Children of Paranoia

by Trevor Shane

  “Buckle your seat belt,” I ordered.

  “What?”

  “Buckle your seat belt,” I replied. I buckled mine as if to show you how to do it, keeping the gun in my right hand as I did so. When you saw me do it, I think you realized I was serious, so you quickly buckled yours too. As soon as I heard your seat belt click into place, I put the car in reverse. Fifteen feet. In the mud. I had to hope it was enough room. Once locked into reverse, I slammed on the gas. The wheels turned in the mud a few times before catching a grip. Then, suddenly, the car jerked backward. I steered it straight into the light. We were moving at a pretty good clip by the time we rammed into the front of the kid’s car. I hoped it was fast enough. The kid’s car skidded backward in the mud. The front end of the car smashed in like a soda can. One of the headlights cracked and went out. The other simply dimmed, now shining crookedly off to the side, sending a glimmer of light across the rain-swept field.

  I opened my car door and stepped out into the rain. I walked right over to the kid’s car and pulled open the driver’s side door. The impact was enough. His air bag had deployed. The kid was sitting in the front seat, still dazed from the impact of the air bag. A small trickle of blood leaked out of his lower lip. He didn’t have his seat belt on. His backpack sat on the seat next to him, partially unzipped. He had been reaching for the backpack prior to the crash. He looked at me when I pulled the door open. His eyes looked lost. He wasn’t able to focus them yet. I wasted no time. I grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him out of his car. I dragged him into the light radiating from his car’s one working headlight and threw him down in the mud. Then I went back to his car. I didn’t take my eyes off him. I pulled his backpack out and threw it down in the mud next to him. I stood over him, the light from the one working headlight shining on us like a spotlight. The rain cut through the light, throwing off shadows like a million tiny daggers. I pointed the gun down at the kid. He climbed to his knees and stared at me. He was finally coming to. His eyes refocused. He finally realized what was about to happen.

  At first he didn’t look at me. He just stared at the barrel of the gun. I knew his face but I couldn’t figure out why. Then he looked up at me. He didn’t flinch. He looked right into my eyes. I couldn’t see fear; not yet, anyway. All I could see was hate and pain. The look on his face was the same as the looks on the faces of every sixteen-year-old kid I had ever taught about the War. It was the same face those kids wore when we first showed them that slide show of death and destruction. The fact that he was staring at his own death didn’t change a thing.

  I heard a car door slam. I knew that you’d gotten out of the car. I didn’t know if you were running away or coming toward us. I didn’t look up. I didn’t take my eyes off the kid. I didn’t want to face you, not until I had done what I had to do. I knew that if you ran away, you’d come back. I didn’t know how you’d react if you stayed.

  “Who are you?” I asked. It was killing me. Why did I recognize this kid?

  “Fuck you,” he responded, staring at the gun as he spoke. I had no problem with that response. I respected it. Still, it wasn’t helpful. I planted my left leg in the mud and kicked the kid as hard as I could in the gut. I heard a gasp when I did so but it didn’t come from the kid. You’d stayed. I would have rather done this without you, but you were going to have to be introduced to violence sometime.

  The kid had keeled over in the mud after I kicked him. He gasped for air, swallowing rain as he did so. That started a coughing fit. I waited from him to finish. When he did, he climbed back onto his knees defiantly.

  “Who are you?” I asked again, leaning toward the kid, speaking more softly this time. He just glared at me. His eyes repeated his earlier words, but this time he saved his breath. “What? You think you’re some sort of cowboy?” I yelled at him. “You thought you could lead us out here and you and I would have some sort of duel? Twelve paces at midnight? Is that what you thought? You’re a fool, kid. You’re going to die a fool.” The kid looked ashamed but he still didn’t look scared. I stood up straight again and pointed the gun at the kid’s head. I’d make it quick. “It didn’t have to be this way, kid. You could have just left us alone. You could have run away. You could have kept driving. I wish you had.” I tensed my trigger finger, and started to pull. As if he’d rehearsed for this moment, the kid turned his head to the side so that the bullet wouldn’t enter through his face.

  “What are you doing, Joe?” Your voice suddenly cut through the sound of the beating rain. You thought that I’d been posturing. You thought it was a bluff, that I was acting. You didn’t know that I didn’t bluff. I wasn’t planning on gambling with our lives. I eased up on the trigger. The kid looked up at you, through the falling rain. I didn’t dare look at you. I kept my eyes on the kid. “What are you doing?”

  “He’s one of them, Maria.” I aimed the gun again. I didn’t want you to talk me out of it. Killing him was the smart play.

  “He’s just a kid, Joe!” You were shouting. Your voice was laced with panic.

  “No, he’s not,” I replied. I looked at the kid again as I spoke. “He’s a soldier. And he’s a liability.” The kid glared up at me through the corner of his eyes as I spoke. Finally, there was something in his face besides hate. It was pride.

  You suddenly turned to the kid and shouted, “Tell him! Tell him you don’t know what he’s talking about!” You were now pleading with both of us to simply stop it. Stop the madness. It was beyond us. The kid and I were in it together.

  “Go ahead, kid. Tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about,” I said to the kid. He shot me the glare again. I kept the gun pointed at his head and walked over to his backpack, lying in the mud, sopping up the rain. I picked up the backpack and reached inside. Just as I’d expected, the backpack was full of papers. Under the papers was a gun. I took the gun out and threw it away. I simply tossed it off the side. It quickly disappeared into the blackness. I couldn’t even hear it land over the sound of the rain. It was as if nothing existed in the world outside of this small triangle of light given off by the car’s smashed-in headlights. Like the gun, the rest of the world had disappeared.

  I threw the backpack, now free of weapons, down on the ground next to the kid. “Show her what’s in the backpack, Eric.” He looked up at me. He didn’t move. I mustered up my meanest voice. “I know you’re a proud kid and you ain’t afraid of dying, but I’m not above killing you slowly. So show her what’s in the fucking backpack.” Finally, the kid reached over to the backpack. He unzipped it, reached inside, took out a large stack of papers, and flipped them into the mud. There were pages and pages of printed material. Paragraph after paragraph full of details. From where we were standing, we couldn’t read the words. I didn’t need to. I knew what they said. I had seen this before. Along with the printed pages were pictures. Even from where you and I were standing, the pictures were clear. There were five or six pictures of me. Pictures with a goatee, pictures clean shaven, older pictures, and one picture that had to have been taken within the past three months. There was a picture of our car. The one we were standing behind. The picture clearly showed the Massachusetts license plates that we had ditched back in Pennsylvania. Then, to round it off, there were two pictures of you. The first appeared to be a blow-up of the picture from your college ID. You couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old. You looked fifteen. You had grown up a lot in two years. The second was a more recent picture of you, standing in front of a lake next to an older man. The older man’s arm was wrapped around your shoulders. It must have been your father. Whoever had gotten that picture got it from your family. They had been to your parents’ home. I could hear the pace of your breathing increase as you stared at the pictures as they crinkled in the rain.

  Suddenly, the kid spoke. “Your child doesn’t belong with him, Maria,” he said to you. He spoke directly to you. “Your child is one of us. Your child can have a chance to do something good for the world.”

  Hea
ring his words, you began to cry. You placed your hand over your stomach, as if to protect your baby. You leaned over, placing your other hand on the dented trunk of our car. You sobbed, stopping momentarily to try to catch your breath. Then your words came out. Angry words directed at the kid. “What did we ever do to you?” you cried out. “Why can’t you just leave us alone?” You sobbed again, bending over. When you caught your breath again, you repeated more quietly, “Why can’t you just leave us alone?” Then, looking down at the kid, kneeling in the rain, covered in mud, as if the question could end it all, you said again, “What did we ever do to you?”

  “That bastard,” the kid replied, pointing at me, having the audacity to point at me while I aimed a loaded gun at his head, “that bastard killed my older brother.” He spoke to you as if I weren’t even there. “He came into my house”—the kid’s voice rose in anger—“when I was thirteen years old. He came into my house when my brother and I were home alone. He grabbed me first because my brother was upstairs. He grabbed me and he tied my hands and feet together and he put masking tape over my mouth. Then he went upstairs and I listened as he strangled my big brother to death.” The kid kept pointing at me as he spoke. “That’s what he fucking did to me.” That’s why the kid had gotten the package. That’s why I recognized the kid. His brother was my third job. He lived in Cincinnati, a good three hours from where we were. I don’t remember why he was a target.

  You didn’t respond. It was all too much. I began to worry about the baby. I had to end it. The kid kept going, “Your baby, Maria, your baby can be better than that.” I’d heard enough. It was my baby too. I hauled off and kicked the kid in the face. His body jerked to the side and he fell face-first into the mud. Slowly, he struggled back up onto his hands and knees. I hated him at that moment. He was trying to convince you to leave me. He didn’t even care if he died.

  “Because you’re not a killer?” I finally yelled at him. He was just like me when I was his age.

  He lifted up his head, and for the first time in minutes, he looked at me again. His eyes were filled with scorn, his voice filled with hate. “I’m not like you,” he said. “I’m righteous.” I pulled the trigger. The shot rang out through the night air as if it would echo for days. The kid’s head jerked back. Then his body fell forward into the mud, motionless. I immediately regretted it. For the first time I could remember, I felt remorse.

  You screamed. Then you ran off into the darkness. You made it maybe twenty feet before falling to the ground. I could hear a retching sound coming from the darkness as you threw up into the mud. I started to walk after you. I stepped out of the beam of light. Once out of the light, the darkness wasn’t so complete. Though they were still difficult to see, I could make out outlines, shapes, and shadows in the grayness surrounding us. I could see your form, hunched over on the ground. I stepped closer to you. Suddenly you stood up and turned around. You extended your arms out toward me. At first I thought you were going to reach out to hug me. Then I realized that you had stumbled upon the kid’s gun.

  You held the gun in front of you. You aimed the gun directly at my chest. I stopped walking. I didn’t dare move any closer to you. I wasn’t sure what you were capable of at that moment. You were still crying. You didn’t want me near you. “Why did you do it, Joe?” you cried. Your hair, straightened by the rain, hung over your shoulders. Your wet clothes clung to you.

  “I had to, Maria.” You let out an audible cry when I spoke. “I know you think I had a choice, but I didn’t. It doesn’t stop with him, Maria. If we let him go, he tells everyone where we are. He tells everyone where we are and it’s over. We’re trapped.”

  My logic didn’t mean anything to you. Killing still didn’t make sense to you. “You promised me you’d stop killing, Joe.” I had. I’d meant it when I said it. That was four corpses ago.

  “I didn’t want to kill him, Maria.” I went to take another step toward you.

  “Don’t, Joe.” You lifted the gun, changing your aim from my chest to my head. “Don’t come near me, Joe.”

  “Please, Maria. Please come back to the car. You’re sopping wet. You’re cold. We need to get you into some dry clothes. We need to get you warm. This isn’t good for the baby.”

  “Don’t, Joe.”

  “Please, Maria. Come back now. Get warm. Get dry. If you want to leave me in the morning, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.” You reluctantly dropped your arm down to your side. You didn’t walk toward me. You walked past me toward the car. I followed a few steps behind you. Before you climbed into the backseat of the car, you took one last look at the kid’s body, sprawled out, lying facedown in the mud. Then you threw his gun back into the darkness.

  I went back to the kid’s body. I picked him up and carried him to his car. I opened the back door and laid his body down on the backseat. I took off my jacket and my shirt and used my shirt to wipe the mud off the kid’s face. The bullet had gone in and out through the sides of his head. His face was untouched. Once I had gotten the mud off his face, I reached into the front of the car and turned off the one working headlight. I put my jacket back on, leaving my shirt in the mud next to the car. “I’m sorry, kid,” I said to his lifeless body. “I’m sorry about your brother too.” Then I closed the car door, leaving the kid’s body sheltered from the rain in the backseat, and walked back to our car. On the way, I picked up the papers and the pictures that were strewn on the ground. I left the backpack. I left the money. I didn’t feel right taking it anymore even though we needed it. I left everything that couldn’t incriminate us. I threw the papers and the pictures in our now dented trunk, not wanting to leave evidence lying there in the mud. The damage to our car was minimal, little enough that it shouldn’t arouse suspicion. They had pictures of our car, though. We’d have to trade it soon.

  You didn’t speak to me for the next three days, but you didn’t leave me either.

  Fourteen

  We made it all the way to Charleston, South Carolina, the day after I killed the kid in Ohio. I drove through the night. You eventually fell asleep in the backseat of the car. I knew as soon as we met the kid that Chicago was no longer an option. We’d left New Jersey and pretty much driven in a straight line leading directly to Chicago. Once they found the kid’s body, it wouldn’t take them long to guess where we were headed. We had to change course.

  I had never been to Charleston. That was the draw. I’d never done a job there, never taught a class. I’d driven past it but never stopped. As far as I knew, no one in Charleston had a reason to want me dead. If they were to find us in Charleston, they’d have to come looking for us. I hoped it was a big enough city that I could find a job and we could still disappear.

  We made it to Charleston with about two hundred dollars and a smashed-up car. We still had some food left, but that was starting to run low too. We needed to find a new car. We needed to figure out a way to make some money. I was willing to work but my list of marketable skills was painfully deficient. I wasn’t about to start killing people for money. It wasn’t right. Besides, I’d made a promise to you. We’d need a place to stay. I’d need to be able to clean myself up if I expected to find any sort of work. But I was afraid to stay in any one place for too long. I decided on a three-night rule. We wouldn’t stay at any one place for more than three nights. We’d keep moving. It was all I could think of for us to do. We couldn’t keep changing cities, not without cash. I would have let you in on my plans but you weren’t talking to me. I figured you needed time. I think seeing what you saw in Ohio finally drove everything home for you. This was real. We spent the first night in a cheap motel about forty miles outside of Charleston. We went into the city during the day, trying to scope it out and see if I could find work.

  During our second day in Charleston, you finally spoke to me again. “What do you think happened to him?” you asked me. We were sitting on a bench in the Waterfront Park. I was flipping through the help-wanted ads in one of the free local papers. You had a b
lank expression on your face. At first I was afraid to say anything. I simply looked at you, scared that anything I might say would make you stop talking again. You stared off into the ocean. “I mean, what do you think happened to his body?” There wasn’t sadness in your voice anymore, just curiosity.

  “If his parents and friends haven’t realized that he’s missing yet, they will soon. They’ll send people out looking for him. Eventually, someone will stumble upon the body. The police will be called in. With no suspects and no motive, they’ll just write it off as another unsolved murder, a random act of violence. His parents, his family, they’ll know the truth.” A cool wind blew in from the ocean. It smelled of rotting fish.

  “And they’ll have lost another son,” you said, looking at me, searching for any remorse.

  “Yeah,” I said, the guilt that I’d felt after shooting the kid coming back. The guilt felt good. The guilt was beginning to make me feel human.

  “And that’s why we’re in Charleston and not Chicago?”

  “And that’s why we’re in Charleston and not Chicago,” I confirmed.

  You didn’t ask any more questions, not yet. You’d done enough talking for the time being.

  After two nights in a motel, we spent two nights sleeping in the car. We tried to keep the car off any main roads. I still hadn’t figured out how to get a new car. Our supplies were running low and so was our cash. Four days in Charleston and I hadn’t found work yet. But it was four days without incident. That was progress in my book. Four days in Charleston. We would make it almost four months. Maybe the next place we’ll make it five months, then six, and then, eventually they’ll forget us and we’ll be able to settle down.

  The job search was painful. I’d known it would be. I had no papers, let alone skills. The only thing I had going for me was the fact that I was willing to work cheap. I knew I had to start somewhere. Even in the War, I’d started at the bottom. So every day I pounded the pavement, walking into places unsolicited and asking for work or answering ads in the papers for unskilled labor. I wasn’t having any luck. They’d look me over, a twenty-five-year-old guy with no history, no backstory, and every one of them balked. I can’t say that I blame them. I reeked of trouble. I could smell it on myself.