Sticklan smiled. There was hope for this man.
“If you can’t, you can’t. But I’d like you to try.”
“And the boy?”
Richter sighed. “He’s been a lost cause from the git.”
Sticklan nodded. “If I catch her, after you see her, I get her?”
Richter nodded.
“Anything I want?”
Richter nodded again. “I don’t care.”
Sticklan smiled. He wished he could see the young woman’s eyes clearly in the image, the solidness in them, then he could really relish how much he’d enjoy breaking her and watching that fire go out.
A few days later they got a new lead and a new picture, this one a bit clearer, and it troubled Sticklan but he wasn’t sure why. Still that pushed him out on the road a few days earlier than he’d planned but that was okay by him. It was good to be away from the house, from the day-to-day banality that came with dealing with men like Richter Crow. No matter how dull the endless highway became Sticklan Stone preferred it to the company he found when not on assignment. Richter was a man who believed he was special, the sort of fella that’s forgotten he’s just as fragile as everyone else. Sticklan had watched him pine over his website, checking how many people are watching him, following him on various social networks, linking to the universal network so he can broadcast his lies and nonsensical self-praise across the galaxy. The speeches and vlogs were humble in words but the very fact that they existed was self-important. He was a man who’s allowed himself to believe he’s special in some way. He’s a man who doesn’t realize how easily he can feel pain and how simply he can die. Worst of all he’d instilled these ideas into his two oldest sons. They sit in front of their computers, watching themselves as they talk to nobody about nothing and revel in the number of times people click on their prosaic proclamations regarding mundane superficialities. I saw this movie. It was good. The new Tensight album is a little weak though track three is okay. Bla bla bla put a bullet to their brain and make the world a better place.
That brought his thoughts to the other two, the children that had been ignored so completely by his ego. He never caught Viona engaging in such self-importance, a quality she’d instilled in Leone and one she’d caught from her mother most likely. He didn’t know them as well as he did the older boys but he liked them better, which was why he hated them. It was a shame what had happened five years ago. Though it did get him out of the house.
Sticklan found himself, on those long stretches of road between places, as the landscape passed and changed beyond the windows of his car, daydreaming of shattering Richter’s self-image and filling his eyes with realization. He wanted to see it click in the man’s mind, wanted to see the disbelief give way and suddenly he’d understand that he was nothing more than a body and thoughts. Everyone is muscle spasms and electrical discharges coursing with bio-chemical fluids, nothing important and nothing all that different from an insect. Men like him don’t know that about themselves. Men like him were the most fun to kill.
The road forked ahead and Sticklan took the wheel and pumped the break.
“Auto drive disabled,” a breathy female voice informed him as he rolled to a stop. He’d chosen the voice because it reminded him of a woman he’d known once back when he was Butcher Baker—man how long ago that seemed now. Years, more than he could count and more than enough to make him question whether or not he’d dreamed that entire part of his life. Only the occasional special about, ‘the cereal killer called Butcher Baker who has to this day not yet been identified,’ assured him it was real. He heard they were going to make a movie about it, the uncatchable one that suddenly stopped.
He came closer to the split in the road and slowed, looking down one stretch of highway and up another. “Now where did you go?” he sighed to the empty car. His eyes looked this way then that again and finally fell upon and lingered on a place not far down the road. It looked to be a shitty diner. The sign read Roaders Dine Out.
A few hundred kilometers back he’d stopped and shown the picture of the girl, Rain she called herself, to some people at a place similar to this and someone had said they’d seen her heading this way, though they couldn’t be sure where exactly she was going. The next stop he’d made was a bust, apparently she hadn’t felt the need to stretch out in a while, but this place might just prove lucky again. He could feel the fourteen hours in the car in his joints and as a tight discomfort in his back. The girl certainly couldn’t have gone much longer without a stop. If he was this uncomfortable in his luxury car she had to feel like the victim of a torture device in that shitty van.
Pressing the accelerator he turned left toward the Dine Out and started another daydream. This one involved the girl, Rain. Stupid cunt thought she was smart, probably deemed herself brave too. Everyone’s always so smart and brave until they see their own blood. Then it’s amazing how little they know and how fast they discover the virtue of cowardess. Weeping and begging they discover bravery isn’t for those who don’t want to suffer in their final hours. They turn their backs on the causes they felt so passionately about only minutes ago and forsake their life’s works and ambitions for the sweet comfortable release he can provide with a single slice of his blade.
The Dine Out was what he expected, a good place to come for a heart attack but little else. He pulled into a space close to the building. He noticed only two other cars and a rig parked on the gravel surrounding the place as he stepped out into the cool breeze.
He inspected the Dine Out’s patrons. The first was a young family in sweats and pajamas trying to stay comfortable on their long haul to wherever. The mother and father seemed to be in their early thirties and the two kids had yet to hit puberty. The other car belonged to a single guy who sat on the chipped paint of his hood eating a burger in scruffy jeans and a tee shirt. He threw a few fries in his mouth as he mulled the burger and swallowed once before sipping a dark beer from a plastic cup. The car looked like it’d seen its share of kilometers and then some. He didn’t see whomever the rig belonged to but figured he was in the sleeper catching a nap. Whatever the case, no one here looked dangerous so he started for the window.
“Help ya?” a fat balding man asked from the other side of the counter.
“Depends on how sharp your memory is,” Sticklan told him. He held up his sheet and showed the cook a picture of the girl he was after. “Seen her?”
The cook took a long look at the picture, squinting his eyes and thinking. “Not a very good picture,” he complained.
“Goes by Rain,” Sticklan added.
The man looked at the girl with short dark hair and a simple, slightly blurred face again. Suddenly he snapped his finger and looked over his shoulder. “Billy! Billy,” he shouted.
“What?” someone hollered from the back.
“Come look at this.”
There was a commotion, metal clanking and dishware crashing together. A moment later what Sticklan assumed was Billy came walking from the back wiping his hands on a white apron with grease stains. “What?” the young man asked annoyed.
“Wasn’t this girl here last night?”
Billy took a look at the picture on the screen and started nodding almost immediately, “Yeah, I believe she was.”
Sticklan smirked.
“Think she was called Rain, or something,” Billy shrugged.
“Yeah,” the pudgy bald man smiled. “That’s right, I thought I recognized her. She was here.”
Sticklan looked up and down the empty road. He could hear something, the rumbling of thunder but it was clear skies as far as he could see. “She here with anyone?” Sticklan asked, not looking at them.
The cooks’ looked at each other and started shaking their heads. “Don’t think so,” the fat one said.
“Though she did spend some time with the moonshiner,” Billy added.
“Moonshiner?” Sticklan asked, his attention returned to them.
“Yeah, Pickens and Zaul,” Billy
said. “Just the best damn moon whiskey you can get.”
When Sticklan didn’t react the pudgy one added, “That’s right, the two of them had dinner and then he just opened a pair of barrels and let the roaders have at it. Seemed crazy to me, that Pickens and Zaul shine fetches a high price. Highest outside genuine distillery whisky on this rock, but then who can get that?” he asked with a huff and a chuckle.
The thunder was growing closer and Sticklan noticed there was no break in it. He looked up the road and saw it wasn’t thunder at all but a caravan of some sort rolling in from the east. “When did they leave?” Sticklan asked.
“She left about three hours ago. He must have stayed a half hour more.”
“They didn’t leave together?” Sticklan asked, looking back at them.
They shook their heads in unison.
“Naw,” Billy said. “She headed north, I think. He musta pressed west.”
Sticklan looked back to the road and saw motorcycles riding two by two toward the diner with a pair of cars and a rig behind them.
“Don’t pay them any mind,” the bald man assured him. “Brood knows we got nothing worth their time here, and we keep quiet about their travels. In exchange they pay for what they get and keep the killing away from our place.”
Sticklan looked at the man then asked him, “No one else was with her, you’re sure?”
The bald man shook his head, “Not that I saw.”
Sticklan looked at Billy who shook his head. “Guess someone coulda been in the back of that van but if they were they stayed put the whole night.”
Sticklan nodded slowly, thoughtfully. Bitch was playing games, trying to be smart. It was annoying. He was going to catch up to her eventually.
He stood watching the Angels of the Brood roll in for a few moments before the bald man asked, “Interest you in a bite?”
“No,” Sticklan replied without a glance back. He smiled as the Brood pulled into the parking lot and thought that maybe he wouldn’t have to catch up to her at all.
The brood stopped in the spaces around his car and let their vehicles sputter into silence. “Gunna need a lot of food,” the one in the middle with a thick beard yelled as he stepped off his bike. His voice sounded a little like his motorcycle, beat to shit from years of wear. “Road got us a mighty hunger.”
“Yeah, and nothin save gravy coated meat will satisfy,” a younger one added.
Sticklan started toward the group as the men stepped away from their bikes and others emerged from the cars and rig behind. The bikers formed a line and stepped toward him, stopping him from going toward the cars or rig. “Something I can help you with?” the one in the middle with the thick beard and sun baked skin asked. Sticklan could see the toll years spent riding a motorbike under the baking sun had taken on the man.
“Yes, as a matter of fact there is,” Sticklan said cheerily as he held up his sheet computer.
“Awe,” another of them groaned sarcastically, “Poor thing lost his pussy.” A round of laughter emerged from the Broodlings.
When it subsided Sticklan continued, “Not mine so much but yeah, I need to find her.”
“Never seen her,” the one in the middle said and they started to walk past him.
“She’s worth a lot of money,” he declared.
The men stopped. Sticklan could see the Broodlings by the other vehicles had begun to take an interest.
The man with the thick beard smacked his lips. “How much?”
“Fifty million. Off books. Roader currency, as its sometimes called.”
It took a moment, but the broodlings laughed. “Hole that tight don’t exist,” the one in the middle said.
Sticklan smiled, “Vengeance that strong does.” The two men looked into each other’s eyes for a moment. The man with the beard was trying to discern whether or not Sticklan could be believed.
“What’s going on up there,” a man in a new, custom-tailored jacket shouted. He was also cleaner than the rest.
“Nothin’ boss,” the bearded man shouted back at him.
“Just trying to offer your boys here a sum of cash for some help. Seems the amounts a bit too much for them to handle,” Sticklan added.
“It’s bullshit,” the broodling shouted back at the man climbing from the rig.
He stepped forward. “I think I’ll decide that. Whatchyer story there partner?”
“Just need to find this girl.”
The leader, a man who went by the handle Render, looked the picture over and nodded thoughtfully. His face was clean-shaven with sharp features that squinted into V’s as he thought. “What’s the bounty?” he finally asked.
“Fifty million.”
His eyes bulged, and though he had his doubts the leader of this particular pack wasn’t going to shy away from the possibility this opportunity could be on the level. “What’s she done?”
“Kidnapping and murder,” Sticklan answered instantly.
The man nodded. “Must be some important folks she did that to.”
“It involves the family of Richter Crow. I tell you that because I trust you’re a man of discretion but I really can’t say any more save that he’s authorized me to offer such a reward.”
The leader nodded. The Broodling scratched his beard and asked, “Smell any truth on this?”
“I smell a bit,” Render replied looking from Sticklan, in his pristine tailored suit, to the car he’d rolled up in. The suit alone was probably over ten grand, the car would have cost more than some folks’ houses.
Sticklan tapped his sheet a few times. “I’ve left my card marked on this place for an hour. Add it to your contacts,” he said with a shrug. “Whether you believe me or not, you roll around enough and if you happen to find her you let me know. I mean, what’s the worst that happens, I’m lying and you kill me when I come for the girl without the cash in hand?”
Render looked into the man’s eyes, nodding slowly.
“And I handle the bounty personally, Blue Moon and its security won’t be involved.”
“What assurance do I have on that?” Render asked sharply.
Sticklan grinned at him. “They don’t even know I exist.”
Render looked over at a young man sitting in the rig and nodded. The boy ducked into the cab and a moment later he popped his head out and yelled, “Got it.”
“Dead or alive?” the leader asked, having no problem with either.
“Alive.”
The leader nodded and replied, “We’ll keep our eyes open.”
Sticklan smiled, “I’d appreciate it. Guys here seem to think she went north.” He started to turn away when he noticed the shine barrel with the Pickens and Zaul label across its side. “Oh and if you happen across a Pickens and Zaul truck, there’s a bounty on him as well.”
“Another Fifty?”
“Depends how helpful he is once I get him.” Render looked suspicious so Sticklan added, “But at least ten.”
Suspicion melted under the heat of greed and the men exchanged glances as Sicklan walked back to his car. “Think he went west,” he added before climbing into his car.
“What cha thinkin boss?” the bearded Broodling asked.
“I think we better eat quick while I activate the chapters. See how many we can get ta meet us here then take off.”
“Which direction?” one of the younger broodlings asked.
“Fifty million,” the leader huffed. “Shit boy we’re going everywhere. I don’t care if this bitch is in the moon and we haveta shoot you outta a cannon, we’re going to find her.”
Life had been kind to Sticklan Stone. He’d been allowed to roam free and to kill as he pleased for years before getting locked up in a mental institution and even then no one suspected who he really was or what he’d done. He’d been given an amazing ability to fool people, to remain calm and bide his time. Even when they locked him away he knew it was only a matter of time. See, he wasn’t the sort that got what was coming to him, he was what paid a visi
t to the sort that do. The knowledge of this truth is what kept him together, kept him sane and functional. He was a real life monster but he existed because without him bad people would never get what they deserved, and if he happened to have a bit of fun along the way well then that was just his reward for existing.
This current situation was a perfect example. Rain was one of the unfortunates who the universe had decided needed to pay for her arrogance and he was just the sort of thing she needed. In exchange for his good deed the universe had sent him the Angels of the Brood. He knew what a group of barbarians like that would do for the hopes of fifty million in coin. If anything less than a worldwide riot broke out he’d be disappointed by their lack of effort. There would be blood, and that was the important thing. It made him smile.
Sticklan flipped on his sheet and decided to find a place worth waiting for the Brood’s call. He found Pajarah, a city a little more than four hundred eighty kilometers north. He could be there in three hours, less if the road was straight enough, and there’d be a real restaurant and hotels.
As he started the car and backed out of his spot he could see the Broodling with the thick beard had gathered the others and he was relaying orders the leader had given him. When he got to Pajarah he’d check the satellite feeds, maybe he’d be able to watch a bit of their carnage while he rewarded himself with a five-star lunch—something raw and bloody perhaps. Then maybe he’d find a hooker and just when she thought it was over, just after he handed her some coins, he’d show her his knife and watching her face would be better than his orgasm.
Cat and Mouse
The rig with the faded Pickens and Zaul decal on its trailer sped through the streets, air horn blowing. Rachel was unconscious in the sleeper compartment and Dusty was sitting with her, holding her in his lap and caressing her cheek. He spoke softly to her, words Quey couldn’t quite, and didn’t try to make out, while he checked to make sure she was still breathing. Faintly, the air was flowing.
The Saffron Malformation Page 21
