Gabriel’s Watch - Book One: The Scrapman Trilogy (13 page)

It was cute, but it just wasn’t going to happen.

Still, I nodded in approval. “Then your cause is admirable and you have my blessing; now, if you don’t mind ... ” I tilted my head toward the restraints around my wrists, hinting to what their next move should be.

“Miles, do you know what the most important thing is we have left?” Claire asked, indirectly ignoring my latest request for freedom.

I rolled my eyes. “No, what’s that, Claire?”

She leaned over, putting her face just inches from mine, “Trust.”

At some point during my captivity, Claire had discarded her thick sweatshirt and swapped it for a more revealing spaghetti-string top, one that offered up quite the tempting helping of cleavage. As she spoke, I did my best to keep eye contact and remain professional.

“So I’m going to trust you, Miles, despite the circumstantial evidence against you—which is most compelling, I might add.” She pointed to John, and in turn, to the piece of paper in his possession, the one he’d been determined to shove down my throat. “But I’m going to trust in your good heart; and as much as I do wish you’d join us, I unfortunately know that’s an impossibility.”

John suddenly seemed confused, spinning around to address her last statement. “Yeah, and why’s that?”

Claire only smiled and winked at me, acting as though the two of us shared some covert schoolyard secret. “Yes, answer the man, Miles. Why is that?”

I looked at her, attempting to unravel her thoughts through some psychic feat of reverse-engineering, but soon realized that I’d still been hindered to my meager assortment of five senses—none of which enabled mind reading. I was left only to guess.

“Because,” I started, still trying to come up with something worthy of the suspense thus far. “Because ... I’m ... in love?” I guessed.

“Exactly!” Claire exclaimed, “Believe in those words, Miles, because the sooner you realize it, the better.” She turned to John. “Cut him loose. We’re finished here.”

“Give me a friggin’ break.” John blocked the doorway, putting his body in front of hers. “We’re gonna let him go because he’s a pansy-ass?”

“No,” she disagreed, crossing her arms over her chest. “We’re gonna let him go because he’s a romantic— maybe the last one left on the planet—and if there’s any romance left in the world, we have to protect it.” She then looked over her shoulder, straight into my face. “Cherish it, Miles. Cherish it like it’s the only thing you’ve got.”

“Jesus Christ, this is some sickening shit,” John huffed, the bloody napkins fluttering from his crusted nostrils.

“Let him go,” Claire said sternly, shoving her way past him and out of the freezer.

John let out a sigh, bent to pick the fallen knife up off the ground, and took a couple steps closer. “Just you and me now, Loverboy,” he grumbled emptily, like the saddened squabbles of an angered house-pet. He was Claire’s. I knew it, he knew it, and she knew it. As long as she was there, I really was untouchable.

“Now, let me make one thing perfectly clear,” he started, speaking quietly enough that only I could hear. “I don’t want to see your face again. I don’t want you pokin’ around. I just want you to disappear. Got that?”

I tossed the ropes to the floor and rose to my feet, first rubbing my wrists and then reaching up to touch the back of my throbbing skull. It was there that I found a sticky lump beneath a patch of matted hair. The nerves in that area screamed in objection, informing me of their remaining tenderness. I winced a bit, cursing the room. Surely I was in need of a few stitches. We had a couple first-aid kits and some local antiseptic back in the cavern—still not a picnic, but, on the brighter side, it beat the hell out of a slowly severed cranium.

The kitchen, like the freezer, was relatively dark. Shadows had dripped from the ceiling, spilled to the tile floor, and gathered there into viscous pools of murk. The only source of light was that which had crept in through the door to the dining area, carving out the surrounding darkness with an encouraging wedge of day. I crossed the freezer and stepped through the threshold, entering the hindquarters of the kitchen, with John lurking at my heels.

The flattened surfaces beyond were marked with various stoves and burners, long since reduced to darkened pits beneath brownish bits of metal. A collage of cupboards stood ajar, over them hung a pattern of thinly strung steel from which hung a single desolate pan. It lingered there to tell stories of the way things once had been—left to reflect on every pancake, egg, and piece of French toast that had simmered to a golden crispness atop its brazen belly. Ahead of me, a dual set of deep sinks were gaping, stained yellow over time, with a vision of pots and pans piled high within them.

As I made my way toward the dining room, my foot came into contact with something unexpected. It was quite soft, and by its certain consistency and weight, I guessed it was some kind of rodent—probably just the body of a rat, one that had died recently. I felt the object flop and tumble upon the collision, imagining its stiff little legs sticking straight up at me, as the thing had surely toppled onto its back.

But, as I looked down, I soon discovered that the object—although a living thing—was not a rat, or rodent for that matter. I took a step backward, the onset of dread tightening its greasy fist over my chest, as the room seemed to shrink in on itself, compressing with such swift fluidity, that—in only a moment—all that was present was me and that thing on the floor.

“What the ... ”

The thing was a hand ...

Attached to an arm ...

Connected to a very large man.

De la Cruz? What the hell?

He was sprawled out on the floor, limbs spread wide apart, and strategically positioned in the shadows. His eyes were closed, but the rising and falling of his chest indicated his continued respiration.

Just then I heard something rather wicked directly behind me. Something had collided with such an intense cracking sound, that a wet, crunch-like echo emerged thereafter. It sounded like someone had released a suspended bag of meat, letting it fall hard onto the icy floor. I spun around to find John’s body crumpled at my feet.

“Jesus Christ!”

I looked up, back into the direction of the freezer, but the darkness within had commenced to play mischievous little tricks, sculpting shapes and forms out of thin air, and creating the illusion of movement along the vaporous edge of my peripheral. It left my head tossing frantically from side to side, as I strived to achieve either madness or resolution— whichever came first. And it was then that I saw it.

Looming out of the blackness, it seemed to form itself just beyond the shadows, creating a solid body of mass and density from sheer nothingness. The figure approached me slowly, offering a friendly nod beneath the hood encompassing its head, then stood to look down at John.

I stayed there, more out of shock than either courage or will power. I could only stare, regarding it with wild eyes, as I hastily crammed in what details I could.

The figure’s attire, made up of a hooded sweatshirt and a pair of dark jeans, hung from it in a rather peculiar fashion, dipping and collecting in clumps throughout various areas, hinting that the body within was not made of a smooth or even matter, but rather an awkward assemblage of abruptly angular appendages.

Given the thing’s dejected and haggard appearance, it was not unreasonable to come to an
un-dead
conclusion, believing that the voids within it were due to mounds of missing flesh, and that its dark clothing, sinking deeper, was sopping up against its sodden bones. There was something obviously unnatural about the way the thing looked, almost like it had been broken numerous times, only to be tossed back together in this haphazard manner.

The thing was Zeke.

The robot walked past me, bringing with it an innate sort of grace. It didn’t just stumble idly along, but moved instead with a grease-slickened precision. And then there was the item it held, just casually flung over its shoulder. The object had not only been bulky, but also appeared quite heavy; and yet Zeke conducted it with minimal effort, performing an incredible feat of strength and dexterity, as it lifted and dropped the object on top of De la Cruz. The object had been another man, also unconscious, with arms dangling freely above his head.

It was Luis, the knot tyer.

The two bodies collided with a soft—yet disturbing— thud, as the robot reached out, grabbed John by the ankle, and yanked him to the top of the human pile. It stood somewhat triumphantly over them, seemingly pleased with its work thus far, as one of the men let out a wheeze beneath the immensity of flesh and bone.

The robot then turned to look at me. With no visible features beneath its hood, its head looked like nothing more than a large and barren socket of emptiness, just a dark and moist place for a nightmare to stir.

I’d always considered myself a calm and stable individual, good in tight spots and not prone to panic, but the entirety of this experience had proved taxing to say the least. I felt as though I’d been twisted, tightened, and then steadily compressed to a quivering coil of nerves beneath a sheet of sweaty skin.

So, when Zeke leaned over to plunge its arm straight into the human pile, I found myself leaping backward and slamming hard into a set of old cupboards. There was a large crash as something dislodged and smashed to a million tiny fragments across the kitchen floor.

The robot jerked in my direction, delivering a single command: “Quiet.”

Its voice, sharp and penetrating, had pulled the skin taut over my arms, lifted the hair on my neck, and sent an icicle to burrow deep between my shoulder blades. I watched as it retrieved my weapon from the heaping mass and tossed the 45 on a ten-foot arc in my direction. I caught the gun carefully, mindful not to shoot myself in the face, as the robot lowered its hood, leaving the cloth resting on its angular shoulders. And it was then that I saw Zeke’s head, still just a smooth and gleaming piece of spherical metal, formerly invisible beneath the cover of its clothing.

“That works better when you use it,” Zeke said, motioning toward the gun in my hands.

I tucked the 45 back into my waistband. “Oh, you got a sense of humor all of a sudden?”

The robot shook its head. “No, sarcasm has always been a part of my programming.”

“Seriously?” I wasn’t sure if the thing was joking or not—or if the thing was even capable of joking. It was incredibly hard to read without the helpful aid of facial expressions.

But the robot ignored me, already leading to more pressing matters: “We need to move. Arcturus gives us a safe window of five minutes.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What happens in five minutes?”

“Others are coming.”

I really didn’t need any further coercion; I’d been ready to break for the door the moment those three guys had made their presence known—the same guys I was looking at, all stacked in a staggered formation, forming a grisly sort of six-sided, human star. That was when I’d noticed, with just a dash of horror, that someone was vacant from that pile.

“Where’s Claire?”

The robot tilted its cranium. “Who?”

“The woman, where’s the woman?”

“Oh.” Zeke turned to point into the aft section of the kitchen, its hands and head being the only parts of it not covered with clothing—my clothing, I’d just noticed. “She’s there.”

Zeke had lifted its finger toward the freezer, indicating a small passage to the right of it. I turned to look as that same stream of day ventured just far enough to weave a single band of light into that slim corridor, promising to illuminate a very modest portion. I looked back to Zeke, whose arm had remained extended, steadfast and statuesque.

I nodded and walked across the kitchen, expecting to find an unconscious Claire spread out on the floor upon turning the corner. I instead found her still on her feet, and very much awake.

She looked at me, tears streaming down her cheeks, as her arms hung limp and trembling at her sides. She took in a shallow and unsteady breath, her bottom lip shaking, and her head tilting slightly backward, exposing her soft and supple neck. And even though her mouth hadn’t moved to form a single word, she’d managed to speak through the urgency filling her eyes:

Miles, help me, please help me.

And it was then that I saw the knife, pressed in such a way against her throat that the skin there could only crease beneath its fine edge. The blade had a wooden handle, brandishing two golden rivets which held the steel between both halves of its hilt.

I knew that knife well—a little too well in fact—since it and I had gone on a great many short adventures together, taking the lives of countless raccoons along the way. And somehow, for reasons I’d not yet been ready to face, it had traveled all the way from the cavern to meet me there in that pivotal moment, a moment that seemed to suck all the air out of the world.

I could see fingers around that hilt, fingers belonging to the person standing just behind Claire, the same person who’d been holding it against her throat. There was just enough light for me to make out a faint and shadowy silhouette, and within it, where the eyes would be, floated two brilliant blue orbs.

The orbs blinked at me, changing shape in what appeared to be recognition, as the shadowy person’s grip on the knife faltered for the briefest slice of a moment, loosening just enough to release the crease from Claire’s skin, only to regain an even tighter grip the following second. A drop of blood emerged beneath the blade and began to run the smooth course of Claire’s neck, leaving a shiny string of red dangling just behind it.

The person with the knife nudged Claire a step forward, the action of which sent only more tears streaming down the woman’s face—moist and salty proof that her world had plummeted to complete disarray. And as the light peeled back the blackness that had previously engulfed them, dissipating the intensity of those floating orbs, it was then that I saw the painfully familiar image of Alice’s pretty face. I watched as her eyes reduced themselves to sharpened slits.