Gasp

by V. J. Chambers

  He was pushing a dolly loaded up with boxes. I was wearing a postal worker’s uniform. We’d knocked out the actual postal worker and stuffed him in the back of his truck. After we’d taken the dolly and the boxes, that is.

  Jason checked his clipboard. “Says to bring it here.”

  “We don’t accept mail here,” said the guard. “This entrance is only being used for Imri Black’s personal employees. If you have things to deliver, you need to go around—”

  “You’re not going to let us in, are you?” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” said the guard. “But this is the wrong entrance for mail.”

  I sighed. “This could have been easy for you, dude.”

  Jason nodded. “Could of been.”

  “You want to do the honors, or should I?” I asked Jason.

  The guard furrowed his brow. “What are you two talking about?”

  I yanked out my gun and pressed it to his forehead.

  His eyes got wide. “Oh shit.”

  “So, I bet you’d let us in now?”

  “Yes,” said the guard. “Absolutely. Just don’t… Let’s take this easy, okay?”

  “Keep your hands where we can see them,” said Jason.

  “Where’s your access card?” I asked the guard.

  “Breast pocket,” said the guy. “Look, don’t shoot me. I’m married. My wife is pregnant—”

  “You know,” I said, “if I had a dime for every time a guy told me his wife was pregnant when I had a gun to his head, I’d be rich.”

  Jason snickered.

  I cocked the gun. “Look, it’s nothing personal, sir, but I can’t leave you alive. You’ll go run and tell Imri that we’re here, and then we’ll have all kinds of problems, and that’s just not going to work for us.”

  “Sorry,” said Jason.

  “No,” said the man. “No, please. Wai—”

  I pulled the trigger.

  The man’s body thudded into the wall and then slid down onto the ground.

  “God damn it, Azazel,” said Jason. “You see all this blood spatter? Someone’s going to notice that and wonder what happened.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “What if we move that fake tree over there in front of it?”

  Jason peered at the tree. “Yeah, that’ll work.”

  I sighed, bending down over the dead guard and getting his access card out of his front pocket. “Man, knocking out that postal worker was a complete waste of time.”

  Jason got the potted plant and dragged it back over. “I don’t know. I got to see you in your bra.”

  I glared at him. “You’re ridiculous.”

  He set down the plant, grinning at me. “You love it.”

  I shrugged.

  He threw his arm around me and kissed my temple.

  I smiled at him. “Maybe I like it a little bit. But I’m not changing uniforms on a whim every time you want to see me in my bra.”

  He released me. “Damn it.”

  “You’ve been seeing me in my bra for a long time anyway. What’s the allure?”

  “I don’t know.” He held out his hand for the access card. “It just never gets old.”

  I handed him the card. “I wonder what Chance and Hunter are up to.”

  “I’m sure they’re fine.” He slid the access card through the slot, and the door opened.

  Well, we were inside now. Imri was giving a big speech tomorrow in commemoration of the merger. And we were in the hotel where he was staying and where the speech was happening.

  So far, so good.

  * * *

  “This is a town?” Kenya stared out the window of the car, looking half-afraid and half-disgusted.

  “We just passed a sign that said, ‘Welcome to Bramford,’ so yeah, I think so,” said Chance.

  Outside, the scenery passing by was less than inspiring. There was a run-down looking grocery store to the right. The “O” in “Food” had been busted out. In front of it, there was a Burger King, looking respectable, but lonely. They were flanked by a small car dealership. On the other side of the road, there were only houses. One of them seemed to have been converted into a dentists’ office according to the sign.

  “Any of this look familiar?” Chance asked me.

  “No,” I said. I turned to Paige.

  She shook her head. “I never came here. My mother told me about it, though. She said she graduated from Bramford High School. Which I think is right there.”

  The school sat atop a hill. It looked like it had been built in the 1970s, all blocky architecture and jutting wings.

  “No, when I dream, I always dream about a gazebo.” I looked around. “I don’t see any gazebos.”

  “We don’t even know if that gazebo is in Bramford,” said Paige. “Hell, we don’t know if it exists. It could be something we imagined.”

  “Both of us imagined the same gazebo?” Somehow, I didn’t think that was likely.

  “Well, maybe not,” said Paige.

  “So, we’re looking for a gazebo?” said Chance.

  I shrugged. “Maybe?”

  Kenya turned away from the window, gulping. “I take it back. What I said before? That other place being Deliverance? This is much worse.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Kenya paged through the menu in the little Italian restaurant we’d found. “Oh my god, there’s nothing vegetarian, let alone vegan.”

  We’d been driving around Bramford for a few hours. Well, not so much driving around as driving through the same six blocks that made up the town over and over again.

  Turned out that the stuff we’d seen coming in hadn’t been Bramford proper. That had been some little strip mall thing on the outskirts. The real Bramford was a tiny place. It was a one-stoplight town. The main street was made up of three story building that reminded me of stuff you’d see in the old west. They were tall, rectangular buildings—obviously old, but obviously only made to be functional, not decorative. The one exception was the courthouse, which sported columns, a dome, and a spire.

  Anyway, we’d gone up and down those few streets over and over, looking all over the place for a gazebo but finding nothing.

  Finally, Paige said she was hungry, and we decided to look for a restaurant.

  From the outside, the restaurant looked like it had once been someone’s house. It had a front porch with a swing on it.

  Inside, it was lit with low-hanging lamps that dangled over booths that had been shoved up against the walls. The carpet was red, and it looked like it had seen better days.

  “You’re vegetarian?” said Chance.

  “I’m vegan,” said Kenya.

  “What’s the difference?” he said.

  “I don’t eat animal products at all. No cheese. No eggs. No meat. It’s very simple. If it’s a plant, I eat it. If not, I don’t.”

  Chance made a face. “How can that even be healthy?”

  Kenya rolled her eyes. “How did you not notice that I haven’t eaten any meat since we left the city?”

  “What?” said Chance. “You think I’m paying attention to you or something?”

  Kenya’s jaw tightened. She went back to the menu, fuming.

  “So…” said Chance. “Do you do that because you think animals have souls or something?”

  Kenya snapped the menu shut. “Look, you asshole, meat is not good for your body, okay? Maybe in small amounts, every once in a while, it’s not a big deal. But what it does, if you eat a lot of it, is it makes you fat and lazy and also prone to heart disease. Plus industrial farming is really disgusting.”

  Chance shook his head. “I don’t think meat does that. We need it. We need protein.”

  “Yes, well, thank heavens for beans and nuts and seeds then, yeah?”

  Chance wrinkled his nose.

  “Or quinoa?” she said. “You ever had quinoa?”

  “What?” he said. “You know what, you are crazy. I kind of want to strangle you right now.”

  “Oh whatever,” she said.
“You’re glad enough I had that training so I was able to bandage up your brother, aren’t you?”

  I gazed across the table at Paige. “It’s like we aren’t even here.”

  She leaned across. “I guess this is the way they flirt?”

  “Hey,” said Kenya. “We are sitting right next to you, you realize? We can hear everything you’re saying.”

  Luckily, the waitress picked that moment to show back up at our table. She was chewing gum. Her hair was dyed bright red. She had wrinkles around her mouth—the kind that happen from smoking too many cigarettes. “Hey there. You all ready to order?” She said “you all” like it was one word.

  “Maybe,” said Kenya. “Can I ask you a couple questions?”

  “Sure,” said the waitress.

  “Well, I’m wondering if your marinara sauce is cooked with meat?”

  “You mean, is it a meat sauce?”

  “No, I mean, do you put any meat in it at all? Broth? Meat bits? Do you have meatballs floating in it back there?”

  This was getting tedious. I set my menu down and looked around the restaurant. There was a shelf against the far wall that was stacked with tall books. They all seemed to say the same thing on the side. I squinted. Bramford High, 1999, read one.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  The waitress turned to me. “Yes?”

  Kenya pursed her lips, clearly annoyed.

  “What are those over there?”

  “Oh, the owner of the restaurant teaches the yearbook class at the high school, and we have all yearbooks going back to whenever he started, like 1985, I think,” said the waitress.

  “Can we look at them?” I said.

  The waitress shrugged. “Sure, if you want.”

  “I’ve decided,” said Kenya. “Can you just give me some pasta with oil and basil? Is that something you can do? And a salad. No cheese. With a vinaigrette.”

  * * *

  ~azazel~

  I buttoned the guard uniform up over my clothes, much to Jason’s chagrin. Once we’d gotten close to Imri’s room, we’d seen that the place was swarming with guards, and so that had necessitated another costume change.

  Jason tossed his gun from hand to hand. “So, what’s the plan? You want to charge the door, shooting everything that moves?”

  Sure, we could have made a more detailed plan before getting into the hotel, but the thing was, plans never seemed to work out the way you planned them, so we figured it hardly mattered one way or the other. “I don’t think we should go for something so obvious,” I said. “That’s going to attract attention, and attention will make our job harder.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “You’re always so practical.”

  “Well, someone’s got to be. You’re just giddy about shooting people.”

  He looked at his feet, his voice suddenly quiet. “I’m not.”

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay.”

  He looked up at me. “I really don’t deserve you, you know that?”

  I smiled. “Yup.”

  He chuckled.

  I kissed him on the cheek. “Should I have let you do the guard outside?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Good.”

  He peered around the corner. “So, what’s the plan?”

  I tucked in my guard uniform shirt. “We blend. That’s the plan. We go join the rest of the guards outside the door, and we pretend to belong. And when the opportunity presents itself, we get inside to Imri.”

  “Okay,” said Jason. He kissed me quickly. “For luck.”

  “I love you,” I said.

  “I love you too,” he said. “Now let’s kill Imri Black.”

  “Hell, yes.”

  Jason went first, and I brought up the rear.

  We strode down the hallway as if we owned the place, as if we belonged there.

  The other guards were stationed in groups of four. One group stood right against the door. Two others were several feet down, two men each flanking the hallway.

  Jason stopped next to the first group and took his place next to one of the guards.

  I followed suit across the hallway.

  The guards looked at us with confused expressions on their faces.

  “Who are you?” said one of the guards.

  Jason shot a quick glance down at the ID badge on his uniform. “I’m Townsend.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Jason glanced around as if looking for answers. “Um, guarding Mr. Black?” he said as though it was obvious.

  “Seriously, where’d you two come from?” The guard looked at me and then back at Jason.

  “From down the hallway,” I said. “We were guarding the elevators, and some new blood came up to take our place, but they sent us here instead.” I wanted to add more, but I bit my tongue. Giving more information than was necessary was a sure sign of lying.

  The guard eyed me, suspicion all over his face.

  Another guard, one next to me, was scrutinizing me. “You look familiar.”

  “We’ve worked together before,” I said to him, smiling.

  “No,” he said. “That’s not it.” He shook his head.

  The first guard looked annoyed. “We don’t need you here.”

  Jason shrugged. “Take it up with the man in charge.”

  The first guard’s eyes narrowed. “Man in charge?”

  “Yeah.” Jason nodded.

  “And who might that be?” said the guard.

  Jason swallowed. “Well, you know that as well as I do.”

  “No,” said the guard. “I don’t. The person in charge of this field operation happens to be a woman.”

  Jason cringed. I could see that he was going for his gun.

  The other guard moved more quickly, however, grabbing Jason’s arm and twisting it behind his back.

  Jason glared at the man. “Let go of me.”

  “Who are you?” said the guard.

  I had my gun out. I leveled it at the guard.

  But the man next to me tackled me instead.

  I went down on the floor hard. Face down, I was pinned to the floor by the guard on top of me. I could feel the cold metal of handcuffs being snapped on my wrists.

  Shit.

  * * *

  ~hunter~

  “Stop,” I said.

  Paige looked up from paging through the yearbook. “What?”

  I pointed. “Holy shit. That’s my mother.”

  “What?” said Chance, peering over my shoulder.

  “See?” I said.

  “Oh, you’re right,” said Paige. “Azazel Jones. Huh. I guess there aren’t a lot of people with that name, are there?”

  “My mother and your mother went to school together?” I shook my head. “That’s weird, isn’t it?”

  “Well, let me find my mom.” Paige turned a few more pages and then stopped. “Yup. There she is. Eve Newcomb. Man, she did weird things with her hair.”

  “Keep going,” said Chance.

  Paige gave him a questioning look.

  “Look at the ‘W’s. Zaza and Dad met in high school.”

  “Seriously?” I said. “So, wait, they started dating in high school, but then my mom dated Paige’s dad. And then she somehow hooked up with my dad while she was still with Jason—”

  “There.” Chance pointed.

  “That’s your dad?” said Paige.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “He’s kind of cute,” said Paige.

  I made a face at her. “Don’t say things like that.”

  She shrugged. “What? You look like him.” She cocked her head. “Which I guess is because he’s technically your uncle, right?”

  The waitress came over to our booth with steaming plates of food.

  Paige moved the yearbook. “Oh, sorry.”

  “You’re fine, honey,” said the waitress, setting a plate in front of Paige. “Was that Jason Wodden you were looking at?”

  “You… know him?” I said.


  She shrugged. “Well, not anymore. I sort of knew him back then. I mean, I was a couple years behind in school. The Jones family took him in. They had a lot of foster kids. But then, he, uh, abducted their daughter, and they all ended up getting killed. It was a real tragedy.”

  “Abducted?” I said.

  “Jones family?” said Chance.

  “Yeah, Azazel Jones,” said the waitress. “I knew her better than I knew Jason.”

  “He didn’t abduct her,” I said.

  “Those are our parents,” said Chance.

  The waitress looked surprised. “No shit?” Then she clapped her hands over her mouth. “Sorry, I’m not supposed to say stuff like that in front of the customers.”

  “You’re not offending us,” I said.

  She looked back and forth between Chance and me. “So, Jason and Azazel are like… together, huh?”

  We nodded.

  She looked back at Chance. “You know, it’s funny, because you look more like Azazel’s best friend… Oh, what was her name? It was another one dedicated to His Infernal Majesty… Uhm… Lilith, that was it.”

  Kenya spoke up. “His Infernal Majesty?”

  The waitress laughed nervously. “Shit. I’m not supposed to say that in front of the customers either. Not great for tourism, you know? But I don’t get the big deal, really. Most people here in Bramford are Satanists, okay? But, you know, that doesn’t mean we’re bad people. We’re not. We’re just like anybody else except the fact that we worship Chaos. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Paige. “We knew that already.”

  “No, we didn’t,” said Kenya, looking a little horrified.

  “I, uh, didn’t,” I said.

  “Well, I did,” said Paige. “My mom was a Satanist. It’s a totally awesome religion. It’s like nature worship plus being really open to your own desires and not stifling yourself and stuff. There’s nothing wrong with it at all.”

  The waitress beamed at Paige. “Thanks for saying that, sweetheart.” She drew back. “Hey, you’re Eve’s girl, aren’t you?”

  “You know my mom?”

  “Sure do,” said the waitress. “How is she?”

  Paige looked down at her plate.

  I cleared my throat. “Her mother, um, passed away.”