by Brian Hodge
The one bright spot he found in the otherwise dismal story came about when he asked her about Lucas’s claim. And, thankfully, she was able to put to rest the fears that had tried to tear deeper into him every mile of the way. The man hadn’t laid a hand on her.
“They’ll be ready for us down there as soon as we roll in,” Jason told the group. “So. When do you want to leave?”
For most of them, now wouldn’t have been too soon.
Jason grinned wearily and shook his head. “Sorry. I just drove eight hundred miles to tell you this. I’m gonna get some sleep before I turn around to head back.”
“If you’re lucky,” Erika whispered.
Jason drew an arm around her shoulder. Could be a looong night. But he doubted he’d be able to sleep for a few hours anyway. The adrenaline, road nerves, and caffeine overload of his marathon drive had left him wired, his mind racing. His left foot had been on fast twitch for the last hour. It had to wear off eventually, though, and nothing could stave off the crash and burn to follow.
“First light tomorrow should be soon enough,” Jack said.
“We can make it in two days, easy,” Jason said. Which means we sleep there in two nights. “Gas and food, that’s about all we need for the trip. Everything else, just start collecting them again once we’re there.”
There wasn’t much else to talk about, at least not as a group, and so what had been a formal meeting dissolved into cliques. Jason, with Erika grafted to his left arm, went off to one side with Rich and Jack. Rich had an atlas opened up to the St. Louis metro area.
“You came in on I-44, I’m guessing,” Rich said. He aimed a finger at the map, fingernail rimmed with grime. He traced the blue line that represented the last miles of Jason’s return.
Jason nodded. “Quickest way back in.”
“Did you see anyone on the way, anything moving?”
“A few cars, nothing much. A couple dogs making puppies out in Kirkwood. That was about it.”
Jack rolled his eyes and wiped his head. Jason noticed there seemed to be more of it showing than when he’d left in March.
“I think we should take this way out of the city,” said Erika. She pointed at I-55, which led out of St. Louis straight south, loosely paralleling the Mississippi. “I mean, if…there aren’t any objections.”
“What’s it matter?” Jack said.
She began to twist with the faintest hint of unease. “Just a hunch, I guess. A feeling. Is it that big a deal?”
“No, she’s right,” said Rich, studying the map some more. “It makes sense. If we take 44 out we have to go north first, smack back into the middle of the city. I’d hate to run into anyone we’d rather avoid during our last few minutes in town. We take 55, we can be on it five minutes after we leave here. It’d get us out of town and out of the state faster than any other route.”
“And that wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Jason said. “You can bet that someone like Travis isn’t gonna take it lying down that he can’t find you anymore. He might have people crawling all over before long.”
Rich flipped back to the full U.S. map in the front of the atlas. “Say, I-55, all the way along the south edge of Missouri into Arkansas. Cut down across Arkansas into Texas. Boom. We’re there. It doesn’t even really look that much longer.”
“And, hopefully, they wouldn’t be expecting us to head due south for so long before cutting west,” Jack said.
Jason nodded. A thought had been squirming at the back of his mind. Should he keep it from them, or cast a dark cloud on everyone’s optimism? Better bring it up. The more cards on the table, the safer it was for everyone in the long run.
“How serious do you think Travis and the rest are about this grudge match they’ve got going on? I mean, just how mad is this guy now?”
“You didn’t see what he did to Farrah,” Jack said hoarsely. He and Rich and Diane, who was nowhere in sight now, were still grubby with the mud acquired from burying the girl while Erika and Caleb had gone to meet him under the Arch. “Anybody who can do that to a child is capable of anything.”
“If Brannigan’s was any indication, he’s pissed as hell. They must’ve hit there right after you bugged out. The place looks like a wrecking ball rolled through.” Come on, you’re stalling, he told himself. “Anyway. I’m wondering if he’s angry enough to carry this back to Texas all over again.”
He had their attention.
“When they went south after me, well, you know what happened in Heywood. Three of them are dead, but there’s one guy we never found. Hagar, the guy with the red hair and beard. And if he gets back here and tells them, they know everything—their guys didn’t just take off and never return. And, obviously, Solomon had to know already before he could send them in the first place.”
So we’re not gaining a whole lot, is what it really boils down to. He’d not looked at it quite that bleakly until now. Maybe he hadn’t allowed himself to. In retrospect, hope, more so than caffeine, had carried him back here.
“No way we can start from scratch,” Jack said. “Not as long as it took to find one decent place.”
“At least in Heywood, we’d have more of a fighting chance,” Rich said. “It sounds like they know how to put up a fight.”
Jason nodded, tried to give them a reassuring smile. He figured it came off about as cheery as a deflated balloon. I already brought one shitstorm down on their heads. I can’t do it to them again.
Happy endings…these days it seemed that the only place they waited for you was on the far side of hell.
2
It was well after dark when Hagar showed up at Union Station. A few lights still burned in the train shed area of the mall, but Travis would’ve known him even in the moonlight. Nobody else had a silhouette like Hagar. He looked like a barrel with a gigantic Brillo pad stuck on stop.
Travis sniggered, almost slobbered.
You could say he was smashed.
He’d been wandering the mall with a fifth of tequila welded to one hand, trying to bask in his domain. Since this afternoon, basking felt like all he had left. Assholes. They’d stripped him, paraded him over to Brannigan’s, kept him lashed into a chair so tight he couldn’t even scratch his ass. And now he couldn’t find them. Couldn’t even march back there fast enough to scrub them from existence before they turned tail and scurried somewhere else.
This hadn’t set well with Solomon either. He hadn’t spoken since, just walked around scowling with those ice blue eyes of his. What was running through his mind was a big tough question that Travis didn’t feel like kicking around. There wasn’t room enough in his own head. The tequila filled the hollows, a huge sodden mass that tipped his balance one way, then another.
Solomon was out here tonight too, sitting on the steps beside a pool of scummy water rimming the bottom of one of the fountains. It was no fun being around him when his moods dipped this low, silently brooding, but tonight the idea of being away from him felt worse. It seemed wise to keep him in sight. And when Hagar wandered in, Travis was very glad for the distraction.
“Hagar,” Solomon said, a flat sound neither question nor statement.
Hagar stepped closer. Was there a hint of trepidation in his movements?
“You’re alone,” Solomon said, rising, and his voice chilled over to such an extent that the air temperature seemed to plunge fifteen degrees.
With the tequila sloshing in his bottle, Travis couldn’t move, could only swallow thickly as he watched the two of them square off. Oh shit Hagar don’t give him bad news not that anything but that.
“Can you explain why you’re alone?” Solomon said, his voice biting like the lash of a whip.
Hagar stumbled over and around the first words of his explanation before he finally got it going. “It went all wrong for us, it happened so fast, the other guys didn’t make it. I was the only one t
hat got out of there alive…”
Oh shit oh shit, Travis thought, managing to shut his eyes, because he had the feeling he didn’t want to see what would happen next.
“YOU MEAN YOU LOST!” Solomon roared, and with one hand he seized the front of Hagar’s shirt and flung him backward. The barrel-shaped man spun in an attempt to regain his balance, couldn’t get it, and crashed into a large red clay planter. The pot shattered and a black cascade of dirt spilled across the white tile. To Travis’ eyes, it appeared that Solomon had expended about as much force as he might use to roll a bowling ball.
And then Solomon was closing the gap, stalking Hagar…
“He came back, Hart came back!” Hagar screamed, as if knowing this was the only thing that could buy him a little more time. “I followed him the whole way! He’s back! Nobody’s at Brannigan’s anymore but I know where they are! He met somebody, met ’em under the Arch, and I know where they went!”
Total silence, except for the rush of blood in Travis’s ears. He breathed a relieved sigh for Hagar’s sake. So far, the fact that Lucas and the others were dead hadn’t even registered. Time to worry about them later.
“Do tell,” Solomon said.
Hagar spilled his guts so fast he hardly stopped to breathe. And when he was through, sprawled out and mixed with potting soil and shards of the red clay pot, he looked as if he didn’t know whether he was going to live in honor or die a failure.
Neither.
Solomon merely nodded, pensive now, and turned to leave. Travis stepped from the shadows and the false cover of dead foliage, trying his best to stand steady before Solomon.
“We hit ’em tonight?” He didn’t think his voice sounded too bad.
Solomon regarded him with disgust. “You must be joking,” he said quietly, then brushed his way past. “That area of the city isn’t wired, and I’d like for us to be able to see what we’re doing without them seeing us coming.” Then, over his shoulder, he added, “And I think you’ll be much more up to the task first thing in the morning.”
Travis watched, listened as Solomon disappeared down the middle stretch of the mall, turning around when it felt safe again. It seemed easier to breathe now, that pre-thunderstorm tension dissolving as the moments passed.
Another sound…Hagar crying?
Travis offered a hand to help pull him back to his feet. The hand went ignored and Hagar struggled to his feet and scuttled off on his own, throwing glances both at Travis and the direction in which Solomon had left.
Alone again. Travis didn’t even have enough spite left to fuel a sour thought about Hagar, and finally pulled his hand back. In his other hand he rediscovered the tequila.
It didn’t take much effort to realize who his friends were tonight.
* *
He walked alone outside, because he didn’t care for the air inside. It was rife with failure and discontent. And fear?
That too.
Across from Union Station, at the corner of Market and Twentieth, sat a bar named Maggie O’Brien’s, and Solomon paused to stare at the darkened windows. They might have looked inviting once, urging you to enter and leave your worries at the door. But now its heart was as hollow as everyplace else, and all it did was remind him that, back in Union Station, Travis had found his own feeble solace for the night.
For a few moments, Solomon found himself close to longing. Dangerously close to needing something the same way Travis needed the bottle tonight. Craving the simple, comforting one-on-one presence of another. Not someone who feared him, not this time. But someone who understood, who cared. It had been so long, so far away, since—
No. No. He didn’t need that. Gods needed only themselves, and they stood alone, utterly alone.
He crossed Market Street to Aloe Plaza, staring at the rectangular fountain where they’d once left the bodies of their enemies. Nothing but bones now, woven with tatters of cloth and scattered by the scavenging of dogs.
What a fine day that had been. All that promise and potential.
He recalled that it was the first time he’d seen Erika and Jason. They’d been such youngsters that day, frightened and unsure and as tentative as newborn colts awaiting the courage to walk.
How they had grown.
The past year had worked wonders on both of them, had supplied more than enough to crush them, and yet had only brought them closer and made them stronger. Because they had common goals they would simply not turn loose of. He could’ve used more people with their kind of tenacity, their single-mindedness of vision.
Solomon had to smile, though. In Hagar’s terror, he’d spilled out everything he must’ve thought had a chance of saving his hide. Including a stammering rendition of how Lucas had met his demise. No loss, really—Lucas was crude and abrasive and not much given to thought. Solomon just wished he could’ve seen the man die. It sounded like a fine piece of work, pure of hatred, pure of wrath. Jason Hart had become his creation now, hardly the same fellow who’d let Lucas live months before, when the smart thing would’ve been to kill him in that liquor store parking lot.
Bit by bit, he’d killed the Jason of old, and it was finally time to finish the job entirely. In truth, Solomon would’ve liked nothing better than to have hit them tonight, in full force and fury. To see them, the entire bothersome group, eradicated and be done with it, and free himself up to look for a new project.
But tonight, Solomon just wanted to rest.
To recoup his pride, his drive, his energy.
Wanted to? Needed to.
And come morning, all the recent failures would be redeemed.
* *
Pit Bull wasn’t in his room.
Travis was finding it tough to stand still without the floor tilting beneath him, the tequila a fiery roaring haze in his head. And no Pit Bull. Disappointing.
Pit Bull had a room like no one else’s. The walls were covered with wrestling pictures, down to the last square inch. First thing he’d done, months back, was raid Union Station’s B. Dalton bookstore and take every last wrestling magazine in stock. He’d gleefully pulled them apart and plastered them over every wall: Hulk Hogan and Harley Race, Ric Flair and Rowdy Roddy Piper, Andre the Giant and the Junkyard Dog. And in the center of each wall, plus the ceiling, was the same identical picture of Pit Bull himself, which he’d discovered in an issue of Wrestling USA.
Travis was about ready to turn around and leave when he saw the club, the scepter with which Pit Bull ruled the arena. The heavy club, topped off with the steel rat trap. Its length was battered and nicked and stained, and a thick maroon residue had built up in the trap’s moving parts. The thing stank, too—every now and again you’d catch a whiff of a death smell, enough to turn your stomach inside out.
It didn’t go well with tequila.
Neither did the thing on the table by Pit Bull’s bed, lying on a thick pad of dust. It looked like a necklace of clamshells, but upon closer inspection they turned out to be severed ears, souvenirs from his dead opponents.
Of all the heads in Union Station these days, with all the perversions and warped habits, Travis had to admit that the hardest head to figure out was Pit Bull’s. Even Peter Solomon was easier to understand.
Travis backtracked and headed out of the Omni, holding himself up along the railing of the suspended walkway leading back into Union Station’s midway, now darkened and shut down for the night. He wandered the mall, finally tracking Pit Bull down after seeing the random arc of a flashlight shining out of a store. Inside, he found Pit Bull sitting in the floor, shadows heaped high around him, and it sounded as if he were eating something.
“What are you doing creeping around this late?” Travis said.
“Hungry,” Pit Bull said, then pushed an empty can toward Travis, its lid hanging askew. “I found these a long time ago. Guess nobody wants ’em.”
Travis peered at
the can, illuminated by the flashlight. Pheasant? Whatever. A tiny jar of caviar sat next to Pit Bull’s booted foot.
Travis thudded to the floor across from him, losing orientation for a dizzying moment. Whoa.
Offhand, he didn’t know anyone else around who would be willing to do this, sit one on one with Pit Bull. Diamond, maybe, but that was only because Diamond was used to the weirdness—he ran the arena shows and Pit Bull was the main attraction. That’s all he was to everyone else: entertainment. A bizarre sort of mascot. They loved him in that sense, and this was all Pit Bull seemed to want. He had no true friends, and so far as Travis knew, the man was asexual.
People could be chummy with him, and he could be chummy right back, like a giant kid on the receiving end at Christmas. But should one of those folks happen to fuck up and earn a trip to the arena for their punishment, it was as if Pit Bull had never seen them before.
In fact, Travis knew of only one loyalty that Pit Bull had: to Travis himself. Because they went back to the beginning together, before the beginning, back to the jail cell where he became the guy’s one friend. Back to the day when they were released by the last jailer left with a conscience. Back to the day Travis found him that studded collar. Such a simple gift, but to watch Pit Bull, you’d have thought they were the crown jewels.
“You need to get some sleep tonight,” Travis said.
“How come? I don’t fight tomorrow.” That hairless brow frowned in confusion, full of small scars he didn’t have a year ago. But he wore them proudly.
“Yeah. Yeah you do.” Travis belched, far back in his throat. It burned. Tequila or bile, he didn’t know which. “As a favor for me?”
