by James Sperl
“Then I'd say we've got ourselves a problem.”
“On that point, sir, I would say we have an accord.”
Clarissa gripped Valentina's hand so hard joints cracked. Andrew hadn't flinched in the slightest. He barely blinked and kept his rifle trained on Travis's head. If he was scared, he didn't show it. But where Andrew was cool, Travis was ice.
His unsettling calm and apparent disregard for the threat of imminent death was something Clarissa had never witnessed in a person. It was almost as if he welcomed it. But she knew Travis well enough to know this couldn't be further from the truth. That terrible boy she knew from high school had transformed over the years into something far worse. And the thought of what he had become frightened her down to her soul.
“So what happens now, Travis?” Andrew said.
“Well,” Travis said casually, “seems to me you should probably set that rifle down and step aside.”
“You know I'm not going to do that.”
“I figured as much, but you're not very realistic. Brave? Absolutely. But if I'm honest, you're being a bit stupid.”
Andrew shifted at the criticism.
Travis pretended to crane his neck to get a look at Andrew's rifle.
“What do you have there, a Blaser bolt-action? Don't see many of those. R93 model, right?”
Andrew blinked uncomfortably.
“Not really the best weapon for this situation, wouldn't you agree?”
“It's enough.”
“Enough?” Travis scoffed. He looked over his shoulder at the people beside the car. “You do see the ladies and gentlemen behind me, don't you?”
“I do.”
“And you understand that's a bolt-action you're holding? You'll be lucky to get off one shot before one of my crew mows you down. Doesn't seem like the odds are in your favor.”
Andrew held firm. “I understand the risks and lopsided nature of this situation. But one shot is all I need.”
“Ah,” Travis said, as he crossed his arms and leaned back onto a hip. “Meaning you cap me, and my crew falls apart, right?”
“You know what they say about the head of the snake.”
Travis considered this. “It's a lofty plan, but a bit of a gamble, wouldn't you say? I mean, any one of my people could put a bullet through your skull right now and bring this pathetic standoff to an end. Don't you feel the fact that this hasn't happened yet shows a little good faith?”
“No. I think it shows a lack of confidence, and it cements my theory.” Travis tilted his head inquisitively. “If your 'people,' as you call them, are so cold-blooded and accurate, they would have killed me already. The fact that it hasn't happened yet tells me they either don't have the skills to make such a shot on a quick draw or they're so scared I'm going to splatter your face over my driveway that they won't risk it.” Andrew looked down the barrel of the rifle at Travis. “I'm leaning toward the latter.”
Clarissa's heart pounded in her ears. She couldn't fathom a way in which things would end well. Travis's gang outnumbered them, both in bodies and firepower. If it came down to a gun battle, it would be a massacre. But Travis wouldn't allow it to end so easily. If Clarissa needed convincing, she need only remember the Railleys.
Travis grinned in a way only those possessed of pure evil could.
“I like you,” he said. “I mean that. It's not often you meet someone with balls the size of cantaloupes.” He passed his eyes over everyone on the porch then pointed to the heavens. “That noise in the sky? It's more than just a head-scratching enigma. It's a signal for the beginning. A starter's pistol to mark the end of all things. Mankind has always been on the cusp of destroying one another. We've just never had the motivation to fully commit to it. That all changed with the Sound.”
He smiled then, his expression a facsimile of human compassion. He glanced at everybody one last time before finding Andrew's eyes at the other end of the rifle.
“So be it.” He raised his index finger and twirled it. As if on command, the men and women who had been creeping stealthily forward retreated back to the car and ripped open the doors. Travis backed away casually, his hands jammed into his pockets.
“It's a brave new world out there, kids. And the police can't do shit to help. We're all on our own. We make our own laws now. You might want to think about that.” Travis stopped at the front of the car and gave a two-finger salute. “You all have a pleasant morning.”
Reaching the driver's door, Travis delivered a final smirk to Clarissa before he slid behind the wheel and cranked the engine. He backed the car around and coasted down the drive.
Andrew slowly lowered his weapon.
Clarissa's heart down-stepped its beating as the car receded. Crisis averted. For now. It didn't take a mathematician to calculate the odds of Travis's return. And when he came back, he would be absent his counterfeit airs. He would be fierce and merciless. Of this, Clarissa was certain.
As if to punctuate this belief, one of Travis's goons leaned out the rear passenger window and popped off a barrage of semi-automatic shots into the air, as the car sank out of view over the rise. Laughter diminished along with the sound of the engine.
Yes, he would be back. And Clarissa was more scared now than she had ever been.
CHAPTER 23
No one got another wink after Travis left. Rattled nerves and burgeoning daylight put the brakes on any further sleep. It was just as well. With everyone awake, no one faced the risk of disappearing while they slept.
What a bizarre headspace to be in, Clarissa thought: To be afraid during both waking and sleeping hours.
They had lots to do. Breakfast was brief, with plans made over scrambled eggs, toast, and the blackest of coffee.
It turned out Andrew's errand to retrieve his flatbed trailer held more purpose than simply to reacquire borrowed property. He'd had some foresight, and the timing couldn't have been better.
Until this morning, he had always parked his truck off to the side of the driveway. But not anymore. Now, with the flatbed hitched to it, he parked it inside the spacious storage shed, which he repurposed as a detached garage.
Everyone knew Travis would be back. The only question was how much damage he would do once he arrived. Andrew hid his stash fairly well, but he couldn't guarantee that Travis or one of his cronies wouldn't stumble across it in a home invasion-fueled demolition spree. With any luck, they would only discover Andrew's shelf of “mugger's pay” supplies and be gone. Then Andrew, Clarissa, and her friends could return to the home at a later date and utilize the hidden room's supplies for themselves. It was a big “if,” but they needed to hang their hat on a best possible outcome, even if they planned for the worst case scenario.
Rachel and Valentina had been tasked with hauling up select supplies from the storeroom Andrew had set aside. It was a hefty job. Items had to be carried up a flight of stairs, through the house, and across the lot so Andrew could pack them on the flatbed. Clarissa couldn't remember a time when either of her friends had engaged in so much physical activity. Less than an hour into the job both panted as if each had just finished a five-mile jog.
By comparison, Clarissa's job was much less strenuous: she harvested the garden. When Travis returned, he would either clear it out, trash it, or both. Andrew wanted to gather as much fresh produce as he could before it met its likely demise, and since neither Rachel nor Valentina had any gardening experience—Clarissa's failed attempt to grow herbs in the three flower boxes hanging from her apartment balcony qualified her—Andrew picked her for the job.
The garden was rife with tomatoes, lettuce, and spinach, and the carrots, onions, potatoes, and sugar snap peas were just shy of their harvest times. They would never be able to eat it all, but Andrew would be damned if he would leave everything to a bunch of hooligans to enjoy. Once they had gathered as much produce as they could, Clarissa and Andrew would assist Rachel and Valentina in their efforts.
Andrew had barely said two words to her while he
worked. Clarissa preferred a conversation to help pass the time, but she got the sense that working in the garden was a cathartic experience for him. He tended to the plants tenderly, almost lovingly, as if they were more than just food producers. She wondered if gardening had been a shared experience between him and the woman in the photos. That this was a place where they spent time together to be part of the world that helped sustain them.
What a beautiful sentiment, Clarissa thought. To be connected to a person on every level. Did Andrew and the woman speak to each other when they worked in the garden? Did they hold in-depth conversations about life and love as they harvested and pruned, or was it like now, where absolute silence prevailed? Either way, Clarissa found the notion of sharing an activity with someone special—even one as simple as tilling soil—heart-achingly profound. Just thinking about Andrew and the woman out here together plucking ripe vegetables from their vines under an azure sky made her envious.
The woman. Clarissa hesitated to call her Andrew's wife, but the designation seemed likely. She was too old to be his daughter. Given the sheer number of photographs that featured her, what else could she be?
“Just ask.”
Andrew's question came from out of nowhere and caused Clarissa to jump.
“I'm sorry?”
“You have questions. Ask them.”
“Questions? I...I'm not sure what you mean.”
“I've seen you all in the house. Looking at the pictures. Scrutinizing them. I know you have things you want to ask me. So let's get it out there.”
Clarissa's throat dried up. Had she been thinking out loud? Perhaps mumbling under her breath as she mulled over Andrew's personal history? She'd never been one to do that before, but lots of things had never happened before until recently.
“I, uh...”
Andrew turned to her. “It's okay. Really.”
Clarissa inhaled. “Okay. That woman. In all those photographs. She used to be your wife.”
Andrew faced forward and continued to pinch cherry tomatoes from their vines.
“Yes.”
“But something terrible happened to her.”
A pause. “Yes.”
Clarissa waited for further elaboration, but none came.
“Can...can you tell me what?”
Andrew deposited a handful of the tomatoes into a plastic bin half full with others then shifted on his knees to a different vine.
“Do you remember the Trenton Mall shooting?” he began. “From roughly ten years ago?”
Clarissa searched her memory but came up empty.
“I'm sad to say that I don't.”
Andrew bobbed his head. “I'm not surprised. There're too many to keep track of anymore. At least in this country. It seems like every other week someone with a gun's walking into a populated area to sort out their problems. Schools, colleges, theaters...malls.”
Clarissa tried to resume collecting snap peas, but her hands only fumbled for them clumsily.
Andrew sighed. “Liv and I were shopping for a birthday present for a friend. There was a big sale at the Pottery Barn, you see.” He smiled, but there was no conviction in his eyes. “Next thing we know, people are running and screaming, and I hear these popping sounds. I look over, and Liv's on the ground, bleeding from the abdomen. She died six minutes later.”
Clarissa was frozen. Her mouth hung open, her hands hovering in front of the pea vine, purposeless.
Andrew inhaled and continued. “I never even saw the shooter until they plastered his face all over the evening news later that night. Eleven people in all, they said, including the gunman. Liv was number five. The police never learned the shooter's motive.”
Clarissa let her arms fall to her sides. Tears had pooled along the rims of her eyes and slipped down her cheeks.
“Andrew, I...”
Andrew looked at her and nodded.
“It's okay. I've had plenty of time to process it. Doesn't mean I miss her any less, I just...I don't hate the world as much now.”
Clarissa backhanded the tears from her face. “Is that why you're all the way out here by yourself?”
Andrew returned to harvesting tomatoes.
“After that day, a lot changed. It wasn't just that I lost my best friend, I lost my humanity. I felt compassion for nothing and no one. People became soulless, evil entities to me, beings that seemed hell-bent on doing as much harm as they could. So, I checked out.”
Andrew picked in contemplative silence for a clutch of seconds. Clarissa barely breathed.
“After her insurance settled,” he continued, “I thought the best way to honor her was to do something we had always talked about doing.” He passed his sagging eyes over the property. “Living off the grid. Becoming self-sufficient. Removing ourselves from a deteriorating society.” He sighed and dropped more tomatoes into the bin. “Who knows. Maybe if we had done it sooner, she'd still be here.”
Clarissa abandoned the peas and turned to face Andrew.
“Don't say that. Talk like that makes it sound like you blame yourself. You couldn't have known that guy was going to come to the mall that day. No one could've known.”
“Of course no one could've known,” Andrew said sharply. “But what if we had gone shopping on a different day, or had gone to a different store? Or what if we had just gone one of the dozen or so other times she had asked me to go before that day instead of me procrastinating and putting it off?”
“Look, Andrew,” Clarissa began, her head down and her hands in her lap, “I'm not a particularly religious person. In fact, I'm not religious at all. But I'm a big believer in fate. If...things hadn't happened that day then I believe it would've happened on a different day. Maybe not immediately but at some time. I can't explain why I feel this way, but I just believe there's a cosmic order to things. That paths are set, and all we can do is follow them.”
Andrew just looked at her. “You can't believe that.”
“But I do.”
He winced. “Listen to what you're saying. You're essentially claiming that we—you—have no free will. That every choice we make has already been laid out for us by...something. Worse yet, you're telling me that Liv was a marked person. That she was fucked from the get-go because “fate” determined that she die young and childless. It makes no sense.”
Clarissa clamped her eyes shut. Her words weren't coming out the way she intended.
“I know what I'm saying smacks of predestination and God's plan and all of that, and, well, maybe I'm more spiritual than I think. I just have a hard time accepting that something as senseless as your wife's murder is without purpose. There has to be something at the root of it all. Some greater picture that we're unable to see. A reason she was taken from you that we just don't understand.”
Andrew smiled humorlessly. To Clarissa, it felt placating.
“Ah,” he said, as he resumed picking.
Clarissa frowned. “What do you mean 'ah'?”
“Nothing. I just...now I understand where you're coming from.”
Now he understands? What's that supposed to mean?
Clarissa didn't like Andrew's tone. Were the conversation about anything other than the incredibly sad and sensitive topic of a murdered spouse, she might have allowed her hackles to rise. Instead, she got a grip on her emotions.
“And where is it I'm coming from?” she replied.
“Well,” Andrew began, oddly dispassionate, “I think you believe what you believe because you're uncomfortable with the alternative.”
Clarissa searched the ground. “Which is?”
He stopped and looked her square in the eye.
“That sometimes evil shit happens to good people for no good goddamned reason.”
Clarissa swallowed then jumped when Valentina shouted from across the yard. She and Andrew turned simultaneously. Clarissa was secretly thankful for the distraction.
Valentina crouched over an upturned box of canned goods. She collected them amid mumbled curses.
“Your friends are having some difficulty accepting what we're doing, aren't they?”
“A little,” Clarissa said, tossing her head from side to side. “They just don't understand why we should leave when we have all that food, all this land, and this remote location. They're not convinced Travis is a threat. They're just scared is all.”
Andrew nodded. “But you understand why we have to leave, don't you?”
Clarissa shot her eyes to him. “Because that asshole, Travis, will be back.”
“Yes.”
“And he'll probably have more people with him next time.”
“Yes.”
Clarissa gulped. “Because he and his friends killed your neighbors.” Andrew said nothing, only bore into her with his stare. “And if they come back, they'll kill us.”
Without a word, Andrew rose and crossed to a bed flush with basil. He snapped off crisp leaves by the handful.
“How do you know our friend, Travis?”
The blood drained from Clarissa's face. She pretended to busy herself with a pea vine she had already harvested.
“I, uh, made a bad decision once a long time ago, and if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not talk about it.”
“Fair enough,” Andrew said, then without missing a beat: “So how long have you been a waitress?”
The sudden shift in topic left Clarissa fumbling for words.
“Me? I, uh...well, longer than I care to admit.”
Andrew waited for a five count until it was clear Clarissa would offer nothing further on the subject.
“Okay. You like football?”
“Not really.”
“Cooking?”
“I'm awful at it.”
“Got a favorite book?”
Clarissa wrinkled her nose. “I don't read much.”
Andrew let his shoulders slump and followed it with a comic scowl. “Well, you're a fountain of conversation. Is there anything you do want to talk about? Do you like music? Do you have a favorite movie? Do you have a boyfriend?”
Clarissa glanced at Andrew and chuckled. For someone who had craved conversation not five minutes ago, she was awfully terse.
