Frag Box

by Richard A. Thompson

  “Try to find another one,” I whispered.

  “Another axe?”

  “Another thing that could be used as a weapon. Tire iron, pry bar, anything. But keep the lighter away from the windows.”

  She faded into the darkness and came back a short time later with a crowbar and a blade from a rotary lawn mower.

  “Good job. You get first choice.” She picked the crowbar.

  “Herman, I’m scared.”

  “Relax, Anne. And keep your voice to a whisper. We’re going to make it through this.” I had absolutely no idea how.

  The garage was not small, but most of it was filled with the massive hull of some kind of cruising sailboat.

  “See if you can get up and inside that thing,” I said, pointing. “If they break in, I’ll try to draw them away.”

  “I can’t ask you to do that.”

  “Now would be a good time,” I said. “And quietly.”

  She gave me a soft kiss on the cheek, which I found totally surprising and rather touching, and disappeared into the dark interior.

  We waited silently in the dark for maybe five minutes. I wondered how clear our footprints were in the new snow, then pushed it out of my mind as just one more thing I couldn’t do anything about. Then something bumped against the outside of the garage, and I could dimly hear voices. The lock handle on the overhead door, by the bow of the boat, rattled. Shit! I had completely forgotten to check that one.

  “This one’s locked,” said a voice.

  Thank God for small favors.

  “What about the man-door?”

  “Checking it now.”

  Suddenly somebody on the other side of my wedged door was jiggling the knob.

  I grabbed the mower blade in my right hand and held it over my head, ready to strike down on the first thing that came through the door. With my left hand, I held the axe in place. If somebody decided to shoot through the door, I was a dead man. Or through the wall, for that matter. The place really wasn’t built all that solidly. Its only good feature was that it had only two very small windows, and they were set high off the floor, where an ordinary person couldn’t look through them without standing on something.

  The doorknob jiggled again and somebody pushed on the door at the same time. It moved maybe a quarter of an inch before the wedging action of the axe head took hold and stopped it. I resisted the enormous urge to push it back to where it had been.

  “No joy,” said the voice outside.

  I heard another bump against the side of the garage, and I continued to hold the mower blade high, ready to strike with it. Then a couple of powerful flashlights turned the glass on one of the windows opaque yellow-white, while the beams swept around the interior, probing, accusing.

  I abandoned my post by the door before the light got to it, diving under the boat. The hull seemed to be supported by some kind of a cradle, rather than sitting on a trailer, and there was barely room for me to squeeze under it. The discs of light continued to dance around, but they couldn’t reach me. I forced myself to breathe normally, hoping to put myself into a state of calm control by some reverse body language. It didn’t work. Some very old impulses were resurfacing. Very old. But I wasn’t very old anymore. Suddenly I was fourteen again, and quite sure I was about to die.

  Chapter 20

  The Chill Below

  Michigan Central Station is the only building left standing in the center of Detroit’s old downtown, other than the twin office towers behind it. The towers are vacant and abandoned now, the lower-level windows boarded up. The train station is still in use, but it looks like a derelict, too, surrounded on all sides by blocks and blocks of empty landscape, where all the buildings have been leveled and replaced with nothing.

  I see it suddenly, as I break out from the alley between a bank and an insurance company building, still running. My lungs are on fire. I would tell myself to stop and take a few deep breaths, but that won’t do it. I need a lot more oxygen than that. And I will need more yet. I put my hands on my knees and bend over for a moment, resisting the urge to puke. Then I straighten up and move on.

  I can clearly see the station now, but there’s no way I can get to it. The space between it and me is full of cops, guardsmen, and rioters, all beating the shit out of each other. It looks like a battle scene from the Trojan War, only with firearms and smoke canisters.

  Over near the terminal building itself, there is a beat up car beginning to catch fire back by the gas tank. It looks just one hell of a lot like Jerp’s Mercury.

  Forget about the troops. Forget about catching your breath. You can get through, somehow. You have to. Jerp could still be there. But even as I start running, I see the flames spread. Then the gas tank blows, lifting the ass end of the car six feet off the ground.

  What the hell do I do now, besides try again to catch my breath? Get someplace else, anyplace else. Not back downtown. I just came from that way, and it’s no good. Run. Move, damn it!

  Away from the terminal building, toward the river, three or four sets of train tracks bend away from the main lines and disappear into a black tunnel, plunging down to go under the Detroit river. Nobody in his right mind would go there on foot.

  So I do.

  Maybe twenty yards into the tunnel, stumbling over rocks and railroad ties that I can’t see, I find a string of freight cars, just sitting. The doors all look shut, so I climb under a car and scrunch up behind one of the big wheels. Clutching my baseball bat, the only protection I have besides my young, fast legs, I hug the track ballast and pray that I won’t be seen.

  Stay here, stay here, stay here. Wait this thing out.

  I stay until the sun goes down and the urban battlefield behind me is empty of people, lit by the occasional burning car or trash fire. Even in a real war, people eventually get tired and go home, I guess. Walk back over and check the Mercury for Jerp’s body. Nope, empty. Well, that’s something.

  Suddenly I remember that my pad has been torched. Where to go? Where to spend what’s left of the night? Where to sleep? God, I need some sleep.

  Six-by-six Army trucks with fifty caliber machine guns mounted on them are patrolling the streets now. There’s probably a curfew, and the troops are spooked and strung out, shooting anything that moves. And here and there, people who aren’t so easy to see are shooting, too.

  Back to the tunnel, is all I can think of. My freight train is still there, but I no sooner get under it than it starts moving, filling the dark with clanking, screeching noises. There’s no place else to go, so I flatten out and let the train pass over me. Nothing hits me, so I guess there’s more room than I had thought. I don’t care what Uncle Fred says; if I get out of this alive, I’ll never go collecting without a sidearm again. After the train is gone, I go deeper into the tunnel, clear down to where I imagine I can hear the river rushing overhead. There are more trains, later, but they don’t frighten me anymore. I’m busy listening for other things, waiting out the night. And feeling very frightened and very, very ashamed.

  ***

  “Herman?”

  And quite suddenly, it was over. Really over. Its power was gone, and not because Anne had called my name, but because somewhere deep in the back of my psyche, the right machinery had finally clicked and I knew I could redeem myself by my own hand. I had come a long way since Detroit, dragged myself up to adulthood and self-sufficiency with no help from anybody. And the terrible memory of that boiling summer had been easy to push away, never to be looked at again. But Charlie Victor’s death had brought it back and it made me see, finally, the link between us that I hadn’t been able to put a name on. Charlie had been abandoned by his comrades-in-arms. And to my shame, I had been an abandoner of another comrade. Sooner or later, I had to atone for that. I decided it would be sooner.

  “Herman?”

  The flashlight beams were gone, and Anne was leaning over the gunwale above me.

  “Herman, where are you
?”

  “Keep your voice down. We don’t know if our new friends are completely gone yet.”

  “Okay, my voice is down. Come and see what I found.”

  I dragged myself out and up and took the object she was holding out to me. It was a double-barreled shotgun.

  “I don’t believe this,” I said. “Is it loaded?”

  “I think so. There’s some kind of shells in it, anyway, but I didn’t pull them out to see if they were live. I was afraid I might drop them and loose them in the dark. I didn’t find any extras.”

  I cracked the breech and carefully pulled out one shell. It was about the right weight and had a closed end, so I pronounced it live. I put it back in and snapped the weapon shut again. Suddenly I had a whole world of options.

  “Can you see out the garage windows from up there?”

  “They’re awfully dirty, but I’m up high enough, yes.”

  “How did you get up there?”

  “There’s no ladder, but there’s a sort of step thingy by the rudder that works pretty well.”

  I found the thing she was talking about and hoisted myself aboard as quietly as I could. The garage windows were dimly lit from outside by a single streetlamp in the middle of the block. I saw no silhouettes of anyone looking in. I leaned out a bit farther and saw parts of an empty alley.

  “We need to find out if they’ve really gone.”

  “How about if we curl up together in the cabin of the boat and get warm for a few hours first? No, make that a few days.”

  “We have to know.”

  “And how do you suggest we find out?”

  “I’m going back outside.”

  “I was afraid you’d say something like that.”

  We agreed on a secret knock, and Anne secured the door behind me. I immediately ducked into a shadow and began to work my way down the alley. I tried to move like a commando looking for a sniper, grabbing cover wherever I could, keeping my eyes moving, always pointing the shotgun where I looked. Nobody.

  I hugged the shadows, forcing myself to take my time. Across the alley from the bathroom window that Anne and I had bailed out of, I hunkered down behind a garbage can and looked and listened.

  The window was dark. It should have still been lit. I watched the snow drift silently down in front of it and it suddenly occurred to me that it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Here I was facing almost certain death, and I was thinking that the snowfall in an alley behind a third-rate motel was the stuff of picture post cards. I almost laughed. And somehow I knew that now I could do whatever it took to survive. Or at the very least, I could save her. And that would be good enough.

  I looked for movement or light in the window, the glow of a cigarette, the green spillover from a night-vision scope. I listened for a careless bit of chitchat or a scuffling footfall. I breathed deeply and counted my breaths. After thirty, I finally decided there was nobody there, and I moved on.

  I wondered if the intruders had killed the night manager at the motel before they came for Anne and me. When I came to a spot across from the end of the motel, I broke cover and ran as fast as I could across the alley, flattening myself against the back wall. I risked a quick look around the corner, then a longer one. Again, I saw nobody. I turned the corner and moved along the end wall of the building, shotgun shouldered and up.

  And quite suddenly, the jig was up. Four men in black came ambling around the corner, carrying their weapons loose and low, talking with each other, not looking at me. I cocked both hammers on the ancient shotgun, and they froze and looked up. And again, I knew I could face death and not blink.

  “The first one of you who raises his weapon, gets his head blown off.” I was surprised at how steady my voice was.

  “You seem to be a little light in your math skills,” said the one in the right center slot. But he kept his weapon where it was and with his free hand gestured to the others to do the same. He seemed to be the one in command, and I aimed the shotgun squarely at his head.

  “Not really,” I said. “I have two shots and there are four of you, and that’s way too bad. It means I can only kill you and one other guy before the others drop me. But I can do that, and I will.” God, I loved that voice. Hell, even I believed that voice.

  But would he? He and the others were backlit by the spillover from the parking lot floods, and I couldn’t read their expressions at all. They remained motionless for what seemed like hours, and so did I. Finally the same man spoke again.

  “I don’t think you’ll shoot anybody in the back. You win, for now. We’re leaving. Let’s go, men. Slow and easy.” And still keeping his gun at sling-arms, he turned slowly on his heel and walked away from me.

  After a skipped heartbeat or two, the others followed suit. I walked quickly backward to the corner of the building, to use it for cover in case it was all a ruse. I kept the shotgun leveled at them. But they kept on going. A minute or two later, I heard car doors slam and an engine start. When I ran over to a dumpster at the edge of the parking lot and ducked behind it, I saw the Hummer cruise out the driveway and on down the road.

  I permitted myself to tremble. I avoided walking anywhere for a while, because I was sure my legs didn’t have a bone in them. And as I leaned on the dumpster and stared off at the dark streets, I saw flashing red and blue strobe lights, first a long way off, then closing rapidly. The law had arrived.

  Chapter 21

  Ships in The Night

  My new favorite sheriff, Oskar Lindstrom, led the parade in his Explorer, followed by a couple of deputies in unmarked cars and then a fire truck. When they got close enough to have me in their headlights, I put the shotgun on the ground and stepped forward, away from it. The sheriff got out of his vehicle and squinted at me, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. He had his revolver out and up, but when he recognized me, he relaxed a bit and pointed it at the sky.

  “Some folks don’t seem to know when to get out of town,” he said.

  “It’s that small town hospitality,” I said. “You just hate to leave it.”

  “Yeah, I’m so sure. So you stick around and blow up a motel room, just to be doing something?”

  “We didn’t do it, we had it done to us. I’ll tell you the whole story, but first I think we ought to go check on the motel manager. He could need medical attention.” I walked toward the motel office with the sheriff at my side. The others trailed behind us. As we walked, I gave Lindstrom a quick version of what had happened. He put his gun back in its holster and walked with his hands on his hips, shaking his head a lot and scowling. He looked as if I had personally brought him more trouble than the entire rest of his law enforcement career.

  “Well, I can’t imagine anybody making up something like that,” said the sheriff. “So who do you think these people are, then?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I think you have a lot of ideas. You just don’t like sharing them.”

  I was starting to think he might be right. Maybe I knew a lot more than I thought I did. Or I was about to.

  The motel manager had been gagged and tied up but was otherwise undamaged. Apparently it had been one of the other motel guests who had called nine-one-one. We checked our rooms next, and to my amazement, there was very little damage beyond the broken window and a couple of kicked-open doors. If the sheriff hadn’t gotten a call from somebody other than me, I’d have had trouble convincing him there had been any explosions at all. Concussion grenade, I thought. Not meant to kill, just to stun and shock.

  “So, is that your shotgun back there?” said Lindstrom.

  “No. I borrowed it from a garage with a big boat in it. We ran away and hid there when the goons came.”

  “That would be Elmer Carlson’s garage. He’s a retired carpenter, built that boat from scratch. Used to be, when his wife was alive, it was his place to go get away from her. He’d go out and pretend to work on the boat and then get drunk and pass out. She�
��s been gone for a long time now, died of cancer, and he’s confined to a wheelchair, has a nurse look in on him a couple times a day. So there’s probably been nobody in the garage for years now. I’m surprised it wasn’t locked. Where’s your wife, then?”

  I nodded my head in the general direction of the alley. “Still hiding in the boat. I have to take her some clothes.”

  “Well, I think maybe we’re done with you here for now. Take your time. Have a shot of old man Carlson’s booze, if you find it. He’ll never be back out there. See me again before you leave town, though, hey?” He gave me a card.

  “Sure, no problem.”

  I grabbed up everything from both our rooms and headed back out to the alley. Along the way, I picked up the shotgun again.

  ***

  It took Anne a while to respond to our secret knock, and for a brief moment I wondered if she had been attacked by a fifth member of the patrol, if that’s what it was, while I had been drawn away.

  But the third time I knocked, I heard the axe being pulled out, and then the door opened away from me. When Anne saw I was alone, she put down the crowbar and hugged herself again.

  “Are you okay?” I said.

  She nodded. “I was back in the boat again, and I wasn’t sure I ought to come out. The question is, are we okay?”

  “Yes. Anyway, we’re clear for now,” I said. “The bad guys are gone and the—”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I pointed my trusty shotgun at them and they got in their car and left.”

  She gave me her penetrating, skeptical stare again. I gave her what was probably a goofy-looking grin and nodded my head. “Yeah.” I laughed at the sheer wonderfulness of it. “Just like that. I couldn’t believe it, either. They ran off just before our friendly sheriff showed up. He’s back at the motel now. I brought you your clothes. Maybe you’d like to—”