by Jack Castle
But Deputy Parnes wasn’t the one the broken-man was really after. Parnes was just one of the hired hands.
Yuri Semyonovich Ivanov, about sixty, had a haggard face and usually wore a disinterested expression. Yuri and his mob had terrorized the town since their arrival from formerly known as Russia twelve years ago. Officially Yuri was a local businessman who had somehow acquired the local grocery store, auto shop, and only car dealership in town, all in short order. Unofficially, as most the locals knew, he led the Russian mob. You didn’t mess with him, or you’d end up dead.
Presently, Yuri sat at the table with the broken man’s soon-to-be-ex boss, Sheriff Larry Landenberg. Sheriff Landenberg sported a typical law enforcement walrus mustache and close-cropped hairdo. The broken man had made the connection between mob boss Yuri and Sheriff Landenberg a little too late. As a result of his dimwittedness his wife and two young children were lying at the bottom of Devil’s Gorge.
At the moment, the two dozen people still in the bar stood frozen. Most were armed, but after watching Deputy Parnes’ head disintegrate, none reached for their weapon. At least not yet.
“Anybody else who wants to leave best do it now,” the broken man mustered. The effort caused him to hack up more blood but his message had come across well enough. All but four men sitting at the table scrambled for the front door. Like the décor, not much had changed from the old west. Not really.
Sitting with Yuri and the sheriff was also a terrified, middle-aged accountant type. When the accountant spoke, his voice quivered like a terrified little boy. “Deputy, I had nothing to do with what happened to your family,” he said, slowly rising from the table with his open palms toward the broken man, his briefcase tucked neatly under his armpit. “You know I just do the books. P-p-lease. May I go, too?”
“Abram, you coward,” Landenberg growled under his breath.
The broken man tried to reply but only hacked up more blood instead. In answer, he weakly waved the nose of his revolver toward the front door. The accountant scurried for the exit. He nearly tripped as he ran, his pants clearly stained.
“That’s enough, Deputy,” Sheriff Landenberg said in a commanding voice, “Put that gun down right now!” The sheriff tried to sound authoritative but his voice cracked towards the end. It seemed as though even the seasoned law enforcement officer was a little unsettled by the headless Deputy Parnes.
The broken man leveled his pistol at the sheriff, cocked the hammer, and tightened his finger on the trigger. When the broken man spoke again his voice was more strained. Sheriff Landenberg heard him though because there wasn’t a sound in the place, save the bartender crouched behind the bar, urgently whispering into his cell phone to the cops.
“We’ve been friends for six years, Larry. Our kids went to the same school together. I trusted you.” The broken man stifled a sob in the back of his gun hand.
Sheriff Landenberg used the distraction to discreetly slide his hand under the table.
“You know, she didn’t die right away … my wife. Both kids died instantly in the crash but my wife… I listened to her choke on her own blood in the end.”
The broken man recalled how Landenberg and Parnes had taken out the tires of his wife’s SUV with a well-placed stop-strip on the bridge over Devil’s Gorge. After bouncing down the cliff walls their battered vehicle had finally come to rest upside down in the ravine. The creek water trickling in was what first revived him. His children’s broken little bodies in the backseat were the first to meet his then focusing eyes.
Sheriff Landenberg raised his one hand still above the table in silent plea. “Now wait a minute. We can still work this out. Just look at yourself. You, you need medical attention. I’m sorry for what happened, I truly am.” He pointed at Yuri beside him. “But you’ve got to know that Yuri made me do it. Please, I’ve got a wife and kids too.” the sheriff said, sniveling now. He thought the broken man wouldn’t notice his one hand slowly reaching for his pistol under the table as he begged for his life with the other.
Sheriff Landenberg was wrong, and he did notice.
BOOM!
For a second time that evening the broken man’s gun thundered. Sheriff Landenberg, caught in mid-draw, flipped over backward in his chair as though a cannonball had shot him in the face.
The broken man casually cocked an ear towards the exit. He could already hear the State Trooper’s sirens screaming for him in the distance. There wasn’t much time left.
He turned toward the two remaining men in the bar: Russian mobster Yuri Ivanov and his right hand man, Petrov. Even the bartender who had called the troopers had high-tailed it out the back. Petrov shuddered in his seat, but Yuri was cool as formerly Russian snow. “You’d won. We were leaving,” the broken man explained, grief-stricken. “You had everything and everyone you could possibly want in this stinking town. Why couldn’t you have just let me and my family go?”
Yuri was unafraid. His expression was acceptance. He came from a place much crueler than small town USA. Every day he wasn’t gunned down in the street was a surprise to him. When the Russian mobster spoke it was with but the vestige of an accent. Yuri had worked hard to lose it completely over his time in America. “You know that’s not the way it works, my boy.”
“No,” the broken man answered sadly, his vision blurring in his one good eye, breathing for perhaps only a few moments longer. “No, I reckon it ain’t.”
Yuri and Petrov simultaneously reached for their auto-pistols. The broken man’s pistol rang out two more times. Like the corrupt sheriff, Petrov was dead before he hit the floor, but impossibly, Yuri was groaning from the floor a few seconds later.
With his last remaining ounce of strength, the broken man grabbed the table and flipped it over and out of the way.
Yuri’s shoulder had been completely blown away but he was still alive. Unlike before, he stared back with a look of fear. “Please … please don’t kill me.”
The broken-man leveled his pistol at Yuri’s face. One bullet left. At this range, he wouldn’t miss, even with his vision blurring by the second. He had barely heard the state troopers pulling up outside a few seconds ago. Now they were bursting through the front door, guns drawn, demanding that he drop his weapon. At their range, they wouldn’t miss either.
Deputy Sheriff Hank McCarthy’s last thoughts were happy ones: his wife and children on last Christmas morn’.
Chapter 27
Memories
Hank stumbled to his feet and steadied himself.
His head ached with one mother of a migraine. The pain soon melted away the recollection, but he knew the memory to be true. He felt pairs of hands on him and realized Emma and the doc were holding him up.
“What happened, Hank?” the doc asked.
Hank checked with both of them before answering, then switched his gaze to Simon. “What did you do to me?”
Simon threw his hands down by his sides and stomped his foot like a spoiled child. “Why does everyone blame me for everything? I don’t understand why everyone blames me for everything. I had nothing to do with it. You finally remembered is all. I don’t know nuthin’.”
Hank wasn’t buying it. He moved back over to Simon, put his elbow across his throat and gun to his temple. “If you don’t tell me what I want to know…”
“Oh, that’s the real commodity these days, isn’t it? Information.” The human expression vanished and was replaced by his normal madman stare and jack-o’-lantern grin. “Shoot!” he screamed. Before Hank could react he screamed, “Or don’t shoot!”
Hank shook his head in disgust.
“Since we both know you’re not going to shoot me, it’s best if you probably just let me go.”
“Why’s that?” Hank asked dryly.
“Because if you don’t, bad things might happen,” he said, practically singing.
“Hank,” It was Emma.
He glanced at her but she hesitated, her face pale. “Maybe … maybe we should listen to him.”
“Emma, what are you saying? We just let him go? After everything he’s done?”
“You didn’t see what happened to Horatio before he crashed out the window, did you?”
“What do you mean, Emma?” Doc asked.
“I mean, before he fell out the window, he … well, Horatio didn’t have a mouth.”
Odessa, quiet until now perked up at this, “That’s right, that’s right, I seen it, I seen it. He didn’t have no … mouth.”
Ignoring Odessa Hank turned towards Emma, “Are you sure that’s what you saw? I mean…”
Emma frowned, and then said in a voice tempered with anger, “I’m as sure as you were of seeing a naked man when no one else did.”
Hank nodded. “Point taken.”
“Last chance, Hanky-Panky, better let me go,” Simon sang again.
“Shut up!” Hank yelled and smacked him over the head with the butt of his pistol, though not enough to knock him out.
“Owww!” Simon complained. “That really hurt.”
The first sign of things to come was the drop light over the pool table began swaying back and forth. Simon sighed. “Oh well, too late, too late.”
Simon began shaking. No, he wasn’t shaking, the ground was shaking. “Uh-oh, you’ve gone and done it now, Hank.”
Hank heard Doc say something weird, “This shouldn’t be happening, this shouldn’t be happening.” And then the whole diner began to shake in earnest. Gently at first, then harder and harder, as though by some enormous hand. A roaring sound assaulted everyone’s ears. The windows along the back wall cracked, and eventually blew out. Tables upended and scattered dishes. Every picture frame fell from the wall.
Odessa got down on her knees, put her hands over her head, and started praying. When another good jolt shook the diner her eyes flashed open wide. She glared over at Hank and screamed, “Let him go!”
Hank shook his head.
“You damn fool, he’ll kill us all if you don’t!” Odessa cursed then crawled unceremoniously under the pool table, or at least tried to; her rump was too large to fit and stuck out.
And then it was over. The shaking subsided as quickly as it had begun.
Hank and Doc still had a firm grip on Simon. The quake hadn’t shaken any of them hard enough to send them to the floor. “Everyone okay?” Hank asked.
Emma had fallen onto a seat in one of the booths but nodded. “That wasn’t so bad.”
Hank flashed Simon a look as if to say, ‘Is that it?’
Odessa popped out from underneath the pool table like an ostrich and stumbled to her feet. She ran over to Simon and kneeled before him, hanging on his pant legs like a drowning victim. “Please… I’s seen the man with no face, and I’s seen your awesome power. Just tell me one thing mister. Tell me … are we dead?”
Simon appeared extremely pleased with himself. “Now this is more like it.”
“Get up off your knees,” Hank said, disgusted.
Emma appeared beside her and tried to help Odessa to her feet, “Do you think he really caused that?”
“Get your hands off of me,” Odessa shouted. Turning her full anger on Emma she said, “You seen Horatio’s face, same as me.” She then thudded her chest, and pointed to Simon, “He says let him go or bad things will happen and looky here, we’s got ourselves a damn earthquake. So how do you explain that? Huh? How about you, Sheriff?”
In a soothing voice the doc answered, “It’s just coincidence, Odessa.” But to Hank, the look in the doc’s eyes said even he wasn’t so sure.
Odessa spun towards him, “Coincidence? I don’t think so!” She turned back towards Simon. Still kneeling in front of him she asked in the most pleasant voice she could muster, “Please, mister. Just tell us what we have to do?”
Simon reached down and cupped her cheek. “Oh my dear child, the more important question is what did you do to get sent here in the first place?”
Interrupting everyone’s thoughts Doc suddenly blurted, “Wait Hank! Earthquake!”
“What?” Hank asked.
“In 1964, the largest earthquake ever recorded hit Alaska; a 9.2 on the Richter scale. But it wasn’t the earthquake tremors that did the real damage; the real damage came when the Tsunami hit the town afterwards.”
“Tsunami?” Odessa wondered aloud. Hank stared at Simon who shrugged his shoulders and said quietly, “Surprise.”
Hank released Simon roughly. He moved over to the doc who started to appear catatonic. “How long you think we got before we get hit?” Hank asked.
“The speed of a wave travels depends on the depth and displacement of the water.” The doc said this more to himself, as though he were thinking aloud. “This shouldn’t be happening…”
“Doc… How long?”
“Not knowing the location of the epicenter of the water displacement, it’s impossible to know.”
Hank glimpsed Simon. He was now sitting up on the counter, swinging his legs joyfully, tapping his watch, and smiling. “Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock.”
A loud roaring sound started building in decibels. Simon put his ear to his watch. “Ah, right on time.”
Hank ran to the side entrance and opened door. The only good news was that the diner was on high ground and they were on the third floor of the building. Emma, Doc, and Odessa joined him on the balcony overlooking the town. Sucking winds threatened to pull them right over the railing and each of them gripped the railing. Roaring out of the bay was a twenty foot wave racing towards them.
When the massive wave hit the harbor, it smashed aside the boats and swallowed the port whole. As the wave continued onwards down Main Street, it swept cars from the street, engulfed first floor buildings, trees and anyone unlucky enough to be in its path.
The wave raced past them. When it reached the mountains it turned the fuel tanks at the fuel refinery inside out. Fuel slicked the surface of the black water as the wave began to suck back, drawing debris and flotsam with it.
Simon appeared at the railing, he was trying to light a cigarette with a malfunctioning lighter. When Hank saw this, he yanked the unlit cigarette from his mouth and threw it and the lighter to the floor.
“What? It’s my smoke break?” Simon complained. “I’m going to talk to HR about this.”
“Everyone back inside,” Hank commanded. Hank took one last look over his shoulder and realized theirs was the only building in town not underwater.
When they entered the diner something was immediately apparent to Hank. “Wait a minute, where are all the bodies?” “How is that possible?” Emma asked.
There was still blood on the floor and Bob’s remains were still splattered across the double doors, but all the bodies had been removed while they were out on the balcony.
Oh no.
Hank scanned the room. “Where’s Simon?”
Chapter 28
Is This Purgatory?
Amidst the chaos the Last Frontier Diner might as well have been an island.
For the past three hours Tsunami waves, smaller with each passing, flooded the streets. All communications were out; they couldn’t reach anyone and didn’t see any signs of any other survivors on adjoining roof tops or in the water.
Sheriff McCarthy carefully explained that leaving the diner would be suicide. The only thing they could do now was wait for the waters to recede.
They never did find where Simon had disappeared too. He had vanished as if his entire role had been to usher in the apocalypse and exit stage left. Instead, they passed some of the time by scrubbing the blood off the floors and walls and returning the diner somewhat to its former state. At least with the emergency generator in the basement the building still had power, unlike the rest of the town. No one had spoken in the last twenty minutes. Emma had
brought out some pumpkin pie she had made earlier that day. So far only Odessa seemed interested in eating any.
Finally, Emma was the first to speak. “Hank, before… What did Simon do to you?”
Emma watched as Hank struggled before answering. Finally, he said, “I don’t think Simon Privet killed my wife and kids. I’m not sure who those people on the video were but I don’t think they were my family. I think my real wife and kids died back in Wyoming where I was a deputy sheriff.”
Doc frowned, “Simon forced you to remember?”
“How’d they die?” Odessa asked, chewing a giant piece of pie.
Hank bit his lower lip. “The Russian mob bought off most of the sheriff’s department I worked for. I didn’t realize what I was stepping in. I made the connection too late.” Gazing out the window he added, “And because I made the connection too late, my wife and kids died.”
Emma said, “Oh God, that’s awful.”
Doc squeezed his shoulder. “Now Hank, you can’t blame yourself for all the evil in this world.”
“Yeah, but that’s not all. When I went to shoot the last mobster, I remember the State Troopers all pointing their guns at me. I was squeezing down on the trigger and the next thing I know, I wake up outside of town.”
Emma shuddered, a hand going briefly to her head as a headache had spiked. When she was able she said, “Same thing happened to me.”
Emma saw Odessa make a face and roll her eyes, but undeterred she continued, “My step dad did something awful to my sister. I remember wondering where my real Paw kept his shotgun. The next thing you know, I’m on the ferry coming into town.”
