Gabriel’s Watch - Book One: The Scrapman Trilogy (12 page)

He paused for a moment to lean in just a little closer. “And where do you think that leads me?” he asked.

“You probably think I’m an agent,” I guessed.

“No, I don’t think you’re an agent, but I do think you’re friends with one—guilty by association in my book. Not to mention that little threat you made before you did this ... ” He tapped the side of his colorfully broken nose. “I should let you go before this gets a whole lot worse? Isn’t that what you said?”

“You got me all wrong, John.”

He’d either ignored my last statement or had just started to shut me out completely, releasing the reins of his own ego until all he could hear was that which was most important to him. “Are you a religious man, Miles?”

“Not particularly.”

“Old Testament?”

I shook my head.

“Well, it says that one day God will come down to end the war between good and evil. He’ll come to set things right. And before He casts all the wrongdoers into hell, He’ll first cast down a different kind of people. Can you guess who they are?”

“No, but I don’t like where you’re going with this.”

John laughed to himself. “He’ll first cast down those who did nothing, Miles, those who just stood by and watched—those with the cleanest of hands. And, although I’ve concluded that you’re not a government agent, I’m afraid that you’re a nobody—just a head-turner, so, inevitably, your fate will be matched with theirs.”

“Yeah, and what fate is that exactly?”

“Are you aware of the battles between China and Japan during World War Two?”

“Vaguely,” I shrugged.

“Well, the Japanese would take the heads of the Chinese soldiers and stick them on poles—real gruesome shit. Of course stuff like that’s been done throughout the ages—Genghis Khan, Vlad the Impaler, Atilla the Hun, just to name a few. Maybe it’s just the Norseman in me, but I still think it’s a fine way to declare a war.” He turned to shout a name into the kitchen, “De la Cruz!”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“Afraid not—call it a hunch, but something tells me your head on a stick outside this address—that’s gonna mean something to somebody.” He rested a hand on my shoulder. “But don’t worry, Miles, I’m not a monster. I am not without morals. So I will offer you a choice.”

“What choice?”

The mountainous man from before suddenly entered the freezer, in his hands he held a black leather case. John took it, thanked him, and, with a simple nod, instructed the man to leave again.

Upon De la Cruz’s lumbering departure, John looked back at me and smiled, placing the case on the floor and unwrapping it with the swing of his hand. It unraveled and flopped open, presenting me with an ugly assortment of knives. “Which blade would you like us to use?” he asked in a painfully casual tone, like asking someone the time of day.

I looked down at the large variety of sharpened objects, each tapered so finely that every sloping edge looked as though it could split an atom. And the way they all gleamed in such sadistic anticipation, I could nearly hear them chanting the seconds before one of them got to lick my neck clean open.

Yet it seemed that the real purpose of this display was to fill me with an overpowering sense of terror. I should have been up to my ears in it, but I wasn’t. In fact I felt strangely detached from the situation—much like watching a suspenseful thriller safely behind a fistful of buttered popcorn, or reading a real nail-biter while gripping that last comforting chunk of remaining pages. I’d somehow been cast beneath a shroud of indifference I could hardly define. Maybe it was due to my recent contusion, or the short-lived sensation of being with my family, or maybe—just maybe—it was something else, something deeper.

Perhaps what I was feeling was the weight of my own unfinished story, along with the unshakable awareness that there must be more to it than this. No way could this be my final chapter, not when there was so much left to write.

“Choose,” John said, and I forced myself to give each one a once-over, taking the time to admire their handles and long steel shapes, before lifting my chin at the serrated monstrosity second from the left. “That one.”

John looked at it and pointed, “Here?”

I nodded as he bent to pick it up. The blade hissed angrily in his hands as he scraped its tip along the metal floor. “Any last words?”

I took a moment to sift through a series of possible responses before settling on one I’d found to be quite suitable. It had come from one of my favorite movies—a timeless classic: “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”

John’s face remained unchanged. He seemed neither moved nor agitated by my random insertion of the famous theatrical quote. “I swear, Miles,” he said, running a frustrated hand through his hair, “you’re either the bravest man I’ve ever met, or just purely insane.”

“Says the man with the knife,” I scowled. “Our fate is sealed, anyway. You made sure of that by keeping me here— despite my clear warning. And now you’ll have to answer for it.”

John beamed at my sudden outburst. “Now we’re getting somewhere!” He clapped. “Spill it and I just might let you keep your head.”

Remember, Miles, if you can’t DD, then you BB
—I thought to myself.

It was a clever piece of advice given to me by one of my old maintenance managers. He’d shared it when I’d come to him, unsure of exactly how to fill out a mechanical report that would ultimately make it up to the eyes of the (ever intimidating) plant manager. When asking his advice, he had said only this:

“Kid, if you can’t dazzle them with diamonds, then you baffle them with bullshit.”

It was the perfect nugget of wisdom, one that was easy to remember and simple enough to store for safekeeping, for a time such as this.

I
looked up at the ribbed ceiling, shifting my eyes as I tried to find the best place to begin my story. Before long I found myself starting with a question of my own: “It’s safe to say that people like you and me would do anything to survive, right?”

“Uh ... yeah,” he agreed, scrunching his face a bit, not yet sure where I was going with this.

“So, ten years ago,” I went on, “I decided to make a deal.”

“Okay.”

“It was a deal I made for my own protection.”

“Oh, yeah?” he said, becoming more fascinated.

“Yeah,
he
told me that I’d always be safe.” I paused there for just a moment, thickening the tension until it was almost palpable, and then added: “and all it would cost was my soul.”

His eyes widened a bit as his brow lifted to allow them room to do so. I didn’t really know what to expect by saying this; I never did fancy myself an actor, or even a liar for that matter, but I thought I’d give it a shot. Maybe (by some stroke of genius) I’d be able to pull it off and play the role of one who’d somehow summoned the supernatural—or just someone who seriously believed that he did.

What was the textbook resolution for escaping a situation such as this, anyway? There in the freezer, with that cascade of sharpened instruments gleaming before me, I could think of nothing better than to simply fight crazy with crazy. Sure, I didn’t expect the man to cower in fear, say his Hail Marys, or fill the place with the musky scent of burning sage—but I had nothing else.

I watched him, waiting to see just how well he’d take to the fictitious tale, but his reaction was less than promising. It started first as a small hoot, then led to an immense bubble that rolled up and out from the pit of his belly, splattering about as it echoed off the walls. “The devil?” he bellowed heartily. “You’re telling me you made a deal with the devil?”

I felt suddenly foolish for even thinking he’d find this anything other than comical. It was indeed a ridiculous claim, good for little more than buying me some extra time. But maybe being seen as funny wasn’t such a bad thing after all; the world wasn’t exactly lush with comedians anymore. Perhaps he’d see to labeling me the honorary court jester long enough for me to figure a way out of the diner.

“So where’s your devil now?” John asked.

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“Enlighten me.”

I rolled my eyes, falsifying my irritation in the hopes of making it more believable. “The devil gave me something, a kind of bodyguard.”

“A bodyguard, like a demon?”

“You could call it that, yeah.”

At this point John nearly fell over with laughter. He stumbled to the door and called to a man named Luis. It was the experienced knot tyer that had responded, coming swiftly to John’s command. He was also the man most likely responsible for the immensity of my headache.

Luis’ skin was dark, his hair deeply brown, and he glared at me with certain disdain as John spewed the words I’d recently shared with him. But, to John’s apparent surprise, Luis did not laugh along with him; he instead cursed me in Spanish and spat at my feet, revealing a silver crucifix resting on his collarbone. The man then stormed away.

“You must forgive him,” John said, still chuckling. “He takes his religion quite seriously.”

I nodded, trying to scrape the Mexican man’s saliva off my boot. “I understand.”

“Still,” John started, “your demon’s not a very good bodyguard, is he?”

I shrugged. “You can ask him when he gets here.”

“You’re something else, Miles.”

“And I’m bored with this shit,” I said sharply. “Why haven’t you hit me yet, huh? All this talk and no action—I know you want to hit me, but you won’t. Why?”

It wasn’t long before John’s face twisted itself into a grimace, buckling and folding until it built a fleshy overhang above the pockets where his eyes should have been; they were left somewhere behind the darkness that emerged there.

No longer laughing, he stepped forward with a serious air, throwing back his shoulders and expanding his chest, “You don’t think I’ll hit you?”

I shook my head and leaned forward defiantly. “No, ‘cause someone told you not to, didn’t they? So why don’t you go and get the puppet-master, huh? I’m tired of this.”

Dropping the knife, John reached out and grabbed me by a handful of shirt, stretching out the neckline as he reared back his other fist. Much like that of a medieval archer, or the eternal constellation of Orion, his posture had filled to the brim with potential energy—packed so tightly that it seemed to seep through the cracks below his knuckles. John’s eyes were on fire, his teeth were bared. I closed my eyes and squeezed, tensing every muscle in my face in the meager hopes of just injuring his hand.

“That’s enough, John,” a voice called in. “I would say he’s onto us now.”

But, judging by the sounds of his breath—the rapid succession of shallow intakes—John’s nerves hadn’t calmed upon the coming of this request. In fact, his anger seemed escalated, smoldering up his esophagus and settling there like some molten slab of obsidian. And there I was—an easy target, a convenient outlet for him to focus all that unhindered rage ... and yet he’d been told to relent.

I forced myself to open one eye, looking up and into his face, as the fury I’d sensed seemed to be manifesting itself just beneath that leathery skin. It slithered there, quivering slightly, forcing the veins in his temples up into full view. I could see them quite clearly, pumping and writhing like a pair of plump night crawlers.

“John, relax,” the voice insisted of him. “Breathe.”

John shook his head, not really in refusal, more like a man trying to shake an earwig out of his skull. “Dammit!” he shouted, taking his fist and slamming it against the top of his head. “Dammit!”

“You should listen to the lady, Man,” I advised calmly. “Just listen to her.”

He shouted just a few more obscenities before harnessing control over himself once again, finally relinquishing his temper, lowering that wrecking-ball of a fist, and letting it hang idly at his side. John inhaled deeply, looked back at me, then whispered: “Some other time then, you prick.”

I could have coaxed him just a bit further, saying something like:
Oh, I’m shakin’ in my steel-toe boots
, but felt silence would serve me better than being a complete ass. “We’ll see,” is what I decided to say instead.

John said nothing in return. He rose with his back to me and took a few steps toward the freezer door, toward the person who’d instructed him to desist. It was the woman with the spider hands, the black widow of Dingy Pete’s Cafe.

“You must forgive me ... again, Miles,” Claire said, reaching out to place a hand on John’s shoulder, where she gave him a reassuring squeeze, “but we had to be sure you hadn’t turned over to them. Eight years is a long time to lose your way.”

“Indeed,” I nodded.

“You’re a mechanic,” she observed. “Just think of it as ... a filtering process.”

Yeah, the Dingy filter—about as effective as the liver inside a rampant alcoholic.

“Sure,” I agreed. “This seems like a real service to humanity. You mind if I get outta here now?”

“In a minute.” Claire stepped into the freezer, passing John on her left. “Let me clarify some things before you go, just so we understand each other.”

Due to the blood on my neck, the knives on the floor, and the pain in my head, my patience was dwindling. I let her continue nonetheless. She took another step toward me. “Everything you’ve heard here is true, Miles—well, almost everything. We really are building an army.”

“Militia,” I interrupted.

“What?”

“Militia sounds better. Besides, there aren’t enough people left in the world to build an army.”

She smiled. “Fine, we’re building a militia, and our first strike will be at the Land of the Damned.”

“But we’re not going to kill the women,” John interceded, speaking with his back to me. “I’d never hurt my own daughter ... or any of the others.”

I guess that was just part of the interrogation, a clever ruse designed to make me think he was insane. I’d say it worked—so well, in fact, that he had yet to convince me otherwise.

“This is a rescue mission,” Claire insisted. But her courage and ambition seemed vastly misdirected, reminding me somewhat of my daughter—back when she would grab her plastic keys, toss her tiny jacket over her shoulder, and walk to the front door with the intention of driving to her nonie’s.