Marathon

by Brian Freeman

  They were spending two weeks on an ecotourism vacation somewhere in the mountains of Costa Rica. For Ethan, who was sixteen years old and lived a block away, this was the best summer adventure ever. His neighbors, the Carlsons, had stocked the fridge with Mountain Dew and homemade cookie dough and frozen Heggies Pizza. He could play Minecraft all night long. He could binge-watch Game of Thrones on their sixty-inch television and replay the nude scenes as many times as he wanted.

  It was an easy gig. Water the plants. Scoop the litter box. Mow the lawn. And above all, above all, don’t let the cat out.

  Now he was screwed.

  The sirens had brought Ethan to the front window, where it looked like a Jason Bourne movie outside. Police cars roared up and down the street. Floodlights scanned the woods and the yards. His mother had called to tell him: Stay inside the house, and make sure everything’s locked. He’d followed instructions, but when he spotted three police officers in military gear walking side by side down the street with rifles in their hands, he couldn’t stop himself. He cracked the front door and called out: “Hey, guys, what’s going on?”

  One of the cops shouted, “Get back in the house, lock the door, and don’t come out!”

  Ethan did, but he was too late. The door was only open a few inches, but a few inches were plenty for Fuzzball. Like a streak of orange lightning, the cat was out the door and gone.

  “Crap!”

  He bolted down the steps into the driveway to chase the cat. The cop saw him and had a fit.

  “Son, I said, get inside the house right now!”

  He started to explain about the missing cat, but when a cop with a rifle marched up the driveway toward him, he turned around and ran back inside and locked the door. That was half an hour ago. He was still inside, the cops were still outside, and so was Fuzzball. He didn’t dare open the front door again.

  Ethan went downstairs to the finished basement. He let himself out through the patio doors onto the screened porch that bordered the garden, the storage shed, and the woods behind the house. The evening was warm and dank. A mosquito whined in his ear, and he slapped it away. He went to the screen door that led outside and peered into the darkness.

  “Fuzzball!” he hissed. “Fuzzball, come!”

  But Fuzzball was a cat, and he didn’t come when he was called.

  Ethan went back inside and retrieved a flashlight and brought it to the screen door and shined a light into the yard. He checked the garden. No cat. He cast a beam up and down the grass. No cat.

  “Fuzzball!”

  Ethan unhooked the lock on the screen door and stepped outside. He wasn’t visible from the street here, so he figured the cops wouldn’t see him. He left the porch light off to keep the mosquitoes away, but they dove for him, anyway, as if he’d bathed in sugar water. He walked to the wire fence around the garden and cast the light along the rows of tomatoes. Despite the fence, rabbits still got inside sometimes, and he wondered if the smell of rabbit had encouraged the cat to go streaking out of the house.

  But Fuzzball wasn’t in the garden.

  He lit up the crabapple tree and the spireas growing along the foundation of the house. No cat. Then he walked deeper into the yard, past the garden, toward the old metal storage shed, swinging his flashlight beam along the grass; it was short, because he’d mowed it that afternoon.

  There was Fuzzball, outside the shed, lapping up water that had pooled near the door.

  “Hey, buddy, there you are,” Ethan said quietly, not wanting the cat to scamper for the woods. If the cat did that, he’d never see him again. “You know, if you were thirsty, we’ve got water inside.”

  He approached with slow, careful steps, but Fuzzball paid no attention. The cat let Ethan come right up next to him, and Ethan bent over and scooped the cat up by its stomach.

  “Gotcha!” he said with a sigh of relief. Fuzzball fussed, but Ethan held him tightly.

  The cat’s paws were wet. Soaking wet. Ethan turned the flashlight around to light up his white T-shirt, and he was puzzled to see red paw prints smudged all over his chest. He lit up Fuzzball’s paws. They were red, too. The underside of the cat’s fur was all red. So were Ethan’s hands.

  He swung the cone of light back to the ground. He could see a puddle leeching from under the door of the metal shed, but it wasn’t water. The liquid was dark red, like wine. He sniffed his fingers, and he knew what it was.

  It was blood.

  Ethan stared at the storage shed and saw that there was blood everywhere. On the ground. On the grass. On the door. It was a lake of blood, growing larger. From inside the shed, someone groaned, and the frame of the door rattled.

  With Fuzzball still in his arms, Ethan spun around, shouted, and ran for the street.

  44

  “Khan Rashid! Open the door, and keep your hands in the air!”

  The voice of the FBI negotiator boomed through the speaker in the DECC conference room that served as the command center. There was no answer from the metal shed on Northfield Street. There had been no answer for an hour.

  As the FBI, police, and SWAT teams communicated back and forth between the Woodland neighborhood and the DECC, Stride found himself scribbling on the legal pad in front of him.

  He wrote: Rashid shot a cop.

  Then he changed it.

  Rashid shot a cop?

  Special Agent Durkin, who was seated next to him, glanced at the pad and whispered into his ear. “What’s up? What are you thinking?”

  Stride was thinking that none of this made sense.

  “I don’t know. I was shocked when the report came in that we had an officer down. I know Rashid was on the run, but I didn’t think he’d turn violent. I really didn’t think we had the right man.”

  “Khan Rashid! You’re bleeding. You need medical attention. Open the door, and keep your hands away from your body.”

  Again there was no answer.

  “Do we have any options for getting the door of the shed open?” Agent Maloney asked the tactical commander on the scene.

  “We sent in the robot, but we couldn’t unjam the door,” the commander replied. “Either the suspect locked it from inside, or he’s got it blocked. It means we’re blind for now. All we can do is listen.”

  “What are we hearing?” Maloney asked.

  “The suspect doesn’t seem to be moving. We think he’s on the ground. We can hear the occasional moan, but that could be a fake to mislead us about his condition. However, he’s lost a lot of blood, and there’s still blood coming from under the door. Sooner or later, he’ll be critical, if he isn’t already.”

  Maloney turned to the people in the command center. “Thoughts?”

  “If he dies, we lose the chance to question him and find out if he was part of a larger network,” Durkin said. “We should go in.”

  “Yes, I’d like him alive, if possible,” Maloney agreed. He turned to Stride. “What about the officers who had eyes on him? What can they tell us about the magnitude of the threat?”

  “He fired at them,” Stride replied, “so we know he has at least one gun. Beyond that, it was too dark to assess if he had other weapons or additional ammunition.”

  “Have we found any unclaimed vehicles in the neighborhood? Do we know if he came by car or by foot?”

  “Nothing on that yet,” Stride said.

  Maloney tapped the eraser of a pencil rhythmically on the conference room table. The point of the pencil was perfectly sharp. The agent’s face was a mask as he wrestled with the decision. What to do next. To go in or to wait.

  Stride had been in Maloney’s shoes more than once. There were no easy answers when a suspect was injured and trapped. You could storm the hideout and risk the lives of your officers. You could wait and risk walking away without the truth. He knew what he would do if the decision were his alone. He’d wait. He’d let Rashid die, if it came to that, rather than put more men in jeopardy. He hoped that Maloney, who was a cautious man, would do the same.
/>   And yet something still bothered him.

  He had a hard time reconciling the Khan Rashid he’d met on the stairs of the house near UMD with the man who could put a bullet into a police officer’s throat. He was certain then that they’d made a mistake about Rashid, but here they were, anyway. A cop was in the hospital; Khan Rashid was bleeding to death in a shed. He’d been wrong about suspects plenty of times in his life, but he was honestly surprised to be wrong about Rashid.

  Agent Maloney spoke into the microphone. “Commander, tell him again to toss out his gun.”

  There was a pause from the scene in Woodland, and then a voice blared through the loudspeaker.

  “Rashid! Slide open the door, and toss out your gun. We’re trying to save your life.”

  Silence took over the communications channel. Stride heard nothing from the radio feed. He wanted to hear the metal shed door slide upward on its tracks, but he didn’t. The robot outside the shed broadcast a faint noise that sounded like Rashid’s ragged breathing.

  “Any movement on site?” Maloney asked.

  “Negative.”

  Then everyone in the room flinched in surprise. Gunshots burst over the speaker, one after another in rapid succession, muffled shots from the interior of the shed. It was Rashid, shooting, and the sudden noise triggered a response from the tactical team, whose jittery fingers were already on their weapons. Outside the shed, someone fired, and then someone else fired, and the entire scene erupted in gunfire banging into the metal walls. Fifteen seconds of chaos filled the room before the commander regained control and silenced the weapons.

  “What the hell was that?” Maloney demanded.

  “The suspect opened fire, sir.”

  “Is anyone hurt?”

  “No, sir.”

  Maloney placed his hands flat on the table. “I guess we have Rashid’s answer.”

  The room was silent, but then Agent Durkin said, “Not necessarily, sir.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the gunfire on its own doesn’t make any sense. Rashid can’t see anything from inside the shed. Maybe he was emptying his weapon. We asked him to open the door and toss his gun out. If he’s not physically strong enough to do that, he might have been trying to prove to us that he’s no longer a threat. He fired until he ran out of ammunition.”

  Maloney frowned. “Stride?”

  “Or he may be trying to lure us in.”

  Maloney opened his mouth to reply, but a voice over the microphone interrupted him. It came from the transmitter mounted on the robot at the scene, and it was almost impossible to interpret.

  “Commander, what was that? Was that Rashid?”

  “I think so, sir.” And then, louder, over the bullhorn: “Rashid, repeat your last communication.”

  They all heard it this time.

  “I surrender.”

  * * *

  Khan awoke on the floor in the house at the end of Redwing Road. The pain made him feel as if his skull had been split in two. When he touched the back of his head, the slightest graze of his fingers set off lightning bolts. He pushed himself to his knees, feeling dizzy. When he stood, he fell against a wall, barely able to keep himself upright.

  He was alone.

  “Malik?” he called, but he knew his friend was gone. The gun that Malik had left for him was still on the floor at his feet. Next to it was a folded sheet of white paper. Khan squatted, feeling the whole world spin, and he retrieved it. He tried to read the note, but the darkness was too black, so he carried it to the front window, where the glow of a nearby streetlight reached inside.

  I’m sorry, my friend. This was the only way to set you free. Leave the way I told you, and don’t look back.

  Khan wondered what time it was. Was it midnight yet? Malik had said he’d know when it was safe, but he had no idea what that meant. And then he realized, looking outside to the street, that something was different.

  The police were gone.

  There were no flashing lights. No parked squad cars. No uniformed officers going house to house. He was alone. Somehow, Malik had drawn them all away, just as he’d promised.

  Wherever the police were, the emptiness in the neighborhood wouldn’t last. The window of escape would only be open for a brief time. Khan realized that Malik was right. It was time to go. He’d thought it would be difficult—impossible—to leave his life in Duluth behind, but now that he was at that moment, he realized he had nothing else to do but walk away. His wife was gone. His son was gone. The only thing he had left were memories, and he could bring those with him.

  Standing there in the house, Khan felt something ugly inside his chest. He realized he was bringing something else with him, too.

  Hatred.

  Anger.

  He didn’t like those feelings. They were foreign to him. He wished he could drive them away, but they clung to him like ticks that had dug their way into his skin and were feeding on his blood.

  Khan walked over to the gun on the floor, picked it up, and shoved it into his belt. He had nothing else to take with him. His head throbbed. It was hard to walk. But he couldn’t wait any longer.

  He opened the front door. He expected lights and rifles and angry shouts, but instead, the darkness welcomed him. Crickets sang, and frogs croaked out a chorus in the swampy woods. The trees fronting the golf course were on his left. All he had to do was cut across the hilly fairway under the protection of the night and find the burgundy Ford Taurus that Malik had left for him. Get into the car. Drive. Escape. Leave his life behind.

  Start over.

  He tried to go, but he hesitated on the threshold. He couldn’t stop thinking about Malik. Where was he? What had he done?

  What was his plan?

  By then it should be safe.

  Why?

  Because they will no longer be looking for you.

  Khan’s headache made it hard to think. To understand. To puzzle out the answer to the riddle. It made no sense for Malik simply to draw the police away. Once they captured him, it would be clear that it was Malik in their hands, not Khan. The search would begin again. He wouldn’t be safe, not here, not on the road, not in Minneapolis. There was nowhere to run.

  A day or more. It will give you time.

  A day for what?

  Think, Khan.

  And then he knew. Horror crept into his body, starting in the soles of his feet, wriggling up his back. It was hard to breathe. He spun around, too fast, and he lost his balance. He went back inside the house, leaving the door open, and braced himself against a wall. The darkness and dizziness followed him. He could barely see. Like a blind man, he stumbled forward, and he realized that, along with the shuddering pain in his head, tears had begun to fall from his eyes, as heavy as rain. He felt for the door to the basement; he knew it was there. He ripped it open. The stairs felt impossible, as if he had to lower himself into a cave. He only made it two-thirds of the way before he fell, crashing down, feeling his shoulder hammer the concrete floor.

  When he got up, he squinted. Faint light glowed through the window wells. He let his eyes absorb it, and he let the room slowly stop spinning in his brain. He inched across the floor, kicking debris. He wanted to shout. He wanted to scream. The curtain of tears turned the basement into a gauzy dream.

  Khan knew what he would find down there.

  Nothing.

  The wooden chair was empty. The suicide vest that Malik had assembled was gone.

  * * *

  I surrender.

  Malik knew that was what they wanted from him.

  Give up the fight. Offer no sacrifice at the end. He could never do that. He was going to die, and when he did, he wouldn’t die alone. He’d take as many of the Unbelievers with him as he could in a single moment of bright light. It was a glorious thing, to walk with head held high into the Hereafter.

  And the others?

  Taste the penalty of the blazing fire.

  It would be days before they could run the
ir tests on blood and tissue and realize that they had all been fooled. By the time they knew who had died here tonight, Khan would be hidden in another life.

  Malik lay on his back. He stared upward, seeing nothing. His heart pumped; his blood spilled to the floor, leaving him light-headed to the point of euphoria. He felt keenly aware of everything around him. In the fierce buzz above his face, he could distinguish the flutter of wings of each individual bee. He could identify each leg of each beetle that traversed his skin. Somewhere nearby, he smelled roses and honey, rising like sweetness above the manure in the shed.

  His breathing came with difficulty now. When he tried to move his legs, he found that they didn’t obey his brain anymore. Instead of pain, he felt numbness. He didn’t have much time. It didn’t matter; he had no fear and no regrets. The flat, plastic trigger was already in his hand, and all he needed was the barest touch of a finger to fulfill his goal. One spark, sent along the wires, exploding flesh and bone into a billion fragments. Online, his brothers had assured him that he wouldn’t feel a thing. One moment, he would be here in the dirt and darkness, and a millisecond later, he would be walking in the Gardens of Paradise.

  “Rashid, we are coming to get you now.”

  Yes, yes, come, he whispered soundlessly to himself. Bring as many as you can. Meanwhile, hopefully, Khan was already gone, on his way to freedom.

  “When we open the door, do not move. If you move, you’ll be shot.”

  And by then, we will all be gone.

  Malik waited. He wished he could pray aloud, but he knew his prayers would be a warning. His lips moved, but his voice was silent. Instead, the verses ran through his head. He could hear them as clearly as if his brothers were there with him, reciting them in unison.

  By the Glorious Morning Light,

  And by the Night when it is still

  Your Guardian Lord has not forsaken you, nor is He displeased

  And verily the Hereafter will be better for you than the present

  And soon will your Guardian Lord give you what shall please you.

  Outside, the boots of the police splashed and thundered. He didn’t know how many there were. They crept toward him inch by inch, and they shouted at him, and their armor and guns clattered as they came closer.