The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage

by Selznick, Matthew Wayne

  I tore a few slices of butter-top bread out of its plastic bag and shoved them in my mouth. Apparently keeping bread in the fridge wasn’t so weird after all. While I chewed, I found a nearly empty tube of Braunschweiger wrapped in plastic wrap. I tossed the wrap aside and squeezed what was left of the sandwich spread into my mouth.

  Denver had a half-gallon of milk. I gulped from the carton. I also ate a few slices of Swiss cheese, let pickle relish fall out of the bottle and into my mouth, and crunched down two handfuls of baby carrots.

  I made a mess. I felt better.

  Okay.

  Now what?

  I wandered out of the kitchen, hoping my gaze would fall on something useful. Instead, moving past the dining table, I was struck by a powerful sense of déjà vu.

  I had just seen a view very much like the angle from one of the strange surveillance tapes next door.

  I spun in a slow circle. Where in the hell were the cameras hidden? Were they watching me, taping me right now?

  So creepy.

  “Fuck it,” I said to myself. There was no time to care. Wherever my dad was, the PrenticeCambrian guy was getting closer. I had to find them.

  I stepped into the living room. I saw Denver’s old rotary phone on an end table, right next to a small, lined spiral notepad.

  I hunkered down to take a look. There were a lot of white paper scraps stuck in the metal spiral holding the thing together, as if a bunch of pages had been torn out. I flipped the cover back.

  The very first page had some numbers scrawled on it. Was this something?

  18, 15, 90, 93…

  Oh, yeah. This was something. I knew it.

  My love of maps was about to pay off. Over the last year, staring at the interwoven red and blue and black lines of the giant National Geographic map of the United States on my bedroom wall, I’d become pretty familiar with one particular potential “elsewhere.”

  My father was on his way to Missoula, Montana.

  To the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies.

  From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Twenty Two

  With the food in me and my new knowledge, I had a fire under my ass. One way or another, I would retrace their route. Maybe I’d hitchhike. Maybe I’d have to get a bus, or something.

  Whatever. I couldn’t do it without money, and I couldn’t do it in the clothes I was wearing. The woman’s blood was all over me.

  I found Denver’s bedroom, stripped off my bloody sweatshirt, and raided his closet.

  The old man’s flannel shirts didn’t fit too badly. His upper body was built up from decades of pushing himself around in his wheelchair. My chest and shoulders were freakishly broad just because I was a freak. It worked, especially once I rolled up the sleeves.

  My jeans and shoes had some blood on them, but wearing Denver’s pants was out of the question—they were too small. If our upper bodies were similarly unusual, our lower halves were different as could be for the same reasons, kind of.

  I’d have to get by with a fresh shirt and hope people didn’t realize what the other stains really were. Good enough. Clothes, done.

  I’d need money. Denver had an empty bottled-water jug about a third full of coins, and I considered raiding that, but it would take a ridiculous amount of change to get me across three or four states. That would never work.

  I tried to think like someone who would hide a bunch of money in my house. I looked under the mattress. I looked under the cushions of the couch in the living room. I remembered a movie I’d seen and looked in the tank behind the toilet. All of this was pretty much in a mad rush. I felt the clock ticking.

  Denver didn’t have any money.

  With a sigh of resignation, I realized who might. With another slouchy dash, I returned to the house next door.

  The fancy car, of course, was still in their driveway.

  I could take it. Somewhere in their house were the keys. I didn’t have a license beyond my learner’s permit, but shit, what was one more petty crime?

  I had another thing to keep an eye out for in the house. Money and car keys.

  I went back in like I lived there and stopped just inside the door.

  She was still there.

  Cold, on the floor.

  There was no goddamned time to be a baby about it. She had tried to kill me, or might have. Now her partner was going to do the same damn thing to my dad, and he was the only person who could help me with my shit.

  Fuck it.

  Thin bravery aside, I still ended up doing a tiptoe dance around the body.

  Once she was safely behind me, I turned my attention to the question of where I would stash my spending money if I was a couple of badass killers staking out a house.

  I returned to the surveillance room. I opened the closet (empty) and glanced around and behind the assorted video recording boxes, but there was no secret hidey-hole of cash there.

  The next room was the woman’s, if the lacy things in a dresser drawer were any indication. It made me feel a little strange, but I rifled through them. My mother kept fifty dollars in her bra drawer, after all.

  This one didn’t. I couldn’t even find a purse.

  Next up was the partner’s room. Definitely a guy. If his underwear drawer hadn’t clued me in, the pictures I found would have done the job.

  They were under the bed in a shoebox I felt certain would be stuffed with hundred-dollar bills. The pictures made my stomach clench.

  They were all of the woman. Evelyn. All of them had the same blocky quality of the surveillance videos, and it was pretty clear from the way she stood that she had no idea the photos were being shot.

  In one, she was half-undressed, naked from the waist up. I didn’t want to think it, didn’t want to feel it, but seeing her in that snapshot, totally at ease, in the privacy of her bedroom, getting dressed or undressed…no idea her partner was taking secret dirty pictures of her, a whole box of them…

  She looked…vulnerable. Soft. And I’m sorry, I couldn’t help thinking it. She was hot.

  This was the person I killed.

  The person in this picture was dead on the floor in the living room down the hall. Because of me.

  I felt like crying. I shoved the picture back in the box, slammed the lid in place, and put the thing back under the bed instead.

  There was no damn money in the bedrooms, and no car keys. Fine.

  I went into the kitchen. It wasn’t until I was there that I realized it was getting easier to walk past the woman’s body. I didn’t like that. It should always be difficult. Always. Forever.

  As I suspected, the kitchen drawers and cabinets were empty or nearly so. I already knew what was in the fridge. I tried the freezer compartment.

  Two long, wrapped packages of white paper sat on the frosty metal mesh shelf. It looked like they might be pieces of fish.

  I grabbed one and knew right away that it wasn’t frozen fish. I unwrapped it with rising anticipation and found a loose bundle of fifty-dollar bills.

  “Holy fuck,” I breathed. I grinned and started counting it, but I realized the exact amount wasn’t important. What mattered was that it was a shitload of money. I shoved it in my front left jeans pocket.

  I tore open the other package. No fifties there.

  That bundle was of hundreds.

  Into my front right jeans pocket that went.

  I had the money I needed. Where the fuck were the car keys?

  I made another circuit through the house, but after a minute or two I knew I was just avoiding the obvious. After all, where did I keep my own house keys?

  In my pocket, that’s where.

  I would have to search the woman.

  Evelyn. “Her name is Evelyn, Nate.”

  I bent down next to her, my back to her face. It made it a little easier, but there was still the blood in the carpet squishing under my shoes, the awful pallor of her skin, the sheer…weight of her body.

  I looked at her jeans. They were tight on her hips. Th
e pocket on her left side had a kind of keys-shaped lumpiness to it.

  I had to reach into the tight jeans of a dead woman, my fingertips just a few layers of cloth away from the bare skin of her thigh, just a few inches away from her crotch, to get those keys.

  It made me think of being with Lina. I hated it. I hated myself. I felt like some kind of necrophiliac. I mean, not that I wanted to do something to the body, nothing fucked-up like that…but the whole thing was just…

  It was bad.

  I had the keys.

  The phone rang.

  I straightened up fast, my heart in my throat, my skin flushing.

  The phone rang three more times while I stared at it. A click, and the answering machine picked up. I heard Evelyn’s voice, curt and short, instruct the caller to leave a message. The machine beeped.

  I held my breath.

  “It’s Uldare. Lou. Obviously.” The voice on the machine laughed. He sounded a little nervous. “You there? C’mon. Goddamn it. Okay. I’m in…Baker, I think. Baker, Barstow, you know, it doesn’t matter. Based on the gizmo, I’m not too far behind the target. Engaging as planned shouldn’t be an issue. Let the big guy know if he calls. I’ll make contact again after the package is delivered.” He laughed. "’The package is delivered.’ What a crock. Okay, talk to you later, Ev.”

  Click.

  After touching the body, I really, really, really wanted to wash my hands. But that was the guy—that was the partner! Lou.

  And if he was in Baker, he had a pretty damn big head start, and that meant my dad was even farther away.

  I had to go. Time to see if I could drive well enough to keep from attracting the attention of the highway patrol. In my stolen car.

  Andrew Charters – Five

  They’d been on the road for nearly three hours since stopping in Baker for gas and snacks. Andrew had taken a pass on getting out of the van then. Even though he looked more normal than any time in the last fifteen years with his fresh haircut and shave and Denver’s clean clothes, internally Andrew still struggled to hang on to his slippery humanity. Exposing himself to the busy humanity, the oily smells, and the jarring sounds of cars and trucks coming and going at a gas station was a little too much, too soon.

  But by the time they approached the border of Nevada and Arizona, Andrew felt like anything was preferable to the interior of Denver’s van.

  “Need a break!”

  Denver looked over his shoulder from the front passenger seat. “Need to stretch your legs, buddy? Squeeze out the bladder?”

  Sandy harrumphed from the driver’s seat. “Denver.”

  “What?” He laughed. “Oh, I’m so sorry! There’s a lady present!”

  “You’ll watch your step, mister,” she said with a smile in her voice, “if you want anything to do with this lady in the near future.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Andrew couldn’t really follow their banter. The best he could do was catch whiffs of their pheromones in the close air of the van. Their attraction was cloying and increasingly irritating.

  “Need a break!” he said again.

  Sandy said, “He’s not the only one. Let’s fill the tank and stretch our legs.”

  “If you’ll pardon the expression,” Denver said.

  “Get over yourself,” Sandy said.

  Denver chuckled. “One of these days. Hey, don’t stop in Mesquite. Might be easier on Andy if we go somewhere a little less busy.”

  “Good idea.”

  Sandy pulled off Interstate 15 at Old Highway 91 and eased the van up to the pumps of a truck stop / travel center.

  When she turned the engine off, the sudden absence of noise, vibration, and the smell of exhaust made Andrew realize just how tight and tense he’d become. He sighed and clawed for the latch of the back doors.

  Sandy was already there. “Can you help me with Denver’s chair, Andrew?”

  He looked over her shoulder at the expanse of pavement and sandy earth. The horizon was reassuringly far away. The air was warm, almost hot. Andrew thought it would be nice to just run…

  Sandy stared at him. “Hey, there, Andrew.”

  There wasn’t really enough cover in the terrain to suit him, anyway.

  “Yeah,” he said to Sandy. “I’ll help.” He turned to the wheelchair, mounted on its ramp contraption. “Uh…”

  Sandy climbed into the van. “Here.” With her help, they got the chair out of the van and onto the pavement. Andrew couldn’t have repeated the steps twenty seconds later.

  “Gonna…stretch,” he said to Sandy.

  She wheeled the chair around to Denver’s side of the van. “Stick around, all right, Andrew?”

  He grunted an acknowledgment and stepped away from the van. There was a hint of breeze; it felt strange to feel wind without it passing through his tangled hair and beard.

  The air brought the scents of his surroundings into his sensorium: motor oil, ammonia, asphalt, warm tire rubber, sweet engine coolant, stomach-clenching gasoline… cooking grease, weird fast-food meat…sweaty, tired humans…a dog?

  Andrew grinned. Dogs hated him. He confused them. Maybe they even resented him, since he registered as more animal than man to them, but he walked around and went where he pleased like the things that held the leashes and filled the food bowls.

  It wasn’t a nice thing, but he never could resist messing with a dog when he had the chance. Maybe it made him feel a little less like an animal. Maybe he was just an asshole.

  He laughed and inhaled deeply through his nose while keeping his mouth just slightly open and his tongue moist. Information flowed in.

  One of those big, white, blocky house-trucks was parked near the edge of the lot. Andrew loped toward it.

  The dog, tied with a length of rope to its collar, trotted into sight from the far side of the recreational vehicle. It started barking as soon as it saw him.

  Andrew laughed again. The names of dog breeds were lost to him, but it was one of the big ones, easily three feet at the shoulders and probably a couple hundred pounds. It was also all tied up.

  “Sucker.” He laughed and stopped a leap away from the thing.

  The dog’s muscles flexed under its tawny fur as it bunched itself. Its hackles bristled. When it leapt and was yanked with a jerk at the end of its tether, the RV rocked on its chassis.

  Andrew crouched on the pavement, his arms wide and his fingers hooked, nails ready. Grinning, he bared his teeth and growled. He stomped the ground in Denver’s slightly-too-large boots, and his feet jostled uncomfortably within.

  The mild pain of his feet was ruining his fun. Had to lose the shoes. He straightened up and pulled each one off with his feet.

  The dog never stopped barking and pulling on his makeshift leash.

  The side door of the recreational vehicle swung open and slapped against the siding. A slender man with gray hair and a neat beard stepped out.

  “What the hell is…”

  He caught Andrew a little off-balance in the middle of yanking Denver’s socks off his feet. Automatically, Andrew dropped into a low, three-point crouch, balanced on his toes and the fingers of his left hand and ready to leap. He pulled his lips back from his teeth and growled.

  The sight of a barefoot but otherwise clean-cut middle-aged man in crisp new blue jeans and a bright red-and-black checkered flannel shirt growling in a very convincing impersonation of a rabid animal gave the man pause, but not for long. He stepped away from the RV, well within Andrew’s striking range.

  “The hell is wrong with you, messing with my dog like that?” He turned to the beast, who barked on and on. “Massive, shut up! Jesus!”

  Andrew shifted his balance so that he could keep both prey in sight. He could smell the dog’s intent to rip out his throat if he could just break his leash. There was a good chance that rope wouldn’t hold.

  The surprise appearance of the dog’s owner was almost enough to push Andrew over to his more bestial nature. He was ready. Neither of these
creatures was threatening enough to trigger the instinct to flee. It was fight, all the way.

  Andrew, cooped up in Denver’s house all night and in the van all day, wanted it. It had been over a year since he’d cut into a human; a dog, even longer.

  Maybe he’d just pick one and go for it.

  And then there were three. A little boy, maybe six years old, appeared in the open doorway of the RV. His dark eyes popped.

  “Daddy?”

  And then there were four. The mother, even more of a meatless stick than the father. “Dan, what—?”

  The dog barked on. The RV shook.

  The kid hollered, “Mommy!” and started bawling.

  Andrew decided on the dog. Those people were no challenge at all. No meat, no risk.

  He barked a challenge. The animal seemed to realize the human was crazier than it was. It recoiled and whined, its head low.

  Andrew tensed to leap.

  “Andy! Lay the hell off, right now!”

  Denver’s voice and familiar scent cut through Andrew’s hunter focus like a knife in the belly. He jerked up and back, nearly colliding with Denver in his chair.

  “Get off of me, you idiot!”

  Denver shoved him hard. It was enough to make Andrew stumble and nearly fall. The sudden vulnerability, coupled with Denver’s no-bullshit attitude, fully shattered Andrew’s animal persona.

  He saw Sandy stride past. The dog resumed barking, but Andrew made out Sandy offering strident apologies to the family.

  Denver wheeled into his field of vision. “Get back to the van, Andrew. Now.”

  Andrew ran back to the van the fastest way he knew how: on all fours. He leapt through the open back doors and closed them behind him.

  Inside the otherwise silent interior of the van, he could still hear the dog, whining now, confused and worked up.

  Andrew sat on the wheelwell and shook. He felt frustrated and ashamed to the point of pain.

  A door opened, and Denver lifted himself up and into the driver’s seat. Sandy opened the back doors and got the wheelchair secured without asking for Andrew’s help.