Spacecraft

by Benjamin Broke

the engine and lights and we coasted. He stopped the truck one house up from G’s.

  “Alright.” He said, picking up the bag of explosives. “Let’s do this shit.” As I got out I saw Jessie get something from the bed of the truck. He was trying to carry it so I wouldn’t see, which made me more nervous than I already was. “Good, everybody’s home.” He said. I saw that it was a flashlight and a roll of duct tape. He set everything down and pulled out two M-1000s and a lighter.

  “What’s all that for?” I asked, pointing to the tape and flashlight.

  “Nothing. Here you take this side of the house and the back. When the shit’s in place, run to the truck and wait for me.” Before I could protest he lit both fuses and shoved the little bombs in my hand. I ran down the side of the house, not bothering to duck at the windows. At that point I just wanted to get rid of the things. There was a high gate to the back yard that was locked, so I pitched one of the M-1000s over the fence. I heard a dog barking inside the house and I was glad it wasn’t in the backyard or I might’ve had another dog corpse on my conscience. I turned and ran back the way I’d come, dropping the second explosive on my way. I raced up the street to Jessie’s truck and got in. I looked at G’s yard, but I didn’t see Jessie anywhere. I was thinking it was some sort of trick and I was about to grab my skate and bail when I saw movement under Steven’s beat up Camaro in the driveway. At first I thought it was a cat, but it was Jessie, crawling out from under the car. I felt like I was going to throw up. He ran up the street and threw the tape and the flashlight in the truck’s bed and jumped in the drivers seat. He sat there breathing hard and smiling.

  “Alright, come on. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” I said.

  “Are you kidding? I don’t want to miss this.”

  “When that shit goes off, cops are gonna swarm.” I said. “We need to go, like now.”

  “Calm down, we won’t get caught, I promise.” He picked up the bottle of Jack and took a gulp. He handed it to me and I took a mouthful but it didn’t go down right and I started coughing. He took the bottle back and was screwing the top on when the first explosions went off. They were very close together and all I could hear afterwards was ringing in my ears. Jessie started the truck and put it in drive. I expected him to fly down the street and get us out of there, but all he did was pull right in front of G’s house and stop.

  “What the fuck are you doing? Come on! Let’s get out of here.” I said. Jessie just laughed. The porch light went on and the front door of the house opened. I immediately ducked down, so I wouldn’t be seen. Jessie leaned on his horn for a long time, then opened his door. I thought he was going to get out of the truck and leave me, but he just stood up from the drivers side so he could be seen over the top of the cab. There was a person on the porch, yelling, but aside from some curses I couldn’t tell what they said.

  I heard what Jessie said clearly. “YOU OWE ME MONEY ASSHOLE! IT’S TIME TO PAY.” Right after he said it I heard another blast. It was much louder than the first two and it was followed by a roar and the sound of glass fragments landing on the sidewalk and the truck. Jessie finally sat back down and put it in gear. As we sped away I sat up and looked back. The Camaro was now crooked in the driveway and flames were pouring out of the hood which had been forced open by the blast. The tree next to the driveway was on fire too. I only saw it for a moment. Just long enough to get the image, and then we turned the corner and we were gone.

  21

  When I got home that night I half expected Steven to be waiting for me with a gun. All the commotion on the street had died down. The fire trucks and cop cars had left and all the curious neighbors had gone back to their homes. If Steven was going to load up his gun and go looking for someone to kill, he would do it now, he wasn’t the type to put it off. I didn’t think I’d been seen in Jessie’s truck, but I might’ve been seen through a window when I dropped the M-1000s at the side of the house. As I was getting ready for bed I had a strong feeling that Steven was somewhere in the house, or just outside, waiting to kill me in my sleep. I went through the house and made sure all the doors and windows were locked, and then I checked the closets. I thought he might be hiding in one of them.

  As I got under my covers a new thought occurred me. The only room I hadn’t checked was Kate’s room, and it was possible that he was in there. He could’ve come in and taken her hostage and had her tied up and gagged in there, just waiting for me to fall asleep. I knew it wasn’t likely, but I hadn’t seen or heard anything to rule it out either. I strained my ears listening for some noise that would tell me if I was in danger. The house was full of small noises. A creak in the floorboards could be a nervous gunman, pacing. Ice cubes falling in the freezer could be Steven dropping the chain he was going to beat me with. The furnace clanging could be someone trying to break the lock on the back door. I heard hundreds of these noises during the night and the sun was coming up when I finally fell asleep.

  Sometime in the afternoon I woke up to the sound of a dog barking somewhere nearby. I turned over and pulled my blanket up to my nose. I must’ve drifted back to sleep, because I had an unsettled dream. I was a small kid again, maybe nine or ten, and I was in a basement with a bunch of other kids. It was cluttered and dark, and there were boxes everywhere. Duct work and pipes crisscrossed the ceiling and walls. Everyone down there was trying to get out. We were all going somewhere and this basement was the last stop before we reached our destination, the final stop in a long escape. There were small windows, and outside I could see a line of kids who were waiting to climb to the top of a fence one at a time. Once they were there they were floating away into the sky. In the basement we were waiting to leave out of a hatch in the wall. When it was my turn I climbed in and shut the door. I pulled a rope and got sucked up into water. I was on the bottom of a swimming pool and there were more kids swimming in a tight pack over my head. I knew I had to get out of the pool before they realized I was there. I nervously swam along the bottom and came up as quietly as I could. I looked at them and saw that they were all blind. They were listening for me and I had to be careful not to make a splash, or breathe too loud. I knew that if they got me I’d become one of them and lose my sight. I carefully pulled myself out of the pool and climbed onto the fence where I’d seen the other kids take off from. I stood and stretched out my arms. As I began to float away I looked back at the pool and I saw myself. I was blind, swimming, and I was also above, floating away. There were two Nicks. I felt sorry for the blind me, and at the same time I was glad to be leaving my sad double behind.

  At around two in the afternoon there was a knock at the door. I was sitting on the steps around back having a smoke. I snuffed out my cigarette and went into the house quietly. The curtains in the living room didn’t quite reach the edge of the window frame, and if you stood in the right place you could see the front porch without moving them. It was just Jeremy. He was walking away when I opened the door. He stopped and turned around. “Oh, you’re home.” He said.

  “Yeah, come on in.”

  He walked in and set his skate down. I shut the door and looked out the window to see if anyone else was out there. “Are you by yourself?” I asked.

  “No I brought my aunt Tilly with me, she’s hiding in your bushes.” He said. “What’s up with you?”

  “Nothing, just bored as usual.” I said. “I was out back having a smoke.”

  “Oh, could I have one?” He asked. I said sure and took him to the back steps that had become my preferred smoking area. I lit a fresh cig and handed him the pack and the lighter. “Well the bunker is all fucked up.” He said.

  “Really? What happened?”

  “It rained last night, and all this mud slid down onto the carpet. We’re gonna have to reinforce the walls and come up with some sort of drainage system. The rug is ruined and the place needs some major work. Michael and me came up with a nice plan for it though. That’s kinda why I came to see you.”

  “Yeah? Let’s hear it.”
I said.

  His eyes widened as he spoke. “Check it out. I know a guy who has the address of a seed bank in northern California, and he said if you send this guy forty bucks, he’ll send you ten seeds. It’s the best. Skunk weed. Don has a copy of that book, The Closet Cultivator, so we’re gonna run electricity to the bunker and grow weed down there.”

  “Why don’t you just buy some skunk weed with seeds in it and use those?” I asked. “Aren’t you worried that the northern California guy will bust you?”

  “Nah, my friend Taylor’s brother used the guy, and it was fine. Supposedly the seeds that you get in commercial weed produce crap plants for some reason. You gotta get them from a seed manufacturer.” He said.

  “Yeah, but if you get lights and plants going down there, you could lose all of it in an afternoon. What if it rains again?”

  “That’s why we gotta reinforce it. I’m thinking we go four more feet in every direction and put a thick layer of gravel on the bottom. Then we build a large wooden box with a slanted roof. It has to be big, like eight by eight by six. We construct the box in the hole, with one big tube for air intake, and another one for exhaust, so we can keep the air flowing. We have