He sees that there’s a woodburning stove in a far corner of the room, but it doesn’t seem to be generating much heat. Sees that he’s wearing dry clothes—overalls that fit eerily well. No shirt underneath, just like the old man. Something like a wet shirt sleeve has been ripped away to become a tourniquet for something that feels like a very raw slash in his upper-arm meat. Hurts like hell. And there’s dried blood all over him too. His blood? Someone else’s blood? He tries to ask all these questions at once and the toothless man says something about being up the creek again.
His voice sounds like a scene out of Deliverance.
• • •
The conversation that happens next is like a series of sound bites that make an impression, but don’t really stick. All he gets is a version of the facts that he can piece together in rough order, and he gets the sense that somehow this man may have saved his life somewhere in the mix, but he also flashes back over swimming in an ice-cold river of blood and almost freezing to death. He checks himself for other wounds and there aren’t any more on his body and he thinks that’s absurd. He figures that whatever happened back there, he must have been thrown clear, that he swam and clawed his way to safety . . . and then he remembers the bomb in his trunk, and that snaps everything into sharp, sharp focus.
• • •
Jollie, what happened to you and Andy? Where are you now? How long have I been swimming for my life?
He starts to sit up in the tiny cot, which suddenly smells like someone’s hundred-year-old dog. The man in front of him, who looks like that dog, says: “What’s your name, son?”
“I don’t think I remember.”
“Don’t surprise me none. I think y’took a hit to the head back there.”
“Back there? Did you see what happened?”
“No, but I sure as hell heard it. Big s’plosion.”
“Yeah, like World War Three.”
“World War Three already happened, son. I was there for it. Think we’re on to ’bout World War Four or maybe Five by now.”
“Yeah, I guess . . .”
“If you were in the middle of what went on back there, son, I think yer damn lucky to be alive right now.”
“What am I doing here?”
“You were freezing to death near the bank of the river. Delirious.”
“You fished me out?”
“I’m of the opinion that when you see a man like that, you ought’a help him, no matter what his name is.”
Mark looks at his new dry overalls like a man sees a new skin.
The man with one tooth sees his sudden shock and smiles. “Don’t worry, son. I ain’t no redneck pervert. Hadda get ya outta them wet things you were wearing, but it was all business. You were kinda covered in blood too. Thought you was dead for sure. Turned out you just wasn’t feeling well.”
“I’m feeling a little better now.”
“And that’s a goddamn miracle, son. Not that I much believe in miracles, or God or Jesus or whatever. But, yeah, you was plenty lucky back there.”
Mark notices he’s got new footgear too. Black boots, half-muddy. They feel a little big, but he’s not looking any more gift horses in the mouth. He levers his feet onto the floor, the open bootlaces falling at his ankles.
“How long was I out?”
“A while. It’s way past dark now. About half past midnight. You’ve been in and out, really. You should just take it easy.”
“I can’t. Something really bad is happening . . .”
“Figures.”
“I need . . . to know if my friends are okay . . .”
“What you need to do is rest some. You ain’t all there just yet.”
Mark sighs, and the world jumbles again. Tries to pull his breath in slow. All he can sense when he does that is the death of Jollie and Andy. He focuses, and loses it. Need a hit of something. Gotta jump-start somehow.
Reaches up and feels the back of his head—and the old man is right. Heavy knot back there. And a cut into his skull that feels pretty deep. It throbs and gives him fits and spurts of sharp ice, then fades and ebbs. Finally, he gives up on paying attention to it and looks at the old man again.
“Thank you. For what you’ve done. I’m grateful.”
“You don’t have to thank me, son. Us men of war gotta look out for each other, right?”
“How’d you know I was a man of war?”
“Shit, any fool coulda figured that out. But when I found ya . . . well, you had the stare going on. You know what that means, son? The stare?”
“Maybe. I dunno.”
“It’s the stare you get when yer in a war. I know ’bout that because I was in three wars. Not some pussy ones, neither, where you just wait around for something bad to happen and get sent home on the next rotation. Naw, son.”
“What wars were you in?”
“Don’t matter none. What matters is that I’m gonna die soon, in peacetime.”
“Sounds like a good way to go.”
“It’ll do, until whatever else comes along.”
Mark looks right at him, very seriously. “I had some stuff in my pockets before. Did you see any of it?”
“Sure as hell did. You had a key on a ring, about three thousand dollars in folding cash, and some diamonds. Them things real?”
“Yes. One hundred percent real.”
Mark almost laughs, thinking about fruit juice. Crushes the laughter quickly, looking away from the toothless man, who stands up and fishes in a pocket, bringing out a slab of black plastic. Comes over with it, handing the thing to Mark, who almost doesn’t recognize what it is. He’s still having trouble focusing every third second.
“You had this in yer pocket too. I think it still works. Waterproof and all.”
Mark takes it and turns it over in his hand.
The toothless man squints at him. “It’s one’a them smartphone things, right?”
“Right.”
“You had a gun too. Had it in your hand, when I found you. You’s holdin’ onto the damn thing like grim death. I think I’ll keep that sucker for now. You know, till we get to know each other better.”
“Fair enough. I had some white powder in a watertight plastic bag too. Did you see that?”
“You mean the cocaine?”
“Um. Yeah.”
“Flushed it down the toilet, boy. Sorry.”
“That was worth six hundred dollars . . .”
“In my world it ain’t worth shit. Unless y’count the trouble it brings. Now I ain’t askin’ any questions about diamonds and dope in a stranger’s pocket when they wash up on the side of the river—and the way I look at it, you should be damn grateful.”
Flushed it all. Goddamn.
He’ll have to do this the hard way. Sober.
He’s already getting the shakes.
Fuck.
“I’m grateful,” Mark says. “I’m very grateful for your help.”
He looks at the old man, who looks back at him seriously.
“So, son . . . you got somewhere you need to be?”
• • •
Fast-forward. It all happens really quickly as the new rush of stone-sober panic drag races in his system. It’s a rush that he’s not used to—something hard and nasty and mixed with the high wine of tinnitus still haunting his head from the blast. But he powers through. He’s explaining that he needs a ride into Austin and the old man balks at first, saying something about how that place is a shithole he don’t even pretend to understand and wants nothing to do with, but he backs off a little when Mark offers him a thousand dollars cash money for the ride, and as a matter of fact, let’s make it the whole three thousand, and the old man whistles loudly and says something about shit creek again and how the paddle is only as long as the cash we have on hand to pay for it, and Mark is cinching t
he laces on his new boots tight and standing up for the first time and he’s dizzy at first, the panic still riding hard in his bloodstream, but pretty soon the two men are marching out of the empty woodshed and the smartphone is hot in Mark’s sweaty hand and he thinks he might see the rickety front porch of something that looks like the cabin in the Evil Dead films—and, yeah, The Cabin in the Woods too—but he doesn’t think that’s important at all, and the old man yells at him to climb in the front cab of a flatbed truck that looks like a rusty bullet with headlights . . .
And his mind snaps back over all the possibilities.
He sees Andy and Jollie, together in the basement. He knows they could have survived easily, in a hole that far down. And if they survived, they are in the hands of the enemy—because that’s what happened back there for sure. They were attacked and defeated by the enemy. And the enemy has to be the Monster Squad. And he has to be ready for them.
All this is confirmed when he powers up the smartphone and talks to the robots in outer space and those robots tell him exactly where Jollie is.
Or someone pretending to be Jollie.
That’s a very real possibility.
His friends could be dead and this could be a trap.
He thinks about dialing the number of the phone sending him the GPS signal, but that’s a bad idea too. That’ll lead whoever right to him. Maybe.
And that leaves just one unanswered question. He’d almost forgotten what it was. The question is the name of a man.
Dictator Ken.
• • •
He sees that moment in the office, just before the world became a thunderstorm of gunfire . . . and he sees Ken’s mouth moving, making sounds he can hardly comprehend. He sees Ken’s terrible eyes—all full of secrets only a dictator would know. Things that made him rebel against the company to have a wife. Things that made Ken’s heart die, when those bastards killed his one true love. Real terror, in a frozen instant, telegraphing the awful truth about everything.
Mark searches for the words Ken might’ve said.
Still gets only fragments.
His mind powers through, needing the boost.
• • •
He stands in front of the truck and the old man counts his money. Then the guy jams the wad in his pocket and goes into the cab and yanks something that looks like a jacket from behind the seat. Throws it at Mark.
“Put that on, son. The night’s gettin’ cold and you ain’t got much on.”
It’s a thin Windbreaker with a wooly collar for lining, but at least it’s something. Mark notices the old man is wearing something that looks just like it. Mark slides the thin thing over his arms and suddenly realizes how cold he is.
“Thanks, man.”
“No problem, son. Get in. Time’s a-wasting.”
“Can I trust you?”
“Prolly not. But what the hell, right? And you just bought yourself a ride into town. You wanna cash it in or not?”
“You got a name, old-timer?”
“Yeah.”
“You wanna tell me what it is?”
“No.”
“Why’s that?”
The old-timer gives him a look like Are you fuckin’ kidding me?
Mark looks at the phone again. Checks the location of the sister smartphone he gave to Jollie. It’ll take at least two hours to get there. But first things first.
It’s just past one in the morning.
A perfect time to die.
• • •
More wise men. This time, just two of them.
One of them is a sixteen-year-old kid named William Raycraft, the other a fifty-year-old man named Moonie Raycraft. They are father and son. They are the guys who kicked in Eddie Darling’s door at three this afternoon and shot him in the back while he was watching TV. They did it together, just like they do everything together.
Right now, young William is about to shoot a man in the face.
• • •
Jollie . . . Andy . . .
He shivers in the cab of the truck as they near the city limits and holds his fists in his lap, trying hard to focus on their faces, getting too much information—then trying to regulate it, check it, slow it down so it doesn’t drive him crazy. The effect is maddening, like the throbbing gash on the back of his head. It’s irritating and obvious—exactly the thing his teachers warned him about. Humanity, friendships, all the distractions of the mortal world—all of it rushing to mute and destroy his killer instinct.
And he needs a hit of something—anything.
Real bad.
Fuck, man. This just plain sucks.
He checks the phone again.
Just past two now.
• • •
Young William holds the gun in the old fuck’s face and the old fuck still won’t give them the information they require. Some people are just hopeless, man.
So the old fuck’s gotta go.
His father taught him a long time ago—never make idle threats.
The shot is almost deafening, but the two of them are wearing earplugs. Brains go everywhere in a clap of thunder. They spend another ten minutes ransacking the office, looking for keys to the storage lockers. Nothing.
Then . . . a miracle.
• • •
Mark tells the old man to pull up to the gated front driveway of Southside Storage when he sees that the lights in the front office are off. The driveway leads right into the maze of storage units, each with a big steel roll-down door. Near the gate is a small monolith with a lighted entryway keypad that allows anyone to punch in at any time of day or night. He’s been here a million times, to get his shit.
He snorts in some air, wishes for the millionth time that he had a rail of something. Some speed maybe? Just a quick eye-opener to take the edge off. If he has to go into combat, it will get even worse. His hands are trembling harder than ever now. Gotta tough it out. Gotta do this fast.
He checks the phone one last time.
Two thirty in the morning.
Please be alive, Jollie. Andy. Please.
The old man punches in the number on the keypad and the gate clatters to the side on oiled rollers. The gate is made of solid steel bars, painted black—your basic automated apartment-complex security. Mark tells him to ease the truck forward, into the first aisle of the concrete mausoleum. The old man shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders. Does as he is told. Slowly.
Neither man sees Moonie and William Raycraft’s Mazda CX5 Hybrid because it’s parked just behind the little office shack, off to the left of the gate area. Neither man sees the two of them watching over the desk in the dark room, licking their lips, like baby wolves.
“I’ll get the car,” Moonie says softly, whispering. “You wait right here.”
• • •
Mark tells the old-timer to park the truck in front of his locker unit. It’s just twenty feet from the front gate, near the end of the row, just at the intersection that splits into the maze.
The old man rolls them right up and shuts off the engine.
“Curbside service, son.”
Mark takes the key out of his pocket. “Thank you. For what you’ve done for me.”
“You don’t gotta thank me none. Let’s just get this business over with. I wanna get home before dawn. Old man gets tired, y’know?”
“Yeah. I do know.”
The old man gives him a look like I don’t think you do, son. But thanks for playing.
Mark gets out of the truck and slams the door behind him. The key jingles on the ring in his hand—the key that survived, along with him.
Ridiculous. Impossible.
The voice of Dictator Ken mocks him: Kill yourself, kiddo. It’s the only way you can redeem this whole shit sandwich.
SHUT UP.
The
lock clicks and the roll-door comes open. And there the package sits, right on top of his filing cabinet.
Right where he left it.
• • •
Moonie and young William watch them from just twenty feet away.
The gun is sweaty in the kid’s hand. He says he’s ready in a whisper. Moonie very quietly tells his son to be cool. Don’t blow this.
• • •
Mark checks the package, and everything is still there. The Molly and his guns from the hit—along with the buy money, almost three million in seed cash. The street resale value would have quadrupled that, of course—made Razzle Schaeffer a rich man finally. But nobody ever really gets what they want, do they?
His hands shake again and he thinks about opening one of the packages and snorting some of the white stuff in there.
No. The package has to weigh out perfectly if I want to trade it for Jollie and Andy’s life. And that shit is pure and uncut. One nose full would kill me dead, especially in my condition.
But still, he wants it.
He forces the nagging gnaw of it out of his head—focuses hard on his friends, on his one true love, and he feels his whole body weakening in the effort. Hardens himself again. Pulls out the smartphone and checks her location one more time.
It’s 2:37 in the morning.
Please be alive. Please be okay. I’m coming for you and I have what everyone wants. I have it right here. I’m going to give it right over to them and save your lives.
And I can do it sober.
I don’t need the fucking drugs, goddammit.
He grabs the two Glocks. Both have full loads. (He’ll need to get his Vestika back from the old man eventually, if he can.) Shoves them into the wide hip pockets of his greasy overalls. Does a deep breath before he zips the carry-on bag closed, unlocks the pull-up handle, and sets it on the concrete. Takes three steps forward, pulling the carry-on toward the truck on its rollers. The truck is right there, just outside the open roll-door. Just three steps and he’s home free. He takes two steps and he’s almost there. Steps out of the storage locker and smiles at the old man.
But guess what?
Nobody ever really gets what they want.
And you blew it, kid.
• • •
The old man senses the boy coming up fast behind him just a second too late, his ancient military training almost saving him in the moment before the shot rings out across the concrete mausoleum and the bullet hits him in the collarbone, smashing the hell out of cartilage and meat, sending it everywhere in a spray of pulpy liquid gore. As he goes under the pounding of his own heart, trying to make noise that comes out all garbled and wrong, he sees the boy charge in from behind with his big gun for the second shot, just before that shot kills him. Sees a snot-nose teenager wearing a weird white-on-white costume and a drugged-out heroin smile. (He’s seen a lot of heroin smiles and they all look pretty terrifying, even at a quick half-glimpse.) Sees his whole life in one quick rewind before it blows through his chest and splatters the windshield, then shatters the windshield into a terrible crooked spider web that he falls straight forward into.
Metro Page 23