Stage 3: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (20 page)

When the choleric diatribe was done, Mason was sure he'd gone too far. Surely, the kid would see through the deception. He grimaced and massaged his knee and groaned, all the while studying the kid's face for tells. For several moments, the boyish face merely scowled, then the kid flipped a glance over his shoulder to the corpse of the woman on the floor near the window and smirked indignantly.

"Preachin' to the choir," he said flatly.

Mason suddenly felt sick to his stomach. Still, he had to take solace in the fact that the kid's hostility was directed elsewhere for a change. Back to the baggage of a bitter life he carried draped about his neck like an anchor chain. Back to the naked corpse of the woman who had either been his boss or resembled her enough to fill in once King Shit assumed his throne.

"I thought about quitting a thousand times," Mason kept at it, sighing heavily, "but bills have to get paid, right? Twenty years I've worked at that hell hole, and the bitch still calls me 'Billy' like some punk-ass copy boy."

"
Called
," The kid corrected him, "
Past
tense. None of those stuffed shirts would know how to survive in the real world. They're all dead by now, your wicked old witch included."

He flipped a sideways peek at the man in the tie, asleep in a puddle of his own mire. Mason almost made his move then, but the kid's eyes only ever left him for a split second. Not enough time. He needed more. Just a bit of an edge. A glance held elsewhere too long would be enough.

"Friggin' Bossholes," Mason spat his contempt on the floor, "Good riddance!"

The kid suddenly burst into laughter. It was cold and sour and just as humorless as before, but the sound animated the swarm outside, and they crashed and banged against the barricade with renewed vigor. Despite the din, the kid laughed on and on in a forced semblance of levity, but not once did he let his eyes waver from Mason.

"Omigod!"
He howled in mock giddiness, "
Bossholes
…..I love it!"

He made a display of slapping his knee and holding his belly as he laughed, but behind it all were dead, soulless eyes. He was mimicking what he'd seen others do, with no understanding at all of what mirth really was. And all the while, Mason laughed right along with him like they were old pals. Then the kid suddenly stopped laughing as if someone had thrown a switch, and Mason forced a few more chuckles to allow the laughter to die a more realistic death.

"It sounds like you and I have something in common," he said, knowing that he was pushing it.

Suddenly the scowl was back, and Mason knew he'd taken one step too far.

"I doubt it," the kid scoffed.

And just like that, whatever connection Mason thought he might have forged with the kid was severed. Back was the sneer and the prepossessed arrogance and the smug arch of those cocky
goddamned
eyebrows.

Perhaps sensing the change in atmosphere, Mackenzie squirmed in Mason's lap and tugged on his shirt.

"Mace," she said in a hush and with an adorable blush of her cheeks, "I need to pee."

The pistol stirred at the end of a skinny arm, and the kid looked askance at Mason.

"I thought you said your name was 'Billy'."

Shit! One lie too many. …..Hard to keep them all straight…..

Mason thought fast and lied again, "It is. But my last name's Mason, so most people call me 'Mace'."

The kid pointed the gun to the center of his chest and cocked his head warily, "She calls her father by his
last
name?"

Now that they were back to square one, every word that came out of Mason's mouth stood between them and immediate death. 

"I'm not her father," Mason admitted, hoping the kid would see the truth in his eyes.

"Oh, yeah? So, like,
what
then…what is she, spoils of war? You like 'em young?" The kid let a sly grin curl one corner of his upper lip and added, "Well, maybe we got something in common after all.….."

Mason's blood ran cold, but for one second, one unforgivable and interminable second, he considered using that egregious angle to form a new bond with the kid. But it was simply too monstrous a notion to contemplate, and he knew he could never pull it off convincingly. Only a monster could talk monster.

"I'm her uncle," he said finally, and with enough gravity to derail the kid's abhorrent train of thought.

"Oh yeah?" the kid leered from one to the other.

"My parents died when I was little," Mackenzie explained with genuine sadness, then she stuck out her chin staunchly and lied like a pro. "Uncle Mace raised me."

Goddamit, babygirl, whatever you might be, you sure as
hell
aren't stupid
……

"Wow…." the kid smirked, "Blind and an orphan, too. ….Don't bother buying lottery tickets, kid. Not with the whole universe against you." He sneered a grin that only grew as the girl fake-pouted. "You know what, little princess? I'm an orphan, too. No, really, I am!  I know that for a fact, because I killed my parents myself." The kid turned to Mason and shrugged nonchalantly, "In my defence they were trying to eat me, so….. "

Before Mason could come up with any kind of response, Mackenzie nudged him with her elbow. "Uncle Mace, I
really
need to pee."

Another switch flipped, and the kid was suddenly angry.

"So,
go
already!" He barked at her, "Who's stopping you?"

Mackenzie turned to the kid and gave a little tilt of her head.

"Aren't
you?"
She asked sweetly.

"Hey, you gotta go, you gotta go," The kid spread his arms wide, "Pick a corner, any corner!"

Mackenzie hesitated for a long moment, then she turned to Mason with a grimace.

"She likes her privacy," Mason explained with a '
what're-ya-gonna-do
' kind of shrug.

"No one's watching," the kid told the girl, "Just drop your little pants and pee wherever you want."

Mason couldn't miss the ugly, sly smirk tugging at one corner of the creep's mouth, so he cut off the notion in no uncertain terms.

"She's shy. She needs to be alone."

The kid scowled peevishly, as if he'd just been denied the chance to pull the wings off of a fly. At last, he pointed the pistol toward the rear of the restaurant and gruffed, "Fine. Whatever. Just stop whining. The can's back there…..
Princess
."

"It would be easier if I showed her," Mason tried, but the suggestion was met with a snort.

"I don't think so,
Billy
. You and I are staying right here. She'll find it on her own. Or not."

As Mackenzie disentangled herself from Mason's arms, she felt the empty pistol in his waistband and feigned a stumble to draw his shirt down to cover it. Then she stood, and Mason aimed her in the right direction.

"I can see the sign for the bathroom, Mack. There's tables and chairs, then a counter. Once you feel the counter, follow it to the right, then go left."

The girl oriented herself, offered a sincere, "Thanks, Uncle Mace," and headed off to the back of the building.

As she bumped along from one table to another, the kid called after her, "Hey! You have three minutes,
Princess!
Any longer, and you know what will happen, right?"

Mackenzie stopped and turned blindly back to the kid.

"Oh, I know what will happen, alright," she said, then she turned back and resumed groping her way to the back of the restaurant.

The kid watched her struggling to find a path through the jumble and smirked to himself. Then his eyes dropped to the little girl's slender backside and a thin tongue darted out of his mouth like that of a snake. Mason felt his face grow red and his muscles tense, but then the gun came up in a flash and centered itself on the middle of his chest.

The kid's smirk only widened.

"Princess got a name?" he asked idly.

Mason considered lying, but he dare not. As loathe as he was for this monster to know Mackenzie's name, it wasn't worth the gamble.

"Mackenzie," He answered reluctantly.

"Mackenzie…..," The kid repeated, mulling over the name. "Mackenzie. Pretty name for a pretty girl. How old is she?"

Mason cringed inwardly at hearing that precious name uttered by such a vile creature, but he forced his expression to remain neutral as he considered his answer. The subject had never come up, so he could only guess. He'd assumed that she was nine or ten, but what if the kid asked Mackenzie the same question and got a different answer? An ordinary uncle might be expected to be a year off one way or the other, but not the kind of uncle he and Mack had already purported him to be. If the kid asked Mackenzie her age when she got back and Mason's answer was way off, that would be it.

"She's ten," he declared without a hint of indecision and as loudly as he dared, then he massaged his knee and groaned in pain and shifted his weight so that it looked like he was now fully supported on his bad side.

"Hmmm…..," the kid purred, then he smirked and mused as if to himself, "They're so adorable at that age. So…..
gullible.
I bet she'd do just about anything to keep her uncle safe."

All at once, Mason knew the kid had to die. If he'd come across this creep a week ago, he would have delivered a beat-down in a back alley and topped it off by pissing on the punk's head. Now, things were different. In this new world, even such half-measures were relics of the past. The only law that existed now was the law of the jungle. Eat or be eaten.
Literally
, he admitted with a turning of his stomach. Even if he somehow got himself and Mack out of this mess, this kid had to die. They may have to share the world with monsters, but not
this
kind of monster. Like someone said somewhere in his distant memory, some people just need killing.

He shifted his weight again and sunk further onto what he'd already advertised as his bad knee, moaning loudly. The kid followed his every movement with the barrel of the pistol, but at least his focus was on something other than the retreating Mackenzie. Mason winced and groaned and made a grand display of a most excruciating pain, and he saw a self-satisfied grin curl the corners of the kid's mouth, so he knew he was buying it.

Good. Be amused at my pain… …All I need is an opening….…..Give me that, and everyone's worries will be over…..

The kid might or might not be falling for the ruse, but either way, the gun didn't waver an inch.

"And what brings you two out on a day like this…..
Billy?"

Mason knew he was being goaded, but he accepted it with a furrowed brow and an expression of anguish as he settled down on his 'bad' knee. He knew that his best chance to act against the kid was while Mackenzie was out of the room, but apparently the kid knew it, too. The gun remained centered precisely at Mason's chest. Still, he kept up the charade and massaged his knee. Eventually the kid would slip up. He had to, or they'd never make it out of this place.

"We were looking for her aunt," he said truthfully, just in case the kid asked Mackenzie the same thing.

"Ah," the kid nodded, "The missus."

This wasn't idle chit-chat; it was an interrogation, no matter how casual the questions seemed. The kid was using an old cop trick, getting the subject to commit to so many details that a lie would eventually trip him up.

Alright then, I can play this game…..Just enough truth to keep the lies straight…..

Sarah's last name was Cullen. It might come up.

"No, she's from the other side of the family," he said, keeping the details as vague as he could, "Her name is Sarah. She worked at a clinic up near Russian Hill, so we made our way there to see if we could find her."

"And?"

Mason shook his head with calculated solemnity, and said nothing.

The kid pursed his lips and clucked, "Oh, that's a shame. Dear little Mackenzie's pitiful life just keeps sucking more and more, doesn't it?"

Mason held his tongue and busied himself with calculating precisely how he was going to take the gun away from the kid. The idiot was sitting, which was good. A stationary target didn't require much math. Eight feet away. No, make it nine. Nine feet. It could be worse. He could cover that distance in a second. The gun was in the kid's right hand, so left hand to grab the gun and right hand straight for the neck. A good punch to the nerve bundle behind the ear to stun him like a fish, then close a hand around his throat. If the kid fought, he'd die. Mason would strangle the life out of him and consider it a job well done.

But that second to pounce was an eternity. He could never move as fast as a finger could twitch. And at nine feet, the kid couldn't miss. The bullet might not hit anything vital, but even a graze would slow him down enough for the kid to empty the clip. He needed an edge.

He'd already laid the groundwork by complaining of his bad knee and the tale of a sedentary life. That might buy him half a second. It was good, but not enough. He needed more. The only option was a feint. Some kind of diversion. If he could distract the kid enough to steal that other half a second, he'd stand a decent chance. And sure as hell, once he had the kid in his hands, it would take an act of God to keep him from choking the life out of this punk-ass kid.