by Sean Platt
“What now?” Raj looked at the porch. They’d stopped just off it, knowing that rising onto its stained-wood surface would mean moving into plain sight to anyone walking into the window-strewn kitchen.
“If we’re lucky, the door will be unlocked. They carried supplies in this way a lot because the French doors give them twice the width to carry boards and stuff. But I don’t think Garth has been doing much construction since he came back.”
“What if it is locked?”
“Then we’ll be unlucky.” Trevor’s dad was looking forward at the door, mumbling. But Raj was asking a serious question, and there was still a not-insignificant chance that Raj might be shot before this was all over. Meyer seemed to decide that he deserved a real answer. “Try the windows.”
“And if the windows are locked?”
“Maybe we can break one. He has the TV up pretty loud. These are energy-efficient windows. Should normally be pretty soundproof, but I could hear everything back there.”
Meyer didn’t seem to like that option. If the windows were soundproof enough to muffle a loud television, they’d also be thick enough to create a louder-than-average noise when shattered.
Trevor watched his father creep forward, duck-walking to stay low. Still, he was entirely visible to anyone who wasn’t blind inside the kitchen, and Trevor felt his heart ratchet up another pounding notch.
He gripped the handle, seemed to wish a silent prayer, then pulled down. The door sighed open. Meyer closed his eyes for a half second and exhaled.
“Now,” he said, waving. “Hurry.”
They scampered inside. The kitchen was large and bright, lit above from skylights. If not for the imminent threat of men in the other room and the blaring TV, it might be possible to believe this was just another day in paradise. Even with the threats, looking out the large bay window, Trevor found it hard to believe that a fleet of alien ships was on its way, that what he imagined as enormous brushed chrome ball bearings would soon be floating above, hanging as if on strings.
“The door. Get the door.”
Trevor reached back and slowly pulled the glass door closed behind him.
One last time, Trevor tried to see the girls hiding at the tree line. They’d fallen back, perhaps to where he and Raj and his father had tied their own horses. Seeing nothing made Trevor feel unanchored. He wanted that final glance, one last look of assurance.
But they were gone. There were only trees and grass and rocks and mountain peaks in the distance. Quiet air. Birds chirping. Nature going about its business, oblivious.
Trevor closed the door, committing them.
Meyer said nothing. He crept quickly toward the closet, minding the mop and broom and dustpan lying on the floor at its foot. It struck Trevor as odd that the closet had been stocked, given that the rest of the kitchen wasn’t even finished — entire walls of cabinets missing, nude wires poking through holes in the drywall above as if waiting to be connected to can lights in the ceiling. But the construction crew must have to clean things up from time to time, or maybe his father had put them in there — either because he’d swept out the bunker below, or to make the closet’s disguise that much more convincing.
There was a panel already opened in the closet’s rear. Raj leaned closer, curious. It had a keypad on its front, but there was also a futuristic-looking pad below, angled slightly forward. It had the shape of a hand drawn in white outline. Even in his fear Trevor couldn’t help feeling intrigued by the hand scanner. His father might have planned for the ultimate doomsday scenario, and that was cool. But Meyer’s presentation made it that much cooler.
He’d laid his palm flat on the glass when Trevor heard the distinctive sound of a toilet flushing behind him. The sound had fallen into a gap in the TV volume, and in the temporarily quiet kitchen, the everyday sound was downright chilling.
Trevor spun. So did Meyer and Raj. There was a sound of a toilet lid closing behind the door in a small alcove off to one side — a door Trevor hadn’t been able to see when he’d looked into the kitchen from the front.
“Go!” Meyer said, his voice more exhalation than sound. “Hurry!”
But the man who’d been in the bathroom wasn’t a hand-washer, and he was sauntering out before they could take a single step, his belt halfway buckled. He was a man in his twenties, stubble haircut, a few days unshaven. He had a gun on his hip and a daredevil’s eyes — the kind of person who started fights for fun and, Trevor suspected, was either too brave or too stupid to be afraid of anything.
His gun was raised before anyone could flinch. He was too far to lunge at, too close to miss.
He faced them with his fly still open, his partially buckled belt hanging to the side like a brown tongue.
“Well now,” he said, a slow, maniac smile crawling onto his face. “Looks like we got visitors.”
CHAPTER 33
Day Five, Evening
Axis Mundi
Meyer’s first instinct was to fight the man who’d confronted them — not because he was a warrior by nature, but because the adrenaline in his blood was insistent.
He’d been on alert — sure that something was coming, as he’d seen during his visions and felt, beneath his skin, for weeks after each ayahuasca ceremony — for months. He’d gone into higher alert when the news of the spheres’ approach had broken on the news, just like the world at large. He’d ratcheted up another notch after their Land Cruiser had been stolen, and hadn’t really settled since. Then he’d seen that his Axis Mundi was occupied. They’d broken into the kitchen, knowing the men in the house had guns and they did not — knowing that being seen might get them shot out of hand.
Meyer was amped enough to dive at the new man whether he held a weapon or not. But he was also at the back of a closet, with two kids between him and the problem. Boxed in.
There were three men in the house. Not two.
The man was watching them, his expression stern but also slightly amused. His whole head seemed to be reddish stubble, from head to unshaven face. He had cornflower blue eyes that were far too soft for a criminal, and a baby face peeking beneath his stubble. He was probably in his midtwenties, maybe less. He looked like a good kid gone bad — one of those fabled young men who’d been led down the wrong path by a sour crowd. But whatever was down that wayward road, this kid looked like he’d found it suited him fine.
“I guess you’re the lady’s husband,” he said, the gun at his hip, almost an afterthought. He looked down at his pants, laughed, took two protective steps backward, and went about the business of buckling up. He couldn’t do it with one hand occupied, so he set the gun on the kitchen island. It was a casual thing, disarming in order to zip his fly. But to Meyer, who’d made a living out of studying people, it came off as confident rather than careless. He knew they’d see that gun leave his hand and think of springing forward. But he clearly also knew he could get it again before they got close, and wouldn’t hesitate to use it.
Meyer noticed something else, too. Beside the gun, a white residue was clearly visible on the dark stone around the banked oven, below the new steel fume hood. It might be drywall dust, but Meyer doubted it. Not after seeing the kid’s tiny pupils, and the way he kept pressing his nostrils closed and sniffing.
He wasn’t just cocky. He wasn’t just confident. He was also high, wired. If Meyer had to guess, he’d probably love to pull the trigger, just to see the blood flow.
Garth wasn’t like that. Not even the worst Meyer had seen in Garth was like that. But he’d found an appropriate henchman to help him take the Dempsey house: a wild card willing to shoot first and party later.
“You gone deaf, then?” he said when Meyer didn’t reply. The kid had some sort of an accent, but Meyer couldn’t place it. It wasn’t quite Western, Southern, or East Coast. It might be the accent of reckless youth — a way of clipping speech, somehow turning cocksure and careless into sound, then using it to shave edges from words. “Maybe I’ll shoot you in the leg.”
“Whose husband?” The shift in his group’s position, as Meyer moved from the back of the closet, was subtle. But it put him at the front, the gunman’s weapon pointed at his chest, rather than at Trevor or Raj.
“The lady we got.”
“Is she alive? Did you hurt her?”
“Sure, she’s alive.”
There was an oddball item on the stove’s other side, and it took Meyer a moment to place it: a tiny crystal candy dish his mother had given him when he’d seen her six months ago in Denver. Somehow it had ended up here; somehow it had ended up on the kitchen island; somehow the new, armed occupants had seen fit to bring it down and fill it with M&M’s. Had they run out to buy the candies? It seemed a strange thing to do while occupying a house and holding a hostage, but it’s not like Meyer had stocked the place with food. At least not outside the locked bunker.
The kid popped an M&M in his mouth, then spoke around it. “We ain’t savages.”
“Who are you?” Meyer asked.
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
There were footsteps from behind the kid. For a second Meyer imagined Piper and Lila, somehow in the home’s belly, somehow armed, somehow having skirted the other men. Ready to strike with baseball bats, maybe. The kid wasn’t turning to look. He’d be easy prey.
But of course, Meyer had made it clear that the girls should keep their distance, and neither Piper nor Lila were any good in a fight, let alone a bare-hands hostile takedown of two armed brutes. With luck, they’d already be riding away — to get help, Piper would tell herself to make abandonment easier.
Meyer heard the other man before he saw him.
“Who are you talking to, Wade?”
Wade didn’t answer. He popped another oversized M&M in his mouth with his free hand. Had to be peanut.
A second man came around Wade from the back, watching the kid rather than the open kitchen. He only noticed Meyer and the boys once fully inside. He stopped like a wind-up toy out of steam. It wasn’t Garth. This man was sandy blond, Meyer’s age, with quiet, pale-blue eyes that matched Wade’s. Were they father and son? There was no other resemblance, but two home raiders with pretty blue eyes wasn’t something a person usually expected.
“Who the hell is this?” The newcomer’s voice had the faintest lilt, as if he’d been born in England and hadn’t quite lost the affect.
“Dunno.” Then, speaking to Meyer: “Who is this?”
“This the guy Garth was waiting for?”
“I don’t know. Go ask Garth, you wanna know so bad.”
“Where did they come from?”
“You got a lot of questions, Remy.” Another M&M. The kid was rail thin, almost emaciated. Apparently, the drugs he was clearly on were a fair counterbalance to his high-fat diet. “I don’t know. Found ‘em in the closet.”
“The … the closet?” Remy sounded like he didn’t understand the word.
“Yeah.”
“That one there?” He pointed.
“Yeah.”
Remy stared hard at the kid — some understanding having percolated that Wade either didn’t get or was too cool to acknowledge. He was dressed in jeans and an unzipped black hoodie over a plain blue T-shirt, but somehow the look seemed to be meant as understatedly stylish. Like he was trying to prove that he wasn’t actually a slacker, but found the wardrobe attractive.
Wade didn’t so much as look at Remy. Finally, he turned his head from Meyer’s group — still just feet from the closet in question — and said, “What?”
“Goddammit, Wade. He was going into the … you know.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
“So why didn’t you wait until he’d opened it?”
Now Wade turned to face his accuser. “I was taking a shit. I came out, they were here staring at me. Then I was like, ‘No, please, continue,’ but for some reason they didn’t want to.”
“Goddammit, Wade.”
“I didn’t know they were here! Where the fuck were you, huh? Maybe Garth can come in with his hearing aid and tell me why he didn’t know they were in here either. With that fucking TV so loud, it’s like you want motherfuckers to sneak in.”
“Dammit, Wade.”
Wade turned the gun on Remy. He held it high, his arm cocked, the barrel inches from the other man’s head. “You know, I don’t have to be here. And you don’t have to be, either.” He nudged Remy’s forehead with the muzzle.
Remy sighed, ignoring the gun. Wade must do this kind of thing all the time. He turned to Meyer, who felt like an intruder caught midprowl. He and the boys were standing with their arms at their sides, but to Meyer it felt like he’d been stalking across a dark room when the lights popped on, feet wide, arms out, eyes flicking back and forth and unsure where to move next.
“You. You’re Meyer Dempsey.”
Meyer said nothing.
Remy nodded, apparently taking his silence as a yes. He indicated the closet with a toss of his chin. “Open it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Meyer.
Without hesitating, Wade strode forward, his pleasant, boyish expression becoming one of pure id. He struck Meyer hard with the gun’s side. Meyer blinked the sudden pain away, then opened his eyes to find the weapon’s barrel pointed between his eyes.
“He said open it.”
“It’s open.” Meyer looked at the ajar closet door.
Wade hit him again. Trevor made a small, inarticulate noise of fear.
“The hidey hole, asswipe. That panel in the back you were working on when I came out.”
The simple sentence sent a chill up Meyer’s spine. This was a game of seconds. If they’d entered the closet ten seconds later, they would have had the door to the spiral staircase open before Wade had come up behind them, and the intruders would have had what they wanted. But if they’d entered it thirty or sixty seconds earlier, Meyer would have what he wanted: in and out, armed and armored. It wouldn’t matter if Wade was in the bathroom. The flush would have heralded his death cry. The Uzi could have cut him in half through the door’s fine oak.
“I can’t. It’s locked.”
“Unlock it.”
“I can’t. It’s on a time delay. For exactly situations like this.” Meyer lied without hesitation or hitch. He didn’t know what a time delay would mean or why anyone would possibly want one on a place they might need to enter in a hurry. But he did know that in at least some small way, Wade believed him.
He made to hit Meyer again, but Remy grabbed his arm. Wade looked for a moment like he might leap on the other man, but then his vitriol seemed to settle.
“That’s enough, Wade.”
He yanked his arm away, hard, then went about adjusting his hoodie with angry little movements.
“Open it,” said the older man.
“I can’t. I’m telling you the truth.”
“He’s lying. He’s just fucking with us. Maybe I should just put him out of his misery.” The gun rose.
“Hey …” said Remy.
“Or maybe I should put this one out of his misery,” said Wade, sounding inspired. The gun lowered until it was pointing at Trevor. Meyer wanted to grab the man’s gun arm, but the weapon was too far away to grab with any advantage, and Remy wore a gun, too.
Meyer stepped between Wade and Trevor, moving his hands behind him.
“Yeah, you see that? There’s how we get him to do it. Good. We won’t have to kill the woman. I could shoot him in the leg right now. Give him two chances to …”
“Wade.”
“This one,” he said, using the barrel to indicate Raj, “is clearly the mailman’s kid. Or the kid of the guy at the Quickie Mart. But I shoot that motherfucker, he’ll know I mean business.”
“Wade!”
Meyer realized how hard his heart was beating. He’d blocked it out somehow, but was feeling almost lightheaded. Wade was right, and Meyer had been stupid. He’d come in with something to lose. If they shot Raj, he’d talk
. If he threatened Trevor enough, he’d talk. And even if the boys somehow got away, there was still Heather to think about.
“Okay then, Remy,” said Wade, scowling. “What’s your plan — have a tea party and hope they get friendly?”
Remy looked from Wade to the open closet to Meyer and the boys hiding behind him. His tongue went to the backside of his front row of teeth — a thoughtful movement echoed in a side-to-side yawing of his jaw.
He walked forward, peeled Trevor from Meyer’s grasping arms, and shoved him toward Wade.
“Dad,” Trevor said weakly.
“We’ll take him to Garth,” Remy said. “You go first, and we’ll follow you.”
He eyed Meyer and Raj, making sure everyone understood one another. “If this one tries anything stupid,” Remy told Wade, “kill the kid.”
CHAPTER 34
Day Five, Evening
Axis Mundi
Heather heard the TV turn off some time later. Thank God.
She wasn’t into science fiction, but Meyer always had been. Tolerating the polarity, when they’d been married, had been murder. He was flat-out addicted to that one series, so she’d had to endure it when they’d lived together. She could probably recite the Matrix movies by heart. But for Heather, who liked romantic comedies and stupid, brainless entertainment, listening to talk of nanobots and networks and singularity was the poop icing on the shit cake she’d baked herself into.
Being held captive? Bad.
Being held and forced to listen to actors blab on and on about the future? So much worse.
She peered through the mesh at the front of her locked pantry, wanting someone to shout observant and witty insults at now that things were quieter. When she saw none of the three men, Heather turned back to the walk-in pantry itself. Why had Meyer put a pantry near the laundry room? Shouldn’t it be near where — oh, she didn’t know — near where the fucking food would be prepared? But Meyer had a reason for everything, and she’d learned to pick and choose the things she allowed him to be superior about.