The Spy's Little Zonbi (10 page)

Early Wayne ran for his idling pickup, the receiver still swinging at the end of its metal cord. In eight minutes he was taking the meeting hall basement stairs three at a time.

“
Where's the fire, Early?” Some of the guys were playing poker around a folding card table as Wayne darted past. He knocked over half the empties, breaking a couple on the concrete floor.

Wayne pulled up in front of their captive in the dim end of the basement, hands on his knees, gasping for breath. Limp Shockley was tied every which way and hadn't budged from the old wooden chair.

“
What's got into you, Early? Everything's been quiet as could be.”

Wayne reached out for the Agway corn sack covering Shockley's head and slowly lifted it up. The duct tape over his mouth had turned into a weird, robot-like smile and the man's hair was wet and all crazy. His nose dripped snot and his eyes were bloodshot and fearful.

“
When's the money comin', Early? We're outta beer.”

Wayne pulled the newspaper clipping out of his breast pocket and unfolded the small byline photo of Shockley. He held it out and squinted in the bad light. Same fat cheeks, same eyes, same everything. Wayne switched hands with the clipping and took hold of the duct tape. Slow didn't work, so he put one palm on Shockley's sweaty forehead and gave it one big rip just as a flash grenade burst through one of the high narrow windows and exploded at his feet.

Temporarily blind and partially deafened, Wayne hurled himself to the floor and tried crawling on the dirty concrete. His boots kicked out behind him, searching for traction, but snapped one of the wood chair legs and brought a screaming body falling over him. He was pinned. Wayne thought he heard someone shout FBI and he was half certain he heard someone call out the name
Mrs
. Shockley.

Wayne felt the hogtied body inch higher up on his torso, pushing air out of his lungs. Hot breath was on his neck and in his ear. Wayne, helpless as the mouth hungrily probed his cheek, was repulsed by the great looming blur. Early Wayne knew he was never going home again and it caused him to surrender. The boots stomping down the stairs were coming to carry him away and that left nothing to fight for. The pain of Mrs. Shockley biting off his nose was somehow comforting.

***

“
They should coin a phrase for this kind of journalism.” Chase was packing away prints and negatives he wanted to keep from the summer while Limp sat eating a peach over a napkin. Limp's slurping was accompanied by the darkroom radio playing classic rock.

“
You saved my mother's life.”

“
How do you figure?”

“
The Feds would never have tapped those boys' phones to know what they were planning.”

“
They kidnapped your mother—well, they thought it was you—because I stole their credit.”

“
Yeah, there's that.” Limp hadn't shown any real emotion over his mother's abduction. She'd suffered a sore hip but had refused a trip to the hospital and was more upset over missing an afternoon of soap operas. “She's a tough broad.”

“
My mom would be under psychiatric care.”

“
My mother scares psychiatrists,” Limp said, folding the peach pit into the napkin. “You aren't having any second thoughts?”

Chase stacked three empty photo paper boxes on the counter and began filling them with five by seven prints he'd made over the last eight weeks. Many were over- or under-exposed discards, but some were duplicates he'd made of his best work. There were a few good feature pictures, but most were spot news, the parade of weekend fires and car wrecks.

“
I'm dropping out as soon as I get back to campus.” Chase flipped through a new stack of black and whites. Limp had told him to expect a letter with instructions on where and when to report for a two week training and orientation session. “I don't know if I could sit through classes even if I wanted.”

Limp tossed his pit in the trash and stood over his shoulder. “You never showed me this one.”

Chase held the accident scene photo of the severed hands still attached to the steering wheel—the one the cop had asked him to shoot. “I don't know why I took it,” he lied.

“
You'll do just fine in your new job,” Limp said, reaching for the photo. “You see the beauty in such awful circumstances. That's a rare gift that'll come in handy.”

“
I'm going to miss my friends,” Chase said, meaning Stoney and the dopey girls they both managed to bring back to their dorm.

“
I'm going to surely miss you, too, Pie.” Limp embraced him from behind, his head in the nape of Chase's neck, his right hand still clutching the photo. “It needs a name, don't you think? How about Driving with Severed Hands?”

“
That's fine.” Chase tried wriggling out of the bear hug that reeked of Old Spice and sweat.

“
You keep yourself safe. There's going to be places where they cut off more than just hands.”

Limp's tears dripped down the back of Chase's shirt.

S
toney wasn't taking Chase's new plan well.

“
Where the fuck are you really going?” Stoney was following him across campus toward the registrar's office, shirtless to show off his deep tan, wearing mirror sunglasses and cut-off jeans. “You're full of shit. No way you're going home.”

“
I got a job and I have to go to a training program.” It was the truth, but the letter Limp had advised was coming had warned Chase about the dangers of friendship. In his new career, Chase would put Stoney in danger if a foreign country identified him as a spy. Chase was less worried about his family.

They wound around the banks of Mason Pond, through the Student Union, where Stoney bought a can of Coke from a machine. He punched buttons hard enough to send a few coeds scurrying away. They dodged Frisbees in front of the library as Stoney continued his rant.

“
Bullshit. You don't drop out of school like this. A cult! Did some bitch lure you into joining a cult? I read about stuff like that. That shit never turns out cool.”

“
It's not a cult.”

“
Jonestown, man. Think about the purple Kool-Aid.” He put a hand on Chase's shoulder and slowed their pace across the short cropped lawn. “They'll draw you in by giving you like ten wives, dude, all bangin' you at the same time and making grilled cheeses and shit.”

“
It's not like that.”

“
Then the crazy leader will decide some asteroid is a spaceship coming for you, and he'll pray it up and shit and make everybody drink poison. Porking ten chicks always has a downside.”

“
It's not a cult.”

“
All you poor bastards.” Stoney seemed absolutely convinced he had it right. “I should tie you up in our room and have that chick you banged from last semester deprogram your fucked-up head.”

“
Okay, I joined the Army,” Chase lied.

“
That would be worse. The Army is just like prison, man. You'll get ass-raped and then forced to do push-ups. Stop bullshitting and tell me why you're leaving me. I followed you all the way to that open sewer to watch a bunch of kids get killed.”

They were nearing the building housing the registrar's office.

“
I know, man. I dream about it all the time.” There had been nightmares. They came less and less frequently over the summer, but Chase learned that falling asleep stoned made them come back vivid and hard. He'd even woken Stoney last night.

“
It's friendship treason.”

“
It's a chance to do something big, Stoney, you just have to understand.” Chase escaped at the doorstep of the registrar's office. No shirts, no shoes, no service. Stoney had to wait outside while Chase withdrew his student status.

***

Stoney drove too fast. Chase's Mustang wasn't meant for speeding down gravel roads at high speeds with a drunken kid in aviator sunglasses at the wheel. Chase knew Stoney wanted to squeeze out their last hours together and didn't complain about the long drive out toward Shenandoah National Park. They'd come twice before with girls and a trunk full of beer and ice.

Stoney made the last turn onto a closed road, the wooden barriers with no trespassing signs knocked to the side long ago. They parked in a turn-around spot, each grabbing a backpack with a few cans of beer and a towel. It was buggy and hot and it took Chase a while to realize they'd made the entire trip in silence, no music and no talking.

The narrow, overgrown path was a straight line to the flooded quarry. They climbed down the least steep wall, one careful step at a time, to a small patch of crushed stone. They drank the beer then swam the fifty yards across the deep, dark water to the side where people came to climb and jump.

Every splash was echoed from the soaring rock walls. Some stories said the water was a hundred feet deep, others claimed it was a thousand.

They emerged from the cold water and found the best climbing line to begin the ascent. The face was nearly vertical, but had easy hand- and footholds. You could turn and jump from five or twenty-five feet, or go all the way to the top for a hundred foot freefall.

Chase followed Stoney, but stopped at a small ledge where kids had scratched curse words, names, and the height—they'd guessed it at twenty-five feet. He edged sideways then turned, his back to the wall, hands flat against the cool stone. It was a beautiful, postcard-kind of view, but he closed his eyes.

Chase listened as Stoney climbed higher and higher, slipping and catching himself. He could hear his close calls, his swearing, and his determined grunts. If you started falling, you were supposed to push off backwards, away from the outcropping, hoping not to clip anything on the way down.

“
I made it,” he called from almost directly overhead. Chase craned his neck and could barely see him leaning over the edge. “It's really high, man.”

“
You're crazy, Stoney.” But Chase was really just in awe of him. Stoney always went farther, to places Chase was afraid of, and that wasn't crazy at all. Stoney wasn't afraid of anything.

“
You see that?” His words echoed, were carried back by the stone walls and the water below. “Look!”

It was a hawk, or some other large bird of prey, making a fast, banked turn around the perimeter of the water's edge, maybe seventy feet off the surface. With a slight angling of its wings, it gained altitude and headed out over the middle of the water, then dropped into a dive bomb at an incredible rate, reaching its talons out at the last instant to pluck a small, shiny fish from just below the surface. It beat its wing against the warm air and rose up and out of sight of the manmade cavern.

And then it was Stoney's turn to soar. Chase watched as he pushed off the ledge with a mighty howl, arching his back like a skydiver, arms reaching forward. He fell silent and fast, a blurry swoosh just a few feet in front of Chase, before slamming into the surface of the water fists and head first. Kids never jumped head first from the top ledge. Never. It seemed forever before Stoney came back to the surface. Most of the white bubbles had already disappeared.

Stoney drove Chase to the airport two days later. Right up to the international terminal, but Stoney pretended not to notice. Again there was no talk and no music, just the sound of the wind on the highway, then the roar of big engines when they arrived.

“
I'm sorry,” Chase tried. He couldn't see past Stoney's mirror lenses.

Chase grabbed his backpack and new camera bag from the back seat. Stoney hadn't moved from behind the wheel, the Mustang idling at the loading zone curb. A cop was strolling up to keep people moving along and Chase didn't want Stoney hassled for all the empties visible with the top down.

“
The pink slip is in the glove compartment. I signed it over.”

“
Christmas present?” It was Stoney's first words.

“
Take care of it.”

Stoney let go of the steering wheel and draped his right arm over the seat to look at Chase. “I'm the one who jumps, not you.”

“
Maybe it's my turn.”

The cop was standing next to Chase and seemed interested in the collection of bottles and cans strewn across the back seat and the piled on the floorboards.

“
Yeah, but you ain't got my style.” Stoney revved the engine and popped the clutch. The tires spun and smoked as the startled cop jumped back and lost his balance, nearly falling on his ass. Chase held his ground because he knew Stoney and was in awe of how he kept the powerful old car under control, probably hitting eighty miles an hour by the time he reached the interstate.

I
n the airplane window seat Chase was feeling like a little kid, nose pressed to the acrylic surface, circles of moisture appearing and disappearing. They banked hard right on approach and he searched every inch of the exotic view. The green hills spreading out below were hazy with smoke from dozens of what seemed to be small fires. The towns, built from dirt and stone instead of wood and steel, were earth colored. And Chase was here to help kill their president.