by A. G. Riddle
“The thing is, Des, your uncle owed me some money.”
“That right?”
Desmond had never seen his uncle borrow a dollar—or get up from a card table with a debt to his name.
“Sure did.”
Desmond could see the outline of a small revolver in Dale’s pants pocket. A .38 caliber snub-nose if he had to guess.
“Tell you what,” Desmond said. “We’ll head to the bank, I’ll cash these checks, and we’ll settle up.”
Dale thought about it a moment. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Why don’t you go ahead and sign the back of ’em checks right now.”
His eyes bored holes into Desmond.
Slowly, the teenager turned the checks over and signed them.
“Old Orville wasn’t much for banks, was ’e? Didn’t trust ’em.”
Desmond’s eyes settled on the lever-action .30-30 leaned up against the door. Orville kept it there in case a deer wandered near the house. Dale saw him glance at it, tried to act like he hadn’t, tried to make his tone casual.
“Heck of a will he left. Them numbers at the end—sounded like a combination to a safe to me. That what you think, Des?”
Desmond’s mind raced. He needed to get out of this living room. He said nothing.
“Yeah, that’s ’zactly what it is. Let’s see if that combination works. I’ll take what’s owed me, and I’ll be off.”
He stood quickly, shuffled over next to the rifle. “Where’s the safe, Des?”
Desmond didn’t make eye contact. “Under his bed.”
Dale smiled. “Nah, doubt that. Orville’s too smart for that. Somebody robbing you is bound to search the house. Twister could get it too. Bad fire might burn it, melt the lock.”
He stuck his hand in his pocket, the one with the gun.
“Where is it? I ain’t gonna ask again.”
“Shed out back.”
Dale stepped forward, snatched the will from the coffee table.
“Show me.”
He opened the door and stood with his back to the rifle, blocking Des from reaching it. The setting sun flooded into the shabby old farmhouse.
Desmond marched past Dale, onto the porch, and down the few steps. The grass was cut short. Brown dirt patches littered the ground like a coat that had been sewn back together countless times.
The shed was a hundred feet away. It stood there, placid in the fall wind, its oak walls and rusted tin roof silently waiting for an event that would change Desmond’s life forever. The building had been just big enough for a tractor in the sixties. Now it held the broken-down Studebaker truck and a John Deere riding lawnmower Orville had made Desmond cut the grass with.
“How’d he die, Dale?” Desmond walked quickly, trying to put distance between them.
Dale quickened his pace to keep up. “Blowout.”
It was a lie. Desmond could tell by the way he said the word, knew the man would never tell him the truth.
At the door, Desmond paused, acting like he expected the other man to open it.
Behind him, he saw that Dale now held his right arm behind his back. His pocket was empty.
“Open it,” Dale said, nodding to the door.
Desmond flipped the latch and pulled at the door, which caught on the grass around it. He slipped inside quickly.
Startled, Dale rushed forward, through the breach.
Desmond’s eyes didn’t have a chance to adjust, but it didn’t matter; he knew what he needed and exactly where it was.
In the darkness, his hand reached from memory, gripped the spare lawnmower blade hanging above the workbench, careful not to let the sharp side dig into his fingers. He swung it without even sighting his target.
It connected with deadly precision, cutting into Dale’s neck. Blood painted the wall like oil gushing from an uncapped well. Dale’s right arm fell limp at his side. The .38 revolver fell to the ground.
Dale reached for Desmond’s throat with his left hand, grasped it, his fingers digging in. Desmond released his grip on the blade, put his shoulder into the man, and drove him out of the shack, into the light. Blood shot out of Dale’s neck and onto the grass like weed killer being sprayed on the side of a highway.
Dale’s grip loosened. Desmond pushed him to the ground, stepped on his left hand. Within seconds, the color drained from the older man, the squirting blood slowed to a pour, then a trickle. He gurgled some words Desmond couldn’t make out, then his eyes went still and glassy.
Desmond stood, stared at Dale Epply’s dead body, lying there like a cowboy at the crossroads of a dusty western town—a gunslinger who’d been outdrawn.
What have I done?
The wind whipped Desmond’s blond hair into his face. Blood dripped from the fingers of his right hand where he had held the lawnmower blade too tight. He had killed a man. In self-defense, but nevertheless, he had taken a life. It had happened so fast.
Desmond expected to feel remorse, but instead he felt nothing. I did what I had to. But he knew that his life was about to get more complicated.
The lawful thing was to call the sheriff’s office and tell them what had happened. He figured they would believe his story: Dale probably had a rap sheet longer than the Missouri River. But Desmond’s record wasn’t clean, either; he’d been arrested in three states, mostly drunken brawls Orville had pulled him into. And Dale might have friends at the sheriff’s office—or folks who might put pressure on the case. Desmond had nobody.
Calling the sheriff meant uncertainty, possibly being trapped in this place, maybe for a long time.
Inside the house, he washed his hands and got his uncle’s truck keys. He backed the truck up, returned to the shed, and gathered what he needed: a tarp (which they used when the roof was leaking and they were too drunk to fix it), a shovel, a tank of gas they had used for the lawnmower, a bottle of Clorox bleach, and several unpainted oak planks they used to patch up the house.
He laid the tarp out next to Dale and took Orville’s single-page will from the dead man’s pocket. Desmond had seen men die on the rigs, knew how long it would take rigor mortis to set in. His body would be like a spaghetti noodle for a while. For that reason, he laid several oak planks next to the man, then rolled the man and the planks together into the tarp. With the stability of the boards, he hoisted the roll up, set the end on the tailgate, and pushed it onto the bed.
He scooped the blood-soaked dirt and grass into a five-gallon-bucket and capped it. With a handsaw, he cut away the blood-soaked portions of the shed’s planks, stuffed them in a sack, and tossed them on the back of the truck too. He stripped off his bloody clothes and tucked them inside the tarp.
Naked save for his underwear, he returned to the house, washed up, put on a fresh set of clothes, and gathered his belongings, which barely filled the passenger side of the truck. The computer tower sat on the floorboard; the fifteen-inch CRT monitor lay facedown on the seat; and a bag with three changes of clothes buttressed the computer, making sure it didn’t move. He put the .30-30 lever-action behind the seat.
He then went to Orville’s bedroom; he knew his uncle kept a pistol by his bed, an old Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum. But when he opened the drawer on the bedside table, he stopped, surprised by what he saw. The pistol was there, but there was also something else: a slightly rumpled photograph. In it, an oil well towered behind a young boy of maybe eight—Desmond. Orville stood beside him. They were covered in dirt and oil. Neither smiled.
Without a thought, Desmond reached down, took the photo, and placed it in his pocket. Then he quickly drew it back out, as if it had burned him. He didn’t want to wrinkle it.
He returned to the truck and placed the photo in the glovebox and the pistol under the front seat—where it would be easier to reach.
Inside the shed, he popped the hood on the Studebaker and started taking the tools out. A few minutes later, he moved a straight pipe wrench, revealing some of the safe. He dug more quickly then, soon revealing the entire face of it. Had Or
ville welded the thing to the truck? He probably had, making it impossible for a robber to make off with it without a tow truck. Smart.
Desmond spun the safe’s dial to the three numbers in the will and turned the handle. When it opened, Desmond was stunned. He had never seen so much money in all his life. Stacks of green bills, bound in ten-thousand-dollar bundles, sat there like a mirage. Desmond reached out, held one as if making sure it was real. The safe also held the deed to the house, the truck, and a set of US Army dog tags with Orville’s name. Beneath those items lay a sealed envelope with a single word, written in rugged block letters: Desmond.
He stuffed the dog tags in his pocket and ripped the envelope open. It was a letter to him, written by Orville, dated a year ago. Unable to resist, he read the first line. He wanted to go on, to stand there and read it all, but he felt he should wait until he had time to process it. At the moment, all he could think about was getting rid of Dale’s body and getting out of town.
He put the deeds and letter in the truck’s glovebox and returned with a sack for the money. To his astonishment, he counted out thirty-two of the ten-thousand-dollar stacks.
Inside the truck, he pulled away from the home he had arrived at thirteen years before, after the tragic bushfire that had killed his family. He wasn’t leaving healed, but he was changed.
He drove west on Slaughterville Road, turned off ten minutes later, and stopped at a gate to an abandoned ranch. He undid the wire holding it closed, pulled the truck through, and shut it behind him. He drove through a field, far away from the road and out of sight.
He dug a pit next. He was drenched with sweat by the time he finished.
He tossed Dale’s body in, along with his clothes and the bloody boards. He doused them with gasoline from the tank, waited for the sun to slip past the horizon, and tossed a match in.
The smell of burning human flesh sickened him, reminded him of the elementary school where he had stayed with all those people burned by the bushfire. He thought of Charlotte as he walked away from the blaze, then he thought of Agnes, and finally Orville. The man had been mean as a snake. A hard man. But he was all the family Desmond had. Now he was gone.
With the fire burning in the pit a few feet away, Desmond took out the envelope and read Orville’s letter.
Desmond,
Take the money. Don’t be careless with it. Respect it, invest it, and take care of it, and it will take care of you. I’ve been saving it my whole life. After you came to live with me, I got a little more serious about not spending every last cent I earned. The rest is the proceeds from your family’s ranch in Australia, which I have preserved in its entirety.
I hope you leave and go far away from this place. There’s nothing here for a mind like yours.
People often say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That’s hogwash. Some events a person just can’t recover from. They don’t make you stronger, they make you weaker, no matter how hard you try to cover it up or how strong you try to act. That happened to me when I was 25. It doesn’t matter what it was. Don’t go trying to find out. It’s water under the bridge. When you came to live with me, I was well on my way to drinking myself to death. Probably would have been in the grave within a few years if the rigs didn’t get me first. I told the woman on the phone that I was in no shape to care for you. I figured it was more dangerous here than wherever they would take you. But she wouldn’t listen. She sent you on anyway. I’m glad she did. For my sake. Caring for you saved me. Changed me. After what happened to you, I thought you would do what I did, shrivel up and die inside. But you didn’t. There’s a fight inside you that’s stronger than anyone I’ve ever met. Not on a rig, or in the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia, or on the streets of London when the bombs were falling.
This world broke me. I found my peace at the bottom of a bottle. Drinking was my crutch. Don’t let it be yours. Don’t take the road I took. Drinking and drugs only make you forget for a while, dig you deeper in the hole. Don’t depend on them, Desmond. Get yourself clean. Leave the drinking behind. Quit the rigs for good. I don’t know where in this world you belong, but it’s not here. Live a life that makes you proud. As the years pass, it will be the wind in your sails. Regrets will sink you.
Orville
Desmond folded up the letter and watched the fire burn down until the flames receded into the pit. Sitting in that field in Oklahoma, he made a promise to himself: he would stop drinking for good. And he would do as Orville had suggested: he would leave this place and never come back. He knew where he had to go.
He took the shovel from the truck, tamped out the last glowing embers, scooped up the fire’s remains, and deposited them in two five-gallon buckets. He filled the hole back in, drove the truck another half mile to the banks of the Canadian River, and slipped his waders on. He washed the blood off the tarp in the river, then cut it into small pieces and scattered them, along with the ashes from the buckets. For half an hour he dropped the remains in the river, watching them flow out of sight. Then he washed the truck bed out with bleach and cleaned his hands.
At a grocery store in Noble, he loaded up on supplies.
He camped in another field that night, though he didn’t light a fire.
First thing in the morning, he visited a lawyer. He brought his uncle’s will and the deed to the house. The man was a professional, fair on his fees, and amenable to what Desmond suggested, though he said it was highly irregular.
Two hours later, Desmond signed a series of documents, which the receptionist notarized. The three of them walked to the courthouse for a brief meeting, which went as expected.
Desmond drove out of town that afternoon, heading for a place he’d never been but which would change his life forever: Silicon Valley.
Chapter 53
Peyton opened her eyes. Slowly, the room came into focus: metal walls, a narrow bed, and a glass partition. Her head throbbed. She felt hung over. She sat up, and a wave of nausea greeted her. After it passed, she still felt a slight motion, almost like a vibration. She recognized the feeling: she was on a ship.
A man with a badly scarred face and long blond hair was sitting in a metal chair beyond the glass partition, reading a tablet.
“Good morning,” he said, an insincere cheeriness in his Australian accent.
“Who are you?”
“My name’s Conner McClain.”
Peyton studied him a moment. “What do you want?”
“Information.”
Peyton wanted information too. She sensed that this man had it. “You started the outbreak in Kenya, didn’t you?”
“We merely accelerated the inevitable.”
“Pandemics aren’t inevitable.”
“You know they are, Peyton. You’ve said so yourself.”
“I’ve said that pandemics have been inevitable—throughout human history. Not anymore. They can be a thing of the past. I’ve dedicated my life to that work. And you’re destroying it.”
Conner stared at her, a mildly amused expression on his face. “There’s one person in this room who’s going to make the human race safe from pandemics. And it isn’t you. Your life’s work is a drop in the bucket compared to our plan. We’re implementing a real solution—one final pandemic to end all others.”
One pandemic. “They’re related, aren’t they? The flu pandemic and the hemorrhagic fever in Kenya.”
“You’re smart enough to know the answer to that.”
“Why?”
“Fear.”
The pieces came together then. They had released the flu strain in isolated parts of Kenya a week before they had released it around the world. In the later stages of the virus, it presented like an Ebola-like hemorrhagic fever—an outbreak deadly enough to get every government’s attention. They had wanted to demonstrate what would happen around the world in a week if the virus wasn’t cured.
“You have a cure, don’t you?”
He flashed her a condescending smile. “We’re not monste
rs, Peyton. We have the means to stop the virus as soon as governments figure out their place in the new order.” He turned away from her. “Now as much as I’ve enjoyed our talk, I have some questions I need you to answer.”
“Screw you.”
“Your friend Dr. Watson has lost a lot of blood. My people tell me she needs surgery, urgently.”
Peyton stared at him, rage simmering. This man was responsible for Jonas’s death and Lucas Turner’s and so many others. He couldn’t be trusted.
“Give me answers, and we’ll help her,” Conner said.
“I don’t believe you.”
He turned the tablet around, showing Peyton a video feed of Hannah on an operating room table, a tube running from her mouth, the wound at her shoulder exposed and prepped for surgery.
Three people in masks and surgical gowns stood around the table, gloved hands held in the air.
“How do I know you’ll do it?”
“A show of good faith, Dr. Shaw.” Conner touched his collarbone. “Proceed.”
On the screen, the medical personnel sprang into action, converging on the wound. Others appeared from off-screen, pushing trays with instruments forward, within easy reach.
“You stop answering, or start lying, and we stop operating,” Conner said.
Peyton nodded, still watching the screen, her eyes locked on the blood pressure readings.
“Have you had any contact with Desmond Hughes?”
Peyton looked up. Desmond Hughes—the words were like a cattle prod. “Yes,” she said quietly.
“When?”
“Before I deployed.”
“How?”
“He called me.”
Conner looked confused. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not—”
“We tapped your mobile, Peyton.”
