by Alan Ryker
Even from the distance I can see panic make his face go slack, then rage twist it back up. It’s the face of a toddler about to explode in tantrum, not a cold-blooded killer who’ll shoot you in the back. Then again, most people wouldn’t give a tantruming toddler a gun. “Fuck you! I hope they make it hurt!” He turns and runs.
Whatever. Hopefully I’ll never see the kid again in this life, though I know I’ll be seeing his face in my nightmares.
I head for the cold storage building, stumbling in the dark over the larger chunks of asphalt and more tenacious and tangled clumps of grass and weeds. I’m approaching from either the back or the side, because instead of a main entrance I’m heading toward a loading dock. As I near the building, its height blocks the moon and I can barely make out what I’m walking into.
I take out my phone and turn on the flash LED, though I know it makes me a lot more visible than my surroundings. Still, it keeps me from from tripping, especially as I near the building and scattered bricks litter the ground along with the crumbled pavement.
Soon I’ve stepped into total darkness, and I’m not even inside yet. I can feel the weight of the building above me. I’m an insect, and the building is a hand waiting for just the right instant to squash me.
There’s a door beside the dock, and I head for it until I see that the stairs that once led up to it are a twisted, rusted wreck hanging precariously by bolts stuck only halfway into the brick of the building. So I turn back to the dock. It’s about four foot high, and I’m glad I’m tall as I plant my hands on the concrete and press myself up. I hesitate for a moment. It strikes me that this morning I sat at my desk at a venture capital fund. Now I’m standing on the brink of the pit, about to walk into an abandoned warehouse in the worst part of town imaginable. This morning seems years away. It seems like a part of a different life as much as my memories in the burn unit.
I realize that if anything is in the dock, it’s watching me standing here framed by the night sky. Taking my phone from my pocket and using it again as a makeshift flashlight, I step into darkness.
8
I’d expected heaps of industrial junk, but of course the owners of the building had sold off anything of value before abandoning it. The evidence of small fires spot the concrete floor, piles of ash with the occasional chunk of ancient unburned pallet jutting from the black center. I tilt my head back to scan the ceiling for smoke stains, but the ceiling is far too high, and staring up into the perfect darkness above makes me feel strange, like someone is stepping on my heart and squeezing the air from my lungs. I feel like I’m at the center of the Earth.
As I walk, I step around liquor bottles and rusted tins of food. There’s something strange about them, and then I realize what it is: they’re all so old. The cold storage facility had once housed the occasional squatter, but from the dust and rust on this glass and tin, it hasn’t for ten years.
Rats, though, scurry out of sight. I hope they’re rats. I catch the occasional dual pinpoints of reflected light close to the ground. Some blink out quickly and I hear more of the tick-tick-tick and sandpaper scrape of claws on concrete. Some, though, stay put, small rodent eyes locked on mine, belligerent, challenging.
Walking straight ahead, I eventually find the brick wall that marks the end of the loading dock. I turn left and follow it and eventually come to a wide-open doorway covered with frayed rubber flaps, and also a smaller doorway. Pushing aside the rubber flaps, the sight of the main floor of the cold storage building nearly takes my breath away.
Unlike the cave-dark docks, the top of the five-story main area is an almost solid row of windows, and silvery light bathes the interior. I step through the door and see faces in the light of my phone. My heart thumps against my ribs as if I hadn’t been looking for people the whole time, as if this were a big mistake, which it probably is.
“Get that light out of my face,” a woman’s voice says.
I turn the light away and try to let my eyes adjust. The light from above spills on a huge pile of rubble that dominates most of the vast chamber. The entire five-story cold storage building is basically one huge room. Catwalks circle the walls, but bridges from them either jut out into nothing or hang precariously. This pile of rubble at one point must have been some sort of interior structure almost as tall as the building itself, because it takes up almost the entire floor, making the huge room seem claustrophobic.
My eyes adjusted, I look at the woman. I can’t tell her age. She looks like one of those people who might be older or younger than they appear. Her flesh has the thin but tough appearance of a mummy, which is in contrast to her lively eyes that glint from black pits.
I’m looking at her so intently that I don’t notice the man sitting propped against the rubble ten feet away from her until he moves. He has the same look of having been wrung out by a hard life, but he’s younger, and his gaze isn’t as fierce.
“Are you—?”
“He’s not the Serpent,” the woman said, twisting her face in scorn. “So who are you?”
“How do you know he’s not?”
“I’m looking at him.”
I decide to cut the conversation short and say, “I’m not.”
“Then what are you staring for?”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You surprised me. So you’re waiting for the Serpent?”
“Nope. We’re not doing this,” the woman says.
“Doing what?”
“Having some heart-to-heart about why we’re here. He tried that earlier.” She waves a dismissive hand into the darkness to her left. “Wouldn’t shut the fuck up until we shut him up. Not interested in your story. Not interested in telling you mine.”
This woman is horrible. “You’re very pleasant.”
“Fuck off.”
I have to bite my tongue, take a breath, remember that she probably had a lot of reason to be like this, remember that getting into a conflict wouldn’t help me find Ouroboros.
Instead of continuing the useless interaction, I look off in the direction she gestured and see a third person I hadn’t noticed, huddled against a pile of rubble so that he looks like refuse himself.
As I walk towards him, he recedes into the pile, but he doesn’t have far to go. I briefly shine my phone on him. He squints and holds up a hand. I know it’s rude, but I want to get a glimpse of him.
I see a homeless guy, a guy I would pretend not to see if he were panhandling from the edge of the sidewalk on my way to work. Hell, I might have pretended not to see him before, a hundred times before. He has the sort of old homeless guy face that melds into the type because you never look at it directly. Now I’m looking directly at him, and it’s making him very nervous. I turn my light away from him. I saw enough. Deep crags. Few teeth. Bushy gray beard. Black eye.
I look back at the other two. She meets my eyes with defiance. They hurt him, when he wouldn’t be quiet.
“I’m Cody,” I say, taking a seat a few feet away from the old man. A lot of the rubble is surprisingly soft, and I see that among the wood is a lot of moldering cork. This must be the remains of an insulated tower. So the brick building was just a shell containing this tower, which was the real cold storage.
“I’m Bill,” the old guy says. “Are you a member of the Serpent?”
“No.”
“I don’t get it. Do you know who they are? Do you know they come here?”
“I know some.”
“So why are you here?”
“Why are you here?” I ask. I try not to look too eager, but I can’t believe I’ve found someone who won’t look the other way when the Serpent is mentioned.
“A million reasons. I’ve made just about every mistake it’s possible to make. I can’t…” His eyes flick past me and he trails off. I turn and find the other two glaring at them. I remember what she said about shutting the old man up.
“They won’t hurt you. You can talk.”
He looks at me questioningly, searches my face. I think he deci
des that I’m being sincere, but he still has something of the whipped dog about him.
He shrugs. “No need to go into specifics. I’ve done plenty to warrant a trip to the Serpent. The question is why someone like you is here. What could you possibly want from them?”
“I’m not sure.”
His brows knit together and he says, “Then you need to get out of here. This is something you need to be sure about.”
“Why are you so sure you need to be here?”
I’m fishing. I’m afraid that if I confess that I have no idea what’s going on that he’ll clam up. It seems stupid to pretend that we’re on the same team, but it’s what I’ve got. I figure that if I can get him talking, I can narrow in on what the hell this Ouroboros secret society is all about. I feel like I’m on the right path. These people are desperate, and remembering how Maddy was right before everything changed…I think I’m on the right path.
The man peeks past me again, searches my face again, then its like a bursting dam. His story starts with him supporting a wife, two kids and a slight drinking problem. It doesn’t get better from there. I knew that it wouldn’t, that a story that ends with a man squatting in an abandoned warehouse in the Burnout waiting with a couple of junkies for a group called the Serpent to come snatch him up wouldn’t be a light-hearted romp, but it’s stunning how everything went wrong for this man. If he could have seen how he’d end up from the beginning he never would have let it happen, but that’s the rub: it’s one damn thing after the other. It’s the little things that turn into the huge things that destroy your life. It’s not looking before opening your car door and causing a multi-car pileup. It’s forgetting to flip a little switch to turn the heating element off and getting cooked alive. It’s a drink every evening to unwind, then a couple, then…
It’s unfair. That’s what it really is. Unfair. And people will tell you that you get what you deserve, and those same people would beg for mercy if they went through what you went through. And those people will tell you that life isn’t fair for anyone, but they will still act as if it is, as if we chose this, as if we all haven’t been tossed blindfolded into a maze full of deadly traps and slippery slopes.
Finally, his story ends with him sitting there in the cold storage building, trying to commiserate with fellow unfortunate souls and getting beaten for the mistaken belief that seeing the world’s cruelty will make a person more sensitive to it when it makes so many more willing to add to it when they get a chance to get their own licks in.
“But what does this have to do with the Serpent?”
He looks at me, finally understanding the depths of my ignorance. But now we’ve traveled together. “Because they’ll fix it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. No one knows. But if you’re willing to give everything to them, people say they can fix your mistakes, unhurt all the people you’ve hurt. I was on the Mayfield bridge just up the river. I’d climbed over the rail and spotted some rocks and was about to jump when I noticed this building and remembered that it belongs to the Serpent. I’m tired. I’m so damned tired. But I figured I’d try this one last thing.”
Cody, I think I’ve found a way to fix everything.
Bill says, “You need to get out of here. There’s no reason for you to be mixed up in something like this. You’re not like us.”
He’s made the mistake people make about him every day: thinking you can understand a man by looking at him. It must be evolutionary. It must go back to the days when we had to decide friend or foe in the instant before a stranger saw us.
But I have to get Madison back. I don’t understand what deal she made. I don’t understand how the Serpent does it, but they can change things “if you’re willing to give them everything.” I can’t live with that.
A few hours pass. Bill and I continue to chat despite the dirty looks we get from the other pair. He tries to convince me to leave, but when he sees I won’t, he just talks. I think it’s been a long time since anyone’s listened to him.
Then the door to the loading dock lightens, glowing yellow, and we all go silent. A man steps into the wide doorway and slides his flashlight over us.
My eyes have to readjust after the beam of the light passes over me, and because he’s standing behind the light source all I can really make out is a silhouette, but it speaks to me. The air of authority could mean cop. The bearing of possession could mean land owner. But the casual expectation…This is a member of the Serpent.
He runs the flashlight over us again. I fight an urge to reach into my pocket and wrap a finger around the trigger of my pistol. Instead, I remind myself that this is what I want.
“What’s your story?” He shines the flashlight into the woman’s face. It’s much brighter than my little phone light, and it puts every feature on display. The crows’ feet and thin, pinched lips. The sunken eyes. The jutting jaw. They begin her story before she ever opens her mouth.
She has a few false starts. Between every one she clamps her lips and glares at the man who we still haven’t seen.
“You’re part of the Serpent?”
We all know that he is. She’s stalling.
“Yes. Why are you here?”
She huffs, squints angrily into the light. “I’ve made mistakes. I need you to fix them.”
“What mistakes?”
“Now? In front of…”
“Yes, now. Do you think this is a…Okay, I’m going to lay this out for all of you, how this works. You will tell me what you want. If I decide you’re full of shit, you walk away. If I decide you’re prepared to do what’s necessary to cut a deal with Ouroboros, you come with me. If he decides to help you, he helps you. If he decides that you can’t or won’t be helped, you get shot and dropped in the river.” He gives a moment to let that resonate. “If you have doubts about him or your own dedication, then this is the time to leave.”
The man who sat near the woman fidgets. We all turn and look at him as he’s illuminated by the flashlight. He shields his eyes, making a brim of his right hand.
“Do you want to leave?”
After a moment, he says, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m going to leave.”
The junkie grabs his backpack from the rubble and sidles out. Ouroboros’ man follows him with his flashlight, and I’m able to make out a few details. He’s tall. Not quite as tall as me, but over six foot. He’s muscular. He has hair. The man I chased after was shaved bald, and I thought it was some sort of requirement of the cult. As the flashlight follows the nervous junkie out, the beam finally hits the brick wall to spotlight the junkie sidling onto the loading dock and then turning and running. The light hitting the wall reflects onto this man, and I see large, dark circles on the back of his hands.
He turns back and I see nothing of his face as I’m blinded again.
“How many do we have left? Come forward.”
Bill and I stand beside the woman, though Bill makes sure to keep me between himself and her.
He scans us with the flashlight, stops at me. “This should be good.” Then flicks it back to the woman. She squints until her eyes almost disappear.
“Can you get the damn light out of my face?”
“No. What do you need fixed?”
Her lower jaw juts out until her chin is a shelf, but eventually she says, “I used to have a family. I had two kids, an apartment, a boyfriend. He and I had smoked crack before the kids, but I stopped. He did too, for awhile. He started again. He brought these people around the house, around our kids…I told him not to, but he kept on. One night, a couple of them broke in, held us at gunpoint and searched the apartment. They found his little stash, but they thought he was holding out. They…” The deep wrinkles around her squinted eyes moisten. “They executed my kids. He wasn’t even holding anything else.” She bears her gritted teeth. “Is that enough? Is that fucking bad enough for you? You can kill me and throw me in the river. Good. I’ve been trying to die every day since. Fuck you. Fuck you.” The last words
she forces through gray teeth that look ready to crumble in her grinding jaws.
“That’s good.” He moves the light past me and onto Bill. “Now you.”
Bill tells some of what he told me before the man gets frustrated by the length of the tale and interrupts, saying, “Yeah, that’s good enough.”
Bill shuts his mouth without protest.
The man moves the light to me, and it’s my turn to squint. “I can’t wait to hear what makes your life so bad that you need Ouroboros.”
I wait for more taunting, but when it doesn’t come, I say, “My girlfriend disappeared, and it’s my fault.”
“Your girlfriend? You’re going to trade everything not for your family, not for a wife and kids, but for a girlfriend? Girlfriends come and go. If they didn’t, they’d be wives. Get the fuck out of here.”
He motions to the other two, and they start to move for the door.
He’s going to leave without me.
I almost reach for my gun before I think of one other way to get his attention. “Her name is Madison Barrington.”
He stops, puts his flashlight back on me. “Hold on.”
He pulls a phone from his pocket and dials it without moving the light from my face. I don’t want to close my eyes, obviously don’t trust this bastard, but I have to. It barely helps. The light pounds through my eyelids and into my brain.
“Let me talk to him. Yes, it’s important. I’m looking at Cody Miller.” After a few seconds he says, “Here.” When I open my eyes, he’s handing me his phone.
I take it and turn away. “Hello?”
“Hello, Cody. You’re very persistent.”
“Who is this?”
“Ouroboros.”
“The serpent eating its tail? What does that mean?”
“You’re smart. You’re too smart to be messing around with us. You’d be dead if it weren’t for me. So maybe you’re not that smart.”
“So the kid…He did shoot me?”
“Yes, he did. And so will this man. But this time he’ll be doing it for me, and I won’t save you.”
