Moving With The Sun

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  Chapter 40 – Anonymous

  Dear Diary,

  I am down to days, perhaps even hours, before escaping this oppressive paradise. I had planned a rather showy going-away celebration for the Colonists – several large pots of poisoned gumbo – but the weather is not accommodating. Nobody wants to come to my party in the rain. It has also created some logistical problems in terms of procuring supplies for my expedition. Everyone is staying inside, so there are people occupying the two places to which I require covert access: Ingrid’s secret room and the Love Shack. How I loathe that ridiculous name…almost as much as I detest my time spent there in the persona I invented to ‘blend in.’

  It chafes, it annoys, it nauseates. But not for much longer.

  I will wait for the kitchen staff to exit the Love Shack, and then I will ransack it. Afterward, I will take the footpath to Ingrid’s house and gain entry by whatever means necessary. There has never been a door that could keep me out for long. I daresay the old woman doesn’t always remember to check every lock in that garish monstrosity. I know she leaves the upstairs bedroom window open. I’ve often stood in the shadows below and watched the gauzy curtains rippling in the night breeze.

  It appears that I won’t get to kill everyone before I go, but I shall at least enjoy disposing of that old bird. She represents two things I despise: wealth and privilege. As a child born into poverty and ignorance, I had to fight for everything. I had to use the utmost stealth while acquiring the knowledge my intellect demanded. If I was discovered reading library books under my threadbare bedcovers at night, I would be beaten. Education wasn’t revered – it was feared. It was deemed ‘uppity’ and ‘snooty,’ and anyone who desired it was scorned.

  Can you imagine such? No, Diary, I think not. Only those who have lived in the inbred backwater of Appalachia have an inkling as to what a gifted little girl would have suffered.

  And, oh, how I suffered. I have the switchin’ scars and the absent teeth to prove it.

  It’s a shame that I have only so recently come into my own, a battered Lepidoptera shedding its restrictive larval form and emerging as the glorious creature it was meant to be. I will make the most of what remains of my time on earth as the Angel of Death. Even now I perceive magnificent obsidian wings sprouting moth-like from my shoulders. I sometimes feel lightened by their silent fluttering movements, as if my feet barely touch the ground while going about the chore of pretending to be someone I’m not.

  Those days are soon coming to an end. When I leave this place in my sublime new incarnation, I will set off on my solitary journey and never again assume a persona other than my own.

  But first, there are a few minor tasks to complete...

  Chapter 41 – Fergus

  “Stay frosty...stay frosty...those words and the gesture toward the knife in my pocket...they mean something.”

  Fergus had lost count of the hours and days he had been inside The Box, or as he had come to think of it, Lucifer’s Anus – surely there was nothing more disgusting than the anal cavity of the most powerful fallen angel. He had acquiesced to the demands of his body and filled the bucket. He was used to the smell, and as bad as it was to him, it would be much worse for whomever was charged with the task of releasing him. This thought prompted another: when would he be released? His punishment seemed to be going on for too long. Had something happened? He knew that his skyscraping friend was not out there, surreptitiously protecting him, because Lester was with Amelia. What if everyone else had abandoned the building and he had been forgotten? Amelia was planning a rescue mission, but what if something happened to her on the way? That little woman was a force of nature, but she was still human and therefore fallible. He tried to remember how long it had been since they had last communicated. Three hours? Twenty-four hours? It was impossible to tell.

  The Ritz cracker cartons were empty and their wax paper liners licked clean. His stomach had been rumbling nonstop for a while now. His thoughts had become foggy and detached. Sometimes it was difficult to discern if he was sitting in a metal cube in the Tequesta Costco building or in some stinky, cosmic backwater black hole. Probably in the vicinity of Uranus.

  He shook his head, struggling to clear his thoughts. These bizarre mental wanderings had been happening frequently. He hadn’t lost his mind, but he felt it fraying around the edges.

  “Stay frosty...hmmmm. And the knife bit...hmmmm.”

  He shook his head again with such force, it felt like something dislodged inside his skull.

  “You’re losing it, mate. The food is gone, the bucket is full, and there’s a marked absence of naked women in here. It’s time to go.”

  He realized he had been subconsciously contemplating a prison break, but the notion hadn’t fully coalesced in his brain. He wouldn’t wait for a rescue that may not come. Besides, there would be much less danger for Amelia and Tung if he were to amble up to them on the road, all safe and sound before they arrived at the Terminator headquarters to bust him out.

  He reached for the device in the pocket of his shorts. It was no simple switchblade, but rather a Victorinox Swiss Army multi-tool, boasting several blades, scissors, a wire cutter, two screwdrivers, a bender, a scraper, and a prying implement, all folded into a four-inch metal ruler. You could build a bomb or deliver a baby with the thing, and he would put it to good use now on the door of The Box. He hadn’t been lying to Aubrey when he told her he could pick any lock this side of a maximum security prison. And since she didn’t strike him as someone who would forget a significant detail, he suspected she might be having The Box watched, waiting for the exact move he intended to make now: escape.

  He ran his hands over the surface of the door, then the knob and locking mechanism, then the aluminum casing of the doorway. He closed his eyes – even though there was no discernible difference between when they were open or not – and pictured the structure in its entirety, fleshing out all the details in his mind. Then he visualized the specific movements the multi-tool would make to free him, like a red-haired turd squeezed from the bung hole of Lucifer himself.

  Twenty minutes later, he was free, and breathing in a lungful of undefiled air. He surveyed the perimeter and saw no one. Perhaps the building had been abandoned, as he had feared.

  The rubber soles of his cross-trainers emitted faint squeaks as he headed toward the back of the building. There would be fewer guards at the back door leading out to Tent Town than at the front door near Aubrey’s office. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about Spaz, the Linda Hamilton wannabe; although if he were forced to engage in hand-to-hand combat with a guard, he wouldn’t have minded having a go at her.

  “Focus, Fergus,” he muttered to himself. He stopped at the end of the aisle, peering around the corner to the door with the EXIT sign and the crash bar. As expected, no sexy woman wearing a black tank top and toting a semi-automatic rifle stood sentinel. Instead, one of the two twins who normally guarded Aubrey’s office was stationed there, wearing a bored expression and running the fingers of his left hand along the cartridges in the crisscrossing bandoliers covering his chest. The M16 hung at his side. The index finger of the right hand was placed above the trigger. The safety was off.

  Fergus pulled his head back around the corner and contemplated his next move.

  “I didn’t know you were getting out today,” a child’s voice whispered through the stacks of paper towels which separated Fergus’s aisle from the one next to it.

  “Annabelle, my dear. You scared the shi...you scared the bejesus out of me.”

  “What’s bejesus?”

  “I have no idea, but it just squirted into my underpants.”

  He smiled at the giggle.

  “I think I know what bejesus is now.”

  “That’s because you’re a smart cookie. Tell me about the situation here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Lester is gone, yes?”

  “Yes. He left to track some people that had been spotted going up th
e river.”

  “I see. And was he alone?”

  “No, Spaz went with him. They should be back soon, though. I know he’ll be happy that you’re out of The Box. Was it terrible in there? I’ll understand if you’re not up to reading to me until you’ve recovered. You’ll want to get a bath too,” she added.

  “You can smell me from over there?”

  “Yes. Have you ever been to the monkey house at a zoo?”

  “Say no more, child. Other than Lester being gone, everything is normal?”

  “Yes. I’ve been hanging out with Aubrey a lot. I think she really likes me.”

  Fergus frowned. “Indeed? What have you two ladies been up to?”

  “She’s been telling me stuff. About how everything runs here and why she has to make difficult decisions sometimes.”

  “Like what?”

  “Sometimes she has to make decisions that not everyone is happy about. Like the meat thing. People definitely weren’t happy about that at first.”

  “Understandably so.”

  “But then after a while they got used to the idea. If they didn’t, they had to be dealt with. You can’t have order without discipline, and you can’t have discipline if people are allowed to complain.”

  Annabelle’s parroted words had come directly from Aubrey’s lips. With a creeping sense of disquiet, he wondered how much time the child had been spending with the psychopath while he was in The Box.

  “I know you’re impressed by her, Annabelle. But as smart and pretty as she is, she doesn’t know everything. She’s not right about everything, either. What would your mommy have thought about eating people?”

  He heard a shuffling of small feet on the other side of the paper towels. “She wouldn’t have minded. Before she died, she told me to eat her after she was gone if I got really hungry. So I did. She kept me alive until I got good with my gun and could shoot squirrels.”

  Fergus felt the bile rising in his throat.

  “Oh, Annabelle. I’m so sorry. That is not something a child can do without being forever changed by it.”

  “It’s okay, Fergus. She was right, and so is Aubrey.”

  “Stay put. I’ll come around to your side.”

  “No you won’t,” a woman’s voice said from behind.

  He had been talking into the paper towels, intent on his conversation with Annabelle, and had let his guard down in the process. He pivoted slowly, dreading what he would see.

  “Good job, Annabelle. You did exactly what I told you.”

  He looked down the barrel of a Heckler and Koch 9mm handgun. Annabelle scampered up the aisle to stand next to the psychopath.

  “Well, bollocks,” Fergus said. “I did not see that coming.”

  “Didn’t think you would.” Aubrey smiled, patting the blond head affectionately.

  “I’m Aubrey’s understudy now. She’s teaching me everything I need to know. Someday I may be in charge if she and her sister ever want to take a vacation.”

  “I see. So what’s to be done with me?”

  He watched the little girl look up into the face of the young woman, waiting for a difficult decision, no doubt.

  Suddenly he felt a scratching sensation inside his brain. He barely managed to keep from smiling.

  “We’ll take you out back for a public execution. We’re going to make an example of you. Let people see what happens to people who try to escape. Annabelle, go tell everyone to be at the shooting range in ten minutes.”

  A quick bob of the blond curls and the child was gone.

  “Don’t try anything. I’m very good with this.” Aubrey brandished the handgun.

  “Yes, I imagine so. It seems that many people are these days.”

  “Keep those hands up and walk toward the back door.”

  “Very well. I don’t suppose there’s any point in groveling for mercy. You don’t strike me as the merciful sort.”

  “You got that right. I wasn’t born with empathy or compassion. Mercy is not in my nature.”

  “Neither you nor your sister were born with those traits?”

  “Correct. Keep moving. Turn left here. We knew what we were when we were nine-years-old. The same age as Annabelle.”

  “How can such a young child know that she is a monster?”

  “Because it was the only thing that made sense.”

  Fergus nodded. He supposed that was true. He remembered the psychology books in the woman’s office. She had studied about herself in those books; had probably come to terms with her psychopathy years ago. Perhaps even embraced it.

  Some monsters are happy being monsters.

  “Open it,” she said to the man guarding the back door.

  Fergus stepped out into a drizzling, overcast day. He couldn’t tell if it were early morning or late afternoon since the sun was obscured. Gray clouds hung low and oppressive in the sky, the waterlogged roof of a child’s abandoned blanket fort.

  “Hands up,” Aubrey said from behind.

  He had been lowering his arms a fraction with each step. He had hoped she wouldn’t notice, but of course she had. Psychopaths possess a superior intellect as well as excellent observational skills.

  “What’s to stop me from running? My odds of survival would be better than to submit to a firing squad.”

  “Because if you run, I’ll put a bullet in your knee and then I will slowly torture you to death. If you behave, you’ll be shot in the head. Quick and painless.”

  “How could you shoot such a handsome man?”

  “I won’t be doing the shooting. Annabelle will.”

  Suddenly he thought he might need to vomit.

  “This way. Past the tents.”

  He was being ushered toward the open grassy area beyond the sleeping quarters. It was where the Terminators conducted training exercises and target practice. A chain-link fence, adorned with spiraling razor wire along its top, encircled the perimeter. Curious onlookers appeared in the openings of tents as he and Aubrey walked by. He studied their faces and saw a mixture of sympathy and excitement. He thought about his philosophical conversation with Lester: Are there mostly moral or immoral folks in your organization? He knew he could expect no help from any of the Terminators; Aubrey’s hold on them was too secure. Fortunately there were others in the vicinity who had never met the beautiful monster. The question was, would they arrive in time to stop his execution?

  “Keep walking. See the target in the middle? Stand there and keep your hands up like you have them now. Don’t lower them little by little like you were doing in the building. I’m not an idiot.”

  “You are many things. An idiot is not one of them.”

  Aubrey stopped fifty yards from the bullet-scarred plywood on which human-shaped silhouettes had been painted. Fergus continued on, trudging through the weed-choked field as slowly as possible. His clothes were soaked. Mud sucked at his sneakers with every step. He wondered how long it had been raining. Was it a precursor to the tempest Amelia was so worried about?

  The notion seemed absurd at the moment. You could easily avoid a hurricane; not so easy to dodge a bullet sent from a would-be sniper. Annabelle had been killing squirrels with her rifle for months. It must require considerable skill to hit a moving target that small. She would have no problem hitting his stationary, red-haired head from half a football field away, even in the rain.

  He reached the plywood at last. The human figure drawn on this one was small. He imagined his body filled in the empty space perfectly. He turned, preparing to face his diminutive one-man firing squad. During his slow walk to the targets, a congregation had gathered near Aubrey. He recognized the rat-faced pharmacist and a few other people to whom he had been introduced prior to going into The Box.

  His stomach felt like a bowling ball floating in battery acid. He knew he was in trouble. Amelia’s last communique had revealed her location. Tung’s weapon would not arrive in time.

  “Lucifer’s Anus is looking rather appealing right about now,” he m
uttered, then caught his breath when he saw Annabelle’s blond curls emerge from the crowd.

  He had an epiphany.

  “Lester knew,” he said out loud. “Lester knew Annabelle would turn. He was leaving and knew I might be in danger in her presence. That’s what he had meant with his ‘stay frosty’ warning. Damn it, Fergus. You fell down on the job. You got distracted by that adorable killer, and now you’re about to pay the ultimate price for your carelessness.”

  He watched the little girl say something to Aubrey, then saw Aubrey nod. He watched her load the weapon that looked much too big for such small arms.

  He knew better, though.

  He watched the barrel rise. In a few more seconds, a bullet would be coming to claim him.

  He pinged Amelia again, noted her minor progress, and sighed.

  “I love you, my darling.” He sent the message with his scythen, having no idea if she received it or not.

  “I’ve had a good, long life. Perhaps I’ll meet up with Thoozy again. That would be lovely. We’ll have a nice chat about women – the ones we’ve loved, the ones we’ve lost, and the ones who wanted to kill us.”

  He took a deep breath, resisting the temptation to lower his eyelids. He needed to see the bullet. It would be what carried him to Thoozy.

  His eyes widened at the unexpected tableau unfolding before him. Annabelle’s rifle had been pointing at him. The blond curls hovered near the scope. He didn’t see the small finger move toward the trigger, but sensed the action’s imminence...was bracing for it.

  So he was surprised when she pivoted suddenly and shot the real-life Little Mermaid. Was surprised again when she twirled in the opposite direction and fired at the two bandolier-wearing men who were charging her. By the time she had taken out the guards posted on the roof of the Costco building, he was no longer surprised.