by JJ Zep
Danko drew his slicker over his shoulders and was about to let himself out into the night when the door suddenly flew open. “I’m here. I’m here,” a female voice said. “Roof’s sprung a leak and we’ve got Niagara Falls in our bedroom. Brian’s just putting out some buckets.”
Messenger stopped in the act of mopping up the last of the excellent stew with a crust of bread. He turned towards the door.
“Some more, John?” Verna said from beside him. “Plenty where that came from. We raise our own sheep you know, grow our own vegetables too. I’m not sure if Jer told you but…”
Her voice trailed off into nothingness. Messenger’s attention was focused firmly on the woman standing in the doorway. Not a woman, an angel, a Madonna holding a baby.
“This is my daughter, Skye,” Verna said. “And the little bundle of cuteness is my grandson Danny.”
nine
“No! No, no, no, fucking no! This will not stand, man! This shit will not stand!”
Riley Reed, Wackjob to his friends, hoisted himself from his cot and charged headlong into the steel locker standing opposite. He took a few backward steps and charged again, this time delivering a kung-fu kick that left an imprint of his combat boot. The rest of the crew, standing in a loose circle in the dorm room absorbing the news that Charlie had just delivered, let him rant. When Wackjob was in this mood, it was best to stay out of his way.
“That prick Harrow’s been angling for this ever since that time in Palm Desert with the Quicks,” Greg Mons said.
“Since before that,” Normal cut in. “Sum bitch has had it in for us ever since La Jolla. Remember? When he wanted us to pull out and leave those civvies behind, and the Loot told him to go fuck himself.”
“That was Long Beach,” JC cut in.
“Yeah, whatever. All I’m saying is, that cocksucker’s been looking to shaft us for a long while.”
“And what?” Wackjob said. He was wild-eyed, spittle flying from his lips as he spoke. “We just gonna bend over, touch our toes and let him shaft us? I say we disappear the fucker, strap a claymore to the engine block of that Caddie he likes cruising around in. Who’s with me?”
“Whoa!” Charlie cut in. It was all very well letting the men rant and blow off steam. But when the talk turned to car bombs, especially when that talk came from Wackjob, it was time to step in and calm the waters. “Let’s just take a breath here, boys. No one’s blowing up General Harrow.”
“Why the fuck not?” Wackjob’s eyes were all but bulging out of his head, the veins at his temples throbbing like mini constrictors.
“Wouldn’t change anything for starters. Blackwell would just step up in Harrow’s place. Even if you all didn’t end up in front of a firing squad, the order would still stand.” He gave them a while to absorb that. “Besides, what’s the deal here? You pussies can’t face up to the prospect of military life without me around to wipe your asses?”
He scanned his eye around the circle, to the seven men standing with heads downcast in the half-light of the bungalow – Wackjob, Normal, JC, K-Mart, Ryan “Juice” Newton, Greg Mons and Andy Siebert. They’d faced so much together, shared so much, sacrificed so much, seen so many of their comrades fall. Harrow had known that, and he’d known exactly how to hurt Charlie. You had to give him that, Charlie decided He’d found Charlie’s weak spot as surely as a sidewinder finding a jet fighter.
“Why the fuck can’t they post us all to El Centro?” Wackjob said. “Why split us up?” He was calmer now, his anger simmering rather than flash frying.
“Cause he’s fucking with us, that’s why,” K-Mart said. “Fucking with our shit.”
“It is what it is, fellers,” Charlie said. A quiver had crept into his voice. “Besides, have you been to El Centro lately? If the world had an asshole, that’s where you’d find it.”
“We’d go there for you, Loot,” Greg Mons said.
“Fuck yeah,” Wackjob added.
“Stop it,” Charlie said. “You boys are getting me all misty eyed. Now, we gonna drink this good scotch I brought or we gonna sit around sobbing and holding hands?”
He broke the seal on the first bottle of Glenfiddich, poured a generous dram for each of the men, passed the glasses around.
“Dog Section!” he said raising his glass.
“Dog Section!” his men echoed.
“The best goddamn fighting unit in the Corps.”
“Fucking A.”
“Damn straight.”
The scotch was at once smooth and slightly spicy, with an underlying sweetness. Charlie let it linger on his tongue a moment before allowing it to trickle down his throat. Then he stood, glass in hand, studying the grey vinyl tile on the floor.
“Hey Loot,” Andy Siebert said, eventually breaking the silence. “Is it true that the real reason Harrow is out to get you is because you slipped Mrs. Harrow a quick one?”
A chuckle passed among the men. Charlie raised his glass and took another sip of whisky. “A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell,” he grinned.
“Anyone see any gentlemen here?” K-Mart said. “Cause I sure as hell don’t.”
ten
“John?”
Messenger snapped back into the moment. Verna was hovering over him, a pot and serving ladle in her hand. “I asked if you’d like some more stew? There’s plenty left.”
“No, er… no thank you,” Messenger said.
“Oh go on,” Verna insisted. “Just a little bit.”
“No, thank you ma’am. I’m fit to burst, truth be told. Ain’t et that well in months, years even. Guess my stomach’s shrunk with lack of food.”
“Must have been hard on the road,” Jerry said, then when Messenger didn’t reply, “John?”
Messenger reluctantly drew his attention away from the girl, who was now fitting the baby into a high chair.
“I said it must have been hard out there on the road,” Jerry repeated. “You must have seen some things.”
“Oh yeah,” Messenger said. “I seen some things alright.” Here it comes now, the questions. What’s happening in the rest of the country? Is there any form of government in place? Is the military doing anything about the situation? Any idea what these things are, where they came from? He’d heard them all a thousand times. Couldn’t people just accept that it was over? That the human race was run? That the weak weren’t inheriting the earth after all? That it was time to step aside and make room for a species even more vicious than our own?
He pushed his plate aside, patted down his shirt and removed a battered pack of Winstons, shook out a damp butt and placed it on the table in front of him.
“We don’t allow smoking in the house,” Verna said.
Messenger wasn’t sure that he liked her tone, but he decided to let it slide for now. He picked up the cigarette and ran it under his nose, enjoying the tangy stink of damp tobacco. “Yes sir, I seen just about everything there is to see and I gotta tell you, it ain’t pretty out there.”
“Anyone trying to get a handle on the situation?” Jerry wanted to know.
“Lots of folk,” Messenger said. “Carving up little chunks of territory for themselves. You got biker clans across the Midwest, paramilitary along the east coast, slavers working the Mississippi, eaters everywhere.”
“Eaters?” Jerry’s daughter asked. What was her name again? Skye? That was it, easy to remember on account of her blue eyes. Messenger turned in her direction. She was a pretty little thing, all strawberry blond hair and perky little tits, those three little beauty marks running across her cheek.
“Cannibals ma’am. Filthy scum who take decent folks, folks such as yourselves, for livestock.”
“Cannibals?” Skye said. Messenger enjoyed seeing her eyes widen, the color drain from her face. “Those stories are true?”
“Oh yeah,” he chuckled. “Seen it with my own baby blues. Many times over.”
The kitchen door opened again, this time admitting a tall, dark-haired man. Handsome, Messenger guess
ed you would call him.
“Rain’s letting up,” the man said, “but I’m going to have to get up on the roof in the morning and replace those shingles. Either that or we’re going to need a canoe.”
He stepped into the room and stamped his feet. It was then that he noticed Messenger and his entire demeanor changed. “Who’s this?” he said, speaking to Jerry.
“This here’s John Messenger. He was –”
“I’m less interested in his name than in what the hell he’s doing here?”
“Feller was walking along the road in the middle of this downpour, Brian,” Jerry said defensively. “I couldn’t rightly –”
“I thought we agreed.”
Jerry was quiet for a moment as though gathering his thoughts. Every eye in the kitchen was focused on him, so when Messenger edged his hand across the table and palmed the knife, nobody noticed.
“We agreed, yes,” Jerry said. “But my conscience –”
“Your conscience is going to get us all killed,” Brian cut in. He turned to Messenger. “I’m sorry but you can’t stay,” he said.
Messenger picked up his cigarette from the table, slotted it behind his ear and returned Brian’s glare. “Guess it’s Jerry’s call whether I stay or go,” he said.
Brian opened his mouth to protest, but Messenger cut him off. “But I wouldn’t want to cause any trouble between you good folks.” He levered himself out of his chair. “Jerry, Verna, I thank you both for your hospitality, Skye, a pleasure to meet you, you boys too.”
“John, you really don’t have…” Jerry turned desperately towards Brian. “You ain’t going to send him out into this storm are you?”
“No,” Messenger interjected. “Brian’s right. You ought to be more careful Jerry, who you take in off the streets. Not everyone is of my sweet disposition. There’s lots of people out there be more than willing to kill for the few luxuries you folks have managed to harvest for yourselves. Now if it’s all the same to you, I’ll go rustle up my things.”
He headed for the passage, taking the long way, around the table on a path that would take him past Brian, standing with his butt up against the kitchen counter and not much room to maneuver.
Messenger pushed past him, simultaneously allowing the knife that he’d palmed earlier to slide from his sleeve, until he could feel the sharp point against his index finger, the serrated edge against his palm.
“Thank you for understanding,” Brian said as he passed.
Messenger turned to face him, offered him an exaggerated grin. “Why, that’s my pleasure, Brian,” he said. “This too.”
He allowed the knife handle to drop into his palm, wrapped his fist around it and closed the distance to Brian in an instant. His left hand came up and fastened on the man’s throat, while his right sent the blade traveling on a deadly arc that penetrated Brian’s abdomen under the sternum and drove upward into his heart.
Messenger heard the sweet cacophony of screaming in his ears, withdrew the blade from Brian’s chest and allowed him to slump to the floor. “You folk provided the food and drink,” he said. “Seems only fair that I should supply the cabaret.”
eleven
Skye woke to a wall of pain. Everything about her ached. From the throbbing that seemed to be inflating and deflating her head like a balloon, to the swelling that she sensed in her lips, her cheekbones, the bridge of her nose, to the chaffing she felt from the ropes binding her wrists and ankles. Most of all she hurt…down there…hurt bad.
She angled her head, trying to get a look and realized that she was naked, bound hand and foot to the brass bed in her parents’ bedroom. How had she come to be here? She rifled her memory bank and returned only snatches of memory. She and Brian giggling as they rushed about distributing tins and buckets to catch the deluge that had suddenly sprung from their ceiling, her tip-toeing across the muddy yard in the rain, entering the kitchen and almost clattering into Danko. Her father had been sitting at the table, her mother standing poised with a pot and ladle. She’d settled Daniel into his high chair, then she’d…
Daniel! His name jangled suddenly in her brain like a fire alarm. Where was Daniel? Where was her son?
She tried calling his name, producing nothing but a dry squawk, tried calling for Brian with similar result. She thrashed at her bonds, succeeding only in chaffing more skin from her wrists. Eventually she gave up exhausted and surrendered to dry sobs.
She noticed now a thin haze of smoke, a smoky scent, and underpinning it, something else, something stronger and more sickly, the reek of seared flesh. A memory stirred, a freeze frame of her placing Daniel into his chair. That rewound mentally to the moment she’d entered the kitchen. She saw herself again dodging past Danko, her father seated at the table, her mother holding the pot… There, there it was, a man at the table. Skye couldn’t make out his features, but something about him brought to mind a certain insect-like quality. He was tall and lean with sun and wind blasted skin and a nest of unruly dark hair. He’d shaven recently, cutting himself in the process. A small square of tissue paper was glued to his chin by a tiny droplet of blood that for some reason seemed blue rather than red.
The stranger’s name stirred just below the surface of her memory. His name was…Mason…Messing…Messenger. His name was Messenger. She wasn’t sure why that was important but it seemed to be. It seemed to be because it…
Her memory did another of those dizzying swoops, casting her back to the moment she’d entered the room. There was her father seated at the table, her mother offering Messenger another helping of stew.
Now Brian entered. Her attention was drawn by the tone of his voice and she turned to see his face flushed with anger, his lips moving soundlessly, like in a silent movie.
“Brian,” Skye whispered. A tear spilled over and trickled down her cheek. Quite suddenly the jumbled web of memory unraveled itself in her mind. Messenger tangling with Brian, then stepping away with the bloody knife in his hand and a smile on his lips; Hudson darting for the rifle that he’d leaned in the corner; Messenger moving with the swiftness of a cat to beat him to it; The shattered porcelain sound as the rifle butt connected with her brother’s face; Messenger deftly reversing the weapon and simultaneously firing it; Danko’s head exploding beside her; another report that clattered her father into the wood burning stove with a rosette of crimson blossoming on his shirt; the stove door popping open and ejecting a cascade of coals that lit her father’s work shirt on fire; the sudden stench of burning flesh; her mother’s shrill screams and the clubbing sound that had cut them off.
Skye had stood in the midst of this carnage, barely able to comprehend what had happened. She’d turned to her son, lifted him screaming from his high chair and held him. The killer, the demon that her father’s kindness had unleashed upon them, stood at the other end of the kitchen, blood on his face and a predatory grin on his lips.
“If you want to live,” he said, “if you want your boy to live, don’t fight me.” He crossed the kitchen, skirting the carnage he’d wrought. Skye stood clutching Daniel to her breast with every bone in her body turned liquid.
“Don’t hurt my son,” she’d managed before Messenger reversed the rifle and jutted it into her face.
She heard footsteps now, approaching down the passage in slow, deliberate steps. Skye thrashed impotently at her bonds, tried to rise. It was no good. At the last moment, she turned her head away, closed her eyes, pretended to be asleep.
The footsteps stopped in the doorway. A soft, tuneful voice picked up a melody. “Hush little baby don’t you cry.”
Skye opened her eyes and turned towards the doorway. Messenger stood with Daniel cradled in his arms.
twelve
The sight of her son in the arms of the murderer, gave her voice. “Danny! Oh God, Danny!” she cried out, every syllable like a carpenter’s rasp applied to her delicate vocal cords. “Don’t you hurt him mister. Don’t you hurt him or by God I swear I’ll kill you.”
“R
elax princess,” Messenger said. “The last thing I want to do is hurt you or this little guy.” He stepped into the room and Skye could see why her memory of him had conjured the insect analogy. It was the eyes, slightly bulging, startlingly blue and constantly in motion. His skin too carried an odd pallor, sun and wind burned, but with a bluish tint, as though he were standing under a stage light.
“What have you done with my family?” Skye demanded. “What have you done to me? Did you rape me, you son of a bitch? Let me loose!” She thrashed at her bonds.
“That kind of behavior’s going to make me walk away and leave you tied to the bed with little Danny crawling around on the floor until he starves to death,” Messenger said. “You want that?”
Skye didn’t answer. A million desperate thoughts vied for attention in her head. She wanted to be loose and holding her son, she wanted to know that her family was okay, that everything she’d recalled about last night was just a bad dream. She wanted her hands on Messenger’s throat. She wanted to squeeze the life out of his bug-eyed face.
“I said… do you want that?” Messenger repeated, his finger trailing along Daniel’s nose, across his lips, his hand now covering the child’s mouth.
“No, no, I don’t want that.”
“Good. Then maybe we’ve got us a basis for negotiation.”
“Negotiation?”
“Yeah, you know, you give a bit, I give a bit, everyone goes home a winner.”
“Cut me loose first,” Skye demanded.
“Don’t work that way, princess. I’m the one setting the terms, you the one nodding your head and saying yes sir. Understand?”
What could she do? Skye nodded her head.
“I like this place,” Messenger said, glancing wistfully through the bedroom window. “I been too long on the road, too long without the comforts of home and the attention of a good woman.” He turned back towards her. “I think I’m going to stay a while.”