Simon Rising

by Brian D Howard

He found one apartment belonging to a family of four. The man’s clothes were a close enough fit. He upgraded to a pair of jeans and a dark gray cable-knit sweater.

  In the process, he discovered the diaper overflowed into the sweatpants. He cleaned the disgusting mess in the bathroom surprised it didn’t stink far more than it did. He showered himself down with water he only felt when some of it sprayed in his face. Rinsing his hair while he was at it soothed him. The water on his scalp was a luxury he lingered in once he got it adjusted warm enough. “Keep the stitches clean,” he suggested out loud.

  A recent-looking red bruise colored his right knee. Where did that come from? He did not recall where or when he might have bumped it. He frowned, unsure what to make of it.

  He sprayed the tub copiously when he was done. Hopefully the woman would never know what he just flushed down her tub drain. He ran extra water to wash things further down the pipes, just to be on the safe side.

  Drying himself with one of the fish-and-seaweed-themed towels turned out to be a bigger challenge than he expected. The towel needed to move in more than just straight lines. Manipulating just a couple of points, as if he were holding it in his hands, turned out to be too much. He ended up needing to visualize the entire surface of the towel and move different parts of it in different directions. It took a lot of focus, and he had to dab himself with toilet paper afterwards to confirm he was dry enough.

  Even still, the jeans clung where he missed spots. They were not a perfect fit, but they fit no worse than the sweatpants and were still an upgrade. He searched around until he found a belt to help them stay up better. It was clearly, to him at least, a woman’s belt—silver and sparkly—but it was all he found. It would do for now.

  “Beggars can’t be choosers, I guess.”

  He took the soiled diaper-and-sweatpants mess and stuffed it deep in the kitchen garbage—a big blue plastic can with plenty of room. Hopefully their garbage day was coming soon and they would get rid of it before noticing the odor. Of everything he lost—his memories, his sense of touch over almost his whole body—it was control of his bladder and bowel that pained him the most.

  Someone came into the building and was riding the elevator up. He set aside the hurtful train of thought and followed their progress to the floor he was on. It was time to head back. Whichever apartment the person came to would still be too close. He partly jumped and partly flew back across the street.

  In another apartment he found a small backpack filled with college textbooks. He emptied it onto a bed and put his few belongings into it. That made things much easier to carry with him. He tried just slinging it over one shoulder, but that was complicated by not being able to feel where it was. He had to keep some of his attention on it to sense when it slid to halt and correct the motion. It was still an improvement.

  He continued to move from apartment to apartment, finding eight he got into. He took little bits of food from each apartment, trying not to take too much from any one place, hoping the people living there would not even realize anything was missing.

  In one apartment he found a large jug about one-third full of silver change. There was a smaller jug half filled with pennies, but he ignored that jar. He took several dollars in quarters and loaded one of the coat pockets with them.

  He found more clothes close enough to the right size, collecting another pair of jeans and some extra socks. He claimed a hard plastic sport bottle which he filled with water. An electric razor, which he used, also went in the pack. He rinsed the sink thoroughly to get all of his trimmed hair well down the drain, running water for a few extra minutes while he perused the rest of that apartment. A gray leather fedora about a half size too big but still worth taking perched on a closet shelf. As his hair grew out it might end up being just about the right size.

  Another person came home to the adjacent apartment. A sign it was time to leave. Drifting down to the ground, and controlling his descent, turned out to be easy enough. He walked away without looking back.

  Money was one of his next priorities. The quarters in his coat pocket would only go so far. He was also going to need more food than the granola bars, some assorted candy, cans of fruit with pull-off lids, a couple of apples, and the bunch of bananas he took. Guilt already gnawed at him having stolen from so many people on his first day of freedom, but he did need what he had taken—more so than the people he took it all from. That was how he rationalized it.

  He was surviving, but he could not live like this forever. His thoughts turned back to ways to get money as he crossed a street, not bothering to look in either direction before crossing. Moving cars were heavy with a lot of momentum. They were bright to his motion sense, all things considered, and effortless to keep track of. He did not need to turn his head or his eyes to time his crossing between them.

  CHAPTER 9 – ANOTHER DINER

  Carl glared at the empty coffee mug. He did not want to direct his frustration at the poor waitress. She had been one of the more pleasant things at this crappy little diner and he was far from impressed with her. Still, it wasn't her he was upset about. He ate at little dives like this one often, and most of them he liked better than this one. But, it was a quiet place where nobody would remember what he looked like after an hour. None of the people that came here were likely to be memorable. It just was not the sort of place that memorable people went.

  The diner lived up to low expectations by not being memorable, either. Basic and common food, greasy but tasty enough to be tolerable, although not tasty enough to leave a lasting positive impression or a reason to come back. He would rather have sat in the cute Latina’s section—she had an attractive sassiness to her, but he guessed wrong when he picked his spot and ended up with the older, heavyset redhead with resting bitch face.

  The three people on the Latina’s side of the diner never seemed to run out of coffee. She was on top of that. Not so with dumpy Samantha, who seemed to treat him and the couple two booths away as if her job were a chore she resented doing. To be fair, it could be near the end of her morning shift, and she might be worn out by the morning rush, which ended before he walked in half an hour ago. If he had to work at this craphole he wouldn’t seem enthusiastic, either.

  At this rate, the lunch rush should start soon. The black cat clock with its paranoid eyes swinging back and forth over the opening to the kitchen already said eleven-thirty. It surprised him the diner was as empty as it was. Not a good sign for business, and this struck him as the kind of neighborhood a quaint diner would do well in. Quaint could be memorable though. Half the people around here probably forgot this place existed.

  Eleven-thirty already. Was that a good sign, or bad? A thousand miles away was far enough, right? Müller wouldn’t send anyone so far, would he? Would the sadistic fuck even be able to find them? Maybe they would never be far enough.

  But they were gone, driven away after one final drunken argument. The looks on their faces haunted him. His little girl’s disappointed tears crushed his heart the most.

  He looked at the cheap gray flip phone sitting next to his plate. A nicer one waited in his pocket, but this one, the one on the table, was the one Müller would call. The other one was his personal phone. He would not let Müller have that number. The phone on the table was disposable and not connected to an address linked to him if he ever needed to disappear.

  Sooner or later the day was bound to come. He knew all too well the German’s inclination to have people who upset him killed off. The man was dangerous, and cruel, and sometimes unpredictable. That combination never sat well with him. And now Carl had failed him. Müller made it clear Ambrose was important. All he had to do was kill the quadriplegic. Who was now on the loose and missing.

  “Wait for further instructions,” Müller said over the phone in the hospital stairway, “I will call you.”

  Sooner would be better than later, Müller knew. It was going to be one of two things. One option was Müller telling him where to find Ambrose and sending
him in to finish the job. The other option was Müller telling him to find Ambrose himself. The longer he had to wait for those ‘further instructions’ the harder option two would become. Other options involving letting Ambrose disappear were not worth considering. He knew better than most Müller’s penchant for relentless determination.

  That relentless determination had been the bane of his life. His stomach churned and soured. If only he had never gotten involved. Or if he had gotten out when the German took over the Family. Giannino wasn't too bad for a mob boss. Giannino had been a good guy to learn from, and Carl fell in with his crew not long after coming to this fucking city.

  Maybe that had been his mistake, coming here in the first place. As much as he hated the Bronx, it was safer and easier to understand. But then he would never have had Marie. But then maybe he would be less dead and broken inside.

  Maybe the alien ship crashing in the bay should have been his clue to get out. Or the confusion afterwards. All the damned people flocking here for the new opportunities, or the infrastructure jobs that came with it, or the reconstruction jobs, or just living in a city with the world’s only crashed alien spaceship. Not like it being here had been all that fascinating. It just sat there, impenetrable. No aliens popped out to solve world hunger or climate change or poverty.

  Even the few bits of discovered alien wreckage hadn’t revolutionized anything. Still no flying cars, or cure for cancer, or working fusion power, or teleporters and force fields. Not even laser guns. No, all that came of it so far was stupid shit like an explosion on a ship in the harbor when someone tried to hijack it, or the scientist who sabotaged something in a secret DARPA lab that blew up and blacked out the entire goddamned city for a moment. Not so secret after that! Oh, how long had that crap stayed in the news? How many months of the world griping about the U.S. holding back. Bitch, bitch, bitch.

  No, even all the crap that came with an alien ship in the bay hadn’t been the problem. He could have handled that fine. Maybe even have done better. But Müller the ambitious fuckhead couldn’t leave well enough alone. Everything went downhill since he took over.

  He picked up the last piece of toast and pushed the plate away from him, closer to the edge of the table. Grumpy Samantha ought to take the hint and come collect it. Then he could ask her for more coffee.

  If the diner did become crowded, he would leave sooner than planned. The phone call he was waiting for was a safe enough one to have in a quiet, largely empty diner, not a good conversation to have in a crowded one. His throat tightened. He did not want to have that conversation at all. But he was in too deep to be able to slip out now. Six months ago, maybe. Now all he could do was dig himself deeper or get himself killed. Or worse. He shuddered.

  The toast was cold, but he was used to cold toast. Nicer organic jam waited at home than the generic strawberry jelly spread over the dry wheat toast. He ate half of the piece before letting it drop onto the uncollected plate.

  Last night caught him off guard; that frustrated him. It wasn’t something that happened often. Sure, he expected things wouldn’t always go as planned. Things almost never happened exactly as planned, but he prepared for most of the major contingencies.

  Müller had people in the hospital. Only Müller knew he was coming to kill the quadriplegic bank heist planner. He did not blame himself for not anticipating perhaps the completely paralyzed man would not be there when he showed up. Why would he even suspect it? It was pretty much the one part of the plan for the night he would have considered a given if it even crossed his mind.

  But the putz was not there. Something distracted the nurses; no one made any effort to clean the piss on the floor around Ambrose’s bed. That meant the nurses didn't know, that he discovered Ambrose’s absence before they did. Perhaps those two things were connected, he supposed. Perhaps someone created the distraction for them to carry the man out. That would mean a team of two, maybe three.

  That someone got there first seemed the only reasonable conclusion. Someone with orders not just to kill, but to either kidnap or extract the man. That annoyed him too, that he had competition. He did not like having competition. Not knowing who that competition might be made it worse.

  There were only so many possibilities. One was Andrew Barton figured Müller might send someone to kill the man. Ambrose was one of Barton’s men, and Barton no doubt viewed Ambrose as a valuable asset. Maybe Barton wanted his asset safely in his own grip rather than languishing in a hospital Müller reached so deep into. But Ambrose had lost all his memories. Maybe Barton wanted to be sure. Carl should have switched sides long ago. He could be working for Barton now. But Marie was still here back then. He didn’t have a choice.

  The other possibility was Ambrose had men loyal to him, not caught, who came to spring their boss before he ended up on trial and in prison. Or maybe he set up some kind of contingency plan of his own. The man was supposed to be some kind of wizard at planning heists although from what he gathered things were getting shakier and shakier with each next heist. Just like his job, the longer you went at it the more you shook the dice no matter how careful you were.

  Somehow the first one seemed much more likely. The whole honor-among-thieves thing was bullshit; he knew that only too well. Ambrose would have to be someone pretty fucking special to get that kind of loyalty from his crew. Or someone on his crew wanted to make damned sure Ambrose didn’t testify. Although if that were the case, killing him would have solved that problem. He could understand someone might have reason to snatch him and keep him alive. So that could be a possibility. Okay, he decided, he would not discard either option until he had more information.

  When he caught Samantha’s attention she came over to find out what he wanted, then with a huff strode over to the coffee station to bring the pot over. She spilled some of it on the table refilling his mug. Either she did not notice or she did not care. He decided either was just as well, and he might prefer she did not care. When the phone call came, he would not want her interested enough to pay any attention. In that aspect, the more oblivious the better.

  Eventually the call did come, and the phone danced a little buzzing dance on the table. He felt no driving need to answer it on the first ring. For as long as the morning waiting for this call had been now it came he felt reluctant to answer it at all.

  He took a breath, dread soaking into him like a cold rain.

  “Yeah?”

  “Carl, I am I frustrated and disappointed,” the German began with his clipped accent. Carl gulped. “But to be fair none of it is your fault, so I am not frustrated with you. I thought you should know that.”

  “Steven Ambrose walked out of the hospital last night. He was not so paralyzed after all.” A clear undertone of anger rang in the German’s voice. The man was struggling to control his voice and his words. Carl learned early on Müller had a temper, but the calmer Müller got the more ruthlessly dangerous the mobster became. That ruthlessness knew no limits. Families had been tortured and murdered just to prove that point. But not Marie. Not his girl. And not Stacy. Not if he could do anything at all to prevent it.

  “Walked, huh?” He felt his face pale and his stomach sank. The older, frail looking man walking down the hall pulling his IV around with him—that man might have been his target. And they walked right past each other. He sighed. Damn.

  “Clean it up,” the German ordered. “Your way. Find him and finish him with finality. Then I will give you names of my people at the hospital. Someone has to have helped him fake his injuries and I want to know who and why. And I do not care what methods you employ.” Only results mattered.

  “You still want this discreet?”

  “Fuck discreet, I want it done.”

  Had he ever heard the German swear before? Even during instances where the best word he came up with to describe the mobster’s rage was ‘livid’ the man had not sworn. A chill crept up his spine like a spider. Although he thought he understood the mobster well enough to predict his
reactions to many things, he was in dangerous territory where he could not be as sure in any expectations or predictions of the mob boss’s behavior. Bad to worse.

  “As you say,” Carl confirmed, leaving it at that. With the German as angry as he clearly was, keeping things simple would be safer.

  “None of this ties to me,” the German explained. “The man is Barton’s. The worst case scenario I see is people seeing it as Barton making an example of him. After all, if I was going to kill the man he’d be dead by now, wouldn’t he?”

  Point taken. “Makes sense. I’ll let you know when it’s done.”

  “Good,” Müller said before the call ended.

  “Okay, then...,” Carl said beneath his breath to no one in particular. “Fuck.”

  His coffee cooled since the waitress had grudgingly refilled it. He grabbed up the mug and downed it all at once. His hand was a little shaky. That never happened. He killed men without reacting this way. He fought for his life without shaking afterwards. Yet now a simple phone call affected him this way? Something about the mobster’s tone of voice unsettled him, something ominous and menacing. Not being able to predict the man and his reactions must be affecting him more than expected.

  Were Marie and Stacy far enough away? Was Iowa far enough? Was it obscure enough? What if in the end he sacrificed everything for nothing? No, they were safer there than here. Better off hating him than here with him.

  The best way to make sure everything was okay would be to find Ambrose and take care of him. That meant finding him. There were far too many places in the city he could hide. The city’s population more than doubled in the years since the alien crash. Overcrowding in some areas and whole neighborhoods vacant and being rebuilt meant empty places to hide in and crowds to get lost in.

  Somebody had the man. Somebody helped him get out. He was either out of the city and on his way out of the country or holed up somewhere waiting for things to cool down. If he fled the city he was gone. No, more likely he was hiding somewhere. Most likely somebody helped him and sheltered him somewhere. Somebody knew where he was hiding. Somebody would notice a new stranger sheltering somewhere. Squatters kept track of who used what building. So somebody knew where he was, and other people would become aware. It would mostly be a matter of finding the right person.