“Bill?” Stella pulled her legs inside her oversized sweatshirt and rocked back and forth. The rippling killer nodded.
“And eight other cops. If I don’t get them all, they will spread.” Stella rocked harder. Her voice sounded cold. And small.
“Like cockroaches—”
The man’s strong jaw muscles pushed hard teeth into another bite of bacon. “No. Cockroaches serve the food chain—more like cancer.” He locked eyes with Terrence for a moment. On screen, their precinct chief consorted in illegal ways with a minor a block from a junior high school. “The system won’t stop it. It’s too big, too slow, too inefficient—too many offenders inside pumping the brakes for their buddies.” The cursor confirmed what they saw.
>Commercial exploitation of children.
*S 230.05: Patronizing a prostitute in the third degree.
He was right. The system was broken.
When the act came to a close, Bill refused to pay the child for what she’d done. He pushed her from the car and rewound a small camcorder. The police chief looked tired but serene. He reviewed the tape for a few moments, put himself in order, and started the car. Stella tapped furiously at her controller. “He taped it, Ham—he even taped it.” She hovered over a word.
>Terminate?
“Where is the yes? Why doesn’t it give me a choice?” Terrence tried his own controller. He hovered over the ominous word to no effect.
“Is it broken?”
“No,” said the man quietly. “That’s where I come in. I didn’t keep you here to act—I brought you here to understand.” His scarred hands did his bidding. The cursor hovered and clicked.
Terminate? >Yes.
Bill Turret, family man, officer of the year, cousin of the mayor, pedophile, took one last breath.
Terrence put down his controller. His shaking hand reached out for his soda, but knocked the can over. It landed on the floor and spilled. Stella seemed frozen. The stranger, the man with the power and the will, spoke. “I’ll do the rest. Hundreds will die, but they need to. It doesn’t affect me like it affects either of you—I’m not wired the usual way.” Stella’s cheeks were tear-streaked. She seemed to manage only quick, jabbing breaths. Terrence absently considered how trivial the pool of soda that spread on the floor really was.
Yesterday it would’ve been an event.
Tall, graceful, their visitor walked to the door. He waived a card in front of the scanner. With a hum, the door rolled open. “I doubt you will be on the news for a few days—considering. Take care of yourselves. Tomorrow, when you wake up in your own beds, think about how you fit into the system. Do what you can to make it better. I’ll do what I can from here.” The heavy door closed behind him. The television screen flickered to a national news station. A tropical storm was upgraded on Florida’s panhandle. There was discontent in the Middle East. Fuel prices were up.
~Epilogue
The Belcher’s sea snakes multiplied. As Henna and Stephan tenderly sorted, sexed, and inspected each tiny marvel before freeing them in a coral rich habitat brimming with tiny bright orange fish, Henna excitedly told Stephan about her newest discovery just upstream of Perth on the Swan River.
“The bull sharks come upstream, so not many people dive there. It’s quite urban until it isn’t—anyway, I worked my way upstream. Some aboriginal kids floated toward me in a raft of plastic buckets. One of them had a Ziploc bag. He held it up to the sun and pointed inside. I went over to see what he had—”
Stephan watched Ryker. He had paused to listen to the story. He’d been brushing at the Gargoyle’s remaining horn inside the shrikethrush enclosure. Although the unassuming bird had hundreds of live-branch perches to choose from, she seemed to like the weathered horn of the gothic statue best. The naked German seemed a part of the exhibit. The little bird hopped around cheerfully and tilted her head. She caught a colorful beetle and flicked her wings to land on the specter’s shoulder. Ryker opened his mouth and the bird fed him the beetle—It was toxic enough to kill eighty normal people, but that didn’t concern Stephan.
The Germans ate them all the time.
“—the kids all laughed until I unzipped the bag—then they freaked out. ‘Sick-fish! Sick-fish, lady!’” Rickard continued his work, quietly at a computer. He had announced that he was automating what could be automated—the program showed promise, although the blue-rings seemed to escape more often to hunt for their neighbors when people weren’t around. Stephan guessed the invertebrates removed the filter from the aerator when they went marauding—they were smart enough to figure it out. If that was the case, they put the filter back when they were done—he tried to film them doing it, but they refused to misbehave on camera. Stephan hadn’t seen Bonn for a long while. After culling seventeen percent of the city’s police force, he got quiet. He wiped down his old muscle car frequently and appeared deep in thought. Stephan saw Bonn reading an article on Route 66 the night they’d celebrated Henna’s return. He might be out there now—driving between windblown gas stations, eating cherry pie under buzzing old neon signs. Sleeping in bad motels.
“—they don’t know where the fish go when they aren’t schooling together, Stephan, I couldn’t convince the kids to give me the bag. I even offered to trade boats with them. I think they thought I’d eat the fish. So what do you say, Rabbi? Next spring? You and me on the upper Swan in Perth? I know a guy who can make you a passport—what should we do with your hair?” Stephan looked at his reflection in the glass. The prosthetic eye looked perfect behind his new glasses. He didn’t need to jitter his good eye anymore.
“I think I’ll grow it out—let it get long. Go for the ‘Robinson Crusoe’ look.”
“That sounds a bit Hassidic. Are you getting serious about religion on me?”
“Always have been, Doc.”
Always have been.
Estelle awoke to a telephone. She hiked herself up on an elbow. She was surrounded by familiar things. “I thought I’d call and make sure you got home, too—”
Ham.
“—there is a note here, with a phone number: call if you need help on the job. Thing isn’t signed, but we know who it’s from.” Estelle rubbed at her eyes. She looked around her bedroom.
Nothing interesting here.
“It’s only Christmas morning for you, Ham—that or he knows I don’t need any help to get things done.” Estelle took a shower in her own shower.
She would miss the tiny root beer soaps. After breakfast she’d call to announce her return—several days of questions would follow. A physical at the least. It’d be like an astronaut’s re-entry protocol. They had to make sure she wasn’t brainwashed or in love with her recent captor.
Hair still wet, Estelle decided to splurge on a cup of coffee.
Ham won’t know. One won’t hurt, will it?
The Bill of Rights hung in a simple frame above her kitchen table. With goose bumps everywhere they would fit, Estelle read the short message written on the table in permanent marker:
~Trust your instincts
Lochlann Blackshaw handed an envelope to the craggy man. Inside were eight-by-tens of an attractive redhead. Abernathy pulled out the stops to make things right—he’d delivered the photographs to Lochlann himself. The woman’s face was captured from several angles as she made her way through customs at LaGuardia. The man flipped through the photographs, slid them back inside the envelope, and passed the packet back.
“Don’t you need to take them with you?”
The craggy man shook his head disdainfully and tapped his temple. The lobbyist wondered what was next. He was used to being the heavy. When he made a promise, it affected the economies of nations. If he didn’t pull through on those promises, someone like the man before him would visit. He’d remove him—a stubborn nail from a weathered fence. Lochlann knew about these people, but he’d never before looked one in the eye—the life he led was a gamble and so far he’d won. “What should I call you?”
“You shouldn’t.
”
“How will I pay you?”
“Now.”
Lochlann nodded—angry, but nervous. Marcus usually dealt with the bottom-dwellers.
Now he’d do it himself.
Marcus was dead, but this man would make it right. Lochlann reached across the table and handed the man his fee.
Bottom-dweller wasn’t an insult—they were just very hard to get to.
Lochlann solicited help from wealthy friends, who recommended someone—who notified the apparition before him. Although he couldn’t recognize the man’s nationality, he did recognize the need for such men. It took money to make them surface and this particular man hailed from the deepest depths. If Lochlann was the head of a hammer, building wealth and industry for those who kept the world in balance, this man was the claw on the opposite end of the same tool. Lochlann knew the man’s name. Not many did. Osgar didn’t bother with promises.
He probably wasn’t even in the business for the money.
The killer moved gracefully to the door of the coffee shop. Lochlann heard the door open, but when he looked out the window—the man was gone.
~About
I’m a full-time, independent author living in Alaska with my family. Inhumanum is my first novel.
The sequel, Made Men, will be available fall, 2016. Though some are bad asses, and others jerks,
all characters appearing in this work are fictitious—so please don’t become
flattered, ashamed, angry, or the like if you believe that you resemble
one of the jerks.
Instead, seek therapy … or take up yoga.
Perhaps you could adopt a pet
who doesn’t know your past.
I’d love to hear from most of you. Join me on:
Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/writerBradleyErnst/
Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14537396
And see my next projects at http://bradleyernst.com/
Bradley
INHUMANUM: A THRILLER (Law of Retaliation Book 1) Page 33