The way Mark saw it, his job was to earn money at work, then pay people who knew how to do things, rather than learn to do them himself.
So he didn’t know a lot about the world, in some sense. But that was okay. That was his role in life. He was just supposed to earn money for his family.
Up until now, his money had been the gold standard. It had done everything he’d needed it to. It had been his tool, his tool to get done what needed to be done.
It had been what they’d needed as a family. When there was a problem, money had always fixed it.
And now?
Money seemed to do nothing.
The stores were closed. Money wasn’t any good there.
Most of his money wasn’t actually in cash. Most of it was in the bank. And what did that mean? Really just that there were some numbers in a computer system that corresponded to his name.
And now that the computers were down? What had happened to those numbers? What had happened to that money?
Normally, he paid for everything with cards, both debit and credit, depending on the different reward point systems.
Obviously, those cards did nothing now.
Fortunately, he had some cash, about $300 in twenties.
But what good did the cash do him? He’d tried to buy some gasoline from a man walking alongside the road several hours back, but the guy had said, “What good is that money to me now?”
Mark had been stumped. After all, what good was some paper if the institutions that stood behind it had ostensibly collapsed?
Not much good.
Not much good at all.
“Daddy! What’s that?”
“Quiet!” hissed his wife, spinning out.
“Honey,” he said, his voice tired and exhausted. “Don’t worry about it… he’s just… “
“Look, Daddy!”
“Shit, Mark! Did you see that?”
“What is it?”
“Look! Look out the windshield!”
“What?”
Mark was squinting, bending his head down to try to get a better look through the dirty Volvo windshield.
What were they all seeing? And why wasn’t he seeing it?
“Mark! Stop! Stop the car!”
Mark still didn’t see anything.
But he trusted his wife.
He slammed on the brakes.
It was almost just in time. But not quite.
The front bumper of the Volvo hit the car in front of them. Not too hard. But not exactly a low-level fender bender either.
The Volvo, he was sure, would be fine. But newer cars didn’t have bumpers like Volvos. They crumpled more easily.
But the possibility of filing an insurance claim was the furthest thing from his mind right now.
Why hadn’t he seen that car in front of him?
He saw it now. That was for sure. He saw it as clear as day. It was some type of SUV. One of those modern, sleek-looking ones.
“Mark! What the hell? Why didn’t you see it?”
He glanced over.
His wife was furious.
With good reason, he supposed.
But it still didn’t make him feel any better.
“I don’t know…. I don’t know…”
“Dad, are you okay?”
“He’s fine,” snapped his wife. “Daddy needs to think.” Then, more to him, “Mark, what the hell’s going on with you?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know. I guess I’m just really tired.”
He was really tired. His body felt horrible. His heart was racing. He glanced down at his smart watch, interested to see what his pulse was, before forgetting that it didn’t work anymore, just like all the other electronics.
“Hey, buddy!” shouted someone, appearing at the window.
He was a big man. Broad shoulders. Tall. Looked like some kind of woodsman in a flannel shirt, a big dense beard covering his angular face.
The voice was loud, even through the window.
Mark glanced up at the guy. Then over at his wife, looking for an answer.
His heart was really galloping now and he was somehow covered in a thin layer of cold sweat. It made him feel sick.
“Step out of the car! We need to settle this!”
Mark glanced over at the guy again, then at the SUV he’d crashed into, then at the long line of cars that was up ahead.
It was nothing but stop-and-go traffic. How had he not seen it? The lack of sleep must be affecting him more than he’d thought.
“Just drive! Just back up! Don’t be an idiot, Mark!”
Mark thought for a long moment.
Meanwhile, the man stood there, glowering at him.
“No,” he finally said to his wife. “The world may have gone crazy, but it hasn’t gone that crazy…. I’m going to settle this like a man…. like my dad always said, I can’t go running from my problems forever…. I left that lifestyle behind me when I met you and got my job…. I’m never going to be that person again.”
He meant it, too.
If he hadn’t been so tired, he might have realized the extreme contradiction in what he was saying, given the fact that earlier on he’d actually run over a man and hadn’t even stopped the car.
If he had remembered that, he would have managed to justify it somehow.
But his mind was beyond tired, so tired that he hadn’t even seen a massive line of cars. What had happened? Had he drifted off, thinking that he was awake when he was actually dreaming? Or had his mind filled in the missing space with just a nice empty road, an effect of his dreams starting to poke through into normal life?
“Daddy will be right back,” he said, turning around to his children.
Despite his fatigue, he managed to wink at them as he often did.
But while they normally giggled when he winked at them, now they were dead silent. They didn’t make a peep.
Holding one finger up to the man outside, signaling that he’d be there in one moment, he turned to his wife. “Tell them it’s going to be okay,” he said.
But she didn’t respond the way he’d hoped. Instead, she said, “Mark, don’t you dare get out of this car.”
“I’ve got to do the right thing,” he said. “I can’t run away from my problems.”
“Are you demented? What about that man you ran over?”
Mark’s exhausted brain couldn’t deal with the contradiction.
He huffed, exhaling sharply. And, in a flash, he opened the door, stepping out, ignoring the pleas from his wife and children.
Mark closed the door.
The man took a step toward him. He towered over Mark. He said nothing. His face was stone.
“I’m sorry,” sputtered Mark, looking up at the man’s stern face. “I’m sure we can work something out…”
The man still said nothing, so Mark decided to make things clear by digging into his back pocket and bringing out his wallet.
He started to open it, making it clear that he was going to pay the man.
“Now what do you think is fair?”
“I don’t want that,” snarled the man. “What good is money to me?”
“But…”
Mark’s tired brain was having a tough time. It was having a tough time trying to comprehend how money wouldn’t or couldn’t solve all his problems.
The man’s giant hand suddenly swung at Mark. Mark flinched, thinking he was about to be hit.
But the man hadn’t been going for Mark. He’d been going for his wallet. His massive paw hand swatted the wallet out of Mark’s trembling hands. The wallet went flying, landing several feet away in the snow, instantly buried out of sight.
It was like some kind of symbol. A symbol of everything that he’d worked so hard for. And a symbol of everything that wouldn’t work for him now.
11
Hank
Hank could barely believe that he wasn’t hit. The cop had known what he was doing. He’d gotten a lot of good shots off.
To
put it frankly to himself, Hank was surprised he was alive.
He had to give the cop credit. They usually weren’t that good. Well, plenty of them were. And plenty of them weren’t. It was a mixed bag, like anything else.
“You still alive?” called out Hank to his new partner, the man who’d been his enemy less than an hour ago.
“Still alive.”
“You hit?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it bad?”
“I’ll live.”
“You need anything?”
The man was on the other side of the car.
Hank finally hoisted himself up, beginning to walk slowly around the vehicle. Everything hurt. But he wasn’t dead. He hadn’t been shot. He wasn’t even bleeding. Not bad for a fight.
His new partner was lying there. Blood on his leg. Blood on his arm.
“How you holding up?”
The man grunted.
“What should I do?”
It wasn’t that Hank didn’t know what to do. He knew good and well how to do a crude field dressing. Crude but functional.
But he also knew the code. The code that he and his associates operated by.
One of the rules was that you don’t touch another man, whether to bandage him or whatever, unless he’s okay with it.
He shook his head. “I got it,” he said.
“You don’t look like you do.”
The man scowled and something like a growl issued from his mouth. “Trust me,” he said. “I got it.”
And with that, he began to work, cutting away part of his shirt and starting to bind it around his leg as a sort of tourniquet.
“That looks like it’ll work fine. But what about your arm?”
The man held up his arm. “Look. It didn’t even get me. Just grazed me. It’s not even bleeding bad.”
One man’s definition of bleeding bad wasn’t another man’s.
There was a chunk missing from the man’s arm, right where his shirt was torn.
“We almost got him.”
The man grunted, continuing to work.
Hank studied the man as he worked, scrutinizing his face, trying to read his character further.
Then Hank found himself looking around at the devastation, at the dead men scattered around the vehicles.
Jimmy was there, looking ridiculous and awkward. Hank found himself studying Jimmy’s face. Even in death, there was something there that he just didn’t like.
Hank felt nothing in the way of emotions. That’s just the way he was. It was part of what made him good at what he did.
His mind was already working, already strategizing.
It was thinking things over, coming up with plans, churning and churning, as it often or always was.
What about that cop?
Now, normally, you’d get in a gunfight with the cops and that would be it. Either death or jail. One way or another, they’d catch you. You couldn’t live completely outside the law the way you used to be able to do, hiding out away from civilization.
Now there were cameras. Cameras everywhere.
But now? The cameras couldn’t have been working.
But what about that cop? He was alive. That much was sure. He’d driven away.
Had the cop gotten a good look at Hank? There was no way to know. But, he probably had. Why wouldn’t he?
So what happened when things went back to normal and the cop put this all down in his report? What happened when he got a sketch artist to draw Hank’s face into one of those fancy new computer programs that would track him in a national database, immediately pulling up his name, criminal record, and last known address?
He had to track down that cop.
He had to kill him.
There was no other way.
Hank valued his freedom too much to not find that cop.
Well, it shouldn’t be too hard, right? North Adams wasn’t large, and the surrounding areas were mostly rural. The cop must be local. He hadn’t been a highway patrolman, judging by the squad car. Hell, the cop probably lived nearby. He’d probably been on his way into the station from his respectable little home not more than a couple miles away.
“How’s it going, buddy?” said Hank, looking down at his partner, who was still busy bandaging himself.
“Almost got it,” he grunted.
It was then that Hank suddenly remembered the drugs. And the money.
What would happen to the trade-off?
Well, the cop had to be taken care of first.
But after that? The proper thing to do would be to split it. It seemed likely that the next link in the drug transport chain would be broken, considering what was going on in society. Better to be careful and not try to keep going down south with it. No point in that.
Since society was in shambles at the moment, that also meant that if there was ever a chance for Hank to abscond with a big cache of money and drugs, it was now. Right now.
When society was in shambles, criminal groups often also were. Sometimes, they could grow powerful very quickly. But that growth always originated in chaos.
Whatever was going on down south, Hank doubted that he’d be sorely missed if he didn’t show up on time. After all, what could they do? They couldn’t exactly call him, or send him an email, could they? And if he made it halfway across the country, or up to Canada, or even down to Mexico, they’d have a hell of a time tracking him. Even with their moles in the highway service and police forces, they’d be at a loss to track him when all the cameras and license plate scanners were out of commission.
Maybe this was Hank’s chance for real freedom. After all, what gave someone freedom other than money? Not a whole lot.
What was he thinking? This was his chance.
Hank stared down at his companion, who undoubtedly would want a cut too. Or maybe he’d object to the whole project, calling it theft or something equally ridiculous.
Hank’s hand went instinctively to his gun. His finger slid behind the guard, pressing ever so slightly on the trigger.
All he had to do was pull the trigger. All he had to do was extend his arm. All he had to do was something he’d done dozens of times before.
It was easy. As easy as anything in the world.
The money would be all his. The drugs would be his to sell later.
It’d be quite the fortune. He’d be untraceable, finally able to retire.
A beach in Mexico sure sounded good right about now, when the wind ate at his bones, and the gray sky hung oppressively low above him.
His partner, who was about to die, finally finished with his tourniquets and bandages.
“You got lucky,” he said. “That you didn’t get hit.”
Hank studied him, taking in all the lines of his face, all those little minuscule expressions that people make with the small muscles around their eyes. He always liked to study the faces of the people he was about to kill. After all, these were their final moments on Earth, the final moments that were witnessed by no one but himself.
Hank had something of a photographic memory for these faces, those small gestures right before he’d pulled the trigger or plunged the knife.
Sometimes he worried about how much he’d like it. Maybe in another life he could have been a serial killer. Maybe, technically, he would have been considered one already, given how many people he’d killed. But in reality, he was too focused on himself, too focused on money and freedom. He knew that when he retired, he’d kill no more. He was just an amateur killer, a dilettante. The serial killers… that was their life, and nothing more. They cared about nothing else.
“Give me a hand up, would you?” said the man, holding up a blood-drenched hand. “I got the bleeding stopped mostly. But I’m stiff as frozen cow shit.”
Hank remained frozen, his finger on the gun that was out of sight.
“Hey, what gives? Give me a hand, buddy. I’m in pain here.”
Hank still didn’t move. He didn’t shoot, and he didn’t yet extend a ha
nd.
It was as if he was waiting for inspiration. Something was holding him back from killing this man right here and now.
And what was it?
The idea hit him suddenly, like a ton of bricks. He gasped for breath. Anger filled him. Anger at his own stupidity. Why hadn’t he thought of this before?
The obvious thing to do was to use this man’s help in tracking down and assassinating that uppity cop. Then when that was done, Hank would kill his own partner, taking the loot for himself.
That was simply the best strategy. It was simply the plan that left the least room for error.
It was the best plan.
“Here you go, buddy,” said Hank, reaching down, extending his hand.
The man took it, the blood on his hand immediately getting on Hank’s. It was wet and slick, and it ran between their pressed together palms like oil. It was as if they were making some blood-based pact, one that should never be broken, but one that Hank already knew he’d have no choice but to break.
12
James
James was trying to get with the program, for lack of a better term.
Sure, he’d been nearly beaten to a pulp. Sure, he was black and blue all over. Sure, he’d rarely felt this much pain, let alone for this long. Sure, he was pretty certain that many of his toes and some of his fingers were broken.
But so what?
This cop here, he was really hurt. He was unconscious. He was in a bad state. James didn’t see how the cop could possibly pull through.
And all of this made James think differently about his own condition. After all, hadn’t he seen in his own life countless examples of mind over matter, where someone had been able to push themselves with sheer willpower through difficult physical circumstances?
So why couldn’t he do it?
James and Meg were silent.
The air was tense.
Barb was working furiously and expertly on the cop, occasionally giving little status reports to James and Meg. Nothing more than quick bursts of words. Occasionally, she needed something and barked orders succinctly.
The minutes passed.
“I think I’m getting the bleeding down,” she said.
Constant Danger (Book 2): Defeat The Anarchy Page 8