Roadrunner

by Michael Lilly

  “How long have you been watching?”

  This entire conversation feels surreal, like those random tangents you have with a friend online at four in the morning, one about the nature of the universe and about which you feel supremely embarrassed when infused with the sobriety of tomorrow morning.

  “You? A year or so. Them, the better part of a decade.”

  “A year. Wow.” My chills intensify. My awareness of being monitored has risen and fallen at times, but never had I expected anything on this scale.

  “From afar. I never got close enough to fuck things up, obviously. You’re too observant—I didn’t dare get that close.”

  “Yet here we are.”

  “Here we are. The watched rogue murderer and his babysitter.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter,” I say. I hope it comes across over text less angsty than it sounds in my mind.

  “Babysitter. Friend. Ally. Whatever you want to call me. I’m just here to make sure things don’t get fucked up now.”

  “How do I know you’re any of those things?” I say.

  “I guess you don’t. But you’ll come to trust me, I’m sure.”

  “Let’s exercise that, then; how do I avoid these people? What kind of resources and access do they have?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. They’re kind of everywhere. You experienced a taste of that with Wometzia, didn’t you? You went through all the trouble of uprooting your life, not to mention Todd’s, in order to run off to a tiny town in New Mexico, just to find that they had already set up camp here. Your best bet was always somewhere crowded; Los Angeles was a good choice.”

  So they do know where I am. Incredible.

  “How did you get my number? How did you find me if they can’t?”

  “Ah, my boy, they have their resources and I have mine. I’m just better at using mine.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” I say.

  “And I don’t intend to.”

  “Why did you contact me, then?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “You can spoil the surprise. I don’t mind.”

  “I think you and I will be teaming up again soon, it seems.”

  Again? I’ve already ruled out Beth and Todd, my two primary ‘teammates’ over the past several years. I mentally flip through the detectives I’ve worked with on the odd domestic violence case or drug charge investigation, but none seems likely to be involved in anything as sinister as what’s happening now, nor would they have had the capacity to maintain this kind of cryptic banter.

  Rather than humor the mysterious texter, I put my phone on silent and go to take a shower.

  Showers have always been my vice. The hotter the water and the longer the duration the better. In my days of more paralytic OCD, showers were my one relief from my rituals—nothing to count, no asymmetry to obsess over, just me and my thoughts and water that turns my skin red.

  I haven’t yet shopped for the necessities with which I normally indulge during my shower time—candles and my favorite, cool-smelling body wash—but it nonetheless allows me the freedom of thought I always seek in my Me Time.

  I wonder whether Todd knows about my new supposed accomplice. Clearly, the guy knows about Todd. I initially worried about Todd’s safety, but if they were to harm him to get to me, they would have made demands, and conveyed some sort of ominous threat.

  So maybe the texter really is an ally. But then why all the secrecy? The scales feel uneven with their intimate knowledge of my life and my zero knowledge of their identity.

  My skin turns red and wrinkly over time, and before I know it, the window in my bathroom is ablaze with evening sunset.

  As I’m toweling off, there’s a knock at the door. I throw on some clothes and peer through the peep hole, expecting either a couple of armed hooligans or some missionaries.

  But alas, it’s the stereotypical teenage pizza delivery boy, which would be marvelous, except that I didn’t order a pizza.

  Before I open the door, I tuck my gun into my jeans at my lower back (with the safety on; I like my ass intact). I don’t undo the chain before opening the door.

  “I think you have the wrong place,” I say through the gap.

  “Are you not Mr. Odd Thomas?” the boy says. His voice is well beyond his skin complexion on the puberty timeline.

  “Oh, uh, yeah, that is me.” Odd Thomas is the main character in Dean Koontz’s arguably most prolific series of books, which is one of my favorite series of all time. This pie is indeed meant for me.

  I sign for the delivery and add quite a large tip, if only to spite the one responsible for the invasion of property.

  I place the box on the counter, suspicious like it might explode, but instead it just sits there, smelling delicious.

  It’s a chicken, bacon, and ranch pizza. My favorite. I go back to my bedroom to get my phone and see it light up with a notification when I enter the doorway. With my pizza now in hand, I lie down and unlock my phone to find that I received a text just now, from the same unknown number:

  “Not feeling talkative anymore? Do I need to buy you dinner first?”

  Jesus, this is getting creepy.

  “Jesus, this is getting creepy,” I type.

  “Just making sure my new friend is comfortable is all.”

  “I think we have vastly different perceptions of comfort.”

  “My boy, I think you’re right about that. But all things considered, I think you could be far less comfortable.”

  “I don’t know that I have the capacity to be less comfortable.”

  “Then Remy, my boy, I think we’re both in for quite a journey of self-discovery. The next few weeks will be rough.”

  “What’s your reasoning?”

  “Call it a hunch.”

  My elbows begin to fall asleep and I shift from my stomach to my side. Abruptly, I feel an acute awareness of the passage of time, as though my nerves have begun to register the movement of the earth through space, in addition to its rotation. I hear the squealing brakes of a car in the unmoving traffic in the street below. A car honks its horn. The silence in my room in contrast with the penetrating noise from the outside makes me feel as though I’m suspended, banished to a dimension adjacent to home but untouchable. But is that not the case? I think to myself grimly.

  Indeed, hundreds of miles separate me from anyone I care about, and now an emotional rift likely threatens to widen in an identical manner.

  The worst part, however, that which fills me with an intense, inward rage, is that, if you follow the chain of events all the way up, this was a mass reaction catalyzed by yours truly. I was wondering when the buses would load back up to continue the guilt trip, and now here we are.

  There are scores of other links in that chain, oh yes, but they would fall to obsolescence, philosophically, without the existence of the first link: my murder of my father.

  An argument could—and should, really—be made that my logic is sound only under the assumption that such event chains are so linear. Event A leads to event B, etc. In a two-dimensional world, this may be the case, but our universe caters happily to the third dimension and, as such, that manner of linear chain of events only occurs in the simplest of cases. And this particular set of circumstances is the farthest thing from simple.

  Perkins himself was a wild card, influencing (and being influenced by) many factors, even outside the traditionally tunnel-visioned scope of vengeance and retribution. Business, for one—if he stood above even Jeremy Keroth in the ranks of the pervert empire, he had to be raking in bills. But with that source of income gone, neutered by yours truly, surely he felt that he had to make an example out of the one responsible for it.

  It does strike me as odd, though—Keroth seemed to be far more competent than Perkins. Why wasn’t he running things? Maybe he didn’t fancy sticking his hand that far in, at least while trying to lead the double life of the dirty detective.

  Unless, of course, both o
f them had someone to answer to. But Perkins’ nature—his speech, his actions, his motives—they weren’t of a caliber, in themselves, to indicate a sinister mastermind. No, I think I’ve just severed the head of this giant beast and now, prudence warrants that I find a safe place to hide while the brain’s former subordinates flail and writhe through the remainder of their energy and money, and hope that a swinging limb doesn’t connect with me, either on purpose or by accident.

  “So you’re in contact with Todd?” I type. I have to blink away a film of tears in order to see the screen properly. My heart beats sixty-four times before the response comes.

  “Yes. I am.”

  “Tell him I love him.”

  This reply comes faster. “He knows, dear. He promises to see you soon. I’m briefing him on the situation.”

  “Will you brief me on the situation, too?”

  “In time. For now, you’re safest knowing as little as possible.”

  “I don’t trust that logic.”

  “Fuck logic. Trust me. Do you trust me?”

  “No.” While it’s both tempting and relieving to consider the idea of having gained an ally, neither sensation is powerful enough to hoist me over the wall of wariness erected in my mind. The unknown number sends a picture message. I almost cry again—there’s Todd, wearing his “It’s all that can be done” face and holding a sheet of paper with “Love ya, babe” written on it. He’s in the kitchen at the house in Wometzia. No code words or hidden messages, as far as I can discern, and the lettering is the smooth, deliberate script I’ve come to adore, though now it brings a relieved breath instead of the butterflies it brought me when it came in the form of letters and notes for me to find, as well as small everyday things—shopping lists, reminders, the likes.

  I’m reminded of all of these things, but the accompanying sentiment is one not of giddy and foolish love, but an ache of distance and hollowness and inaccessibility and regret.

  Now, I do cry, still lying on my side, hot tears running over the bridge of my nose and down my cheek, pooling where my upper cheekbone meets the carpet in a patch of damp anguish.

  The number sends another text: “Satisfied?”

  I wonder whether my answer will turn out to be more of a commitment than I now realize, but my utter powerlessness renders that worry all but irrelevant.

  “Yes,” I say. “Now what?”

  The anonymous texter doesn’t reply. For a moment, I’m overwhelmed with the temptation to call Todd, but a deeper, more stable part of me (rare though they may be these days) wins over, deciding that the safe plays are the only ones I can afford to make right now. Recklessness in any form is a detriment to the endeavor of self-preservation, naturally; even if the actions themselves yield no direct consequences, the accompanying mindset is one I don’t want to fuck with. No, I must focus my energy and concentration on moves that are safe, calculated.

  After several minutes, much of which I spend staring at the blank, white wall and projecting my thoughts onto it like a hormonal, moody group of teenagers having a movie marathon, my mystery contact texts me.

  “They found you. Run.”

  I yank my now charged phone off of its charger and shove it into my pocket, massage a kink out of my neck, swing my backpack up and onto my back, and bolt. I suppose that if there’s an advantage to being so far removed from the people I care about, it’s that I can up and leave without the time-consuming burden of skimming the mental checklist of people, pets, and valuable or sentimental items before evacuating in an emergency. I don’t know how close my pursuers are, but with as many people as they seem to have—that is to say, absolute fucking legions—it’s bound to be that some of them live in Los Angeles, and thus, the faster I can shove this apartment behind me and into the past, the better.

  I snatch a dark green windbreaker from the closet, lock the door behind me (not that it will make much difference, but if it slows them down, that will be advantageous) and run.

  The possibility that this is a trap hasn’t escaped my consideration. But even if it is, that their plan involves tricking me into moving my physical location means that they indeed know where I am, and I should be getting out anyway.

  The outdoor hallway outside my apartment features a stairwell on either end, and I start toward the southern one, but turn back when I hear and feel a pack of hungry footsteps pounding up the stairs.

  Jesus, I think, they’re more efficient than I thought. And that’s saying something. I double back toward the north staircase, and crouch down a couple of steps down, so as not to be spotted either by stragglers down below or the leaders of the pack, now coming up into view on the other side. For a second, I fear that they see me across the long hallway, but they focus instead on my apartment door with the concentrated intensity of a bloodhound in heat.

  I descend the steps enough to see the last pair of boots climbing up the stairs on the other end of the hallway, a unified force almost identical to the set from Albuquerque. As quickly as I can without hurling myself down the stairwell, I go down the stairs, paying little mind to the noise; those goons will be too preoccupied with trying to find me in my apartment to listen for me crashing down the stairs mere yards away.

  I hit the ground and take off to the north, on toward the edge of town. My path is mostly unimpeded, and the couple of obstacles that do appear do so with a visible (to my eyes, at least) route to pass through without problem. The city offers a variety of scents and colored neon lights, a spectacle, and certainly something Todd and I would stop to appreciate were we to walk these streets sans threat of impending death.

  However, now I’m forced to reduce that marvel to a blur of lights streaking through my vision. Just as I consider halting for a moment’s rest, I hear a shout behind me: “There he is!” I turn and see a group of men four strong, three of which look like their morning meals could rival me in size and in fight. Now, I am left with no option but to run.

  Each step puts pavement between the men and me, and I gain on them handily. After a block of stares and gawks, two of them have already fallen substantially behind. The two remaining are the smaller guy, around my size, and one of the giants. I blitz across the street, still heading north, and duck into an alley, hoping that it doesn’t trap me into a dead end.

  One advantage of my skillset is that dead ends are few and far between. But even so, they do exist. The alley is narrow and becoming darker as the sun descends into twilight. The way the brick walls twist and fold and surround me makes me feel like I’m in the middle of the urban version of a corn maze. The alleyway comes to a T at the end. I’m not far enough ahead of my pursuers, yet, to round the corner and leave them to guess which way I’m going.

  At the T, I break left, into a similarly dark alleyway that seems to be teeming with roaches and rats at first, but is in reality just rife with shadows swaying and breathing, cast by a line of drying clothes fluttering in the breeze.

  I cause a commotion when I accidentally kick over a bucket full of various metal tools and parts—screwdrivers and screws, a hammer (but no nails), some assorted fastening hooks—and send the whole of it flying, tinkling to the ground even as I run through.

  At the end of this alley segment, a gate closes off access to the next (that is, for most people). I vault onto a crate that sits atop a pallet and hurl myself toward the wall, where it meets the top of the gate. My feet go over first, and like an Olympic high jumper, my body follows without touching the bar. Unlike an Olympic high jumper, however, I am without the luxury of a squashy mat to land upon, and my ankles and knees take a hell of a blow when I land, stunning me for a moment.

  I’ve just straightened up when one of the men, the smaller of the two, comes flying over the gate in the same manner as I had. I see now that the normal tactics won’t work on this guy. The other man tries to smash his way through the gate, but the padlock holds strong.

  “Go get him!” he yells. I’m confident that the last of my predators doesn’t need it, either a
s a command or as encouragement.

  I take off, trying to strategize as I go, but it’s difficult; the sights, sounds, and smells of the city invade my senses even as I try to suppress them so as to reserve my cognitive power for the onslaught of incoming walls and fences and small, grounded obstacles.

  Both my pursuer and I are at the mutual disadvantage of being entirely unaware of each other’s abilities. That being the case, my most logically sound move would be to push it as far as I can—bigger gaps, faster sprints, trickier navigation of terrain.

  But what if he can keep up? Then I spend my energy and remaining stamina just to be cornered at the end of it all, likely to be shot, and certainly too exhausted to do anything about it.

  Knowing that, perhaps the correct course of action is to find the closest secluded, roomy alley I can find and confront him. After all, he’s far less scary alone than with the three Hulk aspirants.

  Or … I could just bring it into the eyes of the public. I don’t know what motive the opposition has to keep me under wraps, but in any case, that the police haven’t gotten involved (as far as I know, at least) indicates to me that my past is still quiet and private—just the way I like it. And in that case, they probably don’t want their boys racking up assault or murder charges.

  Before, I removed our path from the main road by two blocks so as to be seen as little as possible, but now, with the opposite goal in mind, I cut back east toward the mess of lights and sounds, his footsteps falling rhythmically after mine. He’s not gaining on me, but he’s not falling behind, either. It makes me wonder whether he could catch me in a dead sprint if he wanted to but is holding back for some reason.

  We zip by the two blocks separating us from the crowded streets. As I turn the corner, I immediately slow to a walk as nonchalant as Casual Friday at a strip club. As planned, the man on my trail barrels around the same corner and collides into my back and I make a show of falling to the ground. I turn and look up to find that my pursuer is as winded as I am. Maybe more so. For a moment, despite the flood of running engines, chatter from newly fed, satisfied passersby, and some asshole playing his awful attempt at metal on max volume with his windows rolled down, the only sound to me is my panting.