by Jim Heskett
With the booming music from the nearby beer tent drowning out his words, she only cocked her head and made a face at him. Why would she listen to anything he had to say?
Micah pushed forward, and now he could see Eagle had changed direction and was marching toward Micah. Eagle’s broad shoulders knocked festival-goers out the way, and many of them barely even noticed.
Eagle lifted the nailgun, and Micah put himself between the nailgun and Magda. Most of the crowd still had their eyes on the parade as the hearses and coffin racers continued to dance down the street, but a few people around Eagle had taken notice. Some of them seemed to realize the weapon in his hand was not a toy and were calling for help, but it didn’t matter. Eagle was too close.
Eagle lunged at Micah, holding the nailgun’s safety off with one hand as he moved. Micah leaned back and out of the way as a nail flew through the air next to his head, but he bumped into someone behind him. A glass of beer fell onto his face, cracking against his nose. Micah’s eyes instantly filled with tears from the impact, and the world went blurry.
He was able to see the form of Eagle’s dark duster jacket through the blur, and he jumped to the right, out of the way and into the street.
Eagle turned with him, and Micah’s vision cleared. More people nearby were now reacting to what was going on, and a man tried to grab at Eagle’s nailgun. He jammed his elbow into the person’s face, driving him back into the crowd. More people swarmed Eagle, trying to get the weapon away from him.
Micah used the distraction to rush at Magda, then he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her past the sidewalk, between two buildings. A slim alley.
“What’s happening?” she said. “Why is Eagle trying to hurt you?”
Micah realized the space between the two buildings narrowed and dead-ended. No back way out. “He was going for you, Mags.”
“That can’t be true. Why would he do that?”
Micah snatched at her arm so he could drag her out of this alley, but Eagle appeared, blocking their path. He didn’t have his nailgun anymore, but he reached into his boot and pulled out a knife. The blade glinted as the clouds above briefly parted.
“Eagle,” Magda said, “what are you doing? Why are you acting like this?”
“I’m sorry, Magdalene,” he said. “But we all have to die today. It’s the only way for Lilah and Cyrus to be safe so they can release their preachings out to the world. We’re not the carriers of the message. They are.”
Magda shrunk back, behind Micah. As Eagle lifted the blade, Micah checked the alley around him. There was a row of kegs stacked at the far end of the building and a few lengths of pipe resting nearby, but Micah wouldn’t get there in time.
Fists versus knife wasn’t a fair fight. But he had no choice.
Eagle advanced, his blade out. Micah could see past him to the crowd, and they seemed to have forgotten about the nailgun-wielding madman already. Micah considered calling for help, but his voice would be lost in the cacophony of the festival.
He had to get Eagle off balance, or turned around, or something. But this attacker in front of him was a trained police officer. Also, a psycho with a knife.
Micah spread his legs and lowered his center of gravity as Eagle approached. Put his hands out at his sides. No matter what, he could not let this man get past him to reach Magda.
“I never trusted you,” Eagle said.
“Go fuck yourself,” Micah said.
Eagle grinned, his eyes darting around their surroundings. Then he jabbed and Micah twisted out of the way, the blade passing within an inch of his stomach. Micah tried to latch on to Eagle’s hands, thinking he’d use Eagle’s momentum to drive him into the wall of the building.
But Eagle was too quick for that. He changed the direction of his attack, slashing Micah’s stomach. Micah felt a sting across his midsection, and then the heat of blood meeting the cold air. He didn’t feel guts spilling out, so the wound must have only grazed him. No time to look or feel around for the damage.
But now that Eagle was off-balance, Micah threw the palm of his hand into his shoulder, forcing him to the ground. Micah drove down, extending his knee, which he slammed into Eagle’s thigh.
With a hand gripping his shoulder and a knee on Eagle’s thigh, Micah succeeded in pinning him.
But only for a second. Eagle—moving so fast Micah didn’t have time to think—recovered and spun onto his back. Micah went flying onto his butt.
Somewhere, an air horn blasted.
Eagle tried to sit up and thrust the knife, but Micah scurried back on his hands a few feet, keeping clear of the blade. Felt coolness rush to his stomach. He was bleeding.
Micah lunged forward, dodging to the right to avoid the tip of the blade as Eagle’s arm was fully extended. Micah lifted his hands to push the blade out of the way, and slammed his head forward, the hardness of his temple connecting with Eagle’s nose.
Eagle tried to shake it off as something came flying through the air from Magda’s direction. A metal pipe smacked him in the head, and he wobbled. Micah saw Magda’s extended arm out of the corner of his eye.
As the impact happened, Eagle dropped the blade and his hands rushed to his face. Micah saw his chance. He grabbed the knife from the slick ground and thrust it into Eagle’s side, felt it scrape against bone as the blade pierced Eagle’s flesh. Eagle’s eyes opened wide and he gasped great lungfuls of air. He staggered to his feet, crashed into a trashcan, which clanged into the building.
Then Micah jumped back, frantically searching for Magda so he could protect her. Eagle wouldn’t be done yet.
She was huddled against the opposite building, her arms out wide and gripping the wall. Another length of pipe clutched in her hand, a collection of several of them at her feet.
Micah threw his body in front of hers.
Eagle looked down at the blade jutting from his stomach, then he staggered to his feet. But instead of coming after them, he pivoted toward the open end of the alley. With one last look at Micah, he lumbered back into the crowd.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Eagle’s car slowed in front of 1623 Caribou, its driver in a daze. He parked, yelping in pain from the knife wound as his hand shifted the lever from D to P.
He willed himself not to feel the pain, but his body refused to respond.
Every movement made his side burn, but he was afraid to remove the knife. He’d lost too much blood, but he had to get in the house and clean out the basement. He’d failed at taking care of Micah and the others, but he could do this one last thing, at least.
Could make Lilah and Cyrus safe from persecution. Safe from the government. He had to do this one last thing.
He stumbled out of his car, and his eyes focused on a few stray drops of blood that dripped from his side onto the clean white snow in the yard. One set of tracks in the snow looked fresh. Someone else had been here recently.
He stumbled over to the knotted tree, but the box with the emergency gun was open and sitting on a pile of snow. The weapon gone.
Didn’t matter. Get inside. Have to get inside.
His head throbbed and his jaw clenched so tightly that he didn’t think he could open his mouth. His hair fell in messy clumps around his shoulders, and he lifted one hand to brush it back. The other hand stayed by the knife, trying to keep the flow of blood slow until he’d completed his task. Every movement rubbed the knife blade against his abdomen.
A rustle came in the trees nearby, the sound of voices. Were those real? Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. He lurched toward the porch, digging in his pocket for the house keys.
He stumbled up the stairs, and the wound in his side bellowed. For a second, he thought he would pass out. He leaned against the doorframe as his vision returned to normal. Not yet. Couldn’t stop yet.
The wood of the house felt cold and comforting against his shaking hand.
He fit the key in the lock and staggered inside the house, frigid and dark and empty. He hadn’t seen t
his house devoid of people in all the years he’d been living here.
With his eyes on the basement, he struggled to lumber through the house without knocking over everything in his path. A squelching sound came as his boots hit the ground, and at first, he thought it came from snow or mud on the bottom. Then he realized his feet were wet on the inside of the boots. Blood had dribbled down his legs and soaked his socks.
Eagle fiddled with his keychain to find the basement key and jammed it in the lock. As soon as he opened the door, he slipped, landing on his ass on the first stair.
He cried out as the knife jabbed him deeper, slicing his guts into pieces. He imagined his organs torn open, blood and bile mixing inside him. Didn’t matter. He had to finish this one last task, and then he could die. Not before.
Lilah and Cyrus had to survive. They had to be made safe.
He eased down the stairs and hit the light switch, then he stumbled toward the table with the stacks of wrapped brown packages.
The front door swung open as noise came from upstairs. The ceiling of the basement creaked as a person or people moved across it. Didn’t matter. Focus.
He grabbed a backpack next to the table and stuffed all twelve of the remaining packages inside. The last one caught on the backpack’s zipper and tore. A dusting of off-white powder puffed from the hole, and Eagle studied it for a minute as it drifted and then settled on the floor. Like snow.
He didn’t have time to clean it up. Didn’t matter. Getting the bricks out was the most important thing.
He slung the backpack over his shoulder and stomped back up the stairs, and as he turned into the hallway, a bright light flashed in his eyes. Voices rising into a shout. Giving him commands.
Eagle found himself across the hall from a white man wearing full body armor, a helmet with a plastic visor, and the words ATF across his stomach in bright yellow lettering.
The man shouted something at Eagle, and two more like him hustled through the entryway to join him. Now they were all shouting, standing shoulder to shoulder, but Eagle couldn’t hear what they were saying.
The noses of their assault rifles pointed at him like dogs at attention. Eagle stared at the three little black holes, three tunnels of darkness.
With a scream, he hurled the backpack and yanked the knife out of his side. He lunged forward at the nearest ATF agent as the first bullet penetrated his shoulder. It didn’t hurt, felt more like a pinch, but it did twist his frame. The second bullet hit him in the neck, and spun his body back in the other direction.
The backpack bounced off a wall and a brick of cocaine burst and tumbled out onto the floor. White spilling into the cracks between the floorboards.
Another bullet hit him in the thigh, but Eagle was still churning his legs. He raised the knife, and two more bullets punctured his chest. The world went sideways as he felt air swishing by his face, then the cold wood of the hallway hit him in the side of the head.
More shouting.
A distinct memory appeared: Eagle at three or four years old, at his parents’ house in Arizona. That massive front door to the house, the one he hadn’t been able to open yet. The inner doors—the lighter ones—he’d been able to open for a year or more. But that front door had been too big, too solid. And then one day, he tried the knob and found he was now strong enough to twist it and open the door. How proud he felt that he was big enough to finally defeat that door after struggling with it for all of his young life.
Then, his eyes closing.
Sounds in the room dimming.
His hand flexing around the hilt of the knife, bloody and slippery.
Then blackness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Micah grabbed Magda by the hand and pulled her toward the street and out of the alley. She stared at the spots of Eagle’s blood on the sidewalk.
Micah’s senses were on fire, adrenaline from the fight pumping through his veins. Every blast of the festival music, every shout of glee from the parade-goers was thunderous in his ears.
“Why did this happen?” Magda said. Her left eye twitching, her face jittery and pained. Voices and movement all around them, never ending. Mirth and chaos amplified.
Micah stopped his flight and held Magda by the shoulders. Looked deep into her eyes. He didn’t want to yell, but he was so amped up, he couldn’t help it. “This is all ending, right here, right now. If Eagle is here, then Lilah and Cyrus are here, too. They’re going to kill us, Mags, unless we find a way to deal with it, right now.”
“But Cyrus wouldn’t do that,” she said, her voice high and trembling. “He loves us. None of this makes sense.”
Micah gripped her shoulders harder, enough to get her attention. Felt his fingers sinking into flesh beneath her jacket. The plan to expose Seth was maybe no longer worth it.
“If you don’t come with me, we’re both going to die.”
She blinked, then sucked in a haggard and wheezing breath. Her head bobbed in something like approval, so he took her by the hand, leading her back out into the crowd.
A police officer stood nearby, and Micah watched as a man talking to him pantomimed someone raising a gun. The cop was nodding and taking notes on a pad. Micah pivoted away from these two, because he didn’t have time to give a statement about his fight with Eagle.
He let a hand touch his belly, and the slash Eagle had given him didn’t feel too deep. The cut was maybe six inches wide, just above his belly button. Blood creased the wound like water under the surface of a dry river, but it wasn’t pouring down his stomach.
He headed for the beer tent, making sure he stayed blended and hidden inside the moving organism of the crowd, and also that he kept a secure grip on Magda’s hand.
Seth wasn’t at the beer tent anymore. “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” Magda said.
“Never mind. Maybe it doesn’t matter. All that really matters right now is getting out of here.”
Micah turned his head and caught Lilah, standing a few hundred feet away, wandering through a cluster of people on the sidewalk. She was covered in blood, streaking her hair and face and neck. To everyone else, she probably looked like she was dressed up as Carrie from the Stephen King book, with everything except for the prom queen crown.
But Micah knew better. Whose blood was that?
And opposite Lilah, a few hundred feet in the other direction, Micah saw Seth, near the polar bear plunge in Chipeta Park. He was watching the line of people leaping into the air to dive into the freezing cold water. Except now, he didn’t have his two buddies with him.
Micah tugged on Magda’s hand, headed straight for Seth.
“Where are we going?” she said.
“I have a plan. No matter what happens, you stay with me.”
Micah and Magda descended the hill toward the polar bear plunge. Halfway down the hill, the coke dealer turned and his mouth dropped open. His hands fell to his side as his beer bottle slipped from his grip and thunked onto the grass.
Seth started up the hill, and they met a few feet from each other.
“You motherfucker,” Seth said.
“I get that you’re mad at me, but would you rather retaliate, or get what you’re owed?”
Seth raised a fist to point a finger in the air, then Micah’s words appeared to sink in. He lowered his angry finger. “What are you talking about?”
“You want your coke? I know where it is.”
Seth’s head jerked and he chewed on his lower lip for a moment. “You still have my coke?”
Micah shook his head. “No, but I know where it is. I can show you the bitch who stole it from me.”
Magda tried to say something, but Micah held up a hand to silence her. This must have been horribly confusing to her, but he needed her to play along for a minute more.
“Alright,” Seth said, “but if you’re fucking with me, you’re a dead man. And when this is over, you and me are still going to have to settle up.”
“Follow me.”
&
nbsp; Micah headed back up the hill, with Magda and Seth in tow. Lilah was on one side of the street, now parallel with the cop. The parade was ending, and everyone was marching up the road to where the coffin races would take place.
“There,” Micah said, pointing at Lilah. “She has your coke.”
Seth's eyes shot open. “Lilah? Lilah has my coke?”
Micah was speechless as Seth seethed. Seth knew Lilah? How could that be possible?
Micah watched Seth stomp up the hill and across the street, on a collision course with Lilah. “You!” he shouted. “You took my shit?”
Lilah noticed him and her blood-streaked face twisted in confusion. But then, she looked past Seth and settled on Micah and Magda. She bared her teeth and lurched forward toward them. She bumped into a woman in a dragon costume, which sent the dragon tumbling into a knight in cardboard armor.
Seth kept shouting at her. “I told you to stay out of my business, you bald-headed freak! Did you think I was kidding about that?”
The cop across the street took notice, and he put a hand on the walkie-talkie clipped to his shoulder. A few people around stopped what they were doing and now seemed to realize there was something strange about the blood-soaked woman. She wasn’t playing dress-up.
This woman who was pure malice in a six-foot frame.
Seth came within striking distance of Lilah, jabbing his finger in her face. “You never trusted me, you fucking bitch. But it was you who was the conniving one, wasn’t it?”
She acted as if she hadn’t even seen him, brushing past as she stomped toward Micah and Magda. Seth stayed with her, shouting about his coke and what he was going to do to her if it was true that she’d robbed him.
Lilah raised her hand at Magda. “You betrayed me,” she said.
Magda’s face collapsed. “No. Never. I never would hurt you.”
“You betrayed me by keeping information secret about Rodney, and now I want you gone. Did you think you could keep your lies under your veil forever? You are excommunicated from our church. Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will no longer have the blessing of the True Manna.”
