The Dark Trail

by Will Mosley

  Ken and Tanner parked along the uneven curbstone and steered through the policemen and gun enthusiasts – whose individual body odor lingered lightly under the intense warm air in the building. With no air conditioning, the facility smelled of warm urine and gunpowder. Ken was recognized and welcomed at the front counter by Abrams afternoon staff. He introduced Tanner, took three paper targets, eye and ear protection, and headed to the firing range.

  Ken attached the first target to a set of clips on the mobile target carrier, pulled the activation lever, and sent the target, swinging side to side, ten feet down range in a whizzing rush. Tanner occupied a stool behind Ken's lane, upright, his face expressionless with the confidence of a seasoned marksman.

  “You'd think they'd figure out a way to clean this track up or something.” Ken yelled, over the gunfire in the lanes nearest him. He turned to Tanner as if waiting for acknowledgment, then turned back to reload his magazine. “The target swings for five minutes before you can shoot at the damn thing!”

  In the nine lanes to the left of them, the muted pulse of gunfire behind their ear plugs came in successions of short bursts from many different calibers of guns, and the fragrance of hot lead and burnt gunpowder drew an eerie smile on Tanner's face.

  “10, 15 and 25! That's all the department requires! At least 85 percent on target!” Ken yelled. Tanner slid off the stool and stood next to Ken with his face close to Ken's ear.

  “Yards?” He asked.

  “No, kilometers. Of course yards!”

  “What if you don't shoot 85 percent? Can you get another target and start over?”

  Ken smiled and nodded, then shrugged. “The system's broken, but I'm not arguing!” Ken aimed and his first gunshot rang out as he fired downrange. More concussive than the gun fire nearby, it startled Tanner, throbbed his chest and momentarily took his breath. The barrel flash left a negative image in his eyes that he blinked away before Ken's next gunshot. Boom! Tiny bits of unburned gunpowder splashed Tanner, noticeable, yet nearly imperceptible, like clumps of dust blown about by a ceiling fan, slightly abrasing arm hair and eyelashes. Noticeable, like... sand? Lots of hot, searing sand. Oceans.

  From behind the array of targets set up by the shooters where a sloped mound of darkened dirt and gravel absorbed the lead slugs, something rived through the mixture, something alive, though bullets did not penetrate as it slithered. Tanner turned from it, eyes down, thoughts on something else. Boom! The gunshot startled him again and he wanted to turn back to see if it still moved. He did, but it didn't. He stared back at the stool, at the brown oil and dirt soaked cloth that was once a comfortable and clean seat cover, trying to take his mind somewhere else, maybe back to Ken's house. But the allure of the things' presence demanded his attention; demanded that he look at it – not at what it was, but how it was, and where, and what it intended. He turned back to the – Boom! – the mound of rock and gravel bits exploded then imploded onto themselves and the whole of the mound was instantly soaked in a soulless blackness, deep and forever, with no bottom, no bounds – and it grew. The targets were swallowed up as it swelled, pulsating as if it were some breathing mass. Tanner desired to run and not stop, run in any direction so long as it was away from the black and its imminent encroachment. Though, the lane area was far warmer than the gun shop upstairs, he felt hot, blazing hot, on fire. His body wanted to spew sweat from his glands like sprinklers, his nerves wanted to be free of this inconsistent burden, his legs – rubber bands, weak and coiled, ready – wanted to escape, even if it meant that the brick wall beside him would become an exit. The blackness consumed the lanes, the sound, Ken, and Tanner stood waiting with clenched fist, head down, eyelids pressing tightly, silent and alone, terrified as the ooze closed in and engulfed him, too.

  “Warm-up round. The kick still screws me up. You shooting? Tanner – you alright?” Ken asked holding the butt of his gun Glock 22 toward Tanner.

  The black was gone and the noise of life around him continued as normal. In fact, though Tanner had only heard four, maybe five of the exploding rounds, the target ten yards away painted a different picture: sixteen holes were scattered on the paper target. If he had missed ten or more rounds being fired, at least ten seconds were taken from him during the blackout.

  “What's with the tears, little bro?” Ken asked.

  “Huh?” Tanner touched his face, felt the moisture, immediately wiped it away and looked at his wet palm which confirmed Ken's observation.

  “This is a gun range, not the set of a soap opera!” Ken laughed and punched Tanner in his shoulder. “You gonna shoot, or what?”

  “Those were tears of joy, ass munch!” He looked at the gun and plunged his hands deep in his pockets. “I'm crying thinking about how ecstatic I'll be when those things are finally banned.” Somewhere in that punch, the name calling, and the competition that Ken was attempting to force on him, the awkwardness born from many years apart began to dissolve and a camaraderie was starting to form. Ken grinned wildly and an unmitigated happiness sparkled from his eyes.

  “Give it a break, hippie! They'll have to pry my guns from my cold, dead hands.”

  “You're gonna need a bunch of hands, neo-con!” Tanner sat on the stool and held his hand up to Ken. “You go ahead and shoot. Besides, it looks like you may need a few hundred more bullets to kill this guy! If it were a criminal, he probably be more upset about the ammo you've wasted while shooting at him!”

  “It was a warm-up, Tanner! That's not how I shoot.”

  “You don't get warm-ups when someone breaks into your home.”

  “Then, show me how it's done, Annie Oakley.”

  “No, Ken! I don't want to. Seriously. I'm just not a gun guy.” Ken shrugged and reload his next magazine. “Oh, well. I always beat you in everything. I guess we'll keep that tradition going.” Ken baited.

  Tanner's jaw dropped. “Everything? Basketball? Did you forget basketball?”

  “You had luck on your side that day. It was raining and the court was slick. You expect me to win all of'em? One time, Tanner,” Ken held up one finger. “One time.”

  “The-court-was-slick, my ass! Next you'll say that space debris fell on the court, or that the hoop was one of those oval circus hoops!”

  Tanner continued, “What about racing? Or, does that count in Ken's fictional recollection of memories?”

  “Foot or car?”

  “Foot.”

  “No, sir! Let's talk about car racing! Remember the brown, green Acura you had that we called, 'Turd'?”

  “Foot racing, Ken!” Tanner stood up and aggressively pushed his brother's shoulder. “I said foot racing! We are not talking about that car!”

  “ – and the muffler would drag on the ground and you had to tie it to the frame with a wire hanger?” Ken, bent over in laughter, laid the magazine next to the gun on a fold out table and strategically moved away from it.

  “ – that car was really good on gas –,”

  “ – and your girlfriend was afraid to –,”

  “Forget it Ken! Where's the damn gun?”

  Ken, leaning up against the wall behind Tanner, had tears of laughter struggling to roll down his cheeks, pointed to the fold out.

  “You won't listen to reason,” Tanner mumbled and loaded the magazine. “You think you're so damned funny. That Acura was a good car! I'd still have it if it hadn't been wrecked. Hell, I even asked dad to buy it back from the insurance company and we could fix it up.” This new knowledge combined with Tanner's angry defense of 'Turd', sent Ken into a soundless, paralytic laughter; his mouth stood open, his face was red, but no sound came forth.

  “This damn target looks like someone took bird-shot to it,” Tanner grumbled, poking his pinky finger into random bullet holes of Ken's splayed grouping, only once looking over his shoulder at Ken. Tanner grabbed the target adjustment lever, shoved it forward and sent the paper man whizzing and swinging further down the lane. “Ten yards is for Girl Scouts and policemen!” He said loudly an
d sent the target thirty yards down range then shoved the magazine into the gun, cocked it and took his stance, gun pointed toward the floor. For no more than a moment he watched the target swing from left to right, side to side, more than a foot in each direction. With mechanical precision Tanner raised the weapon and fired.

  One after another, gunshots rang out, not a second between them. So rapid in fact, it was as if Tanner had flipped the guns automatic switch, for which there was no setting. Instead, his finger depressed the trigger so rapidly that it looked like no more than a blur of activity. His arms swayed, slightly swooping, following the target as it moved.

  As Ken's laughter subsided, chuckles turned into a condescending smile which quickly morphed into jaw dropping shock.

  Five seconds after the first shot was fired, the gun was empty and smoking, and the target still swung, now only a few inches and wavered back and forth in its sway. Tanner placed the decocked gun on the fold out, pulled back on the lever and the target rushed in on him in a sweeping motion. Once it was close enough to grab Tanner held the bottom of the paper to stop it from moving. Ken's original sixteen shot arrangement was left untouched, and no new holes near any of his were made. Instead, in the target's center circle, only corners of dusty orange remained and the circle itself was gone.

  Tanner waited as Ken went upstairs to retrieve more paper targets, but not paper men. Instead of cartoon assailants, these targets simply had five bulls-eye centers, each with two smaller circles inside larger ones and the center circle of all five was orange. Ken clipped a fresh paper target to the track, pushed the lever forward and sent the flapping paper down range once more. “Repeat that.” Ken said. Tanner looked as if he were about to decline the offer when Ken helpfully added, “If you can.” Without delay, Tanner loaded fifteen rounds of ammunition into the magazine, slid it into the gun, cocked it, removed the magazine again and added one more bullet. 16 shots. With the magazine back in the gun, Tanner took aim and held his stance – and waited.

  “It's – it's not moving.” He said.

  Ken laughed in disbelief. “What? So you can only hit moving targets?”

  “I can hit these just fine. I just thought you wanted a challenge.”

  Before Ken said another word, the gun rapidly exploded. So synchronized were Tanner's shots it sounded as if he were firing to the concussive cadence of a thrash metal song in his head. His arms gently swayed through the air, making the slightest, almost imperceptible movements: straight ahead left... straight ahead right... dropped down... dropped down further... down left... down right. In an instant, the gunfire stopped. Then Tanner pulled the lever backward and the target came to him. This time all five of the inner orange circles were intact. But in each were three well placed holes only millimeters apart. In the larger, middle circle there were four perfect holes instead of three. So precise were the shots, someone could have walked up to the target with a sharpened pencil and manually punched those holes and not have been as accurate. Wordlessly, Ken strung up another target, loaded the gun for Tanner in the same manner he had done, then stood beside the lever and smiled.

  “When I push this lever, you start shooting. That is, if you think you can handle that.”

  “Sure.”

  Whizzzzz... Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.

  The result was the same.

  Chapter 15.

  Jacob ran.

  His arms flung, his feet pounded through snow, asphalt, dirt, icy puddles of water that soaked his pants and his legs were tubes of molten lava – but he ran.

  The sun, was almost over head when he started. It had dropped below the horizon – which made travel on the major roads quicker – stayed down for hours, which morphed his running into a jog, and now was rising again and he ran harder.

  A chivy haze clouded his mind, clothing benighted memories in chiffon. But every stride exposed the skin of forgotten knowledge until the picture that emerged, though trivial, exceeded his scope of understanding or logic.

  A snap shot was the first recollection, and it seemed that this individual frame was just one installment of many still frames that would eventually produce a movie, a mini-series sized event that encompassed many millions of similar stills. This was a blessing and a curse, but he didn't stop moving to analyze it. Instead, he sucked down cold air that burned his lungs, pumped his legs whose lactic acid boiled muscle fiber and seared bone, and focused on that sole frame and its improbability.

  Where was I? In this frame, a snapshot taken from his viewpoint, a crisp blue sky fell onto some war ravished town. In the distance two pillars of smoke rose from far off destruction. In front of him, a dark skinned man waved him forward, his arm frozen in an overhead sweep and fear of eventual doom swam in his face and eyes. In this mental still, back spasms burned through him as something in his arms weighed him down. Jacob could now feel intense extra-natural heat from this memory as he studied the beckoning man's face and coverings with more scrutiny. He struggled to remember, but somewhere in his mind this man's name had been buried – intentionally.

  Dawn sent a faint glow of radiance through the trees and on the road ahead of Jacob. He could now see that trees sloped into a natural canvass of either a mountain slope or a river bend, and for miles now, the road had been gently veering left. He didn't know why, but he needed to go south – as if freedom lay south. A narrow bridge a quarter of a mile away confirmed his river theory, so he took it and continued on his southward trek.

  The man's uniform was also strange; it was military, which Jacob had never remembered being summoned by any military personnel for any reason, and the uniform did not belong to any branch of the American armed forces. Upon second look, he noticed that it was the same as American uniforms but with an entirely different flag. Beside the beckoning man, another man appeared as if from manifestation – huskier and dark skinned – fired an assault weapon toward Jacob. A stream of live ammunition passed within inches of Jacob and he conceded that the second man was covering the first. However, the man with the weapon had recent familiarity. So familiar in fact, that he had kicked the man in the groin just one day before. It was Guillermo. He and the first man wore concern on their faces as if it were natural and both wore uniforms emblazon with Iraqi flags on their chest and shoulders. Immediately, Jacob knew that the men behind him, the men at which Guillermo was firing, were not enemies at all and neither was the person in his arms weighing him down. Both the dead body he held and the charging army whom he could not see – but from whose weapons death was sent as whispers of hot metallic sizzling passed his head, as if he were some enemy to them, a civilian dressed in a foreign military's regalia – were fellow Americans.

  And now, the name Jacob began to feel almost foreign. Jacoben. Jacoben Faust. They were yelling in the frame, Jacoben, Run! He remembered. 'Jacoben!' not Jacob. How did Tatem know? The realization stumbled Jacoben for a moment. He corrected himself and did as Guillermo had instructed, 'Run.'

  Just outside of Baltimore several suburbanites took notice of the man seemingly running for his life. And his strange behavior did not go unnoticed by the local police. During his run, one squad car in Columbia, Maryland rode along beside him for a mile. Jacob waved at the policeman and continued. Realizing that he was probably of no harm to anyone, the officer continued on. Outside of Washington, DC, however, the squad car actually blocked Jacob's path. Jacob stopped and the officer got out.

  “Sir, are you alright?” The officer asked. He looked to be no more than twenty-five years old, but built like a linebacker. Jacob huffed, rested his hands on his knees, but never answered. “We've received calls of some guy running through town. Somebody chasing you, bud? You on the run or something?” The policeman kept his distance, remained watchful and kept his hand close to his holster.

  “No – No, sir.” Jacob pushed the words from his gut, past the lung fulls of air escaping him.

  “Can I see your identification, please?”

/>   “Don't... have...” Jacob attempted.

  “You're not carrying anything? Where do you live?”

  Jacob looked at the officer, his stare demanding the man to leave him. “Please, officer... I – I'm homeless.”

  The officer took a condescending look around. “This isn't the place to be homeless, sir. This is a nice neighborhood, so I know you're not from around here.” The officer approached Jacob. “Let's go down to the station and work this out.” Jacob watched the man's hand carefully reach toward him and his senses instantly began calculating the force needed to incapacitate the officer.

  “Please don't touch me.” Jacob pleaded. “I – I don't know what I'm capable of.”

  Hunger, fatigue and exhaustion had blurred his vision. The police said something that blended into the back ground noise of mid-morning traffic, and before he could strike the officer, his mind went blank, his torso swayed, his legs buckled and his vision failed him.

  “That's the guy, LT.” Roused from an exhausted sleep, Jacob heard the phrase through the ambient office noise as if it were a note specifically meant for him in a heap of clutter. “Says he's homeless. I'm not so sure. Homeless people don't wear boots like that.” With his thumb and forefinger, Jacoben stroked the tear sacs of his eyes attempting to stave off rest, then gathered his attention, focusing it at the young, black haired officer who had stopped him. When the officer saw Jacob looking in his direction, he turned his back towards him.

  “Where's he from?” Another voice asked.

  “No ID. No Idea, sir.” The black haired man turned to Jacoben and the head of the other man looked around the officer.

  “Accent?”

  “Can't tell. Sounds western, and southern; almost sounds like he speaks another language and he's covering it with English. Who knows?”

  “You're supposed to, Justin. It's called information gathering.” The other man huffed loudly. “You're still fairly new at this. I'll talk to him.” The other voice complied. The black haired officer nodded to Jacoben and walked away. The other man, wearing more formal police attire – a white button down whose buttons became taut around his stomach, and dark blue slacks – with his fore finger, motioned for Jacoben to follow him.