by Scott Sigler
Two to the chest, one to the head.
Pookie called for backup. He also requested an ambulance, but unless someone got a splinter from the ruined table the paramedics wouldn’t have much to do — Bryan’s perp was already dead.
“Holy shit,” Lanza said. “Holy shit.”
Bryan sighed, closed the gunman’s jacket. He looked back at Lanza.
“They were after you, Lanza,” Bryan said. “Like I told you, you probably want to lie low, if not just throw in the towel and go back to Jersey.”
A wide-eyed Lanza nodded. “Yeah. Lie low.”
Bryan walked to Lanza and helped the man to his feet.
“You owe me,” Bryan said.
Pookie watched. Bryan had just killed a man, yet he acted like that was about as upsetting as opening the fridge to find someone had drunk the last of the milk. The casual nature and the cold stare seemed to shake Lanza up as much as the shooting itself.
“You owe me,” Bryan said again. “You know that, right?”
Lanza rubbed his face, then nodded. “Yeah. I … holy shit, man.”
“A name,” Bryan said. “We want a name for this Ablamowicz thing.”
Lanza looked back to the dead gunman lying on the floor at Bryan’s feet, then nodded.
Pete Goldblum had hit the deck as soon as the shooting started. He stood and wiped spaghetti sauce off his suit coat. “Mister Lanza, you don’t owe this cop shit.”
“Shut up, Pete,” Lanza said. “I’d be a grease spot right now. You and Four Balls didn’t do a god-damned thing.”
“Hey,” said a facedown Tony Gillum. “I got a round off.”
“Sure, Tony,” Lanza said. “You’re like a regular Green Beret.”
Pookie heard his own long release of breath before he knew he was letting it out — the situation was contained. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen Bryan Clauser in action like that, but he hoped it would be the last.
Bryan’s Lie
The sun had hidden itself somewhere behind the apartment buildings. Bryan was only minutes away from his bed and sleep. Usually he had trouble sleeping at night, but not today — he’d be out like a light.
“Riddle me something, Bri-Bri.”
Bryan’s forehead rested in his right hand; his elbow rested on the inside handle of Pookie’s Buick. Whatever bug he had was rapidly getting worse: fatigue and body aches, the start of sniffles, throat full of razor blades, a first hint at a monster headache.
Bryan leaned back and yawned. Pookie had been talking nonstop since they left the restaurant. That was in a manual somewhere — keep the shooter talking after the incident, don’t give him time to get all introspective.
Pookie meant well, for sure, but Bryan just wanted silence. He couldn’t tell his friend and partner why. Some things you just couldn’t share. They were almost back to Bryan’s apartment, then he’d be done with Pookie’s constant chatter.
“Bri-Bri? You hearing me?”
“Yeah, sure. What’s the question?”
“How does a grown man not have a car?”
Bryan had to clear his throat before he could talk. “Don’t need a car. I live right in the city.”
“You don’t need a car because I schlep you all over the place.”
“Also a factor.”
Pookie double-parked in front of Bryan’s building. Horns behind them started honking instantly.
“Bri-Bri, you going to be okay? I can hang here tonight if you want.”
Bryan put on his best fake-solemn expression. “Thanks, but no. This ain’t my first rodeo. I just need to be alone and think this through.”
Pookie nodded. “All right, playa. But call me if you start wigging out, okay?”
“Thanks, man.” Bryan had to coax his exhausted body out of the car. He stumbled into his building. What a day. A shooting, handling the crime scene, giving his statement, the preliminary shooting review — too damn much. There would be more long days to come. With all those witnesses, with a gunman opening fire in a crowded restaurant, Bryan wouldn’t catch any shit for this. That didn’t mean, however, that he didn’t have to go through the motions. A full shooting review board was already scheduled. That was always such a good time.
And at the crime scene itself, before he could even leave, there’d been the mandatory chat with the police shrink. Was Bryan okay? How did the shooting make him feel? Did he think he could be alone that night?
Bryan said what he always said — that killing a man felt awful.
And, as always, that was a lie.
Did he enjoy killing people? No. Did he feel bad about it? Not in the least. He knew that he should feel something, but just like the last four times, he did not.
The guy had fired a shotgun. If Bryan hadn’t put him down, it could have been Lanza in the body bag. Or Pookie. Or Bryan himself.
Lanza, such an idiot. Maybe on the East Coast people respected the Mafia enough to give them leeway, but not out here. Jimmy the Hat had been a sharp cat. His son? Not so much. Frank and his buddies dressed up like they wanted the golden age of crime to come back overnight. Well, now they knew a different story.
Adrenaline had kept Bryan pumped from the shooting right up through the talk with the shrink. But during that whole time, his body had been sneakily breaking down. Once the buzz of excitement wore off, he’d felt completely wiped out.
Bryan pressed the button to call the rickety old elevator. Instead of a click and the whir of machinery, he heard nothing. Dammit — the elevator was broken again.
He pushed his body up the stairs, each step feeling like he was lifting someone else’s much-larger foot. He reached the fourth floor and paused. Muscle pain you could ignore. Most of it, anyway. Aches, throbbing, fever … but now he felt a new pain that demanded his attention.
A pain in his chest.
Bryan ground his teeth, then rubbed his hand hard against his sternum. Was he having a heart attack? No … it felt like it was a little above his heart. But what did he know about heart attacks? Maybe that’s where they started.
And then, suddenly, the pain faded away. He took a long, deep breath. Maybe he should call a doctor, but he was so damn tired.
It was probably nothing. Just the flu, messing with his system. Maybe he was more stressed about the shooting than he knew. If his chest felt like that the next day, he’d call a doc for sure.
Bryan walked into his apartment and started stripping off his weapons. He managed to remove most of his clothes before he crashed into his bed and fell asleep on top of his covers.
Fade In, Fade Out
The musty dampness of rotting cloth.
The stench of rancid garbage.
The pulsing heat of the hunt.
Two conflicting emotions fighting for dominance — the overpowering, electric taste of hatred juxtaposed against the pinching, tingling sensation of creeping evil.
Even as he hunted, something hunted him.
Bryan stood motionless, using only his eyes to track the prey.
One womb.
They hurt him. Just like the other one had.
We have waited so long.
Even through the blurry, nonsensical images, he recognized the street: Van Ness. Shifty streaks of people with indiscernible, blurred faces; moving swaths of fuzzy color that were cars; headlights and streetlights that made the fog glow.
Bryan watched his target, a target made up of abstract impressions of hazy crimson and dull gold, of wide shoulders and floppy blond hair, of scowling eyes made of evil.
Not a man … a boy. Big, but still young. The boy had a certain walk, a certain … scent.
Bryan wanted this boy dead.
He wanted them all dead.
One womb.
Hunting, but also … hunted. Bryan searched the skyline, looking for movement. Even as he did, he felt a deep, cold knowledge that he probably wouldn’t see death coming. He needed to make the mark, the mark that kept the monster at bay.
Bryan felt a tap on his sh
oulder. He sighed in frustration, knowing he could take the prey if only there weren’t so many people around. But he had another job to do — this target would have to wait.
Turning now. Moving. Everything a blur. Fade in, fade out. Refocused. Looking down at an alley. Must be high up. Looking down at a beat-up blue dumpster. Something behind the dumpster, mostly hidden from view, but not hidden from smell.
Bryan recognized this scent as well. Not as good as the boy, not as healthy. More … worn-out, but still good enough to make his stomach rumble. Bryan looked closer — a bit of red and yellow behind the dumpster. A blanket. A red blanket. The yellow looked like something familiar … a little bird …
Fade out, fade in, fade out again. The dream slipped away.
In his bed, Bryan turned once, opened his eyes and wondered where he was. The room’s darkness seemed a living thing, ready to sting him with blackened barbs. Sweat dripped from his face, soaked into his sheets.
His sheets. His bed. He was in his own apartment.
He’d left the dream, but the fear of the monster that hunted him came along for the ride. His chest hurt, far worse than it had on the stairs. Was that ache from dream-terror, or from the flu that made him burn and sweat?
Bryan reached out and turned on his nightstand lamp. He winced at the sudden light, but not for long.
He had to find some paper, find a pen.
He had to draw.
Rex Wakes Up
Rex Deprovdechuk woke up hot and sweating.
Excited. Terrified.
For a brief moment he remained lost in the dream’s power, his heart hammering, his breath short and fast. Then the aches faded back in like a vise slowly squeezing every part of his body. The pain, the fever … he’d never been this sick before.
His pants felt funny. He reached down and touched, felt something stiff. He pulled his hand back — what was that down there? Embarrassment swept over him, making his skin feel even hotter.
He had a boner.
He knew what boners were, of course. Kids at school talked about them all the time. People talked about them on TV. He’d even seen them in Internet porn. Seen them, sure, but he’d never had one. Watching porn hadn’t given him one. Neither had the girls at school. Rex had always known he was supposed to have them, yet they had never come. Nothing had ever turned him on before.
But the dream had.
He had been stalking Alex Panos, the biggest of the bullies who made Rex’s life hell. Stalking him, like a lion would stalk a zebra. The dream-smells still filled Rex’s nose — rotting cloth, garbage — and those conflicting feelings: burning rage against the bully, and mind-numbing fear of the thing lurking in the shadows.
One womb.
What a great dream. He’d almost jumped down from some building to attack that asshole Alex. Wouldn’t that have been great?
There had been other people in the dream, people who were hunting side by side with him. Two people … two people with strange faces. Dreams were crazy like that.
His dick throbbed so bad it hurt. It was a different kind of hurt than the sickness that overwhelmed his body. Growing pains, Roberta had told him. He still didn’t know about that. The pains had come out of nowhere just a couple of days ago. But maybe she was right — he’d just had his first boner ever, so maybe he was growing. Maybe he’d grow a lot and wouldn’t be the smallest freshman in the school anymore.
Maybe … maybe he’d get big enough to beat up the bullies.
The boner brought with it a huge wave of relief. In that way, at least, he was like the other boys.
Rex climbed out of bed, careful to move quietly lest the squeaky floorboards wake his mother. If Roberta woke up at this hour, it would be real bad.
He reached up and tenderly touched his nose. Still sore. That wasn’t from the body aches, it was from where Alex had punched him in the face yesterday. Just a little punch, and it had put Rex down. If Alex ever hit Rex as hard as he could …
Rex didn’t want to think about that. He walked to his desk and turned on his lamp. He had to draw a symbol he’d seen in the dream, something that he knew would make the fear fade away. He’d draw the symbol, and then something else — one of those strange faces he’d seen in the dream, a face that should have frightened him but did not.
Finally, Rex would draw Alex. Alex, and all the things Rex wished he could do to him.
The sketch pad waited.
Rex drew.
Aggie James, Duckies and Bunnies
Aggie James pulled the dirty sleeping bag tighter around his body. Even the two cardboard boxes underneath him couldn’t keep away the ground’s chill. He’d wedged himself behind a dumpster that blocked at least some of the light wind, but San Francisco’s night mist permeated his clothes, saturated every breath he drew into his lungs, even soaked into the sleeping bag he’d been so lucky to find. The sleeping bag was red, with duckies and bunnies on it. He’d found it draped over a trashcan not too far from here.
He felt the cold, the dampness, but those were distant, just faint echoes of something that might concern him. Weather didn’t matter, because he had scored. Scored big. And it was good shit, too — he’d felt the horse kick in before he’d even pulled the syringe out of his arm.
This was his favorite sleeping spot, in the back doorway of some old furniture store on Fern Street, just off Van Ness. They called it a street, but it was an alley. No one really bothered him here.
A numbing warmth spread all over his body, even down to his toenails, man, even down to his toenails. So it was cold out, so what? Aggie was warm in the way he needed to be warm.
He heard a light thump, then a heavier rattle, like something had landed on the dumpster.
“Pierre, you retard, try to be quiet.”
“You sthut up.”
The first voice sounded raspy, like sandpaper on rough wood. The second rang deep. Deep and slow. The sounds echoed through Aggie’s head. He hoped these guys would just pass on by. Sleep was coming whether he wanted it or not. Damn, but this was some good shit.
“This him?” The sandpaper voice.
“Uh-huh,” said a third voice. This one sounded high-pitched. “We gotta clean him up, but for sure he’s a won’t-be.”
The sound of someone sniffing, and that sound was close. When Aggie heard it, he felt a cool trickle of air across his cheek. Was someone smelling him?
Aggie tried to open his eyes. They cracked, just a little. He saw a blurry image of a kid’s head, maybe a teenager?
The teenager smiled.
Aggie’s eyes slid shut, returning him to the delicious darkness. Had he dropped a tab? Maybe he had after he shot up, then forgot about it. Had to be something — horse had never made him hallucinate before. Well, maybe a little, but not like that. Had to be acid. Only acid could have made him see that teenager with big black eyes, skin as purple as grape juice, and a smiling mouth full of big fucking shark teeth.
Just say no to hallucinations, thank you very much.
“I been watching him,” said the high-pitched voice.
“He looks sthick,” said the deep voice. Something about that voice, something wet and slurry. It reminded Aggie of Sylvester, the cat from Looney Toons, the way he’d spit and slobber while working out suffering succotash. The guy sounded like he had a tongue that just didn’t know its place.
“He’s not sick,” said high-pitch.
“He looks sthick. Thly, you think he’s sthick?”
“I dunno,” said the sandpaper voice.
High-pitch sounded offended. “He’s not sick. He’s just stoned. We can clean him up.”
“He better not be sick,” said sandpaper voice. “The last one you picked must have had the flu. I shit chocolate milk for a week.”
“I said I was sorry about that,” said high-pitch.
Sandpaper voice sighed. “Whatever. Pierre, pick him up. We need to get back.”
Aggie felt strong arms slide under him, lift him effortlessly.
“I’m staying out tonight,” said high-pitch. “We have lots of time before dawn. I got to do my thing.”
The sandpaper voice again. “Chomper, you need to come back with us.”
“No. The visions. I … I can sense him.”
“Yeah, so can we,” said sandpaper. “I told you not to talk about it. You want Firstborn to beat you again?”
“No. I don’t want that again. But those assholes hurt him, I can feel it.”
Him. Whoever it was, he sounded important.
“I have someone watching over him,” sandpaper said. “You stay away, or you could bring the monster down on him.”
A pause. Aggie felt like he weighed all of five pounds. Maybe even five negative pounds, because you don’t weigh anything if you float.
“I’ll stay away,” high-pitch said. “But I’m not going home. Not yet.”
“Just don’t draw attention,” said the sandpaper voice. “And stay away from the king. Hillary said he’s not ready yet. You get us caught, Firstborn will kill us. Pierre, let’s go, we’re due back.”
“Okay, Sthly.”
Aggie felt like he was falling, only for a second, then he went up. So fast, herky-jerky, pop … pop … pop … like someone taking the stairs three at a time, yet the arms holding him felt gentle, like the guy carrying him was being careful — much like you would be careful carrying a dozen eggs you just bought from the store.
Aggie struggled to open his eyes again. He was on a rooftop. He could see Van Ness far below, his attention drawn to a green Starbucks sign. Not that a Starbucks sign was much of a landmark; those things were everywhere.
Then, the world lurched under him. Up, then down, then up, then down.
Despite the motion, the horse — that goddamn fine horse — finally caught up with him. Aggie James let himself slide into the warmth and the darkness, into the one place where the memories didn’t haunt him.
The Belt