by Sam Sisavath
He should have done a lot of things before he sank his knife into Max. Like stayed in bed or never left the B&B to begin with.
But he hadn’t.
Instead, he was here, closing the door.
“This isn’t the one step at a time we were talking about,” the voice said. “But it’s not too late. We can still fix this.”
How?
“No one knows what you’ve done yet. All you have to do is get rid of the girl.”
Mason didn’t answer the voice.
“You know what you have to do,” the voice said. “It’s the only way out.” When he still didn’t answer, the voice continued: “What are you waiting for? There’s still time to fix this. One step at a time, remember?”
One step at a time…
“That’s my boy.”
But the knife remained in its sheath.
“Do it,” the voice said. “You can do it. It wouldn’t be the first time...”
Freckles squinted through swollen eyes at him the entire time as he walked back to her.
“Do it,” the voice said. “We can still salvage this. But you have to make the choice. Do it.”
His knife, for whatever reason, remained at his hip when he stopped in front of her and they exchanged a look. There was something different about the way she sat in the chair that hadn’t been there before when he first entered the room. She looked different, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
What was it? The way she was looking at him? Her posture? What was it about her that didn’t make any sense—
Then he saw it.
Ah.
Mason couldn’t help himself as the realization struck, and he grinned. “You were playing possum this entire time.”
“What?” she said.
“You made him think you had given up, that all the fight was gone. You were pretending so he’d stop.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She didn’t look away and he saw, without a doubt, that the defiance he’d seen in the woods, then later on the road back to town had made a triumphant return—if it was ever really gone in the first place.
Clever little girl.
“Why did you kill him?” she asked. “You wanted to finish me yourself, is that it?”
“Is that what you think?”
“I killed your friends. It makes sense.”
“Only if they were actually my friends.”
“Weren’t they?”
“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, I’m new here. I barely knew their names. I barely knew this guy’s name,” he said, nodding at Max’s lifeless body lying on top of the stained tarp between them. “I couldn’t care less about these people.”
“Or your future, apparently,” the voice chimed in.
Oh, shut up.
“You first.”
Freckles looked down at Max, then back up at him. That fierceness seemed to give a little, replaced by something that could almost be interpreted as confusion. “So what now?”
“This girl’s full of good questions tonight,” the voice said. “So what now, tough guy?”
I don’t know.
“You can still fix this. It’s not too late. All you have to do is take out your knife and cut her throat. No one has to know it was you that did it. They would think it was Max.”
What about Max?
“Easy. She got loose and killed him, but he managed to do the same to her. Double homicide. Leave your knife in her hand after you cut her throat. No one will know.”
No one’s going to buy that.
“They’ll be confused, questions will be asked, but in the end, they’ll move on. No one’s going to be playing Columbo around here. In a week, no one will care what happened or how it happened.”
People saw me walking down the street.
“A lot of people walk down the street.”
In the middle of the night?
“You’ll think of something. It’s what we do best.”
Maybe…
He became aware of the girl eyeing him intently, and Mason wondered how long he had been quietly arguing with himself.
“Don’t tell her, and I won’t,” the voice chuckled.
“Are you okay?” she finally asked him.
He ignored her question and kicked at Max’s body. “They’re going to find him. People saw me coming here; I’m new, I’ll stick out. Someone’s going to put two and two together.”
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and turned back to the door and squinted his eyes.
Everything he’d said was true. He was a relative stranger here. The two people who knew him best—and that was stretching it—were both dead. Jocelyn had made it pretty clear she didn’t like him, and Paul… Well, he’d only met the guy yesterday. How smart was Paul? Smart enough that Jocelyn had left the town in his hands. But was he smart enough to figure out who had killed Max?
That was the problem. The not knowing. He hated the not knowing.
“Should have thought of that before you sank your knife into Max’s gut,” the voice said.
Too late for that now.
“Should have listened to me.”
I should have done a lot of things. Now are you going to help me get out of here or not?
“And then what?”
Find another town, maybe in another state. Someplace where they don’t know me. Pick a new name and start all over.
“That’s your big plan?”
It’s a plan.
“I suppose it is. Not a very good one…”
Stop your nagging and help me get out of here. We can’t start over if I can’t put T10 in the rearview mirror. One step at a time, remember?
The voice sighed. “The things I do for you…”
“Hey,” Freckles was saying, her voice bringing him back to the bloody room.
He turned around and refocused on her. “What?”
“What are we gonna do now?”
“‘We?’” the voice said. “Who is this ‘we’ she’s talking about?”
“I’m thinking,” Mason said.
“Well, you better think faster,” Freckles said, “because it’s gonna be light soon, and they might come and check on this fucktard.”
TEN MINUTES LATER, he unwrapped the tape around her ankles and wrists and went back out into the lobby while she dressed. Mason found that if he kept moving and hiding in the still-darkness, he could ignore the voice nagging at the back of his mind.
He stayed in the shadows next to the front glass windows and looked out behind the fading donut mural at the empty streets beyond. From his angle, he could see a couple of the solar-powered lamps hanging from the poles, and although they provided decent lighting, it wasn’t enough to give him a complete view of the world outside. Which was good, because if he couldn’t see everything out there, then he was just as obscured from anyone looking in.
There was a click from behind him as she came out of the back room. She’d found her boots, because she was moving just a bit too loud for someone who was so small and frail. Or maybe he was just hypersensitive to sounds at the moment as he listened and waited for his crime to be discovered, for Paul to come get him.
“It’s what you would do in his shoes,” the voice said. “You’d hunt down the dummy and string him up, make an example of him. You remember all the things you did to maintain control? All the vile things you made others do so you wouldn’t get blood on your hands?”
He looked across the window at Freckles as she leaned against the wall on the other side. She had wisely picked a spot that kept her hidden, and he couldn’t see the cuts along her cheeks and forehead even though he knew they were there. For someone who had just gone through torture, she looked amazingly…calm.
“She played you,” the voice said. “Just like she played Max. And you fell for it hook, line, and sinker, you peckerhead.”
He could just barely pick out her brown eyes as she looked back
across at him and said, “It’s going to be light soon.”
“I know,” Mason said.
“We should leave.”
“So it’s ‘we’ now, is it?”
“You can’t stay here. You said it yourself.” She glanced back at the hallway, as if to make sure Max hadn’t returned to life. “We should leave.”
“There’s that ‘we’ again,” the voice laughed. “You hear that? It’s officially ‘we’ now, because you guys are a team. A fucked up, gonna-get-killed-real-soon team, but a team! Feel safer now?”
Mason squinted his eyes to block out the laughter.
When he opened them again—a second? Two seconds?—she was staring at him.
“You’re doing it again,” she said.
“Doing what?”
“Like you’re not here. You really okay?”
“I’m not the one who was trapped in that back room with Max.” He refocused on the street outside. “Besides, I’m just thinking of a way out of here.”
“Oh,” she said, though he wasn’t sure if she actually believed him. When he didn’t say anything else, she asked, “Any ideas yet?”
“Yeah, I got a few,” he lied.
IT WASN’T A COMPLETE LIE. He did have some ideas.
Okay. It was more like one. But one was better than none.
“Keep telling yourself that,” the voice said.
He led the girl out of the donut shop and down the street. It was still dark enough (but that wasn’t going to last forever) that she could hide most of her exposed facial wounds by sticking closer to the buildings while Mason made himself visible next to the road to draw attention to him, to the uniform he was wearing. In a place like T10, uniforms were everything.
Freckles had wanted weapons, but there weren’t any in Max’s building to give her except the scalpel she was gripping in one of her hands at the moment, hidden just out of view inside her long-sleeve thermal shirt. Mason had his Sig Sauer and his knife, but that was about it. It hadn’t occurred to him to come find Max with more firepower.
“Are you saying you didn’t know you were going to do it?” the voice asked. “That you were going to fuck everything up for us once you found him?”
That’s exactly what I’m saying.
“I don’t believe you.”
I don’t care what you believe.
The voice laughed. “You should care. I’m you, you peckerhead.”
He checked his watch when they came out of the donut shop and again when they reached the first intersection. Twenty minutes or so to sunup, and he could already see the sky starting to light up in the horizon just over the roofs of the taller apartment buildings.
The coming dawn was both a relief and a hindrance. Sunlight meant they could escape the town without having to worry about black-eyed ghouls beyond the city limits. He had the uniform on, but that didn’t always work. Right now, the night was the only thing keeping them hidden, as well as keeping Max’s dead body from discovery. Once that changed…
“Why did you do it?” the voice asked. “Why did you throw it all away for a girl whose name you don’t even know?”
It didn’t matter how many times the voice asked the same question; he didn’t have any answers for it. Or, at least, nothing to explain why he’d killed Max to save the girl.
Why? Why had he done it?
“Isn’t that the question of the century,” the voice said. “Remember to share with the class when you figure it out.”
“Are you okay?” Freckles asked. She was walking slightly behind him, her pace slower than his because she couldn’t move as freely out in the open as he could. Without realizing it, he had slowed down.
Mason nodded. “Yeah. Why?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“So stop asking stupid questions,” he said, and looked forward again.
“Even the girl knows you’re not right in the head,” the voice said. “Sooner or later, she’s going to figure out you’re cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs and try to shoot you again. Which reminds us: Do not give her a gun under any circumstances.”
Good idea. That’s a good idea.
They were half a block from the bed-and-breakfast that Mason called home when he finally found what he was looking for: a compact blue Nissan pickup truck parked at the curb about thirty yards away. It had been there when he first walked this same patch of street and was still there now along with its driver, sitting on the hood smoking a cigarette with his rifle laid across his lap.
The man heard Mason approaching and glanced over, but if he was alarmed, his body didn’t give it away. Instead, he held up a hand in greeting, and Mason returned it. He didn’t know if Freckles did the same thing behind him. If she was still sticking to the shadows, her black clothes might have been able to pass for a uniform, but that was only if the guard didn’t look too closely.
The guy hopped off the Nissan and onto the sidewalk when they got closer. He slung his rifle, the front of his cigarette glowing bright red for a moment before fading as he took a draw, then asked, “You on patrol?”
“Nah, just getting some fresh air,” Mason said.
The man (like all of T10’s soldiers, he didn’t have a name tag on his uniform) looked past him and slightly to the right, at Freckles coming up behind Mason. “Civilians aren’t supposed to be out at dark.”
“I don’t think she knows that,” Mason said.
“Everyone knows that,” the guy said before taking another long pull on his cig. “You guys new in town? I don’t recognize you.”
“Yeah, we just got in a few days ago,” Mason said.
He was ten yards from the guy now and could make out the other man’s face: thirties, and taller than Mason, but then who wasn’t taller than him? Most of the world’s population was gone, and he still somehow kept finding himself at the short end of the stick.
“Hey, jokes are my department,” the voice laughed.
The sentry peered at him as Mason continued walking up to the man. “What’s your name?”
“Mason.”
“You’re not supposed to be out here, Mason.”
“People keep telling me that,” Mason said, and kept walking.
Recognition flickered across the man’s eyes when he realized what Mason was doing, and Mason thought, Took you long enough.
The sentry should have gone for his sidearm because it was closer, but instead he wasted two precious seconds reaching back for his slung rifle. It was a full second more than Mason needed, and he lunged at the man even as the knife came out of its sheath for the second time and cut through the cold air.
Mason had already assumed he’d need to kill again before the day was out and was ready for it. Besides, it wasn’t like killing was ever something he had a hard time accepting. It hadn’t been the case before the world went to shit, and it only got easier afterward with everything at stake.
He punched the blade into the man’s gut, almost at the exact same spot where he had gotten Max not even an hour ago, and drove his forearm into the sentry’s throat while at the same time pushing him back until he was pinned against the truck door. The man forgot about the rifle and grabbed at Mason’s left arm as it pressed hard against his throat when he should have been more concerned about the knife in his stomach.
Like Max, the guy fought for a while. Five seconds—ten—while his legs kicked fruitlessly at Mason’s own. Thankfully Mason was always stronger than he was tall, and he held on as the guy flailed helplessly, gagging against the forearm in his throat.
Mason heard shuffling behind him just before Freckles appeared and grabbed the sentry’s handgun—a Glock—out of its holster even before the man gave up the ghost.
“Don’t let her get the gun, you idiot!” the voice shouted.
But Mason couldn’t do anything about it, not with both hands busy keeping the collaborator silenced against him.
“Shit!” the voice hissed, as Mason waited helplessly for Freckles to show him what a fool he had been, that a
ll of this was the biggest mistake of his life (and the last mistake he was ever going to make).
But she didn’t press the gun against his temple and pull the trigger. Instead, she faced away from him and scanned the streets for signs that someone had heard the commotion. But no one had, and the roads remained empty except for the untended vehicles parked up and down the curb. She glanced up at the apartments above them, but their windows remained dark.
Eventually Mason’s second victim went slack and he let go, stepping back to let the body slide to the sidewalk in a lifeless heap. His hands, already stained with Max’s blood from the donut shop (it hadn’t occurred to him to properly clean them), were once again coated in fresh, warm liquid.
“That’s what they call evidence,” the voice said. “You might want to get rid of them; or, at least, make them less obvious. But hey, what do I know.”
Mason took a few seconds to crouch and wipe his fingers and knife on the dead man’s clothing.
“Are we just going to drive out of here?” Freckles asked behind him.
“That’s the plan.”
“Your plan sucks.”
“You got any better ideas, let’s hear it.”
The girl didn’t answer.
“Thought so,” Mason said, and rummaged through the dead man’s pockets for the car keys.
“We should hurry,” Freckles said.
“Hold your horses.”
“No, we should hurry,” the girl said.
Mason didn’t have to look up to understand the urgency in her voice. He could see it: A sheet of sunlight falling over the car door in front of him as morning began to bathe the town of T10…
TEN
“YOU KILLED THEM. You didn’t even blink when you did it.”
“It wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last,” the voice said. “That is, if we survive this, which at this point is a pretty big if.”
I can make it work. Find another town. Use a new name. No one has to know about what happened here.
“Someone’s going to find out. Someone always finds out.”
You ever heard about the power of positive thinking?
“Is that before or after you screwed everything up?”
I don’t know why I even talk to you.