by Mike McCrary
“Kate,” he calls out.
Murphy feels the familiar sensation of peeling away from the world.
A slide away from the here and now.
Lady Brubaker’s gaze is like a funeral.
The plane begins its descent.
“See you later, guys,” she says, touching his face.
Chapter 30
There are shapes.
Amazing colors melt into fields of light.
Pulsing emotions fill his thoughts. Wonderful feelings that words don’t do justice. He’s a witness to something unbelievable. Something he’s never seen or felt before, yet void of the anxiety that walks hand in hand with the unknown.
He can see sounds.
He can see love embodied in color and light.
An amazing sensation of calm blankets him. One delivered from the idea that everything is okay and nothing has been or ever will be wrong again.
He feels loved.
Understood. Cared for. Then…
Boom.
The ocean breeze blows.
Feels nice, but different from where he was seconds ago.
He’s always liked the taste of salt in the air. Likes sun even more as it warms his skin.
Murphy slides a black ski mask over his face. It’s scratchy. Stinks of peanuts and bourbon, but it somewhat matches his black suit and electric blue tie. He loves the feel of a good suit.
Checks the load. His Glock is ready.
Green light means go.
Mother called him about a job about a week ago.
A job they could go away on, she said.
Sort of gig that sits your ass on an island drinking the good shit for the duration, she said.
A gig she needed to get her shit right.
That Mother, she’s all right.
Always with the sugar mouth. Always the dreamer.
Murphy can’t believe he used to think this way. Noah is taken back by Murphy’s feelings for his mother. This wasn’t present before.
But they both know it is real.
Murphy watches what he did that day. Sees himself move with purpose working his way toward a house near the beach. Hours ago, he killed three men in San Diego.
They were assholes. Such assholes.
He took one of those assholes’ car, then drove up the PCH to this sleepy little beach town. After parking the stolen car behind a dumpster, he administered his crude but ultimately extremely effective device.
A little something he learned from a domestic terrorist a few years ago.
A terrorist who didn’t realize Murphy was someone he couldn’t trust.
Still, Murphy never missed an opportunity to learn, even from bad guys. And on that day, he learned how to make a crude device that will turn the car he stole from the assholes in San Diego into a fireball that will go off about five minutes from now.
He didn’t know if he needed the diversion or not, but he knew he needed the car to go away. God knows what story that car could tell those who wanted to hear the latest tales about Markus Murphy. What paths it would lead cops and feds to.
It’s a shame.
It was a nice ride.
A vintage candy apple red Porsche 911. There are maybe less than a dozen left on the planet. A gas-fueled monster designed and crafted during a time when human drivers and power were valued. Before the driverless, limp electric computers on wheels took over.
Don’t get Murphy started.
In addition to helping himself to the candy apple red Porsche, Murphy also helped himself to the drugs the assholes in San Diego had available.
Just shy of all of the drugs, if the truth is going to be told.
Reds and blues.
Yellows and polka-dotted whatever.
Snort, smoke or shoot—let the fans decide. Murphy has been dabbling in the art of self-medication for the last few years. Fancied going pro at some point. Maybe if he lives through this.
Now, Noah takes it all in.
Noah sees the memories of Murphy.
Noah is now seeing the beginning of the beach house scenes he’s seen played before.
Like someone else’s story is being downloaded into his thoughts. Trying Murphy’s tale on for size. Feeling it. Getting used to the texture, working over the rough spots. He’s soaking up Murphy’s life as Murphy is soaking up his. The worst moments of both of their stories laid out for their viewing pleasure. To be seen and accepted for what they are.
Unvarnished truths.
Zero apologies requested or given.
The last person—last San Diego asshole—told Murphy he could find his mother at the beach house. That was before Murphy put two in his chest and slit his throat for good measure. Murphy had been looking for a while. Looking for Mother. He’s left a trail of dead assholes from sea to shining sea searching for his dear, sweet mother.
Mother needed this job, this gig, and deeply needed the money from it.
Endless male errors. Financial disasters. Failed jobs. Her life was a series of tragedies and mistakes. Although she’d never call them that.
Excuses and reflection are for pussies, she said.
But her life could be accurately described as a tragic mistake, if you were so bold to tell her. Murphy knew it.
Yes, Mother needed this gig to turn her past into a real-life Etch A Sketch. Shake it hard and start clean. She used to keep the ancient toy on her nightstand. She played with it—sorry, worked with it—all the time. Kept it next to her Bible. Next to her medicines. Next to her gun.
If he was being honest, he needed the gig too.
Needed some going away money. Wanted out of his own tragic mistakes. His thinking was getting cloudy. Thinking and feeling much more than a professional murder and mayhem machine ever should. He still enjoyed the work. The simplicity of the result. Dead or alive. Red light, green light. Still, he could use a clean life-shake as much as she could.
He knocks on the door of the beach house.
Glock held down by his side. His finger resting to the side of the trigger. Ka-Bar knife tucked behind his back. He positions himself out of the sight line of the small window by the door. He presses his thumb over the peephole, knowing there’s more than likely some form of camera on him right now. Only upside to this search and rescue op is that escape from the house is limited. There’s an open beach and endless water behind the house and a long run uphill to the main road. Not great escape options for the poor bastards in this house. Murphy is also meaner and stronger than anything inside there—except Mother, of course.
Murphy doesn’t enjoy going in like this.
The Wild West style bullshit.
Not preferred.
With his day job—killing for the government nine to five—there was a plan. Always a plan. Layouts of rooms. Satellite images. Drone footage. Intelligence, with gigs of data on the people inside. Escape routes along with traffic camera video feeds establishing the pattern of things. All things were known, evaluated, and plans made beforehand. Any unknowns were unwelcome.
Sure, things went sideways.
Variables that can’t be foreseen can and will pop up. An unhappy accident here and a blown operation there. AI and the biggest of data can help but the unpredictable happens when bullets fly and bodies drop. The massive universe of what, how and when is hard to predict with complete accuracy. But, to be clear, things always started with a drop of intel and then a dab of a plan.
The only plan here is to kill everyone except for Mother.
Perhaps that was Murphy’s plan his entire life.
“What the fuck?” asks a gruff voice behind the beach house door.
“Like a word,” Murphy chirps.
Spike of silence.
A fireball erupts. Murphy almost forgot about the sweet red Porsche parked up the hill. Smoke plumes mushroom-like up into the clear blue. Murphy removes his thumb from the peephole. A shadow shifts behind the curtain. Murphy blasts double rounds into the door. The shots boom, echo, then trail off into the oc
ean air. Not much to contain the rip of violence along the beach.
It’s okay.
Murphy wants it loud.
Doesn’t know why, perhaps the self-medication has finally dulled the edges of his usual careful killing. Regardless, he wants it loud as hell.
Murphy kicks in what’s left of the door.
A body lies in a bloody mess a foot from where he stands. He hears his mother’s scream. More like a battle cry. She’s in the corner but there’s not time to check her for wounds. He feels the tingle of death that’s about to begin.
This is Murphy’s time.
Murphy’s gift.
It’s as if he can see the future of his violence. He can always alter and adapt, but he knows where he’s going before the kill clock starts.
Three men in the living room. Maybe more in the back.
The first one grabs a shotgun from under the couch. Murphy puts two in the sternum, then one in the face. The man’s wide body crashes into the glass table behind him. Shards dance and bounce off the white tile floor. Blood seeps between the grout.
Another man grabs his phone, hauling ass toward the back of the house.
Murphy stops him.
Two in the back.
The last one in the room pulls his weapon, racing toward Mother. Murphy puts a bullet in his temple before that man can get within three feet of his mother. In the blur, between the dusty blood cloud, Murphy sees a bottle of whiskey on the floor by the couch.
She’s still yelling.
Can’t make out the words.
He hopes they are a call of appreciation. Of praise, perhaps.
Good job, son.
Murphy knows better.
A baseball bat cracks his shoulder. Murphy’s teeth grind. He spins around, firing a single shot between the man’s eyes at the closest of range. The man’s body wilts, slipping, sliding onto the bloody tile below him. Murphy watches it flow. All the red. His mother barks in the background.
The ocean breeze blows through an open window.
Murphy picks up the whiskey bottle, takes a long pull.
“That’s some rude shit,” Mother says.
His collective mind stops.
A moment of frozen thought between Noah and Murphy.
Did we hear that right?
The bar with Kate.
Murphy sees the scene now though Noah’s eyes. He is standing at the bar. Two glasses of whiskey. “That’s some rude shit,” Kate says with searing confidence. Her eyes. The bite of her lip.
Noah’s favorite memory.
The strangeness of the memory slides away for Murphy. A connective moment between them. A fusion of thought.
Did Mother say that?
Did Kate?
A voice roars inside his head. Screaming inside his hurricane of confusion, fighting to be heard in the chaos. The throat tears, ripping off the force of the scream. He wants to wake from this. Shake free from whatever chemical cocktail Brubaker gave him.
Is this what she wanted?
Is this what was going to ‘fucking hurt?’
He knows he’s still on the plane.
Hopes he’s still on the plane.
Murphy’s thoughts slam into one another. Unable to parse them out.
Memories collide.
His eyes crack open.
He’s in a dimly lit room.
A single light bulb sways, hanging down by a thick red cord. Attached to some unknown place above him as if dropped down from a pitch-black abyss that goes on forever. It’s cold. Air feels electric and tight. His breath balls into clouds in front of him as he breathes in and out.
He’s strapped to a steel chair dressed in a gray pinstriped suit with a pink tie.
The suit he wore in Baghdad.
Unable to speak. His mouth doesn’t respond to his mind’s requests. As if his lips have been stitched together with thick, hairy twine.
His mother and Brubaker are there.
Their lips do not move but he can somehow hear them.
More like murmurs. Jumbled but emotional.
They move slow, circling Murphy like sharks. Murphy fights the straps of the chair. Brubaker and his mother continue to speak to him without speaking. Their thoughts audible. Their voices are clear now.
You will be monitored constantly. You know that, right? From here on out, Brubaker says.
Your emotional state. Your mental state. We, they will be watching, Mother says.
Their tone is friendly but stern.
Cautionary yet kind. Someone who cares but isn’t playing games.
Did the big bad world break you? Mother asks. Or were you always broken?
Most of us spend our lives in hiding. From others, Brubaker says. From our thoughts. Hiding from everything. You? You’ve been hiding from yourself.
A new sound breaks through the words of Brubaker and Mother.
A giggle.
Tiny footsteps.
Children are playing in the distance. The soft sounds of two girls laughing. His body trembles. He knows those laughs. He knows those footsteps.
His favorite sounds on the planet.
Sounds he couldn’t remember. Ones he never thought he’d hear again.
Mother and Brubaker continue. Their conversation speeds up. Hard to tell who’s saying what. Murphy can only do his best to listen as they continue to move round him. Talking as if he’s not there.
Can Noah handle the anger?
He’s seen rage before.
Seen it in his dad.
And his mother.
When his dad came home blind-drunk…
Yes?
His dad used to hurt him.
Oh yes, he knows this rage all too well.
And now he's stuck in one brain side by side with that same rage.
The car skids along the grass on its roof, cutting up the ground before slowing to a stop.
Tires spin wildly then slow into a loose wobble. Fluids pour from the hood forming puddles on the ground. Steam plumes. Stink of burnt rubber and gas. A violent silence now fills the cool night air.
Kate’s body lies broken and still in the wet grass.
Noah fights to breathe as his blood spills.
He knows he’s still on the plane.
He hopes he’s still on the plane.
Looking down, he sees a severed scrap of steel jammed into his stomach. A level of searing pain he didn’t know was possible. His thoughts fight the fog. Thoughts that are stronger than pain.
His thoughts are of the girls.
Their twin girls. The day they were born. Playing on the living room floor. How sweet they smelled fresh from their bath. How he read to them each night. How soft they were as he kissed them goodbye before leaving to go to work. Fragments of memories scream through his dying mind. Halting on a single memory of Kate. A replay of their last drink together.
Noah is present.
Murphy is there as well.
No longer a spectator.
Trapped, pinned, bleeding out in the twisted wreckage of their car. The car they hated. He hated. He wanted a better, more reliable car for his family. Right now, this is a car he’d love to have back. Murphy can feel Noah. A billion neurons firing off like a crashing meteor shower.
There’s deep pain. Longing. He misses them. It’s unbearable to accept. Murphy takes it all in. All the good times he spent with her, with Kate, all of it rips through his mind at blinding speed. So many great memories to absorb. So many gone by too fast.
He remembers.
Their first date, much like the one Brubaker recreated on the plane.
School together. Studying together. Helping each other with tests, papers, and presentations. Kate was so good in school. Dedicated. A work ethic Noah could only admire from afar.
Flirting at work.
Keeping it quiet because they didn’t know how management would handle it.
The first time they slept together. Everything about it. Her face. Her eyes. The sounds. The taste of her. He
put on some cheesy diva love songs because he thought she’d like it. The way they laughed after, relieved the first time was out of the way. A solid foundation to work from, but they knew their best was in front of them. Frustrated their bodies would force them wait, at least a few minutes. They shared without holding back. Without apologies or strategy. Honest emotions void of an agenda. Unfiltered affection.
He remembers.
The day he found out Kate was pregnant.
The excitement.
He remembers.
The fear. Fear that he wasn’t ready. Fear that he wouldn’t be enough.
On the day they were born, in the delivery room, Noah cried as they cried. Cried through the smiles. Tears fell as he held Kate’s face in his hands. He did not understand life was capable of being like this. His heart was so full.
He remembers.
Emotions roll in waves and he lets them.
No jokes to be made.
No looking away.
The girls were the answer to the question. One he didn’t know how to ask. The start of something bigger than himself. More important than him. Nothing before prepared him for that moment, and he knew nothing would ever be the same.
The memories are wonderful, and crushing.
Soothing, yet still rough and prickly to touch.
Murphy takes them in as his own. Lets them wash over him as he lies in the car's wreckage with his body failing. His chest heaves in and out. Blood fills his lungs. A new perspective on a familiar view.
A silver car stops on the highway.
Electric.
Driverless.
Noah—Murphy—the line is fading—cranes his neck to look through the shattered glass that drips with his own blood. His grip on consciousness is slipping. Through tunneled vision he sees a tall man with a buzz cut step out from the car.
Noah can’t manage a single word.
Murphy cannot utter a syllable.
He begs his body to move, but it cannot. A battered soul in a broken shell.
His mind recalls this moment with perfect clarity. Playing out as if it was yesterday, yet something that was hidden before now. Now able to see this through much different eyes. He processes these horrific minutes knowing now who this tall man is.
