Birth of a Monster (10 page)

“Yesterday, I was a man without an
arrest record, Tats,” Righty said, and then paused, wanting the
enormity of his sacrifice to sink in.

“And I knew these were potential
consequences of showing up at that jail unannounced with my pockets
full of cash and no better explanation than that I wanted to speak
to the chief.”

Tats hung his head. He knew there was
nothing he could say that would truly show he appreciated the
gravity of what Mr. Brass had done today.

“There are going to be hard things I’ll
ask of you, Tats,” Righty said, still probing the waters before
jumping right in.

“Just name them!” Tats said
zealously.

Another long stare. Righty was
convinced.

“Before I do, I want you to know your
boss isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty himself.”

The next thing Tats knew, the head of
the man who had not long ago seemed to hold all the power in the
world over his fate was now sitting on top of his table like a kind
of macabre decoration.

Tats gulped and felt the hairs rise up
all over his neck and back.

“Just name them,” Tats repeated, now
feeling oddly rejuvenated by the grisly sight.

“You’re going to need help. Anyone who
refuses—kill them.”

Chapter 20

It was 12:55 p.m. the next day. Righty
and Harold were hovering at around two thousand feet. It was pretty
chilly up here, but Righty didn’t want to risk Harold being seen at
any costs. The blue clear skies were a double-edged sword, since
they made Righty’s upcoming task much more feasible, yet also
increased the risk of people below noticing the unusually large
eagle hovering over their city.

He hadn’t gone home last night either.
He could have, but there was something that just had to be done
today, and he couldn’t risk the pangs of conscience that a
comfortable night with his wife and baby might elicit.

He suspected a nasty storm was brewing
at home, of an equally fierce temperament as his current troubles,
albeit of a different nature. He would have to tend to that
later.

“Am I going too far, Harold?” Righty
asked, picking a dubious source if he was looking for words of
caution.

“There’s no going back now,” Harold
replied.

12:58 p.m.

Tats, dressed as an upscale, but not
ostentatious, gentleman, approached the vicinity of the Sivingdel
Police Station with fifteen similarly well-dressed underlings.
These had been the survivors of a rather nasty culling. Tats and
Crabs had rounded up large numbers of the gang last night at one of
his mansions and asked for volunteers.

Per Righty’s instructions, no ill will
was conveyed to those who declined participation in today’s
activities until everyone in the group had been asked. Then, Tats
and Crabs had mercilessly hacked to death everyone who had refused
the invitation.

Tats had been privately a bit glad by
some of the underlings’ decision to decline participation, as he
suspected that if they had not been traitors yet it was only a
matter of time before they hurt the gang, whether by treachery or
stupidity. He didn’t hesitate a moment to run each and every one of
them through with his sword, and he was glad he didn’t see Crabs
flinch at the task either, although he was going to be keeping a
close eye on Crabs today to see if he merited continued inclusion
in the gang.

Tats also knew that, with the sudden
escalation of everything, he was going to have to start training
his subordinates rigorously in the arts of the knife, sword, and
fist. In addition to this making them more useful subjects, it
would also give him an enhanced opportunity to test their
mettle.

Mr. Brass had been very specific about
the task in question being completed at exactly 1 p.m., and after
everything he had done for Tats yesterday, he wasn’t going to allow
anything to get in the way of full compliance.

In other words, he was going to do most
of the work himself.

He checked his pocket. Sure enough, the
chain was still there.

He hoped he would be able to find the
doors closed, but the exactness of Mr. Brass’s instructions on
timing left little of that to Tats’ control. He glanced at his
watch. It was 12:59 p.m.

He nudged Crabs and quickly began
leading the gang from the side of the police headquarters, where
they had been pretending to pass themselves off as gentlemen on
lunch break, straight towards the doors.

“Get in there, ya young punk!” shouted
an angry officer at a belligerent drunk in handcuffs, who—in
imitation of the canine species when confronted with the prospect
of a bath—was squatting down low towards the ground, attempting to
forestall his entrance to a police station he had undoubtedly
visited numerous times.

“Give this officer a hand, gentlemen!”
Tats instructed his disguised hooligans.

They yanked the foul-smelling man up in
the air, pushed open the doors, and tossed him inside like a dirty
bag of laundry.

“And they say you can’t count on your
fellow man for anything!” the officer said,
good-naturedly.

“They’re mostly right,” Tats responded,
with some regret but no time to dwell on it.

The officer’s face turned from joy to
confusion to anger as Tats and his gang shoved him inside the
station and quickly leaned against the doors, making it impossible
for the officer to open them back up, despite his most ardent
efforts.

Tats quickly pulled the chain out,
wrapped it tightly around the doors, slapped the padlock on the end
of it—he had practiced this procedure endlessly last night—and
said, “Let’s scram!”

“Stop those men!” shouted an officer.
He had a couple fellow officers trotting up from behind, wanting to
see what all the excitement was about.

Tats took off sprinting.

On the other side of the building, a
wagon was rolling to a stop right in front of the doors where
Righty and his fellow crooks had been let out the back yesterday.
It was the same wagon Tats had been driving when the nightmare
began. Its contents now were quite different, however. Large stones
added to the natural weight of the wagon, making it an implacable
doorstop.

A dozen men hopped out of the back,
where they had been lying in wait with daggers ready in case the
wagon had been subjected to a search or stop. They took off running
like there was a snapping pit bull on their heels, and the two
drivers did the same.

1:00 p.m.

Harold was now about five hundred feet
above the police station. Righty would have loved to go lower, but
this was as low as he dared go.

Feeling one last bit of self-doubt,
Righty said, “When the history books are written, let them record
that, while I may have struck hardest, I didn’t strike
first.”

Then, attempting a bit of gallows humor
to lighten the unfortunate scene, he said, reading from an
imaginary envelope, “Delivery for Sivingdel Police Headquarters . .
. oh, wait, special instructions: ‘Leave on rooftop.’”

Rancher Tim Sanders had been a busy
beaver last night, and the fruits of his labor were dispersed
between two large sacks, one abutting each side of Harold. Righty
had told him he had to clear some really tough stumps and stubborn
brush on a different ranch.

Righty reached into the bag on his left
and extracted a lantern-like object with an exceptionally large oil
compartment. He then struck a match on a piece of flint he had
ready and then lit the lantern.

The only way is
up
, the rock climbing coach assured
him.

“And I sure as heck can’t climb down,”
Righty added.

He let the lantern fall, and its humble
shattering sound belied the large puddle of fire that immediately
spread around it.

Below, inside the station, a swarm of
officers were kicking and pushing against the door. Their combined
force reached a point at which—while the chain itself was in no
danger of breaking—it was becoming a possibility that the handles
might rip off. But before reaching that point, the ever-increasing
number of pushing officers became counterproductive, causing them
to smash and trample one another.

Righty lit another few lanterns and let
them fall.

Meanwhile, Tats’ pursuers were closing
in on him, and one of his gang had already been nabbed.

“FIIIIRE!!!” someone shouted out from
below.

Righty figured that if the fire was now
visible to the people on the ground he could dispense with lighting
the individual lanterns. He took out his compressed sword and
severed the entire bagful.

By this time, the top brass were
beginning to wonder what all the commotion was about down in the
lobby, and so they left behind their windowed rooms, from which
they might have jumped had they known there were around twenty
seconds left within which it would have served any purpose to do
so.

Even from this height, Righty felt a
rush of heat as a fireball leapt up into the sky after the bag of
lanterns made contact with the roof. Knowing this was going to turn
onlookers’ eyes upward, he realized it was time to wrap this
up.

He cut off the other sack, which was
full of sticks of dynamite.

Righty didn’t need to say anything to
Harold. No sooner had the sack left Harold’s side than Harold began
pumping his wings and heading straight towards the sun, hoping to
thereby reduce the likelihood of anyone seeing him below while he
simultaneously increased his and his passenger’s chances of
survival.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!

It was a majestic, thunderous sound,
reverberating quickly and rapidly, deafening anyone within a
hundred feet.

Tats’ pursuers stopped to look, but,
while Tats certainly felt curiosity, his desire for freedom was far
stronger. He kept sprinting, and only when he was convinced that he
had successfully blended in with the panicked multitude and left
his pursuer far behind did he dare turn and look at the black smoke
cloud enveloping the entire sky.

Mr. Brass had not said much about what
the purpose was behind chaining the doors shut, but he was emphatic
that after Tats did so he spend a well-deserved three-week vacation
in Sodorf City, to begin immediately. That now sounded like rather
good advice.

Chapter 21

As Righty emerged from the woods behind
Ringsetter—as close to the town as he dared tread—he knew he was
really pushing his luck by not heading straight to the Simmers’
home, where Janie’s mood no doubt currently shared a great deal
with her married surname. But when a man’s got a list of chores, he
has no choice but to keep marching through them.

He walked into his store, which he had
neglected for weeks if not months—he had too much on his mind to
stop and calculate—and was glad to see faithful Robert there
attending to customers and managing everything
splendidly.

Righty waited respectfully for him to
finish and then flipped the “Please Come In!” sign to “Please Come
Back Soon!”

With a motion of his head, he beckoned
Robert towards the back room.

“Everything running
smoothly?”

“Yes, sir,” Robert said, confidently,
and then handed Righty a list of certificates of deposit that he
had made at Righty’s bank account over the last several
weeks.

“Impressive!” Righty said sincerely.
“And costs?”

“We’re definitely in the black,” Robert
said, handing him a series of weekly reports.

Righty looked over them and whistled
approvingly.

“You’ve got a golden thumb, young
man.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Are you interested in more
responsibility and more pay?”

“Absolutely,” Robert replied, not
pausing a second.

Righty put a stack of money on the
table.

“Here’s $500,000. Ten thousand will be
yours as a bonus just for all the extra hassle. I’ve been meaning
to set up a similar store in Sivingdel, but things just keep coming
up. I don’t want this store to bear my name, because crime is
getting rather nasty these days, and so I don’t necessarily want to
be easily linked to this store or any future ones we might
open.