by Patin, Eddie
“Tommy!” his mom’s voice called from the kitchen.
Shit.
He turned back to the zombies, just in time to block another attack.
Thunk!
He didn’t take the half-second needed to look at his health—he’d be overwhelmed in short order if he didn’t get the hell out of there!
Turning tail, Tommy bolted up over another short hill’s ridge, running almost blindly through the rain with mobs right behind him. He pulled out some fish.
Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch…
His character ate one, then another. He fell down a short cliff that was a little too high to jump from, and was hurt again. A spider hissed, its legs drumming as it ran up behind him.
“Tommy Shelton!” his mother suddenly said, right behind him. “Turn that off! It’s time for dinner!”
He turned to look at her, suddenly remembered the danger, and turned back, trying to get away from the zombies that were on him again.
“Moooooom!” he cried. “Just a second! I’ll be out in just a second!”
Thunk.
He turned and raised his shield just in time. One and a half hearts?! Shit!
“Now, little man!” she said. “I’ve been calling you! You can play again for a while before bed if you eat all of your food.”
A bow twanged from behind him. His character stumbled as the arrow hit, and he turned to run, then heard the final blow as a zombie hit him in the back...
With one last grunt of pain, his character fell to the ground, throwing all of his inventory items out around him. The screen dimmed, and a pop-up message appeared in the middle of the screen.
“You died!” it said.
“Damn it!” Tommy yelled.
He felt a jolt of pain in reality when his mother bopped him on the top of the head.
“Language!” she said. “Come on.”
Tommy stood up from his computer chair and followed her out of the room.
“Aww, Mom,” he said, walking with lanky steps and trailing one hand along the wall. “I got stuck in the rain on an island and I was trying to get back to my boat. It would have just been another second!”
“Isn’t there a pause button?” she asked.
They walked into the small living room, and Tommy saw his little sister, Jody, sitting in front of the coffee table, using her little fingers to push puzzle pieces together. She looked up at him with bright green eyes and a little smile from under her long and straight dark blonde hair.
Tommy’s hair was dark and straight too, in a medium-length cut that threatened to cover his eyes with bangs that needed trimmed, and his mom and dad’s hair was dark. Mom said Jody’s hair would probably get darker when she got a little older—definitely by the time she was twelve like Tommy.
It was the unicorn puzzle. His sister hadn’t put many of the pieces together yet, but Tommy already recognized the pink background. There were also rainbow bits, and white pieces that would become the unicorn’s body.
“Come on,” he said to Jody, and she jumped up to follow him, straightening her shirt with stubby, little fingers.
“Here you go, guys,” Mom said, handing them each a plate. “Both hands.”
Tommy looked at his plate. It was one of the ceramic grown-up plates. Mom never really gave him the little plastic kid plates anymore—only Jody still used those.
Just as well, he thought. He was pretty hungry. And Mom seemed to know it. He had a good-sized portion of twisty noodles and meat, and a fist full of cooked green beans.
Jody frowned at her little, rimmed plastic plate. Tommy saw that she had the same food—just with little kid proportions.
“Mommy, I just want six green beans,” she said. “Not ten.”
“Go to the table,” their mother said, assembling large plates of dinner for herself and Dad.
Tommy walked to the table, put his plate down, and slipped into a chair with ease. Jody followed him, frowning with subtle disapproval, and put her plate next to Tommy’s. She climbed up into her chair with a little effort.
“I should have eight green beans,” she muttered. “When I’m nine, I should have nine, and I won’t have ten until I’m ten!”
Dad’s heavy footsteps clomped into the living room.
“Dinner’s ready, honey!” Mom called.
Tommy’s dad stepped into the kitchen. He was wearing his boots and work pants, but was just wearing a thin, white undershirt on his upper body. His belt was loose, and he wasn’t wearing his gun yet. Dad smiled broadly, looking over the kitchen with happy, dark eyes, looking at Tommy and his sister, looking over at Mom.
“Thanks, babe,” he said. “Not too messy, I hope? I didn’t put my shirt on yet, anyway.”
“Nah,” she said, carrying their plates from the counter to the table. “Just stroganoff and beans. Man, I hate it when you have to work nights!” She put his plate, heaped with food, at the head of the table. “Water or milk?”
“Water’s fine,” he replied, taking his seat, pausing to clap Tommy on the shoulder. “I know, honey. I’m sure this transition thing will be done soon.” Settling in, Dad’s chair groaned.
“It’s going to be so boring—what’ll we do?” Mom said. “I guess we can watch a movie or something…”
Tommy knew what he was going to do tonight. He wanted to get back to his game…
“If we watch a movie, can I still make my puzzle, Mommy?” Jody asked. She sat straight with her hands at her sides. Tommy eyed his stroganoff, but waited like his sister for Mom to get to the table and for Dad to say Grace.
When Mom put the lid back onto the pot sitting on the stove, and walked in with a couple of glasses of water, handing one to Dad, Tommy say up straight and put his hands together, as his family followed suit.
Dad spoke up, closing his eyes and tilting his head down. “We thank you, Lord, for this food we are about to receive. Through Christ Our Lord, Amen.”
“Amen,” Tommy said. His mother and sister repeated it, Jody’s voice tiny and cute.
Grabbing his fork, Tommy dug in, taking huge mouthfuls of twisted, flat noodles, ground meat, and a yummy sauce that made him forget all about his computer game...
“Easy, Tommy!” Mom said, laughing toward Dad.
He slowed down—just a little.
Dad was eating calmly, looking at Mom’s face and smiling, then, he looked over at Tommy and his sister.
“So Tommy,” he said. “I was thinking about going shooting this weekend. You wanna come?”
Tommy took the time to finish his bite, so he wouldn’t be rude when he responded. His parents watched him patiently.
“Yeah sure, I guess,” he said.
Dad looked across the table at Mom. “He guesses,” he said.
She shrugged.
“You know, boy,” he said, “if you want to go deer hunting with me this fall, and be able to hit anything, you’re going to have to learn breath control. Trigger control. Sight alignment, and patience. And the only way you’ll learn is to practice.”
“I know, Dad,” Tommy said. He smiled. “That sounds great, sure…”
Dad smiled, then looked back at his plate to stab another bite.
Tommy loved shooting with his dad. He even had his own guns—a single-action revolver and a single-shot rifle, both in .22.
For his tenth birthday, Dad had given him that revolver, and it was pretty damned cool. He loved the way the cylinder clicked when he spun it around, and loading and unloading .22 rounds through the old-fashioned cylinder gate—the little port behind the cylinder on the right side of the gun—reminded Tommy of Roland the gunslinger from Stephen King’s Dark Tower books, which he read through around the same time.
The little rifle was a bit older—he had received it as a first gun when he was eight. Four whole years ago now! Four and a half, anyway. He was pretty decent with the gun too, and learned a lot about guns and gun safety from it, but it kid stuff—the rifle was small and only able to hold one shot at a time. He
still shot it sometimes.
But his revolver was a lot more fun! It held six shots...
Going shooting with his Dad would get in the way of his plans, though. This weekend, he was going to bring his computer over to his friend Zack’s house to play a long game on Friday night and all day Saturday, and was planning to ask his Mom to stay Saturday night as well. If he tried to make plans to stay an extra night ahead of time, it would never work. But he was going to call her on Saturday afternoon to see if he could stay longer until Sunday.
Sometimes it worked…
It had been a while since he went shooting with Dad, and it always seemed more important to Dad that Tommy goes with him than it felt to Tommy himself…
“Aren’t you going over to Zack’s Friday night, honey?” Mom asked.
“Yep,” Tommy said.
Dad looked up.
“Well, I guess we can go Sunday after church, huh, kid?”
So much for that idea…
Tommy smiled. “Sure, Dad.”
“What about you, Jody?” Dad said. “You want to come, too?”
“Honey…” Mom said.
“Me??” Jody asked with a mouthful of noodles.
“Sure, why not?” Dad said, looking at Mom. “She just turned eight. I started teaching Tommy when he was seven. It’s about time for her to start learning the basics.”
“I don’t know, Allen,” Mom said. “You know, Tommy’s always been really … mature for his age. I don’t know if Jody’s ready yet.”
“It’s okay, Daddy,” Jody said. “No thank you. I just want to stay home with Mommy.”
Dad sighed. “Eh, okay, darlin. Maybe next time, huh?”
“Maybe next time,” she repeated in a sing-song voice.
The family ate in silence for a while, their forks clinking on their plates.
Dad took a sip of water, opened his mouth to say something else…
And a sudden thunderclap hammered the air outside, sending Tommy jumping several inches out of his chair!
Boom!!
The lights everywhere in the house clicked off.
Jody screamed, a quick, high, squeaky sound, then clamped her hands over her mouth.
“What the hell was that?!” Dad said, dropping his fork and jumping to his feet.
“That was thunder!” Tommy cried, putting his fork down and standing like his Dad. Looks like the power went out, the young man thought. If his dad needed help checking the circuit, Tommy would be there to help him…
In the dark, Tommy saw his little sister slide out of her chair and run to their mother. Mom opened her arms and hugged the little girl tightly, speaking quietly to her as she did.
“Shh, shh,” Mom said. “It’s okay—it’s just a power outage. It happens sometimes.”
“What’s lightning doing striking here with no rain?” Dad asked, storming in the dark toward the living room’s window. He crashed into the coffee table with one leg, and ignored it, and continued to the curtains muttering quiet curses to himself.
Tommy hurried to catch up.
“Is it raining?” the boy said.
Dad drew the curtains aside in a quick, angry motion, and stared out at the quiet and cool night sky.
“Nope,” he said, calming down. “That’s weird. What in the world was that?”
“Who wants to help me get the lamp and the candles?” Mom asked, half-singing. “Looks like we’re playing board games instead of a movie!”
“I will!” Jody sang.
Tommy opened his mouth to react, then looked up at Dad.
“Go ahead, boy,” he said.
“I’ll help!” Tommy exclaimed, and ran back to the kitchen, dodging around the coffee table with ease...
5 - Officer Harvey Swanson
Las Vegas, NV
Harvey cupped his hands under the thin, metal faucet of the basic stainless steel sink, and drank some water.
His mouth still tasted like refried beans and bologna.
Gross.
Sighing, he turned off the water, and moved back to the metal bed, hanging from a concrete wall. Harvey sat on the thin mattress, leaned back, and rested his head on the thickly-painted cinder bricks.
It was a good thing they brought him here, to the Convention Center Area Command Center, and stuffed him into this isolated holding cell. Better than being in general population. He certainly wasn’t in a good mood when they busted him...
Of course, if Harvey was booked into the main jail downtown, he’d be in the system. There was no going back from that.
There was hope for him yet.
Thin hope, but hope...
He looked up at the dusty and gnat-infested fluorescent light, and realized that it was buzzing in his ears.
Since they fed him breakfast, Harvey had to assume it was daytime, but really, there was no way to be sure. Unlike in C.C.D.C., there were no windows here. He was under the main floor of this massive station, down with the crickets and the storage rooms, while the brass figured out what to do with him.
As busy as things were up on the main floor, with all of those beat cops who work the strip, as well as all of the city staff milling around, his cell was very quiet.
The light buzzed.
Harvey sighed again, opening his eyes and looking toward the thick, clear plastic wall in the front of his little dwelling and its thick, clear plastic door, framed with blue-painted steel. A blank, grey hallway with no signs of life was on the other side.
Standing and stretching out his long arms and legs, he paced a few times back and forth in the little cell like a caged lion, until he appeared in front of the sink again. Taking another drink with his beefy hand from the minimal faucet, he looked at his face in the sheet of thin metal bolted to the wall that pretended to be a mirror.
Tired blue eyes stared back at him, surrounded by deep, sour lines in a severe, frowning face. His short blonde hair wasn’t all that messed up from sleeping on the crappy synthetic pillow last night, and his normally clean-shaven face was shadowed with blonde and grey stubble.
How had he ended up here? So far from home, screwed over by the woman he loved, jailed by his own comrades for making … bad choices?
Bad choices, he thought. Maybe. Maybe not.
Not really.
He definitely slipped up somewhere—he shouldn’t have gotten caught.
Running a large palm along his face, he felt the stubble scratch his hand, then ruffled his blue polo shirt, now dirty and stained from his body being crushed and pushed onto an oily parking lot.
At least they didn’t try to beat him up.
They knew who he was.
Once, upon a time, he was Sergeant Harvey Swanson.
Now, he was at the bottom again.
Officer one.
Worse than the bottom. He was a criminal now. A perp in a cell.
But he had no regrets—at least not involving the scumbags he deleted, the actions that landed him here. He regretted getting caught, of course...
Harvey splashed water onto his face, wiped his eyes with the bottom of his shirt, and sat back down on the bed.
He became a police officer way back in Salt Lake City to try and make a difference. His family had ground into him the drive to always be prepared, which came with a natural and logical acknowledgment that evil existed in the world. People these days always wanted to make excuses for evil actions. But, the way Harvey saw it, no matter how much emotional and physical abuse drove bad people to do horrible things ... their evil actions themselves still impacted innocent people, and there was no excuse for it.
So some scumbag was sexually abused when he was growing up, was beaten by his daddy, and alienated by his classmates? That sucked. But when he went on to invade someone’s house and execute their family, all of that sorry stuff that drove him to become that twisted adult doesn’t matter to his victims. They’re still dead.
And years ago, when Harvey realized that evil existed, and would always exist, he also realized that he cou
ld personally try to do something about it—to try to make the world just a little brighter. If he helped save some innocent lives from suffering every once and a while, and upset the quota of evil, even just a little, then becoming a cop to do it was a worthy pursuit...
How had he wandered so far?
Those ideals were all Harvey had left. Taken advantage of and being manipulated by a gold-digging bitch, losing his little girl, losing control of himself—eventually all he had left was the pursuit and destruction of evil...
And now, he might lose that too.
Harvey wondered where his daughter was...
The sound of approaching footsteps snapped Harvey out of the mind-numbing trance of sitting awake and staring at nothing. An approaching officer’s boots clacked on the coated concrete floor.
Stepping into sight on the other side of the plastic wall was Corporal Jamal Godwin, dressed in the bright yellow shirt that patrol officers often wore when the weather started getting hot—the neon color a stark contrast against his dark skin.
His old partner.
Harvey hadn’t seen Jamal since … maybe a couple of weeks ago in passing? At least two weeks. It looked like his old partner was growing a short moustache—curly little black hairs clung tightly to his upper lip. The man’s dark eyes contorted into concern.
“Damn, Harvey,” he said with a frown, his deep voice muffled by the security wall.
Harvey scoffed.
“Spare me the bullshit, Jamal,” he replied, standing, and approaching the door.
“I can’t believe it. I still can’t believe it! You’re the Metro Stalker??”
Harvey pressed his lips together, and looked away at the sink. He looked back and met Godwin’s eyes again.
“You know I can’t say anything about that, one way or the other, man.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jamal said. “I get it.” They stood quietly for a moment with the clear plastic wall between them. “Did they book you?”
“Nope,” Harvey said. “Not yet.” He paused. “Do you know what they’re going to do?”
“I dunno,” Jamal replied. “Word is they’re talking to the D.A. right now.”