The Flicker Men (25 page)

Satvik's face broke into a smile. The dazed look faded. “They are letting us go.”

I shook my head. “Why would they do that?”

“I don't know,” he said. He slipped his shoes on. Black loafers. “They are done with us, maybe.”

“Satvik, this doesn't seem right.”

Satvik stood. “I was working too hard. When I get home, I will be different. Too many hours. For what? Fertilize to cut, fertilize to cut.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It is like lawns. You put fertilizer, and the grass grows faster. But why? There is no outcome.”

“Satvik, I need you to focus.”

“I am focused. I have been here two weeks. Today I go home.”

“You believe him?”

“He said he's letting us go.”

I thought of my mother then. Her ability to believe what she needed to. Like a superpower. Maybe we all had that in us. Maybe we could all draw from it when we needed to.

The other guard came and got us and ushered us toward Polo, who stood by the private elevator. The doors opened, and I expected to see the car, but the elevator bay was empty. Just a blank metal floor and four steel walls. As large as a one-car garage.

“In,” the guard said.

The four of us stepped inside. I stood next to Satvik, and Polo pulled the metal gate closed. Then the exterior elevator doors closed slowly. I could smell the grease of the elevator cables.

Satvik was still smiling. “Things will be different now.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Polo hit a button, and the elevator jolted into movement.

“I have been too long away. I'll see my daughter tonight.”

I could only nod.

“She will be happy to see me.”

“Happy,” I said.

The man in the polo shirt raised his arm in a fluid movement and shot Satvik in the head.

 

32

I didn't scream until after.

The splash of blood against the wall—and then I flung myself at the shooter, but he was expecting it. He spun away, using my own momentum against me, as he grabbed my arm and slammed me into the gate. My face mashed against the hard steel, and I felt my nose break. Stars swam before my eyes. Dark spots. I turned and swung my fist blindly, but there was only air, and then a chipping jab to my jaw that sent me to the floor.

I shook my head, trying to clear my vision. When I moved to stand, a kick smashed me in the ribs, sending me onto my back—the wind knocked out of me so that I couldn't grab air. I gasped like a fish. Then another kick came. And another. I curled into a ball, protecting my vitals. Consciousness winnowed to a fine white point, slipping away, and then the kicks stopped.

The elevator lurched to a halt. I felt the jolt beneath my hip. Then the vibration as the elevator doors opened. Men stepping out, the murmur of voices.

It had all happened in the course of an elevator ride. Satvik dead. Me on the floor, smashed and bleeding.

A white Range Rover was backed up to the opening of the elevator bay. Beside me, Satvik lay on his face, a pool of blood expanding across the metal floor. I became aware of movement then, coming closer. Polo and the other guard, stepping back inside.

They wrapped Satvik's body up in a tarp.

I wanted to kill them.

I wanted it so bad I cried. Cried in rage as I tried to pull myself to a sitting position. The one who'd pulled the trigger only looked down at me.

“Watch those eyes,” Polo warned.

I stared at him, wanting to take him apart. Wanting to bite out his throat.

He kicked me in the face then.

My head snapped back, and I felt my lip split. Blackness swam.

“I said watch those eyes.”

When I looked up with blurry vision, Polo was standing over me. I didn't look away. Instead I reached for the wall. I pulled myself forward, glaring up at him. The guard's face went flush with anger. He pulled his gun and pointed it at my face. I thought of the pattern in the sand. Six circular chambers. But this was no revolver. Instead, a semiautomatic. I kept coming, wobbling to my knees.

He cocked the hammer back.

“Not yet.” The other guard reached out and put a hand on Polo's wrist. Pushed the gun down. “Unless you want to do the digging.” The anger in the guard's face was still there, but he seemed to get himself under control while he holstered his gun.

He looked down at me. His arm flexed—so fast that I barely saw it, the crunch of bone, and the world went dark.

*   *   *

“Up.”

The word came from nowhere as I felt myself being yanked by the arm. It might have been seconds later or minutes.

I tried to fight, but my head swam—body not responding as I was dragged across the elevator floor. I rolled, trying to get my knees under me. The grip on my arm released, and I collapsed onto my stomach. Blood from my broken nose drained down my throat. The floor of the elevator was silver-gray, a smooth steel. I could see my hands on it, but they felt like somebody else's. My stomach heaved. I puked blood across the clean surface, splashing blood and bile across the man's shoes. It was some consolation at least. The only blow I'd landed.

“Get him in the fucking Rover already.”

The two guards jerked me by the arms, opened the hatch, and threw me in the back. The zip ties were at the ready. Polo cinched my wrists behind my back and pulled them tight enough to cut off blood flow. I'd lose my hands if they left me that way for long. It didn't seem likely to matter.

They threw Satvik on top of me and then slammed the hatch closed.

*   *   *

His dead weight pressed down on my legs as the vehicle circled through the parking garage. I could feel his arm against my back—his legs draped across my calf. The blood from his head wound spilled out of the tarp and soaked my shirt.

Up front, the men talked low and steady, but I couldn't make out their words. That suited me. I didn't want to hear them. Satvik was dead. I was about to die. I thought of my sister. My father and mother. Satvik's words,
People forget they are going to die someday.
I felt the laugh rising like madness. And there was a reason, I realized. You
have
to forget. Because you can't hold that in your mind. You can't contain it. Your own extinction. The end of it all. Does the world wink out of existence? Or is there something more? Something after.

The Range Rover came to a stop. A moment's pause, and we were moving again, rounding a bend, the light suddenly bright and yellow. Daylight streamed through the glass. We were outside the parking garage and on the city streets.

The Rover accelerated. I thought of what Polo had said in the penthouse.
Letting you go
, he'd said. Sometimes there was a bit of truth to a lie.
Dropping you off in a park.
I could imagine Satvik and I buried there deep and dark, where no one would ever find us. It wouldn't be hard.

The drive continued, the sound of the road. It was several minutes later when the low talk from the front seat cut off abruptly. Sudden silence.

I noticed it without even being aware of it at first. It wasn't the silence that came at the end of a conversation. It was something else. Cut off, like their attention had been snagged. Cut off like they'd
seen
something. I could feel the vehicle start to slow.

Polo's voice came softly, “The fuck is this?”

“Tell her to get the fuck out of the road.”

“What's she doing?”

“Hey—”

The squeal of tires.

“
Look ou
—”

And then the crash came, and the world turned on its side.

*   *   *

The impact was deafening—a violent jerk that slammed me against the hatch, and then I was rolling, bouncing off the walls as broken glass rained down in a glittering cascade. The vehicle skidded on its side, pavement scraping past, throwing sparks inches from my face where the window used to be. When the movement finally stopped, I was on my back, knees pressed against my own head. But that wasn't right. It was Satvik's knees, not mine. Our bodies entangled by the crash. I shifted my weight, and my arm came free—snapped loose from the zip tie by the force of the impact. I pulled my arm out from under me, blood pouring from my wrist. Satvik was still draped over me, his face turned away as if in shame. I was screaming. I didn't realize it until my voice gave out. A high-pitched crackle that seemed to choke itself.

I crawled out through the rear window. We were on a city street. Warehouses on one side, chain link on the other. Construction zone of some kind—the location too isolated to be accidental. Only one pedestrian stood gape-mouthed on the sidewalk. An old woman with thin plastic grocery bags in each hand. The car that had hit us was a dozen feet away, a brown sedan. After the crash, it had continued on and now sat crumpled against a light pole. Our vehicle was on its side, twisted wreckage littering the street.

The pop of sheet metal drew my attention, and the driver's door of the brown sedan jerked open. A shoe hit the ground, but I didn't wait to see. I turned and pulled myself across the pavement. The smell of gasoline assaulted my nostrils as glass drove itself into my hands and knees. I got a dozen feet before there was a sound behind me, and I turned. Polo was sliding out of the vehicle now—coming through the shattered windshield, trailing blood. His leg moved at a funny angle, and he cried out. Twenty feet up the sidewalk, the old woman dropped her grocery bags and ran. A six-pack of Coke hit the pavement and burst, fizzing across the cement. And that's when I saw the other man.

He crossed from the wreckage on the other side of the street. Tall and pale and bearded. Scalp buzzed to stubble. He carried a gun in his hand.

The scars were what you noticed. They crisscrossed his flesh, deep and puckered. Like a bomb maker too intimate with his craft. Our eyes locked then—almost a nod. He approached the wreckage, smile curling back from his teeth. The sound of sirens rose in the distance.

He raised the gun toward the spidered windshield. He didn't speak.
Pop, pop, pop, pop
. It happened so fast. The bullets striking meat and metal. The driver never had a chance. The adrenaline dumped into my system like a sizzle. I kept crawling, putting as much distance as I could between myself and the carnage. I looked back to see if the tall man followed. He'd moved around the side of the vehicle where Polo lay. Polo still moved, leg bending strangely from a dozen joints. The man used his foot to flip him over on his back, and I could hear the ragged breathing, red bubbles frothing from his lips. Broken ribs, a pierced lung. And then a shoe came down on Polo's throat, pressing him into the pavement. His eyes rolled in their sockets. A moment later, a loud snap. The breathing stopped. The scarred man's eyes moved to me, and I froze. I dared not move. He circled around to the back of the vehicle. He crouched near where Satvik lay, half in, half out of the broken hatch, still wrapped in the tarp. He pulled the tarp back from Satvik's face, almost tenderly. Or maybe I just saw it like that.

Satvik's dark eyes far away. Focused somewhere else. I hoped it was somewhere good.

“Already dead,” he said.

“And the other one?”

I turned my head but couldn't see her. The other voice. The scarred man looked down at me. Made eye contact again. The sirens were louder now.

“Still alive,” he said. “Hurt, though.”

I saw his hand flex on the gun, adjusting his grip, but he didn't raise the weapon. A thin runnel of smoke rose from the barrel.

“Quicker to end it,” he said.

“No,” the woman's voice came again. A familiar voice, I realized. And then I saw her as she stepped from around the side of the wreckage. Saw the scar that bisected her eyebrow. The woman who had saved me from the fire.

“Vickers says we take him,” she said. “So we take him.”

 

PART III

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark.

—WENDELL BERRY, “TO KNOW THE DARK”

 

33

Sirens passed the old panel truck going in the other direction. It was the kind of old truck used to haul furniture—a square box on wheels. The woman and I were in the back. The scarred man up front driving. I sat behind him, leaning against the wall. I could feel the vibration against my spine.

I stared at the woman sitting across from me. “Who are you?”

“Friends,” the woman said.

“Don't lie to the man,” the driver said. “That's no way to start out.”

She grunted. It could have been agreement. It could have been a laugh. At that moment, up the street, another police car came around the corner, lights spinning. I watched through the front windshield as the cop flashed by.

“Okay, not friends,” she said. “Not exactly.”

“Then who?”

It was the man who answered. “We're less likely to kill you than the other guys.”

*   *   *

I braced myself with my hands as the truck wove its way through the streets.

Occasionally, the driver craned his neck, checking the mirrors while the engine whined. The woman's mouth drew a grim line. I looked at her left hand, the missing fingers—most of her ring finger and part of her pinky. The flesh pink and gnarled.

Through the windshield I saw traffic and buildings and houses—pedestrians with their heads turned in our direction, frowning at the reckless driver. But no more cop cars.

No one chased. At least not that I could see.

She seemed to follow my thoughts. “The cops,” she said, “are the least of our worries.”

I thought of the stethoscopes as we rounded a corner. When we had straightened out again, the woman rose to her feet and moved to the front. She leaned over the passenger seat and picked up something from the floorboard. The scarred man turned his head, and the top of his left ear was missing—pink scar tissue carving an ellipse across the side of his skull, a curving line where hair no longer grew.