The Rapture: A Sci-Fi Novel (10 page)

20

No Escape

“You sure had
an eventful morning there, Mitchell,” Richards says, from the other side of the room. I want to hate him, but I can’t. None of this looks good. Seven bodies, and Kristine and Janice are gone.

“Mikey came after me.”

“It’s over,” he says, shaking his head, “the girl led us to the haul in your truck, the whole deal.”

“Then there should be a black book in there, and this weird thing, some boxy looking device that has some GPS—”

“I don’t think so,” he says, “so it’ll be awhile before you get out of here.”

“Check the evidence, man,” I say, my arms bleeding from straining against the cuffs, “go and check it. You’ll see.” I can still feel the black book in my pocket. I won’t play that card—not yet.

“You know, this will move a lot quicker if you just start talking.” Kristine removed it all, the bitch. She’s going to leave me here.

“That goddamn whore.” I’m thinking about Kristine now, the .45 that I hope is still going into her gut if I don’t get out by midnight. I just wish I was the one that could airmail it to her.

“There’s the Mitchell that I know best,” he says, “don’t understand why Rod thought you were such a pussy.” The only thing keeping him from strangling me is the security camera in the corner of the room. “We talked to your liquor guy, too, and he confirmed that you were more skittish than an alley-cat with a load of methamphetamines shoved up its ass.”

“Danny?”

“And you know what he told me?” He flashes a smug grin, like he wants me to ask. I don’t. “Not curious? Well, I’ll tell you anyhow. Told us you were shutting down that crappy bar and cutting out. Hell of a coincidence ten hours after the bank goes boom and your buddies are cooked crispy style, don’t you think?”

“Isaac.”

“Yeah, turns out we can’t find him. But we’re looking.”

“He was right next to me in the damn bank!”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Richards says, “you admit you were there.”

“Yeah, you moron,” and I rattle my chains, “you found the stuff in my truck. But I’m not your guy.” Not the most evil guy, anyway.

There’s a loud knock at the door.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Richards says as gets up and leaves. Like it’s funny. I hear his footsteps trail off down the hall. There’s no way out—this might as well be a padded room. He returns with a manila envelope.

“Take a look,” he says, tossing it real casual on the table. I fan the contents out. Standard police shots of the jewels—which don’t look as good in evidence as they did on my bar—and other loot. Henderson, dead on the floor. Richards puts his hand down on the stack, stops me from going further.

“Her? Here?” I don’t know what he’s talking about.

“You ain’t seen this? What were you doing last night? Too busy babysitting me?” No response. “I didn’t kill him.”

He jabs his hand at the cross on the ground. Kristine’s cross.

His hands are on my throat. “You vile son of a bitch, this woman, she’s the only one worth a damn, the only person that could bring me back from where I’ve been.” I gag and try to shake free, but but there’s no way out. “I loved her you bastard, I loved her, and she gave me another chance, and now…”

The door swings open and a swarm of officers lift Richards off and carry him out, feet kicking.

“I’m going to kill you Mitchell,” he says, far down the hall, but plenty loud for me to hear, “Kristine was a good one.”

Christ. Richards has jumped off the deep end.
She saved him?
Maybe she cleansed his soul or something. I try to remember what the Rapture was about. Something about rebirth, salvation, absolution. If I ever got out, I’d have to do some research.

But right now it’s just me, left alone with all I’ve done, as well as that I have not. The only way out is through the door, and the evidence says, if I don’t make it out now, I’ll be getting the needle. Or a return to a life no one wants.

And then it comes. A revelation. Two of them. Richards said “the girl” called. He’d have recognized Kristine’s smoky voice. I could tell that he loved her; no way you forget a voice like that.

Which meant that Kristine didn’t set me up. It was Janice, that two-faced cunt-rag.

The second, and more pressing, thought? The way out.

I work one foot against the other and manage to remove my right boot. It must look like I’m having some sort of episode, so I can only hope the security guy is taking a little break.

I crane my head to see what’s come out. Red logo, bull horns; The Bull rides to a potential and ironic rescue. I snare the bag with my toes, and, after a few false starts, manage to contort my leg up and over the table.

I arrange the powder into a sloppy set of lines. If nothing else, I’ll be pretty buzzed—or dead—when Richards comes back. I stare down the powdery mountains, think for a moment, but I can’t put this shit—whatever it is—back. Not that I’m concerned about criminal activities; all things considered, I think this is what’s considered to be a low risk proposition.

I tear up one of the pictures and roll it into a crude tube. Pain shoots up my nose as I carve through the first line.

Richards isn’t from the future. I can tell by the way he talks. Kristine must have found him, saved him, and then she disappeared somewhere else, wherever they turn out Feds. That’s how he recognized the cross.

My thoughts jump back to the present. I’m on a roller coaster, that feeling you get at the top, looking down, everything building in your stomach. Except this, it doesn’t subside, stays locked in the center of my being. Every neuron is firing.

Back when I was nineteen, a girl I was hot for, Miranda Sterra, a pretty brunette, with these eyes and an ass you could bounce a quarter off, showed up at the El Dorado.

Miranda was wearing the tightest jeans, so tight she must’ve stole them from her kid sister. And there I was at the bar, knocking back my third or fourth beer of the night—past a certain point, it all fades—eyes focused on the bubbles and the foam, everything but the girls, Jasper off somewhere, hooting and hollering with the rest of the horny morons.

The second rush of white lighting drips down the back of my throat and my heart pumps, a piston in a race car going 230 that’s only built for 190.

Miranda sat down and said, in a voice ninety percent girl, ten percent woman, “Martini, no olive.” Without even looking, I had a boner ready to scream out of my pants. “Say, Damien, didn’t know you came here.” And she gave me this smile, all sweet and all sour, something beautiful and broken beyond repair. You know when you lie down on the blacktop in the middle of summer, where you go,
goddamn, it’s nice to be alive, and I feel it all so much right now because it hurts so damn bad
?
That’s what Miranda was like: bad for both of us, but damn if I didn’t feel alive.

She didn’t have a motorcycle, though, or a leather get-up, not like Kristine. Another rocket soars into my brain, launches me straight into the stratosphere, where no one can breathe without a special suit. I can hear footsteps now, voices even, but I don’t know if that’s my brain hallucinating or the assholes returning to harass me. I shake when the door rattles, but it doesn’t open. Richards must be the only one with the keys to this whole joint. Someone needs to make duplicates or something.

I don’t want to shove another line of toxin up my nose—because that’s all it is now, just arsenic or drain cleaner—but I bend down, do it anyway.

Miranda took me to the champagne room, free, because the bouncer there had a little thing for her—who didn’t—and we sat there for a long time, losing track of drinks, dances, each other.

“Hey, bend over for a moment,” she said to one of the strippers, and tapped out a line of powder from a vial, right onto the girl’s bare ass and snorted it up. “Try it.”

“Sure,” I said, and the night
was mine, everything delineated, a path glowing before me like it had never been before then. And I screwed her there, after the dancer left, lit out of my mind, until her ass cheeks glowed red in the murky light.

That was the first time I did flare and the first time I screwed Miranda and, later that same night, the first time I got my ass beat bad enough to almost die. And it was the first night when I decided that I wanted something better, only to find that being a Coyote was a hell of a rabbit hole.

I can hear screams and shouts, but my vision is blurry and I’m starting to drool on myself, and the last thing I see—or think I see—is Miranda’s huge boyfriend knock my teeth in and drop me out in the desert, five miles from Riverton.

I can see myself, that kid, morning sun tearing at his back, and I watch each step of his journey as he drags his bleeding ass home. I hear his words, broken and humble, as staggers up the crumbling steps.

“God help me.”

Be careful what Gods you pray to.

Because some of them, as it turns out, are assholes.

21

Dreams

“You found me,”
Isaac says with a little shrug, “I thought you’d come sooner.” I look down on him, out of my body. Maybe this is what it’s like to die.

“You know kid,” he says, dragging in long and deep and cool, holding the breath in for about a year, “when mom and dad died, went away, I was all you had. And I worked hard, I did.” His laugh is smooth, effortless, belies his actions. I can see his face, or the faint outline of it, in the shadows. He looks as real as the last day I saw him.

“Sometimes, though, you have to move on,” he says, “and I left you behind a year ago.” Two paths in the woods diverge, but what I’m curious to know is—even though the chances might be low—if somewhere down the line, far away, they can meet once more.

“This place I found has a good feel, though,” he says, “it’s, you know, kind of like home. Only better.”

I manage to speak. “Why’d you do it?”

“If I brought you along,” he says, walking away, “I’d always have to take care of you.” I try to follow him, once more, but I’m frozen here, locked away in solitary stasis.

Death changes a
man’s weight, makes him heavier, like something’s missing. One might take this is evidence that we have souls. I don’t have the answer, but I’m breaking a hell of a sweat carrying these bodies out in the emptiness. The sky is blue, but it’s dark on my plane of existence. And the pile of flesh never gets smaller, always stays the same.

Holes in the desert fill as soon as you shovel the sand out, and digging a grave is like trying to build a house by yourself—a noble pursuit, but impossible. The ground is hard on top, but underneath it has no hold, caves in on itself.

“Giving up there, Damien?” It’s Janice, sitting on a park bench, surrounded by grass. And here I am, covered in blood, this pile of bodies—Lenny, Mitch, Jasper, Henderson, Jepsen, the faceless thugs—still besides me. And I’m looking at this girl, far away but still crystal clear, eating an apple in an oasis. I step towards her, but I can’t get closer. She scolds me. “No getting out of this. There’s more work to do.”

“I can’t.”

She crosses her legs and stares off somewhere else.

Brisk night and daytime heat collide in this strange world, and I shiver and pant as the shovel crashes against the dry surface, over and over. I gaze deep into the dead’s glassy eyes.

“They’re dead, Damien, but only if you believe it,” Janice says, flicking the apple core behind her, “to go back a few days ago, huh?”

“Don’t.”

“Oh stop, it’s not about you. I’ve been working this out for years. You’d think I’d never hear about Riverton in the East, but the Federal boys that came in the restaurant there, well, they sure had some big mouths.”

“So it’s always been you running the show.”

“It’s always been me. And now it’s him. We’re the true voice of the Rapture.” The word lilts and floats towards my ears, almost sounds nice. I guess the concept’s all right, but I can’t agree with their interpretation.

“Am I dead?”

“What, like your friends? Worried that you went a little too far this time?”

“I guess. You kill Jasper?”

“He was a good little boy, don’t you think?”

“So you killed him?”

“It’s a mercy,” she says, grinning, not the least bit sad, “the world is cruel, Damien. But revenge is crueler. You’ve found that out, haven’t you?”

Everything starts to quake. This might be it—the part where the switch goes off.

“But I can change it.”

“You need the switchbox; I do believe you’ll be left behind without it.” She laughs, bitter and cold. I pick up the shovel again, focus, and the hole gets deeper. “There, you’re getting the hang of it. Down is the only way out.”

Dirt piles up next to the bodies. I rub my hands together for warmth and stare down at the stained soil. I place the bodies in, one at a time, cover them up. They don’t reappear this time.

“You’re a little tougher than you look, Damien Mitchell. Say a prayer.”

“I don’t know any,” I say, my mind going blank.

“Now I lay me down to sleep—”

“I’m leaving,” I say, and, just like that, she winks out of existence, her words with her. I walk for miles, feeling neither thirst nor hunger, and I find a car in the middle of the desert. It’s empty.

Kristine emerges from the driver’s side, holding a red can.

“Fuel,” she says, red can in her outstretched arm, “to get you home.”

“I can’t go home,” I say.

“Find a new one, then.” She sits on the hood, fingers tapping against the metal.

I look around at the empty plains, mountains on the horizon too far to touch. The gas slows to a trickle and the can runs dry. Keys come hurtling through the blackness, and somehow I snatch them out of the air; I look at Kristine and she gives me a smirk.

“Desire is a crazy thing, Damien.”

“I’m thinking we’d be better without it.”

“You don’t mean that,” her smirk turning into a kind smile, “we met, and that was all right. No one is good and no one is evil, they’re just…”

But she’s gone. The sky parts and I’m off, accelerator to the floor, racing a storm and the crescent waves behind me. Water looms closer in the rearview, and I pump the pedal, hard, fast, slow, but I can’t outrun the tsunami. I’m going to be carried away.

But then the car slingshots forward, leaving everything behind as pastel shades of a new dawn burst into the sky, fusing the world together once more.

I wake to
the frantic beep of medical equipment, light bleeding into my sockets from behind closed lids. It’s painful to blink. Sounds rush in like the crash of a waterfall—strained voices, the clink of surgical tools against the gurney. I hope that they don’t cut me open right here. It can’t be sterile; I can smell smoke.

My vision locks back into place, and I’m looking at endless blue, corrupted by hazy ash. Clouds traipse across the sky, and I know what each shall become: this one, a pirate ship, will soon be a race car, zooming and careening across the heavens. I can feel that my raw arms are free of shackles.

Face covered in sick and blood, I taste a burning drip in my throat. I can only see forward, but it’s enough to know I’m still at the police station. I roll against the side bar of the stretcher; it’s loose, old. I snap it off.

Time to leave.

“He’s awake,” I hear someone say, but I can’t tell if they’re relieved, disappointed or just don’t care. This is it, the end of my plan, and I leap from the slab, back from the beyond, catch a glimpse of Richards, look him right in the eye before I smash his face with the metal pole.

I’m flying across the ground, like I’ve been lifted on a jet stream far above the desert dust, skin touching nothing, the wind beautiful against my bare chest. Straight ahead, I can see it now, the terminus of my desperation, an idle police car, keys in the ignition, engine purring. It invites me in and I accept, slide into the driver’s seat without missing a step. Pistons pounding as I throw it in reverse, I gun through the line of pursuers, the scent of torched rubber mingling with the tingling in my throat.

I duck my head a little low, in case they shoot, but they don’t, and I roar onto the main road. Behind me, softer and softer, I hear their shouts, see the cops scatter and scramble. Ahead, a police cruiser stationed at the bank springs to life, lights sweeping across the hood of my car, on-off-on-off. I’m up to eighty now, closing the gap, three hundred yards, one hundred, as the officer pulls out, trying to pick up speed and cut me off all at once. I can hear his tires squeal, see the back end of his car clinging to the road.

I clip his tail before he can straighten out, blow right by him, sending the cruiser into a coffee shop. The horizon and I race, me trying to catch up, it running ever further away as I push my ride as hard as she’ll have it. Maybe I can make it—but I have no cash, the entire force crawling up my ass, and a brain that feels sharp enough to cut right out of my skull.

The radio crackles to life.
Suspect fleeing west…white male wearing blue jeans stained with blood…no shoes, no shirt. Wanted for multiple homicides, robbery, kidnapping, drug trafficking and use.

I bang it with my fist and achieve radio silence. Drug use seems to be low on my list of purported sins.

It crosses my mind to stop at The Lady, grab my truck, but it’s not there and the keys are off with Kristine, maybe in a ditch, the permanent property of the Riverton desert.

I pass the El Dorado and Candice’s old trailer, a final, short farewell, and now I’m out in the open, the sun starting to go down, roses and cobalts and mangoes diffusing across the flat earth. A familiar voice sputters from the radio.

“Little brother,” he says, “you can’t outrun this one.”

“I’m sorry Damien, there wasn’t any other way,” Janice says, voice warped by static, “it’s not personal.” I fumble with the switches, turn on some loud metal music that rocks the car for a moment, flip a few other dials, and hear the line open.

“It’s that easy, then. All for some gold.”

“The gold?” Isaac seems surprised. “It was always about the switchbox, buddy, not the cash.” Then he adds, “Although the money, that’s necessary, where we’re going. Can’t pay them in dollars.” He laughs, like this is funny.

“She didn’t tell you, then?”

“Tell me what?”

“She’s going to kill you.”

“We’re in this together. We’re going to change the world.”

“That’s sweet, Lancelot, it is. But there’s only room for one megalomaniacal asshole at the top of your organization. And it’s the one who’s been planning longer.”

“If you follow us,” Janice says, “the girl dies. Say hello, honey.” I can hear muffled cries and something else in the background. Still alive.

“Whatever Janice has planned, I’ll kill you—” I’m cut off by a crackle and sputter. Disconnected. “—both. Shit!” But the line is dead, and I might as well be too. Twenty years down the line will have three new residents—or maybe just two—and I’ll be out in the arid heat, crows eating my appendix, eyes rotting in the sand, coyotes tugging at my insides.

I want to believe I’m pissed because of some moral compass— but that’s not enough to chase them into the void. Truth is, I’m just like all of them; I want something impure, guttural, dark. I want to blast the Syndicate from the world, and now I want to do the same to the Rapture—each of its splintering arms. And I understand now, at least a little, Richards’ grasp of redemption.

There’s one way to redeem this: slit Janice’s goddamn throat, slow, and look right into her eyes.

Droplets form on the windshield and the wipers leave behind blurry streaks. I need to get to Freeport. I hope Freddy’s still there.