At all costs

by John Gilstrap

  Once inside, they were going to put the body his dad kept talking about into a bag and cart it off someplace. After that, he didn’t know what was supposed to happen. One thing was certain: Travis hated being out here by himself. The quicker they got it all done, the happier he was going to be.

  Soon he felt relieved to hear the high-pitched whine of the little saw coming from the direction where they all disappeared. At least they were getting down to work. A few minutes later he heard the tink-tink of metal on metal, followed immediately by a metallic clatter, then silence. When no one reappeared after another minute or two, he concluded that Nick had been right about the lock and that they were inside doing whatever they had to do.

  It’ll just take a few minutes.

  Those had been his dad’s words back in the skanky trailer in West Virginia. When his mom kept rejecting the plan, Dad had assured her that it would “only take a few minutes.” A few meant three, right? “A couple” meant two, and “a few” meant three. Or four, he supposed; five on the outside. After that, people said “about ten” or “about fifteen.” So five minutes, then.

  Travis settled into the colorful undergrowth and leaned back against a tree. He could do anything for five minutes. This was almost over. He wasn’t worried. Everything was going to be just fine.

  What’s that?

  Some sounds can be mistaken for other sounds; he’d certainly learned that lesson this afternoon. But only a cop’s radio sounded like a cop’s radio, and Travis swore to God that’s what he just heard. His blood turned to ice. He brought his legs up and leaned forward until he was on his hands and knees, and he peered intently through the bushes. Something was out there, all right. He could see him moving out in the distance, slithering carefully through the trees, trying his hardest to be silent.

  There was the radio sound again, but this time much quieter, as if the man in the woods had turned the volume down.

  “Oh, God,” Travis whispered, his mind racing. “They got us.”

  Despite the wedge of light which sliced across the interior of the concrete tomb, the darkness seemed impenetrable-a black hole so dense that even the white light of the afternoon sun couldn’t cut through it. Jake felt like a grave robber, nagged by a superstitious fear of waking the dead. He looked behind himself one more time to get his bearings before entering, and as he did, his mind replayed the last time he took in this view. It was mostly concealed by smoke and flames back then, but right there was the spot-directly across on the first berm there-where the man with a rifle, dressed all in jungle camouflage, squeezed off round after round, killing his friends and damn near killing him. He looked away, realizing that the memories of the past were far more frightening than the reality of the present.

  They played their lantern beams through the blackness, revealing thousands of square feet of nothingness. The twisted remains of melted steel shelving rose from the concrete floor, standing guard above countless black lumps of charred, spent munitions. Remarkably, the skeletons of old wooden crates could still be seen among the ruins, somehow preserved by a quirk of physics that spared them from total annihilation by the white-hot fires.

  As the entry team moved cautiously beyond the doorway and in toward the center of the ruin, their movements stirred dust devils of poisonous soot, which rose lazily from every surface to float in the air, creating a kind of dirty black fog.

  They moved to the left, following Jake’s lead. He and Carolyn had gone right on that day in 1983, and he remembered seeing the members of Entry Bravo-My God, could I have forgotten their names already? — waving their lights over their heads. That had been way off to his left. But was it past the door? He tried to remember if Bravo was standing beyond the seam of light when they announced they’d found the body, but the image just wasn’t there. Perhaps this was going to be more difficult than he’d thought.

  The harder Jake tried to peer through the gathering cloud of soot, the more difficult it was to see anything. His light beam penetrated only a foot or two ahead before being consumed by the poisonous cloud. It was here, though. It had to be: the evidence that would give them back their lives. As the darkness enveloped him, he stifled surging panic, keeping his mind on track by counting his breaths.

  In and out, Jake, old buddy. One breath every five seconds. Twelve per minute. Seven-twenty per hour…

  He nearly shit his pants when someone tugged on his arm. It was Carolyn. He could tell by her height. And she was pointing with her light beam to something on the floor. He had to stoop low to see what it was, and when he saw it, he gasped. It was a boot; the same type worn by every Enviro-Kleen entry team member, and in remarkably pristine condition. Closer examination revealed that it was still connected to the leg of a moon suit. He followed the lines along the floor with his light, over a bend that had to be a knee joint, past a waistline, and finally up to the hood. He touched nothing, and closed his eyes as he shone his light through the blackened Plexiglas facepiece. When he opened them again, he felt relieved to see that the fire had rendered the facepiece opaque. Still, in his mind’s eye, he could swear he saw the empty eye sockets of the corpse’s skull staring back at him.

  Jake looked away. But for somebody’s poor aim, or perhaps his own incredible luck, that could have been him. Or Carolyn. He swallowed hard to sink the wave of nausea before it could rise to his throat.

  “That’s one,” he said to himself aloud, even though no one could hear. Hearing a voice reassured him, even if it was his own. “Now, where’s the original?” The temptation to recover his friends’ remains was overwhelming, but he reminded himself that such was not their mission here.

  The remains of two other Enviro-Kleen workers-the rest of Entry Bravo-lay within a couple of feet of the first. Jake took some measure of comfort from their positions in death. The fact that their suits remained melted here and there, but largely intact, told him that they hadn’t burned to death (his most horrid of horrid nightmares), and the fact that they lay sprawled rather than curled up told him that they had not suffered too greatly. Even as he thought these things, he knew that his conclusions were flimsy, but he chose to believe them, anyway.

  Nick was the one who found what they came looking for. Six feet, at the most, beyond the furthest moon-suit-shrouded corpse lay a scattered pile of smaller bones-the bones of a child, it appeared. The meat was long gone off this body, and without any protective covering, it was barely identifiable for what it was. But there was no mistaking the vertebral structures of the spine or the looping shape of the few remaining ribs.

  Nick’s wild gesticulations with his flashlight drew Jake over toward him, and as soon as he saw the bones, he knew that their journey had ended. Before he could motion for Carolyn, she was there, body bag in hand.

  Not a religious man by nature, Jake offered up a quick prayer of apology, begging forgiveness for the desecration he was about to perform. Blessing himself with the sign of the cross-something he hadn’t done in more years than he could remember-he set about the grisly business of loading a small child into a rubber bag.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The man stalking them was definitely a cop. Travis got a glimpse of the hat and the badge as he stepped out into a clearing. From the way the cop was moving, he hadn’t seen them yet, but he sure seemed to know where he was going.

  As panic grew in his belly, Travis looked over his shoulder to see if the grown-ups were on their way back yet. It had been a lot longer than five minutes.

  Shit! What do I do?

  His father’s last words burned in his brain: “Your job is to wait out here and watch for anything unusual.” He realized now that it was just a bullshit job, because he was up to his eyeballs in unusual, but he had no way to warn anybody.

  Dammit!

  The cop was getting closer with every step, and Travis’s sitting there with his forehead scrunched in confusion wasn’t helping anything. He had to get word to them. Maybe he could shout.

  Good idea, idiot, Travis chas
tised himself. Why don’t you just stand up and wave a flag, too?

  Okay, shouting was a stupid idea. At least from here. Maybe if he got closer… close enough to see what was going on, anyway.

  He rolled out of his current spot, staying low to keep from being seen on the ridgeline, and then he slid on his butt down the other side of the embankment. On the far side, he found himself on another road, just like the one where they were parked, and facing another magazine, identical to the one he’d just climbed. Running now, he dashed around the next mound, rather than over it, and he found himself suddenly in the midst of the moonscape. Nothing lived here. No grass grew; no plants. Even the dirt seemed dead. Across another road, maybe fifty yards away, stood the open maw of the burned-out magazine. If he used his imagination, he thought he could see movement inside, but no people.

  He considered yelling again, but it was still too far away. C’mon, Trav, think…

  He needed to move closer. He could think all day, and he’d still be too far away to yell without being heard by the cop. But what about the dust? Jesus, how many times did they have to say it? The dust here would kill him if he breathed it. At least that’s what they thought. But he was breathing it now, wasn’t he? And he was still okay. Maybe the stuff had all worn off or blown away, like Nick said might be the case. In any event, he could always hold his breath.

  He glanced nervously over his shoulder again, thinking he heard the squawk of the radio. Okay, he’d hold his breath. If he got in and got out quickly, it wouldn’t be a problem. What other choice did he have?

  Pausing there at the margin where green and red and orange turned to flat black, he took in five or six deep breaths, hyperventilating himself the way he saw swimmers do it on television before a big race. He could do this.

  On your mark… get set…

  Who the hell would bring a car out here? As Sherman Quill drew closer, he saw not only the car-a Cadillac, no less-but a bunch of boxes and equipment strewn all about. It still made no sense to him, but one thing was clear: whatever was going on, and whoever had done this, they were still here, unless they’d left on foot.

  Maybe that FBI lady had been right. Maybe the Donovan gang had returned to finish what they’d started. In an era where crooks were stupid enough to rob banks using notes written on the backs of their own deposit slips, as had happened in Little Rock just a few weeks before, Sherman had come to put no limits on the extent of stupidity he could expect from a lawbreaker. No matter how clever their crime, sooner or later, it seemed, it was always something truly stupid that ultimately brought the perpetrator down. Like returning to the scene of the crime.

  Resting his hand on the grip of his. 38 Police Special, Sherman approached the Cadillac cautiously, peering in the windows and scanning the trees for any sign of movement. “Well, I will be damned,” he muttered, lifting his portable radio out of his belt.

  “Unit One to Control,” he said. He listened carefully for a response but got nothing. Somebody broke squelch, but if there was a message, he couldn’t hear it.

  “Unit One to Control,” he tried again. “Nan? Are you there?”

  Again, nothing. Not surprising, really. These low-band radios were a pain in the ass once you got them into the woods. If he had his patrol car down here, with its five-watt mobile unit, there’d be no problem. He briefly considered the option of going back for it, just to call in a report, but decided that would be silly. He was here, and the bad guys were here. He might as well take a look at what they were doing.

  The conscious realization of where he was hit him like a smack in the face. Sweet Jesus, he was in the middle of the most hazardous spot on earth!

  “You are out of your cotton-pickin’ mind,” he mumbled. He looked back again, and he considered the mobile radio one more time.

  Make this collar and they’ll be calling you a hero, he told himself. He drew the. 38 from its holster, then started his long walk toward the exclusion zone.

  Travis’s big breath took him as far as the doorway and then about ten feet farther. If his folks had been closer to the front, he’d have been able to dash in, grab one of them, and then dash out again. As it was, there was no way for him to make it. His lungs screamed for relief, and as he turned to head back toward the door, the breath just popped out of him in a giant rush. Then, before he could stop himself, his diaphragm rebounded and sucked in a huge lungful of air.

  Travis winced, closing his eyes tightly in anticipation of death, but nothing happened. There was a lot of dust, and it tasted like shit, but he felt fine, other than the urge to sneeze. Even the sneeze tasted awful.

  Carolyn didn’t hear anything, actually; she sensed a noise she didn’t recognize through the layers of protective clothing. She pivoted her body to get a reassuring glance at sunlight, and there was Travis, silhouetted against the brilliant white background.

  She screamed, “Oh, my God, Travis, no!”

  She dropped her flashlight and Jake’s pry bar onto the concrete floor, the noise reverberating forever in the concrete canyon, and ran to her son.

  “Get out of here!” she yelled. “Oh, my God, get out of here!” She ran to her baby, scooping him up on the fly and dragging him out toward fresh air. In the rush of adrenaline, he weighed nothing. “Hold your breath, honey!” she yelled. “Hold your breath!”

  But Travis couldn’t hear any of it. “Hey!” he yelled indignantly. “Put me down! There’s a cop outside!” Jesus, she’s strong!

  Jake saw the commotion and put it together in an instant. He followed his family out into the open, running as best he could in the bulk of his protective suit to catch up. What the hell was he doing inside?

  Carolyn had the boy over her shoulder in a kind of fireman’s carry that was as awkward as it was effective. With him wriggling to break free the whole time, she carried him out of the hideous stain of the exclusion zone and into the world of living underbrush. From there, it was another twenty-five or thirty yards down a small decline to a stream they’d seen on the aerial photo. She heaved Travis like a sack of potatoes off her shoulder and into the swollen, quick-running stream.

  Good idea, Jake thought. She was going to try and decon him. But it’d be tough going in her moon suit. Pulling his arm out of his sleeve, Jake fished around his pants pocket for his knife.

  “Hey!” Travis yelled. “Listen to me! There’s a-”

  Suddenly, he found himself immersed in frigid water, with his own mother holding him under the surface. As he struggled to rise to the top, she stepped into the stream with him, straddling him with her legs and crushing his rib cage with her knees. He could breathe, but not without taking a mouthful of water.

  “Mom! Jesus! What the-”

  She pulled at his soaked clothing, and suddenly he found himself shirtless. He tried to fight her, but there was nothing he could do. She was a crazy woman. Every time he thought he had a grip on something, it would slip out of his hands. “Mom! Stop! Ow, you’re hurt-”

  Now he was upside down in the water, face submerged, and she was yanking on his pants. As he felt them slip down past his butt and on toward his knees, he tried to kick and squirm, but it was useless. His choice was to cooperate or drown.

  A new pair of hands appeared out of nowhere and grabbed him under his arms. It was his dad, and he was in regular clothes again, but with the air pack still in place. “Hold still,” he yelled, his voice muffled by the mask. “We’ve got to get your clothes off! You’re contaminated.”

  With two against one, there was little choice but to cooperate. One last hard yank ripped the pant legs clear of his feet while nearly yanking his legs clear of his hips. Once his pants were off, the struggling stopped, and Travis realized to his horror that they’d stripped him of all his clothes. He was naked!

  As Jake struggled out of his air pack, Travis scrambled to cover himself up.

  “Stay away from those clothes!” Jake commanded.

  “But Dad, there’s a cop-”

  The sound of a
gunshot killed the words before they could form in the boy’s throat.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Sherman was getting too old for this crap: walking through the woods, trying to sneak up on people. If he were halfway as smart as he pretended to be, he’d have waited for the backup that had to be on the way by now. Nan wouldn’t have wasted even a second getting the call in to the state boys. So why did he keep on going forward? Another damn good question. Personal glory, he supposed. Because this was his town, and if the Donovans were down there like he’d been led to believe, he stood in a position to get payback-to punish those bastards for sucking the life out of the place he’d always known as home.

  His heart fluttered like a butterfly as each step brought him closer to death; if not at the hands of the Donovans, then at the whim of his own body as he inhaled the unknown dangers floating in the air. He heard noises ahead; man-made ones this time. The realization made his heart pound even harder.

  Why the hell would anyone…

  He heard a yell. The sound of a child in distress. Sherman quickened his pace-something else he hadn’t done in a very long time-and he hurried across the last roadway separating him from the foul-smelling desolation of the exclusion zone. The best speed he could muster was a moderate jog, and the out-of-sync swinging of the equipment in his Sam Browne belt slowed him down even more.

  He chose to scale the final mound rather than go around it, in hopes that the elevation would grant him an element of surprise. Sherman expended enormous effort scrambling up the steep slope, using his left hand to pull himself up while gripping his revolver in his right. It was tough going until he cleared the top of the giant doors, and then the slope eased a bit, allowing him to scramble the rest of the way more or less on his feet.