Small Things (Out of the Box Book 14)

by Robert J. Crane

  “What did you see that night?” I asked, trying to doggedly get to the question rather than the theory.

  “I saw … rough ground,” Theo said. “Like we were standing on a cliff’s edge. It was pretty dark, too, but there was light from somewhere above. Faint, though, like we were in a big warehouse or something and someone hadn’t bothered to lay electrical in the corner we were in. I couldn’t see the horizon; we might have been indoors. I didn’t get a good look, because I was focused on the ground for most of the moment the blindfold was up.” He finished with a shrug. “That’s what I saw.”

  “Really interesting,” Friday said. “Thanks, Theo, that helps a lot.”

  I started to give him the stink eye, because that didn’t help at fricking all and made me at least $750 poorer, but right at that moment, the waiter appeared and set a margarita in front of me the size of a toilet bowl. “And for the lady …” he said, and suddenly I felt a whole lot warmer in my heart for him.

  “Maybe you guys should check with Chase,” Theo said as his shot glass disappeared in the waiter’s hand again. “She was always sneakier than I was, and for about a quarter second while I was trying to get a look through my blindfold, I saw her looking, too. Just a little peek of an eyeball from under her blindfold, you know? ’Cept she didn’t get caught looking.”

  “I don’t even know where to look for her,” Friday said so quickly that I knew he was lying. I didn’t care right then, though, because I had a margarita in my hand, and I started sipping. Part of me wanted to take it down like Theo with a shot, but based on the service in this place thus far, it would probably take me until my eightieth birthday to get another, so I sipped slowly. Mmmm. Good. Sour. Tangy. Salt on the rim, which I licked like a pervert.

  Theo was too gone to notice. “Yeah, I don’t blame you for not looking for her after what happened last time you two met.”

  “What happened last time you two met?” I asked.

  “Tell you later,” Friday said, a little too quickly.

  Theo stared at us, his eyes glazed. “Why can’t you tell her now?” Friday looked a little trapped, but then Theo’s head lurched forward a little, and he shook his head. “Man, I’m tired. Hurry up with the story, will you?”

  “Well … all right, I guess,” Friday said, looking nervously at him. A couple seconds later, Theo closed his eyes, and Friday sat up a little straighter. By the time he’d fully launched into it, Theo was snoring gently, right there at the table.

  31.

  Friday

  October 8, 2001

  Kandahar, Afghanistan

  Sienna note: Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit—

  They called it Operation Enduring Freedom, and let me tell you something—it was only day one and I was already enduring my freedom like a stone pimp back at the base with Chase every chance we got, if you know what I mean. SCHAWING!

  *slurp of margarita*

  “I bring you civilization, heathen devils!” I shouted as I jumped out of the Blackhawk helicopter at five hundred feet. I had a guitar specially made into a super duper grenade launcher gun, and it was the baddest of baddassity, barrel on the neck of the instrument, which I played as I fell, firing wildly at the enemy technicals—that’s their name for their little shitty trucks with machine guns mounted in the beds—

  I know what a technical is, thanks.

  One of them went up to the furious thrusting of my grenades. BOOM! BOOM! Another! BOOM! I was single-handedly destroying the Taliban of Kandahar province!

  Chase shouted, “You are singlehandedly destroying the Taliban of Kandahar province! Now let’s hurry and finish this vital mission so we can get back to base and you can take all my clothes off and—”

  I am going to bury a fork in your eyeball if you don’t keep this story on track and out of the gutter. A knife will follow, and I’ll save the spoon, which is guaranteed to be the most painful thing I use on you, for last.

  So, anyway, I was killing my way through line after line of Taliban! I landed and was ripping off heads as I played my guitar—rocking and hitting the chords as I grabbed a guy in a black robe and turban and yanked his head off. I punted it into the next province to warn them I was coming. Boom! Grenade to an old jeep! BOOM! Grenade right to a guy who was shaking in his pee-stained robes, wishing he could surrender! He blew to pieces, it was so cool.

  A Humvee on a parachute dropped down next to me and I ripped the parachute off and shouted, “Come on, team! We’re going to liberate this province from these evil shitstains!”

  “Yeah!” Chase said, and she shook her—

  *brandishing fork* Carefully consider your next words.

  “We’re with you!” Theo shouted, shaking his M-16 in the air.

  “I will follow you everywhere, Friday!” Jon shouted, flying overhead on his surfboard and hosing down the enemy with his dual Uzis. He only killed, like, ten guys. I’d already killed three thousand between my grenades and ripping heads off. It’s a satisfying feeling, watching the pieces come hanging out little tissue streamers of red and—

  *slurp* Stop.

  I jumped into the Humvee and Greg jumped in next to me. “You will lead us to victory on day one of this war!” he shouted.

  “Damned right,” I said, and started the ignition. “Chase—on the gun.”

  “Yes, my lusty love with an immense—” Chase said, and—uh, stop glaring at me—anyway, she manned the turret and ended up killing a hundred Taliban. Which is good, but obviously not as good as me.

  I drove across the mountainous desert, kicking up a cloud of dust that could be seen from a mile away, like a warning: THE STORM IS COMING!!!!

  (I am the storm.)

  Oh, for f- *rattle of ice, slurp of an empty margarita glass* That went fast.

  I headed for an enemy position ahead. You could see a battle line etched across the hill, machine guns everywhere, a bunch of guys in their black robes and stuff, and they started making ululating yells when we were five hundred yards away.

  And they started shooting at two hundred.

  “I’ll save you all, team!” I said and inflated to huge proportions.

  “I’ll get out of the way so you can do your heroic best!” Greg shouted, and then he disappeared, leaving me more room to get SWOLE.

  “My love, they are filling your sexy chest with bullet holes!” Chase cried from the back while lighting those bastards up with endless fire from her turret.

  “But I will bleed sexy blood and destroy them and then drink to my own awesomeness!” I shouted, steering toward the trench line the Taliban had cut into the hill. They started to panic and scream like girls and threw away their guns at the fear of seeing my bare, huge-normous chest taking round after round and still I came forward, playing my guitar, firing grenades and overwhelming them with my tight death metal. You could almost see them thinking as they screamed and ran around in the trench, their eyes flitting in fear—“If that’s the size of his chest, imagine how HUGE he is below the belt!”

  I crashed my Humvee into the trench, into the densest concentration of Taliban, killing like fifty of them at once. The crunch of bone and blood was lost as I leapt into the air with my grenade launcher guitar and hung there for a minute, pounding them with explosion after explosion, and a guitar solo that went on for like, ten minutes! IT WAS TOTALLY KITTENS!

  *rattle of ice in empty margarita glass* This isn’t fair. This isn’t right.

  I landed back on the ground and lifted the smashed Humvee with one hand while I continued my raging, badass guitar solo/killing stream with the other. I smashed like twenty guys with one swing of the Humvee, then killed fifty more with a well-placed grenade at the end of the trench.

  “You are the badassest badass of all time!” Jon said.

  “You are so extreme you make Arnold, Stallone, and Willis combined look like the sissiest sissies!” Theo said. “When we get back to the United States, I want to become your manservant and follow you around and say catchphrases for you l
ike, ‘He’s on fire’! and ‘DY-NO-MITE’!”

  Jesus, Friday. He’s sitting right there, and you’re being really racist.

  What’s racist about saying DY-NO-MITE!? Anyway, up at the cave mouth ahead, I saw a massive figure come striding out. He looked like an Arab version of me, except for that big beard and the white turban. I would never wear a turban. There’s no containing these devastatingly gorgeous locks.

  “That’s Osama Bin Laden!” Chase cried. “We have to do something!” She looked right at me, eyes full of sexy desire and hope. “Bruce! You can win this war right now!”

  “I will win this war right now!” I shouted and jumped into the air. Osama threw up his hands and screamed girlishly as he saw me and my massive package descending upon him, ready to smite him like I’d done to his men, who were all dead, all of them, except for one guy who came out from behind a rock with his pants down, running around yelling for like toilet paper or something, I dunno. I would have felt bad about killing him, so I let him live. Because I’m merciful.

  “Aieeeeeeeeeeee!” Osama screamed, trying to hold up his hands to protect him from the vengeful god of bronzed muscles and sexy bullet wounds descending on him from the heavens. I like to think he got religion right there, and that he knew the Furious Crotch of God when he saw it coming—

  *head in hands, weeping gently for my wasted time and my blackened soul, listening to this shit* Why is the service here so sexist and slow?

  Wait, the story gets better.

  “I beg you to spare my life!” Osama cried as I landed in front of him. I was twice as tall as he was, and I lifted him up into the air.

  “Any last words?” I shouted, and big tears streamed down his face.

  “Please don’t kill me!” He peed himself right there, again, then shit his robes, I think. I didn’t want to check. “Have mercy, with your big American heart and bigger American penis!”

  I stared at him coldly. “I don’t have one of those … and it’s not the penis!” I spun him around and kicked him in the ass while simultaneously firing a grenade up there and hitting the high notes of my guitar solo all at once. He exploded from within, I nailed the hardest hardcore chord ever played heard in the entire world, and his corpse went tumbling back into the cave.

  *head in hands* You did not kill Osama Bin Laden. That’s not how—or when—he died!

  Oh, it is. You just bought into the government lies, man.

  “Nicely done,” Greg said, appearing at my side as my team wandered up now that all the badass, huge-chested hard work was down. “Tight metal, by the way.” And he lifted his pinky and index finger as he made a drum set appear and we rocked on the pieces of Osama’s dead corpse—

  What the actual fu—

  32.

  Sienna

  “—ck is wrong with you?” I asked, head buried in my hands, as it had been for most of the story. “That story had nothing to do with Chase, or Greg, really, or anything other than you making up more horseshit about how awesomely badass you supposedly are.”

  Friday stared at me inscrutably for a second. “Earlier, you called my story bullshit. Now, it’s horseshit. So … what’s the difference?”

  “One comes out of a bull, the other out of a horse,” I deadpanned, “but they’re both shit, the only difference is in the consistency—and your stories have no consistency, no connection to reality other than maybe in passing. The people in your stories don’t die when you say they do, I question whether the locations even exist—”

  “You don’t think there’s a Kandahar in Afghanistan?” Friday snickered.

  “Oh, I know there’s a Kandahar,” I said, “I just question whether you’ve ever seen it, and especially whether you’ve seen it on the days you claim to.”

  “But you don’t doubt I was there with my badass team,” Friday said, puffing like a peacock.

  I stared at him evenly. “If you were, I think you were the guy that you were supposedly letting escape mercifully because he’d been busy taking a dump while the battle was going on.”

  Friday’s face fell. “Ouch. So much hate.”

  “That’s truer than anything you’ve said so far.” I tossed enough money on the table to cash us out. Theo was still snoring gently, his last shot of tequila just sitting undrunk in front of him. Not wanting to be undrunk myself, I snatched it and took it down quickly, slamming it down hard enough to wake him. “Closing time, Theo. You don’t have to go home, but you’re not getting any more loaded on my dime here.”

  “Oh, okay,” Theo said, getting slowly to his feet. “Did I miss anything?”

  “Just a crazy story that you probably could have poked enough holes in to render it less seaworthy than the Titanic,” I said, steering him toward the exit. “Also, Friday here seemed to be under the impression that you wanted to be his butler and follow him around when he came back to the States.”

  Theo made a rumbling laugh. “Shit. Bruce here can’t take care of himself, let alone anybody else. He needs Supernanny or something.” He broke into laughter.

  “You guys are really mean,” Friday said as we passed the hostess station. I was tempted to complain about my shitty waiter and my pitiful lone margarita, but what was the point now?

  I stepped out into the long shadows of the LA evening. Sundown was coming, but not just yet. There weren’t many cars on the street, which was weird for LA at this time of day, and I started to question how much margarita I’d actually had when something long, ovoid and steel started to drift down in a slow arc from above. It was small, maybe the size of a baseball, but shaped like a miniature bucket and I turned back to say something to Theo—

  But he was gone. I was left alone with Friday on the sidewalk just outside the Mexican restaurant, the streets around us as deserted as if the rapture had come to town and swept them all away. “I got a bad feeling about this—” I barely got out before that bucket-thing hit the ground—

  There was a flash of blinding white, the kind you saw in—

  Nuclear explosions—

  And the wave of heat and flame swept over me a millisecond later, before I even had a chance to say another word, register another thought—

  Or prepare any kind of defense.

  33.

  Augustus

  “All right, here’s how we do this,” Reed said as we parked a couple houses down from the address that we had for Cassidy Ellis. It was a clean-cut street in the Minneapolis suburb of Richfield, which was sandwiched between the burgeoning suburban landscape of south Minneapolis and the commercial metropolis of Bloomington, which boasted the Mall of America and the airport, and a few other things that city-dwelling me yawned at. “Two of us crash in the front, two in the back.”

  “Did he make that sound kinky or is it just me?” Scott asked.

  “Just you,” Jamal said. “Get out of the gutter.”

  Richfield just looked to me like another boring, post-war tract of small houses, at least on this street. The type of places thrown up to house residents of an expanding city, with all the inconsistencies of an aging, first-ring suburb. One house would have immaculately kept yard, trimmed and perfect, flowers planted in the beds outside the window and blooming already. The next house would be gone to seed, weeds already springing up even though the ground had only thawed a month earlier.

  The whole street was pretty green, with leaves out on every tree and the dull roar of one of the freeways—probably 494—rumbling in the distance. A car passed by as we crossed the lawns, striding with purpose to a little white-painted house that looked somewhere between gone to hell (which was on the right of it) and lovingly maintained (which was to the left). It was a Goldilocks house, kind of a “just right” balance between someone who really showed pride of ownership and someone who’d let the bank take the place having not given a shit about it for the decade before.

  “House is set up to not draw too much attention,” Reed said, casing it as we approached in the shadow of a tall maple tree. “Compared to
the neighbors, I mean.”

  The wind blew through, bringing the smell of pine mingled with a little exhaust. “No steel door at the front,” I said. “And it’s got a window. We could reach in and unlock it, or kick it down.”

  “Kick it down,” Reed said.

  “Gee, why not just have him make a golem and do it that way?” Jamal asked.

  “Trying to keep this quiet, since technically this is breaking and entering,” Reed said, his stride a little uneven as the question was asked.

  “We could just, y’know … knock,” Jamal said. “Two in the front, two in back, like you said. Watch to see if she goes out a window, but sort of do the polite-society thing first before we come crashing in like fools.”

  That caught Reed by surprise. “No,” he said. I had to wonder how much his judgment was being influenced by the fact Cassidy had once detonated him and his car. The only thing that had saved him was Sienna sucking in all the heat from the explosion. The car, tragically, was a total loss. Damned shame, too, because it was a beautiful Dodge Challenger. “Give us a second to get in position and then we’ll knock knock, okay?”

  “Ok—” I barely got out before Reed sucked Jamal up in a vortex and the two of them flew over the house. It was surprisingly soundless considering that the wind force necessary to lift up two dudes of their size had to have been something more than a light breeze.

  “I think he might be letting his feels get the best of him here,” Scott said after Reed disappeared over the roof of the house. He led the way up to the door, up three small steps to a concrete porch with a ragged old screen door that wasn’t completely closed.

  I scoured the area around us for any sign of cameras and found none. That didn’t necessarily mean anything; Cassidy was one of the smartest people on earth, if not the smartest in terms of sheer technical, theoretical brilliance. For all I knew, she’d engineered cameras the size of a safety pin and was watching my pretty face right now in glorious 1080p. But probably not, I reassured myself. She’d been a schemer, but turning herself to tech stuff? Hadn’t happened yet. And fortunately, people were predictable in a lot of ways, what with them not liking to change their spots and all that.