by Jay Morris
Once inside Amy found Tucker sitting at the counter, he was staring intently at a map and several other pieces of paper. She walked slowly by him but he never looked up. She went into the office and quietly as possible slid open the drawer and picked up the key. She slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans. She came out and still Tucker said nothing, nor did he move in the slightest. She went across the hall into store room. It was crowded, in fact they had removed the snow blower, the riding mower, and a bunch of boxes of maps and brochures as well to make room for all the underling. She stepped carefully over the sleeping Young Deer. She knelt down and pulled a blanket up around Chase then touched Gina’s hair. She smiled at Lucy who looked truly happy sleeping with her arms wrapped firmly around Ronald Bear. She held her hand over her mouth and fought to not cry. She silently said good bye to the children she loved so much.
As she left the store room she saw Tucker silent as a headstone and just as immobile. She walked by him and she could not help but slow down and look at him. She wished he would say something, anything, but he would not. She told herself that by leaving she was saving him and saving Darnell. She left the Welcome Center and walked to the truck, her pace picking up after she took the key from her pocket. We saw each other and nodded. She walked up to Darnel and took his hand in hers, she touched his face and they spoke quietly for several minutes. I really didn’t want to hear whatever romantic drivel they were saying.
Amy turned and walked over to me
“Johnny can you go get the Doc? I think something is wrong.”
I hopped down from the stump but as I started to go around Amy, Darnell grabbed me and spun me around then he punched me in the nose, hard. I fell back on to the ground and I heard Amy bark
“What are you doing? This isn’t the plan!”
I tried to get up but my arm gave way beneath me, I then heard a loud ‘crack’ and Amy spun to the ground next to me.
“Shut up bitch! You think I would run away with you? You betrayed me! You killed my friends! Stupid whore!”
He slapped her again then kicked me in the ribs making me ball up in a fetal position. He took my M-9 from my holster and shoved it in his pants, then he picked up my rifle. Amy cried out to him,
“Darnel where are you going? What are you doing?”
“I am going to kill the bastard who killed my family!” he snapped back.
He started to jog towards the Welcome Center when suddenly, just as he passed the far end of the pick-up, up rose Tucker. He held a two by four perhaps four feet long. He swung it hard with both hands like a pro-baseball player going for downtown. The blow caught the jogging man in the throat. The sound of the impact was dreadful, like a hand full of green twigs being snapped in two. Darnells’ head jerked back and his feet flew into the air, the rifle tumbled from his grasp. Amy screamed and I tried to focus my eyes, which were giving me double vision. Tucker dropped the board and drew the old Kabar combat dagger from the sheath on his belt. Amy staggered to her feet and towards the two men. Darnell was flailing on the ground gasping and holding his throat with both hands. Tucker turned the knife over in his hand for a better grip, but Amy reached him first
“No Tucker! Please! You can’t do this!”
She stepped between them and tried to push Tucker away from her lover.
I had just gotten to my feet, my mouth awash with the coppery taste of blood from my nose. Things all happened in rapid succession after that. Amy was moving from side to side like a basketball player, trying to block Old Man Tucker. Darnell was still laid out on the ground but he was able to take my M-9 from his pants. With a shaky hand he raised it and fired a round at Amy and Tucker. His aim was way off but it sure got everyone’s attention. Tucker grabbed Amy’s wrist and pulled her behind the front of the truck. Darnell fired again and the driver’s side window on the truck exploded. The glass was still falling to the ground when Tucker darted out from behind the truck and dove into Darnell, his huge bulk crashing violently into the younger, stronger man. The impact of the heavy old man caused the pistol to fly from Darnell’s grasp. The knife flashed in the dark, twice in his side under the rib cage, then into the stomach, the knife tip pointing upwards to do the most damage. Over and over Tucker stabbed the young soldier, he slashed across Darnells’ already ruined face, jabbed under his arm pit, and finally down low, at Darnells’ crotch where Tucker jerked viciously upward on the hilt of the combat dagger like he was gutting a deer.
I don’t know how many times he stabbed him, six? Eight? Ten? However many it was left Darnell looking like hamburger. Tucker was straddling the corpse, he stared silently down at it then he tilted the man’s formerly handsome face skyward and with the knife he slashed it across Darnell’s throat, nearly decapitating him. I picked up my pistol and walked over to Amy who was kneeling on the ground, sobbing uncontrollably, her face held in both hands. Tucker slowly got up, having to use both hands on his knees to do so, his knees cracked loudly as he did. He turned and walked towards the Welcome Center. As he walked by us I heard him mutter,
“I’m getting too old for this.”
I sat with Amy for a long time but eventually I got her up and we started towards the Welcome Center. Tucker was back at the counter, spray painted with blood splatter, studying whatever nut-job plan he was coming up with to get us killed. I opened the door and ushered Amy in. She walked over to the counter opposite Tucker and placed her hands on the edge of the counter and stared at him. Her tears had evaporated when she entered the Center. I saw Karen in the office so I went past the one sided showdown and joined her. We left the door open just in case a referee was required and we lay down together and dropped a few eaves.
“Why? John, Why?”
She was seeking something from him but he didn’t offer her anything except silence. There was a slap and I lifted my head to see Tucker rubbing his jaw. But still he said nothing.
“I asked you a damn question and I expect an answer” she demanded.
He put the pencil down and looked her in the eyes,
“He was coming to kill me and who knows who else.”
His voice was flat, factual, and emotionless. “Should I have just let him kill me?” he countered. She seemed flustered but not deterred “I meant why were you even there? Didn’t you trust me?” He shook his head “what have you done that would make me trust you?” he asked. “What?” she snapped. “As soon as you left I went in behind you and guess what? The damn key was gone.”
She shifted her weight to one hip and again I realized just how pretty, no, beautiful she was, it made me hug my wife even more. “This is about sex isn’t it? You were mad because I didn’t sleep with you and I did with him.” He did not flinch “You presume a lot Mrs. Driscoll, if you recall I never asked you.” She was shocked by his remark, hurt even. “Then it was because he was black isn’t it? He was right, you are a racist and you killed his sister and now he is dead!” There was a second loud crack as she slapped him hard a second time. His face had been pushed to the side and he stared off in the distance for a moment. He slowly, incrementally turned back to face her, he moved like a machine, or the movement of an old watch.
“That’s twice you have slapped me, don’t do it again” he warned.
He paused then said “I killed his sister because she was a thug, a murderer, and a sexual sadist of the most despicable sort. She was capable off and performed the vilest crimes against all three of the Franks and only God knows who else.”
He was breathing hard, I knew he was starting to lose it.
“I killed Darnell because he was coming to kill me and you know what? He deserved it, all of them did. They were going to leave me and John and Karen and Gina and Lucy and Chase and a whole flock of little gray aliens here with no weapons, no food, and no transport. It was a death sentence and you damn well know it. My only regret was that I cared enough about you to try and take them out with a minimum of bloodshed. I should have just killed them, then maybe Diane West would still be al
ive. She deserves to be alive, she was a good person, I liked her and I trusted her. She is dead because I didn’t have the stones to tell you ‘NO’.”
It was then she slapped him a third time and it was a doozy, it sounded like a gunshot. There was a moment of silence then there was another slap, different, heavier. I heard a thump and Amy sobbing and I hopped out of our bed and ran to her. She was on the floor holding her jaw and I could see a hand print forming on her check. I saw red and drew my M-9, in a motion I had practiced a thousand times over the last month I pulled the slide back and pointed at Tuckers face.
“You going to shoot me John?” he asked quietly.
“If so let’s go down by the truck, I don’t want the girls to hear or see. Can we do that John?”
He stared at me, he wasn’t angry or even hurt. It was the same expression of profound loneliness I had seen in him months ago. I didn’t say anything and I noticed just how steady my hand was, all the things he had taught me, keep the wrist rigid, sight picture, sight alignment, put the sight center mass.
“Then quietly, almost a whisper he said, “John, it is okay. If you have to do it, it’s okay.”
He closed his eyes.
In my head I was having a debate, the pros and the cons of killing him. I felt a hand gently rest on mine, it was Amy. Twice! This was getting old. She slowly lowered my pistol and turned me to face her.
“Johnny” she said as her other hand rested on my cheek.
“Johnny, I shouldn’t have struck him and he shouldn’t have struck me either. But I can’t stand to lose anyone else, you understand that don’t you?”
Well, that was something I could understand. Each life we take, each friend we lose, it takes a piece of us that we can’t get back. I understood then, I think, the hurt, loss and even shame Amy felt. Shame because Tucker had been right and she had betrayed all of us. I too saw the misery, loneliness and sense of betrayal that Tucker felt. I looked at him and said “sorry.”
“No worries John” he answered. I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or relieved or didn’t even care that he wasn’t dead.
I left them then, I have to admit that I really had no clue as to what was going on between them. I lay in Karen’s arms, her head on my chest, and listened to them for hours. Amy wanted to know if he regretting killing any of the people he had killed.
“Regret isn’t the right word, but it weighs on me. I’m sorry that Darnell didn’t leave when he had the chance.”
He asked her why she had slept with Darnell and Carl while she made him feel, well, like he mattered.
“Of course you matter to me, and why? I don’t know really. Before monster day, my husband was cheating on me, he was with someone else that day, and he didn’t come home. Darnell was young and alive and after, well, after Billy died”, she paused. “When he was killed I mean. I just didn’t want to think about anything, so sex was it. It was easy and Carl? No clue, I guess because he asked.”
When she said that, she was crying softly, then she asked if he meant it when he told me it was okay to shoot him.
“I’m tired Amy. Tired of feeling responsible for so many deaths. Tired of hurting, of pain, so yeah, I meant it. I love that kid and I figured if it was my time then better him than the aliens.”
I know I was dozing and missed a lot of the questions but I did hear him ask her if she loved him meaning Darnell I guess.
“Maybe, a little at first. By the time he left the lodge, no.”
She asked him if he loved her; now we are getting to it I thought.
“Amy, I think I do, I mean thought I did, I don’t know. But Amy, I don’t trust you.”
She hung her head in shame I think, it certainly would be hard to find out someone you care about did not trust you. Then he asked her why she agreed to leave with him, seems he had heard nearly their whole conversation.
“Well, I was trying to figure out how you both could live. If I didn’t go with him one of you, maybe both of you was going to die. Running was a solution.”
They carried on with their private version of “As the Stomach Wretches” or maybe it was “The Ditzy and the Ancient” I don’t know, but I finally drifted off to sleep.
Day 41, Continued, Command Area, Vehicle 8-3
The new Director 8 had just finished meeting with her lead technicians. They had to make some major (but hopefully final) modifications to her Defender. They had created no fewer than 40 original modifications to the Biotech. She was proud of them, a truly remarkable effort really. These two last modifications would most likely make her Defender the single most lethal creature on the planet. The first modification was stolen from the Indigenous Life Aggressives own Mech-tech. The vertebra of her Defender was now based on the universal joint found in the drive train of a 1998 Toyota. The second Modification was a direct result of the vertebra, the hips were narrowed and the three original mounting points were change to two parallel triplets of thinner, more flexible alloy steel.
She looked at the genetic modification projections, she smiled, and it was going to be magnificent. The delay had been worth it. Her Defender would be a quadruped, the first in history. It would be long and thin, athletic instead of bulky. A gymnast instead of power lifter, and it would be fast, incredibly so reaching the equivalent of nearly 70 miles per hour. But perhaps what she was most pleased with was the tail, long and powerful, it took them a long time to figure out how the Defender could use it for balance. Then there was the color, a very pleasing gray and orange tabby with black accents, best of all four beautiful white socks. Very Da-Nah indeed.
She left the Command Center in Vehicle 8-3 and stepped out into the enlarged defensive base camp. She did like the mornings on this world, so full of color, of life. Technicians had set up a Mech-tech Modification Station in the shade of a Solar Filter Screen attached to the side of 11-2, she had ordered it while they modified the laser cutters and binder guns. She didn’t want any accidents to occur inside the vehicles. The Bio-tech Defenders from Pods 11 and 13 stood near the center of the clearing. They faced outwards, constantly on guard, always vigilant. She had to give credit where credit was due, the Aggressives had not dared attack a Pod Defense Group since they had implemented the Supreme Director’s protocols.
She smiled and flashed a calm gold as three young siblings played a game with their underling. The offspring of the Da-Nah were beautiful and indulged by their society. They were cherished as the inheritors of their culture. She was pleased with her group and she turned back to return to the Command Center, but something was bothering her, something faint like a drop of blood in a container of water. Whatever it was, she would figure it out and then like every other obstacle she had faced, she would remove it. As she climbed the ramp two underling, one on either side of the entry bowed and held their palms up in submission. She didn’t even register their presence.
Day 41, Continued, West Virginia Welcome Center.
By the time I got up Karen and Young Deer were already getting something together for everyone to eat. Amy and Tucker were both sitting side by side listening to Lucy and Gina, Chase was there but didn’t say anything; and I thought, those two are both nuttier than a fruit cake. How could it be possible for them to work this out? How could she forgive him so quickly after he killed Darnell, nearly eviscerating him in the process? Then I had it, well at least part of it. It was time, we didn’t have any, and life was being compressed like when you squeeze a barely filled balloon. No matter how you hold it, where you squeeze it, the air pops out somewhere else and if you squeeze everywhere? Bang. It was me being married at 13. It was how Doc had shifted sides in one day. It was how I could kill someone one minute and play go fish the next. Amy and Tucker needed each other and there wasn’t 5 years or even 6 months to work it out. The unspoken truth was we could all be dead at any moment. There was no time for long drawn debates, not in our world right now, maybe not ever again.
I sat next to Amy and listened in, Lucy and Gina were nearly babbling, co
mpleting each other’s sentences (that drove me bonkers) but I did my best to follow along.
Lucy: “A Pod is 4 trucks or ..”
Gina:”..or maybe airplanes we don’t know and ..”
Lucy:”..there were only a hundred to start with and..”
Gina:..boy oh boy are they mad at you Gampa.”
Lucy: “so the underling are still trying to reach ‘we’ far away..”,
Lucy held one hand over her brow like she was an Indian scout. Gina explained to us that ‘we’ meant all the underling and that was how they referred to themselves.
Gina: “..in places with big long walls and ..” Gina held her arms out as wide as possible.
Lucy: “..and very big hairy people that eat leaves “ Gina made an exaggerated display of munching.
Gina: “.. and big hoppy kangaroos!”
Lucy: “..isn’t that wonderful?” Lucy clapped her hands, then Gina and Lucy and all the aliens started hopping around the room like kangaroos with their paws held out in front of them. It took nearly 5 minutes to get them all settled down. “Anything else girls?” Tucker asked.
“Oh yeah lots!” Gina answered.
“Yep! The underling say we are safe for now but the bad Da-Nah are going to make us all sick soon so you have to go and stop them!”
Tucker ran his fingers through his hair when Chase pulled on Lucy’s sleeve and stared at her intently for a moment. Suddenly Lucy blurted out,
“Oh right! And Director 8 is being a sneaky, sneaky poker!”
Gina added “But she might get in trouble, we don’t know.”
And everyone started nodding, with Lucy peeking out between her fingers demonstrating just how sneaky this Director 8 was being.
Tucker was sighing deeply when he felt a tug on his jacket. He looked down and there was an alien handing him a piece of paper. He read it out loud:
“Hi Gampa Tukker, we is liking Tang. Plez?”
The handwriting and spelling looked like a child’s and the dot over the “I” was actually a little heart. Tucker said
