Hit (4 page)

“The police won't come.” I stick the Glock back in my jeans and pick up the basket, a thousand years older than I was when I walked in the door. “Read the card. It explains everything.”

“Read a card? The police won't come? What the hell is happening?”

He takes the card from Eloise's limp hand as the girl shouts from far away, “The police aren't answering. It was just a message, like for a bank. For Valor Savings. But I called 911, like, three times. What do I do, Matt? Tell me what to do!”

He doesn't answer. He's reading the card. Tears are slipping
down his cheeks, he has one arm around his dead mother, and still he's reading the card.

“What does this mean?” He looks up into my eyes like I'm a priest, like I'm God, like I know anything. Like I have power.

“It means you need to start paying off your debts.”

I can't stay here a second more, watching a son mourn his dead mother. I can't watch her head flop against his shoulder as he tries to keep her upright.

“I'm sorry,” I mutter, and I hurry down the hall, the basket in my hands.

The girl in the tracksuit is nowhere to be seen. The front door is still open. I jog back to the mail truck and pull the Postal Service shirt off over my head and throw it onto the floorboards so it doesn't record my sobbing. My hands are shaking as I put the truck into drive, and I swerve around a cat and nearly hit a mailbox. I can barely drive through the tears, and my mind won't let go of her beautiful hands holding the card as everything else fell away to nothing.

I know she said she didn't mind. That she forgave me. Hell, it was probably a mercy for her. If she was in hospice care, trapped in a bed, strapped to those machines, it's not like she was living a great life. He said she couldn't eat. Eloise Framingham wasn't just going to miraculously recover. That woman was already dead. It was just a matter of time before her brain realized it. Maybe I did her a ­kindness, doing it quick like that.

But what about her son? Now he's got a dead mom, and he'll probably go into debt just to hold her funeral, and that little paper card isn't going to be much comfort to him. He's probably already ripped it to shreds. If you'd asked me yesterday, I would have said better him than me. But now, seeing the reality of another kid watching his mom die of cancer and then the senseless, cold-blooded government murder in the back bedroom, I'm not so sure. Maybe they weren't ready to let go yet, either of them.

Less than five minutes ago, I stood on her doorstep, wishing she would be ancient. But seeing Eloise Framingham die there, in her bed, with as much dignity as she could muster—now I wish she had been mean or a drug dealer or something, anything that I could hate. I wish she had been like that nasty creeper in the big coat who comes into my work on Kids Eat Free night and rubs himself under the table and tries to corner little boys in the bathroom. I wish it had been someone who deserved to die, instead of someone who simply couldn't afford proper medical care or who never had a chance to beat her disease. When she racked up her debt, Eloise Framingham didn't want a bigger TV or a fancier purse. She just wanted a few more years of life. I'll never even know if she got what she wanted. If it was worth it.

I back away from the mailbox I almost hit and turn around, and my mail truck is stuck right in front of Eloise Framingham's garden gnomes while I frantically try to escape. The guy in the sweatshirt
steps onto the porch with a rifle in his hands. He opens his mouth to shout something, but I slam my foot on the gas before I find out what it is. He must fumble the gun, or maybe it's not loaded, or maybe he's too sad to pull the trigger, because the shots I expect never come. I'm down the street and around the corner on two wheels as fast as a mail truck can go, my heart pounding in my chest.

I want out of this tidy, happy-looking neighborhood, fast. Back on the main road, I pass the fallen grandeur and yellowed, empty yards of the Preserve and aim for the place where I parked the mail truck last night as I counted down the hours until the clock started blinking and I had to knock on Bob Beard's door. It's in one of those subdivisions they started before the economy got bad, where they half built three gigantic houses and abandoned the property to grow wild between fancy streetlights. Like the Preserve's equally self-­important sister, they call it the Enclave. But it's empty now and has become the sort of place where kids park to make out or smoke weed and drink beer where no one can see them. No one ever lived in those three houses, and they're covered in graffiti tags now.

There's this paved lot behind the most finished house, all screened in by those thick privacy bushes that rich people put up so they don't have to see their neighbors. I guess they were going to have an RV back there or something. But now it's just a convenient, private place for me to park.

The clock resets itself, the red lines blurred through my tears.
Before I give in and punch the shit out of it, I slip between the seats and into the back of the truck. Some of my stuff flew all over the place when I was turning around and speeding away from Eloise Framingham and her son and his gun, and I try to put things back in order. I tuck the pillows into place, shove yarn balls back into my tote, and push the fast-food bags farther under the bed—after trolling for leftover croutons. They're clammy with old dressing, but I'm starving and still overcome with emptiness, so I swallow the few chunks I can find and then cough them right back up into the bag when they won't stay down.

Hating myself completely, I shove the gun under the pillow on my bed, a narrow cot with a thin mattress that came welded into the back of the truck. When I first saw the setup, I thought it was kind of cute. Homey. Now I see it for what it is: a prison.

I sit down on the carefully made bed and realize that my hands are still shaking.

I just killed someone. I killed two people in one day. Eloise was dying in the same way my mom might die. I'm living in the back of a truck. All I've eaten today was fast food, and I puked most of it back up. My blood sugar's probably low, or maybe I'm in shock. I've got eight more people to kill, and one of them is a guy around my age.

I don't know why killing Maxwell Beard should be any worse than killing anyone else. A life is a life, right? It's not like Jesus thought there was a big difference, if I remember what little I learned when
my mom still made me go to Sunday school. For what I'm doing now, age and attractiveness and goodness and great taste in bands don't matter.

Still, I'm dreading seeing him again, putting the gun to his chest and actually pulling the trigger this time. Deep down, I know it's worse because he's my age and we like the same music. Maybe he's just another keep-up-with-the-Joneses douchebag, like his dad. But I saw the fear in his eyes, the devastation. He's just a kid, like me, and kids should be allowed to make their own mistakes. Whatever he did, we're both victims of our parents' weaknesses and bad decisions. And that strikes a little too close to home. I hope I can convince him to do what I'm doing, work off the debt in a horrible but surprisingly quick way, and be done with it. He might believe me if I tell him it's not so bad.

I snort. That's one big lie to swallow.

I yank up the back door of the truck so I can stare at the high grass sloping down to a forest. Maybe some fresh air will help me relax, make my stomach stop churning. I just need a nap. I ­haven't slept since the man in the black suit showed up. When I found the list in the envelope yesterday morning, I tried to Google these ­people, to find out more about them, but our Internet was mysteriously down. Was it just ours, or everyone's? Is Valor Savings taking over the media, too? Do they now own the television stations, the news, the radio? Are the phones even working? Have they shut down the
cell signals? I know the police aren't answering the phones, but what about the hospitals? Has a bank really taken over the entire country overnight, just like that? Out here, in the backyard of an unfinished house in an abandoned neighborhood, I have no way of knowing what's happening in the real world, whatever that is now.

I set the alarm on my phone for four hours from now and toss it back into my yarn bag. Other than making sure I'm awake in time to visit the next victim during Postal Service hours, my smartphone is now completely useless. No bars anywhere, all day. I'm more alone than I've ever been in my life, and if I don't eat something, I'm going to barf acid, so I open the mini-fridge that's bolted to the back of my truck. It and the tiny microwave are both run by thick cords that snake through the truck, and I'm not even going to try to understand how all that works.

The mozzarella sticks I bought at the drive-through earlier are almost frozen, so I microwave them until they melt. They're mealy and mushy and burn my tongue, but I snarf the entire box and drink a can of soda, which makes me shift uncomfortably. That's the one thing this mini-RV doesn't have: a bathroom. But I do have a four-pack of toilet paper. I think about breaking into the house and using their facility, if anyone bothered to put in a toilet. But I can see missing windows, and I know other, less responsible people have already broken in. The toilets are probably ruined and already full. So I just pee out back in the weeds, glaring around, feeling both like the only person in
the world and like a rabbit waiting to get eaten by something bigger.

Back in the truck, I lie down on the bed, holding an embroidered pillow to my chest and staring at the posters I've taped to the ceiling. I wonder what will happen to bands, to music and musicians, now that Valor Savings owns the country and democracy is dead as a doornail. Will life mostly go on as it always has, or will we suddenly have new rules, new standards for living? Will we be like Socialists, or something new, some freaky breed of responsible capitalists in matching Valor uniforms? Or will it be full-on dystopia?

So far, I've focused on getting through the next five days and then taking my mom to the oncologist the moment my bonus arrives from Valor. I don't know how I would live without crafting and music. Without the giddy joy of yarn bombing a cart at the grocery store or slipping embroidered bookmarks into the soulless bestsellers at the bookstore. Without the glory of going to shows, of charging into the pit, of swaying or slam dancing or just singing along with a crowd. But living without art and music would be easier than living without my mom. And a lot better than dying.

I have a brief mental image of my favorite local band chained up in jail for singing anti-Valor songs and shiver. My history teacher once said that wherever there's oppression, there are going to be people who won't put up with it. Even my yarn bombing is its own form of protest, although I probably wouldn't get in too much ­trouble if I got caught.

Thunder cracks outside, the world gone gray with almost-rain. When I turn over to sleep, all I can see is the list of names I found in the envelope. I've already got it memorized. The last two names are the ones that worry me the most; now that I've met Max, I know both of them.

But Ashley Cannon is next, and I don't know if that's a guy or a girl. I'm going to assume it's a girl. She lives about five miles from here. With less than twelve hours to go, I should just get it over with. I assume Valor is tamping down the rumors, keeping people from using technology to spread the word that it's open season on debt and the police aren't going to be there for protection. The faster I get my list done, the easier it should be. But I'm on the verge of collapse, and I'd rather go unconscious by seeming choice.

The first raindrops rattle on the flat roof of the truck, reminding me all too much of gunshots. I get up to yank the back door down before it can rain inside. The truck is borrowed, but the mementos inside are mine, and they're more important now than ever. The posters carefully taped to the walls might represent the last shows I ever go to, the last few times that music was completely free to say whatever it wanted to say and that I was innocent and unrestricted enough to enjoy it on my own terms.

The storm smells so good that I leave the door cracked open, maybe a foot up from the floor. Just enough to let in the gray light and the sweet scent of rain on fall leaves. I shuck off my jeans and
long-sleeved T-shirt so that all I've got on are panties and the white tank I wear instead of a bra. There's a painful zit coming up on my chin, the kind that hurts like hell, so I dab some white zit cream on it and scrub my teeth with one of those fingertip disposable toothbrushes. If I were on a road trip or a vacation, this might be fun. But I've never done that, never even slept in a hotel bed. This is as close as I'm going to get.

With a shiver that's only half from the cold, I crawl under my favorite blanket, the flowered quilt my mom bought for me off the sale rack at T.J. Maxx when I was nine. I gave an identical one to my best friend for her birthday that year. We embroidered them one afternoon, our initials and
BFFS 4EVER
in purple thread, and I wonder if she still has hers. I haven't really had a close female friend since I started high school, and I run fingers over the clumsily stitched letters, remembering what it was like when everything was easy. When I didn't even know what debt was.

Pulling the gun out from under my pillow, I curl around it, running a finger along the barrel.
PROPERTY OF VALOR SAVINGS
is stamped on it in gold. Although I know exactly how many bullets there are, I eject the clip and count them. Thirteen bullets left. Eight more lives on the line. That's all they gave me, but it's not the only weapon I brought.

With a deep breath, I mutter the prayer my mom used to make me say every night before bed.

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

Watch and guard me through the night

Awake me with the morning light