Skillful Death

by Ike Hamill

  “With your money, I’m sure you could get test results that say anything you’d like them to say.”

  “True,” he says.

  He opens up a big yellow envelope and shakes out a radiograph.

  “These things are impossible to read,” he says, holding the black film up to the light from the window. “But here you can see the spirit of the village.”

  “Looks like you’ve got an extra big heart,” I say. I’ve had some experience with X-rays. This one is of someone’s chest, and either the heart is too big, or there’s an extra mass right beside it.

  “I have two hearts. One pumps my blood and the other is the spirit of the village.”

  “What does it pump?”

  “Nothing, as far as anyone can tell. It beats, but it doesn’t make much noise because nothing flows through it. You can hear it if you’d like. I have a stethoscope around here somewhere.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Now that he’s told me what to look for, the X-ray really does look like it shows two different hearts. That’s fascinating. Easily faked, but it’s still fascinating.

  “Here’s an MRI of the hearts and a letter from the doctor talking about the phenomenon.”

  “It’s a known phenomenon?” I look over the paper. In it, the doctor is talking about the stages of development of the heart.

  “During embryo development, we all have two hearts. They fuse together at some point. If you read to the end, you’ll see that the author eventually punts his theory. Embryos with cardia bifida have two hearts that are both hooked up. My second heart isn’t hooked to anything.”

  “So, in strictly scientific terms, the village wants your second heart? That’s what it comes down to?”

  “Yes.”

  “But, in your mind, when you give up your spare physical heart, it’s going to break your metaphysical heart.”

  “Yes.”

  The alarm is very quiet. Bud jumps up and runs to the computer on the table. He expands the view of one of the cameras.

  “This can’t be. They’re inside the perimeter,” he says. “Come quick.”

  ♣ ♢ ♡ ♠

  I grab my backpack and the little laptop I’ve been writing on. Bud takes my arm and pulls me towards a narrow cupboard in the kitchen. He opens the door and we’re looking at a broom, a mop, and a shelf with cleaning supplies. The inside of the door has one of those racks where you can store your batteries. Bud pops out one of the AA batteries, flips it around and plugs it back into the holder. I’m about to ask him what he’s up to when the whole inside of the closet pops out and swings out of the way.

  The inside of the closet is a doorway to a panic room. Bud keys in a code and an inner door swings and he pulls me through. When he hits a button on the inside, the closet reassembles itself behind me and the inner door closes again. It’s like a vault in here.

  There are some empty racks on the opposite wall. I’m guessing that’s where the equipment on the kitchen table is from. It looks like this room used to have a lot more monitoring hooked up, but Bud has scavenged it.

  “Are we going to…” I begin to ask.

  Bud puts a finger to his lips. He messes with a control panel of some sort and I hear a distant hissing sound.

  “I have the noise canceling on. You can talk now,” he says.

  “Are we going to be able to see anything in here? It seems like you took all the monitors out to the dining room.”

  “Yes, I left two in here,” he says.

  He goes over to the wall and opens a set of cabinet doors. He has two medium-sized monitors mounted in there. When he turns them on, they show split screens of eight different views of the house. Every few seconds some the views change. It looks like any scene with movement stays locked. Five are locked right now. Five different views show men creeping on the property.

  “Those are Providentials?” I ask.

  “Perhaps. Or mercenaries.”

  The men on the screens are all moving like SWAT guys in a movie. They glide over the floor and move in bursts, entering quickly and checking all their angles. They communicate with hand-signals. Some are wearing forest camouflage, some are dressed all in black. They’ve either got tight masks or face paint. I can’t see anyone’s features. A few hold rifles, and the others have something else. I’m guessing they’re stun guns.

  “How come you don’t have any security guys?”

  “I have some, but I don’t trust them. So I built this room.”

  “How long are we going to be able to stay here?”

  “Food and water for weeks. We won’t need it,” he says. “I just want to make sure they’re all inside the house, and we’ll make a run for it. If you’re up for it.”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  “They’re after me. You could probably stay here while they chase me. They won’t be completely sure anyone else is here, so as long as you don’t leave this room, I’ll bet you could wait a few days and then just make a clean getaway.”

  It doesn’t seem appealing. Judging from the monitors, I don’t have much time to consider my options. The men are inside the building and Bud is keying an authorization code.

  “This isn’t murder,” he says. “This gas will just knock them out for a few minutes.”

  “How did they get by the alarms, and the monitors, and the mines?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Bud hits the final button and the panel lights up red.

  “Take this, just in case,” Bud says. He hands me a gas mask.

  The men on the monitor are still creeping. I don’t see any gas at all. The ones coming up the stairs drop first. They just settle to the ground, and it’s almost a graceful fall. The guy in the kitchen falls. Two in the dining room go down. A few in the hallway drop. All the guys are on the floor.

  Bud is wearing his mask. I put mine on. It’s hard to see. It’s not quite as dark as a welding helmet, but fairly dim. The display brightens a bit. Bud reaches up and flips a switch on the side and an overlay lights up. I’ve got statistics on air quality, temperature, my heart rate, and respiration.

  “We’re going out the side,” Bud says.

  He opens a big door and keys in yet another code. A recessed panel about as big as a window slides into a slot in the wall. It opens up on the shady afternoon. It’s beautiful outside, and the wind carries in a puff of the summer air. I bet it smells wonderful, but I can’t smell anything through the gas mask. When the panel retracts all the way to the side, I can see the full thickness of the wall. This room is built to last. At about two feet thick, it must be as secure as a vault.

  Bud sticks his head through the opening and looks down.

  “Almost ready,” he says.

  “For what?” I ask. We’re on the third floor of his house. It must be at least twenty-five feet down to the ground.

  “Take a look,” he says.

  I lean forward and look out the hatch. The display on my gas mask is distracting. Little triangles light up in the yard. They’re overlays from the display. I’m guessing it’s showing me the location of all the mines. Below the hatch on the ground, a big air bag has sprung from the side of the house and it’s inflating.

  “Wouldn’t a ladder be easier?”

  “This is faster,” he says.

  Bud jumps up on the ledge of the window and pulls himself through. He’s spry for an older man. In a wink, he’s gone. I look down and see him land on his back and roll to the side.

  “Give it a second to re-inflate,” he says. His voice is coming through a speaker in my gas mask.

  As I watch, the airbag starts to puff up once more. A flashing light on the display behind me catches my eye. I turn to see one of the guys on the video monitor. He’s up again and he’s running down the stairs. I guess the gas doesn’t last very long.

  The bag looks pretty full. I’ve never jumped onto an airbag before, but Bud made it look pretty easy. I jump out a little and pull in my legs so I can l
and on my back. It’s a quick trip down, but somehow I rotate too much and I pretty much land on my head. Good thing the airbag is forgiving. My mask comes off, but I’m fine. I slip it back on so I can see the mines.

  They’re everywhere. I can’t imagine how the invaders made it through the yard without blowing up.

  The boss has wheeled out a small motorcycle from some compartment. Whenever I visited this house, I always thought it was quaint and humble. It seemed like such a modest place for such a wealthy man. I’m seeing a different side of it now. All the rustic simplicity was just a cover for Bud’s clever gadgets.

  He starts the bike and slings a leg over it. He waves for me to climb on behind.

  I hear men bursting from the door of the cabin as Bud guns the engine.

  Even with me on the back, Bud makes that little motorcycle dance over the yard. In my display, I see the mines flashing by. It frightens me to see how close we’re passing by them. Behind us, the men have shaken off the effects of the gas and they’re streaming from the cabin.

  Bud’s voice is directly in my head again. “They’ve probably got the Jeep staked out, but I have another vehicle hidden in the woods.”

  We’re out of his yard now, but the display is still giving me information. It shows horizontal red lines in different directions. I’m guessing maybe he has tripwires set up. I look over Bud’s shoulder and see that he’s following a dark green line that the display is painting on the forest floor. We fly over a little ledge of rock and the bike catches some air. I nearly bounce off the back when we hit the ground again.

  “Duck,” Bud says. He steers the motorcycle under a low limb and it nearly takes the top of my head off. The gas mask wouldn’t have protected my head much. I guess with all the money he spent on the cabin, he couldn’t afford a couple of helmets.

  We skid to a stop, leaving a ragged tear in the moss and ferns behind the tire.

  “That’s it,” he says. He shuts off the motorcycle.

  “What’s it?”

  I see a big yellow triangle in my gas mask display, but nothing else. I pull off my mask as Bud pulls a big camouflage tarp from a green Jeep.

  “Oh,” I say.

  I give him a hand.

  “You like Jeeps, don’t you?” I ask.

  “They’re handy,” he says.

  We pull the tarp off the Jeep and flip it over the motorcycle. Bud takes our masks and throws them in the back as we climb into the seats. Bud’s other Jeep, the red one, has a roof, and windows, and soft seats. This one is like the tougher older brother. You would clean this Jeep by hosing it out. The sides and roof are canvas and clear plastic. To get in, you unsnap the door flap and then snap it up behind you. Instead of a seatbelt, it has a five-point harness and all the hard edges inside are wrapped in thick foam.

  The road is rough. I have my harness tight and I’m holding on with both hands, but we’re being tossed around as Bud bounces down the mountain road.

  I hear a distant percussive sound and look up. It’s hard to tell for sure, but I think I see a black helicopter through the heavy canopy of trees. Bud bounces us through a gully and I come all the way off the seat. For a second, I’m just floating in space, not being jerked around by the Jeep. It’s nice until the ground comes up to meet us and then my jaw claps shut and I nearly bite off my own tongue. I’m not normally a nauseous person, but I might throw up before this ride is through.

  We hit a bunch of rocks and we’re racked from side to side. I’m glad for the padding as my head comes close to hitting the roll bars more than once. The little laptop is in the backpack clamped between my feet. I wonder if the hard drive is going to survive this trip.

  “We’re almost through the worst of it,” Bud yells. Up ahead, the road disappears into low trees. The limbs slap at the windshield and sides of the Jeep. My door flap becomes unsnapped and a few branches whip my shoulder through the hole.

  Suddenly, we’re out. We burst through the last of the leaves and on to a smooth gravel lane. It looks like a dry riverbed, but it’s too flat and straight to be anything but a road.

  Bud increases our speed and the tires kick up the loose rocks as we drift around the easy curves.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “I have another car stashed about twenty minutes from here,” he says. “After that, I’m not sure.”

  I pull myself to the limits of my harness and look up through the windows. I can’t see any helicopters, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that there may be one up there somewhere.

  “Do you have a current passport on you?” I ask. Whenever I’m going to see the boss, I always carry a passport and all the cash I can pull together. You never know where you’re going to end up. As a rule, he’s pretty considerate, but sometimes his priorities shift. One you’ve been stranded in Iceland with nothing but five bucks and a driver’s license, you tend to be a little more careful.

  “I can get to one,” he says. “Why? Where do you want to go?”

  “Eastern Europe,” I say. “I’ve got an idea.”

  55 TRAVEL

  WE TAKE BUD’S JEEP down a series of terrible roads until he finally pulls out onto decent pavement. The tires sing on the asphalt and the Jeep seems to have a top speed of forty-five miles per hour. I think it’s the studs in the tires. They’re great for traction in the woods, but get them on pavement and they’re a real liability. It’s such a pretty day though, you can almost forget that we’re being chased by an elite squad of masked men. At least now that the road is calmer, it’s easier to talk.

  “It’s easy to prepare a getaway kit,” Bud says. “The hard part is maintenance.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Documents expire, food is perishable, you’ve got to register vehicles and pay for insurance. You have to get the oil changed and make sure the gas doesn’t go bad in the tanks. All that stuff takes time to update. And you can’t have someone do it for you. The more people who know about your emergency stash, the less valuable it is.”

  “That sounds terrible,” I say.

  He smiles. “It can be the difference between getting caught and getting away. Like today—I haven’t driven that motorcycle in years, but I have to drag it out twice a year to make sure everything is working and the tires are inflated. And you can’t have just one stash. What if you’re being chased east? You need something in a couple different directions. In a way, having these guys come after me is a relief. When we ditch this Jeep, I won’t have to worry about paying the excise tax next year. One less thing to worry about.”

  “With all your money, it seems like there must be a way to subcontract those chores.”

  “Sure, I could, but look at what happened today. Somehow those guys got all the way inside the perimeter before a single alarm went off. That means they must have known the system: where the sensors are, where the mines are, everything. They must have somehow tapped into records from my subcontractors. The more people you hire, the more your risk. Think about everything they know from you.”

  “From me?” I ask. “What are you talking about?”

  “The psychic? All that stuff she said?”

  “She told me a bunch of stuff about your past,” I say. “She didn’t get anything valuable from me.”

  “But she told you lots of things that you’d never admitted to anyone, right?”

  “True.”

  “So, they must have extracted that information from you beforehand.”

  “Perhaps, but to what end?”

  Bud turns onto a smaller road that winds up a hill and then between beautiful meadows dotted with black and white cows.

  “They had her establish her credibility by telling you information they’d previously extracted from you. Then, she told you a bunch of information they’d dug up about me. I think the point was to send you running to me so they could follow you.”

  “Huh,” I say. I guess it makes sense, but I hadn’t put those things together. I thought they were just trying to scam
me out of the prize money, but he’s probably right. “It didn’t work then. I interviewed the psychic last year. We’re only talking about it now.”

  Bud nods.

  We pass into another patch of woods and the boss slows down until he sees a narrow drive. About a hundred yards into the woods, he stops at a small garage. He hands me a ring with two keys on it.

  “Pull the car out and I’ll put this one in there,” he says.

  I unsnap my door and jump out of the Jeep. It’s so quiet here. Even with the Jeep idling behind me, the way the woods seem to absorb sound is unsettling to my city ears. One of the keys matches the padlock on the garage. I swing open the two doors to reveal an older tan Toyota with rust around the edges. I squeeze in through the door, since there’s not much extra room in the garage, and start it up. I notice from the sticker in the window that the car is due for inspection this month. That’s probably why Bud had maintenance on his mind.

  I pull the Toyota out and Bud pulls the Jeep in. Leaving the car running, I get out to move to the passenger’s seat. Bud locks up the garage and waves me back.

  “No, you drive for a while,” he says.

  I get back in and wait for him. I flip on the radio. Instead of alternative hippie drum music, the de facto radio programming in this part of the world, I hear police chatter. He must have this stereo hooked up to a scanner. I hear orders conveyed to officers in the field. They’re looking for two white males, one in his sixties and one in his thirties. They give heights and weights that match me and Bud and cap it off with, “The older man is shaved bald. Suspects are armed and dangerous.” Bud gets in the passenger side and puts on his seatbelt.

  “Are they talking about us?” I ask.

  “I guess,” he says. He turns the radio down until it’s just a distant drone.

  “So the people chasing us have enlisted the local police?”

  “I guess,” he says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d bought or bribed quite a few people.”