“Doesn’t make it right.”
“Hell . . . some people just need to be killed. You know that.”
I almost laugh, but then I don’t.
Toni lets out a sigh and stands up. “This is fucking nuts. And I’m too tired to think about it anymore.”
She starts for the master bedroom, then turns to me.
“Are you coming, Elroy?”
Yes.
Of course I am.
• • •
She stands in the center of the room, at the foot of a bed that smells like clean things, decent things. A bed I stole for her, so we could rest and be here. Just for a moment. Before we run again.
My head swims, so close to her.
My pain, so deep and so permanent.
Love cannot stay.
Walled on all sides of us are glass cases filled with Barbie dolls. Hundreds of them. All reshaped and customized in really elaborate handmade outfits and hairstyles. There’s Punk Rock Barbie, Soccer Mom Barbie, Army Paratrooper Barbie, Rock Star Barbie . . . and every other walk of life that bridges worlds, all with the same face, all with the same eyes. There’s even a series of Homeless Gutter-trash Barbies and Rotting Zombie-Freako Barbies, and they look real happy, too. I can’t imagine why.
I close the door, and we’re alone together.
“Nice bedroom,” she says, not looking at me. Then she sort of laughs. “The little lady must be a collector.”
“It’s a whole Internet subculture. Customizable dolls like this. I’ve never seen this many in one place before.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“Kind of creepy if you ask me.”
She hangs her head and sighs. “You know, if you wanted to play house with me, we could have just found a cheap motel. This is a little much, don’t you think?”
“No. We need a solid position. I need to check some things before we move again, and a motel is way too public now.”
“What kind of things?”
“A minute ago, you said something,” I say, staring deep into her. “It was something Toni never would have said.”
“You still think . . .”
“You dropped the F-bomb. In ten years, I don’t think I’ve ever heard Toni say that. Not even with my father. Not even Hartman.”
She moves closer to me.
I take one step back.
“My memories have been ruined for years,” I say. “You can’t know what a nightmare that’s been. The most important thing in your life, taken away and replaced with . . . nothing. I came to find my wife in that awful place. I wanted so badly to find her there. All I’ve had for years to go on was the smell of her. The smell of you . . .”
I breathe her in.
It’s still Toni, but weaker and weaker all the time. Like the memories that abandoned my mind on the operating table. Like the years that teased me, shadows and whispers.
“And now I can’t be sure at all,” I say. “I feel like I’m floating in some far-off place, surrounded by strange new faces.”
“You’re wrong,” she says. “Can’t you believe your eyes?”
“I didn’t even know what my wife would look like when I found her.”
“I’ll prove that I am who I am. Right here, right now.”
The smell of her armors my heart—makes me believe again. Does it even matter who she really is? Could she be Toni anyway? A new version of her that came back to rescue me in the burning dark—to rescue me from Hartman?
We all tell ourselves lies. We all sell out every day.
I could stop right here and accept the lie and move on. I could be happy with it. Because even if I saw the real Toni now—even if she’s still alive and she still loves me—I would always remember this version of her. She would always be here in this room full of dolls, her scent filling my heart and burning my soul. Does that convince me, deep down? Am I Jimmy Stewart, dressing up Kim Novak in fancy clothes?
Am I really that far gone?
I put my hands gently on her shoulders. My breath touches her ear, and she whispers softly that she loves me.
I love you.
She closes her eyes and all the breath leaves her body, resigned.
And she kisses me.
• • •
The kiss is good, full of things you remember. Like promises made and secrets kept, anger and fear and desperation colliding somewhere in a dark place you can’t find your way out of. I feel the uncertainty in that moment and I want to believe more than ever that she is my wife, the electric bolt of it shocking through my body and leaving me breathless, as we melt into one another. I caress the slope of her neck with one hand. My lips meld with hers. It all comes so easy. Like we’ve been here so many times. Like we know each other this well, just by sensing. Just by feeling.
I love her because she is my wife.
But she isn’t.
Nothing ever felt more right and more confused.
So we go deeper.
Our souls vanish in the hot shimmer, leaving us naked of all our sins, hovering without flesh, without blood, without anything but this endless longing to find each other. To find anything.
Even if it’s not real.
It’s full of fear, this one moment of love, but it’s also beautiful. I think it might be the most beautiful moment I’ve ever shared with a woman. Because it moves through me so fast and the taste is so sweet that I don’t even know it’s there when it happens, and the memory fades instantly. Like we made something together, something to survive the ages, and then we shattered it, because it was perfect. Because it couldn’t last. Because happiness is not something that stays in this world, even when it does. All that’s left is the trace of something vague and promising, like a dream that breaks your heart to wake up from, and then you make yourself forget because it hurts to remember. It’s something you have to let go. Something impossible to define. Something that never really existed.
Or maybe it did.
• • •
I pull away from her when the kiss is done, unsure of everything.
She bites her lower lip softly.
“Why did we do that, Elroy?”
“I’m not sure.”
“It felt good. Didn’t it?”
“Yes.”
She touches my shoulder, looking up into my eyes. “We’re still in a lot of danger. They could grab us any time. The cops. What’s left of Hartman’s crew.”
She stops, then looks away. “I love you, Elroy.”
I know it’s a lie.
I know it’s not really her.
Dominatrix Barbie stares at me lustily, all done up in leather and lace and diamond studs. I wonder if the diamonds are real. It chills my blood a little.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she says. “But you’re wrong.”
She pulls me close to her again. I don’t fight it. I feel the sweat on her face, salty like tears. I feel everything and nothing, all at once, deep inside me and coming loose. We stare at each other in the dark. We’re still wearing blue rubber gloves, the two of us. I almost laugh at that, it’s so goddamn absurd. We stay very close for a long time, standing here at the edge of everything. A million painted eyes stare back at us from the glass cases. We don’t say a word to each other. We communicate in soulspeak.
Or at least that’s what it seems like.
That’s what I tell myself.
But it’s not her.
It’s not her.
It’s not her.
It . . .
• • •
I wake up in the middle of a dream.
I know it’s a dream because my father is here with us, and I am with Toni, and there are no questions about anything—everything is simple and beautiful and perfect. All the answers are easy. Nobody wants to kill us.
We’ve come home.
To the house of Jayne Jenison.
And I am clicking the keys on a computer console, speaking words that sound like numbers. And my father looks over my shoulder.
And David Hartman looms over his shoulder. And the voice of the Sarge comes loud and clear:
It’s the face of God.
You ain’t got what it takes.
But I’ve come home. To Toni and my father and my family that never was. I click the keys. The numbers come at me. It’s a wall of rubber that bounces me back.
A wall of numbers that kills my father.
David’s voice now . . . so far away . . . fading . . .
This is where that nasty bitch lives, buddy-boy.
I struggle to stay here.
In this house.
The smell of roses pulls me away.
No . . . have to stay . . .
Have to . . .
• • •
The dull light hits hard as I peel my eyes open.
Morning now.
I can’t remember going to sleep. I was holding Toni in my arms, we were so close, and then I was dreaming. I feel it all dance in front of me in a cold shimmer. Am I dreaming now?
I hear the TV come on in the next room.
Franklin, scoping the news for some word.
I realize I’m lying next to the girl, and she’s already awake. We’re both still wearing our clothes. Maybe she never went to sleep. Guess that’s appropriate. We might be complete strangers.
My head still hurts.
Slashes of overcast morning gloom filter through the drawn curtains, capturing tiny swirls of dust. It’s like we’re hovering just outside our own light, in some lost place where only our shadows have substance. Hovering just outside the dream.
Just outside the house of Jenison.
What did it mean?
I sit up at the edge of the bed, looking out at all the dolls. Toni’s voice is somewhere, speaking to me now. So close to me, and a million miles away.
“You were talking in your sleep,” she says. “Something about a wall of numbers. You said Hartman’s name a few times. I wanted to wake you up.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I was afraid to.”
Somehow, that needs no explanation. I rub my eyes, looking at the clock on the bedside table: 8 A.M. Slept for three hours. I want to sleep for three years.
Gotta pull through this, somehow.
I hang my head and let loose a long breath. “Had a dream just now.”
“What about?”
“The bad guys were right at my shoulder, telling me things in plain English.”
“Do you remember what they were saying?”
“Just things I’ve already heard. Stuff about the face of God, and seeing Jayne Jenison’s house. I was looking at numbers.”
“Maybe the numbers mean something.”
You know where she lives and breathes, boy.
You saw it.
I see myself in the vault, sweating bullets. When the time locks were kicking my ass. That row of numbers I couldn’t ever figure out, always reorganizing and coming back in the original pattern. A ploy to fool hackers like me. Or maybe something else. Something put there by David Hartman. Because only a maniac like him would do that.
Don’t look.
The face of God.
Alex Bennett thought it was a decoy code and I didn’t believe her. Maybe we were both wrong. And I still have the numbers burned into my memory, the same way all numbers burn forever like snapshots, deep down, so I can leave them there and forget them.
Burned.
The same way God burns you when you dare to look in his face.
“Yes,” I say to her. “Hartman put the numbers there. It was his vault and he put the numbers behind all that security. I memorized them. I thought it was something it wasn’t. I thought it was the key to open the door.”
It was the mistake that got my father killed.
Hartman hid the damn thing in the deadly bear trap, where nobody could get at it—nobody but me.
The Sarge told me not to look.
They both knew it was the end of the world.
And I didn’t hear them.
• • •
Franklin sits glued to the big TV.
The local news channels are reporting the fire at Hartman’s compound, and there’s a continuing piece on CNN about the shootout in the lobby of the Sheraton. It spools all day long, but there’s no breaking information. They’re calling it TERROR IN THE HEART OF TEXAS, and there’s a lot of pundits and reporter-types arguing about the nature of the attack. That’s what they’re calling it now—an attack. Like what happened at Toy Jam in Austin. Some people are wondering if the two incidents are linked, but the official word is nil. Complete police blackout. There hasn’t even been a press conference yet. That probably means I was right about the security cameras—and Jenison’s people have to be combing the city for us right now. They’ll find us and kill us. They want what I have. And the cops want blood, too.
They’re not saying anything.
But someone has to pay.
Anyone.
We move in three hours.
But first . . .
• • •
The ghetto richies who live here invested a few grand in a nice civilian computer setup, with a printer and a scanner and everything. Cute. Getting past the Mickey Mouse security on the rig, I discover that they own a local business—a stationery shop in the River Oaks Shopping Center—and wifey has a side hobby selling those customized Barbies on eBay. The hottest one she had was a Britney Spears model, and the damn thing fetched near a thousand bucks from a collector who calls himself ILIKEDOLLSMAN666. This business really is creepy.
I hack the family e-mail account and find their travel plans, airline itinerary, the works. I even know the name of the ritzy kennel where they sent their dog to live for the next three weeks. That takes me ten minutes. Should have taken three. It’s always a little harder with gloves on.
Then I get into my offsite location and dig up some zipped blackware I’ll need.
An hour later, I’m riding the datastreams.
A ghost among ghosts.
I run a scan of the girl’s hand through the Houston Metro police database and come up snake eyes. I’m even not thinking of her as Toni anymore. Starting to doubt everything now. Starting to feel the ground shift again. Hartman’s hackers are all long vanished from my chat rooms. Everyone’s staying real low. I’m on my own now, back in the city of the living dead. There’s no way out but the way down.
I hack into a Global Positioning Satellite owned by Google.
It’s real easy.
Then I feed it the numbers I memorized in the vault.
And that’s exactly what the numbers are.
GPS coordinates.
It’s a complicated road map and this rinky-dink consumer imaging software isn’t sophisticated enough to look very close, but I do get a fuzzy picture: sixty or seventy miles of desert in Wyoming. The girl leans over my shoulder and asks me what the hell it is. I tell her:
“It’s the house of Jenison. And we have the keys to it.”
16
00000-16
JUST ONE MORE THING
I shouldn’t do this.
I have the discs and I know the general area where something big is located. It might not be Resurrection itself, but it’s all I need. I should run screaming from it, hide somewhere safe and wait for the sky to fall. I should use what I have to cut a deal with someone, anyone, for protection. But who do I go to? Who the hell do I trust? Can I even trust myself to see the truth—in anything? It all hovers in front of me. The plot wants to be figured out.
But there’s one more thing.
Toni.
I have to know for sure if I’m crazy. I have to know the truth about Resurrection Express. And only one man knows. Maybe.
I shouldn’t do this.
But I do it anyway.
• • •
I route my voice through a cheesy Skype-friendly microphone I find in a drawer and feed it through a series of filtration programs, making an encrypted digital signal that dials the phone number Elli
e Mayhem gave us last night in the bar. It’s 6 P.M. sharp, just like she said.
A rough voice answers on the third ring, gravel cut with razor blades:
“Yeah?”
“Ellie Mayhem told me to give you a call.”
“Where is that bitch? Who you is?”
Who you is?
He’s a real mind, this guy.
A dangerous mind.
“I’m an old friend of Mollie Baker. And Ellie’s with me now. I think we should talk.”
The razor-blade voice goes silent for a long, long time before it speaks again.
• • •
We get to the club at eight fifteen and the sun is long gone.
Texas Hardbodies says the lasso of neon revolving on the roof.
It’s one of those all-day-all-night joints that went way south from a strip club or a watering hole a while back—it’s a cheap mudslide instead, warped and tacky, full of beer signs and antlers on the walls, all traced in Tex-Mex bric-a-brac and dim Christmas-tree lights. The main room has six poles where the ladies let it all hang out. Most of them are teenagers with skinny legs and fake IDs. I try not to look. Three bars on three walls. Two pool tables. Plenty of private lap-dance booths, and some gated VIP escort rooms. A balcony full of rich depravos swarming like trolls in the dark, with the dull glimmer of lit cigarettes and fat cigars tracing their silhouettes. The gaudy thud-boom-twang of country trance music, which is the worst kind of noise in the world. Sounds like bowling balls pounding out a rhythm alongside a fiddle player having a seizure.
We’re early, me and Franklin and the girl.
The girl I thought was my wife.
We move through the room, towards the swinging doors at the rear that have a rolling set of police cherries on either side and a sign across the top that reads WELCOME TO THE PUSSY MACHINE. There’s a booth near the doors, dug deep in a corner. In the booth sit three men. One of them is the man we came to meet.
I can tell it’s him just by the way he looks.
He looks just like his voice.
A big guy with extra-wide shoulders, black jacket over a leather vest, his chest naked. Something heavy in a holster, almost visible under his right arm. Bald head and bloodshot eyes, rough dark skin like bad road, split across the chin with a long scar. It looks like recent damage, maybe six months old. Hasn’t healed well because he keeps moving. Crazy guys like this have to keep moving or they drown—they’re like sharks.
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