The Dispatcher

by Jahn, Ryan David

‘Okay,’ Ron says, ‘I know just what to do.’

  Henry and Beatrice and Maggie pile into Ron’s Toyota as Ron said they should before he disappeared into a hallway, and now he emerges from the green-painted front door of his house with two rifles under one arm, boxes of shells in the other hand, and a pistol tucked into his waistband.

  He hands the rifles to Henry, who slides them between his legs, butts on the floorboard, barrels aimed at the roof of the car.

  Then Ron gets into the car himself and closes the door behind him.

  Maggie does not understand what is happening, not exactly, but she knows it is bad. They’re going to try to use those guns on Daddy. She wants to do something, but she doesn’t know what. She can’t even run. This town is empty, and miles from anywhere else. She only wanted to go home. She only wanted to go home to her daddy and mommy and—

  Stop it, Maggie. Stop it.

  One two three four five six seven eight.

  She exhales in a slow breath. She has to be a big girl. She has to stay calm. She has to stay calm and see what happens and if there’s anything she can do to help herself or help Daddy she will. But she can’t panic. That won’t get her anywhere. She closes her eyes and is enveloped by darkness. She opens her eyes, feeling a bit better, though still scared.

  ‘Where we going?’ Henry asks.

  ‘High school.’

  ‘High school?’

  Ron nods.

  ‘Trust me,’ he says and starts the car.

  They park in an otherwise empty parking lot. It is strange to be the only car in this vast field of asphalt. They get out of the car. There are several textbooks lying open on the asphalt, the hot breeze like a ghost occasionally turning their pages. Henry hands Ron one of the rifles and keeps the other for himself.

  ‘This way,’ Ron says.

  They walk toward the front door of a two-storey building. It is a light blue color, the paint chipped and peeling. Not just the paint is peeling—time and weather have taken out chunks of the outer wall itself, leaving behind empty pits guarded only by what looks like chicken wire. They walk up five concrete steps and into a large empty corridor lined with lockers, some open, some closed, several still padlocked. The open ones have pens and pencils and books in them, pictures taped inside some of the doors. Books litter the vinyl floor. There are also occasional animal skeletons.

  A rattlesnake lies on the vinyl floor in front of them. It looks to be in pretty bad shape. Ron pokes at it with the barrel of his rifle to make sure it’s dead. It is. They step over it and continue walking.

  ‘Beatrice and Sarah can wait for us in one of the classrooms,’ Ron says.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Beatrice says. ‘Are you hungry, Sarah?’

  Maggie nods.

  ‘You couldn’t’ve said nothing before this minute?’

  ‘I didn’t want to interrupt.’

  ‘We was at Ron’s house. There was food there. What the fuck do you think we’re gonna find here?’

  ‘I just wanted to use the vending machine.’

  ‘What fucking vending machine?’

  Beatrice points. At the end of the hallway sits an ancient vending machine with ancient food in it. Bags of chips, candy bars.

  ‘All right,’ Henry says. ‘Let’s get you some.’

  They walk to the end of the hall where the vending machine sits. As they near it Maggie can see that several of the bags have been chewed through by animals—small rough-edged holes in the packaging, and pieces of food visible, usually small crumbs of it littered with even smaller pieces of insect shit.

  ‘All right,’ Henry says, ‘stand back.’

  He slams the butt of his rifle into the glass front of the vending machine and it cracks loudly, sounding to Maggie like God clapping His hands. Then he slams the butt of the gun against it once more, and it shatters and pieces of glass fall to the floor where they shatter further. He knocks more glass away, then hands the rifle to Ron and starts pulling out packages and going through them.

  ‘Most of this shit’s been got to, Bee.’

  He throws the stuff that’s been gotten to to the floor.

  But they still manage to find six bags of chips and three candy bars and two bags of pork rinds that seem safe, or at least undisturbed by animals. With Beatrice’s arms piled up with food, they head toward the nearest classroom.

  ‘I need to talk to my girls a sec,’ Henry says.

  ‘Have to it,’ Ron says, ‘but make it quick. I wanna get to the roof ASAP.’

  Henry nods, and then guides Beatrice and Maggie into a classroom.

  The room is bright with daylight. It is empty save about twenty desks stacked in the corner. A tattered poster of the multiplication table hangs on the wall. There are math problems written on the chalkboard, faded white ghosts of what used to be. The floor itself is littered with textbooks and math papers. A row of windows, some of which are now shattered, reveal the baseball diamond. Empty bleachers. A rusty dugout. Plugs where bases used to be. A pitcher’s mound. Dead grass.

  Henry grabs Maggie by the arm and walks her to the stack of desks. He grabs one of the desks from the top of the stack and pulls it down and puts it on the floor. He shoves her into it.

  ‘Sit here.’

  Then he stops, apparently thinking. Turns silently and walks out. When he returns he has a pair of handcuffs, Ron’s handcuffs, in one hand and a pistol, also Ron’s, in the other. He tucks the pistol into his waistband, and then walks to Maggie with the handcuffs. He puts one of the cuffs on her wrist, tight, and the other he wraps around the desk, around part of the metal frame that curves up from the seat and bends to become the desk-top frame, onto which the slab of wood is screwed.

  ‘What if I have to pee?’

  ‘Squat by the desk.’

  He turns away from her and walks to Beatrice. He pulls the pistol from his waistband and puts it into her hand.

  ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘Just in case.’

  ‘Just in case what?’

  ‘It’s a semiautomatic and the safety’s off, so be careful. All you have to do is aim and pull the trigger, Bee. You got that?’

  ‘Aim and pull the trigger at what?’

  ‘Anybody walks through that door other than me or Ron.’

  ‘I don’t wanna shoot nobody, Henry.’

  ‘What do we do, Bee?’

  ‘What do we do?’

  ‘We do what we have to to keep the family together.’

  She is silent a long time, and then she nods.

  ‘Good girl. Now keep an eye on Maggie, give her some chips or something, and if anybody walks through the door other than me or Ron . . .’

  Bee just stares at him.

  ‘Bee?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If anybody comes through the door other than me or Ron what are you gonna do?’

  ‘Aim and pull the trigger?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  As soon as Henry is gone Maggie begins trying to squeeze her hand out through the cuff. It hurts, but if she squeezes her hand tight, and folds her thumb into her palm, she thinks she might be able to get free. If she has enough time.

  Henry walks out of the classroom and into the corridor.

  ‘All taken care of?’ Ron says, pulling himself up from his leaning position against a wall of lockers.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Good.’

  He hands Henry back one of the two rifles, what was once their dad’s .30-06, an old army job that takes an eight-round en bloc clip. When their dad got drunk he would shoot bottles off fence posts with it and tell them, ‘Patton used to say this was the finest piece of military machinery ever made, and you know what? That crazy motherfucker was right.’ Henry checks to make sure it’s loaded, and then nods to himself.

  ‘To the roof?’ he says.

  ‘To the roof.’

  They climb an access ladder in the janitor’s closet, push open a hatch, and make their way out onto the asphalt roof. It is early e
vening now and the sun is low and red in the sky. For some reason it makes Henry think of cracking a fertilized egg into a frying pan. That yellow yolk, that seed of red upon it cooking and dead. The evening sun. He turns in a circle and looks at the deserted town around them. He stops and looks down the long gray strip of asphalt leading to town. He can see for miles. If he had better eyes he could see all the way to the interstate.

  ‘Good place,’ Henry says.

  ‘I know it,’ Ron says. ‘Only the Jackrabbit Inn’s taller, three storeys instead of two, but you can’t see the road leading to town as good.’ Ron nods to his right and says, ‘Let’s take a load off while we wait.’

  There are two lawn chairs sitting out in the red evening light and between them a styrofoam ice chest. Ron walks over and eases into one of the chairs. The thing protests under his weight. He pulls the lid off the ice chest, reaches inside, and pulls out a Coors. He breaks it open. It foams and he sips at it.

  ‘It’s warm,’ he says, ‘but it’s beer.’

  ‘Who’s the other chair for?’ Henry asks.

  ‘For you.’

  Henry sits beside his brother and looks west toward the falling sun. A warm beer rests between his legs. He felt panicky before when he was unarmed and simply waiting to be killed, but now he feels oddly calm. He’s here and ready. Beatrice is safe. Sarah is locked up and incapable of doing any harm. And soon Hunt will be dead.

  He glances over at Ron. ‘It’s been a long time,’ he says.

  ‘Too bad it’s under these circumstances.’

  ‘I think he got Donald. I didn’t tell you that part at the house. It’s the only way he could’ve found out where I was heading.’

  ‘Got Donald?’ Ron says. ‘You mean kilt him?’

  Henry nods.

  ‘You think or you know?’

  ‘I think.’

  Ron shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says, ‘he didn’t kill Donald.’

  ‘I think maybe—’

  ‘Donald’s the only one of us who’s any good. He couldn’t’ve got killed.’

  ‘I think he—’

  ‘Hush up and watch the sunset.’

  ‘I just—’

  ‘Hush up, Henry. You never did know when to keep your goddamned mouth shut.’

  Henry picks up his beer and takes a swallow. He squints toward the sunset, then looks left at the gray road to the south leading from the interstate into town. It is empty.

  By the time they each finish their second beer and grab their third Ron is smiling again.

  ‘I missed you, Henry.’

  ‘I missed you too.’

  ‘This kinda feels like fishing, don’t it?’

  Henry nods. ‘It’s nice.’

  But suddenly the smile is gone from Ron’s face and he is no longer looking at Henry but past him. He nods his head.

  ‘Look it.’

  Henry looks left, to the south, and sees it. A dirty red car coming toward them. At this distance it looks like little more than a matchbox, a toy you could lose under your bed, but it’s Ian Hunt all right. And suddenly Henry’s heart is beating very fast in his chest, a percussive blood-drum pounding out the rhythm of his fear. And even now, even up here with his older brother, two rifles, and a couple boxes of ammunition, the sight of Hunt’s red car coming toward him does make him feel fear. He does not know why, but it does.

  He finishes his warm beer, tosses the can aside, and drops into a prone firing position, up on his elbows, butt of the rifle in his shoulder, legs forming the number four behind him. He leads the red Mustang with the barrel of his gun. It grows larger as it comes nearer. A dusty old beater of a car.

  He breathes in and out in tight, jerky fits. He’s going to have to get himself under control if he’s to make this shot count. A man has only one unexpected shot, and he’d do well to make it count. That means creating a calm in his center. At this distance a small shift can mean putting the bullet off target by a foot or two. The throbbing beat of his heart or a poorly timed inhalation and that is it: he’s missed.

  Ron remains seated in his lawn chair. He takes a loud swallow of his beer, sets it down, then drops to a knee. Henry doesn’t see it, but he hears it, and he knows that’s the position Ron likes to shoot from, for some reason.

  ‘You got him?’

  ‘Hush it up,’ Henry says. ‘Lemme concentrate.’

  ‘So you got it.’

  ‘Yeah, now quiet.’

  As the car gets nearer Hunt’s face becomes visible. As does the face of the man beside him. He is not alone. He brought someone with him. Henry is sure that he was alone when he saw him on the interstate yesterday. Somewhere along the way he picked someone up. He squints, trying to see if he recognizes the man in the passenger seat. Officer Peña. Diego Peña.

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ he says under his breath.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I said lemme concentrate.’

  ‘Then stop cursing and start concentrating.’

  Did Hunt involve the police after all? No, that doesn’t make any sense. Peña’s just a city cop and this is way outside his jurisdiction. Peña doesn’t even count as a policeman this far west. He’s just another si habla español with a gun.

  He looks past the Mustang and into the distance. There are no other vehicles within miles. Hunt and Peña are alone out here. They’re alone out here, and Henry has to make sure they never leave. He has to kill them. Then it’s over.

  He licks his lips. He inhales and holds his breath. The world is a storm but he is its eye. He lines Ian up in his sights.

  The cold metal of the trigger dents the pad of his finger as he puts pressure upon it, then it moves beneath that pressure.

  It is nearly seven o’clock when Ian pulls the Mustang off the interstate; the sun is low in the sky and has lost much of its midday polish and the sky itself is reddening. They drive past a place called the Desert Cafe, and then past a shotgunned sign that says KAISER 8 MILES. Beyond the sign there is no evidence of human life save the road itself, the desert stretching out on either side of them dotted only with shrubbery and Joshua trees. A rattlesnake is stretched out on the other side of the road to catch the last of the day’s sun before slithering off for the night. The corpse of a jackrabbit half a mile past it.

  Neither he nor Diego say anything for a long time.

  Then Ian breaks the silence: ‘You don’t have to be here for this.’

  ‘But I do.’

  ‘You don’t. You have a wife and a son and you don’t have to be here for this.’

  Diego looks at him a moment, and then out toward the desert to his right. Ian glances at him, but he is silent and his head is turned away.

  ‘When I was in grade school,’ Diego says after a while, still looking out his window, ‘around twelve or so, I was hanging out with these older kids at recess. They walked up to this kid sitting on one of the picnic benches next to the basketball courts, just this kid about my age reading a Stephen King novel or something, and started harassing him. ‘Nice shoes,’ someone said. They were the cheap plastic kind and the tops were already cracked. ‘Thank you,’ he said. You could hear the nervous tremor in his voice. I remember that very clearly, that nervous tremor. ‘You find ’em in the trash?’ That kind of thing. I just stood there. I might have even thrown out an insult of my own, you know, to fit in, but I felt ashamed of myself, Ian. My heart felt sick. I’ve never forgotten that.’

  Ian slows down as they approach the town itself. To the right is an abandoned gas station with a tipped-over Coke machine lying dead in its parking lot. Civilization felled. Dead grass juts from cracks in the asphalt. Then they pass a grocery store, also abandoned.

  ‘Jesus,’ Diego says. ‘It’s like a preview of the end of the world.’

  Ian nods. ‘Keep a lookout for any sign of them. I don’t like driving into this at—’

  Thwack.

  For a moment Ian has no idea what happened. Then he sees a small hole in the middle of the windshield. He looks to Diego.
Diego looks back.

  ‘Your ear’s bleeding,’ Diego says.

  Ian touches his right ear. It stings sharply and his fingers come away red. He glances to his seat’s headrest. A hole just big enough to stick your pinky finger into.

  ‘Put your head down,’ he says to Diego as he drops his own. Thwack.

  Pieces of the windshield start to fall around them.

  Ian puts his foot on the gas, panicking and trying to get them out of the line of fire, but accidentally stalls the engine after only ten or fifteen feet. He reaches out to the driver’s side door—he thinks the gunfire is coming from the school to the northeast and wants the car between him and any bullets flying toward him—and pushes it open.

  Then he pushes himself out the car door and onto the road saying, ‘This way, Diego, and keep your fucking head down.’

  He hits asphalt and a terrible pain rips through his chest.

  He looks down. Red spreads quickly across his shirt. The tube tore out. He forgot about it and it tore out. It lies across his seat and hangs down the outside of the car and drips pink pus-blood onto the dirty asphalt. On the end of it, wrapped around it, is the black string that was once stitched through his skin, making the edges of the wound pucker like a tulip, and a pink triangle of the skin itself. When he breathes he hears that punctured-tire wheeze. He puts his hand over his chest to stop the air from leaking out that way. The last thing he needs right now is a collapsed lung.

  Thwack. Thwack.

  Two more bullets hit the car.

  Diego drops to the road beside him.

  ‘Are you shot?’

  Ian shakes his head.

  ‘I need plastic,’ he says.

  ‘Plastic?’

  He closes his eyes and grimaces in pain. Then he opens them again. Diego sits on his haunches, ducked behind the Mustang and looking down at him.

  ‘In the car,’ Ian says. ‘On the floorboard. There should be a small sheet of plastic. Can you get it?’

  Diego nods and climbs back into the car.

  Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

  Silence from within the car.

  ‘Diego?’