He wiped tears away with the collar of his shirt and pulled the brim of his hat to shield his eyes. “You must think I’m the biggest baby.”
She lifted the brim of his hat slightly and looked him in the eyes. “I don’t.” Standing back up she walked over to the kitchen table and sat down. “It feels nice in here.”
“We should check every room just to be sure that it’s safe before we do anything else. This has got to be too good to be true. I feel like there has be to a wild bear waiting to maul us or something.”
“You come across a lot of bears here in Akron?” Anna asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I’ve read Call of the Wild enough to know it could happen. Ohio and Canada are pretty close.” Cole opened all of the kitchen drawers until he found the one he was searching for and pulled out a knife. “I’ll look upstairs real fast, and you check the rest of the rooms down here. Open all doors and really look inside for anything strange.”
“Why are you so suspicious?”
“Because dying people set traps to keep people from looting their house. They would rather have all of their possessions just sit to decay rather than have someone who didn’t purchase them use them. I don’t know if you didn’t hear me the first time… but people, even the dead ones, are the worst.” He lifted up his shirt to expose a round scar under his rib cage. “See this?”
“Yeah… ouch. What happened?”
“There was this huge house right outside of town. They had really elaborate outdoor Christmas decorations… so I assumed there must be really cool presents wrapped under the tree. I opened the front door and schwoomp- I get impaled by an arrow.”
“But how? If there was no one there---”
“They rigged a contraption to shoot an arrow if anyone opened their door like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. But, joke’s on them- I left the arrow there and opened all of their presents and smashed the stupid ones, and kept the really cool leather coat.”
“What’d you do about the arrow?”
“I waited until I got to a drug store to pull it out. It bled for a while but eventually healed.”
Anna walked over to the kitchen drawer and pulled out a knife. “You’re making a lot of sense”
Cole smiled and nodded and headed up the staircase.
Anna started by opening the door to the pantry. It was filled with shelf upon shelf of boxed and canned foods that were covered in a thick layer of dust. She then opened the door on the far end of the kitchen and was confronted with a dark hallway and a set of stairs. “I think I’ll hold off going down there…” she said and softly closed the door.
The dining room was occupied by a long table that was covered in a white tarp as well as the chairs surrounding it. Another large chandelier hung above the table with tiny twinkling lights. At the end of the table was a red envelope that stood out against the white cloth. Anna walk over to it and flipped it over. It appeared to be a hand-delivered letter that was addressed to Rodrigo.
You won’t take my calls, answer my texts or respond to my emails. I just wanted you
know that I’m done begging. Keep your money. I’m going to use what’s left of the
settlement to make sure that the whole world knows what kind of man you are. I’m going to tell the whole world you worked for A-IX. I’m going to tell them that you used your A-IX money to pay for your Harlow treatments, and I’m going to tell them that you refused to buy them for your kids and your ex-wife. Sure, people may understand why a man wouldn’t put up the money he so clearly has to save his ex-wife… but his children? Landon is so sick and you don’t even care. You are not a man. There might not be a world tomorrow, and my efforts to smear your name might not make a difference in the end… but at the end of every day when I lay my head down to sleep I know that I did everything in my power to help my children. Quemarse en el inferno, Rod.
Anna walked into the living room and ran her fingertips along the crushed velvet sofa. The living room closet held nothing but throw pillows and blankets. As she crossed in front of the staircase to the den she heard voices coming from the second floor. As she stood and listened, trying to decipher what was being said, Cole appeared at the top of the steps.
“The owner… he is still here.” He pointed down the hallway.
Anna ran to the top of the stairs. “Alive?”
“Yeah… he’s right in there.” He pointed to the one door that was open and casting yellow light into the hallway.
“And… he doesn’t mind that we’re in his house?” Anna was suspicious.
“He’s a frail old man. I think he’s confused. He thinks that I’m the gardener.” He rolled his eyes.
Anna sighed. “If he’s a confused old man he probably won’t remember me.”
“We’ve got nothing but time to jog his memory.” Cole said and turned to head back down the hallway. “Are you ready?”
Anna nodded and followed him
“Hey, Mr. Moreno,” Cole appeared back in his doorway, “I wanted to introduce you to my friend. I hope that’s ok.”
“Sure, I don’t mind,” a thin voice said inside the room.
Anna followed Cole into the room and looked upon the small man. He was thinner than she remembered him being, and the frame of his glasses looked different. His thick black hair wasn’t slicked back, but was disheveled silver waves. She did, however, recognize the shape of his face and the way he so intensely studied the papers that were in front of him.
“D-D-Doctor Moreno… do you remember me?”
The old man looked up from the document and dropped his pen and let out a strange puff of air. He stood up and his desk chair crashed into the filing cabinets behind him. Raising shaking hands to his ears he whimpered the way a child would whimper.
“‘Dios perdoname... dios perdoname... dios perdoname!” he said as his whole body began to shake. And then, as if someone had turned a light on in his brain, he stopped shaking and stopped speaking, opening the bottom drawer of his desk. He reached down and pulled out a handgun.
“Wait!” Anna yelled as she put up her hands defensively.
Cole dropped to the ground and pulled on Anna’s legs, pleading her to join him on the ground.
They both jumped at the sound of the gunshot as Dr. Moreno put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, and stood motionless as his body collapsed onto the floor.
They stood that way for what felt like days: Anna crouched over with her fingers in her ears and Cole wrapped around her legs on the floor.
“Holy shit…” Anna finally said as she dropped her hands to her side. She slowly leaned over the desk to find Dr. Moreno slumped against the wall with a puddle of blood seeping into the beige carpet.
Cole slowly rose to his feet. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Wait, what? What’s wrong with me?”
“Why didn’t you take cover? He had a gun.”
“I thought I could talk him out of it.” She shrugged.
“Look around you, Anna.” Cole’s face began to turn red as he raised his voice. “Look at the world… talking doesn’t work.”
“Hey…” Anna folded her arms against her chest. “Calm down... It all happened so fast I just acted instinctively.” She walked over to where Dr. Moreno lay. “Pretty sure he’s dead.”
Cole walked over to the end of the desk and nodded in agreement. He picked up the document that Dr. Moreno had been working on. It was a leather-bound book and on the front page it read Mi Autobiografia. “Well shit.”
“What is it?” Anna peered over and read the title. “You’ve got to be kidding me…”
“Looks like this book holds all of the answers that you were probably looking for. The question is- can you read Spanish?”
“Not even a little. Do you?”
Cole rolled his eyes. “Oh yeah… I took two semesters of Spanish my sophomore year at Ohio State.”
“Alright, alright… the sarcasm isn’t necessary.” She flipped through the book helpl
essly. “I’m going to hold on to it anyway. Maybe if I could get my hands on a translating dictionary---”
“You could have it translated right before you die of old age,” Cole quipped as began to look through the filing cabinets. “He was an English-speaking doctor… there has to be something here in English that could be useful. Help me look.”
While Cole continued to open each filing cabinet drawer, Anna looked through the desk drawers.
“These look like the receipts from his Harlow treatments.” Anna waved the papers in the air.
“There were treatments for the virus?”
“An article that I read in the newspaper downstairs said that a small company out of Texas was charging people over $200,000 for the cure. And based upon an angry letter that I read in the dining room… he only paid to get the treatments himself and left his ex and his kids to die.”
“Even his kids? Man… this guy sounds like a real asshole.” Cole pulled out a thick manila folder. “This might be useful- it’s a folder labeled paychecks.” He sat the folder on the desk while he and Anna scanned through each individual piece of paper. Most were basic pay stubs from the hospital in which he worked, but there were paystubs from a company called A-IX.
“A-IX… that name keeps popping up.” Anna sat down in the dead man’s desk chair.
“Yeah, there are a lot of buildings that have negative things about them spray-painted on them.”
“It’s popped up other places, too. When I woke up in Wooster there was a dead man in the building with me and he was wearing a polo shirt with the A-IX symbol and in that letter down---”
“Wait… you never mentioned the dead guy before.”
“Yeah I know… but I’m telling you now.”
“It seems like a big detail to omit.”
“I feel like you’re getting tied up on this really small detail,” she snapped in frustration.
Cole didn’t respond, but instead read over the same pay stub.
“There was a letter downstairs the mentioned his ex-wife was going to slander him for not paying for the cure for his children along with the work he did for A-IX… like the work he did for them was bad or something.”
Again, Cole remained silent.
“Ok what’s going on- why are you suddenly silent?”
“I just don’t know why you snapped at me.”
Anna let out a long sigh. “Look- the mere sight of me caused this old man--- an old man who paid over $200,000 to stay alive at one point--- to grab a gun and blow his brains out. My nerves are a bit on edge. I’m sorry.”
Cole nodded, his cheeks red with embarrassment. “It seems that we need to find where this place- this A-IX place- is.”
“Yeah… wait… these check stubs are weird. It’s like they’re commission checks.”
“What’s that mean?”
“That instead of earning an hourly wage, he’s being paid per job. And it looks like each job is tied to a name. Which means…. Shit--- Here, right here--- this is me, this is me… Anna Kemp!” She pointed to her name on the check stub.
“M-1501 Anna Kemp 10/27/2015 $500,000” Cole read from the receipt.
A burning sensation filled Anna’s stomach. “What did he do to me that warranted a commission of a half of a million dollars?”
Chapter 9
The address on the back of Dr. Moreno’s check stub lead them ten miles away to West Akron, and was referred to as The Ohio Division of A-IX.
Anna chewed on the corner of a fingernail as she watched Cole try to fill an empty gas tank. “Sorry… I was never good at keeping the tank filled,” she said along the side of a broken and mossy side street.
Cole spit the gas that had come up out of the hose onto the ground and quickly placed the hose inside her gas tank. “I don’t know why you couldn’t do this.”
“I told you, I don’t know how.”
“You ever drink pop through a straw?”
“Yeah…”
“Then you know how to siphon gas out of a gas tank.”
Anna laughed and walked to the front of the car and jumped up on the hood. Pulling her knees into her chest she peered over the peaceful landscape. There were few houses and buildings visible from the street that lead away from the city. Everything looked as it normally did, although a bit greener. She leaned back on the windshield, closed her eyes and listened to the birds.
“Greetings, travelers!” A woman’s voice echoed in the distance.
Anna shot up from the windshield and rolled herself off of the car. “Where did that voice come from?”
“Over there.” Cole pointed to a line of heavily robed people walking up from a gravel driveway.
“What should we do? Should we make a break for it?”
Cole folded his hands on the top of his head as he considered their options.
“We mean you no harm, travelers, and we have come with great news!” the woman’s voice said as they neared.
Anna looked to Cole with wild, panicked eyes.
“Let’s hear what they have to say. Turn on the car and stand outside the door. If things go south, jump in the car and mow them all down.”
Anna leaned into the car from an open window and started the engine. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” she muttered to herself.
As the group neared, their features became more clear. There were seven people in the group, and each wore a black cape over their filthy clothes. The seven people wore a different plastic mask on their head: a horse head, a pumpkin head, a Richard Nixon head, a Spiderman mask, a chicken head mask, and 2 Osama Bin Laden masks.
“I’m so pleased that you decided to stay and listen,” Richard Nixon said. She sighed and continued, “We see so very, very few people anymore… and the ones we do see are frightened by our looks.”
“Even though we have tried our best to make our appearance pleasing to the eye. Yet many still fear us,” Spiderman added.
Richard Nixon nodded. “May I ask where it is in which you are headed?”
“West Akron.” Cole replied.
“May I ask what business in which you seek in West Akron?”
“No.” Anna quickly added before Cole could answer truthfully.
Richard Nixon nodded again. “I can see you would prefer us to disclose our intentions first, and I will obey your unspoken wishes. We are the Troopers of Vader, and we hail from Washington D.C. My name is Trooper Grace. We seek new members to join our tribe. For once we were over 100 strong, we are now a meager 22. After the great light destroyed our town, we seek guidance and strength in the darkness.”
“Wait…” Anna interjected. “Troopers of Vader? As in Darth Vader?”
The group sucked in a collective gasp. “You have heard tale of Lord Vader?” Osama Bin Laden walked to the front of the group.
“Yeah I saw those movies like a dozen times.”
“She has laid witness to the Lost Word!” Osama Bin Laden brought his hands up to his plastic mouth. “Trooper Grace! Is she not the prophet that you dreamed all those years ago?”
Richard Nixon put her hand on Osama Bin Laden’s shoulder. “Trooper Carl, I feel you are frightening these travelers.” She took a few more steps towards Anna and Cole. “I know we may seem strange, but I would love the opportunity to introduce you to our tribe.”
Cole looked at Anna who tightly shook her head. He turned back around and held up a finger, signaling the group to wait. He circled around and pulled Anna away from the car. “We should go with them.”
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