by Mike Kilroy
Nine Meals:
Frail Man
By Mike Kilroy
Nine Meals: Frail Man
Copyright © 2015 by Mike Kilroy
Publisher: Fishtail Publishing
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In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the copying, scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book (other than for review purposes) without permission is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. All rights reserved. If you would like to use material from this book, prior written permission can be obtained by contacting the author at [email protected] or through the publisher at [email protected].
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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Find out more about the author at fishtailpublishing.com or on Twitter @KilroyWasHere7.
Prologue
The Eyes Have It
Bullet through the brain, heart or eye? That was the big decision to be made on this day.
He was Paul Bray—his enemies, of which he had many, called him Frail Man—and he had vengeance in his heart.
There was room for little else.
Blood stained his hands—a frightful reminder of the way things now were. Sticky, red hand weren’t all that rare in these days.
It wasn’t the event itself—the coronial mass ejection belched out by an angry sun—that was the danger and the cause of this hell. Oh, no. It was the people.
It’s always the people one must fear. They are a dangerous dish when boiled on the hotplate of disaster.
Bray thought he was above such deterioration. He was just like the rest of them, though.
With blood on his hands.
He didn’t even bother to clean them. Instead, he cleaned his gun. He needed it in fine working order when he put that bullet through his enemy’s brain, heart or eye.
Cleaner the better. Firearms were so hard to keep maintained after The Ejection.
Such a dirty Armageddon.
He stroked the coarse hair on his chin and then dabbed the jagged, swollen hole where his right eye used to be with a piece of sterile cloth. The wound seeped and wept a ghastly fluid. It also throbbed and stung every minute of every day. He didn’t mind it much, though. The pain reminded him of his most intense desire and drilled into him the reality of his only reason to exist.
Vengeance.
It made him feel alive in a world that was so dead.
He contemplated the decision of the day and grinned. Little brought a smile to Bray’s deformed face, but thinking of the bullet ending his enemy certainly did.
Through the eye was his choice.
An eye for an eye for an eye. It’s only fair.
Chapter One
Frail Man Before He Was Frail
“Maybe you can help out a poor, hungry soul?”
The man was thin with a thick growth of a graying beard. His hair, black and peppered with white, was greasy and a tangle on his head. It tasseled about in the early-morning breeze. Sun spots dotted his face and snaked down his slim arms. He looked emaciated, peaked, shriveled and starved.
He was a pitiable man and he held out his quivering hand, palm up, to Officer Paul Bray, who looked anything but pitiable. Bray cut an imposing figure in his police blues. Bray was a stocky man, solid and unyielding with short cropped hair, broad shoulders and a square jaw. He had a fresh tattoo on his neck, just above the collar, of the Chinese symbol for strength; he was quite proud of it—even though it looked like a fancy letter ‘n.’
Bray peered down at the frail creature who sat with his back against the brick of the building. To live like that? How can anyone live like that? Pull yourself up and do something with your goddamned life! Get a fucking job! Don’t just sit in front of a convenience store and beg for money and food. Jesus!
“Mr. Blackburn,” Bray said, folding his beefy arms on his thick chest. “How many times have we told you? Fifty? A hundred? You can’t panhandle here. Now beat it.”
“Come on, Paul. Give the guy a break.” Officer Justus Coe’s voice was grating to Bray. So sincere. So innocent. How the fuck did he get a badge?
Coe was always the good cop because he always smiled, his white teeth sparkling. Bray wasn’t sure if Coe could even push a whisker out of that smooth-as-a-baby’s-bottom face of his. He had light blonde hair and blue eyes and looked like an Adonis.
The females at the precinct certainly swooned over him.
Coe, though, wasn’t long out of the academy and it showed.
He’ll learn. Oh, he’ll learn.
Coe reached into his pocket, pulled out a twenty and handed it to the old man, who stared at the bill as if it was a brick of gold.
He looked up at Coe, his eyes weepy with joy. “Thank you. Oh, thank you so much.”
Paul Bray scowled. That makes me the bad cop.
He didn’t really want to be the bad cop, but it seemed to suit him. Perhaps it was because of his muscular build or because of his five o’clock shadow even at nine in the morning, or because of the way his eyes cut through people, or because of his off-putting sense of humor.
Whatever it was, Bray always had to be the hard-ass, the boor, the bastard, the jerk, the dickhead.
Fuck it. I’m okay with that.
“Why did you do that, dude?” Bray asked as they entered the store. He grabbed a package of donuts—the frosted kind—and then a Mountain Dew from the cooler. Bray wasn’t himself until he had a Mountain Dew.
Coe eyed him and shook his head. “What’s your beef? I got rid of him, didn’t I?” Coe grabbed a coffee, dumped a copious amount of sugar into it, and stirred.
“Until tomorrow when he’s back beggin’ again.”
Coe chuckled. “What if that was you out there, hungry and cold?” His eyes scanned the store. “What if you were like that poor girl?”
Coe pointed to a young, thin girl browsing the M&Ms and Kit Kats and 3 Musketeers. Every few seconds her dark eyes jumped up nervously to scan the store. She was afraid and tepid, perhaps a runaway, most definitely neglected and forgotten. Her dark hair was stringy and her lips were cracked and peeling.
Bray scoffed as he peered at the waif. “She’s probably gonna rob the place.” He looked back at Coe and jammed his thumb into the chest of his blues. “That’ll never be me. I make my own fate. I decide what will happen to me. No one else.”
“Sure, Paul. Sure.” Coe took a sip of his coffee. “Whatever.”
“Shut up.” Bray opened up the package of donuts and shoved one into his mouth, chewing as he spoke. “Let’s go catch the bad guys.”
***
There weren’t many bad guys to catch tonight. There were rarely any bad guys to catch on any night.
Bray sat in the squad car and stared through the windshield as a light drizzle fell. The rain soaked the pavement and the street lights that reflected its sheen cast an eerie glow to the still, soupy air. A few people strolled by, hands slammed into their pockets, heads down to shield against the mist.
Bray sighed from the boredom.
Coe shook his head. “I don’t get you.”
“What’s to get?”
“You’re actually sad that no one is going on a murder spree.”
“I didn’t become a cop to sit in a car with a pansy like you and watch it rain, I can tell you that much.”
“You should be happy,” Coe said, his eyes peering through the damp windshield and out into the fog that was thickening by the minute. “This is a nice town.”
Bray waved a dismissive hand toward Coe. “Jesus. There’s no fun in nice. There’s no challenge in nice.” Bray
punched at his chest a few times. “There’s nothin’ to get your heart pumpin’. There’s just this penny-ante shit: drug busts and petty thefts and domestic violence calls. Just last week I had to drive clear to the other side of town to pick up a stray dog. A stray goddamned dog!”
“Well, you may have saved that dog’s life. You may have saved some kid’s life. That dog could have bit some poor child. That’s what we do. Protect and serve.”
Bray stared at Coe, his head slightly cocked. His eyes locked on him for a good, long while before he finally erupted into laughter. “Wow, did you step out of some kind of 1950s cop show or something? I’m gonna start calling you Friday. Yeah, Joe Friday. ‘Just the facts, Ma’am.’ You’re unbelievable.”
Coe looked at Bray, confused. “Who’s Joe Friday?”
Bray waved his hand at Coe again. “Ah, fuck you.”
Bray flicked on the wipers to clear the raindrops that had dotted the glass, some snaking down the windshield like a crooked stream. All that did was allow him to see more clearly his purgatory. This town, this place, was calm. No strife here. No chaos. No murders to solve, no crimes to stop.
Bray feared he would be stuck in a squad car much like this one for an eternity.
“I just want to make a difference.” Bray broke the silence, still staring out over the wet streets. There was no wind—the flag that hung high above the courthouse downtown was limp and barely moved. It was as if time had stopped, trapping him in this void forever. “I just want to do some good.”
“You are doing good, Paul,” Coe said, patting his partner on the back. “Sometimes doing good means doing nothing, just sitting in a car and watching it drizzle.”
“Whatever.”
The screeching of the police radio startled Bray and Coe. “Car 9. Code 2, a possible 211 at 135 North Main.”
Bray sat up quickly, his eyes wide. He tried to stymie the smile that was forming on his face, but failed.
Coe shook his head. “Well, you got what you wanted. I guess this makes you happy?”
Bray put the car in gear and gleamed at his partner. “Let’s go catch us some bad guys.”
***
Bray drove up slowly, rolling the squad car to a stop a half-block away from the convenience store. He flicked on the wipers to clear the mist from the glass and peered down the street toward the scene of the crime in progress.
He couldn’t make out much, just the cashier with his trembling hands held high and a figure, dressed in all black, rifling through the register. Another figure, also cloaked in black, plucked cartons and packs of cigarettes off the shelves and stuffed them into a bag.
Bray exited the car slowly as Coe called for backup.
Bray hunched down and stalked toward the entrance of the store, his hand on the grip of his police-issued firearm.
Before he could reach the entrance, three men—boys, really—spilled out into the fog. One caught a glimpse of Bray, tapped on the shoulders of the others, and they quickly ran down an alley adjacent to the store.
Coe gave chase as another figure—short and thin—emerged from the store. He was just a dark outline against the bright lights from inside and had both hands jammed into his pockets.
Bray drew his weapon and aimed. “Put your hands on your head! Now!”
The figure froze. Bray took a step forward and yelled again. “Do it! Put your hands on your head!”
The figure jerked, and then quickly pulled his hands from his pockets. He clutched something in his right fist.
Is that a weapon?
Bray could see an outline of a gun gripped tightly in the figure’s right hand.
Is he aiming at me?
The figure’s right arm came forward.
The fucker is aiming at me.
A flash illuminated the fog as Bray squeezed the trigger. The figure crumpled to the pavement.
A waft of mist billowed out from the muzzle into the moist air as Bray crept forward, still aiming his pistol.
He peered down at the figure and his jaw slacked open.
Bray knelt and then rested on his knees.
Tears streamed from the corners of her dark eyes, past her temples and into her mussed hair. She stared up at him and then blinked rapidly. Blood spilled from her mouth as she tried to speak. A crimson circle, small at first, grew larger and larger on the chest of her tattered sweatshirt.
Bray turned his eyes to her right hand, which loosely squeezed a PayDay bar.
His lips quivered. He felt nauseous. He grabbed a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it down on her wound. She grimaced from the pressure as her lips moved, but nothing but groans escaped.
“Don’t try to speak,” he whispered. “Help is coming.”
The girl mouthed a few words, but nothing but shallow breaths moved past her lips. Her chest heaved.
Bray shushed her as his eyes darted about the streets, which were filling with people who had come from their apartments and homes and businesses to see what the commotion was all about. He looked back down to her and the girl’s lips were turning blue. “You need to save your strength.”
Bray wanted to tell her he was sorry, so, so sorry. He wanted to beg her for forgiveness, but he didn’t. Why should I? I did nothing wrong. It was me or her. That’s what I thought at the time, anyway. Me or her? I’m always choosing me.
“It’s … time,” she whispered before a long exhale of vapor billowed from her mouth.
She was gone.
Bray closed his eyes tightly, keeping the tears from spilling from them. Then he opened his eyes, gritted his teeth, stood and stared down defiantly at the girl.
Not my fucking fault. She was a part of a robbery. That could have been a gun for all I knew. She could have been trying to end me. I did nothing wrong, goddammit! I did nothing wrong.
He told himself that, over and over and over again. He believed it.
He prayed she was in a better place, at least.
***
Bray knelt and stared at the muddy ground, at the way the leaves were matted and scattered, at the slight impressions in the soggy duff.
He stood and smiled. “There’s a big-ass buck, and he’s chasing a doe. Horny bastard.”
Coe stared at Bray, whose face hung in a stream of sunlight that had filtered through the mostly bare tree limbs. “How do you know that from that mess down there?”
Bray wiped his hands on the thighs of his camouflage pants and grabbed his Prairie Panther 223 Brush hunting rifle, which cost him two week’s pay. “I can track anything.”
He thanked his father for that. It was one of the few useful things the drunkard imparted to his son: how to track game of all sorts. Bray took to the sport and hunted whenever time allowed.
Time allowed for a lot of hunting now that Bray was on leave after the incident with the girl—he had forgotten her name. He didn’t want to know it to begin with, which his superiors found odd. Bray, though, didn’t want to put a name to the face. Better that way.
Bray stomped off, pushing through branches as Coe followed, reluctantly.
Bray knew Coe to be more of a tree stand kind of hunter—let the prey come to you. Bray was the opposite. He liked to stalk his game, look for weaknesses and then strike.
That’s the fun part.
They came to a clearing and Bray put his right hand in the air for Coe to stop. The buck stood about fifty yards away. It was an enormous beast with an antlered head of twelve points that would make for a splendid prize and a perfect addition to his impressive collection.
“Don’t fuck this up for me, Coe,” Bray whispered as he leveled his rifle at the buck, which looked up and stared back at him through steely black eyes.
Wind? About five miles per hour. Distance? About forty-seven yards.
Bray took a deep breath and held it, aiming for the beast’s shoulder. His finger twitched on the trigger.
Then he saw her.
She stood there, where the buck was just a second ago, with her lips moving
and her dark eyes that each looked like an abyss locked on him in a hardened stare. A spot of crimson grew and spread on the chest of her ratty sweatshirt.
Bray lowered his rifle and closed his eyes. His heart thrummed in his chest and he began to sweat.
Why the hell am I seeing her? She’s not real.
He refocused his eyes on his target. The girl was gone and only the buck remained, frozen and staring at him, chewing on a tuft of grass he had just plucked with his teeth.
Bray raised his rifle again and aimed at the buck. Every part of him demanded he pull the trigger, but he couldn’t. His finger ached on the trigger, but he couldn’t squeeze it, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how desperately he wanted to do it.
Finally, the buck scampered off, leaping into the brush and vanishing.
“What happened, Paul?” Coe asked. “You had him in your sights.”
Bray slung his rifle over his shoulder and snickered. “Too easy, that’s all. The fucker just stood there. What’s the fun in that?”
Bray’s hands trembled as he pushed past Coe and back into the bramble.
***
“You need to deal with this, Mr. Bray.”
“Has anyone told you that you look like Joe Pesci?”
“Please, Mr. Bray. Tell me about it.”
“Not until you say it.”
“I’m not going to say it, Mr. Bray.”
“Come on. What’s it gonna hurt? Just say it. Two yutes.”
“Do you realize that I can make it so you never return to work?”
That got Bray’s attention. He peered up at the poster behind the doctor. It was a recreation of the famous Beatles album cover—George, Paul, Ringo and John—crossing Abbey Road. All Bray could think was two of the four were dead and that John Lennon was murdered. That would have been a great case to work—arresting John Lennon’s killer.
Bray refocused on Dr. Hale, whom the department had sent him to see after his “police-involved shooting.”
“I don’t need a fucking shrink,” Bray insisted. “Wasn’t my fault. Anyone would have done the same.”
Dr. Hale, it appeared, had his doubts. “You can’t convince me that killing a girl left no impact on you whatsoever.”