The Last Day

by John Ramsey Miller

  “I'm going to go out and get a signal,” Todd said. “Two hard taps close together followed by a third after three beats is me. Anybody else, don't open the door.”

  “Okay,” Ward said.

  When Todd slipped outside, Ward locked the front door behind him. Through the window, Ward couldn't see anything, but he imagined Todd, gun at his side, walking up the driveway. He moved back into the den where the candle, set in the fireplace, illuminated the women's faces. Natasha had the prototype in her hands, rolling the tires absently.

  “I bet you wish you hadn't come,” Natasha said to Leslie.

  “Don't be silly,” Leslie replied. “We're safe with Todd here.”

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  Alice huddled at a public phone kiosk, hunched over the “M” section of a phone book, her finger finding the exact address she wanted. She used her GPS to find her way to his house. Her indignant anger grew as she drove slowly past the McCartys’ mailbox three times before she made up her mind to drive in. When the narrow driveway turned she stopped, her path blocked by a black pickup truck. She got out of her car and knocked on the empty truck's window. She couldn't see anybody around. What idiot would park that way so nobody could get in? Enclosed by the trees, the property beyond her headlights was dark and creepy It reminded her of one of the many horror films she'd seen over the years. She told herself movies were not real, but she was.

  Thinking better of her late- night visit, Alice started to turn around. Backing between two trees, she was jolted when her rear tire fell into a hole. When she tried to pull forward, the car wouldn't move. She gave it more power and the wheel spun loudly, but it didn't budge. She slammed her palms against the steering wheel and cursed.

  Turning off the lights, she threw open the car door and rooted in her black tote until she found her cell phone. She flipped it open and was greeted by her lighted screen and an absence of bars. “Fuck!” she yelled, stamping her feet on the floorboard.

  Alice cut the motor, climbed out of the car, slammed the door, walked to the truck, and stood there in the darkness listening to the buzzing of the insects. An overcast blocked what moon there was, and she stood there afraid and confused.

  In the darkness, she could barely make out the asphalt driveway that ran through the woods beyond the truck, and she cursed silently because she didn't have a flashlight in her car.

  Taking the black tote bag from the passenger's seat in the Corolla, she went around the truck, moving away from the stuck automobile, opening her cell phone to give herself some illumination.

  Walking cautiously, she rounded the next bend and was beginning to be able to see better as her eyes grew increasingly accustomed to the darkness.

  She heard a noise off to her right—a slight rustling sound, like a wolf stalking her—and she held up her cell phone, straining to see what had made the noise. In the weak light Alice could just make out something reflecting the bluish glow in the leaves. She moved cautiously, inching toward the shape.

  She heard a door closing and turned toward the sound. She didn't see any light from that direction, but to her left she could make out a shape over the rise—a roof? Hearing footsteps behind her, Alice started to scream, but a strong hand closed around her mouth as an arm cinched her waist, and she was lifted into the air, kicking off her sandals in the process. She kicked against her assailant, hitting his legs with her heels, but to no effect.

  “Shhhhhhhhh,” the man whispered into her ear. “Cut the crap.”

  Alice closed her eyes and the fast- moving man carried her like a doll toward the house.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  Even with the gun in his hand, Ward had never felt so helpless. The weapon should have given him a sense of control, but it felt like a metal toy. He tried to imagine himself aiming the gun at Louis Gismano and pulling the trigger as Gismano ran at him, knife raised, but the image ended with Gismano dodging the bullets and killing Ward, then everybody else in the house. The idea of Gismano killing Ward didn't bother him one tenth as much as the image of him killing Natasha and Leslie.

  Todd was their only hope. If Gismano wasn't stopped—if he escaped—how long would it be before he returned? They couldn't pay for protection forever, and if Todd's contacts couldn't find him, who could? He thought about a monster defiling Barney's room and his memory by stealing the bear and leaving a casket with an effigy of their dead child lying glued in the small black box. Ward breathed deeply, willing away his nausea.

  Natasha sat on the couch, her arm resting lovingly on his back. Leslie sat in a leather chair, staring at the flickering candle in the fireplace. He heard Todd's musical rap on the door. Natasha jerked, straightening.

  “That's Todd,” Ward said, standing.

  He moved to the front door just as Todd knocked again, tapping out his signal authoritatively.

  Ward opened the door to the sight of a girl suspended in the air, floating, but he realized that the blackened investigator Todd was supporting her weight, his blackened hand over her mouth. Seeing her was such a surprise, it took Ward a second to put the child into context.

  “Alice?” he asked. At the sound of his voice, Alice opened her eyes and abject fear changed into pure relief. The hand left her mouth.

  “Mr. McCarty, make him put me down!” she said. Todd pushed by and entered the house, carrying her past Ward, who, after locking the big door, followed them into the den.

  “Who's this?” Natasha asked.

  Todd released Alice, who stood barefoot, looking first at the women, and back at Ward.

  “What are you doing here, Alice?” Ward asked her.

  “Alice Palmer?” Natasha asked.

  “There's a truck blocking your driveway and I got stuck trying to turn around, and I came up the driveway and this psycho kidnapped me.”

  “Why are you here?” Todd asked her.

  “Because he stiffed me.” She looked accusingly at Todd. “Did you think I wouldn't notice, ass bite?”

  “Stiffed you?” Todd was genuinely perplexed.

  “You gave me one thousand dollars, not two.”

  Todd reached into his pocket and took out an envelope. Opening it, he shook his head and showed it to her. He laughed awkwardly. “I'm sorry. You're right. I gave you the wrong envelope. This one was supposed to be yours.”

  “You ought to give me both of them then,” she said, holding out her hand. “Since you inconvenienced me and kidnapped me you should pay another thousand.”

  “I agree,” Natasha said. “Give her the three thousand and let her go.”

  Alice looked at Todd. “So, why are you all sooty, and why's it like so freaking dark in here?” she asked, shoving the envelope into the black carry bag. “Can you like call somebody to come get my car out of that hole?”

  “Our phones aren't working,” Ward said.

  “Mine didn't work either,” she said, putting her black cloth bag on the couch. “Why would you live where you can't have a phone?”

  “How did you get here?” Ward asked her.

  “I got your address from the phone book,” she said. “I have a GPS.”

  “Did you steal it?” Leslie asked.

  “My mother bought it for me for my birthday so I wouldn't get lost. You know,” she said, looking at Leslie, “you could be nicer. You don't even know me.”

  “What you did was unforgivable,” Leslie told her. “You took advantage of Mr. McCarty, and you caused the McCartys both a great deal of unnecessary anxiety.”

  “My bad,” Alice said.

  “Alice,” Ward said. “You came at a terrible time. There is a man outside who wants to kill my wife.”

  “Which one is the wife he wants to kill?”

  “I'm both,” Natasha said dryly.

  “Nice to meet you.” Alice chewed on a fingernail for a second. “And he could have killed me?”

  “Yes,” Todd said. “I doubt he wants to kill you, but since you're here, who knows. He won't want to leave any witnesses.”

  �
��So you like saved my life?” she asked Todd.

  Ward nodded. “He probably did.”

  “Gismano won't harm her,” Leslie said. “Will he, Todd?”

  “He's not killing anybody tonight,” Todd said. “I'm assuming Thumper either is neutralized or isn't who I thought he was.”

  He took his Colt from its holster. “I'm going to work my way away from here until I can get a signal, and make some calls. I need to give my guys a heads- up on what we're facing here now and get some deputies with guns out here.”

  “Maybe you should stay here until they come.” Natasha said. “If we stay together, with you and Ward armed, wouldn't that be preferable to splitting up?”

  “Maybe Natasha's right,” Ward said.

  “I agree,” Leslie said.

  “We're not voting,” Todd replied. “Gismano could kill my guys if I don't warn them. If Thumper is Gismano, he could ambush them because they know him. Whatever his plan is, I need to short- circuit it. There's a definite range on jamming devices. So, once I get out I can make the calls, and even if we don't stop him tonight, it'll be over for now.”

  Ward followed Todd to the door.

  “I'll go around and make my way to the subdivision back there. Even if the cell doesn't work, there are phones in the houses. It's probably safer than trying to go to the road down the driveway. I suspect he'll be out there waiting for one of us to try that way. I'll knock on the door when I get back.”

  In the darkened garage, Ward triggered the roll- up door closest to them. He waited until

  Todd, .45 in hand, bowed down and slipped out into the darkness before he rolled the door back into place.

  SIXTY-NINE

  Ward looked out across the backyard from the dark kitchen. He thought he saw a shape moving fast up the slope beyond the pool. In the den Alice had seated herself on the hearth. She was staring into a candle.

  “This candle is about shot,” she said. “You got any more?”

  “Yes,” Natasha said. “In the kitchen. I'll get one.”

  “I'll get it,” Leslie said. “Where are they in the kitchen?”

  “The drawer next to the fridge,” Natasha said. “There are a dozen or more.”

  When Leslie came back, she lit a long candle from the dying one, and pressed it into a vacant ring in the candleholder. Ward noticed the large butcher knife in her hand.

  “Just in case,” she said, holding up the knife so the blade caught the light. “I, for one, will not go gently into that good night.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Natasha said. “What time is it?”

  Ward glanced down at his watch. “Ten,” he said.

  “Do you have a flashlight or anything, besides that candle?” Alice asked.

  “Yes,” Ward said, “but we don't want the guy out there to be able to see what we're doing in here.”

  “God, this is all so freaky, don't you think?”

  “Yes, Alice,” Natasha said, looking at Ward. “We certainly do.”

  “So, you're like a little-kid doctor? And what're you?” she asked Leslie.

  “I'm a secretary,” Leslie said.

  “Oh,” Alice said. “So you're like a typer?”

  “Yes,” Leslie said. “And also a filer, and a phone answerer.”

  “Cool,” said Alice. “How much money do you make?”

  Even in the low light, Ward saw Leslie roll her eyes.

  “You know, my mother went off the deep end and I need some funds quick, so I sure could use a job.”

  “Too bad we don't have any jobs that entail stealing our inventory,” Leslie said.

  “So, Mr. Hartman told me your kid died,” Alice told Ward. “You didn't tell me that. You definitely told me you didn't have any kids. I remember stuff like that.”

  “I didn't want to go into it at the time.”

  “When did he die?”

  “It happened a year ago today,” Natasha said.

  Ward thought about the circle around the date on the calendar in the kitchen.

  “If you'd have told me the truth, I wouldn't have taken his toy car, you know. I'm not heartless. I'm basically a good person.” She took a picture from the mantel and held it so she could see it in the candlelight. “Is this him?”

  “That's him,” Ward said. “His name was Barney.”

  “He was a cute kid. Let me ask you something,” Alice said. “You remember drawing my picture on the plane?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, something happened to the picture. And I really liked it a lot. What I wonder is, could you like maybe draw me again?”

  “I'd be happy to,” Ward said.

  Alice looked at Natasha. “He can really draw people good. Did you know that?”

  “Yes,” Natasha said. “Ward's a very talented man.”

  “Well, he should draw all the time. He could like sell pictures of people. He could make some money drawing like kids and stuff. I really wish I hadn't torn it up. It was just because that investigator dude pissed me off. Do you mind me talking so much? I mean, I could shut up.”

  “No.” Natasha smiled warmly. “It's distracting.”

  “So, do you like living out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  “Most of the time the inconvenience is convenient,” Natasha said.

  “That doesn't make any sense,” Alice said.

  “Well, when you're out here, it takes effort and energy to go anywhere. So instead of going to stores and spending money when you get bored, you don't leave home. And it's isolated, which is a good thing most of the time.”

  “But like if you need the cops, like now, they're a long way off,” Alice said. “Wild animals make me nervous. Not to mention murderers running around in the woods. Why is a killer trying to kill you?”

  “He thinks we did something to him, which we definitely didn't do.”

  “Like what?”

  “He thinks Dr. McCarty killed his son,” Leslie said.

  “I thought your son was dead?” Alice said, confused.

  “Our son died because of an accidental electrocution. The man outside's son was hit by a car, and I operated on him. There was something else wrong; and he died from that. He didn't die because of anything I did, but because I didn't know he had something else wrong. There was no way for anybody to know.”

  “So, just tell him that,” Alice said.

  “He wouldn't believe it,” Leslie said.

  “Is he crazy?” Alice asked.

  Leslie said, “Seems pretty obvious he's past the reasoning stage.”

  SEVENTY

  Cupping his hands to keep light from leaking, Louis Gismano used his penlight to look at the picture of Gizmo one last time. “This is for you, little guy,” he told the picture. Placing the photo in his front pocket, Louis stood from his crouching position and raised his hands over his head to stretch his arms and loosen his tense shoulder muscles. He had just dragged a warm corpse, now lying at his feet, deep into the woods. Opening the dead man's cell phone, he broke it in half and, winding up like a major-league pitcher, threw it off into the woods, hearing it shatter against a tree trunk.

  For the past twenty years Louis had exercised religiously, even doubling up on his repetitions since leaving the Army because if a man ever slows down, his reflexes rapidly go to shit. He'd seen it happen, and slowed reactions meant the difference between life and death—a bullet slamming home because you didn't move fast enough, or a sudden scraping of the tip of a blade nicking the inside of your spine as it sliced through your neck.

  Someday no amount of exercise or vitamins would help maintain his speed, strength, or reflexes. Often he tried to look down the road at his life- to- be, but he could never see anything of it. Before Gizmo's death, he often pictured himself watching his son grow up, saw Gizmo joining the military to follow in his father's footsteps, driving a car to take his girlfriend on a date; he imagined Gizmo's bachelor party, and the grandchildren he would have bounced on his knee, taught to shoot a gun, use a kn
ife. After Gizmo died, there had been nothing in the future.

  Gizmo had been full of life and laughter. Louis's wife had been a good mother to the boy, except for that one lapse in judgment that had cost their son his life. Louis told himself that he cared that she had screwed Ross only because it had put their son in a position to be killed by some worthless punk. That had sealed her fate, more than the betrayal of their vows. That betrayal was something he understood. He'd slept with a lot of other women to satiate his needs, and what was a little sperm toss- and- catch between friends? He could have forgiven her, and allowed her to live, had it not been for what her actions had done to Gizmo. Everybody who had a part in his son's murder had to pay for that involvement, even the woman who had given birth to him.

  This was just another war.

  In war you fight and you win, or you die trying.

  In war there are casualties.

  In war there is justice.

  In justice there is truth.

  Louis moved rapidly around to the garage, unlocked the garage door electronically, and using his back silently raised the door two feet and rolled beneath. Before cutting the landline, he'd called the alarm company, posing as their local installer, to tell them the system would be offline from ten until around midnight. He had prepared for his mission, as a good soldier would. He pulled out his knife and, moving from car to car in the dark garage, stabbed each of the twelve tires, releasing the trapped air in a dull whoosh.

  There were now three women and one man inside the house waiting for Todd Hartman to rush in and save the day. But Hartman was gone, and the only other person the people inside the house would ever see on this earth was Louis Gismano.

  He was still crouching behind the BMW when the lights inside the garage suddenly came to life, so he froze, holding the knife at the ready.

  Seconds later, when the garage lights went out, Louis moved to the kitchen door and stared through the glass into the house. He saw the golden pulsing glow from the candle in the den visible through the kitchen doorway. Knife in hand, he readied himself to move into the house and get on with the task at hand.