Knuckleduster

by Andrew Post

  Thorp untangled Maribel’s reins from the shrub and guided her along, following Brody up the dirt path.

  “I’m glad you have the fire going in you and everything, but I don’t think it’s the dead cars they wanted in the bog.”

  “We both know what happened to them happened because it had to,” Thorp said. “But we have to think about what happens after all this. What if Hark is planning to report us to the cops?”

  “There’re no tracks,” Brody shouted. “They dropped the cars out of the fucking sky. It’ll be inadmissible in court, not even evidence. How did we get them out here? Neither of us even owns a car. They can try to incriminate us all they want; we can get around this one no problem. It’ll take time, but what they did here tonight is just plain sloppy. You got money. We can get a decent lawyer.”

  “I had money coming in, but that’s a thing of the past now. And we don’t have time to go to court for this. Tomorrow will make it twenty-five days that Nectar has been missing.”

  Brody sighed, launching a burst of steam into the air. “If Hark calls it in, if the cops show up and start poking around, it looks bad; that’s for sure. But there won’t be enough linking us to them. They’ll see that there wasn’t time for us to get the vehicles from the field down here, and with no tracks, yeah, their trying to get one over on us is completely shot full of holes.”

  “My gun,” Thorp said. “The one Seb took from me at the field.”

  At that, Brody’s stride halted.

  Brody groaned. “Your goddamn Franklin.”

  “Afraid so.” Thorp nodded. “I’ll get a saddle on Maribel, and maybe together the horses can pull the cars out and—wait, what are you doing?”

  Brody threw his coat aside, stomped down to the edge of the bog, and kicked off one boot, then the other. He tossed Thorp his phone, wallet, and lighter. He pressed his thumb against the sonar to make sure it was going to stay stuck. He splashed only three steps out into the water before the temperature hit him. His steps became slower. Each time his socked feet landed on half-frozen mud at the bottom, it was like his soles were struck by lightning. Radiating agony that reverberated through him—up his shins, to his knees, and into the muscles of his thighs, awakening the newly notched flesh in the crook of his crotch.

  His voice jittered uncontrollably. “Any idea where the Fairlane might’ve ended up?”

  “I saw some bubbles a second ago over to your right.”

  Brody moved that way, the black water crawling up to his waist. His exhales came out in contracted jerks, puffs of steam washing over his face in the wind—the smell of his own breath, musty with tobacco and sweet from the last coffee he’d had. His teeth chattered fitfully like a malfunctioning typewriter.

  “Do you want me to come in?” Thorp asked.

  “No point in both of us getting hypothermia,” Brody managed to say.

  The ping played over the surface of the bog. In wire frame it became a colorless checkerboard. He trudged another couple of feet, the half-developed sheet of ice cracking as his chest pushed through. He kept his arms high, let out little snarls and grunts he couldn’t help as he stepped farther and farther, deeper and deeper. Again, he thumbed the sonar. The water, rife with rock-hard cranberries, was at his armpits.

  His knees hit the bumper.

  “Is he in there?” Thorp asked from the bank.

  “Hold on.”

  When Brody lifted the trunk lid, Spanky drifted out and bobbed to the surface. Brody saw his head push through the white gridded bog, close enough to the sonar that the minutiae of Spanky’s face could be found—the texture of his dead, sunken cheeks, the five-o’clock shadow poking through like cactus quills. The bumpy, swirly road map on his eyelids like subdermal worms bending themselves into cursive: Never. Dead.

  “Yeah,” Brody said, “he’s in here.”

  He pulled Spanky around and shoved him through the water. The corpse pushed a wave of water out ahead of him and drifted languidly toward the bank. Brody watched to make sure he wouldn’t change course and go in the wrong direction, then watched Thorp crouch to receive the corpse. He looked disgusted.

  Brody stepped around to the side of the car and opened the door with some difficulty. Seb bobbed out as well. Brody dragged the giant man along by the hood of his jacket onto the muddy shore.

  Upon pulling himself from the water, Brody flapped Seb’s waterlogged coat open and retrieved Thorp’s handgun. “Here.” He shoved the ice-cold thing against Thorp’s chest and walked up the hill, fighting with his coat.

  The wind tore across his damp clothes, and his body felt as if it were imploding, bones telescoping down into themselves, his flesh crawling like it was recoiling from the muscle, folding up and racing to the core in a frantic dash of self-preservation. Each step roared. “I got to get to the house. I can’t be out here.”

  “But the power’s off. There won’t be any heat.”

  “We’ll handle that in a m-minute. I need to make sure I’m not going to lose my f-fingers.” He tottered along with everything numb, socks squishing with each step. “You said you got a space heater, right?”

  “Pretty much confirms that they’re onto us, huh?” Brody said, driving the shovel down to take another bite out of the frozen dirt. It came away in chips, splinters—frosty brown sheets. He cast the shovelful aside. He stopped for a moment to flex his hand and slap his palm against his knee. He wondered if the loss of sensation would be permanent.

  “Let me take over,” Thorp said.

  Brody stepped aside and picked up his coffee from the ground, finding it had gone cold. They were in the trees, about half a mile within the more forested and far-flung portion of Thorp’s property. It smelled to Brody like Mother Nature’s Womb—if the gardening shop also happened to be a place to store dead bodies. He glanced down at the corpses. The discharge they had let loose when their souls were shoved from their bodies was palpable on the air. He turned away.

  His face warmed suddenly. He must’ve come out from behind a tree trunk’s shadow. The sun was up but was about as useful in warming them as saying the name of the distant star over and over, but he could feel it on his face faintly, knew it was there—and stared into its assumed location with clouded eyes with no fear of it damaging anything. He and Thorp had been at this all night, and now it was threatening to eat into yet another day.

  Thorp pressed his foot atop the shovel blade, driving it in deep. “I always hated this part.”

  With the sonar, Brody examined the depth of the rut Thorp was finishing. “Let’s not talk about that now,” he said, setting his coffee down. “That’s good. That’s deep enough. Here. Get his legs.”

  They slid Seb over and placed him in the hole, then Spanky next to him. The top of the burlap sack was open, and an arm splayed out. A hand with the fingers squeezed tight in a bloodless fist. Thorp edged it back in with the side of his boot.

  The grave was shallow. It took only a few minutes to fill it back in with icy dirt.

  Brody stood, leaning on the shovel handle, eyeing the mound as Thorp kicked some half-rotten dead leaves over it. He bent and gathered up a load of sticks, leaves, tore some green underbrush from the earth, and dispersed it on the heap. He took a small bottle from his coat and poured its contents around and over the grave. Brody detected the odor: ammonia.

  When finished, Thorp asked, “Suppose we should say something?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, man. They’re dead. Just because we weren’t on the same side doesn’t mean we shouldn’t show them some respect.”

  “We buried them in bags that horse food came in,” Brody said. “I think we’re a little bit past the showing respect portion of this ordeal. If it were them up here and us down there, I’d understand. Can’t exactly give a proper burial when all of this other shit is going on.”

  “But look at it,” Thorp said. “It’s like they were a couple of dogs or something.”

  “Don’t,” Brody said. “It only m
akes it worse.”

  Thorp swallowed. “This isn’t right.”

  “No, it’s not. But, you know, shit happens.”

  Thorp shook his head. “Wow. I know you were always cool as a cucumber, water off a duck’s ass and all—but even for you that’s pretty cold. They were people.”

  Brody scattered the dregs of his coffee aside into the carpet of dead leaves and snow. “Like you pointed out, Spanky would’ve shot us if you hadn’t stopped him—and Seb, well, that was just a case of trespassing gone awry.” He took up his shovel, coffee cup hooked on his index finger.

  “You think it was … something else that made him come back?”

  “Who?”

  “Him.” Thorp nodded at the mound. “Them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How they dropped him off. You think it was all just them trying to pin it on us or … something else? I deserve to have to deal with it, I guess. I did kill him after all.” He coughed once, raspy.

  “It’s done,” Brody said. “You threw down the ammonia so if the cops bring dogs they won’t find shit besides the cars. We got your gun, these two’re buried, and scents are covered—it’s through.” He waved his hand. “Okay? Through.”

  “I got to answer for this,” Thorp said.

  A beat passed. The last of the crickets tuned themselves down, then out.

  “I’m going inside. I still can’t feel certain parts of myself, and if they were to fall off I’d be rather upset.” Brody walked away, shovel handle resting on his shoulder.

  “I told God I’d never kill anyone ever again,” Thorp shouted after him.

  Brody’s strides faltered. He hesitated, then continued walking. He didn’t answer because he didn’t have an answer to give.

  29

  Late in the afternoon, Thorp woke to the sounds of toil. He roused from the couch, and the Gizumoshingu fell to the floor. Immediately, he was rewarded with an onslaught of unpleasant images and ringing ears. It was verbatim to the previous night’s bad dreams. He didn’t allow them any more time to sink in: he got on his coat and headed outside with his ordi in his grip.

  He paused upon taking one step onto the back porch. The Darters were gone. Just two dark craters where they had been, two dirty trails where they’d been dragged through the yard, digging up the grass en route to the barn. They were mostly fiberglass but still weighed well over a ton each—how the hell did Brody do it?

  Thorp opened the barn door and stepped inside.

  Brody was at work with his eyes closed and his forehead pushed toward the open hull of the Darter, elbow-deep in the craft’s mechanic innards. “I got coffee over here,” he said.

  Thorp saw the horses were breathing heavily, lapping up water in turns. They were still wearing their bridles. A network of ropes and pulleys were strewn all over the empty space above the aircrafts. He noticed a simple machine had been made utilizing the net Thorp used to bind stuff up and store it in the rafters. It was filled with nearly the entire pile of old electronics as a counterweight. Still, apparently the medieval-style vehicle relocation hadn’t been enough; the horses looked exhausted. He gave Brody a smirk. He thumbed at them. “Did you?”

  “I apologized afterward and gave them a couple of carrots. I couldn’t have dragged these things in here on my own.” Brody wiped a rag down the length of his blackened forearms and tossed it onto the workbench cluttered with parts, butted cigars, coffee cups, and a half-eaten bowl of shredded wheat. He’d also brought out a hot plate Thorp hadn’t seen in years and wired it up to the generator, alongside the space heater he’d apparently slept in front of, indicated by the rumpled horse blanket.

  He saw that the more damaged of the two Darters was dismantled most of the way, the other wearing its companion’s parts. The ridged gray scars of welding looked decent, and the wings were folded up together on the aircraft’s back neatly. Brody had gotten a lot of good work done throughout the morning.

  “I hate to admit it, but she’s looking pretty fine,” Thorp commented, running his hand along the more complete aircraft. He never thought he’d see either Darter complete again, as he saw one the first time on that airstrip out behind Fort Reagan. It was both a consoling and thrilling sight.

  Brody turned out the pocket of his jeans, and what looked to be ten pounds of nuts and bolts tumbled onto the workbench. “Pretty much good on this. Just have to get the airfoil working and reinforce the manifold over the engine compartment. I’m missing a few pieces, but I’ve managed to fabricate some of it together out of sheet metal. May not be airtight and it looks rough as hell, but it’s passable.”

  “Have you even attempted the circuitry and stuff yet?” Thorp inquired, ducking his head in through the open cockpit door. “I can start in on that if you want.”

  The instrument panel was a mess of broken dials and thousands of frayed ends of wires sticking out like begging hands. When the Darters had been delivered by flatbed truck he had considered them more or less complete. But now, looking at them with the mind-set of reassembling them for actual flight, countless hours of work and frustration stared him in the face. He said to Brody as much as himself, “I think I have a few of the old books lying around somewhere on that stuff.”

  “That’d be great,” Brody said, putting his coat back on.

  “Flight computer’s gone,” Thorp said. “No autopilot.”

  “Suppose we might have to touch down after all, then, huh? Can’t exactly send this thing on a quick loop around the city without it knowing how to fly on its own. Do you know where we can get one of those? The black market or something?”

  “Oh, come on now. You’re talking to the handyman, remember? I’m better than that.” Thorp smiled. He poured himself a cup of coffee. It tasted good, if burned. “I’ll just need a few things.” He nodded toward the dangling pile of electronics, still captive in the net. “There’s probably something in all of that I can use.”

  “But doesn’t the autopilot function operate with an AI?”

  “A basic one, yeah. It’s just a map system and a series of preprogrammed flight patterns. Basically a whole slew of code and a timer. Hell, I could have the thing take off from here, fly us all the way to your apartment in Minneapolis, and get us back without either of us ever having to touch the controls except for the go switch.”

  “Then what are you waiting for? You get cracking on that and I’ll get the tail fin going. Before dinner we’ll have this thing in the air.”

  They worked throughout the remainder of day and well after the sun descended again. Thorp had discovered an old boom box in his pile of forsaken electronics and had it tuned to a classic rock station. It was the same music he preferred when in the service, stuff that had been popular long before his time, but music he felt the most connection with. He found himself humming when his thoughts steered into dark territory and openly singing along when they veered off completely in an attempt to counteract them.

  As the songs passed one to the next, the men labored at their separate stations within the barn. Brody used the torch to tack the dual tail fins onto the end of the passenger shaft, never having to shield his eyes from the welding flare. Thorp’s fingers danced on the keyboard, creating a long series of code on his ordi that would be the autopilot function.

  The men didn’t speak for hours, never even went into the house to relieve themselves. They yellowed the snow outside and returned with unwashed hands to their respective jobs.

  Around the same time both men’s work grew quiet, finishing touches were applied. Thorp emerged from the cockpit, Brody from the nose of the craft where he’d attempted to bend some sheet metal, and they met at the workbench wearing matching looks aimed at one another.

  “Ready?” Thorp asked.

  Brody nodded. “You?”

  “Yep.”

  The craft squealed, and the four wings spread out on its back and began to violently beat the air, kicking powdery snow away in surging, rhythmic bursts.

  Thorp buckle
d his four-point harness. Brody slid on a pair of headphones and adjusted the microphone before him. He could see nothing beyond the windshield but felt the lurch in the well of his stomach as the Darter lifted off. The magnetic gyroscope within the beast’s belly twisted and turned and scoured the earth beneath it for any sort of metal to push off of—scarce in their rural setting.

  Nonetheless, after a few tired barks from the Darter’s engines, the aircraft took flight and hovered a good thirty feet over the top of the barn. Brody clutched the worry bar and imagined seeing the shingled roof of Thorp’s house and barn far, far below. Thorp plunged the aircraft forward through the icy wind over the cranberry bog and surrounding forest and then back again.

  Thorp pointed at the nose of the Zäh still sticking out of the iced-over bog. “I wonder if they found my rucksack.”

  Brody was too terrified to answer, so he just shrugged.

  “Let’s take a look,” Thorp suggested, and they began following the road to the scene of the other night’s carnage.

  “Well, I think that’s about where we were,” Thorp said, filling in for what Brody couldn’t see.

  “Yeah?”

  “Snow’s covered it all up. Can’t even see tracks or anything.”

  “They probably took care of that, too,” Brody managed. His stomach gave a quarrelsome twitch.

  Thorp pushed the stick forward, and the Darter obediently started to descend. He cocked the craft forward enough that the nose was pointed straight down. It remained hovering like this, Brody feeling the bite of his harness in his chest.

  “What is it?” Brody asked. Holding the bar ahead of him and his legs straight out, his body bracing for impact all on its own, he imagined the nose of the Darter was a mere fifteen feet off the ground, if not less. His confused equilibrium settled, and he could feel the craft was entirely vertical, its tail stuck straight up in the air. The engines gave a low whine, struggling to keep it upended.

  Thorp narrowed the Darter down closer. He leaned forward in his seat. “I don’t see it.”