“You ran through a wall,” he informs me, then laughs and pats my back. “Good for you. What about,” he searches the crowd and finds him, “—what about the kid? Sam?”
“I uh…” I turn and look at him, too. Ryan is talking to another officer, relaying the same story. “I vouch for him.”
“Really?” the Chief looks at me. “You know him?”
“A bit. He’s a student of David’s. Bright, from what I hear. He went in there unarmed and faced all three of ‘em. Brave kid.”
“Actually,” the Chief looks down at his notes, “one of them already had a broken arm from Sadie. She’s a bit groggy now, took a good knock to the head. Concussion but she’ll be fine. Girl’s dangerous. But that damn kid nearly blinded tha’ other bastard.”
“Good,” I say, enjoying the idea that the attacker was somewhere right now suffering from an immense amount of pain. “The kid’s solid. Couldn’t have gone in there without him. He deserves the credit—” I realize a moment late I shouldn’t be placing any spotlight on him “—well, actually, I think we’d both prefer that our names don’t get out on this one. Is that…” I look at the crowd past the police tape, understanding that anonymity may no longer be possible.
“We’ll do our best. Either way, you guys are heroes. These three scum-suckers been hittin’ massage schools all over the east coast.” The chief checks his notes again. “Man schedules a discount massage at a massage school,” he begins listing, “shows up, scopes it out, waits for the students to get comfy, then two other gentlemen come in. Teacher gets bound, girls are sexually attacked. Sacks over their heads. They only use a knife, no guns – say it’s less of a prison sentence if they get caught—we’ll see about that haha. And et cetera.”
“How many times has it happened?” I ask out of curiosity.
“Shit, we only just realized this was even goin’ on. These ass-fucks move around a lot. States only recently started communicatin’, mappin’ it out. They hit schools in PA, Maryland, Ohio, Georgia…” he searches his notes for things that probably aren’t there, “...and other places. I think.”
Chief Armstrong reminds me of an old, weathered judge: sturdy and thick like a tree, with pot-marked face and broad, gray hair. He’s well past his prime and older than you would expect a police chief to maintain his position; however, he’s an appropriate fit for the protector of an area that doesn’t see much crime. And he enjoys pontificating, though he spares me during this brief meeting. I’ve only heard stories of his anger, like the one where his face turned red during an interrogation and the suspect laughed, leading the Chief to staple the suspect’s hand a few times.
I don’t believe it but, you know, it’s interesting to think of him having a temper.
David approaches through the crowd and the police let him pass.
“What happened?” David asks, looking over our shoulders and into the massage school. “Someone break in?”
The Chief laughs, his exuberance taking David back a step.
“More like through!”
A SHADE LESS ORDINARY
The ordeal with the massage school causes life to be a shade less ordinary.
The bar picks up to the point that Chris is needed every night as an extra set of hands. While Jun Kae Do at Dove’s Grove is closed to repair the dry-wall, fourteen free-trial applicants stop by and sign up for classes, causing me to add an extra evening class. David suffers most, first losing a student when Ryan disappears from the face of the Earth – I don’t blame him for leaving – and then our after-dinner “jam sessions” are put on hiatus as the expansion of my class load causes a rift in my attending dinner.
The Massage School at Dove’s Grove has a student drop-out (Ryan’s girlfriend) while nineteen enroll for the next semester; this is mainly because, when David, Chris, and I get calls from the local news asking for details, we give all the credit to Sadie – she broke the arm of an attacker, then blinded another before pushing the final one through a wall into the dojo next door. There’s a few days where reporters show up outside the school, and the phone rings incessantly for about a week, and Sadie’s story becomes a footnote amidst the usual vignettes of horror and violence on the evening news. She loves the attention and gives plenty of interviews. (My favorite quote: “Sometimes it’s nice to hear that someone beat the hell out of evil.”) The headlines read FORMER PORN STAR BEATS RAPISTS and XXX ACTRESS STOPS GROUP OF SEXUAL PREDATORS. There’s a rise in the sale of her old porn DVDs, a nice royalty check, and offers for her to return (which she declines)…
And that’s it.
Business as usual.
The Chamber of Commerce meeting goes as well as a Chamber of Commerce meeting can, and David teaches the massage students self-defense (better late than never); they hang on his every word and one of them signs up for discount classes.
By the beginning of August, the phone stops ringing. The news stops mentioning Sadie. A large amount of my new students stop coming and I end the extra evening class, returning to dinners with Lizzy and David and our nightly practice. Sadie retains a few of the nineteen applicants for the fall but most don’t follow through. The bar slows back to its frequent regulars and occasional youngsters.
Everything falls back into its rightful place, concluding with an odd encounter:
I sent Chief C. H. Armstrong a long e-mail detailing bullshit reasons why we pinned the rescue on Sadie and thanking him for handling the situation so professionally. He responds with a handwritten note, handed over by a passing young deputy named W. Winslow Pickett – all I know of the kid is what I see, which is that he has a thin, poorly developed and misshapen mustache, smells like beans, dark features and skin, and he’s pulling his chin back toward his throat as a sign that he isn’t particularly happy as he passes me the note.
“I seen that,” Deputy Pickett says in a disdainful, accusatory tone; he’s talking about the letter.
“Oh?”
I take the letter from him, his face frozen in a serious expression, his chin practically against his Adam’s apple. He stands there, motioning for me to read it:
Thanks for saving several people from a horrendous fate. No matter who gets the credit, you did a damn fine job, Ridley. I can only hope the dipshit deputy that delivers this note can grow to be as dutiful and quick to act as you.
Chief C. H. Armstrong
Deputy Pickett’s still in front of me when I close the letter.
“I’m no dipshit. Okay?”
He’s surprisingly serious.
“I…didn’t write it?” I practically ask, standing there momentarily confused.
Deputy Pickett shakes his head and crooks an eyebrow at me before leaving.
THE One Day SCENARIO
It’s almost 10:30 a.m. when I walk into The Buffet at Dove’s Grove.
They have the sushi station ready for me, as my daily routine involves sushi at this time every week day: there’s the morning’s delivery of fish in the sushi station ice bin, salmon and tuna meat already prepared; a side of rice and seaweed; and a clean knife on the cutting board. The station is in the center of the buffet and, as most patrons don’t eat sushi, we split the space with a large slab of roast beef beating under a heat lamp.
I sit to eat at my usual spot, a large ice water waiting for me as always. My hand wraps around the cold glass, enjoying the condensation slipping over my fingers, and I take a hearty drink. As the glass lowers, the only other patron gets my attention as he sits at my table, directly across from me.
“Looooong time,” he drawls out the words, low and menacing.
I stare at him, blank; recognition comes quick.
My face remains blank:
“I told you if I ever saw you again, I would kill you.”
“So be it,” he answers.
a brief interlude about the seven devil nation
The Melting Man
The last day of tracks were a decoy.
Following them, I noticed a different pattern, a more coher
ent travel: they walked uniformly, thirty-eight feet showing focus – no deviation, no unnecessary stops, no stops period. Not even a full day had passed since nineteen people walked more than 18 hours without a rest or bathroom break, no charcoal pit to roast meat, nothing. As I did when following tracks, I moved at a half-sprint, my body partially crouched – a sacrifice I didn’t like to make: consistent speed for slight visibility.
My bare feet scarcely touched the ground.
Water was my only meal during the day, a low fire at dusk to cook fish from the river. Boar were loud and I only killed them when one would begin to track me, as they sometimes did when I was in their territory – a large amount of their meat and usefulness would go to waste, though; I had neither the time nor tools to bring any of it with me. I traveled light: a sack for water at my side; a tiny backpack with a pipe, the Hacker compound, some necessities, and even two booby-traps; an old, brown handled katana tucked under my belt (right-side, opposite the water sack); a thick, sharpened walking stick that doubled as a fishing spear; the cloth around my waist, which I used for shelter and disguise at night; and the dirty, thin sheath that covered my body.
The ambush grew more obvious shortly before dusk. The paces slowed, their tracks told me. A third—six of them including the one I assumed to be the biggest, whom I nicknamed Maggie—jerked straight left, closer to the river. The other twelve continued on. My assumption was that they were taking to the water for some specific task, to meet up further down the path at some designated spot.
The main set of tracks continued a half-mile north until another six went right.
It was a trap – they were flanking me and I knew it the instant I saw the second divergent tracks. Stopped dead, the silence thick and grimy, sweat sticking the dirt and bugs to my skin…and nothing happened, at least not at first. If they were going to attack, it would be a sniper from afar; they needed me alive but the condition didn’t matter – I could be a quadriplegic as long as he had enough time to stare in my face before I died.
At full sprint – completely sacrificing visibility for speed – I ran back the direction from which I had come and didn’t stop until nausea set in, maybe four miles. (Training had been so intense that I couldn’t remember the last time I had run so fast and far that I was actually exhausted.) My mouth had swollen from thirst and burned at the touch of water on my lips and tongue.
Two burning mouthfuls and I vomited.
Dusk hadn’t yet started but it was near. I had more work than most nights, making camp in almost the same fashion as always (with two exceptions): caught my dinner, two fish in the shallow embankment of the river, wrapping them in leaves to fry after nightfall; cleared a large area for a fire pit to burn safely; walked the parameter at thirty paces, then fifty paces out to learn the terrain and (the first exception) I set two traps; gathered what I needed for the fire, mainly solid, healthy wood but (and this was the second exception) some of it was rotten, dead at the core, and I also gathered a lot of foliage; the beginning stages of the fire were with the sturdy wood, the flames low, quiet, and I quickly fried the fish and inhaled them (this small, quick meal only increased my mountainous hunger); afterward, I added the dead wood and foliage for a bright, loud, smoky fire; and, finally, at the base of a tree some fifteen paces from the roaring, blazing (but well-controlled) fire, I settled—or, more accurately, collapsed—with both traps in front of me, one thirty paces to my left (in the same direction as the first divergent footprints) and the second near fifty paces, closer to the main trail.
It was difficult not to sleep, even though the cloth wrapped around me was damp and stank horribly of body odor; it had a tendency of collecting the sweat from my waistline. Over time, it had changed color from a light flora to patchy dirt; in daylight, balled up at the base of a tree, it looked like nothing more than a pile of earth. At night, curled beneath it, I was invisible.
And, though there was a mightily fight against it, I fell asleep.
Sometime around 4:00 a.m. a distinct sound woke me:
SHUFFLE…SHUFFLE…SCRAPE…
SHUFFLE…SHUFFLE…SCRAPE…
SHUFFLE…SHUFFLE…SCRAPE…
It was specific – a conscientious creeper. As it got closer, gently growing in volume, I could distinguish the movements - a step, another step, and then a light jabbing at the ground with something like a stick.
SHUFFLE…SHUFFLE…SCRAPE…
SHUFFLE…SHUFFLE…SCRAPE…
Through a hole in the fabric, I looked for the source but couldn’t find it in the darkness – it was less than ten feet from me. In the distance around me, past the sound, I could hear other movement – people sweeping the area, a second and distant third set of the same sounds closing in:
SHUFFLE…SHUFFLE…SCRAPE…
SHUFFLE…SHUFFLE…SCRAPE…
SHUFFLE…SHUFFLE…SCRAPE…
While tracking them, there was a man that blatantly stood out as the largest of the group – by his footprints and pacing I had guessed 6’7, 250-plus lbs.; even in the darkness, even in the distance, I could tell my measurements were close, if a tad under. It was the giant whom I nicknamed Maggie, and he was already at my camp, his menacing, ogre-like frame circling the fire, his tree-trunk arms outstretched like a wrestler about to attack – the tip of his right hand came to a point and I realized he had a dagger clutched in his monstrous, bear-like grip.
A bright FLASH at thirty paces out—someone triggered the white phosphorous. A blaze leapt up through the trees and littered the forest with clear, piercing light. Everything became visible: the man nearest me; a man at his side, about ten paces away; Maggie the ogre at the camp; and there were two others closing in from the opposite side. A howl of pain and, even from the ground, I could see a man covered in what looked like electricity, whizzing and whirring sparks – this was pure luck on top of regular luck, as the tripwire covered over fifteen paces and the poor bastard who tripped it happened to be within a foot of the tiny, propulsive canister; the purpose was to warn and illuminate the enemy’s location, not necessarily maim. His shriek gurgled, fizzled, then abruptly cut out – his throat was melting, as was the entire side of his body. He was dead before the noise even left his lips, smoke wafting from his silent, shocked, still-standing body.
The white phosphorous rained over the sky – the forest would be visible for less than a minute – Maggie the ogre was watching from the fire, bemused, and the two men on the opposing side of the camp continued their search before their “friend” had even hit the ground. The man closest to me stood still as if he could sense my presence; his eyes darted from the melting man, over Maggie the ogre, and around again.
By the time the smoldering man hit the ground, I was standing, sword drawn, feet planted, ready to strike the nearest man—Maggie the ogre’s eyes were pin-point and penetrating my back as I lurched toward the closest man—dashing, the other two men were leaping over brush toward me – and there was a SZZZZZZT! and, just like the incredible melting man, I fell face-first in the dirt, unable to move.
the Scattershot 14
CONTINGENCY
Each of them gets the text I send:
SCATTERSHOT 14
David ends class abruptly and smashes his phone on the sidewalk outside, cursing himself for making a mess as he carefully picks up each of the plastic bits and tosses them in the trash; then he picks Lizzy up from summer school before she’s even had lunch.
Chris stops masturbating only long enough to remove the SIM card from his phone and snap the rest in half; then he quickly finishes. After lazily washing his hands, he heads into the bedroom and pulls from the back of his closet a shrink-wrapped outfit with a personalized signature across the top.
Lizzy’s shrink-wrapped outfit doesn’t have a personal signature but instead a horse/frog-beast drawn on it. It’s a shame to destroy something so creative, she thinks, tearing through it all the same to put on an outfit she had picked out several months earlier. She had grown and it was tighter than she
remembered.
“You can’t wear anything you’ve already got on—no shoes, necklaces, nothing. Just the clothes in the bag.”
“Why!” she moans loudly.
In her hand, Lizzy has a metal hairclip that had been her mother’s. It has the picture of a smiling turtle hugging a tired lion and it’s something she wears in the front of her hair every day. “Uncle Sandwich always gets to keep that stupid ring he wears!”
David knows what’s upsetting her and he pauses a moment to decide if he should break one of his brother’s strict rules. Truthfully, David hadn’t saved anything from his time with Sarah, Lizzy’s mother – after her sudden death, it had just been too hard and Lizzy was too young to comprehend what was happening. The hairclip had been something David bought for Lizzy the day he was released from the hospital: having just recovered from a gunshot wound to the chest, he immediately celebrated not dying by letting four-year-old Lizzy pick something out in the hospital gift shop. Lizzy picked the hairclip and forged its past, leading herself to believe that, aside from the few baby photos David had saved of her with her mother, this was her mother’s final possession.
“You can’t bring it just yet but we’re not leaving forever, sweetie. I’m sure we’ll be back tonight,” he consoles her from his bedroom.
“This stupid—can’t ask any stupid questions—stupid,” he can hear her grumbling from her bed, mainly random words combined with ‘stupid’. Her hair is completely over her face, an obvious sign she’s hiding in anger.
David tears through the signature and opens the cellophane wrapped outfit he had picked out alongside Lizzy’s some months back. He removes everything, finishes dressing, and walks into her room.
“Ready?” he asks her, low.
She just puffs, shoves past him, and leaves.
They head a block down the street to find Chris waiting at the bus stop. He nods without speaking and heads down the line to catch a different bus, saving David and Lizzy the extra blocks.
Because of this, they arrive at the Lay Zzz Inn first.
Seven Devils Page 5
