Remember the Future (18 page)

“We gave you your money,” Maddy pleaded in Torres’ arms.  “Every cent and more! Tell him, Rudy!”

Standing beside his boss, Rudy glanced at Torres, whose dark eyes were glued to Grant.

“Tell her, Torres.  Tell her what I’ve been trying to for the last few days. Maybe she’ll buy it if she hears it from you,” Grant said.  “It was never about the money.”

Torres narrowed his hard eyes on Grant.  “You’re going to die here tonight where you stand and there’s absolutely nothing anyone can say to me that can stop that from happening.  You can fill this building with cops and it won’t make a shit of difference to me.”

“One of us will die, and believe me, when it's time for me to go, I will embrace it, because finally I'm at peace with this thing,” Grant told him. “How about you, Torres? Are you prepared to be judged for how you've spent your life?”

Torres snickered.  “Love thy neighbor, say your prayers at night, and everyone gets a comp in the Garden of Eden, right? Well, I got news for you, Frederickson. The real world doesn't operate by those rules. Never did.”

“Is that what you told my wife before you murdered her?” Grant asked, taking a step forward.

Torres tightened his grip on Maddy.  “Did you have time to discuss philosophy with Frederickson's wife before you rolled her car into the river, Rudy?”

Rudy turned to look Grant in the eye.

Grant rushed Rudy and got one solid punch to his nose before Torres’ thugs grabbed him, ripped the gun from his hands, and shoved him to his knees.

Tossing Maddy to the floor behind him, Torres stepped determinedly forward, digging the muzzle of his gun into Grant’s hair.  “See, I knew you would be good for something, Rudy.  Now before I splatter this shit-heel’s brains all over the floor of this club, tell me how much of my money he gambled away before you stopped him?”

Grant gave a weak laugh.  “Yeah, please tell the man how much I lost.”

Rudy pulled a bloody sleeve away from his nose.  “Gave him all the time in the world just like you said,” he replied flatly.

“And?” Torres demanded.

“He never spent a dime.”

Torres glared at Grant with a furious expression.

Looking slowly up at him, Grant gave Torres a smug smile.  “No, I get it now, but y’see, it’s not mine to give you.”

“What's that?

“My soul.”

Torres pulled the gun away from Grant's head and chambered a round.

Maddy rushed forward but one of the suited men caught her arm.  “Killing him won't prove anything,” she shouted.  “You already know he won!”

Torres leaned forward over Grant, his clenched teeth just a hair from his ear.  “You think you're better than me, don’t you, Frederickson?”

“Grant, you're the strongest, most decent man I've ever met,” Maddy cried out from behind them.  “I love you!  And the only reason this monster wants you dead is because he can't
be
you.”

“Maddy,” Grant called out.  “Did we change the arc?”

Giving Grant a look of concern, she squeezed her eyes shut.

Torres glared from Grant to Maddy. Rising quickly--his aging spine giving a loud whip-like crack--he turned the gun on her.  “Love, huh? I'll give you one chance to prove it right here and now, bitch. Your life for his.”

Maddy blinked down at the gun.  Giving it a nod of acceptance, she closed her eyes.

Grant gaped at Maddy in wide-eyed horror.  He rolled to the balls of his feet, his leg muscles tensing.  “Is that the deal you offered my wife?” he spat at Torres.

“No, he wanted something else,” Maddy stated.  She opened her eyes and gazed directly at Torres, who narrowed his eyes at her, truly seeing her for the first time.  “But she wouldn't let you have her, would she, because she was good too.  As good a woman as Grant is a good man.”

Grant stared at her in disbelief, his eyes glistening.

Torres reddened, the gun beginning to tremble as the muscles in his hand tensed.

“She was faithful and moral.  All those things you resent,” Maddy continued.  “Because the darkness hates the light, doesn’t it, Arturo?”

Sidling back against the edge of the stage, Rudy looked up at Maddy with a dim smile and shook his head, laughing weakly as he drew another cigarette from the pack from his breast pocket with his teeth.

“Y’know, she tried the same shit with me,” he stated in a low voice, searching his jacket for a lighter.  “It worked too.  Got me so worked up that I forgot to focus on the job.”

“Rudolph, could you please shut the fuck up,” Torres grumbled.

Rudy snatched the cigarette out of his mouth in frustration and tossed it to the floor.  “By the way, I killed your fucking dog, Arturo.”

A supremely wounded expression appeared on the large Latino’s face, looking briefly like a child who had been slapped without provocation.  His gun arm wavered and finally dropped.

“Yeah, he was foaming at the mouth, because one of your genius mechanics at the garage in Houston figured it would be a gas to feed a dog crystal meth,” Rudy said, folding his arms across his chest in a clear show of bravado.

“You killed my Pepe?” Torres managed, turning to look over his shoulder at Rudy.

“Technically, I put him out of his misery instead of letting him suffer.”  Rudy started toward Torres.  “Why didn't you tell me we were running drugs out of the Houston office, Arturo? Why didn't you tell me the real reason you wanted me to kill an innocent man?  And his wife!”

Mack’s radio squawked and he snatched it off his belt.  “Go for Mack.”

Brigham rushed irrationally toward the fire escape, wondering what had possessed him to stick around this long.

Grant watched Maddy with concern as she stood with her eyes squeezed shut, despite the fact that Torres’ gun was no longer on her at all.

Mack turned to Torres.  “Boss, we've got a couple of guys at the service entrance to the bar. They're...”

A couple of gunshots echoed from a distance. The radio exploded with static.

Rudy stared Torres in the eye.  “I warned you about these guys, Arturo. And now here they are.  In our kitchen!”

“Are these the ones that called earlier?” Torres barked, turning the gun back on Maddy.  “Then we’ll give them what they want.”

Mack and the other bodyguard drew their guns and turned in opposite directions, placing their backs to one another.

Brigham reached the fire escape doors and pulled frantically on them.  He wondered,
How in the hell can they be locked
?

Grant rushed to Maddy’s side.  “Are you okay?”

Her eyes remaining closed, she whispered as if deep in a dream.  “Here we go.”

“What?” he muttered in confusion.

She opened her eyes and took his face in her hands.  “Do you trust me, Grant?”

He hesitated only briefly before saying, “Yes, I do.”

“Close your eyes and don’t open them until I tell you to.”

Grant nodded and closed his eyes.

26

Waves of color transformed the fire escape door from white to a deepening red that seemed to crawl with a supernatural kinetic energy.

Brigham stopped tugging on the handle of the locked door and glanced over his shoulder. Turning his eyes to the ceiling, he stared in confused wonder at the enormous blood red cloud blooming overhead.

Through a tiny hole in the ceiling--like the hot tip of a burning cigar--where Grant’s single gunshot must have gone, a bright pulsing light bubbled and spread slowly like lava across the four corners of the ceiling.

Brigham backed slowly away, watching in horror as the hole began to move upward before his bulging eyes.  The whole ceiling seemed to be pulling itself up into the shape of a cone, like the tip of a tent.

Or the inside of a volcano
, Brigham considered with increasing alarm.

He spun and threw himself violently back against the fire escape door, the lock finally giving way and swinging open to drop him down into the outer hallway.  He looked up to discover a towering dark-suited man standing just inside.

Grabbing him by his collar, the giant tossed him out of the way behind him like he were a twenty-pound child and strode into the room firing a single shot to take out one of Torres’ bodyguards with barely a pause to aim.

*

Charging into the blues club, the Blank Man skidded to a stop and cast a look at the grey walls around him, which appeared to be melting like dark candle wax.  He peered down to find his shoes sinking into the electric blue carpeting of the club.  Yanking up his feet, the glowing carpet held tight with coiling tendrils that moved as if alive and attempting to feed on his shoes.

Tugging his legs with all his strength and unable to free himself, the Blank Man lifted his watch to his mouth.  “An event is in progress.  Keep clear and do not enter the room!  I repeat..!”

The door behind the bar swung open and the other Blank Man swept inside.

Mack, the other bodyguard, rushed him, firing as he advanced.

The Blank Man dropped him with a single shot.

*

Rudy watched as the mural of the painted pelicans on the wall of the stage area begin to bulge and glisten.  He stumbled backward, shaking his head in denial as the lanky birds pushed themselves out of the mural as if emerging from a birth canal.  The creatures hopped down to the stage floor, flapping their wings as if to flex unused muscles.

“Arturo!” Rudy called out.

*

Torres’ attention was in the corner of the room, where the rickety wooden cabin sat, a scarecrow perched in silent vigil over a faux corn field, turned in his direction and slowly began to lift its raggedy head.

Torres lifted his gun and began to fire at the creature, the bullets piercing the soft grain of its innards and passing out the other side to strike the dark wall beyond, the pounding thumps of the bullets ricocheting around the enclosed space.

The scarecrow lifted its pitch fork as it pulled free of the nails pinning it to its wooden platform.  “Time to pay, Arturo!  I’m comin’ for my pound of flesh,” it croaked at an inhuman pitch.

Firing until his gun emptied, the large man scrambled awkwardly backwards, tripping over the fresh corpse of his man Mack, his head twisting back and forth in an instinctual denial of the reality that he was experiencing with eyes which had never betrayed him in the past.

*

Taking two steps at a time, Brigham barreled down the fire escape steps until he hit the exit door three floors later.  He skidded to a stop just outside the casino building and looked both ways for any sign of Torres or his goons.  Almost immediately, a uniformed man leaped out of the shadows and threw him expertly chest first against the building.  Out of the corner of his eye, Brigham could make out an entire unit of similarly-dressed armed men storm into the fire escape doorway.

“Tell me what’s going on upstairs,” the man who held him against the wall demanded gruffly.

Brigham pressed his forehead against the wall and gave him a helpless laugh.  “Frankly, I’ve got no goddamn clue what just happened to me,” he answered, his weak voice slowly regaining some of its moxie.  “But I’m alive!  The Brigster is alive and still kicking up the charts!”

The soldier rolled his eyes and cuffed him unconscious with a strategic punch to the back of his head.

*

Dropping to his knees, the lengthening and thickening coils of supernatural electric blue carpeting dragged the first Blank Man to his knees like tentacles of a squid.  The Blank Man that Maddy had once nicknamed Ernie began to scream for help, the sound feeble and hoarse like a new instrument unaccustomed to playing at a particular register—as fear was not an emotion with which he was accustomed.

Giving his partner a casual glance and otherwise ignoring him, the second Blank Man, whom Maddy had once given the name Bert, retrieved the tiny wooden coffin held by his side and dropped it loudly atop the bar.

“Ain't so Pepe now, eh Arturo?” Rudy screeche
d
hysterically.

At the sight of the coffin, Rudy began to wheeze with pent up laughter.  The newly birthed pelicans took flight all around him.  He could actually feel the feathers of their wings brushing against his ears.

It’s real.  It’s all really happening,
Rudy thought as he felt a strange crawling sensation down his arms and up his neck.  Out of the corner of his eye, Rudy sensed movement and looked down to find a trail of long and slender white objects moving in a line down the length of his left arm.  He reached instinctively up and swept the side of his hand across his neck.  Two unlit cigarettes bounced to the floor at his feet.

Peering down at the open pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket, Rudy watched in morbid fascination as a cigarette separated from its brothers and slithered out of the foil opening to crawl up the front of his shirt, the middle portion of his tube-like body rising and falling like an inch-worm.

Rudy began to dance around, slapping at his body like a teenage girl who had just walked through a spider web.

Someone begin to scream with laughter.  It took him several moments to realize that it was him. The laughter exploded from his belly like thunder from a storm cloud, the noise so foreign coming from him that it sounded to his own ears like sobbing.

Torres dropped to his knees and stared with an open mouth at the coffin on the bar.  Coming to his senses, he gazed back over his shoulder at the slowly advancing scarecrow and snatched up the pistol from his dead soldier’s hand.

Rudy screamed something at him that at first he couldn’t understand.  Finally, it registered: “It’s her, Arturo!  She’s doing all this!  Shoot her!  Shoot the witch!”

Torres blinked in numb-wonder at Rudy and dutifully turned the gun on Maddy, who remained in Grant’s embrace, both pairs of eyes still closed against the monstrosities surrounding them.

Bert, the remaining Blank Man, marched determinedly from the bar past Rudy, retrieved a reflective object from his pocket and lashed out in the direction of Torres’ gun, which fell to the floor along with several of the big man’s fingers.

Torres lifted the mutilated stump of his hand before his eyes and wailed like an injured animal.

In response, Rudy began to laugh even harder, slapping his knees even as they began to buckle.

“Freeze!  Drop your weapons!” a shout came from the fire-escape door.  A group of uniformed combat-ready men piled into the room and instantly began to spread themselves out across the room, their laser-sighted weapons searching for targets.

“No way,” Rudy wailed hoarsely, grabbing his gut and trying to control his laughter. “This shit keeps getting better and better!”

Two of the agents swooped down on one of the suited men, who lay completely unrestrained in the middle of the carpeted floor of the restaurant, yet still feverishly calling to be freed.  Rolling him roughly onto his stomach, they cuffed his hands behind him.

Another agent rushed Rudy, who lifted his hands in acquiescence and turned to face the stage in expectation of the eventual pat-down.  “I’ll do anything you want, man, if you just give me a cigarette,” Rudy said hopefully, peering down at the floor and the white sticks scattered there.

Did one of them just move?

“On second thought, you got a stick of gum?” he asked dully.

Bert lowered the large knife he welded and cast it aside with a disgusted smirk.  He placed his hands behind his head and dropped with resignation to his knees, quickly sighting the bloody gun in the pile of chubby dismembered fingers lying beside him.  He peered up to gauge the distance between him and his target.

But she and the man were both gone.

He scrutinized the fire-escape door on the opposite side of the room more than twenty yards away.  There was no realistic scenario in which they could have reached the door in that short of a time and shut it behind them without a sound.  Since the entire floor was free of tables, he had a clear line of sight.  There was no other place they could have gone but through that door.

Unless she was still somewhere in the room.

It had finally happened!  She had expanded her awareness to the next level.

She had broken through the psychic shields that protected him and his partner.  The infiltration had spread completely, he thought with sudden alarm, and she could make them see or un-see anything she could imagine.  Her power had become potentially limitless, subject only to the mental capacity of her target.  To make matters worse, she had taken them completely off guard using the confusion around them to her advantage.

Yet instead of taking their lives, she had chosen to escape.

That decision displayed her basic weakness, he thought.  Unlike them, she was restrained by a moral code.

That would give them the advantage next time.  If there was a next time, he considered.  There was the distinct possibility that they might both be removed from service indefinitely because of this debacle.

Glaring over at his partner a few yards away, wreathing in the full throes of madness on the carpeted floor as the agents attempted to get him into restraints, Bert, the Blank Man glanced down at the discarded gun again and considered shooting the weakened amateur in the head just as a professional courtesy.

The emergency lighting flickered on along the walls and rendered both dark-suited men in bright white lighting.  Bert cringed, lowering his head.

Agent Morrison, a young short-haired man wearing a flashy green tie beneath his uniform rushed in behind the other agents.  “Arturo Torres, we have a warrant for your arrest.  We have enough from that shop in Houston to put you behind bars for the rest of your life.”

Cradling his bloody hand beneath his arm, Torres glared at the floor, his body vibrating with hatred.  He casually lifted the gun that no one had bothered to confiscate yet and casually placed it into his mouth.

“Stop him!” Morrison bellowed at the top of his lungs.

Uniformed men rushed him from every direction as a bullet traveling at high velocity through Torres’ cerebral cortex effectively removed all possibility of his giving any person a loan, a gun, or drugs ever again.

“Well, shit!” Morrison exploded, shoving past the nearest agent to take a look at the corpse of the mobster.  “Exemplary job, guys.”

Turning to the apparently more lucid, suited man whose hands were folded cooperatively behind his head, Morrison reached out and flicked the dark glasses off of his face with an index finger, revealing ice blue eyes.  “You want to give me an idea of who the hell you are supposed to be?  Elwood Blues?”

Bert slowly peered up into the eyes of the agent and gave him a secret smile.

Agent Morrison blinked at him, his pupils growing larger.  He took a single step backwards and gasped.

Cursing under his breath, Rudy ignored the stick of gum the agent had been in the process of offering him, snagged the loosely-held rifle out of his hands, and opened up on the remaining Blank Man, reducing his head to a red and grey stain on the head agent’s obnoxious green tie.

“There!  I’m done now,” Rudy snapped as he dropped the rifle at the agent’s feet and thrust his palms into the air in surrender.

The agent spun him around, threw him chest-first onto the floor of the stage, and buried his knee in his back.

“Sorry, sorry,” Rudy coughed, as the agent struggled to remove the handcuffs from his belt.  “You think I could still get that gum?”