by J. C. Allen
Roost’s phone began to buzz in his pocket.
“Shit, Mercury! You didn’t silence that before coming?” I said,
“Damn thing’s vibratin,’ ain’t it?” he tried to defend. “Sorry, piece of shit.”
“It’s fine, not like we’ve kept our voices quieter than that,” I said, realizing my momentary freakout was completely unjustified.
He stepped away and I watched him, waiting to see just who had called. I wondered if it had anything to do with this situation, a concern that seemed more likel as his face began to grow more concerned. I glanced over at the three others, who had been watching with their own looks of concern. Now seemed a good chance to thank them.
“I appreciate what you three did for me last night,” I said. “AK, Rucker, I’m sure you played as big a role in rescuing me as Bones did.”
“Not a problem, sir,” AK said.
“Yes, sir,” Rucker said.
“You are OK now,” Bones said, more an observation than a question.
“I think that’s fair to say,” I said, testing my arm for the hell of it. It was still sore and a little bit pain, but I wasn’t limited in mobility or in strength in any way that I could tell. “Is it common for men to—”
“Yes,” Bones said.
“Mission comes first,” Rucker said. “If we can keep fighting, we fight. I’ve seen men get their appendages blown off, sometimes even limbs, and they keep fighting.”
“Damn,” I said, feeling like a sudden pussy in comparison. “Well, thanks all the same.”
I turned back, glancing over as Roost stepped over to me. I raised an eyebrow, seeing that his face was still twisted in concern as he made his way back over.
“What happened?” I asked, my own concern beginning to grow.
“We gotta get back to the shop,” he said, already turning towards his bike. “I’ll tell ya when we get there.”
“Shit, what?”
But before Roost could respond to me, he was already gunning his bike and heading off.
“You heard him!” I said. “Let’s roll!”
We made our way to the shop in record time. I could feel the concern continuing to grow. I hated how quiet Roost was about the situation, how he had not responded to my request for further clarification. I knew whatever he had found out was not good.
I wanted to get back to Eve, wanted all this to be over, and somehow, I felt this was only the beginning. That the games were only ending now and the real war was about to start.
Fuck…
You knew Falcon would pull a mindfuck like this. This is nothing new, Derek. You gotta stay with it and keep your head together. Whatever Roost found, he didn’t just pull us away for nothing.
I parked my bike beside Roost as he led me into the office. I glanced around, seeing how empty the shop was with how late it was, and wondered why he had us come here. He stepped over to the computer at the desk and turned it on. I watched, my nerves only continuing to grow and glanced over as the printer began to sputter to life, spitting out several pages.
“What’s going on, Roost?” I asked as I stepped towards the desk, slamming my hands down in front of him.
“What’s going on is we just finished yer wild goose chase,” Roost said, continuing to type as he stared at the computer screen.
“What? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I asked, glaring down at how nonchalant he suddenly seemed. “Am I at fault? What did—”
“Nah, no one coulda known,” Roost said. “But it means that Eve was right, this was only a chase. And, furthermore, it doeslead nowhere.”
Roost finally moved away from the computer to snag the papers from the printer, but he moved like a mad scientist, unable to make human contact.
“What? What do you mean? What are you talking about?” I demanded as I watched him finish up with his typing.
“It was a distraction, Derek,” Roost said, moving the papers in front of me.
On the pages were photographs of different areas of the city. In the photos were Falcon standing over a crew, supervising some kind of construction. On the last page, there were four smaller photos of the finished buildings with several men standing around the locations.
I glanced back at Roost, frowning. What I was seeing… was this just not the clue?
“So… what? They’ve just been setting up new locations?” I asked.
“Four, from the looks of things. It seems Falcon decided to branch out a bit since we destroyed their last hideout. What better way to insure the completion of these new HQs than to send us everywhere an’ anywhere except where he didn’t want us?” Roost said, running his hand over his neck. “And that’s not the end of it, they’ve begun selling again and at a much more rapid rate than before. The city crime rate has increased in the last week.”
“What?” I asked. “How is that even possible?”
My mind raced in panic. Was this really happening? I glanced back at Roost, unsure of what to do now.
We’d gotten played badly, once again. It was a theme, I noticed, that whenever we thought we had a bead on the Falcons, they turned it around on us. It was only when they had an obvious location, an obvious event, that we had them pegged, and even then, it often was more heavily fortified than we thought.
It was clear that whatever we did, we’d have to commit an uncomfortable amount of our men and resources to the effort. Lives would be lost. Money would be wasted.
But we had to take them out. And we had to figure out how to approach them.
“What do we do then?” I finally asked.
“Best I can think, we take out these place one-by-one,” Roost said, shrugging. “It’s the only thing we can do. We got a lot of numbers still thanks to our neighborhood raid, and I believe they’re still bigger than what the Black Falcons’s got.”
“But how can we be sure this isn’t also another trap? Or another goose chase?”
“’Cuz these photos came from Eagle,” Roost said, showing me the email.
I stared in a bit of surprise. I hadn’t requested Eagle to go on that mission, and while I didn’t oversee everyone’s actions—that would take up just too much of my time—the higher level folks usually came to me first.
“See, thing is, I was gettin’ a bit suspicious ‘bout all this,” Roost explained. “We went to all these places, and only place we ran into anyone was when ya got shot. But even then, Bones was tellin’ me the prints were fresh, as if we’d gotten there literally minutes after they’d taken our guys there. So it seemed to me they wanted us to discover it after the fact.”
“And so they could escape and keep focusing on their real buildings.”
“Bingo,” Roost said. “Thing with Falcon, ya can’t be thinkin’ of what a rational person would do. Ya gotta think outside yer box. So I had Eagle just go anywhere that ain’t in that lil’ triangle you created that one day. Said ‘no shootin’, just scoutin’.’ He seemed to take the words to heart and sent those over just now.”
“Is he safe?”
“Yep, I sent him home once he got these.”
“And we confirmed he’s home?”
“Yep.”
I grimaced at the realization of just how unsafe things were becoming, but the longer my grimace lasted, the more dangerous I realized things were. Now, the Falcons didn’t just have one home—like a virus in a body, they’d replicated and made themselves even more present throughout the city. It wasn’t an understatement to say that they were spreading and we had to stop them before they surrounded the shop.
“When ya see Eve, Derek, tell her to be real careful,” Roost said. “Rise in crime, these new places, and everythin’ else associated with this makes me think this is ‘bout to go from a goose chase to a goose hunt. They took their time lickin’ their wounds, but those wounds have healed or they healthy enough. You can’t be too careful outside, Derek. Don’t leave yer place without a gun, and do the same for Eve.”
I bit my lip. Well, it was a fun three we
eks while it lasted.
“Understood,” I said. “Let me get home and advise her of such. We’ll start a plan tomorrow. They may have spread, but we know where they are now.”
14
Eve
In most of my dreams, I stared at the man from the party, Tyler, or the Falcon before me as they threatened to kill Derek.
But tonight, I saw something new.
I was in Derek’s apartment, standing in the entrance just from his elevator. The place was littered with beer bottles, liquor handles, and spilled wine. Pizza boxes littered the place. Holes in the wall were punched. Everywhere you looked, the place had fallen apart into a kind of destruction.
And there, standing before it all, with a gun to his head, was Derek Knight.
“What are you doing, Derek?” I said, trying to remain calm before him, reminding myself I could not control the gun but I could control my own reactions.
“Whaddoes it look like I’m doinnn, Eeeeve?” he said, slurring his words as the alcohol had, once again, gotten to him. “Fuck it, I’m, I’m, I’m burnin’ it all! Hahahaha, yes, goodbye, goodbye, gooooodbyyyyeeeeee!”
“Derek!” I said, trying not to cry. “Why did you get like this? What the hell happened to you?”
“Oh, nothing happened to me, Eveee,” he said. “I just, I just reaaalized the truth. We can’t, we won’t, or, err, umm…”
He paused to throw up right before me. I thought of running in to take the gun from him, but he was too far. He’d see me coming.
“Ooooh, the taste of self-defeat is incredible! Haha, hahahaha, hahahahaha! You should try it sometime, Eve!”
“Derek, what is going on,” I said, not bothering to hide my tears.
“You really think I, Derek Knight, could defeat Falcon? You really thought that was possible? I am no hero. I am not your man. I am, I am a failure of a son. We tried, Eve, we tried. And we gave it our all.”
Then he raised the gun from the ground back to his head.
“No! No no no!” I shouted.
Derek, temporarily, put the gun down.
“We can still do this, Derek. You and I. We can get away.”
“Hmmm,” he said, drunkenly mumbling and soon burping. “You know what?”
And then, as if in some supernatural state, his face and voice turned to that of Rock’s.
“You’re right.”
“No!”
The trigger was pulled.
I saw the bullet screaming toward my head.
I closed my eyes.
I jolted forward, awake, out of breath, away from my dream. I looked to my right. Derek… sober Derek… alive Derek…
He was there.
He was fine.
I had just had yet another nightmare.
And the worst part was, once my mind settled, my heartbeat went back to normal, and I realized Rock was not here, he was still dead, and Derek had not puked in the living room, I realized that I was completely used to these kinds of nightmares to an almost unhealthy degree.
I didn’t like the idea of just bouncingback from the type of nightmare that had plagued me for so many years. I wanted to suffer through these nightmares so that I could feel obligated to get help. I wanted to scream loudly upon waking so maybe Derek would tell me I should get help since—while he would never say so out loud—it was affecting his sleep.
But, that didn’t happen.
Whenever I woke, there was always a sort of nauseating moment of “Oh, good, still just a dream.” Then it was just a matter of shaking off the post-nightmare anxieties—reminding myself how to breathe, peeling myself off the sweat-soaked sheets, and waiting for my heartrate to return to something resembling normal—and, a cup of coffee later, I could almost forget that I’d had it in the first place. Almost.
I looked at the clock and saw that it was about 7 a.m. I didn’t ever remember falling asleep, and it must’ve been a true testament to Derek’s stealthy abilities that I never woke up when he returned. Perhaps I was having a pleasant dream at that time about Derek, but I doubted it. More likely than not, I was in that limbo state of too tired to be aware of what was going on, but not tired enough to dream.
I put my head back on the pillow, trying to go back to sleep, but it did little good. On the one hand, I wasn’t sure if I’d gotten eight hours—not that I could really ever count on that luxury—and on the other, I had a terrifying fear of nightmares so bad that they would ruin the day ahead for me. It was a real lose-lose situation.
I tried to think of times of when I didn’t have those nightmares, and truth be told, they really did seem random. It wasn’t like Derek sleeping next to me gave me the chance to sleep in peace, nor did having an orgasm before bed do the trick. It was just… I hated to say it, but it really did seem up to fate.
I didn’t want to wake Derek, but I needed someone to talk to. I grabbed my phone and texted Tara. “Breakfast? :-)” It was simple, and frankly, I had no expectations of her replying. Just the act of trying to make plans helped.
But to my surprise, despite the early hour, she began writing back to me as I saw the chat bubble pop up.
“LOL more like late dinner 4 me. But sure. Lets do it. Carls Cafe?”
The location wasn’t the greatest, not because it was in a bad part of town, but because it was just close enough to walk—which ran the risk of drawing eyes I didn’t care to have.
But, at this early in the morning, I doubted anyone would be pulling anything. It was the evening and the night that most worried me, with the Black Falcons able to blend into the darkness of the night sky. In the morning, though, with the sun rising and overshadowing us? I wouldn’t say it was safe, but it was certainly safer.
“Yeah. See you in 30?”
“Sounds good.”
I closed my phone and rubbed my eyes. Funnily enough, now that I wanted to make plans, I was suddenly so tired I didn’t even want to get out of bed. It was like my body said “we’re going to do the opposite of whatever you want.”
Well, eventually, I’d make it so tired it wouldn’t have the energy to produce a nightmare. Then it could do whatever it wanted.
I tried to get out of bed as quietly as I could, trying to grab casual attire that would not reveal my features so easily. I also made it a point to throw on sneakers in case I had to run, something that I prayed wouldn’t be necessary but was necessary to plan for all the same.
And then I heard Derek wake.
“Babe?”
Shit.
“Just go to sleep, baby, I’m going to meet Tara for an early breakfast.”
“Now?” he grumbled, stealing a look at the clock. “I just got back four hours ago.”
“I know, and I’m glad you were quiet,” I said, deciding it was better than saying I wish he had woken me from the nightmare where he almost killed himself before killing me. “But I had a bad dream. I asked Tara to meet me and we already made plans. I’ll be safe, I promise.”
Derek let out a long sigh before throwing himself dramatically against the bed.
“Is this punishment again for being out so late?” he said with a hoarse chuckle. “I swear I’ll be good from now on.”
“Hah, no, nothing like that,” I said. “You were a good boy last night, and when I get back from the cafe, I promise to reward you for your good behavior.”
“Promise?”
In a state of mid-dress, with just my underwear, socks, and a t-shirt on, I went over and kissed him.
“Does that answer your question?”
“I suppose,” he said.
He fell quiet for a bit as I continued to get dressed. I knew exactly what was going on over there—he was losing himself in his thoughts, assuming the worst. I thought of asking him about what had happened last night, thinking that might get him out of his head, but then it occurred to me that and his darkest thoughts might be too closely connected. So, unable to think of anything better, I just kept getting dressed in silence, humming to myself to fill the air.
/> “Promise you’ll be safe?” Derek said, again.
I appreciated his concern, even if it was bordering on being overbearing. I mean, who wouldn’t be a little bit much in these circumstances?
“I promise, okay?” I said, turning towards him and giving him another kiss. “We are meeting at the café down the street from here. What could happen?”
I knew right away that was a stupid question. I had asked it to comfort him, but I suspected that it only got him more frazzled.
“In our world?” he challenged, his eyebrow raised quizzically and his mouth pulled downward in a frown. “I’d say it’s safe to say a lot could happen.”
“Okay, that’s fair,” I said, conceding the point. “But I won’t be alone, and we arejust meeting at a café. We’ll be in public view.”
“Okay,” he said, seeming to calm down. At least, externally, he was. “I’ll be here, so if you need anything, just call, okay?”
“I will, I promise,” I said, leaning in and kissing him.
He kissed me back. Then he tried to pull me into him, but I had to pull back.
“You said I wasn’t being punished!”
That drew a laugh from me, but not an assent to continue.
“I made plans for 7:30 sharp, I’m sorry,” I said. “Otherwise, yes, I’d be all over you. But I promise when I come back from breakfast, I’m going down on you.”
“Even if I’m asleep?”
“Especially if you’re asleep.”
He smiled that wicked grin I so loved, and I moved in to kiss him.
“Love you babe,” I said.
“Love you too.”
Before things got too carried away because I lingered, I pulled back and made my way down the hall towards the elevator. My thoughts danced around the various worst-case scenarios of the morning, but I did my best to ignore them, instead trying to focus on the conversations that Tara and I would have and the morning wakeup call I would give Derek.
“Hey, babe?”
I turned with some surprise to see him approaching me naked, his cock rigid… and a knife in his hand?
“Is this some kinky foreplay idea you have?” I said. “We should probably talk about this before—”