Gabriel’s Watch - Book One: The Scrapman Trilogy (14 page)

“Jesus, Miles.” Her voice was slacken in a way I’d never heard—simply broken. “You look like shit.”

My mind continued to cycle like the chambers in an old revolver, searching for words to dispense through a stone-dry mouth, but all that came was a patch of stale air. It hung there, awkward in the stillness, as the room itself seemed to be rapidly increasing in temperature.

“Alice?” I took a step toward them, angling my hands out to reveal my bare palms, trying to will the knife away, to eject it fully from the scenario. “Alice, what are you doing, Sweetie?”

“Sweetie?” Alice’s face grew darker, this time without the aid of any shadow. “You
never
call me
sweetie
.”

“Alice.” I took another step, much smaller this time. “Give me the knife.”

“What did you do to him, you old hag?” she hissed, pulling Claire tightly to her. The blood was coming more steadily now, trickling down the slope of Claire’s neck, and gathering there in the gap between her breasts. It began to soak through Claire’s clothing, creating a dark and ominous syrup-like stain, oddly reminiscent of the Tarot cards she’d presented me earlier.

My mind reverted back to that reading: The Lovers card—the man between the two women, the Death card—a coming choice, and the Fool card—the very moron that brought it all to pass. And it was then that I realized, whatever the outcome, whatever horror ensued there, it would be on my hands. I’d brought it with me as soon as I’d entered, placing it neatly on Claire’s two-top table.

“W
hat ’s the matter?” Alice asked, looking back to me, a prideful smile curling the edges of her lips. “Are you surprised? Are you surprised by the lengths I will go?”

I said nothing—could only say nothing; time’s flawless metronome seemed to stop completely, clicking its final rhythm through the hollows of my bones, as the kitchen itself turned into a separate dimension—a new reality where standard rules and logic no longer applied.

It was a place of pure and devilish whimsy.

And so she continued, speaking in short and blunt sentences, letting me know that I was, indeed, being punished for my actions: “Do you feel it, Miles? That twisting and sickening feeling? That hopeless wrenching in your stomach?”

I nodded honestly.

“Good. I want you to feel it. I want you to
really
feel it. And just know ... ” she parted her lips, spitting words through clenched teeth, words that came at me sharper than nails, “just know that that’s how I feel ... every, single, goddamned day!”

Claire’s mouth moved, but no sound was emitted. Her lips parted and clasped repeatedly, silently sculpting a series of words that never audibly entered the world. With her eyes still wringing themselves shut, I could see she was in prayer—a most desperate state of prayer, the way one speaks to God when their life has become as brittle as papier-mâché.

Reading those oscillating lips, I recognized a small line of her voiceless and desolate dialogue:

...
thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is ...

It was the Lord’s Prayer, mouthed with more feeling than she’d probably ever prayed it before.

I looked back to Alice. “It was just a misunderstanding,” I tried to reason. “I was just about to leave.”

“Still, is it not what they deserve?” Alice stared hard at the blade in her own hand, seemingly intrigued by the thing’s presence there, as if she and it had commenced in conversation—feasting over the thought of slicing the trembling woman’s breath from her body. “Yes, I would expect nothing less. Nothing less for what they’ve done.”

...
forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us ...

“Alice, you’re not listening to me. I’m fine. Just put down the knife and let’s go.” I took a daring motion toward her again. “C’mon, please! Let’s go home.”

Despite my words, she didn’t budge in the least. “What do
you
know?” she challenged. “You wouldn’t understand. You can’t
possibly
understand. It’s what they deserve. It’s what’s right, isn’t it?”

I stepped back again, realizing now that the knife she’d been holding, the very knife she’d brought from the cavern, was no longer there on my behalf, but on hers. Revenge seemed to have finally sunk in. Just as soon as she’d gotten hold of a human—a human other than me—she’d focused all that bottled energy, all the potential for hatred I thought had left her. But she’d gotten her hands on one of them, and seemed ready to exact the proper penalty for the deaths of her slain brethren.

...
lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil ...

I had to say something. I had to do something— something that would jolt her back to her senses. “Alice, I
do
understand how you feel, and, you’re right, I’m surprised by it. But ... ”

I took in a slow and strategic breath, being sure that I’d received her full attention before continuing. “But I’m not
impressed
by it. Everyone’s capable of hate, and of revenge. The truest test of strength isn’t in these things, but rather in the ability to
control
them.”

I reached out to place my hand on hers, and was pleased to find that she’d let me. “This woman is as innocent as they come, Alice; there’s no evil here, I can assure you.”

The action was met with a hesitant kind of warmth as Alice let me slip the knife from her fingers. She further complied by releasing Claire, letting the woman flop to the floor to wail in tears.

Alice stepped over her without a second glance, walking right past me and back into the center kitchen. The robot turned the corner just in time to watch her pass.

“We have to leave now.” The thing spoke with marked urgency. “There’s no time for this.”

“Don’t worry,” Alice said, already making her way toward the back door leading into the parking lot, “we’re leaving.”

As she entered the light, I could see that her entire body had been covered in dark clothing—not a single inch of her reddish skin was visible.

No one saw her,
I told myself.
No one knows what she is.

But I wasn’t sure. How could I be? All I could do was watch as she and the robot slipped through the passage, leaving me momentarily alone with Claire and that ungainly three-man heap.

“Sorry for the mess, Claire,” I said, taking a step toward the back door. “I’ll tell you what—you can keep the root beer, if you want.”

I saw her mouth open, but didn’t wait long enough to hear her reply. I was out the door the following second, darting to catch up to the kinetic entity, and my Alice.

The sunlight stung my eyes as I passed the threshold, squinting to see my bike there in the parking lot. The motorcycle was still exactly where I’d left it, and from what I could tell, hadn’t yet been tampered with. I could hear the sound of my boots on the asphalt—that rapid
smack-smack-smacking
of rubber against a solid surface—as I fished around for the keys in my front pocket. But they weren’t there.

“Shit!” I stopped dead. “That
sonofabitch
took my keys!” But just as the words escaped my mouth, Zeke had spun around to toss something to me, something that sent an almost harmonious chime through the air before sinking straight into my palms.

“Ah, thanks,” I said, shoving the keys into the ignition, kicking the bike in gear, and rocketing past Alice and the robot as they hopped into the Jeep they’d stashed a block away. The three of us tore through the streets, putting miles and miles between us and the diner within a matter of minutes.

But there was a crawling sensation churning in my gut that refused to be cured by the fresh air, or settled by the additional distance between me and Dingy Pete’s. Instead it grew more intense by the second.

I’d be lying if I told you the source of this anxiety had been a mystery. Anyone who’d ever been in a marriage (or partnership of sorts) would recognize this sickly feeling. It manifested itself with the sudden realization that, the farther we got from the diner, the closer we got to the cavern, and it would be there ... I knew ... I’d be receiving an earful. Oh, how I wished the road were never ending.

The next few weeks passed in a rather uneventful blur as the three of us spent our time in different ways. Alice hardly separated herself from the workbench during those weeks, staying tethered to it through one project or another. I watched as she would come with handfuls of gadgetry to spill across the table, sending out a host of metallic clatter as a clear indication of her wishes to be left alone. At least that’s what I’d gathered from it.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned after countless sessions of marriage counseling, it’s that I’ll never understand women. They might as well have been written in some kind of impervious code, some intricate conundrum that man was not meant to solve.

Maybe that’s why I decided to become a mechanic. Machines are (more or less) straightforward, and if you get stumped, you can always refer back to a schematic or technical diagram, or, in the old days, even a hotline where a trained professional could tell you what was wrong with the damn thing. Sure a machine could rip a limb clean off, but it’s incapable of holding a grudge.

I swear the seventh circle of hell must be filled to the brim with seething women, a terrible place where a guy could be thoroughly ignored for whichever length of time best describes eternity.

I shudder at the thought.

So I did as I thought she wanted, giving her an abundance of space, and offering her all the privacy she could possibly need. I respectfully left her to ponder whichever puzzle she’d most recently presented herself.

Zeke was a different story, however. That advanced tactical machine had gone through our modest library and plucked out a single book to read. And of all the literature with which it could have chosen to challenge its processors, I would never have guessed the novel it would choose. It was the story of an eccentric seventeenth century doctor who took it upon himself to assemble an entire man out of salvaged graveyard body parts. With the addition of a brain, some mystery chemicals, and a little electricity, the doctor granted the creature new life. But the story proves to be a tragic one, filled with sadness, loneliness, and eventually a multitude of murders—all because the doctor, who thought he could provide everything the creature could possibly need to survive, could not provide the most basic necessity:

Love.

Zeke read the novel over and over. I would catch the machine and Alice having lively conversations about it, getting real chummy like they were in some kind of book club. By the way I write this, you’ve probably gathered I was extremely jealous.

Alas, this much is true; no one likes to be the odd man out, especially when there are only three people (my usage of the word “people” is very loose here). When Alice finally came to speak to me, I was elated. She’d come bearing a single question, one that I was eager to answer, if only for the sake of conversing with the woman I’d been missing for what seemed like ages.

She came to me asking about the end of the world and how it had all come to pass, so I started to assemble a small presentation.

“I don’t understand the point of all this,” she said, scrunching her face.

“Just bear with me for a second, it’s my teaching method. I like to use props.” I continued to collect a small assortment of mechanical bits and pieces, clumping them into groups of similar objects atop the workbench. “So here we have the Wingnuts, they are a desolate and religious people, whose sole purpose in life is to bring upon us the end of the world. And in doing so, they believe their Messiah will return to Earth and convert everyone to ... Wingnutism.”

“Why does this tutorial already seem incredibly ignorant and one-sided?” She crossed her arms over her chest.

Brushing off the comment, I carried on with the tiny lecture. “And then we have the mighty Lockwashers, whose sole purpose in life is to defend the innocent and ... to bring order to the galaxy.” I then reached out to pull the other objects closer to the Wingnuts, forming them into a larger mass of parts. “But the other countries began to despise the mighty Lockwashers for the power they possessed ... ”

“I think you mean the corruption,” she interrupted.

“Well, to each his own—so they decided to aid the Wingnuts in their worldwide suicidal endeavors.”

“So here we are ... ten years later,” Alice added with marked skepticism.

“Yeah, here we are—no Messiah, no nothin’, just billions of dead people, a handful of survivors, and a few thousand years short of talking apes, according to Hollywood.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “I’m not even going to ask you to explain that last part.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t.” I chuckled, hoping to win her over with what little charm I could muster. It didn’t seem to be working.

“You should be utterly embarrassed by your explanation for the end of the world.”

“Well, aren’t you saucy this morning?” I shrugged, then continued. “What can I say? I’m not a professor, and I never really liked to watch the news.” I lifted my palms to gaze sheepishly at them. “I guess I’ve been living in a cave long before I bothered to build one with my own two hands.”

She reached over to place a sympathetic hand on my shoulder, her green eyes piercing me, like she could pluck a thought from my mind before I’d even known it was there. For lack of a better description, it made me feel all warm and tingly.

“Spoken like a true Lockwasher,” she said. “But if you ask me, it wasn’t the religious Wingnuts that brought on the end of the world, but the arrogance of your mighty Lockwashers.” She tossed up a couple quotation signs in a very sarcastic manner, in an attempt—I believe—to embarrass me.

“I can’t dispute that,” I agreed, “but why is it, as long as there are two people to occupy a room, there always seems to be room for a political debate?”

“Human nature,” she retorted with yet more sarcasm.