Futile Efforts (26 page)

Mom just went, "Uh huh..." but Briar could see the finger streak of foam on the girl's cheek.

A nervous electron cloudburst, static intensity in the air picking up strength, with the reek of burning ozone wafting past. The lightning inside.

Briar swallowed a grunt and trembled as he hit a new energy ring, quivering with the hairs standing out on his arms, sucking air through his teeth in tune with the driving waves of a roaring, bone-crushing ocean.

Sometimes
, he thought.

Jesus, sometimes the love that promotes rage gives way to the fury. He could still sense
Bethie
and feel her in the depths of his memory, twisting and writhing there, but he no longer remembered her with any clarity. A handful of images would occasionally surface, some distant and vague emotions, but nothing with any heft.

Eventually, his sorrow should have lightened. He should've continued on with his life as his parents and brothers had done. He could have compartmentalized his pain and gone forward to find the right woman, the perfect job, the goddamn picket fence. Any of it.

But there are questions you can ponder for too long, until the chemistry in your brain begins to circle and pick up speed, and it grows into a whirlpool that draws down all your other thoughts into it.

Elizabeth Briar—she'd just turned nineteen back then when the easy cash of the Tender Trap lured her into topless dancing. She got together enough of a stake to move out of the house and into an apartment she shared with one of the other strippers.

The Feds fucked up and played it all wrong, as usual. Richie Merullo had frustrated them at every turn so they had to go after penny ante shit.
 
Raided the Trap and found a little coke, and it turned out that
Bethie's
roommate was four months underage. Feds played it up and really tried to skewer Richie with it, never bothering to put the girls or anybody else under protective custody, never even mentioning the possibility of trouble to them. Hell,
Bethie
kept on dancing, going to work every night, totally unaware that the cops were running the game as stupidly as they were.

Until the morning when
Bethie
and the roommate were both taken out—pop, pop, two in the eyes for each of them. Later on that day the cokehead bouncer got a double-tap to the face as well. Richie was like that.
 
Any troubles, no matter how small, and you just make them disappear.

And there it was—
Bethie
dead at nineteen because nobody double-checked her friend's fake ID, and a barrel-chested schmuck with a 20-inch neck wasn't smart enough to figure out a better hiding place for his stash than under the bar behind the bottle of JD. The girls never would've testified, but Richie never took chances, always went to sleep at night without any heartburn. Besides, Popgun liked his work, and you apparently had to turn him loose every now and again or he'd start to mope.

Sometimes
.

The misery takes over and becomes everything that matters—the watching and waiting, the hundreds of hours of research and investigation, completely on your own in the darkness, until your silky hatred becomes all you know. It's where you're at home, it's the sweet water you draw from the well.

The boy just stood there blinking at Briar, peering intently like he was trying to get something blurry into focus. Mom using the towel to dry his hair, tugging him this way and that but the kid still wouldn't take his eyes off Briar. He sneezed and rubbed at his nose, and sneezed again, sniffing at the frying ozone.

"It's time for you folks to go," Briar said.

Father didn't know best, didn't know shit, and said, "But the hurricane—"

Mom getting this semi-demented look on her face, about to screech about bad manners or disrespect to tourists, how she'd never come out this way again, sticking her bloody leg out in front her like it might ward off assholes.

Briar reached into his pocket and handed the man a key. "I was staying at the Shoreline Inn. It's right up the road. The room's paid for until tomorrow.
 
Go and spend the night. Like Socco said, there's free cable."

"But—"

The kid proved to be smarter than his parents, tugging at his father's sleeve. "Let's go Dad."

"Maybe
The Princess Bride
will be on HBO," the girl said.

Dad catching a hint of larger troubles, wanting to get out now but still scared. "Even if it is only down the street, we won't be able to get there.
 
Are you people blind? Have you looked at it out there? We'll drive into the ocean!"

"No, you won't. You'll be safe."

"How can you say that?"

"Because," Briar told him. "It's my storm."

He stood and a burst of hot air swept around him and gusted into the parents' face. Mom went, "oh," and the father withdrew, holding the key as the boy tugged at his little sister. She finished the cappuccino and said, "That was good, can I have another?"

Dad told her, "No, we're leaving. Come on."

The mother rushed out first, followed by the kids, the dad backing out slowly, one step at a time, before turning and making a run. Sort of funny actually, the way things worked out. It was nice that Briar got a chance to do something good for somebody else for once, no matter how meaningless.
 
They got to their car and piled in, and Briar saw the rain lighten up around them, making way, the tempest humming and rumbling and shrieking, but holding back just a bit while they drove the half-mile to the hotel.

Sometimes you gave a shit and sometimes you didn't.

Briar rubbed at his temples, took a deep breath, and approached the
Ganooch's
table. All the soldiers stiffened in their chairs, and Briar kept his hands open at his sides. He waited and tried to glare at Richie but there didn't seem much of a point now.

"A man with a story,"
Ganooch
said. "So what is it?"

"One you've heard before, Mr.
Ganucci
."

"I'm seventy-four years old, I've heard 'em all by now."

That was probably true. "You mind filling me in on the joke with the rabbi and the fat lady with the mole?"

"What?"

"I came in late on it. And you tell it so well."

The
Ganooch
had seen plenty of pains in the asses like Briar before, somebody out to annoy him. Cops, shooters, unhappy union reps. "You got balls of ice, my friend."

Richie cocked his chin and said, "You look familiar. I've been trying to figure it out."

"Yeah?"

"You. But it's not you. The kid."

Briar blinked at him. Christ, Richie really did have a photographic mind and could access all that data from the dead past. "Yes."

"You're the brother."

"That's right."

"Tommy, right? Little Tommy Briar."

It stopped him cold and the roof thumped directly overhead as if fists were hammering against it. "Jesus Christ, Richie, they weren't kidding about your memory. You could've only seen me once as a kid. The morning you killed my sister. I was in her apartment, visiting. Rode my bike over, had breakfast there. She made waffles. The roommate was asleep. You and Popgun did her in her bed. Or he did her while you sat in your car and watched. Either way."

Ganooch
spun in his chair and said, "Richie, who the hell is this
smartmouth
?"

Richie got up and tried to slap Briar. Maybe it was a
wiseguy
thing to do. He was, after all, a capo surrounded by his men, and even if he didn't usually go in for the rough stuff he had to beat some ass now and again.
 
Didn't make a fist, though, just made as if he was smacking his wife. Briar shifted his weight and balance, easing left so Richie's hand swung over Briar's shoulder. It was a powerfully non-aggressive move that still hinted at violence. It was enough for Richie Merullo to back off a step and try to figure the situation anew.

"Do you know what anguish is, Richie?"

"Anguish?"

"It isn't pain. It's energy. It's resolve. You dwell on something long enough and all that concentration, your sorrow, it cracks your chest in half and can fly up into the sky."

"You're fuckin' crazy kid."

"You got calamari stains on your tie, you sloppy prick."

That was the last line to cross. Richie made a soft sound like a baby who'd lost his rattle. "Would somebody whack this fucker already!"

"It's mine, this storm," Briar told him. "Hurricane Thomas. It's been brewing in me for fifteen years, and now it's finally come for you."

Popgun Fusilli, the murderer of his sister, started moving that massive bulk and was instantly on his feet, Briar not even seeing him stand up really, he was just suddenly there in force.

"Okay, Pop, two in the face. Make sure you take my eyes. I don't want to see what she does to you."

But Richie had finally gotten around to looking out the window at the ocean. The smashing insanity of the typhoon brewing, boiling, attacking now and taking on a new form and substance.

Did he see her? Were there thousands of white-capped faces smiling at him, blowing kisses? Dancing as she'd danced on the stage for him?

"What the hell is that out there?" Richie moaned.

"It's the little dark cloud that's been hovering over your head. Her name is
Bethie
."

Briar smiled. It felt good to be smiling again, at last. Richie began losing it, moving as if he might want to hug Briar, or be hugged by him, letting loose with a growling whine. "Are you really doing this?"

"Sure, why the hell not?"

The '
Niners
with three seconds left on the twenty, the entire Bronco defensive line waiting, Popgun reaching under his arm for his shoulder holster and drawing out the nickel-plated .22—Briar again noticing how...how goddamn
exquisite
those hands were—as the
Ganooch
made a funky gurgling noise. He struggled from his seat staring out the window and whimpered, "Jesus, the hell's going on? What...?" There was no beach left at all.
 
No land in sight, just the bloody sea ripping loose and raging forward. The waves stood four stories high, tens of millions of gallons surging. Richie looked at Briar one last time and leaped up with his arms out, knees bent, like he might try surfing his way out. Socco behind the bar saying, "Look at this one...." His gaze almost forgiving now, sort of sad but not quite.
 
Glass splintered and wood cracked and the walls and roof buckled with a ripping scream. Popgun squealed with his outlandish voice—girlish, even coquettish—and pulled the trigger. Briar felt the intense pain blossom inside his left eye but it didn't match what was already thriving ruthlessly, and still growing, inside him. The .22 came up again and Popgun's pretty white finger started to tighten once more, as Briar snickered, the '
Niners
ran it in, and the hurricane thrashed out of his sick head and swallowed the whole room and all the stinking world.

By Simon Clark

T
he end of the world? Armageddon? The apocalypse? All that fiery stuff in Revelations? Could it ever happen? Yeah, of course it will. It has to. There's no doubting it. One day planet Earth will be no more. Either naturally, when the sun expands to devour the Solar System, well at least the important bit that includes our home planet's orbit. Or it might just happen before, either due to war or some hideously extravagant industrial accident. Really, when you get down to it, the notion that the world will end one day is mundane, even banal. What's really interesting is that humanity appears to feel compelled, in some ineffably strange collective way, to imagine scenarios of its annihilation. Most religions have the blueprint for
Ultima
Thule embedded in their belief system, while popular culture has spun many a yarn about life being terminated on this humble ball of rock that spins through the big, cold scary vacuum of space.

The thing is, the world is ending all the time. Often we don't realize it's happening because the curtailment of the old order happens slowly as society changes. The world of your grandparents is dead and gone; if you can, ask them; they know we live in a new society now. Sometimes, civilizations collapse all of a sudden or at least suddenly from our perspective. Anyone who lived in Rome when its last Emperor was retired by the German King Odoacer in 476, or when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1452 must have thought: 'Oh, crap. That's the end of the world as we know it.' And it was. Their inhabitants must have despaired. They wouldn't have believed life could continue at all. But many survived and they adapted to a new way of being. Even the last Roman Emperor didn't come to a bloody end; he exchanged imperial purple for a Bishop's vestments and lived happily on a very generous pension, thank you very much. Yet even though people know, by virtue of all those precedents history has set us, that life will go on after the worst of calamities they--we!--still instinctively, hold ourselves in cat-like readiness for Armageddon. Sometimes it's the loonies on the street corner who scream at cars, 'The end is nigh!' or its brilliant writers like William Hope Hodgson, Richard Matheson, Jack Finney (happily, the list goes on and on -- I love a good disaster story) who present their own chilling visions of our global demise.