Entropy (25 page)

My lungs felt like they were compacted with sand. I couldn't catch my breath and was panting, exhausted by the tragic truth of what had just happened. The layers of skin on my hand were blistered, and the relentless rain had washed some of the blood and flesh away so that the delicate bones beneath were visible. Water from the gutters above me poured into the dumpster into which I had ditched my rubber gloves.

It was hard to see where she had run into the field. Only two streetlights lined the road at that corner. I took a few quick steps into the alley and grabbed the gun I had dropped. When I bent over I cringed and raised a hand to my side. I pulled my shirt up a few inches and noticed that my torso had already begun to bruise. The section of steel piping she had struck me with sat in a small puddle of rusted water and blood. I staggered against the rear wall of a dry cleaning shop, and finally, came out at the other end of the alley. A lone traffic light swung back and forth violently in the wind. Running to the edge of the street, I didn't care any longer about getting in deeper.

When my feet came down on the asphalt of the road, I couldn't keep my balance and staggered. It had been raining heavily since we started the last fire a little over an hour before. The bare branches of trees lined each side of the street. Autumn leaves were stamped into the pavement. When I crossed the center line I slipped and collapsed to the ground. The side of my left arm scraped across the asphalt and opened up a gash above my elbow. The rain made it difficult to see.

Suddenly, an intense light cascaded through the landscape. A transit bus was coming towards me through an early morning haze of exhaust and mist. I strained to get to my feet in vain. Instead, I secured the gun in the waistline of my jeans and with a desperate effort rolled towards the sidewalk, my momentum carrying me across the pavement and up against a wooden rail fence that bordered the field. The bus roared past me and sprayed water and mud across my face. I focused my view towards the hills at the end of the field. By now, she was probably a mile or more ahead of me.

But I didn't care.

People were now getting killed because of her recklessness.

I had suggested that because of the weather, that we wait another day or so. But she had her orders, and a schedule to adhere to. When I grabbed her arm and told her we had to leave, she just stared at the body of the man scorched in the fire. She fought me and tried to touch the corpse. I struggled to keep her near me. Vapors rose from the body into the night sky, like rain striking hot asphalt. A horror novelist couldn't describe the odor emanating from the body. She couldn't get close enough because of me, and in frustration she started screaming. I had never heard someone wail like that, and I wasn't sure if it was because of sadness or anger.

I didn't understand at that time that his death hadn't been an accident.

We started to run from the scene through a one-way street, and ducked into a closed furniture warehouse less than a mile away. The air inside the warehouse was humid and dense. She immediately went to the front windows and looked around. Satisfied that we had not been followed, she quickly set down a small bag and began rummaging through it.

“We have to get out of Mississippi,” she said. Although the situation was intense and dire, she showed no signs of panic. It seemed to fit her profile. That's why I still felt uneasy by the way she had just acted towards the smoldering corpse not ten minutes earlier.

“What the hell were you doing back there?” I hissed.

“Our job,” she said, checking to see that the door we had come in through was still secure behind her.

“It was our job to burn the clinic, not kill one of our own,” I said. I grabbed her hand and pulled her closer. “We shouldn't have escalated to murder. It complicates things.”

“Murder is nothing but political. What about all those people in that church in Pittsburgh that you killed?”

“Who was the man who died? The one you tried to get to so badly?”

“It doesn't matter,” she said.

“I want to know,” I said.

“I'm canceling the rest of our mission,” she said. “We're done.”

“Who was he?”

“He was a traitor to the cause,” she said, her chest heaving as she tried to contain her emotions. In a different situation the woman would have been staggeringly beautiful and seductive. As much as I should have tried to resist her advances when we had spent that night together, I didn't want to. There was something intensely raw and animalistic about her.

“What does that mean? Are you saying that he was killed deliberately?” I said.

“Yes,” she said.

I wanted to reach for the gun that I had hidden against the small of my back. It was the first time that I had ever felt uncertain being William McCoy. That unnerved me. I had never been ill at ease using his voice, planning arsons or when meeting with her group. “Why?” I questioned. “That kind of action leaves evidence behind. What if someone's able to identify him? It could all lead back to us. You compromised what we were trying to do,” I said.

“It had already reached that point when the flames jumped to that hardware store,” she said. I was careful not to misconstrue her tone as a representation of guilt.

“That's beside the point,” I argued.

“It's not your call to make, so it doesn't matter,” she said dismissively. “There's nothing more that needs to be done here,” she said. “It's over.”

“Who says? There's more to do,” I interjected. When she started to leave through the rear entrance, I grabbed her hand and pulled her back violently.

“Let go of me,” she demanded.

“What are you going to do?” I leaned in towards her, close enough to smell the scent of burnt violets on the nape of her neck. “Burn me?” I grabbed her wrists and held her arms above her head. She initially resisted before allowing herself to be pushed into the corner at the rear of the building.

“No. Someone like you can't be destroyed,” she said. Without any fear she gave in, craned her neck, and crashed her pelvis against my body. Our bodies collided, like a close traffic accident; the smooth chassis of flesh and muscle, tearing on impact at the intersection of indiscretion and carnal desire.

“Why did you kill him?” I asked, turned on by her willingness and her danger. Her lips flashed across my exposed collarbone, through the hole burnt in my shirt from the fire, to the scorched flesh underneath. She moved her tongue higher along my shoulder then paused. “Kill me then,” I whispered, massaging the dark area between her legs, her burnt garden of displeasure.

“I'm supposed to,” she said, her fingertips pressing sharply into the small of my back as she raised her leg high against my hip. “I want to.” She was so warm inside. “I can't.”

Again I questioned her. “Why would you want to kill me?” I held her wrists tighter and rolled my tongue across her throat, her incredible skin coated with her body's sweat. It felt like being in the ocean, the warm saltwater rolling across the edges of my lips. Her body could dehydrate the seas and suffocate a man. All I wanted to do was keep her close. God help me, I desperately wanted her.

“I was supposed to kill all of you,” she said.

“Then why just kill him?”

“Because he was undercover,” she admitted.

“What are you talking about?” I released her hands and she massaged them gently. There were dark red marks around her wrists.

“We found out that he was sending messages to the A.T.F,” she stated. When I heard her admission I imagined being murdered, right then and there, feeling the quick twinge of a steel blade penetrating the kidney or the lung. She probably had her people close by.

Oh Noemi
.

I missed her instruction, her graciousness. I had lied so much, willingly and with such intense purpose. William McCoy had become a liability; one that I could no longer carry; one that I could no longer be. I imagined being burned alive. I reached around and withdrew my weapon and pointed it at her. I took a step back and told her to get down on the ground and to put her hands behind her head.

“You fucking bastard,” she screamed.

“It's over,” I said.

“You let them burn,” she said. “You stood there and did nothing.”

“So did you,” I said. “But William McCoy is a lie.”

“Changing a name doesn't change who you are,” she said as I pressed her hard against the wall and patted her down around the waist again. “You murdered them,” she said. “Did you sacrifice them just to get to me … to get
inside
me?”

“No,” I said. But I knew that she was right.

“Yes you did,” she retorted. “You only pretend that those people don't matter. Are you married? How will your pretty little wife feel that you murdered someone? Will you put your arms around her and tell her that you love her, or will you smell the dead hiding just beneath the surface of her scent? Tell me, does she fuck you like I do?
Does she?
Does she make your skin burn when she takes your cock into her ass like me? Does she tear through your flesh when you're hard inside her, and see who you actually are underneath?” she asked.

“You're sick,” I said.

“And you're still an animal, no matter what you call yourself. I'm just the only one who really knows it. Aren't I? Did they tell you to fuck me? Or did I turn you on so much that you wanted to? When your wife kisses you is she going to taste me on your lips?” As she said this, her eyes turned into a crazed, burnished umber as if she was gazing upon the results of our arson attacks.

***

I ran into the deep sodden grass. Blood and soil streaked my pants, and water darkened the ankles. It was hard to tell where she might have gone, but I headed straight up a small hill and into the thick line of trees ahead. It looked like an untended graveyard of nature; a blighted and dense arrangement of rock and diseased trees. Nothing appeared to possess life except for the various black birds switching from branch to branch. The trees suppressed the rainfall and the winds, and as a result, it was easier to see. Nevertheless, there was little to behold, just an expanse of decay and nothingness. The ground looked rusted and ruined. It took me about ten minutes to wade through the boulders and twisted stumps, looking for where she may have gone.

At least I knew that she didn't have a gun.

On the other side of the trees I came upon an open expanse of land, an unused field of several acres that ran underneath an overpass. Through the distant mist of the breaking dawn, I could make out several steel power line stanchions. I checked the clip on my handgun and walked slowly out into the open field, searching for her, desperate to stave off her attempts at self-preservation while maintaining my own. The rain started again, reducing visibility.

It was odd, but I wanted nothing more than to strip down and let the rain wash over me, to cleanse me. But unfortunately there was an inherent and brutal truth in what she had said. Holding Noemi, and caressing her glassy skin, wasn't going to change the simple fact that I had murdered someone – even if it was indirectly. It was one of the abstruse decisions that had to be made in such cases, weighing up a series of imperfect and dubious consequences.

If her group hadn't threatened political members in Washington, I would have been asleep by Noemi's side, entranced by her elegance, with the cadence of her breathing lulling me into a sense of repose. My musings were suddenly pushed to one side when I saw her appear underneath a stanchion.

She stood motionless, as if she was waiting for the ground around her to burst into flame. However there were no flames that could burn away the culpability and guilt of what had occurred in Mississippi.

So I ran.

I ran as hard as I could. Each muscle was pulsing feverishly; subtle, kinetic collisions vibrating throughout my legs and ankles. I could feel the burn of the lactic acid in my body. Through the incessant rain I watched her turn. She should have gotten farther than she had. I was quickly closing the distance between us, but lost my footing and stumbling, tripped and fell, striking my head directly upon a rock. When I gathered myself and searched for her, everything appeared shrouded in a light shade of yellow, and my surroundings indistinct. It had become uncommonly quiet.

The surrealism was broken when she appeared again from behind a nearby piece of abandoned rusting farm equipment. Her arms were braced by her sides. I could see drops of water collapse along the tip of the blade she was holding.

“Everything we worked for here is dead because of you,” she said.

“You're dead already,” I said.

“And what about you?” she responded.

“It doesn't matter.”

“I disagree,” she said.

“You don't even understand what you've done,” I said.

“Yes I do. I've done God's will,” she said, moving the blade into a more angular position.

“No, you haven't. You've exercised your own hate. Drop the blade and get down on the ground,” I said.

“I can't,” she began.

“I won't ask again. Put it down, and put your hands behind your head.” Her shoulders slumped in surrender, but her hold on the blade tightened. Leaves struggled in the wind and collapsed against her body, fall colors caught up in the struggle against decay. Several landed upon the slope of her shoulders and made her face appear shaded and scorched with vermilion and coral.

Suddenly, her demeanor changed; the look of depravity and hate seemingly altered by the silence. In that brief introspective moment she came across as vulnerable and alone. But in an instant she regained her composure and the sharp blade flashed in front of me. I dropped to my knee, and forcing air deep into my lungs, I pulled the trigger. Her body was forced back by the impact, coming to rest beneath the stanchion. I watched her half crawl and half drag herself across the ground, her hands spread open, a mixture of blood and soil being smeared along her arms. She tried to stand but failed, dropping back into a prone position, and never moved again.