Recovering (10 page)

“Yeah…course,”
he lies. I watch his knuckles whiten on the steering wheel.

 “Well, if
you weren’t using diversionary driving tactics, they could follow you right
back to your hideout. They’ll wait to take you unaware, probably while you’re
all sleeping. I’ve seen it before.” I shake my head solemnly. “Messy, messy
business. But if you’ve been using diversionary driving tactics, we’re fine.”

 I sit back
in my seat and lick the wonderful grease and salt off my fingers. We stop at a
light. I turn my head.

 “SHIT!” I
scream, jerking up from the seat.

“What?” Bird
Brain twists around in his seat.

“We’ve got
company,” I say, my voice grim. “Yep, definitely angels. A few cars back. Damn.”

“Where?” Bird
Brain yelps. He scans the cars.

 “Act cool!”
I shout at him, pulling the gun out of my coat but keeping it below the window.
“Okay, put this baby in reverse. Soon as the light turns green, you perform a
Gallifrey maneuver, get me in close…” I roll down the window as I speak. “I’ll
blow them both to hell, and then you’ve got to get us out of here. Got it?”

 The kid is
so white I think he might pass out. I can’t help it. I crack up. The light
turns green, and Bird Brain stares at me, unsure. The car behind us starts
honking its ass off.

 “Move you
idiot,” I manage between gasps as I drop my gun back into my pocket.

 Bird Brain
has the sense to switch the car from reverse back into drive, and we sail
forward. “You’re…you’re really messed up,” he mutters.

 I roll up my
window, mercifully shutting out all that freezing air. “Comes with the
territory. You wanna do what we do? Check your sanity at the door.”

 
Bird Brain pulls us into a freakin’
Marriot of all places. I try not to let this immediately piss me off. Marriot
wouldn’t even take a dump at the places we usually stay. As Bird Brain parks, I
think,
It’s better to buy bullets than a stupid mint on the pillow anyway.

 “How many in
your crew?” I ask as we walk toward the entrance. Bird Brain plays pack mule,
carrying my duffle and tool bags. I grip Sir Hopsalot’s carrying case. Poor guy
has been in the case all day. He’s so good about it, but I know I’m a craptastic
owner. Then again, he was originally supposed to be Maya’s dinner, so it’s all
about perspective.

 “Five…no,
four,” Bird Brain mumbles.

“You don’t
know how many people are on your crew?”

“We had
five…this morning.” Bird Brain looks away.

This is news.
He didn’t mention losing a member in his quick rehash of this afternoon’s
events. My stomach tightens.

 “Who…” I
begin nervously.

 “Puma,” Bird
Brain answers.

 “No, who
killed him?” I clarify. I remember Puma now from the video The Totem posted. He
was the cocky son of a bitch who couldn’t give cardboard a run for its money in
the acting department.

 “The angel.
Uh, the, not Buffy. The other one.”

 Wheeeewwww!
Big exhale. Maya didn’t fall off the no-killing-humans wagon. Not that those
bastards didn’t have it coming, putting her in cuffs.

“Sorry man,”
I say to Bird Brain as we make it to the front entrance. “Dangerous business. I
can help you with getting rid of the body.”

He gives me a
probing look, not entirely sure I’m being serious.

The huge
revolving front door of the hotel looks like a death trap to my blurring
vision. I can almost hear a woman’s proper British voice announcing in my
brain,
Imminent bodily shutdown in…twenty minutes.
 

I shadow Bird
Brain’s step exactly as he takes on the door, practically spooning him in the
process.

 “Uh…okay,”
he murmurs as we make it through into a huge, polished reception area.

I decide to
pretend our little door mamba was completely ordinary.  Actually, I forget all
about it the second I raise my head and look around. Holy Churchill’s spleen, this
place makes every motel room we’ve ever been in look like a dumpster dive. Huge
chandeliers hang from the ceiling, plush furniture dots the lobby, and a
colorful abstract painting hangs behind the reception area. I don’t see stale
wads of chewing gum anywhere.

      Classical
music gently spills out of speakers, and people skitter around in controlled
chaos. My sneakers squeak across the tiled floor as I move out of the way as two
men in suits zoom by clutching the handles of small black roller cases. I also note
the cameras and weave a drunkard’s path around a few columns, keeping my face
turned away. They’ll catch glimpses of me, but not enough for an easy ID.

 Bird Brain
watches my little dance, skepticism written all of his face. Yeah, I burned him
good with that little trick in the car. Probably not the best idea in
hindsight, but still utterly worth it.

 “Cameras,” I
grumble to him. He looks up, probably noticing them for the first time. I’d bet
my left testicle that he and every member of his stupid Totem have been
sauntering through the lobby in full, glorious view.
Great
. We’ve been
together all of a half hour, and they’re already compromising the shit out of
me. I really should have thought this through better, but it’s too late now. The
cheerful British narrator inside my head announces,
Imminent bodily shutdown
in…17 minutes.
 

 When we make
it to the elevator, I keep the brim of my hat low and stare straight at the
floor.

 “Will your
crew be more receptive than Chad?” I ask as Bird Brain hits a button for the 23
^rd
floor.

 “Chain?
Yeah, Finch and Bear are cool.”

The doors
open with a stupid pleasant
ping.
“Lead the way.”

 We scuffle
over nice carpet that probably gets vacuumed twice a day. Bird Brain knocks on
a door. No special knock. I tense. Despite what Bird Brain said, his teammates
could be hostile, or maybe Chainy is sitting on the other end, machine gun in
each hand, just waiting to go Rambo on my skinny ass.

 The door
opens.

“Hello, I’m…”

“Not out
here.” I shoulder my way into a large sitting room and sigh. All those cameras
make me twitchy as hell.  

“Yes, I
suppose that’s wise.” The man standing at the door is not what I expect…at all.
Not Captain America, not Batman, not even Professor X. I stare at a chunky,
balding guy who nervously adjusts his glasses and sticks a meaty hand out at
me. He reminds me of one of those happy, white middle-aged guys that you only
find in a Home Depot commercial. I can picture him cheerfully steering a riding
mower as he gabs about all the outdoor projects he completed over the weekend
thanks to Home Depot’s great selection and amazing deals.

 “Bear,” he
says.

 “Gabe.” I
meant to say
Lee,
but oh well. Tarren can chew me a new asshole later if
I ever find him again. I take Bear’s sweaty hand. We shake and something about
him puts me at ease. Underneath the chub, I think I see a fighter in him.

Imminent
bodily shutdown in…12 minutes

 My best
friend Chainy lounges in the corner, stroking his chain belt in a very
unsettling manner.  The evidence of our little scuffle is really starting to
show. His nose looks twice the size it was before my fist introduced itself,
and his left eye is beginning to swell and color. If he had Cyclopes’s power, the
glare he’s giving me would burn a hole right through my chest.

Nice to
see you again too, you douche.

“We have a
lot of questions,” Bear says, “but I think you deserve to have yours answered
first.”

 I gratefully
sink into a plushy chair, trying hard to control my descent so it isn’t obvious
that my legs are buckling. As Bear fills me in on some more of the Totem’s
background, I catch Bird Brain’s eye and motion for my bag. When he brings it
over, I grab a can of Monster and gratefully pour more caffeine into my body.
The pleasant British voice in my head warning me of imminent bodily shutdown
backs off.

Bear keeps the
Totem’s origin story short and typically cryptic. Apparently everyone on the
team had some encounter with an angel. I look around the room at each face – Bird
Brain, Chainy, and Bear – and wonder how bad it was. The answer is obvious. Satan’s
gonads bad. Any student of comic books knows that the best heroes rise out of a
primordial ooze of pain, betrayal, loss, and blood. Uncle Ben got capped right
in front of Peter Parker’s eyes. The Punisher’s entire family was blown away,
and, of course, little Bruce Wayne got to enjoy a blood shower courtesy of his
parents’ bullet-riddled bodies. Makes sense that enough angels wipe out enough
innocents and certain people are going to turn the blackness of loss into something
more than a memorial Facebook page. 

The way Bear
explains it, the dead guy, Puma got the ball rolling by posting on some whacky
conspiracy theory message boards. That’s where Bear discovered him. I watch
Bear’s big hands massage each other as he carefully skirts around his personal
angel encounter of the third kind.

“I went to
the police, of course,” he sighs, “told them my story. They were less than
receptive.”

“Not a
surprise. Cops aren’t good for anything,” I tell him. I decide not to mention
that Bear’s lucky his report got ignored. The angel network is breaking down,
but there are still plenty of baddies in the government, in the corner offices
of posh companies, and clinging to some pretty high rungs. There was a time
when even asking certain questions could win you an instant trip to the morgue.

“I wanted
answers…needed answers,” Bear continues. His solution? The internet of course.
His queries eventually took him to Puma’s message board posts. Right alongside
stories of alien probes, Big Foot sightings, and Tooth Fairy encounters, Bear found
angels…in a manner of speaking. He and Puma chatted online.

“We
discovered enough commonalities in our stories that I was confident we had been
accosted by similar creatures,” Bear says. His voice takes on a hint of
excitement. “Imagine discovering that you aren’t alone. That you aren’t crazy.
That something…some grand conspiracy truly does exist just beneath the surface
of the life you thought you knew.”

Makes me
think back to all the civvies we’ve saved in the past. Over the years, certain
people have gotten quite the eyeful. I wonder how they’ve been coping. Lo’s
strategy, apparently, is to poke out all the memories of his dad with metal
hoops and studs.

Here’s where
Bear’s story gets more interesting. He invited Puma over, presumably for tea,
biscuits, knitting tips, and angel talk. Puma showed up in leather jacket,
animal mask, and with a sidekick in tow named Finch.

At the
mention of Finch’s name, everyone glances toward the closed bedroom door. Bear
continues the story.

“Puma had big
plans for tracking down these creatures. He invited me to join the cause, as it
were,” Bear says dryly.

As it were.
Love this guy.  

“So, don’t
tell me,” I say, “you immediately started sewing your superhero costumes.”

“Of course
not.” Bear removes his glasses and carefully cleans each lens with a small
cloth he pulls from his pocket. “We were dangerously uninformed, unprepared.”

 Hmmmm, a man
after Tarren’s own heart.

 “But I
needed answers, and the authorities weren’t willing to help.”

Wow, when he
puts it like that I realize that I actually understand where he’s coming from.
Wouldn’t
I have nutted up, grabbed some guns, and done the same?

“We needed to
capture one of them,” Bear says. “Then we could begin to understand what they
were, their physiological differences from humans, their needs, their network. We
could use this information to develop a strategy to fight.”

Solid,
through and through. I can’t help myself, I’m starting to feel the first
strands of a bro-crush on Bear. Just as he opens his mouth to go on with his
story, my phone purrs in my pocket. Oh thank Frodo’s disgusting, hairy feet.
Tarren finally pulled his head out of his ass, or, even better, Maya decided to
hand me an invite to her little angel massacre soiree.

“Hey,” I say
roughly into the phone.

“Hellloooo,”
a cheerful female voice sings.

…The hell?

“How much is
the truck? My son saw it and fell in love with…”

“Thirty
thousand,” I blurt out.

“WHAT?” No
more sing-song voice.

I hold up a
finger to Bear, and turn my face away from the group. “It’s one of a kind.
Haunted.”

 “Uh…”

“You see, I
hit a raccoon last month. Don’t worry, no damage to the truck, at least no
physical damage. But the thing is, I can feel its spirit inside the truck now. The
raccoon, that is. Like this angry, feral presence. Sometimes when I’m driving,
this need comes over me to eat out of trashcans. That has to be the raccoon,
right? So, I figured, hell, I don’t want a truck haunted by a raccoon, but I
bet someone in world would, right? So that’s why I…hello?”

The dial tone
buzzes in my ear. I tuck my phone in my pocket and look back to Bear. “You were
saying?”

 To his
credit, Bear only raises an eyebrow before he continues. While Puma fumed in
his pretty leather jacket, Bear threw himself into the task of figuring out an
angel detection method. At about that point, serendipity happened in the form
of a bloody catastrophe in Poughkeepsie, New York.

When Bear
says the word “Poughkeepsie,” it hits my spine with all the grace and delicacy
of an ice pick.   

 He explains
that a group of local teens disappeared from a nightclub only to be rescued
from a putrid barn six days later.  Of the eighteen that disappeared, only
eleven made it out alive. The ones who were coherent enough blabbered about psychedelic
drugs, a deranged cult, glowing hands, and chains.

 I keep my
mouth cemented shut. Yeah, I happen to know a thing or two about that
particular incident in Poughkeepsie. If I wanted to rummage around in my
memories, I could pull up the horror show we found when we opened up that barn door.
I suck in a quick breath as I see all those kids rotting away, chained together
inside horse stalls. The smell, I’ll never forget the smell, or how the flies
crawled over the open, glassy eyes of the dead. Just teenagers, all of them.  It
was enough to make me wish I could’ve revived the angels who snacked on those
teens just so I could kill them all over again, this time with honey and fire
ants.

 I tune back
into Bear’s story. “Puma and I found similarities in the stories of the teens and
what we had experienced, particularly regarding energy absorption through the
hands. We were able to track down several of the survivors to garner more
details.” He gaze moves to Bird Brain and then to Chainy.