Dead Last, Vol. 3

by Quaranta, Marc

  “Break this off. Do you hear me? Break it off with my sister. You’re pathetic. You’re sick. Break it off with Sarah or I swear to God I’m going to kill you myself.”

  He pushed the glass over to me as if I was the one cleaning the table. He stood up and walked away. Sarah watched him leave and then looked at me concerned.

  She didn’t hear the conversation and she still had no idea about my past, but based on her look, I knew that she knew Glen just spilled the beans about their relationship.

  Either she didn’t ever want me to know that they were brother and sister, or she was just waiting for the right time to tell me. I bet on the former. She turned pale and didn’t bother coming over to me for any reason. Instead, she cleared a few plates at the bar and then went into the back office.

  I got up and headed back to the jailhouse to finish my shift.

  33

  Kurt Elkins

  Y a know, I knew Nick a long time. We’d become pretty good friends. You just killed him. Without hesitating for even one damn second you just pulled the trigger. The first date my wife and I ever went on was actually a double date. Nick and his girlfriend, Heather, were there, too. He was going to be in my wedding. He was a good friend of mine. I’ll never forget this one time the four of us went out after work. Oh, we worked the night shift. You didn’t know that, did you? Yeah, well, it was about 9 am and we were all going to head back to Nick’s place to hang out and drink, yeah, we were going to drink at 9 am because that was like our nights. I’ll never forget the look on the cashier’s face at Marsh when Nick and I walked up at 9 am with two bottles of different flavors of vodka, and a 24 pack of beer. That was probably the first time I knew I was going to spend the rest of my life with Haylea after that day.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  I wasn’t very close to Dan. I’m not going to lie, he was a weird guy. He had no idea how to be anything but socially awkward. He couldn’t hold a normal conversation. He was one of those guys that would think of his next question before I finished talking. He’d ask the next question and it would be all over the place. There was no fluidity when talking to him. I’m telling you what, though, the guy had this light about him. He was honest. He was pure. He wanted to be an actor, and I’m telling you he wouldn’t have made it in a million, million years, but he loved it. He knew everything about everything when it came to movies and TV.

  “I do not care. You came all this way to walk down memory lane with me?”

  And I’ll tell you what, he actually went out to Hollywood for a little bit. He got a couple of small background parts in a few TV shows and played the monster in a really cheesy low budget horror film. He made me watch a few minutes. It was bad. It was really bad. He was never going to make it. He—How I Met Your Mother, that was it. You remember that show? There is an episode where if you pause it just at the right time, you can see Dan sitting in the background eating a bowl of soup. That was Dan, though. He probably made twenty dollars off that, got no official credit as an actor, but he was on a set, man. He loved it.

  “I don’t care. Did they send you in here to give me some sort of psych evaluation? What the hell do you want?”

  I just wanted to tell you what my friends were like. You killed both of them, Kendrick. They were both good people. They had people that cared about them and you killed them. How many others have you killed like that? How many people have you hurt?

  “You want a number?”

  What happened? Did Glen stop listening to you? Were you a little jealous of Glen? He was getting all the attention and all the praise for building this place and you were just becoming his personal errand boy? Did that get to you?

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You need to shut your mouth.”

  Or what? Are you going to gun me down at point blank range like you did Nick? You know, now that I’m this close, Kendrick, you’re not so scary.

  “Open the door then. Open the door and tell me I’m not that scary. I’ll show you just how terrifying I can be. Why don’t you ask your boy, Nick, just how terrifying I could be? It didn’t take him long to piss his pants.”

  Shut up.

  “He was crying like a little bitch a few seconds into our conversation. I can still hear it. Can you still hear it? Can you hear him crying and begging me not to do anything? What was her name? Heather? Yeah, he was calling out for her, too. She must have been, what, like a four? Nick was no looker. I actually probably did her a favor by taking him out of the picture.”

  I’m going to fucking kill you, Kendrick. Keep talking.

  “Come on, open the door, Kurt. Open the door.”

  How many times have you done this? How many people have you killed without Glen’s knowing? How many times have you gone behind his back like this? My guess is that you did it a lot. Never had anyone fight back like us, though, huh? Thought you, big bad Captain Kendrick and his men, could just take us out quietly. Looks like we’re a little more resilient then you thought, huh?

  “Well, remember, not all of you. Nick and Dan were not resilient. I killed them. I mean, technically, I didn’t kill Dan, but they were my orders. Nick I killed, though. I put a bullet into the back of his head.”

  You’re not going to break me. You can’t get to me.

  “I think I can. Open the door, Kurt.”

  What’s the endgame? What are you hoping for? Were you going to put a bullet in the back of Glen’s head in the middle of the night and think nobody would notice? Were you going to burn the whole damn place to the ground?

  “Nobody is ever going to know now, I guess. It’s sad, huh?”

  What happened? Did you get jealous? Were you lonely and just needed to act out? Somebody notice me? I haven’t heard or seen any girls come visit you. Where’s the wife, Kendrick?

  “Shut up.”

  Oh. Oh, that’s it. Did something happen to her? Did she die?

  “Open the door, Kurt.”

  She must have been pretty important to you to make you fly off the rails like that. Was she important? Married or was she not ready to commit long term to a crazy son of a bitch like you? I can’t imagine what it is like to lose somebody like that.

  “Keep talking and you won’t have to imagine. I’ll cut that bitch’s throat right in front of you.”

  What’s the plan? A mutiny? You got a group of cronies that are going to try a strategic takeover?

  “You have no idea what the hell you’ve stumbled upon. You have no idea what you walked into. Your whole fucking world is going to come crashing down and you have no idea. You think you walked onto a miracle lot? This whole damn place is a façade. It is all a mirage for what District 7-1 really is. You have no idea what we are or who we are. You’ve walked into a God damn mad scientist’s experiment. And you have no idea what I am capable of doing even from inside these bars.”

  You have no power here anymore, Kendrick. I’ve been here twenty days and I got more pull around here then you do. You’re an animal locked away in a cage. They’re throwing you scraps for dinner. They have no more respect for you. After what you did to us—failed to do to us, nobody is going to believe a word you say. You’re screwed, Kendrick. Whatever plans you may have had, whatever you thought you were going to accomplish, those plans ended the second I showed up to this place.

  “You died the second you showed up here, Kurt. You signed your own death certificate. Yours and your peoples. You’re not going to make it out of this place alive.”

  You’ve got a mean bite, unfortunately, the only thing you can do behind these bars…is bark.

  “Where were you the night of the outbreak? Where? Work? At home? Were you cuddled up with that cute little piece of ass of yours?”

  Keep trying to get to me.

  “You want to know where I was? You want to know what I was doing? I was right here. I was in this place standing right outside those doors waiting for the rest of the world to end. I was waiting for everything to collapse. I was waiting for
the world to burn to the fucking ground. You think you’re safe, Kurt? You think your people are safe? You’ve never been in more danger than you are right now sitting across from me, you asshole.”

  It’s sad to see what you’ve become. Well, actually I didn’t really know the man you were, but you are sad and pathetic now. You’re weak. You’re broken. I’ve seen guys worth twice as much as you take a lot longer to fall. You’re done. You’re finished. And I promise you I’m going to kill you for what you did to my friends. Believe that.

  I left the jail and walked the town. Hours could have possibly passed with how slow I walked, but I knew there was one thing I wanted to do. When I was lying in bed, a priest, or pastor, or whatever position he was, came by the bed to put a blessing over me. Haylea and the others said that same man helped them survive the night of the attack.

  I walked to that little chapel and walked right through the front doors to find him.

  “Father Ricky?” I smiled at him and shook his hand.

  “Kurt. Look at you. God is good, isn’t he? Look at you.”

  “Father, I was wondering if there was something you could do for me.”

  “Of course, anything. Just name it.”

  I wasn’t going to let any more time pass me by. I was going to get married tomorrow night.

  34

  Jack Scoville

  B eer was good. It was one of the rare things in life that was truly perfect. It never let a man down. It was never going to leave someone or cheat on them. It was never going to lie to them. Beer was always there. It was there for good times, but also for bad times. No matter the circumstance. No matter the event. Beer was good.

  I could only drink so much, though, before I needed something else in my system. I didn’t let the beer leave my side. I carried it with me, but I went into my new home and started to fix myself something to eat. I found some cheese and some flour tortillas. I thought about making a quesadilla, but the energy it took to turn the stove on, warm up the pan, butter the pan, place the tortilla in there, and cook it was not within me.

  I dropped some shredded cheddar onto the tortilla, wrapped it up, and shoved it into my mouth in less than three bites. Whether it was the exhaustion I was feeling or the buzz of the beer, it was the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten. I might as well have closed my eyes and pictured myself at a five-star steakhouse, it was that good.

  During the second bite of my second cheese wrap, Frank and Reggie arrived back home from their early lunch. It wasn’t the best of circumstances to be living with them, but Frank was undeniably giving and understanding. Almost to a fault, in my opinion. He said it would be fine, but would only be for a few days.

  “Why don’t you go upstairs to your room and play,” Frank told his son. Reggie didn’t think twice about it, he didn’t complain, or show any signs of fear of going somewhere by himself.

  This was the life that Frank wanted for his son. They could go out in the yard and throw a ball around, Reggie had his own room to play in. He had toys and video games and everything else a kid could want. There were kids down the street he could play with and he was even enrolled in the small classroom to learn. I had no idea what grade he was in.

  Reggie ran upstairs and Frank shot me a look that would have made his son cry if he had seen it.

  “How was lunch?” I asked. The tone in my voice echoed how little I actually cared about getting an answer. Frank could hear that.

  “When you asked me if you could stay here, do you remember what I said?”

  “I do.” I had a full mouth of cheese and tortilla.

  “What did I say? Jack, what did I say? Tell me.”

  I swallowed. Washed it down with a big gulp of beer and looked at him annoyingly.

  “You said that I could stay here for a few days.”

  “And it has already turned into a couple of weeks,” he said.

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “Go on. What else did I say?”

  “You said that I needed to behave myself because above all else, you were going to protect your son.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So, what’s your point?” I asked.

  “Look at you, Jack. It’s not even noon, yet, and you’re drunk. You’ve been drinking nonstop since you moved into our home.”

  “Home,” I repeated.

  “What?”

  “You said home.” I laughed.

  “Yes, home. This is our home now, Jack. You don’t have to like it, but you will respect the way I feel about this place. I’m not going to let you ruin this place for me like you’ve ruined it for the rest of your friends. I will not allow it. My son deserves better than this.”

  “Frank,” I said. But I had nothing else that I actually wanted to say.

  “Either stop your drinking, or you’re out of the house.”

  I thought about it. I took a drink of the beer. That probably didn’t help the situation seeing as we were discussing my problem with said beer. I walked around him and could feel how frustrated he was with me when I passed by his shoulder. I sat on the couch.

  “I’ll be out of the house by tonight.”

  “Take the easy way.”

  Frank was about to leave the room. I couldn’t imagine he was going upstairs to play with Reggie. I knew he loved his son and I would never be able to imagine how much, I wasn’t a father, but surely, he needed some alone time every now and then. Perhaps he was going to his own room or going to shower or something where he would take some time to himself. Besides that, I’m sure Reggie wanted some time away from Frank.

  “Frank,” I said. I felt like I was sitting across from my own body and trying to stop myself from saying what was about to be said. “Frank, I am sorry for what happened with Cam. I’m sorry for what I did.”

  The hallucination of myself puffed into a cloud of smoke and then faded away slowly. It was a weight removed from my body that had been holding me, no, pinning me down to the ground. He could have reacted a handful of ways, but no matter what he was going to say, I felt better.

  He came back into the room and sat on the lounge chair off to the side. He kicked stretched his arms back and let out a vicious yawn. That told me that he wasn’t going to go upstairs to play with Reggie. He was probably going to go take a nap.

  “Jack, I understand why you did what you did. Isn’t that sick? That’s almost unforgivable right there. That I could understand why you gunned down my brother and his friends in cold blood, but I do. You were protecting your friends. You were surviving in a world that didn’t have any rules anymore. There were no morals or moral people for that matter.”

  Frank looked at the chair he was sitting in as if he was measuring the level of comfort the chair was providing him.

  “I accept what you’ve done and for those reasons I forgive you. I miss my brother very much. Cam got himself into trouble a lot. He did that even before the outbreak. He was much younger than me. We actually had different dads, so Cam wasn’t really in my mother’s plans when I was little, but when she met this new guy, her plans changed.”

  I sipped on my beer and Frank watched me doing that very carefully.

  “I remember when Cam was in high school, he got in trouble for smoking weed in the bathroom. He got in trouble for cheating on a quiz. God, there were so many things. He put himself in really tough positions. He did that with you. He should have never gone to WTIX and did what he did. You were protecting your people.”

  “I actually think because of what happened to Cam,” he said. His voice cracked when he said his brother’s name. “I think that made me a better father to Reggie. Not only because I will never let what happened to Cam happen to my boy. But also, and I think, more importantly, I don’t want to see my son grow up to be like the person my brother became. I hope he becomes more like…more like Kurt.”

  That annoyed me. Why Kurt? I tipped the bottle back and finished the last of the beer that had unfortunately warmed up to room temperature. Even so
, it was still delicious. It still didn’t let me down.

  “You don’t agree with me, do you?”

  “I don’t care who you want Reggie to be.”

  “That bothers you that I think Kurt is a good guy.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Jack, you’ve questioned every decision and move that Kurt has made since the moment I came into this camp. From talking to the others, the power struggle between the two of you started the day Kurt showed up. Yeah, I know he showed up a few days late. I know everything. I wouldn’t let Reggie stay here without knowing all the information.”

  “You’d make a good lawyer,” I said.

  “You did everything you could to question Kurt’s leadership. He said walk, you said run. He said jump, you said duck. He went left.”

  “I’d go left,” I interrupted.

  “Not without arguing about going right for an hour and even when you were proven wrong, you would not go willingly.”

  “It wasn’t on purpose, Frank. You weren’t there for most of it. I did what I thought was right. I did what I thought was going to work.”

  “I hope that you saw it didn’t. It didn’t work. It tore the group apart. Kurt’s way worked. You will always be a shoot first guy. Shoot first guys don’t lead. They cause trouble.”

  I heard enough. I tossed the bottle onto the couch and smirked at him out of the corner of my mouth. I walked away from him and decided I wouldn’t wait until the end of the day. I was going to leave now.

  “Where are you headed?” Frank asked.

  “I’m headed to the bar. I’m a drunk, right? And if there is no point in me leading, or shooting first as you call it, there is no point to stop my drinking.”

  “An attribute of a great leader is knowing when to follow. Remember that, Jack.”

  I looked around on the walk out for anything that belonged to me, but there was nothing. Nothing in this house, or my other house, or the whole damn town belonged to me. Nothing belonged to any of us. That is why it would never be home.