by Sean Platt
Boricio’s laughter quieted to a dying rumble.
The voice cackled back. “Glad to see you’ve got a bit of fight in ya. This might just be fun,” he said. “The rest of you fuckers were a bit vanilla for my taste.”
Boricio felt a slap at his throat, not too hard but hard enough to make him open his mouth in reflex. The earthy shit was back, followed by a second slap to the throat. “Chew on it, fucker. I’ll be back.”
A whine, a thud, then seven or so minutes of silence followed by, “I think that asshole’s name is Jackson,” from the voice all the way to Boricio’s right. “And I don’t know it for sure, but I think he’s the one who killed the guy who was sitting right where I’m sitting, ‘round this time yesterday. I don’t think he meant to, and I think he may have even gotten in some trouble from Brock, that was the other asshole who was in here earlier, but he gets carried away and they let him. Might even be his job. Gave me a gash on my right cheek. Feels creek deep, too. My name is Moe, by the way.”
Moe paused, as if he were waiting for someone to say something. When nobody spoke, he continued.
“You all can’t see it, but it’s a bad one, and bled so much I expected I’d die right there. Happened right when that asshole Jackson hauled me in. And ain’t no reason, neither. Asked me why I was smirking, and I said I wasn’t smirking. Guess he didn’t like me talking back 'cuz he started whooping me on the top of my head. I was just gonna take it, but then I got to hearing my daddy in my ear telling me not to be such a bitch, so I tried to swing, but forgot my hands were tied behind my back so I fell flat on my ass. That Jackson fucker just started laughing his ass off. He told me he’d teach me not to fight. A second later, I felt the worst pain I ever felt, no warning or nothing. My cheek was in a couple of pieces, and blood was spilling from my face like a busted faucet. I started screaming like a hog. Even pissed myself; ain’t no shame in it either way, ‘cuz I was bleeding. They gave me some sort of shot, I guess to sedate me. Next thing I knew I was in here, same as I am now.”
“Shit!” another man to Boricio’s left said. “My name is Jack. They didn’t do nothing to me, least that I remember. I just woke up in here with my eyes covered and hands tied, about as scared as I’ve ever been.”
“What about you?” Moe asked.
“Me?” Boricio said.
“Yeah, how’d you end up at the End of the World Inn?”
“Not much to tell. I spent most of the last few days hiding in a basement. Woulda stayed there, too, least if I hadn't got so goddamned hungry. You all are the first people I’ve seen since whatever happened happened, least if you don’t count the bitch that brought us all together.”
“And you, heavy breathing dude?” Moe asked. “You ain’t said shit that makes sense yet. Someone fuck you up bad when you got here?”
“My name’s Adam, sir, And no, not hardly. I’ve had no problems other than getting tossed in here to start with. And I may be a prisoner, but them folks out there saved me from something that was pure, pitch-black evil, I tell you what.”
Silent Bob’s name is Adam. Shit, and he ain’t so silent now, way to fuck up a nickname. Oh well, not like I’ll need to remember his name much longer.
Manny asked Adam, “What do you mean? That what you were trying to say earlier?”
“Yeah,” his voice about cracked in half. Something in the tone made Boricio uneasy. “I seen some things that I don’t even know how to explain, though I expect I’ll try once they make sense inside my head. Are you okay, Mister … what did you say your name was?”
“Boricio,” he said. No sense in lying, as none of these fuckers were likely to get out of here alive. “And yeah, I’ve dealt with tougher women than that prick.”
“That Jackson guy seems like a real sore wound of a fella,” Adam said. “But I swear on everything I know we’re better off in here than we are out there, unless these guys are as crazy as the things I’ve seen. And they were horrible, but a fat step up from my old man. World’s gone; I’m a prisoner of who knows who, and I seen evil walking on two legs sure as I’m breathing earlier today, and I still say this is a better than the average week.”
Boricio should’ve known the second he referred to Moe as “sir,” but hadn’t realized until just that moment — Adam was only a boy.
“How old are you, Adam?” Boricio asked, no disguise.
“I’m 16, but big for my age. Was my job to get the beer, no matter who was asking.”
“Your old man sounds like a ripe old gash of an asshole.”
Adam made a sound, might’ve laughed, though Boricio wasn’t sure. “Yeah, have to say I’m not sorry to see him go at all. Gary was an asshole and beat the shit out of me on days ending in Y and fucking my little sister once a month when my mom wouldn’t put out. Ma was busy pretending she didn’t have a clue what was going on, when the truth was she was just too scared to do anything about it.”
“How old was your sister?” Moe wanted to know, as if it mattered.
“Just turned 15 last week of September.”
“How many times have you imagined killing him?” Boricio asked.
“Not once until last year, but once I started, every day since. Before then, I thought things were maybe somehow my fault. After that, it was clear he was some sorta demon.”
Boricio felt something, maybe curiosity. He hoped it wasn’t anything bullshit like compassion, though he’d guessed he could understand it if it was. “What happened?”
“We had just moved to St. Pete. Grandpa, the original asshole you might say, died and left Gary some land. A real dump, but paid for. There was a big trophy case in the house from when he was a kid. I was looking at the trophies, trying to see what the big one on top was for. I accidentally fell against the case and brought the whole thing down. I swear it was an accident, but before I knew it, all the trophies were on the ground, broken, and Gary came running in the room.”
“He grabbed me by the hair and dragged me through the house, kicking me the whole way. When we got to the kitchen, he flicked on the garbage disposal and grabbed my hand and shoved it into the drain, and I thought for sure, my fingers were gonna get caught up in it.” Adam started to cry, and fucking beer-battered bullshit, Boricio kinda felt bad for the kid.
“He kept calling me a liar and yelling at me to tell him what really happened. I kept telling him I wasn’t lying. He told me if I ever lied again, he’d bring me right back to that same spot and let the blades tear my fingers up.”
This day was getting all full up with fuckers to kill. Would be nice to find Gary and build a whole new kind of fire to hold his ass to. Would bring back the sweet taste for sure.
Boricio had a special place in his dark heart for evil fuck fathers ever since he paid his dear ole dad back for his childhood of hell.
Ears burned with cigarettes. Forced to drink shampoo. Three toes bent so bad the doctors considered amputation. A third-degree burn by way of blow dryer. A miserable fucking childhood raped of every molecule of joy. Yeah, it’d be nice to skull fuck some other asshole just as deserving.
“So, Adam,” Boricio asked. “What do you think happens when they take you out of here, then? What’s in the box?”
“World’s been shit miserable so far; maybe outside is some sort of hallelujah to make up for it, you know, if you’re the right kind of person.”
“What kind of person is that?” Boricio asked.
“Maybe the world owes some of us a new beginning.”
The room went silent, as if in the aftermath of an uncomfortable truth. Boricio wanted to laugh at the kid’s delusional pipe dreams because as sure as shit, there was no God in the sky, no angels waiting to take you to heaven, and the world never gave you what it owed you. No, the only thing on the menu was shit and more shit.
However, perhaps fortune had smiled on Adam, as Boricio reconsidered his plans to kill every fucker in the room.
No reason he couldn't take out most of the room, leave one soldier behind. Maybe a s
econd set of hands was just what Boricio needed. Maybe Boricio could be a mentor. A special kind of mentor, like Boricio had while growing up.
It felt good to think about Tom again. It had been a long time since he allowed himself to remember the man who taught him to kill and never get caught.
Thirty
Edward Keenan
Oct. 15
Early evening
Somewhere in North Carolina
Ed and Teagan were 60 miles from her home in Cape Hope, North Carolina, when she finally decided to break the ice that had frosted their air since the fallen bodies at the gas station.
“Why aren’t we going to find your daughter first?”
“What?”
“Well, if my dad were looking for me, I don’t think he’d stop to help a stranger and get sidetracked from doing what he set out to do.”
“It’s complicated,” he said. “Can we talk about something else? Anything. Like your favorite bands or what movies you like, or what you like to do? Do you play any sports?”
“Had to give up football with the baby and all,” Teagan said with a laugh, patting her belly. Another moment of silence passed before she finally said what she’d wanted to say in the first place. “You killed those people like it was nothing. I mean, no hesitation whatsoever. How can you do that? What are you?”
“What do you mean, what am I?”
“You said you were kinda like a cop, but cops have to go by rules, right? Even now. My cousin, Jeb, was a cop, and I can’t imagine him, or any of his cop buddies, pulling the trigger like that, no questions asked.”
“I can’t really say what it was that I did, but I worked for our government. And I was one of the good guys. And despite what you see on TV and in the movies, the good guys aren’t necessarily the same as the nice guys.”
“So, you’re not a nice guy, then?”
He kept his eyes on the road. Teagan’s resemblance to his daughter made the conversation every bit the biting through nails it would’ve been if it were Jade’s mouth moving instead, so he tried not to look at her any more than he had to.
“I’m just a guy who does what needs to be done. You said your cousin, Jeb, was a cop? What do you mean was?”
“He was killed by a drunk driver a year ago. Tell me, why were you arrested?” she asked, so out of the blue he nearly swerved off the road.
“What?” he asked, playing stupid.
“The rings on your wrist, someone had you in cuffs, I assume?”
Ed smiled.
“You’re observant.”
“So, are you going to tell me?”
“Man, you just cut right to the chase, eh?”
Teagan was smiling, but just barely.
“You’re right, I was arrested. But I didn’t do anything I wasn’t told to do.”
“Then why were you arrested?”
“Sometimes, the people who make up the rules of the game change them on the fly depending on which asses need kissing, the political gestures that need to be made, and you know, all the usual bureaucratic bullshit. Well, maybe you don’t know. At any rate, when the rules change and your bosses are caught playing by the old rules, well, that means shifting the blame downwind to someone else. A guy like me.”
“What does that even mean?” she asked.
Ed had to laugh at the knots of confusion on her face, though he was pretty sure she thought he was laughing at her expense.
“The less I say, the better. Trust me. When the world returns to normal, people will be looking for me. They find out I was with you, they’ll haul you in, ask you more questions than a week’s worth of SATs, and make your life a living hell. The less you can honestly answer, and trust me when I say they can tell when you’re lying, the better off you are.”
Teagan stared at him for an uncomfortably long time as if she were still trying to figure out exactly what he was. She needed him to fit neatly into some preconceived notion of good or bad because that’s the way light spilled against the prism of her sheltered adolescent worldview. Few layers of gray existed in her world of blacks and whites.
“So, how did it feel the first time you killed someone?”
Ed moved his eyes from the road, let up slightly on the gas, then looked to his right. To his relief, her expression wasn’t that of a vulture searching the carcass for morbid details; it was the sparrow-like curiosity of an innocent child.
“What do you think it’s like?”
“I can’t even imagine it; it has to be awful.”
“Yeah, it is that. It’s also scary.”
“You’re scared?” she said, surprised. “But you shot those guys like you were picking up a carton of eggs and a gallon of milk.”
“It’s scariest the first time. But it’s never not scary. You’re always looking at two choices — run or act. With each choice comes a consequence. What happens if you run? Will those people continue to threaten you or those you’re protecting? If so, then you really don’t have a choice, do you? You must deal with it in the moment, unless you’re outnumbered or have too many variables to deal with. And when you kill, you must always be prepared for the fallout. And you have less than a millisecond to make the right choice.”
“Did you feel guilty about killing those men at the gas station? I mean, they might not even have meant us any harm. Maybe they were just like us; they had guns to protect themselves from the bad guys.”
“Maybe,” Ed said, “But I can’t think about that. I can’t cry into the rearview. If I ponder all the what-ifs, that leads to guilt and my instincts get dull. It makes it that much harder to act decisively the next time. Soon, I’m dead. Or worse, someone I’m protecting is dead.”
“So how do you deal with those things?” she asked, slowly drifting from curiosity to full-blown psychological exam. “How do you just … forget?”
“I disconnect from the situation. Remove all emotional residual, lingering doubts, and every ounce of guilt. I seal them all in a drum, fuse the lid, then drop it into the deepest ocean of my soul.”
Ed could feel her staring.
“I don’t believe you,” she said, “I don’t think you can just disconnect your humanity like that.”
“You’d be surprised what you can do, have to do, when it’s do or die.”
“I’d rather die than lose my humanity,” she said. It was her turn to stare out the window. Rain began to fall on the windows and roof of the SUV.
Ed flipped on the wipers. “That’s a rather noble idea, really it is. But I guarantee you one thing — once your baby is born, you will go anywhere and do anything to protect it, and believe me, you have no idea what that means.”
A sign ahead announced: Cape Hope: 50 Miles.
Ed hoped to find someone. He needed to lose the pregnant appendage. The sooner he was flying solo, the sooner he could quit the crap and get on with a solution to whatever happened last night.
“I know why you’re not in a rush to get to your daughter,” Teagan said, circling back to the original subject. “You’re afraid of what you’ll find, aren’t you? You don’t know what you’d do if she were gone?”
Ed kept driving.
Thirty-One
Mary Olson
Mary and Desmond crossed the parking lot, passed the attendant’s booth at the far edge of the hotel, then stepped onto a narrow strip of State Street on their way to find Paola. Jimmy and John agreed to stay at the hotel, Jimmy downstairs with an eye peeled for Paola, while John swept the upper floors one more time for anything that might help them understand what happened to Mary’s daughter, or the world.
The group agreed to meet back in the lobby of the Drury in one hour, whether they found anything or not. “You look like you actually know where you’re going,” Desmond said, a half-step behind Mary.
Mary couldn't smell Paola, not exactly. But she did know which direction to go. She was following a feeling more than a scent — her daughter’s emotional bread crumbs. She’d first sensed them in the kitchen, and
the trail seemed to be growing stronger with every step.
“Paola was here. She left the kitchen, crossed the parking lot, and then went that way.” Mary pointed to a small, brick sandwich shop across the street on the corner of State and Trough.
“How do you know?”
“Because she went through the kitchen, I felt her there.” Mary paused to see if Desmond’s eyes gave question to her certainty or sanity, and was relieved to see they didn’t. “Earlier, when we were searching the hotel, I thought maybe she’d come outside for some fresh air or something before heading back inside the hotel. But now I’m positive she left and walked this way. I’m just trying to understand why she left in the first place. I can’t for the life of me see why she’d run off. That’s not like her at all. Paola always thinks she’s right and she loves to be the boss, but she’s a perfectly sensible girl.”
“Any chance she went off to find her dad?” Desmond asked.
“She wouldn’t do that without me. But once we get to the base, I ought to at least see if he’s still here, whether the rest of you want to go with me or not.”
“I can’t speak for the others, but I’ll take you anywhere you want to go,” Desmond said.
They crossed the street then turned onto Trough.
“Once we were back outside, I felt her immediately, like the wind was carrying her trace.” She looked back at Desmond again. His eyes were still receptive to her weird ramblings. “And I swear it’s getting stronger.”
“Is it possible you’re wrong?”
“Nope,” Mary walked faster. “Well, of course it’s possible. And I’m not claiming I can explain why, but I know she went this way.”
“What do you mean? How can you know?” Desmond asked.
