Metro

by Stephen Romano

  “Tell me who it was!”

  Jackie knows he’s dead if he tells.

  Jackie knows he’s dead if he doesn’t tell.

  Jackie’s just dead, period.

  He remembers that third bullet coming in like a mad bee, hitting him just below the chin. The tiny wound opening near his larynx, sending blood down his throat, human shrapnel choking him hard, making him forget about the gun in his waistband. More strobes. More flashes. The whole room gone crazy now. Everyone falling down dead before they even know what’s happening. Five guys, his father’s best friends, his dirty extended family of assholes, all ripped to hell in terrible freeze frames. Blood splattering across a hanging light fixture. The walls painted sickeningly in oozing, glowing, gory red. And in the center of it all . . .

  “So fast . . . he moved . . . so fast . . .”

  His life, coming in on fast-forward now.

  Twenty-five years, working for his father.

  My life, on fast-forward . . .

  Jackie-Boy Schaeffer was born into the world through pain, and he can still actually remember being born. Nobody ever believes him when he says that, but it’s damn true. His mind is a steel trap and a vast computer bank. He was three years old when he learned how to work a Mac computer, three and a half when he built a website for his father, four years old when he realized his father was a drug dealer and a killer. Five years old when he realized his importance in Daddy’s machine, and that Daddy’s way of loving him was to treat him like an adult, make him part of it, feed him pills that made his senses sharp and his dreams hot and awful. Jackie never went to school. Never met kids his own age. But he was—is—brilliant beyond belief. A prodigy. The years fell off the calendar and the money rolled in. He was ten years old when he realized he’d probably never get laid. He wanted to be an adult in the way that puppy dogs want to be human. For five years, he operated the family business, set up the dope runs, cataloged the cash, measured pounds of white stuff and black stuff and green stuff. He spied on people who spied on him. He developed a sixth sense for police tails and eyes in the sky. He knew everything about how it worked by the time he was seventeen. He met the Monster Squad and they terrified him. Eddie Darling and Darian Stanwell, the worst of the worst.

  But that’s just the way it is, kid.

  Be a man. Or at least pretend.

  That’s Daddy talking, even now, as the life runs from him . . .

  He was still just a kid when he met Mark Jones for the first time. The first thing Jackie talked about with Mark was how cool it was that someone made a movie out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He read Mark’s weird monster stories and thought instantly that his writing was passionate and transcendent, and it plugged into a deep longing and isolation that they’ve both experienced within themselves for most of their lives—that solitary brilliance that keeps them from being like other people, even when you have your own scene finally, when the party never ends, when enough good dope hurls you through the mists of revelation after revelation about the way things really are, and about the true faces people wear in dark corners. This is real, this is right, this is something burned in his soul and consecrated by the passing of time, the sweet strains of music that never ends, the wild laughter of friends that never go away, coming at him now in his memory like sweet bullets and hard fists, making him so happy, then leaving him hard, faster now, like the deep canyons of understanding and camaraderie forged in the wee hours of the Kingdom, when all saints search for a reason to exist and a kindred spirit, Jollie on her political soapbox at five in the morning, making Jackie fall in love with her for the ten-millionth time with that thing she does, Andy strumming his guitar and telling him all you need is love, and Mark is always there, always the brilliant, sad master of the Kingdom, his best friend . . . his one true love . . . deep down where it matters the most . . .

  Mark, who turned into something awful.

  Something made of iron and gunpowder.

  Just like all the others, when it’s all over.

  Even worse than the others . . .

  . . . no.

  Don’t think about that now.

  Hold on to the years.

  Hold on to what’s good.

  He tries so hard to do it, even as the pain sleets back in and chokes him bad and he drifts away from the details of his life. Until only impressions remain. The smell of summers in Austin, which are always the same, but each tinged with something new, as the phases of your life shift and modulate, as the drugs became purer and easier to get, the ladies who smell so sweet . . . so many faces . . . swirling in a cosmic shitter now, surging toward the moment . . .

  When it all blows up in his face.

  The next bullets—two in his right leg, another one scraping just across his right side, as he finally kisses the concrete floor, bathed in grotesque glowing red from the bloody hanging lightbulb. The unstoppable killer in the center of the room, that THING that used to be his best friend, swiveling and firing again, never moving from that one place where he stands, like a statue sentinel given terrifying, cyclonic movement—bang bang bang bang BANG. And as Jackie lies there on the floor, he feels the absurdity of his computerized mind cataloging the number of shots that happened, including the six that almost made him dead. Twenty shots in total, from two different weapons, one in each hand. Flashes and flashes. Pain, seeping in from all sides, clogging backwash, making it so he can’t get up at all. That and the shattered leg, throbbing and awful . . .

  . . . and Mark is about to finish him off, standing over him.

  The gun is aimed right at Jackie’s head.

  Mark is saying he’s sorry.

  He’s a monster.

  He’s always been a monster.

  But Mark doesn’t ever fire that last shot—the mercy kill that would have spared him all this pain.

  Mark doesn’t get a chance to.

  Because the door explodes open.

  And more men run in.

  And more shots happen and . . . and . . . AND . . .

  The bad lieutenant leans in again, and his voice is still low and almost distorted, but Jackie gets the gist—the kid’s a smart one, even full of lead poisoning.

  Mark, That wasn’t you.

  That was someone else.

  A robot, a pod person—IT JUST WASN’T YOU.

  The bad lieutenant asks again who did this, who hit us, where’s the stuff?

  And this time Jackie doesn’t say anything.

  Instead, he starts crying, just before the big black seeps in from all sides.

  He sees the face of the monster.

  That cast-iron Terminator in a room full of gangsters who never saw it coming.

  Mark.

  I love you.

  It wasn’t you who did that.

  I’ll never believe it was you.

  Never.

  He speaks the words.

  He says them out loud.

  At least that’s what it seems like.

  Mark . . . Andy . . . Jollie . . .

  The bad lieutenant leans closer.

  “Where are they?”

  Jackie tells him.

  And the bad lieutenant is punching a number into his cell phone before the words finish boiling over the poor kid’s lips . . . and another very bad man is answering his call even before the kid passes out all the way.

  17 minutes and COUNTING . . .

  The other very bad man is Eddie Darling.

  Eddie Darling is really pissed off.

  And when Eddie Darling gets really pissed off about something, bad things tend to happen very quickly.

  The cop on the other end of the phone gives him Mark Jones’s name. Gives him Andy’s name. Give him Jollie’s name.

  And an address.

  Eddie looks at the men standing in front of him, blows smoke from
a chewed-to-hell cigar, and says just four words:

  “Hard search. No survivors.”

  Marnie smiles at his boss, his heart jumping for joy. He knows his brother will be a little disappointed that he missed out on some fun hands-on action this morning, but Darian has been overworked this week, and Marnie is a night owl anyway.

  Darian takes bad news well, after all.

  Not like Eddie.

  Who sits there, fuming, surrounded by smoke.

  15 minutes and COUNTING . . .

  At first, Jollie is scared for Mark, then she wants to know what the hell he’s talking about, then she’s angry because he won’t say anything. Instead he repeats the same thing he’s been saying for five minutes:

  “I love you, Jollie. I’ve always loved you. Please come with me now.”

  “Mark . . . what have you done? Did you hurt someone?”

  “I can’t tell you anything, Jollie. Not yet. But I can promise you that it’s bigger than both of us. Bigger than anything you’ve ever imagined. I love you and I know you love me. Please . . . please come with me.”

  His voice lulls her.

  His voice always lulls her.

  He’s right—she loves him so damn much.

  She takes a breath, feeling stronger, the warmth of Mark’s room filling her with easy comforts: the Christmas-tree lights, twittering and blinking a multicolored galaxy of movie stars and cartoon cels, flyers for old eighties bands like A-ha and Mötley Crüe—everything that’s classic and awesome, just because they say it should be. Johnny Depp scowls down from the ceiling in black-and-white, his eyes glowing like dull gray jewels, a poster for Dead Man she gave him for Christmas last year. This room is filled with gifts, like Mark’s loving gaze, his desperate eyes. Like the Star Wars T-shirt on his chest, peeking out from under the flannel overshirt, also stained brown. All of this stuff will be nothing but reminders very soon. She can feel him going away from her, and it’s terrifying.

  “Mark . . . please . . . please tell me what’s going on.”

  He shakes his head gently.

  And she clenches her teeth. “Dammit . . . stop being so goddamn melodramatic! Talk to me, Mark!”

  He leans forward and kisses her. She pulls away before he gets very far with it. “Mark . . . you know I love you . . . But, I . . .”

  “It’s Andy, isn’t it?”

  Her mouth yaps open. “What? How can you say that now? You’re pulling that shit on me?”

  “Jollie . . . it’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not! It’s not okay! It’s not fucking okay!”

  He moves toward her as she starts to freak, and he gets slapped for his trouble. Then she breaks down and almost starts to cry, coming home in his arms. Giving up. She feels the passionate hammer of his heart in his breast, the moment like dull gray fireworks . . . and then she really does start to cry, looking up into his sad eyes, seeing nothing but truth there, the nerdy-classic world they made together with all their friends and lovers. This really is it. She will never see him again. The ring is still in her pocket and she knows he loves her so much. She could let him have her, just this once. It would be better than losing him forever.

  And so she kisses him.

  And it goes like this:

  13 minutes and COUNTING . . .

  The mad rush of the Molly floods back in again, making Jollie want him and fear him in the same moment, creating more of the safe illusion deep in her heart that this is just a loving trick to get her in bed, and she lets him get away with it and kisses him hard, and it’s all a blur for her, as her hands grip his waist, and the waves slam into her heart again, and she is helpless in the riptide, powerless to stop herself, and her full breasts swell against his chest like throbbing fruit as the two of them press their bodies together, and the jangling of her belt buckle and the soft whizz of his zipper coming undone are like music that reaches her from very far away, but it also turns her on, and his hands are there, in that place she’s gone herself so many times, thinking about him, thinking about Andy, all the free love and flower power and good vibrations of the entire world blossoming between her legs, and she slides out of her loose-fit jeans so easily, slides them right over her lace-up shoes, and she is naked from the waist down, and they are freefalling now, falling backward through space and time, back through the years, remaking everything, together in a temporal womb, caught up in the silent, endless spaces between spoken words, and she lands on him, and her mouth is in his, heaving sighs down his throat, gripping his head with both hands, moving across him mercilessly, using her entire body to make a good-bye, even though this is just a game . . . but it’s the best game yet, Mark’s most amazing game . . . and she knows it means he loves her, and his skin feels so amazing now, as she pulls his flannel shirt over his head, leaving his chest covered only by the faces of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, lost siblings breaking sacred trust in this amazing, terrible, ugly, desperate, passionate, perfect moment, and his fingers move under her blue blouse, massaging the creamy freckled terrain of her back and chest, and she’s unbuttoning herself quickly, and his pants are off and her jeans are on the bed next to them . . . and as he pushes inside her, it feels so amazing, so absolutely right . . . and in the rush, she wonders with a shriek of sheer, white-hot amazement why in the hell she’s never allowed herself this, and it all seems so romantic and girlie and just-like-a-poet to have waited all those years, just like that traditional lady who’s always lived under the surface of her masked rebel self, and they are pressed so tight together now, blasting through each other so hard and so fast that it’s like they are one person, one being, one idea, and ideas are invincible, eternal, bulletproof, just like they are in the movies . . . and they are the movies . . . they are fucking so hard . . . and I love you, Mark, please don’t leave me, don’t leave us, fall with me now, fall from grace with the entire world . . .

  The climax blows through both of them.

  It’s the most intense feeling either of them has ever known.

  It’s better and bigger and badder than anything.

  Jollie feels the weight of an entire life lift away from her shoulders and her heart, liberating her whole body, delivering a peace beyond peace. Mark feels the horror of so much death and deception and the strain of his trained muscles and mind snap like violin strings, and all he wants to do is die in her arms, forever. And so he does die.

  And they both cry out and surrender to it.

  Going straight down into nothingness.

  Into a sleep that never seems to end.

  5 minutes and COUNTING . . .

  The sergeant kicks Mark in the ribs and tells him he’s weak.

  Get up, boy. Get up now, you weak little shit.

  The smell of gun metal and the sharp sting of open wounds on his feet and face are like seething, evil insects.

  His legs and his arms are like corded rubber, abused and throbbing.

  Get up, now! The enemy never sleeps! Get the hell up!

  He realizes he is sleeping . . . realizes he is dreaming . . . realizes he’s fallen deep into an abyss that has robbed him of all his strength . . .

  Get the hell up!

  Must wake up. Must wake up NOW . . .

  1 minute and COUNTING . . .

  Dull gray fireworks hit him hard as he comes back, the sound of glass breaking in the next room, a rough, open hand slapping his face. His eyes jerk wide awake so fast that it feels like something rips his skin and his brain all at once.

  And then he sees the two men with guns and knows he’s completely screwed.

  . . . 0:00

  2

  zero hour

  A hot blonde girl in a Spider-Man T-shirt sits on her knees, six feet away from Mark, with an automatic pistol pointed right at her head.

  The two men stand on either side of her, one of them aiming the gun, and he knows they aren�
�t Razzle’s people, just from a two-second look. They’re wearing black suits, like spooks, and they have half-there faces that bleed into the dark room, white teeth like sharks, smiling and gnashing. The one on the left is a little taller, and his voice is like mud and rocks:

  “Your girlfriend is cute. A little bit on the hefty side, but what the hell? In for a penny, in for a pound, right?”

  He nods at Jollie, who still lies sleeping on the bed.

  Mark tries to move, and realizes he can’t. The Xanax oozes like a dull accusation in his system but he deals with that part easy—like a pro.

  The real problem is far worse.

  His hands are cuffed behind him with steel bracelets, and a blade is jammed into the small of his back.

  Another two men back there, one holding the knife, the other holding a gun barrel to the side of his head—feels like a monster Desert Eagle automatic, with a silencer. He realizes he’s on his knees, on the floor, facing the blonde girl. Four shooters, all in black, all cruel mad-dog professionals—and he closes his eyes again and curses himself, wanting to go back to sleep.

  “Now this little lady,” says the guy with the mud-and-rocks voice, leaning in to steal a kiss from Spider-Girl, who recoils and shivers, her voice gagged back by a leather strap, her eyes giant like searchlights. “Now she’s a piece of talent. Yummy, baby.”

  He licks her ear and laughs a little.

  Pulls a small device from his pocket—something that looks like a black pack of cigarettes, with a pulsing red light on it.

  A camera.

  “Time for the big show, lady,” says Mud Rocks, aiming the lens at Spider-Girl.

  Mark can’t really see his face—Mud Rocks is still just a dark outline in the room. But he sees the outline nod to his buddy with the gun, who crouches in front of Spider-Girl, putting the business end of the silencer against her chin.