The Good Kill

by Kurt Brindley

  By the time he reached the farm, the sun had begun its assault on the night and colored the top of the forest with a warm orange glow. He had been planning to take the woman to the farmhouse, but as he was making his way down the drive, he couldn’t. He couldn’t allow her into his house. Not in her condition. He drove past the farmhouse.

  He pulled the Cuda next to the pickup in front of the barn and threw it into park. He didn’t know what to do with the woman, other than to get her out of sight. He got out of the car and rolled the barn door open. He then rushed back to the car and pulled it into the barn. He opened his car door as if he was going to get out, but he didn’t. He looked at the woman. Now that he had brought her to his home, he wished he hadn’t. He had no idea what he was going to do with her. Another stupid decision. Why hadn’t he just left her to her fate at the pimp’s house? She only saw him briefly. As high as she was there would have been no way she would have remembered what he looked like. He should have left her there to take her chances with the police, with the pimp’s partners, with whomever it was whores like her had to deal with in situations like this.

  The familiar anger displaced the panic and rose fast within him. He wanted to hit something, destroy something. He grabbed hold of the steering wheel and tried to rip it from the steering column. It wouldn’t give. He pounded down on the dashboard. He punched at the windshield. Neither would give. He looked at the woman lying next to him. He tore the blanket off her and glared at her, naked and bloodied. He hated her. He hated her for what she had done, not just to him, but to herself. The defiled life she led. A desire to strike out at her burned hot through him. To hit her. To wrap his hands around her throat and eliminate her. Relieve her of the fucked up life she led. But before his shaking hands reached her neck, he pulled them back. What was he doing? What was wrong with him? He screamed. All of it was so fucked up. Everything. A curse. The world’s fucked. Completely. How could he ever had thought that he could do anything to unfuck it.

  Killian was staring at the woman helplessly when she began to stir. She moaned. Her eyes fluttered open briefly and she turned her head toward him. He wasn’t ready to confront her just yet. What would he say to her? What would he do with her? To her? She just mumbled incoherently as he placed the chloroform cloth over her face again and then drifted back to unconsciousness. Killian noticed the purple knot on the right side of her head. He wasn’t sure if the injury was from when her head whipped against the passenger window or from when he threw her against the wall down in the pimp’s basement. He unconsciously touched the spot where his own head had whipped against the passenger window during Diego’s accident. It was still tender. It was then he knew exactly where to take her.

  He slammed his door shut, threw the Cuda into reverse, and peeled his way out of the barn. Outside, he threw the automatic transmission back into drive, and punched it. The tires threw up gravel as they worked to gain traction. He fishtailed it around the corner of the barn and drove like a madman, cutting a muddy trail through the brown, frost-covered grass as he sped along the side of the barn and then headed down the hill toward the base of the bank that led up to the loft. He got air as he drove over the hump of the bank, and as soon as he landed on the other side of it, he made a hard right and fishtailed his way a near U-turn as he headed down the side of the bank into a small cove-like area. He slammed on the brakes almost immediately, coming to a stop right before an old door set in the middle of a retaining wall that followed the sloping contour of the bank. Constructed with the natural fieldstone found abundantly throughout the region, much of the ancient-looking wall sagged, with many of its stones now lying stray beneath it in the tall brown grass.

  Killian got out of the car and walked around the front of it over to the passenger side. He reached down into the car, covered the woman back up with the blanket, and then lifted her gently from the passenger seat. With her in his arms, he walked over to the cellar door. He hadn’t been to the back area of the barn since his return home, so this was the first time he noticed that the door’s lock and hasp were gone. Not just gone, but physically removed as was evident by the scars left in the wood of the door and in the thick oak beam that served as its frame. Killian kicked around briefly in the tall grass to see if the hardware was lying on the ground anywhere; but, seeing he had other pressing matters on his mind, he let it go and gave a hard tug on the old door to get it open.

  As soon as the door opened, the primal musty smells of long-enclosed earth and fermented food came whooshing out at him, reminding him instantly of the happy times when his mother was still alive and used the cellar to store the plentiful harvests she always had from the large vegetable garden she maintained in the field behind the house. He had to duck to enter through the small door, and he had to continue ducking as he walked down the sloped dirt floor into the cellar so as to not knock his head on the thick beams that lined the ceiling. Once inside the darkened space, he could still see in his mind, set against the stone wall in the back, all the goods his mother would store in here: the overfilled baskets of potatoes and carrots and turnips and onions and just about anything else that could be grown from the ground and be eaten. The beams that ran horizontally along the walls served as shelves. On them set her jarred preservatives, pickles, and jams. Now, instead of his mother’s home-grown vegetables and preservatives, the cellar was stocked full of canned goods, dried goods, and as much toilet paper as anyone could imagine. Back against the center wall set a large metal storage cabinet on wheels. But to Killian, the only thing stored in the cellar that mattered were his memories of a happy life long since passed.

  He carried the woman to the cabinet and, being careful not to bang her head against it or anything else, he placed his back to the side of the shelf and gave it a push, wheeling it away from the wall and exposing a 36-inch by 72-inch concrete-filled metal blast door. Killian placed his right eye up close to the door. After it had been positively scanned, he spun the five-spoke banker’s wheel until the fourteen-bolt locking system was fully released. He pulled the heavy door open and reached inside and flipped a switch. There was the buzz as a series of florescent light bulbs came awake and then flickered on, their bright white light exposing a cylindrical downward passageway. He had to hunch over so as not to hit his head on the corrugated metal overhead while tucking the woman tight in his arms to prevent her head from hitting the sides. When walking down the steep decline he had to carefully place his feet securely between the metal grooves so as not to lose his balance. At the bottom there was an open hatch, one similar to those found on navy ships. He stepped through the hatch into a small decontamination area. He then had to step through another hatch which led him finally into a fully equipped, fully functional military-grade bunker.

  Buried thirty-five feet under the barn, the circular-shaped compound looked as if it were part NASA command center and part presidential suite of a five-star hotel. Killian, his arms burning from the weight of the woman, quickly carried her through the length of most of the seventy-five-foot bunker, past the operational area in the front, past the galley, past the living quarters, and into the sleeping quarters. He rolled the woman out of his stiff arms onto the master bedroom’s queen-sized bed. After making a poor effort to cover her with the bedspread, he sat numb next to her as the exhaustion and stress from the night’s hellish disaster overwhelmed him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Even though she was up most of the night tossing and turning, RJ woke early, much earlier than her normal six a.m. wake-up time. She woke with such clarity, energy, and purpose that she knew there would be absolutely no chance of her falling back to sleep. She wanted to see Killian. Needed to see him. She showered hastily, one of those combat showers where only the hot spots were closely attended to, brushed her teeth, which included an aggressive scrubbing of the tongue to eliminate the unsightly morning residue and leave it pink and pleasant, and then dressed herself in a pair of faded Levis and an old red-checkered flannel shirt, casual clothes t
hat said that she wasn’t out looking to impress, but which she knew had just the right amount of snugness in just the right spots to highlight her primary physical attributes and impress nonetheless. She brushed out her thick auburn hair in front of the bedroom dresser mirror and then tied it back into a neat, yet still damp, ponytail. She then leaned into the mirror and inspected her face; its smooth ivory skin flawless except for the slightest of wrinkles around the eyes, the only evidence from her fresh, youthful appearance that two months ago she had just turned forty. She left the mirror pleased that her lack of sleep hadn’t left any noticeable bags under her eyes. Makeup wasn’t even a consideration.

  For breakfast she had a hardboiled egg, a small taste of cottage cheese, and a cup of black tea. She ate standing up at the kitchen island. After finishing her meal and washing the dishes in the sink – the dishwasher hadn’t needed to be used since before her mother’s suicide – she made a fresh cup of tea and then sat down in the chair at the head of the kitchen table, the same chair her father commanded from when he was still the authoritative head of household. Hanging above the sink, a large strawberry clock faded pink from age – its second hand that had been stuck at the 2:03 mark for as long as RJ could remember – told her that it was still only 6:37 a.m., way too early yet for her to make her desired visit to Killian’s place. She took the Walmart Special smart phone out of the left chest pocket of her flannel shirt, aimlessly fired up the news app, and swiped her way through the day’s headlines without really taking any of it in. She was thinking only of Killian.

  Much against his wishes, RJ had been determined to stay with Killian after he had tried to commit suicide, to take care of him and be there for him until she was sure he wasn’t going to try to do anything harming to himself ever again. She had planned to stay with him for as long as it took for her to feel certain he was out of danger. And she didn’t care how long it took, or how long it would keep her away from her business. She only cared for Killian. But it turned out that she was only able to stay with him for two days.

  At first she thought Killian’s reluctance to have her helping out was because he was embarrassed. It had to have been hard for him, she thought, to be taken care of by a woman who had broken his heart. In fact, it was emotionally challenging for herself, as well. She had to deal with her own guilt for what she did to him, what she did to them both, while at the same time trying not to fixate on all the reasons that drove her to do what she had done in the first place. She wanted to make it up to him, to let him know that she was there for him, that she would always be there for him, and to try to use her own tragic experiences, and what she had painfully learned from them, to help him manage his own recovery.

  But very quickly she came to understand that his insistence that he was fine and that she needed to leave was sincere, that his aversion toward her help didn’t seem to have anything to do with what she had been telling herself the reasons were. She had no choice but to leave. She didn’t understand why, but whatever it was that had been motivating him to live, this new purpose of his, had left her with a sick feeling, not that he might hurt himself, but that he might hurt someone else. Her perhaps. So, by the end of the second day she didn’t need much further provoking from him to get her to go.

  With a very heavy heart, she left. But she didn’t leave angry, despite the callous way he had repeatedly made it be known to her that she was not welcomed in this renewed life of his. How could she be angry when she knew that it wasn’t the real Killian treating her with such disregard? It was obviously the mental damage caused to him from his military service. Of that she was certain. Deep down, despite his injuries, she knew Killian was still just as good, just as wholesome, as that boy she grew up with, as that young man she grew to love. She just wished Diego were still alive to help her find a way to help Killian. He would know what to do. How to reach him.

  Until recently, RJ had barely even seen Killian since her short stay with him, even though she had stopped by his farm to check in on him many times. Whenever she did, he was usually never there; or at least he usually never allowed her to think that he was there. The rare times that she was able to find him at home, when she was able to surprise him with her appearance, she always found him in the barn working on whatever it was he always seemed to be working on so passionately; and she also found that not only was he doing well since his attempted suicide, but he seemed to be thriving, obviously driven by this newfound sense of purpose of his, a purpose of which she still had no idea what it was except that it left her with a worrying, foreboding feeling of danger. Whatever it was, though, it certainly didn’t require her presence in his life.

  In fact, whenever she did show up to check in on him and he was home, it seemed as if her presence was an unwelcomed interruption from whatever it was that was driving him so passionately forward. Of course, she was happy for him to have found a renewed sense of life, of living purposefully; she only wished that his life’s purpose could have included her. Eventually, her visits went from every day, to every few days, to every few weeks, to, lately, none at all. Which was why she was so surprised when, three days ago, he showed up at her garage unannounced.

  She was waist-deep under the hood of a rusted out 1970 Chevy Chevelle – an old barn find she was checking out for the grandson of the car’s original owner to, firstly, give the car a thorough inspection to see if it was an authentic SS454 LS5 as the grandson hoped it was, and then, secondly, if she found that the car was authentic, she then needed to provide the grandson with an estimate of how much it would take to completely restore the engine. When she heard the bell ring from the opening of the customer door to her ramshackle reception room, she couldn’t help cussing out loud from the interruption as she unfolded herself from under the cavernous hood just enough to get a look at the circa 1980s black-and-white security camera monitor mounted up on the wall between the two garage doors, both of which were kept closed to keep out the cold February air.

  Seeing the grainy security camera image of the only man she had ever loved all of a sudden standing in her shop triggered a physical reaction in her that she hadn’t experienced since she was a teenager, since the time Killian’s love for her was equal to her love for him, since the time just before her life went cold and dark. Her heart skipped into a frenzied, palpitating beating. A surge of heat rushed through her body, sending a hot color into her cheeks and a hot moistness between her legs. It all took her by such a surprise that she had to steady herself against the car. She hated herself for her body’s reaction. She hated it because it had taken her so long to not be thinking about him every second of the day ever since they reconnected after Diego’s death. And she hated it even more that she was in a pair of baggy coveralls that at one time used to be blue, but now were exclusively the color of grease.

  Once she had somewhat regained her composure, she headed quickly to the reception area, wiping her greasy hands nervously on a greasy rag along the way. Also along the way, she tried to rationalize her heated reaction to the sight of Killian as being nothing more than the consequence of years, decades, of self-imposed celibacy, of burying even the slightest hint of passion deep beneath the thick impenetrable scars left by the deep, humiliating wounds inflicted upon her by her father.

  Having never experienced it willingly – though she always tried to keep the thought of it out of her mind, unconsciously, on those rare times that she did think about the act she had never experienced outside of incestual rape, she always referred to it only as it; any other label for it sounded vulgar and violent and repulsed her completely – it was something she never thought about until Killian’s recent unexpected return to her life. Since then, even though she tried hard not to think about it, it was constantly on her mind. So obviously, she tried to tell herself, her body’s reaction just now could have been caused just as easily by the unexpected appearance in her shop of any halfway good-looking man. But even as she was telling herself this, she knew it was way more than that. She knew that it
was Killian and only Killian who could ever affect her so. She knew this because she also knew that she still loved him just as much as she did as when they were in high school. And she truly wished she didn’t, because it was so hard for her to stay away from him now, now that she wanted so badly to rededicate her life to him.

  She entered the reception area through the garage entrance, bringing her in behind the counter. Up close and in person, Killian’s effect on her was much greater than it had been through the security camera monitor. He looked good, really good. Healthy. Strong. Though she preferred his thick, wavy blond hair grown out as he had always worn it in the past, she had come to like his new closely cropped hairstyle, as it, in compliment with the scars that ran down the left side of his face, his chiseled chin, and the dark scruffy growth of a three-day beard, gave him a look that further enhanced his rugged good looks. Heatwaves began to radiate throughout her body once again from his presence. Afraid her voice would belie her sentiments, she threw on as glowing a smile as she could, hoping it would help to overcome the unsightly coveralls she was wearing, and waited for him to speak first.

  Killian stared at her. For a second, it appeared to RJ that something about her had struck him. Had seeing her again after so long an absence triggered something in him? A memory, perhaps, of their lost love for each other? RJ’s heart fluttered and then began beating even harder. She became even more self-conscious of her appearance and began thinking that maybe he was looking at her in such a way, not because he was struck by a memory of their love, but because she had a big blotch of grease on her face. She looked away from his penetrating blue eyes as she wiped at her cheek with the back of her greasy hand. When she looked back up at him, the soft look of – what was it? longing? regret? – she wasn’t certain, but whatever look it was it no longer mattered. It was now gone, replaced with one distant, impenetrable.