Cursed Apprentice (Earth Survives Book 2)

by R. R. Roberts

  With the frantic part over, his heartbeat returning to normal, Mike began to believe his own lie—they would come out of this okay. He watched crime TV. He knew if anyone thought to treat this particular back lane with Luminol, there would be a gory tale told, but no one would. It was just a back alley, one of thousands in the city. And Mike had lived on the streets of this city. No cop would wander down this way or give a crap about what happened back here.

  All he and Cherry needed was to get away, get rid of the stiff, get rid of the car, then act normal. Of course, Cherry would have to act her ass off when she reported her car stolen tomorrow. And she could act, he’d seen her in action; she was good when she wanted to be. She acted desperately hot for a man, any man, during her act at Girls, Girls, Girls, the patrons eating it up every night, when in reality, their hungry eyes and shouted suggestions and invitations turned her stomach. She’d told him this, over fries and gravy at Denny’s.

  Fries at Denny’s—his intention when he’d started this evening, so very long ago.

  He pressed the car keys into Cherry’s hand, made his way to the back door of Girls, Girls, Girls, turned the water off and began to wind up the hose, the water gushing out of the end in ever diminishing spurts with each pull toward the building. By the time he’d finished, Cherry pulled the car up before him and he climbed in. The car reeked. She looked at him soberly. “Where to?”

  He guided her to Stanley Park, then, with the headlights off, through the trees to where he buried his emergency stash, still to this day making sure he had a Plan B in case his life here in WEN 2037 went south. This scenario, however, was one he had never envisioned.

  “Wait here,” he said, and was out the door and jogging toward Tree before she could reply. Climbing up, he grabbed the hand shovel he had left behind and a penlight he’d randomly found during his scrounging days and returned to Cherry. “Come on. We go in about thirty feet, then we dig.”

  “Where’d you get the shovel?”

  “Tree.”

  He couldn’t see her features out here but sensed her accepting shrug.

  Afraid to use the light, in case it attracted unwanted attention, they felt their way to a good location and Mike scraped off the layer of moldering leaves and pine needles before he began to dig.

  “What can I do to help?”

  “You can help when we have to move him,” Mike grunted, not missing a stride. They didn’t have a lot of darkness left. The ground here was soft, as he’d known it would be, and the digging went quickly. He stopped when the hole was roughly four feet deep, plenty deep as far as Mike was concerned, his limbs shaking from the effort. He wanted this over.

  Together, they dragged Trenholme’s body from the car and along the ground.

  “Okay,” Mike gasped, dropping Trenholme’s arm. “We have to remove anything that will identify this guy.”

  “His wallet? Watch?” Cherry asked.

  “Clothes. Teeth.”

  “What!” Cherry’s cry bordered on hysteria now.

  “Dental records, Cherry.”

  She began crying.

  Mike dropped to his knees before the body and began removing clothes. “Did he wear glasses. Contacts?”

  “How would I know?” Cherry wailed. “He wasn’t detailing his medical history when you found us! What the hell, Mike!”

  He jumped back to his feet, grabbed her by her arms and gave her a shake, making her cry all the louder. He was beyond caring at this point, they were in so deep. “Do you want to explain this to the cops, Cherry? To Danny Harrelson?”

  “No! You know I don’t!” She fell against him and after a moment he caved and wrapped his arms around her, letting her cry out what they were both feeling: Fright, remorse, and huge, body-numbing fear. If Danny Harrelson got even a whiff of what had happened here tonight, it would be them buried in the woods somewhere they would never be found.

  Mike stroked Cherry’s hair, grimacing when his fingers got caught in a tangle of dried blood. He located a fragment of bone and pulled it free, tossing it into the woods behind him, shuddering as he did. How had this happened? How were they now burying a body in the woods?

  After a few minutes, Cherry pulled herself together and backed away. She cleared her throat, wiping her face with the sleeves of her sweat shirt. “Okay. I’m okay now. I’ll do whatever you say. We’re in this together and we’ll make it through. No more crying. I promise.”

  “We need to take his clothes, his stuff, burn it in the car. He goes into the ground the way he came into this world—naked.”

  “And—and his teeth?” Her voice was thin.

  “Maybe we can skip the teeth. Too many forensic TV shows, I guess.”

  “But you’re right. They do trace bodies with dental records. They do it all the time. Then they’ll come looking.”

  They were silent for a long moment, knowing they had to find a way to remove Trenholme’s teeth. Mike shuddered despite wanting to be strong for Cherry. Yes, he knew in theory what needed to be done, but the execution…not so much. He had no pliers. He shuddered some more, the reality of this night finding its way into his soul. Had he really killed this man?

  A man who needed killing—a man assaulting Cherry.

  But a man so connected that no matter the circumstances, Danny Harrelson, crime lord of the lower mainland would make sure they paid for it, and probably in a spectacular way.

  There were no good choices here.

  “Let’s start with his clothes,” Cherry whispered.

  Mike nodded, and they set to work stripping Bruce Trenholme of his clothing, his wallet, his watch, heavy, gaudy gold rings, and purely by accident, a gold nugget and gold chain he had buried deep in the soft folds of his thick neck—this they almost missed. Disaster averted. The chain and nugget were custom made, easily a one of a kind piece. Identifiable.

  Then Cherry found the money belt.

  They sat back on their heels and stared at it. Then they opened one section, counted the bills, all hundreds they could see in the dim moonlight. Ten grand, in one section alone, and there were ten sections. If each section held the same tender, that meant they had found one hundred thousand dollars, worn in a sweaty leather money belt. The money was damp and smelled. But it was real.

  “What the hell,” Mike murmured. “Who walks around with a bank strapped to their body?”

  Cherry said, “Bruce Trenholme?”

  “Whose money do you think this is?”

  “It has to be his. Danny Harrelson isn’t so stupid he’d have his fixer walking around with his money. Plus, this is small potatoes for Harrelson.”

  “So, there’s no way Harrelson will come after the money?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t even know about it. He’ll be looking for Bruce.” Cherry paused. “Bruce was a talented guy. He fixed everything. Ironic that we’re burying him. I’m betting he’s buried dozens of people for Harrelson.”

  “So, this is poetic justice, then.”

  Cherry laughed at this, a kind of sobbing, croaking laugh that made his skin prickle out here in the darkness, surrounded by mute trees, the occasional rustling of leaves, the sound of the ocean a hushed back beat to their macabre transaction. “Maybe?”

  “About the teeth…” Mike said. “I’ll get a rock, maybe and…” He let the rest slide. She knew what he’d have to do.

  “I’ll take his stuff back to the car, put it in the trunk, ready to burn.” Her voice was tight.

  “Yeah—you do that.” Galvanized, they tugged the rest of his clothes free, Cherry averting her face. Mike didn’t need light to guess her expression of revulsion.

  Wordlessly she gathered up all they had taken from the body and stumbled away toward the car. Mike felt around until he found a good-sized rock and, clenching his teeth, went to work on Trenholme’s. It was quick, gruesome work. It occurred to him he would never, for the balance of his natural life, such as it might be after this horrific event, forget the sound of smashing bones, breaking a man’s ja
w apart, prying pieces and individual teeth away.

  How was this saving the world? How was this being heroic? What would Coru say if he were here, witnessing what his little brother was doing in the dead of night in the dark woods?

  Mike began to cry, hitting, breaking, gathering up the pale pieces with fumbling fingers, dropping them into a scrap of cloth Cherry had left behind. “Coru! Where are you?” he wailed, his inner, frightened child breaking free of the prison in which he’d kept him since he’d fallen from that monstrous Time Bore into this ugly, hostile place. “Why won’t you find me? Find me and help me?” he collapsed against the dirt, sobbing, all control lost, terror rushing in. “Why won’t you save me?”

  No one answered. No one cared about Payton Wisla.

  “I want to come home! I need to come home!” Mike pounded the ground with his fists, spittle falling from his mouth to the dirt in streams. “Please, someone come take me home, away from this place. I hate this place.” He cried and cried until there were no more tears, just a white whale of a body, lying beside him, mute testament to what Payton Wisla, cocky, foolish daydreaming, self-proclaimed “Professor Rez”, overweight library rat was capable of.

  No, he was Mike here, he mustn’t forget this important fact.

  Mike pushed himself upright and wiped at his face.

  Nothing had changed, but he had.

  There was a cold place inside him that just hadn’t been there before tonight. It was different; he felt different. He gazed at the pasty white body before him, the hairy swath of hair growing in swirling patterns across the chest, the bulging belly. He made himself look at the ruined face. “I did this,” he said clearly. “I did this to save a life. To save a world.”

  The dark woods were silent all around him, waiting for his next move.

  He was in charge of what happened here. There was no rescue coming. There would be no miraculous last minute save. This was on him.

  He straightened his spine. “I’m here to save a world.”

  Did he believe it? He had to. This mission was never going to be pretty. It was always going to be ugly. He had to accept the ugly. Only he knew the horrendous future if he did not stay the course. There were no good choices here; he had no good choices.

  He wiped at his face again, then placed his hands on Trenholme’s cold white flesh and rolled him into the hole. The body fell with a quiet thunk, followed by a burst of escaped air. He could have sworn it was Trenholme sighing in relief.

  He laughed out loud, the sound obscene but absolutely appropriate to the situation.

  That’s when he remembered what they had forgotten.

  Fingerprints.

  He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, knowing he’d reached his limit for decimating a corpse. Just let Trenholme rot away fast, destroying his fingerprints in the process.

  Then he covered Trenholme up with soil, stomping down the fresh earth. He finished by using the shovel to roughly rake the leaves and pine needles around to cover what they had done, raking more over the path that had been created dragging the body into place before returning the shovel to Tree. He grabbed a bag of spare clothes, lowered himself back to the ground, and went to rejoin Cherry.

  He had two sets of clothes, one for each of them. She would swim in them, but they were clean and held no trace of Bruce Trenholme and would allow them to work their way through the dark city unnoticed. They just needed to get the car to The Point. Get to The Point, strip out of their bloody clothes, wash in the ocean, throw the soiled clothes into the car, set it on fire, and then hightail it out of there.

  First, he’d chuck the pieces of jaw and teeth out into the water, as far as he could manage. An echo of the sucking sound the pieces of jaw and teeth had made when he’d wrestled them from Bruce’s head made him shudder.

  Forget that. Just wipe that from your mind. Didn’t happen.

  Patching together the appearance of confidence, he approached Cherry with a grim smile. Her red rimmed eyes were large in her face and they remained on him as he made his way around to the passenger side of the car. He got inside. It still stunk. No mystery what had happened in this car tonight. He turned to face her. She’d found tissues or wipes of some kind and had scrubbed the grime of their deed and the rest of her makeup from her face. She now looked so young it was hard to believe she was actually older than he was. Without her makeup, she could pass for fifteen.

  “All done?” she asked uncertainly.

  He bobbed his head, not trusting his voice just yet.

  “If we work it right, we could be back at my apartment before light.” She looked at him, waiting for his assurance. He still couldn’t do it, so he just nodded.

  She started up the car but left the headlights off. Starting slowly, she peered through the windshield and guided the car cautiously from the woods. Staring ahead, pointing the way when needed, it occurred to Payton there was no going back. He and Cherry were tied to one another for life now. Tied by Bruce Trenholme’s murder.

  After tonight, he couldn’t get away from Cherry if he tried.

  CHERRY STAYED in the shower until the water ran cold, washing and rewashing her body, shampooing and re-shampooing her hair, afraid of what she might find in its strands after the first bone fragment worked its way free. She shuddered, she sobbed, then quit, focusing instead on scrubbing….

  When she finally stepped out, she scrubbed herself hard with the towel, scrubbing away the feeling of Bruce Trenholme that still clung to her skin. Normally she was proud of her long straight black hair—vain about it, actually. But today, the compulsion to cut it all off, to throw it and all it contained away was almost more than she could control. What if she missed a piece? What if she were talking to someone and a tooth fell from her hair, a bone? What if blood began oozing down her cheek…?

  It was irrational of course, but it felt real. It felt as if parts of Bruce’s body were hung all around her, that she was carrying pieces of the thug along with her every step, in danger of something falling, revealing what she had done this night.

  She stared into the full-length mirror. It was just her—pale skin, waist length hair, frightened face, haunted eyes. No one who saw her as she was would have any doubt she was hiding something.

  She wouldn’t go outside. She’d quit Girls, Girls, Girls. She’d leave town. She’d go to…

  Not home to father and mother. They’d disowned her years ago.

  She didn’t know where she’d go to, but somewhere far away. Somewhere small, where no one knew her.

  A knock on the bathroom door made her jump. “What?” She grabbed her cotton pajamas and yanked them on.

  “You all right?”

  She opened the door and faced Mike. “Are you seriously asking me that? Of course, I’m not all right. I’m a disaster. I’m freaking out. I’m getting my stuff together and blowing this place tonight.”

  “In your pajamas?”

  When she didn’t answer, he stepped aside as she pushed past him and followed her into the kitchen. Silently, she poured a cup of coffee, all the while Mike watching her, saying nothing about how the pot shook in her hand. She dumped in sugar, something she never did—she’d given up sugar years ago. Today was different. Today, she deserved sugar. Lots of it.

  Mike left her to go shower. She chugged the coffee, scenes from Girls, Girls, Girls flashing across her vision, and once the cup was empty, she made another. She needed to be grounded; awake. She needed to figure out her next move.

  Mike was back, breaking her concentrated stare at her toaster. He gently pried her fingers from the counter and led her into the seating area, her bachelor apartment affording no separation of room function. She saw the sun was up now. Pale pink light flooded the room, gradually changing to daylight. She seldom saw this time of day—she always slept until noon, always alone, in this tiny space. This was where she ate, slept, worked out, watched TV, read, wrote, and dreamed of a better life. Despite the multi-functions of this room, it was still tidy, and what sh
e thought of as welcoming. Maybe just to her, but that was all that mattered. She never invited men into her home. She had a plan, and men were not featured in that plan.

  Having young Mike Eggers here with her felt strange, crowded, but she didn’t want to be alone, either. She sat on the loveseat, curling her legs up under her and motioned to the only other chair. “Sit.”

  Though Mike was pale himself, and wearing a set of shapeless grey sweats, he looked almost normal. Well, normal with a distorted, scarred face, but pretty normal. He’d told her once his face used to be gruesome, but he’d had corrective surgery and that this was much improved. She shuddered at what it must have been before the surgery. She knew he habitually wore stage makeup to disguise it. Now, with the makeup gone, she could see why. It wasn’t great now.

  Yet, here he was, young, still eager, displaying more energy than she ever could. She saw his dark wig was firmly in place and carefully slicked back. Yes, she knew he wore a rug, which was weird for someone so young, but… hey, live and let live. It meant little to her.

  He watched her closely. That’s what was different about Mike Eggers. He was ever vigilant. What was he always watching for?

  “What are you planning to do?” she asked.

  “Planning? What do you mean?”

  “Are you getting out of Vancouver or will you lay low?” God, she could be reciting from a cheap movie script.

  “We can’t just disappear. We don’t know if Trenholme told anyone where he was headed last night. We’ve got to stay the course. Act normal—pretend like nothing happened. If someone comes calling, wants to know when we last saw him, we say we went to Denny’s for chips and gravy. Then, when we got back here, we parked on the street because I always borrow your car to drive home later, but I ended up staying over. It went missing overnight.”

  She hadn’t thought of this—it made sense; it could work. “Wow. You have been thinking this through.”

  “I have.” His expression was a mixture of satisfied and questioning. What did he want from her?

  “Do I report the car missing today?”