The Redeemers

by T. J. Martinell

  Carl remembered what Fred had taught him a long, long time ago.

  A loud bang stopped the boy in his tracks. He dropped the knife and clutched his abdomen as blood trickled through his fingers.

  With his revolver still smoking, Carl got up from the ground just as the boy collapsed and curled into a fetal pose. He died neither quickly nor easily, groaning in agony as his companions gathered and watched in disbelief. One of his friends went inside to find help, but the rest knew it was hopeless. The large pool of blood was sign of their friend’s impending fate.

  Holstering his gun, Carl knelt by the boy and inspected his right hand. The lack of a scar signified the absence of allegiance or loyalty to anyone or anything other than himself. Carl felt no remorse, for he had not killed one of his own.

  Tom was standing behind Carl, still in a state of shock. He probably expected swift punishment to come for killing a fellow stringer. If Carl was lucky, it meant exile and banishment. At worst, someone would take revenge.

  Carl almost welcomed the challenge, to prove he was still he they said he was.

  Within seconds the scene had transformed. Half of the library crowd seemed gathered on the sidewalk and the street staring at the corpse. No one spoke, because no explanation was needed for what had happened.

  Carl refused to hide his involvement, standing in front of the body like a hunter claiming his trophy, though in his heart he felt neither pride nor shame for what he had done. Like so many things he had carried out in life, it was necessary. Right or wrong wasn’t a part of the question, because violence was the only proper answer.

  Duong appeared at the front entrance, anxiously pushing men aside. He stormed over to the sidewalk and came upon the body lying deep in a pool of blood. He swallowed hard and looked up at Carl, hesitant to say anything. There was no accusation in his eyes, merely bewilderment. He preferred to handle it discreetly. However, the men around them made it impossible.

  “I’ll do it,” Carl said.

  Duong blinked. “What?”

  “I’ll take that job you offered, if you’re still offering it.”

  Everyone looked at Duong curiously. After short pause, he nodded with a carefully hidden grin. He had been given a way out.

  “You should go,” Duong said as he dispersed the crowd and ordered them either back inside the library or to go home. Tom followed alongside Carl as he walked away but gave him some space while he smoked a cigarette. Tom approached him once he was finished and flicked it aside.

  “Are you going to give me shit about it?” Carl asked. “I didn’t want to do it.”

  “I know. I don’t know what got into him.”

  “It’s not what was in him. It wasn’t what he didn’t have in him.”

  “I’ll tell the recruiters they need to vet these assholes better,” Tom stated. “We can’t have that kind of kid in our ranks. We weren’t like that.”

  “Because we weren’t angry with the world. The world was angry with us.”

  Tom smiled. “You always have a way of putting things.”

  Carl went for another cigarette but tossed it away with a snarl. “I hate it. I hate it all.”

  “Hate what?”

  Carl glanced at his hand. A bit of splattered blood was on it. He wiped the blood off on his trousers and sighed. “I hate how everything we love gets taken away from us. Or we hardly get to have it before it’s gone, just long enough for us to know what it’s like not to have it. I loved what we had here. It wasn’t perfect, but we didn’t want perfection. We didn’t want an easy life. We wanted something different than what was offered to us back home. And now it’s gone. We lost it even before Norton left us. It’s a doomed city, that’s what it is.”

  “You thinking of other stuff?”

  “Like?”

  Tom grimaced. “Like her?”

  He didn’t answer right away. “Yeah, sometimes.”

  They walked quietly as they reached the car. Mentioning her always had produced silence between them. In the years following her disappearance, they never discussed it or what Tom had done to stop him from going after her. Nothing Tom or Norton had told him had helped him put it all side the same way he had with Usher and others who had been captured or killed. Carl’s reminisces were a fiercely private affair.

  ***

  The next morning Carl began gathering his things. Duong had already contacted their man stationed in Bellevue. He’d have the safe house ready for him by around noon. A lot of things were wrong with the Cascadian, but they still ran a tight ship and things operated like clockwork.

  Tom stood in the doorframe to Carl’s room, a bottle of rye whiskey and two whiskey glasses in his hand. “You’ve had too much to drink this week, but might as well have one more before you go.”

  “I’m good. You can have one. I had enough from last night.”

  Tom put the bottle and glasses on the table and came back, leaning against the frame with one hand. “I just hope you’re going for the right reasons.”

  “What reason do you think I have for going that worries you?”

  “Is there nothing for you there?”

  Carl thought of his mother, and it failed to stir any emotions within him, no yearning to see her face or hear her voice. Both still haunted him. He refused to wonder if she ever came to regret what she had done.

  “Nothing except my job matters,” Carl declared as he stuffed clothes into a suitcase. “I don’t want to be in Seattle too much anymore. I don’t like the way it has changed.”

  “The other side of the lake won’t be much better.”

  “At least it will be different. At least it’s not supposed to be better. Who knows? Maybe I’ll come to appreciate this shithole better once I’ve been away for a while.”

  He snapped the suitcase shut and placed it on the floor. He was tossing belongings out of his desk and onto his bed when Tom came in the room and sat down in his chair, an unlit cigarette between his fingers. “I just hope you don’t think you’re going to find out where she is.”

  Carl frowned, but said nothing.

  “She’s gone,” Tom said. “And she ain’t coming back. Wherever they got her holed up, you ain’t gonna find it.”

  “I’m not arguing with you.”

  “Be honest: If Duong had made that offer before last night, would you have done it?”

  “Before Norton was gone? No. I’d have stayed.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Carl went to retrieve his books from the shelf next to his bed, but he decided to leave them there. He had read them too many times to count, memorized most of them.

  “You can have ‘em if you want,” he said to Tom.

  “Hell, I’ll never get around to that stuff.”

  “Then someone else might. Either way, don’t throw them away. I’ll probably come back for them at some point.”

  “If you ever come back.”

  Carl chuckled. “I’ll be back.”

  When Tom failed to laugh, he looked over and saw his friend rather grim. Tom rose from the chair and approached him slowly. “Take care of yourself, alright? Don’t do anything stupid. I mean it. We’re gonna need you back.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Tom’s face was unreadable. “I’m glad you convinced me to come here, you know that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.”

  “You know what?” Carl said.

  “What?”

  He clapped Tom on the shoulder. “I’m glad you convinced me to stay here.”

  He took his belongings out to the car and shoved them in the trunk. They both got inside, Tom taking over the driver’s seat. He would bring him as far as the old I-90 bridge, where one of their men would meet them in a nondescript modern car.

  “You’ll have to get used to all the changes,” Tom said. “I’m sure all the technology has improved.”

  “I’ll live.”

  “You couldn’t stand it before.”

  “I wasn’t working
as a stinger before. I don’t have to deal with the bullshit like I used to. And if I don’t like it, I can leave.”

  “But you won’t.”

  Carl paused. He knew Tom wasn’t going to let him leave without a fight.

  “I need to do this,” he insisted. “It won’t be long. Just enough for our paper to have something setup. When somebody else wants to do it, I’ll hand it over to them.”

  “That could be a while.”

  “Things are changing everywhere else. It can change there, too.”

  Their man was waiting just as expected in the center of the bridge, situated between two wrecks. He was standing outside his ajar door with his hands in his pockets, dressed in a weird getup, a tightly tailored suit, bright green waistcoats and bowtie. The coat jacket cuffs were rolled back. It had to be the latest fashion. Nobody in Seattle kept up with modern trends.

  Tom pulled off to the side and helped Carl load his things into the other car. They intentionally avoided looking at one another. When it was time to go, Tom waved and mumbled a goodbye.

  “Hey!” Carl called out.

  Tom turned. “Yeah.”

  A revolver fell into his open hands. He took a step back and gazed puzzlingly at Carl.

  “You keep it,” he said. “I won’t need it in Bellevue.”

  Tom cracked a weak smile. “I hope not.”

  “I’ll see ya around.”

  Carl hopped into the car and closed his eyes as they drove off. He couldn’t look back to see what Tom was doing. It would be the first time they’d be apart in years.

  Strangely, it was one of the reasons he needed to leave. He couldn’t live his life on Tom’s terms. He had to become his own man.

  He just hoped that path would bring him back to Seattle again sooner than later.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Kicking at the smashed car door, Carl crawled out onto the pavement inside the parking garage and heaved. The taste of smoke and dust was strong in his mouth.

  Groaning, he wiped his lips as he seized the briefcase in the front passenger seat. He could hardly walk. Making his way down into the underground garage, he had struck the side of the wall on his side, driving too fast to make the correction. His arm arched, but there was little he could do about it.

  Somehow, word had gotten out about his departure with a briefcase full of damning evidence that threatened to tarnish the city’s reputation. His source was a probable culprit, but it didn’t matter. His only concern at that point was staying alive and free.

  Everything had gone right up until that point. He had headed back to the safe house with the information in hand, ready to transmit it back to an earnest Duong at the Cascadian. After several months setting the small bureau up, he was pleased to see its first major story, only to find the whole ISA after him.

  Heading to the elevator hall, he stopped and looked for the surveillance cameras near the entrance. The stairway would suffice. He didn’t have the time to work his way around the cameras to use the elevator. The stairway had cameras, too, but they were the last ones the building security would check.

  Behind him anxious voices bellowed. Someone must have heard the crash. He glanced back at his car; it stood out like a lemon in a barrel of apples. They’d report it within a minute.

  Grappling the guardrail, he pulled himself up floor after floor until he made it to the surface. Finding a restroom, he hurried himself and changed into a spare outfit he had taken from his trunk. The clothes were all soiled, yet they looked nothing at all like the power suit he was wearing. More importantly, he knew they were clean of ISA tracking devices, something he couldn’t know for sure about his suit. How else had they managed to find him?

  He studied himself in the mirror for the briefest of moments.

  It would have to do.

  He had originally arrived at their bureau situated within an old brewery to find a horde of unmarked police vehicles and undercover ISA agents waiting for him. Their exaggerated mundanity had given them away. Any other man would have missed it, but while in Bellevue Carl had taken the time to carefully study their mannerisms to the point where he could instantly make them out in a crowd.

  Despite avoiding the obvious trap, Carl had barely escaped alive. The ISA had pursued him with three vehicles. The only thing that had saved him had been bad congestion along the road leading to the Interstate. Carl had faked heading onto the on-ramp before pulling away at the last second and then driving to side road leading to the parking garage. The ISA cars were stuck in traffic, their sirens unable to clear an open path for them.

  Taking the most obscure routes possible, using every side road, concealed sidewalk, and tree-covered trail, he made it out downtown Bellevue and reached a south neighborhood. The milieu around him was calm, serene, as though to mock him as he ran for his life. The seemingly peaceful scene offered nothing of the regional lockdown happening everywhere around him.

  He cursed under his breath as he ducked beneath a bush, wishing Tom was by his side. And why the hell hadn’t he kept his revolver?

  Of all the times to use it, he needed it now.

  Hiking up the hill, he glanced over his shoulder towards downtown. There, the ISA and local police were in mad pursuit of him, the cluster of drones swirling around the sky like a tornado of metal and steel.

  Gripping the briefcase with one hand, he trudged down the sidewalk, keeping his head down to avoid any security cameras attached to the street lights. No doubt they were skimming all surveillance footage in the city at that very moment. He had no idea if he was included in their facial recognition software database, but it was prudent to assume so, along with the rest of the safe house.

  There was no point calling them to check. Either it was under surveillance or the men inside were under duress to coax Carl into returning. He couldn’t bear to hear them talk like that.

  His only real choice was to find a way back to Seattle.

  Panting, Carl wiped his forehead and paused, assessing his situation. He couldn’t stay out in the open forever. Yet, he didn’t dare risk taking someone’s car. Too many people had theirs registered with the local law enforcement agencies with the option for their car to commandeered automatically by police the moment it was reported stolen, and Carl lacked the tech skills to circumvent or disable that feature.

  He set the briefcase down by a spruce tree and caught his breath. Fortunately, he was in excellent physical shape. He hardly exercised, but his daily regiment kept him on his toes enough that he didn’t need much exercise to remain healthy. He could travel a long distance, if need be. However, he was still confined to the general area.

  A quick analysis determined his options were limited. The longer he remained in the city, the more likely he’d get caught. Driving was out of the question, and posing as a homeless man carried its dangers, too. Vagrancy laws were strictly enforced, and getting arrested for that would make no difference. They’d figure out who he was one way or another.

  His gaze moved over to the old I-90 bridge. The thing looked as though it were ready to sink into the water; probably wasn’t far away from it. But it was still holding up and would if he could get down there.

  The idea didn’t sit well with him. It was a way to walk, and he was bound to encounter ISA agents before then. However, it was the most plausible strategy to get into Seattle. Heading south in the hopes of moving through West Seattle was futile.

  Carl picked up the pace but tried his best to appear late for a business appointment. His clothes were dirty, but their soiled appearance was only noticeable up close. A casual glance would see nothing.

  At first, he seemed in luck, encountering few people along the way. None of them looked at him or even noticed him. He had seen that the entire time he had come back. Working in his hometown had been a blessing and curse. He was cynically unsurprised to find the city and the people had hardly changed in all those years; like the rest of the world outside of Seattle, it was a regulated, circumscribed environment fu
ll of people who walked and talked like an ordinary person but lacked self-purpose.

  The sirens in downtown blared. All hell was breaking loose. They were truly terrified of what he might print. They were also unaccustomed to stringers in their town. They had to make a show of force to demonstrate who was in control.

  Carl would help them with that as best he could.

  Sticking to an old bike trail that hugged the side of Lake Washington, he moved from building to building in a precautious manner. The I-90 bridge kept getting closer and closer on the horizon until the small stairway leading up to the interstate walkway became visible on his left.

  As he walked toward it he suddenly ducked and clung to a tree to avoid a swath of drones hovering low in the sky above. They had no weapons, but once a face was recognized they would pursue like a pack of hunting dogs, their high-pitched alarms acting as barking sounds to call their ISA masters to where they had cornered their prey.

  The small cloud of metal and machine passed overhead. Carl peeked out from the tree, checked the sky for any remaining stragglers, a common tactic employed to catch wanted fugitives. A minute later, he grabbed the briefcase and continued to the bridge. A crack run down the center of the stairs, and he had to jump over gaps in the cement caused by the earthquake. It as a strange sight to see in a city where care was taken to clear up the smallest pothole or imperfection in the road.

  Climbing up the last remaining step where the guard railing had twisted and formed what resembled a gate, he leapt onto the bridge pathway and sighed. He had left his map inside his car containing every single backup rendezvous location in the city, none of which were anywhere near the bridge. He hoped it had thrown off the ISA and local police.

  Grinning from ear to ear, he took a cigarette from the pack in his back trouser pocket and lit it. Tossing the smothered match aside, he puffed slowly as he prepared for a long walk back home. His feet would need a long soak in the tub when he finally returned, and a good, stiff drink would help numb the pain.

  He didn’t have the time for it, but Carl couldn’t help looking back at the city, deciding he would never return. He had had his fill. It was time to go home.