The Trashman

by William Alan Webb

  If seeing humans in the back of one of their APCs alarmed the frogs, they didn’t show it. None of them gave us a second glance. More than likely, they were undergoing the soldier’s universal pre-battle prayer session with their gods, promising to eat fewer flies, or sacrifice more flies, or whatever frog-gods wanted to hear. Speeding down the road, with the olive trees planted at regular intervals, I aimed the rifle at Dona S. and acquired her in the scope. There was a rhythm to the trees blocking my aim, with about two seconds to shoot between them. This time I felt fully in sync with my target, the sign that I once again had kaval to use. I fired three shots, knowing they would all hit their mark.

  They did. Unlike with Blong Cha I caught her off guard. Little flashes marked impacts on her torso. Dona Salvatorelli sensed me instantly after I squeezed off the first round and reacted as the slugs struck, and through the scope I saw her stagger. But she didn’t fall. In the glimpses I got between passing the trees, I saw her waving at her bodyguards. Why she didn’t die was a mystery, as were the flashes. Maybe bullets couldn’t penetrate whatever magical shield she could project? Did it vaporize the bullets? Or maybe she had healing powers like Venus, only faster. Regardless of why, all I managed to do was alert her to our presence.

  Shooting erupted along the shaded road, spawning chaos. The frogs fired automatic weapons in every direction, and we joined in. APCs braked and got rear-ended by ones behind them or sped up and rammed the APC ahead. One of them exploded.

  “Get us up on that hill,” I said into the intercom. They worked again, further evidence we were back in the real world—or a real world.

  Ribaldo sped toward an intersecting road that led up the hill to where Dona S. and Dawn stood. Jürgen and my father gunned down frogs passing no more than three feet on our other side, while Venus clenched her fists in concentration to heal her stomach wound. Cynthia stayed low, although she held a pistol and I wondered not only where she got it, but if she knew how to use it. I huffed a laugh. I found it hilariously ironic that despite being a high officer for a corporation named LifeEnders, Cynthia hated guns. I pointed at the weapon.

  “Try not to shoot one of us.”

  “They’re safe,” she said, waving at the others. “I can’t say the same for you.”

  It took every bit of skill, concentration, and kaval manipulation to hit my targets. Potholes in the old road bottomed out the now-damaged APC more than once. Bullets whizzed and ricocheted around us, and Ribaldo swerved to avoid cannon fire from turreted enemy vehicles. Back in the sandbox we’d spent downtime playing a video game like that. I picked off as many black suits as I could and littered the hillside with their bodies.

  We took the turn at a high enough speed to lift the APC’s right wheels off the road, nearly throwing all of us out. Once the heavily abused shocks steadied it again, the road ran straight up the slope for three hundred yards, a hell ride into a fusillade of MP7 fire. Most of the rounds bounced off the armor with a metallic thunk, but enough hit the windshield and engine for the dented and smoking APC to lose momentum.

  I handed Dad my standard issue P320 and reloaded the M4, but without EXACTO rounds even I had to see a target to hit it, and the steady storm of MP7 fire kept us all pinned down. We’d gotten within 30 yards of the crest when the APC coasted to a stop. Twice I rose and snapped off blind shots, and twice bullets tore at my clothing the instant I showed myself. I was damned lucky not to be dead.

  “I can’t get off a clean shot,” I said. “I need a distraction.”

  “That is me,” Venus said. I didn’t know how her healing or regeneration powers worked, but blood soaked her shirt and the waistband of her pants. She’d been at death’s door, and unless she could heal in the two minutes we’d been out of the Continuum, the door hadn’t closed yet. Without hesitation, though, she rolled over the side and ran for a ditch beside the road, squeezing off shots from her own P320 as she ran. The black suits instinctively tracked her, giving me a chance to stand, aim, and put five down before Dad, Jürgen, Ribaldo, and Cynthia joined in.

  Dona Salvatorelli climbed into the back seat of a black Mercedes and vanished over the hill. I didn’t bother shooting; how many Mafia leaders didn’t use cars reinforced with plate steel and bulletproof tires and glass? Tracking for a new target, the magnified image of Dawn Delvin being dragged toward a second Mercedes froze me for half a second. Tears streaked her face as she struggled to break free of their grip, but they tossed her into the backseat. I dropped two out of seven, and they were gone, too.

  “Why didn’t you save me, Steed?”

  The voice rang in my brain…Dawn’s voice.

  “I love you, and I thought you loved me, too. How could you abandon me?”

  The first time, back in Guatemala, I hadn’t heard the voice, I’d only felt the emotions. Now I heard it clearly, and it rekindled the longing for Dawn Delvin that had faded in the past few months…to a point. I wanted to hold her tight body close to mine, to kiss every inch of her body, stroke her hair and profess my eternal love and protection. Yet I also knew that what I felt was Dawn manipulating me. I had strong feelings for her, yes, but as strong as they felt now? I didn’t know. It was like being hypnotized while being conscious of your own hypnotic state.

  The remaining black suits retreated to the reverse slope, giving us a chance to bail out of the APC. On the road behind us, the convoy of frogs had stopped. Several fires marked destroyed vehicles, and a full-scale battle was in progress. Dismounted frogs mowed each other down.

  Cynthia ran to where Venus lay after taking multiple hits, carrying the medical bag. The rest of us paused long enough to evaluate our status.

  “Why are they fighting each other?” Dad said.

  “I saw it in the sandbox,” I said. “It’s tribal. Dona S. probably held them together. Once the mission was blown they went back to killing each other. Word has probably gotten to the others back at the airfield, too.” I glanced up the road. “I’m going after Dawn.”

  “I’ll go, too,” Dad said.

  “No, stay here and keep those frogs off my ass.” I swapped him the M4 for the P320.

  “Hey, Steed,” Cynthia called from her knees next to Venus. “Save her if you can, but if you can’t, execute her contract. It’s back in force.”

  I nodded, doubting that I could actually kill Dawn Delvin, and hoping I didn’t have to try.

  The panorama after I crested the hill would have made a great postcard. The ruins of a stone cottage stood near the road. Suspiciously, six saddled horses stamped and pulled against leather reins tethered to a lemon tree whose branches hung heavy with bluish-yellow fruit. A dust cloud followed four cars toward a coastline perhaps a mile distant, beyond which I could only see blue-water ocean. I couldn’t say how the frogs got there, or how we did for that matter, but we couldn’t be anywhere except a close variation on Sicily. And now I understood: Dona Salvatorelli had detoured her army through the Space-Time Continuum for an invasion of Louisiana, which sounded crazy but actually made sense. No transports or ships needed, just a road laid down through the fabric of Time, easy peasy. That I could even imagine such things showed how much my mind had been transformed.

  I didn’t ignore the obvious conclusion that six horses left behind for six Trashmen was an invitation to a trap; I just didn’t care anymore. The road led to a causeway over a narrow inlet that connected a rocky island to the mainland. Some small boats tied to a pier lay near the gates to a medieval style castle, complete with portcullis, which occupied most of the island. Mounting a fine chestnut, I rode down to what I expected would be my death.

  One thing I didn’t need kaval to do was ride a horse. In the harsh and primitive terrain of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Northern Iran, I had spent years hunting al Qaeda from horseback. Having stirrups and a saddle felt like cheating.

  Another road paralleled the coastline in both directions. To the south was a half-dispersed cloud of dust, which I assumed marked Dona Salvatorelli’s getaway. We’d screwed up h
er plans to the point where she must have given up to live and fight another day.

  I’d watched Dawn’s car cross the causeway and disappear inside the castle. I couldn’t pursue them both, and on horseback I had no chance of catching Dona S. anyway, so I filled my free hand my with Sig, dug my knees into the horse’s flanks, and galloped over the bridge.

  Black suits rose on the battlements, and I dropped them as fast as they popped up. I’d never felt such a surge of kaval in combat before. I became one with the collective consciousness of my enemies, fired by instinct, and willed the bullet trajectories so they hit my targets. Black suits toppled over the sides, bounced off the rocks, and slid into the surf. Halfway across I ran dry, dropped the magazine, and, once past the gate, reloaded in the darkness beyond the second portcullis near the courtyard. Danger flared behind me, and I rolled out of the saddle as a stream of bullets came through an arrow slit to the side. I returned fire without a clear target, trying to deflect my shots off the wall to hit the gunman. I must have wounded him because he quit shooting. I let the horse go and it ran back down the causeway.

  “Steed, save me!”

  The voice wasn’t in my head this time. It echoed off the stone walls of the courtyard, where two black suits held Dawn with guns to her head. Another eight surrounded me, four on each side, moving in with guns drawn. If there had been time I would have laughed at the obviousness of the setup; nobody was going to shoot Dawn unless it was me. But I had to cut down the odds if I wanted to keep breathing. That’s when the outer portcullis slammed shut with a clang so loud that everybody jumped. It was the distraction I needed.

  I fired twice, hitting the men who held Dawn in their foreheads, and I dropped to the ground. Black suits shot where I’d been, missing me but hitting each other. I rolled onto my back to gun down some more of them…and the ground heaved from a deep and heavy underground explosion, flinging me two feet in the air. I landed flat on my back and dropped the pistol.

  A second blast shook the walls and cobblestones, sending bits of dust and dirt billowing upward. Bits of stone broke off and fell into the courtyard. More rumbles rattled the island and, after getting to my feet, threw me down again. My backup guns loosened from their ankle straps and skittered away.

  “Steed, for God’s sake stop fighting. They won’t hurt me if you stop fighting!”

  Dawn’s voice held fear. The castle’s self-destruction took her by surprise, but not me. I doubted there was anybody Dona S. wouldn’t sacrifice to achieve her goals, and clearly her goal now was destroying SAD, one Trashman at a time if that’s what it took. At that moment it was my turn.

  The black suits took advantage of the vibrating ground to attack me with fists and gun butts. I left two spring-loaded tactical knives in the neck of the first man to grab me, losing my grip when somebody clubbed me on the back of the head. I pulled out one of my two Ka-Bars. My mind whirled as reflexes took over and reacted to warnings, even as my heart longed for Dawn, and I heard her begging to stop resisting. Punches and cuts sapped my strength. Blood made the footing worse as the castle fell apart around us. A scream was cut off after a square-cut boulder dislodged from the battlement and crushed a man as I kicked him in the side.

  Bodies lay scattered around me, and then the fight paused. Breathing heavily, I ignored the pain wracking my body and rose to my feet amid the rubble of the courtyard about 30 feet from Dawn. Five Red Nail soldiers stood at her sides, MP7s trained on me. Their barrels shook from the now-constant tremors. This time, when I met Dawn’s gaze, I saw genuine terror on her face. She’d finally figured out that if Dona S. had to sacrifice her to kill me, that was a price worth paying. Dawn had trusted the most ruthless woman in the world to keep her word.

  “Save me Steed! Please save me, I love you so much!”

  Only now did I turn my own kaval to work on the young girl that I thought I loved. Until then, I don’t think I wanted to know the truth. She pulsed brighter red now than she ever had. That sealed it. However strong her powers might be and however much I wanted to believe that adorable teenager with the naïve eyes and lust-worthy body loved me as much as I loved her, I saw that it was now, and always had been, a lie.

  I still held the Ka-Bar, and while it wasn’t a perfect throwing knife, it’s what I had. I shifted my grip in case I got the opening I hoped for. Maybe this was the moment of my death, but I wouldn’t die alone.

  “You are the most stubborn man I’ve ever met,” Dawn said, apparently trying to re-establish her position of authority with the black suit. She was too unpolished to understand what was truly going on around her. “Why couldn’t you love me enough to shove all of your square-jawed bullshit up your own ass and join Dona Salvatorelli? We could have lived forever.”

  There, at the last, I finally knew the difference between my feelings for Dawn and my feelings for Cynthia. Hatred for Cynthia went every bit as deep as my love did. It was a complex, living thing that twisted my guts in the same way as when I first saw her in a coffee shop at eighteen. Back then the hate hadn’t yet developed, it was only love, and it happened at first sight. Except with Cynthia I never had to wonder if my feelings were the result of some power I didn’t understand.

  “If you love me, Steed, you will harm yourself so you cannot harm me. Use your knife to open your neck…it will be peaceful, and over quickly.”

  The compulsion to obey was still strong. Of its volition my arm lifted and touched the point of the blade against my carotid artery. A one-inch plunge and it would be over. All of my life’s pain, all of the torment, it would all go away, and Dawn would be safe from my savage impulses. How could I think about ending the life of such a perfect flower?

  She didn’t love me, and I knew it, but it didn’t matter. Standing there, dripping blood from half a dozen wounds, everything felt the way it did in Guatemala, back when everything started, Only now my brain had changed. I shoved all of those emotions into a dark compartment and locked it. I didn’t hate her, not even now after she lured me to my death, because the depth of my feelings was shallow compared to how I felt about Cynthia. Cynthia abandoned me without warning and for no reason, and I could never forgive her for that. Dawn was just a spoiled teenager who cared about nobody else.

  “I guess I’m pickier than you are about who and what I give my allegiance,” I said, “and malignant gnomes aren’t on the list.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. She started to yell, and I threw the knife, allowing the momentum of shifting my right shoulder to throw me to the bricks, where I rolled behind a low stone wall. Bullets sparked behind me and chewed at the bricks atop the wall, filling the air with rock splinters. Then the shooting stopped as the most violent tremors yet rocked the island. Swaying walls shed blocks of stone.

  I gave it five seconds and glanced over the top. There was no sign of the Red Nail soldiers. Dawn stood alone, swaying, my knife buried in her left eye socket up to the hilt. Her remaining eye followed me as I approached, its shade of blue already pale as life fled her body. I couldn’t imagine how she was still alive.

  I withdrew the knife and cleaned it on her blouse. Her legs buckled, and she dropped to her knees. Still not dead, I credited kaval with keeping her going long after others would have died. When her right eye began wandering, I crouched so she could see me and lifted her chin until our gazes met.

  “Contract fulfilled,” I said.

  She sniffled once and fell over. I bent to her cheek and gave her our first and last kiss.

  Deep underground, yet another detonation brought down a tower on the far side of the island. More blasts followed, and the earthquakes intensified. Great stones rolled down the castle walls and crashed all around me, cracking open the floor. Not even the island itself would survive the constant demolitions.

  I ran to the main gate and found the portcullis dislodged and hanging askew. The causeway had fallen into the water, which churned from falling masonry. I was cut off.

  Then I saw the pier, where a line of tethered boats bobbed
in the suddenly turbulent waters. Half running, half limping, I climbed into the closest one and cast off, using a paddle to get away from shore after reckoning it would take too long to raise the sail. It was a close thing.

  Cut blocks ten feet long smashed into the water mere feet behind the boat, where instead of crushing it to splinters, the waves they created hastened my getaway. The castle finally collapsed, and the island sank, chopped apart like a block of ice, taking with it the young woman I both loved and had killed. Once I was safely away, I deployed the sail, stood, and watched as water bubbled to mark Dawn’s grave.

  A banshee wind propelled me toward a distant storm.

  “Orange Rhinos in the Sky”

  (To the tune of “Ghostriders in the Sky” by The Outlaws)

  Duncan Steed went drivin’ out one hot and sunny day,

  In a cool backseat he rested as he went along his way,

  When all at once a mighty herd of vicious beasts, he saw,

  Ploughed out the ragged skies, and through a jagged flaw.

  Their eyes were tiny blazing coals, their hooves were made of steel,

  Their horns were sharp and shiny and their hot breath you could feel,

  A bolt of fear went through him as they thundered through the sky,

  For he saw the rhinos coming hard, and he heard their hungry cry.

  Yippee-ki-yay, yippee-ki-yo, orange rhinos in the sky.

  Their pointed teeth filled their mouth, their bodies soaked in sweat,