by Jack Heath
Apparently one FBI team was dispatched to arrest the terrorists, while a second team set up roadblocks nearby so they couldn’t escape. But locals noticed the police presence, and soon rumours were spreading online that the barricades were for the protection of Emmanuel Goldstein. Instead of congregating at the courthouse as Fred intended, the protesters were drawn to the roadblocks, right in the middle of the Guards’ escape route.
The director implies that this was a long-term operation rather than dumb luck. She doesn’t admit how bad it could have been.
The same doctor comes back, looking even more haggard. Working a double shift, I guess. She gives me a script for OxyContin and an antibiotic, and discharges me. I go downstairs to the pharmacy. The man behind the counter offers to send a bill to my residence instead of charging me on the spot. I give him a fake address and walk out.
It’s too far to walk home, and I don’t have any money. But the hospital is surrounded by drug addicts. I can tell them apart from the worried relatives by their hollow stares, the way they rub their thin arms through their coats. Some of them look a lot like Cedric. I wonder if he could have made OxyContin from his poppies.
I walk up to the most wealthy-looking addict, a woman in a knitted sweater and beanie. I sell her my painkillers and spend the cash on a bus fare home.
I can’t tell if my house has been robbed. The lock on the door is broken, but maybe it was always like that. It feels like I’ve been gone for years. The fridge and the freezer are empty, except for some cash hidden inside a block of ice. The old TV is still there, but it might not have been worth stealing.
I sit on the battered couch and wait for Reese Thistle to come and arrest me.
But she doesn’t.
No one does.
CHAPTER 43
What do you deep-fry to open a door?
Down in the editing room, screens were flickering. FBI agents appeared on more and more rectangles, bulked up by bulletproof vests and helmets. But the room was empty. No one was watching the feeds.
Six agents surrounded the slaughterhouse. Eight more crept around the outside of the main house. They saw the dog run, but no sign of any dogs.
The slaughterhouse door was still unlocked. Cautiously, one of the agents pulled it open. Inside she saw the sets, the chains, the cameras, the grinder. No people, just bad smells.
The front and back doors of the main house were locked. From a distance, the agent in charge counted to three. Others used battering tubes to smash in both doors at the same instant. The team swept through every room of the ground floor with flashlights, checking in closets and behind doorways for hostiles. There was no one.
Upstairs, they found a woman in her early sixties, holding a gun.
Fred had given it to her. Once he was clear, she was supposed to shoot it into the floor, igniting the ammonal and setting off the massive explosion that I had expected earlier. The fire would have consumed her and destroyed all the evidence of Fred’s crimes.
She didn’t, though. She kept the gun pointed at the floor as the agents shouted at her. She waited three, four, five seconds. Then, just as the FBI agents were about to open fire, she dropped the gun, having held it for long enough to prove that she could have killed everyone in the building. The agents wrestled her to the ground and dragged her downstairs so roughly that they didn’t find out she couldn’t walk until much later.
It was unclear why Fred expected her to die for him. Maybe he thought she owed him for all that time he spent growing up without her. Perhaps he thought she’d want to protect her son, despite everything he had done. Maybe he thought she would rather die than go back to prison. Or maybe he was just a bully, used to women doing what he told them. No one will ever know.
Penny was freed within days. She’d already served her time for Swaize’s murder and had committed no crimes since then. She refused all interviews, and the media eventually lost interest in her. She couldn’t be neatly categorised as a villain, a victim, a hero or a bystander, so there wasn’t much reason to keep pursuing her.
Thistle also avoided the media. Ivy, too. The priest announced that he wanted to return to his congregation, but it turned out he had already been replaced. He had to fight to get his parish back, and even after he succeeded, his congregation shrank. Most people didn’t really believe the accusations of paedophilia, but they left anyway. Better to be safe than sorry.
Hailey’s show became the most downloaded podcast in America, a spot it held for almost a week.
Amar and his family had to move house because of all the harassment from people who believed he really was a terrorist.
Emily, being young, thin and blonde, was the one I saw on TV most often. It was always the same scrap of footage, her standing next to her father in front of their McMansion, dabbing a tear away from her mascara. The soundbite: ‘It was like a nightmare.’ Thousands of subscribers had watched her suffer in that slaughterhouse. Now she was on national television, where millions could enjoy it. Somehow, she’s become the hero of the story, rather than Thistle. There’s talk of Margot Robbie playing her in a Netflix series.
Donnie was later found crawling around the streets of Houston with a broken thigh from the crash. He had a knife, and slashed at anyone who came near him—the police subdued him with a taser. His prints matched those all over the house and the slaughterhouse. He’s serving ninety-nine years in Huntsville, but his attorney is appealing. The judge sentenced Donnie as though he were a psychopath, the lawyer says. She failed to consider provocation—yes, the victims were innocent, but Donnie believed they were rapists and murderers. He has expressed remorse and can be rehabilitated. Legal experts say this defence is a long shot, but many columnists are on Donnie’s side.
After Cedric was identified as one of the Guards, his book of poetry was reprinted and became a bestseller, popular among those who normally only read books like Mein
Kampf, On Guerrilla Warfare by Mao Tse-Tung and that romance novel by Saddam Hussein. Some avant-garde band put some of the poems to music. They were immediately condemned for profiting from Cedric’s crimes. Protesters stormed a bar where the band was supposed to perform, trashing it. Nowhere else would book them after that, but the protest made them so famous that their streaming revenue went through the roof, and they were briefly rich before the publisher of the book sued them. The world kept turning.
Kyle was identified, too. I saw his mom crying on the TV. She said she didn’t understand how this could have happened. She claimed he was a sweet boy, with a kind smile and a big laugh. She has his dimpled chin, his flat ears. He looked more like her than he did like me.
I could call her. But what would I say? Hi, I’m a stranger, and no, her boy wasn’t sweet, he was an asshole—but I loved him anyway. I could have saved him, if I’d done a few things differently. Anyway, nice talking to you, goodbye.
My name doesn’t appear in any of the news coverage. Maybe Thistle suppressed it somehow. Or perhaps Zara did. There’s no mention of her, either.
I’m determined to stay on the sofa until someone arrests me, but pretty soon my hunger gets the better of me, as always.
I thaw out the cash from the freezer and take it to the mall, where I buy a whole roast chicken and some new clothes. By the time I’m halfway back to the house, I’ve eaten most of the chicken. I’m starving. It’s like my body is trying to grow a new arm. I assume it can’t do that, but I wonder why not. What’s the medical reason that I can regrow skin, hair, flesh, bone and blood, but not a limb? A lizard can regrow its tail, after all.
When I get home, I have to put the bag of chicken on the ground so I can open the door one-handed. Then I have to pick up the chicken, take it inside and put it down again so I can close the door. I can’t use a knife and fork at the same time, so I have to pick the bones clean using only my fingers and teeth.
By the time I’ve finished the chicken, I’m wondering other things. Like, what am I going to do if the police never come for me? What is the res
t of my life supposed to look like? I have no friends, no family. No job, and no prospects of getting one.
Over the next few days I practise some things. Tying my shoes one-handed is too hard without a thumb, so I buy Velcro-fastening shoes from a thrift store. I buy a backpack so I can carry more than one thing at a time. I get rid of my shirt with the buttons, which are fiddly. I learn to pin objects down with my stump so I can manipulate them with my other hand. Mostly I just get used to life being a pain in the ass.
At night, I wake up screaming. The nightmares are about the grinder, but it’s usually Thistle being fed into it, not me.
I’m too scared to call her. She knows my secret now. But I also saved her life. What does she think of me?
The throbbing from my stump fades as the antibiotics kill the infection. Every day I have a little more energy. I spend my time pacing around the house, asking myself the same questions over and over.
Eventually I do call Thistle. But her number has been disconnected. I can’t even leave a message.
Kyle’s hat is on the floor next to my mattress. One night I see that some of his hairs are still stuck to the rim. I close my eyes and sniff them. They don’t smell of anything.
CHAPTER 44
What is good at the start but sad at the end?
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ says the woman behind the counter. ‘You need written permission.’
‘I got a call to say the results were back,’ I say.
‘They are, but I can’t give them to you.’
She’s wearing a polyester polo shirt with her name embroidered on the lapel, too small for me to read. Thick glass separates me and her, as though someone might try to rob this place. There’s a sign on the counter: CAUTION. SHUTTER RISES UPWARD.
‘You need the legal guardian’s permission when the subject of the test is underage,’ she says.
‘I can’t get that. He’s dead.’
‘The legal guardian is dead?’
That’s not what I meant, but I decide to roll with it. ‘Right.’
‘Then you’ll need permission from the next-of-kin.’
‘I don’t know who the next-of-kin is,’ I say. ‘That’s why I need the test.’
She looks at my empty sleeve, wet from the rain outside. Most people glance away quickly, act like they haven’t noticed my missing arm, but her gaze lingers long enough for me to see some sympathy.
‘IED,’ I say. ‘In Afghanistan.’
She nods sadly. ‘I’ll see what I can do for you, okay? But no promises. Wait over there.’ She gestures to a plastic bench bolted to the wall of the corridor.
‘Thank you,’ I say, and sit down. The woman emerges from a door marked Staff Only and hurries away down the corridor, her black sneakers squeaking on the linoleum.
I look down at my own shoes, with the Velcro. Kyle’s shoes had the same straps. Did no one ever teach him to tie his laces? I’m not good for much, but I could at least have done that for him.
After a minute, someone approaches, but not from the direction the woman went in. Maybe she called security on me. I keep my head bowed, hoping they’ll walk right past.
‘Blake.’
I look up. It’s Thistle. Beautiful, strong, unbending. She’s alone, in plain clothes, hair tied back, make-up on. I’m on my feet so quickly that she takes a step back.
‘What are you doing here?’ I ask.
‘I went to your house,’ Thistle says, ‘but I didn’t want to go in. And then you left, so I followed you.’
I don’t ask why she didn’t come in. There’s no good answer to that question.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask.
‘No permanent damage,’ she says. ‘You?’
‘Yeah, me too.’ My lie is more obvious than hers. I clear my throat. ‘You look good.’
‘You too.’ She glances at my missing arm. ‘Have you lost weight?’
‘Ha.’ I can’t resist a smile.
‘Listen,’ she says. ‘I—’
‘Can you wait five minutes?’ I don’t want to get arrested before I get the results about Kyle.
‘Sure.’ She sits next to me. ‘I can stick around.’
‘Your roommate must be glad to have you back.’
‘I’m not staying with her.’
‘Oh?’
Thistle looks away.
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘We’re not getting back together or anything.’ She sounds like she’s trying to convince herself as much as me. ‘He’s just helping me get back on my feet.’
‘Oh,’ I say again.
‘He’s really not that bad.’
She doesn’t say compared to you, but that has to be the reason. She thought her ex-husband was an asshole, until she fell in love with someone even worse.
Just as the silence is becoming awkward, the receptionist comes back and hands me a small cream-coloured envelope. ‘Here you go, sir.’ She notices Thistle. ‘Your husband is so brave.’
‘Mm-hm,’ Thistle says, and raises an eyebrow at me as the woman walks away.
‘She’s not wrong about you,’ Thistle adds, when the woman is gone. ‘And yet I feel like she is, somehow.’
I look down at the envelope.
‘Is that a paternity test?’ she asks.
I nod, squeezing it as though that will help me work out what’s inside. I don’t want to open it in front of her. Don’t want her to see my reaction, one way or the other.
‘I don’t think you should open it,’ she says.
I look up sharply. ‘Why?’
‘Kyle wasn’t your son. He can’t have been. Think about it—the odds must be a million to one.’
‘The odds of him ending up in that house with me were a million to one whether he was my son or not.’
There’s a hole in my logic, but Thistle is kind enough not to point it out. ‘Sometimes you think something will be okay until you’re actually faced with it. And then it’s too late.’
‘I have to know,’ I say.
She takes a deep breath. ‘When I had the abortion, I was only nine weeks pregnant. The embryo wasn’t even technically a fetus yet, so I only needed two pills. Like you’d use to get rid of a headache.’
I want to squeeze her hand, but I don’t. She’s sitting on the wrong side of me.
‘The doctor said to take the second pill two days after the first,’ she says. ‘I managed to avoid thinking about the fetus in between. But I wasn’t supposed to swallow the pill. I had to put it inside my cheek and wait for it to dissolve. It takes a long time. Long enough to name the baby. Long enough to plan out its whole life in my head.’
She doesn’t look upset as she says this. It’s ancient history to her. But not to me. I missed this whole chunk of her life. I wish I’d been there for her. My eyes burn.
‘I’ve always been pro-choice. But when I was waiting for that second pill to work, it really felt like I was killing something. I wasn’t,’ she adds quickly. ‘But it felt like it.’
I’m not sure why she’s telling me this. ‘You made the right call.’
‘I know. But it was hard. Losing a potential child.’ She clears her throat. ‘Either Kyle was your kid and he’s gone, or he wasn’t your kid and then you’ve lost him in a whole other way. Opening that envelope won’t bring you any peace.’
I want to fight her. What would you know? But I don’t.
‘Do you think …’ I almost can’t finish the question. ‘Do you think I would have been a good father?’
Thistle hesitates. Wanting to lie. Unable to. ‘No. But I’m sorry you never got the chance to try.’
The tears come then, blotching the envelope in my hands. Thistle puts her hand on my back.
‘Can I take this with me?’ My voice wobbles. ‘While I think about it?’
‘Take it where?’
‘To jail.’
‘I’m not here to arrest you, Blake,’ she says.
‘You’re not?’
She gestures at the corridor. ‘Do you see a
SWAT team?’
I’m flattered that she thinks it would take a SWAT team. ‘I told you I’d come quietly.’
‘I’m here to thank you for saving my life.’
‘It’s because of me that you were in danger in the first place.’
‘Maybe,’ Thistle says. ‘But if not for you, the others would still be trapped, or dead. I can’t see anyone else getting them out the way you did.’
Well, no. Escape plans based on self-mutilation are my specialty. ‘You did most of the work,’ I say. ‘We make a good team.’
‘Yeah. We did.’ She looks at the floor. Takes a breath. ‘I have to say goodbye.’
I don’t know what to say. Does she mean right now, or forever?
‘I’m sorry. I know it’s not your fault that you’re a—’ she searches for the right word, or for a way to avoid saying it ‘—the way you are. But I can’t do this.’ She gestures back and forth between herself and me. ‘Not with you.’
I knew this was coming, but it’s still a gut punch.
I want to tell her that I can become a good man, someone safe for her to love, but we both know that I can’t change.
‘You could visit me in prison,’ I say, knowing how desperate it sounds.
‘I told you, you’re not getting arrested.’ Thistle forces a smile. ‘As far as the FBI is concerned, you went to the house investigating Fred. When you found yourself outnumbered, you impersonated Lux. Then you got the prisoners out as fast as you could. I didn’t tell anyone about the …’ She hesitates. There’s that word again.
‘Why not?’ I ask.
‘Because I don’t think you’re a danger to anyone.’ She gestures at my stump. ‘And I think you have a good heart.’
Only when you’re around, I want to say. I’m nothing without you. Please don’t go.