Last Call

by Lloyd Behm II

  I thought about it.

  “I’m going to catch hell for it, but you’ve waited for me. I can catch a little hell for you…”

  * * *

  I still don’t understand what you are doing, daemon…

  You devils never do. This is working. He still slumbers. He will make the choice we want him to…

  * * *

  “My fellow citizens. At this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.

  “On my orders, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein’s ability to wage war. These are the opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign.

  “More than 35 countries are giving crucial support, from the use of naval and air bases, to help with intelligence and logistics, to deployment of combat units.

  “Every nation in this coalition has chosen to bear the duty and share the honor of serving in our common defense…”

  * * *

  “Hon, you ok?” Mel asked when I stepped off the jetway. I’d been away from home for two years—first for the initial invasion of Iraq, then because I’d volunteered to do another tour after we’d gone into…something. Try to think about whatever it was, and I just hit a blank spot in my memory. All I knew was, that mission was why I was home, wearing sergeant’s stripes, and looking at actually getting out of the Corps.

  I grabbed her, hard.

  “I’m fine, babe, it’s just kind of weird being back in the States,” I said. “I keep expecting to wake up, you know?”

  “I understand,” she said, stepping back and looking at me. “I thought you’d be wearing your uniform.”

  “I’m on terminal leave,” I said. “I out-processed before they sent me home.”

  “What about the Stop-Loss?”

  I gave a wry smile. “I injured my left knee in Iraq, falling out of a helicopter. The doctors say it’s too injured for me to PT on it, but not injured enough for them to fix it, so out I go.”

  “I…I don’t know what to say to that,” she replied.

  “Nothing to say, love,” I said. “I shipped everything home, so all I’ve got is this bag. How about we go get a burger?”

  Burgers were our tradition—every time I’d come home on leave, the first place we’d stopped outside the airport was What-A-Burger, and it was the last place we’d stop on the way back to the airport so I could go back to work.

  “Still a cheap date, I see,” she said, handing me a set of keys.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Well, I got the bonus last month, and I knew you were coming home, so I figured you’d need something to get around in—so you can find a job, that kind of thing.”

  She led me over to a brand-new Toyota Tundra. There was a blue jay sitting on the hood. It cocked its head at me, then flew off.

  “It’s too much,” I said, taking in the truck. “Are you sure we can afford this?”

  “Hon, I banked everything you sent home. I’ve been making five to six figures a month since you went overseas,” she said, looking me in the eyes. “You’re not upset, are you?”

  “Not in the least. I’m looking forward to being a kept man,” I said.

  “You’ll look good in the leather speedo I got you.” She laughed. “You can wear it when you’re feeding me peeled grapes.”

  “What-evah.”

  I unlocked the truck and tossed my bag into the back of the crew cab. Mel climbed in beside me.

  “You left the seat back.”

  “Yes. I figured it was easier than you having to fight to get under the wheel,” she replied.

  I got everything adjusted, and we drove out into Austin traffic.

  “You decided what you’re going to do now?” she asked as we left the airport.

  “I’m going back to school.”

  “Good. Back to Texas State?”

  “No. Where the fuck did you learn to drive, asshole?” I shouted at a car that came booming past us, narrowly missing an oncoming truck.

  “That’s an interesting name for a college,” Mel snarked.

  “Sorry. Look, there are a lot of things I can’t talk about that happened while I was in Iraq,” I said, setting the cruise control. “…So many shiny buttons.”

  “You can’t talk about shiny buttons, got it,” Mel replied.

  “Sorry. The truck is great. I’m a bit distracted, I guess.”

  She leaned her seat back. “Not a problem, love.”

  “I did some thinking while I was overseas, some of it because of the things I saw. I…I want to go into the seminary.”

  “You want to become a priest?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that mean you want a divorce?”

  “No. I’m Episcopalian, not Catholic. Even then, since we were married before I was ordained, I don’t think the Catholics would make us get a divorce or an annulment. You don’t have a problem with me becoming ordained do you?”

  “No, but Momma’s going to flip her lid,” Mel purred. “You know what she said that time she went to church with us?”

  “No, what?”

  Her voice rose in pitch, matching her mother’s almost perfectly. “‘I don’t know what you and that boy you married see in that… that Sunday morning athletics program y’all attend. I don’t know why you couldn’t marry a nice Baptist boy.’”

  “Oh, that’s funny.”

  “Momma loves you, hon; you’ve made her favorite child very happy,” Mel said. “She’s just a little…provincial when it comes to Jesus.”

  “She thinks anyone who isn’t Baptist is going to hell for being a heretic, love. Speaking of which, you’re probably going to have to convert.”

  “Put a grandchild in me, and she’ll be fine.”

  “We’ll have time to try now,” I said.

  Mel stuck out her lower lip and grunted, scratching her head. “Ma-rine put baby in me! No try, do! Big Ma-rine put baby in my belly!”

  “You are so weird. I think that’s why I love you.”

  “I thought it was because I was rich and shower you with presents.”

  “That helps. Fucking traffic.”

  The car that had passed us earlier was in the middle of the highway, upside down and burning. Just as I was going to get out and see if anyone needed help, the fire department rolled up and started pouring water on the fire.

  “Huh. Never seen that before,” Mel said.

  “You’ve never seen a burning car before?”

  “No, I’ve never seen a bird land on a car mirror before,” she replied, pointing.

  There was a blue jay sitting on the mirror, looking at me expectantly.

  “Wonder if it’s the same one from earlier?” I said.

  * * *

  It is working…

  * * *

  “Daddy!” Arya squealed as she ran down the walk. At five, she was a force to be reckoned with. I scooped her up and swung her above my head.

  “How’s the babyest of baby girls?”

  She’d been born two days after I’d graduated from the seminary. Mel had decided not to stick to the family naming conventions and had named her “Arya” after a character in some book she’d read.

  “I’m not a baby girl anymore, Daddy,” she said. “That’s Robby’s job.”

  “Robby can’t be my baby girl, hon. He’s a boy.”

  I was not discussing transgenderism with a five-year-old.

  “That’s okay. He can be the babyest of baby boys, then,” she said.

  “Woman! Have you been teaching your daughter logic again?” I shouted, stepping into the parsonage. “Next thing you know, she’ll want to vote or something.”

  Mel came out of the nursery, Robby on one hip. Two kids had done nothing but made her more beautiful in my eyes.

  “How else will she rule the world one day if she can’t confuse men with her logic?” Mel a
sked before kissing me.

  “How was work?” we asked each other.

  “Oh, the usual—trying to convince the idiots in marketing that naming a sleeping medication after Morpheus isn’t a good idea. That smug idiot Johnson even tried to argue that people would link it with The Matrix and think it was a good thing! UT graduates think they know everything, I swear,” Mel said.

  Mel pulled in a lot of money these days. I was able to play the humble suburban Episcopal priest thanks to her job.

  “My day wasn’t that bad,” I said, “except for dealing with the building committee again. Dalma keeps arguing that we can afford to replace the floors with marble, and Holt wants hardwood.”

  I set Arya down and she scampered off.

  “What did you tell them?” Mel asked, handing Robby to me.

  “That we couldn’t afford either one with the current budget. Padgett said he thought he could get some nice tile donated, but we’d have to pay someone to come out and lay it.”

  “Mr. Padgett has some questionable sources, my love,” Mel said.

  I looked into Robby’s eyes—and for a moment, watched a ghoul pull the face off a kid in MARPAT in a stairwell.

  What was your name…?

  I could tell I’d scared Mel.

  “Yeah, it was another vision,” I said. “I’ll tell Dr. Heibert about it when I see him Monday.”

  “I just worry about you, hon. Most peoples’ PTSD shows up in hypervigilance or nightmares about things that happened to them.”

  “One of the guys I know has nightmares about looking for people lost in a sandstorm,” I said.

  “But you get visions of mythological creatures and things that never happened.”

  Thump.

  “What was that?” Mel asked.

  “It was a bird, mommy. It flew into the window,” Arya reported.

  “I’ll go look,” I said, handing Robby back.

  You could see the oil from the bird’s feathers on the glass of the window. I found it, a blue jay, lying stunned in the flowerbed.

  “Is it…is it dead?” Arya asked.

  We’d had the “live verses dead” discussion a few weeks ago, when a hawk had stooped on a squirrel and ate it in the yard, leaving the head and tail behind; we buried the remains with all due pomp and ceremony.

  “No, I think it’s only stunned,” I said, watching the jay twitch back to life.

  It stood on shaky legs a few minutes later, then flew to my shoulder.

  “Daddy…”

  “Don’t worry, little one,” I said.

  The jay leaned into my ear and whispered, “Remember.”

  Now I’m hearing animals talking…

  * * *

  When I’d first come home from Iraq, Mel and I had slept au naturel. These days, with the kids—Arya had a habit of bursting in just before things got interesting—I slept in an old pair of silky shorts; Mel wore a series of oversized T-Shirts.

  “Don’t forget to take your meds,” Mel said, climbing into bed.

  “Already did,” I said, tossing I, the Jury back on my nightstand and yawning.

  “I love you,” Mel said as I drifted off to sleep.

  She was still reading forty-five minutes later when I woke up screaming, “Morrison! Your name was Robert Morrison!”

  * * *

  Your way is no better than mine…

  Gloating will not get our masters what they want, devil…

  * * *

  Arya graduated high school and joined the Corps. After basic, she gave me shit for being a Hollywood Marine. Robby followed his mother into business, and Mel and I grew old together.

  I started seeing things while I was awake. After I had to cut my third sermon short because of a “vision,” I retired.

  “There’s something organically wrong with your brain,” Dr. Singh said.

  “So the latest scan showed bupkis,” I said.

  “Yes, the latest scan showed nothing,” he agreed.

  The last dream had been a doozy—Mel had died at the hands of a monster from D&D, and my old gunnery sergeant from the Corps had been the one to tell me about it. I’d called him and we’d had a laugh about it, but Mel had asked for more tests, and since the insurance would cover them, I’d agreed to being poked and prodded like I hadn’t been since I’d been in the Corps.

  A strikingly handsome nurse with long black hair walked in and handed Dr. Singh a chart to sign.

  “You’re drooling, you old goat,” Mel said, poking me in the ribs.

  “Sorry. Doc, who was that?”

  “That? That was my new nurse, Diindiisi…

  Diindiisi…I know you…

  Reality twisted and shattered…

  * * *

  I told you this would not work, daemon. You pushed it too far, and he fought back…

  I did what my master asked, devil. It is not my fault the human was better protected than we were told. Leave him, I must report to my master…

  * * *

  “Jesse. Jesse, wake up,” Billy said in my ear.

  “I’m up,” I said, reaching for the gun I kept under my pillow.

  That’s when I realized I couldn’t move my arms.

  “The fuck, Billy?” I asked.

  “I’m still working on the straps,” he replied. “They grabbed you at Mel’s place. I should have known we were walking into a trap; it was too simple.”

  “Where are we?” I asked, wincing as I put weight on my right arm.

  “I’m not sure, but we’re not in Limbo anymore. It has to be one of the planes, though, or I wouldn’t have been able to find you.”

  “We’re lost, but we’re making great time,” I said, sitting up and looking him over. He was still wearing the jeans and T-shirt outfit, with my UMP slung cross body, and his dad’s 1911 hanging from one hip on an old cotton web belt.

  “I don’t have a clue how to use this thing,” he said, following the direction of my gaze.

  “I’ll walk you through it when we get out of here,” I said. The room looked familiar—it had the industrial look of modern medicine. “You got my gear?”

  “Yeah, they just dumped it in the corner,” Billy said, handing me my pistol. “The armor is shot, though.”

  Whatever had grabbed me had shredded the tough nylon outer shell of my armor, and even etched the composite plates.

  “Leave it,” I said, stripping all my pistol magazines from my gear and dropping them into a cargo pocket. I grabbed my belt tabernacle and worked it in as well.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said. “You think you can do the thing with your hands?”

  “When we get outside, yes,” he replied. “Something’s interfering with it here. Probably iron in the building somewhere.”

  “Concrete construction, they use rebar to reinforce the…shit,” I said, looking at the first sign we passed.

  Written under the directions was “Texas State Student Medical Center.”

  I could see a window ahead, and I ran to it, leaving Billy behind.

  The sky was the color of dross on the surface of molten lead.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 20 – Diindiisi

  Before we could run the shoot house, there was other, more pressing business to dispose of. Primarily, the “interrogation” of Tatsuo.

  Someone, Goodhart probably, had decided that the best place to interrogate her would be R&D, since the crypts were still under repair. Sola had done his best to create the proper atmosphere—the walls were niter covered, there were mysterious drips, and the entire room was poorly lit, with reed lights and the glow from braziers heating strangely-shaped metal rods to be applied to the recalcitrant witness. In one corner, a skeleton hung from the walls. In another, the Iron Maiden rested.

  “Um, wow,” Tatsuo said as we entered the room. “I thought Maggie Thatcher was dead.” Tatsuo wore a short white shift, artistically stained to show that she’d been imprisoned prior to being put to the question

  “Damn,�
�� Sola said, waving a hand at the Maiden.

  “That’s better, now it looks more like Eddie,” Tatsuo said, clapping.

  Fred and his merry band of tricksters had volunteered to play the part of the torturers.

  “Did you guys escape from a leather fetish video shoot or something?” Tatsuo asked. “I mean, I love the attention to detail, but the assless chaps are a bit much.”

  “If they’re chaps, that implies they lack a covering for your fundament,” Alfie said. “Leather leg coverings with an ass are called pants.”

  Tatsuo covered her mouth, and her eyes enlarged. “Oh, Alfie, I didn’t know you were such an expert.”

  “You know that’s not going to work on him, right?” Dalma asked. “He’s not into…dragons.”

  “Oh, good save,” Ozzie said, hugging her.

  Sola was rolling his eyes at the byplay. “If we’re done with these…these antics, I have other things to do.”

  Today the elf was wearing one of his better outfits—a white jumpsuit covered in sequined eagles.

  “Yes, I guess I’m ready,” Tatsuo said, taking a seat in the heavy stone chair in the center of the room.

  Sola sat behind a wooden desk and gestured for me to sit next to him.

  “Now that we are in place, Chief Torturer, confine the prisoner,” Sola said.

  The dwarfs swarmed the chair, strapping Tatsuo down.

  “None of this is, like, necessary, you know?”

  “The prisoner will be silent!” Fred boomed. “Unless you would like us to begin with the Pear of Anguish, Magistrate?”

  Andre held up a lump of metal with a rod sticking out from it. On the end of the rod was a knob.

  “That doesn’t look too bad,” Tatsuo said.

  Andre twisted the knob, and the metal lump expanded.

  “Where do you put that?” Tatsuo gasped.

  “It is used to…gag prisoners who will not shut up,” Fred said, winking at Tatsuo. “Disappointing, huh?”