The Straw Men

by Marshall, Michael

  She still had to find the keys. If that was the last thing she ever did, then so be it.

  She found them in his right trouser pocket. Found three sets. Took them all. Slid along the floor, keeping as far away from him as possible, until she was by a chair. Maybe the chair she'd been lying in, she thought, though she wasn't sure. That seemed quite a while ago.

  Triumphant with possession, it only took her thirty seconds to get to her feet. And then she went back across the lobby, over the body of the dead policeman, through the door, and back out into the lot. Her second wind was ebbing, and she knew it—not because she was hurting more, but because the pain was being occluded from her. Blood loss and shock. Her body was pulling up the draw-bridge. It needed its energy, and she was wasting it.

  She got to the car, grateful she hadn't shut the door. Pulled herself across onto a seat that was now soaked with rain.

  The second set of keys went into the ignition. She closed the door only then, knowing she wouldn't have to go find Bobby.

  The engine caught on the first turn, and she blessed Ford and their wily little car makers. It wasn't like when she was young. Then you had to coax them into life, and as a result you loved them and gave them names. Come rain, come shine, these days the things always started. You didn't have to name them to make them work. All you had to do was know where you were going.

  She rested her head on the wheel, just for a second, and felt herself blacking out. Jerked back up, put the car in reverse and kangarooed back ten yards.

  Then shoved it into Drive, put her foot right down, and drove straight at the fence.

  •••

  I kept my word, though I was afraid and confused and didn't want to be left alone in the house. I stayed at the bottom of the stairs, staring at a thick cable running up it, until I heard Zandt's voice from the front room.

  'Oh Jesus Christ,' he said, and the girl managed another scream. There was a clunking sound. I ran.

  In the front room a single lamp was now on, casting a sallow glow by the window. The girl was scrunched up in the corner, making mewling sounds. Zandt was on his back on the floor, his gun lying yards away. The cop had a very bizarre expression on his face.

  Standing over him was a man with a gun. The gun was pointing right at Zandt's head.

  'Get away from him,' I shouted, arms straight and my own gun ready. 'Get the fuck away.'

  'Or what?' said the man, without even looking. 'Or what?'

  'Or I'll blow your fucking head off.'

  'You think?' The man finally turned to me. 'Hey, Ward,' he said. 'Long time no see.'

  I saw my own face. The world tilted, flipped away.

  His hair was longer, and a slightly different colour, dyed a brighter blond. There was something shifted about his features, but nothing more than the impact of being enlivened by a different mind. If you'd seen my face on some days, in some situations, it would have looked the same. Other than that there was no difference. Even our build was exactly similar. I blinked.

  'Right,' The Upright Man nodded affably. 'So—you think you can do it now? Kill the only blood relative you ever had?' His finger tightened on the trigger of his gun. 'I'm genuinely interested to know, and don't let the fact you'll be killing John, too, influence your decision in any way.'

  He turned his attention back to Zandt. 'Said I'd give her back, sooner or later.' He swung a kick at Zandt's face.

  The impact jerked Zandt's head back so viciously that for a moment I thought his neck would be broken. I tried to pull the trigger. But I couldn't.

  'You killed one of my co-workers, fuckhead,' The Upright Man continued. 'You put away men better than you. Just so you know, I tried to change Karen. For a long time. It didn't work. So I boiled her. But now I give her back. Did you like the 'delivery' outside?'

  Zandt rolled his neck, sniffed against the pain. 'I don't care what you call yourself,' he said. His voice was flat. 'I never have. Shoot the fucker, Ward.'

  My mouth was open, and the insides were dry. My arms were not trembling, but locked like stone. It was impossible to move my fingers. I felt like I was missing the back of my head, as if I only lived in my eyes.

  The Upright Man saw me staring, grinned. 'Weird, huh? We got a lot to talk about,' he said. 'But I know you're going to be a little wigged out, and actually we need to be leaving. As a gesture of good faith to you I'm going to leave one of these two pieces of shit alive. You get to choose one, and whack the other. You done nowhere near enough killing yet, my man. We need to get you up to speed.'

  'The FBI is on the way,' I said. My voice sounded vague and quiet and hollow, even to myself.

  'Don't think so,' The Upright Man said, confidently. 'They were coming, they'd be with you.'

  'Why did you do it? Why did you kill my parents?'

  'They weren't your parents, fuckhead. 'You know that. They killed our father and screwed up our lives. We should have been together, right from the start. Think what we could have done by now. The Straw Men got the money, bro, but we got the blood. We're pure. We're the heart of everything. We're what is true.'

  •••

  Lying in the corner, Sarah's hands were over her ears and her eyes were screwed shut. She could still hear the man's voice. His hateful, hateful voice, the voice she had heard going on and on, saying thing after thing after thing until she thought it was that which would kill her in the end, not the hunger; that sooner or later he would say something and her head would just split rather than hear any more.

  'My advice is you kill John here,' Nokkon was saying. 'He's got nothing left to live for anyhow. And that way you get to keep the girl. She's kind of scuffed up, but hey—we could have some fun.'

  Sarah opened her eyes.

  'Shoot him, Ward,' the man on the floor said. 'Just shoot him.'

  'You're beginning to piss me off, John,' Nokkon said, kicking him again. 'You too, Ward. It's time to move on. My work on this mountain is done. It's time to fly.'

  Sarah was confused. The man she'd thought might be her father wasn't, and he was lying on the floor. The other man… she didn't know who he was. A mirror man.

  Nokkon talked to the mirror man, who wasn't moving. 'Come on, man, let's get this done. Whack the fuck. You know you want to. You've killed before. That's not an accident.'

  Nokkon pointed his gun at the head of the man on the floor. He was going to kill him and fly. He'd said as much. And if the man on the floor wasn't her father, then her father might be at home with her mother and sister. But the thing was, their home had a roof. And if the house had a roof then Nokkon could fly through it, and if he'd do all this to her then there was no telling what he'd do to them.

  Sarah slid her hands off her ears. They weren't blocking anything anyway.

  'It's in your blood,' Nokkon was saying. 'I know you read the Manifesto. You've read it, and you'll know it's true.'

  'It's bullshit,' the man called John said. Nokkon's foot lashed out immediately, stomping down on his hand.

  'Ward, I'm rescinding my offer,' the devil said, his voice for the first time less than steady. 'You want to kill anyone, it's going to have to be her. This guy's been mine for a long while.'

  He lined the gun straight at Zandt's face.

  But then his head jerked upright. As if hearing something outside the house.

  Sarah didn't even think. She leaped out of the corner.

  •••

  I saw the girl shoot up from nowhere. Her body wasn't up to it, and the forward thrust was compromised before she was even fully on her feet. But the momentum drove her over Zandt's feet and barrelling straight into The Upright Man. He toppled over backwards, swatting at the girl's bony head, at teeth that were trying to fasten on his face.

  One good crack across the eyes and she was falling backward, but the spell on me had been broken.

  I fired once, missing him, but then Zandt was on top of him and I couldn't shoot again.

  The two men rolled across the floor, kicking, punching. I
stood ready to one side, waiting for a clear shot I believed I would take, which I knew I must take at any cost. Then I heard the noise from outside, the sound of a thrashed motor, of a horn being hit again and again. Bobby, thank Christ.

  I saw the girl, lying still on the floor, blood flowing out of her nose. I ran to her, knowing this would have been Zandt's choice of priority. I pulled her upright with an arm round her stomach, stumbled toward the front door.

  Yanked it open to be bathed in light. I couldn't work out what the fuck and then realized it was the headlights of the car I'd rented from the airport the day before.

  I pulled the girl down the steps beside me, wondering what the hell Bobby was playing at but blessing his very soul. Then I realized there was only one person in the car and it wasn't him but the FBI agent and that she looked like death.

  I ran round to her window. 'Where's Bobby?'

  'Get in,' was all she said. 'Is that her?'

  'Yes. Where's Bobby?'

  'Where's Zandt?'

  'He's inside. Will you tell me where the fuck Bobby is?'

  'Bobby's dead,' she screamed. 'Davids killed him. I'm sorry, Ward, but get John, please, we've got to go. The whole compound is wired and we have to go.'

  Cables. All over the place.

  I yanked open the back door and pushed the girl in as gently as I could. Left the door open and sprinted back to the front of the house, shouting out Zandt's name.

  Thinking: Bobby's dead.

  In the front room there was no one. Zandt's gun wasn't lying on the floor any more. I ran through the house, still shouting, gun out in front, enough of my head still stuck in the world of two minutes ago to be running hot with shame. I hadn't done it, hadn't shot my brother. But I could do it now. I knew I could. I could do it now.

  I heard the sound of running from behind and to the side and swerved to pelt into the back reception area. Zandt came hurtling across the room at me. I remembered at the last minute and shouted, 'It's me, John, it's not him, it's me.'

  Zandt's face was running with blood. He stopped, gun an inch from my head, trigger already half-pulled.

  'Look at the clothes, John, look at my fucking clothes.'

  A beat, and then Zandt shoved me aside and tried to run past. I grabbed him round the neck.

  'Nina's outside. Bobby's dead. We've got to go.'

  Zandt elbowed me in the stomach, knocking me backward. I grabbed him again, yanked his head in tight, screamed at him.

  'The whole place is wired. We don't go, he's going to get us all. He's going to get Sarah.'

  Zandt's rigidity flexed for a split second, and I hauled him into the front room. Pulled him backward across it to the front door, back into the light flooding through it.

  Outside Nina was revving the engine, but still Zandt tried to resist, fighting like a bear against the arm looped round his neck. For a second I thought I might have seen a shadow flit across one of the doorways back inside the house, but it was soon gone.

  When we were outside Zandt seemed to realize there were other people in the world, seemed for a moment to see a window through which there was something other than the man he had to kill. I shoved him at the car, stooping to pick something up off the ground.

  Zandt climbed unwilling into the back, shouting and swearing, banging the back of the seat in front of him with his fists. Nina had slumped sideways, half into the passenger seat. I got in the driver's door and pushed her across, strapped her in.

  I found the gas pedal, jammed my foot down as if trying to stand up. The car fishtailed backward on the wet grass and I pulled it round. Nina was banged into her door, and started moaning, rhythmically but quietly.

  'Brace Sarah,' I yelled back to Zandt, pulling my seatbelt on, and then we were hurtling back down through The Halls, flashing past all the quiet houses with their treasures.

  I thought I could hear bones crunching under the tyres, but that must have been in my mind and I hoped Zandt did not hear it, too. I hoped also that I did not see what I thought I saw, for an instant: the silhouettes of a small group of people standing up on the ridge of the hill surrounding the pasture, looking down on us.

  We were going too fast. I couldn't really have seen it. When I glanced back, they were gone.

  I aimed at the hole Nina had made on the way in, and almost made it. Boards flew past the windshield. Worse was a bad tearing noise from where the chassis took a hit from one of the posts on the other side, but the car kept on going. It nearly rolled in the left turn out of the lot and I thought everything had been in vain, but I got the wheels down again and took off down the drive, under the gate, and then right into the road out of the mountains. I nearly totalled the vehicle again immediately just around the turn, where Harold Davids had stashed his car, but managed to skid around it. A series of hairpins, picking up speed, until a final long straight run down toward the stand of trees that shielded the road. I didn't even try to make this turn, knew in advance it wasn't going to happen, and steered instead through the trees, finding gaps large enough to get the car through, aiming us bumping and shuddering out the other side onto the grass. Somewhere between there and the road a flint took out one of the back tyres, and all I could do was try to stop the car rolling as it bounced and skidded down the final slope to smash through the low barricade with a scream of shearing metal.

  The car skated across the icy road and clear off the other side into the Gallatin River, running shallow and fast and cold. There was a moment of stillness, in which we realized we were still alive, and then the entire world seemed to explode.

  Slumped as I was, bent over and twisted round, all I could see was a new sun of light, bursting out of the mountains like the dawn.

  Houma, Louisiana

  This is a small motel, and has no room service. I have a small room, out on the end of an arm of equally small rooms stretching out from a dusty office, which is small. The television is old and shit. There is water in the swimming pool, but no one is swimming in it. Least of all me.

  Tomorrow morning, early, I will move on. I can remember the name of the town where Bobby's mother lives, and have vague memories of him describing the street where he grew up. I think I might be able to find it. I would like to be able to tell her about her son. What he was like, how good a man he was, and how he died. Perhaps I will even find the graveyard where his father lies buried, and tell him, too. It's the only memorial my friend will ever have.

  •••

  Ten days ago I sat in a car in Santa Monica and watched as John and Nina walked a girl up to a front door. Sarah was holding one of each of their hands: Nina's left, as her right was in a sling. Sarah was still very pale and weak, but looked a lot better than she had when we got her and Nina to the hospital in Utah. The medic on duty wanted to call the cops. From what he could tell, Sarah had been fed nothing but water laced with lead and a variety of other chemicals, some of them biological agents of a type associated with gene therapy. What was supposed to have been achieved by this, apart from acute poisoning, he wasn't prepared to even speculate. John knew, however, just as he now understood that—had they read the evidence properly—the bodies of The Upright Man's other victims showed similar attempts to create someone like himself through head trauma and sexual violence.

  Nina used her badge, preventing the scene from going nationwide. The doctors checked Sarah and Nina in for a week, but the next morning John and I came and stole them both away. Yes, they still needed treatment. But staying in one place was too much of a risk. Zandt called Michael Becker to let them know he was coming, and then we got in the car and drove.

  We headed straight down through Utah, Nevada, and California and then across LA to Santa Monica, Zandt and I taking turns. Though she slept most of the way, I got to know Sarah a little. She was kind, and said I was very different, which helped. In time I believe she'll be okay, and I'll personally lay a bet that next time she's a lady who dines out (probably round about the year 2045, if her father has anything to do with
it), she'll be having not a Cobb salad but a burger just the way she wants it.

  When they'd reached the step of the Beckers' house, Nina let go of Sarah's hand and rang the doorbell. They looked like a painting for a moment, and then the door opened and there was a flurry of love that I had to look away from. I stared straight out of the windshield for a while, remembering the girl's last words to me.

  When I looked back Nina was walking toward the car, her head down. Zandt was still with the Beckers. Sarah finally let go of him and went to her parents. Michael Becker shook Zandt's hand and something passed between them, though I don't know what.

  John stepped back and let the family go back inside. He stood there for a little while, even after the door was closed. And then he walked back up the path and got in the car and we drove away. He is down in Florida at the moment, visiting his ex-wife.

  When I saw his reaction to the sweater, I wished I had picked up one of the bones instead. I wasn't thinking clearly—it was an unconscious reaction, a realization that he might want something brought back out of the mountains. I guess a bone would have been better, something that had once genuinely been a part of her. But I think the sweater will give them closure enough. We arranged that we will meet again in a while. We have each other's cell numbers. He appears not to hold against me the fact that I was unable to use my gun in The Halls.

  But any such reunion should wait for a while, I think. I hope his priority is meeting back up with Nina, after she has cleared her stuff out of LA. Seeing the two of them standing together on that doorstep, I saw something that I hope they come to understand. They're already together.

  •••

  For long periods while I'm driving I find myself staring straight ahead. Not seeing what's beyond the glass, just allowing rushing images to run through my head like a strip of film. Sometimes I think about The Straw Men, trying to work out what's true and what's not. I want to believe that what underlies all of this is something more intangible than The Human Manifesto: that the ideas within it are merely a psychotic's way of explaining away the divisions that we seem addicted to. But then it occurs to me that the book many claim as the first novel, Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Years, was written in the aftermath of a disease that swept the whole of Europe, and could have been blamed on the way we live together, cheek by jowl; and that our major forms of entertainment, film and television, both burst into true flower immediately after world wars. I begin to wonder if fictional landscapes and aspirational schemes became important as soon as we started to live together in towns and cities, and if this explains the birth of organized religions at about the same time. The more crowded our way of living, the more interdependent we are, the more important our dreams have become—almost as if all of this is there to bond us together, to help us aspire to something missing, and so to edge us toward a humanity that is more than being merely human. Now the Internet is spanning the globe, knitting everyone tighter still, and I wonder if it can be a coincidence that it does so just as we have listed our genetic code, and are starting to tinker with it. The closer we're brought together, the more we seem to need to understand what we are. I do hope we know what we're doing with our genes, and that when we start to take out the parts that seem like faults, like imperfections, we're not removing the things that make us viable. I hope it is our future, and not our past, that makes the decisions. And I hope that now, when I realize something is missing in my life, I will continue to search for it; even if I know that it may only be a promise, and not really there to be found at all. Otherwise we become men of straw, women of shadow, left standing in empty fields where not even the birds come; waiting for an endless summer, when winter is already here. Given how we live, so far from what was once true, it's bewildering that we cope as well as we do. We dream our dreams to keep us sane, and also to keep us alive. As my father once said, it's not a case of winning, but of believing that there's something there to be won.