An Unsettled Grave
Page 22
Ben watched the car drive off, and the cabin door shut once more. All around him, the woods fell quiet. Ben picked up the bucket and carried it down the hill first. The Styrofoam and gasoline mixture had formed into jelly. He set the bucket down behind the outhouse and climbed back up the hill to gather the five bottles of bubbling liquid. He set them behind the outhouse as well and withdrew, going far back into the woods until he was deep in the shadows between the trees. “There’s a story I never told you, Ollie,” Ben whispered, easing himself onto the cool ground.
He pulled out the bone-handled pocketknife and clicked it open. Digging the tip of the blade into the bark of the nearest tree, he picked at it while he spoke.
“Happened when we were just kids. I used to go down into the basement and root through Dad’s stuff. I knew he’d whoop me if he found out, but I couldn’t help it. He had that helmet with that big dent, remember? Said a shell had rolled off the back of a truck and coldcocked him. That helmet saved his life, he always said. One night, I’m going through his trunk where he kept his uniforms, and at the very bottom I find this different uniform. It was the wrong color. Wrong army, even. It had lightning bolt insignias on the patches and the cap had a skull pin. I knew right away what I was looking at. A goddamn Nazi uniform. I couldn’t believe it. And not just any old Nazi, either. One of those SS bastards. The nasty ones. And worse than that, folded in the clothes were pictures of Dad as a young man wearing that same uniform.
“Well, I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.
“I remember I went upstairs and picked up the phone in the kitchen and called the operator. ‘I need to call the FBI,’ I said. ‘Now just what do you need to bother the FBI for, sweetie,’ the operator said. I told her, ‘Ma’am, I think my dad’s a Nazi spy.’ She gets real angry at me, yelling there’s no Nazis, don’t you dare prank call the operator with such nonsense, and all that. So I hung up the phone and ran back downstairs, because I realize I’m going to need proof. I go back to the trunk and just as I’m about to grab the uniform and photographs, I hear him coming down the steps behind me.
“There he was, staring at me in the dim light, holding his bottle of whisky.
“Man, I thought I was dead, right there. I thought he was going to kill me and stuff my body behind the water heater or something, just to keep things quiet. He asked me what I was doing, and I figured, I’m dead anyway, so I might as well say my piece. ‘I know you’re a Nazi, you son of a bitch,’ I said.
“He looked at me and said, ‘What did you just say, boy?’
“I grabbed one of the photographs and held it up, shouting, ‘You fucking Nazi!’
“And he slaps me across the face, real hard, with his whole hand. He had those roofer hands, all calloused and filthy, remember, and I thought he knocked my teeth loose. So I’m laying there, crying, and he goes over to the photograph, picks it up, and closes the trunk. He sits down on it and tells me to get up and sit down next to him. When he sees me rubbing my jaw, he says, ‘I hit you for going through my stuff. I should hit you again for calling me a goddamn Nazi.’ He showed me the photograph again, pointing out the trees in the background, and said, ‘That’s called the Ardennes forest. We had some terrible fights there. Killed a lot of Germans and a lot of Americans died, too. One day, we get in a shoot-out with some SS troopers and the ones we don’t kill run off. I chased after the commanding officer and captured him single-handedly. Truth is, he surrendered pretty easily. As soon as he saw me coming with my rifle ready to fire, he threw up his hands and got down on his knees, begging for mercy. My lieutenant let me keep the man’s uniform as a trophy. I put it on and started dancing around in it, just to make everyone laugh.’
“I’m sitting there rubbing my face, and I can feel my cheeks go hot with embarrassment. I felt like the world’s biggest asshole. ‘They must have given you a medal for that,’ I said.
“He laid the picture facedown on the trunk and said, ‘No, no medals. That night, the fucker got free and killed two of our boys by bashing their heads in with a rock.’ He took a long drink of whisky and said, ‘One of them was a good friend of mine. We hunted that Kraut bastard all night. He killed another one of us before it was over with, and by the time we finally caught him, he was laughing. He saw me and he was calling out to me, telling me it was my fault. Well, he wasn’t laughing soon after that.’
“That’s when I learned the truth about war. You don’t take prisoners. You don’t spare the ones who plead for mercy. In war, you kill every fucking one of them.”
Ben stood up and stretched his back and his legs. He walked back to grab the bucket and carried it down the driveway toward the truck. He went back, gathered up the five bottles of liquid, and cradled them in his arms as he carried them to the motorcycles. He placed one bottle upright behind the front tire of each bike, hidden from view.
He scooped up some of the gasoline jelly with his gloved hands and smeared it across the lengths of the two sturdiest branches he could find, then unscrewed the gas caps on the truck and car in the driveway and stuck the branches halfway in.
He carried the bucket over to the motorcycles, grabbed another handful of jelly, and smeared it across the leather seats and gas tanks. He covered the front and rear tires of all the bikes, then took a handful of the jelly and squished it, squirting drops of it onto the ground all around the bikes. He used the remainder on each of the glass bottles, making sure their caps were good and gooey.
The gloves were still coated in jelly. He tossed them into the bucket and held his hands up in the moonlight to make sure there wasn’t anything on them. He reached for the box of matches stuck in his back pocket and struck one, watching its tiny curling flame dance in the darkness. He waved the match first under the branch sticking out of the truck’s gas tank, and it instantly ignited, engulfing the entire stick. He hurried over to the car and ignited that branch next. The sides of both vehicles were on fire, swallowed by a wall of flame and black smoke by the time he reached the motorcycles. He struck another match and flung it at the nearest bike, hitting it in the tire, and ran for the side of the cabin.
The truck’s gas tank blew up, an explosion that echoed for miles, lifting the entire vehicle up in the air and sending it back down with a tremendous crash of glass and steel.
But the motorcycles were Ben’s favorite part. Their tires caught fire so fast they melted, and the flames leapt from tire to seat, growing wider each time, until all of the bikes ignited.
The car’s gas tank blew up next, an explosion as loud as ordnance on any battlefield. From inside the cabin, he heard someone shout, “What the hell was that?”
The curtains covering the windows were thrust aside. From around the corner, Ben could hear them cry out in horror at the sight of their burning motorcycles. Four of them screamed in outrage as they fought to get through the front door, running out wearing no shoes. Some were just in their underwear, dragging the towels from their windows with them.
They swatted at the flames, trying to beat them away, but it was no use. The towels did nothing but spread the burning jelly across the bikes. With all of the commotion, none of them noticed the bottles cracking open beneath them. They stomped around on the shattered glass and melted caps as the contents of the bottles released into the air, surrounding them in a cloud of invisible chlorine gas.
Wombat came running through the cabin door but stopped, crying out at the others to get away from the flames. He held his pistol, cocked, waving it in the air. The man knows napalm when he smells it, Ben thought.
The bikers wobbled and staggered around their bikes as they swung the towels, too dazed from the chlorine gas to realize their towels and clothing and skin were on fire as well.
Ben watched them sputter and choke, squeezing their throats with their hands as they collapsed against their motorcycles. Flames spread across their bare arms and torsos, and that was enough to wake them up from the chlorine haze, but it was too late.
Tears ran down Wombat’
s face as he watched, helpless. He screamed for them to get away, for them to roll into the grass. The bikers were thrashing into one another, overcome by the chlorine gas and black smoke in their lungs and the fire melting their flesh. Orange made an effort to escape, trying to run, only to be swallowed by flames. He screeched as the outer layers of his flesh peeled off, leaving raw white and red underlayers beneath that smoked.
Wombat covered his eyes, trying to prevent himself from seeing any more of it. The ones still on their feet didn’t have the breath to scream. The ground around the bikes was on fire, and they danced in it, igniting their feet, vomiting from the gas through their fingers as they clutched their mouths.
Ben Rein crept up behind Wombat and slammed the length of his brother’s pocketknife into the biker’s right thigh, just above the knee. The blade was sharp and strong. It sank through denim and flesh and muscle, puncturing Wombat’s femoral artery like an oil drill striking that first underground torrent of black gold. Wombat cried out as the blood sprung from his leg. Ben took the gun from him, turning it over in the dim light, inspecting it as Wombat squirmed on the ground, trying to plug his leg before he bled out. The copper stench of blood and smoke and screams filled the deep woods again.
Ben closed his eyes and inhaled. It was good to be home.
CHAPTER 25
Wombat stirred and came to. Ben was standing in the kitchen over the stove, looking down at an iron pot filled with hot water. Bubbles were forming on the water’s surface. Some of it spilled over the side of the pot and hissed on the red burner. He could hear Wombat’s boots scrape against the wooden floor. The biker groaned, reaching down to feel where the length of bloody rope was cinched around his knee. Ben had used a steel rod and some rope he found inside the cabin to form the makeshift tourniquet, and he’d twisted so hard he thought the man’s leg might sever, but at least it stopped the bleeding. It wasn’t the best tourniquet, he knew. He hadn’t even kept track of how long it had been on.
“Which one of you was the cook?” Ben asked, looking through the spices mounted on the stove and the boxes of spaghetti and noodles. Wombat writhed on the floor, clutching his leg, not hearing him. Ben didn’t mind. The water was at a rolling boil now. “I have to say, I’m impressed you managed to run electricity and phone lines all the way out here. Must have cost quite a bit of money. I guess crime really does pay.”
He didn’t have to look out to know what Wombat was doing. The biker was scrambling around the floor, looking for some kind of weapon, anything to defend himself with. Maybe a knife or gun or even a screwdriver someone left hidden under the couch or tucked away in the clothing left scattered on the floor from their party. Good luck, Ben thought, because I already moved everything. He’d collected the knives and sets of brass knuckles scattered around the room. All the guns were already hidden in the closet in the rear bedroom of the cabin, too far for the injured biker to reach. The only other gun, Wombat’s own pistol, was tucked in the back of Ben’s waistband.
Wombat moaned and cried out, “Oh Christ, no! You sick fuck!” and Ben knew why. Wombat had found the charred bodies of his friends. Some of them were still smoking, despite all the water Ben had poured over their corpses before pulling them inside the cabin and sitting them propped up against the far wall. They looked like photos townsfolk would take in the Old West of dead bandits after a foiled bank robbery. Except these bandits had been set on fire. A few of their faces had burned away completely, revealing their blackened skulls.
Wombat, the hardened war veteran, the Disgraced’s president, gaped in horrified disbelief at them. He turned and saw Ben, standing in the kitchen, next to the stove. “Listen to me,” Wombat rasped, swallowing his disgust. He clawed at the floor to spin toward the kitchen, leaving a smear of blood as he turned. “I don’t know what you think we did, but we didn’t do it. We’re businessmen. All we do is move a little coke around. We don’t bother anybody!”
“Is that right?” Ben asked.
“I swear to God!”
Ben grabbed the handle of the pot and flung the boiling water at Wombat, who shrieked and covered his face. Water steamed off his clothes and skin. Ben stood there, waiting for him to stop whimpering.
“We both know I’m going to kill you,” Ben said. “I won’t insult you by pretending otherwise. How I do it, that’s up to you.”
Wombat grimaced, trying to sit upright. “What do you want?”
“It’s real simple,” Ben said. He grabbed the phone off the wall and held the receiver out toward Wombat. “You’re going to call your friend Chief Auburn, and tell him to come here.”
“He never comes here,” Wombat said. “That won’t work.”
Ben cracked the biker on top of the head with the phone’s hard plastic receiver. He waited for Wombat to stop moaning before saying, “You’ll make it work. Tell him there’s a problem up here and he needs to get involved before it gets worse.”
Wombat looked at the phone, but as he reached for it, Ben pulled it back and said, “I don’t need to tell you what happens if you do anything to make him suspicious, do I?”
“No,” Wombat muttered.
Ben dialed the number written on the wall and listened to it ring through the receiver in Wombat’s hand.
* * *
Walt Auburn sat in his den, drinking his third whisky and soda that night. Not drunk. Just nice and warm. His feet were up as he reclined in his deep leather chair, watching the news. He swirled the remainder of his drink around the ice cubes at the bottom of his glass and took a sip. It had been a hell of a day, he thought. One for the ages.
He hadn’t expected the phone call earlier that day from the Patterson Borough supervisors asking him to take over command of their police department. There were steps to take, official proceedings and all, but in this emergency circumstance they said they’d all sleep easier with a firm, steady hand at the wheel. They’d pay him, of course. It would almost double his annual salary.
He poured a new glass and held it in the air in front of his face. “Here’s to you, Ollie, wherever the hell you may be.”
Before he could drink it, the phone mounted on his wall rang, loud and shrill, making him start in his seat so hard he almost dropped his glass. “God damn it,” he muttered, trying to work the lever of the chair to get himself upright. The phone kept ringing. He could hear his wife shouting from their bedroom, “Walt! The phone!”
“I know it’s the damn phone!” Walt shouted back. He got out of the chair and snatched the receiver off the wall and pressed it to his ear. “Chief Auburn,” he said.
“It’s me,” the voice on the other end of the line said. It was Wombat, that filthy biker fuck who liked to think he was some kind of criminal kingpin.
Walt closed his eyes and grimaced. He bent his head around the corner to make sure his bedroom door was still shut and his wife wasn’t coming to see who was calling. She knew better. Calls that late at night could only mean trouble. Well, this call was trouble, too. Bad trouble. “What the hell are you doing calling my house?” he snarled.
“We’ve got a problem up here at the cabin.”
“So? Handle it,” Walt said.
“I need you to come here, right away,” Wombat said. “You need to know about this before shit hits the fan.”
“Know about what?” Walt asked, but the line went dead.
He cursed and slammed the phone back in the receiver, looking around the den for the pieces of his uniform he’d left scattered about. He grabbed his shirt and slid it on, made quick work of the buttons, and stuffed the tails into his waistband. He grabbed his gun belt and buckled it around his waist, adjusting it so his heavy revolver hung low on his right hip. He was fitting his cowboy hat onto his head when one of the bedroom doors opened, and his boy poked his head out. Steve’s hair was matted and a crease ran along the side of his plump cheek from the pillow seam he’d been lying on. Barefoot in his pajamas, he looked at Walt sleepily and said, “I heard some kind of noise.”
Steve yawned and said, “You going to get the bad guys?”
Walt tipped his hat at him. “That’s what a lawman does, son.”
He shut the front door behind him and headed for his police car. If those idiots fucked something else up today, there is going to be holy hell to pay, he thought. Killing a man and making me clean up their mess wasn’t bad enough? Bad-ass Vietnam vets. Bullshit. Just derelict drug-pushing fuckups on motorcycles, now.
He stepped on the gas, flying down the back roads toward the game lands, eager to get to the clubhouse and handle whatever it was that needed to be handled.
* * *
Walt Auburn smelled the burning wreckage long before he arrived. It smelled like gasoline and charred rubber. As he came up the road he could see smoke rising off the truck’s smoldering remains. It had been burned down to the frame, and as he slowed down he made out the clump of plastic and metal in front of it that had once been a car. “God damn,” he said, driving wide around the vehicles, just in case the wind shifted and some burning ember leapt onto his police cruiser.
But that wasn’t all, he realized. Holy Christ-loving shit, that wasn’t all. Every single one of their motorcycles had gone up in flames as well.
Walt parked his police car and adjusted his hat. He stared in wonder at the pile of scorched chrome and steel, the twisted handlebars and melted engines of each motorcycle. “What in the fuck happened here?” he said aloud. It was hard not to laugh.
He walked through the front door of the cabin, keeping the wide brim of his cowboy hat low to keep them from seeing him smile. “I’ve heard of a cookout, but this takes the cake,” he said. Before he could look up, he heard the mechanical click of a gun’s hammer cocking back and felt cold steel touch the back of his neck.
Wombat was sprawled out on the floor in front of him, sitting in a puddle of his own blood. To Walt’s left, the rest of the bikers, posed in ghostly silence, burnt to a crisp. The entire room stank like gasoline and charred meat. “You traitorous son of a bitch,” Walt said, eyes glowering with hatred at the biker.