Dark Advent

by Brian Hodge

  “Apples and oranges, Jason. The two don’t compare, not one damn bit.”

  “Then forget all that for now. I don’t think you’ve had a good look at my back yet, have you?” Without waiting for an answer, Jason unbuttoned his shirt and stripped it away. Holding his arms out from his body, he slowly turned his back to Gil, showing him the gridwork of scars. “The guy by the pond did that to me. He says he raped my girlfriend. He helped murder Tomahawk. Just call it an overdue debt I paid back.”

  Gil said nothing for a long moment, and Jason thought he might turn and walk away. But then he looked Jason in the eye. “It could be seen that way. But when you sink to their level, what makes any difference between you and them?”

  “The end goal,” Jason said, without hesitation. “It makes all the difference in the world.”

  He slung his shirt on again and walked away, cane in one hand and Gil’s riot gun in the other. He headed for Molly’s, and in her driveway sat parked a Dodge Charger that had been recovered from the other side of town and rejuvenated to get him back north. The last he saw of Gil, the man was still staring at his back.

  * *

  It was early yet, the gray of daybreak at the windows, and Farrah was sure that no one was even awake to pay attention to her.

  She was worn out. She’d scarcely slept since Friday night, and when she did, her dreams were lying in wait, ready to pounce. Weird dreams, dreams that scared and fascinated at the same time. A part of her whispered that they were wrong, but its voice was weakening. The part of her that told her they were exciting was getting stronger every day.

  No one’s out here…

  They’d begun on Friday night, and she’d almost told Diane about them during their talk yesterday. But she’d chickened out. Maybe she wouldn’t have had Diane asked about them point blank, but how could Diane have known? They’d returned last night, worse, if anything. Her curiosity wouldn’t take much more without something to appease it.

  I shouldn’t be doing this…

  She repeated it with every step higher, creeping along the escalator to the sixth floor. Toward the man they’d brought in Friday night. She knew his name was Travis, and that everyone had talked about him for a long time, and that they didn’t like him. Well, that much she could understand—his looks were kind of scary.

  But whatever had been happening inside her—and she wasn’t at all sure what it was, a queasy tug of war between wildly contrasting emotions—somehow Travis was the cause of it. She’d never seen a man like she’d seen him, not even her father. Okay, a year ago this past spring at school, one of her friends had smuggled her mother’s most recent Playgirl out of the house and a bunch of them had crowded into a giggling ring around it in the bathroom. But pictures could lie, and there was a world of difference between seeing something on a flat piece of paper and seeing it standing in front of you.

  I really shouldn’t be doing this…

  But by now she was at the top of the escalator, on the sixth floor, for real, and the last of her hesitations had fallen away five or six steps below. Although if someone had asked why she was really here, she still couldn’t have answered.

  Someone like Sam. Sam Dunne. She’d watched him trudge upstairs late last night for what they were calling guard duty. She guessed it was still his shift, and if he’d stopped her, Farrah supposed she would’ve told him that she wanted to pull her weight for a change, take a turn at guard duty. But as he sat in his chair, ten feet from the escalator, Sam’s chin was drooping to his chest, and next to the gun across his lap there was a Sony Walkman. He had a pair of earphones clamped over his head, and his breath snorted and puffed.

  She tiptoed past.

  Farrah saw him near the sales counter, tied into his own chair like a forgotten player in a game. At first Travis didn’t notice her, but then his head snapped around and he watched her approach…softly, cautiously. Every quiet step of the way.

  He looks different.

  Well of course he did, she decided a moment later. He was wearing a pair of gym trunks. Farrah stopped a good eight or nine feet away and came no closer. The light up here wasn’t as good as downstairs…more things to block it. But she could see him staring back at her, his hair sweaty and curly and tangled, his eyes spaced wide apart, his muscles enormous, like a man from the action movies her dad had loved to watch.

  “Shhhh,” he whispered, and nodded at Sam. “You don’t want to wake him up.”

  She shook her head, suddenly mute.

  “Well?” he said. “What do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything.” She felt herself getting red, and must’ve stumbled over the ‘I’ half a dozen times. I made him mad.

  “So you’re just gonna stand there and stare? That’s rude.”

  She took a step backward. “I could go if you want me to.”

  Travis looked at her a long moment, then shook his head. “Nah, you don’t have to.”

  Farrah smiled, just a little, and retraced her step forward. Maybe she hadn’t made him mad after all, and only surprised him. Some people didn’t like surprises. At least he didn’t look mad anymore. He was watching her in a way that reminded her of her father, how he used to sit in his recliner after work and answer her questions even when there were too many in a row. He’d answer them all, and get this exasperated expression on his face, but underneath it she could see that he really did love her.

  Something about Travis brought all that back again. There was something different about the way it looked on Travis, but it was close enough, and in a world where parents weren’t around anymore, close enough was fine by her.

  “Were you there when they brought me in a couple nights ago?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Uh huh. They made me leave really quick.”

  He seemed to find this funny. “Did they tell you why I’m here?”

  Farrah shook her head. “Nobody tells me much of anything. Diane didn’t even say why.”

  He seemed to perk up at the mention of her name. “Diane, huh? You good friends with her?”

  She nodded proudly. “Best friends.”

  “I see.” He concentrated a moment, as if thinking this over.

  “So…” she finally said after watching him think for a moment. “How come they brought you here?”

  “Oh, it’s a long story,” Travis said with a sudden surge of friendliness. “Some differences of opinion, that kind of thing. It really is kind of stupid.”

  And just to prove that he didn’t hold any grudges, that he didn’t hold her guilty by association, he gave her a big smile. She smiled back, uncertainly at first, then with more confidence. And she slid another step forward. Maybe everyone downstairs misunderstood him. Maybe he didn’t smile enough for them, because he had an okay smile when he wanted to. It made his eyes lighten up and look less scary.

  “You know how sometimes the boss has to yell at people who work for him, and they get mad, even when the main thing he wants is for everybody to just get along and do a better job? It’s like that,” he said. “You know, I’d really like to have a chance to go downstairs and explain that to everybody. Get a lot of this stuff straightened out, you know. But, uhhh…” Travis looked down at the ropes wrapped around him and gave a helpless little chuckle. “Doesn’t look like I can go anywhere, does it?”

  “Do those ropes hurt?”

  He chuckled again as she took another step forward. “Well, they sure don’t feel good.”

  Farrah nodded. No, I don’t think I’d like them on me either.

  Travis glanced toward Sam, then regarded her with large, sincere eyes. “You know something? I bet if we went down there together and you helped me out, helped me explain all this stuff to everyone, they’d really be proud of you. They’d probably think you were some kind of hero or something.”

  “Heroine.”

  “Heroine. Right
. See, you’re already smarter than me, know more words.”

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly.

  He shrugged, or did the best he could under those ropes. “It’s up to you, you know. Downstairs, they probably don’t tell you anything because they don’t expect you to do much to help, to get involved in the important stuff. But hey, it’s up to you.”

  He was right, of course. Colleen wasn’t the only one who always treated her like a child. They all did. Except for Diane. Sure, they let her help out with the cooking and that kind of stuff, but nothing that was important.

  Travis needed help.

  And it would be just like what she’d told Diane yesterday. He’ll be trapped someplace and things look awful for him, and I’ll come along and save him. The closest thing to a fairy tale situation as she was likely to find anytime soon around this place.

  “It’s all up to you,” he said again, little more than a whisper.

  Farrah looked over her shoulder at Sam, whose chin was still playing tag with his chest. Right there. He was right there if she needed him. She turned back to Travis and covered the last few steps in between. She knelt to start on the ropes at his feet. And while she couldn’t see it, that was when his eyes got scary all over again.

  * *

  The road back to St. Louis was around 800 miles, give or take. Hagar had no estimated time of arrival, only a dogged determination to get back home and worry about the road weariness later. Of course, he didn’t know for certain that’s where Jason Hart was headed, but he’d have bet on it just the same.

  They’d blown it yesterday. Fucking A, how they’d blown it, sky high and miles wide. Come down with a serious case of overconfidence and walked right into an armed enemy camp, complete with attack dogs. Seventy-five percent casualties, and it would’ve been a clean sweep had he not bailed out of the truck when he had the chance. He’d made a break for the line of trees, hiding and working his way around and watching what happened next. He watched the truck go up like Fourth of July fireworks, thanking whatever instinct had told him to jump. Then, as he watched Jason take Lucas apart, Hagar thought if it had been him, he’d rather have burned with the truck.

  Blown it, pure and simple. No way in hell was he going straight back to St. Louis to break the news to Solomon.

  So he’d hung around, watching, skulking in shadows and darkened corners. It wasn’t hard to keep from being noticed. Everyone else had other things on their minds. Pretty soon it became apparent that Jason Hart was planning on leaving.

  With the other guys dead, he couldn’t imagine a better outcome to the morning. This would save him a lot of trouble. As long as Hart was headed north on his own, all Hagar had to do was tail him and make sure he got there all right. And when the opportunity presented itself, deliver him to Solomon.

  He had a feeling this was the only thing that would earn his way back in.

  All he had to do was watch as Jason lugged a quartet of five-gallon gas cans out of a shed and into a car. All he had to do was steal his own gas when he realized he might lose the kid on the road if he had to take time to siphon along the way. All he had to do was steal an entire car next, hot-wiring a compact on the edge of Heywood. All he had to do was hang back a mile or two the entire way, as often as not driving with the binoculars at his eyes so he could make sure Jason wasn’t doing anything unexpected.

  All he had to do was drive all afternoon yesterday, all through the night—no headlights, just moonlight—and now all morning.

  Hagar was one tired and cranky stormtrooper indeed. His stomach was a hollow, rumbling pit; he’d had no time to grab food. The only water he’d had for hours had been scooped from a ditch during a gas break. Sunburn had spread across his face and arms, a constant low-grade flame.

  But he would have his payback soon enough.

  Every mile north brought it that much closer.

  * *

  Sunday morning, an hour after dawn, was when all hell finally broke loose at Brannigan’s.

  Jack had decided to let Travis eat twice a day, with mealtime being a job for three. Two to keep guns on him, and one to untie the ropes so Travis could eat and do his business in a bucket. It also gave them a chance to tighten the ropes every several hours in case he was trying to pull a Houdini and work them loose little by little.

  “If this is gonna be a long-term deal,” Rich said on the way up the escalator, “we need to work out something more humane, less labor intensive. Make up some kind of cell for him.”

  Jack nodded. He was carrying a spoon, some canned stew and fruit, and a couple slices of bread baked in a propane oven.

  “I was thinking about trying to find an office somewhere, without windows. See what we could do with that.” Rich looked at the rifle in his hands and chambered a shell.

  Jack was ahead of him, the first off the escalator, and the way he froze was the first cue that something was terribly wrong. Rich shouldered past and saw Sam Dunne sprawled in the floor, face down and eyes open and his head cranked too far to one side. Then Jack looked toward the sales counter, and even in the bad light, Rich could see him going pale. Jack uttered a sickly groan.

  A moment later Rich saw why. It wasn’t just because Travis Lane was gone.

  It was the longest walk of his life, from the landing over to the empty chair, the pile of ropes, the lanky young body draped over the sales counter, every step a slow-motion nightmare from which he kept wishing he could awaken. Find himself by Pam again, so he could start the day over and get it right this time.

  “Why didn’t we kill the son of a bitch when we had the chance?” Jack croaked.

  Farrah lay limp across the counter, one leg hanging off. Mottled bruises ringed her throat and darkened her mouth; the tip of her tongue peeked out between her swollen lips. Her multicolored jam shorts lay on the floor, and thick smears of drying blood traced the inside of her thighs. Her panties had been bunched into one hand.

  The other hand held a note. With shaking fingers, Jack pulled it free. It had been hastily scribbled in pencil on a return slip from beneath the sales counter.

  I guess she came up here because she was curious, it read. Diane shouldn’t have brought a naked man around such an impressionable young girl. I satisfied all her curiosities.

  Jack slowly crumbled the note and went to his knees with a stifled sob.

  “We’ve got no choice anymore,” he said into the floor. “We’ve got to clear out of this place now.”

  8

  The first face Travis saw when he got back to Union Station was the last one he wanted to.

  He made it into the Omni and back to his room by one of the least-traveled routes, looking as if he were returning from a morning jog. Clad only in the gym trunks and the soles of his feet aching from the barefoot run from Brannigan’s, Travis shut the door behind him…

  And found Solomon sitting on his bed.

  “Have a nice vacation?” Solomon asked.

  Travis averted his eyes, feeling like he was sixteen years old again and bringing the car home at three in the morning, with dents.

  “Nobody around here seems to have the faintest idea what happened to you.” Solomon rose from the bed, twirling a red wig on one finger. “Or Erika either, for that matter.” His fist suddenly snapped shut on the wig, as if he’d just crushed a small dog.

  “Bad judgment on my part,” Travis muttered.

  “Bad judgment,” Solomon smirked. “Let me guess. Some woman came along and got you thinking with your cock instead of your head.”

  Up yours, buddy, it could’ve happened to anybody. “They’ve already started paying for it. And they’re nowhere near finished.” Travis moved toward the closet and started dressing. “When did you and Earl get back?”

  “Late last night. Kansas City looks promising. More damage to the power plants than here, but he can still get them working.
”

  “Did the guys get back with Jason yet?”

  “No, but I shouldn’t think they’d be much longer.” He chuckled to himself, eyes narrowing with cynical humor. “A couple nights ago I was asking myself, ‘Hmm, now who among my people will be the next to reeeeally fuck up?’ I see I have my answer.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” Travis growled. “I got out of there on my own.”

  Solomon shrugged, unimpressed.

  Travis busied himself in his closet, taking out the tactical shotgun he’d had since that long-ago day when he and the other survivors had left the jailhouse. He found a box of shells and began loading, the small clicks unnaturally loud in the room.

  “I hope you didn’t have any long-term plans for anyone at Brannigan’s,” Travis said. “I promise you in two hours every last one of them’s gonna be decorating their walls.”

  “Yes,” Solomon mused, idly looking up at the ceiling as if seeing beyond it. “I guess maybe we have dragged things on with them long enough. Maybe it’s time.”

  Damn right.

  Solomon began to laugh. Gently at first, then with more force, like a schoolboy who’d thought up his best prank yet. Travis paused, staring, until he explained himself.

  “And then,” Solomon said, “when we get Jason back, we take him on a tour of the place. A kind of homecoming present. Yes. Yes, I like that a lot.”

  The thought of it spurred Travis into double-time. He moved like a whirlwind throughout the Omni and Union Station, rounding up his soldiers, interrupting sleep and meals, sex and card games and work details. When a group of about thirty had gathered on the parking lot, bristling with guns and machetes, Travis let them know that this time there were to be no prisoners. This time they had the freedom to do whatever they wanted, no holds barred.

  Except for one stipulation: a blonde in her mid-thirties named Diane was all his.

  And, Solomon added, Erika was all his.

  They packed into four pickups and screeched out of the parking lot, rolling down Market Street, cutting over to Olive at Twelfth. Sullen clouds thickened low overhead, a growl of thunder rumbling in the distance. Masonry buildings towered darkly above, silent as rows of tombstones.