Black_Tide

by Patrick Freivald

  He approached the cashier, a chubby redhead, mid-forties with black lipstick and clothes to match. "Hey, is Peter here?"

  She sized him up, a lingering wander of the eyes that a farmer might use to assess cattle. "Who's asking, beefcake?"

  "Matt Rowley. He knows who I am."

  She looked at her nails. "Lucky him. You a cop?"

  "Only sort of. Can you tell him I'm here, please?"

  "He expecting you?" She yawned over his reply.

  "Doubt it."

  She plucked the phone from its cradle, pushed a button, and stared out into the street. The other end rang four times before a male voice said, "Hello?"

  "Yeah, boss, this guy's here to see you. Says his name is Matt something. Rolly. Looks like a cop. Talks like a cop. Says he's only sort of a cop."

  Matt didn't catch the reply.

  "Yeah, he's standing right here, looks kind of pissed off. No, Pooley's got his gun." Her voice raised in agitation. "Fuck, I don't know." She rolled her eyes at Matt. "Just a sec, I'll ask." She covered the receiver with her hand and raised her eyebrows at him. "You here to kill him?"

  "That depends."

  She took her hand off the receiver. "He says it depends. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-uh. 'Kay." She dropped the phone in the cradle and smiled up at Matt. "Top of the stairs. Third door on the left."

  He turned to go but she stopped him with fingers on his palm. He turned. She leaned forward, plucked a matte black business card from her cleavage, and tucked it in his back pocket. "I'm Patty. And I'm free all weekend."

  "Nice to meet you, Patty." He held up his left hand and waggled his ring finger at her.

  She pouted.

  Matt cut left through the only door up the narrow stairwell to a long hallway that had to bridge between the pawn shop and the warehouse adjacent. He walked down the hall to the third door, the only one open, the only one with a light on.

  Peter Salomon sat behind a cheap desk, a .45 pistol disassembled next to his laptop, his fingers on the keyboard. A bronze, bald, spotted egg with prominent ears, his nervous, twitchy eyes betrayed the calm he tried to project with his easy slouch. "Come on in."

  Matt stepped in but didn't take the only other chair. The room smelled of old lo mein and cigarettes. A shattered statue leaned in the corner, a white plaster angel in a dozen pieces, her face staring up from the floor by her feet.

  "You got some balls, Rowley, but before you do anything stupid let me say a little something." He looked up to the security camera in the back corner, pointed right at the door, right at Matt. "First, that feed goes to the cloud, and the cops already know you're here, so you do anything stupid you're going to jail. Second, I didn't do whatever the fuck you think I did. This business with burning your town, with your wife and kid, I don't know nothing about it."

  "But you know about it."

  Salomon raised his hands, a plaintive gesture. "Yeah, Kellett and I don't like each other much, but he gave me a heads-up, professional courtesy like, said you might be stopping by. I didn't think you'd make it up from Texas so fast, but hey, you got your kid to worry about, am I right?"

  "So you're saying I'm wasting my time." His phone beeped. He looked down, sent a quick reply to Sakura, and put it back in his pocket.

  Salomon pulled open a drawer, produced a bottle of scotch, a pair of glasses, and a fat manila folder. "I didn't say that. I got a boy of my own, just went off to college. When I heard you might be showing up I put together a little something for you." He poured them both a couple fingers, apologizing for the lack of ice, while Matt looked through the folder.

  Of the sixteen dossiers, Matt separated out the eight he recognized: Monica's rapist, the fat man he'd killed in the window, the three identified by Ronald Kellett, the man from the basement—the whispers cooed and tittered in remembered joy, drowning in shrieks of sweet agony and gushing fountains of hot blood—plus Gerrold and Burns, the two men who had attacked Kazuko's hospital room with Onnoleigh Sweetman.

  Salomon finished his scotch, poured another, and nodded in approval at the pile. "All dead men."

  "Who are the others?"

  "Employees of mine who took some time off with these guys."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning my boys went freelance, in direct violation of their contract."

  "Who hired them?"

  "Don't know." Salomon downed his glass in one huge gulp, cleared his throat, and stood. "Let's go ask."

  * * *

  It came for Kazuko on wings of Jade, a billion crystalline feathers that drank the light. An IV of saline and morphine stood next to a beeping machine and both faded to unreality as it approached. A musky scent filled the room, like incense and wet dog, and old leaves under ancient, primal skies. It wore her mother's face, but Kazuko saw through the simple lie; Sakura Isuji did not smile, not like that, not even for her daughter.

  "Daitengu, why do you come to me with the face of my mother?"

  It scowled, an expression more familiar but somehow too deep and not deep enough.

  Kazuko giggled, tried to put her hand to her mouth, but lacked the strength. "Your nose is so small. The legends say it would be much larger."

  It spoke in all tongues and none, its voice a majestic symphony. "Are you not afraid, child? All fear death."

  The ache took her, an ocean of pain where she floated in each waking moment, as familiar as breathing, dulled by the narcotics but ever-present. "I do not want to go, but no, I am weary but not afraid."

  The wings enveloped her in a cocoon, a prison, eternal and cold. A bitter wind whipped straight through her, a maelstrom of unending screaming madness. It filled her mind with a million voices, whispers of pain and death and a false joy at pain and death.

  Kazuko laughed. The bright joy couldn't coexist with the darkness, and proved far stronger. The wings shattered like glass, the symphony faltered in a groaning whine, the wind died and the whispers turned to dust.

  "I know you, demon. My mother did not know you and so gave me to you to save my life. But you cannot take me for what you have not given, and you cannot take what I have not offered. I am Sakura Kazuko, my mother's child, not something you control. And I deny your power. I will go in peace, to peace, and you cannot have me."

  The wind threw her, but she closed her eyes and did not resist. It couldn't move her. Powerless to take her even in death, the storm raged like the unending alarms of hospital equipment, like frantic arms pumping on her chest, but she ignored it, and them, and slept, and died.

  * * *

  Kazuko sighed, a gasp of relief and loss and contentment and sorrow.

  Matt heard it as plain as Salomon's footfalls in the gravel.

  The whispers shrieked, shredding his mind in a seething, petulant lament of sadism denied. The white thoughts settled the Jade, and Kazuko's voice joined them in compassion and calm, iron couched behind down. Still the whispers raged, but muffled and sulking in their powerlessness.

  "You all right?" Salomon raised an eyebrow.

  No. "Yeah. Why?" He took his hand off his pistol, returned to him before their excursion into Salomon's compound.

  "Because you stumbled and look like you saw a ghost. Anything I need to worry about here?" His .45, reassembled, hung on his hip, but while he eyed Matt's hand, his thumb stayed hooked in his belt loop.

  "No, I'm okay." Matt kept his eyes on the warren of cargo containers, blurred with unbidden tears for a girl he barely knew, and a mother who wouldn't cry, at least not in his presence.

  They approached an open-air hangar. Fourteen mobile homes, single-wide trailers circa mid-1990s, parked in neat rows underneath an enormous skeletal frame of aluminum and plastic panels.

  "They live here?"

  "Sometimes, if they want to." Salomon ran his hand over his bald head. "Some of these guys prefer to live off grid if you know what I mean. This is easier and cheaper than cash at a dive motel."

  "Are they armed?"

  "Probably. I keep the heavier stuff locked up, but
most of these guys carry, and I'd be surprised if all of the hardware made it into the lockers like it's supposed to."

  "Noted."

  They approached the third trailer. Salomon banged on the door. "Hey, Bill, get out here a minute, would you?"

  More bedraggled than his dossier photo, Bill Mcloud opened the door. A wiry man in plaid boxer shorts, a cigarette hung from his lip as he looked from Salomon to Matt and back. "Shit, boss. This looks like a 'pants' meeting. Give me a minute."

  Whispers slithered through Matt's brain. Salomon grunted as Matt body-checked him out of the way. The shotgun blast took Matt in the right shoulder, spinning him sideways in a spray of hot red meat. He stepped into the turn and spun, Glock in his left hand, and fired three shots through the wall.

  "He's here!" Mcloud yelled. "Rowley's here!"

  Matt fired again, a double-tap just below the voice, and then burst through the door, shredding the cheap hinges on his way through.

  Mcloud clutched his neck, arterial blood gushing between his fingers, eyes wide and pleading.

  Matt kicked the shotgun away, then looked at his shoulder.

  The point-blank slug had shattered his scapula, the force snapping the clavicle so that his arm hung down in an unnatural slouch. Muscles writhed, cells crawling together, but too slow for the coming fight. He gritted his teeth against the pain and dropped to one knee in front of Mcloud.

  "Tell me who hired you, and I'll see to that wound." He kept his eyes on Mcloud but listened for hostiles outside.

  Mcloud coughed blood and his hands went slack, eyes glazing over in death.

  "Or not."

  He turned from the dying man without standing and peeked through a bullet hole in the wall. Five men approached the door in various states of dress, every one of them in Salomon's folder. Poole and Schick carried pistols, Nichols had a chef's knife, Chung a machete, and one black-bearded monster in a long trench coat, Loveland, hefted a four-foot length of rebar, rusted orange.

  Salomon sat Indian-style, his palms bloody from where he'd caught himself on the concrete. Even seated, he projected calm authority. "What's going on here, boys?"

  Matt stepped outside, pistol pointed at the ground.

  "Not your concern, boss." Chung waved him to the side with the machete. "This is between him and us."

  "Man here says you took his son, came around to my place of business looking for you. That kind of thing makes it my concern."

  Gritting his teeth through the maddening itch in his shoulder, Matt kept his finger off the trigger. "Nobody else needs to get hurt here. I get my son, you all can walk away. You have my word."

  Poole rolled his eyes. "Oy, fuck this." His pistol made it halfway up before a small "pop" rang out from behind Matt and a small hole appeared in Poole's forehead. "Oy." He sat down, and his hand went up to the wound, his face scrunched in bewildered confusion. "Watermelon crab people." He fell over, pistol clattering to the ground.

  Chung, Nichols, and Schick bolted for cover. Loveland charged. Matt put three bullets in him center-of-mass before three hundred and fifty pounds of 'roided-up muscle crushed him into the wall, blasting the air from his lungs and the pistol from his grip. Matt ducked past a head-butt and screamed as Loveland bit down on his injured shoulder. He punched left-handed, aiming for kidneys, then solar plexus, but his fist hit kevlar backed by metal plates. The monster shrugged off the blows and bit down harder.

  Ragged muscle tore further as Loveland crushed Matt's arms to his sides and pulled. Matt's clavicle shifted, the muscles around it shredding. Screaming, Matt lifted his feet from the ground, planted them on the trailer and pushed off, launching them both toward the ground.

  Weapons' fire accompanied their tumble. A bullet caught Matt in the foot, white hot pain searing straight through. Loveland hit his head on the concrete and it dislodged his bloody teeth from Matt's shoulder, but he laughed and squeezed harder. Matt couldn't suck air into his lungs, couldn't get enough purchase to—

  Sakura bolted past, her pistol barking twice, straight down. Loveland's upper jaw sagged, the bones shattered from the double-impact. Matt head-butted him, caving his weakened face in with an eggshell crunch. His arms fell slack.

  Matt rolled to his feet and looked around. Nichols and Schick lay sprawled on the ground, bleeding. Loveland twitched, his face a shattered, blood-soaked mess.

  It hurt to breathe. "Where's Chung?"

  Sakura flicked blood from her knife and sheathed it. "Running."

  "Let's go." His stumble turned into a limping run, Sakura keeping pace only by virtue of the bullet in his foot.

  "Adam's not here."

  "But you took care of their bags?"

  Sakura nodded. She'd found the bug-out bags in the back of an SUV in the motor pool, and at Matt's direction had stripped them of all cash and identification, and slid several GPS trackers inside the pockets. By the time they reached the car Matt no longer limped, but his right arm still hung useless.

  He got in, started it up left-handed, and put it in gear. "What have we got?"

  The car flew down the street as Sakura looked at the tiny screen on her phone. "They drove fast. Already at the airport. In the parking garage. Four bags moving."

  "They're either switching cars or taking a flight. They'll need cash, and will figure out they have no IDs pretty quick."

  The phone vibrated in her hand. She pushed "Talk" and held it to her ear. "Sakura. Yes. Explain, please." Matt pushed the car to ninety miles an hour, trusting precognition to navigate through red lights on the half-empty streets. Sakura listened for a long while, thanked the caller, and hung up.

  "Who was that?"

  "Doctor Clines. Sakura Kazuko is dead." She closed her eyes. "My daughter is dead." She looked at the screen, said something in Japanese, and then, "They are exiting the parking garage and entering the ticketing area."

  "I'm sorry." Matt swerved around a delivery truck, cut across two lanes of traffic and took a hard right into the airport. They squealed up to the curb and got out.

  As Matt walked around the car, a short black man in an airport security uniform turned to him. "Sir, you can't leave your vehic—holy shit!" He fumbled for his weapon and radio at the same time. His hand slipped off the radio, and the pistol fell to the sidewalk. He crouched and re-triggered the shoulder microphone at the same time. "Medical emergency at dropoff, potentially hostile."

  Matt glared down at him. "I'm fine." He made it two steps toward the revolving door.

  "FREEZE! HANDS ON YOUR HEAD!"

  Matt turned, his left hand raised. "I'm injured. I can't raise my right arm." He looked at Sakura. "Get them. I'll handle this." He turned to the security guard. "I'm with Homeland Security. If you'll let me get my badge—"

  The guard tracked Sakura with his weapon. Matt stepped forward, and the gun jerked from the doors back to him.

  "Not another step, buddy. HEY! GET BACK HERE!"

  As the guard shifted his attention again toward Sakura, Matt lunged. He caught the weapon by the barrel an inch from his chest and yanked it out of the guard's hand. A shell flew as he racked the slide against his chest and ejected the magazine, which clattered to the ground. He held the weapon out by the barrel.

  "Take it, but you try to use it and we're going to have a problem."

  * * *

  Sakura identified the mercenaries on a pair of benches off to the side outside the secure area, clustered around a laptop, flustered and angry. She removed her phone from her pocket, absently sliding from screen to screen, pretending to surf the web as she worked her way behind them. She took a picture. The 80 megapixel, infinite depth-of-field camera allowed her to zoom straight to the screen and read it.

  She took four more pictures at a dead run, on the balls of her feet to minimize noise on the tile, for what little good it did in combat boots. Her feet left the ground six feet from them, phone already in her pocket, and she slammed the tall African American in the spine with her heels a moment later. She brought her co
upled fists down on another then dropped to the floor, gritting her teeth against the searing heat in her injured thigh.

  As the first two collapsed, she leapt. Chung stumbled back. His companion reached for a nonexistent pistol at his hip, and she rewarded him with a steel toe to the temple. He crumpled, the laptop clattering to the floor. Someone screamed.

  Chung advanced, blocking two strikes and ducking inside her kick. The small man's reach stretched no further than hers, so she backpedaled away from his strike to her belly, the taut muscle absorbing the hit with a twinge of discomfort.

  She dropped low and swept his legs. He backflipped and then sprang forward, striking as fast as she could evade. The small man hit like a hammer, so she flowed with his strikes, limping back until she hit the windows before dropping to the ground.

  His fist rebounded off the reinforced plate glass. She used the split second of his flinch to knife-hand strike him twice in the groin. He dropped to his knees but used the momentum to drive his elbow into her injured thigh.

  She rolled right, gasping in pain, cursing the slow, feeble shell her body had become. She put weight on her leg, fell to the tile with a gasp, tried again.

  A boot smashed her to the floor. She snarled, rolled, and lashed out, snapping a knee with her hands, breaking someone's arm, hyperextending an elbow.

  Strong hands lifted her. She struck with palms, elbows, knee, all weapons meant to cripple or kill. They met unyielding steel. Arms enveloped her, yanked her into an unwelcome, unwanted embrace. Pain poured out of her, a raw wail without recourse or end.

  * * *

  Matt kept his arms around Sakura as her killing strikes faded to ineffectual struggling, the ragged sound from her throat resolving into haggard breaths. She kept her arms between them, a shield against human contact, but he pulled her close and held her nonetheless. He cradled her body as she collapsed to her knees.