The Rapture: A Sci-Fi Novel (3 page)

7

Withdrawal

There were other
incidents like that over the years—to be expected, since I started working for the Syndicate once I hit twenty. Which is why it’s kind of funny that this one moment sticks with me.

My mind ratchets forward, back to the present.

“It isn’t about the money,” I say, flicking the ash from my cigarette with a well-rehearsed finger tap, “it’s the goddamn principle. This life owes people something more, and if it isn’t going to hand it over, I’m taking it for them. For us.”

Isaac, Lenny and Mitch, they’ve been at the bar for an hour, two, maybe more. Tonight was big. I was still struggling with the magnitude. The two of them, Lenny and Mitch, they were dumb as bricks: they thought the robbery was about the money.

They could have the money. I wanted what was inside Sheriff Henderson’s security box.
The switchbox
. Henderson, after that murder in the canyon, hadn’t let the New Chicago thing go. He’d found out what was going on, and he got his piece.

He ran this end now. Just the type for middle management: ambitious, dirty, but stupid enough to ensure that he wasn’t a threat to the real folks in charge.

“Well aren’t you just a regular Robin Hood,” Little Lenny says from behind the bar, “all lofty with your principles.”

“You know I’m in it for the money,” Mitch says, “and I ain’t going to share none of my loot.”

“Fellas.” I pause to sip some vodka for dramatic effect. “You never felt that life screwed you? We all could have done so much more—”

“Yeah, think of all the bitches I could’ve slammed out if I’d been born in Miami,” Little Lenny says, “you seen some of them broads, the ones down by the beach? Gorgeous.” He smacks his lips together and Mitch snickers.

“You guys are too damn stupid to realize what you’re missing.”

“We’re robbing a bank, Damien,” Mitch says, staring at the whiskey before him, “this ain’t some sort of humanarian—”

“Humanitarian, Mitch.”

“Yeah, that charity stuff, we ain’t doing it. I want the money, Lenny wants the money, and you’re a bullshitter if you say you don’t too.”

“What about Isaac, does he want the money?”

“Damn right he does.” He didn’t. He got me into this Rapture movement, and while I don’t agree with the religious weirdness of it all—and I sure ain’t looking for absolution—they got a decent message. They want to help people. Even if it’s with the opiate of the masses.

Mitch slams back his third whiskey, the shot glass hitting the table with a loud thud. I’d tell him to slow down, but I feel he has the right idea.

I pace back and forth, trying to calm down, but the nervous energy doesn’t dissipate. I flash back to Bruiser, his nervous energy. This is my first time messing with the Syndicate. I glance over at Lenny, who’s cleaning like a damn demon. Under normal circumstances, he couldn’t be convinced to do that by a bare-assed supermodel.

“Vodka, on the rocks,” I say. The Lucky Lady’s interior looks elegant in the dim light. One would think that this town could use a little modernity, with Phoenix not even a buck ninety away.

But no, it’s been five years since I opened this place—after getting the boot—and I’ve gotten my fair share of comments about my building ruining Riverton’s rustic aesthetic or that I think I’m better than everyone else.

Screw them. This is 2029; they could use the lesson in modern style. I nurse the vodka, and when it settles in my stomach, I feel a familiar fire. My leg stops its incessant pounding and I close my eyes to wait for the inevitable.

“Tired,” a familiar voice calls, and I emerge from my trance with a start.

“Focusing,” I respond.

“No ice?”

“Melted away.”

“You’re slipping, you know that.” Isaac throws his arm around my shoulder and rocks me a bit on the stool. “It’s time.” I don’t say anything, just stare at the empty glass. “Tonight’s our only shot.”

“Lenny and Mitch are out there?”

Isaac grins at this, nodding his head. “You don’t trust your big brother to run a tight ship?” I want to ask about everything, double check all the plans to make sure that nothing can go wrong, but that’s an impossibility, as anybody who’s lived a day in this world can tell you. Truth is, even if you put in all the work, you still might come up empty. We walk to the idling car, all alone out here on the outskirts of Riverton.

“The first thing you need to do,” Mitch is saying as I sink into the cracked leather seat, “is buy a new car.”

“This, my friend,” Lenny says, pulling on to the empty road and towards the faint glow of the town proper, “is a classic. She doesn’t need any replacing.”

“So it’s a girl, Len?”

“Yeah, and she’s got delicate feelings.”

“You sticking this old boat in the exhaust?”

“He does strike me as a back door kind of guy, now that you mention it,” I say, vodka taking effect.

“The lot of you was raised by goddamn inbreds, you know that?”

“You’re right. I trust your judgment.”

An uncomfortable silence settles in after this, clogging the air. The car rattles on over the pitted road. I look outside at the empty Arizona landscape. The dark outline of the town grows larger. The Lucky Lady is only a few miles outside Riverton, but the ride feels like it’s in slow motion.

I check my messages every few moments. Nothing. Maybe the video’s all in my head, the guilt of what I’ve done coming back to haunt me. I doubt it.

Soon enough, though, Greater Riverton Bank & Trust’s sign is flickering in front of us. The interior gleams like a beacon against the starry night: all the lights are on, even with everything locked up. Lenny cuts the engine in the darkened parking lot next door. The buildings on Main Street are freestanding, so we’re still a couple hundred feet away.

“The lights are on. Maybe they know,” Mitch says.

“Only if you sent them an email about our plans,” Lenny says.

“I don’t use email.”

“It’s a joke, dumbass.” Lenny rubs his forehead and groans. “The lights are left on for the watch guy, some lazy clown who never shows.”

“Don’t worry, Mitch, you just have to stick a couple of things to vault,” Isaac says, patting the big guy on the back.

“Why the hell did I agree to let him take care of the explosives,” Lenny says when we exit the car, “asking for a goddamn catastrophe…” I can’t hear the rest.

The trunk clicks open and I hand the equipment bag to Mitch. Lenny passes out black cotton masks and gloves, which we don—to look the part of thieves and, I suppose, for practical effect.

I glance around to check for cars, my heart skipping a beat when I see a light in the distance. I want to say something, but my throat catches and nothing will come out, and right when I think I might collapse I recognize the neon glow as little more than the omnipresent buzz of the El Dorado’s sign, colors congealing into a bright, massless ball.

This happens every damn time, and the feeling sucks enough to remember it. But that doesn’t stop it from happening. I shake my head like a dog after an unwanted bath.

The bank gleams before us, a desert jewel—the well-manicured hedges outside are even watered, evergreen, like something you’d see in a model.

Lenny jimmies the lock open. No alarms sound; the watchman didn’t take care of it. For the past three weeks I’ve seen his routine and he didn’t break form tonight. He never has.

I’ve been in here before, but the sleek wooden countertops, the polished marble floors and the strong incandescent lights all seem foreign. A little slice of civilization dropped in the midst of a mad, dusty world. I step back outside and lean against the glass. I stare into the blackness. The lookout. Nothing moves, like a temporal lock has been put in place.

I burn cigarette after cigarette.

“Damien. Hey, Damien!” I turn towards Isaac’s voice.

“What?”

“You going to take a couple steps back daredevil? Let’s go.”

I’ve zoned out. I can feel my legs moving across the street, but it’s surreal. I see the vault all wired up inside, something way too complex for Mitch, a guy who didn’t even remove the tags from his clothes, to pull off.

Mitch presses the trigger, and for a moment nothing happens and there’s still hope. I’m going to walk away, go back to my old job and everything will be fine—but then a violent boom shakes the ground, strong enough to send me into the bushes. The glass cracks under the weight of the explosion, and I can hear the supports give way inside, right before the loud crash and grind of metal disrupts the midnight quiet.

When it’s over—and it only takes a minute, maybe two for it to become a pile of rubble—I hoist myself off the ground.

“Holy shit, Mitch,” Lenny says, “I think I broke my ass.” He touches the seat of his pants, hopping about.

“Mitch,” Isaac says, “that wasn’t what was supposed to happen.”

“No.” Mitch shakes his head.

“We wanted to blow the door.”

“Yes.”

“And you just blew up the entire bank.”

“Some of it’s still there.” He isn’t being fresh, just literal. I can’t help but laugh; I can see clean out the other side now, through a truck sized hole in the back wall. This wasn’t in the plans; time to improvise.

Not that I need to. Something tells me this always happens.

“Maybe we can get in the back,” I say, and by the crew’s reactions, they haven’t noticed that Mitch’s homebrew has blown a chasm straight into the vault. “Look.” I point and Lenny races off.

“We can walk right in,” he calls from afar, so we follow his voice to where we can see a hole leading to the dull metal safety deposit boxes inside.

“I’ll check it out,” Isaac says, “safety and all.” He grabs the bag and steps inside. I hear the crowbar clang and some muffled scrapes. I know what he’s doing, and I look over at Lenny and Mitch. They’re flotsam, I guess, but we’ve known them for a long time. I hear Isaac’s words in my ears:
sacrifices are necessary
. I say nothing, just stare at the sky with a grim smile.

After a few minutes he comes back out. “All right, let’s hop to it.” We start popping the boxes out of the wall. They hiss when we open them, like little cans of cola.

“Goddamn, look at Jason Arthur,” Lenny says, holding a fragile snapshot in the air, “still has all his teeth in this one, the son-of-a-bitch.” Arthur’s been cutting his teeth on whiskey and chew at the local watering holes for years.

“Keep it moving,” Isaac says, and Lenny tosses the photo into a corner. Cash, jewels, broaches, earrings, engagement bands; they all go back in the bag where, just before, explosives and cold black steel sat. Then I’m aware that no one else is opening anything, so I turn to find the three of them huddled in a tight circle.

“The hell are you slackers doing?”

“Come check this out, Damien,” Lenny says, “frigging unbelievable. It’s the real deal.”

Gold bricks. I’m pretty sure stacks of these don’t exist outside of movies. Or, rather, I was. There’s some other stuff in the box—a black book and a couple of old looking electronics—but they don’t look too exciting. At least not to Mitch or Lenny; to me, they’re the real gold.
The switchbox
—the controls to time’s train tracks.

My heart leaps, but I pretend like I’m focusing on the shiny stuff. “What’s it worth?”

“A shitload,” Lenny says, “who knew someone in Riverton had all that? Greedy dick.”

“Viewing hours are over,” Isaac says, “time to load it up.”

“Well, you don’t need to be a prick about it. I’d expect that from Mitch,” Lenny says, starting to put the cache in the bag.

“Just load it.” Isaac glances at his watch. The bag’s full now, and he motions towards me to pick it up, adding, “Stash that.”

“Where,” I ask.

“In the bushes.”

“I don’t think that’s—”

“No, jackass, in the car. Lenny, give him the keys.”

I stomp out to the lot and open the trunk. This job must be eating at Isaac for him to lose his cool. I scan up the two lanes—one for coming and one for the going—that are wide as four. To my right is The Lucky Lady, just outside Riverton enough to be considered part of the going, but not far enough to be gone.

And to my left, far down—past Sissy’s Diner and some busted up buildings—is the Sheriff’s station. It’s the coda to the main strip; turn off there, and all you’ll find is a junkyard of homes and trailers. Which reminds me: I’ll have to visit Monk when we’re clear of this.

There aren’t any lights coming from the station, which makes me breathe a little easier, until I drag a little too hard on a cigarette and start into a fit of coughing.

Echoes of the past wash over me, and I get a bad feeling, you know, like déjà vu. I see Bruiser choking on his big cigar, and I feel like I might be getting into something that I can’t handle.

But all I can hear is the lonesome call of a coyote across the plains, somewhere far off in the desert dust. I wrap my hand around the .45 holstered at my hip, right before an explosion rocks the bank, heat bursting out in all directions.

The heels of my boots pound against the pavement as I cut around the back. Thick black smoke, but I can’t see much else.

“Shit,” I scream, but no answer comes. I can’t find Isaac; I don’t know if he’s messed up, if he’s smoked himself along with Lenny and Mitch.
No loose ends
, he told me, over and over again, but I don’t think he considered himself one. Orange tendrils leap skyward. In the distance I see lights, screaming down the road from the direction of the El Dorado.

They’re coming.

The acrid taste of torched asphalt cakes my mouth. Even with the pops and groans of the collapsing building I can hear slow, measured footsteps clicking against the ashy ground.

I have little place to hide, nothing behind me but empty desert. I edge towards Sparky’s, closer to the car, hoping that the destruction distracts whoever’s come. The veil of smoke only stretches halfway between the bank and Lenny’s car; there’s a space between, clear as daylight, that offers no cover.

I pray that this unwelcome visitor is a bad shot.

“Goddamnit,” a woman says, “too late.” She sounds like she’s in front of the bank—or, at least, what used to be the front. The footsteps halt; I strain to hear over the din of the blaze. Nothing. “Don’t move, you son of a bitch.” I turn around and there she is, fifty yards away, barefoot, clad in a tight top and shorts, gun aimed square at me.