by Jim Heskett
Inside, he heard only silence and the ticking of the grandfather clock, but he took care to make his footfalls as quiet as possible. No reason not to think Lilah, Eagle, and Magda might still be here.
As he crept into the den, Garrett was sitting in Lilah’s big chair, smoking a joint.
Garrett looked up, his eyes red and dim, his face pulled tight with fear. He ashed the joint into a coffee mug. “Hey.”
“Are we alone?” Micah whispered. He had to assume Garrett wouldn’t smoke weed in the house with Lilah around, but it didn’t hurt to ask.
Garrett nodded. “Why are you here? I heard she kicked you out.”
Micah stood up straight. “I came back for my things. You should go, too. You know she murdered Rodney yesterday, right? Shot him in the forehead.”
Garrett took a long pull from his joint, his hands shaking so much that ash fell onto the carpet. “I thought I dreamed that,” he said as he exhaled. “I’m supposed to go. I’m supposed to meet Hannah and that priest during the parade, and we’re going to leave together.”
“Good. You should do that.”
Garrett grimaced. “Being here with Lilah and studying the Bible is all I’ve known for the past five years. I mean, she used to babysit me when I was little. I don’t know if I…”
Micah didn’t have time to argue with this brainwashed kid. He was either going to come to his senses and leave, or he would suffer with the rest of them. “You can do whatever you want to do, Garrett, but if you hang around here, you’re going to go to jail.”
“What?”
“The ATF is on their way. I think you should go meet your wife in town. Think about your baby’s future.”
Garrett picked up the coffee mug on the end table and dropped the roach of the joint into it. He leaned forward, cradling his head in his hands.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Micah sighed and walked away. Whatever Garrett did next was up to him, because Micah had his own problems to consider.
In Lilah’s bedroom, he dragged the safe out from under her bed and examined the keypad. He could try a few number combinations to get it to open, but that might waste too much time. Plus, too many missed tries might engage some extra lock.
Instead, he hoisted it up over his head and walked back down the hall. Garrett was no longer sitting in the den, but his truck was still out front.
Micah left the house and carried the safe down to his car, then dropped the heavy box into his trunk. The back end of his Honda dipped from the weight. He drove into town, careful to keep an eye out for Eagle and Lilah, although they didn’t seem to be anywhere nearby.
As he rolled into town, crowds clogging the streets slowed traffic to a crawl. People in costumes of demons and devils everywhere. Face paint turning humans into ghouls and zombies. People drinking beer from long flutes, stumbling around the streets, even this early in the morning. Many of the town’s parking lots were covered with tents, with music pumping from all directions. Nederland was celebrating.
At the hardware store, Micah parked at the rear and opened up the trunk to grab the safe. A Bible sat next to it, huddled in the trunk’s corner, right next to his AA Big Book. He considered the two books, both roughly the same shape and size.
He set the Bible on top of the safe as he hefted it from the trunk, and on his way to the back of the store, he flipped the Bible into a recycling bin.
Micah opened the back door to access the storeroom. He dropped the safe on top of a workbench, then ventured into the main store. Didn’t see Hannah or Magda anywhere.
Micah went straight to Walter’s office, rounded the desk, and popped open the file cabinet. He thumbed through the employee files until he got to R, then yanked his file. He ran each document through a shredder. Doing this wouldn’t erase his record of having worked here, but would make things trickier for anyone looking for him. He’d faked all his employment records anyway, but this was an extra layer of protection.
As he fed the last document into the shredder, the office door opened behind him. “What are you doing?”
Micah looked up at Walter, standing in the doorway, his arms crossed and his eyebrows creased.
“Hey, Walt,” Micah said as the shredder stopped churning. He took his green vest out of his back pocket and dropped it on the desk. “Thanks for the opportunity here, but I think today’s going to be my last day.”
Walt stumbled over his words. “What were you shredding?”
Micah turned up his palms to the ceiling. “It doesn’t matter. Where are Hannah and Magda?”
“They have the day off to go to the festival.”
Micah walked to Walt and patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks, Walt. You’re a good guy and a good boss. I’m glad I got to know you.”
Micah left him there, with Walter too stunned to do or say anything. Micah gave a few nods to people in the store, although none of them he’d ever considered friends. He was just another one of the religious freaks they stayed away from. He thought about the Purple Haired kid, that he hadn’t seen him since the day of the failed kidnapping attempt.
Micah dropped into the tools aisle and picked up a 1/2” drill and a diamond bit, then walked it into the back room and set up the workbench. He drilled for several minutes to punch a hole in the front of the safe. Something triggered and he heard a lock clench.
“Shit.” Hidden away in his pocket, Boba Fett frowned. That had been careless.
Some kind of emergency anti-cracking measure? Micah didn’t know much about safecracking.
He scooted the safe around and drilled a hole through the back, then drilled several more holes to create a ring of them all around the back of the safe. He went back into the aisles to get a crowbar, and found Walt, once again staring him down, arms crossed.
“What are you doing in the storeroom?”
“I forgot the combination to my safe, so I’m cracking it. I’m almost done, so I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”
Walter shook his head and tapped his foot. “None of this makes any sense, but I don’t like it. You need to leave or I’m calling the cops.”
If Eagle showed up, that would be fine, because he’d find out about the safe anyway. “Do whatever you need to do, Walt. I’m almost done. Also, I should tell you: the reason my background check failed before? That was because I falsified my paperwork when I started. I’m sorry I did that, but I had to.”
“What?”
“One more thing: there’s a kid with purple hair who works in Gardening.”
“Zach?”
“Sure, Zach. I said some mean things to him the other day. The little shit deserved it, but I shouldn’t have said all that anyway. Tell him I’m sorry. But… don’t tell him what I said about him being a little shit. That’s just between you and me.”
Walter, looking utterly confused, retreated back to his office, and Micah scurried into the storeroom. He hooked the crowbar into one of the holes in the back and threw his weight into it, tearing that hole into the next one, and then he did the same with another set of holes. After working at this for a couple minutes, he could peel back the metal and get a look at the inside.
A collection of cell phones, driver’s licenses, and two passports. He grabbed his phone and shoved it in his pocket, and then he was about to leave out the back, but he paused.
Took a few breaths, considering.
Micah grabbed the two passports and checked them. Hannah’s and Garrett’s. Maybe he couldn’t save Magda, but he could find Hannah and help assure her safe passage back to Canada.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
With the two passports secured in his back pocket, Micah left the hardware store and ventured into town. He checked his phone and wasn’t surprised to find out the battery was almost dead. His charger was in the trunk of his car, but he didn’t have time to go somewhere and sit for a half hour next to an electrical outlet while it charged. He needed to find Hannah and Garrett now, before they left.
Froze
n Dead Guy Days was in full swing. The parking lot near the hardware store was full of hearses decorated with ghoulish fake blood, skeletons, and a multitude of death-related enhancements. One hearse was jacked up like a monster truck with a row of fake tombstones on top to make it look like a cemetery.
As Micah began to mix with the dense crowd of people, his senses overloaded with the insanity of the scene around him. Fake blood and guts everywhere. A group of four people in spiderweb-drenched gorilla costumes surrounded him and did a quick monkey dance with him at the center before moving on. They each had a numbered race bib pinned to the front of their gorilla fur.
Next he weaved through a dozen young women in full-body paint, each of them shivering in the cold, but giggling anyway. Goosebumps dotted their naked flesh.
Micah couldn’t remember if Garrett had said where or when he and Hannah were meeting the priest. Had they done it already?
He diverted down First Street toward the reservoir, thinking he’d bypass the throng of ghouls and goblins and make his way up to the church from there. A crowd had gathered in a circle in Chipeta Park, standing around a hole in the pond’s top layer of ice. In the freezing water floated two guys in yellow hazmat suits, and a line of mostly-naked people were getting ready to jump into the water. A girl in a bikini was at the front, and she leaped into the air, then plunged into the water as everyone applauded, then the two hazmat guys helped her out of the hole in the ice.
Micah cut back left and made his way up the hill toward Sacred Heart Church. As he shot left and right to dart between people, he came upon the parade. A line of hearses stretching back toward the reservoir crept forward, many of them with costumed demons on top, some themed like TV shows or movies. Between the hearses were the teams of coffin racers. Each group of four or five people carried a wooden box shaped like a small version of a coffin, and they all had race bibs and themes of their own. Star Trek. Super Mario Brothers. Breaking Bad.
He darted across the street through the parade, racing in front of a hearse decorated like an armored tank, complete with men in fatigues in formation, carrying plastic assault rifles.
“Citizen!” one of the fake soldiers shouted with a grin on his face. “Get yourself to safety! This is a hot zone!”
Micah turned his head toward the shouting long enough to miss where he was going and slam into a person on the other side of the street. He folded into a rotund man wearing a fur coat, with his face painted an electric blue and carrying a massive stein of beer. Half the beer stein ended up all over Micah.
“Crap. I’m sorry,” Micah said.
The guy howled in response and stuck out his tongue, then shook his head to wag it. He didn’t seem upset, only another person caught up in the frenzy of the festival. He’d probably already consumed a belly-full of beer this morning.
So Micah left the blue lunatic there and pushed back toward the church, and past the rows of people, he saw Benedict, Hannah, and Garrett, huddled in an alley.
“Wait!” Micah said as he sprinted toward them.
Benedict jumped forward, positioning himself between Micah and the other two. Guarded, arms out, protecting them. “Have you changed your mind?”
Micah, panting, tried not to gag from the stink of beer that had drenched his clothes. “I have something for you.”
As he reached into his pocket to retrieve the passports, Benedict shied away, pushing Hannah and Garrett back a step. She peered around Benedict’s protection. Her eyes shot wide open when Micah produced the two little books.
“Are those…” she said.
“I cracked open the safe this morning,” Micah said.
Benedict was about to open his mouth to speak when Micah felt someone pushing him aside. A guy with fiery red hair, looming large, eyes of rage pointed at Benedict.
“You sick and twisted asshole,” the redhead shouted at him. “I’ve been looking all over for you. You’re going to burn in hell for what you did to those kids, you know that?”
Benedict, Hannah, and Garrett all took a step back. The redhead advanced.
“Hey,” Micah said, grabbing the guy and yanking him back. “Who the hell are you?”
The redhead turned to him and sneered. “Out of my way, dickweed. I’m going to teach this pervert a lesson.”
The redhead wrestled a weighted sock from his front pocket, filled with something heavy. Quarters, or ball-bearings, probably.
Micah reacted. He jabbed at the guy, cracking him across the jaw. The redhead spun toward Micah, trying to raise the sock. Micah jabbed him again, throwing the full weight of his shoulder into it. He could feel the curve of the guy’s chin bone against his knuckles.
The redheaded attacker could feel it too, apparently, because he fell backward, bumping his head against the side of a building, then he slumped to the ground. Out cold.
“Jesus Christ,” Micah said as he checked his hand to make sure it wasn’t broken. “What was that all about?”
“It’s a long story,” Benedict said.
Micah picked the two passports off the ground and passed them to Benedict. The priest checked each one before handing them to Hannah and Garrett. “Thank you, Micah. This will help.”
They all stared at each other for a second, and Micah didn’t know what to do now. He hadn’t expected it to be so easy, random redheaded attackers aside.
“Will you come with us?” Benedict said.
Micah thought about it. Why not? There was nothing left for him here, since Magda had permanently and forever turned her back on him. He had no reason to stay and every reason to go back to Denver and resume his life of working as Frank’s assistant and going to AA meetings, living one day at a time. Away from this small town craziness he’d been wallowing in for the last three weeks. Of course, he didn’t need to escape with these three in some getaway car, he could get in his own car and leave.
Abandoning Nederland made perfect sense.
But helping Magda still tugged at him. He still held on to that little grain of hope, because, even though she had every reason to, Magda hadn’t told Lilah about him hacking into her computer.
It had to count for something, didn’t it?
The redheaded jerk on the ground stirred, moaning and putting a hand on the back of his head.
“I can’t,” Micah said. “I have something I need to do here first.”
Benedict nodded and zipped up his jacket. “Thank you, and good luck to you, then.”
Benedict spun and guided Hannah and Garrett back up to the church.
Micah exited the alley before the redhead could get to his feet, satisfied that he’d done the right thing and some good would come out of this whole fiasco. Back on the street, he scanned the crowd, searching for Magda, when his heart stopped.
Right across the road, holding a bottle of beer in his hand, was a man Micah hadn’t seen in over three weeks. He recognized him by the big spacer earrings dangling from his floppy lobes. The same guy who had tied extension cords around Micah’s hands and put a pillow case over his head, then stabbed Micah with a screwdriver.
Seth.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
As Lilah pulled into the parking lot at Limon Correctional, Cyrus stood near the fence, with a plastic bag under his arm. He was wearing the same ratty jeans and blue button-down shirt he’d worn when he was arrested eight years ago. Same blood stains around the collar.
Lilah remembered that day, when they came for him. The chaos of the men in their full-body armor, assault rifles swinging as they rampaged through the house. Tear gas billowing from canisters on the floor, something was smoking and on fire, people running, crying, no one knew how to get out or away from the men with their guns. Eyes burning. Gunshots rattling.
And Cyrus was ready for them. He’d had a plan, but that didn’t stop the pandemonium from sending Lilah into a panic attack that left her curled into a ball on the floor. When the agents picked her up, it took two of them to lift her, since she refused to open the ball to them.
>
Cyrus, leaving in handcuffs, his face bruised and bloodied as the agents—the ones who’d survived the roof collapsing—had taken out their frustrations on him. And his mouth moving, shouting at Lilah, but she couldn’t hear any words, only residual ringing in her ears from the blasts of the guns.
The next time she saw him, he’d been in court, wearing an orange jumpsuit. The cuts and bruises on his face now healed to echoes. How badly she wanted to go to him, to hold ice against his swollen and blue cheek, to tell him she loved him and would always be by his side.
She’d thought she might never see him in the real world again, and now here he was, standing outside the fence.
With a scowl on his face.
She parked the car next to him and he opened the passenger door. He didn’t look at her as he slid into the seat.
“You’re late,” he said.
The skin on her arms sizzled, itched like fire.
“I’m sorry. It was hard to get out of town because of the festival. Traffic was terrible until I got to Boulder.”
“Frozen Dead Guy bread and circuses to keep everyone sedated. Fill the people with beer and food on sticks and they’ll never realize how much they need to rise up and rebel.”
Lilah pursed her lips as she drove out of the parking lot. When she envisioned this day, she would see Cyrus throwing his arms around her, them barely being able to leave the parking lot because they were too passionate for each other. But Cyrus had barely looked at her.
“I’ve been thinking,” Cyrus said. “Rodney should go. I don’t trust him. That’s the first thing we’re going to do when we get back—I think—is question him about his loyalty. If I don’t like his answers, he’s gone. For too long we’ve been too lax about the rules.”
Lilah kept silent for a moment as they joined the highway. “Something happened yesterday. I haven’t had a chance to tell you about it yet.”
“What happened?”
Lilah’s heart pounded against her ribcage. Felt like she had a ball bearing stuck in her throat. “Rodney was not who he said he was. He was an ATF agent, but I took care of him.”
