by Unknown
“Leslie, look, I’m sorry, but I don’t believe this.”
“You have to, Joe, you…”
“No. No, I don’t. I don’t have to. Your dad tried to… he tried his thing and nothing happened. And you say you got your fucking nads stolen, only you didn’t get cut up or have to go to the hospital or anything and it just… No.”
“Joe, at least listen to me for…”
Joe got to his feet. “I can’t Leslie. I’m sorry, you seem…”
“It didn’t have to happen! Shit, after it was done, after it left, I figured out how to stop it! And you, you can do it too, if you just listen…”
“…You seem cool but I can’t be part of this.” He hit the buzzer for his guard.
“Joe, listen! It’s in the book Joe, it’s what it is, listen!” He pounded his hands on the desk as the door opened. “Listen!”
* * *
Kate and Fred had spotted their tail pretty quick, and once they had Fred just muttered “lost,” when he signaled left and turned right hard. A couple more turns and they were clean. Fred even wondered if he could have ditched the cop without magick. He didn’t think so.
After a couple wrong turns, they parked at a Wal-Mart and made their way to the sporting goods section.
“Can I help you?” asked the burly woman behind the counter. Her smile revealed teeth with shiny nicotine stains. Her name-tag said “Carla.”
“Yeah,” Kate said. “I’m looking for a gun for self-defense? Can I look at that one there?”
“This Glock?” the woman asked, opening the counter. “How much do you know about guns?”
Kate shrugged and smiled, looking a little abashed and uncertain. Fred rolled his eyes, playing the indulgent husband to the hilt.
“You may not want a Glock,” Carla said. “It’s got no safety features to speak of. Cops buy them because they want a gun they can use to shoot people reliably, but this thing will go off with the clip out…”
“How about that Ruger, honey?” Fred said, pointing.
“Can I look at that one?” Kate said, looking at Fred as if for approval.
Carla pulled it out and Kate gingerly hefted it.
“Kind of heavy,” she said. Fred took it and sighted down the barrel.
“Could you take the trigger lock off, so I can check the pull?” he asked.
“Sure,” the woman behind the counter said.
Fred and Kate examined it some more. “What about that revolver?” Kate asked.
“The Smith & Wesson here, or the Colt?”
“The chrome one. It looks a little more… manageable.”
“Well, it’s smaller and lighter, that’s for sure. And I know some people who swear revolvers are more accurate.” Carla put the Ruger away and brought out the revolver.
“Ooh, I think this one feels better,” Kate said. “What about the trigger? Can I check the trigger on this one, too?”
“Sure, just let me unlock it,” Carla said.
Kate sighted down it, held it in her hands, gently tried the trigger.
“What about that one?” she asked, pointing with her left hand and putting the gun down. As the weapon touched the glass, the barrel hit the trigger lock and knocked it down to the floor by Carla’s feet.
“Oopsie,” Carla said, bending down to pick up the lock.
Fred and Kate left a few minutes later without having given Carla a decision. Kate’s old pistol rested in the display case with the trigger lock on it, while a new one—the same make and model—rested in her purse.
* * *
Back at the Sleepy Teepee, a remarkable coincidence occurred.
The Freak had decided to cut itself to get more magick power, since someone was already shedding blood and it didn’t want to run out of gas in the final lap. It had sterilized the bathtub in its hotel room and given itself a Novocain injection. As it was making a shallow incision—nothing as deep as the arm cut, just something minor it could seal up with butterfly bandages—Jolene drove past on the road and saw the compass make a rapid swing. She pulled over by a pay phone and called her boss.
“Jolene?” the well-manicured man said, somewhat surprised that she was still alive. “How goes it? Did you meet Cage, Bob and the others?”
“Negative boss. But I’ve found Kimble. He’s staying at the Sleepy Teepee motel, room three. Can you get the others on the horn and get them here?”
The manager breathed a false sigh of relief. “They’re already there, Jolene. You used the compass, right?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, one of the people we brought in, uh, is a Hermaphrodite avatar too. That’s what your compass picked up.”
“Why did you send in someone who’d jinx the compass? Now how the hell are we supposed to find him?”
“I’m sorry! You know how unpredictable magick artifacts are. We assumed it would track the strongest signal, not the closest one. But now you’ve found the people you’re looking for. Just go knock on the door and say ‘It’s Jolene from TNI.’”
Jolene hung up and took a deep breath, hoping the nightmare was about to end.
As she stepped up to the door of Room Three, Phil King pulled in. He’d been keeping an eye out for a white van or truck all day, and seeing one at a motel made him suspicious.
This was not, in fact, a total coincidence. The conjunction of the cop, the magus and the assassin had been ordained by chained chance, by the will and power of a chaos magician. The spell had not yet been cast, but with powerful magick (as with advanced physics) the effect can sometimes precede the cause.
* * *
“Okay,” Kate said.
“Okay,” Fred replied.
“It should really work this time.”
“Yes.”
They had tried to drive out of town into the barren fields, but county patrol cars had the exits watched. After some aimless driving around, they’d gone back to the park with the frozen pond. This time they sat in the gazebo.
“Do you mind if I pull the trigger again?” Kate asked.
“Makes no difference to me,” Fred said, wondering why but not asking.
They pressed their heads together. This time, Fred held Kate’s free hand in both of his own, pressing it to his chest, to his beating heart.
This time, the gun was functional. The danger was real. The potential for power became actual, and as it drained into the two adepts the ripples of its passage were felt all over the county.
In the town grade school, there were three classes of third grade students. In each class, at the exact same moment, the child in the third seat of the third row developed a nosebleed in his or her left nostril. The nurse was quite puzzled.
At the Steak and Shake, the manager had a vision of his own face, reflected back at him from each frying patty, burning in agony. He went and had a sit-down in his office.
A brief rain of fish fell in the county dump, but no one was around to see except the rats, who made short work of the evidence.
Eight miles away on Shane Steiner’s farm, an unfertilized hen egg hatched anyway, giving life to a two-headed chick.
Leslie felt the psychic double shockwave so powerfully that he passed out. Fortunately he had just parked his car in the diner lot.
And a few people who lived by the park and were home during a weekday heard the sound of the gunshot.
* * *
There was no question in Fred’s mind that this was, at long last, the Major Charge—the ultimate risk of the ultimate loss, yielding the ultimate power to change the world. For a thin sliver of a moment, Fred could view the whole world, perceive the grand murky shapes behind every chance meeting, every unplanned event, every roll of the dice and draw of the cards and beat of a loving heart. He could feel the powers of order and chaos, he could feel the archetypes, and then he realized he could feel his wife’s blood and brains on the side of his face.
He wondered what the odds were that the bullet would go through her head but not his own. But in his state, at ground zero o
f a magickal implosion, all states merged. Every possibility was within his grasp, he simply had to pick what to make real. Every likelihood in the future or the past could be seized. What was bound could be loosed. The improbable could become inescapable. The future could be inflexibly molded, or the past loosened and recast.
A breeze blew by, and a strand of her hair—somehow unbloodied—tickled his nose. He had a moment’s regret for Joe Kimble, but he knew what he wanted to do with his power. He knew what event he had to unmake.
* * *
“Do you mind if I pull the trigger this time?” Fred asked, before Kate had a chance.
“I guess not,” she replied, though she secretly wanted to be the one who did it.
Within seconds there was the sound of thunder, and the nosebleeds, and their son passed out, and the fish, but this time—which was the only time, which was the unchanged, uninterrupted flow of time as understood by anyone but the late Fred Mundy—it was Kate who was covered with a lover’s blood.
She ran to the pond, cracked the thin ice and dunked her head, her face instantly as numb as her heart, and then she pulled out and ran again, this time for the car.
She only paused to retrieve the gun.
All fall down
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Freak was wrapping its fresh injury when it heard a knock on the door. Suspicious, it looked out the peephole and saw a tired looking woman with big bones and red hair.
“Who is it?” the Freak rasped.
“It’s Jolene. From TNI,” she replied.
The Freak was stunned. How could this be? The Hotchkiss Compass, of course. But Abel wasn’t in the habit of hiring dumb bitches, and how dumb would she have to be to just come up bold as brass like that? Now that it knew, the Freak recognized her from the van. She’d done an all right job of changing her appearance, but the Freak was an old hand with the tricks of disguise.
“Just a minute,” it said. “Let me put on some pants.”
Something about its tone made Jolene suspicious. In fact, she’d been getting increasingly suspicious all day when her “backup” hadn’t shown up.
“Hurry up, willya?” she said, pulling the Desert Eagle out of her purse. Then she kicked the door in as she racked the slide. The room was a little dark and the figure springing at her was just a blur, but she fired, saw blood, fired again and then it was on her. A numbing blow sent the pistol spinning into a corner and she felt a powerful hand seize her by the hair…
…as miles away, the Mundys embraced for the last time and gathered a charge of staggering power…
The Freak gasped and dropped to its knees. Jolene dove to the corner, grabbed the pistol and spun just as Phil King shouted “Police! Throw out your weapon!”
Jolene shot at the Freak again, was rewarded by a little spot of blood again, but it had recovered and it was screaming as it charged her again. Jolene judged her chances and dove through the window, firing a fourth round and missing. The Freak thudded into the wall, rebounded and was about to go through the window itself when it heard the crack of more gunfire and felt its protective spell wear off. It heard more shouts of “Freeze! Police!” and it crouched down, peeking out the window. It couldn’t see the woman, but it could see a big man with a gun and a badge running toward its door.
The cop ducked his head in, saw her and said “Jesus fuck!” He glanced out the window and then back at her. “I’ma call an ambulance for you right now. Just stay put! Don’t move!” Then he ran out to his car.
The Freak had no intention of getting put into an ambulance. It, and it alone, was the master of its body. To allow someone else to change its body—even to heal it—would leave it powerless, at least for a while. It briefly wondered why it even bothered to pack as it slung its smaller suitcase—the one with the gun, the money and other necessities—over its shoulder.
“Ma’am! You’ve got to sit down! Please! You’re in shock!” The big cop had his hands spread wide open and in front of him. The Freak stopped, doing its best to look dazed. His eyes were wide and his face ashen as he put a hand around its shoulders. “Sit down now, ma’am…”
“Okay,” the Freak said, but what it did instead was reach both its hands into his jacket. The left hand undid the velcro strap on his holster while the right hand pulled out his gun—a big one. He looked down at the velcro sound and grabbed the Freak’s right wrist. He didn’t have time to register that both his muscular arms were unable to force down the one hand of this apparently slender woman before “her” left hand had gone into his armpit, and, with a powerful torque of its hips, the Freak flung him back against his own car. It retained the pistol.
“Down,” it said, indicating the pavement. Phil King knelt.
“Belly out and count fifty. Out loud. Hands behind your back. Head under your car there. Feet up in the air.”
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Shooting a cop if he doesn’t obey,” the Freak said, flicking off the safety.
“Goddammit,” King muttered, but got down as ordered and said “One, two, three…”
“Slower,” the Freak said as it went to the van.
By the time the policeman reached fifty, the Freak had the compass and was driving away.
* * *
Kate Mundy stumbled back towards her car, got in and drove aimlessly away, not sure what to think, the crash of the gunshot still ringing in her ears, the loss of Fred still too big to comprehend. That and all the power.
Cops. Would cops come to investigate shots in the park? They wouldn’t find her. A thought, a tiny pinch of the power, and it was so.
What else? What else should she make happen? Joe. She had to protect Joe. He should be released from prison. Another portion of power hummed out, drawing Phil King towards the evidence that would free her son.
She should protect Joe. And find Leslie. As simple as that, she set off towards where they would both eventually be. But she had time, she knew. Time to stop by the hotel for a quick shower. No one would see her going in.
“I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair,” she murmured, and then laughed hysterically. Then she pulled over to weep and weep and clench her hands, not into fists, but into hooked little claws, pulling every muscle tight until it hurt, wanting her hands to hurt as much as her heart hurt, but nothing could ever hurt that much. She slouched down in the front seat of Fred’s car, knees on the floor, shoulder pressed against the dashboard, the gearshift almost in her throat, and she cried until her face burned. When the first moan came out, she turned on the radio, not wanting anyone to hear her. The song was the same one she’d been singing.
She howled and sobbed and snot dripped and she hugged herself and drove her nails into her ribs until they left little marks. But eventually she stopped. She sat up, wiped off and realized she might not have time for a shower after all.
A few sobs still shook her, unexpectedly, like hiccups. While she waited for them to subside, she reloaded the pistol. This time, she filled all six chambers.
* * *
When the call came in about gunshots at the Sleepy Teepee, Chief Walter Stelke and the county sheriff had a short, loud discussion that ended with the sheriff sending his more numerous deputies out to look for two redheaded women, one large, one small. Roberta was sent to the scene with Phil King, while Luther and Walter went to talk to Joe Kimble.
Kimble wasn’t in his cell. The police had agreed to let him use the phone as much as he wanted, as long as there was an officer in his presence, so he was sitting at Luther’s desk talking to his dad’s bank on the phone.
“Look, just bring me the papers here in jail then. C’mon, what good do you think the money’s gonna do me here? I just want to have enough to pay for his funeral.”
“Joe, can I speak with you?”
Joe glanced up. “Look, I’ll talk to you later,” he said into the phone. “Yeah. Thanks for nothing, asshole.”
He hung up and looked at the police chief. “Yeah?” he asked,
not bothering to stand.
“You heard about the second murder?”
“Read the paper, yeah.”
“We were following a lead on that and we found a cache of guns. Silenced guns. Exactly like the ones that were used to murder your father.”
Joe felt a cold trickle fall down his spine. “Yeah?” he whispered.
“In light of this new evidence, we don’t really have much reason to hold you.”
“Excellent,” Joe said, standing. “Where are my clothes?”
“Joe,” the chief said, holding out a hand to stop him. “We’d like to put you in protective custody.”
“Meaning what?”
“Sir, he can stay with me,” Luther said.
“I’d really prefer it if you stayed here. We can protect you here, Joe.”
“C’mon Chief,” Joe said. “I been in here for days. I gotta go take care of my dad’s funeral. You really think I’m going to stick around when I don’t have to?”
“Joe…”
“It’ll be okay, Sir,” Luther said. “If you want, I’ll stay by him 24/7 until we get this thing solved.”
Walter looked between the two men.
“Sheriff!” someone shouted. “They found her!”
Walter looked over his shoulder and winced. “Okay Luther. You’re Joe’s bodyguard until further notice.”
“Hot damn!” Joe said. “C’mon Lou. Lunch is on me.”
“Joe!” the Chief said. “Do not, repeat, not go to your house. Do you understand me? It’s off limits.”
“Is that an order?”
From some old movie, Walter dredged up a line and said it with a smile. “Let’s say it’s a request.”
* * *
Five shots left in the pistol. Abel had sold her out. Traitors got the death penalty.
That’s what Jolene thought about as she ran through the orderly little Missouri town. She also thought about dodging the cars as she raced across the streets. She thought about what the police were doing when the good folks around stared at her gun with astonishment.