The Storm Giants

by Pearce Hansen

  Everett reached out, grasped David’s right thumb, and curled it back against the boy’s palm in an iron grip. He squeezed David’s thumb within his fist. David cried out, dropping off the stool onto one knee.

  “Where’s Otis?” Everett asked. “Where’s Aaron?”

  “In the garage,” David said, his eyes screwed tight shut. “Both in the garage.”

  Everett led David by his thumb down the hall to the kitchen. He plucked up a meat cleaver embedded in the butcher block. He spun the cleaver on its axis. The blade hummed as it rotated, and he made it stop in proper cutting alignment. Whenever he picked up a new knife, he hoped it would make the same bell like tones that Silent’s blade had so long ago in Hayward. He’d yet to find the right knife however.

  They went outside and through the undergrowth toward the outbuilding garage. Everett glided along; David stumbled in his grip, impeding his progress.

  “I know you wouldn’t hurt me,” David said.

  “Silence,” Everett said.

  Aaron and another Phisherman loomed out of the shrubbery ahead. Metal glinted in their hands.

  “That’s close enough,” Aaron said to Everett, and turned to the man at his side. “We’re far enough away from the house.”

  “You’re right,” Everett said, and flung David off to the side.

  David bounced off a tree trunk and flailed to the ground. Everett finally deciphered the enigmatic look Aaron gave him when Phil visited the room earlier. Aaron was the one afraid. Phil was full of shit, playing vulnerable as a ploy.

  Aaron needed to be made dead and Everett was the one to do it. All the lines pointed to Aaron and through him. The lightning bolt was a bright arc of knowledge.

  Time now slowed to a molasses crawl, as it always did. No fear, no rage, only necessity.

  As Aaron raised the pistol Everett whirled to the outside, closing the gap with all the time in the world. Everett daintily hacked the meat cleaver into Aaron’s carotid with surgical precision, just hard enough to sever the artery, yet not hard enough to embed the blade any deeper in the throat than necessary. A fan of arterial blood sprayed out to Aaron’s left. The slow motion time flow made the blood seem to hang in the air forever. Everett spun away to make a more elusive target, and avoid getting Aaron’s DNA all over him.

  Aaron’s partner was trying to throw down with his own pistol. Everett slithered toward him like a piece of silk fluttering in the void, hacking the wrist of the guy’s gun hand hard enough to chop through the ulna. The guy yodeled a few meaningless chords. His piece tumbled from his hand as his half severed wrist dangled like a mitten on a string.

  Everett continued his whirling dervish death dance through one more spin around. His midbrain told him there were no more targets and the timer snapped back into normal duration flow. But Everett was still in the middle of process and this was not the completion of the line.

  He stood in the midst of his victims, panting and trembling in hated reaction. Aaron was busy bleeding out at his feet. Aaron’s boy had sunk to his knees holding his ruined wrist.

  David was frozen half way to his feet, staring at the bloody meat cleaver in Everett’s hand. David’s trembling ghost face let Everett know the storm giants were glowing from his eyes.

  David moaned and tried scrambling away into the shrubbery. He yelped when Everett caught him by the heel, dragged him to his feet and re imposed the thumb hold.

  Everett kicked the wounded Phisherman in the side, hard enough to penetrate the shock of the wound. “Up,” Everett said, and herded the two the rest of the way to the garage.

  The side door was open. The wounded man collapsed to huddle next to it. Everett shot putted David through the doorway, hard enough he flew in an arc to sprawl onto his face. David started to get up, and stared at someone out of sight to the left of the doorway.

  Everett glanced back at the house. The lights and Christmas decorations were on; however no one was visible in any of the windows. Everett dove through the doorway over David and somersaulted in a tight ball, bounced up to face left with the cleaver by his ear, his other hand extended to his front, ready to bounce flea-like in whichever direction necessary to embed the cleaver in flesh in s kaleidoscope of violence.

  It was Tobias in front of him with hands tied around a pipe running vertical up the garage wall. Tobias’s shirt was ripped off to expose his back, his face was bruised and swollen, and a sock was stuffed in his mouth.

  “You came,” Tobias said when Everett pulled out the gag. “You didn’t bail.”

  Next to Tobias on a work bench was a blow torch, a pair of pliers and a serrated bread knife – the good kind you could cut off big hunks with. Cowards like Aaron were the cruelest torturers, and Tobias had been in for a rough ride if Everett hadn’t come.

  David stood next to the wounded Phisherman, holding the guy up as his half severed wrist spurted blood onto the garage floor.

  “I swear I didn’t know,” David said, looking at the interrogation instruments. “I had no idea they’d do this.”

  “Get a tourniquet around his wrist before he bleeds out,” Everett said.

  He sawed through Tobias’s bonds with the bread knife. David squatted next to Aaron’s boy, trying to be inconspicuous even as he tied his belt around the guy’s wrist tight enough to make the spurting stop.

  “They caught me prowling around,” Tobias said.

  “Figured that,” Everett said as he picked up the pretty bread knife and gave it that whirring spin in his hand.

  The snack truck was parked to one side. The steel plate was off the floor leaning against the wall. An empty pit was revealed in the cement floor. The doors of the truck were wide open and several dozen gold ingots were stacked in there.

  Here was the Holy Grail Everett had been clawing towards. A silent tune crowed in Everett’s head, all heavenly trumpets in gloating triumph.

  “Beautiful, ain’t it?” Tobias asked. “It was especially hard, sitting tied up and staring right at it.”

  Someone cleared their throat at the door.

  “So you got tired of lying low, eh grasshopper?” Phil asked. “I was wondering when you were going to make your move.”

  Chapter 37 : The Ultimate Wellspring

  Phishermen crowded behind Phil in the doorway. Others goggled in at the window. The garage’s double doors squealed on their rails as they were opened.

  Everett leapt across the pit and palm struck Phil’s shoulder spinning him half round. Everett wrapped his arm around Phil’s head, the crook of his elbow holding Phil’s big forehead immobile.

  Phil leaned back unresisting within the embrace of Everett’s forearm. Phishermen started spilling around Phil.

  “Ha!” Everett cried, and whipped up the bread knife to hold it across Phil’s throat.

  He dragged Phil around the pit to the snack truck. Everett rested his shoulders against the truck to save energy rope-a-dope style.

  Tobias scampered to the work bench, snatched the cleaver, and returned to press his own shoulders against the truck next to Everett. Tobias waved the cleaver in front of him in excited figure eights.

  Celeste and the thirty odd phishermen trooped into the garage, enclosing the two in an arc a few yards away. The shallow pit in front of the two men would complicate any effort the Phishermen made to bum rush them. The obstacle prevented Everett having to decide before he had to.

  “So this is what you do Henry?” Phil asked, his beard tickling Everett’s knife hand as he spoke.

  “Yes Phil,” Everett said. “We need to talk.”

  “Yes,” Phil said. “You’ll have to be careful though grasshopper or you’ll get blood stains on your clothes. It might ruin your stylish outfit.”

  “Raincoats are cheap,” Everett said.

  “There’s a way out of this you know,” Phil said.

  “Yes,” Everett said. “One way or the other I’m leaving with this gold. Have to take it to the Widow.”

  “The Widow? Do you mean –“ and
Phil said her name, the Germanic syllables flowing off his tongue with an affectionate sound (Everett refusing to allow her name to penetrate into his mind, refusing to allow her that humanity). “Where is she? Is she in town? Please call her here, I must talk to her.”

  Everett closed his eyes for a second, and then opened them. “You want to see her?

  “Of course,” Phil said. “I wasn’t letting you hang out for your scintillating personality. I held her gold because I needed to make her come to me.”

  “Why?” Everett asked.

  “Because, I love her you fool,” Phil said.

  “Phil, the Widow isn’t here. She sent me to get the gold. She also sent me to kill you.” He lifted the blade a hair so as not to nick Phil’s quivering throat.

  Celeste gawked at Phil with longing sympathy and hurt. For all his vaunted people reading skills, had Phil taken note of this girl’s feelings?

  “You’re not one of her people. You never were,” Phil said. “I finally realized that but I didn’t extrapolate.”

  Everett tightened his grip on the knife a measured iota.

  “Why are you doing this for her, Henry?” Phil asked.

  A thousand lies cropped up in Everett’s head, but: “She’s a threat to my family. You were right, I have people and they’re hostage to her. Phil – one way or the other, I’m leaving with that gold.”

  Phil said, “It made me suspicious when you tried to hide behind your friend like he was ninja smoke. It backfired, and you stood out more. I knew right off she’d sent you and I waited for you to make your play. I couldn’t understand why you were taking so long; just staying here like you enjoyed my company. I figured it out when you refused to say her name.”

  “You won’t kill me, Henry,” Phil said in an odd, soothing voice. “Because she wants you to.”

  He reached up and plucked Everett’s unresisting arm from around his neck. He turned around within arm’s reach, still in range if Everett wanted to slice anything off with the bread knife. Tobias looked on incredulous.

  “He killed Aaron,” Celeste said.

  “Ah,” Phil said. “Henry had no choice. Aaron was going to hurt his friend Otis. It was self defense for them. Besides, I’d had my eye on Aaron for a while. He was going against the program. He was getting ready to betray us all. Look in the front seat.”

  Celeste rummaged around, emerging with a handful of CD-ROMs and thumb drives.

  “PIN numbers,” Phil said, rotating in place to favor all the Phishermen with the power of his declamation. He gestured toward the data Celeste held up like a courtroom exhibit. “SSNs, credit card numbers. Aaron was planning on leaving us, cutting us out and selling them all.”

  “The gold,” Aaron’s boy said from where he sat against the wall. Blood was puddled below the guy’s maimed wrist. He was pale from blood loss. Enough body hair poked out the neck hole of his shirt, if he had a girl friend, she’d have a full time job shaving his chest and back.

  David squatted next to him holding the tourniquet tight, trying to escape notice from the room full of people. He flushed and stared down at the floor as every eye lit on him and Aaron’s boy.

  Aaron’s boy said, “You were holding out on us, that’s why Aaron did what he did,” the guy said. “He said you were the traitor.”

  “The gold,” Phil said, looking at the stacked bullion in the snack truck as if noticing its existence for the first time. He stared apology at all the Phishermen in turn, the errant leader mending fences with his disillusioned followers. “I was thoughtless my friends. You know I’ve done my best to serve you all, to serve our Family.

  “But then I went and fell in love. You should have seen her when I first met her, down in San Francisco years ago. We were young and she was beautiful. She was damaged, so damaged. Still, she would have been your queen if I’d had my way. She would have helped me to lead our Family. But my words never swayed her. I had to touch her with something she falsely believed important.

  “So I took the gold. Yes, and I hid it. I wasn’t holding out on the Family. I was guarding it in safe keeping until the glorious day she joined us. Now I realize that day will never come, so I am giving the gold to my friend here.” Phil looked at Everett with sad, dog like eyes that seemed to have no game in them at all.

  “That gold is worth a lot of money,” Celeste said. “Why are we just giving it up?”

  “We don’t want this gold, sister Celeste,” Phil said.

  He stepped to the truck, inspected one of the ingots and put it back. He lifted and returned brick after brick of the butter colored metal before finding what he was looking for. He held it out for everyone’s inspection. Everett and Tobias both stayed out of reach of the Phishermen, but they were still part of the circle leaning closer to share Phil’s discovery.

  The gold shone, highlighting the Nazi Eagle stamped on it, an inventory lot number centered beneath. That infamous Nazi efficiency: careful records had been kept; each of the bars melted down from dead Jews had been tallied. Everett had a flashback vision of a much younger Doctor D writing down the number to each bar in a notebook, not afraid to get his hands dirty in service to the Final Solution.

  One corner of the gold bar was more irregular than the rest of the ingot’s gleaming perfection. Its surface was rough and corrugated. The irregularities were molar shaped fillings and teeth fragments. Residue from the human byproducts sacrificed in the bullion’s smelting.

  The Germans were getting sloppy at the end. They’d been running out of time with Gotterdammerung closing in, and they’d rushed things. Here was proof of the ultimate wellspring of the Widow’s gold. The flesh and bones of those exterminated in the Camps.

  “Do you see?” Phil asked. “We want no part of this.”

  Celeste’s indrawn breath hissed. Just like that, a quorum was reached and the debate about the gold was over.

  Phil looked hard at David and Aaron’s boy. “And what are we to do with these two?” he asked.

  Every eye in the room was on Aaron’s two surviving crew members. David looked even more waif like and resigned.

  Aaron’s boy was pale and his expression verged on shock. He muttered, “Please don’t send me away. I thought I was doing the right thing, but now I know I was wrong now. Please Phil.”

  “Who of us is guiltless anyway?” Phil asked, looking around at the Phishermen as if demanding opposition. “Who of us has never shed blood? I’m inclined to forgive and forget this time, and allow them both to stay. Aaron is gone and we can’t change that, but these two will not betray us again.

  “Will you?” Phil asked David and Aaron’s boy, his scowl that of an enraged Biblical prophet. “We will find a way for you to atone to us. You will pay penance, like our friend Terry. You will stay with us until then in the bosom of our Family.”

  Phil looked to Celeste. “Get Brad to the ER. Tell them it was a kitchen accident. Tell them someone got careless with a meat cleaver.”

  David appeared ecstatic. And as for the wounded Brad? As a clot of phishermen hustled him out the garage, he looked surprisingly happy for a man that was probably about to get his right hand amputated.

  Chapter 38 : ‘Cartoon People’

  Phil and Everett were walking together, away from everybody else.

  The phishermen were scattered about the grounds in whispering groups. They were too separated to pose an immediate threat but still an ongoing cause for concern.

  Tobias sat in the snack truck with the engine running, doing his rabid best to keep one eye on the surrounding phishermen and the other on Everett.

  Phil clasped his arms behind him like the folded wings of a bird, leaning forward a bit as they strolled. Everett walked next to him well within carving distance, though the bread knife was stuck in his belt. He was steeled not to listen to whatever hypnotic drivel bleated from Phil’s mouth if Everett had to do the dirty deed. Should he pour melted wax in his ears like Odysseus with the Sirens?

  “You not too upset about Aaron,�
�� Everett said. “You planned it all along.”

  “That’s a cynical statement, grasshopper. I’m offended by your lack of faith.”

  Everett shrugged. His eye lit on David, who stood with some other phishermen. David stared at Everett, who looked away.

  Phil said,”Let’s suppose there’s anything to what you allege – which I deny categorically by the way. But let’s say you’re the leader of a hypothetical family a lot like this one. Now let’s suppose your second in command starts acting like a threat to everything you’ve worked for and believe in. Maybe you love him like a son, but he’s got to go, right?”

  A stone was on the ground. Phil stopped, studied the rock and kicked it so it skittered along the ground for several yards. They continued their perambulation.

  Phil said, “Then suppose a man comes along – maybe someone a little like you, grasshopper. I see you as a way to communicate with ‘the Widow’ as you call her, and set our interaction in motion. Aaron sees the attentions I accord you and immediately categorizes you as a threat, as intended. He’s primed for a role he thinks I still expect of him. It’s a well worn groove of behavior that he follows by habit, even if he is thinking about leaving.”

  Everett grunted. “A man in that position would want everything to look normal right up until he beat feet.”

  “Yes. I was coming to that grasshopper. Please be courteous enough to let a man finish pontificating, you haven’t heard enough of my voice yet. Aaron couldn’t see that his attempts at deception distracted him from my deep game, and bought me all the time I needed.

  “It was the path of least resistance to wait until one of you took the other out. A minimal investment of energy with no possible downside. If you overcame, Aaron would be gone and I could pretend amazement and innocent surprise along with everyone else. If Aaron won you’d no longer be a threat, the Widow would be foiled, and I’d be no worse off than before. A win-win.”