Waiting for Mister Cool

by Gerard Houarner

  “I understand your concerns, Max,” Santos said, his voice fading. “But be aware, I represent failure. I am, unfortunately, the embodiment of this place – the burned down resort, the circus graveyard, the doomsday weapon which never delivered its threat. What Morris has brought to me is hope. The possibility of redemption. I wasn’t sure until now I could have a new life. I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to die. His coin is as valuable as yours.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Aside from what Morris has contracted you for? Perhaps you’d like to join us, Max,” Santos said, forcing words out between gasps for breath, “and find out. Run a different branch of the organization Morris has established. Perform more hands-on work. Perhaps with the help of your . . .daughters?”

  “More like nieces,” Max said. “I adopted them. They call me Uncle Beast. In French.”

  “I only saw them for a moment, but I think they might have potential, as well.”

  “They’re not here right now, Mr. Santos,” Morris said. “I warned him about bringing kids along on a job –”

  “I’d expect the unexpected from someone like him.”

  “The job I came here to do isn’t done yet,” Max said.

  “Then I’ll see you on the other side and we’ll talk some more.” A rattle escaped from deep within Santos, and his eyes fluttered.

  Morris indicated the entrance with a nod of his head, then said, “I’ll mop up tonight, boss.”

  “I am . . . tired,” Santos said, turning away and speaking to the wall. The curves of his body settled, as if the tectonic plates of his bones had collapsed.

  For a moment, Max thought the old man had died.

  “Don’t worry, we won’t need any more backup,” Morris said, heading out. “As soon as the boys get here, we’ll head over to the other side and clean out the rest of the rats. They can’t have much left.”

  Max, who had started following Morris, stopped. “You know better. You’ve been trained, you have experience.”

  Morris paused at the entrance. “You get paid the same if the job lasts a day or a week.”

  “Did you see what attacked us? Do you have any idea what they were on? What was wrong with them?”

  “What’s wrong with them is what’s wrong with the other side.” Morris crossed his arms, and his voice had modulated into the fast, flat tone of command. “That’s why we have to wipe them out.”

  “I thought the ‘other side’ were child molesters. What else is going on? Do they have more resources over there? Can they get stronger, faster, better?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Is that all you can do – doubt? What’s your intel on the enemy? Those were kids out there. Are there any adults? Has anyone been keeping an eye on the other camp, watching for reinforcements?”

  Morris waited for a moment, and Max thought he was playing to Santos, establishing his dominance in case Max really did join their operation. “Are you afraid?”

  The Beast strained against the restraints of the cottage’s light. Max imagined a few ways he might kill Morris before answering, “No, I’m a professional.”

  “Really. Do pros normally eat the enemy’s eyeballs? His dick and balls? Because they didn’t teach us that one at SEAL school.”

  Max refrained from giving him the obvious answer: maybe they should have. Words were stupid. Only action mattered. Instinct and experience told him to kill Morris, and Santos. Then go after Lee and the girls, and during the inevitable fight between camps, take a vehicle and get out.

  Taking the time to clean up the twins’ mess, of course. That body would not match any, in terms of wounds, found in the vicinity. Even the ones marked by the Beast. That fact might instigate a separate line of investigation when the authorities discovered what had happened in the county.

  But with the Beast restrained, Max had the chance to indulge in a curiosity that was usually overcome by more basic desires. Enigmas teased him, and sometimes he liked to be teased. The questions seemed more complicated than the ones he’d run across along his usual range of missions and amusements. Here was a chance to gain experience in a different theater of war. Perhaps learn something that might save his life another time.

  What’s more, he’d be acting impulsively, like Morris, if he simply took the man out and went out blindly looking for Lee and the twins, without intel or backup. It would be unprofessional to kill, right now.

  And with a little luck, there’d be bigger opportunities for killing – the wild, careless, savage kind that fulfilled both the Beast and him – if he just waited a little while longer.

  The hunt was not always easy. Stalking required patience. Max settled into his silence, camouflaging intent behind a mask of knowing his place. Not a lie, he thought with satisfaction. He did know his place. It was just not the one Morris needed to convince himself Max belonged in. He braced himself against the bullshit that was coming, and the dizziness brought on by spending more time in the sickly light.

  “I knew what type of killer I was getting when I laid the money out for you,” Morris went on, at last, speaking slowly, as if savoring his advantage. “The kind who could take on these assholes and not flinch. Turns out you’re a hell of a lot better than advertised. Freakier. But better. Just the anchor I need to keep everyone steady, and take some of the heat off the others. I appreciate that. I really do. And Mr. Santos offering you a spot on the team, that’s special. That’s a cut of the action, Max. A cut of what’s really going on out here. I think you caught a clue about what I’ve been talking about during the shit storm we had. So my advice to you, my friend, is to ease up and enjoy the ride. Stick to doing what you do best. Put a leash on the attitude. Get with the team.”

  “I am on the team,” Max said, the words feeling filth in his mouth. “But something’s wrong here. Something doesn’t feel right.”

  “A lot’s wrong here.”

  “What were those kids?”

  “Nothing. Literally. Pieces of emptiness. Drones.”

  Max shook his head. “That doesn’t explain anything. And something hit me. Right when it all started. Something big. Almost took me out. It was airborne.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. A bit of friendly fire, that.”

  “You need to explain what’s going on.”

  “No. I don’t. I need to pay you when you finish helping me clear this facility. If you really do join us, I need to brief you on what you need to know, no more, no less. That’s it.”

  Max rode his own silence, letting the Beast do the speaking deep inside of him, from the poisoned sac in which it rested.

  Morris stepped out. Max took his time getting to the door, not wanting to appear too eager get out of the light. Morris was apparently used to its effect. And, to use his words, he was highly motivated. Unless he was missing an essential human characteristic, physical or psychological, which granted him immunity.

  Max had never had reason to celebrate the human aspects of his existence, outside of enjoying the benefits of appetite and sensation. He didn’t like to think of himself as related to the meat that was his usual prey. But if one of those fragile facets differentiated him from Morris, he could reconcile himself with the flaw’s presence. Even if he had to pay for it by puking his guts out while Morris stood by laughing.

  He wouldn’t be laughing for long.

  The night air, scrubbed clean by lightning and rain, swept away Max’s unease. The Beast, released from its cage, surged through him, made his cock hard, caused him to stumble for a couple of steps as he was nearly compelled to jump Morris and break his neck. Not yet, Max told himself, and the Beast. Not yet.

  The storm had ended, at last, leaving the air chilled. Max rubbed his shirt sleeve, regretting the wet clothes, and discovered they had dried out in the cottage. He didn’t want to think about what the cottage’s light might have done to his insides. His hard cock shriveled, went limp.

  The rest of Morris’s men were spread across the camp and the surroundin
g fields, sweeping high-power lantern lights across the ground and harvesting the dead, piling them into stacks. A few were putting out the fires in the vehicles, others trying to start new ones with soaked tinder. Shadows moved through the deeper darkness along the perimeter, and Max was glad to see the more serious effort in maintaining security. Still, there was too much noise, and if Morris’s enemies hadn’t yet figured out their attack had failed, the activity on this side of the installation would certainly tell them. But then, the frantic assault they’d just survived told him both sides of the game were being played by amateurs.

  “Let’s get back to Cal and get organized,” Morris said, waving Max on. “You see, my philosophy is you run your enemy down when they retreat. Cut him down from behind, drive him into the sea. Terrorize the son of a bitch so he’ll never fuck with you again. Marathon, Issus, they teach you stuff like that in military college. Shit like Wounded Knee? I don’t have a problem with that. We were just making a point. Look what happened to Germany after Dunkirk. You’ve got to wipe your enemy out while you have the chance, otherwise they’ll come back and kick your ass.”

  “Chasing the Greeks at Plataea didn’t do the Persians any good in the short run,” Max said. “Neither did wiping out Custer at the Little Bighorn, in the long term.”

  Morris glared. Cal called to him, and for a few minutes Morris was distracted by the demands of outlining his plan of attack. Max didn’t like the prospect of splitting their force, one going through the hedges and across the heart of the installation while the rest circled through the woods, just like their attackers had done. Morris seemed intent on treating the opposition as if they were nothing more than vagabonds or, at best, a gang.

  “Maybe they have a secret weapon,” Max said. “Like you do.”

  Morris shook his head, waved Cal off, and pointed to a break in the spiny trees and brush by a cottage next to Santos’s where some of their assailants had come through. “Look, I’m not going to argue military theory with a guy who’s never studied the art of war,” he said, leading the way to the brush. “I’m not saying you’re not talented at what you do. But you’re a loner, not a team guy. One of those people who can’t see the big picture, not that you’d complain about the environment or civil rights or any of that shit. Obviously, we share a lot of values. But most people don’t understand there’s a bigger plan, and when that plan is fulfilled, everything will turn out all right because all the details have been figured out and even if they haven’t, the guys running the show are smart and strong enough to make sure the right things happen.”

  “You have to give yourself to a higher power,” Max said.

  Morris didn’t look back as he said, “You can work for us now, or you can work for us later. The pay’s much better if you join us now.”

  Max thought he could be talking with one of his usual employers.

  Flashlights and loud voices carved the air with sharp intent. Max looked back and squinted as a bright, white beam caught him in the face. Men in groups of twos and threes were fanning out, some heading for the tree line, others following Morris to the cottages and the natural fence. Judging from clothes, weapons and attitude, it looked like most of Morris’s techs were taking the long way around. None of the men seemed to be carrying military night optics, but at least they turned off their lamps as they approached the trees. He hoped the sprained-ankle casualty rate wasn’t going to be too high.

  They couldn’t have made less of an effort to conceal the attack. The Beast coiled inside Max, grumbling about a trap, a set-up. Max had been betrayed enough times to feel his demon’s suspicions boiling inside him. But listening to Morris, he also remembered that situations blamed on conspiracies were just as often caused by plain stupidity. These men weren’t criminals or dogmatic fundamentalists. They were glorified bureaucrats, armed and as dangerous to themselves as to their enemy, braced by an ideological agenda he hadn’t yet been able to grasp and a pseudo-religious zeal that allowed them follow whatever Santos had become in his prison cottage. They were arrogant little men, dedicated to a cause that promised them rewards Max couldn’t understand: forgiveness, redemption, communion with a higher power.

  Max’s laughter made Morris turn to him for a moment. Then Cal came up to them, still limping, his beard trimmed and the torn skin on his face awkwardly bandaged. A few other men who moved like they were the best of the lot followed him. Weapons were distributed – in addition to the M16 and an old military .45, Max took an eight-inch hunting knife. He asked for grenades, but couldn’t get any.

  Morris took a radio, clipped it to his belt, slipped the headset on. One of the men took off his headphones, another took a swig from a flask. Cal and Morris ignored them. Even the best still had feet firmly planted in the everyday world of beer and loud music, for all the promised glories. They were not subtle. They were, in fact, exactly what they’d appeared to be when Max first saw them: stupid.

  Morris directed teams toward the hedge wall, keeping the rest of his little army spread out, far from his own position. Staying close to Morris’s flank, Max supposed Morris had calculated that even in the worst-case scenario, there would be enough survivors to perform the work needed to bring the town, or the facility it apparently masked, or the graveyard it had become over the years, back to life. And in that worst-case scenario, Max also supposed there’d be a little more forgiveness to share for everyone who survived.

  Max regretted stumbling across this game just as it had started. If they’d taken care of the twins’ victims and come across this battlefield, even Lee would have enjoyed the slaughter they might have inflicted. But besides the killing of Morris, his men, Santos, and whoever lay waiting for them across the carnival zone, there was now also the possibility of destroying the thing in which they’d all placed their hopes. Whether something real or imagined, solid or insubstantial, Max could sense what drew their faith was not a small thing. Its pain would be vast, and the ripples from its passing would carry far. It would have been shameful to miss such an opportunity.

  The promise of murdering not only Morris and his men, but what they carried in their hearts, made Max light on his feet, and the Beast quiet in his heart – a perfect stalking pair.

  Chapter 5

  Cal went first into the hedge wall, wearing a headlamp and widening the passage through the brush that had already been cut by hacking at the tangle of branches and vines that seemed nearly solid in the lantern light. Rainwater sprayed down on everyone who followed him in as branches trembled overhead. The line of men scraped their shoulders against the cottage wall and made elaborate efforts to avoid touching vegetation bristling with thorns and spikes. Even the serrated edges of some of the leaves looked dangerous. Max followed their lead, though he’d forgotten to take a flashlight, and had to rely on the cottage wall rubbing against his left shoulder, and jittery, roving beams of white and red light randomly cutting up the semi-solid darkness to make his way.

  They passed a broken, low-hanging branch from which blood from the teenagers who’d used the passage in their attack still dripped from razor-edged nettles. Despite the reminder of the pleasures it had just feasted on, the Beast grumbled, feeling imprisoned by walls of nature. One of the men complained he’d widened the passage only a few days ago when he’d taken a tour of duty in the steeple keeping the fire lit.

  “It’s like super kudzu,” he said, “with a bite.”

  “Shut up, Keitz,” Morris added. “Be grateful it grew back enough to slow down the assault.”

  Max wanted to ask Morris why he hadn’t secured their side of the hedge with a removable section of the vicious brush, and put his hand out to grab one of the small leaves off a vine. He thought he’d been careful, but a thorn stung him immediately as he tore off the leaf. Pushing on, the oily leaf slid between his fingers, and an edge sliced his fingertip.

  The world spun for a moment, and he had touch of nausea, like a rookie pulling his first maneuvers in an F/A-18 trainer.

  He lifted the
LED flashlight from Morris’s belt, flipping through red and green until he settled on the clear lens, and took a closer look at the greenery. Though there appeared to be a mix of plants growing over the skeletal remains of dead wood, from a sturdy foundation of trees to a variety of shrubs and bushes, all draped in a knotty vine that liked to curl and twine but never choked, they all shared the same berries, nestled in a ring of thorns, surrounded by a variety of different leaves, some short, narrow, arrow-shaped, others serrated, still others a cluster of needles, and others broad and innocently smooth-edged. Every shoot and limb, no matter the plant type, had the identical thorns protecting the berries.

  Neither birds nor squirrels had challenged the hedgerow’s defenses to build their nests, and even insects spurned the feeding grounds of litter among the roots and scattered over root-smothered earth. There was not a trace of moths, beetles, caterpillars, as if the dense foliage held no temptation for them. The cicadas had let the air fall silent.

  Berries, small and beady, like eyes torn from demons, gazed back at Max as he probed the tangled jungle with the light, blinking languidly across the lush desert, the absence of cycles of life and death, from the depths of a landscape that was simply an end of things.