Southern Ouroboros

by Matt Kilby

  “If I didn’t know better, I would think you were worried.”

  “But you do,” John said.

  “Because this has happened before,” Vick finished the thought for him.

  John nodded and pointed at four sets of blue lights approaching on the other side of the highway. The white of the world made them brighter, and the Charger would stick out as well—bullet holes and all. Vick tightened his grip on the wheel and shifted in his seat, ready to mash the gas at the first cruiser crossing the median. As they did last night, all passed in a hurry to somewhere else.

  “Impossible,” Vick said.

  “A man was shot and left for dead in a motel parking lot,” the cowboy looked over with a grin. “Is it so impossible someone called the police?”

  “No, but not noticing a parade led by the person you spent the last day trying to find is harder to reconcile.”

  “One of these days,” the cowboy chuckled, “you won’t have any choice but to believe. I thought last night would put you on your way, but you always were stubborn.”

  That was something Vick had no hope of arguing, so he didn’t bother. He shut up and drove, trading his attention from the road to the rearview at intervals as steady as a ticking clock. The other cars kept their distance, none brave enough to take another shot and risk either losing their chance at Carly or drawing the attention of the otherwise distracted police. They followed where he led, past the Creek Hollow town limits like some modern Pied Piper with an entourage of rats. As they passed the church, he wondered if Carly still waited or left as soon as she was free of John Valance.

  The cowboy’s attention didn’t leave the road until it ended at an old highway Vick remembered from his search for Suzanne. Beyond rundown houses and swampland, the right leg led to a dead end. Even so, John nodded that direction and told him to turn. Vick rolled through the stop sign and corrected the back wheels as they slid. Waiting for the car to lurch forward, his eyes fixed on a glint of metal among the trees: a sign blocking a gravel road. Property of the Orion Group. Trespassers will be detained or shot.

  “She’s there, isn’t she?” He felt Suzanne nearby when John nodded. It didn’t matter if she was miles away or this was the one detail the cowboy got wrong. She was there, waiting as always for him to show up too late. He stomped the accelerator and fought the steering wheel, aiming for the chain link fence with enough traction to flatten the gate and open the way. Under the ceiling of the trees’ branches, the road was more or less dry and gave him time to build momentum to ram the metal arm stretched across the single lane. It also gave the rest a chance to catch up, which they did knowing the police were occupied, leaving Orion’s security guards to contend with. The idea made the passengers of the first cars bold enough to prop in their windows at almost eighty miles an hour and shoot at the Charger with the same rifles that freckled the windshield. At his speed, Vick couldn’t risk a glance back but didn’t think they mattered anymore. They were John’s problem, his the building ahead and the single guard in the middle of the road, holding his walkie talkie to his mouth.

  “John,” he yelled. “What do I do?”

  “Keep driving,” John said in his sleepy way. “It’s ahead.”

  “I see that,” Vick barked, “but so is a man.”

  “Who’ll move or die,” John looked over.

  Vick wondered how he could say that but didn’t waste breath asking. He would get the same answer about the stone’s will and how things happened the way they were meant to. Already sick of the party line, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he jerked the wheel before they hit the security guard, the Charger ramming the guard house at an angle to bounce back toward the parking lot. The tires popped in the impact, showering sparks down the side of the car within another fifty yards. Eyes on the massive building ahead, Vick kept the gas pedal down as John sat silent. He could have reminded him nothing he tried to change mattered but instead stared like some scientist at a rat running a maze for the hundredth time. Fuming but determined, Vick kept his speed steady until the cars that followed were past the gravel with room to maneuver. In the short space before the first parked cars, they boxed him in: one shooting out his remaining tires as another clipped his back bumper with the synchronicity of people who’d done this before. The Charger lurched and rolled onto two wheels, too heavy to stay up, so the car bumped them again. They flipped, the Charger scraping on its roof before there was nothing left but to stop.

  After the screeching metal and tinkling glass, the only sound was the blare of an alarm. Vick hung upside down with lacerations healing across his face and broken ribs shifting to set into place. Out of habit, he buckled his seatbelt, but John didn’t see any point. That was why he was crumpled on what used to be the car’s ceiling, his neck twisted wrong and eyes staring dull through the broken windshield. Snow gathered beside his face, the pupils narrowing as the soul inside woke again. With a cough, the cowboy spit blood into the powder.

  “If you keep pushing,” he grunted, pulling his legs under him to sit, “the stone is liable to teach you a lesson.”

  “I thought its path was set,” Vick said. The cowboy checked the door handle, giving two heavy shoves to open the way wide enough to crawl through. Before he did, he gave Vick his attention.

  “If you think I don’t know what you’re doing, you’re wrong. I have seen you go through today with and without seeing her, and I promise you’ll be worse if you miss your chance. Go inside and to the basement. A room full of boxes is set to burn, and the one you’re looking for has the number 231 on the side.”

  “How much time do I have?”

  “That’s not a question you should ask,” John warned. “Not if you intend to listen.”

  “What if I won’t? What if I said you can shove that rock and its future up your ass?”

  “What if I told you this is what you always said?” John didn’t wait for an answer. He pulled his revolver and crawled out, leaving Vick to turn the question in his head. He made up his mind by the time he heard the next gunshots. For Eric and the thing inside him that said Suzanne could be saved. For Pastor Marshall, who said this was the only choice a good man had left. For Pete and his father, who would be disappointed if he chose some easier way. Vick pressed the button to his seatbelt, raising the other hand to catch himself as he fell. He eased onto his knees and then to John’s open door.

  Looking out, he didn’t see anything but the snow and sunlight reflecting off other cars. As his eyes adjusted, he found John’s tracks and heard the boom of his revolver firing from the Charger’s trunk. Rapid pops marked return fire from about thirty yards away, though distance didn’t matter. Time was his problem now, any death likely to make him miss his window for getting to Suzanne. Maybe it was what John’s warning meant. If Vick played along, the stone would veer every shot off course, but if he tried changing the inevitable, a bullet would find some vital organ. He would die and wake in time to know she was gone, with nothing but a distant hope he would find another way in the next thousand years. It was almost enough to make him start toward the building, but then he heard another boom and a man scream nearby. Even if every one of those men were bad, Vick couldn’t avoid what Brandon told him. If you figure out any chance at changing them, I hope you’ll take it. Wolgiss said, If Tuck Marshall can survive, so can she. Different pleas begging the same thing. Change it. Save her. He closed his eyes to gather a breath and opened them as he crawled out, crouching down the side of the car to where John stood firing measured shots at the men ducking behind parked cars. If the cowboy realized Vick was there, he didn’t acknowledge him or the gleam in his hand—the butcher knife he swiped from the pastor’s kitchen. Vick didn’t wait for him to turn and steal the opportunity, jerking his hand up to drive the blade into John’s skull. With a surprised jolt, John dropped limp to the pavement and didn’t move. Like at the warehouse across town, he wouldn’t until someone pulled out the knife. It should give him plenty of time but depended on whether John was r
ight about the stone. As Vick pulled the messenger bag from the cowboy’s shoulder and draped it over his, he understood there was only one way to know.

  He darted back the way he came, up the side of the Charger toward the building. His confidence grew with every bounce of the stone against his hip, but he kept low to avoid unnecessary gun fire. He didn’t know if the people crouched behind their cars saw what he did to John. If they thought he was on their side, he might not need to worry about them getting in his way, but at the end of the cars, as he walked into the open space, he remembered they were only his first problem.

  Fifteen members of Orion’s security stood in a line a few feet from the front door to make sure no one made it inside. By their rigid attention and unflinching lack of curiosity about the nearby gun fight, Vick guessed they were all ex-military. None moved to stop what happened at the other end of the parking lot. Their concern was the task in front of them. With his last step, Vick understood that was him. He stopped under their stares as each shoved an assault rifle into their shoulders to aim his way. Instinct forced his hands up as if they cared whether he was armed or he cared whether they shot him. One way or another, he was getting inside but thought he should at least try to do it in peace.

  “Listen,” he said, eyes drifting down the line. “You don’t know me or what I can do, but trust me when I say I can be reasonable. Move out of my way and let me inside. If you want a fight, there are men behind me who’ll give you one, but I’ve seen too much of that already. So what do you say? Can we do this the easy way?”

  A few smiled, but every face went serious when his hand dropped into his coat. They didn’t wait to see his gun, and it didn’t stay in his hand once out, the pain as bullets shredded his arm forcing him to drop it. They took out his legs next, putting him on his knees. They drilled him in the chest to finish him and then raised their eyes to wait for whoever came next. Vick couldn’t wait for every bullet hole to close, so he did the only thing he could and trusted the Godstone. Even as his final breaths slipped out, he worked his hand into the messenger bag to touch its smooth face. As his fingers found it, he felt the same rush as last night, a shot of adrenaline into his heart. The light soaked into his blood, his being, as he pulled his legs under him and got onto his feet. Power surged through him, rolling down his fingers in waves so heavy he had to see them, so he took the stone from the bag and showed the awestruck guards. With the brick in his hand, blinding white, he imagined he looked the way Joe did in the Starks County sheriff’s department last summer. He remembered what its power accomplished then and what he had to do for Suzanne now.

  He didn’t know how it worked but was sure it would. When he held out the brick, the light intensified, erupting in a stream of constant energy. It struck the center guard’s chest, his face and arms searing from the inside out. The light consumed him to nothing, and the man beside him reeled with a terror so profound his gun fell clattering to his feet. That saved his life, but the others weren’t as lucky. They continued to fire at the glowing man who kept his steady approach. Each were cremated where they stood. Vick marched over the dust they left behind and found the door they guarded locked. The stone’s pulse told him to hold it to the glass. Another surge buckled the frame and exploded the rest into shards.

  He stepped through and toward the elevators, hoping the alarm and red strobe in the ceiling didn’t shut them down. The lower triangle lit, and he waited, trading glances between the hallway and shattered door in case more guards or drug dealers showed up. When no one dared, he guessed they saw what happened outside.

  After a short ride down, the elevator opened again on a man in the basement hallway who shook a spray can with a clatter before painting numbers on the box at his feet. Vick read the dark digits and sighed, though he knew it wouldn’t be easy. The brick might feel like his weapon, a tool set to his purpose, but it was always the other way around. John warned him. This thing wrote destinies—his, Joe’s, Eric’s, and Suzanne’s. If fate existed, it glowed against his palm as he marched forward to grab the clock puncher by his collar.

  “Where is she?” Vick growled and slammed him to the wall as if this man killed her, though his confusion made it hard to believe. Still, his silence made Vick angrier until he asked a question the man could answer.

  “Where is box 231?”

  “Inside,” he stammered and pointed down the wall. The door he meant was shut with a countdown above, a minute and a half left until zero. It was all the time Suzanne had, so he let the man go and walked toward it.

  “You can’t go in there,” the man called after him. “Once the counter starts, the door seals until the burn.”

  “Then make it stop,” Vick said when he reached the door, watching the flashing numbers.

  Incineration, Vick thought as he held out the only key he needed. Its flash reflected in a window to his left, though he felt it enough without seeing. The power thumped so steady through him, it might have been his heart. This was the thing that killed his father and burned Pine Haven. It took Eric and threatened to do the same to Suzanne, but he couldn’t help loving it as it pulled him to the door, the red numbers reading 1:07.

  “I can’t,” the man said.

  The Godstone wanted him inside to see Suzanne and remember her dead, to be haunted by her ghost for so many years and decades and centuries he came back, following the fading steps his feet made before. He pressed the stone to the door like outside, but instead of buckling, something inside whirred loud until a latch sprung to slide it open. Stacks of boxes cluttered the room, each with a different number on its side. There were so many, his eyes blurred to pick out any certain one, but he forced his focus and his feet to walk despite the countdown above his head. When frantic didn’t help, he took a deep breath and concentrated. As his internal count blurred, he found her box in the corner—the base of a three-crate column. He shoved the two above, tilting them over the back with a crash of shattering glass from inside. He yanked up the lid of container 231 until the plastic ties binding its edges snapped. With it open, he saw Suzanne for the first time in two weeks and knew she was dead. An hour earlier might have been on time, but he couldn’t do anything for the purple hue of her face or stiff stillness in her chest. He moaned as he reached for her and found it the last breath that came easy.

  He dropped to his knees with his arms over the case’s edge, brushing her cheek as if she slept. Ignoring the white lolling beneath her cracked eyelids, he might have thought it was all she did, shaking her shoulders with some hope she would open her eyes with a snort. He ran his hands down to cradle the limp weight of her head.

  “Hey, buddy,” the man shouted down the hall. “You better get out of there.”

  On cue, a female voice spoke from the ceiling, drowning out the alarm’s repetition.

  “Incineration will commence in twenty seconds. Please clear the disposal room and ensure the door is sealed.”

  He didn’t care how it would feel to burn with her, only wishing he wouldn’t come back.

  “Incineration will commence in fifteen seconds. Please clear the disposal room and ensure the door is sealed.”

  “If Tuck Marshall can survive, so can she,” he said as if he could reason with the inanimate rock on the floor beside him.

  “Incineration will commence in ten seconds. Please clear the disposal room and ensure the door is sealed.”

  Then something at his fingertips widened his eyes. It could have been nothing but hope made manifest, but it felt like the faint trace of her pulse.

  “Incineration will commence in five.”

  His hand shot to the floor for the Godstone, fearing it would slip from his fingers in a final act of defiance.

  “Four.”

  He brought it into the crate and against her face, the way Carly said John did for him, but nothing happened.

  “Three.”

  He tried the other cheek, but it didn’t matter. The stone meant for her to die. At the limit of his desperation, he scr
eamed and stood above her.

  “Two.”

  He put the stone under her face like a pillow. He was out of time, but if Tuck Marshall could survive, he refused to let her die. So he crawled on top of her.

  “One.”

  He shielded her with his body and felt the heat behind him. Even with his head down and eyes closed, the world went bright. As his hair singed and scalp blistered, he risked a glance to find out why.

  His hand had tucked under the stone, which worked to heal him as it did outside. Whatever bond he shared forced that, but it still rested under Suzanne’s head, against her cheek, the light soaking into her face the same as his fingers. Her eyes sprang open with a breath so sharp it might as well have been her first. In the process of being cremated and recovering all at once, he couldn’t help himself. He kissed her.

  He didn’t know how long the fire burned but didn’t pull his lips away until it stopped. Despite his effort, his body didn’t block much of the fire. She was in a metal box, after all, her skin burned raw and smoldering. But as he climbed out and stood back, her blisters receded and skin smoothed. She healed, and he couldn’t help laughing at the impossibility.

  “Vick?” she said and sat up. She started to stand but glanced down and realized something he missed, as impossible as it seemed.

  “Where are my clothes?” she fixed her eyes on him. “Where are yours?”

  He looked down and laughed again. It was something not to notice her clothes gone, but another not to see his had evaporated in the same way. The stone couldn’t save fabric, but he guessed that was why John’s clothes were covered in stitches. He told Suzanne to wait and left the room to find the man where he left him.

  “I need clothes,” Vick told him.

  At first, the man gaped, his hand on the wall to keep his legs from failing, but then Vick snapped his fingers.

  “There are uniforms in the other room,” the man whispered, and Vick nodded his thanks.

  He went back, this time to the door on the left. He turned the knob, relieved to find it unlocked. The stone might have saved Suzanne, unwilling as it’d been, but he was in no hurry to touch it again. He would be glad to hand it back to John, under certain conditions, but first put on coveralls with the Orion logo over his heart and found a pair he thought might fit Suzanne. She made him turn away as she dressed, though he’d seen her naked plenty of times. Still, he didn’t argue. For the simple act of being alive, it’d be a long time before he told her no.