by ML Banner
His wife didn’t even want the damned place anyway.
~~~
Fourteen Years Earlier
It should have hit him when they first arrived at the front gate. Mimi craned her neck forward so that she could better see the sign above the gate. “Heaven? Really?”
“Yep! And I have to go open our pearly gates.”
He had thought she was just chiding him for naming the ranch “Heaven” because he thought this land was heaven on earth. But as he drove them to the house, after passing through the gate, she unleashed her complaints.
“Oh my God, there’s no one around,” she said. It wasn’t a compliment.
Still Tom didn’t allow himself to hear it, at least not yet. “I know, isn’t it cool?”
“I thought it would be closer to everything. After all, it’s Missouri. How far is our closest neighbor?”
“A little more than a mile,” he said, putting the truck into park.
“A mile? What if Drew has an emergency?” She peeked back at Drew in the back seat, asleep like always, and then pulled her cell phone out of her giant handbag, while she waited for him to open the door.
Tom offered his hand to her. “Our neighbor is also an EMT.”
“How do we call our neighbor, with smoke signals? I can’t get a cell signal.” She thrust the phone into the air, exaggerating her movements.
“And you won’t get one for a few years yet. But that’s why we have a satellite phone.” He reached back into the truck and hoisted out all thirty pounds of their unconscious son, still strapped into the car-seat.
She said nothing more. Even without words, her movements told him everything about her dislike at their move: each thumping foot on each stair step, pretending to struggle with the door handle, holding her nose and “eww”-ing the new paint smell inside. Everything that he was most proud of she hated.
He had been laboring for three years to build this place, funding it with contracts that took him to hellholes in the Middle East. He’d make a bunch of money, take a few months off and build more of the house. Then he’d go overseas and do another contract, come home, and build some more. Years away from his wife just so he could build this place. He built the whole damned thing for them, and the least she could do was say, “Wow, you did a great job, Tom. I really love the place.”
“Could you at least pretend you like it?” he stammered.
She ignored him, marched into the kitchen and examined each appliance, like she was a Cooking Channel diva; she didn’t cook. Then she came back into the living room, where Tom was waiting in the open door.
She stopped in front of him and glanced at Drew, who was still sleeping in the car-seat Tom was lugging around, through all of her yammering. She scowled at him. “Pleeeease tell me we have Internet and cable here.”
“Satellite TV, yes; Internet, no!” He waited for it, expecting both barrels of her shotgun sarcasm. He knew the Internet thing would get her, even though he had already talked with her about it.
Instead of leveling angry words at him, her eyes filled up like dikes, about ready to burst and wash away all the anger he felt. “Why,” she sobbed, “did you move us so far away from everyone?”
He wrapped his arms around her, but she shrugged away from his touch.
“We talked about this long ago. Soon, because the US economy will collapse, there will be chaos everywhere, but most especially in the cities. Millions will die, and only those who are prepared and out in rural areas will survive. That’s you, me and our son.”
“Sometimes,” she said between sobs, “like now, I think it would be better not to survive.”
“Oh honey... This place will grow on you. And in time, you’ll come to love the solitude just as much as I do.”
She pushed farther away from him, straightened herself, and brushed her hair out of her face. One hand stayed, her forefinger nervously twirling around her curls—a nervous habit he had always loved, except now. “Like I have a choice.”
Hell’s Requiem Playlist, Track 7
Song/Artist: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door by Bob Dylan
Keywords: put my guns in the ground; can’t shoot them anymore; black cloud is comin’ down.
10
It stared back at him, his shrine to the ultimate bad memory. And the melody of a distant Bob Dylan song started to play on his mental jukebox.
The words of the song defanged him: put my guns in the ground... can't shoot them anymore... knockin’ on heaven's door.
Only moments before, he had chosen a path of revenge, albeit with some reluctance. Now, reality was staring him in the face.
He found himself perched at the precipice of the mesa, above the wind-swept target where Drew had been hit by the ricocheted bullet that ended all their lives. But now, looking at the scene of his crime from this alternate perspective made him question the reasons for his chosen quest.
The weight of that moment still bore down on him as if it had just happened. He didn’t resist and sat hard.
The table called to him, drawing a scowl. He felt a flash of anger for not having found the path back down the way he had come and thus avoiding this obstruction to his mission, allowing him to settle the score he had with his intruders. The table demanded his attention once again: he had some unfinished business to deal with first.
Below him, was the table that Drew used to shoot from; the same table where Drew pulled in his last breath. And then Tom’s whole world had come apart... It was that very table staring back at him now, daring him to look further.
Several yards to the left and closer to the mesa was the other table, overturned and unused since that day. That was the table Tom occupied when his son was hit.
Reality was a critical judge, insisting that he’d face the truth. And not the truth he told everyone else.
It was not surprising that the Sheriff didn’t believe him, that Drew’s own bullet had ricocheted back to him and had enough velocity to kill. But the forensics couldn’t show anything different. And it wasn’t that Tom was purposely hiding the truth from the investigators. It was simply that he couldn’t handle the truth: after Tom had fired his rifle, it was his own bullet that had ricocheted and killed his son.
Tom figured it was the angle of his shot, because they were shooting from opposite points at the same target. It was all part of a game that Drew enjoyed where one fired into the target, and the other attempted to drive their bullet directly into the same hole, not touching the paper.
He guessed that the deadly bullet had hit a stone embedded in the tree they used to hang targets on. Weeks earlier, he’d tested shooting rocks from an improvised gun he’d made. One of those embedded rocks must have been the culprit which caused the ricochet.
It was all his fault.
And so were the actions of the intruders.
He deserved to lose his house—it was no longer a home—after he murdered his family. And he certainly did nothing to prevent these intruders from taking his house from him, in spite of all the warnings they had given him.
All of the anger he’d felt earlier poured out of him, like an overturned bottle. The determination to do the job he had set out to do was now gone. And something else moved into its vacancy, like a single dark cloud unexpectedly rolling in front of the sun, blotting out the light of an otherwise sunny day. He felt lost.
A big part of him just wanted to stand up, turn around and walk away from this property and the life he had thought he had made. He thought he’d forged a life for his family, and the ability to survive with them. But that life had ceased to exist nine years ago, when they had left him.
He sat in a heap on the soon-to-be scorching-hot ground, cross-legged, his rifle resting in his lap, staring into the abyss and examining the remnants of his fractured life, utterly unsure what he was supposed to do next.
Ever since the Army, or after he’d moved his family to this once-fertile ground with the intent of living a simple life, away from the poisonous American culture,
or even after he had destroyed his family, or after the apocalypse sent the world back to the Stone Age... no matter when he recalled, he always thought he had some sort of purpose. A raison d’être, as the French called it: a reason for being.
But now he knew he had none.
It occurred to him that he no longer cared about this land or the house he’d built. So why in the hell had he been working so hard this past year to survive there?
So he could suffer.
There it was: a final admonition to the tables, his only witnesses to the event that changed his life. Each day, he had worked on the property and cursed God for his existence. Then he’d finish the day torturing himself further by sitting at Drew’s table recalling his worst memory. And for what? There was no purpose in any of this. What was he living for, with his son and wife gone?
His mind was blank for a while. Empty. No one thought could grab hold within the swirling tempest inside. Then a single reflection emerged. He looked at his rifle as if to confirm this.
It wasn’t a reason to exist, but it at least it was something. He glanced at the rifle once more for affirmation. He did have a purpose after all. But he wasn’t going to accomplish this sitting here.
Either get busy living or get busy dying.
It was a line from his favorite movie, Shawshank Redemption. His wife hated it.
He hadn’t thought of this since... he couldn’t remember when.
Get busy living or get busy dying.
Yes, it was, he decided.
Thrusting his palms into the dirt, he pushed himself upward but stopped when he heard voices.
“The blood leads this way,” fluttered a shrill utterance riding upon a stiff northern breeze. Its speaker was not yet visible.
Tom quickly swung his legs around and flopped onto his belly, so that he was now prone, pointed toward the oncoming voice, now more prominent. He shimmied back a few feet to put a little distance between him and the edge of the mesa, so that he wouldn’t be visible to them. Snake-like, he silently slid backwards, over his rifle, until he could grab it and raise it to his eye. He clicked off the safety and waited for them to walk into view.
“You lost the trail way back there,” a familiar female voice droned.
“I know where the trail leads and it’s this way,” the shrill male voice said.
Although they were still unseen, Tom recognized their voices as the short man and woman who participated in his own attempted murder and the taking of his house.
They finally appeared in a clearing, but a tree blocked a clear shot. His finger lightly touched the trigger, in anticipation of them walking into the open space. If he found a clear site picture, he’d end both of their miserable lives.
Shorty stopped just before the clearing, put his hands on his hips and huffed a note of frustration.
“What, did you lose the trail, Tracker John?” she taunted.
“Look, at least I’m doing something.”
“What’s the point, Shorty? The man was shot three times at point-blank range. He’s dead. Animals dragged him away; like I’ve been saying,” she proclaimed.
“Well, it’s still better than being back at the house, knowing that Scarface could be coming anytime now.” Shorty’s voice trembled.
Although Tom couldn’t see his face, he could tell that Shorty was scared of this Scarface, whoever that was.
“You think we should just give up this house and all the great shit inside and run to Cicada before Scarface catches us?” the woman asked in a mocking tone.
“Duh! Of course I do. That was what we agreed to do when we took the Cicada map and the entrance pass from the Teacher. We were just coming here for supplies,” Shorty insisted.
“Look, I know you heard one of the GA Guards saying that Cicada was a giant walled community, with scientists and food, and that we should definitely go there. But isn’t that where we were all ultimately going with the Teacher?” She was no longer taunting. Her question seemed serious.
“I told you this already.” Shorty sounded frustrated. “If we get to Cicada first, we can warn them. They’ll welcome us in. And if it’s what I hear, we’ll never have to want for anything. Besides, waiting for Scarface to come is suicide, and you know it.”
Their shadows stood inches from each other, unmoving, obviously contemplating each other’s words. At least that’s what Tom figured must be happening. But while they were weighing each other’s words, so was Tom. A part of him yearned to hear more about this Cicada community of scientists, as well as Scarface, and their plans.
The woman finally broke the silence. “Okay, let’s try and convince the big guy that we should take what supplies we can carry and get moving.”
They stood for another few seconds, and then trudged back the way they had come.
When he could no longer hear their footsteps, Tom stood up straight and clicked on the safety again.
He felt a strong need to learn more about what they were talking about. But he also didn’t want to give them the chance to leave before he made them pay for their transgressions. And he suspected he needed to do all this before this Scarface arrived.
He had a purpose once again. As he followed his own footsteps back, he softly whistled a Blondie tune, while considering his approach.
Hell’s Requiem Playlist, Track 8
Song/Artist: One Way Or Another by Blondie
Keywords: gonna find ya; gonna get ya; one way or another
11
By approaching the house from the east, Tom could be sure the stiff breeze was in his face.
His prey wasn’t likely to smell him; it was just habit from his many years of hunting. This standard of approaching the hunted also minimized the possibility of alerting them if he stepped on a dried twig or if he tripped: he wasn’t yet steady on his feet.
After watching them for hours from a hidden tree stand, overlooking his garden and the front of the house, he shimmed down the tree and made his approach.
From their observed movements and their hurried demeanor, Tom guessed that they were planning to leave in the morning. He hatched a plan while quietly waiting for nightfall to execute it, and at the end of it, his intruders.
Far from a direct path to the house, he looped around and came up through the back side before finding his destination, a well-organized pile of building materials.
Now an unintended monument to a garage project he’d abandoned before beginning, it would have been his man-cave. Only a few days after the truckload of materials was delivered, his son had died and his wife left him. After this, there seemed to be no purpose in creating additional empty space. The house already felt too big and lonely. It turned out to be a good decision, as a man-cave without power was damned worthless. So the materials just lay, mostly unused, deteriorating like the rest of the world under the punishing sun. Tonight, he would finally use the materials, but for something entirely different.
Drawing behind the highest point in the pile, Tom’s head peeked just above a stack of two-by-fours and glared at his house.
His intruders didn’t appear to be outside. In another life, it was the kind of night someone without worries of survival would have sat out and enjoyed the auroral symphony above, and the relative coolness that evening brought.
Tom spun around and sat cross-legged, while unslinging his pack so that he rested his back against the pile. He checked his take-down rifle once more, making sure it was ready. His magazine held eight, but he’d only need three rounds tonight—actually four, as two were reserved for Shorty. 22 LR rounds were small and did little damage to muscle because of their minimal stopping power. But a well-placed shot to the head should kill two of the three intruders almost instantly. His loosely cobbled-together plan was to take out the giant and the woman and disable Shorty. He’d then torture the short man into giving him information about Cicada, along with the invitation they spoke about. He hadn’t yet considered what to do about the kid.
He rose and spun back around
to once again face the house. He took notice of the house once more, before laying his rifle on top of the pile.
Still no activity.
A small flicker of light danced inside a side bedroom window of the house. The dwelling and the world around him appeared to be in slumber, but for a cricket or two in the distance. Perhaps they were sleeping already, no doubt in preparation for their early morning departure, before the scorching heat of the day. That is, assuming his assessment was correct. He had tried to time this correctly. Not too late, but late enough that they would be tired, asleep, or even drunk.
He unscrewed the cap of a gas can he had collected from a storage area outside his greenhouse. Standing up tall, he toted the gas forward with the intent of dousing the front of the pile, before working back to the point of origin. He’d then drag a line of gas and a couple of boards toward where he’d quickly set up to snipe each of the intruders when they came out to inspect the burning debris.
A creak from the front door caused Tom to freeze. His head snapped forward and he watched and waited to see if his prey would appear around the corner of the house.
“He hasn’t come back yet. Aren’t you worried?” a high-pitched voice questioned. It was Shorty.
“Who cares? If the kid doesn't come back, that’s more food for us. He was a pain in my rear anyway,” said the woman.
The younger man appeared around the house’s corner, following the path of the wrap-around porch. Then the woman appeared.
Tom quietly laid the gas can down and slowly backed up to where he had left his rifle. His eyes were glued on the two.
