The Death Agreement: Severity & Preamble & Section I - Recount History | Section II - Look After Family | Section III & IV - Obituary & Attend Funeral | Section V - Share Final Words | Section VI - Wishes | Section VII - Celebrate Life | [Section VIII - Visit The Dead & Ex Post Facto & Addendum]
SECTION VII - CELEBRATE LIFE
The C.I.D. agents followed me through the winding hallway. I turned the last corner and found the door to my room partially open.
“Huh, that’s strange.” The hinge creaked as I pushed it the rest of the way inward.
I leaned my head inside and looked toward the empty kitchen, then toward the dark bedroom. “Mary? You still here? Decent?” When she didn’t respond, I stepped over the threshold. “Mary? I’ve got company.”
I turned to the agents and shrugged. “I guess she decided to leave.”
Rossenkants narrowed his eyes. “What did you say Mary’s last name is?”
I motioned for them to follow me into the kitchen. “I’ll give you her business card. Don’t mind the mess,” I said, stopping to pick up a crushed beer can.
The agents stepped inside and waited as I threw away the rest of the trash from the night before.
Porter stared at the three empty liquor bottles. “Would you say you’re a heavy drinker?”
“I’ve had a rough few weeks.”
“I see,” she said.
I shook my head. “Lady, you don’t have slightest idea.”
Rossenkants took a step forward and held out his hand. “Business card?”
I removed Mary’s card from under a magnet on the fridge and handed it to him. “That’s her office. Her cell is written on the back.”
Rossenkants looked at it and nodded. “Thank you.”
“Give me a second, I’ll get the rest.” I tried to walk pass the agents, but Porter grabbed my arm.
“Lieutenant,” she said, “why don’t you stay here with me while my partner has a quick look around.”
I shrugged off her hand and made a waving gesture. “By all means, knock yourself out.”
Rossenkants smiled and left the kitchen.
Porter looked me over. “What is it you’re not telling us?”
“You probably won’t believe this, Agent Porter, but from the moment I heard that Jesse had died, all I’ve tried to do is keep from losing it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I hadn’t even recovered from the news that he was gone before I learned about what else he had done. Not to mention everyone thinking I had any part in this. I’m not a murderer. I’m not an accomplice. I’m not anything.”
She frowned. “All of this is happening around you, yet you can stand here and tell me that you’re not involved.”
I stared at her for a moment before responding. Finally, I said, “Because it’s true. I didn’t ask for any of this, and all I want is for it to end.”
“You’re very convincing, but where there’s smoke there’s fire.”
From the living room, Rossenkants called out, “All clear.”
Porter smiled and left the kitchen. “Now, about that evidence….”
The jeans I’d worn the night before were piled at the base of the couch. I picked them up and rummaged through the pockets looking for Taylor’s letter.
“Damn,” I said.
“What is it?” Rossenkants asked.
“It’s gone. The drawing…the confession…both copies of The Death Agreement.”
In a mocking tone, Rossenkants asked, “Is it possible you put them somewhere else? Maybe in your bedroom?”
“No. I had everything in my pocket.” I threw the jeans across the room and nearly fell backward. “That bitch stole it for her goddamn story!”
Porter and Rossenkants watched me pace back and forth. I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed her number. The call went to voicemail, of course.
“Why, Mary? You didn’t need to steal from me. I would have given you copies.”
Ending the call, I sat on the couch, and lowered my head.
“She’s got what you want,” I said to the agents. “So leave me alone and go bother her.”
I felt their untrusting eyes stare through me for what seemed like an eternity before Rossenkants finally walked back into the hallway.Porter followed him. From the hall, Porter said, “You’ll be seeing us again soon, Lieutenant.”
I listened to their heavy footsteps fade away.
For months, I had constantly been in the dark, and when I finally felt like I had gotten ahead of the game, the game thrust me right to the back of the line. I knew right then that I was done with The Death Agreement, done with Jesse Taylor, done with the military, done with everything. As for Yang and Mary, they could go to hell. I didn’t care why he had helped some psychopath take that saw, and I couldn’t give less of a damn why she had thrown away my trust for a story.
It dawned on me how long I had allowed all the hurt, anger, and sadness to flow into each other, strengthening over time until the meld became a perfect storm of pain.
I crawled into bed and screamed and thrashed and cried and cursed and kicked. At some point I forgot about the troubles of the world. At some point I forgot about Jon Randon.
**
The blades of a helicopter sliced through the air somewhere in the darkness above.
“Jon?” Taylor whispered. “Come and play with us.”
I opened my eyes and sat up on a blood-covered cot. Taylor’s shadow danced away and I stood, amazed both of my legs were made of flesh. Looking around the empty medical tent, I felt a sense of disorientation, as if the world had began spinning in the wrong direction.
“Jesse, I don’t know what to do.”
The steady cadence of a helicopter engine distorted into a sickly whine that grew louder and louder.
“Come,” Taylor said.
I followed the shadow to the front of the tent and looked up at millions of maple tree helicopters slowly falling to the ground.
“Beautiful,” I said.
When the first pod landed softly onto the sand, a terrible crash of twisting metal and shattering glass filled the air, and a sudden blast of heat blew back the tent flap, burning my face.
I marveled at the red fireball roiling high into the pitch-black sky.
The shadow circled around me like a vortex, then slid from the tent into the hot desert air. “Come play with us,” Taylor said again.
Several other shadows, silhouetted by the blaze behind the dunes, slid across the black sands. They were laughing and kicking a ball. I knew them all. Mr. Hunter, Mrs. Christina, Kyle, Tiffany, Lorie….
Mary Stallings said, “Kick it to me, kick it to me,”
“No,” Yang replied. “It’s Jon’s turn.”
“Hello everyone.” I waved, and they all waved back.
Taylor pointed in my direction.
Yang kicked.
I ran forward and stopped the ball with my right foot, feeling the soft texture give slightly under my weight.
“It’s mine,” Taylor said. “Kick it over to me.”
“Okay.” I readied myself, drawing back my right leg, then stopped. “Wait. Something is wrong.”
I rolled the roundish object under my foot, twisting and turning it. “The ball have hair.”
After giving it another roll, the face Taylor’s infant son, Jon, came into view. His milky, dead eyes stared up into his head, and when I screamed, the baby looked at me and blinked.
**
Each time I woke from a nightmare, I noted the color of the sky seeping through the window shade before forcing myself back into oblivion. The ambient light had changed from blue, to orange, to red, then finally to the dull eggshell color of the street lamps.
Eventually my mind refused to shut back off, and instead of restless sleep, I listened to the sound of a clock ticking the hours away.
My stomach growled. The pangs of hunger had caught up to me, and I couldn’t recall when I had last eaten.
I knew it was past midnight by the sound of the generators. They only kicked on after the solar power batteries fully depleted, which usually happened around two in the morning.
I fumbled to get myself out of bed, making sure to securely attach my leg before attempting to stand.
In the kitchen, I found the refrigerator nearly empty. What little was inside didn’t appeal to me in the least, but my stomach rumbled again, telling me to eat something anyway.
I inspected the quarter loaf of bread, looking for signs of mold. Then I opened the container of lunch meat and sniffed. “Borderline.” I shrugged and dropped shiny turkey slices on what had been left of the rye, then devoured the sandwich. After, I drank a glass of tap water and wiped my lips on the sleeve of my winked dress uniform.
Appetite pacified, I opened my door to see if the newspaper had been delivered. Sure enough, the St. Patty’s day edition of the Baltimore Sun had been propped up against the door frame, rolled up in a transparent yellow sleeve.
Kneeling, I noticed specks of blood that led down the hallway, and wondered which patient’s leaking bandage had messed up the carpet.
I sat down at the kitchen table and flipped the paper open to the Obituaries.
Mary had kept her word at least in terms of Taylor’s death notice. The tidy history of Major Jesse Taylor lay before me in black ink on the dull grey pulp.
‘Sterile’, she had called it.
Yeah, well maybe it had lacked soul. I didn’t care. The message was honest, and that was enough for the general public. The firestorm would come, no doubt, but I didn’t want to be the one to throw the match.
While I read over the good parts of Taylor’s life, a transformer exploded somewhere far off, and the lights in my room dimmed until they finally extinguished.
Sitting in the dark, I considered trying to go back to sleep, but then I heard the unmistakable loud pop of a second transformer.
“Gotta be a power surge,” I said.
Then the silence was shattered again by a third explosion, a foundation-rattling blast.
“What the…?”
I walked to the window and peeked outside. The whole campus seemed to be without power. The crescent moon provided the only light for miles.
Though I had hoped to see several electrical crews working, the street was deserted, and a sudden need to go outside overwhelmed me. I felt my way through the darkness to the door, hoping that when I opened it, I would find light on the other side.
The hallway was just as dark, and after I closed the door behind me, cutting off the dim moonlight, the pitch-black felt viscous. My throat tightened and my breathing quickened. I pulled in each breath through my open mouth to make as little noise as possible. When the floor creaked below my feet, dread like I’ve never experienced stabbed though me.
Every step was deliberate, careful. I did not know why I was so frightened, but fear is immune to logic, so I walked slowly toward the faint red glow of the exit sign at the end of the hall. I sensed the doors to my sides as I went, and my jaw tightened in anticipation of them bursting open. Absolute silence would be my only protection from what may lay ahead, sneak up from behind, or attack from either side.
I stared at the glowing sign and watched it grow larger with every small step. It felt like a lifetime, maybe even longer, but I finally made it to the door and let out a relieved sigh.
I pressed on the latch and pushed. The door creaked open, and I stepped out onto the fire escape, looked up at the starless night sky, and took in deep breaths of the cool march air.
Light from the fingernail-moon reflected off of the fog, creating a broken halo effect. The parking lot below the fire escape was mostly empty, and at the far end, the seemingly black leaves of the maple trees swayed, beckoning me forward.
I descended the rusted staircase, scanning for signs of movement. The campus was supposed to have a couple dozen people stationed. Soldiers were always outside, regardless of the hour, yet everything was eerily still.
I kept looking back down the parking lot, then my attention fell on a car and I couldn’t pull my gaze away.
What about it? I wondered.
I racked my mind trying to find a reason why that car seemed so familiar, then a memory flashed: Me standing on the fire escape, calling out to Mary, letting her know to come up that way to avoid the soldier at the front desk.
The car belonged to her. I quickened my pace. Once off the steps, I ran through the parking lot, hoping I had been mistaken.
As I approached the front of the car, a figure on the edge of the parking lot darted through the shadow of the building hanging over the parking lot.
“Mary?” I called out and heard footsteps running on pavement, drawing closer.
I rounded the corner of the car and had a fraction of a second to register the butt-end of a rifle before it slammed into my face.
**
I opened my eyes and my vision cleared on a pair of loafers standing on the pavement. A hand came down and slapped my cheek, then one of the shoes kicked me in the ribs, rolling me onto my back. I heard the unmistakable chi-chink of a pump-action shotgun, then a barrel appeared inches from my eyes.
The gun moved aside. Yang stood over me, eyes wide and bloodshot, jaw clenched and trembling. “I thought you were one of them,” he said.
He held out his hand. I took it, and he pulled me to my feet.
I spit out a mouthful of blood. “Think I swallowed a tooth,” I said, rubbing the side of my face. “What the fuck?”
“You’re lucky I didn’t blow your head off.”
“How do I know you’re still not going to?” I held hands up, spreading my fingers. “From what I’ve heard, you’ve aided a mass murderer in stealing evidence, and now you’re a fugitive. And what the hell do you mean you thought I was one of them?”
“Get up. We need to go somewhere safe to talk.”
“We can go up to my room.”
Yang shook his head. “It isn’t safe there. Come on.” He turned and began walking away.
“Wait!” I yelled. “This car belongs to a friend of mine. I need to find her.”
Yang stopped and looked back. “Trust me, you don’t want to.”
**
Yang peeked into the window of the headquarters building, the room a dull red glow from the emergency lighting system.
“Did you kill the power?” I asked.
“No. Most of it had already been cut by the time I got here. Transformers have been going off all over the base.”
“I heard three go.”
Yang nodded. “The whole place is dark now.” He looked through another window. “Okay,” he said. “It still looks safe. Let’s go see the base commander.”
I followed Yang around to the back entrance. The door hung open, broken from the frame.
“Inside, move,” Yang ordered.
I stepped into the building, sure that he intended to blow a hole through my back. When the shot didn’t come, I said, “Colonel Litwell wouldn’t be here this late.”
“He’s….” Yang sighed. “He’s not. Listen Jon, I’ll tell you everything, but you won’t believe me unless you see with your own eyes, all right? We just need to get to his office.”
I nodded and led the way to Litwell’s door, finding that it had been ripped from the hinge and lay on the hallway floor.
“What the hell happened here,” I said, stepping into the commander’s office. The room had been destroyed. Glass and broken furniture covered the floor. Sitting behind the battered desk, bathed in red light, Colonel Litwell lay with his head down on top of his folder arms.
“Sir?” I took a step forward.
Litwell did not move. I stepped closer.
“Sir? It’s Lieutenant Randon,” I said, reaching out to shake his arm.
I touched him and pulled my hand away from his ice cold skin. “Oh, god.”
“He got to him before I could,” Yang said, walking up beside me. “I knew he’d come back here, and I wanted to warn the colonel to lock the base down. Couldn’t risk calling.”
Yang grabbed Litwell by the shoulders and slid back his chair. “I think he came here for the station list to find out who else would be on base and where they would be.” He pointed to a crumpled sheep of paper clutched in litwell’s fist.
Yang swung the chair around so that I could see Litwell’s whole body. Only Litwell didn’t have a whole body. The bottom half of him was missing, entrails and thick, black gore spilling out onto the floor, terror etched his dead face, frozen in a final scream. The blood-red light illuminating what was left of his corpse perfectly conveyed the agony that he must had felt.
I turned away and threw up.
“We have to call for help.” I wiped away the spittle hanging from my still sore lip. “We can go to the MP station.”
Yang shook his head. “I found the guards at the front gate dead when I arrived. Went to the station next. They’re all dead, too. It’s a blood bath. I came across several other bodies while making my way to your room. All of them butchered, parts missing. Some were still alive…I shot them.”
“What—”
Yang held up a hand. “I had to.”
I had been stepping backwards, away from Yang without realizing it. My back hit the wall, and I said, “You’re telling me you killed wounded men?”
Yang nodded. “That’s why we’re not calling for help. Not yet.”
I lowered myself to the floor, noticing all the broken picture frames, each containing a photo of Litwell smiling and shaking hands with politicians. I tried to reconcile the man in the photo with the mass of butchered dead flesh in the chair.
Yang walked over and sat down next to me. He leaned the shotgun against the wall in the space between us. I thought about grabbing for it, but Yang’s expression told me he knew what I was thinking.
After a moment of silence, he began his tale in a slow and even tone:
“Howard Taylor’s residence…I knew the bastard we’ve been after was nearby. He’d been staying in that house, hiding, planning, whatever.
“Once the Fed’s took over the scene, I left the house to head home. Keys in hand, I approached my car, but I sensed someone watching me.
“I noticed trunk lid bent then saw a streak of blood on the handle, so I pulled my gun. ’Come out with your hands up,’ I shouted, then glanced toward the house, hoping someone could back me up.
“The trunk flew open, catching me off guard. I fired…once, twice, three time. I had to have hit him, but he was fast. Somehow managed to knock my gun away and grab my throat.”
“Was it Alan Goodtime?”
Yang shook his head and laughed. “Goodtime! Oh, the goodtime will come for me, but not yet. Not yet.”
I stared at him, furrowing my brow and wondering if Yang had lost his mind. “Who then?”
Yang closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall. “Hooded, long grey jacket…military issue. I couldn’t see his face then. He was strong. I tried to fight….
“Then I wake up in the rear seat of my car, hands tied behind my back. We’re parked outside of my apartment. He’s going through my wallet, and holds up a picture of Lin and Brandon, my Brother’s wife, and my nephew. He tells me what he wants, and he tells me what he’s going to do to them if he doesn’t get what he wants.
“I walked him inside the station. He was right behind me, pressing the gun against my spine. I never expected he’d make it back out, but when we got to the evidence locker, instead of killing me, he only knocked me out. I don’t know how he managed to get away, but what choice did I have, Jon? What choice?”
“Why did you run? I’m sure the other cops would have understood.”
“They wouldn’t have listened.”
“You could have told them what happened. Now they think you’ve been in on this.”
Yang turned toward me. His eyes wide and wild. “They would have asked who and I wouldn’t have been able to lie.”
I met his stare. “Who was it, Yang? Why would that make you think you needed to run?”
He opened his mouth to speak, lips trembling, and then he answered both of my questions with a name: “Jesse Taylor.”
The Death Agreement: Severity & Preamble & Section I - Recount History | Section II - Look After Family | Section III & IV - Obituary & Attend Funeral | Section V - Share Final Words | Section VI - Wishes | Section VII - Celebrate Life | [Section VIII - Visit The Dead & Ex Post Facto & Addendum]
Submitted November 01, 2014 at 01:49AM by 2LT_Randon http://ift.tt/10aYsqD nosleep
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