“I can’t.”
She crosses her legs and stares off somewhere else.
Brisk night and daytime heat collide in this strange world, and I shiver and pant as the shovel crashes against the dry surface, over and over. I gaze deep into the dead’s glassy eyes.
“They’re dead, Damien, but only if you believe it,” Janice says, flicking the apple core behind her, “to go back a few days ago, huh?”
“Don’t.”
“Oh stop, it’s not about you. I’ve been working this out for years. You’d think I’d never hear about Riverton in the East, but the Federal boys that came in the restaurant there, well, they sure had some big mouths.”
“So it’s always been you running the show.”
“It’s always been me. And now it’s him. We’re the true voice of the Rapture.” The word lilts and floats towards my ears, almost sounds nice. I guess the concept’s all right, but I can’t agree with their interpretation.
“Am I dead?”
“What, like your friends? Worried that you went a little too far this time?”
“I guess. You kill Jasper?”
“He was a good little boy, don’t you think?”
“So you killed him?”
“It’s a mercy,” she says, grinning, not the least bit sad, “the world is cruel, Damien. But revenge is crueler. You’ve found that out, haven’t you?”
Everything starts to quake. This might be it—the part where the switch goes off.
“But I can change it.”
“You need the switchbox; I do believe you’ll be left behind without it.” She laughs, bitter and cold. I pick up the shovel again, focus, and the hole gets deeper. “There, you’re getting the hang of it. Down is the only way out.”
Dirt piles up next to the bodies. I rub my hands together for warmth and stare down at the stained soil. I place the bodies in, one at a time, cover them up. They don’t reappear this time.
“You’re a little tougher than you look, Damien Mitchell. Say a prayer.”
“I don’t know any,” I say, my mind going blank.
“Now I lay me down to sleep—”
“I’m leaving,” I say, and, just like that, she winks out of existence, her words with her. I walk for miles, feeling neither thirst nor hunger, and I find a car in the middle of the desert. It’s empty.
Kristine emerges from the driver’s side, holding a red can.
“Fuel,” she says, red can in her outstretched arm, “to get you home.”
“I can’t go home,” I say.
“Find a new one, then.” She sits on the hood, fingers tapping against the metal.
I look around at the empty plains, mountains on the horizon too far to touch. The gas slows to a trickle and the can runs dry. Keys come hurtling through the blackness, and somehow I snatch them out of the air; I look at Kristine and she gives me a smirk.
“Desire is a crazy thing, Damien.”
“I’m thinking we’d be better without it.”
“You don’t mean that,” her smirk turning into a kind smile, “we met, and that was all right. No one is good and no one is evil, they’re just…”
But she’s gone. The sky parts and I’m off, accelerator to the floor, racing a storm and the crescent waves behind me. Water looms closer in the rearview, and I pump the pedal, hard, fast, slow, but I can’t outrun the tsunami. I’m going to be carried away.
But then the car slingshots forward, leaving everything behind as pastel shades of a new dawn burst into the sky, fusing the world together once more.
I wake to the frantic beep of medical equipment, light bleeding into my sockets from behind closed lids. It’s painful to blink. Sounds rush in like the crash of a waterfall—strained voices, the clink of surgical tools against the gurney. I hope that they don’t cut me open right here. It can’t be sterile; I can smell smoke.
My vision locks back into place, and I’m looking at endless blue, corrupted by hazy ash. Clouds traipse across the sky, and I know what each shall become: this one, a pirate ship, will soon be a race car, zooming and careening across the heavens. I can feel that my raw arms are free of shackles.
Face covered in sick and blood, I taste a burning drip in my throat. I can only see forward, but it’s enough to know I’m still at the police station. I roll against the side bar of the stretcher; it’s loose, old. I snap it off.
Time to leave.
“He’s awake,” I hear someone say, but I can’t tell if they’re relieved, disappointed or just don’t care. This is it, the end of my plan, and I leap from the slab, back from the beyond, catch a glimpse of Richards, look him right in the eye before I smash his face with the metal pole.
I’m flying across the ground, like I’ve been lifted on a jet stream far above the desert dust, skin touching nothing, the wind beautiful against my bare chest. Straight ahead, I can see it now, the terminus of my desperation, an idle police car, keys in the ignition, engine purring. It invites me in and I accept, slide into the driver’s seat without missing a step. Pistons pounding as I throw it in reverse, I gun through the line of pursuers, the scent of torched rubber mingling with the tingling in my throat.
I duck my head a little low, in case they shoot, but they don’t, and I roar onto the main road. Behind me, softer and softer, I hear their shouts, see the cops scatter and scramble. Ahead, a police cruiser stationed at the bank springs to life, lights sweeping across the hood of my car, on-off-on-off. I’m up to eighty now, closing the gap, three hundred yards, one hundred, as the officer pulls out, trying to pick up speed and cut me off all at once. I can hear his tires squeal, see the back end of his car clinging to the road.
I clip his tail before he can straighten out, blow right by him, sending the cruiser into a coffee shop. The horizon and I race, me trying to catch up, it running ever further away as I push my ride as hard as she’ll have it. Maybe I can make it—but I have no cash, the entire force crawling up my ass, and a brain that feels sharp enough to cut right out of my skull.
The radio crackles to life. Suspect fleeing west…white male wearing blue jeans stained with blood…no shoes, no shirt. Wanted for multiple homicides, robbery, kidnapping, drug trafficking and use.
I bang it with my fist and achieve radio silence. Drug use seems to be low on my list of purported sins.
It crosses my mind to stop at The Lady, grab my truck, but it’s not there and the keys are off with Kristine, maybe in a ditch, the permanent property of the Riverton desert.
I pass the El Dorado and Candice’s old trailer, a final, short farewell, and now I’m out in the open, the sun starting to go down, roses and cobalts and mangoes diffusing across the flat earth. A familiar voice sputters from the radio.
“Little brother,” he says, “you can’t outrun this one.”
“I’m sorry Damien, there wasn’t any other way,” Janice says, voice warped by static, “it’s not personal.” I fumble with the switches, turn on some loud metal music that rocks the car for a moment, flip a few other dials, and hear the line open.
“It’s that easy, then. All for some gold.”
“The gold?” Isaac seems surprised. “It was always about the switchbox, buddy, not the cash.” Then he adds, “Although the money, that’s necessary, where we’re going. Can’t pay them in dollars.” He laughs, like this is funny.
“She didn’t tell you, then?”
“Tell me what?”
“She’s going to kill you.”
“We’re in this together. We’re going to change the world.”
“That’s sweet, Lancelot, it is. But there’s only room for one megalomaniacal asshole at the top of your organization. And it’s the one who’s been planning longer.”
“If you follow us,” Janice says, “the girl dies. Say hello, honey.” I can hear muffled cries and something else in the background.
Still alive.
“Whatever Janice has planned, I’ll kill you—” I’m cut off by a crackle and sputter. Disconnected. “—both. Shit!” But the line is dead, and I might as well be too. Twenty years down the line will have three new residents—or maybe just two—and I’ll be out in the arid heat, crows eating my appendix, eyes rotting in the sand, coyotes tugging at my insides.
I want to believe I’m pissed because of some moral compass— but that’s not enough to chase them into the void. Truth is, I’m just like all of them; I want something impure, guttural, dark. I want to blast the Syndicate from the world, and now I want to do the same to the Rapture—each of its splintering arms. And I understand now, at least a little, Richards’ grasp of redemption.
There’s one way to redeem this: slit Janice’s goddamn throat, slow, and look right into her eyes.
Droplets form on the windshield and the wipers leave behind blurry streaks. I need to get to Freeport. I hope Freddy’s still there.
22
Welcome
The car’s tires spin in the soggy ground; it can go no further, but I’m already where I need to be. I grab a shotgun from the trunk, a little riot gear and head towards the cluster of buildings veiled by the downpour. No tearful goodbyes or sentimental thoughts. Richards and his friends will be here soon, so I have to move. Freeport’s pool is rising. It might be the first time since this place closed that it’s seen this much water.
I drum the shotgun’s barrel against Freddy’s door.
“Hello?” Suspicious.
“Freddy, you beautiful son of a bitch,” I say, shouting to be heard over the storm, “let me in. Could use a favor.”
“What the hell do you need?”
“I need to know what else that switchbox can do.” Long, long pause. I wipe the rain from my face. Click; he locks the door. Paranoid guy, this Freddy—must think everyone is after him. With all that horsepower holed up in there, though, someone must be. “Hey, Freddy, it’s frigging wet out here!”
“Go away!”
“Come on man, I got nowhere else to run.”
“Your brother was just here, and they’re gone—”
“Isaac?”
“Yeah, with his girl, cute little thing, and he said he’d kill me if I let you through.”
“Was Kristine with them?”
“Yeah.” He sounds scared. Maybe they’re still in there.
“Now come on Freddy, that’s crazy. I can protect you.” Isaac, that silver-tongued bastard. No answer. “What’d you do, Freddy? Where’d they go?”
“Sent them away, where you can’t follow. And now people are closing in on you, Damien, they’re closing in, and you’d best run, because killing me won’t do you any good.”
I hear a gun being loaded on the other side of the door.
“I can help you if you just let me in,” and he does open the door then, all drug-addled, with some weird sort of rifle I’ve never seen before. He brandishes it towards me, like it’s a saber. “Woah, Freddy, just take a minute here, go back inside. The storm’s about to get real nasty and we can talk in there, where it’s warm, and no one has to die.”
“You’ll keep coming man, I know you won’t let it go, I know you’re just like all of them, I know that,” he says, his voice almost a whisper, “I got to do this, I got no choice at all, unless I don’t want to live…” He’s shaking, and I don’t think it’s from the wind. His eyes are sunken, body gaunt.
“You look like a corpse, man,” I say, and I step towards him, “just tell me where Isaac went.”
He rasps up some blood, and it dribbles from the edges of his cracked lips.
“Stop moving! I swear to God, I’ll do this right now, cook you out here.”
“All right, all right, Freddy, just relax man, you’re right, I’m like them, and I need help. I get it, and it’s just been a long day, you know, and I’m just realizing it all now. So let’s just wait for the cops to show and cuff me up so I can get this help.”
“Get over near the pool.”
“Why?” I don’t move.
“Because the cleanup, it’ll be messy, all those guts outside the front door,” he coughs as he says this, black, viscous liquid splattering down his shirt, “and I don’t want to deal with that, I’d rather just let the rain wash it all away.” He holds both of his hands up to his head and screams, like he’s trying to shake a demon loose from his consciousness.
I bring the shotgun up, pump and fire. He howls and retreats back into the cabin as I let loose another blast, blowing out an already ruined window. Lightning crackles, and I can see blood in the wet sand, but it doesn’t look right at all, more like motor oil than anything human.
“I knew you were going to kill me, I knew it,” I hear Freddy say, more like a whine, and I kick down the door, spraying bullets as I enter. He’s in the corner, hand clutched to his stomach, weapon in his lap. “There are bodies all over the desert, we’re standing on what’s made of bodies, everything and everyone is a body, alive or dead…”
He’s overdosing.
“You damn junkie son of a bitch.”
“Either way, it’s you, Damien, it’s you that got me, I should’ve seen it…you’re just as bad, maybe worse.”
“Getting metaphysical on me now?” Shadows and bright lights dance in the desert through the open door. It won’t be long before the cops find me. “Freddy? I need you to do that thing for me now, tell me what else the switchbox does.”
His eyes are scrunched in slits and scarlet strands hang from his mouth. “That bitch,” he says, and he laughs, coughing, “I’m glad her mom kicked it, the slut. And her brother. I hope the Bull gets hung by his balls. I hope you all do. I know it’s too late for me, but for you, for you, that’s the funny thing about liars, we all get ours in the end. And you’re a dirty scumbag liar, and I should have known it would end like this, in the rain, it never rains here, never once…” He trails off and that’s all he leaves me with. He’s got a little clicker in the hand covering his gut.
I take it and press the button, but nothing happens.
The shack shakes as a flashbang explodes inside. I wheel around, blind, jerk the shotgun and coax bullets out of it fast as I can, hear screams, white heat searing my flesh.
Someone steps out of a car, but all I can see is the hint of someone’s boots, each slow step dragging along mud and grime. I wrap stiff fingers around the cartridges in my pocket, ones that will never make it into the chamber.
I pull myself forward, towards the door, and I’m about in the middle of the room when a figure cuts in the frame, silhouetted by the moon.
Eyes shut, I hear Richards say, “Let’s finish this and leave his body to rot.” He cocks the hammer on his gun.
There’s no shot. Just the lonesome lilt of the rain fading into nothing, like an old picture that’s been around too many years to hang on any more.
Do good things change us as much as bad? You take them for granted, part of the daily routine, while the bad, a man might never get acclimated. They tear at his heart, shatter his mind, crush him down into less than he was before.
Whoever named Riverton must’ve got a storm or two like this and thought it was the Promised Land. Believed they had found an oasis in the midst of the nothingness.
But everything turns to shit, because the good can only go down and most things are wrong to start. Or maybe I’m talking in old clichés because they’re easy as cheap whores. Men take these generalities as truth to be a little less alone, pretend like their experience is shared by everyone else.
Desert rain is pretty, like most things you don’t see too often. A coyote cries, a brother-in-arms, both of us in solitary battle with this unfamiliar element.
Desert chill is strange as anything; it seems wrong that one moment the sun could burn you off the earth’s surface, the next the ground’s ha
rder than tundra.
Snow isn’t sprinkling from above, but it feels like it could be, even must be. The only reality is what you think, not what’s actually there. Because nothing is. I strain to push myself from the ground, but my shoulder buckles. A hole straight through it, still bleeding.
That makes two in less than three days. This one’s worse.
It takes a try or two, but I rise up. Freddy’s body is in the corner. I look out at the pool; it’s clean, well-kept even. The shack is a nice building, architecture unlike anything I’ve seen—a strange mash-up of modern steel and some sort of polished stone. Everyone else has disappeared.
Freeport Recreation, the sign out front reads, followed by symbols I can’t read.
No cruiser treads in the dirt, no sign of Richards or anyone else. I sleep in the shack while I wait out the storm. I don’t dream, my sleep blank and empty. An alarm wakes me at midnight, but I’m not hurtled back to the start. I go back to sleep, wake in the morning, pristine sky above. I touch my shoulder and it burns, oozes red and white.
A new world. One of reality or insanity, I know not which.
I exit the shack and start to walk, the sun not yet out all the way, the rain not burned all away and the earth still cool beneath my bare feet. Open road stretches on away from Riverton, until its swallowed whole by the horizon. I follow it, don’t look back—can’t look back.
A floating car zooms by and does a quick turn, coming up alongside me.
“You look like you could use a ride, there,” a man says. And I get in, say sure, why not, and he says, “damn, son, that’s a nasty sort that worked over your shoulder,” and I nod, ask him what year it is, to which he gives me a quizzical look, followed by “2049,” right before we move off to meet whatever the distance holds.
I’m in a hospital. I move my shoulder and, to my surprise, it doesn’t hurt at all. A nurse comes in, and I can’t see her behind the curtain, but she talks to me in sweet tones. “The machine sure had a whale of a time with you. A record around these parts. The system isn’t programmed for wounds like that.”
The Rapture: A Sci-Fi Novel Page 11