Gabriel’s Watch - Book One: The Scrapman Trilogy (11 page)

“I’m really sorry about this, Miles. I wish we could have met again ... under better circumstances.” She put a hand on my shoulder, a gesture meant to be comforting. Instead it felt more like an arachnid coming to inject an acidic enzyme. “But did you really have to break John’s nose?” Claire continued, “You don’t know how hard I had to fight for you, just so they’d put you in here.”

“Yeah, you’re a real hero,” I spat.

“Come now, Miles.” The spider leapt from my shoulder and settled atop my head, spreading its spindly legs through my damp hair. “You don’t believe I wanted this for you, do you?”

I said nothing, only exhaled deeply.

“Miles, look at me.” She lifted my chin so I would have no choice but to oblige. “I’m really sorry you had to get mixed up in all of this.”

“What is ‘all of this’ exactly, Claire?”

She turned to look back at the door she’d entered through, making sure we were still alone, then leaned in to place her cheek against mine. She then began to share with me a little secret, her lips brushing against the rim of my ear as she spoke. “Listen, there’s something you need to understand about John.” She paused for a moment, then started to whisper: “He doesn’t take too kindly to—”

“That’s enough, Claire,” a voice called in from the opening as a new figure emerged there—one she hadn’t been expecting. Startled, Claire tore her hand from me and rose to her feet. She spun on her heal and immediately walked out of the large freezer.

The man she’d previously referred to as John entered as she walked past him. But his face did not display the disdain I’d been anticipating. His eyes were a bit glossy, but didn’t appear to harbor any contempt.

His mouth, a simple gash above his chin, looked as though it had been idly carved from clay—the shoddy workmanship of some inexperienced artist. Its indifferent angle was quite visible, even beneath the spotted napkins he’d shoved up into his nostrils.

The man’s nose, quite dark and swollen, had come to a nasty bump below the ridge of his brow where I’d broken it. The discoloration there had spread and scooped upward, showing the early signs of two bruised optical sockets.

“Are you comfortable?” the man asked once Claire was out of earshot. I took an extra second to ponder my present situation and how it might be affecting my overall mood. I shrugged my shoulders and twisted my wrists. “I’ve been better,” I admitted.

The man took a step closer. “Look ... Miles, right? I think we got started on the wrong foot back there.” He paced, looking more at the floor than at me. I could see the blood stain on his shirt now, the blotches of red below his neckline where it had leaked out his face.

“I tend to agree,” I nodded.

He stopped moving and locked eyes on me. “I’ve just got a couple questions for you, and if I like your answers, I’ll have you home before the sun goes down. Sound good?”

“Great.”

He pulled a piece of paper out from his pocket, unfolded it, and stuck it out so I could see. “Do you recognize this?” It was the paper with Tim’s cross streets on it, the one I’d copied from Zeke’s satellite imaging. They must have searched me while I was out.

“Yes,” I admitted.

“Good so far,” the man called John encouraged. “What is it?”

“It’s where I get my dry-cleaning done,” I smirked. “I’m gonna be a little late today, though.”

The man attempted to grin, his lips zig-zagging themselves upward until a defined crease developed at each side of his face.

Something switched in his eyes just then, something almost luminous, like the ignition of a stove light in his brain. But his expression remained stiff and fixed, reminding me somewhat of the irreversible onset of rigor mortis. It was the first real glimpse I’d had of the man within the shell.

What was Claire trying to tell me? What was she trying to warn me about? He doesn’t take too kindly to what?
I suddenly recalled a group of individuals who’d suffered from a severe neurological disorder. From birth they had displayed an abnormal lack of empathy and incapacity for love; they also suffered from an extreme lack of conscience and compassion.

And, seeing that there was no medication capable of instilling empathy, their amygdalae and prefrontal cortexes were forever destined to pump just a few cylinders short of a mentally stable individual. It was said that these people had made up about one percent of our entire population—up to the end of the world, that is. Who knew how many of them were left? It was then that John began to speak.

“That cute shit might work on Claire, but it’s not gonna work on my boys.” He let that fictitious smile melt away. “And it’s certainly not gonna work on me, either.” He raised himself and walked toward the entrance of the freezer, placing a hand on the wall and putting his weight against it. “Claire tells me you served in the military. That true?”

I nodded, even though he wasn’t facing me at the time. “Yeah.”

“You ever go to Iraq?”

“No.”

He turned to thrust a thumb at himself. “I did. I was part of a special unit—real off-the-grid kinda stuff.” He took another step toward me, leaning over, genuine glee peeling his lips apart. I could see his bottom row of teeth now, positioned slightly inward, as if designed to detain his venomous tongue. “I even did a little work in an interrogation unit,” he added.

“Is that right?”

John nodded. “That’s where I got the nickname
Saint John.
Do you know why they called me that?”

I shook my head.

“Well, let me ask you this. Do you know what someone needs to do in order to become a saint?”

“Perform a miracle,” I answered.

“How many?”

“Seven.”

“That’s right,” he laughed. “And it’s the damndest thing, during that time in the unit, how many Iraqis could
miraculously
speak English when I was done with them.”

And, there in the freezer, his laugh rose to nothing short of a menacing cackle. He threw back his head as I watched the lump in his throat nearly bounce out of his mouth. It was like listening to the soft tendrils of white matter—the glue that holds our sanity in place—snapping with each of his cackles. I can honestly say now that there’s nothing more frightening than a man who enjoys the sound of his own laughter.

“Good thing I already speak English,” I said, trying to interrupt the man’s maniacal commotion. He managed to restore a bit of sanity to himself as he stepped forward, lowering back to my level.

“So start speakin’ it,” he said, lifting the paper again. “What is this? What’s here?”

“A friend,” I answered.

“You have friends at this address?”

“Just one,” I corrected.

“How do you know him?”

“He broke into my home.”

John looked puzzled. “Some friend.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Why do you have his address?”

I shook my head. “No more questions. Not until you answer one of mine. What’s this all about?”

John took a moment. He didn’t seem to know exactly how to respond. His fists tightened and his jaw clenched.

I readied myself for another onset of pain, were he to start swinging on me. Instead I found his posture softening within a few short seconds and his fingers uncurling from the knots they’d previously formed.

“Fair enough,” he agreed and reached into his back pocket to pull out a leather wallet. The thing was completely empty except for something stiff and folded in half inside it. He held it out to me. “Claire says that you had a family, that you had a daughter.”

I nodded and looked at what was in his hand. It was a picture of a young girl, a young girl who bore a striking resemblance to my own daughter—same wavy blonde hair, same adventurous blue eyes. It was uncanny. “Yeah, I had a daughter,” I agreed.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” John said, a heavy emotion trickling into his words, “but I also envy it ... in a way.”

I looked at the picture further. “I don’t understand.”

John cleared his throat, it sounded thick and viscous—like the clearing of a starch line. “Well, while your daughter died that day,” he started to clarify, “my daughter survived.” A tear began to form at the edge of his left eye, slowly gained in mass, and slid down the side of his face. “You don’t know how badly ... how badly I wish that she hadn’t.”

“What do you mean? What happened?”

John wiped the moisture from his face and made a snuffling sound, attempting a cough to cover it up. “You ever heard of the Land of the Damned?” he asked.

The name rang a bell. I must have heard Mohammad mention something about it before. “I think so,” I said.

“She was taken from me about a year and a half ago, during the reaping.”

“The reaping?”

“Jesus, man, have you been living under a rock the past ten years?”

I shrugged. “Yeah ... yeah, I guess you could say that.”

John shook his head, clearly agitated by my ignorance. “As the government was growing in strength and numbers,” he started, “they turned that small strip mall at the edge of the city into a red-light district. That strip mall is what we now call the Land of the Damned.”

“Okay.”

“You ever go to Thailand in your military days?”

“Yeah, once or twice.”

“Then you and I both know that, in order to build yourself a proper red-light district, you’re gonna need lots and lots of women.”

I nodded, waiting for him to continue.

“So they set out to find ’em. As many as they could get.”

My jaw swung open in the sudden realization of where this story would inevitably be heading. It made my heart wrench. “Oh, shit.”

He nodded and lowered his eyes to the floor, hiding them there in a place I couldn’t see. “They broke into our home. I tried to protect her ... but I was outnumbered.” His fists clenched as he turned his back to me, drawing in a very deep and shaky breath. “No matter how hard I fought ... no matter how much she screamed ... they just kept comin’.”

He stopped for a moment, bent to touch the floor, then brought his fingers up to his face to examine them there, rubbing them together as if he’d found a small puddle of oil.

“They took her,” he added, rising, “then lit the place on fire and left me for dead.” Lifting his shirt, John exposed his horribly scorched midsection. It had been covered in what looked like a thick layer of rippled skin, reaching up and wrapping around his abdomen like a flattened stingray. The burn was horrendous. “She’d be fourteen this year,” he added, releasing his shirt. “And do you know what the worst part of it is?”

I didn’t bother shaking my head; I simply waited for him to answer his own question.

“The worst part is not knowing ... not knowing if she’s alive or not. Sometimes I stay up all night just hoping— hoping she’s at peace and not ... ” There was a small silence, followed by another awkward sniffle. “I envy you,” he finished.

And he was absolutely right. Perhaps, instead of spending so much time hating God, I should have been thanking Him for bestowing such mercy on my family, a mercy that, for one reason or another, I had not been destined. Who knows, maybe He’d kept me around because of some lasting purpose, some final function I was supposed to fulfill. Somehow life doesn’t seem nearly as chaotic when you give into the belief (or delusion) that there’s a divine plan out there somewhere—an elusively irritating divine plan.

“So, now you could say I’m holdin’ a bit of a grudge,” he added.

Jesus, you think?

“I’m so sorry,” I managed to say to him.

“Luckily, Claire helped me get healthy again,” John went on, ignoring my sincere apology. “And now I feel stronger than ever. I’ve been talkin’ about revenge for the longest time, but people were too afraid to stand up to them.”

He turned again, stretching an arm out to the inner city from inside the freezer. “But all that’s changed, hasn’t it? Someone got ’em good at that old Zolaris building, and now people aren’t afraid to talk about it anymore. Now is the time. It’s the time to build an army.”

He turned back to me, baring that foreboding slice of a grin. “And maybe I’ll find my daughter ... or at least avenge her death in the process. Either way, it’s something I must do.”

“So you’re looking for people to join your army?” I asked. “That’s what this is about?”

“That’s right,” he agreed.

“What’s your plan once you get enough enlisted?”

“That’s a great question.” He rubbed the palms of his hands together, seemingly excited I’d even bothered to ask.

“The first thing we’ll do is go to the Land of the Damned ... and cleanse it.”

“Cleanse it?” My ears pricked at his strange choice in words.

“Just think of Sodom and Gomorra,” he went on, “God has called on us to wipe it out again, to do as the ancient scriptures have instructed of us. It’s clear as day— already been written. They must be punished. All of them.”

“All of them? What do you mean ‘all of them’?”

He leaned in. “Every—last—one—of—’em.”

I still didn’t quite understand. “But—you said yourself—many were forced—they had no choice.”

“Yes, and they’ll be the ones thanking us—kissing our hands before we end their torment.”

“Why not set them free?”

“That’ll be God’s decision,” he said, pointing a finger up toward the sky, “just as soon as they reach those pearly gates.”

“And what of your daughter?” I challenged. “What if you find
her
there?”

John lunged forward, sliding a hand beneath my chin and slamming my head hard against the rack behind me, screaming something that didn’t register right away.

The pain shot out in bright waves across my body, like the switch of an electric chair. I felt my teeth smash together and soon discovered something rattling around that hadn’t been there before. Whatever he’d shouted came back to me in a distorted mental echo a moment later: “Then her fate will be the same!”

“Take it easy,” I said, spitting out that tiny shard of enamel. “I’m no fan of the government either, but even I wouldn’t join an army like that.”

“I figured as much,” he said, releasing my face with a shove of his wrist. “And there you’ll find we have a problem. Because this,” he lifted the paper with the cross streets again, brandishing it like the very last poker chip in an age-old game, “this is a well-known government sanctuary, and since you have yet to disclose that information to me, it makes me think you’re protecting it.”