The Stickmen

by Edward Lee

  Just take it a step at a time, Garrett reminded himself, against the mudslide of details.

  And there was always Sanders to worry about. Garrett didn’t even want to think about how to deal with that…

  The street stood quiet, distant crickets trilling, and the air was cooling down. Softly lit windows glowed in the identical Army prefab apartment buildings before him. He tried to appear as normal as possible as he approached Building 4128, entered the side stairwell, and hiked up to the third floor. Halfway down the corridor, he found Room 313, Ubel’s room.

  I guess I don’t need to knock, Garrett thought in the poorest taste. He didn’t waste time testing the doorknob to see if it might be unlocked; Ubel, given his post and occupational specialty that required a highly compartmentalized security clearance, wasn’t the kind of guy to forget to lock his front door when he left his apartment.

  No big deal.

  Garrett didn’t have the key, of course, but he had something better: his set of HPC lock-picks and assorted tension wrenches. If there was one thing he’d learned during the course of his eccentric profession it was the quick and effective circumvention of the inconvenience of locks. For years he’d studied the brands, the model numbers, function types and pin-configurations. It was second nature now, and at the very least, Garrett was one of a very low number of people who didn’t have conniptions when he locked his keys in his car.

  A certain tactic of appearances was involved. You walk up like you owned the placed, all the while, as you approached the door in question, you scrutinized the lock for its make and model. Garrett did exactly that as he approached the door to #313, his mind already working out the details: Shlage, Primus model 1116 from the ‘82-’88 series. Upper deadbolts were almost always the same pin-configuration as the lock on the knob. Left-side locks generally worked clockwise, right-side counter clockwise. The flange set told him both locks were top pin-sets. Eleven pins in each set, he assessed.

  He made these calculations in a matter of seconds, as he was walking toward the door. The worst thing to do was react if anyone else stepped into the hall: a man with lock-picks looked the same as a man with a key if he held the pick and tension wrench properly. Just walk up and do it, like it’s your own apartment…

  Without having to look at the lock-pick wallet, Garrett’s fingers slipped out his #4 “hook” and a 6-millimeter tension wrench. He applied both into the keyway heavier deadbolt, gently raked with pins with an upward stroke while simultaneously holding the pins in place with the wrench, exerting just the right amount of pressure with his thumb.

  Come on, you—

  But before he could finish the thought, the bolt slid open after only one stroke against the pins.

  The lock on the door knob opened just as easily. Garrett had managed to tease open both locks in the same amount of time as it would have taken with the actual key.

  Tell me I’m not good, he congratulated himself. But—

  Something flagged his senses, and then he sniffed and knew something wasn’t right. Then, when his fingers closed around the brass-plated knob—

  Warm, he noticed at once.

  The metal doorknob felt unduly warm, almost hot to the touch.

  He didn’t need to open the door to verify his suspicions, but he did anyway. He twisted the knob and pushed, and when the door swung slowly open, he was looking into a room walled by sheets of flame. A billow of black smoke rolled out, and the scene within was strangely silent. No crackling, hissing of gasses evaporating out of the sheet-rock. He stood in a momentary shock, surveying the room made of traceries of flame. The scene was almost delicate somehow, almost beauteous.

  Fuckin’-A! he thought, and turned and ran.

  “Fire! Fire!” he yelled as his feet rocketed him down the hall and toward the stairs. The act of arson, clearly set by Sanders, had obviously been set very recently, and Garrett, even in his panic, was adept enough to give that some thought. Careening around the metal banister in the exit stairwell, he yanked the red fire alarm, and then tramped down the stairs. Seconds later, he was out of the building.

  The alarm bell grated into the formerly quiet night. Residents began to wander out of all the surrounding buildings, and from Ubel’s building, residents poured.

  Thank freakin’ God, Garrett thought. When he’d discovered the fire, and pulled the alarm, it looked like he’d done it in time for everyone to get out. Sanders must have set it very recently, maybe only minutes ago, he considered. He could hear the sirens from several fire trucks as he was getting back into the Buick, driving away.

  Yeah, he thought, his tires squealing. Sanders must’ve known I was coming here. It’s almost like he was waiting for me, waiting till I got here before he set the blaze, probably with some remote-controlled pyrotechnic device.

  But why?

  If he knew I was coming to Ubel’s, why didn’t he stake the place out and just kill me? Or—

  Garrett’s eyes widened as he accelerated away from the apartments.

  —he needs me alive.

  Two fire trucks screamed by in the opposite direction.

  Sanders must not know where Depot 12 is, and he thinks I do.

  This was not an exuberant realization. Garrett didn’t know where the hidden depot was either…but a trained assassin thought he did.

  Garrett errantly lit a cigarette, every gear of his mind running full-tilt.

  If Sanders knew I was going to Ubel’s apartment…he’s gotta also know where I’m going next…

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Are you all right?” Lynn asked.

  Jessica looked up numbly from the seat she’d remained in for quite a while since the…forearm bone had…regenerated… She squinted at Lynn. “Are you?”

  “Fuck no,” Lynn replied in some very out of character profanity. But if any occasion warranted indecorous language, it had to be this occasion. The two women, both Garrett’s ex-lovers, sipped hot coffee and stared speechless for extended snatches of time. But neither of them dared to let a glance drift over to the top of the shining stainless steel examination table…where it still writhed.

  “I actually feel bad now,” Lynn muttered, leaning against the counter which housed an autoclave, a hi/lo baumanometer set, and a Ritter 800V automatic-cycle sterilizer. She barely felt the near-scalding coffee in her mouth.

  “Feel bad about what?” Jessica muttered back.

  “You know. For the whole time we were married I give him a hard time every damn day about the things he believed in. I called him a crackpot and a nut and a tabloid weirdo with no connection to reality.”

  “Me too.”

  “And look where it all ends—”

  “A fuckin’ alien arm on my morgue slab, regrowing skin before our eyes,” Jessica admitted. “I never would’ve believed it in a trillion years.”

  “Me either.” Lynn wished she could pinch herself, or prick her skin with a safety pin, and simply wake up to discover it was all a macabre dream, and she almost expected that: to wake up in her own bed, in a world with no evidence whatsoever of extraterrestrial visitations.

  But she’d been here for hours now. She hadn’t woken up, and she wouldn’t.

  This is real…

  “What the hell are we gonna do now?” Jessica asked.

  “Good question, and I sure as hell don’t know the answer,” Lynn admitted. “But there’s no point in hanging around here all night.”

  “Yeah…so…”

  Where do we go now? Lynn finished the obvious next question. Where do we go with…an alien arm? So she voiced the only fair suggestion: “Your place or mine?”

  Jessica made a face. “You know, I really don’t want that thing in my apartment. I mean, Christ, I’d have to put it in the damn refrigerator. You want something like that in your fridge?”

  Lynn winced; it didn’t take her long to get the point. She simply could not envision herself opening the door of her shiny white Kenmore and seeing a two-fingered extraterrestrial fore
arm stuck in between the Sunny Delight and the Fat Free Kraft Miracle Whip.

  Not in my fridge, no way.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Jessica perked up. “Why don’t we go to—”

  But Lynn had gotten the idea at the same time. She grinned. “Harlan’s apartment—excellent. Come on.”

  Jessica stood up, then paused. She and Lynn stared at each other through a shared sub-verbal dread.

  “I know,” Lynn admitted. “One of us is actually going to have to pick that thing up and put it back in the bag.”

  Then they both glanced back at the morgue table. The arm’s runneled, veiny pink skin glistened harshly under the exam lights.

  “I think you should do it,” Jessica spoke up. “After all, you used to be Harlan’s wife.”

  Lynn gaped. You’re ballsy little tramp, aren’t you? “What’s that got to do with anything?” she wasted no time in objecting.

  “Well…”

  “Besides, you’re the medical examiner��”

  “Assistant medical examiner,” Jessica corrected.

  “Fine. Assistant medical examiner. “Which makes you a thousand times more qualified than me to…relocate…post mortal…evidence.”

  “My ass!”

  Jesus, Lynn thought. “All right, we’ll do this the fair way, okay?” She plucked a quarter out of her purse.

  “Fair enough,” Jessica groan her consent.

  “Call it—”

  “Heads!”

  Lynn watched the silver coin twirl up, then down, clinking to the floor. It spun there for a moment as both Lynn and Jessica urgently leaned over, squinting.

  The quarter fell over, head-side up.

  Fuck! Lynn thought.

  Jessica released a relieving sigh. “Like I said, fair enough.”

  I’m am REALLY beginning to dislike her. Lynn bit the loser’s bullet, turned, faced the table. And there it was, lying before her.

  The arm.

  Lynn could hear her teeth slowly grinding as she stepped forward, her eyes narrowed to squinting slits. She reached out, as if to grab a bag of stinky, leaking garbage, and very slowly, she lowered her hand to the table and—

  YUCK!

  —let her fingers close around the arm, at about the midpoint.

  It felt like raw chicken skin wrapped around a broom handle. It felt…squishy, warm, and in even more distaste, she could feel the veins—fat as earthworms—beneath the welt-pink skin. Then—

  “Oh my God!” Lynn squealed.

  “What?”

  Lynn, her own arm fully extended, was staring at the queer, two-fingered hand. “The fingers are moving!”

  “No way! That’s impossible!” Jessica insisted.

  “Yeah, and it’s impossible for a bone that’s been sitting in a fucking briefcase for thirty years to grow skin, but this thing did it!”

  “Yeah, but that’s a lot more explainable, Lynn. Something caused some minor cellular regrowth of the skin, probably just some genetic regenerative effect. But there’s no way the fingers can move because that kind of movement requires a synaptic command from the brain. And there’s no brain.”

  Infuriated, Lynn turned and shook the arm at Jessica. “Yeah?”

  Jessica’s face twisted up in disgust when she looked more closely. The two long, multi-jointed fingers—no thicker than a pencil—began to minutely move.

  “Gross,” Jessica acknowledged. “But it’s probably reflexive death-response. It happens here i the morgue all the time. Decaying nerves can cause the digits to move slightly. I guarantee you, the skin growing back on that thing is just an autonomic fluke. A couple of hours now, it’ll be dead again. So come on, put the damn thing back in the bag and let’s get out of here.”

  But before Lynn could do that…the two fingers began to flex rapidly back and forth.

  Lynn and Jessica screamed simultaneously, then Lynn dropped the arm, where it slapped to the floor.

  “Jesus Christ!” Jessica blared, jerking back.

  They both looked down in shock, staring at the arm on the floor.

  No, Lynn thought. No way in hell…

  The index finger continued to move, extending, lowering, and pulling back. The finger, in other words, was dragging the arm across the floor, several inches per motion. At this rate, the arm might be able to traverse the floor in a matter of minutes.

  Lynn sighed after the initial shock. She watched the arm move for a few more seconds, then frowned back to Jessica. “That doesn’t look like any fucking reflexive death-response to me.”

  ««—»»

  The neighborhood itself didn’t appear “military” at all. It was not regimented, nor uniform. Instead, it looked like typical middle-class suburbia in Anywhere, U.S.A.

  But Garrett doubted that he looked as typical himself, not with scuffed shoes and a long tear in his expensive slacks, his suit jacket long gone since it had served as Ubel’s shroud. He kept Lynn’s pistol stuffed in the back of his belt.

  I’m not scared, he suddenly realized. I should be scared, shouldn’t I? Sanders was out there somewhere; he predicted correctly that Garrett would go to Ubel’s, so it wasn’t a brain-storm to predict he’d be coming here too. At least Garrett had had the presence of mind not to drive up to the house: a sniper would be expecting that first and foremost. That’s why Garrett had parked, not several houses away but several blocks away. It was far more tactical to walk in, far less chance of being seen.

  He was lucky at least in that the street-lights were widely spaced, which left him with ample shadows to use for make-shift cover. And when he got to the back of the proper block, he chanced it, and cut through someone’s back yard, keeping his fingers crossed that no dogs—or people—would spot him. He crept as quietly as he could, half-feeling his way through the darkened yard, wary of things to trip over. At one point, though, he nearly screamed when a raccoon scuttled across his path, looking up with faint orange glints. In the distance he could still hear the sirens of fire trucks responding to the Sanders’ handiwork at Ubel’s apartment building. Garrett prayed that no one had burned up and that it hadn’t spread to other buildings.

  But Garrett himself had been smoked out—that was for sure.

  That’s what had him worried.

  In a minute, the rear of the house in question emerged into view; he could see lights on in the windows. The back sliding doors were closed but the floor-length drapes still drawn open. Good, they’re not in bed. Garrett got down on one knee, hunkered behind the picket fence which outlined the back yard. He kept his eyes on the sliding doors, vigilant for movement.

  He checked his watch—ten p.m. now. He continued to watch for signs of life for the next ten minutes, but none were forthcoming.

  Shit. Maybe he’s been here already. Maybe he’s killed everyone.

  This was a reasonable speculation, considering Sanders’ previous moves. And even if the assassin had killed everyone inside, even though the bulk of his mission would be completed, there was still one more person he had to take down.

  Me, Garrett knew.

  Sanders was probably not given to leaving loose ends.

  Now Garrett realized only two bare choices. He could stalk up to the windows and peep in, visually scan the interior of the first floor—but if he did that, and a neighbor saw him and called the MPs?

  I’d never be able to talk my way out of it, he realized. Phony ID or not. I’d be in the stockade and that would be that.

  The second choice?

  Walk up to the front door and knock.

  He fidgeted, his knee dampening in the grass. Fuck it, he resolved. Just grow a pair and do it.

  He got up and immediately walked around to the front of the house. If no one answered the door, he’d need his picks again, but he hoped he was just being paranoid. I’d say I’ve got reason being paranoid. A hit man tried to kill me today. Garrett figured that if he was wrong, his life might easily end right now. Sanders would have already established a secluded firing position, probab
ly some huge long-range infrared or Starlight scope. He’d just be waiting for me, invisible, up in some tree half a mile away, Garrett knew with a growing dread in his belly. Knowing I’ll be coming to this house. All he’s gotta do is sit there and wait for me to walk right up to the front door…

  Garrett walked right up to the front door. He even stood there for a protracted moment under the bright porch light, waiting for the rifle slug.

  It never came.

  Okay, let’s do this.

  He already knew this was the right house from the base residential map he got at the admin center, but a glance over the mailbox reassured him:

  GEN. ANTHONY VANDER

  I was wrong about the house being staked, Garrett thought. Now it’s time to see if I’m wrong about everything else.

  His finger pressed the door buzzer, and suddenly he felt sure: They’re dead. Sanders has already been here and killed everyone…

  Then the door opened, rather abruptly, and Garrett was being scowled at by a tall, testy man in Army dress slacks and a summer-weight shirt pulled out. General stars on the shirt’s epaulets.

  It was a good thing looks couldn’t kill.

  “Who the hell are you are? What do you want? What are you doing ringing my bell at this hour?”

  Jesus. “General Vander,” Garrett bumbled, whipping out his phony ID case. “I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour but I’m here on a very urgent matter. I’m Special Agent Richard Odenton with the F.B.I. and—”

  “Bullshit!” the general barked back. “The F.B.I.’s got no business on a military reservation! I’m calling the MPs!”

  Shit! “Please, sir, wait!” Garrett blabbered, just as the door slammed in his face. “Your son’s life is in grave danger!” he shouted.

  Garrett’s shout echoed down the street. After a moment’s pause…the door clicked back open and Garrett was re-faced by a very solemn General Vander.

  “My son?” the man said. “Why on earth would—”