Adam S. House is a Canadian writer living in Beijing, China, where he is a contributing editor for a Canadian-based video game website as well as a podcast personality. He is a lifelong fan of horror, science fiction and fantasy stories in which the reader is allowed, and encouraged, to dream the impossible. Since 2005, he has divided his time between China and his home in Nova Scotia, Canada. Find him at adamscotthouse.com, thesurrealhouse.com, and Twitter: @HaggardMess.
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Detached. Cold. Distant.
Check, check, and check.
What else had she said? Oh, yeah—“Goodbye.”
Why am I thinking about this now? Is this my life flashing slowly before my eyes? Rendered into a series of depressing snap-shot memories to distract my mind from the goddamned howling of the wind? My regrets will make my fear seem hollow, and I’ve seen the wind chew them up—all of them. I know the wind is still hungry. Always hungry.
The tent flaps at me from every angle, as cyclonic winds batter my feeble shelter.
Detached. Cold. Distant.
There it is again. I don’t think this is some instinctive coping method. This is something more than that. The wind beckoned me away from her, right down into this graveyard canyon. And soon, soon it will snatch me up with its terrible claws and tear me into pieces.
Detached. Cold. Distant.
I’m not enough weight to keep the tent on the ground. It’s going to wrap me up, my own nylon burial shroud. I’m going to go outside. And when the wind grows tired of toying with me and finally comes for the kill, I’ll let it take me . . .
Because I’ll be taking it to Hell with me.
Two Weeks Earlier
Matt stands in front of the window overlooking the back yard, his cell phone held up to his ear. The look on his face may be slack and blank, but the gears in his mind are grinding along steadily enough. His eyes are bloodshot and cheeks bearded with three-day stubble, pale under the dark fuzz. In a single glance he notices the ancient swing-set in the backyard with the crabgrass clustered around its metal support legs like the fur on Clydesdales, the billowing cotton-like seed from the popular trees coating everything in a layer of slick tree-born white . . . and Lisa, standing behind him with her arms folded across her chest and her scowl telling him everything she wants to but won’t because he’s on the phone with his boss.
He processes a mental mosh pit of thoughts for each visual observation: I promised Lisa five damn years ago we’d be married and have a child in six months. I’d pointed at the swing-set and told her I would fix it up as soon as we knew the sex so I could paint it pink or blue. I need to mow the damn lawn—looks like fucking meth-heads live here. If the cotton is falling from the trees then it must be full-on summer, the sappy pods of spring having left their stink and stain for another season, God bless ya, nature. He recalls the recent souvenirs taken from Vegas: beet-red skin and tender bags under the eyes . . . three bruised ribs. I look like shit and we both know it. But that’s what work gives us besides gobs of money. Affliction. Some skill set there, pal. You’ve become pretty adept at trading the freedom of others and your own for cash, all in the name of financial security.
These observations tie directly to the next blurry rail. Look at her. She is going to leave you this time. No excuses, no promises, no nothing. She is done. We are done. Those words she had screamed in his face, a vain and childish attempt to draw any form of emotion from him, still hum and burn like freshly swallowed whiskey.
Detached. Cold. Distant.
And all this while his boss William Baird rambles on about how Matt is going to be spending his weekend. He tells him to pack his sleeping bag and shotgun and he’ll be picking him up in half an hour, be outside and ready.
Matt ends the call and turns to face Lisa. He can’t read her expression beyond the obvious anger. He doesn’t know what she wants to hear or what he should say. So he is honest.
“I have to go camping this weekend.”
Lisa scoffs, “Oh, is that right? You got home less than forty-eight hours ago and already can’t wait to get the hell away from me?”
“I’m doing all this for us. You know it’s not personal, and I really don’t want to fight about it. Just one—”
“Oh, there’s no fight here, Matt. It’s not personal—right?” Her tone echoes Matt’s and with brutish certainty he knows what she is going to say. Here it comes. Don’t act surprised, stupid—you knew this was going to happen. You knew and you did nothing. “I’m leaving now, Matt. I can’t fucking do this anymore.”
He says nothing. Not even when she begins crying. Not even when she leaves the front door open and storms out. Not even while she sits in the driveway with tears streaking down her face, letting the car run for five minutes before finally pulling away.
Matt grabs a beer and sits on his front porch. He’s on his third with no sign of stopping when his aptly named boss pulls up in a forest green Escalade.
William’s thick dark beard presses back the collar of his army fatigue jacket. He sees Matt waiting and taps his faded blue fishing cap at him. The thick, elaborately twisting mustache twitches, signaling a smile as he hangs out the window and shouts, “This is going to be a fun job. I love chasing these survival nuts down. I’m hoping we can bag these shitheels quick enough so I can get some fishing in, ya dig?”
“I hear you.” Matt crumples the can and chucks it over his fence. He stacks his sleeping bag, backpack, tent, and duffel bag in the cargo space next to William’s tightly packed supplies. Under a flap of canvas Matt sees the corner of a charcoal crate with the unmistakable “HK” painted in red. He takes a quick mental measurement and the sober words form in his mind, killing his buzz: Grenades. What the hell are we doing with grenades?
Deciding not to say anything about them yet, Matt closes the back and moves to the passenger side. “Survival jobs, huh. So—what’s the take?”
William Baird laughs and his mountain man beard quivers. “Juicy, friend. Real juicy.”
Matt doesn’t smile—in part because he didn’t receive a real answer. But he nods it off for now, knowing he’ll circle back and squeeze it from the tight lipped William Baird soon enough. He settles into the passenger side, using the first several moments of the drive to adjust his seat with the assortment of knobs and switches he finds at the base.
While he is maximizing his comfort, wishing he’d had the foresight to grab his flask, William makes an announcement. “Gotta pick up Rocco and Lance and then we’ll be headed up into the hills.”
“Both of them? I thought they hated each other.”
“They do.” The twitching mustache signals another smile hidden somewhere under the caveman face-do.
Matt can’t shake the image of the red letters and the slim case in the back. Throwing the other two savages into the mix makes him uneasy. “And how many people are we chasing down if there are four of us?”
William waves the question away, knowing Matt can get on a roll with his questions and can work that roll right back around to the subject of payment. He’s known Matt longer than the others in his employ, and still has the hardest time reading him and not being walked in whatever circles Matt calmly chooses to manipulate him into. It’s one of the reasons he likes Matt so much more than the others: his tact. The brutes Rocco and Lance, the Brothers Trouble, tended to fall short in that category.
William loves his job. There’s no reason to hide one’s motives in the human tracking business; you can really see what makes a man tick when you hunt other human beings for a living. Matt works for William The Beard because he can utilize his cold determination, tracking skills, and calmness under pressure. Rocco works for The Beard so he can beat people up and flex his tattooed arms while doing so; a rabid animal whose savageness can be reasonably focused for whatever brutal tasks are set upon him. Lance works for The Beard to supplement the meager disability the military pays him for taking a few chunks of shrapnel the size of a soda bottl
es to his neck and leg just south of Bagdad. That, and the rigid, socially-awkward, six-foot-six ex-soldier has himself a few vices which require him to assume the mercenary role from time to time (like a monthly need for a good rail or two of Dirt to keep the night terrors away), of which William has no problem taking advantage.
This is the first time he has had to call in his three best for a job. William wanted the score to be a surprise, especially for Matt—but he knows Matt isn’t going to let it go. He can already tell that the wife thing has gone downhill, and he doesn’t feel like getting the blunt end of Matt’s mind-shovel today.
William The Beard pulls down the floppy bill of his fishing cap and hunches his shoulders with a sigh. “Two of them. So—” he holds up his fingers, “that’s four of us, two of them. Fair odds, right?”
Matt nods at this logic, but it’s plain to see his gears are still turning. “Okay, normal enough. It’s always at least the two of us. And then the other two psychos as backup . . .”
Used to Matt’s little mind traps (like assuming the last was spoken as a question), William elects to play dumb and remain silently hidden under his scowl and beard.
“But what I’m wondering now,” Matt continues, “is what kind of badasses would require all three of your most adept players, when we all know you have those who are cheaper. Much cheaper.”
An uncomfortable silence. Then déjà vu all over again, and William wonders: Haven’t we been here before? Right. Fucking. Here? No wonder Lisa’s gone, buddy. Your relentless mistrust probably picked every bit of meat off her soul, too.
Through with games, Matt springs the trap. “What’s my take, Will?”
William licks his lips. His pink tongue darts from his mass of beard and he clears his throat. “If we get both of ’em—and there’s no if there, my friend . . .” William lets it hang in the air to build suspense. Then, without fanfare: “Two hundred K.”
William is pleased to watch this bit of info act like a wrench thrown into Matt’s mental gears. For a full minute there is a no sound but the road under the wheels and wind pushing through the cracked windows.
“So,” Matt begins, “we are chasing down a million dollar bounty this weekend.” He nods his understanding without needing his boss’s confirmation.
William’s arched eyebrows tell him he is on the right track. “Yeah, yeah.” Another wave in the air swiping away the conversation, and now the beard can’t hide William’s defeated irritation. “You figured it out, smart guy. We are following a couple of big bounties into the wild frontier this weekend. If you can wait until we meet up with the rest of the crew, I’ll go over everything in a nice little package. That okay with you?”
“Two hundred K?” Matt squints one eye at his agitated boss.
“Okay, if you can keep it to yourself, I’ll throw in a fifty K bonus, ’cuz I know you just got back from that Vegas job and didn’t get your R and R yet.”
Matt opens his mouth to thank him, but William chuckles and quickly adds, “Shit, I bet Lisa is pissed.”
Matt says nothing.
“So? Is she pissed or what, asshole?” William slaps the steering wheel in frustration.
Matt tilts his head to the window as he considers the question. “Yeah. I guess you could say she’s pretty pissed.”
William is floored by actually reading an emotion from Matt—it’s happened maybe twice since they first met. There’s a glimmer of something which could be sadness or longing in those clear, blue eyes—and it worries him. He decides not to pick at the obvious wound. Instead he points at the trailer becoming visible up the gravel road and the two huge men standing chest to chest and nose to nose in front of it.
“Guess Rocco decided to meet us here. Must be real excited for this hoorah.” William chuckles deviously under his beard and pulls up behind Lance’s jacked-up F250.
Matt curls the corners of his mouth in an effort to fulfill the acknowledgment of humor, but the action is shallow and awkward. William honks and the two giants turn their angry stares on the Escalade instead of each other.
“William, goddamn it!” Lance shouts before William can even come to a complete stop. “Why are you sending this crazy scumbag to my home?”
“Your home has never been so classy as when I stood on your rickety-ass porch and knocked on your fiberglass door.” Rocco backs up his taunt with an arrogant grin that crosses his smooth, handsome face. It’s no secret that he considers himself the Casanova of the human recovery biz.
The smell of charged sweat in the air could rival a pit-fight arena. Stepping toe-to-toe with the other brute, Lance’s neck muscles twitch and William shouts over them both in an attempt to defuse the dangerous situation. He jabs at his watch. “Hey! We’re on the clock, fellas—clamp the shit and climb in. We’ve got a bitch of a drive ahead and then one hell of a hike waiting at the end of it.”
Lance thumbs in Rocco’s direction. “I am not riding in the same vehicle as this asshole. I’ll follow in my own rig.”
William smiles at Matt as the burly bounty hunter stomps off to his old beaten Ford. William leans across Matt’s lap and shouts out the window at Lance while Rocco slams his backpack into the remaining cargo space. “Hey, don’t you wanna hear about the job? About your take?”
Lance doesn’t even turn around. He answers as he opens the mismatched red door on his otherwise blue pickup with a hateful squeal of metal on metal.
“Later.”
William nods and shifts the Escalade into gear. They roll away from the trailer park.
“Rocco wants to know about the job and the take, don’t you, Rocco-ol’ pal?” Matt says while looking out the window at the stop-motion scenery.
Rocco is kicked back against the leather, sunglasses hiding his eyes, thick head resting back against his palms to give him maximum flexing potential. He smirks at Matt, but it fades as he considers it.
“Yeah, I guess I do.”
William flips Matt off. “Fine. Rocco, we are chasing down two high dollar bounties this weekend, and they are supposedly survival nuts—more paranoid than Lance’s meth-head neighbors. We are following them into a thick forest up on that Hoo-Doo mountain. Nasty terrain, and spooky as hell anyways. Everybody else is looking in the wrong spot . . . but I got the golden tip others just don’t have a clue about.”
“So . . .” Matt verbalizes for a speechless and confused looking Rocco.
William huffs, “So? So big pay day, Rocco. We nab them both and you’re pocketing fifty K.”
The resounding celebratory sound Rocco makes is reminiscent of drunken frat boys and dying elephants. Matt winces at the sound while The Beard laughs out loud and turns up the classic rock radio.
There is very little conversation for the remainder of the ride.
Matt, always more content being observant to those around him rather than left alone to his own thoughts, keeps an eye on Lance in the pickup behind them. The old truck belches black puffs of exhaust smoke as it drifts across the double yellow line and back. Matt shakes his head when he notices Lance alone in his pickup talking to himself in a rather animated and irritated fashion. Somewhat content, Matt sighs. He’d easily take Blue Oyster Cult over Lance’s—or anyone else’s, really—ranting and raving any day of the week.
Time passes quickly enough, and before nightfall the men are pulling up to a motel in the town of Dry Hill at the base of the mountain. William springs for two rooms, but Lance refuses to sleep indoors with any of them; his expletive-ridden objections are barked across the parking lot and punctuated with a hoarse “Nothing personal” before he slams the truck door behind him. The others shrug it off, and William takes the second room for himself without bothering to ask. Matt and Rocco each crash on a twin bed in the first.
Matt tosses and turns, the sleep of the heavy-headed. In his dreams her words echo endlessly in a wind that roars around him, though the tall pine trees surrounding him remain anciently still.
Detached. Cold. Distant.
He
finally feels the wind, her words slicing at his flesh like verbal razorblades within the howling gale as it engulfs him. The pain is terrible, and as it reaches a crescendo he awakens to Rocco’s Budweiser-reeking snores and early morning sunlight spilling in through the cracks of the heavy brown drapes.
Matt wipes the sleep from his eyes, and within minutes The Beard is knocking at the door. Matt looks at Rocco, chainsaw snoring nearly as loud as the pounds on the door, then gets up to let his boss in. He opens the door, blocking the morning glare with his forearm. William and Lance stand there, shadowy hulks, ready to go.
William looks like a cat digesting a canary ever-so-slowly while the big man over his shoulder is looking twice as bad as he did on the drive up yesterday. Matt leaves the door open for them while he takes a leak and grabs his jacket. Lance refuses and returns to his pickup to let it run. William walks around the bed and the snoring Rocco. He pinches the giant’s nose closed and with a few muffled snorts Rocco is coerced into reality. They grab a dozen doughnuts and coffees—which Lance rudely refuses, “Fucking sulfates!”—and are on the road within fifteen minutes.
William leads them with a map he doesn’t let Matt or Rocco see, and within an hour they are deep the bowls of the gnarly Hoo-Doo forest at a point too tangled and wild for the vehicles to maneuver any further. They strap into their packs and, after William consults his mysterious map, head deeper into the shadows of the trees. Within ten minutes they find a highly-enhanced Jeep wedged between a boulder and the trunk of an ancient evergreen. A fierce looking rock outcropping has buried itself in the Jeep’s undercarriage like a knife in the belly.
Smugly, William fluffs his dark beard and twists on his mustache. “You three may be damn good at what you do, but I assure you, gentlemen—I am also damn good at what I do.”
He looks at his crew and smiles with a mix of pride and unspoken worry. Matt is climbing and crawling around the Jeep, searching intently for any clue of the direction the men went on foot. Rocco kneels down and pulls out his twin shock batons: two inch-thick alloy rods with electrified tips. Lance digs into a duffle bag and retrieves an assortment of tranq-guns, which he loads and distributes to Matt and William. Then he digs out a pair of AK-47s and four magazines.
Darkness Ad Infinitum Page 18
