by Jack Cuatt
“Alex,” Kukov starts with a sigh, clearly not believing he's about to die. “This is all...” his voice is low, melodious. His hand shifts on his knee, slithers toward the side of his chair. “... a bunch of bull...”
Machine could stop Vlad with a word, a glance at the offending hand, but he does neither.
Vlad kicks away from his desk and his hand darts under the seat of his chair, clawing for the handle of a small-caliber automatic. He’s fast for an oldtimer, but not faster than a bullet. Machine's .45 bucks and a crater opens in Vlad’s forehead. A .380 Beretta tumbles from Vlad's hand, but the cigar remains locked between his teeth even as he slithers out of the chair and flops to the carpet behind his desk. Machine steps around the desk and puts two more shredders into Vlad's broad back then turns and aims the Colt at Paul.
“Goodbye Paul. Thanks for your help,” he says. His hatred for Paul is too great to allow the fat man to live, to allow him to turn out little girls and boys another day.
“Alex!” Paul gasps and loses four inches in height. “You said you wouldn't kill me! I'll leave town! You'll never see me again!”
Machine is done talking. He pulls the trigger and flame traces a straight line from the .45 to Paul’s head. The big man drops like a sledge-hammered cow.
Machine turns away from the corpses, walks to the door, opens it, and looks down the empty corridor. A distant clatter comes from the kitchen. Nothing else. He steps out and hurries down the hallway, listening for anything out of the ordinary. He reaches the front door, opens it a sliver and looks out.
One of Vlad's soldiers is having a look at Paul's shot-out windshield. Quietly, Machine steps onto the porch, crosses it and starts down the stairs with the .45 in a two-handed shooter's grip, level on the man's chest. When Machine hits the bottom step, he fires twice in rapid succession; one in the chest, one in the head. The soldier spins with the force and slaps the asphalt beside the Cadillac.
Machine runs forward, pocketing the Colt. He recognizes the soldier as he steps over him and slides behind the wheel; it’s pretty boy Dean Marcel.
The burning odor of vomit doesn’t faze Machine. He puts the car in gear and makes a hard u-turn. He keeps the headlights off. Cold air whips into the car as he accelerates down the driveway. The gate is open, the Lincoln parked across the electric eye to keep it that way. A shadow sits in the passenger seat.
The shadow gives him a moment's pause. Kyokuto should be behind the wheel, but he has little time for speculation. At the end of the straight slope, he slows, jumps the curb, turns sharply, and parks the Cadillac close to the brick wall. He exits the car, leaving the key in the ignition, and trots to the Lincoln. He jumps behind the wheel, puts the car in gear, pumps the gas, and pulls out onto the blacktop all in one motion. The gate rumbles closed behind them.
“Why aren't you driving—” he starts to ask, turning to look at Kyokuto, but he doesn't bother to finish. Kyokuto wouldn't be able to answer. His hands are wedged behind his back. A strip of gray tape is stretched tight across his mouth and another piece covers his eyes. His knees are banded in gray as well. There's dried blood on his pants and jacket. His chest rises and falls. He's still alive.
“Hello, Alex,” a voice comes from the back seat.
Machine recognizes the voice, though he never thought he’d hear it again. With his fingers locked around the steering wheel, he looks at the rearview mirror. The light isn't good, but he sees enough to make his blood slow to a crawl: a skeletal white face and dark, maniacal eyes.
“Hello, Red Sleeves,” Machine says in a monotone.
Moses grins at Machine from the back seat, bloodless lips twisted into an ugly smile. He's lounging casually, legs stretched across the seat, aiming a pump twelve-gauge at the front passenger seat. The threat is implicit; if Machine tries anything, Kyokuto dies.
50
“Who's the gook?” Moses asks, without taking his eyes off his son.
Machine doesn't answer. Sparks fly inside his head as he drives slowly down the asphalt, under the arching branches of the lifeless trees. The scene at the Metro plays across his mind's eye: Moses going down, Connie's face dissolving under a load of buckshot, the Ghost waving as he boarded the train and disappeared.
“Why?” Machine asks, suddenly unsurprised. He should never have believed it. Moses was too smart to get worked like that, even high on smack. He had set the whole thing up. Body armor.
“Money. It’s always about the money. Thirty million dollars.”
“My mother. You murdered her.”
Moses drops the smile and his expression turns sour. “That punk, that fucking Ghost, killed Connie. He was overzealous. I made him pay for that. I carved her name in his bones.”
Machine shakes his head. “I know you. You had to kill her to make it work. To make me believe it. To make sure I didn't take the money and leave with her.” It's all too clear now.
Moses' surgery-scarred face stiffens. “I came back here to get you, Alex,” he says rigidly. “I have a little work planned for us. You finished most of it tonight, but there's still the Children of The Blood to deal with.”
“What?”
“Scarpo’s dead. So is Vlad. The Crips are a couple of drive-bys away from being extinct and the Hammerskins are a fucking joke.” Moses shrugs. “Someone's got to run this city; it might as well be us. Once the Militia chops the council, of course.”
Machine shakes his head.” I have the nerve gas,” he says.
Moses flashes his death’s-head smile. “The Militia has the nerve gas. I have the same set of keys you have, Alex.”
Machine’s heart rate slows. Rage makes the color drain from the world; everything turns to shades of gray. Moses had retrieved the gas from the New Town storage space. Once pumped into the city’s ventilation system the nerve gas will kill thousands. Maybe more. Women, kids.
“They can’t move on the council,” Machine says. “I blew up their weapons supply.”
Moses shrugs. “Sooner or later they’ll make a move against the council. It’s inevitable. I can wait. We can wait.”
“Junkie bullshit,” Machine says bitterly. “Dope head fantasies.”
“Be polite,” Moses snaps. “I’m your father.”
“Who's in Holy Oak beside my mother, dad?”
“You have no respect. Never have. That’s your mother‘s fault.”
“Who’s buried beside my mother?”
“The punk. That Ghost. I needed a body, I made his available. Much the worse for wear,” Moses says and flashes that smile again.
“You're going to need that plot, old man,” Machine says. “Very soon.”
Moses flicks ash on the carpet. “I'll kill you if I have to, Alex,” he says. “Don't ever doubt that. I'd put Jesus himself in a box if there was money in it.”
“You'll try.”
Moses sighs. He reaches in his breast pocket, pulls out a pack of cigarettes and shakes one out. His free hand holds the shotgun, balanced on his knee and aimed at Kyokuto, wrapped like a mummy in the passenger seat. Moses lights up and inhales.
“Don't push me, Alex. One way or another, I walk away with thirty million. You're either with me or you're dead,” he says, exhaling a plume of smoke. He shifts the shotgun in his hand, gets a better grip on it, glances at Kyokuto and adds, “The gook too.”
Machine looks at Kyokuto and the internal blackness parts for a moment. He won't risk his friend's life. His eyes switch from the road to the rearview mirror. He forces himself to be calm. To wait. With his free hand, he reaches under the overcoat, into the chest-pack and grips a fragmentation grenade. Its pin is wired to the inside of the pack. He pulls the explosive free. The rasp of metal on metal is not loud, but Moses hears it. And recognizes it. He acknowledges it by putting the cigarette between his teeth and taking a two-handed grip on the twelve-gauge.
“You prepared to meet God, Alex?” he asks, cigarette smoke wreathing his face.
Machine lets out a harsh bark of laughter. “
God doesn't want anything to do with us, old man. We burned that ticket a long time ago,” he says, his eyes on the rearview mirror.
“Well then, fuck him if he can't take a joke,” Moses replies. “Heaven is for pussies anyway. Let's go somewhere and have a talk.”
Machine doesn't reply. He's done talking. All he wants is to get Moses out of the Lincoln, away from Kyokuto, so he can kill him with impunity.
The Lincoln tops a low hill two miles from the Kukov estate. At the bottom of the hill is a burning car; a dark gray Chrysler with rental company tags. Acrid black smoke boils from its burning tires and its shattered windows. The interior is gutted. Moses has disposed of his transportation, as well as any fiber or fingerprint evidence that linked him to it.
Machine keeps his eyes on the road, the live grenade in his left hand, and heads for the turnpike, for the warehouse where Wino and Tic-Tac lay in trash bag shrouds.
51
Machine says nothing during the drive back to Low Town. Every time he looks in the rearview mirror he meets his father's eyes. A thousand options pass through Machine's brain. All are rejected. Every one of the scenarios ends with Kyokuto dead.
They pass near the walled city. A brilliant Day-Glo display of colored blocks backdrops the tattered remnants of the old billboards that line the decaying highway. The clouds hang low and thick over the new city and the old. In the distance Easter Industries smokestacks spew soot. Machine exits the turnpike, spirals down the ramp to a dark intersection in the Bottoms and turns east, toward the river. At Shoreline, he kills the headlights, crosses the street and drives out onto the dock.
The rain has stopped, but the fog has thickened. A pale gray wash twists through the black pilings and rotten buildings. Machine weaves his way to Wino’s warehouse, parks, and turns off the engine.
“We're going to leave the gook here,” Moses says from the darkness of the back seat. “I want you to open the door with your left hand then put both hands behind your head.”
As he pushes the door open, Machine places his hands behind his head, the grenade in his left, its arming lever pressed against his palm.
Moses smoothly shifts the shotgun's aim from Kyokuto to Machine as slides across the seat. In a second he's standing on the pavement, just out of lunging range, backlit by the fuzzy glow of the streetlights on Shoreline, aiming the twelve-gauge into the Lincoln's front seat at Machine.
“Get out of the car, Alex.”
Machine stands and turns. His pale eyes meet Moses' empty black gaze. Past images rise in Machine's mind. Specters of pain, fear, and torture. His father beating Connie. The lash. The razor and fists.
“Upstairs?” Moses asks, then flashes a rabid grin. “Sorry about the mess I left up there. The white guy thought he was tough. If he had given me what I wanted I would have made it easy on him.”
Machine had thought Fat Paul and Vlad had been behind the murders of Wino and Tic-Tac, but he is unsurprised by this spontaneous admission from Moses.
“He didn't know where the bank books were,” Machine says. “He had nothing to tell.”
Moses shrugs, but the movement doesn't reach the shotgun; its aim remains unwavering. “Turns out I already knew where they were. The nerve gas was a nice bonus. But I have to say I was a little disappointed. I taught you better than that. Habits make you meat. You should have abandoned that place after you found the gear stolen.”
Machine says nothing. His stupidity went far deeper than that. He should have realized that it had been Moses who had emptied the weapons from the Rhenquist building. Should have suspected something. No one knew that location but Moses and Machine. But he had thought Moses was dead. And he should be.
“I should have killed you years ago, old man,” he replies as he slowly lowers his hands to his sides.
Moses' smile falters. He takes a quick step back, gripping the shotgun tightly. “Put them up or I'll put you down.”
“Do it,” Machine replies, flexing his fingers around the grenade. Inside the Lincoln with its web-armor and bullet-resistant windows, Kyokuto should be safe from the blast. It's just Machine and Red Sleeves now.
A long moment passes before Moses' smile comes back. His brittle laugh echoes off the sodden planks of the warehouse walls as he shrugs, feigning indifference while white-knuckling the twelve gauge. “Okay, Alex. Let's go upstairs and have our little chat. You first,” he makes a slight movement with the shotgun.
Machine crosses to the door, unlocks it, and leads the way inside, Moses hanging back ten feet. They cross the empty space to the stairs. Machine is only two steps from them when he senses his father moving up fast behind him. A whisper of sound and the shotgun's barrel is pressed tight to the base of Machine's skull.
“Lead on,” Moses says. “No tricks.”
Machine leads his father up the stairs, their footsteps light on the metal grating, the cold circle of the shotgun’s barrel nestled against his spine. But he feels no fear. He has killed more than a dozen men, been almost killed multiple times, and has seen the only friends he’d ever had lying in bloody ruins, sacrificed to the quest to find his mother’s killer. A quest that had led him straight back to his own doorstep. But it ends here. All debts will be paid tonight. Blood for blood, bone for bone. His grip loosens on the grenade. One way or another, Moses isn't leaving the warehouse.
Machine opens the door to Wino’s living room to the smell of decomposing flesh. Moses nudges the back of his head with the shotgun’s barrel. “The table,” he says.
Machine crosses to the far end of the kitchen table, turns, and faces his father.
Moses is still smiling, but sweat has collected along his upper lip and his jaw is clenched. His eyes jitter around the room nervously before coming to rest on his son.
“Sit down, Alex,” he says.
Machine complies, sitting facing the door. Moses crosses the room and seats himself facing his son, separated by four feet of tabletop. He lays the shotgun on the table, aimed at Machine’s chest. His hand rests casually on the stock, forefinger wrapped around the trigger.
Machine slides his hands off the table, into his lap. He tugs the Velcro and drops the razor down his sleeve into his palm.
Moses tenses, his smile dissolving once again into bitter lines. “Hands on the table if you don't mind, Alex,” he says,
Machine shrugs and puts his hands back on the table, the grenade in his left hand now, the razor in his right. He shifts his feet and leans forward.
Moses glances at the razor and says, “Like father, like son.”
Machine makes no reply, but the words make his blood boil. His father. A junkie murderer bound for the pits of hell. A man who had killed his own wife and stolen his son’s soul.
“I like the hair,” Moses says, glancing at Machine's short pink frizz and smiling again. “Hide in plain sight. I trained you well.”
Machine remains expressionless, doesn't speak or blink. He barely breathes. The killing rage is on him, choking off all thoughts but the need for blood. For revenge.
“That was nice work in New Town yesterday. “I appreciate you killing Sculli. If he had made it to the Jesus creeps, life could have gotten very difficult for me,” Moses says.
“Sculli got it easy. I’m going to make you feel it, Red Sleeves,” Machine replies.
Moses chuckles, a sound empty of humor that lasts only a second. “We're both professionals, no need for threats or posturing.”
“Why did you murder my mother?” Machine’s left hand sweats around the grenade, threatening to cramp. The fingernails of his right hand dig into his palm, clasping the closed razor. “No more lies, Moses. The Ghost wouldn’t have chopped her without your say-so.”
Moses sighs then shrugs almost indifferently, but his eyes belie that indifference. They are hard and cold, full of anger. “She told me she was going to take you and leave. That I was an animal. That she’d go to the Jesus creeps if I tried to stop her.” He shrugs again. “She was weak, Alex. Killing her was an act
of mercy. She was ready for it. She wanted it. They all do. They aren't like us. They don't understand this world.” As Moses speaks, his tone becomes earnest. He leans across the table, his eyes searching his son’s face for understanding. He finds nothing but hatred there. A muscle jerks in his sallow cheek as he settles back in his chair.
“Understand what?” Machine asks. “What it's like to kill? To be a murderer?”
Moses shakes his head. “That it's all a game. A fraud. Death is the only reality,” he leans across the table again. “Connie pretended to believe in God. But when the chopper came calling, she lost faith. She didn't want to die. I saw it in her eyes. She wasn't thinking about Jesus. Same old story. I’ve seen it a hundred times. More than that. Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.”
Machine's blood roars in his ears. It’s the same old insanity. His father is a monster. A demon. Machine’s fingers slacken on the grenade. The arming lever pulls away a fraction of an inch. Moses sees it and his grip tightens on the shotgun.
“You were lucky to have a father like me. I made you what you are,” he says.
“I'll kill you for that.” Machine's body trembles with suppressed fury.
“Not tonight. We both walk out alive or we both die right here.”
“The latter suits me,” Machine assures his father.
Moses chuckles, but it sounds forced. “You in a rush to die, Alex?”
“Death is the only reality,” Machine contemptuously echoes his father's words.
Moses' expression turns sour and his eyes go shifty. His hand twitches on the shotgun. For the first time ever Machine senses real fear in Red Sleeves. Despite all the talk about death being a game, the old chopper isn’t ready to die. Machine can see the calculations going on behind Moses’ eyes. Figuring the options. But there's no way he can get out the door before the grenade detonates.
“I shouldn’t have wasted my time. I'm walking out of here, Alex,” he says as he scoots back his chair. “Stay out of my way and you and the gook can leave Low Town.”