by Candice Fox
‘So?’ Keeps pushed.
Celine thought carefully about her answer. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘And he’ll be pissed as all hell.’
‘Damn, man.’
‘And he’s not warm and cuddly at the best of times.’
They parked and walked up the drive. Celine tried not to think about the fact that if Keeps had heard John Kradle talk about her boyfriend on the phone, he’d also heard Kradle say that he knew what had happened to her. That word had cut through the line like a razor, slicing into her ear, into her brain, neatly parting sealed wounds and making blood run. She had heard it so much in the years after the massacre. How was she coping with what happened? Would she ever recover from what happened? It was as if a thunderclap had burst in the sky and snatched up with it every family member she had. It was a faceless happening that had moved through the house with the rifle that day, and not a man.
She punched a code into the panel inside the front door. Keeps stood on the stoop, looking into the eye of the doorbell camera.
‘High security,’ he said.
‘It’s what I’m used to,’ Celine said. They went inside. There was a flapping sound, and she and Keeps stood in the spacious living room and watched as a heavy, brown tabby cat made its way towards them from the kitchen, trotting, head down with determination. The animal stopped at Celine’s feet, looked up and opened its mouth to let out a long, angry wail.
‘Somebody’s hungry,’ Keeps said.
‘Like I said. Pissed as all hell.’ Celine picked up the cat. ‘Come on, Jake.’
Celine went into the kitchen to feed the cat. She smiled as she thought about how Kradle must have overheard and misinterpreted a conversation between her and Jackson earlier that month about the ‘new man’ in her life; the large, mean, wild cat she had befriended on her evening walk. I’d seen him around the neighbourhood before. He turned up again last night. I think we’re going to make it a regular thing.
Keeps followed her into the kitchen, smoothed a hand over the huge, bare marble surface of the kitchen island. She knew what he was seeing. That the house was enormous, that it was immaculate and loveless and cold as a tomb, that there wasn’t a single photograph in the entire place – no happy-snaps of girls’ getaways in Tijuana, no portraits of nieces and nephews in elf costumes from Christmases past. There was no sign of a human boyfriend. No cutesy notes about remembering to feed the cat or bring home milk, no calendar hanging on the wall, ‘Date night!’ on a Wednesday, dinner and a movie and home by nine. Only Celine lived here. The house was a mistake she had made as a teenager in possession of three inherited estates. She figured she’d buy a big house on the other side of the country to the happening, one as far as possible from the seat of her memories, a place with high ceilings and a pool and a double garage, close to somewhere big and fun and filled with people, like Los Angeles or Vegas. She would fill the house with nice things, because she could afford it, and she thought things would make her happy. She couldn’t have known back then that the bigger the house, the louder it yawned with emptiness.
‘I don’t have any burgers,’ Celine said as she scooped a tin of cat food into a bowl for the wailing, mewling, tail-flicking creature pawing at her ankles. ‘But I have beer.’
‘I ordered Uber Eats,’ Keeps said. He held up his phone. ‘It’ll be here in ten. I got enough for the both of us.’
‘I’m not hungry.’ Celine tossed the tuna can into the trash. ‘Just put mine in the fridge.’
‘But—’
She waved as she walked to the bathroom.
An hour later, she had climbed up from where she sat on the floor of the shower, letting the hot water run over her face and neck and back as she stared down the drain into the darkness. She had pulled on sweats and a T-shirt, and walked into the living room, where she found the former inmate stretched out on the leather lounge, his body lit blue and green and red by flashing images on the enormous television screen. Jake was curled on Keeps’s crotch, the cat’s boxy head resting on the man’s stomach. Celine stood examining the detritus of burger and fries wrappers on the coffee table, the empty beer bottles, letting her eyes wander briefly, indulgently, over Keeps’s sleeping figure. The taut tendons in his tattooed hands and the rise and fall of his muscular chest under his singlet. Jake the cat hadn’t let her pet him for two weeks, hadn’t yet dared to venture onto her lap. The animal’s tail was curled around Keeps’s knee, twitching gently as the two rested.
‘Oh, shit.’ Keeps jolted awake, bouncing Jake onto the floor. ‘Woman, how long you been standing there like that?’
‘Start a timer,’ Celine said, tossing her laptop over the back of the couch so that it landed on Keeps’s flat stomach. ‘One hour. That’s all I’m giving him.’
CHAPTER 18
He wanted to stand in the woods, so they took him there. Burke asked them to pull over maybe ten minutes into the drive through the lush, dark woods, and he got out and walked to a spot just far enough from the roadside that he couldn’t see the asphalt if he looked back. He had missed the colour green inside Pronghorn. Not institution green – a milky, numb, plasticky paint colour that was routinely slapped over everything that stayed still long enough. Psychology green. Neutral green. But the rich, vibrant green of sunlit leaves. He sat in the undergrowth and breathed the forest air.
If he’d asked, someone would have brought him a drink. A barrel-aged whisky was what he wanted. They would do that, his handlers, rush into town while he sat there and scrounge up anything he desired. He could have women, food, clothes, guns – these were his days, his first free days, and he was going to enjoy them. Because he was a someone now. The Camp had promised that to him when they found him as a teenager in Massachusetts, lurking around the Columbine forums, a nobody. Burke had been that kid – the quiet, shy, monosyllabic ‘coaster’ at the back of the classroom who the teacher only called on when there was a problem with the screen projector, the one who did the assigned task in the first ten minutes of class and then spent the rest of the time discussing third-shooter theories online with other mass-shooting followers.
He’d been searching around for raw footage from the Columbine library security cameras, rumoured but not confirmed to exist, when another 4channer popped up in his messages. The lurkers online who still hero-worshipped Eric and Dylan, when so many younger people had moved on to your Elliot Rodger incel types, were the real diehards. Rodger and his contemporaries, the Call of Duty generation of shooters, were so focused on women that the media had a party every time one of them arose. The overbearing mother was pictured weeping on the front porch. The fat, nerdy, pimply friends described him as pussy-obsessed. Eric and Dylan, on the other hand, had a real cause. So The Camp watched patiently for lurkers like Burke, who came to the forums consistently, wanting to see the diaries, the autopsy reports, the unseen footage, wanting to discuss the theories, wanting to know why.
Burke’s recruiter hadn’t provided anything more than a gentle nudge into the online world of neo-Nazi groups and their plans for a race war, and Burke fell in love. He liked all the serial killer angles and the calls for disruption, chaos. Black-and-white photographs of a short, angry, determined Charles Manson, his beautiful, waif-like followers, his legions of admirers. Burke followed his recruiter’s links to Timothy McVeigh’s work in Oklahoma, and on and on it went, until Burke was lying in bed at night staring at the laptop as his eyes ached and teared with exhaustion, watching videos, reading manifestos, making notes.
After about a month, Burke’s recruiter, RauffsPlan1, invited him to call him by his real name, Ken. He wanted to invite fifteen-year-old Burke to The Camp: a five-day retreat in the woods near Pelham for young people who he thought had potential. Potential for what, he didn’t say. But The Camp had a legit-looking flyer he could present to his mom, listing all the activities she figured would be good outlets for the unexplained hostility he presented at home – wilderness survival, bushcraft, teamwork, fitness training. She didn’t question why a
kid who lived on energy drinks and Ruffles, who spent sixteen hours a day in front of a screen, wanted to go tramping around the woods. Burke went, and found everything he had been searching for in life there in the green, green wilds. When he’d returned home with a shaved head, a pleasant attitude and a big hug, his mother hadn’t queried him on a single thing he’d learned out in the mountains.
He’d completed some small tasks for The Camp over the years. Firebombings, scare raids, the supervision of a couple of drug shipments to bring in money for the organisation. Always group work. The Mardi Gras shooting had been his own idea. He’d run it past his recruiter, who had sent it up the chain. He’d been given the green light. Burke didn’t think they really believed he’d do it. He’d only been part of The Camp for five years. He wasn’t even a recruiter yet. This would bypass all that. He’d be a hero the likes of which the brotherhood had never seen.
The breakout had also been his idea. Initially the senior people in The Camp hadn’t wanted to do it. Too risky. Too much exposure. Didn’t Burke think that remaining behind bars as a martyr to the cause was better for them in the long run? Burke was a legendary figure. He got letters from potential recruits wanting to join the cause from all over the world. But when Burke had told them why he needed to be released, that he planned to unleash an operation he liked to think of as The Ignition, they’d been on board.
Now, the twenty-eight-year-old Burke rose to his feet, taking up a twig with him, and stood there testing it, not breaking it, as he listened to the sound of a nearby creek. Over the years Burke had thought about calling his mother, trying to answer some of the questions she’d had for him after the shooting. Where had it all gone wrong? What could she have done to prevent it? Was it his father’s death, or her being tied up all the time caring for his disabled sister, or bullies at school that made him do what he did? No. Those were all textbook explanations, gentle placations people developed for themselves about why their son or daughter would not wake up in the morning and do exactly what he did – take a rifle and a backpack and head down to New Orleans, fight his way through the jolly crowds to a roost above the avenue, then open fire and rain almighty hell on a bunch of Black people like a god stretching out his fiery hand.
In truth, Burke had been too young to really have been affected by his father dying. His mother got in the way of his activities, so he was grateful to Danielle for occupying her. And the kids at school mostly treated him like a sagging house plant – something a little depressing to stare at, best ignored. What had truly caused it all was a genetic quirk that made Burke intelligent enough and self-aware enough to see that America was suffering, and only brave individuals willing to set down their rightful, constitutional pursuit of happiness would be able to aid their country. Burke knew he could be ‘happy’ getting an IT job at the local mall, working his way up to manager, pottering around in the garage attached to his medium-rental condo diagnosing software upgrade problems in his spare time for grannies with too much cash. But he decided to trade in that happiness for three glorious, delirious, ecstatic moments of happiness made possible by The Camp and his devotion to it.
The moment he lined up his first victim at Mardi Gras and pulled the trigger, the swell of screams that erupted from the people below.
The moment the PA system at Pronghorn clicked on and he heard the phone call with Warden Slanter blast through the row, signifying the beginning of the breakout.
And the moment that would soon come, The Ignition that would spark the glorious war.
With his lungs full of inspiration, the thin, strong twig still in his hand, he wandered back to the van, where his handlers were waiting. These were the men and women who had conducted the Pronghorn breakout, pure-blood youths from all over the country. They were foot soldiers, like he had once been, people who could follow orders and intricate designs handed down from on high, like the Pronghorn plan, but who could be disposed of easily if they failed.
Like Charles Manson, The Camp’s leaders knew that survival of the group meant sending in capable hands to do the dirty work while the brains of the operation stayed safe, to cook up new ideas for dominance should a plan go south. The Pronghorn plan had been a success. The Ignition would be, too. Burke would have to go into hiding for a while then. For some years, as the race war raged on, Burke’s true genius and heroism would have to remain a secret. But when the white man triumphed, the full story would be told.
As Burke approached the van, the young woman sitting on the rear bumper shot to her feet, and the heavily muscled driver snapped to attention. Burke understood it was this guy – Henry, he thought his name was – who had figured out how to hack in to the prison’s PA system, transmit the call he made to Warden Slanter. Henry would probably get a commendation for his work. The shooter who had taken out the bus driver was the dull but pretty girl standing at the front of the vehicle, doing her best to finish a cigarette before Burke got back. She flicked the butt away and straightened, smiled. Silvia, he thought her name was.
‘Better get him out,’ Burke said, nodding sternly to the back of the van. He hadn’t offered a single shred of praise or admiration to his handlers since the breakout. Hadn’t thanked them for their service, hadn’t asked their names, just picked up that information as they spoke among themselves. Praise was poison, Burke believed. ‘I don’t want to ride in the back with the smell of his piss. Make it quick.’
The kids dragged the prisoner out of the van and threw him onto the asphalt at Burke’s feet. Burke knew this guy’s name for certain. Anthony Reiter had spat on Burke’s shoes as the two passed one another in the visitors’ centre, one day maybe a month after Burke had arrived. Both of them had been cuffed and were being escorted by different sets of guards. You ain’t so tough now, huh, bitch? You punk-ass bitch! The plan originally had been to secure any Black inmate from the rush outside the prison, but as Burke had climbed into the van in the Pronghorn parking lot, he’d noticed Reiter jogging by, testing the doors of cars, trying to find one that was unlocked. Burke stood over the inmate now and smiled as he writhed in pain on the roadside.
‘Who’s the bitch now?’ Burke asked.
Axe had got his first hint that a cruiser was coming for him when his shadow against the outside of the RV sharpened. The moonlight was pretty good, but the high beams of police cruisers could blast unabated for miles across the flat desert, and by the time the car was closing up on him, Axe could see individual whiskers in his stubble outlined as he turned his head. He closed the hood of the little camp barbecue he’d been cooking on, put the knife he’d used to cut the meat into the waistband of his jeans, and turned to show his face to the officers as the rocks at the side of the road popped and sputtered under their slowing tyres.
The officers got out and put their guns on the rims of their car doors, the empty black eyes of their weapons watching Axe where he stood holding a pair of tongs and wearing an Iron Maiden T-shirt.
‘Show us your hands!’
Axe showed them his hands.
‘Drop it, whatever it is,’ the officer barked.
Axe dropped the tongs on the desert dirt.
They came for him, and the bigger one shoved him into the side of the van so that he bounced off the aluminium.
‘Watch it, Roxley,’ the smaller one said. ‘Not too rough.’
‘What are you doing out here, old boy?’
‘Barbecuing.’ Axe had shrugged. If being a long-term inmate, a ‘career criminal’ as the occupation was known, had taught him anything, it was that the less a person offered in the way of information to screws, jacks, PIs, judges or cops, the better things tended to turn out. The guy named Roxley shifted and shuffled around Axe and his barbecue before tugging open the door of the RV and looking in. Axe knew what he saw in there. Nothing. Prison life had made Axe very tidy indeed. The smell of washing detergent had replaced the smell of weed, and Axe had flipped the cover of the little panel computer shut and put it away in a cupboard with the phones and ele
ctronic watches and other technological things he’d found lying about.
Roxley, the big cop, came back to Axe and stood over him again. Axe stared at the guy’s boots, the way he had at the boots of hundreds of correctional officers in his time, and waited.
‘You just some old coot out here in the desert, alone, cooking a barbecue?’
‘Seems like it.’ Axe shrugged again.
‘And you didn’t think to get the fuck out of here when a prison not fifty miles up the road got emptied this morning?’
Axe looked up briefly, made like he didn’t understand. The smaller officer, whose name badge read Nawlet, was kicking stones.
‘Just leave him, man,’ Nawlet said. ‘He’s minding his business.’
‘What are you cookin’?’ Roxley asked. ‘Where’s your phone? Who else knows you’re out here?’
‘I got ID in the van,’ Axe said, gesturing to the door. ‘I can get it. Don’t know nothin’ about a prison, though.’
Roxley was almost chest to chest with Axe. The old man could smell the young officer’s breath coming down on the top of his head. He felt the whoosh of it on his brow, and then the stark absence of it as the cop lost interest, like a dog snuffling at a rat hole suddenly distracted by a noise behind him.
‘Sir, it’s not safe for you to be out here,’ Nawlet said. ‘We strongly suggest you take your vehicle into town and camp there for the night.’
‘Can’t,’ Axe said. ‘I ran out of fuel. Was going to hitch into town in the morning, fill ’er up.’
‘Then get in the cruiser, for fuck’s sake,’ Roxley snapped, his mind already on other things, on escaped inmates out there in the desert, calling to him, begging to be rounded up. ‘Sit in the back and shut the hell up.’
Axe turned off the barbecue, didn’t think it was smart to try to grab any belongings, not under the umbrella of the angry cop Roxley’s impatience. He locked the RV, went to the cruiser and climbed in behind Nawlet. The knife in Axe’s jeans slid sideways along his thigh. He hitched it so that the handle was just poking out of the top of his pocket.