Last Call for the Living (32 page)

Shittin' me?

No way, Hobe.

A deal.

For information you've been privileged to. They'd take care of you.

I seen how snitches get took care of. I got more friends inside I got blood.

Like what? The Brotherhood? Then why'd you jump the score at the bank? It set this whole thing off. They found your partners. Those dead guys on the mountain. Why did you do them, Hobe?

Silence.

I'm trying to understand you, Hobe.

Are you?

Just talk to me.

So I reckon y'all got what, three, four tactical units out there? Next pump some gas in here. Some of that pepper spray. Whatever toys y'all have. Then come right through the front door?

Let's not get off-course here, Hobe. Nobody's coming in. Not while I'm talking to you. Like I say, why don't we take a break and then I'll call you back in about fifteen minutes. I might put you on the phone with some other people who are in a position to really help you out.

Meantime no beer, huh?

Better raid the fridge, bud.

*   *   *

That you, Hobe?

Who else?

Just checking.

Go on.

Hobe, I've got some people here. A special agent from the state. Others. They want to talk.

Tell 'em I ain't of a mind to.

Just hear me out, Hobe. Depending on what you tell them, it could go a long way for you. You could really benefit.

Larry?

Yeah, Hobe.

I can tell a good man by his handshake, the look in his eyes, and by the tone of his voice. I ain't shook your hand nor looked you in the eye. But I know you for a good man.

Thanks, Hobe.

And I still don't care to talk to anybody else.

Silence.

That the way it is, Hobe?

For sure.

Well, what do you want to talk to me about?

Just make sure that boy is taken good care of.

You have my word.

Now come in and get me.

*   *   *

Charlie's head filled
with the past. Down the street there was a dead end he had played in as a child. He launched gyro bombs there. Ignited Wolf Packs and Saturn Missiles.

Tatatattattattaattatata!

Momma used to drive him every July to Alabama to buy fireworks. Take I-20 West. Other times they'd head up I-75 and go to Tennessee. She'd give him ten bucks, tell him to make it last. There'd be a whole gang of kids in the cul-de-sac. Charlie would fill an old Radio Flyer with dirt, plant a row of Roman candles and light them all at the same time. The parents would unfold lawn chairs and sip lemonades. Sometimes those lemonades had whiskey or vodka in them. They'd take pictures. Hoot and holler and videotape it all.

Sometimes they'd start yelling at one another. Charlie figured it was the stuff they were cutting the lemonade with.

*   *   *

Sallie Crews introduced
herself to Charlie. He didn't know why, but he asked to see her credentials. How could he not trust these people? After all that had happened?

She was dressed casually except for the gun on her belt. Not just another cop, though, but somebody important. All the other cops kept approaching her, asking her questions.

Charlie was old enough to buy beer, old enough to vote, but felt as if he were back in sixth grade. They had kid gloves on around him. That look he got, as if no one quite knew what to make of him. He sat inside an ambulance eating a granola bar, sweating and shaky. He tried to see over the roofs of squad cars and SUVs. Knowing Hicklin was still in there.

Well-armed SWAT personnel wearing body armor and flak jackets were waiting for the signal to move in. The sight of them gave Charlie a cold cramp in his stomach and he threw the rest of the granola bar away.

Sallie Crews had been friendly enough toward him but still intimidating. She hoped to talk to him at greater length, the sooner the better. But now wasn't such a good time, she said with a touch of regret.

Still he and Crews talked. Charlie listened to himself sounding eloquent and in control. Some hard, unavoidable truths came out of his mouth. The cottage, Hummingbird, Flock and Lipscomb. It was awkward explaining with all those people standing around. Charlie could tell Crews was listening carefully.

A memory of being nine years old struck him. His mother bought condoms, white bread and sandwich meat and a bottle of wine at a convenience store. Real cheap wine that clung to her breath for days on end. Lotion for her skin. Men would come over to the house. In his room he'd hear them. Lucy always reminded him to lock his door. He'd play with his Erector or chemistry set. Look through his book with all the pictures of rockets and spacecraft.

Sallie offered a cup of coffee. Charlie snapped out of his daydream and reached for the Styrofoam cup with an unsteady hand.

He asked Crews not to hurt him, a refrain she found curious.

Why'd he bring you here? she said.

He didn't want to give a straight answer.

For leverage, he told Crews. Hicklin knew he needed a refuge, needed some hostages.

Charlie could tell she didn't buy his version. She smiled at him anyway. A smile you'd have for a sick person, after telling them they had cancer. A brutal fatigue was catching up with him. His neck hurt, his shoulders stiff from tension. He hated the questions about himself and asked Crews about the man at the church.

How did you know the Sheriff was shot? Crews said.

Hicklin told me.

Did he tell you he was the shooter?

I saw them shooting at each other. Daddy had no choice. But I don't want anything bad to happen to that Sheriff, either.

Lang's in the hospital. I hope he'll live. Did you say your daddy? Crews said.

Yes. Hicklin. He's my dad.

Charlie jumped. The tac teams were breaking the ground-floor windows with crowbars. They fired tear gas into the house.

He screamed. Crews grabbed his arm but needed help to keep Charlie from leaping out of the ambulance. The SWAT moved toward Lucy Colquitt's home. Automatic weapons fire was answered by big nasty wallops from the shotgun. The guys in black took cover.

Hicklin was fighting back.

And Charlie smiled despite his sadness.

*   *   *

The canisters were
thick and black. They hissed as the aerosol was dispersed, gas filling the kitchen and hallway first. Hicklin hunkered in the bedroom. He'd cut the bath towel and secured it around his mouth with a rubber band.

He shattered one of the windows with the muzzle of the .45 and fired three rounds, ducking as return fire sprayed the walls. He rolled, put the handgun in the only space available and popped off another three rounds. A tight grouping that hit the driver's side door of a squad car.

They couldn't know what he had.

Tear gas spread through the house. Could have been any prison yard he was in for the last decade.

He took shallow breaths.

Ran a tongue along the inside of the towel.

More return fire. Hicklin heard rounds chunking away at the house's exterior.

He had two angles on the SWAT's possible entry. He dropped free the expended magazine and reloaded the HK. They strafed the front of the house again, a high-velocity peppering, hot and nasty hole punchers.

For a moment he wondered if the cops would say to hell with this and just set the house on fire.

He leaned over to the window adjacent to the front door and raised a defiant middle finger, waving it at the inner perimeter of law enforcement. A tendon-twisting pain surged through his shoulder. He didn't care. The agony kept him conscious.

He crawled back to the bedroom and deftly fired four rounds through the window. Double taps that resonated like flams on a drumhead.

Keeping them honest.

Because it wouldn't be long now.

*   *   *

Back in prison
it was isolation that challenged him the most. Solitary confinement. Time became slippery and slimy for Hicklin. That's about the only way he could describe it. Those monthlong stretches nearly killed him. But the only person who knew that was him.

They had to let him out of the hole eventually.

All for not talking. But they tried to get him to snitch. A dank cell with no window, a steel toilet, a concrete slab for a bed. Hicklin learned to sleep longer and longer. When his brain got active and unruly, when the fear came on, he'd focus all that activity into one place and keep it there. He'd see light from under the door. But for the most part it was dark. A darkness he found largely indescribable.

He saw things that weren't there. Time oozed by. It dripped like a leaky faucet. Eventually, time hit the edge of a cliff and changed direction.

Down. Down. Down.

*   *   *

He wasn't entirely
immune to the chemical irritants. His nose drained mucus like a spigot. He tightened the towel over his face.

The boys in black were getting more pissed by the minute. There was an unexpected lull.

The phone rang. Hicklin crawled to it.

Not now. I'm busy.

Breathing became difficult. He blew his nose. His eyes burned. The stuff was all over him.

And it hurt like hell.

Hicklin managed to reload five rounds into the shotgun with one eye swelling shut. He racked the pump. Needed some Maalox or milk to bathe his eyes. Should have thought of this back when he was entertaining himself on the phone.

A little tear gas was all. Just an inconvenience.

*   *   *

SWAT positioned themselves
along the north wall, another team outside the carport and one near the front door. Explosive entry experts stationed on either side of the house espied possible blind spots through the windows.

Green light.

They pulled the detonation cords. The charges rocked Lucy Colquitt's home, as intended. The living room was the primary focus of flash bangs and concussion grenades. The primary team waited a beat, then destroyed the front door with a ram. As did the three-man unit at the carport entrance.

Nine men entered the house with practiced, dizzying efficiency.

*   *   *

A brilliant, flash
caught Hicklin by surprise. The blast deafened him instantly. Ghosts appeared in his field of vision, in his mind, as if a nuclear weapon had gone off, his shadow imprinted on the carpet. Again he thought of Charlie. Something the boy had said back in the motel room while they played Lowball. Just bullshitting.

You are the universe.

The impact of the concussion grenades was like an earthquake turning his bones to putty, weakening him further. Hicklin tried to stand, partially-blind, but he had no balance. The fluid in the semicircular canals of his ears had been disturbed by the explosives. He could sense the floor coming at him again, his body following the baited directions of his inner ear. With no sense of balance he crumpled.

Men in black replaced the ghost swarm. From his knees he inexplicably grinned at them and raised the HK in their direction. Next he felt the impact of the tac team's .223-caliber rounds. His own body armor failed. Another team entered the living room, firing.

Hicklin never knew they were there, as the front of his head erupted.

 

This is what the end looks like.

Darkness covers the cities and towns.

A broken man with a gun in his hand

Looking for the last light to shoot out.

 

FOURTEEN

Charlie spent much
of the days that followed being debriefed by law enforcement. He met with Sallie Crews in an office down by the square, not far from his mother's house. There were cameras and a tape recorder. Crews bought coffee. When Charlie requested a certain brand of cigarettes, she didn't think twice about buying them for him, too. If it wasn't okay to smoke in the room she didn't say so.

He told Crews everything that happened, never intending to exaggerate or mollify some of the lurid details of his experience. He had seen a doctor, been thoroughly examined and thankfully had nothing more than scrapes, bruises and a mild concussion. Crews struggled to hide her shock when he told her about Hummingbird and Hicklin. Like those from a fever dream, some details were difficult to recall. As if they'd happened to someone else, a Charlie he found it not so easy to think about anymore

Crews responded by telling him how brave and strong he'd been. His cooperation was immensely important to their investigation. She was worried about Charlie, even recommended he see a state-assigned mental health worker.

At his request, she took Charlie up to the Tri-County Medical Center to visit Tommy Lang.

Charlie sat with him in the IC room. Lang had been through three surgeries to clean out dead tissue surrounding the snakebites, with a fasciotomy scheduled for the following day and skin grafts in the coming weeks. He was semiconscious and silent, his body bloated. Charlie studied the monitors, every tube and blinking, beating machine keeping Lang alive.