Die Again to Save the World

by Ramy Vance

  Reuben’s heart had swelled with pride. That must be how his dad felt all the time when he helped people. The bus was largely silent as it wound through the streets.

  “Sir,” the bus driver had pointed ahead, “there are spikes in the road ahead. What would you like me to do?”

  “Drive over them, of course!” Thorne had demanded, doing a jig that reminded Reuben of Willy Wonka.

  But there were other plans. Before they got to the spikes, a squad car barricade had blocked them off.

  “Keep driving,” Thorne had said.

  The driver’s eyes had widened as he frantically shook his head. “No way. I can’t. It would flip the bus.”

  “Goddamn it, I said keep driving.” Thorne had stepped on the accelerator, forcing the bus to lurch forward.

  The bus driver had pushed back. “It’ll flip. The kids don’t have seatbelts.”

  At the exact moment Thorne had turned to the driver, the back door to the bus swung open. Reuben remembered a lot of yelling and cursing and curling up tighter on the floor.

  But, the voice was unmistakable. Marshall Peet was on the bus.

  Later, Reuben would be told that Marshall had been on the hood of a squad car that got up close to the back. It was some Keanu Reeves in Speed acrobatics, but he had managed to get in. There was helicopter footage of him doing it, and reporters all over the world asked how a cop who’d never had any SWAT or acrobatic training was able to do it. His response: “Your body does some crazy shit when your kid’s in trouble.” But something hadn’t been right about it. There was something Marshall wasn’t saying. To the media, to his cop buddies, and definitely not to Reuben.

  “Thorne.” Marshall’s hands had been out as if he was trying to calm a rabid dog. “We’re working on getting you this Hopper gal. But you’ve got to end this.”

  “I’ll end it when I see Hopper.”

  Marshall had taken a cautious step forward. “This isn’t like the movies. There are only two ways out of here. Death or jail.”

  “Nah, there’s a third. I get Hopper, and she gets me what I want.”

  “OK. We’ll get you, Hopper,” Marshall had agreed, but Reuben recognized that tone. That was the tone Reuben was treated to when he was so far out of line, he had no idea how much trouble he was in. The fallout was always less than agreeable.

  The bus had started to slow down, and Thorne had immediately turned to the driver. “Keep going.”

  Marshall had taken another step forward.

  “Don’t come near me,” Thorne had growled. “I’ll shoot.”

  “We’re working on getting you, Hopper,” Marshall continued to edge slowly toward him. “But—"

  Marshall’s voice dropped right as his boot fell next to Reuben’s curled frame near the front of the bus.

  “But what?”

  “But you’re going down, motherfucker.” With one swift kick, Marshall had wrestled him against the side of the bus. “You want to do this the hard way or the easy way?” Marshall breathed into Thorne’s face.

  Reuben grimaced. He’d had enough of the hard ways when he'd misbehaved as a kid to know this guy was fucked.

  “Get off me,” Thorne had yelled, and Reuben could see him trying to turn his gun on his dad.

  But Marshall was ready. As soon as Thorne moved his hand, Marshall had pushed his arm out the window. Thorne had pulled the trigger twice, the bullets flying outside, harmlessly striking the asphalt below.

  Everyone on the bus had screamed and curled tighter on the floor. Reuben pulled Martha in closer.

  Thorne had screamed like a wild banshee and attacked Marshall, and the two wrestled on the bus's floor, with Thorne keeping a tight grip on his gun. As they wrestled, the bus came to a stop. Later, Reuben would see that it had stopped just feet before the spikes.

  As soon as they’d stopped, another officer had boarded the bus.

  “Get the kids off here,” Marshall had yelled. “Get them out of here.”

  Thorne was cursing and yelling, but Marshall had him pinned to the floor of the bus. However, the wild assailant was still waving the gun around, and the kids whimpered.

  Reuben then remembered the odd line he’d never quite understood. In one solitary moment of weakness under Marshall’s grip, the gunman had cried, “All I wanted was to end the whole thing.”

  If he had kept going that route, things might have turned out differently for the gunman. But instead, he’d fired off his gun into the side of the seat. There was complete chaos, and Reuben only remembered the fear. Marshall had kept a tight but precarious grip on the desperate Thorne while the officers swiftly evacuated the bus.

  A few minutes later, Reuben had stood on the side of the highway with all the other kids while Marshall and Thorne continued to wrestle inside the vehicle. The vehicle shook as other officers boarded, and then Thorne had somehow slipped from Marshall's grasp, jumped out of the bus, and started running for his life down the side of the highway.

  Marshall and all the other officers had taken off after him.

  Thorne had jumped into the bushes alongside the road, and Reuben had watched his dad disappear into the woods after him.

  Ambulance workers had handed out blankets to the kids, who had begun to cry from the shock of the ordeal. Reuben had just watched for his dad through the trees. It seemed like hours, but eventually, another bus had come to pick up the kids.

  Reuben never saw the body, but the reports were clear. Marshall had shot Thorne, and he’d died from a bullet wound to the back. In later years, when Reuben had talked to Marshall’s partners, they said it was a lot more gruesome than that.

  “We can’t tell you anything,” one of them had said. “But it was personal back in those woods. Your dad loves you, kid.”

  “But there's one thing I never understood,” he told his dad’s friends. “Was she really there?”

  “Who? You mean your mom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, they weren’t letting parents anywhere near the scene, so she wouldn’t have been there. They had the roads blocked off and everything. The parents were all watching the newscast back at the school.”

  “But I swore I saw…” Reuben had never finished telling them what he saw.

  But he was certain he’d seen her in the EMS crowd, walking away when he disembarked from the bus. He’d tried to run after her, but the officers were so strict about keeping order that he couldn’t get to her. By the time he got off the bus and away from the officers, she was gone.

  Martha now listened to him tell the story how he remembered it.

  “I never saw her again after that. She wasn’t with the other parents waiting at the school.” Reuben’s voice was distant, empty.

  Martha nodded. Her mom and dad had been there to hug her and hold her tight the first chance they got.

  Reuben shook his head like he was chasing away a bad memory. “Marshall was still at the scene, my mom was gone. I came home to an empty house.”

  “What did Marshall say?” Her eyes narrowed with empathy. “About where she went?”

  Reuben shrugged. “Not much. He was a different person after that. Cold and bitter. The city heaped all kinds of awards on him. TV appearances.”

  “Right. He was everywhere for a little bit. There was the whole script fiasco.”

  “Oh God, the movie.” They both laughed.

  Reuben sighed. “Marshall hated the idea. Said he didn’t want everyone gawking at his life. ‘Nothing to see here, folks.’ He didn’t want to have anything to do with it and believe you me, I watched him do everything in his power to make sure that thing never saw the light of day. You think he’s an asshole to me, you should have seen what he was like with that scriptwriter.”

  She laughed. “Sounds like Marshall.”

  “Yeah.” Reuben’s voice was soft. “The new Marshall. He wasn’t like that before.”

  Martha patted his arm. “I’m sorry it’s been hard for you. If you want to know, he’s why I decided to beco
me a cop.”

  “Yeah, he was a good dad once upon a time. Now?” Reuben just shrugged.

  “And you’re a good son,” she said. “I see how you take care of him.”

  “Not that he notices,” Reuben complained.

  “He does. He just can’t tell you. He’s a proud man, but he loves you.”

  Reuben raised an eyebrow. He knew Marshall loved him somewhere deep inside. But he didn’t know where.

  Reuben listened for noise in the house. “I think he’s asleep.” When he was convinced it was silent, he peeked out. Marshall typically forgot arguments once he had slept. But if he encountered him without sleep or significant booze after an argument, then any interaction would turn into round two or three or four.

  The living room was empty, and Reuben tiptoed down the hall. Through his cracked door, he could see his dad asleep.

  “Yep, he’s out.” Reuben laughed. “You can sneak out now.”

  Martha shook her head. “I wanted to check on you and get away from Marshall, true. But what I really wanted was to pick your brain. You know, one cop to another.”

  “I’m not a cop.”

  Martha gave him that look again. “Well, you were raised by a good one. I figure you inherited some of those instincts Marshall’s always on about.”

  Reuben chuckled. “Maybe. What’s up?”

  “Well, earlier you mentioned something about maple syrup and the Canadian…”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Reuben—Thursday, February 9, 8:25 p.m.

  Reuben and Martha grabbed a box of half-eaten pizza from the fridge and headed back to his room. Now it was just the two of them, very much like when they were teenagers.

  Reuben took a bite of the cold pizza. “So, what’s up?”

  “I’m working this case. Looking for a guy with the alias, the Canadian.”

  Reuben forced a chuckle. “The Canadian? Guy sounds douche-y.”

  “You have no idea. I have been obsessing about this for days now.” She pinched the bridge of her nose.

  Reuben totally understood the feeling. He'd been obsessing, too. Not about maple syrup—about the bomb. He scratched his chin. He was beginning to think both of their cases were related. If so, maybe she would know something that would help him.

  He’d have to ease into the conversation, though. “Canada and maple syrup. Doesn’t sound like obsession material.”

  She laughed. “It’s funny how easy it comes, being obsessed with one case.”

  He related more than she knew.

  “Anyway,” she tossed the empty beer bottle into the bin, “I keep running across weird links. Do you know about this maple syrup bust at the Detroit border?”

  Reuben tried to keep up his poker face. “I’ve read about it. There was a bust of illegal maple syrup at the border. Then there was a shootout with the cops.”

  Martha nodded. “Yeah, two were wounded, and one died earlier tonight,” she explained. “I can’t help but think these two are connected. And then, you know that Canadian investor, Alister Pout? I think he’s connected. But it’s just a feeling. I don’t have any evidence. Just what I saw this morning at that dodgy dry cleaners, and the fact that Pout is Canadian.”

  Reuben raised an eyebrow, and he wondered if this was the lead he needed. Still, Reuben didn’t know anything about Pout other than the occasional tidbit he caught on the news. “Who is he?” Reuben asked, opening his laptop and doing a search. RedBook was the first thing that popped up.

  Martha pointed to a picture of him. “Wealthy RedBook creator, and he wears a douche fedora. Mastermind criminal for sure.” She tried to chuckle at her own joke, but the problem was, she believed it to be true. “I just have this weird feeling that he’s either the Canadian, or he’s connected to him. And that this Mr. Sudds Dry Cleaning and the shit at the border are somehow connected. I just can’t see how.”

  “RedBook, huh?” Reuben remembered reading the maple syrup bust report. “Well, you know the deal with the platform, right?”

  “It’s just another social media thingie, right? Like Facebook or the other things where people send each other dick pics and nudes.”

  “Snapchat,” Reuben said, shaking his head. “Not exactly. It’s designed to record the events in real-time so that people can stay safe. People who sign up agree to data transfers if they are in a Red Zone.”

  Martha lifted an eyebrow. “Red Zone? I don’t understand.”

  “OK, let’s say you’re at the bank and an armed robber comes in. If someone on RedBook notifies the system that there’s a crime or disaster in progress, then RedBook will automatically turn on the cameras, mics, whatever on the phones and devices of anyone else signed up in the area. Then you get a multi-sourced breakdown of what’s happening in real-time. Robberies, traffic jams, tsunamis, bombs.” Reuben paused at this last thought.

  A microwave bomb would only kill humans and other biological beings. It wouldn’t damage buildings or infrastructure or…computers and cell phones. Which meant that devices with the RedBook app would keep running and would transmit images and videos of the event in real-time all over the globe to anyone on the platform.

  “Fuck me,” Reuben muttered. Could Alister Pout be planning to skip town and then set off the bomb to, what? Drive up his stock?

  Technology in the guise of a social media platform that could be used in times of crisis was beyond valuable. It wasn’t difficult to think of the government applications for it: Search and Rescue, manhunts…spying.

  Pout would become one of the most powerful men on the planet when everyone bought his tech. The cost: all the thousands—maybe millions—of human lives wiped out in the bomb’s radius when it took out part of New York.

  “Ah, Martha,” Reuben stammered.

  “Yeah?” she said, looking up from her screen.

  Here we go. Reuben rubbed his hands together. “I’m going to tell you something. You’re not going to believe it at first, but I swear to you two things. One, I’m not crazy, and two, we need to stop this Canadian dude before he kills a lot of people.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Reuben—Thursday, February 9, 9:39 p.m.

  Reuben pulled his Mazda through the circular drive of Buzz’s mansion.

  On the drive over, Martha wanted to know what was up, but Reuben knew better than to try and explain this without Buzz’s help. Not that it stopped her from asking a million questions.

  But now she was silent, her mouth agape as they rolled up to Buzz’s mansion.

  Buzz was already standing outside in a bathrobe that would have made Hugh Hefner jealous. All he was missing was his pipe.

  “This is your college roommate’s house?” Martha asked.

  Reuben rolled his eyes. “That’s him in the driveway. Ahh, before we get out, just know that he’s a…character.”

  “Reuben.” Buzz spread his arms. “Does she know everything?”

  Reuben gave Buzz a look that said now wasn’t the time to tell her about his warping ability.

  Buzz nodded. Then he turned to Martha. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit with such a lovely lady?” He took Martha’s hand and kissed it in a manner far suaver than Reuben thought him capable of. For a moment, he wondered if Buzz had made a playboy robot version of himself.

  “My, my.” Martha laughed. “Aren’t you the gentleman?”

  “I try to be.” He gestured magnanimously toward the house. “Come, we shall drink.”

  Reuben tried not to die laughing. Buzz around women was quite a different creature than Buzz the pot-smoking mad scientist.

  Buzz clapped his hands as they entered his marble foyer. “Rosa.”

  The maid appeared with the same smile she always wore. Reuben couldn’t help but wonder if she was just another of Buzz’s robots, like Binnie. He thought about asking but knew he wouldn’t get a straight answer, so he decided not to. Some mysteries are best left alone.

  “Please, get some drinks for our guests,” Buzz requested. />
  “Yes, Mr. Buzz,” she replied, sighing. “Will there be a party tonight? Because if there is, I get overtime.”

  “Six and a half-times pay. Absolutely.” Buzz turned to his guests. “Make it seven times because tonight, we dance.”

  They walked into Buzz’s pool room, and Reuben wanted to jump into the talk. Buzz gave him a look that said, patience.

  Fuck patience. The end of the world was at stake. But he knew Buzz was right. They needed to find the right opening to let Martha into the loop.

  Martha turned to Reuben and mouthed a hearty, “Damn.”

  Reuben nodded and mouthed back, “I know.”

  The trio reclined on the cream couches under dimmer lighting than usual. Reuben felt a twinge of jealousy. He and Martha were by no means together. But, really? Was Buzz trying to set the stage to get with Martha? It isn’t going to happen, dude, he felt like telling him. Reuben smirked at the very idea. Yeah, he didn’t know who would die first, but he’d pay good money to watch that on reality TV.

  “So, what brings you to my abode?” Buzz said once the small talk had commenced.

  “Uh, Buzz.” Reuben cleared his throat. “Can I talk to you?”

  “Of course, of course.” He gestured around the room. “Ms. Martha, bask in the relaxing glow of strategic lighting and imbibe.”

  Reuben took Buzz to the foyer.

  “First of all, dude, she’s so far from your type. You can lay off the charm.”

  “Whatever do you mean?” Buzz sipped his margarita. “I’m simply being kind and gracious to a member of the fairer sex.”

  “Uh-huh.” Reuben nodded. “Dude, I’m serious. She’s not going to go for it.”

  “You don’t know what the future holds for any of us,” Buzz countered.

  “Yeah, why don’t we, uh, put a cap on comments like that?” Reuben said. “Considering that I can warp back from the future.”

  Buzz sighed. “OK, yes, yes. So what is our business here today, then?”