When gas is four bucks a gallon and food costs are skyrocketing, here's a little free entertainment, available here in serialized form.
Chapter Nine
“It’s you,” Boone says, acutely aware of his trembling voice. Banal as it was, it is all he can think of to say, and in retrospect he will scarcely be able to dredge up any of this conversation. It will come back to him later, but only reluctantly, like pieces of a dream.
“As you see.” Bard is descending the stairs even as he speaks, unctuous voice filling the lobby as he came. “Have we met before, friend?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“This is hardly a day for jokes.” Bard’s gaze settles on Andy’s huddled form, sweating and shaking in the wheelbarrow. “Does your friend require medical attention? We’ve got a doctor upstairs. One of the best in New York, actually—just happened to be staying here at the hotel.”
Boone gapes at him. The air of unreality droning through this moment gives it a weird weightlessness, yet at the same time he knows beyond any reasonable doubt that what he’s experiencing now is authentic, as vital as the blood in his veins. It’s the fear that makes it real, spiking it hard through his pores, right down to the bare nerve.
“Mr. Bard and his team got here not long after the first plane came down,” Emily Wilson says. She is still crouched down on Mara’s level, cradling Mara, running her hands through the girl’s hair, picking out bits of grass and hay, flicking them off. “It’s God’s grace they found us when they did.” Standing, she comes toward Boone, and a shaft of light falls from the windows far above to brighten her face, but the result is more stark than luminous, like the glare of a mirror. “What’s it like out there? We heard the radiation cloud from TMI is headed south—that must have been true since you’re here safely. Otherwise…”
She kisses Mara on the head, and Boone finds himself straining to see the girl’s expression, but this is impossible. Instead he feels himself drawn upward, inward, to John Bard’s flat, enduring smile.
“We’re leaving,” Boone says, hoisting the wheelbarrow.
“You’re sure that’s wise?” Bard asks. “What about your friend?”
“He’s my brother. You know that.”
“Why would I know that?”
“You shot that barn apart with us inside it, I recognize your voice. You shot at my neighbors, you tried to kill all of us—now you’re here? What are you doing? What have you done?”
“Questions.” Bard spreads his hands, appearing to address a much larger congregation than the one that surrounds him here. “At a time like this, they’re all we have. What can we trust? Our only certainty is uncertainty. Can we trust our neighbors? This much we know. At roughly eight forty-five this morning, the attacks began. Given the scope of what happened, it’s still far too early to speculate on the extent of the damage. There have been conflicting reports from around the world that the same or similar catastrophic events have befallen our country’s allies. Again, we don’t know details. At this point the most important thing we can do is maintain a constant state of suspicious readiness, even here—especially here—on the local level. Now…”
He rests one hand on Boone’s shoulder. The hand feels lighter than it should.
“I have no doubt that some person or persons attacked you and your brother earlier this morning. Whether that was related to this larger assault on US soil, no one knows. But let me assure you, my men and I—”
“Who are you?”
“Boone, Mr. Bard saved us,” Mrs. Wilson says. “Before he got here, people were running around crazy, you should’ve seen it! It was chaos! Men here were fighting—”
Boone turns to Mara. “You remember him, don’t you? From the barn? What he did?”
She lifts her head from her mother’s arms. Then, almost involuntarily: “Boone’s right. They shot at us.”
“Who did, honey?”
“Men. We didn’t see their faces.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Bard’s expression does not change. “The cowards who attacked our country this morning would never show their faces. They hide behind masks, behind dogma, behind the madmen that send them forth into the world to perpetrate unspeakable atrocities against—”
“Who are you?” Boone repeats, and jerks his head upward at the dozen or so men poised on the landing. “Who are they?”
“My group is an officially unsanctioned anti-terrorist task force. Our unique liaison with the State Department requires continuous vigilance in the face of threats domestic and abroad. We are—”
“The Triggermen.” Boone’s voice is soft with wonderment. “You really are the Triggermen, aren’t you?”
For the first time Bard’s smile lapses and he scowls in polite bewilderment. “Excuse me?”
“From the show. Except you’re real.”
“I’m not familiar with—”
In the wheelbarrow, Andy jumps forward. “Babbarra!” he shouts at no one in particular. “Adda wadda Babbarra!” His fingers grip the edges of the wheelbarrow and he fights to pull himself upward. His face is pulled tight, eyes bulging, lips harrowed down to reveal his lower teeth. In the extremity of his strain, Boone hardly recognizes him. “Adda—”
The words become garbled as a marvelous quantity of blood comes spurting from his nose. It sprays down the front of his shirt, his body seeming to deflate as it runs out, as if the pressure alone is what swung him upward. Even as he collapses back, blood jetted from his mouth, running down over his chin and soaking his neck until he’s sprawled, twitching, in a lake of it.
Boone says, “Andy—”
“Get the doctor down here now,” Bard orders, and two of his men turn and run up the stairs. He bends down and reaches for Andy’s wrist, then, glancing at Boone: “What are his symptoms? Has he been running a fever, vomiting, anything like that? Has he been exposed to any kind of chemical agent in the last few hours?”
“You don’t touch him! Keep your hands off him!” Boone rams one hand out, striking Bard in the side of the head, knocking him away from where Andy lies trembling, covered in his own blood. “You’re doing this to him!”
Bard sits up, studying the air over Boone’s shoulder and too late he realized the man in the leather jacket is nodding to whoever is standing back there. A flat black slap of pain thwacks him across the skull, driving a barrage of white arrowheads forward into his sinuses. The arrowheads swell up, blocking out his vision, then his hearing, then everything else, in a smoky expanse of black.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
The Triggermen - Chapter Eight
The continuing story of what happens when the unreal finds its way into our world. Available only on the Scary Parent.
Chapter Eight
By mid-afternoon, when they finally do get within hailing distance of the Hotel Hershey—on foot it has taken much longer than he expected—Boone is forced to confront the very real possibility that his brother is sick, quite probably dying. He has no idea why. From the moment he collapsed with a scream, Andy can’t walk, can scarcely speak. Boone has to carry him in a wheelbarrow he finds in someone’s backyard. Whatever phantom malady has befallen his brother has reduced him to sweating, trembling pile of incoherence, a pile that soon begins throwing up so forcefully that he can’t bring up anything but bile and blood. Every twenty minutes or so he will lapse into a shivering stupor, only to come bursting out again with screams afresh, waving his arms and howling as if besieged by invisible demons. He wants something—Boone can tell from the way Andy keeps reaching out, trying to talk—but it seems whatever it was, he wants it from Mara.
“Babbarra!” he shrieks, fingers slashing the air above the wheelbarrow as Boone pushes him up the long leafy hill toward the hotel. Sweat and frustrated tears leak down the sides of his face, his stare riveted to Mara. “Adda wabba Babbarra!”
With a shudder, Mara draws back deeper into the shadows that cover half the road. She hasn’t spoken much since Andy got sick, and even less once he started raving at her. Sallow dark circles have settled beneath her fearful eyes. Boone senses her waiting for him to speculate on what might be wrong with Andy, perhaps offer some tentative jab at an explanation. The truth is that he is too confused and frightened right now to do anything but push the wheelbarrow up the hill like a character in a fairy tale, as if there is something in the hotel that could magically put things right.
Still, some possibilities swim in his head. He wonders if there is some kind of chemical weapon in the air, something his brother inhaled that the rest of them managed to avoid. He thinks about post-traumatic stress—whether Andy’s mental state has clashed with his near-death experience in the burning house, reducing him to the strung-out status of a gibbering junkie. Neither of these things add up. They are lines without rhythm or rhyme. They don’t walk right.
What, then?
The upward incline becomes sharply steeper and Boone grunts, redoubling his efforts, grateful for the distraction. Andy shifts his weight in the wheelbarrow. He whimpers and gazes pleadingly up at Boone from a place beyond words. Whatever this is, his face says, please make it stop.
“Babbarra,” he croaks, twisting his head to look for Mara. His hand go up again, but without much strength. “Adda…Abbarabba…?” With a shudder, his eyelids sink shut and he falls still again, except for his lips, which mouth some inscrutable dream-language on their way down to whatever was passing for unconsciousness.
Cautiously, Mara approaches Boone again. It has been a long hike on what has become a hot day, but she’s soldiering dutifully forward. “Almost there.”
He nods his encouragement. It feels fake. He does it anyway.
“My mom’s gonna be happy to see me.”
“Yeah,” Boone says, forcing a smile, knowing it had to look pretty gruesome. “Won’t be long now.”
She glances down at Andy, shivering and sweating in the wheelbarrow. “He’s really suffering, isn’t he?”
He nods and sighs. “When we were kids, he used to get fevers, really bad ones. When he spiked a high enough temperature he’d have seizures. It was scary for me, because we shared a room, and I’d wake up and see him thrashing around in his bed. I thought he was dying. I didn’t know what was going on. I’d run and get our mom and she’d give him something to get the fever down, but…” He stops. He had no intention of going into this with Mara, no real sense that he was even able to remember those times—when was the last time he thought that far back, anyway? “That just reminds me of this.”
“I wish I could help you push,” she says quietly. “You look really tired.”
“I’m all right.”
“Boone?”
"Yes?"
“You think those men in the black vans did this to Andy? Made him like this?”
The thought startles him. It’s the shock of hearing her vocalize an idea that until now was only incubating in his subconscious. “I don’t know how they could have.”
“The same way they made all the airplanes fall out of the sky,” she says. “Magic. Bad magic.”
“Those planes were crashing because somebody was jamming their navigation systems or something. The men in the vans were—I don’t know who they were, or who they thought we were. Whoever they were, there’s no reason any of them would want to hurt us.”
“You think it’s really the Triggermen?”
“There’s no such thing,” he fires back, more harshly than he intended. “Look, right now I’ve got enough real shit on my mind to worry about cartoon characters jumping off the web and hunting me down.”
Mara shrinks from him, says nothing.
“Hey.” He stops, resting the wheelbarrow down and turning to her. “Listen, I’m sorry. It’s just—I’m as freaked as you, probably more.” He looks at Andy again, sees how pale he’s become, the shallow hitching movements of his chest, more spasmodic than rhythmic. “He’s hardly breathing. He needs medical attention soon, or else—I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“What about that ambulance we saw?” Mara asks. They spotted it along the side of 422, an hour earlier, two harried-looking paramedics struggling to triage the dozen or so wounded that sprawled in the grass around them. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper as far as the eye could see, and people were climbing out of their cars, harassing them for bandages, medicine, drinking water, use of the radio. No more help seemed to be on the way, and the EMTs looked like they were about ready to leap back in the ambulance and just bolt, abandoning the whole enterprise. “Maybe not.”
“I just hope there’s somebody at the hotel,” Boone says, lifting the handles of the wheelbarrow and giving it a full-body thrust to get it going. His hand slips and one of the wooden posts jousts him straight in the balls, making grit and determination considerably harder to muster. “Maybe your mom can help us.”
“Sure,” Mara says. “She works at the front desk. She knows everybody.”
If there’s anybody left, he thinks, but doesn’t dare say. The truth is, the dismal possibility that they might arrive and discover the entire hotel evacuated, including Mara’s mother, has lurked in the cellar of his thoughts since they first started this way. After all, a jet has crashed very near the vicinity of a nuclear power plant. He hasn’t heard a single radio or news broadcast all day. For all he knows, the mass exodus is in response to some FEMA-ordered roundup.
Coming around the final curve, up the last of the wooded glade, he sees the first section of the hotel parking lot and puts that particular worry to rest. The lot is by no means packed, but it isn’t deserted either. Forty or fifty cars are parked alongside the sloped acreage leading down to the tennis courts. More sit down at the employee lot.
“God, Boone,” Mara’s voice says behind him. “Look.”
He sets the wheelbarrow down and jogs over to where she’s standing. Beyond the lot, a break in the foliage yields up a knock-your-eyes-out vista that stretches out to encompass most of the surrounding county, Hershey Park with its silent roller coasters and frozen Ferris wheel, the chocolate factory, and a vast swath of farmland to the south. All across the land, great pillars of smoke rise straight up into the sky from fires that are still burning. Jets, Boone thinks. Down on the roads, Hershey Park Drive and Route 422, he sees hundreds of cars glittering motionless along every road, many of them, he guesses, abandoned. It suddenly feels late in the day, though he knows it isn’t much later than three, the outermost rim of afternoon light already tilting subtly toward darkness.
He turns, picks up Andy and points the wheelbarrow the other way, toward the hotel. “Let’s go.”
The hotel itself is a sprawling old world affair whose architects seem blind to the laws of moderation and restraint. Local prom kids have dinner here in the Circular Dining Room, overlooking fountains and fish ponds, and Boone himself wined and dined a few of his worthier girlfriends there, always feeling a little foolish playing dress-up among the tourists. New Yorkers might enjoy paying two hundred and eighty dollars a night for chocolate soap but to the locals and anyone Boone knew, the hotel means revenue, employment and the customer is always right.
They walk under the awning-enclosed drop-off area, where the bellhop normally stands, ready with the door. Now a security guard holds that post, a bullet-headed, broad-shouldered pit-viper of a man gripping a truncheon in both hands like he either used it recently or meant to soon. It is easy to imagine such a man going home to a woman who finds him simultaneously handsome and terrifying. He spins a tainted eye at Boone and the wheelbarrow with Andy in it then shakes his head in two decisive swipes.
“No entry.”
“My mom works here,” Mara says, stepping out from behind Boone. “Emily Wilson, she works the front desk day-shift?”
“We’re under lockdown, orders from the house.”
“But we walked all this way. And his brother needs a doctor.”
“Then take him to a hospital,” the guard says. “I’m under orders.”
Boone’s ears get hot and rage makes his legs disappear. In front of him he sees the bull-shouldered man squaring up like a batter anticipating a fastball. The guy looks like he packs a good punch but telegraphs it a mile away, half the fight depending on not going crazy early on. Boone watches those eyes hone on him, tiny hard pellets of rat poison.
“We’ve had a hard time of it,” Boone says. “I think you better let us in.”
“Then you’d better think again.”
“Let them in.”
The guard turns halfway round to stare at the source of the voice. Out of nowhere there are two rows of men on the landing above the lobby, all dressed in white shirts and dark suits with long leather jackets over them. All are identically expressionless except for the man in front who also wears a long leather jacket, his smile gleaming like glass on the beach.
“Today we are all refugees in our own land,” the man in front says. “On this darkest of days, we ought to offer comfort and sanctuary to all who seek it. Come in, please. It’s all right.” His stare dips low, recognition fluttering over his face. “Why, that’s Mara, isn’t it? There’s someone here who’s been waiting for you.” He unclips a radio from somewhere inside his coat. “Is Mrs. Wilson up there? Send her down, please.”
A moment later, a woman in a business suit comes rushing down the stairs, the men standing aside to allow her through. “Mara!”
Mara says, “Mommy,” hugging her.
“Oh, sweetheart. Oh, thank goodness. Oh, thank you, God.” The woman holds her daughter at arm’s length to perform a cursory inspection—the scraped cheek, the exhausted eyes, now brimming with tears. “Let me look at you. You’re all right?”
“I came with Boone. I knew you’d be here.”
“Thank you for bringing her,” Mrs. Wilson says.
Boone stands watching the spectacle of mother and daughter embracing. When he looks up, the man on the landing is still smiling down upon them like some beatific bronze god. It is a peculiar smile, full of heat but no warmth. He looks as if he might smile like that forever, long after the rest of them have gone to their graves.
“Mrs. Wilson—” Boone begins.
“We’re all perfectly safe here,” Emily Wilson says and gazes up at the men on the stares. “We’ve been under the protection of Mr. Bard.”
Chapter Eight
By mid-afternoon, when they finally do get within hailing distance of the Hotel Hershey—on foot it has taken much longer than he expected—Boone is forced to confront the very real possibility that his brother is sick, quite probably dying. He has no idea why. From the moment he collapsed with a scream, Andy can’t walk, can scarcely speak. Boone has to carry him in a wheelbarrow he finds in someone’s backyard. Whatever phantom malady has befallen his brother has reduced him to sweating, trembling pile of incoherence, a pile that soon begins throwing up so forcefully that he can’t bring up anything but bile and blood. Every twenty minutes or so he will lapse into a shivering stupor, only to come bursting out again with screams afresh, waving his arms and howling as if besieged by invisible demons. He wants something—Boone can tell from the way Andy keeps reaching out, trying to talk—but it seems whatever it was, he wants it from Mara.
“Babbarra!” he shrieks, fingers slashing the air above the wheelbarrow as Boone pushes him up the long leafy hill toward the hotel. Sweat and frustrated tears leak down the sides of his face, his stare riveted to Mara. “Adda wabba Babbarra!”
With a shudder, Mara draws back deeper into the shadows that cover half the road. She hasn’t spoken much since Andy got sick, and even less once he started raving at her. Sallow dark circles have settled beneath her fearful eyes. Boone senses her waiting for him to speculate on what might be wrong with Andy, perhaps offer some tentative jab at an explanation. The truth is that he is too confused and frightened right now to do anything but push the wheelbarrow up the hill like a character in a fairy tale, as if there is something in the hotel that could magically put things right.
Still, some possibilities swim in his head. He wonders if there is some kind of chemical weapon in the air, something his brother inhaled that the rest of them managed to avoid. He thinks about post-traumatic stress—whether Andy’s mental state has clashed with his near-death experience in the burning house, reducing him to the strung-out status of a gibbering junkie. Neither of these things add up. They are lines without rhythm or rhyme. They don’t walk right.
What, then?
The upward incline becomes sharply steeper and Boone grunts, redoubling his efforts, grateful for the distraction. Andy shifts his weight in the wheelbarrow. He whimpers and gazes pleadingly up at Boone from a place beyond words. Whatever this is, his face says, please make it stop.
“Babbarra,” he croaks, twisting his head to look for Mara. His hand go up again, but without much strength. “Adda…Abbarabba…?” With a shudder, his eyelids sink shut and he falls still again, except for his lips, which mouth some inscrutable dream-language on their way down to whatever was passing for unconsciousness.
Cautiously, Mara approaches Boone again. It has been a long hike on what has become a hot day, but she’s soldiering dutifully forward. “Almost there.”
He nods his encouragement. It feels fake. He does it anyway.
“My mom’s gonna be happy to see me.”
“Yeah,” Boone says, forcing a smile, knowing it had to look pretty gruesome. “Won’t be long now.”
She glances down at Andy, shivering and sweating in the wheelbarrow. “He’s really suffering, isn’t he?”
He nods and sighs. “When we were kids, he used to get fevers, really bad ones. When he spiked a high enough temperature he’d have seizures. It was scary for me, because we shared a room, and I’d wake up and see him thrashing around in his bed. I thought he was dying. I didn’t know what was going on. I’d run and get our mom and she’d give him something to get the fever down, but…” He stops. He had no intention of going into this with Mara, no real sense that he was even able to remember those times—when was the last time he thought that far back, anyway? “That just reminds me of this.”
“I wish I could help you push,” she says quietly. “You look really tired.”
“I’m all right.”
“Boone?”
"Yes?"
“You think those men in the black vans did this to Andy? Made him like this?”
The thought startles him. It’s the shock of hearing her vocalize an idea that until now was only incubating in his subconscious. “I don’t know how they could have.”
“The same way they made all the airplanes fall out of the sky,” she says. “Magic. Bad magic.”
“Those planes were crashing because somebody was jamming their navigation systems or something. The men in the vans were—I don’t know who they were, or who they thought we were. Whoever they were, there’s no reason any of them would want to hurt us.”
“You think it’s really the Triggermen?”
“There’s no such thing,” he fires back, more harshly than he intended. “Look, right now I’ve got enough real shit on my mind to worry about cartoon characters jumping off the web and hunting me down.”
Mara shrinks from him, says nothing.
“Hey.” He stops, resting the wheelbarrow down and turning to her. “Listen, I’m sorry. It’s just—I’m as freaked as you, probably more.” He looks at Andy again, sees how pale he’s become, the shallow hitching movements of his chest, more spasmodic than rhythmic. “He’s hardly breathing. He needs medical attention soon, or else—I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“What about that ambulance we saw?” Mara asks. They spotted it along the side of 422, an hour earlier, two harried-looking paramedics struggling to triage the dozen or so wounded that sprawled in the grass around them. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper as far as the eye could see, and people were climbing out of their cars, harassing them for bandages, medicine, drinking water, use of the radio. No more help seemed to be on the way, and the EMTs looked like they were about ready to leap back in the ambulance and just bolt, abandoning the whole enterprise. “Maybe not.”
“I just hope there’s somebody at the hotel,” Boone says, lifting the handles of the wheelbarrow and giving it a full-body thrust to get it going. His hand slips and one of the wooden posts jousts him straight in the balls, making grit and determination considerably harder to muster. “Maybe your mom can help us.”
“Sure,” Mara says. “She works at the front desk. She knows everybody.”
If there’s anybody left, he thinks, but doesn’t dare say. The truth is, the dismal possibility that they might arrive and discover the entire hotel evacuated, including Mara’s mother, has lurked in the cellar of his thoughts since they first started this way. After all, a jet has crashed very near the vicinity of a nuclear power plant. He hasn’t heard a single radio or news broadcast all day. For all he knows, the mass exodus is in response to some FEMA-ordered roundup.
Coming around the final curve, up the last of the wooded glade, he sees the first section of the hotel parking lot and puts that particular worry to rest. The lot is by no means packed, but it isn’t deserted either. Forty or fifty cars are parked alongside the sloped acreage leading down to the tennis courts. More sit down at the employee lot.
“God, Boone,” Mara’s voice says behind him. “Look.”
He sets the wheelbarrow down and jogs over to where she’s standing. Beyond the lot, a break in the foliage yields up a knock-your-eyes-out vista that stretches out to encompass most of the surrounding county, Hershey Park with its silent roller coasters and frozen Ferris wheel, the chocolate factory, and a vast swath of farmland to the south. All across the land, great pillars of smoke rise straight up into the sky from fires that are still burning. Jets, Boone thinks. Down on the roads, Hershey Park Drive and Route 422, he sees hundreds of cars glittering motionless along every road, many of them, he guesses, abandoned. It suddenly feels late in the day, though he knows it isn’t much later than three, the outermost rim of afternoon light already tilting subtly toward darkness.
He turns, picks up Andy and points the wheelbarrow the other way, toward the hotel. “Let’s go.”
The hotel itself is a sprawling old world affair whose architects seem blind to the laws of moderation and restraint. Local prom kids have dinner here in the Circular Dining Room, overlooking fountains and fish ponds, and Boone himself wined and dined a few of his worthier girlfriends there, always feeling a little foolish playing dress-up among the tourists. New Yorkers might enjoy paying two hundred and eighty dollars a night for chocolate soap but to the locals and anyone Boone knew, the hotel means revenue, employment and the customer is always right.
They walk under the awning-enclosed drop-off area, where the bellhop normally stands, ready with the door. Now a security guard holds that post, a bullet-headed, broad-shouldered pit-viper of a man gripping a truncheon in both hands like he either used it recently or meant to soon. It is easy to imagine such a man going home to a woman who finds him simultaneously handsome and terrifying. He spins a tainted eye at Boone and the wheelbarrow with Andy in it then shakes his head in two decisive swipes.
“No entry.”
“My mom works here,” Mara says, stepping out from behind Boone. “Emily Wilson, she works the front desk day-shift?”
“We’re under lockdown, orders from the house.”
“But we walked all this way. And his brother needs a doctor.”
“Then take him to a hospital,” the guard says. “I’m under orders.”
Boone’s ears get hot and rage makes his legs disappear. In front of him he sees the bull-shouldered man squaring up like a batter anticipating a fastball. The guy looks like he packs a good punch but telegraphs it a mile away, half the fight depending on not going crazy early on. Boone watches those eyes hone on him, tiny hard pellets of rat poison.
“We’ve had a hard time of it,” Boone says. “I think you better let us in.”
“Then you’d better think again.”
“Let them in.”
The guard turns halfway round to stare at the source of the voice. Out of nowhere there are two rows of men on the landing above the lobby, all dressed in white shirts and dark suits with long leather jackets over them. All are identically expressionless except for the man in front who also wears a long leather jacket, his smile gleaming like glass on the beach.
“Today we are all refugees in our own land,” the man in front says. “On this darkest of days, we ought to offer comfort and sanctuary to all who seek it. Come in, please. It’s all right.” His stare dips low, recognition fluttering over his face. “Why, that’s Mara, isn’t it? There’s someone here who’s been waiting for you.” He unclips a radio from somewhere inside his coat. “Is Mrs. Wilson up there? Send her down, please.”
A moment later, a woman in a business suit comes rushing down the stairs, the men standing aside to allow her through. “Mara!”
Mara says, “Mommy,” hugging her.
“Oh, sweetheart. Oh, thank goodness. Oh, thank you, God.” The woman holds her daughter at arm’s length to perform a cursory inspection—the scraped cheek, the exhausted eyes, now brimming with tears. “Let me look at you. You’re all right?”
“I came with Boone. I knew you’d be here.”
“Thank you for bringing her,” Mrs. Wilson says.
Boone stands watching the spectacle of mother and daughter embracing. When he looks up, the man on the landing is still smiling down upon them like some beatific bronze god. It is a peculiar smile, full of heat but no warmth. He looks as if he might smile like that forever, long after the rest of them have gone to their graves.
“Mrs. Wilson—” Boone begins.
“We’re all perfectly safe here,” Emily Wilson says and gazes up at the men on the stares. “We’ve been under the protection of Mr. Bard.”
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Livejournal...?
At the suggestion of a friend, I've started a Livejournal page. I don't know exactly why I did this since I've already failed at MySpace and Facebook except I'm a big wuss who automatically does everything people tell him to do and peer pressure has always been a issue for me.
I did drop a little morsel of writing news over there, if you're interested.
I did drop a little morsel of writing news over there, if you're interested.
The Triggermen - Chapter Seven
The apocalypse will be downloaded...
Chapter Seven
“Boone?” Andy says, smearing dirt from his face with the backs of his hands, leaving long brown streaks down either side of his head. His gaze is far away, beyond the exploded barn to the burning condos and the wreckage of the jet on the far side of the field. To the right, High Meadow Road is now a parking lot of cars and trucks blasting their horns. “What’s going on?”
Boone falters, still trying to absorb the black vans’ disappearance. Amid the debris from the explosion, he can still see their tire tracks in the dirt. They were here, and now abruptly, gone.
“Boone?”
“It’s—some kind of terror strike.” He has to struggle with his voice a little bit. It surprises him how hard it was to say this to his brother, his only living family member in the world. “Planes have been crashing.”
Andy gapes at him, grappling with this concept. “A lot of planes?”
“All of them.”
“Jeez!” Andy turns pale beneath the farmland war paint, and for a moment Boone fears he’ll lapse back into the trance-state, but nothing in his face loses focus. “Have you heard anything from anybody else? I mean, is it—”
“I don’t know.” There are a lot of things I don’t know right now, actually, Andy. First on the list is what happened to guys that were just trying to kill us a second ago—you know, the guys that aren’t supposed to exist in the first place? But then I guess you wouldn’t know about that, would you? You just got here.
“What about those men, Boone?” Mara asks, as if on cue. “Where’d they go?”
Andy blinks at him. “What men?”
Boone almost answers—and almost lies. Some men were shooting at us, I don’t know who they were. He isn’t sure why he’s about to lie, but now that it’s over, the idea of telling Andy that his favorite internet-based anti-terrorist group has sprung to life in the midst of all this is too much right now, not just for Andy but for Boone himself.
And do you really believe that’s who it was, honestly? Could you possibly have misinterpreted the details under extreme traumatic stress? Could it possibly have been someone else, claiming to be Bard?
That’s when Mara, who got him into this, inadvertently gets him out of it.
“What about my mom?” Her voice is very small and her eyes are very big. “I have to get to the Hotel. We have to go. Right now.”
“Okay.” Any idea how we’re going to do that without a car? “I guess we should start walking. We can head up the road toward 422 and try to thumb a ride from there.” Boone squints across the field at the cars piled like boulders in both lanes and over the shoulder, a cacophony of horns, drivers cutting into the cornfield in an attempt to get around each other. One man jumps out and starts pounding on the windshield of the car in front of him with the avowed intention of beating the shit out of its driver. Under such circumstances the possibility of anyone stopping for them seems remote. “Actually, right now the Hotel’s almost due east of here. If we go overland and cut around behind the development we’ll make better even better time, as the crow flies. It’ll mean staying off the main road, but—”
But that might actually keep us alive longer.
“Okay,” Andy says, good-naturedly. He is already fully himself again, green eyes glinting, his voice sweet and eager. There are two sides to his brother, Boone knows—one that’s always ready to move forward, and another, more introspective side, prone to deeper reflection even as his feet carry him forward—their mother’s side, in other words. And although Andy is even now trotting, almost jogging ahead with Mara keeping pace with him effortlessly, Boone knows it would only be a matter of time before the questions that are already rising inside Andy’s mind like bubbles make their way to the surface.
The moment comes sooner than expected. As they climb over the rock wall that delineates the farm property from the woods surrounding it, making their way the long way around the back of Stone Cliff, Andy looks back on the endless pillar of black smoke that continues unabated from the fire where their house once stood.
Even from this distance, the tailpiece of the jet sticks up prominently. Andy can’t take his eyes off it.
“Hey, Boone, is that the jetliner that fell on our house?”
“Near it,” Boone says. “The fire spread over to our place. You don’t remember any of that?”
“No sir!” His steps falter a bit, and he looks back at Boone. “What made the barn blow up, Boone?”
Boone hesitates, but not for as long as he feared he might.
“There was some shooting outside,” he says. “The gas tank of the SUV we were in started to leak and burn.”
“Who was shooting?”
“I’m not sure.” Boone takes in a deep breath and blows it out, wondering what possibly can be the point of withholding information at this late date. “He said he was John Bard.”
Andy’s mouth opens. “The real John Bard?”
“There is no real John Bard.”
“But you said—”
“That’s just what he told us,” Boone says. “Bard doesn’t exist. He’s a character on a show.”
“He was asking you for you,” Mara’s voice drifts back.
“Me?” Andy asks.
“Uh-huh.” She’s taken the lead now, ducking under a tree branch at the edge of a thicket, and Boone watches her moving ahead without so much as a backward glance. The fact is that, in the midst of the gunfire and explosions, not to mention the disorienting effects of brushing shoulders with a purely fictional character, he has forgotten what the voice on the megaphone had actually wanted.
I am seeking Andy Handler. I have business with him. Pressing business, as it happens.
“Why’d he want me?” Andy asks.
Boone shakes his head. “That’s just what he said. He didn’t give us long to get back to him before he started shooting.”
“John Bard would never shoot at innocent civilians.”
Oh yeah? Boone thought, and really wants to say. Want to lay some money on that, big brother?
“Hey!” Mara shouts. “Are you guys coming or what?”
Boone and his brother hurry to catch up, but he can feel the issue clanking unresolved between them like a pair of invisible leg-irons. He distracts himself with geography. On the far side of the thicket, a meadow runs behind rows of backyards, businesses and eventually the golf course on the distant end of the landscape’s low, irregular rise on the way to the chocolate factory that makes up the center of downtown Hershey. At some point they will need to go north—the Hotel is up another mile or two, by his estimation. The main roads, which at first seemed promising, now feel like something to be avoided whenever possible, but—
Suddenly, to his right, Andy falls down screaming.
Chapter Seven
“Boone?” Andy says, smearing dirt from his face with the backs of his hands, leaving long brown streaks down either side of his head. His gaze is far away, beyond the exploded barn to the burning condos and the wreckage of the jet on the far side of the field. To the right, High Meadow Road is now a parking lot of cars and trucks blasting their horns. “What’s going on?”
Boone falters, still trying to absorb the black vans’ disappearance. Amid the debris from the explosion, he can still see their tire tracks in the dirt. They were here, and now abruptly, gone.
“Boone?”
“It’s—some kind of terror strike.” He has to struggle with his voice a little bit. It surprises him how hard it was to say this to his brother, his only living family member in the world. “Planes have been crashing.”
Andy gapes at him, grappling with this concept. “A lot of planes?”
“All of them.”
“Jeez!” Andy turns pale beneath the farmland war paint, and for a moment Boone fears he’ll lapse back into the trance-state, but nothing in his face loses focus. “Have you heard anything from anybody else? I mean, is it—”
“I don’t know.” There are a lot of things I don’t know right now, actually, Andy. First on the list is what happened to guys that were just trying to kill us a second ago—you know, the guys that aren’t supposed to exist in the first place? But then I guess you wouldn’t know about that, would you? You just got here.
“What about those men, Boone?” Mara asks, as if on cue. “Where’d they go?”
Andy blinks at him. “What men?”
Boone almost answers—and almost lies. Some men were shooting at us, I don’t know who they were. He isn’t sure why he’s about to lie, but now that it’s over, the idea of telling Andy that his favorite internet-based anti-terrorist group has sprung to life in the midst of all this is too much right now, not just for Andy but for Boone himself.
And do you really believe that’s who it was, honestly? Could you possibly have misinterpreted the details under extreme traumatic stress? Could it possibly have been someone else, claiming to be Bard?
That’s when Mara, who got him into this, inadvertently gets him out of it.
“What about my mom?” Her voice is very small and her eyes are very big. “I have to get to the Hotel. We have to go. Right now.”
“Okay.” Any idea how we’re going to do that without a car? “I guess we should start walking. We can head up the road toward 422 and try to thumb a ride from there.” Boone squints across the field at the cars piled like boulders in both lanes and over the shoulder, a cacophony of horns, drivers cutting into the cornfield in an attempt to get around each other. One man jumps out and starts pounding on the windshield of the car in front of him with the avowed intention of beating the shit out of its driver. Under such circumstances the possibility of anyone stopping for them seems remote. “Actually, right now the Hotel’s almost due east of here. If we go overland and cut around behind the development we’ll make better even better time, as the crow flies. It’ll mean staying off the main road, but—”
But that might actually keep us alive longer.
“Okay,” Andy says, good-naturedly. He is already fully himself again, green eyes glinting, his voice sweet and eager. There are two sides to his brother, Boone knows—one that’s always ready to move forward, and another, more introspective side, prone to deeper reflection even as his feet carry him forward—their mother’s side, in other words. And although Andy is even now trotting, almost jogging ahead with Mara keeping pace with him effortlessly, Boone knows it would only be a matter of time before the questions that are already rising inside Andy’s mind like bubbles make their way to the surface.
The moment comes sooner than expected. As they climb over the rock wall that delineates the farm property from the woods surrounding it, making their way the long way around the back of Stone Cliff, Andy looks back on the endless pillar of black smoke that continues unabated from the fire where their house once stood.
Even from this distance, the tailpiece of the jet sticks up prominently. Andy can’t take his eyes off it.
“Hey, Boone, is that the jetliner that fell on our house?”
“Near it,” Boone says. “The fire spread over to our place. You don’t remember any of that?”
“No sir!” His steps falter a bit, and he looks back at Boone. “What made the barn blow up, Boone?”
Boone hesitates, but not for as long as he feared he might.
“There was some shooting outside,” he says. “The gas tank of the SUV we were in started to leak and burn.”
“Who was shooting?”
“I’m not sure.” Boone takes in a deep breath and blows it out, wondering what possibly can be the point of withholding information at this late date. “He said he was John Bard.”
Andy’s mouth opens. “The real John Bard?”
“There is no real John Bard.”
“But you said—”
“That’s just what he told us,” Boone says. “Bard doesn’t exist. He’s a character on a show.”
“He was asking you for you,” Mara’s voice drifts back.
“Me?” Andy asks.
“Uh-huh.” She’s taken the lead now, ducking under a tree branch at the edge of a thicket, and Boone watches her moving ahead without so much as a backward glance. The fact is that, in the midst of the gunfire and explosions, not to mention the disorienting effects of brushing shoulders with a purely fictional character, he has forgotten what the voice on the megaphone had actually wanted.
I am seeking Andy Handler. I have business with him. Pressing business, as it happens.
“Why’d he want me?” Andy asks.
Boone shakes his head. “That’s just what he said. He didn’t give us long to get back to him before he started shooting.”
“John Bard would never shoot at innocent civilians.”
Oh yeah? Boone thought, and really wants to say. Want to lay some money on that, big brother?
“Hey!” Mara shouts. “Are you guys coming or what?”
Boone and his brother hurry to catch up, but he can feel the issue clanking unresolved between them like a pair of invisible leg-irons. He distracts himself with geography. On the far side of the thicket, a meadow runs behind rows of backyards, businesses and eventually the golf course on the distant end of the landscape’s low, irregular rise on the way to the chocolate factory that makes up the center of downtown Hershey. At some point they will need to go north—the Hotel is up another mile or two, by his estimation. The main roads, which at first seemed promising, now feel like something to be avoided whenever possible, but—
Suddenly, to his right, Andy falls down screaming.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Intermission 2: Tim Gough is a Genius
I was browsing for info on Peter Straub's upcoming horror novel The Skylark and came across this amazing piece of cover art commissioned by Philadelphia area illustrator/designer Tim Gough. Tim says that ultimately the publisher decided to go with photography, but if my publisher ever set me up with anything like this for cover art, I would spaz out with pure joy. Hey, Random House, can I have some of this?
I still don't have a clue what Straub's book is actually about, but man, I'm loving the art.
The Triggermen - Chapter Six
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I don't feel so good myself.
Chapter Six
“Who’s John Bard?” Mara asks.
Looking back at his unresponsive brother, Boone finds he can still think of nothing to say. Here they are sitting in a dead man’s SUV surrounded by gunmen, and it strikes him as an utterly inappropriate place to discuss such particulars. At the very same time, however, this occurs to him to be the essential time to make that distinction—in a way, the pivotal time. He doesn’t know why, but everything seems to depend on whether or not he can trust his own instinct on these matters because—
Because you actually do think it’s Bard.
That’s crazy. And it is. But crazier still is the fact that the first voice inside Boone’s head, as usual, is the one he ends up trusting.
From outside, the megaphone clicks on again.
“MR. HANDLER! BOONE LAWRENCE HANDLER!” the rolling baritone announces, still sounding quite intoxicated with its own mellifluous tones. “FAILING A SATISFACTORY REPLY FROM YOUR BROTHER, IT IS YOU, SIR, TO WHOM I NOW ADDRESS MY SECOND AND FINAL ENTREATY! YOU MAY ANSWER MY QUERIES ACCORDINGLY, OR YOU SHALL FIND YOURSELF ANSWERING THOSE OF MY BALLISTIC COUNTERPART! THE CHOICE IS YOURS, SIR!”
“Who’s John Bard?” Mara repeats.
“He’s on a web site my brother watches,” Boone says. “The Triggermen. They’re an underground anti-terrorist organization—”
“Then why’s he after us? We’re not the ones that—”
“VERY WELL, THEN, SIR! WE HAVE YOUR ANSWER!"
Boone starts to shout “wait” but a hailstorm of automatic gunfire comes racketing across the barn boards, blasting shafts of daylight around them in a matrix of crisscrossed lines that lace the barn’s interior with a luminescent web of opaque white streams. The SUV’s alarm starts to bleat and squall. Mara screams and Boone drops down as low as he can go, pulling her and Andy down with him behind the seat. Within seconds he smells gasoline mixed with cordite.
“Get out,” he says. “We have to run.”
Mara looks at him like he’s crazy. Bullets are still whistling around them, slapping into the car and shattering its windows, throwing up lethal little puffs of dirt and straw from the ground under their feet. Boone watches as one of the side-view mirrors blows off, leaving a badly amputated armature, a cruel steel hook. He grabs Andy and jumps out the back door. Looking back he sees Mara climbing after them. The strap of her backpack catches on what’s left of the side-view mirror and when she pulls, the backpack bursts open, spilling its contents across the barn floor alongside the SUV.
Glancing back, Boone sees her Blackberry lying there amid notepads, library books, lip gloss, pencils and a baseball cap. The palmtop is on, its screen lit. Through the gunfire he thinks he can hear a high-pitched whine coming from inside its plastic casing, like the noise Andy’s laptop made, stabbing at him on some subsonic level.
When Andy sees the Blackberry, he snaps to life in Boone’s arms and lunges for it. The move is so unexpected that Boone loses his balance and he and his brother both fall forward, the heel of Boone’s running shoe coming down solidly onto Mara’s palmtop with a crunch. The screen goes blank, the whining sound ceasing.
Outside, the gunfire falls silent.
Andy blinks, knuckling his eyes. With the softness in his face, he looks like he did earlier this morning, when he wandered into Boone’s bedroom, still half-asleep. To Boone, it has the heartbreaking effect of making his brother look much younger, not a man at all but a boy requiring his full protection.
“B-Boone?” His voice is so hoarse from lack of use that even in the newfound silence Boone is basically just reading his brother’s lips. “What’s going on? Where are we?”
“We’re—”
“Boone!” It’s Mara. “The car’s on fire!”
Boone lifts Andy in his arms, Andy who is too startled to do anything but allow his brother to carry him at a dead run out of the barn, Mara sprinting beside him, past the aluminum door and out into daylight. Behind him he hears an enormous pressurized bang and a whoosh, followed by a cataclysmic explosion of such force that it flings all three of them down on their stomachs. This time Boone doesn’t even remember falling—he simply snaps back to reality facedown in the dirt.
He lifts his head and looks back. The roofless remains of the barn lie scattered out around the field in burning planks and boards, the blazing endoskeleton of Grant St. Pierre’s SUV cooking at its core like a twisted wire cage. Rising higher, he pushes himself up to his knees and stares out at the field.
The black vans are completely gone.
Chapter Six
“Who’s John Bard?” Mara asks.
Looking back at his unresponsive brother, Boone finds he can still think of nothing to say. Here they are sitting in a dead man’s SUV surrounded by gunmen, and it strikes him as an utterly inappropriate place to discuss such particulars. At the very same time, however, this occurs to him to be the essential time to make that distinction—in a way, the pivotal time. He doesn’t know why, but everything seems to depend on whether or not he can trust his own instinct on these matters because—
Because you actually do think it’s Bard.
That’s crazy. And it is. But crazier still is the fact that the first voice inside Boone’s head, as usual, is the one he ends up trusting.
From outside, the megaphone clicks on again.
“MR. HANDLER! BOONE LAWRENCE HANDLER!” the rolling baritone announces, still sounding quite intoxicated with its own mellifluous tones. “FAILING A SATISFACTORY REPLY FROM YOUR BROTHER, IT IS YOU, SIR, TO WHOM I NOW ADDRESS MY SECOND AND FINAL ENTREATY! YOU MAY ANSWER MY QUERIES ACCORDINGLY, OR YOU SHALL FIND YOURSELF ANSWERING THOSE OF MY BALLISTIC COUNTERPART! THE CHOICE IS YOURS, SIR!”
“Who’s John Bard?” Mara repeats.
“He’s on a web site my brother watches,” Boone says. “The Triggermen. They’re an underground anti-terrorist organization—”
“Then why’s he after us? We’re not the ones that—”
“VERY WELL, THEN, SIR! WE HAVE YOUR ANSWER!"
Boone starts to shout “wait” but a hailstorm of automatic gunfire comes racketing across the barn boards, blasting shafts of daylight around them in a matrix of crisscrossed lines that lace the barn’s interior with a luminescent web of opaque white streams. The SUV’s alarm starts to bleat and squall. Mara screams and Boone drops down as low as he can go, pulling her and Andy down with him behind the seat. Within seconds he smells gasoline mixed with cordite.
“Get out,” he says. “We have to run.”
Mara looks at him like he’s crazy. Bullets are still whistling around them, slapping into the car and shattering its windows, throwing up lethal little puffs of dirt and straw from the ground under their feet. Boone watches as one of the side-view mirrors blows off, leaving a badly amputated armature, a cruel steel hook. He grabs Andy and jumps out the back door. Looking back he sees Mara climbing after them. The strap of her backpack catches on what’s left of the side-view mirror and when she pulls, the backpack bursts open, spilling its contents across the barn floor alongside the SUV.
Glancing back, Boone sees her Blackberry lying there amid notepads, library books, lip gloss, pencils and a baseball cap. The palmtop is on, its screen lit. Through the gunfire he thinks he can hear a high-pitched whine coming from inside its plastic casing, like the noise Andy’s laptop made, stabbing at him on some subsonic level.
When Andy sees the Blackberry, he snaps to life in Boone’s arms and lunges for it. The move is so unexpected that Boone loses his balance and he and his brother both fall forward, the heel of Boone’s running shoe coming down solidly onto Mara’s palmtop with a crunch. The screen goes blank, the whining sound ceasing.
Outside, the gunfire falls silent.
Andy blinks, knuckling his eyes. With the softness in his face, he looks like he did earlier this morning, when he wandered into Boone’s bedroom, still half-asleep. To Boone, it has the heartbreaking effect of making his brother look much younger, not a man at all but a boy requiring his full protection.
“B-Boone?” His voice is so hoarse from lack of use that even in the newfound silence Boone is basically just reading his brother’s lips. “What’s going on? Where are we?”
“We’re—”
“Boone!” It’s Mara. “The car’s on fire!”
Boone lifts Andy in his arms, Andy who is too startled to do anything but allow his brother to carry him at a dead run out of the barn, Mara sprinting beside him, past the aluminum door and out into daylight. Behind him he hears an enormous pressurized bang and a whoosh, followed by a cataclysmic explosion of such force that it flings all three of them down on their stomachs. This time Boone doesn’t even remember falling—he simply snaps back to reality facedown in the dirt.
He lifts his head and looks back. The roofless remains of the barn lie scattered out around the field in burning planks and boards, the blazing endoskeleton of Grant St. Pierre’s SUV cooking at its core like a twisted wire cage. Rising higher, he pushes himself up to his knees and stares out at the field.
The black vans are completely gone.
Friday, May 23, 2008
The Triggermen - Chapter Five
The continuing story of a world gone mad...
“What the—” Grant hits the brakes, stopping the SUV cold in a slowly descending cloud of dust and old corn stalks. “He’s got a gun.”
Boone stares over the real estate agent’s shoulder. In the middle distance, the silver Taurus has stopped also, along with all the other cars. Now the only vehicle still charging forward is Lois Crane’s showroom Jeep, its rooster-tail of dust only now starting to fall on this end of the field. Within seconds, Boone realizes, she’s going to be face-to-face with the barricade of black vans.
“Why isn’t she stopping?” Grant cries. “What’s wrong with her?”
“It’s my neighbor,” Boone says, as if that explains everything, and maybe it does. “That’s how she is.”
The man standing on top of the van fires a single shot. Boone hears the flat pop drift back across the field. Abruptly he both hears and sees the Jeep’s front tire blow out, the vehicle lurching abruptly sideways, slapping another ten or twenty yards like a beast in waterlogged galoshes. The passenger door flies open and Boone sees Lois jump out, the strange metallic hue of her pantsuit kicking back weird fiberglass twinkles of light. In the dusty stillness he can hear her voice, distant but distinct.
“What is the meaning of this?” Lois cries at the man standing on top of the van. Her tone is pure indignation. “Who are you people? Did you see what happened to my house? Do any of you have the first idea—”
There’s another gunshot, crack, and Lois falls back into the dirt.
“My God.” Grant St. Pierre is blinking very quickly and looking at no one. “He shot her! Did you see that? That son of a bitch—”
Grant’s head disappears in a fine mist of red. To Boone’s five senses, at least, there is no sound or even any real feeling of motion. It’s more the turning of a page where the transition is left to the imagination of the viewer. One second the real estate agent is talking, and the next everything from his shoulders up is replaced by a rose-colored cloud in the front of the SUV, something someone might squirt on you as you’re passing the cosmetics counter at Macy’s. Then the terrible magic trick ends and Grant’s body slumps incrementally to the left, against his door. Sticky sounds come from the upholstery as his wet shirt and trousers squeak against the rich leather.
Boone feels himself moving forward, clambering up between the two front seats. He was attacked by a dog once as a boy on his way home from school and remembers going into this same thoughtless defensive action as if his limbs have been overtaken by an unseen, all-business puppeteer leaving him stunned and blinking afterward, wondering what happened. In the back Mara is screaming but it’s far off, coming to him across a wide no man’s land of isolating shock. Still not thinking, Boone unbuckles Grant St. Pierre’s ruined and essentially headless body from the driver’s seat, reaching across the blood-matted polo shirt that now clings like a second skin to the man’s chest and pulls the latch on the driver’s side door. The body tilts, then leans, sags and finally spills sideways out of the car, into the dirt of the field, leaving the seat empty except for a small pool of blood.
Boone sits down in the blood, feels its warmth seeping in to soak the seat and crotch of his running shorts. He jams the SUV in drive, turns the wheel hard and floors it, the earth bumping and pounding underneath him, making his shoulders shake and his vision bounce into a hummingbird blur. He forces himself to stare ahead and focus on the single perfectly round bullet hole in the windshield, exactly the size of the bullet that took his real estate agent’s life.
“Keep your heads down!” he shouts back at Andy and Mara. “Stay low and hold on!”
He glances in the rearview mirror. The mirror is shaking crazily along with the rest of the SUV but he can see that two of the other cars are cutting across the field, rocketing back toward Stone Cliff at life-or-death speed. The others—three or four of them at least—have not moved. They sit motionless in the field, exactly where their drivers stopped them. He shot them, Boone thinks, the notion occurring to him with the immediate certainty of unveiled truth. The man on the van shot them dead behind the wheel, just like he shot Grant—
Up ahead in the distance, an acre or so away, he can already see the low gray chalk line of the stone wall marking the end of the field. A winding dirt lane leads back to farmhouse in the furthest corner of the land. After that there is a thick patch of woods followed by open fields that cover the undeveloped acreage between here and the Hershey town line.
“They’re coming,” Mara screams. “Boone, they’re following us!”
His gaze shoots back to the rearview. Behind him, the fleet of black vans has started across the field, following the cars back to Stone Cliff. Boone clocks the wheel to the left, angling across the field in the opposite direction, toward the farmhouse and the big red barn beside it. He holds the gas pedal all the way to the floor, the SUV bouncing hard enough along the uneven field that all four wheels seem to be leaving the ground for seconds at a time, slamming them back down with stomach-aching suddenness. His skull and spine throb and he grips the wheel so hard he could see the veins in his wrists. There are more rifle shots behind him, snapping in the air like firecrackers, a constant, irregular banter.
He swings up out of the field and past the farmhouse, making for the barn. Across the field, several of the vans split off from the convoy and come directly at him. The barn door is open, a black rectangle amid the brightness of midday. Boone turns the wheel until the nose of the SUV lunges up past the aluminum door inside the barn where he drives the brake pedal to the floor, the vehicle scraping to a halt next to a huge stack of baled hay and a great sprawling welter of farming equipment. For a moment his eyes gasp for light and he can’t see anything. His heart is beating hard enough to shake his shirt and he finds that, try as he might, he cannot uncurl his fingers from the wheel.
What are you doing?
He doesn’t know, anymore than he knows the circumstances that had driven him here. Planes are falling from the sky, men in black vans are hunting them with rifles, and he cannot begin to fathom even his own semi-hysterical decision-making scheme in the midst of it all.
And yet, on some intuitive level, he can.
He looks at his brother, Andy’s shoulders limp, his empty eyes staring out the window at nothing. Andyland. That’s his own voice, and it comes from inside him, in his memory. You remember Andyland, don’t you, Boone? It hasn’t been that long, has it?
Slowly, he releases the bloody steering wheel. In the ticking silence, he listens.
From outside the barn, he can hear the vans coming, high-performance engines revving over the field, drawing closer. Boone can smell dirt and coppery blood mixed with wet straw, rust and moldy canvas from outside. He looks into the back seat at Mara and his brother. Their eyes are a matched set of pale ovals, staring back at him from the depths of an impossible void. Mara’s crying silently, her cheeks streaked and gleaming, as if someone with a paintbrush has drawn two lines straight down either side of her face. Her hands fasten over the backpack she brought with her, clutching it to her small, flat chest. Andy’s eyes remain blank.
Boone swallows, moistening his throat, but still finds he had nothing to say. He reaches back between the seats and holds his brother’s hands. Andy’s palms and fingers feel very smooth and soft, and they are trembling.
The engines stop. There is the sound of doors opening and closing and footfalls in the dirt, but no one speaks.
Boone listens. Then from outside the barn, there’s a loud click, and a voice on a loudspeaker rings out.
“GOOD MORNING TO YOU ALL,” a man’s voice says. It is a great, rolling baritone voice of a classically trained stage actor, a snake-oil salesmen and a natural public orator all in one, and the megaphone’s metallic squawk does very little to eliminate the deep pleasure Boone hears oozing from its liquid caramel overtones. “I AM SEEKING ANDY HANDLER. I HAVE BUSINESS WITH HIM—PRESSING BUSINESS, AS IT HAPPENS. ANDY HANDLER, WILL YOU PLEASE HONOR US WITH YOUR PRESENCE?”
“Who are they?” Mara whispers.
Boone is about to say he doesn’t know but the voice outside speaks first.
“YOU KNOW WHO WE ARE, DON’T YOU, MR. HANDLER?” it asks. “YOU KNOW I MEAN IT WHEN I SAY THAT I AM NOT GOING TO COUNT TO TEN?”
Boone says, “Jesus—”
“WE ARE THE TRIGGERMEN, MASTER HANDLER,” the voice says. “AND I AM JOHN BARD.”
“What the—” Grant hits the brakes, stopping the SUV cold in a slowly descending cloud of dust and old corn stalks. “He’s got a gun.”
Boone stares over the real estate agent’s shoulder. In the middle distance, the silver Taurus has stopped also, along with all the other cars. Now the only vehicle still charging forward is Lois Crane’s showroom Jeep, its rooster-tail of dust only now starting to fall on this end of the field. Within seconds, Boone realizes, she’s going to be face-to-face with the barricade of black vans.
“Why isn’t she stopping?” Grant cries. “What’s wrong with her?”
“It’s my neighbor,” Boone says, as if that explains everything, and maybe it does. “That’s how she is.”
The man standing on top of the van fires a single shot. Boone hears the flat pop drift back across the field. Abruptly he both hears and sees the Jeep’s front tire blow out, the vehicle lurching abruptly sideways, slapping another ten or twenty yards like a beast in waterlogged galoshes. The passenger door flies open and Boone sees Lois jump out, the strange metallic hue of her pantsuit kicking back weird fiberglass twinkles of light. In the dusty stillness he can hear her voice, distant but distinct.
“What is the meaning of this?” Lois cries at the man standing on top of the van. Her tone is pure indignation. “Who are you people? Did you see what happened to my house? Do any of you have the first idea—”
There’s another gunshot, crack, and Lois falls back into the dirt.
“My God.” Grant St. Pierre is blinking very quickly and looking at no one. “He shot her! Did you see that? That son of a bitch—”
Grant’s head disappears in a fine mist of red. To Boone’s five senses, at least, there is no sound or even any real feeling of motion. It’s more the turning of a page where the transition is left to the imagination of the viewer. One second the real estate agent is talking, and the next everything from his shoulders up is replaced by a rose-colored cloud in the front of the SUV, something someone might squirt on you as you’re passing the cosmetics counter at Macy’s. Then the terrible magic trick ends and Grant’s body slumps incrementally to the left, against his door. Sticky sounds come from the upholstery as his wet shirt and trousers squeak against the rich leather.
Boone feels himself moving forward, clambering up between the two front seats. He was attacked by a dog once as a boy on his way home from school and remembers going into this same thoughtless defensive action as if his limbs have been overtaken by an unseen, all-business puppeteer leaving him stunned and blinking afterward, wondering what happened. In the back Mara is screaming but it’s far off, coming to him across a wide no man’s land of isolating shock. Still not thinking, Boone unbuckles Grant St. Pierre’s ruined and essentially headless body from the driver’s seat, reaching across the blood-matted polo shirt that now clings like a second skin to the man’s chest and pulls the latch on the driver’s side door. The body tilts, then leans, sags and finally spills sideways out of the car, into the dirt of the field, leaving the seat empty except for a small pool of blood.
Boone sits down in the blood, feels its warmth seeping in to soak the seat and crotch of his running shorts. He jams the SUV in drive, turns the wheel hard and floors it, the earth bumping and pounding underneath him, making his shoulders shake and his vision bounce into a hummingbird blur. He forces himself to stare ahead and focus on the single perfectly round bullet hole in the windshield, exactly the size of the bullet that took his real estate agent’s life.
“Keep your heads down!” he shouts back at Andy and Mara. “Stay low and hold on!”
He glances in the rearview mirror. The mirror is shaking crazily along with the rest of the SUV but he can see that two of the other cars are cutting across the field, rocketing back toward Stone Cliff at life-or-death speed. The others—three or four of them at least—have not moved. They sit motionless in the field, exactly where their drivers stopped them. He shot them, Boone thinks, the notion occurring to him with the immediate certainty of unveiled truth. The man on the van shot them dead behind the wheel, just like he shot Grant—
Up ahead in the distance, an acre or so away, he can already see the low gray chalk line of the stone wall marking the end of the field. A winding dirt lane leads back to farmhouse in the furthest corner of the land. After that there is a thick patch of woods followed by open fields that cover the undeveloped acreage between here and the Hershey town line.
“They’re coming,” Mara screams. “Boone, they’re following us!”
His gaze shoots back to the rearview. Behind him, the fleet of black vans has started across the field, following the cars back to Stone Cliff. Boone clocks the wheel to the left, angling across the field in the opposite direction, toward the farmhouse and the big red barn beside it. He holds the gas pedal all the way to the floor, the SUV bouncing hard enough along the uneven field that all four wheels seem to be leaving the ground for seconds at a time, slamming them back down with stomach-aching suddenness. His skull and spine throb and he grips the wheel so hard he could see the veins in his wrists. There are more rifle shots behind him, snapping in the air like firecrackers, a constant, irregular banter.
He swings up out of the field and past the farmhouse, making for the barn. Across the field, several of the vans split off from the convoy and come directly at him. The barn door is open, a black rectangle amid the brightness of midday. Boone turns the wheel until the nose of the SUV lunges up past the aluminum door inside the barn where he drives the brake pedal to the floor, the vehicle scraping to a halt next to a huge stack of baled hay and a great sprawling welter of farming equipment. For a moment his eyes gasp for light and he can’t see anything. His heart is beating hard enough to shake his shirt and he finds that, try as he might, he cannot uncurl his fingers from the wheel.
What are you doing?
He doesn’t know, anymore than he knows the circumstances that had driven him here. Planes are falling from the sky, men in black vans are hunting them with rifles, and he cannot begin to fathom even his own semi-hysterical decision-making scheme in the midst of it all.
And yet, on some intuitive level, he can.
He looks at his brother, Andy’s shoulders limp, his empty eyes staring out the window at nothing. Andyland. That’s his own voice, and it comes from inside him, in his memory. You remember Andyland, don’t you, Boone? It hasn’t been that long, has it?
Slowly, he releases the bloody steering wheel. In the ticking silence, he listens.
From outside the barn, he can hear the vans coming, high-performance engines revving over the field, drawing closer. Boone can smell dirt and coppery blood mixed with wet straw, rust and moldy canvas from outside. He looks into the back seat at Mara and his brother. Their eyes are a matched set of pale ovals, staring back at him from the depths of an impossible void. Mara’s crying silently, her cheeks streaked and gleaming, as if someone with a paintbrush has drawn two lines straight down either side of her face. Her hands fasten over the backpack she brought with her, clutching it to her small, flat chest. Andy’s eyes remain blank.
Boone swallows, moistening his throat, but still finds he had nothing to say. He reaches back between the seats and holds his brother’s hands. Andy’s palms and fingers feel very smooth and soft, and they are trembling.
The engines stop. There is the sound of doors opening and closing and footfalls in the dirt, but no one speaks.
Boone listens. Then from outside the barn, there’s a loud click, and a voice on a loudspeaker rings out.
“GOOD MORNING TO YOU ALL,” a man’s voice says. It is a great, rolling baritone voice of a classically trained stage actor, a snake-oil salesmen and a natural public orator all in one, and the megaphone’s metallic squawk does very little to eliminate the deep pleasure Boone hears oozing from its liquid caramel overtones. “I AM SEEKING ANDY HANDLER. I HAVE BUSINESS WITH HIM—PRESSING BUSINESS, AS IT HAPPENS. ANDY HANDLER, WILL YOU PLEASE HONOR US WITH YOUR PRESENCE?”
“Who are they?” Mara whispers.
Boone is about to say he doesn’t know but the voice outside speaks first.
“YOU KNOW WHO WE ARE, DON’T YOU, MR. HANDLER?” it asks. “YOU KNOW I MEAN IT WHEN I SAY THAT I AM NOT GOING TO COUNT TO TEN?”
Boone says, “Jesus—”
“WE ARE THE TRIGGERMEN, MASTER HANDLER,” the voice says. “AND I AM JOHN BARD.”
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Intermission
I worked the midnight shift last night, slept until noon and had to go back to work, so I won't get a chance to post the next Triggermen chapter till tomorrow. But I have to say, having not looked at these pages for a couple years, I'm having a lot of fun revisiting it here.
Meanwhile I'm almost done listening to Larry Brown's final novel The Rabbit Factory on audio. With gas going for four bucks a gallon one of the last remaining pleasures of driving is listening to a good book over a matter of weeks. I've lived with his characters for over a month now and I'll be sorry to say goodbye to them.
I've also just acquired the soundtracks to Ratatouille and The Incredibles by Michael Giacchino, who also does the music to Lost and a lot of other cool things. He's the new Danny Elfman and I love his stuff. If The Triggermen was a movie, he'd definitely be doing the soundtrack.
Meanwhile I'm almost done listening to Larry Brown's final novel The Rabbit Factory on audio. With gas going for four bucks a gallon one of the last remaining pleasures of driving is listening to a good book over a matter of weeks. I've lived with his characters for over a month now and I'll be sorry to say goodbye to them.
I've also just acquired the soundtracks to Ratatouille and The Incredibles by Michael Giacchino, who also does the music to Lost and a lot of other cool things. He's the new Danny Elfman and I love his stuff. If The Triggermen was a movie, he'd definitely be doing the soundtrack.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
The Triggermen - Chapter Four
For your entertainment, a serialized novella available only here on the Scary Parent.
Chapter Four
In the next twenty minutes, three more planes fall out of the sky.
After the jet that goes down in the direction of Hershey, one drops farther off to the south, perhaps five miles away. By that time the crowds of people in what remain of Boone’s condo community are staring up with the blanched, seasick expressions of spectators at some apocalyptic fireworks display, watching the expanse for whatever will come next. The shock of what’s happening has not yet worn off, and it will still be fifteen minutes before the first mass panic begins.
The next plane is even more distant, just a glint in the eastern horizon. Somebody in the crowd points to it and said, “There’s one,” and there’s another boom. The third crash is almost as far off, this time in the direction of Middletown. As it falls, Boone hears a man’s voice say, “Jesus, that one went down right over TMI.”
Three Mile Island, ten miles from here. More than anything, that’s what does it. Standing far behind the flame-crackling condo with his brother and Mara Wilson, Boone feels panic broadening around him from an eddy to a whirlpool into a maelstrom, a terrible, sloping sense of danger without any perceivable limit. The same panic ripples through the crowd around him. TMI is safe, has been safe since the 70s, but the reassurances of local authorities suddenly mean little as thick black and gray smoke starts pouring upward in the sky, from the direction of the reactors.
Somewhere across the green, a woman shrills, “Get out of my way!” She slams into Boone from behind, clacking his teeth together and knocking him to his hands and knees in the warm grass. Sitting up, he sees it is none other than Lois Crane, she of the bronze velour and neighborly haranguing, car keys already in hand, sprinting faster than Boone has ever seen her move, across what remains of the common area. Her hips wobble furiously in her pantsuit. She cuts through the line of firefighters, around the fire—it has now consumed the entire block of condos—evidently heading toward the parking lot on the other side and the Jeep she keeps parked there. She bought the Jeep a year ago, after her beleaguered husband’s death (privately Boone has always suspected the poor bastard offed himself), and subsequent life insurance policy, allowed her to quit her job and devote all her time to being everyone’s least favorite pain in the ass.
Lois’ flight seems to trigger an almost physical spasm of realization among the residents of Stone Cliff. All at once, people whose condos are still on the safe side of the development begin backing up, a tide of bodies moving in a loose but unified wave. Boone watches them running back to their houses now, or going directly to their cars in the lot on the other side. He already hears engines starting, people shouting at each other, swearing, screaming, a woman squalling, “Just get your brother and get in the car!” Almost simultaneously, two children on two opposite sides of the common begin to cry in high, frightened voices.
He looks down at Andy, who is still standing perfectly still next to Mara, his face still queerly expressionless. “My car keys,” Boone hears himself say. “They were in the house.”
Mara gives him an appalled look. “Why is everybody running?”
“They think Three Mile Island got hit,” he says. “But if it did—”
“What?”
“It won’t make any difference now. It’s too late.”
“Boone, what’s happening?”
“I’m not sure.” Of course there’s only one idea in his mind, and she gets it out before he does.
“It’s terrorists, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.” But this sounds so much like an obvious lie to tell a child that he can’t keep himself from adding, “Probably, I guess.”
“What are we going to do?” she asks, clutching her backpack with both hands. “I want my mom.”
“Come on.” He grabs Andy’s hand and gestures Mara in the direction of his retreating neighbors. On the far side of the lawn, just within the range of perceptible detail, Boone sees a silver-haired man in a pale green cabana shirt and khakis. The man is walking swiftly around the front of a white SUV, talking into a cell phone with the studied perseverance of a man who spends a great deal of time doing exactly this.
“Grant!” Boone shouts, pulling Andy and Mara with him. Mara is keeping pace with him easily but Andy lags, stiff-legged, unresponsive, practically staggering to keep up.
Grant St. Pierre glances up from his cell phone, with no recognition in his eyes. He is the real estate agent that sold Boone the condo here, six years ago, and a resident of the community as well. He and Boone often see each other driving up and down Oxford Court and give each other the wave.
“Listen,” Boone said, catching his breath, “can we ride out with you? My keys were in our house.”
“I’m headed west,” Grant says. His civilized gray eyes are fixed on the sky and never stop moving, though his voice is still relatively calm, and he sounds like he might actually remember who Boone is. “My daughter’s in Pittsburgh. I’m meeting her halfway there.”
“What did she say it’s like there?”
“The same. More planes down. They’re saying it’s nationwide.”
“What do you think it is?”
Grant still doesn’t look at him. “Some kind of attack. Somebody jamming the navigational systems or something. I heard one landed on the White House lawn. Probably bullshit but...” He opens the driver’s side door. “You can ride with me if you want but I’m not stopping till I find Jess.”
“Where does your mother work?” Boone asks Mara.
“The Hotel Hershey.”
“I’ll drop you at 422,” Grant says, “but I’m not going any further out of my way.” He doesn’t wait for Boone’s reaction before starting the engine, and Boone opens the back door so Mara could jump in.
“Andy, let’s go.” He shoves his brother into the back and climbs in next to him, still pulling the door shut as Grant swings the SUV around backward so fast the headachy smell of hot rubber comes seeping up through the floorboards. Around them the lot behind Grant’s part of the development has already become one gigantic circuit board of cars blasting their horns and trying to get around each other. Up ahead Boone sees traffic bottlenecked at the exit, people slamming bumpers and rear-ending one another, nobody waiting his or her turn.
“Hold on,” Grant says, reversing until they face the far end of the lot and the cornfield beyond it. He floors it, following the half-dozen other vehicles that have opted to drive overland through the field out to High Meadow Road.
“What that?” Boone says.
And then he sees. Across the field, through the cloud of dust kicked up by the cars, a long line of black vans have stopped to form a blockade in front of High Meadow Road. From here Boone can see a man in a long black leather coat and sunglasses standing on top of one of the vans. “Who the hell is that?”
Grant doesn’t reply, but Boone can feel him slowing down already. Two of the other cars driving through the field have also slowed, but the other two, a silver Taurus and a beige Jeep that looks fresh from the showroom, are still barreling straight at the row of vans, faster than ever. He doesn’t know who owned the Taurus, but he knows Lois Crane is behind the wheel of the Jeep. In what cannot possibly be mere happenstance, the Jeep’s gleaming bronze color matches her velour pantsuit perfectly.
That’s when the man standing on top of the van raises his rifle and brings the stock to his shoulder, siting down the scope at the oncoming cars.
Chapter Four
In the next twenty minutes, three more planes fall out of the sky.
After the jet that goes down in the direction of Hershey, one drops farther off to the south, perhaps five miles away. By that time the crowds of people in what remain of Boone’s condo community are staring up with the blanched, seasick expressions of spectators at some apocalyptic fireworks display, watching the expanse for whatever will come next. The shock of what’s happening has not yet worn off, and it will still be fifteen minutes before the first mass panic begins.
The next plane is even more distant, just a glint in the eastern horizon. Somebody in the crowd points to it and said, “There’s one,” and there’s another boom. The third crash is almost as far off, this time in the direction of Middletown. As it falls, Boone hears a man’s voice say, “Jesus, that one went down right over TMI.”
Three Mile Island, ten miles from here. More than anything, that’s what does it. Standing far behind the flame-crackling condo with his brother and Mara Wilson, Boone feels panic broadening around him from an eddy to a whirlpool into a maelstrom, a terrible, sloping sense of danger without any perceivable limit. The same panic ripples through the crowd around him. TMI is safe, has been safe since the 70s, but the reassurances of local authorities suddenly mean little as thick black and gray smoke starts pouring upward in the sky, from the direction of the reactors.
Somewhere across the green, a woman shrills, “Get out of my way!” She slams into Boone from behind, clacking his teeth together and knocking him to his hands and knees in the warm grass. Sitting up, he sees it is none other than Lois Crane, she of the bronze velour and neighborly haranguing, car keys already in hand, sprinting faster than Boone has ever seen her move, across what remains of the common area. Her hips wobble furiously in her pantsuit. She cuts through the line of firefighters, around the fire—it has now consumed the entire block of condos—evidently heading toward the parking lot on the other side and the Jeep she keeps parked there. She bought the Jeep a year ago, after her beleaguered husband’s death (privately Boone has always suspected the poor bastard offed himself), and subsequent life insurance policy, allowed her to quit her job and devote all her time to being everyone’s least favorite pain in the ass.
Lois’ flight seems to trigger an almost physical spasm of realization among the residents of Stone Cliff. All at once, people whose condos are still on the safe side of the development begin backing up, a tide of bodies moving in a loose but unified wave. Boone watches them running back to their houses now, or going directly to their cars in the lot on the other side. He already hears engines starting, people shouting at each other, swearing, screaming, a woman squalling, “Just get your brother and get in the car!” Almost simultaneously, two children on two opposite sides of the common begin to cry in high, frightened voices.
He looks down at Andy, who is still standing perfectly still next to Mara, his face still queerly expressionless. “My car keys,” Boone hears himself say. “They were in the house.”
Mara gives him an appalled look. “Why is everybody running?”
“They think Three Mile Island got hit,” he says. “But if it did—”
“What?”
“It won’t make any difference now. It’s too late.”
“Boone, what’s happening?”
“I’m not sure.” Of course there’s only one idea in his mind, and she gets it out before he does.
“It’s terrorists, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.” But this sounds so much like an obvious lie to tell a child that he can’t keep himself from adding, “Probably, I guess.”
“What are we going to do?” she asks, clutching her backpack with both hands. “I want my mom.”
“Come on.” He grabs Andy’s hand and gestures Mara in the direction of his retreating neighbors. On the far side of the lawn, just within the range of perceptible detail, Boone sees a silver-haired man in a pale green cabana shirt and khakis. The man is walking swiftly around the front of a white SUV, talking into a cell phone with the studied perseverance of a man who spends a great deal of time doing exactly this.
“Grant!” Boone shouts, pulling Andy and Mara with him. Mara is keeping pace with him easily but Andy lags, stiff-legged, unresponsive, practically staggering to keep up.
Grant St. Pierre glances up from his cell phone, with no recognition in his eyes. He is the real estate agent that sold Boone the condo here, six years ago, and a resident of the community as well. He and Boone often see each other driving up and down Oxford Court and give each other the wave.
“Listen,” Boone said, catching his breath, “can we ride out with you? My keys were in our house.”
“I’m headed west,” Grant says. His civilized gray eyes are fixed on the sky and never stop moving, though his voice is still relatively calm, and he sounds like he might actually remember who Boone is. “My daughter’s in Pittsburgh. I’m meeting her halfway there.”
“What did she say it’s like there?”
“The same. More planes down. They’re saying it’s nationwide.”
“What do you think it is?”
Grant still doesn’t look at him. “Some kind of attack. Somebody jamming the navigational systems or something. I heard one landed on the White House lawn. Probably bullshit but...” He opens the driver’s side door. “You can ride with me if you want but I’m not stopping till I find Jess.”
“Where does your mother work?” Boone asks Mara.
“The Hotel Hershey.”
“I’ll drop you at 422,” Grant says, “but I’m not going any further out of my way.” He doesn’t wait for Boone’s reaction before starting the engine, and Boone opens the back door so Mara could jump in.
“Andy, let’s go.” He shoves his brother into the back and climbs in next to him, still pulling the door shut as Grant swings the SUV around backward so fast the headachy smell of hot rubber comes seeping up through the floorboards. Around them the lot behind Grant’s part of the development has already become one gigantic circuit board of cars blasting their horns and trying to get around each other. Up ahead Boone sees traffic bottlenecked at the exit, people slamming bumpers and rear-ending one another, nobody waiting his or her turn.
“Hold on,” Grant says, reversing until they face the far end of the lot and the cornfield beyond it. He floors it, following the half-dozen other vehicles that have opted to drive overland through the field out to High Meadow Road.
“What that?” Boone says.
And then he sees. Across the field, through the cloud of dust kicked up by the cars, a long line of black vans have stopped to form a blockade in front of High Meadow Road. From here Boone can see a man in a long black leather coat and sunglasses standing on top of one of the vans. “Who the hell is that?”
Grant doesn’t reply, but Boone can feel him slowing down already. Two of the other cars driving through the field have also slowed, but the other two, a silver Taurus and a beige Jeep that looks fresh from the showroom, are still barreling straight at the row of vans, faster than ever. He doesn’t know who owned the Taurus, but he knows Lois Crane is behind the wheel of the Jeep. In what cannot possibly be mere happenstance, the Jeep’s gleaming bronze color matches her velour pantsuit perfectly.
That’s when the man standing on top of the van raises his rifle and brings the stock to his shoulder, siting down the scope at the oncoming cars.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
The Triggermen - Chapter Three
A new and exciting way to waste time at work...continued...!
Chapter Three
The bedroom is empty, but the computer’s switched on, the monitor showing a cartoon clip of a man in a long black coat firing a high powered rifle, good old John Bard, the man who doesn’t count to ten. Boone has just enough time to register that the whining sound Andy complained about earlier is back, only this time it sounds as loud as a power drill over the low thunder of the fire outside.
“Andy!” Boone runs down the upstairs hallway to his own bedroom but it too is empty and the bathroom as well. At the last minute he stops and goes back into Andy’s bedroom to his closet and opens the door.
It takes a moment for his vision to adjust. Then he sees his brother crouched in the far corner, hands wrapped around his knees, eyes shut.
“Andy, thank God.” Boone crawls in and pulls him up in his arms, lugging his bulk out of the bedroom and down the stairs. By now the fire’s distant roar has become a steady, shapeless booming that makes the walls shake around them and he can feel the heat pressing against his face, filling his lungs as he breathes. He jumps off the last step and runs through the living room and out the back door, into the yard. The area behind the porch has been cleared—he can see people and firemen on the far side of the stream—and he keeps running, running.
“Are you okay?”
Andy doesn’t move, doesn’t nod, just stares blankly over Boone’s shoulder at their row of condos. The flames are halfway across now, engulfing the first three units, leaving only Boone’s and the one next to it. In another five minutes, the entire block will be on fire. If he hadn’t gone in when he did—
Boone makes himself stop thinking about it. Around him, firemen start spraying the blaze with big feathery blasts of water along with nearby condos that haven’t yet caught fire, in attempt to keep them from burning too. In the opposite direction, the fire in the jet’s ruined fuselage has gone down and he gets his first glimpse of the bodies of the passengers, black rows of burnt corn kernels still strapped in their seats. The reek of cooked flesh mixes with jet fuel and a veil of gagging smoke. Boone feels his stomach flip over. Hand plastered over his lips, he turns away but the vision clings to the inside of his lids like a nightmare he already senses will never truly fade from view.
Across the commons, beyond the burning trees and the boiling stream, his neighbors are out singly and in clusters, a masquerade ball of familiar faces glazed into unrecognizable fright-masks. Here is stolid, flat-assed, fifty-something Lois Crane, recently elected to the condo association board and a neighbor from three doors down, who routinely comes knocking on Boone’s door telling him when he needs to take down his holiday lights and bring in his recyclable containers. Now Lois stands alone like the totem pole of frigidity that she is, defrocked of all power, gazing at her burning home with the immigrant eyes of a woman without the right naturalization papers. Behind her, Amy Tatsumi and her husband Roy stand side-by-side with identical expressions of glazed disbelief. Amy is clutching a stack of scrapbooks while Roy holds their daughter Emily in his arms. He gives Boone a dull how-ya-doin’ nod.
Boone is worried about Andy. His brother’s breathing and doesn’t look hurt, his color is good and his heartbeat steady, but he hasn’t spoken or even moved his head since Boone rescued him from the closet. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, Andy. It’s me, man, it’s Boone. Can you hear me?”
Still nothing, not even a nod. Off to the side of the common area Boone sees Mara Wilson, standing by herself with her arms crossed, cupping her elbows.
He puts his arm around Andy, leading him through the crowd to Mara. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Her voice is tight and scared, but she’s trying really hard to hide it. “Is Andy—”
“I think he’s all right. He’s not really talking.”
“Boone, do you have your cell phone? I want to call my mom.”
Boone shakes his head. “I don’t, but one of those guys could help us.” He nods at an EMT talking into a radio. “I’ll ask.”
Looking back on that particular moment, Boone thinks it’s probably the first time he noticed the black vans coming. They’re still off in the distance, on the far side of the cornfield that abutted Stone Cliff, traveling down High Meadow Road in a long convoy of shining black steel. It doesn’t necessarily strike him as out of the ordinary, compared to what was going on in front of him, though the detail does stick in his mind, and he will think of it later with a prophetic little chill.
“Hey, excuse me,” he says, approaching the EMT, the guy looking up at him with a distracted frown. He puts his hand on Mara’s shoulder. “Do you think somebody could have a look at my brother? I got him out of there but he’s in shock.”
“Ambulances are on their way.” The EMT isn’t even looking at him anymore. “Gonna need you to move all the way back to the far side of the development.”
Boone glances at Mara, standing there next to him scared out of her mind. “Is it possible for her to call her mother? She’s still at work.”
“Gotta keep the frequency clear. Emergency traffic only. Move on back.”
“But—”
The EMT shakes his head and walks away, bellowing something to one of his coworkers across the green. Boone kneels down and puts his arm around Mara. He hopes he sounds better than he feels. “It’s okay. We’ll find somebody with a cell phone.” He turns to Andy and squeezes his arm hard. “Andy, you need to talk to me here, all right?”
Andy doesn’t look at him, and doesn’t reply.
“Andy?”
His brother raises one hand and points up into the sky. Following his finger, Boone sees a commercial jetliner, blue and silver, descending with a stately, implacable massiveness over the eastern horizon in the direction of Hershey. Its shadow passes over all of them for just a moment, a flash of darkness like a bird across the sun.
“Oh my God,” Boone says.
The jet disappears behind the low hills and a moment later there comes a thunderclap that sends fresh fire into the high morning clouds.
Chapter Three
The bedroom is empty, but the computer’s switched on, the monitor showing a cartoon clip of a man in a long black coat firing a high powered rifle, good old John Bard, the man who doesn’t count to ten. Boone has just enough time to register that the whining sound Andy complained about earlier is back, only this time it sounds as loud as a power drill over the low thunder of the fire outside.
“Andy!” Boone runs down the upstairs hallway to his own bedroom but it too is empty and the bathroom as well. At the last minute he stops and goes back into Andy’s bedroom to his closet and opens the door.
It takes a moment for his vision to adjust. Then he sees his brother crouched in the far corner, hands wrapped around his knees, eyes shut.
“Andy, thank God.” Boone crawls in and pulls him up in his arms, lugging his bulk out of the bedroom and down the stairs. By now the fire’s distant roar has become a steady, shapeless booming that makes the walls shake around them and he can feel the heat pressing against his face, filling his lungs as he breathes. He jumps off the last step and runs through the living room and out the back door, into the yard. The area behind the porch has been cleared—he can see people and firemen on the far side of the stream—and he keeps running, running.
“Are you okay?”
Andy doesn’t move, doesn’t nod, just stares blankly over Boone’s shoulder at their row of condos. The flames are halfway across now, engulfing the first three units, leaving only Boone’s and the one next to it. In another five minutes, the entire block will be on fire. If he hadn’t gone in when he did—
Boone makes himself stop thinking about it. Around him, firemen start spraying the blaze with big feathery blasts of water along with nearby condos that haven’t yet caught fire, in attempt to keep them from burning too. In the opposite direction, the fire in the jet’s ruined fuselage has gone down and he gets his first glimpse of the bodies of the passengers, black rows of burnt corn kernels still strapped in their seats. The reek of cooked flesh mixes with jet fuel and a veil of gagging smoke. Boone feels his stomach flip over. Hand plastered over his lips, he turns away but the vision clings to the inside of his lids like a nightmare he already senses will never truly fade from view.
Across the commons, beyond the burning trees and the boiling stream, his neighbors are out singly and in clusters, a masquerade ball of familiar faces glazed into unrecognizable fright-masks. Here is stolid, flat-assed, fifty-something Lois Crane, recently elected to the condo association board and a neighbor from three doors down, who routinely comes knocking on Boone’s door telling him when he needs to take down his holiday lights and bring in his recyclable containers. Now Lois stands alone like the totem pole of frigidity that she is, defrocked of all power, gazing at her burning home with the immigrant eyes of a woman without the right naturalization papers. Behind her, Amy Tatsumi and her husband Roy stand side-by-side with identical expressions of glazed disbelief. Amy is clutching a stack of scrapbooks while Roy holds their daughter Emily in his arms. He gives Boone a dull how-ya-doin’ nod.
Boone is worried about Andy. His brother’s breathing and doesn’t look hurt, his color is good and his heartbeat steady, but he hasn’t spoken or even moved his head since Boone rescued him from the closet. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, Andy. It’s me, man, it’s Boone. Can you hear me?”
Still nothing, not even a nod. Off to the side of the common area Boone sees Mara Wilson, standing by herself with her arms crossed, cupping her elbows.
He puts his arm around Andy, leading him through the crowd to Mara. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Her voice is tight and scared, but she’s trying really hard to hide it. “Is Andy—”
“I think he’s all right. He’s not really talking.”
“Boone, do you have your cell phone? I want to call my mom.”
Boone shakes his head. “I don’t, but one of those guys could help us.” He nods at an EMT talking into a radio. “I’ll ask.”
Looking back on that particular moment, Boone thinks it’s probably the first time he noticed the black vans coming. They’re still off in the distance, on the far side of the cornfield that abutted Stone Cliff, traveling down High Meadow Road in a long convoy of shining black steel. It doesn’t necessarily strike him as out of the ordinary, compared to what was going on in front of him, though the detail does stick in his mind, and he will think of it later with a prophetic little chill.
“Hey, excuse me,” he says, approaching the EMT, the guy looking up at him with a distracted frown. He puts his hand on Mara’s shoulder. “Do you think somebody could have a look at my brother? I got him out of there but he’s in shock.”
“Ambulances are on their way.” The EMT isn’t even looking at him anymore. “Gonna need you to move all the way back to the far side of the development.”
Boone glances at Mara, standing there next to him scared out of her mind. “Is it possible for her to call her mother? She’s still at work.”
“Gotta keep the frequency clear. Emergency traffic only. Move on back.”
“But—”
The EMT shakes his head and walks away, bellowing something to one of his coworkers across the green. Boone kneels down and puts his arm around Mara. He hopes he sounds better than he feels. “It’s okay. We’ll find somebody with a cell phone.” He turns to Andy and squeezes his arm hard. “Andy, you need to talk to me here, all right?”
Andy doesn’t look at him, and doesn’t reply.
“Andy?”
His brother raises one hand and points up into the sky. Following his finger, Boone sees a commercial jetliner, blue and silver, descending with a stately, implacable massiveness over the eastern horizon in the direction of Hershey. Its shadow passes over all of them for just a moment, a flash of darkness like a bird across the sun.
“Oh my God,” Boone says.
The jet disappears behind the low hills and a moment later there comes a thunderclap that sends fresh fire into the high morning clouds.
Monday, May 19, 2008
The Triggermen - Chapter Two
An ongoing novella serialized here for your time-wasting enjoyment...
Chapter Two
The next thing Boone knows he’s sitting on the asphalt in his running shorts with two skinned knees and a long scrape that runs from elbow to wrist, staring down the long shallow green bowl of the common area to the flames and smoke rippling into the mid-morning air. He still can’t hear any sound at all, as if his ears are stuffed with cotton. What if I blew my eardrums out? is his first, stupid-selfish thought. Dear God, I’m supposed to be Pennsylvania’s answer to Waylon Jennings and I can’t hear music, what am I going to do?
Looking down, the first thing he sees that makes any sense is a child’s bicycle, lying crookedly on the pavement with the colored tassels tangled together. The tassels are familiar, the way they flap, and Boone realizes numbly that it is Mara Wilson’s bike. She was riding alongside him with her backpack on her back, saying something, when—
He looks up the road. Mara is crouching by the side of the road, her wire-thin eighth-grader’s body, dressed in khaki shorts and a white sleeveless top, bent over, carefully picking up the items that spilled out of her backpack, notebooks, pencils, sun block, her little palmtop computer, a Blackberry is what it’s called. Boone moves toward her, feeling like he’s floating along on a slowly melting block of ice.
“Hey,” he says, or tries to say. His voice is still inaudible to him. “Are you okay?”
She turns around and looks up, holding her palmtop in her hand. The right side of her face is scratched and covered with tiny bits of gravel from the road, but she doesn’t seem badly hurt. She blinks at him slowly, her large green eyes sharpening into focus. “Boone? What happened?”
He stares past her, unable to answer, until she turns around and looks in that direction too. Beyond the road in the distance, where his condo is, a roaring tornado of fire has risen up, cooking the air and warping the sky with heat. In the midst of the flames, Boone thinks he sees vast pieces of wreckage, burning twisted steel.
“Plane crash,” he says, and for the first time he’s able to hear his own voice, just a little. It doesn’t sound like him at all. It sounds like an answering machine version of himself: Boone isn’t here right now, please leave a message at the sound of the tone. “It came down right over there, I think. Just behind those houses.”
Looking at the fire, Mara’s face sags into a washed-out windsock of dismay. Her mouth opens and closes but she doesn’t appear to be speaking, or even making the effort. Boone thinks he see the colors of the fire painted faintly on her skin, or it might be the way the blaze has already imprinted itself on his retinas, or just his own simple shock. Does it matter? He feels as if his mind has been taken apart and reassembled by clumsy hands that left out a few crucial pieces, but even so, it takes only a moment longer for the realization of what happened to penetrate his stupor.
“Andy.” It’s the first word he fully hears himself say that sounds like him. “Andy’s back in the house.”
“I better get home,” Mara says, but as she steps forward to get her bike, a pickup truck comes tearing down the road in front of them, blasting its horn. An American flag flaps from its oversized aerial. Boone reaches out and grabs her by the shoulder, yanking her back at the last moment. The truck shoots past, less than five feet from where they stand. It runs over Mara’s bike, flattening it and spitting it out the back in a jangle of chains and broken spokes, without so much as slowing down.
Distantly, sirens begin to rise in the background. Boone doesn’t think they sound like typical fire engine sirens. They sound more like civil air alerts, drawn-out, slow-rising glissandos that repeat endlessly long after everybody who could’ve heard them is dead.
“Boone?” Tears shine in her eyes now. “What’s going on?”
He shakes his head. “Is your mom home?”
“I told you, she’s still at work. She works first shift today.”
“You should stay with me. You’ll have to run.”
Mara nods and they cut across the long stretch of common area, over the low rolling hills leading back toward the other side of the loop. As they get closer to the wall of fire, Boone begins to see pieces of the jet’s wreckage scattered in the grass around them, the pieces getting larger as they get closer, many of them still burning, like some infernal sculpture garden. One large metal shard is implanted directly in a rock. There are letters painted on the side of it in blistered white paint, but Boone can’t tell what they are. In truth he doesn’t look all that thoroughly.
Up ahead the trees are on fire, big oaks and maples blazing orange and red like autumn come early. The grass up there is brown, going on black. He can see the thin creek that runs through the common area behind his house. Part of the burning fuselage lies across it, and that portion of the creek is actually boiling, steam seething off its surface like mist. The bridge that runs across it, where he and Andy sometimes stood and threw pebbles into the water—that’s on fire too.
The sirens are getting louder now.
From somewhere up ahead a bald man comes running up to them, moving with a scrambling, panicked crookedness. He’s wearing a red T-shirt and as he gets closer Boone sees that the shirt was originally white. Both the man’s arms are missing, sheared off at the shoulder. Pale bits of flesh shiver from the tatters of the shirt, gleaming in the odd combination of light.
“What happened?” the man asks in a flat monotone, his eyes fixed on Boone. “I was watering my flowers. I saw a light. Did you see it? What was it?”
“Oh my God,” Mara says, clutching her mouth. “Oh my God, Boone—”
Boone catches the armless man just as he falls, the surprising weight of him almost bringing them both to their knees. The sirens he hears now are fire sirens, and when he turns around he sees a row of long red trucks coming down Oxford Court with their lights flashing. He can’t tell if they’re moving slowly or if that’s just his perception but the whole thing has a stagy, parade-like quality that makes the moment feel even less real, certainly less real than the bald man bleeding to death in his arms.
“Help!” Boone shouts, waving in the direction of the trucks. “Help, over here! Someone’s hurt! Help us!” Even as he says this, he’s looking at the fire in front of him. It’s spread across the first row of condos toward the units where he and Andy live, but he can’t tell exactly where the flames stop. Certainly Andy knows enough to get out as the fire got closer, but Boone wonders if Andy’s circuits would be fried by the immediacy of the thing, no previous experience to give it scale, no comparison available. He sees his brother standing in his bedroom, frozen in front of the window, as the fire creeps up the stairs pinning him against the far wall until the roof gives way.
The fire trucks don’t stop. They are still moving, circling around the far side of the condos that have already caught fire. No, Boone thinks, that’s not enough to take care of what’s happening here, not nearly enough—
Beneath him, the man with no arms lies on the grass, still trying to tell him about how he was watering his garden when he saw a light, and what happened? His chin goes up and down, the motion growing more mechanical until it looks like his teeth are chattering. Throughout it all, his eyes are fixed on Boone even as the awful, lacquered glassiness creeps up to envelope them like bad taxidermy.
“Just hold on,” Boone said, “hold on, they’re coming to help you, okay?” He sees now he’s going to have to leave the man, not in a minute, not in a little while but right now, because now he can see the fire from the wreck shifting northward, toward their condo. If Andy isn’t out by now then Andy is going to cook in there. Boone knows that with the clarity of a man in a corner he’s never been in before. You can’t talk to people about something like that but in the end it’s what makes the difference. The difference between what? You almost have to be standing at death’s door to look backward and see the real dimensions of it.
Across the gap between condos the first group of firemen, three or four men in long black coats and helmets, are charging toward him. Seeing them, Boone puts his hands underneath the armless man’s back and lifts him up. He wants the armless man to see that help is on the way, that these men are going to do their best to save his life, because the moment he perceives the armless man gets this, Boone fully intends to leave him here. Whatever his appreciation of the armless man’s current scenario—or Mara Wilson’s scenario for that matter—he is willing and able to walk away from both of them at this moment in order to ascertain the safety of his brother.
“Here they come,” he tells the armless man. “You’re going to be all right. See that? You’re going to be okay.”
The man gapes up at him, in all likelihood already gone. The last things in his face that hold color are his eyes and even they seem to dim, the sucked-out depths paling in increments to match the flesh surrounding them. His fish-gray lips move up and down one last time. They look as white as paper and the whiteness makes them look flat and the flatness makes them look dead.
Dropping him, Boone cuts across the last of the common area toward the blazing horror that has overtaken a full quarter of his world, the quadrant that consists of his life with Andy. He is fifty yards in front of the blaze, and from his new perspective he can see, thank God, that his condo was not yet burning. Theirs is an end unit, the last in a row of five. The townhouse on the far end is much closer to the jet’s wreckage. The broken tailpiece juts alongside it. It looks like those last units might be on fire, the flames spreading this way, rising as they come. But they haven’t reached here yet.
The roaring heat is intense, enough to dry his eyes and parch his lips. Running for the back porch where he was sitting earlier that morning with his guitar, Boone feels a hand taking hold of his shoulder. For some reason he’s sure it’s Mara.
“It’s okay!” he shouts, not looking around. “I’ll be right back.”
“You can’t go in there,” a man’s voice says.
Boone turns. One of the firemen grips him, a tall man in a yellow helmet with the face-shield reflecting Boone’s own face back at him. “My brother’s in there. This is my house!”
The fireman shakes his head and moves Boone away. “We’ll take care of it.”
Tearing free, Boone opens the back door and runs inside. Except for a low rumbling noise, and the increased heat, his house feels oddly peaceful—untouched by the chaos outside. His guitar is still leaning against the couch, the morning paper spread out next to his coffee cup on the kitchen table.
“Andy!” he shouts, running upstairs. “Andy, come on!” At the top of the steps he sees the other bedroom door closed, and Boone grabs the knob and swings it open. “Andy—”
The bedroom is empty.
Chapter Two
The next thing Boone knows he’s sitting on the asphalt in his running shorts with two skinned knees and a long scrape that runs from elbow to wrist, staring down the long shallow green bowl of the common area to the flames and smoke rippling into the mid-morning air. He still can’t hear any sound at all, as if his ears are stuffed with cotton. What if I blew my eardrums out? is his first, stupid-selfish thought. Dear God, I’m supposed to be Pennsylvania’s answer to Waylon Jennings and I can’t hear music, what am I going to do?
Looking down, the first thing he sees that makes any sense is a child’s bicycle, lying crookedly on the pavement with the colored tassels tangled together. The tassels are familiar, the way they flap, and Boone realizes numbly that it is Mara Wilson’s bike. She was riding alongside him with her backpack on her back, saying something, when—
He looks up the road. Mara is crouching by the side of the road, her wire-thin eighth-grader’s body, dressed in khaki shorts and a white sleeveless top, bent over, carefully picking up the items that spilled out of her backpack, notebooks, pencils, sun block, her little palmtop computer, a Blackberry is what it’s called. Boone moves toward her, feeling like he’s floating along on a slowly melting block of ice.
“Hey,” he says, or tries to say. His voice is still inaudible to him. “Are you okay?”
She turns around and looks up, holding her palmtop in her hand. The right side of her face is scratched and covered with tiny bits of gravel from the road, but she doesn’t seem badly hurt. She blinks at him slowly, her large green eyes sharpening into focus. “Boone? What happened?”
He stares past her, unable to answer, until she turns around and looks in that direction too. Beyond the road in the distance, where his condo is, a roaring tornado of fire has risen up, cooking the air and warping the sky with heat. In the midst of the flames, Boone thinks he sees vast pieces of wreckage, burning twisted steel.
“Plane crash,” he says, and for the first time he’s able to hear his own voice, just a little. It doesn’t sound like him at all. It sounds like an answering machine version of himself: Boone isn’t here right now, please leave a message at the sound of the tone. “It came down right over there, I think. Just behind those houses.”
Looking at the fire, Mara’s face sags into a washed-out windsock of dismay. Her mouth opens and closes but she doesn’t appear to be speaking, or even making the effort. Boone thinks he see the colors of the fire painted faintly on her skin, or it might be the way the blaze has already imprinted itself on his retinas, or just his own simple shock. Does it matter? He feels as if his mind has been taken apart and reassembled by clumsy hands that left out a few crucial pieces, but even so, it takes only a moment longer for the realization of what happened to penetrate his stupor.
“Andy.” It’s the first word he fully hears himself say that sounds like him. “Andy’s back in the house.”
“I better get home,” Mara says, but as she steps forward to get her bike, a pickup truck comes tearing down the road in front of them, blasting its horn. An American flag flaps from its oversized aerial. Boone reaches out and grabs her by the shoulder, yanking her back at the last moment. The truck shoots past, less than five feet from where they stand. It runs over Mara’s bike, flattening it and spitting it out the back in a jangle of chains and broken spokes, without so much as slowing down.
Distantly, sirens begin to rise in the background. Boone doesn’t think they sound like typical fire engine sirens. They sound more like civil air alerts, drawn-out, slow-rising glissandos that repeat endlessly long after everybody who could’ve heard them is dead.
“Boone?” Tears shine in her eyes now. “What’s going on?”
He shakes his head. “Is your mom home?”
“I told you, she’s still at work. She works first shift today.”
“You should stay with me. You’ll have to run.”
Mara nods and they cut across the long stretch of common area, over the low rolling hills leading back toward the other side of the loop. As they get closer to the wall of fire, Boone begins to see pieces of the jet’s wreckage scattered in the grass around them, the pieces getting larger as they get closer, many of them still burning, like some infernal sculpture garden. One large metal shard is implanted directly in a rock. There are letters painted on the side of it in blistered white paint, but Boone can’t tell what they are. In truth he doesn’t look all that thoroughly.
Up ahead the trees are on fire, big oaks and maples blazing orange and red like autumn come early. The grass up there is brown, going on black. He can see the thin creek that runs through the common area behind his house. Part of the burning fuselage lies across it, and that portion of the creek is actually boiling, steam seething off its surface like mist. The bridge that runs across it, where he and Andy sometimes stood and threw pebbles into the water—that’s on fire too.
The sirens are getting louder now.
From somewhere up ahead a bald man comes running up to them, moving with a scrambling, panicked crookedness. He’s wearing a red T-shirt and as he gets closer Boone sees that the shirt was originally white. Both the man’s arms are missing, sheared off at the shoulder. Pale bits of flesh shiver from the tatters of the shirt, gleaming in the odd combination of light.
“What happened?” the man asks in a flat monotone, his eyes fixed on Boone. “I was watering my flowers. I saw a light. Did you see it? What was it?”
“Oh my God,” Mara says, clutching her mouth. “Oh my God, Boone—”
Boone catches the armless man just as he falls, the surprising weight of him almost bringing them both to their knees. The sirens he hears now are fire sirens, and when he turns around he sees a row of long red trucks coming down Oxford Court with their lights flashing. He can’t tell if they’re moving slowly or if that’s just his perception but the whole thing has a stagy, parade-like quality that makes the moment feel even less real, certainly less real than the bald man bleeding to death in his arms.
“Help!” Boone shouts, waving in the direction of the trucks. “Help, over here! Someone’s hurt! Help us!” Even as he says this, he’s looking at the fire in front of him. It’s spread across the first row of condos toward the units where he and Andy live, but he can’t tell exactly where the flames stop. Certainly Andy knows enough to get out as the fire got closer, but Boone wonders if Andy’s circuits would be fried by the immediacy of the thing, no previous experience to give it scale, no comparison available. He sees his brother standing in his bedroom, frozen in front of the window, as the fire creeps up the stairs pinning him against the far wall until the roof gives way.
The fire trucks don’t stop. They are still moving, circling around the far side of the condos that have already caught fire. No, Boone thinks, that’s not enough to take care of what’s happening here, not nearly enough—
Beneath him, the man with no arms lies on the grass, still trying to tell him about how he was watering his garden when he saw a light, and what happened? His chin goes up and down, the motion growing more mechanical until it looks like his teeth are chattering. Throughout it all, his eyes are fixed on Boone even as the awful, lacquered glassiness creeps up to envelope them like bad taxidermy.
“Just hold on,” Boone said, “hold on, they’re coming to help you, okay?” He sees now he’s going to have to leave the man, not in a minute, not in a little while but right now, because now he can see the fire from the wreck shifting northward, toward their condo. If Andy isn’t out by now then Andy is going to cook in there. Boone knows that with the clarity of a man in a corner he’s never been in before. You can’t talk to people about something like that but in the end it’s what makes the difference. The difference between what? You almost have to be standing at death’s door to look backward and see the real dimensions of it.
Across the gap between condos the first group of firemen, three or four men in long black coats and helmets, are charging toward him. Seeing them, Boone puts his hands underneath the armless man’s back and lifts him up. He wants the armless man to see that help is on the way, that these men are going to do their best to save his life, because the moment he perceives the armless man gets this, Boone fully intends to leave him here. Whatever his appreciation of the armless man’s current scenario—or Mara Wilson’s scenario for that matter—he is willing and able to walk away from both of them at this moment in order to ascertain the safety of his brother.
“Here they come,” he tells the armless man. “You’re going to be all right. See that? You’re going to be okay.”
The man gapes up at him, in all likelihood already gone. The last things in his face that hold color are his eyes and even they seem to dim, the sucked-out depths paling in increments to match the flesh surrounding them. His fish-gray lips move up and down one last time. They look as white as paper and the whiteness makes them look flat and the flatness makes them look dead.
Dropping him, Boone cuts across the last of the common area toward the blazing horror that has overtaken a full quarter of his world, the quadrant that consists of his life with Andy. He is fifty yards in front of the blaze, and from his new perspective he can see, thank God, that his condo was not yet burning. Theirs is an end unit, the last in a row of five. The townhouse on the far end is much closer to the jet’s wreckage. The broken tailpiece juts alongside it. It looks like those last units might be on fire, the flames spreading this way, rising as they come. But they haven’t reached here yet.
The roaring heat is intense, enough to dry his eyes and parch his lips. Running for the back porch where he was sitting earlier that morning with his guitar, Boone feels a hand taking hold of his shoulder. For some reason he’s sure it’s Mara.
“It’s okay!” he shouts, not looking around. “I’ll be right back.”
“You can’t go in there,” a man’s voice says.
Boone turns. One of the firemen grips him, a tall man in a yellow helmet with the face-shield reflecting Boone’s own face back at him. “My brother’s in there. This is my house!”
The fireman shakes his head and moves Boone away. “We’ll take care of it.”
Tearing free, Boone opens the back door and runs inside. Except for a low rumbling noise, and the increased heat, his house feels oddly peaceful—untouched by the chaos outside. His guitar is still leaning against the couch, the morning paper spread out next to his coffee cup on the kitchen table.
“Andy!” he shouts, running upstairs. “Andy, come on!” At the top of the steps he sees the other bedroom door closed, and Boone grabs the knob and swings it open. “Andy—”
The bedroom is empty.
Friday, May 16, 2008
The Triggermen
Other than my sister-in-law, I have no idea who reads these stories. But I do feel bad for starting that last story, posting two pages and then stopping. And I like the idea of free fiction online, posting a chapter a day for people to read while they're at work or just surfing around while the baby naps. I like putting something up that you know you can go back to for a couple weeks, if you want. The Triggermen is a long story I wrote a couple years ago. Due to its length, it's one of those neither-fish-nor-fowl stories...a novella, I guess. I hope it helps you kill some time at work.
Chapter One
Life as we know it comes to an end one fine Saturday in early May, not long after Boone Handler has given up trying to write a song. The morning air is warm and clear and Boone can hear kids playing on the far side of his condo development along with the rattle of a woodpecker and the staticky splutter of a single-engine plane doing circles above the nearby airport. All the sounds he can ask for, in other words, except the one he wants—the deceptively simple three-chord progression that woke him in the first place and drove him downstairs to make coffee and pick up his guitar.
It is a little after nine when, with a kind of inner shrug, Boone thinks what the hell and decides to go for his morning run. He is upstairs putting on his running shoes when Andy wanders into his bedroom, still in his pajamas, clutching his Sixers pillow sleepily to his chest. Andy’s blonde hair is sticking up in a bright yellow bird’s nest, his green eyes not quite open, and the whiskers on his face are badly in need of a shave. It has been a week. Boone makes a mental note to help him with that this very afternoon.
“Hey, bud,” Boone says, “I didn’t hear you get up. You want some breakfast?”
Andy shakes his head like a dog shaking off water. “Something’s wrong with the computer, Boone.”
“Oh yeah? What’s it doing?”
“Making noises,” Andy says. “Like, eeeeeeee. It woke me up.”
“Well, I’m going out for a run. I’ll have a look at it when I get back.”
“It doesn’t work,” Andy says. “I’ll show you.”
Sighing, Boone follows his brother across the hall. Andy is independent enough, but there are times when he needs something to be addressed right now, especially when it deals with the computer.
Boone bought him the laptop last summer. Since then Andy has spent an almost worrisome amount of time online, downloading music, burning CDs and soaking in untold hours of his favorite online show, The Triggermen. The Triggermen is an animated action show featuring the adventures of “the world’s most courageous underground anti-terrorist unit.” Andy loves The Triggermen with an awestruck reverence reserved for precious few things in life. Boone knows his brother sometimes leaves the web episodes running in a constant loop, even while he sleeps like a combination screensaver and nightlight. If he could, he told Boone, he’d watch The Triggermen in his sleep.
Stepping into Andy’s room, Boone walks past the immaculately organized shelves, CDs on top, graphic novels on the bottom. Next to the window overlooking the front driveway is a life-sized poster of a man in a long black leather cattleman’s coat with a high-powered rifle in each hand. This man is John Bard, former government agent and now head of the Triggermen, otherwise known as the world’s most courageous blah-blah-blah. Should the sneering lips, heavy-duty firepower and downright homicidal gleam in John Bard’s oddly gleeful eye not be sufficient, the word balloon floating over the man’s head sums up whatever might need clarification: “We have business, you and I,” the balloon says. “Pressing business.” It is his tagline and he says it almost every episode.
Boone bends over the keyboard and looks at the screen. He clicks on the icon for Internet Explorer and an error message pops up. At the same time the CPU begins making a high whining noise, a sound that reminds him rather unpleasantly of a dentist’s drill.
“That’s it,” Andy says. “That’s the noise!”
“Hold on. Let me check something.” Reaching around behind the CPU, Boone locates the cable line where it feeds into the communications bus. He disconnects it, tightens it again and tries the Explorer icon. This time the homepage springs up immediately, though the steady whine persists. After a moment the screen flickers and the noise goes away.
“You fixed it!” Andy grins. “You’re the best at computers!”
“Don’t tell Bill Gates that.”
Andy bursts out laughing and looks at him puzzled. “Who’s Bill Gates?”
“Nobody.” Boone turns and starts out. “Hey listen, I’m just going out, I’ll be back in fifteen minutes, okay? You want waffles when I get back?”
“Sure, okay.” Andy has already started to type in slow, deliberate taps, then almost as an afterthought, he leaps up to plant a wet kiss on Boone’s cheek. “Thanks again, Boone.”
“No problem.” Heading downstairs, his cheek still moist with his brother’s kiss, Boone can hear the familiar Triggermen theme music cranked to maximum volume. Even through the laptop’s tinny speakers it sounds to his discerning ear like an electric guitar being played through the biggest pair of testicles on the planet.
He goes downstairs to stretch. As he steps outside, he hears a dog barking and a woman’s voice saying, very clearly, “Stop it, Ben,” but Ben only gives another hooting howl, triumphantly, louder than ever. Heading down the sidewalk toward the parking area, Boone begins to trot, working himself into an easy, open-handed jog. His cul-de-sac is connected to the larger loop of Oxford Court that runs through Stone Cliff Townhouse community in a large, lazy mile-long oval. For the last year since quitting smoking, he has tried to run the loop at least twice a week, sometimes more if the weather is warm enough. It clears his head and helps him focus. Focusing is something he’s had a lot of trouble with over the last year, as things have gotten ostensibly better for him and Andy.
Ever since their parents died, he’s taken care of his brother, working odd jobs and giving piano lessons to put money on the table while continuing to try to write music. Then, just eight months ago, after years of getting his hopes up and having them smashed, playing in bars and sending out demo tapes, Boone’s manager actually sold one of his songs, a mid-tempo rocker called “Red Dog,” to Tricia Yearwood for her latest album. Against all odds, the song became a hit, and the belated fairytale began for Boone Handler. The money started rolling in, the offers of work, of new opportunity. His manager wants him to move to Nashville, or better yet, LA. Boone has yet to discuss any of these things with Andy, but it is getting harder not to talk about it.
He is jogging around the first bend of the loop when he sees one of his former piano students, Mara Wilson, coming the other way on her bike, her backpack strapped over her shoulders. Mara is a pretty girl with long black hair and braces that only seem to bring out the winning sweetness of her smile. Once she gets older and the braces come off, Mara isn’t just going to be a heartbreaker, Boone thought; she’s going to be a heart-stopper. Guys are going to be writing plenty of songs about her.
“Hey,” he calls out. “Where you headed?”
“Down to Redner’s to pick up some stuff for my mom. She’s working at the hotel till two but then we’re baking a birthday cake for my uncle.”
“Aren’t you old enough to drive yet?”
“Shut up.” She rides up close enough to punch him in the shoulder. “Ew, you’re all sweaty.” Pedaling faster, she pulls ahead and then glances back. “How’s Andy doing?”
“Fine.”
“You ever think—” Mara starts, and her voice breaks off. Later Boone will recall these as the last words ever spoken before the world changed. You ever think.
Overhead, a screaming comes across the sky. He hears the distorted shriek of a jet engine growing louder until its sonic jabbering actually seems to fill up the space around them, pounding it to pieces with its garbled roar. He stops running and Mara stops pedaling her bike, and they both stare straight up. Mara’s mouth is moving, asking him a question he can’t hear. Then a huge, bullet-like shape, far too large for the background, is plunging down out of the sky over Stone Cliff and Boone feels himself actually pushed back by the appearance of the jet coming down toward the rooftops of his part of the condo development. What comes next is an eardrum-rending explosion that sets the whole world on fire. The ground disappears beneath Boone’s feet. His legs go with it.
Nothing after that is ever the same.
Chapter One
Life as we know it comes to an end one fine Saturday in early May, not long after Boone Handler has given up trying to write a song. The morning air is warm and clear and Boone can hear kids playing on the far side of his condo development along with the rattle of a woodpecker and the staticky splutter of a single-engine plane doing circles above the nearby airport. All the sounds he can ask for, in other words, except the one he wants—the deceptively simple three-chord progression that woke him in the first place and drove him downstairs to make coffee and pick up his guitar.
It is a little after nine when, with a kind of inner shrug, Boone thinks what the hell and decides to go for his morning run. He is upstairs putting on his running shoes when Andy wanders into his bedroom, still in his pajamas, clutching his Sixers pillow sleepily to his chest. Andy’s blonde hair is sticking up in a bright yellow bird’s nest, his green eyes not quite open, and the whiskers on his face are badly in need of a shave. It has been a week. Boone makes a mental note to help him with that this very afternoon.
“Hey, bud,” Boone says, “I didn’t hear you get up. You want some breakfast?”
Andy shakes his head like a dog shaking off water. “Something’s wrong with the computer, Boone.”
“Oh yeah? What’s it doing?”
“Making noises,” Andy says. “Like, eeeeeeee. It woke me up.”
“Well, I’m going out for a run. I’ll have a look at it when I get back.”
“It doesn’t work,” Andy says. “I’ll show you.”
Sighing, Boone follows his brother across the hall. Andy is independent enough, but there are times when he needs something to be addressed right now, especially when it deals with the computer.
Boone bought him the laptop last summer. Since then Andy has spent an almost worrisome amount of time online, downloading music, burning CDs and soaking in untold hours of his favorite online show, The Triggermen. The Triggermen is an animated action show featuring the adventures of “the world’s most courageous underground anti-terrorist unit.” Andy loves The Triggermen with an awestruck reverence reserved for precious few things in life. Boone knows his brother sometimes leaves the web episodes running in a constant loop, even while he sleeps like a combination screensaver and nightlight. If he could, he told Boone, he’d watch The Triggermen in his sleep.
Stepping into Andy’s room, Boone walks past the immaculately organized shelves, CDs on top, graphic novels on the bottom. Next to the window overlooking the front driveway is a life-sized poster of a man in a long black leather cattleman’s coat with a high-powered rifle in each hand. This man is John Bard, former government agent and now head of the Triggermen, otherwise known as the world’s most courageous blah-blah-blah. Should the sneering lips, heavy-duty firepower and downright homicidal gleam in John Bard’s oddly gleeful eye not be sufficient, the word balloon floating over the man’s head sums up whatever might need clarification: “We have business, you and I,” the balloon says. “Pressing business.” It is his tagline and he says it almost every episode.
Boone bends over the keyboard and looks at the screen. He clicks on the icon for Internet Explorer and an error message pops up. At the same time the CPU begins making a high whining noise, a sound that reminds him rather unpleasantly of a dentist’s drill.
“That’s it,” Andy says. “That’s the noise!”
“Hold on. Let me check something.” Reaching around behind the CPU, Boone locates the cable line where it feeds into the communications bus. He disconnects it, tightens it again and tries the Explorer icon. This time the homepage springs up immediately, though the steady whine persists. After a moment the screen flickers and the noise goes away.
“You fixed it!” Andy grins. “You’re the best at computers!”
“Don’t tell Bill Gates that.”
Andy bursts out laughing and looks at him puzzled. “Who’s Bill Gates?”
“Nobody.” Boone turns and starts out. “Hey listen, I’m just going out, I’ll be back in fifteen minutes, okay? You want waffles when I get back?”
“Sure, okay.” Andy has already started to type in slow, deliberate taps, then almost as an afterthought, he leaps up to plant a wet kiss on Boone’s cheek. “Thanks again, Boone.”
“No problem.” Heading downstairs, his cheek still moist with his brother’s kiss, Boone can hear the familiar Triggermen theme music cranked to maximum volume. Even through the laptop’s tinny speakers it sounds to his discerning ear like an electric guitar being played through the biggest pair of testicles on the planet.
He goes downstairs to stretch. As he steps outside, he hears a dog barking and a woman’s voice saying, very clearly, “Stop it, Ben,” but Ben only gives another hooting howl, triumphantly, louder than ever. Heading down the sidewalk toward the parking area, Boone begins to trot, working himself into an easy, open-handed jog. His cul-de-sac is connected to the larger loop of Oxford Court that runs through Stone Cliff Townhouse community in a large, lazy mile-long oval. For the last year since quitting smoking, he has tried to run the loop at least twice a week, sometimes more if the weather is warm enough. It clears his head and helps him focus. Focusing is something he’s had a lot of trouble with over the last year, as things have gotten ostensibly better for him and Andy.
Ever since their parents died, he’s taken care of his brother, working odd jobs and giving piano lessons to put money on the table while continuing to try to write music. Then, just eight months ago, after years of getting his hopes up and having them smashed, playing in bars and sending out demo tapes, Boone’s manager actually sold one of his songs, a mid-tempo rocker called “Red Dog,” to Tricia Yearwood for her latest album. Against all odds, the song became a hit, and the belated fairytale began for Boone Handler. The money started rolling in, the offers of work, of new opportunity. His manager wants him to move to Nashville, or better yet, LA. Boone has yet to discuss any of these things with Andy, but it is getting harder not to talk about it.
He is jogging around the first bend of the loop when he sees one of his former piano students, Mara Wilson, coming the other way on her bike, her backpack strapped over her shoulders. Mara is a pretty girl with long black hair and braces that only seem to bring out the winning sweetness of her smile. Once she gets older and the braces come off, Mara isn’t just going to be a heartbreaker, Boone thought; she’s going to be a heart-stopper. Guys are going to be writing plenty of songs about her.
“Hey,” he calls out. “Where you headed?”
“Down to Redner’s to pick up some stuff for my mom. She’s working at the hotel till two but then we’re baking a birthday cake for my uncle.”
“Aren’t you old enough to drive yet?”
“Shut up.” She rides up close enough to punch him in the shoulder. “Ew, you’re all sweaty.” Pedaling faster, she pulls ahead and then glances back. “How’s Andy doing?”
“Fine.”
“You ever think—” Mara starts, and her voice breaks off. Later Boone will recall these as the last words ever spoken before the world changed. You ever think.
Overhead, a screaming comes across the sky. He hears the distorted shriek of a jet engine growing louder until its sonic jabbering actually seems to fill up the space around them, pounding it to pieces with its garbled roar. He stops running and Mara stops pedaling her bike, and they both stare straight up. Mara’s mouth is moving, asking him a question he can’t hear. Then a huge, bullet-like shape, far too large for the background, is plunging down out of the sky over Stone Cliff and Boone feels himself actually pushed back by the appearance of the jet coming down toward the rooftops of his part of the condo development. What comes next is an eardrum-rending explosion that sets the whole world on fire. The ground disappears beneath Boone’s feet. His legs go with it.
Nothing after that is ever the same.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Synechdoche
I love Charlie Kaufman's screenplays. Imagine my delight when I found a PDF of his new script Synechdoche, New York online last night. I only read about 15 pages of it -- it's 159 pages long -- but it was already great, and I planned on posting a link to it this morning. But this morning, the script has been taken down. Why didn't I just save it when I had the chance? Now I have to wait and see the movie, which is of course better, but I have no self-control. This isn't exactly a state secret.
Speaking of self-control, I've decided to stop posting pages of "my new novel" for a while. Not because it's not going well but the opposite. It actually is turning into my next novel. It's a complete departure from anything I've ever done and I think I'm going to have to work on it in private for a while, maybe even until it's finished. I promise you I'm only doing this because I actually want to take it seriously and make it the best it can possibly be.
Meanwhile, I do plan to post some fiction on this blog soon, if anybody thinks they might read it.
I've been listening to Warren Zevon's My Ride's Here and reading Stephen Sachs' The End of Poverty and William Easterly's The White Man's Burden. Jack is still feverish on and off, but I think he's getting better...at least I hope so. It's been four days now.
I hope you're all well.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
You're a Whole Different Person When You're Scared
You worked a midnight shift Sunday night and go back in on Monday with three hours sleep. Sometime that afternoon the kid gets sick, 103 degree fever and your wife calls you at the hospital to tell you his heart is beating 120 beats per minute at rest, he's had a constant headache and can't stop shaking. Should she be worried? Immediately you start thinking strep and then meningitis, the one thing he should be treated for urgently, but there's not a lot of options because you're down to one car and you've got it with you here at work. You can't leave because you've got patients on the table and you're running two hours behind. Down in the ER they're swamped and even if you do go home and pick up your son and drive him back in you'll be waiting hours just to be seen. Just because you work here doesn't mean you get special treatment. You call your wife and she says the boy can move his neck and touch his chin to his chest without any stiffness or pain so it's probably not meningitis. The radiology resident down the hall weighs in on the heartrate issue and you call your wife back telling her to force fluids until you can get home. At ten forty-five you get your last patient off the table and blast to the supermarket for Gator Aid and a gallon of milk, and by then the boy's sleeping and he broke his fever. The strep test can wait till morning. You're exhausted but you can't sleep. Sometime around one you finally crawl into bed and the world goes away for a while. It'll be better in the morning, you think, and when you wake up, it actually is.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Page Two
Previously, on page one of my exciting new novel, we met Win Muller, a family man who recently lost his job and is in the process of trying to maintain perspective in a culture where going off the deep end is rewarded with artificial sympathy.
And now, page two:
When Win returned from his mechanic, Seneca had already taken the children, Laurie and D.B., off to school. He released Kudzu from his kennel, the dog following him upstairs to gnaw its dew claw under his desk while Win searched for teaching jobs online. There was something masturbatory about the compulsive slobbery noise the dog made as it chewed on itself, but what could you do? As a formerly abused animal owned by some anonymous central Pennsylvania asshole, Kudzu had a nonstop desire to please, a trait he shared with Win, who wondered if the dog might be trained to sniff out a job for him. Someone had to do it. So far Seneca's most serious contribution to his job search had been to suggest that Win join a men's prayer group at church, which he supposed might be an opportunity for networking, although in her weaker moments she had confided that she enjoyed having him around the house since he seemed "ready for action" more often. And it was true, their sexual rate of exchange had re-blossomed with what he liked to think of his emotional availability. It was another lesson he could have learned from the dog.
None of the local schools were hiring, of course, so he went downstairs -- it was a few moments after noon -- and took down a bottle of Wild Turkey, looking at the tablespoon of bourbon left in the bottle. The bottle reminded him of some kind of antique navigational tool. What was a sextant anyway? The dog watched him avidly, the way people watch reality TV, waiting to see what might happen next. Win thought about something that a songwriter friend had told him, that drinking in the daytime was actually a highly underrated form of creative stimulation, a questionable theory but then, the friend had recently paid his mortgage off selling one of his songs to a Nashville superstar of the "new country" ilk, so maybe there was something to it. He drained the bottle without a second thought and hooked a leash to Kudzu, preparing for a
And now, page two:
When Win returned from his mechanic, Seneca had already taken the children, Laurie and D.B., off to school. He released Kudzu from his kennel, the dog following him upstairs to gnaw its dew claw under his desk while Win searched for teaching jobs online. There was something masturbatory about the compulsive slobbery noise the dog made as it chewed on itself, but what could you do? As a formerly abused animal owned by some anonymous central Pennsylvania asshole, Kudzu had a nonstop desire to please, a trait he shared with Win, who wondered if the dog might be trained to sniff out a job for him. Someone had to do it. So far Seneca's most serious contribution to his job search had been to suggest that Win join a men's prayer group at church, which he supposed might be an opportunity for networking, although in her weaker moments she had confided that she enjoyed having him around the house since he seemed "ready for action" more often. And it was true, their sexual rate of exchange had re-blossomed with what he liked to think of his emotional availability. It was another lesson he could have learned from the dog.
None of the local schools were hiring, of course, so he went downstairs -- it was a few moments after noon -- and took down a bottle of Wild Turkey, looking at the tablespoon of bourbon left in the bottle. The bottle reminded him of some kind of antique navigational tool. What was a sextant anyway? The dog watched him avidly, the way people watch reality TV, waiting to see what might happen next. Win thought about something that a songwriter friend had told him, that drinking in the daytime was actually a highly underrated form of creative stimulation, a questionable theory but then, the friend had recently paid his mortgage off selling one of his songs to a Nashville superstar of the "new country" ilk, so maybe there was something to it. He drained the bottle without a second thought and hooked a leash to Kudzu, preparing for a