The Five

by Robert R. McCammon

  Jeremy can feel the sweat rising from him like a hot mist. He feels sick to his stomach, he knows he’s going to have to puke here real soon, and it is going to be an effort to get to the bathroom before his own storm breaks.

  You know how many kids have been killed by our so-called heroes?

  “What do you know about it?” he asks the TV screen, which by now has gone into another segment in which Felix Gogo is behind his desk in the studio, chatting up some huge-boobed Hispanic actress who sits on a red sofa shaped like a pair of lips.

  The thing is, the video didn’t actually show the soldier shoot the boy. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. All Jeremy knows is that every block was a battleground. Especially in Fallujah, after the Blackwater dudes got waxed. If Jeremy had been the soldier in that video, he would’ve shot the boy. Damn straight. You shoot at me, I take you down. Then again…where was the boy’s weapon? Maybe he’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It happened. A casualty of the mission, no big whoop. You just put your head down and kept going.

  So you want to make people believe our soldiers are shooting kids over there? That for everything they’ve done for this country, every sacrifice they’ve made, you’re making them out to be child-killers?

  We’re working on it, that punk had said.

  Jeremy lowers his head and closes his eyes, very tightly. An old rage has begun to awaken, and he thinks that if he had those lying scummy pieces of shit right here, he would wax them all, one after the fucking other. Just to shut their lying mouths.

  And someone standing behind his right shoulder leans forward and says, in a bitter whisper that conveys both sarcasm and challenge, Are you my pet?

  Jeremy’s head comes up and he looks around, but no one else is there. It was what his old Gunnery Sergeant used to say to him, when Jeremy’s lungs heaved from miles of uphill running, or when he was crawling through the mud in full gear, or doing the endless pushups, or whatever else the Gunny threw at him. Are you my pet? Translation: guy with a pussy last name ain’t gone be no pussy, not in this man’s Corps.

  He can’t wait any longer. He hauls himself up, staggers, crabs sideways, collides with the TV, gets his knees turned the way he wants to go, and starts for the bathroom. The hallway becomes the twisting corridor of a carnival funhouse he thinks he remembers going to as a kid, but this is no fun. Another collision, this time with the wall, and then he gets into the bathroom and falls to his knees in time to throw up about eighty percent of his troubled freight into the toilet, the other twenty percent going onto the floor.

  After it’s over and done and his retching has settled down, Jeremy struggles to focus on his wound. He is too tired to do much about it, and maybe he needs a few stitches but it looks to him as if the blood is crusting over. He can hear the old man in the apartment below knocking on the ceiling with what is likely a broom handle. Probably freaking about all the noise, thought his bathroom was about to cave in. The knocking stops after a few seconds, and Jeremy slowly gets up off the floor, turns on the sink tap and splashes cold water into his face. He wraps a towel around his left wrist. He blinks heavily, looking at the blood-stained water in the tub, the rivulets of blood on the white porcelain, the mess on the floor.

  A job well screwed, he thinks grimly.

  There will not be a journey to the Elysian Fields tonight. There are some things he has to think about, to get straight in his head. He takes the picture of Karen and Nick with him as he totters unsteadily to the bedroom. He flips on the overhead light. He places the picture on the bedside table, and then he takes his Remington 700 rifle with its attached Tasco scope from the closet and he lies in bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, with the weapon cradled across his chest.

  This is my rifle, he thinks. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. My rifle without me is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me.

  Since his honorable discharge, Jeremy has been through the jobs of construction worker, roofing man, yard workman, building supply warehouse security guard, mall security guard, video store clerk, car wash attendant, 7-Eleven clerk, and for the last four months garbage man until he was laid off two weeks ago because of cutbacks in the city budget.

  It has become clear to him, before this night, that the task he is best suited for involves the tool that lies against his chest. The question is: how does someone use that talent—his God-given talent as a Marine Corps sniper—in the world beyond the battlefield? But this night, and the appearance of the death angel wearing Chris Montalvo’s face, has made him think his task is not finished. And that video he saw has made him think he might have an answer to the question.

  A hit man.

  He could be a hit man.

  People needed them, to get rid of their problems. Governments and corporations needed them, to make sure secrets stayed secure and enemies were silenced. Battered wives needed them, to get rid of abusive husbands. There were plenty of movies with hit men in them, doing the necessary thing. Where did they come from? The military, most likely. They were men just like him, trained to set up the target and send the bullet. One shot, one kill. Why not?

  Maximus in Gladiator was a hit man, really. Trained for war, betrayed by his superiors, bloodied but unbowed, the man in the arena sent out to kill or perish.

  That’s me, Jeremy thinks. I can do that.

  He has his rifle and a .45 automatic he bought for personal protection. Plenty of ammo for both of them, right up there on the closet’s shelf. The Remington is not very different from the rifle he used in Iraq. The sight isn’t as powerful, but at the shooting range up north of Temple he could still hit a target at five hundred yards, on most days. He has some money, not a whole lot, but he has a valid credit card. He has his dark blue pickup truck, banged and dented and seven years old but it can still get him where he wants to go.

  All he needs to start his resume is a target.

  Or targets.

  Five of them, maybe.

  If he hit them all, he could write his own ticket. In Mexico, maybe. God knows they could use his talent down there, against the drug lords. Because if he was a hit man, he would only want to work for the right side. And this band…this bunch of punks going on television talking about how United States of America soldiers are killing children in Iraq, about how they should be ashamed and suffer for what they do in the line of duty, just following orders, and sacrificing their futures and the futures of their wives and sons…they are throwing shit on the memory of Chris Montalvo, and every good man who puts his life on the line over there.

  That band is definitely on the wrong side.

  He thinks he needs to sleep now, to let himself rest. He thinks he might go to the pharmacy in the morning, get some disinfectant, gauze and bandages to tend to his wound. He might go eat a good breakfast at the Cracker Barrel on General Bruce Drive. He might head over to the library, go to the Internet room and look up The Five’s website. Check them out, check out their tour dates. Come up with a plan. He thinks he might take his guns and the rest of his money and his credit card to Dallas, to where that band is playing tomorrow night. Scope them out, so to speak.

  A hit man could make a lot of money these days. But first he would have to show any potential employers how good he was at the job. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have enough experience already.

  That band…with their lies…they shouldn’t be allowed to spread their poison. Sure, it’s a free country, God bless it, and everybody could have their own opinion, but this…this goes beyond free speech into hate.

  We’re working on it, that bastard had said.

  It is enemy action, clear and simple. It is a cancer that destroys from within.

  Lying still and quiet, Jeremy suddenly knows he has found a reason to live.

  He closes his eyes, listening
to the thrum of blood through his veins.

  And when the quiet, sarcastic challenge in his head whispers Are you my pet? Jeremy does not hesitate in his answer.

  “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I am.”

  SIX.

  Nomad saw that they had left a porch light on for him. He wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not. He got out of the cab on the dark suburban street and paid the driver. The cab pulled away from the curb. It was on the weeping side of three o’clock. In fact, that was the name of a song Ariel and Terry had written for the CD The Five had recorded last year.

  On the weeping side of three o’clock,

  I walk alone down the city block,

  I don’t know where I’m going and I don’t care,

  ’Cause I know when I go home you won’t be there.

  Had kind of a Loretta Lynn feel to it, made a little jumpy and strange by a pulsing B-52s-type Farfisa sound. Or it might have been something Joe “King” Carrasco and the Crowns could have recorded back in the mid-’80s.

  Anyway, it was that time on Sunday morning.

  The thing about Sunday mornings, Nomad thought as he walked toward the porch steps of a small house in this southwest Dallas neighborhood, is that they followed Saturday nights. It was quiet except for a dog barking maybe a couple of blocks away. The breeze was soft and the moon, just past full, shone down through the trees. The Scumbucket and trailer were parked in front of the house, across from a playground where this afternoon he’d watched Ariel on the swingset. He’d been standing at a window, just watching. He knew she’d tried to get Neal Tapley off the pipe. He knew also that she had cared for Neal in a dangerous way, had let herself be too drawn into his trials and tribulations. She had cared too much for him, is all. People broke your heart, if you let them. If you got too close, and cared too much, you were just asking for it. He had seen too many bands destroyed in the aftermath of what passed as attraction, or need, or love, or whatever you wanted to call it. So as long as he was the emperor, there would be none of that in this band. No matter if you were sleeping in the same room, or in the same bed, and you were together more often than you were not, and you liked the way somebody smelled and you liked their smile and their voice and something about them spoke to the things you were not but wanted to be.

  There would be none of that in this band.

  He went up the steps, opened the screened door and was careful not to let it slam behind him. He hoped the front door was not locked; if it was, he’d be sleeping on the floor out here instead of on the floor in there. He’d find out in another few seconds which it was to be.

  Five hours ago, he’d been in a totally different scene.

  The boom and echo of his electrified voice over the heads of the Curtain Club audience: Hi, guys. Thanks for coming out tonight, and we hope you enjoy the show.

  A quick flurry of drums from Berke, then into the kick-drum tempo at one hundred and twelve beats per minute, a hiss of hi-hat and the first chord, a monstrous D, crashed from Nomad’s tobacco-colored Stratocaster. Ariel met him on the F chord and slid with him to the G on her glossy white Schecter Tempest. Mike took the bottom with his fire-red vintage 1978 Fender. Terry hung back, waiting. Many in the audience knew what song they were hearing, they knew it from the beginning chords because it had been on The Five’s first, self-titled CD, and so they put up a shout as Nomad got up next to the microphone and sang it in his roughest, darkest snarl with a crimson spotlight in his face:

  “Drivin’ south down Main Street, I was takin’ it real slow,

  But in my pimped-up candy-colored ride, how slow could I go?

  Saw the lights flashin’, heard the siren start to blow,

  Didn’t know it then, Lady Law was gonna lay me low.

  Bad cop,

  She was a bad cop,

  She said I was top of my class at bustin’ bad boy ass,

  She was a bad cop!”

  Everytime Nomad sang the words “Bad cop!” their fans in the crowd shouted it back and swigged their beers, a ritual of sorts for this particular song that had started during their first tour. How those things began was anybody’s guess, but Nomad glanced at Ariel and nodded with satisfaction because the wave of energy was lifting him up. Multicolored lights played over him, the different heats of blue, yellow and bright orange. The surface of the microphone on its stand before him glinted and flared as if made of exploding stars. He looked out upon his world.

  “Now lemme tell you, officer, I think you’re mighty fine.

  She said whoa there, boy, I’m smellin’ seven different kinds of wine.

  And if you think a silver tongue’s gonna save your sad behind,

  Step out here right now, and you walk this crooked line.

  Bad cop,

  She was a bad cop…”

  They were the second band on stage tonight, coming up after the Critters. Following their forty-five-minute set would be local favorites Gina Fayne and the Mudstaynes, and headlining at midnight were the Naugahydes, from Los Angeles, had a record deal with Interscope, had a song in the new Adam Sandler flick, and who sprawled around in the Green Room as if they owned it. Nomad used to be able to wear tight leather pants too, when he was twenty. Let them have their moment.

  “You sure do look good, you sure do fill out your blues,

  Now baby, I’m swearin’ it, I haven’t had that much booze.

  She said, stop talkin’ while you can, you got a lot to lose.

  Get down on your knees and count to ninety-nine by twos.

  Bad cop,

  She was a bad cop…”

  The beams of yellow and blue lights crossed in the air above the audience. Everybody was standing, some holding up cameras. Nomad didn’t care if so-called unauthorized videos got onto YouTube. There was a party going on; it was all good. Maybe most of the people here had come to see the headliners, but for right now The Five was front and center, it was their time to show their stuff. Berke’s drums were pounding the room, and then Terry started playing an organ tone that began as high-pitched and beautiful as a cherub’s voice and suddenly dropped as low and nasty as the fevered gibberings of a meth-charged demon.

  “Bad cop!

  She was a bad cop!”

  On the heels of the opener, Terry started up the pulsing Vox-toned intro to one of the ’60s songs he’d brought in, ‘Your Body Not Your Soul’ by the Dutch band Cuby and the Blizzards from 1968, and Nomad launched himself at it as Berke’s Ludwigs thundered at his back and spinning red lights descended from the ceiling. It was another fan favorite, suited to Nomad’s persona and voice, and he could rip the motherlovin’ shit out of it. Ariel stepped out front just after the chorus to demonstrate that her white Schecter Tempest could shred up a storm. The band moved on into the next song on which Nomad and Ariel shared lead vocals, a slow tempo bluesy tune titled ‘Called Your Number’.

  “Called your number,

  Nobody was there,

  Loving you is leading nowhere.

  Called your number,

  Won’t you answer please?

  Or cut loose this pain that is holding me.”

  It ended with a primal scream of guitars, Nomad and Ariel playing in harmony and then at dissonance. Next up was ‘When the Storm Breaks’, which Nomad introduced as their new video from their third and latest CD, called Catch As Kukulkan, on sale at the back with the other merchandise. “I hope we can get everybody out of the warzones and bring ’em back home,” he told the audience as he stood in the white spotlight. He was going to let it go at that, but he couldn’t. “Bush and Cheney are fucking liars, man,” he added, and braced for the impact. Most in the audience whooped and hollered what Nomad took to be agreement; some were silent, and maybe too drunk already to disagree. Then Berke started the beat, Mike came in with the bass and they powered into the tune. It got a pretty good response, which Nomad appreciated since the song was so different from what they usually did.

  At the set’s midpoint, Nomad and Ariel stepped aside for
Berke to do her drum solo that became a duel with Mike’s bassline, and Terry brought the organ growling in to battle with both of them. This display of musical chops always went over well, and Nomad noted that Berke’s female fans—also fans of Gina Fayne, an outspoken citizen of their Nation—were exuberant in their dancing over on the left side of the stage.

  Nomad had read an article on Yahoo once that said Finnish scientists had run a test on a rock band to see how strenuous the work was. They’d found out it was as tough as being a manual laborer for the comparable amount of time. The job of being a guitarist and lead vocalist was like digging a ditch or moving furniture; the drummer worked as hard as a bricklayer, and the bass player’s exertions were similar to those of a butcher. The body temperature went up to a hundred degrees, beads of sweat popped, and the pulse varied between one-hundred-twenty-eight and one-hundred-forty-four beats per minute. As the show wound down, he was feeling every bit of that and they still had the last number and encore—if the crowd wanted one—to do. They finished their regular set with ‘Desperate Ain’t Pretty’, which was a high-octane rocker that ended with a furious rolling blast of toms and cymbals from Berke, then they went off-stage for a couple of minutes to let the stew boil. When they returned and took their places, Nomad thanked the crowd for their response, reminded them that The Five CDs and T-shirts were on sale at the back, and then he intoned into the mike: “The universe is permeated with the odor of kerosene”, which was the opening of the second retro song that Terry had brought in, ‘The Blackout of Gretely’ by the garage rock band Gonn from 1966. It was a dinosaur-stomping earthquaker that Nomad sometimes feared could send a club crowd out into the street in a riot, if they were drunk enough. The song finished up in a dirty fuzz of distorted guitars, Nomad shouted, “Thank you, Dallas, and party on!” into his microphone, Berke threw the drumsticks into her throng of admirers, and The Five abandoned the stage for the next band’s setup, leaving the club’s crew to move their equipment to a holding area.