by Bobby Adair
“No.” Summer wasn’t attacking. “She said you used to be a loving man. You used to be fun, but after a while, she said sometimes you seemed like you were playing a role, a husband role. She thought your heart wasn’t in it anymore.”
“You two talked a lot about these things?”
“We’re friends, Tommy. I’m divorced. You’re always away on business. What did you expect?”
Tommy shrugged. “I guess I never thought about it.”
“Or didn’t want to. Summer thinks you were escaping.”
“From?” asked Tommy.
“Her and Emma.”
“I take care of my family,” Tommy argued, anger coming to the surface. “I’ve always taken care of them.”
Summer moved in close and put a hand on his arm. “That’s not what I’m saying. That’s not what Faith told me. She thought you were afraid of them because they were your family.”
Tommy turned away from Summer to see that the newly arrived car was parked at the outlook next to the pickup.
“Because of your childhood,” Summer explained. “The way you grew up. Faith said you had difficulty being close to people, so you ran away.”
“This is what you want honesty about?” asked Tommy. “You want to know if I love my family?”
“I’m not trying to say you didn’t love them, Tommy. I—”
“—what?” Tommy interrupted. “Where’s this going?”
“I’m not attacking you, truly I’m not.” Summer turned, as if to show Tommy the bodies on the floor for the very first time. “None of this seems to bother you. You killed that man outside with—” Summer shuddered. “I’m… I feel like I’m about to fall apart here. I’m holding it together because if I don’t, I don’t know if Aaron and Dan will. Yet you’re standing here watching the sunset like you just finished another day at work and you’ve got blood all over you and you say you’re going to kill those two in the kitchen and you don’t seem to care a lick about it. What’s your secret? Do you have a Valium supply I don’t know about, because if you do, I swear to God, I think I could use one right now.”
Tommy thought a long time before he decided to respond. “At first it’s hard. You get used to it.”
“What?” Summer shouted. “You stand there for ten minutes with nothing to say and that comes out? What kind of war-movie wisdom is that? No wonder Faith didn’t feel like you two were living on the same planet. No wonder she was thinking about filing for divorce.”
That felt like a shot to the gut. At the same time, it didn’t feel like a surprise at all. Tommy knew how distant he and Faith had grown, but never had the first clue how to fix it.
“Sorry,” said Summer, apparently aware she’d gone too far.
“It’s okay,” Tommy answered absently, and then decided that the honesty Summer asked for wasn’t going to make anything any worse. “I’ve killed before.”
“What?”
“I’ve murdered people.”
“You—” Summer examined Tommy’s face, looking hard into his eyes. “My God, you’re serious.”
“The first one is hard. Then it gets easier.”
Summer stood, mouth agape.
“Those cars down there. Now there are two more coming.”
Summer turned to look down the valley. She called up to Aaron and Dan. “We’re almost out of time.”
Tommy set his jaw, thinking what to do next. Escape in the stolen pickup? That would only serve to move him away from his goal. “Something here is fucked.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Summer.
“Somebody called in an SOS.” Tommy’s eyes darted around the room. “Somebody’s alive.” He ran into the living room.
***
“Aaron? Dan?” called Tommy.
Aaron came running down the stairs. “What?”
Tommy pointed, “Tell Dan to keep an eye out from up there. I need to know as soon as those cars head this way.”
“What?” shouted Aaron. “They have reinforcements coming? Let’s get out of here!”
“No,” Tommy ordered.
“We should go now,” said Summer.
“Somebody’s still alive here,” Tommy explained. “Somebody called this in.”
“Who cares?” asked Aaron.
“I do.” Tommy scanned the rooms he could see, thought about the upstairs space, tried to imagine where someone could be. “Every guilty bastard in this house is going to pay.”
Aaron looked at Summer, pleading in his eyes. “Are we in the revenge business, now?”
“Be in whatever business you like.” Tommy looked down the hall, past the pantry, and saw the garage door. “Anybody check in there?”
Summer and Aaron looked blankly at one another.
“Shit.” Tommy ran down the hall, past the kitchen, and past the laundry room. Summer trailed after.
Tommy didn’t slow down to reach for the knob, he smashed into the door shoulder-first, tearing it off the hinges. The door knocked down something bulky behind it as it fell onto a short set of stairs down to the garage floor. Beneath the door, struggling and grunting, Tommy saw what he’d come to the garage looking for: a man wearing a camo jacket.
Tommy jumped off the landing and came down with both his feet and all his weight on the door.
The guy cried out under the assault.
Tommy hopped down to the garage floor and kicked the door to the side.
Summer was in the doorway, rifle aimed at the guy on the floor.
Tommy dropped to a knee and put a pistol against the guy’s forehead. “You’ve got about thirty seconds to give me a reason not to kill you.”
“I—” the guy coughed blood out of his mouth. His nose was flowing red.
“Tommy,” warned Summer.
“Who’d you call?” Tommy demanded.
The guy coughed and started to cry. He wasn’t that old—eighteen, maybe nineteen. “We’re supposed to check in every fifteen minutes.”
“With who?” Tommy pressed.
“Crosby,” he blubbered.
“Is he your captain?” Tommy interrogated. “Your sergeant? What?”
“I don’t know,” he cried. “I don’t know anything. I was out here smoking a cigarette when you people busted in.”
“But you called Crosby,” Tommy asked, “right?”
The guy pointed at a sat-phone laying on the floor nearby. “I—”
“Did you burn the barn?” Tommy demanded.
“Tommy,” pleaded Summer. “We’re running out of time.”
Tommy hit the guy in the head with his gun butt. “Answer me.”
“It wasn’t me,” he sobbed. “It… it was Ayers. It was his idea.”
“But you didn’t stop him, did you?” asked Tommy.
“I didn’t—“ more crying. “I’m not. I’m just—”
“—an asshole with a gun?” Tommy accused. “When did you burn it? Last night? This morning?”
“I don’t know. I just—”
Tommy jumped to his feet and shot him.
Summer screamed, “My God, Tommy!”
Tommy bounded over the kid’s body, pushed past Summer and hurried into the kitchen.
Summer ran in behind. “You killed him in cold blood!”
Dan was frozen on the stairs staring at Tommy. Aaron was wordlessly backing into the living room.
“Dan,” Tommy ordered, “get to a window! Watch for those trucks.”
“They’re coming,” he said.
Tommy stomped up to Ayers. “You burned the barn?”
Glaring at Tommy, Ayers said, “I don’t know—”
Tommy shot him in the face, and Ayers fell over backwards in his chair.
The hag screamed.
“Holy shit!” shouted Dan. “Are you going to murder everyone?”
“Aaron,” Tommy ordered, “go see how close those cars are.”
“I—”
“Go!” Tommy ordered again.
“Tommy,” Summer sai
d in the voice of a woman talking down an angry drunk, “what are you doing?”
Tommy handed her the boy’s sat-phone, and started rummaging through kitchen drawers.
“What are you doing?” asked Dan, still frozen in place.
“Let me go,” the hag implored, focusing her plea on Summer. “He’s crazy.”
Dan was making his way past the bodies in the living room, heading for the kitchen door and the pickup they had ready to make their escape.
Tommy found something that would work perfectly—a stainless steel melon baller with a serrated edge.
Aaron came back into the room, panting from frazzled nerves. “They’re coming on slow. We’ve got maybe ten minutes. We need to go.” He pushed Dan toward the broken doors on the back of the kitchen.
Tommy peeled off his jacket and shirt as he looked around at the bodies.
The hag was still screaming. On the floor beside her, Ayers was bleeding a huge pool of blood onto the floor.
“Dan!” Tommy froze him in place with the order. “That guy there, on the recliner. Get me his jacket.”
“What?” Dan was horrified. The guy had been shot, once through the head and once through the shoulder. He was a bloody mess.
“Do it now,” Tommy commanded. “We don’t have time to negotiate this.”
Dan moved toward the body.
“What the hell are you doing?” asked Summer.
Tommy took the melon baller and gouged at the bare skin on his own shoulder.
The hag’s scream found a new pitch.
“Tommy!” Summer shouted.
Grimacing from the pain of his tearing skin, Tommy turned to her and stopped. “If Faith and Emma are alive, I need to try something else if I’m going to have a chance of finding them.”
“He’s lost it,” Aaron told Summer.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” she replied.
Tommy turned to Aaron. “Grab a kitchen chair. I need you to tie me to it.”
Aaron meandered toward the dining room table.
“Hurry,” Tommy prodded.
Aaron obeyed.
Summer stepped over and put a hand on Tommy’s arm. “Whatever you’re doing, Tommy, this isn’t going to help us.”
Dan threw the bloody Battalion 704 jacket and shirt on the counter in front of Tommy, shuddering once it was out of his hand. “We need to leave.”
Careful to take a sane tone, Tommy yanked the list from Summer’s pocket and showed it to them. “Emma and Faith are on one of these. Somebody down in Spring Creek has the master list these guys are working from and knows which page sends which detainees where. Maybe it’s this Crosby character, maybe not. Whoever it is, I need to go through him to find Emma and Faith before any more of these wannabes decides atrocity is their fucktard ticket to political freedom. Only I can’t go down to Spring Creek without going through a roadblock and being caught, unless I let these 704s take me down there.”
Aaron parked the chair in Ayer’s spreading pool of red and backed off, looking at Dan for direction on what to do next.
Nodding, Summer understood what Tommy had in mind.
With a hole torn in his skin, and blood flowing out, Tommy pulled the dead man’s t-shirt on. He told Dan, “The guy you took this shirt from, you and Aaron throw him in the truck.”
“What?” Aaron shouted.
Tommy pointed down the hall, wincing from the pain in his shoulder, thinking maybe he’d dug a little too deep. “Or put him in the bathroom like he was getting ready to take a shower or something. Either way, he can’t be out here with no shirt and jacket on.”
Dan looked at Aaron. Aaron didn’t move.
“Go!” Tommy ordered. “We don’t have time to screw around.”
“I’m going down there with you,” announced Summer.
“No,” Tommy told her. “There’s no reason for you to do that.”
“You don’t know anything about this town, Tommy. You barely know who’s who and what’s what. You’re a tourist who comes in for the weekends once a month.”
Tommy pulled the bloody 704 jacket over his shoulder. “I don’t need—”
“If you don’t want to get yourself killed five minutes after you get there,” Summer argued, “you’ll need my help. I’m going with.”
Tommy slid the melon baller across the counter. “Get you a chair.”
Summer looked at the hag, “What about her?”
“Dan,” Tommy called. “Once you move that guy, put the hag in the back of the truck.”
“We’re taking her with us?” Dan asked.
“Or I can shoot her,” Tommy answered.
Aaron jogged back into the kitchen, panting from the effort of dragging the body into the bathroom. He looked at the hag tied in her seat. “Chair and all?”
“Why not?” answered Tommy. “Just get her out of here.”
Summer’s eyes were glued to the melon baller laying on the counter. “I don’t think I can do that.”
“You need an injury,” Tommy insisted.
Summer dropped to her knees and scooped up Ayers’s blood in her hands. She doused her face in it and rubbed it through her hair. “Punch me.”
“What?” Tommy asked.
“Hit me in the face hard enough to give me a black eye or—”
Hating himself for it, Tommy clocked Summer, hitting her in the cheekbone and knocking her to the floor. He immediately dropped down to help her back up. “Are you okay?”
She had a hand to her cheek. “I hope that cleared your frustrations with me.”
Chapter 12
Ayers lay on his back, a hole just above his right eye, a huge scoop of his brains splattered across the stainless steel oven. The bullet that destroyed Ayers's head didn’t kill him instantly. Well, it did, but it took many long minutes for his body to figure it out. While that was happening, his heart pumped pint after pint and quart after quart of his blood onto the floor.
Tied to a chair beside Ayers, with his legs in the air, Tommy’s head lay on the tile in the puddle of Ayers’ blood. On the other side of Ayers, Summer's chair lay on its side, with her tied to it. Her left cheek was swelling, and the skin around her eye was turning purple. Her face was streaked frighteningly with Ayers’ blood and with her head on the floor, her hair was soaked in it. When she closed her eyes, she looked dead.
Aaron and Dan were gone, tearing off toward the mountain in the stolen truck with the hag in the back. They had one of the 704’s sat-phones, just one. Tommy didn’t want them to take more, and he wouldn’t allow them to take any weapons or ammunition. He didn’t want the militants arriving any minute to know anything was missing, except the souls of the dead men.
“Will they get away?” asked Summer, apparently also thinking about Dan and Aaron with the sound of vehicles coming from outside.
“They had a good head start.”
“Will they believe we’re with them?” Summer asked.
“You’re unrecognizable,” Tommy told her.
“Your fake gunshot wound looks real.”
Men and women were shouting in front of the house, their voices angry.
“Showtime.” Tommy closed his eyes, and did his best to fake unconsciousness.
***
“Hey. Hey, buddy.”
A hand slapped Tommy across the face. Tommy opened his eyes, and rolled them around.
Another slap. “Buddy?”
They were tearing at his jacket and shirt, trying to pull it open.
“He’s shot!” one called, as a dishtowel pressed against Tommy’s chest under the weight of a heavy hand.
“You’re gonna make it,” said one of the men working over Tommy.
“This one’s alive, too,” shouted another guy.
Tommy let his head loll to his left so he could see the man knelt beside Summer.
"This woman needs to go to the hospital."
A knife came out and cut the straps binding Tommy to the chair.
“Pull that Chevy around
,” shouted someone in authority. “Check those others.”
“Goddamned NonCons.”
***
Startled, Tommy opened his eyes.
“He’s awake,” hollered a man kneeling over Tommy.
“What?” Tommy asked, as he looked around. He was in the rear of an SUV with the seats folded down. He was on his back. “Where am I?”
“You’re gonna be alright, buddy.”
Tommy looked up at the man kneeling over him, keeping pressure on his fake wound. He looked like a regular guy—normal haircut, kind eyes, good teeth, like anybody he might see around town at one of the restaurants or out on the bike trails sharing an inner tube with someone who had a flat.
“We’re here,” he said.
Tommy lifted his head. The rear doors were open. Summer was gone. “Where is she?”
“The girl?” the guy asked, thumbing in a direction Tommy had no reference for. “They took her inside already.”
It was then Tommy realized he’d fallen asleep on the drive in.
How is that even possible?
Or maybe it was normal after so many hours on his feet, with the physical abuse and mental stress.
“We’re at the hospital. We’ll have you out of here in a minute.”
Tommy pulled himself up to lean on his elbows.
“Hey,” scolded the guy. “Don’t. The bleeding’s stopped. You don’t want to—”
Tommy sat all the way up. “I’m… umm… it’s not as bad… I think.”
The guy kept his hand on Tommy’s shoulder, pressing the dishtowel against the fake wound.
Tommy reached over with his good hand. "I can get it."
The guy didn’t want to let go.
Tommy shook his head to clear the cobwebs. “It’s okay.”
The guy relented and sat back.
“We’re at the hospital, then?” Tommy confirmed.
The guy nodded.
“I should get inside,” Tommy told him.
“They’re coming with a stretcher.”
Tommy shook his head. "I can walk, I think.” Of course he could.
“You shouldn’t.”
Tommy scooted himself toward the rear of the SUV.
“Let me help you,” offered the guy. “You should wait.” Still, he pushed on Tommy’s shoulder. “Tell me if it hurts.”