Radiant Dawn

by Cody Goodfellow

  And he saw them.

  Four men in dark raincoats stood at the rail on the overpass, spaced out so that one overlooked each lane. Each had a tripod-mounted camera with a lens like the barrel of an elephant gun. Each was closely surveying each vehicle that inched beneath him and past the fake accident.

  Jesus Christ, that's for me, that's it. Suddenly, the moral question of killing cops didn't hold much water. They thought he was a cop killer and would treat him accordingly, thus, making him one. He'd done things to change his appearance, but he was no master of escape and evasion in urban areas, this was stupid, he could just get out of the car now, and give himself up.

  He almost did. Then a horn honking behind him became a symphony of monotone fury and he noticed that the lane in front of him was empty to the horizon. He wouldn't look up, they were looking down at him, snapping pictures, turn myself in? Fuck that. He stomped on the gas pedal and didn't stop until the gas gauge needle lay inches past the E, and luck was with him again, because with its last gasp, the Taurus had brought him right back where he started from.

  Lucky.

  The station wagon coasted up to the rows of cars parked in front of the truck stop's diner. Storch looked around long and hard before he got out, painfully aware of all the flavors of stupid he was already dipping in. He should've ditched the car after the surveillance stop in Bakersfield. He should've stopped Stumbo's heart. He should've gone to Mexico in the first fucking place, and then none of this would've happened. Now it was too late. If they paid this much attention to highways in Bakersfield, there'd be a federal law enforcement convention from San Ysidro to Brownsville. But it was no stupider, any of it, than what he was about to do.

  Storch was born into the Army, had hardwired its rigorous discipline and chains of command into his psyche long before he enlisted. Alone, he'd made a piss-poor showing for himself. Cut off from any opportunity to go to the authorities, trapped in a situation he couldn't begin to grasp, he needed to go somewhere where things made sense, needed someone to point out the enemy and send him at them, or he might as well go into the hills and kill himself. Down to his bones, he was a soldier, and without an army behind him, he would be trampled by both sides.

  He saw no immediate threat in or out of the truck stop. Semis parked in ranks like an invading army at the far end of the lot, and beside them, encircled by a barbed wire-topped hurricane fence, were the cargo containers where they'd kept him before.

  He reached around into the pouch he'd sewed into the waistband of this and all his other pairs of boxers and pulled out the phone list he'd taken off the sentry in this place two days ago. He got out the station wagon's cell phone from the drivetrain storage box, flipped it open and began trying the numbers.

  The first of ten got him an automated weather report. The second was a highway patrol communications center in Barstow. Storch stabbed the hang-up and tried the third. This one was disconnected. Likewise the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth. Probably, the numbers were deactivated when the phone was lost. He skipped down to the last. No answer. So were six, seven, eight and nine. He tried the last number, and let it ring.

  And ring.

  And ring.

  An answering machine picked up on the fourth. A bored middle-aged man's voice with a slight Hispanic inflection said, "You have reached Liberty Salvage and Storage. Our regular business hours are Monday, Thursday and Friday, ten AM to three PM. Your call is very important to us, so leave a message. For towing, call somebody else." Storch barely heard the words as he tried to frame something that would make sense without giving himself up to the wrong people if the number was a bust. To this was added the pure agony of talking to an answering machine.

  Storch loathed them, thought of them as one of the best things about having nobody to call, and would have gladly done just about anything else to get their attention.

  A beep, then Storch was on. "This is the man you picked up by the side of the road the other day. I'm right back in the place you dropped me off, and if it's not too much trouble, I sure would appreciate another lift. Send somebody as soon as you can, because I'll be gone by dawn, one way or another."

  He hit the OFF button and pocketed the phone. He looked around, half-expecting to see someone closing in on him now, rifle shouldered and trained on his head. He was out of gas, hope and destinations, but slowly, he began to feel lifted. His scalp burned and itched like it was sprouting barbed wire, he hadn't eaten anything since he got back from Colma, and he was pretty sure he'd vomited that up when he'd been gassed out in his motel room. His leg screamed for attention and his arm throbbed dire warnings of permanent damage through the painkillers he'd gobbled. But when he closed his eyes, he felt as if he was rising, being lifted out if this sorry, tattered, hunted skin and into something else.

  The stench of his own body odor mingled with the heady reek of diesel filtering in from outside, making Storch's empty stomach flipflop and hinting nastily at the return of the Headache. The frigid, dusty desert wind rocked the Taurus on its suspension, and he could imagine he was on a slow river. Which he was, really, except not slow so much as a series of cataracts, sheer drops and narrow chutes down which his future flailed and struggled not to be dragged under. He'd been fighting to get out for so long that he'd just about drowned himself before any of the unseen predators below could finish him. Now he'd committed himself to swimming the falls, he could feel the world around him again, and begin to fit what he'd seen into it.

  He did this for about a half an hour, and nobody came to kill or claim him. Then, Fuck it, he thought, I'm gonna go eat.

  Two paces from the car, he gagged on the unfiltered olfactory roar of diesel fumes, and slumped across the hood. Blood thickened, nerves rolled up and went on strike, lungs tried to slam shut against the poisons flooding them. His legs buckled, and he clawed at the rain gutters at the base of the windshield to keep from sprawling on the ground. He felt as if his body was rebelling against him, dragging him away from the controls and deep within himself like a snail in a sandstorm. This was the sickness he'd hidden away from for eight long years. It would not take him here, not like this. Biting deep furrows in the meat of his lower lip, Storch levered himself upright with his slinged left arm and balanced himself precariously on locked knees and wobbly ankles. In another five minutes, he reached the big glass revolving door at the nearest end of the truckstop.

  He threw his whole weight against the door to make it swing round and deposit him inside.

  His first breath of the air inside began uncoiling his wound-up system, even as the freon and canned humidity of the air conditioning began to work on his lungs. Still, it was nothing he couldn't eat through.

  The diner occupied the bottom of the colossal L-shaped truckstop; the elbow was a convenience store, with phones, restrooms and showers; the upper end was a truckers-only area, with lounge, sleeping facilities and a rec room. A drowsy teenaged girl stood guard at the entrance to the truckers' lounge, checking licenses.

  Storch knew it would be wiser to buy some snack foods, go back to the station wagon and eat, then see about some other form of transportation out of here if no one came. But he went into the diner and took the last booth beside the window.

  Even for four in the morning in the middle of the Mojave Desert, the place was doing a slow trade. A heavyset man in flannel shirt and jeans and a Snap-On Tools baseball cap slept undisturbed beside a half-eaten bowl of chili. Two bikers at the end of the counter sipped coffee and watched the door. He might've been invisible as he passed through their glazed gazes. Through the kitchen, he could see the cook and the busboy standing out on the back loading dock, sharing a cigarette. He waited, and joined in watching the door and the still black night outside.

  The busboy didn't even look at him as he slung a glass of ice water and a menu across the table. The waitress was so jacked up on something that she never looked at Storch as she took his order. A big green salad with lots of tomatoes, any fruit juice they might have,
and any fresh fruit, especially pineapple. She rolled her eyes and said, "Wendy's at the next exit has a salad bar," and skated back into the kitchen. He heard a door slam.

  Then Storch heard movement behind him, and turned to see the sleeping man had risen and closed the door leading to the truckstop, and was coming down the aisle towards him. Eyes flicking towards the kitchen once or twice, but not with the guilty, fearful look of one about to do evil, but only concern that no one will get hurt who shouldn't. A silencered automatic of the kind cops used to carry in ankle holsters looked like a party favor in his meaty hand. His features were Hispanic, his carriage noncom, a lifetime sergeant with a serious impulse control problem.

  Storch ducked down in the seat and checked behind him. The bikers were both up and less than twenty feet away, with line of sight on him under the table. They both carried silencered MP5 assault rifles slung at their sides.

  Any reaction he might've once taken instantly and instinctively completely failed him. His good hand trembled, but wouldn't go for his gun. He settled back in the booth. The room smelled like burnt coffee, refried potatoes and overcooked chili, a not unpleasant funk that smothered the stink of his own sweat. His pains and his exhaustion faded into the background as the moment took hold of him and made him ready for what was to come. He closed his eyes and prepared himself for judgment.

  "I'm kind of disappointed," Storch called out. "Last time was sort of original, but this…"

  "You got a lot of nerve coming back here, homes," the Hispanic man said, leaning across his table to close the blinds, the gun leveled at a businesslike relationship with Storch's head. "You were lucky the first time, and we were stupid. We paid for that."

  Storch blinked, looked round for the bikers. He could feel their breath on the back of his neck. "What are you talking about?"

  "Where'd you go, homes?"

  "I don't see where that concerns you, Sergeant."

  "You're always ending up in the wrong place, that's why. I don't buy your Gulf War sickness bullshit, and I don't buy you. We came here to kill you, homes." He waited too long to see some glint of fear well up in Storch's eyes. Storch's bland stare gave him one of his own.

  One of the bikers hauled the big man back. "Leave it, man. He's for the Major." The sergeant tucked his gun in an armpit holster, turned and stormed off. The bikers waved Storch out of the booth with the guns. Storch followed the sergeant out of the diner and into the convenience store. None of the handful of sleepy tourists or sped-up clerks took notice of them as they passed through, so Storch assumed the guns had been concealed again. The sergeant strolled over to the truckers' refuge and had a word with the stoned, pregnant girl watching the door. He held the door open for Storch and the bikers. Storch rubbed his eyes at the dimness inside.

  A meeting hall-sized room with a snack bar along one side and cafeteria tables taking up one-half. The rest was taken up with heavy floor-mounted recliners with TVs built into the arms. The tables were empty, but a few truckers dozed or tweaked out in the blue glow of the screens. Through an open double door on the far side of the room, Storch heard the clack of billiard balls and the spastic burble of video games. The sergeant led the way down an adjoining corridor into the lodging area. Sizing up the accommodations, Storch fondly remembered the cargo container as more comfortable and easier on the eyes. The sergeant stopped before a door and slid a chewed-up plastic card through a slot beside an equally chewed-up door. He popped the door open and seized Storch's lame arm. Storch dug in his heels, but the sergeant yanked outwards on the arm, and Storch wobbled with the searing pain, and before the bones had stopped grinding together, he was plunged into complete darkness.

  The cell couldn't be much deeper than Storch could reach from the door. He was more impressed than surprised to find someone'd lifted his gun. He stood stock-still, willing his eyes to adjust to the imperceptible glow of the thread of light from beneath the door. The stink of sweat, cleanser and stale cigarette smoke almost gave the darkness a color, then a face, No, it was a man, in here with him, no, two. Storch had been in the room at least three minutes before he could see them, and never heard them breathing. Despite himself, Storch stepped back to the door and reached behind him for the knob. There wasn't one.

  "Why did you come back, Sergeant Storch?" a voice asked, ringing bells in Storch's head. The officer type in the cargo container, the major.

  "I'm getting pretty sick of people asking me questions in the dark, sir," Storch said. "I don't know what I did to piss you folks off, but I—"

  A brilliant white light stabbed Storch's eyes. He recoiled and clamped his eyes shut. The other soldier asked, "That better?"

  "Tell us what you did in San Jose, Sergeant," the Major asked.

  Storch scrubbed his face. He was beyond exhausted and his painkillers were starting to wear off, it was so hard to focus, to try to play their game. Maybe if he played along, they would help him get out of the country, or at least help him understand what the hell had happened. But how much to tell? How much did they already know? He told them where he went and what happened in San Jose, leaving out only his visit with Buggs. This thing had already burned away nearly all the meager store of friends and acquaintances he'd managed to gather. He wasn't going to sacrifice the only person who'd helped him.

  The Major steepled his fingers in front of his face. Storch could see well enough now to tell that the Major was a black man in his middle fifties, close to two hundred pounds and in excellent shape. Even sitting on a bunk bed in dungarees and a plaid flannel shirt, he looked like the men who'd run Storch's life from the moment of his conception—moving his family hither and thither, committing his father, sending him into the desert. The other man, holding the flashlight in one hand and an exotic sawed-off shotgun in the other. He was younger, white, a grunt with close-set, Appalachian features and a huge jaw that didn't quite set right, a nose like a smashed ax blade, broken so many times the bridge was almost concave. A Marine, Storch would bet his broken arm on it.

  He was impressed by these men, though he hadn't tested them. They were former military, and flint-hard with battle-training—the sergeant probably a Ranger, the bikers were probably SEALS or Green Berets.

  Once Storch had found Special Forces, he'd discovered his allegiance was not to the Army or to his country so much as to the ideals of his caste. If the right catalysts had been introduced at the right time in his career, if he hadn't gone on the mission in the war, who knows? He might've been among these men long ago.

  "You're skipping something. That makes you look like a liar, Sergeant." The Major's voice was calm, cool, anything but condemning. Storch flashed on the first time he'd heard this voice. It'd been scrambled, but the combination of a mild, upper Southern accent—Kentucky, maybe Maryland—and carefully enunciated r's, told him the Major had been the man on the phone in his trailer. The man whose wake-up call had first set him running.

  "Fucker's fucked us twice, Major. We're here to grease him, so let's." The Marine switched off the flashlight. Storch heard the shotgun pump ratchet. He tried to picture the space between him and the gun and wondered if he could fill it with fists before the Marine blew him in half. Slowly, silently, he went into a crouch, preparing to dodge at the slightest sound, opting instead to lunge for the Major and hope the jarhead liked the Major more than he hated Storch.

  "Unfuck yourself, Draper. Those were civilian orders. Now, Sergeant. What else can you tell us about your visit to San Jose? It's very important."

  Storch racked his brains so hard the truth came spilling out, even as he tried to bite it back. He wanted to be a truth-teller in front of these soldiers, he wasn't going to try to lie, not now. "A friend of mine from Thermopylae came down to see me."

  "Did you contact this friend?"

  "No, he tracked me down. He knows computers. Anyway, he took me up to his new work and tried to help me run down Sperling, and then he took me home."

  "What is your friend's name?"

  "I don't
see where that figures in," Storch said. "He's just a guy who used to work for me, up until last week—"

  "So you don't know anything about this," the Major cut him off again, and the flashlight flared again, pointed at the floor between them. The morning Los Angeles Times, still crisp and white, with its too-bright color spread showing a nighttime view of an old gambrel-roofed house on a bright green lawn, surrounded by ambulances, coroners' wagons and police cars. A bucket brigade of medical examiners passed bagged bodies out the front door and down to the ambulances on the crushed gravel drive. Storch sucked in a long, deep breath and blinked several times before he felt ready to read the headline.

  SAN FRANCISCO AREA RELIGIOUS SECT WIPED OUT IN MASS SUICIDE; 28 DEAD

  Death followed him. They followed him, and Buggs—

  "You were there?"

  Dumbfounded, Storch just nodded. "But everything was fine. They were all just asleep."

  The light went out again.

  "The School Of Night was our eyes and ears, Sergeant. Without them, our task is next to impossible. I had orders to kill you as a traitor, but I believed what Harley Pettigrew told me about you. He said you were unbelievably stupid and probably insane, but trustworthy. Who was this friend of yours?"

  Storch started to say his name when it hit him.

  Fucker's fucked us twice—

  —always ending up in the wrong place, that's why.

  I would've done it for free.

  "Oh shit," Storch groaned, and sank to his knees. "Ely Buggs," he muttered. "He came to work for me about three months ago. He was just a clerk—"

  "There were armaments under your store for four months," the Major replied. "I can't believe they used the same fucking guy twice."