People Like Us

by J. D. Rhoades

  “She’s right, Willie.” Despite Sally’s words, she stood next to him, her arm around his waist to steady him.

  “Sorry,” William said again. “But I’m going home. Where my clothes at?” Unsteady as he was, he loomed over the nurse.

  She took a step back, looking uncertain. “I’m gonna get the doctor.” She disappeared out the door.

  “You scared her,” Sally said.

  William grimaced. “Didn’t mean to. You think you could find my clothes?”

  There was a dresser made of light blond wood across the tiny room. Sally opened a top drawer and beamed at her brother. “Jackpot.”

  When the nurse returned with the doctor, they were gone.

  Suddath looked around Hoffman’s study. The swastika flag on the wall and the portrait of Hitler hanging behind the massive oak desk always made him uncomfortable. It was one thing to make common cause with these people in the name of racial survival, quite another to have it rubbed in your face.

  “I don’t know,” Hoffman was saying, stroking his cheek with his thumb and regarding Suddath with a dubious expression. “Are you sure this Price guy is legitimate?”

  “He’s so crooked he has to screw his pants on in the morning,” Suddath replied, “but I believe the woman is sincere when she says she wants to get away from him. I intend to help her do just that.”

  “All out of the goodness of your heart, no doubt.”

  Suddath grinned. “Of course.”

  Hoffman shook his head. “I don’t know. I think you’re letting the little head do the thinking, not the big one.”

  Suddath had always found that expression distasteful. “Listen. I’m not asking for money. I have that. I just need a couple of your, ah, fellows, to make sure Price doesn’t become unpleasant when he realizes I’m taking away his buyer.”

  “And his woman.”

  Suddath nodded.

  “Are you afraid of him?”

  “Of course not. He’s weak. And small. Not physically, but in the ways that count. Still, it doesn’t pay to take chances. A woman like that…she’d be worth fighting for.”

  Hoffman sighed. “All right. I have just the men you need in mind. Shall I have them meet you at the bank?”

  “No. At the house. I don’t want them to scare Price off before I have the sword. Have them wait nearby. I’ll make the call when I’ve made the transaction. Once they arrive, we all leave. Me, the Morrison woman, and the sword. Then we complete the transfer to the new buyer.”

  “After you’ve paid for it.”

  Suddath was growing impatient. “I’m getting the money back, plus a substantial profit, within the week.”

  Hoffman’s eyes narrowed. “Yes. And what are my people going to be paid for acting as security for your little adventure?”

  “Of course,” Suddath said. “What are you asking?”

  Hoffman thought it over. “Ten.”

  “Thousand?” Suddath rolled his eyes. “For a few minutes of work? Don’t be absurd. I’ll give you fifteen hundred.”

  “If you weren’t worried this man might be dangerous, you wouldn’t be talking to me. Seventy-five hundred.”

  “He’s not that dangerous. Three.”

  “Six.”

  “Three,” Suddath insisted.

  Hoffman grimaced. “Fine.” He reached for a pen from the holder on his desk, the one he’d bragged once belonged to Himmler himself. “Give me the directions. I’ll text you the number to call.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  He was snatched awake, pulled from the depths of sleep by a pair of hands that lifted him up and up and up, his feet kicking frantically at the air. In the background, someone was screaming, and he couldn’t help it, he began screaming, too. Then he was flying. No, he was falling, through a dark and scary chasm filled with the screams of damned souls. He could see the ground coming up to meet him…

  He jerked awake, gasping for breath, the scream caught in his throat. He looked around in panic, trying to get his bearings, his right hand clutching frantically for his gun. It wasn’t there. He was in a gray box. The breath he tried to draw froze in his chest with the stifled scream. He was dying. Suffocating. Locked in a gray box…

  Suddenly, the world snapped into place and he remembered where he was. He leaned against the wall of the toilet stall, panting like he’d just run the hundred. His head was still throbbing, but his hand when he gently felt the back of it came away dry, with a few flecks of blood on the ends of his fingers. He’d stopped bleeding. The skin of his head beneath his fingers felt hot and excruciatingly tender, and that worried him. Even a graze could be big trouble if it got infected. Even after recovering his wits, he felt woozy and strange, and he wondered if he might have a fever. That might explain the return of the dream that he’d thought was behind him. That dream had tormented his nights for years, ever since the night his stepfather, out of his mind on cheap gin and PCP, had thrown him and his baby sister out of a second story window in the Fischer projects of New Orleans. He had survived only because a neighbor, having seen the girl hit the ground with a sickening thud, ran across the courtyard to catch him as his stepfather tossed him out behind her. His sister lingered for three days in ICU before dying. The story went around the projects that the girl might have survived had EMS gotten there promptly, but the Fischer projects had been at war with the NOPD for years by then, and the paramedics weren’t going in without them. By the time someone had finally persuaded someone to come, they’d had two to transport; an angry mob had burst into the apartment, dragged his stepfather out, and beaten him within an inch of his life. The brain damage had been so severe that the court ruled he was incompetent to stand trial for murder; that hadn’t stopped the boy who adopted the name of the project as his own from walking into a state hospital a few years later, dressed in an orderly’s scrubs, and putting three bullets in his stepfather’s heart before walking out. It had been Fischer’s third kill, and the one that had stopped the dreams. He’d thought they were gone for good, but now they were back. Fischer knew who to blame. It had to be the fault of the old lady who’d shot him. That meant there was only one way to make them stop. It was all unfolding before him, the answer to not only the nightmare, but the cold trail to his target. He had previously considered the old woman collateral damage, but now he had his own score to settle with her. And before she died, he’d make her tell him where the targets were. He forced a smile onto his face and opened the door to the stall. It was time to get moving again.

  He blinked as he stepped outside. The sky had cleared, but the sun was going down. It had been early morning when he’d come into the deserted park. How long had he been out? He frowned as he approached the car. Something wasn’t quite right. Then he saw the smashed driver’s side window and swore under his breath. The car had been broken into. He broke into a jog that made his head thud with pain as if someone was whacking the back of his head with a bat at every step. He yanked the door open and dove inside. A quick check of his hiding places made him swear again. His handguns were gone. He was going to have to re-arm himself. Fortunately, that would be easy in a state like this, so long as…he took a deep breath and popped the trunk open. A quick look, and he sighed with relief. Whoever had robbed the car had only been interested in a quick smash and grab. The supply of cash he’d stashed in the spare wheel well under the carpet lining the trunk was still there. He’d kept his cell phone on him. With cash, a phone, and an internet connection, a man could find firearms enough for any job. Handguns, which theoretically required a permit, would be difficult, but not impossible. Since he was in a hurry, though, a long gun would have to do. Those were easy. He had a sufficiently strong fake identity built up to pass the rudimentary background checks the law required, but there were ways to bypass even that slight inconvenience. He opened the web browser on his phone and did a quick search for armslist.com. The website—which announced itself as “Craigslist For Firearms!”—popped up and h
e entered the search function, narrowing it to nearby locations and particular type of firearm. He had one in particular in mind. He quickly found two within a twenty-mile radius of his location. One seller appeared to be a gun store, but the other was a private dealer. That was the one he pressed the link for. His phone dialed the number.

  “Hi,” he said, when the person at the other end answered. “I was calling about the Ruger Mini-14 you had for sale on Armslist? Well, how about tonight? I’m not that far away. Great. No, I’ve got the address. I’ll Google the map. Say, an hour? Great.” He broke the connection and smiled.

  Back in business.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “You sure you can eat that?” Sam asked William.

  Aunt Sally answered for him. “Of course. He lost a lot of blood. Best way to replace it is with rare red meat.”

  William didn’t look up from his plate. He carefully cut another bite of the nearly raw meat and shoved it in his mouth. “I’m fine,” he mumbled.

  “I’m not sure it works that…” Sam fell silent as Rachel put a hand on his arm.

  “I’m glad you’re home,” she told William.

  The big man looked up then. Sam couldn’t read the expression on his face. “Thanks,” he said softly and went back to his meal. Sam didn’t know what else to say, so he went back to his own steak, which thankfully Aunt Sally had grilled medium well. They finished the meal in silence except for the sounds of cutlery on fine china. When William was done, he pushed away from the table. He still wouldn’t look at Sam or Rachel. “I’m gonna go upstairs and lie down.”

  “I’ll help you, Willie,” Aunt Sally said as she got up. He leaned on her shoulder as he walked out of the kitchen, plodding like an old man.

  Sam looked at Rachel. “He’s hiding something.”

  She was still staring at the door, biting her lip. “Well, he did just get stabbed. He’s lost a lot of blood, like Aunt Sally says. It’s not surprising he’s not himself.”

  “Come on, Rache. You read people better than I do, even. You know I’m right.”

  She sighed. “So, what do we do? Call it off?”

  He got up and took his plate to the sink, scraping the few leftover bits of gristle and potato skin into the garbage disposal before putting the plate on the counter. “He’s not part of what goes down tomorrow. His part was mostly setting things up. And we’re so close.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t expect we’d be able to move this quickly. You really think he can get a hundred and fifty K together that fast?”

  “He wants the sword. And he wants you. He’s impatient.” He smiled weakly. “Just like we like ’em.”

  Aunt Sally came back into the kitchen at that point, her face pinched with worry.

  “Is William okay?” Rachel asked.

  She nodded. “He’s resting.” She sat down at her place and stared at the half-eaten plate. Eventually she pushed it away.

  “Sally,” Rachel said, “is there something bothering you? Other than the obvious?”

  “You know how sorry you are that we brought this on you,” Sam added.

  She seemed to be struggling with something. After a long pause, she looked up and gave them a wan smile. “It’s going to be fine, children. Really. Let’s just get this done.”

  Sam and Rachel looked at each other. “Okay,” Sam said.

  “We were wondering,” Rachel said, “if he can get that much cash together that fast.”

  “Who, Professor Peckerwood?” the old woman snorted. “He’s most likely got that and more stashed in his house. He’s written about how we shouldn’t trust the banks. He says they’re all run by the Jews, you know.” She grimaced. “Asshole.”

  Rachel still looked dubious. “He says that. But does he really believe it?”

  As it turned out, Suddath truly did. He was down in his basement, working the combination lock he’d affixed to the big steel door he’d had installed in place of what had once been the basement door. He’d spent a lot to convert the musty space into a small but comfortable retreat in case the world situation did eventually explode into the race war Hoffman and his followers assured him would inevitably come. They assured Suddath and each other that the white man would eventually prevail, thanks to superior firepower and tougher moral fiber than the black rabble, but while waiting for that day, Suddath—a thinker and philosopher rather than a soldier—had decided to create a place to ride out the storm. The shelter he’d built in his basement contained enough canned and freeze-dried food for a year, his collection of the Great Books of Western Civilization (and some discreetly hidden erotica) and, most importantly, a substantial stash to help him through the bank collapse that would inevitably accompany the RAHOWA—the Racial Holy War Hoffman preached, but only privately to his followers, at least for the moment.

  Suddath pulled the door open and entered his bunker. There was his easy chair, his bookshelf, his army cot. Another cot was folded and stashed beneath the basement stairs in case he found a companion worthy of riding out the storm. The sight of that one made him think of Angela Morrison, but he put that aside for the moment. He went to the old-fashioned iron safe in the corner. Another combination, different from the first, and he was in.

  Stacks of currency were stuffed onto the metal shelves, squirreled away bit by bit over the years. He took a few sheaves out, counted them on the work table in the corner. Not enough. He frowned, took out some more, sorted them. By the time he’d taken out and counted the last of the paper currency, he was still twenty thousand short. He paused. He didn’t want to dig into the Krugerrands he had stored; the gold coins were his last hedge against apocalypse. Suddath and his fellow believers took it as an article of faith that even in the last extremity, if civilization lay in smoking ruins, men would still trade for gold for the things they needed: food, weapons, and flesh. He opened an interior door and looked at the perfectly stacked piles of gold coins, each exactly one ounce. He tried and failed to recall the current price per ounce. A check of his phone showed, as expected, no signal from his basement. With a sigh, he trudged upstairs, opened the browser on his computer, and confirmed the current price per ounce on the international market. Then he went back downstairs and took out enough of the heavy coins to bring the total up to something just over one hundred and fifty thousand. The glint of all that gold should impress the woman. He smiled at the thought. There was no harm in seeming a little more generous if he knew he was getting the money back anyway. Suddath was whistling as he walked back up the stairs.

  On the way to the meetup, Fischer took the risk of stopping at a Walgreen’s. He picked up a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a pack of cotton balls, a box of gauze bandages, and some adhesive tape. As he walked through the aisles, he spotted a rack holding an assortment of cheap toboggans. Perfect, he thought. He snatched one off the rack and carried it to the checkout. As he stood in line behind a middle-aged woman buying Metamucil and a People magazine, he heard a whistle. He looked around to see a gray-haired black man leaning on a cane, holding a plastic basket full of various items. The man was shaking his head. “Brother,” he said, “you might want to get that cut looked at by a doctor. It don’t look good.”

  Fischer gave him back a tight grin. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “Fell off a ladder while cleaning the gutters. Just need to patch it up.”

  “Uh-huh.” The old man shifted his basket from one hip to the other. “If you say so. But I wouldn’t fall asleep until I had a doctor check that out. Concussion, you know. I saw a special about it on TV.”

  “Thanks,” Fischer’s smile felt like it was going to break his face. “I don’t mean to be sleeping any time soon.”

  Back in his car, Fischer watched the old man shuffle to his own beat-up looking pickup. He hated being noticed. He still had the knife in his boot, and he considered following the old man and making sure he could never tell anyone about the stranger with the head wound. But there was no time. Besides, once he got this job done, he
’d be out of this place forever, and there’d be nothing to connect the man named Fischer with some old fool’s story about the guy he’d seen in Walgreen’s with the cut on his head. Once gone from this hick town, he could connect with one of the doctors he knew who’d treat wounds without asking questions. Still, the old man’s words bothered him. It don’t look good. Part of him wished he could see what was going on back there. Part of him really didn’t want to. The thought of any kind of incapacitating wound made him feel dizzy and sick to his stomach. Or could that be the wound itself, swelling and suppurating and oozing poison into his system…

  Enough. He had work to do. He fought down the nausea and moved the car to a far corner of the parking lot. He dabbed peroxide on the back of his head to clean the wound. The pain wasn’t nearly as bad this time, or maybe he was just getting used to it. He fumbled some gauze onto the wound, secured it in place with the tape, then pulled the toboggan over it. Then he took a deep breath and set off to buy a rifle.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A couple spends a lot of their time together in bed. Making love, even in the most passionate relationships, is only a small part of it. Some is spent cuddling, talking, watching TV if there is one in the bedroom, but the greatest percentage of that time is spent sleeping. Rachel loved that time and loved even more the times spent waking up together. What she hated was the time spent lying beside one another, neither of them asleep, but neither one admitting that they were awake and needed to talk. This was one of those times. She rolled over and looked at Sam. He was lying on his back, hands folded across his chest, eyes closed. She knew he wasn’t asleep; he never slept like that. As much as she loved him, one thing that drove her crazy about Sam was the way he always made her be the one to start the conversation. She glared at him, thinking maybe her stare would be enough to make him sit up and take notice. He didn’t budge. She sighed, then poked him in the ribs, maybe a little harder than necessary. “Hey.”