The List

by Christopher Coleman

  The ghost had become still as well, but as Danielle looked to the ground of the rooftop, she could see three white sticks protruding from behind the metal duct, as if pieces of used chalk had been laid out on display.

  Toes.

  The ghost had stopped just short of exposing its body, but it had failed to pull its feet back fully.

  Danielle raised the gun again, now aiming at the open area just in front of the metal tubing, waiting for the ghost to poke its head forward, which it would have to eventually.

  But for several minutes it remained committed to its position, unmoving, and Danielle lowered the rifle, giving her arms a rest.

  She closed her eyes a moment and cleared her thoughts, and when she opened them again seconds later and re-pointed the gun, her aim had moved six inches to the left of her previous target. The barrel was now pointing at the metal duct where, on the opposite side, she gauged the ghost’s torso to be.

  The hint of a smile formed on Danielle’s mouth now as she squinted at the metal box. This was the shot, she knew, and without hesitation, she squeezed the trigger.

  The bullet entered the steel tunnel with a pop, and a second later, the ghost collapsed forward into view, a single red hole pouring blood from just above its ribcage.

  One down.

  She rushed to the spot of the fallen crab, making the snap assumption that it was the safest place to be at the moment, since the other crab wasn’t likely to be in the same spot. Instinctively, she pulled herself on top the metal tubing, just above the place where the bullet had entered. There she stood tall and quiet, chasing the sounds in the air, trying to locate her prey.

  And her technique paid off.

  The second ghost was as still as a brick wall, but it couldn’t hide its breathing, and Danielle could hear the winded respiration of the beast coming from the HVAC unit just beside the roof door.

  Danielle made no attempt at stealth now, and she followed the metal tunnel around to a raised, second story of the roof. There, she climbed up five feet or so and then walked over toward the door to the roof. She was now looking down on the ghost from above.

  She pointed the rifle down at the ghost, which was completely unaware of its imminent death. It twitched its head back and forth, appearing to listen for Danielle somewhere in the distance. But once she had stepped off the steel tunnel and onto the solid upper roof, she became as quiet as a quail.

  She didn’t need the sight from this distance, and instead held the rifle low by her chest.

  “Psst,” she hissed, just for fun, mimicking the deed of some action hero she’d seen once in a film.

  The ghost threw its head backwards and stared straight up, as if looking at a constellation of stars just above, its eyes squinted, its teeth bared in a cross between grimace and smile. It caught Danielle’s eyes just as the bullet exploded from the weapon, and then it crumpled to the ground of the roof as the metal missile ripped through its skull.

  Two down.

  Well, two plus the general manager of the dealership and the other two out front. That was five kills total. Still though, none of them had occurred in the way she had hoped and planned. Killing ghosts in general wasn’t the goal. Killing from distance was the point. Perhaps she should have been more specific with her list, she thought.

  Danielle retraced her steps back across the upper roof, and as she was about to step back down onto the air duct and then again to the main roof, she heard a scraping sound coming from the street below. She stepped to the edge of the top tier of the roof and looked to the pavement, and there, the third ghost appeared in full view, dragging its way forward, its right leg wobbling grotesquely with each pace. It had no intention of attacking, and there was something rather pathetic in its gait. It was just surviving now, and the distress in its movements was obvious.

  Danielle lowered herself to one knee and put the rifle atop her shoulder. The upper roof had no parapet on which to rest the barrel, so Danielle had to steady the gun with her left hand alone. This was the shot. This was why she was here. It wasn’t this specific shot that mattered, of course, it was the preparation it would give her for later, when she moved on to Goal 4.

  Suddenly, memories of the people Danielle had lost over the last few months, both through death and absence, began to drift to her mind. It wasn’t an unusual practice, this reminiscence, but it was one she normally saved for the quieter moments, late in the evening in the basement of Raise the Flagon.

  But the faces appeared unconsciously to Danielle now, in the throes of battle, and yet they brought with them a calming element. She felt her breathing and hands steady with each face that passed, and when her thoughts came upon Dominic, she fired.

  The wounded crab went down in a slow melting motion, and Danielle knew she had struck it pure. Head shot. Dead before the sensation of pain could be felt. She couldn’t know that last part for sure, of course, but she believed it anyway.

  She held the pose of the shot for several seconds, hoping to imprint the success of the connection, to memorize the exact placement of her hands and eyes and thoughts at the time of the shot.

  She placed the rifle at her feet and exhaled and then stood tall at the edge of the roof and stared down at her kill. She closed her eyes and replayed the shot in her mind, understanding that she would need that level of precision at some point in the near future.

  She stared off to the distance now, finding the location of the cordon where the attack would finally come. She had been there only days earlier, and after several nights of meditation and planning, she believed it the only place possible to cross. Even so, the chance at success was as unlikely as her survival at that moment, and yet there she stood, marksman, killer, queen of her cold, desolate province.

  Goal 4 would be her most ambitious yet, but everything from this point on was icing, and this understanding instilled a level of excitement and invincibility in Danielle’s thoughts.

  She walked to the door of the roof and back down to the mezzanine of the dealership. She thought of exploring the remaining offices for supplies, but she decided she’d had enough of the place for the day. Forever.

  She pulled the granola bar from her pocket and tore the top of the wrapper, and then a thought struck her. She reached her hand back into the opposite pocket and pulled out the ring of keys. She ran quickly down the flight of steps that led down to the showroom and dashed to the door and out to the lot. There she stood in front of the first parking spot which had a sign that rose above it which read, “Reserved – General Manager.” The spot was taken by a sporty number, a MX-5 Miata.

  “That looks like a slicked back GM’s car,” she said aloud.

  Danielle fumbled the key ring in her hands until her fingers came upon a key fob, and with her thumb, she covered the START button and pressed it.

  Danielle shrieked as the car purred to life, and she looked around the lot one last time, instinctively, ensuring there were no other ghosts running at her, attracted by the sound of the engine.

  But the lot was quiet now, and she knew that was the end of her adventure for the day. She took a bite of the granola bar and opened the door, and as she sat down in the bucket seat of the sports car and closed the door, she began to cry.

  Kill a Soldier

  1.

  Danielle sat with her legs draped over the inside of the bar as she stared at the fourth goal on her list. She took a second sip of the whiskey, carefully, trying to leave enough in the glass for a final, satisfying third gulp. She could have used three more shots really, but discipline was one of the few things she still had left, and if she relinquished that to the temptation of the bottle, her hopes of survival would be all but dashed.

  Goal 1. Map the Cordon

  Goal 2. Find a Rifle

  Goal 3. Kill a Crab

  Goal 4. Kill a Soldier

  There was such finality to the strikethroughs of the first three goals, almost a violence in the way the marks split the letters in half, and Danielle suddenly fe
lt the desire to fire off another round of the rifle, or thrust one of the establishment’s steak knives into the bar, imagining it was the face of a squirming ghost.

  But that goal was complete; she’d killed a crab—ghost—and now it was time to turn her focus toward the perimeter of the cordon and the humans keeping her inside.

  She had the weapon she needed to kill a man, and now, with the afternoon at Maripo Mazda behind her, she knew she had the strength and acumen to kill as well. She had accomplished the third goal on her own, and it was important to capitalize on the momentum.

  Except that wasn’t entirely true.

  A stranger had helped her. Scott. He could have killed her if he’d wanted to, and with the justification of protecting his son from someone who was on his property uninvited. But instead he had offered his aid, and Danielle couldn’t erase the thought of what remained of the isolated family. She decided she would make a final visit to the house before she headed to the cordon, just to make sure they were okay, and to tell them her plans and that she would get them help once she was on the outside. She would promise to bring the mass of the world down on whoever was behind their nightmare, and, more importantly, she would arrange for their freedom.

  But that visit wouldn’t come for another few days. Right now, Danielle needed to rest. To sleep. And then tomorrow, with the sun up and her mind refreshed, she would begin working out the details of Goal 4. She knew the place where she would take the shot—that part had been worked out over a week ago—and with her sniper practice atop the dealership now behind her, she felt a new confidence about her accuracy.

  It was the goal that followed, however—Goal 5: Escape the Cordon—that still loomed large in Danielle’s mind, and she didn’t know exactly what her move would be once the soldier hit the ground. Even if the watchtower by the fence was unmanned, she still couldn’t quite imagine the escape. She had a car now, and that seemed like it should at least be part of the solution, but there would be other soldiers roaming the area, and smashing a car through a barrier wall didn’t make much sense in her mind. She would get a half-mile at the most before the chase began, or worse, before tank mortars started flying in her direction.

  Danielle closed her eyes and took a deep breath, clearing her mind. She couldn’t think it all through tonight. That wasn’t how her list was designed. She had to bask in the successes, if only for the day, and then figure out the details of the next mission once the new one arrived. Four and Five were concepts for tomorrow. Tonight, she would celebrate, mostly in her mind, but also with a final taste of Dewar’s.

  She took down the final swig as if putting the final exclamation point on a drinking contest, and then, for no other reason than she felt an urgent need to release the adrenaline that had clogged up inside her, she launched the dram glass toward the back wall of the bar, side-arming it as if skipping a large stone across a pond, smashing it against one of the wooden beams that rose beside the men’s room like the entrance to a tiki hut.

  She felt the additional impulse to scream as she hurled the jigger, but she restrained herself, and instead swung her feet up to the bar and reclined, stretching her legs straight with her feet together as if lying in a coffin.

  She rested only a moment, however, before a shout echoed from outside.

  “What the hell was that!?”

  The words entered the bar muffled but loud, as if someone had shouted them through a pillow directly outside the recess window.

  Danielle’s eyes shot wide, but she stayed still, her throat seizing with fear.

  Someone was in the alley—a man—and his question was in response to the sound of the shattering glass.

  Danielle shot up from the bar top and quickly jumped to the floor, and then, like a cat burglar exiting a bedroom, ran to the table where the candle flickered frantically. She pressed her finger and thumb on either side of her tongue and then crushed the flame with a sizzle. Then, with the same hand, she reached blindly for the shotgun that was resting on the stool beside her.

  She gripped the weapon and waited.

  There was still no reply to the question outside, at least not one Danielle could hear, but a few seconds later, the same voice—the one which had sourced the original question—boomed again, and now that Danielle was on her feet and standing in the dark anticipating, he sounded closer than before, like he was standing beside her in the room.

  “What the hell was that, McCormick?”

  “I don’t know,” a second man answered, now as close as the first. His voice wasn’t panicked exactly, but it sounded more agitated than the one that had posed the question, nervous.

  “It sounded like it came from down there.”

  “Shit!” Danielle mouthed the word silently as she made her way toward the stage, shotgun poised as she climbed the riser like a panther on the hunt. She walked to the back wall and stood below the window, listening. She was hidden there, at least for the moment. If anyone looked in through the window now, with the candle extinguished, he would see only the dim outline of the back area of the bar.

  But she had given up her hideaway the moment she’d pitched the shotglass, about that there was little doubt, and her only hope was that the men would wait a while and then move on, deciding to chalk the noise up to scurrying rats or some starving Maine coon on the prowl for scraps.

  Or even to crabs, Danielle thought, though she figured that assumption would likely warrant an investigation. She knew these men were looking for people—and maybe even her, specifically—but she figured they would take the opportunity to kill as many ghosts along the way as they could.

  But even if they weren’t looking for ghosts, Danielle had had the candle going, and if they had seen the light extinguish the moment they arrived, that would have piqued a different kind of interest.

  “What do you say?” It was the first man again. “You want it?”

  There was no reply from the second soldier, and a couple of beats later the first one began to laugh. It was the masculine cover that Danielle knew so well, macho men responding with insouciance to situations that, to others, appeared serious and fraught. It was a quality she remembered appreciating at certain times in her life, particularly as a child and young adult, with her father and a few boyfriends, when they had made her feel safe with a chuckle or scrunch of the face as they walked a dark street or anticipated news in the waiting room of a doctor’s office.

  But she was older now, certainly wiser, and she knew the danger that such an attitude could bring. The soldiers were in a situation where levity would be costly. If they didn’t leave soon, Danielle would see to that.

  “Alright, McCormick. Since you’re the virgin amongst us, I’ll grease the skids for you, and then you come in behind. Watch the alley until I signal you. I’ll break out this window and—”

  “Look!”

  Again, there was no image attached to the word, and Danielle could only infer what was happening above.

  “What is that?”

  “I think it’s a stairwell. With a board over it, covering it.”

  “Well, shit, how did that get there?”

  “Someone put it there. Looks like they wanted to hide the entrance.”

  The flimsy particle board had worked to keep the ghosts away, but it was a lazy effort all and all. Danielle always knew it would be the downfall of Raise the Flagon, but she usually figured it would be when some stray crab walked down the alley and stepped on it, sending it crashing into the well. She thought about replacing it almost daily with something stronger, more camouflaged, but there was so much else to do, so much else to prepare for, and she’d never come across the perfect substitute.

  Within seconds, the handle on the door, which was now maybe six feet from Danielle, began to jostle.

  And then the banging began.

  Danielle checked the last round in her gun and stepped to the edge of the stage, rotating a quarter turn so that the barrel was aiming directly at the middle of the door, ready to send a b
last into the chest of whichever man came through first.

  The fact that these men were here meant they were beginning to close ranks, to bring the barren wasteland of Warren and Maripo counties to an end. The presence of soldiers downtown couldn’t mean anything else. Danielle had never seen a soldier this far from the border—and she had been watching for them daily from the realty building—but she always knew it was just a matter of time. The military—no matter how shadowy and corrupt—couldn’t keep a world of lies and containment alive forever, and the only way to keep the secret buried was to finish off whoever remained from the ravaging snows of May.

  And, Danielle, they knew, was still alive. Whether they had placed her as the woman who’d escaped from Stella and the colonel, she couldn’t know, but it mattered little, really. They were there to capture her. Kill her. She was a loose end, and thus almost certainly at the top of their Most Wanted list.

  Well that was fine. Danielle had her own list, and though she didn’t know the exact name of the soldier who was coming through the door, he was on it.

  The wood around the latch exploded in a splintered burst, and a half-second later, the door banged open, bouncing off the jamb before swinging back closed for an instant. But the lock was gone, and a moment later, the door fluttered open again, and this time a flashlight moved slowly into the entrance, swiveling from left to right, searching.

  Danielle couldn’t see the man’s body, but she could easily decipher his location; besides, with a shotgun, it would have been nearly impossible to miss her target.

  She felt the twitch of her finger, but she let it fall to the side. She couldn’t do it. Not like this. Killing in this way wasn’t the purpose of the fourth goal, just like killing the crabs in the parking lot hadn’t served the purpose of the third. She would have been in her right to shoot him, of course—the soldier was almost certainly there to kill her—but it didn’t feel authorized, appropriate.