True Heroes (83 page)

              Every ounce of his natural strength went into the ropes repeatedly until he was flailing with a momentary rage, but nothing gave. The more he moved, the more sensation flooded into his temporary craze until he finally stopped and screamed violently in the small cave. “Why didn’t they just drown me?”

              ‘You’re afraid of us.’

              “I deserve to be drowned! I let you all down! Killed you! I was wrong, wrong, wrong!” The last word elongated into a rising scream until his breath gave out.

              ‘You can’t face us.’

              Caleb looked up with tears of mixed origin in his eyes. “I can’t live knowing I did so much wrong to you. The world won’t miss one fucking moron that completely destroyed every life he’s ever touched.”

              ‘You want to destroy yourself.’

              “It’s the right thing to do. It’s time to atone.”

              ‘You want to die.’

              “Yes! Okay? Yes! I’ve wanted to die every day since Carol did!”

              ‘You didn’t though.’

              “I couldn’t”

              ‘You always had a choice.’

              Caleb started laughing. “And I went against what I wanted. I haven’t made a choice for myself since high school.”

              ‘You want to change back into that.’

              “I…always thought I did.”

              ‘You no longer want to be Caleb.’

              “I never even knew who that was, but I hated him. He’s the one you all thought you supported.”

              ‘You are better than Caleb.’

              “He’s a dead soul.”

              ‘You are nobody.’

              “Only when I’m dead.”

              “Who are you talking to?” A round man walked back into the cave with a sidearm drawn. “You have friend here?”

              Caleb couldn’t help but laugh. “No, no friend here.”

              The wide frame walked closer but kept his distance. “The boss, he no like you.”

              “Good. I couldn’t be happier to hear that.”

              He crossed his arms while Caleb stared at the jagged rock under his broken shoes. “You have want of death?”

              “You have no idea.”

              “What man, eh, what man want this?”

              “A man that has lived a mistake.”

              “Maybe, I say, what you want is not really what you want. Mistake are like sand is here. Everybody make them.”

              “Nobody knows how to live through them.”

              There was a sudden smack of metal against the wall behind the relaxed man and he was standing straight immediately. The two lesser guards pushed and shoved him out of the room as Caleb kept his eye on Ronaldi with a glare growing in involuntary fashion. “Protector of the bullied, eh Arnold?”

              The leader stopped fiddling with his object and turned to Caleb. “Only one man ever called me that. I gave him nice scar. You call me that? You must want the same thing. You’re a crazy, crazy man.” He turned back and the ignition of a blowtorch made Caleb unexpectedly cringe. “Tell me the day your whore mother brought you into the world, and I’ll carve it in your chest so you’ll never forget again.”

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              “What if he doesn’t come back, Alice?”

              She popped her head up from the space between her hugged knees. “Then you’re going to feel even worse for always being mean to him. It’s not even nice now to bring it up with me because you know I miss him. A lot. So much—”

              ‘Alice.’

              “What, David?”

              He turned around from the window. “I didn’t say anything.”

              ‘Don’t give up hope.’ She waited until David turned around before closing her eyes and hearing Caleb’s voice whisper. ‘I told you I’d come home. When have I lied to you?’

              “He’s never lied to me. He told me he’d come home.”

              David turned around again with a concerned look. “You’re not talking much. Are you okay?”

              ‘You’ll be all right.’

              “Why?”

              ‘Because there’s no one like you in the universe.’

              Her heart began thumping loudly against the back of her breast before David spoke. “You’re usually thinking a lot, but now you’re not.”

              “I am.”

              ‘Talk this? Let me?’

              ‘Don’t give up.’

              ‘Can…letter, no, can…I talk?’

              ‘You can do it. All by yourself you can.’

              Alice opened her eyes to see David studying her intently. “I’m okay. Well, I’m tired. Do you mind if I get some shut eye?”

              David jammed his hands back in his pocket as she thought, in Caleb’s voice, ‘He’s disappointed. He wanted to stay with you. He still has feelings for you.’

              ‘Friend?’

              ‘No, I think more.’

              ‘Mine…more is…you.’

              ‘I’m you, Alice. Caleb will be back soon.’

              ‘Hope.’

              ‘No need.’

-
         
                            -                            -                           

              Caleb was finally drowning. On all sides was the clear menace that tugged at his precious air while his hair gently drifted with the current of the hand along the back of his neck. His limbs didn’t flail, and wouldn’t if they could. Inside of his mind was still; as the water seeped through every open seam, the instinct to survive that had furthered human and amoeba alike was completely overshadowed by a sense of wrong within the self; a sense of the need to self-destruct in a final, decisive manner that would leave no room for mess within the agony. ‘The dark is so comforting. This is what I want. This is what’s happening. Alice….’ An image of her flashed through his closed eyes and what was left of his breath escaped through his flattened cheeks. ‘She will miss me. We had our future. We…could have had the finest of futures. How odd. The only eulogy a dying man ever hears is from himself. How can that be good? How can that be right? Where is the choice to be made?’

              His lungs suddenly found more air in a dusked corner. ‘How can this be right? My family died, but my Alice lives. I…the dangerous word. It is I that wants to die for what I’ve done, but what’s right? This is vengeance against myself. A crime of passion. A passion of man. A man of I. No, this isn’t right. It is soothing though…Alice. I promised her I’d be home. I promised them so many things…and I will fulfill them. Not even because they wanted it of me, but because they saw that I could do the right thing. They saw what I could never. A world without I. Will it be I, or her? I or everybody? I am sorry, Mom, Carol, Dad, but I cannot do this. No matter how tired I am, I cannot sleep. Not yet!’

              The ropes surrounding Caleb were suddenly engulfed in a blue hue that obliterated the chair into atoms. While the four other men in the room quickly found the exit, Caleb pushed his power completely out until his clothes were burning from the intensity of the surrounding blue orb. Columns shot upwards and exploded through the pointed rock of the mountain, sending hundreds of pieces into the air and collapsing a large portion of the cave system, all the while Caleb’s face had found a smile from underneath the healed flesh now surrounding his body.

              “What just happened?”

              “The past is no more.”

              “Right. Get your man and let’s leave.”

              Caleb dashed through the fallen rocks, but stopped in the dark tunnel with Power several feet extended. His enhanced hearing could pick up breathing shadows cast from the tremendous blue still emanating from his extended self. The intensity of his power subsided into the clear barrier of its weakest state, and a single tentacle unfurled and lit the tip of the searching form with a blue eye. Caleb closed his eyes and looked through the warped space as his feet took measured, nearly silent steps forward. Two men attacked from either side of the narrow passage; Caleb split the single, writhing ray into two extensions of his arms and drove them back into the wall while making their guns unusable. Crouched down behind one of the held men was Ronaldi— ‘He looks surprised.’

              “Who are you?”

              “Nobody, you know.”

              Caleb lifted him by his scarf and powered through the wall. He was back to the unforgiving light, to which he held nothing between who he was, what he was, and what that meant. He ran quickly to the far end of the disintegrating mountain range to find fifty prisoners being loaded into a convoy of military vehicles, and Stanley smiling wildly. “There you are, Jay Bird.” He removed his vest and threw it to Caleb as he approached. “And hello Arnold. It has been a while.”

              Caleb let two soldiers take the cowering man while a third brought him some pants. “This train heading home?”

              Rue kept his smile—a smile that now seemed prevalent across every enlisted man’s face—and said, “You earned a first class ticket, I think. Gotta say, when you promise something, you don’t mess around.”

              Caleb laughed and felt fatigue grip him from the shoulders as Power warily nested within a shallow confine. “I just did what I had to. Something right happened here.”

              “I’ll say.”

              Both men waited until every prisoner was loaded before mounting the bumper of respective Jeeps.

Chapter 22

             
‘Six minutes late. David’s not fidgety at all-what is his problem? I wish I’d come alone. I wish Caleb was here to be with me to wait for Caleb…but that wouldn’t make sense. Man that would be awesome though. Just being with him…. Seven minutes. Please be here.’

              “Alice? You’re not thinking again.”

              Alice swiveled within her quick trench in front of the switchboard—the carpet beneath her feet surely more worn than before she arrived—and said, too loud, “I’m thinking. I’m waiting and thinking because that’s all I can do because he’s almost eight minutes late now, leaving me to wait and think while I walk back and forth like a crazy woman.”

              David smiled while stretching out upon the reclining, copious chair. “Did you ever worry this much when I was late?”

              ‘No,’ she thought, now in David’s voice, ‘it was never a big deal. Never even crossed my mind to worry about him.’

              “The board says he’s been landed for about ten minutes.”

              She pivoted again and caught a group coming off the escalator that dispersed to leave two figures. ‘Caleb!’

---

              Caleb set Stanley’s bag next to the empty escalator. ‘Alice is behind us.’

              ‘I know I saw.’ He smiled and waved to her before turning back to Stanley. “Not a bad few days eh?”

              “Not for me. Not for me at all.” Stanley smiled and extended his hand. “It was short, but kind of sweet.”

              Caleb reached out and firmly took his hand. “It was something. When’s your connecting flight?”

              “I’ve only got another hour to wait. Looks like you’ve got someone that noticed you.”

              Alice walked forward, but kept her distance from both men as they turned; Caleb smiling widely at her proximity while Stanley just shifted between both figures and the slow-approaching David. “No big parade?” As she spoke, she inched forward towards Caleb whose hands were open and expectant. “No banners? Medals? A mob of followers?”