Pack

by Mike Bockoven

  Unfortunately, he had put himself several blocks farther away from his goal than when he started and the town was full of armed men looking for him, so he would have to make another run for it. With the adrenaline flowing and nowhere to direct his energy, Stu started riffling through the contents of “Bar” looking for anything that might be able to help him. He went in the back, thinking there would be knives or maybe another gun (and along with that thought, a brief, John Woo-style fantasy of firing two guns while jumping through the air) when he saw it.

  A land line.

  Tentatively, as if by providence, Stu walked over to the phone on the wall, picked it up, held it to his ear and heard a dial tone.

  “No fucking way,” he muttered, and dialed 9-1-1. He knew, by course of being on the job for a few weeks, that the 9-1-1 call center was 26 miles away in another county, as was the nearest ambulance service. It occurred to him as the phone picked up on the other end that he didn’t have the slightest idea how to explain the situation.

  “911, please state the nature of your emergency”.

  “OK, this is Sheriff Dietz in Barter County and I’m going to need you to keep an open mind as I tell you what’s going on here.” Stu was trying to keep his voice steady and slow but everything was coming out fast and warbly.

  “OK, Stuart, we’re here. Where are you right now?”

  Alarm bells went off in Stu’s head. He hadn’t told them his first name, he sure as hell wasn’t on a first name basis with anyone at the emergency management center a county away. Plus, the question didn’t seem like any 911 call he’d ever heard, so he decided to play it safe.

  “I’m in a house …I don’t know who it belongs to but there are men in Cherry with guns. Lots of them.”

  “Can you describe the house,” the voice on the other end said. “The color? The street?”

  Damn.

  “Do me a favor, Stu,” the voice on the other end continued. “Don’t run.”

  Stu tossed the phone back into the cradle and moved away from it like it was radioactive. Of course they’d tap the land lines. Cell lines, too.

  “But they wouldn’t be able to block the law enforcement radio,” Stu said to himself, his voice sounding small in the big, empty bar. “Not without raising suspicion.”

  He decided to set his watch for five minutes, then leave “Bar” just in case there were eyes on the place or they expected him to run screaming into the street. Then he would head back toward the station and (unfortunately) Dana, and he spent that time rummaging around “Bar.” He was opening cabinet doors behind the bar when his hand brushed against something long and metal that instantly felt familiar. His hands came back from the doors with a Remington Model 870 pistol grip shotgun.

  “Oh, Chuck. I hope you have a permit for this.”

  Even though he was already armed, the gun’s considerable heft gave him a shot of confidence he had been lacking. Who needed a plan when you had this sort of fire power? He rummaged around a bit more and found shells in the cabinet, loaded them and stuffed his pockets with more. After checking his watch (5 minutes 32 seconds), he peeked out the window and everything looked relatively clear. Plus, folks were a lot less likely to pick on a guy with a shotgun.

  •••

  Stander was on the phone.

  “Did you expect to hear from the others?” the voice asked. It was different this time but still prickly and masculine.

  “No, we did not.”

  “And you did nothing to facilitate this?”

  “Nothing.”

  “How do you plan to proceed?”

  “I’m going to go ahead with the exchange,” Stander said. “If anything unexpected happens we’re going to kill them all.”

  “Except for Mr. Rhodes.”

  “You will receive a live sample on schedule. I understand the consequences if I don’t.”

  Stander couldn’t help but notice how the dynamics had changed. He was used to being threatened and second-guessed. This new person was grasping, trying to grab more information. If he had to guess, things were not going well over at corporate.

  “Good, good,” the voice said. “And you’ve received no outside interference? This has been a successful black box operation? No recording equipment, no leaks?”

  “We’ve dealt with the locals, they are all detained and there will be no one to bear witness …”

  When he thought of it later, Stander wouldn’t say he “snapped” at that moment. He simply ran out of patience for going over and over the same set of expectations. The voice had shown signs of weakness. It was time for him to show signs of strength.

  “ … and if I could add some of the personnel I’ve been provided are substandard. They’re not seasoned or trained properly, they’re not prepared to make any sort of decision and I’ve had to make an example or two.”

  The voice didn’t respond.

  “Despite piss poor staffing and doing all the prep and intelligence work myself, I’ve managed to get this done. And I’m going to continue until you have your sample and at that point I believe we need to talk about substantial compensation for my contributions up until this point. Am I clear?”

  “Yes,” the voice said.

  “Good. I will be waiting in an hour with an update. Make sure to call on time.”

  It felt particularly good to be the one to end the conversation and Stander couldn’t help let a slight smirk creep on to his face. For the first time since taking this assignment, the idea of shopping Willie around to another company crossed his mind. He batted it away, and then brought it back. He had been treated poorly during this operation, he had been second-guessed at every turn and he was no longer interested in dealing with this bullshit. Maybe he would become indescribably rich, stick it to his company and live out the rest of his life …

  The rest of that sentence had no finish. He was a company man, a man who was lost without a goal to strive for. He would deliver Willie, he would receive his increased compensation and he would move on to the next thing the company wanted to do. And he’d do it with a smile, knowing he was the competent one, the reasonable one, the best one.

  He put his phone in his pocket and actually struck up a whistle as he strolled around the camp that had been set up around Beaver Creek. There were 22 men, all armed, with hand guns, all semi-well trained and all with eyes on either side of the road, where Dave Rhodes would likely appear in 22 minutes. They had orders to wait until he reached a certain point and then open fire. It didn’t matter who they brought in or how they brought them in or, for that matter, who they shot and killed in the process.

  He walked the length of his forces, everyone snapping to attention when he walked by. The message had spread—he’s in charge and not to be messed with. To a person postures were straight and when anyone spoke it was all business.

  Except for one.

  “Got ’em whipped, don’t ya, asshole?” Willie said through a blood and bile speckled beard, his body tied to a chair in the center of the group.

  “God, I can’t wait to get out of this place,” Stander said with a heavy sigh, the wind catching the leaves of the trees behind him.

  •••

  With twenty minutes to go before 3:00, Dave saw no reason to do anything differently.

  Step one, you break bread. Even if there was nothing to eat.

  “Anybody want a mint?” Dave asked. He usually carried them around after Josie had told him his breath got a little gamey by the time he got home from work. Everyone lined up and took one, more or less understanding the ritual.

  “My breath is like a minty meadow,” Kenny said. “I’m only taking cause you offered.”

  “That isn’t true and you know it,” JoAnn said. It was the first words she’d spoken in a while and of all the moving parts of this particular operation, she was, by far, the squeakiest. “Your breath smells like vinegar most of the time.”

  “Damn, girl, not nice,” Kenny said, twirling the keys to the Mustang. The car
was red, though it had been blue originally, and had more metal in it than the storage unit it was taken from. Kenny would drive the ’Stang, Ron in the ’Vette, Carl was driving the Suburban swiped from a neighbor and JoAnn would follow in the Pathfinder taken from “Bar.” Dave was on the Harley and Josie was going a different direction.

  JoAnn, who was a great bookkeeper and a “hell of a cook,” according to her favorite apron, was not much of a driver. And she was nervous about it. Her part in the operation was simple and she could do it, but she had been clinging closer to Kenny than usual and the group had felt her anxiety. It gave Dave an idea.

  “Everyone,” he said, a bit louder than his normal speaking voice, giving his words some formality. “Come out to the field with me please.”

  The crunching of shoes and boots on gravel gave way to a softer clunk and squish as they left the road and ventured into the field. The prairie grass had been high this year but was starting to roll back and once they got 40 feet out or so, it was like a different world. There were still bugs, though most had gone back to the hell that spawned them, and there were plants with spikes and bright purple flowers, loose strife prairie flowers and so much more. In the midst of the death that comes with mid-fall the field was still teaming with life.

  Dave stopped, and grabbed Josie’s hand. She grabbed Dilly and on down the line until the group was in a circle.

  “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down,” Dave said, and dropped to the earth. Everyone followed, staring at the bright, blue and whispy white of the big Nebraska sky. When someone spoke, the words floated as if on the breeze, not connected to a face or an expression, devoid and free of body language. Dave hadn’t planned this, but it couldn’t have been more perfect.

  “I’m gonna miss you guys,” Kenny started.

  “Where am I going?” Ron said. There were a few murmurs of agreement.

  “Paris or Rome or some shit,” Kenny said. “If we get through this, and I think we’re gonna, every single one of you is going to shake the dust of Cherry off your sandles. Even if it’s just for a little while.”

  “Things change,” Josie said. “Can’t change that.”

  “But this never did,” Kenny continued. His voice was slower, more modulated and free of the “like”s and “man”s that peppered most of his conversations. It was a voice he didn’t use much outside of the house.

  “This was what I could count on. No matter what happened I knew I could depend on all of you. And you could count on me and it felt …”

  The motormouth’s voice cracked.

  “Special,” Dave finished.

  “Yeah, special,” Kenny said.

  “Things were different before Stander showed up,” Dave said. “Things were different because of Byron. And because of me.”

  Dave tried to feel any shift in the way his wife was holding his hand. She didn’t react.

  “I thought, for so long, that I made the right call for all of us. I was wrong. The truth is I had two impossible choices to make and I made the one I thought was best.”

  “Best for us?” Ron said.

  “I don’t know,” Dave said. “I’ve thought about it and thought about it and there were things I could have done better. Lots of things. But I don’t know I’d ever come to a different decision.”

  “Rock and a hard place,” JoAnn said.

  “Between a boulder and a boner,” Carl said.

  “Between a stone and a stiffee,” Kenny said.

  The laugh started slow and rolled and this time Dave felt Josie’s hand squeeze and release as her chest heaved with laughter. He snuck a peek at her as she laughed and remembered how beautiful he still found her. The laughter lasted long and died slow.

  “Do you think we’re doing the right thing now?” Dilly asked after quiet settled back in. “I mean, we’re going to …”

  “Dilly, I know you’re of a tender age, but fuck those guys.”

  Everyone was a little shocked to hear Carl speak up, much less show any aggression or drop the “f” bomb. But here they were.

  “These people came in to our town and want to capture us, detain us, experiment on us, eventually kill us, terrorize everyone in town and take our lives completely away in every sense I can think of. They think we’re morons and beneath them because of where we live. They think they can come and destroy a small town and get away with it. I’m sure some of them are only in it for a paycheck and that’s their bad luck, but the people they came to Cherry to find the monsters. I say they found ‘em.”

  “Yeah,” Dave said.

  “YEAH!” Kenny said.

  “Fuck yeah!” Dilly yelled, His mother did nothing but squeeze his hand tighter.

  “It’s almost three o’clock. Everyone ready to do this?”

  There was a round of whoops and hollers as everyone stood and started embracing. These weren’t timid hugs or the kind of hugs exchanged daily, but the hugs of family who were fired up, an aggressive tenderness if such a thing exists. They were holding on tightly to the only thing that could get them through this. They were grabbing, desperately, to the only thing that could get them home.

  When Dave came to Dilly, he already had tears in his eyes. He tried to remember the last time his son had seen him cry and couldn’t come up with a time. They grabbed each other, Dilly taller than his father.

  “Dad,” he whispered. ‘I’m going with mom. I’m going to fight.”

  “I know,” Dave said. “You stay safe, son. You are precious to me.”

  He heard his son gasp for air as the tears racked his chest. They held on a long time and as he kept going, it was clear Josie was going to be last. When he finally got to her, he grabbed the small of her back and pulled upward, popping her back in a way he used to do when they were younger. It was that perfect moment of affection, something no one else can see you do that holds resonance for the person you’re doing it to.

  “He’s coming with,” Josie said.

  “I know,” Dave said.

  She was crying, too.

  “Your life is in our hands, you know?” she said, half laughing half crying.

  “There’s nowhere else I’d rather put it.”

  “We aren’t done yet,” she whispered into his ear. He felt the hot splash of her tears on his jaw as she leaned up.

  “We aren’t done yet,” he said back. And meant it.

  “It’s almost 3!” Kenny was yelling “Giddyap!”

  As they walked to their cars, Carl caught up with Dave.

  “Can I make a phone call?”

  “I don’t see any reason why not,” Dave said. “This is about over, they know we’re coming. Doesn’t much matter that they know where we are.”

  “Cool.”

  Carl swiped, dialed and smiled as he did.

  “Hey, Steve,” Carl said. “I’d like to request a song. This is a real special case. Any chance I could talk you in to playing it in the next little bit?”

  •••

  At no point in the history of luck had anyone been this lucky. A gambler hitting on 00 while fucking a cocktail waitress while missing his flight that crashes over the ocean wasn’t this lucky.

  Stu had managed to make it back down the street from “Bar,” check on Dana (“you’re doubling back? Are you a genius or an idiot?”) and get back in to the Sheriff’s Department office where the body had been removed but the keys to his patrol car had not. He had run in to one member of the occupying forces who would have seen him had he not gotten a call over the radio and high tailed it back the way he came. And now, as he gingerly approached the car, parked on a gravel road behind the Sheriff’s office, there was no one in sight. Not a soul.

  “I am the luckiest son of a bitch …” Stu said to himself as he got in the driver’s side. Then, as quickly and fiercely as it had arrived, his luck ran out.

  The first bit of bad luck was the radio was gone. Whoever had removed it had done a thorough, if rough job by seemingly ripping the entire console out. Wires were hanging a
nd when he started the car, a spark shot from one of side of the gap where the radio had been.

  The second bit of bad luck was that whoever had ripped out the radio had also turned the lights and sirens on. Stu should have checked but was caught up in the moment and, to be honest, the feeling of confidence that came with being so lucky for so long. The second he turned the key in the ignition the cherries shot to life and the sirens screamed and everyone in a three mile radius knew exactly what was happening and why.

  The third bit of bad luck came when he actually tried to start the car and it didn’t turn over. Upon hearing the sirens he shot in to action and tried to start the car, his blood immediately racing faster and his face flushing with embarrassment at being so goddamn stupid.

  “Oh hell,” Stu said to the sputtering engine. “No, no, no, turn over …”

  But, luck is fickle and it smiled one more time and did as he asked.

  “Yeah!” Stu yelled in the shortest lived triumph of the day as seconds after the engine started, bullets hit the passenger side, shattering the window and making an unmistakable “thunk” against the door. Three men were running toward the car, eager to take responsibility.

  Stu laid on the gas, catching gravel and shooting it behind the car as he sputtered to make a fast getaway. The tires caught and he took off but not before losing another window and hearing the whiz of a bullet flying past his head. His plan was to get in the car and use the radio to call for help. His reality was driving a car with sirens going through a town barricaded off from the outside world. In other words, he was going to have to bust through at least one road block to get out.

  At least they wouldn’t be looking for Dana, he thought.

  The whizzing and thunking stopped, at least for the moment, as Stu put distance between himself and the gunmen and barreled down the street toward “Bar”. He hadn’t grown up around here but he knew enough to know the roads in the direction he was going ended soon and his cruiser was not equipped for off-roading on gravel, so he whipped a hard right and headed toward the first barricade, the one that had caught Willie a few hours earlier.