“It’s a world gone mad, Willy. A world gone mad.”
“I always figured it’d be zombies.”
“You did?”
“Yeah,” said Willy. “I mean, it just always felt like, if it was going to go down, that’d be the way it’d happen.”
“Not just some big ice cube from outer space slamming into China?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s that for some bullshit?”
“That’s some bullshit, all right.”
“I mean, we don’t even get to see it,” said Jake. “It’s just gonna clobber the shit out of us and we won’t even get to see the light or the explosion or nothin’.”
“Well, I mean, we weren’t gonna see it anyway. Not when it hits.”
“Yeah, but that ain’t the point. I mean, if God really loved America so much, you’d think he’d give us the best seats.”
“Maybe he just doesn’t like China,” said Willy.
“Nobody likes China. China don’t like China. I mean, if they did, maybe you’d see more Americans over there doing good in their schools.”
“I don’t think that’s how that works.”
“I mean, he’s still giving it to us hard. It’s the end of days for us all. But they get the ringside seats. And what do we get? Earthquakes and tidal waves and acid rain. I mean, his son was American, for fuck’s sake. We should get the fireworks.”
“Jesus wasn’t American,” said Willy.
“Yeah he was,” said Jake.
“No he wasn’t.”
“Yeah he was. You don’t need cable to know that Jesus was American.”
“Yeah you do, and I’m telling you he wasn’t American. He was Jewish.”
“That’s exactly what a liberal like you would say.”
“I ain’t no liberal,” said Willy. “How many times we gotta go through this?”
“You are the most liberal guy I know.”
“One time,” said Willy. “One time!”
“One time is all it takes. It’s like drugs.”
“It ain’t like drugs.”
“Oh, now you’re an expert on the cocaine and the meth,” said Jake. “You and your fancy cable learnin’.”
“All I said was I was weighing my options. That I wanted to think about it.”
“You said the black feller had some good points.”
Willy nodded. “Yeah! But it’s not like I voted for him.”
“Doesn’t matter. You turned your eyes away from God, if even for a moment. That makes you a liberal.”
“You don’t go to church. You can’t tell me about turning my eyes away from God.”
“I’m an American,” said Jake before taking a powerful pull off his longneck. “That means I don’t have to go to church to believe in God. I vote straight Republican. That’s all God asks of any of us. The rest is just window dressing for the community. Well, I don’t need no one seeing me sittin’ in the first pew to know how good a Republican I am. I fear God. I love my country. Me and the big man are square. For you, there’s purgatory.”
“Liberals don’t go to purgatory.”
“Of course not. They go to Hell. Independents go to purgatory.”
“I ain’t no independent either,” said Willy.
“Well, we’ll find out soon enough, won’t we? Anytime now that door is gonna bust down, our guns are gonna go off, and I’m gonna look behind me in line at the pearly gates, and you’re either gonna be there or you ain’t.”
“I’m gonna be there,” said Willy.
“You better be there,” said Jake.
“And if I ain’t?”
“I don’t know if I can handle all those churchies without you. Forever is a long time without your buddies. And I only got one.”
“Well, I only got one too,” said Willy.
“Then you best be there. Or else I’m gonna be mighty pissed. I don’t wanna have to come down there and wait around until you’ve seen the goddamned light.”
“I don’t reckon He takes kindly to that phrase, let alone when you couple it to His light.”
“Well, I reckon He knew what I meant.”
Outside, the din of the approaching mob grew louder, voices becoming discernible above the dull roar.
“I don’t want to kill these things,” said Willy.
“They aren’t things,” said Jake. “They’re just people. People who don’t think anything matters anymore.”
“Well, I don’t wanna kill no people either.”
“Neither do I. But if we don’t defend ourselves, we’re committing suicide. In the eyes of the Lord, at least.”
“But killing is against the Ten Commandments.”
“No, murdering is against the Ten Commandments. It ain’t murder if it’s self-defense.”
“Then I’m taking seven,” said Willy.
“You ain’t takin’ seven,” said Jake.
Something sounding like a battering ram slammed into the door, the sound like a hollow shot in a wooden box. Jake and Willy slammed the rest of their beers, chucking them aside to shatter against the walls as they finished.
“Welp, this is it,” said Willy.
“Sure is.”
“I just want you to know, I’ve always loved you.”
“I know.”
The door banged again.
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean, Willy. I’ve always known.”
Willy nodded with a gentle smile, pulling the Mossberg up into his lap. Jake clutched his camouflage-patterned .357 revolver, pulling the hammer back. The door banged a third time.
“I’ll see you upstairs,” said Willy.
“You better,” said Jake.
And the door burst open, the cacophony of mad voices screaming victory as the mob flowed in like a wave.
The Last Job Is Always the Hardest
“The last one is always the hardest,” said the stranger from beneath the crisp brim of his hat. He was an anachronism—a duded-up hipster with a thing for the 1930s, all pinstripes and pearly whites. Even his mustache was a thin dark stripe sitting atop his lip, unmoving above a gleaming smile. His features were sharp, his fingernails well-manicured, his wing tips polished to a high-gloss shine. There was something warm about him, inviting, like he wanted to be your best friend in the world and wouldn’t stop smiling until you relented. “At least that’s what they told me,” he continued. “I always puzzled over what that meant, exactly. I used to think they meant that the last job, the previous one, the one before the next one, was the hardest. But it always seems to get harder for me.”
He talked like someone out of an old movie, like he’d watched too many and would break out with a you dirty rat at any moment. But he didn’t. He was more Clark Gable than James Cagney, anyway. Not that Brian knew who either of those people were.
Brian sat sweating in his polyester suit. He wasn’t used to wearing one at all, and this one was so new he could still feel the void where the hanger belonged. It was an odd thought, all things considered—the fact that this suit would know the fit of a hanger better than it ever would that of a person—what with the clatter of the train on the tracks beneath him and the stranger prattling on like he was eulogizing something Brian couldn’t quite put his finger on. But there he was, dwelling upon the mortality of his own suit, thinking about how little it would get to know the shape of his body.
It was a suit with one job to do, just one day off the rack, and then that would be it forever. Early retirement, smoldering to death in a trash can.
For a moment Brian thought of all the people that had ever handled the suit, from the textile workers who wove the fabric to the tailor or seamstress who cut and sewed it together, to the shipping clerks and dockworkers and truck drivers who carried it, and the department store clerk who finally hung it on the rack. Every last person who put effort into getting it here so it could do this one thing.
What a waste of time, he thought. It wasn’t even a very nice suit. But it di
d the job. Brian looked very professional. Just another cubicle rat on a daily commute. Nothing to see here, folks. I’m just Brian, who works in an office and shuffles papers. No need to bother with me. No need to check my bag or ask me where I’m going. Move along, Brian. Move along.
“You know what I mean?” asked the stranger.
Brian nodded, smiling awkwardly, fumbling for a moment through the mental tape reel in his head for an idea of what the stranger had last said. But it was blank. He’d been too lost in thought. Smoldering suits in trash cans and all.
“You’re not listening,” said the stranger, his tone sharper, but the smile refusing to fade.
“I’m sorry,” said Brian. “I have an awful lot on my mind.”
“I get it,” said the stranger, still beaming. “It’s a big day.”
“It is?”
“It sure is. For both of us. That’s a new suit, isn’t it?”
Brian nodded sheepishly.
The stranger snapped his fingers and pointed in the air, waving a victorious finger. “I knew it. I always know a new suit when I see one. Suits are my thing, you know. You’ve got to have a hobby when you do what I do and you’re on the road as much as I am. And, well, suits are mine.” He nodded for a moment, sizing it up. “That’s a Bell and Thompson, right?”
“A what?”
“A Bell and Thompson. Cheap Chinese racket that makes them in sweatshops on the mainland. They sell them in discount department stores over here.” He reached across the small aisle between them and lifted Brian’s jacket open by the lapel, fingers brushing against his chest as he did. Brian backed away, startled, but managed only to sink an inch or so farther into his seat. “Relax, I don’t bite.” Then the stranger smiled broadly, his eyes twinkling. “Hot dog!” He clapped his hands. “Bell and Thompson. On the money.”
Brian looked down. It was, in fact, a Bell and Thompson. “Do you sell suits?” he asked, trying to puzzle out just how the stranger had done that.
“No. It’s just something I picked up. In my line of work, you develop your own tricks of the trade. That’s one of mine. One of my favorites, actually.”
“Gets people talking, I suppose.”
“Boy, does it. And how.” The stranger leaned forward. He had Brian on the hook now. “Some folks, they put a lot of time into their looks. They spend a lot of money on their suits. And when you can name their tailor, wow, do they feel like a million bucks. Others, though, they don’t give a thought to what they wear at all. And when they run across someone who knows what they’re wearing better than they do, well, they want to know what else you might have figured out about them. Everyone has secrets. Some folks have big ones. And everyone is afraid of being found out.”
Brian shifted in his seat, slowly drowning in flop sweat, his hand fidgeting against the cheap plastic handle of his banged-up secondhand brown-leather briefcase. “And what is it you know about me?”
The stranger sat back in his seat, suddenly becoming very serious. But his smile remained, somehow becoming darkly sinister, almost cold, despite not moving or changing at all. “I know everything, Brian,” he said, though they’d never been introduced. “I know why you bought that suit. I know what’s in your briefcase. And I know that neither of us is going to get off this train alive.”
Brian tensed up, his grip on the briefcase tightening. He thought for a moment about jumping out of his seat, throwing open the door to their small sleeper compartment, and running out to throw himself off the train. But the stranger just shook his head.
“I’m not here to stop you,” he said. “Quite the contrary. I hope you’re successful. There’re a lot of good people on this train. Nice people. Sweet people. But they have to die all the same. That’s what this job teaches you. More than anything else. Death touches everyone once.”
“What, exactly, do you do?”
“Same as you, more or less.”
“I don’t have a job. I haven’t had one in a long time.”
“You have a job today. A big one.”
Brian looked down at his briefcase, nodding slowly. “You kill people?”
The stranger shook his head. “Not directly. But I get to choose. To decide.”
Brian leaned forward. “Wait. Are you . . . with the church? Because I thought I was doing this alone.”
The stranger’s eyes lit up, and the sinister smile became more of an amused grin. He laughed. “No. My job’s much bigger than that. Much bigger.”
“Then how do you know?”
“It’s my job to know. You have the stench about you, the specters of the two hundred and thirty-eight people who are about to die resting upon your shoulders. I can see them, Brian. I can hear their screams long before they’ve made them.”
“I’m going to kill two hundred and thirty-eight people?”
“Well, two hundred forty including you and me. But we don’t really count, do we?”
“I’m not going to die today,” said Brian.
“Okay.”
“And you aren’t going to stop me.”
“Whatever you say, Brian.”
“What do you know that I don’t?”
“Well, is that a bomb in your briefcase?”
Brian nodded. “I thought you already knew that.”
“I do. Do you have a trigger for that bomb?”
Brian shook his head, smiling. “No. It’s on a timer. So you can’t stop me.”
“I told you,” said the stranger, more firmly than before. “I’m not going to stop you. I don’t want to stop you, and there would be nothing I could do to stop you even if I did, would there?”
“No.”
“You thought of everything.”
“Yes.”
“You timed this train perfectly.”
“I did.”
“Rode it all last week just to get the timing and route right.”
“Yes.”
The stranger stopped smiling. “You’re lying. Why are you lying? This was all going so well.”
“I’m not.”
The stranger leaned forward, now very concerned as if everything had gone terribly wrong. “You are. This is your first time on this train. That’s why you’ve got the suit. You want to blend in. No one to notice you. You even knew where to walk to avoid the video cameras. You’ve been very precise. It’s all been planned out for you by men much smarter than yourself. You’re to leave the briefcase on the train and get off at the next stop, forgetting it under your seat. The train stops at 4:39, leaves again at 4:44. At 4:47 the bomb goes off, right after the train picks up enough speed to ensure that even those not killed by the blast are killed by the derailment. That was the plan.”
“How the hell do you know all this?”
“Because I touched every person getting on this train to mark them for the collectors. Every. Single. Person. I felt what you were going to do, saw the opportunity, and made the call. Everyone dies. Even you.”
“What the hell is a collector?”
“I was getting to that.”
“I’m getting off this train.”
“At 4:39?”
“Yes.”
“Because the bomb is going off at 4:47?”
“Yes.”
The stranger smiled again. “Even though the train won’t arrive until 4:50?”
“What?”
“There was an accident on another track. They’ve rerouted traffic to this one. As a result, our train has been traveling almost ten miles an hour slower than its normal speed. Had you actually ridden this route before, you’d have noticed. But you haven’t. Because you thought you were going to be spirited away to live in the woods at camp Jesus Freak, right with God, until all this blew over. You needed to be someone no one would recognize. A first-timer. A ghost.”
Brian looked at his watch. “Shit.”
The stranger nodded. “Yeah.”
“How do you—”
“I was coming to that, too. I was trying to tell you earlier, but you
didn’t care to listen.”
Brian took a deep breath, steadying himself. “I’m listening now.”
The stranger clapped his hands. “Hot dog! Let’s do this!” He readjusted himself in his seat, now even more animated than before. “How did you choose this train?”
“I didn’t. You know that.”
“Right. Someone else did. You’re just here to do the job, right?”
“Yes.”
“So someone else did all the thinking and choosing about who dies and you just do the job.”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s like what a collector does, too.”
“What’s a collector?”
“The Grim Reaper. That thing from beyond that comes and spirits your mortal soul into the afterlife. The guy who kills you—or at the very least, sees to it that someone else does.”
Brian’s jaw dropped, half in disbelief, half in shock. “You’re the Grim Reaper? Bullshit.”
“No. The collectors are the Grim Reapers. Plural. There’s hundreds of them. I’m a marker.”
“What’s a marker?”
“We’re the ones who make the call. We’re the angels of death.”
“Oh, come the fuck on.”
“Brian. How did I know your name? And what’s in the briefcase? And what time this was all set up for?”
“I don’t know. You know someone on the inside? You’re with the FBI, maybe.”
“No. Good guesses. But that doesn’t explain how I’m sitting across from someone with a bomb in his hand without so much as breaking a sweat. It’s a little late for me to try disarming it, don’t you think?”
“Yeah.”
“So why am I not afraid of your little bomb?”
“Because you’re crazy?”
“Or I’m already dead.”
“Bullshit.”
“I don’t need you to believe me now,” said the stranger, smile bright, eyes twinkling. “You’ve got all the time in the world to think about what I’m about to tell you. Literally. All the time.”
“What does that mean? Are you saying I’m going to Hell?”
“On the contrary, I might have spared you all that.”
“Might?”
We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories Page 11