“Vodka, on the rocks,” I say. The Lucky Lady’s interior looks elegant in the dim light. One would think that this town could use a little modernity, with Phoenix not even a buck ninety away.
But no, it’s been five years since I opened this place—after getting the boot—and I’ve gotten my fair share of comments about my building ruining Riverton’s rustic aesthetic or that I think I’m better than everyone else.
Screw them. This is 2029; they could use the lesson in modern style. I nurse the vodka, and when it settles in my stomach, I feel a familiar fire. My leg stops its incessant pounding and I close my eyes to wait for the inevitable.
“Tired,” a familiar voice calls, and I emerge from my trance with a start.
“Focusing,” I respond.
“No ice?”
“Melted away.”
“You’re slipping, you know that.” Isaac throws his arm around my shoulder and rocks me a bit on the stool. “It’s time.” I don’t say anything, just stare at the empty glass. “Tonight’s our only shot.”
“Lenny and Mitch are out there?”
Isaac grins at this, nodding his head. “You don’t trust your big brother to run a tight ship?” I want to ask about everything, double check all the plans to make sure that nothing can go wrong, but that’s an impossibility, as anybody who’s lived a day in this world can tell you. Truth is, even if you put in all the work, you still might come up empty. We walk to the idling car, all alone out here on the outskirts of Riverton.
“The first thing you need to do,” Mitch is saying as I sink into the cracked leather seat, “is buy a new car.”
“This, my friend,” Lenny says, pulling on to the empty road and towards the faint glow of the town proper, “is a classic. She doesn’t need any replacing.”
“So it’s a girl, Len?”
“Yeah, and she’s got delicate feelings.”
“You sticking this old boat in the exhaust?”
“He does strike me as a back door kind of guy, now that you mention it,” I say, vodka taking effect.
“The lot of you was raised by goddamn inbreds, you know that?”
“You’re right. I trust your judgment.”
An uncomfortable silence settles in after this, clogging the air. The car rattles on over the pitted road. I look outside at the empty Arizona landscape. The dark outline of the town grows larger. The Lucky Lady is only a few miles outside Riverton, but the ride feels like it’s in slow motion.
I check my messages every few moments. Nothing. Maybe the video’s all in my head, the guilt of what I’ve done coming back to haunt me. I doubt it.
Soon enough, though, Greater Riverton Bank & Trust’s sign is flickering in front of us. The interior gleams like a beacon against the starry night: all the lights are on, even with everything locked up. Lenny cuts the engine in the darkened parking lot next door. The buildings on Main Street are freestanding, so we’re still a couple hundred feet away.
“The lights are on. Maybe they know,” Mitch says.
“Only if you sent them an email about our plans,” Lenny says.
“I don’t use email.”
“It’s a joke, dumbass.” Lenny rubs his forehead and groans. “The lights are left on for the watch guy, some lazy clown who never shows.”
“Don’t worry, Mitch, you just have to stick a couple of things to vault,” Isaac says, patting the big guy on the back.
“Why the hell did I agree to let him take care of the explosives,” Lenny says when we exit the car, “asking for a goddamn catastrophe…” I can’t hear the rest.
The trunk clicks open and I hand the equipment bag to Mitch. Lenny passes out black cotton masks and gloves, which we don—to look the part of thieves and, I suppose, for practical effect.
I glance around to check for cars, my heart skipping a beat when I see a light in the distance. I want to say something, but my throat catches and nothing will come out, and right when I think I might collapse I recognize the neon glow as little more than the omnipresent buzz of the El Dorado’s sign, colors congealing into a bright, massless ball.
This happens every damn time, and the feeling sucks enough to remember it. But that doesn’t stop it from happening. I shake my head like a dog after an unwanted bath.
The bank gleams before us, a desert jewel—the well-manicured hedges outside are even watered, evergreen, like something you’d see in a model.
Lenny jimmies the lock open. No alarms sound; the watchman didn’t take care of it. For the past three weeks I’ve seen his routine and he didn’t break form tonight. He never has.
I’ve been in here before, but the sleek wooden countertops, the polished marble floors and the strong incandescent lights all seem foreign. A little slice of civilization dropped in the midst of a mad, dusty world. I step back outside and lean against the glass. I stare into the blackness. The lookout. Nothing moves, like a temporal lock has been put in place.
I burn cigarette after cigarette.
“Damien. Hey, Damien!” I turn towards Isaac’s voice.
“What?”
“You going to take a couple steps back daredevil? Let’s go.”
I’ve zoned out. I can feel my legs moving across the street, but it’s surreal. I see the vault all wired up inside, something way too complex for Mitch, a guy who didn’t even remove the tags from his clothes, to pull off.
Mitch presses the trigger, and for a moment nothing happens and there’s still hope. I’m going to walk away, go back to my old job and everything will be fine—but then a violent boom shakes the ground, strong enough to send me into the bushes. The glass cracks under the weight of the explosion, and I can hear the supports give way inside, right before the loud crash and grind of metal disrupts the midnight quiet.
When it’s over—and it only takes a minute, maybe two for it to become a pile of rubble—I hoist myself off the ground.
“Holy shit, Mitch,” Lenny says, “I think I broke my ass.” He touches the seat of his pants, hopping about.
“Mitch,” Isaac says, “that wasn’t what was supposed to happen.”
“No.” Mitch shakes his head.
“We wanted to blow the door.”
“Yes.”
“And you just blew up the entire bank.”
“Some of it’s still there.” He isn’t being fresh, just literal. I can’t help but laugh; I can see clean out the other side now, through a truck sized hole in the back wall. This wasn’t in the plans; time to improvise.
Not that I need to. Something tells me this always happens.
“Maybe we can get in the back,” I say, and by the crew’s reactions, they haven’t noticed that Mitch’s homebrew has blown a chasm straight into the vault. “Look.” I point and Lenny races off.
“We can walk right in,” he calls from afar, so we follow his voice to where we can see a hole leading to the dull metal safety deposit boxes inside.
“I’ll check it out,” Isaac says, “safety and all.” He grabs the bag and steps inside. I hear the crowbar clang and some muffled scrapes. I know what he’s doing, and I look over at Lenny and Mitch. They’re flotsam, I guess, but we’ve known them for a long time. I hear Isaac’s words in my ears: sacrifices are necessary. I say nothing, just stare at the sky with a grim smile.
After a few minutes he comes back out. “All right, let’s hop to it.” We start popping the boxes out of the wall. They hiss when we open them, like little cans of cola.
“Goddamn, look at Jason Arthur,” Lenny says, holding a fragile snapshot in the air, “still has all his teeth in this one, the son-of-a-bitch.” Arthur’s been cutting his teeth on whiskey and chew at the local watering holes for years.
“Keep it moving,” Isaac says, and Lenny tosses the photo into a corner. Cash, jewels, broaches, earrings, engagement bands; they all go back in the bag where, just
before, explosives and cold black steel sat. Then I’m aware that no one else is opening anything, so I turn to find the three of them huddled in a tight circle.
“The hell are you slackers doing?”
“Come check this out, Damien,” Lenny says, “frigging unbelievable. It’s the real deal.”
Gold bricks. I’m pretty sure stacks of these don’t exist outside of movies. Or, rather, I was. There’s some other stuff in the box—a black book and a couple of old looking electronics—but they don’t look too exciting. At least not to Mitch or Lenny; to me, they’re the real gold. The switchbox—the controls to time’s train tracks.
My heart leaps, but I pretend like I’m focusing on the shiny stuff. “What’s it worth?”
“A shitload,” Lenny says, “who knew someone in Riverton had all that? Greedy dick.”
“Viewing hours are over,” Isaac says, “time to load it up.”
“Well, you don’t need to be a prick about it. I’d expect that from Mitch,” Lenny says, starting to put the cache in the bag.
“Just load it.” Isaac glances at his watch. The bag’s full now, and he motions towards me to pick it up, adding, “Stash that.”
“Where,” I ask.
“In the bushes.”
“I don’t think that’s—”
“No, jackass, in the car. Lenny, give him the keys.”
I stomp out to the lot and open the trunk. This job must be eating at Isaac for him to lose his cool. I scan up the two lanes—one for coming and one for the going—that are wide as four. To my right is The Lucky Lady, just outside Riverton enough to be considered part of the going, but not far enough to be gone.
And to my left, far down—past Sissy’s Diner and some busted up buildings—is the Sheriff’s station. It’s the coda to the main strip; turn off there, and all you’ll find is a junkyard of homes and trailers. Which reminds me: I’ll have to visit Monk when we’re clear of this.
There aren’t any lights coming from the station, which makes me breathe a little easier, until I drag a little too hard on a cigarette and start into a fit of coughing.
Echoes of the past wash over me, and I get a bad feeling, you know, like déjà vu. I see Bruiser choking on his big cigar, and I feel like I might be getting into something that I can’t handle.
But all I can hear is the lonesome call of a coyote across the plains, somewhere far off in the desert dust. I wrap my hand around the .45 holstered at my hip, right before an explosion rocks the bank, heat bursting out in all directions.
The heels of my boots pound against the pavement as I cut around the back. Thick black smoke, but I can’t see much else.
“Shit,” I scream, but no answer comes. I can’t find Isaac; I don’t know if he’s messed up, if he’s smoked himself along with Lenny and Mitch. No loose ends, he told me, over and over again, but I don’t think he considered himself one. Orange tendrils leap skyward. In the distance I see lights, screaming down the road from the direction of the El Dorado.
They’re coming.
The acrid taste of torched asphalt cakes my mouth. Even with the pops and groans of the collapsing building I can hear slow, measured footsteps clicking against the ashy ground.
I have little place to hide, nothing behind me but empty desert. I edge towards Sparky’s, closer to the car, hoping that the destruction distracts whoever’s come. The veil of smoke only stretches halfway between the bank and Lenny’s car; there’s a space between, clear as daylight, that offers no cover.
I pray that this unwelcome visitor is a bad shot.
“Goddamnit,” a woman says, “too late.” She sounds like she’s in front of the bank—or, at least, what used to be the front. The footsteps halt; I strain to hear over the din of the blaze. Nothing. “Don’t move, you son of a bitch.” I turn around and there she is, fifty yards away, barefoot, clad in a tight top and shorts, gun aimed square at me.
I reach to draw and she fires. The Bullet roars through the chill air and sails past me into the endless night. I return the favor, but there isn’t any hope of hitting her at this distance, so I begin to run, faster and faster, dropping the .45 as I dash towards the car.
I still have the keys, and when I reach the driver’s door I guide them into the lock, one try, quicker than anyone ever has. The engine springs to life—reliable as always—as another round crashes through the glass and into the passenger seat with a muted thud.
The tires screech when I mash the accelerator to the floor and careen out of the lot. No shots follow me, but I can see the woman in the mirror, pistol by her side, watching as I roll off in the direction of the Lucky Lady.
When she’s swallowed up by the darkness, I slump down in the driver’s seat and exhale. It’s over. I touch my shoulder, only to be greeted with a tacky warmth.
I shift in my seat and my right arm explodes, sends shockwaves through my mind, jolts me from the road. I veer off, car tumbling into the cracked earth.
This, this is new. I put my finger into the wound, and fire sears through my entire body. I laugh.
Yes—this is new indeed.
8
No Escape
I tear the ski mask from my sticky face and toss it out the window. When I look in the rearview real close, I can still spot wisps of smoke hovering above the town like man-made storm clouds. I try to focus on the road, but the initial glee has subsided.
Now my shoulder just hurts like a bitch.
I scream, do it until my throat is raw and my breath runs ragged. When there’s nothing left, I shut my mouth, grit my dust-covered teeth together and try the ignition. The twisting motion racks my shoulder with pain, but I keep going, and the engine coughs back to life.
Then I keep driving, in no hurry to get to anywhere. A rush of fear seizes my consciousness; the familiarity of the loop, numbing as it was, seemed like it would never end. I now have no idea what the hell to expect—no hints, no feelings within my soul to guide the way.
And he’s dead. I have the stuff, but my brother is dead.
The Lucky Lady sits silent, windows dark. The engine dies with a little sputter and a groan when I turn the key. I’m surrounded by murky blackness as I hoist the bag out of the trunk and walk into the bar.
Overheads buzz and the heater purrs away in some closet, but silence hovers above it all. Slung over my shoulder, the bag jangles, the spoils oblivious to all that has been spoiled. I pour a drink, then another, try to burn everything away in fiery waves of liquor.
I strip naked, my clothes feeling like shackles, and walk outside for an oil waste barrel. I drag everything—myself, the barrel, the clothes—out behind the bar, silhouetted by faint moonlight.
I shiver with each small bite of wind. I touch my shoulder once more, but the blood is somewhat dry. I need to get fixed up. I fish my lighter out from the oily mess inside the barrel and take a few steps back. With a flick and a toss, the tiny orange light ignites it all, the air nipping at my back, the fire lapping at my front.
“Damn it.” I’ve burned my cigarettes with the clothes. It’s all right; the can sputters out so fast that there wouldn’t have been enough time for half a smoke. No customers means no cooking, no cooking means no oil. Why the bank was trying to foreclose. Now they know what that feels like.
The pay from my other gig, the Coyote one, it was good; the pay as a small business owner, well, not so much. I never claimed to be a financial guru, just an opportunist—and now a revenge-seeker.
I dump the sludge out in the desert, right into the cracked soil. Even in the dim light, I can see it blacken the earth, forever staining the divots and lines. I leave the barrel and head back inside, up the stairs.
I can’t recognize myself in the mirror; my hair matted to my face, thin frame caked in grime. I slam my fist into the reflection, sending a cobweb of cracks through the glass.
I watch the sho
wer water at my feet turn a brackish shade of reddish-black. The coppery aroma of blood and synthetic scent of body wash coalesce in the air, fused together by the steam. I scrub until my skin is raw and pink, fingertips shriveled from the heat.
The smell reminds me of something.
“Stop,” she said, but her giggles told a different story. She slapped at my arms, trying to block my attack. It was unproductive; resistance always is.
I got the soap in her eyes, and she shrieked and hit me, this time hard.
“Ow,” I said, in faux-agony, “why’d you do that?”
Through laughs and little chirps of pain—discomfort—she managed to choke out, “Because it stings, you asshole.”
“That type of language, young lady,” I said, grabbing more soap, “it will not be tolerated. I think someone needs to be cleansed.”
“No,” she yelled, but couldn’t stop from laughing, “I’ll be a good girl.”
“Yeah,” and I rubbed my hand against her back, the soap suds sliding down her smooth skin with the water. I kissed her and grasped her tight.
“Well, that doesn’t mean we can’t get dirty in other ways,” she said, a little sly, all sexy.
“I have no idea what that means.”
“Let me show you.”
I miss her, sometimes.
Most of the time.
I don’t bother to dry; in the hall, the watery footprints move opposite the dirty ones until I turn into an unsullied room. I throw on some jeans and a collared shirt and wander about on the first floor, going nowhere in particular.
“Well, that went well, didn’t it,” Monk says, stepping out from behind the bar, “I think the whole town heard that goddamn explosion.”
“Jesus Christ, man, don’t you knock?” My heart’s beating loud enough that I’m sure he can hear it clear across the room.
He shakes the key ring in his hand.
“Just stopping by your pharmacy for some medicine.” He whistles when he sees me, and I glance at my shoulder. A hint of blood is seeping through. “Don’t tell me you caught one.”
The Rapture: A Sci-Fi Novel Page 3
