Blackbirds

by Chuck Wendig

  He shakes his head.

  "Dude, seriously. You have a chance here to sway my fate. If you subscribe to the thought that a butterfly's wings flapping in Toledo can cause a hurricane in Tokyo, you'd know right now that you have tremendous power in your hands, the power to shape destiny, to direct the course of the entire breadth and scope of human history, right here, right now."

  He blinks. "Fine. Vampire Red."

  She makes a pshhh sound.

  "Fuck that noise." She hurls the Vampire Red box at his head. "I was always going to choose Blackbird Black, dummy. You can't sway fate. Tsk, tsk, tsk. And that, dear boy, is the lesson we learned here today."

  And with that, she darts back into the bathroom and slams the door.

  NINE

  The Notebook

  Ashley hears the faucet start.

  "Perfect," he says. He hops down, grabs Miriam's messenger bag sitting by his feet where she dropped it, and hoists it up onto the bed.

  He casts one more paranoid glance at the door. She should be in there a while. A home dye job isn't quick work. All that washing, all that combing through, all that waiting.

  Satisfied, he starts going through the bag.

  Item after item ends up in his hand, then on the bed. Lip balm. Hair ties. Small MP3 player so scratched and dinged it looks like it has been run through a wood chipper. Pair of tawdry romance novels (one with Smooth Blond Fabio on the cover, another with Dark Goateed Fabio). Clark's Teaberry gum (he doesn't know what the fuck "teaberry" is). A squeaky toy for dogs; it looks like a squirrel clutching an acorn in his mouth. Before he has time to think on that, out come the weapons. A can of pepper spray. A butterfly knife. Another can of pepper spray. A hand grenade –

  "Jesus Christ," he says. Swallowing hard, he gently sets the grenade down on the pillow behind him. He steadies it, takes a deep breath, and then goes back into the bag.

  Finally, he finds what he's looking for.

  The diary.

  "And Bingo was his Name-O."

  It's a black notebook, its plastic cover nicked. The book is swollen, like a tumor filled with words instead of blood. He gives it a quick flip-through: tattered pages, some dog-eared, all colors and styles of pen (red, black, blue, Sharpie, ballpoint, uniball, one in fucking crayon, by the looks of it), each page dated, each page starting with Dear Diary and ending with Love, Miriam.

  "So what about you?" Miriam asks, and Ashley damn near voids his bowels. He looks up, heart racing, expecting her to be standing there, but she's not. She's still on the other side of the bathroom door – she's yelling through, talking to him while she rocks the dye job.

  He takes a deep breath. "What about me, what?"

  "Where you from? What do you do for a living? Who are you?"

  He flips to the front of the diary.

  "Uh," he says, trying to focus on the words. "I'm from Pennsylvania. I'm an, uh, a traveling salesman."

  "Yeah, right," she calls back. "And I'm a circus monkey."

  "I've never had sex with a circus monkey before."

  He flips a few more pages. His eyes drift over the words. His mouth starts to go dry. His heart races. It makes sense, but… He turns another ten pages and reads more. He mouths the words he reads without speaking them aloud –

  Like trying to derail a train with a penny or kicking a wave back into the ocean, I can't stop shit, I can't change shit.

  Flip.

  What fate wants, fate gets.

  Flip.

  I am a spectator at the end of people's lives.

  Flip.

  Bren Edwards shattered his pelvis and died in a culvert. He had two hundred bucks in his wallet – I'm going to eat well tonight.

  Flip.

  It is what it is.

  Flip.

  Almost done with you, Dear Diary, then you know what happens.

  Flip.

  Just need a rich guy to bite it. That'll be the day.

  Flip.

  Dear Diary, I did it again.

  His eyes catch something else in the messenger bag flopped on its side. He reaches in, pulls out a small year-long planner.

  "I'm from Pennsylvania, too," Miriam calls out from the bathroom.

  "That's great," he mumbles. He flips through the datebook. Most days are empty, but others? Others have names. Times. Little icons, too – stars, Xs, dollar signs.

  And causes of death.

  June 6, Rick Thrilby / 4:30PM / heart attack

  August 19, Irving Brigham / 2:16 AM / succumbs to lung cancer

  October 31, Jack Byrd / 8:22 PM / eats a bullet, suicide

  And on, and on.

  "Find anything interesting?" Miriam asks.

  Ashley, startled, drops the book and looks up. She narrows her eyes, and darts her gaze between him, the diary sitting next to him, the grenade on the pillow, and her fallen bag.

  "Listen," he starts, but she interrupts him.

  With a fist. A straight clip to the mouth splits his lower lip. Pop. His teeth rattle. He's surprised, though he probably shouldn't be. She's been on the road for years now. Somewhere along the way, she learned how to throw a punch; and by the looks of that black eye, she knows how to take one, too.

  "You're a cop," she says. "No. Not a cop."

  "Not a cop," he mumbles around the palm pressed to his bleeding lip. He pulls his hand away, sees a streak of red.

  A stalker. A psycho."

  "I've been following you since Virginia."

  "Like I said. Stalker. Psycho. You know what? Eff this." She pushes past him, fetching her books, her armory, her other debris and detritus, and cradles it all before upending it into the open mouth of her messenger bag. Ashley grabs her wrist, but she'll have none of it. She wrenches free. He reaches again, but she backhands him off the bed.

  By the time he realizes what's happened, the front door is already open, and she's gone.

  TEN

  The Sun Can Go Fuck Itself

  Birds tweet. Bees buzz. The sun shines, and the air is heady with honeysuckle perfume. Miriam squints against the bright light, wishes she had a pair of sunglasses. A sour feeling sucks at her gut; her bowels feel like ice water. She hates the sun. Hates the blue sky. The birds and the bees can go blow each other in a dirty bathroom. Her pale skin feels like it's about to split open like the skin of a microwaved hot dog. She's a night owl. The day is not her domain, which makes her reconsider – maybe I should've gone Vampire Red, after all.

  Her boots stomp down the deserted back road. She's been walking for fifteen minutes now, maybe more. It feels like a lifetime.

  She feels vulnerable. Like she got played. Miriam hasn't felt this way in a long time. She's the one with all the secrets. With the edge. Her nerves are electric. Anxiety nibbles. She doesn't know why. What's to worry about? What's he going to do?

  She keeps walking.

  The road twists and turns. Up a hill. Under a copse of trees. Around the bend sits a post-and-rail fence, a hand-painted mailbox, a half-collapsed barn and farmhouse. Perfectly pastoral. Miriam feels like smashing handfuls of gravel into her eyes and rubbing vigorously. She's not even sure why she's so angry.

  She hears a car coming up behind her. It slows.

  A white Mustang. It's Lying Sneaky Asshole.

  It pulls up alongside of her, the passenger window down. Ashley leans over, one hand easy on the wheel. He peers out at her. The smile is gone. He's all serious-faced.

  "Get in," he says.

  "Suck my dick."

  "Nowhere to go."

  "I got my getaway sticks. They take me all kinds of places."

  "I know who you are. I know what you do."

  "You don't know rat rubes from rum punch. Whatever you think you know damn sure isn't the half of it. Keep driving. Get away from me."

  She keeps walking. He continues to ease the car alongside her.

  "I'm not going to sit here and drive along like an asshole," he says. "I'm done arguing. Just get in the car. Don't be a twat."

&n
bsp; Miriam reaches in her bag, and with a quick pivot of her wrist, the butterfly knife is out; metal gleams, and the blade flies free of the split handle.

  "Hey–" he says.

  She lags behind a second and kneels. He tries to see what she's doing, but by the time he gets his head out the window, it's too late. One thrust and the knife punctures the back tire of the Mustang. Air hisses from the rubber, a whispering fart.

  "What the – ?" he yells out from the car. "Where are you – oh, Jesus Christ."

  By the time he's taking the Lord's name in vain, she's already at the opposite back tire, slicing a new mouth in the rubber. It too leaks a steady hiss.

  The rubber flaps on asphalt with each turn of the tire: thup thup thup thup.

  She passes by his driver's side window while he's still looking out the passenger side, and calls in: "See? Told you my getaway sticks will do the trick. Don't go driving on that thing. You'll dick up the rims."

  Then she gives him the finger and jogs away, leaving the hobbled Mustang behind.

  ELEVEN

  The Sunshine Café

  Can Go Fuck Itself Equally

  Miriam enjoys a lumberjack's meal.

  All around her are the sounds of breakfast: spoons clanking in mugs as they stir, the hiss of griddles, the scrape of fork tines against plate. She's keeping her head down, focused on the monstrosity before her. Two eggs, over easy. Two buttermilk pancakes that seemed the size of manhole covers before Miriam got to them. Four link sausages. Wheat toast. And on a separate plate, a grilled cinnamon bun. Everything but the bun sits soaked in a congealing ooze of maple syrup. Real maple syrup, like from a fucking tree, not that flavored diarrhea from the grocery store.

  You curse like a sailor, her mother always said. And you eat like a lumberjack.

  Still. Despite the gut-expanding, tongue-pleasing meal, she doesn't want to look up, lest her eyes explode from all the cheeriness.

  The Sunshine Café. Ugh.

  Bright yellow walls. Sunlight filtered through gauzy curtains. Powder blue stools at the counter. Farmers, migrants, truckers, and country yuppies all milling around together. Each one of them probably goes to church, puts change in the collection plate, and tries to be a good American citizen, smiling all the while. Miriam shakes her head. She reminds herself to one day get drunk and urinate on a Normal Rockwell painting.

  Miriam wads up a hunk of toast, ruptures an egg yolk, lets the runny ooze swirl together with the syrup swamp she's created.

  And then someone sits down across from her.

  "You owe me for the tow truck," Ashley says.

  Miriam shuts her eyes. Breathes deep through her nose.

  "I'm just going to pretend you're a pink elephant. You'll kindly take this opportunity to get up and slink out of this place like a rat before I open my eyes, because if I open my eyes and still see you there, oh Figment of My Diseased Imagination, I'm going to stab you in the neck with my fork."

  Ashley snaps his fingers. "Or, alternate scenario: I call the police."

  Her eyes snap open. She watches him. He grins, the middle of his bottom lip bisected by a dark scabby line. So smug. So satisfied.

  "You won't. You're road scum just like me. They won't believe you."

  "Maybe," he says. "But they'll believe pictures. That's right – I got photos. And the coincidences will seem more than a little strange, won't they? Since Richmond, you've been, what, at the scene of three different deaths?"

  Her jaw tightens. "I didn't kill those men."

  "All of them conveniently missing the cash from their wallets. And I'm sure if someone were to do a little bit of digging, they'd find the credit cards missing, too. Credit cards that sometimes get used, then thrown in trash cans or ditches. Digging even deeper, they'd find a trail of the dead, wouldn't they? With your footprints walking them backward through time. They'd find your diary. They'd find your weird little datebook."

  Miriam's guts go cold. She feels trapped. Cornered. A butterfly pinned to a corkboard. For a second, she genuinely considers sticking her fork in Ashley Gaynes's neck and bolting.

  "I didn't kill them," she says.

  Ashley watches her. "I know. I read enough of the diary."

  "But you don't believe it."

  "I maybe do," he says. "My mother was into all kinds of mystical blah-blah. Crystal gazing, psychic phone line, all that. I figured it for garbage, but sometimes, I wasn't so sure. I always wanted to believe.

  "Plus, these three I've seen, they each died in different ways, didn't they? The bike courier in Richmond – the black kid? Traffic accident. Hard to call that murder, though you are a crafty little cunt, aren't you?"

  "Nice. You go down on your mother with that mouth?"

  Ashley visibly tenses. His grin doesn't fade, but he damn sure isn't happy.

  "Don't talk about my mother," he says. He continues: "The most recent appears to have choked on his own tongue after a particularly severe epileptic fit. Again, could've been murder, but the guy had a history of epilepsy, right? The one from Raleigh, the old man, what was his name? Benson. Craig Benson. I'm actually not sure how he died. Company bigwig, had lots of security and cops and the like; I couldn't get close. But you did. Was he just old?"

  Miriam pushes aside her plate. She's no longer hungry.

  "His dick killed him," she says.

  "His dick."

  "His erection, more specifically."

  "You banged CEO Grandpa?"

  "Jesus, no. I did flash him a tit, though. He was so pumped fill of dick pills – and not prescribed stuff, but shit from, like, some village in China – that it killed him. My chest isn't exactly impressive, but I guess it's enough to kill an old man."

  "So him you did kill."

  "Bull."

  "Gun or tit, you were the one firing the weapon."

  She waves him off. "Whatever."

  The waitress comes by – skinny up top, but a big round bottom that Miriam can't help but think of as "birthing hips"– and asks Ashley what he wants. He orders coffee.

  "So, you've been following me for two months now?"

  He tells her just about, yeah.

  "How? How'd you find me?"

  The waitress comes, pours him a coffee, tops off Miriam's, too. "The bike courier. I saw you picking the corpse's pockets. I had the same idea."

  "You just happened to be there?"

  "Nah. I'd been working the courier for a week. He was dirty. Delivering packages for all kinds of shady types. I was running a scheme, trying to convince him that he and I could take one of those packages and offer it to a higher bidder, but really, I was just going to take the package and run." He sips noisily at his coffee. "Obviously, you came and fucked that up."

  "You're a con-man, then."

  "I prefer con-artist."

  "I'm a dancer, not a stripper. Keep saying it, see if it magically becomes true." She feels a headache from the Bourbon of Doom stretching its legs in the back of her skull, like it needs to get up and roam around. She needs a smoke. Or a drink. Or a bullet to the temple. "Let's cut to the chase. You see what you see, and you follow me for two months. Why?"

  "Initially, it was professional curiosity. I figure, hey, check it out – another con-artist, just like me. Maybe I can learn a thing or two, and maybe I'll pull something over on her, or maybe she'll pull something over on me. Either way would've been interesting."

  "I'm not a con-artist."

  "Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. Maybe this whole thing is a ruse, and maybe you're conning me right now. The diary, the datebook, the hair dye. Maybe you knew about the game I was trying to run on the courier, and maybe you thought I was the bigger fish." He shakes his head, waggles a finger. "But I don't think so. Because things don't add up. The courier had a package. You didn't take it. You only emptied his wallet. In fact, that seems to be all you do. You empty their wallets, maybe take a few other items – like the kid's scarf, or the old man's watch."

  "It's all stuff I need. It was cold,
so I wanted a scarf. And I didn't take Benson's watch. Cop must've taken that. I have my own watch–" She holds up her wrist with the old-school calculator watch attached. "Of course, batteries are dead now, but that's not the point. From Benson, I took a pen because I needed a pen. I need to eat and sleep, so I take money for food and hotel rooms."

  "And that's it? You don't angle for more?"

  She upends three packets of sugar into her coffee. "I don't get greedy."

  "You don't get greedy," he repeats, laughing. "That's cute. I like that. A little ointment for the soul never hurt anybody."