Thunderbird

by Chuck Wendig

  “She’s, ahh. Here.”

  “Here, here? Like, what, under the table?”

  “In town. Tucson. I brought her.”

  “How much does she know?”

  “Some of it. Not all of it. Not the . . .” He clears his throat. “Weird bits.”

  “Oh. Well. Yay.”

  “Maybe you can meet her.”

  “Sure, sure. No way that can go horribly wrong.”

  “Well, if you don’t want to—”

  “Yeah, no, yeah. I, yeah. Of course. I do. It’s fine. Bring her by and she can witness me in all my dilapidated, brain-injured glory. I look like something the cat threw up, so she can be well-assured I am not a threat to your relationship.”

  “Great.”

  “Super.”

  “Really great.”

  Nod and smile, nod and smile.

  SIXTY

  SNAFU

  Night comes and she can’t sleep, so she watches TV. The news is still all about the courthouse bombing. Miriam knows she shouldn’t watch, but you pass a crash, you rubberneck whether you mean to or not. Her whole life is an act of rubbernecking, and here she knows she’s at fault, so she keeps the channel tuned.

  They’ve upped the injured count but knocked down the fatalities. Eighty-nine dead. Three hundred injured, many seriously, some critically. Some are even in this hospital, as it turns out.

  They show the wreckage again and again. Disaster porn. Talking heads talk about it. They squeak markers over it like it’s a football play— here’s where they think the bombs were, here’s where the shooters entered.

  Then: they put a pair of faces on screen.

  Hugo and Jorge. The old security guards, like the two shriveled puppets from the Muppet Show balcony.

  They’re alive.

  That’s something, at least.

  Then: a knock at her door.

  She turns the TV to mute.

  Another familiar face enters. Agent Tommy Grosky.

  “Another fine predicament,” he says, a soft smile connecting his big cheeks. “Hi, Miriam.”

  “Agent.”

  He pulls out flowers from behind his back. “A gift.”

  “You pull those out of your ass?”

  He shrugs as if to say Hey, maybe. He sets them down—they’re already in a small vase— and sits. “How you holding up?”

  “I’m not dead. My brain is only a half-deflated kickball. I failed to save the people I wanted to save. Any hope I had of getting rid of this thing that I have is gone, blown up with the Pima County courthouse.” She turns the TV off. “So: situation normal, all fucked up.”

  Grosky looks over his shoulder at the now-dark TV. “You watching the news, huh.”

  “Yep. Good times. I notice nobody is pointing the finger at the Coming Storm yet. You even know about them?”

  “We do. But what happened there isn’t something we can really explain yet. When we figure out a story, we’ll go public.”

  “We?”

  “The Agency. We’re calling it Federal jurisdiction. Cops don’t mind because this isn’t a football they wanted to catch.”

  “Oh. Good luck.”

  “You mind if I ask you what happened?”

  “This in an official capacity?”

  “Somewhat. I’m doing a favor for friends out here. And a favor to you, too. They won’t understand you. But I think I’m starting to.”

  She sighs. “Now?”

  “Please.”

  “Ask away, big guy.”

  He does. Little notepad in which he writes not much at all. He asks her what happened and she lies. Says mostly she doesn’t remember. Says she got kidnapped, doesn’t know why, then: freaky shit happened. Storm came, birds came, she barely escaped, got shot.

  “You don’t remember much of it at all?” he asks, dubious.

  “Brain injury. Check the charts. My thinker done got boo-booed.”

  “So, you don’t know anything about the birds.”

  She shrugs. “Nature’s weird, hoss. Storms make animals do goofy shit.”

  “You were trying to stop the courthouse bombing.”

  Another shrug.

  He says, “And you didn’t manage it.”

  Another shrug. This one born of ill-contained anger, like she’s a stoppered bottle about to pop. “Who knows.”

  “You think you accomplished nothing,” he says.

  “It feels like that.”

  “They were gonna do more, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Bombings. Pima County was just the first. Miriam, they found a basement underneath Ethan and Karen Key’s ‘house.’ It was loaded for bear with bomb-making material, ammunition, Semtex, guns, knives. And plans. They were going to hit more courthouses. More government buildings. Kill politicians.” That means Mary helped them plan not just for this but beyond. It wasn’t just a suicide. It was a message: People are poison, people are weak, and in one big fire sale, everyone has to go. Grosky goes on: “Hell, going by some of their emails we found, I think they might’ve gone after the president one day. Probably would’ve never gotten close. But you never know. They were trying to start something. Something big. Already other groups in-state have started acting up— but there hasn’t been a tipping point. No other attacks. Those other whack-jobs will back the fuck down now. But if the Coming Storm managed more attacks, all bets are off. Can’t put those snakes back in a can.”

  “I . . . I don’t—”

  “You did do some good here. Just not the good you thought.”

  “Oh.” She swallows. “Cool.”

  “Yeah. Cool. Anyway.” He stands up with a groan. “Enjoy the flowers. Hope you’re not allergic? As always, if ever you wanna work together—”

  “You really need my help, just call,” she says.

  His eyes go wide. Ooh-la-la.

  “I don’t know your number.”

  “I don’t either. But I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”

  SIXTY-ONE

  ALL THAT’S LEFT IS THE WATER

  Morning comes. Time to go home. Not that home is a place for her, but they’re kicking her ass out of the hospital. She’s packing up what little she has— someone had to actually gift her a pair of shoes (which the nurse whispered conspiratorially, These came from a dead woman, shhhh) because they picked her up barefoot. She’s wearing a University of Arizona T-shirt and jeans too clean and too nice to be her own. These, too, gifts from the hospital.

  As she’s about to head out, the phone rings.

  She answers it.

  She listens.

  She says, “Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

  Blink, blink. The water in. The water out. Thunder. Lightning. She blinks back tears as she takes the receiver and eases it back into its cradle.

  Like a zombie, she stalks the halls and, by some miracle, finds her way out.

  SIXTY-TWO

  OF COURSE

  They wheel her ass out. Hospital policy, they tell her. She tells them they can stick the entire wheelchair up their no-no holes, but they insist, or they won’t discharge her. They say it’s for insurance, and she explains she doesn’t have insurance, but blah blah blah, she ends up in the chair.

  She thinks then about Karen. Shot in the head but still not dead. What about now? What happened to her? And Ofelia? Should’ve asked Grosky. Fuck.

  Sliding doors. Outside. The god-awful Arizona sun is in full effect, staring its horrible, punishing eye right at her through the trees and across the parking lot. She gets up out of the chair. Wincing. Pain in her leg. Pain in her chest. Her head still feels like it’s stuffed with tar-soaked cotton.

  Limps a few steps forward and then— what?

  As if on cue:

  A van pulls up.

  A motherfucking no-longer-a-wizard van.

  The motherfucking no-longer-a-wizard van.

  Miriam whistles as Gabby gets out. Isaiah, too, hops down out of the back— this time, he’s wearing a Wonder Woman shir
t. Gabby takes his hand and idly, quietly, Miriam thinks: If you knew what that kid could do, you might not touch him. No wonder Ethan wanted the boy. A single touch and he could pop you from the inside like a microwaved sausage.

  “Hey-o,” Miriam says, trying to sound chipper. Failing.

  Gabby comes up. Gives her a kiss on the cheek. “I got you a present.” She thumbs toward the no-longer-a-wizard van.

  “You shouldn’t have. Also, you know it’s stolen, right?”

  “I do. And it’s also not really my present. It’s a gift from an FBI agent. He said he wanted to do something nice for you. So, he pulled this out of impound and fudged some paperwork.”

  Grosky. What a sweetheart.

  “Hey, kid,” Miriam says to Isaiah.

  “Hey, lady,” Isaiah says back.

  Gabby: “The van’s all fueled up.”

  “Cool. Let’s rock. We can go . . . anywhere. Like, say, maybe . . . Florida.”

  “We can’t,” Gabby says.

  “Huh?”

  “I’m not . . .” She stiffens, wincing, hands into little fists. This is hard for her, and that means Miriam knows what’s coming. Still: she lets her get to it on her own time. In part, a kindness. In another way, a cruelty. “I can’t follow you anymore. I’m going to try to adopt Isaiah. I’ve already convinced my sister and her husband to act as foster parents to him and— I know. I know. I see that look. I feel like shit about this. But you lead a life that I don’t understand, and he’s a special kid and . . . we’ve all been through a lot.”

  “No doubt.” Anger shoots through her. Irrational and hot, like a safety pin cooked over a lighter flame. I’m the one who’s been through the most. I deserve you. I deserve a chance. I deserve to send you away, not the reverse. All stupid, horrible thoughts that she has to stuff in a bag and toss in a river. “I get it.”

  And she does. It’s not a lie.

  “You take the van. Florida or wherever. We’ve got a return ticket for Greyhound.”

  “Go. It’s cool. Just . . . go.”

  Gabby leans in for a kiss. Miriam gives her the cheek.

  Miriam goes to Isaiah. Kneels down. “You heard the lady. You’re a special kid.” A kid who can kill people just by touching them.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Hey. Listen. What you can do? It isn’t who you are.”

  He blinks. Considers it. “Are you sure?”

  “I am sure.”

  “Then that’s true for you, too, huh?” he asks.

  She shrugs. Because she doesn’t believe it. Do as I say, not as I do.

  A quick kiss on his forehead. A swat on his ass. “Thanks for saving my bacon,” she says. “Now go on. Scoot. Shoo.” Fuck off, you’re free to go. Miriam asks Gabby, “You need a ride to the bus station?”

  “It’s walkable, actually.”

  “Well.” Seconds pass. Stretched to minutes. Stretched to hours, to days, to weeks, to an infinity times an infinity. “See you.”

  She hops in the wizard van and drives to Florida.

  SIXTY-THREE

  AND THEN TO PENNSYLVANIA

  Your mother passed away in the night.

  That, the phone call she received. From one hospital to another. It happened days before. Took them a while to track her down. But they did. And now she’s here. At a funeral she planned, at a funeral home near her old house in Pennsylvania, not far from the Susquehanna River. A wet spring day. Cool and spry. Spritzing rain. Better than having the funeral in Florida, she thought. Because funerals, she read once, shouldn’t happen on a sunny day.

  It’s the classic scene. Black umbrellas. A few punctuations of red. They go to lower the casket into the ground. Miriam sees a bird nearby: a fat-bellied crow hanging out on a low-hanging branch of an evergreen.

  For a time, she joins with the bird. They fly. Rain beading on black feathers. Circling higher and higher. A few more crows nearby, cawing and calling. And then she’s back and it’s over. All the funeral attendees have gone and she’s left alone, standing there, staring at the hole underneath a small tent.

  Someone fires up a nearby backhoe. To move dirt in.

  Odd, maybe, that she’s been to alarmingly few funerals. Lots of death, but not much of what comes after. Not much of the bodies in the ground.

  She says good-bye to her mother.

  Then she goes to a nearby bar and gets drunk, really drunk, and cries.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  SHOEBOX ESTATE

  Her mother’s house in Florida is just as it was left. Miriam thinks to rent it out, and maybe later to sell it, but somehow she ends up staying there for one night, then one week, and then a month. Her Uncle Jack— who was at the funeral, and who ended up at the bar later that night— tried to act all sad, but then she told him that the house he was squatting in, Mom’s old house, was hers now. He called bullshit, said, “She sold that to me for a dollar.” And Miriam explained that’s not what the lawyers told her. They don’t have a record of it even if it was true. She said in slurred words, “You wanna lawyer up, you slack-jawed cock-warbler, you go right the fuck ahead.” He said, “Nice job, killer,” because he knows that bothers her, and it took every ounce of willpower she could muster not to punch him in the throat. She hasn’t heard from him since.

  Comes a time when someone knocks at the door, and Miriam thinks it’s one of the neighbors— they’re old here, and nice, irritatingly nice, always bringing by casseroles and soups and salads. But the man at the door says he’s a lawyer.

  Oh, shit.

  She starts to say, “My Uncle Jack is a fucking half-wit— you can’t trust a word that comes dribbling out of his spit-cup—”

  But the lawyer explains that he’s a lawyer for a woman named Mary Stitch.

  So, Miriam invites him in.

  The lawyer is a man too loose in his suit. Like he’s hot. And he should be, because Florida is basically Satan’s dick. The lawyer looks sweaty and ill, and he dabs at his slick brow with a once-white, now-yellow kerchief.

  He explains that Mary Stitch changed her will recently, and was confirmed dead in the Pima County bombing.

  Miriam was in the will.

  “Whuh,” she says. Because that sounds like nonsense.

  He says it isn’t nonsense, and she left to Miriam a shoebox. And in that shoebox, Miriam finds a bottle of mescal, two glasses, and a small, rolled-up piece of paper. When the lawyer leaves, Miriam undoes the rubber band around the paper and unrolls it. It’s a note.

  You’re a better woman than me. If you’re still alive, and I bet you are, here’s a favor: you want to get rid of your curse, I know how it happens. You have to reverse what happened. Undo what was done. The thing that made you who you are. You want to get rid of it? Then you, dear Miriam, have to get pregnant.

  Good luck, honey.

  — Mary

  Miriam holds that for a while.

  Then she drinks a lot of mescal and burns the note with a lighter. She finds something else in there too, underneath the glasses.

  A playing card. With a spider on it.

  No idea what that means. But she burns that, too. Just in case.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  RINGY-DINGY

  The phone call that comes later, months later, goes like this:

  Him: You skipped on out me.

  Her: No duh.

  Him: You didn’t want to meet Samantha?

  Her: No duh, part two, revenge of the duh.

  Him: Well, we’re coming to town.

  Her: Pssh. You don’t even know what town I’m in. I could be in Nome, Alaska. Or Eat Butt, Montana. Maybe I’m on the moon.

  Him: You’re not far from Fort Lauderdale.

  Her: Wait, are you the psychic now?

  Him: Gabby told me where you were. Gave me this number.

  (Gabby. Of course those two are talking. Well, shit.)

  Her: So, you’re saying I have to meet Samantha.

  Him: I did save your life.

  Her: And I
saved yours some time ago.

  Him: I saved yours twice.

  You maybe saved it more than that, she thinks, and she maybe saved his more, too, but at this point, who’s counting?

  She tells him yeah, yes, fine.

  She’ll meet Samantha.

  SIXTY-SIX

  EVEN AWFUL THINGS ARE MADE BETTER BY BREAKFAST

  There’s this breakfast joint in Fort Lauderdale, near the Stranahan House by the river. Dinky joint called the El Presidente. She waits outside. Wants to smoke less because of any nic-fit and more because she’s bored and this would occupy her. Now, as it stands, her hands feel empty, restless, like birds in cages.

  Eventually, Louis pulls up— a pickup truck, new, shiny red. A woman gets out. She’s pretty. Miriam’s seen the photos. Pretty, but not so pretty she’s a wowie-kazowie kind of looker. Maybe just pretty enough to be boring.

  Samantha marches right up to her. Nervous, obviously. Miriam’s hair now is the reverse of what it was months ago— it’s now almost all pink with just a few bands dyed black, and she’s in a torn black shirt and fucked-up jeans, so she knows she’s quite the sight. But Samantha takes it right on the chin and thrusts out her hand.

  Which means she probably doesn’t know what Miriam does or who Miriam is. Louis, for his part, sees what’s happening and tries not to look nervous, but of course he looks nervous and, oh, piss on it. Miriam likes that he’s freaked out. Fine, then. Let’s get it over with.

  Miriam reaches out and—

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  NICE JOB, KILLER

  Nine months. Samantha’s bridal veil floats around her. Bubbles escape from their trap behind her lips as the hands around her neck choke her so hard, her mouth can’t help but open. The hands throttle her. She tries to get out. Hands out of the bathtub water, sliding along the porcelain edge, trying to pull herself up and out, but no grip, can’t manage, back into the drink—