Bones are Made to be Broken

by Anderson, Paul Michael

  His brain throbbed, and he put his hand to his forehead. This is hell, he thought. I’m in hell.

  He didn’t believe that anymore then he believed he was the victim of some vicious criminal mastermind, which is what he first thought when he’d woken up, sitting against the side of a Dodge Caravan in the garage with the pistol and a three-by-five card in his lap. He’d seen the Saw movies, where the victims woke up in some torturous scenario and had to—with sweat, tears, and buckets of blood—extricate themselves if they wanted to live.

  Pistol on his left leg, small white card on his right. He wore a black suit he’d never owned and, at first, he was too groggy to do anything but accept the reality of this. He’d picked up the card first and turned it over.

  KILL THEM ALL AND SURVIVE,

  it read in black Sharpie capitals, so fresh he could smell the ink. His eyes drifted to the pistol and picked it up. Heavier than it looked.

  He got up, using the side of the minivan for support. His feet tingled with pins and needles. His heart pounded too slowly and too hard. He wasn’t scared, not yet, but disorientation worked on his nerves.

  KILL THEM ALL AND SURVIVE.

  “Nuts to that,” he muttered, looking around. To the right was the door leading into the house. To the left was the garage door.

  Richie stuffed the card in his jacket pocket and went to the garage door. Flip it up and slip out. Figure out how he’d ended up here later.

  Except the garage door wasn’t real. He ran his hands over the smooth, cool concrete, where the handle, the windows, should’ve been. The track and steel wire were real, bolted into the wall.

  “What the hell?” He said and then he heard a thump from inside the house. He spun, gripping the pistol tighter.

  I’m dreaming, he thought. That’s it. Drank too much of Jerry’s cheap-ass wine and am having one hell of a nightmare. I’ll wake up in his apartment, or mine, and maybe we’ve just done a job, a smash and grab, and I’ll wake up with a hangover but with some extra cash.

  Or he’d wake up with a hangover and some bruiser out gunning for him. It wouldn’t have been the first. Times were tight and he’d signed on for more less-than-assured jobs recently than he liked. It was a sign of sloppiness. The sign of a thug. He wasn’t a goddamned thug.

  And while I’m standing here dicking around, he thought, something thumped beyond that door. And beyond that door is my only way out.

  He pulled out the card again.

  KILL THEM ALL AND SURVIVE.

  Kill who? he thought, walking slowly towards the other door. His heart sped up with each hesitant step.

  He put the card back in his pocket and reached for the knob. For an instant, he was positive it would be as real as the garage door handle, but his hand gripped its cool metal surface.

  He glanced behind him and looked at the fake garage door, then the minivan. How in the hell did that get in here? But there were no obvious answers. Just more and more questions.

  He swallowed, heard a dry click, and opened the door.

  He entered a well-lit living room designed to look like a picture from a furniture catalogue during Eisenhower’s second term. The television in the corner was a behemoth with a screen the size of a hardcover book. The front door off to the side had stained glass. The three people to the left looked like dazed extras from Father Knows Best.

  The woman was a rail-thin wraith in an emerald green dress, standing a bit away from the other two. In one hand was a chef’s knife. The silver blade winked at Richie.

  The man on the couch wore a suit similar to Richie, but his face had the carved-out look of a heavy meth addict. In his hands was an aluminum baseball bat.

  The boy on the floor was dressed like Timmy from Lassie—if Timmy were sixteen, overweight, flaring with acne, and obviously insane. Half of his face was slathered in blood from a cut along his hairline and his eyes seemed to pinwheel in their sockets. Near one outstretched hand was a bloody claw-hammer. He muttered into the carpet, “Dreamin’. I’m dreamin’. Get it out.”

  The woman turned towards Richie and snarled. A small white card fell from her hand to the carpet. “You.”

  She stomped towards him, raising the knife as her lips drew down, revealing little ferret teeth. “You, you, you, YOU!”

  Richie backed away, his back hitting the side of an oak-paneled wet bar. Out of sight, glass tinkled musically. “Lady, hey, lady, don’t—”

  With an animal cry, the woman brought the knife down and Richie ducked, scooting to the left. He lost his footing, and fell. He rolled onto his back to see the woman raising the knife again. Her eyes bugged out from her head, her mouth drawing down into a grotesque frown that aged her ten years. “You killed him,” she breathed.

  Richie remembered the pistol and raised it, his hand shaking. “Stop, lady, stop right now—”

  She lunged. He closed his eyes as his fingers acted of their own accord, pulling the trigger once, twice, three times. The sounds of the gunshots were deafening, smashing into his ears.

  He opened his eyes and the woman was against the wall, holding her ruined chest and stomach, her mouth a perfect O of surprise. “You,” she said, and blood spilled over her lower lip. More blood flowed from between her fingers. She slid down the wall. “You …”

  She was dead before she could finish the thought, staring at him with something like awe. Richie stood, gun still shakily trained on her.

  He staggered towards the other two as they gaped at him. His heart hammered in his chest, and adrenaline sizzled through his bloodstream.

  He opened his mouth. It felt shot full of Novocain. “Do—do you know what’s going on?”

  The man stared at him, eyes like saucers, and said nothing.

  A throaty growl came from below and two hands locked on Richie’s ankle. He looked down to see the teenager pulling himself forward, his head tilted, mouth yawning wide, eyes bulging. Richie saw blood in his eyebrows.

  He’s gonna bite me, he thought, almost wonderingly, then pulled the trigger into the center of the teenager’s head. A quarter-sized hole appeared in the crown, and grue, hot and loathsome, splashed his leg. The hands momentarily tightened their grip, then fell away.

  Richie whipped the gun towards the man. The man’s eyes flickered from Richie to the dead boy, his mouth working. Richie pulled the trigger twice more, shooting the man in the chest.

  Silence fell on the room with a thump. Richie stumbled away, into the wall. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, thinking, Oh Jesus, oh Christ, what the hell is going on here?

  Richie knew people who’ve killed—or at least claimed to—but the most violence he had ever seen or been in had been fist fights or muggings. He felt the boy’s blood on his legs. The gun was warm in his hands.

  He took a deep breath, then another. The smell of burnt cordite, the reek of hot blood, the ozone stench of fear and adrenaline. He opened his eyes and surveyed the room. His eyes fell on the card the woman dropped.

  He went to it on legs that felt made of wet clay.

  He picked it up.

  THE MAN WITH THE GUN KILLED YOUR HUSBAND.

  His jaw clenched. He saw more cards, one near the man, one near the boy. He snatched them up.

  THE MAN WITH THE GUN HAS YOUR DRUGS, the man’s said.

  THE MAN WITH THE GUN BURNED YOUR HOUSE DOWN AND KILLED YOUR FAMILY, the boy’s said.

  “What the hell!” Richie shrieked and flung the cards away.

  He rubbed his hand on his trouser leg as if touching the cards had been loathsome and went to the front door. Grabbing the knob, he touched nothing but concrete. His knuckles rapped painfully and he cried out.

  He stepped away and closed his eyes. Wait. Think this out.

  KILL THEM ALL AND SURVIVE, his card had said.

  “I did it. I killed them. Can I leave now?”

  No answer, not that he honestly expected one.

  “Dammit,” he breathed. He opened his eyes. He thought of getting into the minivan,
but go where? He couldn’t figure out how it had gotten there in the first place.

  I can’t figure out how I got here, he thought and then he’d heard the slightest of sounds, a soft metal scrape, from down the left hallway. Followed by a thunk.

  “You can’t leave until you shoot me,” the little girl said now.

  His hand dropped from his forehead and he stared at the little girl. He looked around the table, but didn’t see a white card on the table. What did hers say?

  “How,” he said and his throat clicked. “How did you know what my card said?”

  She set her spoon down beside her bowl and looked at him. He recoiled, hissing air through his teeth.

  The little girl had blue eyes his mind automatically associated with cats. The pupils were pointed ovals, constricting in the recessed lighting of the room. “Does it matter?” Her cat-eyes searched his face then nodded, as if he’d answered.

  She turned back to her cereal, finishing the dregs. Her other arm rested on the table and a tight bracelet of steel-gray capsules wrapped around her slender wrist.

  “You’re stuck, Richie,” she said. “Until you shoot me, there’s no way out of here. You can try and look, but you’re sealed in.” She swallowed a spoonful of milk. “Unless you kill me.”

  “Kill you?” he yelled at her. “What the hell is this? Who are you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He grinded his teeth, snorting air out of his nostrils. He looked down at the gun in his hand and saw his knuckles whiten. The metal edges dug into his clammy palm. He thought of the three people in the other room.

  “Fine,” he said, raising the gun and putting it to her temple. His finger slid into the guard and rested on the trigger.

  She didn’t flinch away from the gun; she set her spoon down, then picked the bowl up and brought the edge to her lips, tilting the bowl to drink the last droplets of milk. His gun tracked her and, to his credit, it didn’t shake.

  The little girl set the bowl down. “Whenever you’re ready, Richie.”

  Richie frowned and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened—his finger refused to move.

  He tried again. Again. Same result. His arm shook, beginning in his hand and moving up to his shoulder. Sweat popped out along his brow. The sides of the pistol’s grip cut into his clammy palms.

  He stumbled back a step, still trying to pull the trigger. He looked down at the gun as if it were an alien thing.

  The little girl turned her strange cat’s eyes towards him and he looked up. Her face was still and pale and unreadable aside from those eyes. The pupils fattened and thinned, fattened and thinned. They had a rhythm, almost hypnotic, and Richie struggled to pull his gaze away.

  “Oh,” the little girl said, flatly. “Yeah. Sorry, Richie.”

  At the forefront of his mind, he felt a slippery … coldness seep in through the bone and into his brain, numbing him and chilling him, and he imagined this thing flowing over his mind, filling in the wrinkles. He felt a sudden separation between mind and body, as if both were still in fine working order, but no longer connected.

  “What,” he said with a mouth that no longer felt like his own. “Wh-uh-what a-a-are yuh-you—” He clenched his teeth, forcing his mouth to work. “—doing.”

  He looked at the girl again, and her head was cocked to the side. Her strange eyes continued to pulse.

  His lips writhed, his tongue twisting, forming words. “What. I. Have. To.” Then, as an afterthought, “Sorry. Richie.”

  His brain screamed, but it was distant, far and away from the here and now.

  His arm lowered in a series of jerks, his elbow bending, and the gun was socked under his chin, right above his Adam’s Apple. He tried fighting, but his brain and its commands were passengers in his body.

  His lips writhed, his mouth opened. “Nothing. Personal.”

  What do you mean, he wanted to say, but then his hand tensed on the gun, and he pulled the trigger. The world went dark before he fully heard the shot.

  Baby’s nose wrinkled at the smell of burnt gunpowder, and she turned away from the body on the kitchen floor, folding her hands on the table. As if on cue, she felt minute stings around the wrist that wore the medication bracelet. Her brow momentarily furrowed, then cleared.

  The refrigerator receded into the wall silently, then creaked as it swung inward, leaving a doorway in the false wall. Dr. Roberts stepped out, his thick Buddy Holly glasses reflecting the lights, his perfectly combed sandy hair shining, his labcoat swishing against his legs. He frowned, studying a clipboard, as three like-dressed minions followed.

  “You waited too long, Baby,” Roberts said, not looking up from his chart. He stepped around Richie’s body, as if the corpse were a minor obstacle.

  Baby didn’t answer. Her limbs felt like they were weighted with concrete.

  Roberts looked away from the clipboard. “Was it hard to take control?”

  She, for an instant, thought of answering through one of the dopey minions, but knew that would be a bad idea. “No.”

  Roberts flipped a sheet on his chart, a rattle of paper. “His vital signs were spiking. All machines said he was about to pull the trigger.”

  She wondered if the cameras were still recording. Probably. “He didn’t,” she said through numb lips.

  Roberts cleared his throat. He wasn’t pleased, she knew; his next question would be, Why did you request this, Baby?

  “Why did you request this, Baby?” Roberts asked.

  She pushed her chair back, aluminum legs squeaking over the linoleum, and stood slowly; the drugs made her limbs feel looser, even as her brain continued ticking along. It was the one secret she managed to gain while living under Dr. Roberts.

  She paused at Richie’s body, looking at his face. His eyes were puzzled, but not afraid.

  She stepped over him and the minions backed away. Their thoughts reminded her of startled pigeons.

  She went to the door, then stopped suddenly. Roberts had his hand in his pocket, grasping the bracelet’s remote. He thought she wasn’t sedate enough. He was afraid. He just hid it better than the minions.

  Her back to him, Baby said, “To see if you would do it.”

  Her answer confused him; he continued to hold the remote. His thumb rubbed the button.

  He opened his mouth to ask what she meant by that and she said, “To see how valuable I am to you.”

  “But this?” Roberts said, giving himself away. She heard the edge in his thoughts.

  Careful now, her mother, dead since she really was a baby, said.

  “Did you get your information?” she asked. “My …” She flapped an arm at her side. “… vital signs and stuff like that?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” Roberts coughed as he looked at the chart. Baby could see it through his eyes. “But something’s wrong, Baby. I’ve read your vitals this entire session. You’ve used people before, but this is different.” He paused. “Explain it to me.”

  “You used volunteers from The Compound. This was different. You showed me how valuable what I can do is to you, collecting these people no one would miss, building this set.” She paused, thinking. “These people were real; they had lives before you scooped them up. I realized that. I know that.” She glanced at him and inwardly smiled when he cringed the slightest bit. “But you haven’t and you don’t. Or you don’t care. Whichever way you prefer. But now I know how important what I am to you, at least.” She turned away and stepped through the doorway. “For now, anyway.”

  She walked to the end of the darkened warehouse, towards the door where the agent in the black suit waited, not meeting her eyes. Behind her, she felt Roberts squeeze her remote’s casing. She could almost hear the plastic creak. More medication didn’t matter, she thought, but it made her groggy.

  And then she felt him let go, pull his hand out of his pocket.

  Baby smiled as he told the minions to escort her back to the compound.

  “It’s all right,” she said
again, lowly, as she reached the door and stopped. She avoided the gaze of the black-suited man guarding the door as much as he avoided hers. “It’s all right.”

  A Nice Town

  with Very Clean

  Streets

  the pilots screamed as Grimes watched the surface of Tartan-6 expand in the dead ship’s windshield. He tried believing this wasn’t happening to him, he was somewhere far away; it wasn’t him rushing to crash into the surface of Hell.

  And then FedShip UPF/14 slammed into the ground and what felt like the hand of God slammed into Grimes: an instant of breathless shock and then nothing but darkness.

  He came back to find himself hanging upside down with vertigo warring with migraine and someone else’s blood clogging his throat. More blood, hot and loathsome, coated his face, gummed his eyes closed, soaked his jumpsuit.

  Stephens, the ship’s Alpha rep, called, “Who’s alive?”

  Grimes retched blood, driving twin spikes deeper into his skull, and pawed shakily for the catches of his spiderweb-mesh harness.

  He unbuckled and slammed against the ship’s ceiling. From the back, he heard Newby, the mining rep, try to respond to Stephens and wind up vomiting.

  Grimes scraped blood from his eyes and stood. Every muscle in his body was one, low chorus of pain.

  He looked towards the cockpit and was momentarily confused by the helter-skelter mechanical wall before him; the cockpit had been crushed like a can. Only gore-soaked spiderweb-mesh straps remained of Richmond and Moore. Grimes’s stomach fluttered. Ten minutes ago, they’d been checking the holocube for a lock on Tartan-6’s colony-dome, the last of the thirteen colonies UPF had lost contact with during the war.

  Then the instrument panels—the ship—had gone dead a kilometer above the ground.

  He turned. Stephens stared at the destroyed cockpit, still hanging in his harness.

  Stephens flicked a glance at Grimes, then undid the buckles. Still holding the catches, he swung out of the harness in one smooth movement. He went to Newby, whose Buddha gut pressed against the spiderweb, and helped get him down without Newby falling face-first into his own puke.