and he saw bright flashes of white. Rich punched at him, and he twisted his head to the side, but still caught a grazing from hairy knuckles. Val sucked in Rich’s old-sweat smell, like rancid onions, with every inhale, could feel his heat through his thin shirt. Val was outweighed by at least a hundred pounds. But that was why he went to the gym. He shoved up and Rich shifted, enough so Val and his pounding skull could move away. He swung the bat and it glanced off Rich’s shoulder. They looked at one another.
Rich’s skin had a bluish tint to it, from lack of oxygen, maybe? Deep black circles lurked under his eyes. Sweat glossed his unshaven, flabby face, and his breath caught in his throat with a rattle every time he breathed. Should be easy to finish him off. If only he could get the weight off of him. Rich hit him in the side, and Val couldn’t tell if that sound had been the snapping of his rib or not. He kneed at Rich, not able to get enough momentum to make his jabs hurt. After one more failed attempt, the aluminum bat rolled out of his fingers. Well, shit.
The next time Rich hit him, he was pretty sure his rib did break. Breathing was getting to be a challenge, and now it was accompanied by a sharp pain in his side.
Rich had time to get him once more, a left hook into his kidney, when all of his almost three hundred pounds dropped onto Val, dead weight. Rich’s face landed on Val’s, like they were kissing, and some of the salty mucus, sweat or spit dripped into Val’s mouth. The weight on him twitched once before Val could shrug him off, almost in time to get Kate’s baseball bat to the face.
He turned away, and it smashed the wood by his head.
Val spat and spat, trying to clear his mouth of salty slime. It made him think of prison. He pawed at his tongue with dirty hands, preferring the earthy grit to Rich’s salty warmth. He pushed himself up, standing, using the trailer wall, siding warm in the sun, as a support.
Kate stood over Rich like a tyrant, dropping the bat on him over and over again, reducing the flabby face to a pulp. Tears streamed down her face and her shoulders shook. Now wasn’t the time to comfort her. Val winced as she gave Rich’s junk a soccer style kick, she threw the bloody bat down into the dirt so she could focus on kicking him, drilling her sneakers into him with all she had. Val watched; a hand on his ribcage. Almost a decade of hate for Rich bubbled inside him, and watching the bastard’s poor sister get her revenge was the sweetest prize for Val.
They still needed to get out of here. He suspected if his little gray friends didn’t come along, Felix would, and he still wasn’t sure what that monster’s agenda was.
He was about to clear his throat, not sure how to go about pulling Kate away from her grisly task when she stopped. She stood, looking down at her brother. Then she turned her watery, red-rimmed eyes to Val. Her hair was a tangle and she had blood on her shoes. She reached out her arms to him, and though he thought she might be turning on him now, he took her in his arms where she dissolved into sobs.
“I loved him,” she cried. “And I hate myself for it. But he was there when they left, and he took care of me and made sure I went to school.”
Now, Val thought, was not the time to point out the flip side of this coin. And although Rich’s face was a compressed ruin, Val did feel the need to check for a pulse this time. Who knew how much of the blows had been deflected by all of Rich’s padding?
“I shouldn’t even care. I should be glad. He was your friend too, though.”
She pulled back to look at Val, her eyes panicked and lost. She looked like a wild-child rescued from the desert.
“The Rich I knew and liked hasn’t been around for a long time,” Val said.
“You were best friends,” she said, her voice soft.
Val nodded. “I still remember the good stuff,” he told her, which wasn’t entirely true because a lot of “the good stuff” involved an awful lot of booze and drugs. “Let’s go inside. Get some cool water on your face.”
“Will he be okay out here?” she asked.
Val smiled, unable to help himself. “He’s with Maria now. They’re together again.”
And that seemed to help bring her out of it. Her eyes lost the far off look, and she wiped at them with her hand, leaving a dirt streak across her face. She took a deep unsteady breath, looked at Rich again, then back to Val. “What are we going to do?”
“Put him in the trunk, and we ditch the car. Then we head out of town.”
> “Okay,” she said. “Let’s do it.”
34
The bags were packed. They were on their way out. A quick stop at the mine to send the Daytona into oblivion, and they were on their way to Santa Fe. Kate’s heart plummeted when she saw the brown and white sheriff’s department car. No no no! It was all her fault because she’d gotten Spence involved.
The Daytona stank, a rotten, sweet smell. Rich and Maria, together again. The realization her brother was dead hadn’t quite sunk in yet. Her shoulders ached from wielding the bat, but a kind of disconnect snapped on in her brain. She wanted to leave Lott. When they were somewhere else, somewhere quiet and they were alone, then she could start to process. She’d drawn the line when it came to putting Rich in the trunk. She’d walked around to the other side of the burned-out shed and left Val to it. He’d offered to drive this car, give her the truck, but she said no. She was responsible for it, now.
Maybe Spence wouldn’t notice.
The thought was stupid. It was a quiet dirt road, her car was obnoxious yellow, and Val’s truck was pretty distinct. She couldn’t think of any reason they’d be out here, other than to look for Val. She started to wish they wouldn’t see her, but then her wish snowballed…how far back to wish? Wish she’d never called Spence, wish Val wasn’t babbling about superpowers? Wish they hadn’t had to kill Maria? Wish Rich had never been born? Wish she had never been born?
The car rolled past them and Kate kept her eyes straight ahead, focusing on the road ahead of her, not looking at the cop car. In her peripheral vision she could see Spence and his passenger turning to look at her.
Val followed her in the truck, their bags packed and resting in the bed. Val never intended to go back to the trailer, not ever. This was it, goodbye Lott. Val didn’t slow down either, she noticed, stealing a glance in the rearview mirror. Spence rolled his window down and waved a brown arm at them. When they didn’t stop, he did a three- point-turn and put his lights on.
The turn off to the mine was ahead…but what good would it do? They wouldn’t be hard to follow, and neither the Daytona nor the pickup could outrun the police cruiser. She pulled over. Maybe they wouldn’t smell the rotting stink from her trunk.
She was going to jail.
Val pulled over behind her, and Kate jumped out of the Daytona and went to him, getting to the truck at the same time as Spence and Anderson, the FBI guy.
“Val, where the hell have you been?” Spence asked.
Val rolled down his window. What was he going to say?
“Are you all right? Who was that guy? The real Vargas is out on sick leave.”
For a moment Val wore a desperate, hunted look on his face. He looked from Spence to Anderson and back again. Then he took a deep breath and smiled. “Vargas. From Immigration. That was actually my prison buddy Felix. Playing a joke. Funny guy, Felix.”
“That’s part of what we wanted to talk to you about,” said Anderson. “We ran a background check on Felix Nasiverra and I couldn’t come up with anyone with that name in the New Mexico Penn. Does match a man who’s been missing for six years.”
“Odd,” said Val.
Kate watched around his eyes. He kept them flat and expressionless.
“I’m going to ask you to come down to the station with us for questioning,” said Anderson. He sniffed the air, but seemed to ignore whatever he smelled. The sun beat down, heating the inside of the trunk. It was like her very own slow cooker.
“Ask or tell?” asked Val.
“Tell. Please get in the car, Mr. Slade.”
“I’m sorry Kate,” said Spence. “The deeper we dug, the fishier it got. I figured we could kill some time by looking up this Felix guy, and we couldn’t come up with anything.” Spence looked to Val. “You missed your parole meeting, buddy.”
Val glanced at Kate.
“Step out of the truck, man.”
What was he going to do?
Val opened the door, keeping his hands plainly visible. Kate tried to keep her body between the Daytona and the cops. Sweat poured off her forehead, more than the day’s temperatures warranted.
“What’s going to happen?” she asked.
Her question was never answered. From a distance they heard the sound of a revved up engine, then a flash of red bulleted towards them.
The car was aimed straight at them.
Val shoved Spence out of the way and Anderson jumped free as a new red Monte Carlo slammed into the Otero County Sheriff’s Office sedan.
The driver stepped out. Tall and thin, with a neat shock of dark hair, his features were almost feminine. Felix.
Val’s eyes went wide and he looked around. He landed his gaze on the Daytona and bolted. He pushed past Kate, not even giving her a chance to head for the passenger seat. He slammed the driver’s seat back, started the car, and with a loud backfire that sounded like a gunshot, he took off towards the mine, screeching around the corner and down the turn-off.
Felix looked from Anderson, to Spence, to Kate, and jumped back in the Monte Carlo. He spun dirt as he backed up, and took off after Val.
“That was Vargas,” Spence said.
“We need to take the truck.”
“I’ll drive,” said Kate.
They piled into the cab of Val’s old pickup. The Misfits blasted from the radio, and Spence turned it off. “Same old Val,” he said.
Kate slammed the truck into gear and followed after Val and Felix. The gate was pushed aside, zinc-yellow paint smeared across it. The truck was better suited for the rutted dirt road than either of the other two cars, and she pushed it towards them.
35
His head feeling like it was about to explode, Val pulled the emergency brake out in front of the mine. The Daytona slammed to a halt, carrying with it the sickening odor of death.
Now what? Why had he come here?
They said he could control his environment, surely that meant he could deal with this fucking hum, this pressure. He spent the moment before Felix was on him with his eyes closed, he could make a wall, construct a barrier, to keep it at bay.
It worked. The pressure on his sinuses relaxed, his ears, his brain, his eyes, all of them seemed to deflate. Just in time for Felix to pull the door open.
“You left without saying goodbye.”
Val punched him in the nose, his knuckles howling in pain, and used Felix’s distraction to get himself out of the car.
Now what?
Kate was fucked if the cops found the bodies in the car; he was fucked since Felix pretty much had him. They could have a nice long car chase with the shitty Daytona and the smashed up Monte Carlo, but what was the point? Felix would win. Val was one man; Felix had an army behind him.
Something tan, moving among the rocks caught Val’s eye. He wasn’t just one man. But even if the monster killed Felix, they’d send someone else, on and on until Val threw up his hands and sacrificed himself.
Felix, a hand at his nose, followed Val’s gaze.
“I wondered when that thing would show up.” He fired his funny little pistol at it, striking a rock, which glowed red for a moment after the blast. The creature tucked itself behind a rock, waiting.
“Your girlie and the cops will be here any minute. Come with me. We’ll take your shitty car, take the bodies, she’ll be in the clear, and you’ll be gone. No one will look for corpses up there.” Felix cast an eye to the sky.
Bodies in space. What the fuck.
But how did he know? Val rubbed at his temple…not the hum now, but the enormity of it all.
“You can save my entire race.”
Val shook his head. “I—” he started. What was there to say?
The animal moved behind Felix, and this time Val didn’t look. If it bought him some time…then what? He still had the cops and the FBI to deal with.
“Yeah, I’ll go with you.” He could get Felix’s guard down; give the monster an easy in. He moved towards the Daytona. “Let’s go.”
Felix narrowed h
is eyes, turned around, but there was no sign of the creature.
It came from behind a rock, Felix squeezed off a laser blast but it went wide, off into the sky. It landed on him, all claws. It pinned Felix to the ground, but instead of julienning him, it looked to Val, as if for approval.
Val looked down at Felix, took a step in closer.
“You win. Just do it,” Felix said, coughing under the weight of the animal.
“Aren’t you stoic.” Val thought back to the good times, all the fun they’d had. Could he order this man’s death?
“If I let you go, will you leave me alone?” Val asked.
“Never.”
Val looked up to see his own truck bouncing along the rutted road. The cavalry was here. Except if they saved him, they were then going to arrest him. The ground started to shake, and he almost lost his balance. Felix used the opportunity to shove off the animal. He leveled his pistol at the truck but the creature was on him again, slicing this time. It managed a cut down Felix’s torso, but not deep enough. Felix fired point blank into its side and it dropped; a smoldering hole in its fur.
Val cried out, and stumbled across the shaking ground to it. The truck stopped, its inhabitants stepped out onto the quaking desert, but Kate, Anderson and Spence weren’t looking at Felix, they were looking behind him, into the gaping mouth of the mine. Felix pulled out a strange phone and dialed a code into it, then tossed it back into his pocket.
The dark mine lit up, all at once, an explosion of white light. From that light, a ship emerged, a flat silver, shaped like a disc. I wonder if we can communicate with music? Normally Val would’ve had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.
Not now.
“Come with me, now.” Felix’s voice was a command.
“Are you crazy?”
Felix turned, leveled the gun.
How many shots does that thing have? Val wondered.
Felix aimed at Kate.
And he fired.
No. No. No. Impossible. Val’s knees couldn’t support his weight, but he couldn’t drop, he had to go to her. He crossed the rocky barrens to where Spence laid her down on the ground. His eyes said it all.
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