Thunder Falls

by Michael Lilly

  I climb the stairs, and the upstairs hallway is too dark to see any more prints, but I don’t bother anyway—I head straight for the Willa Frye room, its door closed. I stand outside of it, keeping myself as quiet as I can manage, and listen for any noise.

  Silence.

  I’m about to open the door when I hear movement from inside. I step back and crouch against the wall, my gun trained on the doorway, but it remains closed. Then I hear a voice from inside—a gruff, serious-sounding voice that rattles through the air like a marble in a blender.

  “I don’t like this. I don’t like not knowin’ why I do what I do.”

  A silence follows—he must be on the phone.

  “Part of the job, sure—I don’t ask questions, usually—but I’ve been hearing things, picking things up, and I don’t think I can do it.”

  “I don’t give a shit if your business depends on it, I don’t give a shit if your life depends on it. I’m not doing it. Go fuck yourself.”

  He sighs and I hear a thump. Odin senses and catches on to my quiet and follows suit. Then I do what I’ve been trying to tell myself not to do the whole time: I knock on the door.

  “What the fuck?” the guy mutters. “Who’s there?” he calls.

  “I think you and I might have some answers for each other,” I say.

  His conversation led me to think that this guy was hired on as some muscle for this mess. If that’s the case, I just listened to him tell someone on the Keroth side of the field to go fuck himself, and that’s the kind of guy I want on my side.

  “Who are you?”

  “Remy.”

  There’s a silence for a moment—my name is significant to him. I back away from the door in case he comes charging, changes his mind and decides that he wants whatever money he was offered. Instead, there’s the sound of shifting weight and the floorboards creaking. The door swings open, and a massive silhouette fills the doorway. His hands are at his side, without weapons in them.

  “Remy, huh?” the man says. “So what makes you so fuckin’ important someone was willing to pay two hundred thousand to blow your head off?”

  “Probably that I put one pervert in jail and shot another one in the head.”

  “Perverts,” he says, “like that Eboncore guy?” He gestures inward, toward the room and its obsessive décor.

  “We’re working on that one,” I say.

  “Working on it how?”

  “Well, a lot of that case seemed fishy to us, so we’re looking into it. But yes, perverts like that. I don’t know who, specifically, hired you. Probably they didn’t tell you anything valuable, either. But what we’re up against is pretty big. It started in Oregon.”

  I pause for a moment, to give him opportunity to interject or stop me if he wishes, but he only nods and cocks his head a bit, so I tell him the entire story of Riverdell and Portland, Wometzia and Albuquerque, and how I ended up in Ghost Fork. When I’ve finished catching him up, he raises his eyebrows and exhales a gust through his nose. But still, he doesn’t say anything more.

  “So you’re what, a hitman?” I ask.

  He looks up and meets my eye. “Something like that. Hitman, mercenary. People with money come to me to do their dirty work. Some work is dirtier than others. But this…I can’t be a part of this. My no-questions-asked policy is what brought in all of my business, but if that’s what I’m a part of, I don’t know that I can keep it up.”

  “You could always play for the good guys,” I say.

  He chuffs. “The good guys. Good guys and bad guys. Cops and robbers. Us versus them. When I was little, I thought it was easy. So black and white. They make it that way, you know, in books and TV shows. There’s no question as to who the bad guy is. It’s Wile E. Coyote, it’s the dragon, it’s the dog chasing the cat or the cat chasing the mouse. But life was quick to show me the extent of my naiveté. It all gets blurred when the people you love, the people who are close to you, are doing the same things as you see the bad guys doing on television. Then you start to think, ‘Shit, maybe he’s got a good reason for doing what he does.’ And before you know it, you see it everywhere. You start to see the ulterior motives of the supposed good guys, and you start to give the benefit of the doubt to the supposed bad guys. I realized pretty fast that it’s not so black and white, but we’re all just muddled, splotchy gray.”

  I nod. “So what did you do with that insight?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “I just stopped caring. When you take the good and evil labels off of things, it becomes a lot easier to justify certain actions. I guess that’s what started me on the path to where I am now. I figured if these people wanted to hire someone to do something, they would. Being the tool that they chose for that didn’t bother me. Until now, I guess.”

  “I’m sure you’re not a stranger to dark shit like this,” I say, “but there’s a difference between darkness and evil. Darkness is neutral. I don’t mind darkness—I prefer it, even. But it doesn’t have an agenda. It doesn’t aim to kill or hurt, or to rob children of their innocence. It doesn’t vie to proliferate or benefit from people’s misfortune. It isn’t greed or envy. It just is. Evil, on the other hand, is exactly those things. It wants only for itself, to gain and to grow and to spread, to create more evil.”

  The man doesn’t say anything, but leans against the doorframe and nods, crossing his arms.

  In a psychology class I once took, we were taught that crossing one’s arms is a sign of a defensive state of mind. While I don’t think this is inaccurate, I do think that this is often misinterpreted. When people appoint themselves as Body Language Experts, they’ll see a person cross their arms and assume that the person is lying or trying to hide something, but that’s seldom the case. In fact, as I’ve found, it’s often a sign that they’re confronting an uncomfortable truth. These uncomfortable truths make us feel vulnerable, and crossing our arms is a natural way to suppress those feelings of vulnerability. It’s a way to feel safe.

  “I suppose you probably won’t tell me your name,” I say.

  “No way in hell,” he says.

  “Fair. So, what’s next for you?”

  “I have some thinking to do.”

  “I won’t have to worry about running into you during this storm, will I?”

  He laughs, a surprisingly pleasant chuckle, but not without the painful undertone of a wound reopened. “No. Y’know, it’s a little strange. A week ago, I was pumped full of adrenaline, ready to find you and tear you apart. I would’ve enjoyed it, even, just thinking about the money I’d be earning. That’s all it woulda been to me, you know?”

  I know.

  “Well, take care,” I say, “and maybe stay off of Needle Point Boulevard. I think that’s where your reinforcements are supposed to be coming in. Any idea how many there’ll be?”

  “Not many. From what it sounds like, something happened last night that really fucked them up.”

  “Last night?”

  “Yeah. In New Mexico.”

  What the hell?

  Apparently reading my look, he goes on: “Yeah. Some lady they were after shot ‘em up big time. Took out like half of ‘em. Not just half of those who showed up, either. Half of…whoever they are. That’s why they hired me. They’re skeleton crew right now.”

  “…Oh shit.”

  “I know, right? Crazy stuff you’re mixed up in.”

  “I should go. Nice to meet you, and thank you for not killing me.”

  “Uhh, yeah, sure,” he says. He grips his weapon one more time in what seems like an attempted comeback from the part of him that still wants to kill me, but he loosens his grip and drops the gun just as abruptly. He seems taken aback by my sudden urgency, but I have neither the time nor the capacity to explain what this could mean.

  But just what all is involved here? My mother. I don’t know what happened, but there was some kind of crazy shootout and she was involved. And by the sound of it, she handily decimated the mercenaries sent after her. How did
they find her? Who did they send? And what the fuck happened?

  I turn around and head back downstairs and out the window, back toward the heart of Ghost Fork, Odin trotting dutifully at my side.

  Twenty-One

  Esther

  Last Night

  Esther watches the police zoom by, three squad cars screeching through the night, the red and blue lights just shy of painting the undersides of the clouds overhead. She jogs to catch up, hoping to warn them before they take any action that might get them killed.

  She breathes quickly, but her body and mind are far from spent, and she ups her speed little by little until she’s nearly sprinting. The wind playing at her hair and ears seems to be whispering encouragement to her, further filling her with the full-bodied strength of her essence—robust and strong, firm, unrelenting, and capable of love.

  Powerful.

  Thanks to Wometzia’s small size, Esther manages to catch up to the squad cars before anything has happened. She makes sure to call attention to herself before she approaches, lest she accidentally take them by surprise and end up getting shot after all. She waves to attract the attention of Officer Kent, the cornerstone to Wometzia’s police force.

  Officer Kent looks to Esther wide-eyed and motions for her to duck behind one of the cars, where Kent herself comes to meet her.

  “What the hell is happening? I thought you would’ve been inside, pumped full of lead by now!”

  “That’s definitely what they were hoping for,” says Esther. The words come as easily and steadily as a canoe floating on a glassy lake. “I was inside, but I managed to escape. Not without a few…casualties, though.”

  “How many?” asks Kent, her eyebrows raised.

  “…Eleven,” says Esther.

  “You and I are going to have a long talk after this is through. For now, just try to stay out of sight, okay?”

  “You got it,” says Esther. She means it, but she doesn’t think Officer Kent would approve of how she intends to fulfill that promise.

  Esther watches as Kent makes her way to Officer Simpson and begins talking with him in the hushed, serious tone with which Esther is all too familiar. She can’t hear the words, but Kent delivers them in a calm but direct manner that seems to instill confidence even in Officer Simpson’s nervous mind. After she finishes talking with him, she comes back to Esther, still in her crouch.

  “How many more were there?” she asks Esther.

  “A dozen or so. More, maybe.”

  “Christ. You people sure know how to piss other people off.”

  “It’s in the name.”

  “Who are these guys, exactly?”

  “Same as last time. The group that wants to find Remy and gut him for putting one of their leaders in jail and shooting the other one in the face.”

  “I guess they’re not the forgiving type, then?”

  “Doesn’t seem like it. If you have reinforcements—or a SWAT team—it might be a good idea to call them in.”

  Officer Kent nods, then returns to Simpson to relay the plan. Reinforcements will have to come from Albuquerque, nearly an hour away—even ignoring speed limits. Esther doesn’t know whether the rest of the men in the house will be able to sit still for that long, but she also doesn’t intend to let the sand run out of that hourglass.

  She kicks herself for not having armed herself better, but she reminds herself that she hadn’t had the time to do so properly. She had hidden a few firearms around the house, like the one she has with her, but they’re all inside, and accessing them would mean either approaching the house from the front, which would be the equivalent of red target waltzing up the length of the shooting range, or to sneak around to the back. The latter sounds like a decent option, but because that’s where she escaped, it’s probably being watched more intently now.

  Adjusting to assist the flow of blood in her legs, Esther looks on toward the house from behind the squad car. They’ve turned off the kitchen light—smart. It almost looks like they’ve since taken off, but as Esther focuses, she picks up small bits of movement through the kitchen window—shiny objects glinting in the light for a split second, the quick wink of the oven’s clock as someone moves in front of it and out of its way again. The whole property seems to be alive and festering, desperately longing to breathe again. Save me, Esther. Heal me. Purge me of this evil.

  With only a few rounds left in her gun, however, there’s little she can do. She briefly considers trying to steal a weapon from the officers, but is deterred by a vision of Officer Kent intending to draw her weapon and defend herself only to find her holster empty.

  Maybe she can find a way to get one of the ones she’s hidden in the house. There’s one more in the kitchen—a tiny revolver perfect for a bad soap opera—tucked behind a sack of rice in the pantry. But the kitchen is definitely off-limits. There are two in the bedroom, one in the living room, and one in the bathroom. The living room is adjacent to the kitchen and is thus also a no-go. The one in the bathroom isn’t very accessible, either.

  In the bedroom, one is attached to the inside of a lip in the woodwork of the headboard. The other is underneath an armoire—right next to the open window. She reminds herself of the dangers of approaching the house from behind, but thinking about it now, she doubts that they would have very many people watching it anyway. And if she can find a way to divert their attention, even for a few seconds, she can get in, get her weapon, and get back out.

  Before she knows it, she is backing away from the vehicle and circling around the side of the property, opting to close in on its east side—its only accessible window is in the bathroom, and it’s both too high up and too opaque to be useful to anyone on the inside looking out. Still, she tries to keep her face hidden—a pale face is so often what gives people away in the dark.

  She reaches the house quickly and listens for any sort of reaction from the inside. They’re making a surprising amount of noise, but nothing rushed or panicked, as it would be if they’d spotted her.

  She creeps toward the back and peeks around the corner. Nobody is there, as she expected. Before moving, she stops once more to listen for noise. She hears a couple of voices floating from inside the window. Once again, she can’t pick out any individual words, but their voices sound fearful, almost reverent.

  Good.

  As Esther approaches the window, hugging the wall, the night goes still. The tiny, whimsical breeze that has been playing at her hair dies down and the clouds overhead, previously churning with the threat of a thunderstorm, seem to halt and freeze, as though they themselves don’t want to miss this. Esther’s footsteps crunch in the dirt and echo off the wall. She times them to the rhythm of the conversation inside in order to mask the noise.

  She crouches even lower than before as she approaches the window. She can hear their conversation now, as clearly as if she were standing in between them.

  “What if she comes back?” says one of them.

  “I don’t know, man.”

  “She took out half of us. They said this would be a quick job.”

  “With this many of us, it was supposed to be.”

  “How on earth did we fuck this one up?”

  “She’s good, man. We knew that coming in. JT said from the beginning we probably wouldn’t all come back. And now look where we are.”

  “Where’s JT anyway?”

  “Went out to look for her, I think.”

  “I hope to god he finds her.”

  “Me, too. Before she finds him, at least. Or us.”

  Only two of them, it seems. Perfect. All Esther has to do is be consistent in her usual accuracy and hit rate (or even half of it), and she’ll be able to grab the piece and run before anyone can get into the room. Still crouching against the window, she breathes slowly, steadily, hoping to invite in the sense of knowingness she had earlier, when she could visualize exactly where the intruders were.

  But it doesn’t come. I guess I’ll just have to be quick on the draw, she
thinks.

  Crouching beneath the center of the window, Esther stands up and sees them: a gangly-looking guy, maybe in his twenties or early thirties, with dark, curly hair and facial hair that makes him look like a used lollipop plucked from a barber’s floor. The other guy is thick, slouched, and his eyebrows soar to his hairline just before Esther puts a bullet into him.

  The curly-haired guy barely has time to look from his friend to Esther before he is delivered the same fate. Normally, Esther is much more discriminate with her shots. But she’s happy to make an exception in the event of an invasion of child molesters.

  As fast as she can, she hops through the window frame and reaches under the armoire to grab her fully loaded weapon. After vaulting back outside and stepping out of the room’s line of sight, she checks the magazine, racks the weapon, flicks the safety off, and points the gun toward the window, right where she estimates a curious head might poke out to look for her. This doesn’t happen, but she does hear much more commotion from the inside. Most of it is curse words, thrown out and strung together in creative ways.

  Esther re-engages the safety and tucks the gun into the back of her jeans, its cold weight pressing against her lower back. Now keeping an extra careful eye out for anyone else who might be outside on the property, she works her way back toward the squad cars, where Officer Kent greets her with a wide-eyed rage.

  “Where the hell did you go?” Kent asks.

  “Sorry. I had to look around.”

  “I heard gunfire. You kill any more of them?”

  Esther stays quiet but gives Kent her best guilty child look.

  “You stay here now, I mean it,” says Kent.

  “Just so you know, I got a pretty solid confirmation on their numbers. I overheard two of them talking and one of them said that I killed half of them. He might have been estimating, but if it’s true, that’s thirteen down now, out of twenty-two. Oh, and one of them left the house to try to find me. So there should be eight inside. Give or take.”