Prologue

Soundtrack

Moriarty Woogie - The Bonecollectors

Rock This Town - Stray Cats

Good Golly Miss Molly - Micke Muster

Chapter 31

I’m staring at the phone screen, number unknown, voice waiting for my answer. I lean over it and say, “Could you hold on for a second?” and put it on mute, and ask Madam Wang, “You got any good whiskey here?”

“What do you think?”

“You got Macallan?”

“Of course.” As she goes through the liquor cabinet, I see her hair swaying back and forth like a waterfall. She comes up with two glasses and a bottle. Olivia reaches out, picks up the bottle, unscrews it, and pours me four fingers with a playful smirk. An elegant line of liquid escapes the bottle into the lowball.

Here they are, my four fingers of joy. And I get to say to these fucking people what I think of them. And most importantly, Olivia is here, by my side.

I lift it to my face and say, “It’s been quite a night,” and dump all four fingers into my throat. The burning mixes with all the flavors that I usually savor - the torch slides down to my stomach. Satisfied, I crack my neck, unlock and unmute the phone, and say, “All right, who am I speaking to?”

The voice says, “I am John Pemberton III.”

“Nice to meet you, I guess. So, what’s up, Johnny?”

“You think you’re so smart. You think you can run away from us, do you?”

“Well, Johnny, let’s see. I did it, what, three times so far? Maybe more, who knows? You guys aren’t very good at it, you know.” I lean in so close that the fog from my breath condenses on the glass of the phone.

John says, “You don’t seem to understand who you’re dealing with. We are the top detective agency in the Midwest, and when we do the job, we do it well. By now, you know what our job is, and now, you are going to learn how we deal with people like you, what we can do.”

“What can you do, you ask? I don’t know, shoot yourself and die. What else can you do?”

“Very funny. Laugh while you still can. We know where you are. You’re at that filthy brothel in Ellensburg. As we’re speaking, men are surrounding that place, ready to storm it. They’re gonna kill and torture every single person in there, including you and Olivia.”

I interrupt, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Johnny, did I hear you right? Are you telling me that you brought your losers, that your sadistic losers, here to do that? What are you gonna do exactly? Are you gonna storm the place, Johnny?”

“What do you think we’re gonna do?”

I stand up, leaning over the phone, almost screaming into the microphone. “Do you know how Chicago came to be? It was a place where all the cattle and all the grain from the Midwest were shipped to and traded at. In other words, it’s a useless, mindless parasite nest. It sits right between two coasts, dead center. You know what it is, Johnny? It’s a skid mark on the map of North America.” The voice on the phone stutters, trying to say something, but I talk over him. “Now, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. I’m not done with you yet. You say you brought some goons, some impotent fucks to storm the place. Alright - do you realize you’re about to rob a gun store? Do you know how well that goes? And I’m going to…”

A small hand, unbelievably quick, snatches the phone from in front of me. Madame Wang grips it in her nails and starts screaming in Chinese. Her voice drops, rises, circles. There’s a tonality I’ve never heard before. She speaks so fast I can catch only individual words, it all comes out in one breath, relentless. She finishes, and her last words hang like a battle cry. If I had to guess, she just threatened to make a dildo out of his femur.

She hands the phone back. “You don’t talk for me. I talk for myself.”

“Alright,” I say. “You heard the lady. Here’s the deal. You useless fucks - whatever missiles or toys you brought, you have bought them from a distributor, haven’t you? Madame Wang buys wholesale. This place is a fortress. And inside it, there are a lot of very well-armed people. Sure, they shake their tits for money, but a lot of them know how to pull a trigger. And now there’s me. You’ve faced me before. I don’t know what gives you the illusion you’ve got a chance.”

Silence on the line. Heavy breathing.

Then the voice comes back, “Are you going to live there, Rodion? In that brothel? Forever? Never coming out? Don’t you realize we’ll be waiting? Behind every corner, in every trench, behind every bush…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, John,” I cut in. “I get it. You’ll be hiding in my closet, trying on Olivia’s dresses. Sure. Understood. But listen carefully. You left a trail. Too many bodies to count. Too many resources burned. Too many people know what you did. You understand what that means?”

“What are you going to do?” he says. “File a complaint with the authorities? You think anyone reviewing it isn’t already on our side?”

“John, I’m not that stupid. What I’m telling you is this - if what I know becomes common knowledge, if people find out how your ‘best agency in the Midwest’ actually operates… how you can’t catch one logistics contractor, how you stack bodies - your own guys, civilians - over and over. How many people are going to trust you then? So here’s the deal. First condition - you stay in the Midwest. Enjoy your shitty dipshit deep-dish pizza. You don’t come anywhere near the Cascades. You forget about this job. Say you failed. Make something up. I don’t care. I’ve dealt with Wade. I’ve dealt with his people. They paid for what they did. You get to keep your little business. So go back east and stick to union busting. Deal?”

Heavy breathing. I tap my fingers on the table. Olivia pours me two more fingers of whiskey. I knock it back.

“Deal,” the voice says.

The line disconnects. I sweep my eyes over everyone in the room. Colonel Azaña looks at me as if I’ve just pulled a sword out of my own throat. Olivia pours herself more whiskey and laughs. Madame Wang, under her breath, keeps cursing in Chinese. I hook my hand around the neck of the bottle and drag it toward me. Glass rattles sharply against glass. Shrugging, pouring myself another drink, I say:

“Well, I don’t like Chicago. What can you do?”

Madame Wang shrugs and, inspecting the fetish tools and implements lined up on the wall behind her, says, “Nobody likes Chicago. And speaking of Chicago, I’ve got to call my friend. He needs to know what kind of people are showing up here, swinging their little dicks in my parking lot.”

Olivia sips her whiskey, staring past Madame Wang at the same spot. Her eyes don’t move, but she isn’t looking at the wall. I touch her hand. She shivers, looks at me, and I tell her:

“I don’t know what to say, I… I’m sorry. Listen, I’m sorry.”

“What?” Madame Wang says. “What are you sorry about?”

“Well…” My tongue goes numb, the phrasing too tangled, so I force it out. “She owned a bar. It burned down. It was all she had. And that’s on me.”

Madame Wang walks over and wraps her arms around Olivia from behind. “Is this the first time your place goes down in flames?”

Olivia turns her head and looks at her, and a glimpse of sunlight crosses her face. She stands, returns the hug, “Madame Wang, how about we put some music on?”

She turns on a smooth, creeping blues from Dire Straits. We pour more whiskey and talk, settling down, calming a little.

Hours fly by.

Food is delivered to our room, but the wave of whiskey amber has already swept me into a dizzy waltz. Munching on a slider burger, I drop my head and stare at the black rectangle of the phone screen in front of me. Fine droplets of alcohol slash across its smudged glass. Behind the tainted reflective surface, there is blackness, and that blackness contains the memories, captured by its callous stare.

All the photos in its gallery.

There were more people involved in all this than Wade and whoever came after me, but I can’t fix everything at once. At least now that filth is off my back.

“So ASGI wanted the Hellhazard for the Wishing Well, whatever. I wonder why. Why steal it from the company?” I say.

Olivia says, “What about that guy who came to my bar? What was his name?”

A gaping hole opens in my mind. Siya - or anyone at ASGI - never knew about Lenny. That was kept inside the company. Jerry told me Mr. Hanson liked to keep a low profile. He called it ‘leadership disagreements.’ I hold my chin, like my head might spin off. Elbow on the table. My forehead burns against my palm.

“I need to call Mr. Hanson.”

I reach for the device that Olivia and I had purchased in the Yellow Sector. I haven’t even checked my emails or messages because I knew that whatever I’m going to hear is going to be lies, or at least I cannot verify that they’re not. At the end of the day, I knew that Mr. Hanson was looking to get in contact with me, to put it mildly. And as I open the email app, I see that there are at least four emails per day from him, all worded differently, with grammar and spelling errors. The last one reads:

‘I know you’re alive, contact me right now .’

That space before the dot - even people who work for the company have limits to their patience. I ask Madam Wang to turn off the music and press the call button. Five seconds. For five seconds, the phone rings.

The call connects.

I hear Mr. Hanson’s voice, faster and higher-pitched than I remember, “Mr. Taktarov, what is taking you so long?”

“Listen, I know what I’m carrying.”

“You do?”

“Yes, I do, Mr. Hanson. And I don’t appreciate that you kept that away from me.”

“It doesn’t matter. All you needed to do was move it back to Seattle.”

“That’s what I was doing before things happened to me. And I have come across the people who organized the unfortunate events that transpired. But my real question is - you aren’t telling me the whole story, are you, Mr. Hanson? There is something in the company that doesn’t want me to get there. And until you tell me what it is, I’m going to leave. I’m going to remain where I am.”

He says, “You don’t need to know any of that. Your job is simple. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re alive.”

“I am alive, but Derek, Andy, Sebastian, and a whole bunch of other people are not.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Now… none of what happened invalidates our contract.”

“I understand that. I’m still waiting for the answer to my question. What happens as soon as I set foot in Seattle? Am I going to get shot?”

“That might be a possibility.”

I chuckle, lean back, and bring the phone closer. “So you’re telling me I’m about to walk into another trap? I’m telling you - if you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’m going back to Nevada, and I’m putting that thing, the Wishing Well, back where it came from.”

There is a long pause. Long. Colonel Azaña raises his eyebrows and nods.

Mr. Hanson says, “By now you should know what you’re carrying. And the Company believes that this item can be leveraged for special projects that are being planned for the next fiscal year. However, this opinion is contested. There is a high-ranking leader who believes that pouring any resources into the Wishing Well is the wrong decision.”

“What is the name of that leader?” I ask.

“It’s Hong. Vice President Hong. I knew he would try to sabotage the mission. I did not anticipate that he would go this far.”

“Okay. Thank you for letting me know. And now, Mr. Hanson, I’ll be honest with you. Why would I ever bring something like the Wishing Well to the Company while you guys are still trying to kill me?”

Mr. Hanson says, “First, because that’s the contract.”

“Contracts can fall through.”

“If you do this, I’ll make sure to find you, Mr. Taktarov. Furthermore, if you do this, you won’t find a job as a janitor anywhere within the Yellow or White sectors. If you do this, there will be people coming to get you, and I’ll make sure that the reward is compelling. After all, the money that I owe you is still allocated for this fiscal year. And I don’t think it’s gonna take until the next one for someone to deliver your head to me.”

I rub my forehead. That’s exactly what I told those Chicago people just a couple of hours ago. Reputation is everything in this business. “Okay, and what’s gonna happen when I’m in the White Sector? Is Vice President Hong gonna stalk me with a shiv?”

Mr. Hanson says, “There’s a lot of scrutiny directed at this event. You don’t get to know the details. What you do need to know is that he is unlikely to come at you in an official capacity. However, he is a man of considerable means, and I cannot rule out private action. So, come back here. You’ll get paid, and once you’re paid, nobody will trouble you anymore. Good night, Mr. Taktarov. I expect you in Seattle shortly.”

He ends the call.

I sit in silence.

Olivia asks, “Colonel Azaña, so do you think we should bring the cargo to Mr. Hanson?”

Colonel Azaña slaps his thigh and says, “The inevitability of eventual choice of the optimal trajectory is simple math, simple mathematics, and escaping such a trajectory requires an increasing amount of foresight, care, and simple luck. Even given the nature of the Wishing Well and its remarkable capability to manipulate entropy, I doubt that evading Mr. Hanson is the agreeable course of action agreeable with the universal alignment. As for your concerns, Rodion, dedicated minds spend decades cracking in futile attempts to understand how to harness the will of this item, the passion concentrated, ingenuity amplified, and insanity emerging, erasing the faltering minds of those who sought to conquer the understanding of the mysteries.”

“You think the Company is not as good as the U.S. Army and the CIA?”

Colonel Azaña says, “There would be the next chapter in an ancient book that is still being written, but given the content and the aspirations of the minds involved… the Wishing Well shall not submit to their control.”

I pick up the glass and swirl the whiskey, set it down without taking a sip, and ask Madam Wang, “Can we take a short nap here? I guess we’d better take some rest. Tomorrow we’re going to Puget Sound.”

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Debrief

Image credit

Prologue

Soundtrack

For What It’s Worth - Buffalo Springfield

White Room - Cream

Play It All Night Long - Warren Zevon

Chapter 30

From grainy, monochrome strokes of light and shadow, the image of a man takes shape. In the gray-green eyepiece, floating, suspended in absolute darkness, the man is motionless - fused with the chair, his arms bound to the armrests, his legs tied to the legs. He looks like an extension of that, like an outgrowth of some similar warehouse matter. I came here for this man, but he is not what draws my attention now. Behind him, in the darkness, a hunted shadow thrashes.

His voice, a hollow echo, rolls through the vast, two-story space of the warehouse. “Yo, you fuckface, I’m gonna fuck you up, you hear? I’m gonna fuck you up. I’m gonna end this fucking asshole. I’m gonna fuck you up.”

Perched on the concrete landing, one step away from the rattling metal catwalk, I watch, curious, the rage of the man below - impotent. Threats made it clear now that the danger he poses is no longer implied, perhaps not even real. But he still doesn’t get it. He is armed, after all - there’s a rifle in his hands. He swings it back and forth and keeps yelling. On the monochrome display, I recognize the pattern. Multicam, tainted by an imposing black. A black that betrays the pattern, making it stand out in the night - at night, things don’t turn black all of a sudden.

They simply become dark. There’s a difference. And the man below, and others like him, fail to understand it.

He looks into the dark, and he screams into the dark, stirring something primal, not the fear of a man, but of a mammal, maybe even a reptile - the kind that strains the eyes until they bleed and still sees nothing. There is no light. No flashlight on the rifle either, he sways it from side to side, aiming at figments of his vision, shapes born of imagination, squiggles and shadows.

The thing is - I’ve killed the light. And I killed those who came to see why it was gone. I have the vision. He does not. The man runs across the first floor, scrambling, stumbling, looking for the man in the chair - to threaten, to point his rifle past him, to appear in control, to preserve whatever fragments of power, whatever illusions of control he still has.

“You asshole - show yourself - be a man!”

I’ll be a better man than he’ll ever be.

“I’m gonna fuck him up!!”

No, he won’t. This is the last bargaining chip he could claim, which in itself is a delusion.

“I’m… I’m… gonna fuck him up!!!”

His voice shifts into falsetto, all masculinity stripped by the strain on the vocal cords. Thinking that putting more force to compensate for an improper technique is a common mistake. With a grey-green dot floating in space over his body, I track him as he pants with a strained wail.

“You goddamn fuck!”

Blasphemy. The web of my right hand makes a wave and settles, clamped tightly, on the grip of the rifle - the rifle I came to own by the right of conquest. I’m not looking to correct him. I’m not looking for a theological debate.

I’m looking for a clean shot.

And I have it.

As the man from Chicago freezes for a moment, standing behind the chair, still looking into the void and threatening it, I aim at his head and squeeze the trigger. The snap of the weapon in my hands, the stream of hot gas, choked by the suppressor - and a limp man on the concrete floor. Dark-bluish gray pool forms.

That’s the last one.

Ten more seconds. In silence, all is amplified.

Content, I stand up and descend the catwalk. Metal grating rattles, and the man in the chair raises his head and angles his ear, and wiggles in his restraints. I approach him and take out the knife, and guiding the blade across the tape, I cut him free. In my night vision goggles, his body and limbs are blurred resemblances of themselves, too close to be seen in their true shape. Even superpowers have limits.

A breath tainted by bacteria and dryness comes, “You came from the darkness. A guise emerging. Are you the hand of God?”

I work the old man free and answer him, “I don’t claim to be anything but a man - and a great sinner at that. You need to follow me, Colonel.”

“What is your name?”

“Call me Rods.”

“Is that your true name?”

“You can call me Rodion if you wish.”

He stands up and stretches, unsteady and still holding on to his chair. What restrained him now gives him stability. I hand him the handheld flashlight and turn it on, and its daylight bright blade, coming as a cone of grayish green, illuminates the periphery of my vision.

“Is this wise?” He asks.

“Yes. Please angle your light under your feet. Follow me.”

The man on the floor, a limp mannequin. The last one. There were four. One came outside to inquire about the power box set on fire by Olivia. One at the entrance, calling the phone that buzzed in my pocket. One has been sleeping on a bunk bed, face up. Snoring.

As we walk out of the warehouse, moving along the corridor of stacked pallets, equipment covered with tarps, workbenches with parts scattered like the guts of a mechanical beast, I ask the Colonel, “Do you need anything from this place?”

“This place? Requiring anything of this place is folly. No consequence ever comes out of these arrangements.”

I push the door leading outside, shaking my head. I wince, and the piercing stab in my ear reminds me of the knife that slashed it. I ask, “Do you know who I am?”

“Do you know who you are?”

“Well, if I’m here to extract you, old man…”

“The absence of a task yields clarity. Such sobriety remains elusive for many. That is the answer to the wrong question.”

What is he even saying? And I thought Wade was weirdly elusive.

We go outside, and the night is bright enough for me to power off my nods and flip them up on my helmet. Across the road that runs through the industrial zone, off warehouses and assembly plants, the whole block is drowned in darkness. We walk a hundred yards and turn. Behind the corner, there is Olivia’s truck, engine running, lights off. Colonel Azaña reaches out and, with his left hand, opens the passenger door. I climb up front. Olivia turns on the lights, and we take off.

We go back south - back to the only place that fits the nature of what we’re doing. Madame Wang told us to use the loading dock, as even the VIP exit would be swarming with people. So we follow her instructions. Besides, in the back, there’s a large garage door - we can hide the car inside.

All three of us get out.

A girl, wearing tight thongs, glittering like the scales of a neon-colored fish, with pasties on her nipples, leads us to the weapons room. Madame Wang is already there: composed, impeccable makeup, hair done. She sits at the table, hands joined in a practiced, news-anchor pose. A plastic container stands in front of her, closed.

“I didn’t realize you’d grown so comfortable around that thing,” I say.

She rises, a half-moon smile on her lips. “Taming and understanding the dangerous is precisely my business. I’m offended that you’re surprised.”

“Not many things surprise me. Anyway, it would be better if Colonel Azaña introduced himself.”

There are three chairs. We sit. The colonel - a solid sixty pounds heavier than Wade, gray as ash but sporting the same old-school goatee - looks around with a mix of dread and awe. Madame Wang sits in her chair, silent and presidential-like, never willing to kick the conversation off. That is the job of the visitor, of the petitioner.

I take the hint. “Colonel, first, I’d like to apologize for everything that happened to you. What we did - all we wanted was to talk. We couldn’t anticipate that our adversaries would disturb you.”

He says, “That’s quite all right, actually. The world and the universe converge onto the preordained, and as such, the observant eyes that persist in their inquisition… throughout my life, those I have warred against have not grown tired. The mere whisper that I am in demand, required, is enough to summon a response.”

I tell the Colonel what Wade told us and ask him, point-blank, if it was true. I didn’t expect him to laugh - his belly shakes, his shirt wrinkled and hanging.

“Hubris,” he says. “Pure hubris. As if the capacity were ever there. As if the knowledge were ever obtained. All those endeavors, yes, they involved the Wishing Well - but it is far more ancient. Some say it came from the sky. That isn’t true either. The Wishing Well is old. Older than the pyramids and the Sphinx combined. Perhaps as old as rock. I could even say it predates rock.”

“What are you saying? That the United States didn’t create it?”

“No. All we did was spend years - decades - trying to understand what fell into our hands.”

“That makes sense. No one would build a city near a bunker just to test a theory.”

“No, no, no,” the Colonel interrupts. “We did that. That part is true. A lot of experiments. A lot of studies. A lot of people spent what was left of their sanity trying to understand it, trying to put the Wishing Well to use.”

Olivia says, “How do we destroy it?”

The Colonel shifts in his seat, shuffles, and takes a long breath. “Destroy it? You think you can destroy it? You think we didn’t try? There was a time when delusion prevailed - when we believed the task was complete, successful. People were rewarded. Only to discover the ultimate joke.”

“You’re saying it can’t be destroyed?” she asks.

“You’ve seen it in action. Don’t you understand? Nothing can be done to it without consent.”

“I was hired to deliver it to the Company.”

“The Company,” he repeats. “Of course. The most powerful institutions always chase relics like this. They look for ways to strike their enemies. Now ask me how that worked out for us. For me. And for the United States.”

A black box on the table occupies my vision, without me even touching it. The presence inside - is it watching me? Pointing to the center of the table, I ask, “Colonel, do you think I should hide it? Should I abscond with it?”

“Have you seen the stars, Rodion?”

“What?”

“The stars have outlined themselves, and they speak. You’ve seen more of them than others, so ask yourself this - do those stars permit you to abscond with the Wishing Well?”

His face is still. There’s a smirk on it. Not mockery - something else. Sorrowful grace.

“I can do anything I want,” I say slowly.

“You’ll be hunted. They’ve poured too many resources into getting it. They won’t let it slip away.”

“Well, someone set me up. Killed my people.”

“All that means is that there was a disagreement over which greedy hand gets to hold it.”

“I think that’s what it tried to tell me…”

He turns sharply toward me. His mouth opens wide. His eyes widen so much that the irises are ringed with white, blood vessels streaking. “It… it spoke to you?”

“Yeah.”

He leans forward and grabs my hands. His palms are wet. “Tell me.”

“It came with warnings. Questions. It was… unsettling.”

“Marvelous,” he whispers in exhilaration. “Just marvelous.”

“I thought… one of the rules was not to let it speak to you.”

“No. Is that what they told you? Of course. Of course they did. There is a reason for it. A good reason. As far as I can remember, it spoke to only three people. And every time, it wanted them to have it. They gave you that rule not to protect you, but to limit you. To keep you from learning. Do you understand? If it ever speaks to you - don’t let it go. But knowing the Wishing Well… it might never speak again. The truth is - I don’t know.”

Olivia speaks up, quietly, her contralto muffled, lacking its usual depth. “So you think we should deliver it?”

The Colonel says, “The path through the stars is set. You follow the call. You move along the lines, and you follow the great path. And following the great path is the ultimate virtue.”

“I see,” I say.

“Exactly.”

I turn to Olivia. “Listen, I never asked you - how did you know that guy wasn’t the Colonel?”

She brushes her hair back, exposing her neck, a faint laugh in her voice. “You didn’t see it?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, first of all - do you think someone like Wade would be living in that house, with all that stuff on the walls?”

The Colonel interrupts. “I do apologize, but those things on the walls might be the very reason you were able to get out and rescue me.”

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“Not to diminish your heroism, but the writings, the diagrams - they’re what little I learned from the Wishing Well. The path has a shape. Shapes have words. Words must be arranged correctly.”

“You’re saying it helped us?” I ask.

“It gave you a chance.”

I wince, remembering the body on the couch. “I think one of your neighbors came to investigate.”

“What happened to him?”

“He’s dead.”

“The Wishing Well doesn’t care,” the Colonel says. “Or rather… it is a force of nature. When a hurricane hits a village, the wind is cold, distant, indifferent. It only follows its path until it fades.”

“Alright. But Olivia - what was it?”

“Colonel is left-handed,” she says. “Wade couldn’t fake that. And there was no one else living there. Were you even paying attention, Rods?”

I smack my head - more theatrical than anything, though it lands with a dull thud in my half-ruined ear. “Damn it. The weird-looking scissors.”

“Among other things.”

The Colonel leans in. “And now, who speaks of paths and belonging - Rods - Rodion - tell me - What are you going to do?”

I stumble through my thoughts. I look at their faces, fixed on me. Silence in the weapons room presses in. I open my mouth - to say anything, to break it…

The phone rings.

Wade’s phone.

I answer.

“Hello?”

The voice comes through:

“Hello, Rodion. I think it’s time you and I talked.”

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Debrief

Image credit

Prologue

Soundtrack

Purple Haze - The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Riders on the Storm - The Doors

Keep On Chooglin’ - Creedence Clearwater Revival

Chapter 29

The furious roar of the engine, whining and barely keeping up with the gear shifts, carries our car down the road. Ahead, the ruby lights of Wade’s car slip into the darkness, racing past the flow of traffic, carrying their drivers toward unknown business. Hanging against the stretched seatbelt, Olivia grips the wheel, and the tendons in her arms stand out in sharp relief. She parts her lips, runs her tongue along her upper teeth, spits out invisible saliva, and drags her tongue across them again.

She doesn’t take her eyes off the road, as if her head and spine have turned to stone. The dull thud of the pedals slows us down. Two cars ahead of us drive side by side, blocking the way, and she wrenches the wheel, still gripping it as if tossing the body in a bar brawl. Her head dives down, and she hunches even deeper, streamlined and ready to pounce out of the cabin of the car and chase Wade on foot.

The car, tilting dangerously, tears forward along the shoulder, throwing both Olivia and me around. Every time a tire dips into a hole or strikes a rock, the jolts ripple through us. I splay out, bracing my feet against the space in front of me and my back against the seat, holding the rifle I took from the dead man in one hand, the other pressed against the console. My head feels bleached out, like a stain washed with chlorine, leaving only outlines and fragments of memory.

Plastic of the grip in one hand, plastic of the dashboard in the other. Ahead, in the darkness - the enemy. The task. The target. We follow the trail, like a wolf with its nose to something invisible, barely there, caught only by instinct.

My rage is cold. Olivia’s is a burning torch.

She wrenches the wheel with force, with a full-body pull, as if with a single motion she could hurl the car forward, lift it into the air. Even in this shaking commotion, she keeps scraping her tongue against her teeth. Her lower jaw pushed forward, opening that dark maw, that dark void ringed with teeth, where the pink flesh of her tongue flicks out again and again.

This is our flight, and this is Wade’s flight. No coincidence that the same word came to mean different things - framing different actions a man takes: the pursuit, the avoidance of an enemy’s hand, or the pull of gravity. The swiftness of the car now eats the dark bend of the asphalt, rushing forward, closing the gap. Wade is ahead, but now there’s only 150 yards between us. 120. A hundred. I roll the window down, and the dry air of the plains hits my ear, and I wince.

There’s no reason to aim at Wade. We need to close the distance. There’s too much sway, like I’m standing on a platform or skating, and I won’t compromise on precision - the last virtue of a man with a bleached-out soul.

My ear aches, and I can’t help but touch it to verify that the whining sensation pulsing with the beats of the wind rushing in through the open window is not a figment of my imagination but a future scar.

The West has coined the name for a seat next to the driver. Shotgun. Riding shotgun. In - a stagecoach. Now I am riding rifle - in a truck. A job that requires doing nothing until the time comes to earn one’s wage.

Our car shifts lanes, and I’m tussled to the side like unsecured luggage despite my best attempts to hold on. I’m going to torture Wade. That I know. With the certainty of a physical law, I’m going to keep him alive and keep him feeling everything I’m going to do to him. I’ve never done it - but for my throbbing ear and the ligaments and muscles and tendons in my body pulled by the raking - and for Olivia’s obsessive gnawing at her tongue and her compulsive spitting, I am going to get all the information, everything he knows out of him - and then I am going to…

The ruby glow of the taillights veers sharply to the right. Olivia slams the brakes. The tires scream. My stomach knots tight.

“Son of a bitch!” she says, wrenching the wheel, grabbing and re-grabbing it, pounding at the column, spinning the ring, throwing the car hard to the right.

We burst onto a dirt road, kicking up clouds of dust, tinted red. Olivia leans into the wheel even harder, like a succubus clamped onto a traveler’s throat. She lifts her hand, presses a button, and the road ahead - rolling steppe, scattered green trees - floods with light from the spotlights, leaving nowhere to hide, not for a man, not for an animal.

Wade’s car rolls forward, like a lone player on a stadium field, lit as bright as day - blue-white, harsh - from a battery of powerful lights. Wade tries to swerve, turning onto a side track, but his heavy car bogs down on the uneven road, and the distance closes relentlessly.

Twenty meters.

I grab the handle above the window with my left hand, pull my right arm out with the rifle, and lean out. Bracing my feet, pressing my shoulder against the car, squinting through sand whipping into my eyes, I raise my sight at the dark, soft, vulnerable rubber tires. I aim where they should be and squeeze the trigger.

Short burst. Another. Another. The smell of burning powder, choked by the suppressor and leaking out, fills my nose. Burst. Burst. Wade’s car jerks, swerving to the right. A cloud of smoke, lit by his own lights, expands and thickens, as if the car - a wounded beast - is limping away from the hunters. The car slows, but he can’t straighten it. I see him gripping the wheel, but his movement is panicked, fearful - nothing like the way Olivia drives, that sharp smile cutting across her face. Wade’s car slams into a tree. Airbags explode inside the cabin.

Olivia hits the brakes. I’m thrown forward. I drop back inside, kick the door open, and jump out, swap the magazine in the rifle, and toss the one that’s almost spent under my seat. Coughing, I aim the airbag and shoot it. It deflates, and Wade inside tussles in his seat. I command him to raise his hands, and he obeys.

It’s his turn to obey now.

He turns his head in jerking, jittery motions. His ashen goatee is streaked with blood running from his nose, as if a vampire had been disturbed mid-feeding.

“Get out,” I say, placing the red dot over his head.

His voice comes, muffled by the car. “What about the belt?”

“Left hand. Slowly.”

He does as I say.

“Now get out.”

He does that too.

“On the ground. On your stomach. Hands forward.”

He hesitates for a second, then drops into the dust. Keeping the rifle on him, I circle, aiming at his head.

“Olivia, check his pockets.”

She pulls out a phone and the car keys.

“Stay still,” I tell Wade. “Let her unlock it.”

She grabs his hand, presses his finger to the screen, unlocks it - then yanks his finger back.

Crack. He yelps.

“Don’t,” I say.

I clear my throat, gurgling up stale, salty snot, and spit it into the darkness, away from the cone of light.

“Listen, Wade,” I say. “My turn to ask questions. I suggest you answer them before I...”

What do I know about enhanced interrogation? Nothing. Aside from taking my rage out on him piece by piece. But the grit in my voice does the job. His voice, shaken by fear, muffled by the ground, is eaten, absorbed by the soil. I want to see his face - not out of sadistic triumph - out of curiosity.

“Flip over.”

He rolls over and rises into a sitting position. I don’t stop him.

“My first question,” I say. “Colonel Azaña - is he real?”

“Yes.”

“He’s alive?”

“Yes.”

“Where is he now?”

“Compound. We’ll go to the compound. A warehouse. I’ll show you.”

There’s a plea in his eyes, a glimmer of hope - that if he gives me enough, I’ll forget what he did.

“You will,” I say. “Now, what you told me about the cargo, the item, the Wishing Well. Is that true?”

“As far as I can remember.”

“So what I saw in the casino was real?”

“Yes. Yes, it was real.”

“Okay,” I say. “Now the real question. Who are you working for?”

“You already know that. Northwest Pemberton.”

“Yes,” I say. “That’s not what I’m asking.”

“ASGI is our main customer.”

The fingers of my left hand, holding the fore-end of the rifle, move on their own, like I’m playing some instrument - as much fidgeting as I can allow. If that is true… then could Siya be behind it? Could she have ordered all this?

“Who was your point of contact?” I ask.

“This time it was different. A private call. An individual.”

“Siya?”

“Yes.”

“That whole thing in the desert - was it you?”

“Yes.”

“User RRM53 in a Concord chat - was that you?”

“Yes.”

This man right here spilled everything he knew, bumbled it out like a coward. For what he did to me, he would die. But I feel shame - shame for what I had in mind, what I was thinking about, fantasizing about, torturing him, making him suffer.

This isn’t Christian. I can’t. If I do everything I want to do to him, I’ll become just like him. Those piglet eyes, that wandering gaze, the shivering jaw, spilling words like a cracked vessel. I’m not going to be like him. My God knows what I did, and for it, I will answer. But I forgive Wade - not in a way that spares him his fate, but in a way that spares my soul from being lost to regret.

He smiles, baring bloodied teeth - the smile of a merchant bargaining with his most expensive stock.

“We could use people like you,” he says.

What a sneaky little rat. He saw my hesitation. He read it on my face. Even before I said anything, he started pushing his luck. Assholes like that always look for a gap, always trying to weasel just a little more out of whatever goodwill they can find.

“No,” I say. “I don’t like the weather in Chicago.”

“So, where did you keep the Wishing Well? I want to know.”

I sneer. “Do you seriously think that if I didn’t tell you back then, when the situation was reversed, I’m going to tell you now? No. You’re never going to…”

A bang to my left. I flinch. If my finger had been on the trigger, I would’ve emptied a burst into Wade.

There is a bloodied hole in his chest, seeping. He falls, groaning. His fat fingers cross over his chest, writhing on the ground. He turns on his side, palms running up and down his chest, as if he could pull the bullet out.

I look at Olivia. Sharp shadows carve her face, outlining her tightened jaw, every muscle drawn. She walks up to Wade, stands over him, and points the pistol - my Glock - at his head. As he opens his mouth, she executes him. She turns on her heels and stands there, hunched, her lips twisted into a bitter grimace.

“What the hell?” I say. “Olivia, we needed him to get to Colonel Azaña.”

“No, we don’t need him,” she says. “I checked both his phones. I know the address.”

“Couldn’t you wait until the end of the conversation? Maybe he would’ve made us a great offer about the wonderful winters in Chicago and how living in that godforsaken city is the best thing ever.”

She doesn’t respond. Walks back to the car, picks up his phone, taps the screen, and shows me the gallery. At first, I can’t make it out. Just squares.

Then I see it. Bodies. Limbs. Faces. I squint, then pull back, blinking, like I can wash it away.

“Yeah,” she says.

I look at the body on the ground, lying in the dirt.

“We did the world a favor,” I say. “A disease cured. Maybe we should apply for a job at WHO.”

“Well,” she says, “are you ready to go or what?”

“Yeah, let’s go. Where is it?”

“North of Ellensburg.”

We get in the car and drive off into the night. Olivia chews on her tongue and scrapes its surface, and the tip of her nose flushes, and she draws air with a wet sucking sound. My hand caressed the exposed skin on her forearm, and she jolts - and releases her grip on the steering wheel and slides her palm into mine.

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Debrief

Image credit

Prologue

Soundtrack

Stuck In The Middle With You - Stealers Wheel

Helter Skelter (Remastered 2009) - The Beatles

Reinforcements - Sparks

Chapter 28

Here is a stale basement, crammed with crooked shelves overloaded with boxes, jars, broken machinery, spare parts, lit by a dim bulb hanging from a thick wire. This is where I was always meant to end up. A steep staircase yawns open in front of me - and a kick sends me tumbling down. My hands are zip-tied behind my back, and I can’t do anything to break the fall. My legs, my shoulders slam into the steps, sharp pain driving into my body. I hit the floor with my chest and chin, my jaw snapping shut hard.

Footsteps descend.

The man calling himself the Colonel says, “Well, looks like you finally made it. Comfortable down there?”

His boots step into my field of view. I try to roll onto my back, but a boot presses into my shoulder, forcing me face down again. Barely moving my battered jaw, I speak into the concrete, coated with dust and grit, “So what do I call you, old man?”

“You don’t call me anything,” he says, suddenly sharp, lively. “You answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ If I like your answer, I’ll have you killed quickly. If I don’t… I’ll take my time.”

Metal grinds against metal. He lifts an adjustable wrench and weighs it in his hand.

“We’ll start reducing the number of joints in this room. How does that sound? And besides joints, what else do we have, huh? Fingers? Toes.” He sets the wrench down on the floor in front of me. “That’s for later. We’ve got a long talk ahead of us before we get to that.” He crouches closer. “So. I’m asking you, asshole. Where’s the cargo? It’s not on you. We tore your car apart. Where did you put it?”

Metallic salt touches my tongue. The pain in my jaw rises, throbbing, burning. I say, “Alright. I’ll tell you. We put your - what do you call it - Wishing Well in your crapper. Now you’ll have to tear out the entire sewer system to find it.”

A raspy bass above my head snaps, “You motherfucker!”

The man pretending to be the Colonel raises his hand. “Hold on. Simmer down.”

“But Wade…”

“I said shut the fuck up. You trigger-happy young generation. You. Watch and learn,” he says. “Otherwise, there won’t be anyone left to teach you.”

Wade steps out of my line of sight. A blow lands on my side. My back arches, and my bound hands are seized by a hard palm - with one sharp motion, they wrench my arms up behind me. Agony spills through my shoulders, across my back. My arms are forced higher and higher, pressing my face into the concrete. I try to twist away.

A boot plants itself on my back. My arms keep rising, stretching past what they should, tearing new horizons of pain through my body, splitting my thoughts apart.

“This is called the rack,” the voice proclaims from somewhere above - from where the river of pain pours down, unrelenting, only growing. A pain I can’t get used to. A pain that makes me discover, remember every tendon, every muscle I didn’t even know existed. A second stretches into an eternity. The voice continues:

“In the old days, they’d hang a man by his wrists and let him dangle. Sometimes overnight. But the best part…”

Wade lets go. My arms drop onto my back, and the absence of pain spreads like warmth.

“...is that you can do this all evening?” he goes on. “Fun for you. And this one here - sooner or later, he’ll crack. And if not… I’ve got more to show you.” A pause. “Remember, Ty - a pencil, a rubber band, and a lighter will make anyone talk. But the rack… the rack is an all-time classic.” There’s a note of satisfaction in his voice, like he’s smiling. “Alright,” he says. “Enough talking. Let’s try again. Where’s your cargo, asshole?”

“I told you,” I say, spitting out a clog of blood. “Check the toilet.”

“Well,” he says, grabbing my arms again, “have it your way.”

This time, he pulls them up slowly. The pain rises with it, flooding my vision, swallowing everything. I choke and cough, and there is fine whining escaping my lungs. And as the pain stretches my tendons and tears at my muscles, the scream escapes through my gaped mouth, salivating over the dust. The sounds above, spoken loudly yet unintelligible, voices of voices corrupted and unintelligible.

Hands let go of my arms, and they drop down on my back, but the release of pain is not complete - there is a background lingering, swirling in my body. I’d curl, if not for the boot pressing me into the ground.

Wade says, “You know what I just realized? I realized you don’t need your ears or eyes to answer my question. So I’m gonna take them, because they’re mine. Understand?”

The steel unsheathed. Before I realize what was said and what the meaning of it was, a singeing, piercing spark explodes from my left ear. I move my head, and the blazing fire consumes what feels like my entire head. There is laughter, and I dig my mouth into the floor, teeth scraping against concrete.

Doorbell. The boot pressing on my spine disappears.

“Hey, boss, you want me to go and check on it?” Says the merc, whose name I forgot.

“No. I’ll go and talk to whoever’s up there. You watch him.”

Footsteps above. Thumping against the wooden staircase.

God, please help me. If this is where my path ends, so be it. I give myself into Your hands. But if not, all I need is that rusty disc on the ground, protruding from the circular saw one foot away from me. With my hands shaking, I shift my head carefully. The man with the rifle watches me. His gaze is wandering, with wordless indifference.

Voices above mutter, then yell. Thuds against the wooden planks. A yell. Gunfire. The merc snaps his head and turns, facing the staircase.

I push off the ground with my right foot and flip onto my back, sliding across the floor as quietly as I can, watching the dense shoulders and the muscular hands on the pistol grip of the rifle inch further and further. My finger touches sharp metal. It slices the skin. My hand is wet. I hook the zip tie over the tooth and yank my hands. Residual pain rises, but the zip tie stays.

Ty, that was his name, changes his step, stepping onto the staircase as there is a dragging sound coming from above.

I hook the plastic on the metal by touch again and yank it so hard that tears burst from my eyes. My hands are free. I roll onto my knees, stand on all fours, and rise, crouching. In the dim light of the solitary light bulb, the gleam of metal catches my eye.

I pick up the wrench.

Ty’s head snaps, his ear facing me, and I rise, swinging the wrench, and land it on his temple.

Wet crack, his body limp, clatters on the ground. I stagger and drop on one knee, dizzy. The wrench is buried up to its lower tooth in his skull, and Ty’s mouth is twitching. Blood splatters, and a convulsion shakes his body.

There’s rustling on the first floor, some conversation. I need to move.

With my back aching, I retrieve the rifle from the man. It’s a Honey Badger with a holographic sight, painted in multicam black, made to invoke the lineage of wartime necessity and shaped into a pattern of intimidation. I shove four magazines into the back pockets of my pants, pull the charging handle back, verify the bronze gleam inside, and press the bolt release, ratcheting the gun back into battery. Watching the world through the sight, through the weapon sight, I ascend the staircase.

A trail of blood leads from the door into the living room. And at the end of it, there’s a body, face down on the couch.

Within this mold and this dirt and this rust, I have found the blade that set me free, and for that I thank the Lord. The stale, wet wood of this house stinks of decay, with its walls covered in scribbles and notes and signs, the dilapidated trap, the house of an unwell mind. I am walking tall through these tainted halls across the blood, across the hardwood. This was no deliverance. The man who came to the door, to the threshold, has exchanged his life for mine. I can’t see his face, and I won’t know his name. And yet, I’d be damned if I ever forget about the gratitude.

The corridor runs along the first floor, to my left, near the basement door. To the right is a large room. I turn and move down the corridor. In one of the rooms should be Olivia. And the two remaining men.

Voices. I peek into the corridor. It’s in the room to the left.

“We have to move,” Wade’s voice rasps. “I don’t need any more neighbors coming here, do you understand?”

“What about her?” says the other voice.

“What about her? Toss her in the car. We’ll keep asking her questions. Then you can do whatever you want with her. Go ham. Film it if you want.”

I take the rifle off safety and, rolling my feet, walk toward the corridor. The red dot shakes. I grit my teeth. My jaw moves, and pain pierces my ear, but I keep going. I reach the doorframe and peek around the corner. I see the mercenary and press the trigger.

A sharp, suppressed crack. The man drops. I duck behind the frame. Two loud shots rip through the space, chewing into the wood. I crouch and bring the sight back around the corner. Another doorway across the room comes into view. The door swings, squeaking on its hinges.

I rush in. Olivia is on the floor, gagged with a dried-up mop.

The garage door starts to open. I rush toward it - pistol shots freeze me in place.

An engine roars. I shift the rifle to my left shoulder and aim around the corner. The car is already moving. I fire a short burst. Glass shatters, but the car keeps going and disappears into the night.

I run back to Olivia, pull the mop from her mouth. She spits, coughs. I cut the zip ties on her wrists and grab her hand.

“We have to chase him.”

We rush outside. On the side of the road, with two wheels on the curb, stands an old truck, parked right behind Olivia’s car, painted black and blending into the poorly lit street. Was this neighbor here to help? Did he bring his car just so he could take someone to the hospital? What was he thinking? The guilt of being rescued by a stranger’s kindness spikes in my mind again, and I swallow the bitter regret.

We get inside our car and take off after Wade. Once we reach him, we won’t treat him kindly.

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Debrief

Image credit

Prologue

Soundtrack

God’s Gonna Cut You Down - Johnny Cash

Floyd - Lynyrd Skynyrd

Hear My Train a Comin’ - Jimi Hendrix

Chapter 27

Chewing a gummy worm with an unnaturally strong strawberry taste, I turn in the passenger seat, feeling around in the dark interior for a fresh bottle of water that should be somewhere on the back seat. Ahead of me stretches a neighborhood of detached houses, each set apart by tall fences and spacious lawns- forty to fifty yards wide at least. In the driver’s seat, Olivia crosses her arms, runs her fingers along them.

I finally find that bottle of water, and holding it in my right hand, I dig with my left through the clothes piling behind us. I pull out a plaid shirt and hand it to her.

“Thanks,” she says, “How long are we going to sit here?”

I check my watch. We were invited here at ten. We arrived at quarter to nine. It’s eleven thirty now. I don’t like surprises. And this old man, I feel, is full of them.

“Do you need to be somewhere?”

“Very funny,” she says, wrapping herself in the shirt. There is a rustic beauty that makes me want to lean over and give her a sneaky kiss.

“Alright,” I say. “Let this car pass, and we’ll see who goes where.”

A sedan rolls past the intercept parking lot where we’re waiting, then disappears down the road. Just an ordinary, unremarkable gray car, lighting the pavement ahead with a dirty yellow glow, touching the cracks on the pavement battered with time and neglect. The valley, scattered with houses, is lit by rare streetlights, stretching along the streets like mismatched colors of a garland. There’s a word lingering on my tongue, like a splinter, pricking my curiosity. I point to the mountains rising in the distance and say, “Is this an arroyo?”

“What?” she says.

“This,” I say, gesturing ahead. “Is that what you call an arroyo?”

“No,” she says. “Not even close.”

“Well, what is it then?”

“It’s like a dried-up creek.”

“Oh. Okay. I thought it was like a valley or something.”

“No, it’s not like a valley.”

“What about chaparral?” I say. “Like what we’ve got in front of us. Is that chaparral?”

She pushes her lips forward, shaking her head. “No. That’s way down south, man.”

“Just a word I heard,” I say. “You know, in books. I never actually looked up what all that chaparral, arroyo stuff is supposed to look like.”

“You’ve spent way too much time around solvents and bunkers. I think you need a vacation when we’re done with all this.”

“Well, what do you have in mind?” I ask.

“Can you get me a pass between sectors?”

“Sure.”

“Then let’s go to Texas. It’s warm, and I’ll show you what actual chaparral looks like.”

“It’s a deal.”

The image of Olivia in a two-piece, standing knee-deep in the ocean and looking back over her shoulder, flashes in my mind and sticks there like molten candy. Instead of batting the thought away, I hold on to this concoction of my imagination, tracing the curves with my eyes, imagining my hand reaching out to take hers. The fingers of my right hand curl into a gentle cup. I make a fist, then relax it again, letting the palm open.

“Alright, let’s get rolling. Third house on the right.”

We pull up to Colonel Azaña’s house, a one-story place, wide and sprawling. The garage door is closed, the shades drawn, insulating the old man’s home from any attempt to peek inside.

I ring the doorbell. The door cracks open, and a salt-and-pepper head leans into the gap. The Colonel’s bass voice comes, “Are you alone?”

“No, I brought the entire British Army with me.”

“Quit that. Come on in.”

Olivia and I step inside. He leads us into a living room joined with the kitchen in an open space.

The walls of the house are covered with pieces of paper, photographs, ribbons, and scraps of cardboard with unintelligible scribbles on them. The density of this clutter overwhelms whatever paint was once applied to the walls during the last attempt at renovation. Judging by the molding separating from the floorboards and the weathered, grayed-out hardwood, that must have been twenty, thirty years ago - maybe even before the pandemic.

As I sit on the couch, the stale smell of mold, food, and burnt fat intensifies. In the sink, a pile of dirty dishes rises into a small tower, with a frying pan and spatulas jutting out, coated in dried tomato sauce and pieces of pasta. On the counter - a pair of funky-looking kitchen scissors, with the handles of cracked plastic.

The Colonel is wearing the same outfit as earlier today, and the wrinkles of his shirt around the armpits are stained with perspiration. He brings over a folder and says, “Before we start, would you like some tea?”

Olivia says, “No, thanks,” shifting on the couch, away from a dark brown stain on its worn-out surface.

“Suit yourself,” I say. “I’m not thirsty.”

“It’s your loss. Anyway, here’s the binder.”

He puts it down on the table, opens it, and, with his right hand, flips through the pages, leaving short comments - dates, people, places. Digging into his memory takes a toll: he closes his eyes, pulling sentences out slowly, trying to recall things he must have known half a century ago.

Twenty minutes pass. At first, I listen closely, but eventually I lose the thread of what he’s trying to tell me. Maybe there is no thread - just the rambling of an old man, impressionable and proud of work he once did for an institution that no longer exists.

He hands me the binder. “Well, take a look yourself. I’m still going to get that tea.” He goes to the counter, pours yellowish tap water into a dented whistling kettle, sets it on the stove, then comes back, “So, what do you think?”

“Are there more of those? You said this was part of the MKUltra program.”

“They didn’t tell me,” he says. “As you can imagine, everything I’m giving you used to be classified. This object - as far as I know - is the only one.”

“What did you call it back then?”

“The code name was Wishing Well. Yeah, a little corny. But what do you know?”

I scan through the pages. I set the binder down and say, “There’s nothing about how to destroy it.”

“You’re right. Because it’s a whole damn protocol. I don’t have the rest of the files here, but the destruction sequence… It’s scattered between multiple boxes. You’ll have to go down to the basement and get it yourself.”

“Okay. Let me ask you one more thing. Have you ever thought about destroying it yourself?”

Quiet, contemplative, he turns to the stove, picks up a mug with a cracked rim, opens cabinets one by one, inspecting their contents, closing them again. He mutters something under his breath that I can’t catch. In a side cupboard, he finds a box of tea bags. He tugs at the plastic wrapper, pulls it in rising frustration, and grabs the scissors. Holding them awkwardly, he cuts the wrapper off and shakes the tool off his fingers. One tea bag drops into the cup. Took him long enough.

“Yes,” he says, his voice suddenly firm. “Multiple times. I wish I’d done it sooner.”

Olivia speaks up, and while her voice is steady, it’s pitched higher than usual, “Do you live alone, Colonel?”

“Yes. Been living here by myself for a while.”

She squeezes my hand. Her fingers are cold. She blinks like dust got in her eyes, “I need to go to the restroom,” she says. “Now.”

The Colonel glances over his shoulder, surprised.

“Something wrong?” I ask.

“No. I just thought you’d already be heading downstairs for the protocol.”

“Well, I really need to go,” Olivia says. “You know… woman’s business. Excuse me.”

“Alright. Down the corridor, to the left.”

She leaves.

The Colonel opens the refrigerator, leans in, rummaging, “Milk… milk… where is that milk…” he mutters.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I take it out. A text. Unknown number. One of the numbers I remember seeing in Sam’s care package. It’s from Olivia:

‘This man is not who he says he is.’

I set the phone down. The old man is bent over, squatting by the fridge, still searching. Why did Olivia send that? What tipped her off? Yes, he’s old. Strange. The house is falling apart. Papers glued, stapled, nailed to the walls. But right now - his back turned - this is my moment. Should I pull my gun?

Yes.

Ashamed of doubting Olivia, ashamed of my hesitation, I draw it and point it at him. He turns around, holding an open carton of milk, and freezes.

“What is going on?” he says.

“You’d better start talking. Your story doesn’t add up. Let me ask you again - who are you?”

“I am Colonel Azaña, United States Army. Retired. I’m giving you everything in that folder and the box, freely.”

“No,” I say. “You’re not Azaña. Now tell me who you…” The poker game flashes in my mind. I know the move. Bluff. “You’ve never been in that bunker. You’ve never served in the U.S. Army. And everything you told me is bullshit. Tell me - how’s the weather in Chicago these days?”

A grin spreads across his face. He cracks his neck and sets the milk on the counter. “When did you figure that out?”

“As soon as we walked into your house.”

“Well,” he says, “calling it my house is a bit of a stretch. But it doesn’t matter.” His eyes narrow. “Pull that trigger… and you’ll never see that woman again.” He raises his voice. “Hey, Ty! Casey! Come here.”

I hear a woman’s scream. Muffled swearing. Olivia appears in the doorway, her hands bound in front of her with a black zip tie. Behind her, two men. Jeans, brown shirts - they could pass for locals from the Yellow Sector, if not for the suppressed rifles they use to push her into the room. The man who calls himself Colonel says in a low voice:

“You shoot me - that bitch dies.”

Through the black rectangle of my sights, the red dot sways and lashes, dancing across the old man’s chest. I shift my grip, adjust my left hand, rock on my legs - suddenly stiff, wooden. Olivia is in my periphery. Lips whitened, pressed tight. A defined frown. Her hands tug at the fabric of her shirt, pulling at the buttons, sliding over the red squares. A sting hits my eye. I don’t blink. I could swing the pistol, take out the mercs - but they know what they’re doing. They stay behind her, using her as a shield, a living one.

My index finger trembles on the trigger. Salt floods my eyes. I lower the pistol. Let it settle on the floor. The two men shove Olivia toward me. She stumbles over the coffee table and drops onto the couch. A wrapped suppressor points at me.

“Hands,” the Colonel says.

I raise them.

“Turn around.”

I obey. Zip ties cinch my wrists. A kick sends me down onto the couch.

The old man picks up my Glock, points it at me, and asks, “How’d you figure me out?”

“That was easy. I looked at you and realized the United States Army would never hire an inbred.”

“Okay, that’s how you want to play it? Okay. You tell us where you put the Wishing Well, and we’ll kill you and this Red Sector trash fast. Or I can take my time. Either way works for me.”

“Sorry, pal,” I say. “I don’t deal with conspiracy theorists. I carry cargo. I don’t care about old wives’ tales about MKUltra. You’ve got it all wrong.”

He steps closer, raises his fist.

“But then again,” I add, “with your genetics, what did I expect?”

He swings. The kettle whistles. He turns his head - just enough. I lunge forward and headbutt him. We crash to the ground. The gun goes off, a shot punching into the ceiling. I’m on top of him, my face buried in the stink of his armpit. If I could just cut the zip ties - there has to be a knife.

I see it. I can reach it. Almost… Almost…

A blow lands across my face - sparks burst behind my eyes. I wince, my left eye flooding, vision smearing. I push up on one knee. Another hit drops me.

A voice above: “Settle down or I’ll shoot you.”

I growl, then go still. Hands grab me, haul me up, throw me back onto the couch. The Colonel, breathing hard, panting, wipes his mouth.

“Alright. Alright,” he says. “Hey, boys. Take him downstairs. Let’s have some fun.”

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Debrief

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Check out my serialilzed novel!

Every time you see a YouTube video with over 100,000 views where a younger millennial or an older Zoomer with a perfectly groomed mustache talks about how much somebody or something sucks, you can safely deduce that the target has probably made millions of dollars and created valuable intellectual property loved by millions. In Taylor Sheridan’s case, this principle definitely holds true. It is easy to find people criticizing him, yet his artistic output is undeniably impressive. He has amassed a cult following and earned widespread critical acclaim.

So what makes his storytelling style (as a screenwriter and as a filmmaker) so memorable and so popular? And why does it have so many haters?

The answer is that he seems to base his work on four principles. Each of them contributes to the overall feel - one that some people adore and others despise.

Spoiler Warning: this essay contains major spoilers for Yellowstone, Sicario, Hell or High Water, Tulsa King, The Sopranos, and Breaking Bad. It discusses key plot points, character arcs, pivotal scenes, and the endings of several storylines in order to analyze Taylor Sheridan’s storytelling techniques. If you have not yet watched these works and wish to experience them unspoiled, do that first. It’s better than reading an essay.

A Realistic Premise.

Taylor Sheridan always starts with a premise that has a tangible connection to reality. In Yellowstone, we follow the politics of rural Montana. In Sicario, we follow law enforcement conducting operations in the war on drugs. In Hell or High Water, we see the struggles of a poor Texas family against unscrupulous bankers. In Tulsa King, we see, well, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the formation of a new criminal organization.

Now then, there is something to be said about realistic premises.

Compare these two sentences:

Okay, that’s one premise. Now let’s change it up a little:

It’s not just the specificity that grabs us. It’s the fact that it really happened - or at least the framing now suggests it. Supposedly, it had taken place on this Earth. Taylor Sheridan doesn’t do sci-fi or fantasy. He picks premises that already exist. Most of his audience doesn’t live in Oklahoma or Montana or have anything to do with the war on drugs, but we’re all familiar with these places and concepts. We know they are real. That immediately raises the stakes because of the familiarity and the sense of immediacy.

Dramatic density.

When you watch his movies or TV shows, there are always a lot of moving parts, a lot of things happening - whatever is associated with the setting is going to be presented in one way or another; it is all brought to the surface.

Take Sicario, for example. We witness a series of atrocities committed by the cartels. Whether a single law enforcement officer would realistically witness that much violence over the course of a few weeks is debatable, but every element Taylor Sheridan shows is, again, rooted in real events within a realistic setting.

For example, are there cases of public executions carried out by the cartels in real life? Yes. Are there examples of corrupt government officials or police officers working with the cartels? Yes. Are there examples of military-style attacks on convoys? Yes.

Would all of that happen within a single story? That’s a different question.

But this is the dramatic density that Taylor Sheridan uses to raise the stakes. He packs his stories with realistic elements, even if their concentration is unusually high.

In Tulsa King, we see Dwight Manfredi interacting with local marijuana businessmen, an ATF agent, Native Americans, and various criminal groups over just the first couple of episodes. Taylor Sheridan is not interested in making TV shows where nothing happens, where there is no resolution, or where there is only one mystery or a single hook. He fills his films and television series with events, organizations, conflicts, and storylines that all tie back to a recognizable, realistic world.

Setting sparsity

The third element of Taylor Sheridan’s formula is, in many ways, the semantic opposite of the previous one. Taylor Sheridan deliberately picks locations where man stands tall amidst nature, giving his stories a distinct neo-Western atmosphere. In that regard, he speaks directly to the foundations of American culture. The myth of the Wild West finds a modern reinterpretation in his work.

We have horses, ATVs, and helicopters crossing vast plains. We have Montana, Texas, Oklahoma, and the southern border of the United States.

A setting like New York City would immediately diminish this feeling. In a large city, there are millions of people, but nobody knows their neighbors, and every step is watched by cameras. When two characters meet, there is no sense of two distinct forces colliding.

Now imagine those same two characters meeting in the middle of a desert. It feels like two mountains crashing into one another.

This sparsity allows for much more violent and explosive storytelling. A firefight in downtown New York would dominate the news. There would be immediate public attention, investigations, and political consequences. A firefight in the middle of a desert or on an isolated plain, however, is something that can be quietly swept under the rug.

That is what makes the previous point - dramatic density - possible.

Let’s say you have a kidnapping. In a major city, that kidnapping might become the entire story, followed by a five-episode investigation centered on police work and public reaction. In Taylor Sheridan’s world, however, the kidnapping is only one element among many. It immediately leads to retaliation, vigilante action, cartel involvement, political consequences, or another conflict, allowing the story to move rapidly from one dramatic event to the next.

This is an interesting paradox. By keeping the setting sparse, Taylor Sheridan is able to keep the story exceptionally dense.

Larger-than-life characters

And now we come to the fourth element - the one that probably attracts the most criticism, especially from those YouTubers with the half-grown mustaches. It is

When people criticize Yellowstone, they often say that real cowboys don’t behave like that, that this is not what cowboy life looks like. And they are right, to an extent. What Taylor Sheridan shows is a semi-criminal operation, something that is certainly not representative of the average cowboy’s experience.

Now let’s look at Tulsa King. Dwight Manfredi walks into a marijuana dispensary - completely legal in Oklahoma at the time - and demands tribute. What would happen in real life? A different approach to television, the one David Chase follows in The Sopranos, gives us an answer. Throughout the series, characters like Richie Aprile, Feech La Manna, and Phil Leotardo return to organized crime after spending decades in prison. Their inability to adapt becomes a recurring theme. They barge back into the underworld without realizing that the world they remember no longer exists, and most of them meet their downfall rather quickly.

In Tulsa King, however, Dwight Manfredi uses his charm, confidence, and wit to build a criminal organization almost from scratch. His gravitas naturally draws people toward him.

In Hell or High Water, the Howard brothers repeatedly outmaneuver law enforcement despite taking enormous risks.

In Sicario, Alejandro ultimately assassinates the cartel boss and his family almost single-handedly.

In Yellowstone, Beth Dutton storms into business meetings and utterly dominates everyone at the negotiating table, leaving seasoned executives unable to respond.

When people ask how any of this is possible, they’re asking the wrong question. If an ordinary person tried to behave this way, it would end badly - and very quickly. Sometimes Taylor Sheridan acknowledges that these actions are reckless and carry consequences. But more often than not, his protagonists are so extraordinary that they bend the realism of the setting around them. Their competence, determination, and sheer force of personality exceed what we would expect from an ordinary human being.

Take Casey Dutton. At one point, he leaves his child hidden in a ditch while pursuing kidnappers. Many viewers see that as reckless or even foolish - my wife certainly does. Within the logic of Sheridan’s world, however, it reads as courage. Casey is not meant to be an average father. He is meant to be a larger-than-life figure.

And this is what ties Taylor Sheridan’s style together. These larger-than-life characters navigate stories with immense dramatic density, yet they have room to breathe because those stories unfold in sparse, isolated settings. And because the premises themselves remain fundamentally realistic, these hyper-competent protagonists stand out even more. They become modern-day heroes - almost Hercules-like figures - capable of accomplishing what would seem impossible for ordinary people.

These larger-than-life characters are the final ingredient in Taylor Sheridan’s formula. But they only work because they are supported by the other three elements that make his storytelling so distinctive.

Conclusion

Taylor Sheridan’s storytelling follows what I would call GTA logic. It is based on real life, inspired by real life, but elevated above it - turned up to eleven out of ten.

He invites the audience into a story through familiarity and by relying on recognizable Western conventions. He then fills the plot with dramatic elements naturally associated with the premise, and finally populates that world with characters whose competence is so extraordinary that it bends reality the way a black hole bends gravity.

This approach undeniably works - but only if you’re willing to embrace that final ingredient: carefully measured exaggeration. Sheridan isn’t aiming for documentary realism. He’s creating a modern epic. His protagonists are closer to Siegfried or Beowulf than to ordinary people.

So what is the main takeaway?

You might think that Taylor Sheridan’s approach makes no sense for your story, and I get it. This type of reality-bending character is kind of an imposition. It seems to prohibit the plot from being logical and from the hard rules of the world acting upon the characters.

Right?

Wrong.

Breaking Bad and The Sopranos feel substantially more realistic than Taylor Sheridan’s shows. They are more procedural. They show the intricate mechanics of conflicts evolving in settings that are profoundly and decidedly realistic.

And yet, in The Sopranos, we have the psychic who tells Paulie Walnuts all about his crimes, prompting Paulie to burst out in a rather comical fashion. That supernatural event has no explanation in the show, but it clearly exists there for a reason - to suggest that there is a higher power watching over all these characters living in their own purgatory.

Then there is the Russian ex-Spetsnaz operative who disappears into the woods of New Jersey after supposedly escaping Paulie and Christopher - something a normal person simply isn’t supposed to do.

These sparse moments elevate the story. They highlight the realism precisely by introducing something supernatural or extraordinarily unlikely. And you cannot deny that they stand out. Those scenes are among the most memorable in the entire series.

Breaking Bad also relies on carefully chosen larger-than-life characters, albeit in a subtler way. We have Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who develops such a unique method of manufacturing methamphetamine that entire drug cartels want to work with him and acquire his formula. We have Gus Fring, a drug kingpin who hides in plain sight while being almost cartoonishly meticulous and obsessive about every aspect of his operation. We have Mike Ehrmantraut, who displays a level of operational competence that borders on superhuman.

And yet, all of these characters, despite possessing larger-than-life qualities, remain confined by the rules of their world. Their talents and obsessions serve a dramatic purpose. They are exceptional, but they never feel disconnected from the setting.

So even if your story is completely realistic, and even if you have established hard rules for both your world and your characters, maybe - just maybe - it is worth taking another look.

See if there is a way to elevate your characters, not by breaking your world’s logic, but by making them just a little closer to a legend.

Tell me more in the comment section.

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Previous Chapter

Prologue

Soundtrack

It’s Not Unusual - Tom Jones

Side O’ The Road - Creedence Clearwater Revival

Viva Las Vegas - Elvis Presley

Chapter 26

The Five Arrows Casino is a typical place for the Yellow Sector: an abundance of colors, bulbs, lamps, garlands - the music blasting on the speaker - restless, steady, and inviting. Flashes, bursts, red and yellow, yellow and red, like the advertisements and posters of long-forgotten diners and restaurants I’d seen in New York.

Here, the players are milked: my ears ring from the unbearable clatter of slot machines, the shouts of drunk, frenzied people, and announcements over the loudspeakers that someone has hit the jackpot or that it is someone’s birthday. My head ached - whether from the wild cacophony or from the tight collar of the shirt I’d bought without trying it on.

Olivia, dressed up for the occasion, wore a dark green dress that caught a metallic red sheen in its folds. Her posture straightened, and her hair, tamed after a twenty-minute battle, fell smooth and controlled. With her newfound posture, she walked with pride in her high heels, gliding across the casino floor as if she owned it. Every time she edged half a step ahead of me, I caught myself glancing at her legs, her waist, and the bare curve of her back.

When we stepped into the middle of the hall, she hooked her arm through mine, hanging off it, then spun lightly around me and asked, “So, where to next?”

“Listen, I don’t want to disappoint you, but I think we dressed up a little too much for this dump.”

The printout Madame Wang gave me mentioned something about private poker rooms. Private Room 3. Olivia raised her hand, and I followed the direction of her finger.

“Alright, I see it. Good job.”

We step into a velvet-lined corridor, and the noise of the casino fades at once. We knock. Ten seconds later, the door opens. A clean-shaven croupier, a man in his thirties, stands before us. Deeper inside, at a massive Texas Hold’em table, sits a heavyset man. Frost-gray has touched his temples, but the rest of his hair is still black as pitch. His broad face is accentuated by a thick gray goatee, the kind old sheriffs and gamblers used to be known for. Small, attentive eyes sit deep in the heavy folds of his sun-darkened face. He raises a hand with short, sausage-like fingers and says:

“Leave us. We’ll manage the game ourselves. This is a private party. Treat yourself to fifty credits.”

The croupier lets Olivia and me in and shuffles into the main room. I motion to the table and say:

“Nice to meet you, Colonel. I believe you were expecting us.”

With a deep bass voice, the Colonel says, “I have.”

“Well,” I say, “my name is Rodion. This is Olivia. And we believe you have some information on a certain item we might be carrying, which is why we’re here.”

“Well rehearsed,” he says. “Did they give you that line?”

“They? Who are they? Anyways, no, I improvised.”

Olivia sits down next to me, throws her hair back, and says, “I’m sorry to intrude, but why are we here? Why a casino? Do you want to show off?” She lets out a small giggle.

The Colonel picks up a deck of cards. “I understand that the notion of meeting in this… questionable establishment may seem amusing to you. But as you might or might not know, there is purpose to everything in life, even if that purpose is not immediately clear to an unsophisticated observer.”

Olivia points at herself. “Are you calling me an unsophisticated observer?”

“I’m not calling you anything,” he says. “Now, before we continue, I want to ask you - how do you know about me?”

“We saw some of the files,” I say.

“What files?”

“There were some documents online.”

The Colonel shuffles the cards with practiced elegance, sending the stacks sliding back and forth so the deck seems to dance in his hands. “Do you realize that documents are often full of shit?”

“Well, yes,” I say. “So why don’t you tell us why we’re here?”

“Alright. Are you a gambling man, Rodion?”

“I gamble every day with everything I have. But I don’t play in casinos.”

“Would you care to play with me?”

“I don’t see an issue with entertaining your request. But I’m not betting anything.”

The Colonel says, “I must insist. Such is the condition of me telling you what I came here to tell you.”

“Listen, I don’t gamble with my money. I’m not changing that for anybody.”

“Then I’m not telling you anything.”

I push against the table, ready to stand. “So be it. I’ll leave you.”

Olivia presses my palm down on the table and says, “I’ll give you a thousand credits, you stubborn mule. If you won’t play your own money, play with mine. Pay me back later. Whatever you win is yours.”

I look at his face. She isn’t joking, so I concede. Satisfied, the Colonel says:

“I insist that you, Olivia, play this game too.”

She says, “Fine.”

He hands me the deck and says, “I want you to shuffle this however you like.”

I glance at the stack of cheap, multicolored chips next to him. “We’re using those?”

“Yes,” he says. “Buy them from me. I’ll give you a stake - a thousand credits for you, five hundred for her.”

The Colonel sets out two thousand in front of himself. I shuffle the deck, trying to break whatever arrangement he might have set up while he had it to himself. After thirty seconds of carefully cutting and mixing, I take the top card, grab it with my teeth, and rip it in half.

“Sir,” I say, “I get nervous when I play with real money.”

The Colonel laughs. “I get it. I understand. You don’t trust me. Sweet old tricks - haven’t seen that in a while.”

He calls for the croupier. The man returns, unlocks a safe, retrieves a new pack in factory wrap, hands it to me, and leaves.

I shuffle the deck and say, “That’s better.”

He says, “Alright. Are you okay with fifty as the small blind?”

Olivia doesn’t move, but her nostrils flare.

I say, “How about twenty?”

He says, “Fine.”

We play Texas Hold’em. I deal. Olivia puts down twenty, the Colonel puts down forty. I look at my cards. An eight and an ace. Not bad. I raise to fifty. Olivia and the Colonel both call. The folds under Olivia’s eyes gather, filled with a playful challenge.

“What are you staring at?” she says.

“That is part of the game.”

The Colonel remains calm, as if he couldn’t care less what happens at the table. The flop comes - a two, an eight, and a queen. Olivia plays it cautiously, tapping twice on the green felt. The Colonel throws in a few chips with a clatter, raising to a hundred. Remembering I’ve already made a pair, I raise to two hundred. Olivia, a light sheen of sweat glistening under the lamps, calls. The Colonel calls as well.

The turn comes - a jack.

Olivia raises to two hundred fifty. The Colonel, exhaling through his mustache, bumps it up to four hundred. Is he wheezing from his heart, about to have a stroke, or just excited? Hard to tell. His face, cut by wrinkles and sunburnt, gives nothing away. His hands are steady. His eyes don’t move. I call the four hundred. Olivia hesitates for a moment, then joins. The river comes - an ace.

Olivia checks.

The Colonel raises to a thousand.

I look at my two pairs and say, “All in,” pushing my chips into the center.

Olivia gives a small shake of her head and goes all in as well.

We show.

Olivia has a pair. The Colonel has a pair of kings.

I rake in the pile of chips with my left hand.

“Looks like you got lucky today,” the Colonel says and turns to Olivia. “My apologies.”

“It’s nothing,” she says. “In the end, I made a good investment in the one luck chose.” She gently runs her hand along my shoulder, and a pleasant shiver runs down my spine.

Before I shuffle the deck, the Colonel says, “Do you see the cards you’re holding?”

I say, “Yeah. Two pairs.”

“Two black aces. Two black eighths. Does that tell you anything?”

“Only that it’s two pairs.”

“It’s called the Dead Man’s Hand. Ever heard of it?”

“First time. What is it supposed to be - an omen or something?”

“Some think so. Others think it’s just an interesting piece of history that persists in the game’s lore.”

“I’m not superstitious,” I say. “My religion forbids it. Now, are you disputing that it’s a valid win?”

“Nope,” he says. “The money is yours. Though I do believe we can play a couple more hands.”

“Alright,” I say. “One more.”

Preflop, I get junk. Three and Jack. The flop and turn go uneventful, but on the river, I land a pair of jacks. We both raise aggressively. When we show, I’m relieved - my three jacks beat the Colonel’s two pair. I pull in the chips.

“Care to play some more?” the Colonel asks.

“Yes.”

This time I got four and seven of clubs. The run comes right - five, then six, and another club. I make a flush. The Colonel holds a pair. The same pair he’s been sitting on since preflop. Now I’m surrounded by chips, trying to process what just happened. I give Olivia back what she loaned me, and as I sort the chips, the Colonel says:

“How good are you at poker exactly, Rodion?”

“Well, as you just saw, I’m pretty damn good.”

He says, “I know something about you, though. I know that the item you came here to discuss is nearby. Is that correct?”

I think of the Hellhazard 4 in Olivia’s purse.

“You could be right,” I say.

“I know I’m right,” he says. “And do you know how I know that I’m right?”

“Something to do with the game?”

“Exactly.”

He joins his hands, fingers interlocked, and says, “What you just saw is the phenomenon I dedicated ten years of my professional life to as a colonel in the United States Army. The item you’re carrying was created as part of a government operation aimed at manipulating random events - or rather, the appearance of those events. Deep manipulation of perception. That’s what this technology entails. It was developed during the Cold War, in hopes of defeating the Soviets. There was a problem with it.”

I say, “What kind of problem?”

He leans forward. “Why don’t I show you? Let’s play one more hand. I’m sure you wouldn’t object to winning a little more.”

Flustered, I say, “Alright. One more.”

I get a queen and a king. But as the hand unfolds, nothing comes of it. The board gives a pair of threes. The Colonel takes the pot with a pair of sevens.

“You might think this is an accident,” he says, “but it’s not. The problem my scientists tried to solve is this: once you become aware of the properties of the item and attempt to exploit them, it stops working. I’ve seen scientists going insane trying to solve this. Some of them got badly hurt when they ignored the safety protocols - which I assume you’ve been following.”

I say, “So what happened? During the pandemic?”

“Well,” he says, “when the bombs fell, and there was no one left in charge, people scattered. The item was lost in the bunker you found it in. I did some private contracting for the WHO for a while. And then, well… it found its way back to me.”

“So the people I’m delivering it to…”

“They’re going to try the same thing,” he says. “What I tried. What the United States government tried. To harness it.” He pauses, then adds, “Do you know why they built Las Vegas where they did? It’s a giant testing ground for luck and probability. My people ran plenty of field studies here.”

Olivia says, “Are you saying it manipulates what we see?”

The Colonel says, “Precisely. It tricks your mind - and the minds of everyone around you.”

“This is too dangerous,” she says. “This is crazy.”

“Well,” the Colonel says, “that’s exactly why we spent so much time trying to make use of it. And we couldn’t. But this time… with private capital behind it, I think they might make it work just fine.”

I shift in my seat. The perspective opening in front of me takes my breath away. I have to remind myself to inhale, to exhale, as sweat breaks across my forehead. If I let the Company control this - if the White Sector, already wired for domination and control, gets its hands on it - then whatever they do to the rest of the world will be subtler, crueler. And there will be no recourse.

And it’s me, here in this casino, who has to decide. I look at the Colonel. “How can we destroy it?”

He says, “It’s not as easy as you think. You know what it does to perception. If you mishandle its disposal, you may never come out alive. And as you’ve probably noticed, it tends to… follow you.” He taps the table lightly. “I kept some papers. There was a disposal procedure. Long. Complicated. I don’t remember all of it. But if you come to my home, I’ll give it to you.” He pauses again. “As nostalgic as I am for that item… it needs to go. It’s a shard of the old world that should never have been made.”

Olivia says, quietly but firmly, “Please write down your address. We’ll come tonight.”

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Previous Chapter

Prologue

Soundtrack

Back to the House - Tito & Tarantula

Little Wing - Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble

It Came Out Of The Sky - Creedence Clearwater Revival

Chapter 25

The first thing that comes in the morning is the brain-splitting headache. The center line of my brain is throbbing and pulsing, as if a knife is lodged in my dome. I find myself on the couch, face down, and the worn-out zigzags of the hardwood floor meet my gaze and dance and squiggle and sweep around. I push the unstable formation away with my hand and force myself upright on the couch. I shiver and run my fingers across my bumpy skin. The blanket is on the floor - I reach out to it and wrap it around my freezing legs. My body tilts left like a ship in a nasty storm, and my spine swings like a mast in a wide arch - the forward observer in my dome got almost thrown out of his post.

A glass of water on the clean coffee table -not a breadcrumb, not a dried smudge of an old, stale drink. Right by the glass - a painkiller pill on a white napkin. I send the pill into my mouth and choke on it as it lingers in my throat, then send a flood of water to wash it down.

After a while, it works. I finish the glass of truly cool and clear water and balance precariously on the edge of the couch cushion.

“Good morning, you,” says Olivia’s voice, and I twist my head, looking for the source. She’s in her bed, smiling, nesting happily.

I speak, but a dry rasp escapes my lungs.“You’ve been awake long?”

“For a while. Didn’t want to wake you up.”

I rake my head with my palm, and in that moment, I smell the hangover lingering - a bitter, foul stench of wretch.

Olivia asks, “How would you rate our service from one to five?”

My gaze is glued to the cleanliness of the coffee cup and the floor upon which it stands. Holding my temples, I say, “Did we open the second bottle?”

“No.”

I avoid nodding. As soon as I move my head to the side, my neck cracks, and the throbbing in my stabbed brain flares, making me wince. “I’m a fucking lightweight,” I say. “That’s only one bottle, right?”

Olivia says, “Well… you drank most of it.”

“Didn’t we share it? So, what happened?”

“I mean, you don’t remember any of it?”

“I remember heading to the bathroom.”

“Well,” she says, “I helped you, then settled you on the couch and made sure that if you vomited again, you wouldn’t choke on it. And then… well, I tidied the room and went to sleep.”

“Ah,” I say. “Well, it is a classy establishment. I’m going to give it five stars as soon as I can find my pants. And I do require a cigarette.”

It takes me a good while to locate my clothes until I find a neatly folded stack. I tap it twice, stand up, head to the bathroom, and take a long, hot shower.

With the heat and the painkiller, the pain begins to recede. Refreshed, I step out, dry myself with a towel, head back, and get dressed. By the time I emerge from the bathroom, Olivia is fully dressed. The contrast - and her smile, wide as if she’s just won a bet.

I check my wristwatch, wipe the fat fingerprint off the glass, and say, “Got two hours before we go and meet Wang. Let’s go to the diner.”

A heavy breakfast - loaded with sausages, bacon, and eggs, a whole clutch gathered from a chicken coop - washed down with a liter of orange juice, brings me back to life. Olivia asks if I always eat breakfast like that, and I tell her I usually don’t eat breakfast at all. Except on this job.

After paying, we drive off to Butterfly Dance. They let us in right away - the door swings open silently, as if by a wave of a wand. Muted neon of background lighting and the soft pulse of a rhythmic beat wipe away the distinction between day and night. With no clocks and no walls, this capsule of sin welcomes us into its seedy embrace.

The girl behind the counter didn’t take her eyes off us as we walked in. Without saying a word, she jerked her head toward the VIP room, flicking her side-swept bangs aside.

Inside, Madame Wang sat behind a table cluttered with ammunition and printouts piled into towering stacks. Her makeup, her hair - disheveled, as if she had just returned from a road trip in a convertible. Mascara flaked from her lashes onto her cheeks, and the gloss on her lips had faded, wiped away around the center of her mouth.

When we walked in, her hands were pressed flat against the table, elbows stretched wide, her head resting between them. She was humming a tune I didn’t recognize.

She raised her head, squinting as if trying to focus on me.

I say, “Are you all right? Have you found anything out?”

“Rods. What the fuck did you get yourself mixed in?”

Looking at the mess on the table, I say, “Well, that’s what you’re supposed to tell me. So what is it? Is it a… weapon, or…?”

She stands, hunched over the table. The wrinkles on her forehead gather into a tight formation. Her silence bothers me. Her mouth hangs open, her tongue running across her teeth.

“First, all I found was some esoteric bullshit. I went a little deeper than you, so at least I didn’t have to deal with the out-of-place artifact crap. Then I went to the dark web. There’s a lot of information there - a lot of bad information, too - but I was able to find what it is. And I’m telling you, Rods, you’d better walk away.”

“Well, that’s not an option, Madame Wang.”

She says, “Okay. Where did you find it?”

“There’s a bunker in Nevada.”

“Well, that should’ve been your cue. Have you heard of Area 51?”

“Of course, I know about it, but we weren’t in Area 51. That place was cleared out a long time ago. Way before me.”

She says, “That’s because there’s nothing of value there. It’s a decoy. A storage space. Everything that was of interest in Nevada - well, now you’re holding it in your bag.”

“So what do they say?”

“They say it’s part of the MKUltra program. Have you ever heard of MKUltra?”

“I have.”

“Well, this is the artifact. A successful experiment, mind you. This is a device that manipulates the mind and perception. And it really messes you up,” she adds with a dry laugh.

“Well, that could explain a lot of things. But what was it doing in Nevada?”

“Because - well, you know how it is. It’s dangerous. People online say it gets people killed just like that.” She snaps her fingers and Olivia startles. I’ve never seen her do that.

“So what was the outcome? Was it ever used? Was it ever deployed?”

Madame Wang says, “Well, the forums don’t say. I think not.”

The woman in front of me is a stray lunatic who has consumed far too much unhinged garbage in a very short amount of time. I’ve never seen her speak the way she’s rambling now. And yet, it’s the same face. The same edges to her cheekbones I’ve known for so long. As if she’d aged twenty years overnight and picked up a heavy addiction to at least two chemicals banned on a global level. If I hadn’t seen what I’ve seen, I’d dismiss everything she’s saying. Instead, I look at the table. The mess she made isn’t a mess at all, but a layout. Thin, short 5.56 rounds interchanged with long, sleek, bottlenecked Creedmoor, arranged in stacks of six. I know what she’s been doing, and it worries me.

I ask, “So… is there anyone we can talk to about all this?”

Madame Wang brushes her hair, trying to look presentable, smiles, and taps the stack of papers. “Yes. There is. Colonel Azaña. He was in charge of the facility, and he lives not far from here.”

“Is this real? I mean… it doesn’t seem like a coincidence.”

“Coincidence? Rods, don’t get me started on coincidences. But listen - I did set up a meeting for you.”

“Well,” I say, “I hope it’s not somewhere in the boonies, because I’m not falling for that again.”

She shakes her head. “No. The colonel insisted it be a public place. A casino, in fact. Five Arrows.”

A laugh comes from behind me. Olivia clamps her mouth with both hands, hunched over, letting out guttural giggles.

I say, “What’s so funny?”

“Who is this guy? Do we really have to go to a casino? I mean… this is ridiculous, right?”

I say, “Well, I’ll take a meeting with him if it gets us answers - as long as it’s not in the boonies. I’m not getting shot in the head by some asshole jumping out of the bushes.”

Madame Wang says, “He was specific. Far more specific than anyone in his position would be. And I might know why.”

“Well, what is it?”

She hands me a stack of papers. “Take it. No drive, no electronic trace. Read it, then discard it. But before you do that, I want to talk to you about something. Here, on the table…”

I interrupt, “Yes, I know. I Ching.”

Madame Wang makes a gliding motion with her hand, like a conductor cueing an orchestra.

“Let me tell you what I found.”

I say, “Listen, I don’t do divinations. You know that. There’s no magic, no foresight. This is incompatible with my religious beliefs. And even as far as wu wei goes, this is not…”

She slams the table so hard the brass jumps and rattles, breaking the neat stacks she had assembled.

“Will you listen to me?” she shouts.

Feeling a cold touch on my forehead, I step back and raise my hand. “I’m sorry, I…”

She says, “I just wanted to try something. So I got the dice. And what I saw…” She points at the rounds, picks up a 5.56, rolls it between her fingers, then lets it drop with a tiny clank. “I made a prediction.”

“And?”

“And it changed.”

I frown. “What changed? I mean, the whole thing is about change, isn’t it?”

She says, “No. The outcome changed.”

The dread grips my stomach and pulls me back, but I chuckle and say, “What does it mean? What do you mean - changed? Changed how?”

“I got an answer. Next time I looked, it was different.”

“Well, maybe you misremembered.”

She says, “Rods. Rods. No. Who the fuck … I checked the camera. I checked the recordings. And my memory does not match what I saw. And then it happened again.” Her curved finger with sleek nail polish is aimed at me like a dagger. Her voice breaks into a rushed whisper, “I was making predictions about you and the thing you carry. I got it. I’ve seen it enough to know what happens. But I don’t have a single piece of proof. I’ve been here all night, tossing this I Ching around. Do you understand what I mean? Do you?”

“I’m sorry. I believe you.”

Her hands fidget, running through the brass, wiping away the rest of the predictions she had written - remembered and misremembered. With the last vestiges of her failed clairvoyance destroyed, she slumps into the chair, as if the will to live - and the strength to stand - abandoned her.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I really appreciate what you did for us.”

She raises her head, unshielded now, her hair falling like blades of grass. “Everybody who sent you on that mission,” she says, “you couldn’t trust any of them, could you?”

“No.”

“Good. Don’t trust anybody here,” She gives out an exhausted exhale like she’s done running a marathon. “Anyway… I’m going to get some sleep. Before that, I’m going to get drunk. I want to forget all this. Rods - good luck.”

I wave her goodbye, take the papers, and get ready to leave. Her voice rises again, like a flicker before a flame dies:

“By the way… I know where the missiles that hit your helicopter came from.”

I stop. “Who?”

“There’s a friend of mine in Chicago. His name is La Cerva. We buy our merchandise from the same source, and people talk.”

“Do we know who he sold it to?”

“Yes,” she says. “I do, Rods. I do. I know everything. Too much for my own good. He sold it to Northwest Pemberton. A security company based in Chicago.”

I recognize the name from the Concord chat. And from a lot of other places too.

“What do you know about them? It’s been a while since I last heard that name. Was it about steel mills? Or some factories?”

“They have a lot of clients. High-profile clients. Private clients, if you know what I mean.” She pauses. “And there’s one thing I hate to tell you, Rods. They’re good. They are really good.”

“Madame Wang,” I say, “I owe you one.”

“You owe me a whole lot more than one. But again - good luck. You’ll need it. Now leave me. Don’t forget to meet the colonel at seven at Five Arrows. I didn’t do all this legwork for you to skip town.”

Olivia and I walk out into the fresh air, filled with dry grass, stained asphalt, and the stench of stale gasoline. I light up a cigarette and share it with Olivia.

“We have time,” she says. “Should we go buy something nice?”

“Do you want to make it a date?”

She says, “Don’t ever ask a woman that.”

Debrief

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Prologue

Soundtrack

Tennessee Whiskey - Chris Stapleton

Last of a Dyin’ Breed - Lynyrd Skynyrd

Between The Bars - Elliott Smith

Chapter 24.

It takes me two burgers and a strawberry milkshake to get to the point where I start feeling the taste again - and through the mechanical movement of my jaw grinding the food, the taste of the fried patty and melting cheese finally comes through.

I stuff my face with two large servings of French fries, then lean back, cracking my back, and look at Olivia. Her eyes are so wide as if she had just seen a circus performance. She glances at the empty plates and the drained milkshake glass, pink foam sliding down its sides, and drawls, “I hope you’re feeling better.”

I said, “Yeah, well… you know, I move a lot of things, but this… this is grade A fuckery.”

“Also,” she says, “I’d suggest not painting things in a closed space.”

Munching on over-fried leftovers, with no soft middle and all crunchy crust, I say, “Well… that too. Or you know - do that. You’ll get some cartoons to watch - free of charge. Toluene is my favorite.”

“Do you have a favorite industrial-grade solvent?”

Biting deep into the third burger, I feel that the desire for philosophical discussions is rising inside me along with the blood sugar content.

I say, “Well, there are a couple of my favorites. Hexane - nice, sweet smell. Delicious. Much better than edgy heptane, and the head doesn’t hurt nearly as bad. Then there’s diethyl ether, of course. Can’t get much sweeter than that, but it always gives me a rash afterwards for reasons I don’t know.

“Toluene… well, I said that. Great cartoons, but turns your brain into mush. Sort of like chloroform, but for me, there’s this rancid, acidic smell that ruins it. Whatever softness it has - it’s all gone.”

She shakes her head. “I’m surprised your brain hasn’t turned to mush from all that alone.”

“Well, I do that in moderation. And besides, of all the solvents, my hands-down favorite is ethyl alcohol. So I suggest before we go to the hotel, we stop by a store and get ourselves some of that.”

“All right.” Then, tilting her head as if she suspects me of something, she adds, “Did you actually do all those solvents?”

I laugh. “Nah, nah, come on. Not all of them. And besides, you know… solvents, who cares? Let’s discuss which marker tastes the best.”

She throws a leftover fry at me. I catch it midair and toss it into my mouth.

“Thanks for that.”

“Let’s go already,” she says. “You’re going to feel sick from all…” She circles her finger at the table - the breadcrumbs, dirty dishes, crumpled napkins.

Pushing myself up from the table, I rise and follow her outside the diner. We stop by a liquor store, and I hang back, watching her move along the shelves with the grace of a mountain lion stalking prey. She picks out a bottle of Basil Hayden and a Glenfiddich 14. When it comes to stocking up and bringing a hunt to a successful conclusion, Olivia does not disappoint.

She walks back, her hips swaying side to side, holding the two bottles as if they’re newborns cradled with a kind of maternal warmth.

“Feeling fancy,” I say.

She walks past me and unloads her haul onto the counter. “I thought our budget allowed for that.”

“Yeah, fuck it, let’s do it,” I say.

I check the cigarette pack, crushed in the back of my pants. Only two left. Coping with what I saw burned through most of them while I paced back and forth in front of the diner, waiting for our food. I ask Olivia if she wanted one, but she says she isn’t going to smoke before dinner. Her loss.

We stop by a supermarket and buy an assortment of food: cheese, bread, cold cuts, and some fruit. Olivia is particular about her taste and takes her time, picking out exact varieties of cheese, choosing a sourdough of the right shape, checking each item for freshness, and crunch. I pace in place with the cart in my hand, thinking about the bottles left in the car, waiting for us.

When we make it to the hotel, I dart around the room, unpack our provisions, set out both bottles, and bring out two lowball-looking glasses from the bathroom.

Olivia says, “There’s toothpaste in it. Look.”

Indeed, there are white smudges. I go to the bathroom and give them a once-over. As far as my laboratory training allows me, I bring them back and present them to her.

Olivia looks at them, raises an eyebrow, then looks at me with a mix of contempt and suspicion. She picks them up as if she’s holding dirty socks, goes back to the bathroom, and two minutes later emerges with the lowballs sparkling clean, as if they’ve just come from the factory.

With a sigh - long and theatrical, exaggerated - I pick up my glass and say, pointing at the bottles, “What are we going to start with?”

With a playful smile, she shakes her head. “No, not like that. We are a respectable establishment. What would you like to drink, sir?”

“Four fingers of that Glenfiddich,” I say. “Ma’am, how would you take it?”

She says, “They say you should add a single drop of water to neat whiskey.”

She opens the plastic water bottle from the hotel, pours a bit into the ceramic mug by the microwave, dips her fingers, and lets a single drop fall into my glass.

I lift mine and wait while she prepares her drink - the same way.

“Aren’t you going to drink from the bottle tonight?” I ask.

She runs her index finger along the rim of the lowball and says, “This is a respectable place.”

A sectional couch with a coffee table made out of composite pieces of wood, glued together and polished, becomes our booth for the night, with the bottle, the glasses, and the food laid out in front of us.

We settle in.

Halfway through my glass, I ask her, “Tell me about yourself.”

Olivia, curled up on the couch with her legs tucked under her, pauses, bites her lip, and tilts her head as if she’s been given a math problem. Without looking at me, she says, “What do you want me to tell you?”

“Well, where are you from, for starters?”

She says, “We came from Bend.”

“Have you ever been anywhere - you know - outside your Red Sector?”

She springs up slightly and taps my nose with her index finger, “No,” she says. “You’re the big traveler around here.”

I drop my voice to a baritone, just a touch lower than my usual tone. With a serious expression, I stand up and bow before a surprised Olivia and sing the first words of an old song. I take a breath to start the next line, and to my surprise, Olivia joins in. Her contralto flows in, smooth and seamless, like the whiskey drifting from the glass, pulling me deeper into it.

We slow down, as if there were a score guiding us - cues we both follow without thinking. But there is no track. No conductor. Just us.

As we continue singing, she jumps up, grabs my hands, and in the cramped space between the couch and the coffee table, we sway and dance, awkward and laughing.

I press her close to me, and her eyes are bursting with the joy of a person who found another who knows all the places and all the cities from the song by heart. Our unison distorts a little as we yell out about Water City and Dodge City, and it escalates into a yell and a rasp and a cough, and whoever lags behind smiles and rushes forward, spitting out geographic locations, at least a third of which are no more.

My hands wrap around her waist, and the tips of my fingers lightly brush the top of the soft curve of her hips.

With every move, I can feel the strain in her buttocks muscle that swings her body left and right. There’s warmth and heat coming from her body and then sweat, a healthy blush on her cheeks. I watch her lips move alongside mine. Her gaze, the gaze of a wildcat stomping in the woods, drives me crazier. When I speed up the song, I stumble near the Sarasota part, and she laughs, leans back, takes another sip, and then we continue the song. She undoes her ponytail, and her black hair rocks, coming disheveled with every movement. When we finish, I’ve been everywhere. I drop my voice lower, and she does the same. And then we continue the competition of descending voices until her contralto cracks, and I go a while longer, and then I rasp and cough. We drop on the couch, laughing, holding hands.

I pour myself some whiskey.

“Hey, don’t be greedy,” she says, with that elongated face of mock offense.

I pour her half a glass, and we drink some more. Then we eat.

“It’s nice,” she says.

“What is?”

“Well… singing, keeping things in your head, remembering lyrics. That sort of thing.”

Reclining, I rest my head on the back of the couch behind her. “Well, I’m the last of a dying breed. I keep moving around with no home. That’s what I do for fun.”

“I thought you got the home part figured out,” she says. “In the White Sector. Seattle, that is.”

“Well, that’s where my apartment is. Not that I spend much time there. You can’t supervise deliveries and oversee logistics from a couch. You gotta move your butt a little.”

I bounce on the couch, making it shake and sending her up slightly.

“Watch it,” she says, jabbing me with her hand.

“No can do,” I say. “The train’s left the station.”

I finish my glass and pour myself some more whiskey.

“I ain’t never got to have anything nice,” she says.

“Like what? Nesting? I don’t think I can nest. I’m wholly migratory.”

“Well, even migratory birds nest,” she says. “They just change where they nest once in a while.”

“Fair,” I say. “But in that case, I’d have nests all over the place. And the maintenance costs alone would kill me.”

“So you carried munitions and weapons all over the West?” she asks.

“Well… kind of. That’s what pays the most. But all kinds of things need moving.”

“What did you leave in Yakama?” she asks. “Was it an air-to-air missile?”

I bite my lip as the memory snaps back. I shove a piece of capicola into my mouth and chase it with whiskey. “Well… that was different. The job was - the Yellow Sector government wanted to get some more medical supplies from the White Sector, but their warehouse was already full, and they were running close to the end of the fiscal year. So what I was supposed to do was dispose of supplies and medications past the expiration date.”

She opens her mouth, ready to laugh, but as I speak, her expression changes. It settles into something somber. She drops her gaze, shifts on the couch, and looks into her glass as if it might hold answers.

“So that’s what the job was,” I continue. “I had these containers that were supposed to be set on fire, all because some accountant needed them gone. So I drove them to the closest Red Sector.”

“And what happened next?” she asks.

“Well… in my contract, it said I couldn’t donate them. And the worst part was, the driver was the kind of asshole who followed everything to the letter. So what I did was, I told him to drive the container out into the Red Sector and leave it there. The locals came out, swinging their guns, yelling not to dump trash on their land. I told them I was just using the place as temporary storage. I made it very clear that it was strictly forbidden for them to look inside. I paused, looking at them, not saying anything for a moment, then I got back into the semi, and we pulled off. The next day, when we came back, the container had been picked clean. The driver made me file paperwork for theft, which I did.”

She says, “What was in that container?” Her voice is quiet, rising slightly with a hopeful edge.

“Well… all kinds of things. “Antibiotics, stimulants, anticoagulants, heart medication, asthma medication… even snake antivenom.”

“Narcan?”

“Well, among other opioid antagonists. There was a lot of stuff.”

Olivia says, hiding her gaze, letting it fall to the floor, “Even in our Sector, we had a shortage of all that.” She stutters, looks at me, and her voice trembles. “Even my husband… Even though we got him to a hospital... Whatever good that did.”

I pour myself the last of the black liquid, then splash half of it into her glass and say, “I’m sorry.”

She raises her glass. We clink and drink in silence.

I move my hand in a wide arc and knock the empty bottle onto the floor. My body sways as if I’m walking on ice. I prop my head on the palm of my right hand, holding it as if it might slip away, and say:

“The people divide themselves. They hide in their homes, build fences, and post guards. They are vigilant in their insanity, in their desire to keep what’s theirs and dodge their reckoning.

“And in these ziggurats, these citadels of pride, these Babylonian constructions - the people inside reject their kinship with those around them. They claim truth, culture, refinement, stuffed into cubicles with masks over their faces. They don’t care where their food or resources come from. They have people like me doing their bidding, reliable and trustworthy, bound by contracts, fulfilling obligations.”

My head sways. I bring my left hand up, my fingers numb, and brush the small of Olivia’s back. I steady my chin and continue:

“And I carry them everything they ask for, to their complete satisfaction. And they build these ziggurats higher and higher, trying to reach something they don’t even believe in.

“Every day I watch these towers rise, while the people inside them lose all connection to reality. That’s why I don’t want to be there. I have no desire to spend my time in those ziggurats. They’re infected. Worse than the most toxic chemicals I’ve ever transported for them.”

I try to stand. A wave of dizziness crashes into me, and I drop back onto the couch. Tears fill my eyes. I stare at the ceiling - beige, stained, poorly painted over.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just needed to… I’m not feeling well.”

My skin is numb, like after a dentist’s shot. From somewhere beyond, something wraps around my shoulders. I lift my head and see a blur that looks like Olivia.

“It’s okay,” she says. “Come here.”

She kisses me, and that touch settles the storm inside me, like water falling on a burning junkyard. The kiss stretches into something that feels like eternity.

At the end of it, she pulls back. “It’s okay. Let’s go to the bathroom. I’ll help you.”

My stomach turns. I stagger forward, knocking the bottle on the floor, sending it rattling. The room tilts. Step by step, supported by Olivia, I move toward the black rectangle of the bathroom door.

I need to get a lot of things out of my system.

Debrief.

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Prologue

Soundtrack

Paint It Black - The Rolling Stones

(Don’t Fear) The Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult

Paranoid - Black Sabbath

Chapter 23.

After a thirty-minute drive, we arrive at Manny’s house. A detached, single-story building stood alone at the foot of a small hill covered with low greenery. The faded, weathered beige siding blended into the surroundings, and the peeling paint covered the façade in an intricate camouflage. The two-car garage is empty, and Manny gestures inside and says, “Here. You can use it.”

I thank him, and soon he returns with several rolls of blue construction tape and a spray gun.

“What color do you need?” he asks.

“Black.”

He grunts, rummages around a small table, and produces a battered can of black paint and hands the sprayer to me.

Olivia says, “You ever done this?”

“Well, I’ve used a sprayer, if that’s what you’re asking.”

She nods. “Okay. We need to decal the windows. And in order to do that, we need to keep the car clean.”

I shrug. “You know, it doesn’t have to be perfect. We’re not doing it for the showroom.”

“Still,” she says.

Manny chimes in, “There’s a pressure washer. You can use that.”

I nod, walk around, bring the car out, and drive it behind the house, parking it in a spot sandwiched between the hill, the house, and a few little fir trees. Olivia comes out with the pressure washer and gives the car a fast but efficient once-over. She uses the tool with practiced ease, as if it’s second nature to her. We dry the car with some rags that Manny’s wife - a short, stocky woman - brings out for us.

I bring the car back inside the garage, and we tape off the windows. We tape the windows, the front grille, and the headlights with duct tape. In about twenty minutes, we’re done. Olivia wipes the sweat off her forehead and says, “You good on your own?”

“Yeah, thanks. You can go take care of yourself.”

Manny says, “I’ll get you some tea. Hey, Rodion,” he adds, pointing at the garage door. “You want it open or closed?”

“Let’s keep it closed for now. I don’t want any accidental witnesses. Show me how to pop it open once the fumes get heavy.”

He brings me to the controller and explains which button does what, and hands me the worm-out respirator, covered in speckles of paint of all the colors that there are, and a work robe covered with stains and streaks, either faded or sun-bleached so badly that it was impossible to tell what color it had originally been.

Olivia and Manny go inside his house through the interior door and close it. I pick up the safety glasses off the counter, put them on, and start working.

I crouch low, pointing the nozzle of the sprayer at the exterior of the car. I keep the nozzle about ten inches away from the surface and take small steps, keeping the angle uniform and moving the sprayer so the paint doesn’t pool or collect in one spot. A black funeral color spreads across the red car, plunging it into mourning. Just as long time ago, the bright red Rolls-Royce emblem would darken with each passing of the company’s founders, dressing itself in the undertaker’s coat. So too Olivia’s car. With every sweep of the spray, it draws closer and closer to an ordinary black, like the millions of them scattered across the broken roads of old America.

The sharp smell of paint breaks through even the respirator, whose rubber straps bite into the skin of my face. I walk around the front of the car.

A boy stands near the passenger door. His long facial features, attentive black coal-like eyes, and pronounced cheekbones remind me of Manny - probably how he looked before the labors of life covered his face with that hardened, masculine calm.

I stop spraying. I lift my finger off the trigger, take off the fogged safety glasses, pull the respirator down from my face, and ask, “Hey there, kid. You sure you want to hang around here? It stinks of paint in here, as you probably noticed.”

He answers, “It’s nothing.” After a short pause, he asks, tilting his closely shaved head to the side and looking straight into my eyes, “What are you doing?”

“Well,” I say, “your father let us use the garage, so we’re painting the car.”

“Why?”

“Well… it just turned out that way,” I say with a faint smirk. “This color’s in fashion now.”

My nose wrinkles at the harsh fumes of the solvents. I don’t want to chase the kid away - in the end, it’s his father’s garage, and I’m the guest here.

Feeling my head begin to spin, I say, “Let me crack the door open if you’ve got questions.”

“Okay,” the kid says.

I open the door halfway, crouch down, and breathe in the smell of the earth, the dry grasses, and the scent of small flowers scattered across the fields around us. Fresh air - whose freshness I only truly appreciate now, by contrast. The kid squats nearby, picks up a stick, and starts drawing doodles in the fine dust outside the garage.

“Why is my dad helping you?”

“Well,” I say, “because he trusts us. We’re his friends of sorts.”

“Why?”

“Well, I did something back in the day that I reckon not everyone would do.”

“Do you do that often?”

My hand reaches for the cigarette pack under the rag, but I stop myself. Not in front of the kid. Instead, I stretch my back and crack my neck, easing the tension.

“Do what?” I ask.

He says, “Help people.”

I squint into the distance, looking at the road running away into the hills, and say, “I think so. I think I help people all the time.”

The kid says, “Like you helped my dad?”

“Well,” I say, “I didn’t help your dad specifically, but yeah, I do that from time to time. It’s important to help others.”

“Why?”

“Well, if you want to look at it pragmatically - selfishly, that is - you help others, and others will help you. But here’s the thing: it’s still the right thing to help others, even if you don’t expect anything in return. You got it?”

I look at him with a smile. The least I can do to thank Manny is give a little lecture to his son. As trivial as it is, even this lesson might be what the kid remembers for the rest of his days.

“Yeah, I got it,” he says. “Where are you going now?” he adds in a high-pitched voice, climbing into a slight rasp.

“Well, we’ve got to deliver something, and then we’ll be on our way.”

The kid says, “And do you think that what you’re carrying is going to help people or not?”

I bite my lip and scratch my temple. “Well… sometimes it’s a hard question. But I try to think about what’s best for everyone, you know?”

“You’ve seen what it can do. That had to give you some idea, didn’t it?”

I straighten my back, lose my balance, and land on my butt. My chest feels heavy, as if I’ve just experienced another crash landing.

If people who should not be aware of the cargo are asking about it, I have to ask them to leave.

Here is the kid, nine, maybe ten years old. Looks normal, like any regular kid I’ve seen in my life. With my numb lips, I mutter, “Go away.”

The kid, with a smile like a receding moon, stands up, walks out of the garage, and turns around the corner, disappearing from view.

A feeling of fullness, like after an overly abundant meal, grips my insides. I remain motionless, but my head spins as if I’ve been thrown backward into a pit. The nausea, the weight in my stomach, coalesce into retching. I drop to all fours. A spasm rips through my body. My throat strains, and bitter bile floods my mouth.

Not enough. There’s nothing to throw up, and two more spasms shake me.

I crawl outside and inhale the fresh air. Was it the paint? I think it was the paint. Poor ventilation. I should have known. I shake my head, chuckle, and spit into the dry ground.

No. It’s the Hellhazard 4 messing with my head again. It comes as an innocent child and probes me. I sit outside for a while, gathering my thoughts, breathing fast.

A cold grasp of a callous intrusion barged into my life while I was unsuspecting and unprepared, like a thief reaching into a wallet, like a burglar stepping into a wardrobe, seeing the everyday mess and the sacred secrets of the people living inside. My stomach, unsettled by what I’ve seen and by the nauseating chemicals, grumbles. I need to finish painting that car, and once that’s done, I’m getting out of here.

I pull the respirator over my face, muting the chemical stench. Inside, I rush to finish the job. My hand is no longer steady, and I miss several spots, but I push forward anyway, clenching my teeth and forcing the air through my nose. Once I’m done, I open the garage door, toss the protective equipment aside, and head to the main door, knocking and ringing the bell.

Manny lets me inside.

In the living room, Olivia and Manny’s wife are having tea. They’re serving a concentrated extract from a large French press - enough to hold a quart of water - with dense brown loose leaves resting at the bottom like dark debris.

Manny says, “You want some tea?”

“Okay. Could you make it cold?”

Olivia looks at me. “What happened? Your face is green.”

I sit down on the couch, off balance, collapsing into the soft pillows in an awkward motion. I rub my forehead, and the cold sweat makes my fingers sticky.

“Just fumes,” I say. “Should’ve known better.”

Conversation. Words. But I can’t grasp what the topic is. It’s as if I’m a fish in an aquarium, unable to understand what the humans around me are discussing, unable even to tell where one word ends and another begins.

I take a sip of cold tea. It rolls across my mouth and down my throat. I lean back on the couch. Only now do I realize how slouched I was. As I recline, my eyes fall on a photograph resting near the turned-off black box of the television. Three people in the photograph. Manny, his wife, and the kid - the same face I was just talking to.

Did I just mistake our host’s dead child for an apparition from my cargo? I point at the photograph. My finger trembles in the air. I ask, fighting through the rasp in my throat, “Is that your kid?”

Manny drops his gaze to the floor, studying the carpet.

Manny’s wife, her face tightening into a strained smile, says quietly, “That’s Manny Junior. We lost him two years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“It’s okay,” she replies. “Bright, inquisitive kid. He just loved being in the garage, helping out…”

She looks past me and continues. I can’t gather a single word that would be appropriate to say, but judging by her expression - grief resurfacing, raw and sudden - she doesn’t need me to speak.

“He was so curious,” she says. “Good at math. Straight A’s, only occasional B’s. The teacher said he could be an engineer…”

Her voice breaks. She starts crying. Manny comes over, places a hand on her shoulder, leans in, and whispers something to her.

Olivia says, “I’m so sorry. What happened?”

Manny answers, “Laced cigarettes. Older kids passed them around. They were laced, and no one knew.” His voice cracks. “Overdose. We couldn’t do anything. And they didn’t even know about the damn thing, they didn’t even want it.”

“I’m sorry.”

We finish our tea and have a polite, distant talk. Once the flicker of the conversation is extinguished, we thank our hosts and go to the garage and get inside the car, which still seeps solvents escaping the painted surface. Olivia wants to drive, and I wave myself away and stagger to the passenger seat, struggling to keep my balance. I shake Manny’s calloused hand and thank him, and he says something, and I smile politely.

Gospodi pomilui.

We drive off, and Olivia winces and fusses as the seatbelt snags onto her and says, “I kind of like it in black.”

I nod, pressing my freezing hands on my face.

“Are you alright?” She says.

With my face still buried in the cup of my palms, I say, “Remember that patron I walked to in your bar? The one you don’t remember?”

“Yes.”

“That was the same deal.”

“What did you see?” Her voice is rushed, and the pitch jumps in the middle of the phrase.

“I can’t talk about it now. Well, I guess I already did. It was that kid. From the photo.”

Olivia’s voice drops down into her comforting contralto, “That’s messed up.”

“Yeah.”

“Should you get that HellHazard 4 thing out and give it a lashing?” Her lips are forced into a grin, but her eyes are restless and her shoulders wiggle and shiver as she speaks.

Pressing my index fingers into my eyelids and feeling my eyeballs flick underneath them, I say, “It can hear us. But I doubt it cares enough to listen. Let’s go back to the hotel.”

I raise my face and flip the sun visor. In the mirror, the red spots blush on my skin where the fingers rested, and the bright veins meander in the whites of my eyes like a flooded delta of a river of blood.

“Let’s get some food. Something greasy and… a lot of sugar,” I say, “We have to rest before Madame Wang tells us what she’d find.”

“Want to have a cigarette?”

I shake my head, “No, let’s get away from here.”

We drive a long time across the grassy plains along the rare, feeble trees, curved and twisted and uprooted.

Debrief.

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Prologue

Soundtrack

The Swag - Link Wray & The Wraymen

The Man Comes Around - Johnny Cash

Testify - Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble

Chapter 22.

A gloomy storm sweeps over the valley. A solid cover of dark-gray clouds blankets the dome of the sky, and gusts of wind and sharp drops of rain strike the roof of our car with a steady ringing sound. On the right, a sign flashes by:

‘You are leaving the Yellow Sector.’

Right behind him - another one:

‘Entering the Red Sector - Yakama. Do not forget to use safety equipment: gloves, masks, disinfect all surfaces, and make sure that your documents are in order.’

Both riddled with bullet holes, discolored, and bent around the edges. Along the road stands a booth with shattered windows, long abandoned. I sit behind the wheel, tracking the distance until the turn onto the dirt road. Olivia sits in the passenger seat. Leaning against the door, she looks out at the gray-yellow, desolate landscape stretching into the distance. Her eyebrows are furrowed. She throws occasional glances in my direction and opens her mouth slightly, then settles back into her position again. Her fingers tap a barely audible rhythm on the plastic of the dashboard.

I ask, “Well, what is it? Go ahead and ask your question already.”

She licked her lips and, looking straight at me as if in sudden challenge, asked, “You move munitions?”

I knew this question was coming. With my tone as delicate as I could manage, I answered, “That is part of the hazmat material that I do handle.”

“Listen,” she says, “I’m not going to pretend that I’ve never used the services of people who could get me things through the quarantine lines. But…”

“But what?”

“I don’t want to get in the middle of a smuggler’s war - whatever I do to help you will make me an accomplice. I don’t know what that, you hear?” Her voice is elevated, and the cadence of her words is rushed as if some levee has broken.

“I’m not a smuggler. Let’s get that out of the way.”

“Then what was all that business in the brothel? About missiles? That’s not smuggling?”

“That makes a difference to you?”

Olivia throws her hands in the air, “It does! Logistics is one thing, but instead of talking to me about that cargo, you should have told me that you are a criminal.”

Ahead, the land turns into flat plains of yellow grass, the dry stalks swaying in the rising wind. A left turn, hidden in a gully, comes into view. I slow the car down to a rolling stop and ease it into the gravel road leading towards the mountains.

“Is that what you think of me?”

“What else is there to think of you?”

“Smugglers break the law. I don’t. All I do is use my discretion to make a call now and then.”

Olivia makes an agitated exhale and, shaking her head in disbelief, says, “Discretion to sell missiles to brothel owners?”

“You see these hazardous materials long enough, you realize one thing - nobody knows what they’re doing. You think there is a clear inventory of every single thing laid out everywhere? You think that when they took them apart and kept clean records? Do you think the records they kept even reflected the reality they were facing?

When I go to a job to pick up anything of interest - let me phrase it this way - half the time I arrive at a place already ransacked by the locals. So I start going back and forth with whoever ordered the pickup. I try to hammer out what we’re moving, where it’s going, and what the cost is going to be.

And oftentimes the locals show up and ask, ‘Hey, I got this thing lying around,’ or ‘that thing.’ Then they name the price.

If you’re concerned about legality - well, during the mission, I have wide discretion. That’s what we call it, discretion. I’m authorized to do a lot of different things to secure and fulfill the contract. I do a lot of work for, you know, the White Sector authorities. Let’s put it this way.”

Olivia says, after a short contemplation, “There is a lot of ‘putting it this way,’ isn’t there? I don’t think there’s any need for code words if you’re talking about something this broad.”

I look at her and say, “Okay. If you want it blunt, the White Sector grabs whatever it can get in terms of technology and material and resources, and the Red Sector, in a sense, the Yellow Sector, gets the scraps. That’s the nature of things.”

“Yeah, I know, I live there.”

“So then - All I do, within whatever little authority I have, is apply my - and I stress this next word - discretion to make sure that whatever outcomes I see make somebody’s life better, the way I see it. And that includes selling munitions off the back of a truck.”

She says, “So you admit it.”

“Well, you’re hung up on those missiles, but there’s a whole bunch of different things falling off the back of the truck. And if I didn’t do what I do and the choices that I’m making, life in any sector below White would be a whole lot worse. So, are you on board?”

“Alright, alright. Besides, I don’t want to give back this Beretta.”

“Relax, I’m a gentleman. I don’t take back the gifts - especially those that weren’t gifts of mine to begin with.”

We travel downhill on the bumpy Road. The grass drags across the exterior of the car, and wet, heavy blades and clumps of dirt from the rain cling to the side windows.

I look at my GPS. That’s the place. I bring the car to a stop, open the door, brush away the yellow stems, and jump onto the gray field. I make about ten steps off the side of the road, pushing against the weeds that reach my chest.

A flash of navy-blue fabric on the ground. I squat, pushing the dirt and vegetation aside, and reach the container. I pull it toward me, and a brown impact-proof case pops out of the ground. I open the lid. I tap the contents with my index finger, as if verifying whether it’s real. As I rustle through the paperwork in the box, the words ‘Black Dodge Ram’ flicker before me. A wave of anger rushes to my cheeks - I forgot to tell Sam that Olivia’s car is red. I almost curse, but then I correct myself and say a quick prayer. Lord, have mercy. I should be thankful to have a friend like that. Olivia and I will figure it out later. With a quiet smile on my face, I trudge back to the car, get inside, and hand the case to Olivia.

She says, “What’s in it?”

“This is why in my line of work, I have a backup. This is a care package that, as we like to put it, maximizes my chances of getting out of trouble with my head still attached to my shoulders.

“We got IDs for you and for me. We got passes to the White Sector. We got payment instruments. We’ve got car registration. We even got license plates. Some work cash, too. A couple of devices that I can use to talk to Sam directly.

“This,” I point at the box, “is a get-out-of-whatever-trouble-you-have-free card.” I consult the map. “We’re going to try a forward route for about five miles and then go north, back to the Yellow Sector near Ellensburg.”

The patchwork of quarantine-zone assignments had never presented much trouble for any transportation services I had provided. This time it became a problem. We came out of the Red Sector in the Fossil John Day area and were able to clear it north of the Columbia River. Now I have to dive back into the Red Sector to the southwest of Ellensburg. There was no security to speak of at the eastern entrance, but I am taking a gamble that there is no post on the northern one either. Well, with my new documents, we might be able to get through.

I push forward along the road and break through the hills that divide the corridor under the pressing sky. The land comes alive and gray, as if we were inside a giant room under the faint outline of a moldy ceiling. We climb up a steep hill, straining the engine and sending loose gravel as the tires skip over the uneven ground.

A car ahead, 500 yards

I slow down. I look closer. A truck stopped across the road, with two people standing near.

Olivia says, “What do you want to do?”

“I wouldn’t provoke them. But I’m pretty sure I’m going to have a conversation with them. Stay alert.”

In my rearview mirror, another truck is gaining on us. My sweaty palms slide off the steering wheel as I try to keep us steady. Who are these people? And what do they want with us? Too many variables. I bring the car to a stop and get out, holding the rifle at low ready. Olivia follows me.

She asks, “So how are you going to proceed?”

“Let’s stay nice. Collaboration beats cooperation long-term. Short-term, I’ll keep my rifle loaded and watch their moves real close.

The truck approaches. Inside are two people. Long black hair, high cheekbones, sharply carved features. They stop ten meters from us and step out of the truck. In the driver’s hands - a shotgun. In the passenger’s hands - a pistol. The passenger is a thin, lanky young man. Their eyes pulse with suspicion. A fire of distrust burns in them. Their sinewy hands grip the weapons tightly.

Finally, the driver asks, “Who are you, and what do you want?”

I stand facing them squarely, my legs set wide, and say, “We just drove in. The place looked nice.”

The man with the shotgun says, “And what are you digging around here for? What did you forget out here, huh?”

My cheek twitches involuntarily. Just because we didn’t see any guards when we entered this Red Sector doesn’t mean there weren’t any. And I haven’t been in these parts for quite a while. My tongue runs along the folds of my suddenly dry palate. I open my mouth to say something - some excuse to ease the tension.

The younger one says, “Hey, wait.”

“What is it?” the driver asks.

The younger man steps closer and whispers something into his ear. They both look at me, squinting, scanning me from head to toe, “Are you that guy who hauled cargo through here two summers ago?”

Shrugging, I answer him straight, “A lot of people haul cargo through here.”

“Not a lot of them leave a container behind.”

They still remember that? I barely recall that one. “Yeah. White Swan. That was me.”

The driver looks over our car. His hands relax. He lowers his shotgun and says, “Then you’re a friend. Tom, call Danny and tell them to chill.”

Olivia’s shoulders loosen. She stands up straight, letting the rifle hang, and trots toward me, still watching the two men in front of us.

The driver walks up to me and reaches out his hand. I shake it, “Sorry about that,” he says. “There’s been a lot of escalation recently.”

“I don’t remember the checkpoint being broken down.”

He spits on the ground. “Yeah. That’s part of it.”

I shrug. “I hold no grudges. What’s your name?”

“Manny,” he says, Manny Stillwater.”

I reply. “Pleased to meet you. Name’s Rodion. You can call me Rods. And that’s Olivia.”

Manny nods. “So you’re picking up a dead drop?”

“Yeah,” I say. “A care package to lighten my mood.”

He grins. “Anyway, can I help you?”

Thinking about the title Sam had sent me, I say, “Well, unless you got a garage and some spray paint that I can use, I think we’d better be on our way.”

Manny chuckles. “You really think we don’t have any of that? What do you think of us?”

“I didn’t take you for someone who’d want to get his garage all smelly with chemicals.”

He waves his hand. “No, no. You’re a friend. And if that’s what you need, that’s what I’ll give you.”

I nod. “Okay. Show us the way, then.”

We get back inside our car, make a seventeen-point turn on the narrow road, and follow Manny along the pale terrain.

Debrief.

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Prologue

Soundtrack

Lone Digger - Caravan Palace

Tush - ZZ Top

House Of The Rising Sun - The Animals

Chapter 21.

I take a nap in the car, and it helps me get my plans in order. When we roll into the sprawling industrial zone of Ellensburg, past construction sites and manufacturing plants, I have already made a list of the places I want to visit. Olivia remains behind the wheel. She refuses to yield her position as driver on account of her stated desire to control the musical rotation.

“You go through Ellensburg a lot?”

“You could say that.”

“It’s a big place.”

“Well, as far as Yellow Sector cities go, yeah. Everything that comes west piles up here before moving across the mountains. Resources, including all U.S. stockpiles - that’s all going west, and what comes back - at least the part that I’m tasked with overseeing - is medicine, chemicals, seeds, pesticides, insecticides - whatever the White Sector manufactures. They gotta sell it all back.”

“Where are we going now?”

“Let’s see.” I type the address of the most likely place where I can get high-quality information. “It’s in the district that they call Westside now.”

She looks at the screen and says, “Butterfly Dance? Seriously? Is that a strip club?”

I raise my index finger in the air and proclaim, “Not just a strip club. A high-end brothel.”

“Whatever floats your boat, man.”

“It’s a nice place. You might like it. There are a lot of important people hanging around there. And the ladies who work there are top-notch.”

“Whatever. Do you really want me to go inside now?”

“Yes,” I say. “For that, I do want you to be there.”

She presses her lips together, rolls her eyes, and says, “Well, let’s see if it’s any better than what I’ve seen in Bend.” Olivia makes a long sigh and turns her head toward me with a slight tilt, “I hope it’s not a pleasure trip,” she says. “I don’t think we have time for that.”

“Everything is a pleasure trip if you treat it right,” I say, with a happy, self-indulgent smirk, looking at my reflection in the side mirror. After a short pause, I add, “Why don’t you keep your eyes on the road?”

“I’m OK. I’m going to stare at you until you tell me who exactly we’re meeting.”

“Well,” I say, “There’s a person who has a lot of answers.”

“What is he? What is he going to tell us? What is he like?”

“She, that person is a she. And as much as I appreciate your interest in my friendship circle, Olivia, I believe I’m going to have to introduce you to my friends one by one, on account of them being just a little touched in the head.”

She takes her eyes off me, looks at the road, and brings the car to a stop at a red light, “Am I touched in the head?” she says.

I look at her. Without makeup, there is a gleam of effortless lightness in her. “What’s your favorite way of drinking whiskey?”

“Straight out of the bottle.”

“All right,” I say. “We can be friends then.”

We pull up to a five-story building in a gaudy imitation of neoclassical style, with flashy columns, ornate stucco, and hunched, long-nosed caryatids. The name, written in gold letters, glitters above the entrance. I point Olivia to a sign standing at the left corner of the building and say, “Park the car over there. I don’t want any extra people seeing us.”

We have a smoke break, and I move the HellHazard 4 to an inside pocket of my jacket. We step out of the car, and I walk up to a side entrance - less flashy, but still eye-searing enough. I press the buzzer and resist the urge to show the middle finger to the camera.

A voice answers me, “What do you want?”

Leaning against the door, I say, “I want to come inside. A man has needs.”

Olivia snorts with laughter, covering her mouth with her hand.

“Why don’t you go through the main entrance?”

“It’s a private kind of need.”

The lock clicks, the door opens, and Olivia and I step inside. The vestibule, paneled in dark velvet, is lit by bulbs hidden in the ceiling that drown the room in diffused light shifting from deep blue to burgundy and finally to pink. The bass of a smooth electronic tune pulses through the walls and the floor, as if the meandering melody were native to the place, inseparable from the dim, diffuse lighting, the soft furniture, and the velvet everywhere.

At the entrance stands a desk, behind it - a red-haired woman with heavy black makeup, wearing a black-and-gold peignoir. She presses her lips into a little bow, raises an eyebrow, and asks, “How can we please you today?”

“I’d like to speak with the management.”

“She’s not here right now,” she said.

I glance around the room, and my gaze lingers on the wide staircase that rises to the second floor, its railing splitting into balustrades on both sides.

“I’m an old acquaintance, let’s say,” I tell her. “And as far as I know, she never leaves this place without a good reason.”

The girl behind the counter squints her eyes and says, “What, are you trying to say that, in your opinion, she lives here?”

“That’s not an opinion,” I say. “That’s knowledge. So,” I add, “are you going to call her, or what?”

I haven’t been here in a good while. There’s been a lot of business lately, and I would only stop in Ellensburg for a brief glance - to check on the cargo or to get a beer. It looks like since our last deal, the personnel have changed quite a bit. Maybe it’s a good thing they don’t know who I am. I lean over the counter and say, “Listen, people come to this place to get fucked or to fuck. So far, you’ve succeeded at fucking my brain. Good job. I’m going to leave a five-star review. Now call your manager.”

“I’m going to call security.”

“You can call them too,” I say. “I meant to ask - how is Brad’s kid doing these days?”

That makes the receptionist take a step back and give me a good look. With a slow, deliberate movement, she lifts the phone, presses three buttons, brings it to her ear, and says, “Madam Wang, there is a customer wishing to see you. Yes… Give me one second.” The receptionist moves, makes a couple of clicks on her console, and says, “Yes, this is them. Okay, right away, ma’am.” She nods and puts the phone back. With a guilty look, she steps aside and says, “Please. Madam Wang will be here momentarily. Can I get you something to drink?”

Olivia shakes her head. “No.”

“Yes,” I say. “Can I get a double espresso? And I want those Italian beans from the VIP stash. I’m not in the mood to drink dreck, lady.”

They bring me my coffee. It’s hot and concentrated and bitter, slightly acidic, with a pleasant yellow foam - just like I remember it.

Two women come down the stairs, no makeup, hair tied tight in buns, casual clothes over impressive silhouettes - prostitutes coming home from a long shift.

I finish my drink and place the cup on the counter. As it clanks against the granite, a figure appears at the top of the stairs. With a regal posture and her head held high, Madam Wang descends the velvet steps. Her black hair is arranged in an exquisite hairstyle, with bangs - waterfalls of hair cut at daring angles in the very latest fashion. She wears a dark-blue dress, simple but fitting her perfectly, and I know how much she usually pays for such seemingly simple dresses. Her face, with sharply defined cheekbones, almost a perfect elongated hexagon, white as chalk, gazes majestically over the domain opening before her.

“What a delightful surprise,” says Madame Wang, looking at Olivia and me. “I wonder if I may offer you a proper welcome in this establishment, with the entertainment comped.”

“You know why I come here,” I say. “I’m always coming here only for the VIP room kind of entertainment. Nothing has changed in that department.”

Madame Wang says, “I see. I just thought that maybe after some turmoil down south, you’d like to take a moment and unwind in nice company.”

I squint and look at her. Nothing gets past her, which is exactly why I’m here. “That’s why I came here - to unwind, to ease my mind. I was hoping that the fine silk of your voice could soothe my troubles.”

She tilts her head, “As you wish. And who is that nice lady standing next to you?”

“This is Olivia…”

“Hannon,” she says. That is the first time I hear her last name. It fits her; there is some old-timey gravitas in that name. Hannon. I rush to finish the introduction:

“Olivia, this is Madame Wang. We go way back.”

The women greet each other. The brothel owner looks at the receptionist and says, “Henrietta, dear, would you open the room for our esteemed guests? I have no desire to bother with the locks today.”

The receptionist nods, and we follow Madame Wang upstairs. The corridor we walk along leads to a row of rooms. Around each black door is a massive carved portal of heavy wood, and every door opens into a labyrinth where, far from curious eyes, serious people indulge in their private pleasures.

She leads us to the end, and we pass through a door marked ‘Electricity - Do Not Enter.’ We move through a switchboard room, and a metal back panel opens with a thin squeak, revealing an enormous chamber. Inside the VIP room, on cabinets and shelves, serving as giant display cases, are arranged all sorts of contraptions, devices, and implements that people have used, use, and will one day use during the most elaborate acts.

Madame Wang walks along the rows of stacks - whips, handcuffs, masks - until she reaches the table standing at the far end of the room. She steps behind it like a cashier behind a counter and, resting her hands on the mirrored surface, asks:

“Well then? How may I help you in terms of VIP entertainment?”

Olivia’s face shows shock. Surely she must be aware of the things people do, but being in a room displaying every possible variety sets her back a little. She looks around with suspicion.

“Well, show us the goods then. I didn’t come all the way across the wilderness to look at your dildo collection.”

Madame Wang rolls her eyes. “All right, all right. So impatient,” she says, and presses the button under the table.

The display cases flip, and instead of floggers and masks, there are rows of rifles and pistols and shotguns and explosive devices. Olivia looks around in shock.

I walk towards the section with rifles and say, “We’re going to need some magazines, AR and AUG - original, but PMAGs, not waffles. Maybe something else, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Hey, Olivia, do you want to get a light for your rifle? Do you want to get a pistol?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll take a light. And as far as pistols… can I get an M9A5?”

Madame Wang perks up, walks to the pistol display, lifts a beige Beretta with a mounted red dot and a weapon light, checks the chamber, and hands it to Olivia.

“Excellent choice.”

I turn to our host and say, “Now, the big ticket items. I need some information, and it’s not the kind I can find myself.”

Madam Wang says, “Does it have something to do with a shipment?”

“It has everything to do with a shipment,” I say. “We got ambushed, and here I am. Now, about Olivia here… I wouldn’t be here if not for Olivia. So whatever you say to me, you can say to her.”

“Got it.”

“Here’s the problem. I’m carrying something, and I don’t know what it is. And I want you to find out what you can.”

“You don’t know what it is?”

“It’s a really weird object. They say it’s a major health hazard, but it’s not a bacterium or a virus. It’s some sort of - I don’t know - it messes with your head, I guess. Some people really want it, and some people really want to get rid of it. But I’m not making a move until I know what it is.”

Madame Wang throws a lock of her hair over her shoulder and says, “Have you tried looking it up online?”

“I did. Everything I was able to find was what you get when you look for weird artifacts - the Iron Pillar of India, the Antikythera mechanism, the Baghdad Battery. That sort of thing. Science pop. This must be scrubbed off the web pretty hard. It comes from the old U.S. base. That’s the only thing I know about its provenance.”

“Jesus. Well, how is it a health hazard?”

I explain the five rules, what I saw in Horsehaven, what it did to Olivia, and the ultrasound.

Madame Wang listens and nods, and the smile on her face goes stale - cold and sharp. She pushes herself off the table, clasps her hands behind her back, and begins to walk.

In a quiet, almost whispering voice, she says, “What does it look like?”

“It’s a sphere,” I say, “about the size of a fist, with inscriptions I can’t read. I’ll send you the photo. I can show it to you.”

I reach into my pocket, take out the HellHazard 4, and place it on the table.

Madame Wang looks at it, reaches out her hand, but retracts her fingers before touching it. She darts her eyes at me and says, “Is it safe to touch?”

“Yes,” I say. “You can take a picture of it if you want.”

She carefully rolls the hell hazard four with her index finger across the table, then lifts a photo camera from the drawer of the table and snaps several images.

“Put it back in your pocket,” she says, and I put the cargo back.

“If anybody else came here and told me what you just told me, I would kick their asses back onto the street in no time,” she says. “But I don’t think you came here to pull my leg, Rodion. Give me twenty-four hours - and I’ll tell you what I know.”

We head back. An HH-78 air-to-air missile sits proudly in the middle of a display case.

I turn back to her and say, “Hey, can I ask you something else?” Pointing at the missile, I say, “Have you sold many of these?”

“I sold a few.”

“Could you tell me who you sold them to?”

I see the protest mounting in her eyes. She’s stalling. She doesn’t want to say no, but she has to. So I cut in:

“It’d be pretty ironic if my helicopter got shot down with the same missiles that I brought you from the back of a truck. I just need to know if that’s what happened.”

Madame Wang bites her lip and says, “I’ll see what I can do, Rods. No promises.”

“Okay. Listen, I’d love to hang around, but we’ve got some more stuff to do. Thanks for everything.”

“You’re always welcome,” Wang says.

“Before we go,” I say, “can I get some of that extra entertainment you always throw my way? A little happy ending?”

Olivia gives me a judgmental look. Madame Wang says:

“OK. Five hundred rounds, five-five-six, 77 grain. Three hundred rounds, nine-millimeter hollow points. Is that good enough of a happy ending?”

“Yeah,” I say. It scratches my itch just right, “Thank you.”

We head back down to the first floor. As we exit the place, Olivia says, “This is the weirdest brothel I’ve ever seen.”

“Well,” I say, “Madame Wang specializes in backdoor deals of all kinds.”

Olivia chuckles and says, “That’s not funny.”

We get inside the car. I open my laptop.

There’s a message from Sam. It reads:

‘I got that jalopy delivered. Here are the coordinates.’

Debrief.

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Previous Chapter

Prologue

Soundtrack

Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison

Popcorno Revenge - Messer Chups

She’s A Rainbow - The Rolling Stones

Chapter 20.

The smell of fried bacon, bursting into my nose, snaps me out of my stupor.

“Here’s your order,” says the waitress.

I mutter back, “Thank you. Can I get some more coffee?”

“Yes, of course.”

In the sunlit diner, finished in yellow and red plastic, there are only a few people around. Olivia, sitting across from me, is devouring her second serving of Belgian waffles, drowning them in maple syrup. With a healthy, satisfied smile on her round lips, she throws me a glance and says, “Are you alright? Last time I checked, I was the one who had nightmares.”

My mind is swamped by the viscous mass of semi-digested thoughts. To hell with it. Gotta spill it out. I take a long sip, finishing the cup, and say, “I’d say my whole life has been a nightmare recently.”

“Okay. Well, don’t be so gloomy. We’re going to the White Sector, right?”

I lean forward, steady my bobbling head, and say, “We’re not going to the White Sector today.”

“Why not?”

“Listen. The money I owe you - I do have it, in fact. I’ll pay you. I thank you for your help. But there’s a problem I need to solve first.”

“Well, why don’t you tell me about it, Rods?”

I prop myself up on my elbows, placing them on the tabletop to either side of the triple egg and bacon I had ordered. What I’m about to do is completely off the elemental chart, so to speak - I’ve never done what I’m about to do. But I’ve also never been ambushed like that while transporting cargo, cargo that so finely messes with people’s minds. And in this mess, I need any help I can find, especially if the help can raise hell and watch my back. And also…

With deft movements, Olivia cuts into her waffle, and the motion sets her breasts - covered by her oversized t-shirt - swaying gently from side to side.

That’s it.

Goodbye, my professionalism. It’s high time I stop being so uptight and trust my instincts. My instinct says: tell that woman everything. I lean forward and say, “Listen. Are you going to come with me, regardless of what I’m about to tell you?”

“No way. What if you are a creep?”

“Do I look like one?” I ask this question seriously, looking at her face.

Her face softens, and she replies: “No, not really. Not more than anybody. Let’s be honest. I don’t have anything else to do.”

“All right. Then listen.”

So I told her everything - NDA be damned. Everything I know about the cargo, about the HellHazard 4, and when I finished, she looked at me as if I had just told her a funny anecdote. Her eyebrows lifted in a chuckle, her eyes gleaming.

“Is this your best joke?” she says. “Come on, Roddy.”

“Listen. I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’ll just say it straight. That bar got knocked out because of me. Because of me, your bar is gone. And those people are dead. And worse people than that are coming for me. And last night - that was me. I did that. I’m responsible for it. I should have known. I should have told you.”

“It was just a nightmare.”

“A rule is a rule - no sleeping aids near the thing. It could have been much worse than a nightmare, too. We got lucky.” I stumble, looking down at my backpack. The cargo, the HellHazard, is tucked in a side pocket.

Olivia says, “I get it, I guess.”

“Wait - you are not mad?”

She shrugs and sends another piece of waffle, drenched in syrup, into her mouth, “Of course you should have told me about it - since we are partners and all. Duh. But what is the point of beating yourself over it? I hope you are telling me the truth now.”

“Thank you. I was… You should have seen yourself the other night.”

“I mean - it was bad.”

“It was so bad, I thought you had gone insane.”

She looks at me and sets down her cutlery. It clinks against the plate from which the waffles have been eaten down to the last crumb, “Why do you have those big, wet eyes, like a dog that knows it just made a mess? If you’ve finally decided that maybe you should look inside the box you’re hauling before agreeing to the job, then let’s go figure it out.”

It feels like someone splashes cold water over me, washing my worries away, refreshing breeze runs over my skin. What kind of woman is she, letting go of that grudge? She bounced back faster than a basketball. There is lightness lifting me up, a sudden relief, and a whimsical, eerie blessing of her forgiveness that makes my eyes slightly watery. My head is buzzing as if I were drinking, and I lean back, smirk, and say the first thing that pops into my mind, “You should’ve seen yourself yesterday. I seriously thought you were about to check out right there. And where was I supposed to stash you in that case? Under the mattress? Your curves would give you away in an instant.”

“Haha, very funny. Eat your bacon, eat your eggs. Get some coffee, and let’s go.”

I smash the yellow dome of a sunny-side-up egg with a piece of crispy bacon. The waitress comes back and pours me more hot coffee. Olivia, the very same woman who screamed like a wounded prey just six hours ago, now sits across from me on a leather couch of a diner booth and makes a pretend-angry face at me, blows a raspberry, and refuses to share her jam.

After breakfast, we’ll go to the nearest computer store so I can get a clean device and have a brief smoke.

As we drive out toward Ellensburg, I log into my backup account and start rebuilding my communications. The first thing I send to Sam is a simple message and a photo of Olivia. The message reads:

‘Hey, remember that old jalopy you had in your garage? There is a buyer for it in Yakama. P.S. Also, could you get me and this here girl tickets to Hershey Park?’

That message should get me a decent care package, and if I make it out of this alive, I’ll make sure to thank Sam enough for everything he’s doing for me.

I have a forwarder set between my main email address and my backup, and there is a message in my inbox that catches my attention among the sea of concerns, warnings, and generic mailing list spam.

It comes from the company, from the official email domain. It reads:

‘Mr. Rodion Taktarov,

It was brought to our attention that a severe disruption interfered with the on-time delivery of cargo B3658821ZMX, which you have been organizing as a contractor. This event is a force majeure which no reasonable person could have foreseen or prevented. We place no blame on you for the total loss of the vehicle and the loss of life of the crew.

We believe you are still in possession of the cargo, and the same actors who performed an organized act of violence against you and your crewmates are still interested in retrieving the cargo and eliminating you. As such, we offer you an extraction opportunity.

Please arrive at the coordinates in the attached file today at 7 pm. You will be airlifted straight to Seattle, and your contractual obligations will be considered fulfilled.

Thank you for your attention.’

I chuckle reading this, and Olivia asks, “What’s so funny?”

“You know, there’s something about this slipstream word choice the company cannot avoid that always gets me.”

“What do they want?”

“Well, they want the cargo, and they want me. They’re offering me a first-class ticket back to Seattle so I can have an oyster dinner with a view of Puget Sound tonight.”

“You’re not going, are you?”

“I wouldn’t really call myself risk-averse, per se, but I’m also not a complete moron. If there is an insider working, then going there would be the last stupid thing I could ever do. But out of curiosity, let me just look something up, ”I look at the GPS coordinates in the email and check them. “Well, they want us to come out to the boonies.”

“What did you expect?”

“Well, I mean, it’s actually kind of nice of them. If they asked me to arrive in a residential area, there would be complaints from the neighbors about gunshots disrupting their sleep.”

I dig back into the laptop, looking for messages. There’s one new one. It’s from Sam. It reads, ‘I knew there’d be a buyer. All right, I’ll ship it over tonight.’ I run my hand through my hair and slump back into the seat, resting my back. Sam is good. He’s really good.

I keep scrolling. I check my spam folder, just in case. And among the unsightly offerings and scams, there is an email from a public domain. I open it. It appears to be coming from a nonsensical combination of numbers and letters, created with clear intent to maximize entropy. But the contents of the letter are far from a random attempt at identity theft. It reads:

‘Rodion, I was hoping what happened wouldn’t have happened. I knew the chances were high, which is why you were hired along with Sebastian, Derek, and Andy. This is regrettable.

I believe by now you have had enough opportunities to verify that the five rules that I have given you indeed are pivotal to your continued survival. I urge you to keep following them.

At this time, I have to provide an explanation of what has happened to you. Within my Company, there are divergent opinions on the future of the project that involves this cargo. Without divulging the exact nature of it, my vision is that this cargo has a great future in the research and development performed within the company. However, among senior leadership, there are people who believe that investment in this project jeopardizes the long-term careers of certain people, as they fail to see the long-term potential of the commercial application of the cargo.

I expected that a disruption was likely to happen as a play for power. However, I did not anticipate such a vigorous response. Perhaps your dismissal of Leslie Fitzpatrick informed the senior leadership within the company about the scale of your preparation and your experience, which forced them to commit more resources.

In any case, I urge you to come to Seattle as soon as possible. As soon as you deliver the cargo into my hands, there will be no motivated organizations or individuals who would like to see you dead, as at that time the ploy to derail my research will have been thwarted.

Up until then, I would avoid any company representative whom I could not personally vouch for. Right now, there are meetings regarding the appropriate path that needs to be taken in these particular circumstances. I cannot guarantee the outcome of these meetings, as I cannot guarantee the outcome of meetings that I am not a part of.

As such, my call to you is this: make your way here as soon as possible. Do not talk or interact with anyone unless you have to, and always remember the five rules.

Thank you.’

I rub my chin and say, “Well, it’s all clear as mud.”

“What’s that? Did you learn anything?”

“Well, the problem we’re going to have to deal with is that we do have a mole. There is some factionalism inside the company, with one faction hell-bent on getting that thing delivered.”

“Hell hazard?”

“Yeah. Hell hazard four. And the other faction wants to bury the leads and me - and probably you along with me.”

“There’s a highway intersection coming. What are we doing? You want to go west?”

“No, no. We’re going to Ellensburg. I don’t trust the guy who handed me this cargo, and I don’t trust the rest of his company either. I’m not giving this thing to anyone until I understand what it is.”

“All right then. We’re going north.”

I look at the landscape surrounding me - hills belted by sparse timber, the sun beating down on the wilderness from above, the gray band of road stretching into the horizon. Behind that horizon, there are cities, and in those cities, there are people who wish death upon me. And they are numerous, and they are well-equipped and well-informed. But they don’t know one thing about Olivia and me right here. We’re too stubborn for our own good.

I ask Olivia, “You know what I keep thinking about?”

“What?”

“You know, when forty years ago that big thing started, it had to start with someone, right?”

“Well, I mean, it had to. With someone who had no clue what he was doing.”

“Maybe he did, but he thought it was no big deal, you know - just doing his job. A workplace accident. And now, we’ve got this thing in a backpack, whatever it is… I don’t want anything like that big thing to start with me.”

Debrief.

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Previous Chapter

Prologue

Soundtrack

Surfacing - Slipknot

All Nightmare Long - Metallica

Enter Sandman - Metallica

Chapter 19.

The hotel room in Glendale came as a sanctuary of comfort and calm - after the dust of the desert, after everything that had happened in Antelope, and the sweat, profuse sweat from the chase - this small room, with soft walls and carpet, seeping a faint smell of mold buried underneath a thick layer of lavender cleaner, is what we need to make a stop and rethink everything that’s happening.

Olivia is in the shower. We used her name to check into the hotel. I insisted we take two beds.

Dirty boots are left in the hallway. I stand next to my bed, stripped down to my underwear as my pants and jacket are piled in the corner. An unbearable stench of fire so out of place in the middle of civilization, hangs in the air.

I stumble around. My hands and my legs are numb. I’m drained - drained enough that I might finally get a good night’s sleep. With my movements sluggish, I pace as much as the limited space allows me. The rectangle of linens glows white in the twilight of the room, silently calling to me, yet I need to take a shower first - there’s a layer of fine dust coating my hair and clinging to my skin that reeks of smoke. So, I wait, standing upright and holding the top of a small table, propping myself up like an old man. Five minutes more, and I’ll go to the shower. Then I’ll come back here, crash into the bed. And all of this - everything that has happened - will be gone, at least for as long as I can remain asleep.

The water stops drumming against the walls of the shower. A few minutes later, the hair dryer turns on. And a few minutes after that, the bathroom door opens, and Olivia walks into the room from the shower. Her black hair is loose, falling over her shoulders and down her back, long black strands clinging together. A white towel is wrapped tightly around her figure.

With her makeup gone, her appearance, stripped of the touch of gentle lies and provocative expressions, reveals truth underneath: her slightly rounded face, with its gentle simplicity. It reminds me of the face of a peasant woman who would rise before dawn in olden times to feed the animals before going out into the sunlit fields for the hay harvest.

She throws me a quick look, and the smile dances, spreading across her flushed cheeks from the hot water, “Stop staring. Go take a shower.”

Pulling my gaze away from her, I grab the bag of clean clothes I keep in my backpack, trudge into the bathroom, and take a long-awaited shower, standing underneath the strong jets of hot water. With my head hanging low, I watch the foamy vein of soap curling into an ashen-gray whirlpool near the drain.

Startled out of my numbness, I lift my head, and the hot stream spills across my face. Did I fall asleep here, or just drift off in thought?

I clear my throat, spit, grab soap, lather more into my hand, turn around, and place my stiff back under the hot streams.

Finished with the shower, I quickly brush my teeth, wrap myself in a towel, dry off, put on clean underwear and a clean T-shirt, and go back into the room.

Olivia is already in bed, wearing an old, oversized T-shirt she picked up from the backseat of her truck. Her head is on the pillow, her hair spread out like radiant rays. Her eyes are closed, and on her lips there is a smile, a barely perceptible smile that hits people when they’ve passed the nadir of their lives.

As I pass the mirror, I see the same smile on my face. Hot water releases endorphins. It’s pure chemistry, I guess. I turn the light off, climb into my cold bed, and as soon as my head touches the pillow, I drift off.

Scream.

The voice-splitting scream of a creature being pulled apart, the screeching that tears vocal cords into pieces and rips the throat bloody, the last call - not out of concern for the safety or out of an attempt to ward off the predator, but out of the desperate desire to release the singing agony outward.

It comes from Olivia’s bed.

In the darkness, I push myself up in bed, grab my rifle, and turn the flashlight on the aiming module, pointing it at the floor. In the scattered light, I see Olivia. Her eyes are bulging out, as if an oceanic pressure pushed them out from inside her. Her mouth is ajar. Her limbs are thrashing around, hitting the wall, the bed, getting trapped in the linens. The pupils of her eyes are constricted into a pin. I scan the room, but there is nothing, nobody besides her and me. I put down my rifle and approach her. She’s looking past me, as if I’m a ghost, and her limbs move around and land on my shoulder, my stomach, and hit me across the face.

Holding her shoulders, I yell, “Olivia! Olivia!” Her scream reverberates in my ears with buzzing pain. Trying to catch her hands waving in the twilight of the hotel room, I repeat, “Olivia, snap out of it! Come on, you’re safe. It’s okay.”

She jerks her head up, looks at me as if I have just come out of nowhere. Breathing heavily, she pulls back. Fine perspiration covers her skin, soaking her linens through. From her eyes, a stream of tears runs down her face. From underneath her brow, she wails without saying a word.

“What is it?” I ask her. “Are you epileptic?”

It takes her a couple of seconds to respond, as if my words need time to reach her. She shakes her head and puts her palms over her face.

I ask her, “Have you ever had episodes like this one?”

She mumbles, without taking her hands off, “No.”

“Let me get some water.” I bring her a plastic bottle, and she grabs it and gulps, as if it’s the first bottle of water she has ever seen. A tremor spreads through her bed as I sit right by her and touch her shoulder.

She finishes the bottle of water, and it falls out of her hand, “Poor… that was…,” she stutters. “I’m so scared.”

“Please,” I ask her. “What’s going on? Nobody’s threatening you.”

“What I saw...”

“It was just a dream.”

She goes silent, weeping. Her shoulders are shivering, “A nightmare. The worst I’ve ever had.”

Wishing to tell her that nightmares aren’t real and they can’t hurt her, I looked at her face, drenched in sweat, and the words stuck in my throat. Pale, she lay on the bed as if nailed to its surface. Her limbs twitched, and a high-pitched wail escaped her lips, bloodied from a bite.

I wiped the crimson off her lips with a napkin and reached for some more water.

She curls into a fetal position and pulls the blanket over her body, sniffing. Whatever she saw in her sleep has completely wiped away the Olivia I saw the other day - that woman slinging her rifle, facing off against mercenaries in the wilderness of the Red Sector. Her bare feet stick out, and she pulls her knees toward her chest. I grab my blanket and throw it over her. I sit on the bed and caress her shoulder wrapped in the double layer.

With her voice muffled, Olivia says, “It was like a snuff film, with no end. I tried to scream, but…”

I lean over her and whisper, “Is that about the bar and everything that happened?”

She presses her eyelids shut, and a fresh stream of tears rolls down her face, her nose, and seeps into the pillow. “No,” she says. “It was shapeless. Just madness. I’m so scared.”

“Do you want to go take a shower, refresh yourself a little?”

She says, “No. I’m cold,” and pulls the stack of blankets over her shoulders, wrapping herself tighter.

“Do you want me to stay?”

“To stay here?” she says. “Yes.”

“Okay.”

I turn off the flashlight on my rifle, and the room fades into black. Olivia is wheezing, sobbing occasionally, pressing herself tighter into a coil. Minutes drag on, compounding into hours. Her convulsions space out further and further apart, and her moaning stops as she falls asleep. I keep holding her shoulder in the cold darkness. If she needs me at this moment. She’s on my team now, and I’m not letting go of her shoulder for a while.

As my eyes adjust to the darkness, and in the faint glow of LED lights, in the thin bright stripe that glows underneath the door, I make out the monotone gray of the room. My contemplation, my stupor that takes over proper sleep in my mind, sets in.

This HellHazard job needs to be wrapped up soon. Yes, I’m a logistics contractor. And that’s what I do. I have some discretion, but at the end of the day, I serve other people. They might plot and scheme, but as long as I make the delivery, I’m good. It’s not my job to think about what that ball is that sits in the pouch of my backpack. All I have to do is make sure to get it to Seattle safely. Doing my job is a virtue. So that’s what I’ll do. I swallow my pride. We dash to the White Sector. I offload this cargo onto whoever Mr. Hanson tells me to, and I forget that I saw any of this.

I might stay in contact with Olivia for a while. She seems like a woman who can hold her own - well, most of the time. But a nightmare is a nightmare. I pull my hand off Olivia’s shoulder and stand up from the bed. She doesn’t wake up. I rub my face. It’s time for me to catch some actual sleep. What a day.

Finding my way through the gray shapes, I come to the bathroom. I wash my face, relieve myself, and as I’m heading back, my palm catches the loop of a toiletry bag - Olivia’s. It flies onto the floor, and her toothpaste, toothbrush, and some pill containers spill out. Olivia doesn’t wake up.

I put everything together, using my wristwatch as a flashlight. My hand reaches for her hand cream, her toothbrush, and her pill bottle. I bring it closer, and the large script, barely visible in the dim lighting, catches my eye.

‘Zolpidem, 10 mg’

‘Take one tablet as needed before going to bed.’

‘4 refills’

The pill container slips out of my cold, numb fingers.

If I’m sleeping within 200 yards of the cargo, I should not take any sleeping aid.

My mouth opens in a silent scream. I grab the hair on my head and pull at it, trying to drown the gaping abyss of guilt that has burst open inside me with pain. I should have told her about it. What kind of a man am I?

The helicopter, the bar - and now her, poor thing, innocent in all of this. This is all my fault.

I sit down on the cold floor and clutch my head with my hands. No. Until I understand what the hell it is that I’m carrying to Seattle…

But anyway.

But that’s not the real question.

The real question is how I’m now going to tell her what I’ve done.

Debrief.

The cover art is a collage of this image and Saturn Devouring His Son by Goya and Hell by Hieronymus Bosch.

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Here are some reminders about the cargo and the rules for its transport:

Previous Chapter

Prologue

Soundtrack

Gimme Back My Bullets - Lynyrd Skynyrd

I Heard It Through The Grapevine - Creedence Clearwater Revival

Waiting for the Sun - The Doors

Chapter 18.

Red and blue, red and blue in the distance over the hill along the highway, flashes of color splashing against the terrain in the dark.

In the silent interior of the car, hidden behind the hill and frozen in the middle of a barely visible road between a grove and a slope, Olivia grips the steering wheel pressing her lips together. Her black eyes, framed by smeared makeup, have taken on an expression of feral anger. From under her brow, she looks from the road to the highway in the distance. With her head tilted forward, she resembles a small forest animal.

The approach of the red and blue makes me reach for my rifle. Should I run? Should we take a stand? In any case, I should get as far away from her as possible. Red Sector law wants me, not her.

Red light shines through the gap between the hills. I reach out for the door handle.

Olivia says, “Hold on.”

The splash turns blue and disappears behind the hill.

Thirty seconds later, the lights appear on the left side of the hill, still on the highway. They haven’t noticed us. I relax back into my chair.

For five minutes, we sit, listening to the humming of the motor, afraid to say a word, as if anything above a whisper would betray us and lead our enemies to our position.

She turns her head to me. Her face is relaxed now, and with a friendly smile, she puts her head on the steering wheel, as if tiredness finally caught up with her, and says, “Were you planning on running away from the cops on foot?”

“If they figure we’re here, they’ll probably find a way to call backups and trap us in here. And, well… if I’m not in the car, you could claim duress.”

She shakes her head. Her hair comes loose, the remnants of her ponytail falling down her shoulders as she says, “There are not that many people who can chase me on this terrain for long.” She looks up, turns on the headlights, and says, “Still, I appreciate the thought.”

“We’re gonna have to go across the border. You got your passes?”

“Yeah. Not the White Sector, of course, but I can get to Yellow.”

“The bastards back in Fossil took all my papers and my devices. I can’t access my passes. My name is somewhere on the list, but I got fuck-all in terms of ID.”

Olivia says, “All right. Hide your rifle. Take off your pistol. Wash your mouth out with some whiskey if you still have it. Then I want you to pretend like you’re sleeping.”

“If they check the car, they’re gonna harass us. And there are alcohol vapors in here.”

She turns her head, and a razor-sharp smile touches her lips. “I’m a bartender. Everywhere I go smells like alcohol. Now, why don’t you simmer down?”

As she shifts in her seat, she winces and looks down and carefully readjusts her seatbelt. She gives me a look, mouth slightly parted, then in a moment shakes her head the smallest bit, looks back at the road. We drive off.

The wind turbines are lined up on the top of the hill, barely visible against the darkness above. Rusted. One of the propellers is broken, hanging downward over the barren land, like the remnant of the old world.

Seated, I follow Olivia’s instructions. I hesitate before taking a sip of whiskey from my flask, but at the end of the day, she must know what she’s doing. She’d better. I recline my seat and slump back, closing my eyes.

A rustle to the left. Olivia’s voice. “Here, take it.”

I open my eyes - in her right hand, she holds an old hat. I put it over my face and slump back again.

“Unbuckle your seatbelt,” she says.

I press the button, and the black snake retreats. I slide out of the silky polymer ribbon, get myself comfortable, and cross my arms, bracing myself with my boots against the passenger compartment. The fresh alcohol on my breath lingers in the air, mixed with tobacco and sweat from the bottom brim of the white western hat.

The projectors shine. The car comes to a stop. Brakes squeal. The window comes down.

The stout voice says, “Evening, ma’am. Where are you headed? Oh, hi, Olivia.”

“What’s up, Stripes?” she says. “How’s it hanging?”

The quarantine guard says, “It’s all right. Kind of a slow night. You heard about that thing down south? The helicopter?”

“Yeah,” she says.

“The law, the sheriff’s boys, are up in arms about all that. I’m sure the assholes over the mountains are rubbing their hands - Red Sector this, Red Sector that. I bet this helicopter was going to the White Sector to begin with anyhow.”

“Yeah, yeah, I guess.

“Well, anyway, let me get your papers. Who’s that?”

“Oh, that’s my husband,” says Olivia.

The guard says, “Oh. I didn’t realize you remarried.”

“Well, I did.”

“And you haven’t invited anybody to the wedding?”

After a short pause, she says, her voice somber and deep, “Jake had too many friends up here. I didn’t...” Her voice trails off.

The guard says, “Yeah… I understand. Well, does he have papers?”

“Well, he does - somewhere, but I don’t want to wake him up. He’s really cranky when you wake him up.”

The guard says, “I wish you’d, you know, tell us that you’re… available before all that.”

“Well, if things are going the way they’re going, you’ll be the first to know.”

“All right. Fine. You keep going. Drive safe.”

The scanner beeps. The barrier goes up. The window closes. The car pulls away.

We must be going over the Columbia River now. The streetlights on the bridge come in equal intervals, like a metronome or a heartbeat. I remain in my position, as if the guard could still see us from his post. We reach solid ground again, and I lift the brim of the hat covering my face and look around, “Welcome to the Yellow Zone.”

Olivia is focused on the road, scanning the darkness ahead. The silence lingers, imposing, pressing.

So I ask her, “You were married?”

“Yes. The bar was originally Jake’s place.”

“Was it always that nice?”

She shakes her head, sniffs, and wipes her nose with the back of her left hand, “No, it wasn’t. Jake thought the patrons were always right, and if they weren’t right, then a fight would solve everything. Stupid boys.”

“I tried taking it outside, with Les, you know. But it didn’t help.”

“Well, still, no fights inside. That was the rule I put.”

I speak up slowly, as if probing the ground in front of me for quicksand or a booby trap, “And the other rule…

“That came because of Jake, too. Because of what happened to him.”

North. We keep going north. The flicker of conversation is extinguished, settling an uneasy silence in the interior of the car.

Olivia clears her throat, looks at me, and says, “Now you better tell me what the cargo that you’re carrying is, and who the people that…” Her voice trails off again, stumbling into her swollen vocal cords.

I say, “Well, because of the NDA I cannot…”

Actually, you know what? Fuck all that.

“Here’s the deal,” I say, getting worked up. I feel the blood flowing to my cheeks, “You know, I’ve worked this job a long time. All I do is haul things around. I’m a logistics contractor. That’s what I do. And then this job comes around. You know who gave it to me?”

She says attentively, but without much interest, “Who?”

“The Company,” I say. “The Company paid me - or is about to pay me - a lot of money for carrying this hazardous material right here.”

She says, “Is it a bomb?”

“I don’t know what it is,” I say. “They refused to tell me, these assholes. And the worst part is, they gave me a list of things I’m supposed to watch out for, and none of it makes sense. I feel like it’s just a distraction. Maybe it’s a scam they’re trying to pull, pretending they have something super valuable so they can clear some cash from the insurance company. But even that doesn’t make sense. The guy who handed me this thing seemed serious. And at first I thought maybe that’s all just a play. But then I see that the cargo he gave me is kind of nasty.”

Olivia says, “What does it do?”

“Again, I don’t know,” I say. “It’s a weird one, really. I’ve seen all kinds of things that I haul from the Red Sector and back to the Red Sector from the White Sector, but I don’t think it’s a weapon. I don’t think it’s a chemical either.”

“That doesn’t explain anything. Who are these people who were going after you?”

“Well, the guy that came inside and the one we were having a duel with outside - he was a coworker of sorts. He’s the one who helped assemble the shipping container for the cargo. I dismissed him because he was drinking on the job.”

She says, “That’s smart.”

“Well, that’s what I do. I mean, if you want to drink, drink. Just don’t show up drunk to the work site. Well, anyway, I guess somebody really wants this cargo. But it’s not just Les. There’s somebody else on the inside of this whole operation. They hired these mercenaries. And they were pretty serious people too, especially the one running the whole thing. It was organized pretty well by Red Sector standards.”

She turns her head toward me, and I rush to say:

“Well, you know what I mean. They even had two groups of drone operators waiting for us, and several ground patrols scouting the area. Too bad the low-level mercs were sloppy, but I guess that’s a good thing. But the important thing is somebody was waiting for us. We were set up.”

She says, “Yeah, you said that. So what do you want to do now?”

“Well, first I want to get a clean laptop and start reaching out to people. I want to see what everybody says. They’ll know I’m alive, and they have a general idea where I am. So at this point, I’m just going to check those fuckers one by one and see if their story makes sense. And then, well, we need to get to a hotel. I really need to get some sleep after all this shit.”

“Yeah. Same here.”

A whining noise emerges in my head. It grows. It pulsates.

Olivia whispers, “What’s that? Is that my car?”

I look at her. Frantic, darting around the place. Do I want to tell her about the cargo? Maybe later. She’s already overwhelmed, “Just keep driving. Whatever it is, it’ll pass.”

She looks at me, her eyebrows raised, her lips bent into an upside-down disapproval. But she keeps driving.

The sound peaks.

She shakes her head and says, “Maybe I really need to stop.”

I interrupt her. “Please drive.”

She clutches the steering wheel and hits the gas. The car roars forward, the whining dissipates, and then it’s gone.

“Whatever the hell was that?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Before I fall asleep, can we put some music on?”

“I’m the driver. I’m picking.”

“I’m not arguing. I heard the kind of stuff you’ve got in that bar. So what should I put?”

She says, “Anything from the blues rock playlist.”

I chuckle. This girl’s got a great taste in music for sure. I go to the app and pick a song. The road runs through sparse forest - full of timber, but not to the point where logging crews would come buzzing through. The wall of green rising on both sides puts me at ease. There’s something about this green that whispers of safety and comfort. With a smooth movement of my left hand, I reach into the pouch in my backpack. The HellHazard is still there. My fingers tap its cold, etched surface.

Olivia rocks her head side to side, and her ponytails swing left and right to the rhythm of the swanky tune. A faint redness blooms in her eyes.

Would she believe me if I told her about what I’m carrying?

It doesn’t matter.

She deserves to know what it is.

I’m telling her all that. Tomorrow. I yawn and wiggle in my seat, looking forward to the city hiding behind the forested hills.

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Debrief

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Previous Chapter

Prologue

Soundtrack

The Sniper At The Gates Of Heaven - The Black Angels

I Heard It Through The Grapevine - Creedence Clearwater Revival

On The Hunt - Lynyrd Skynyrd

Chapter 17.

Flying north to safety, in the passenger seat of a car belonging to a person I met no more than a couple of hours ago, I don’t even question the absurdity of this job anymore. All I want to do is smoke. I’d kill for a cigarette right now - but Olivia said no cigarettes, no smoking inside the car - so it’ll have to wait.

For ten minutes, I have been studying the phone of the guy who attacked us in Antelope. Unlocked device gives me everything I want - a glimpse into who’s going after me. The guy’s name is Ed. Every ten or fifteen seconds, I scan the road ahead and behind us. There is no one there. Yet.

Back to Ed’s phone.

Photos. Here is some debauchery. I don’t really care about that: he’s partying with some other guys about his age, all around twenty-five or so. Nothing of interest.

Maps. Let’s look for recent searches. It gets more interesting. Indeed, they were patrolling the Red Sector around the spot I had been walking through. So it was they after all. Home. Home within my address. So he’s a local character, but still a stranger to these parts.

Instant messages. Conversations with friends, with girlfriends. From what I can see, nothing of consequence.

Emails. Some online orders and subscriptions. Nothing I could use.

The pain in my left arm bothers me. I raise my head and say to Olivia, “Listen, let’s do a quick stop. We’ve got to bandage that.”

She winces, breaks into a frown, and with her nasty smile of superiority says, “You really want to smoke that bad?”

“I can’t think straight with that pain throbbing. And yes, I do want to smoke. I paid you for it. Remember?”

She chuckles and brings the car to a stop.

I say, “We have a couple of minutes. If you know how to do it, I wouldn’t mind.”

She sneers and reaches into the back seat of the truck, producing a medical kit.

The rubbing alcohol on my wound, and it singes me with a flare-up of pain. I wince, and through that wince I carry a strained smile. She dries the wound with a piece of gauze and spreads fine dust of antiseptic from a packet. I could swear I saw tetracycline on the packaging, but it’s too dim to be sure.

She produces a thin syringe and asks, “Do you have an allergy to novocaine?”

“I don’t.”

The road runs towards the horizon, a dark band of tranquility, a snake in the grass, gentle waves carrying the unseen presence.

Still, I’m getting that smoke when she’s done.

Olivia makes four injections above and below the wound, and the freezing numbness wraps around it. She applies the coagulant pad and wraps it with a pressure dressing.

“You’ve got one minute,” she says as she packs her medical supplies back in her bag.

I get the Marlboro pack out, fish out a cigarette, and take a drag from it, holding it in my shaking hands, trembling with anticipation.

“Do you want one?”

“Not now.”

Hot smoke bursts into my lungs, and the sacred aroma of concentration interrupts my mind from packing in circles. As the end of the cigarette illuminates the insides of my palm and my skin soaks in the warm secondhand staleness, as if I’m carrying a ball of elemental fire, I realize what I was doing wrong.

Recent apps.

Who cares about the unimpressive smut his girlfriend, named Izzy-C, has been sharing? Recent apps - there has to be some actual messenger, a group chat, whatever these mercs use for coordination.

I climb inside the car, buckle my seatbelt, and pick up the phone. I scroll up on the screen and see all the apps that I had opened, and right after them, Concord. I chuckle, shaking my head in disbelief, and my hand drops down on my knee.

Olivia asks, “What’s so funny?”

“Sometimes we overthink. The solution could be right around the corner.”

She gives me a quick look, throwing her head back as if she caught a gust of wind in her face. “What are you talking about?”

Pointing at the phone, I say, “I was trying to figure out if I could get any intel out of this here device. And it took me too long to figure out how to go to recent apps. And now I see that the group that was trying to go after us used Concord.”

She says, “So what?”

“Well, in my business, everyone knows, or rather should know, that WHO has all the encryption keys built into this platform. I don’t use it. It’s simply not secure. It has the same privacy expectations as yelling at somebody across the street.”

“Sure. So what did you learn?”

I lift the phone and say, “Well, there is a server dedicated to catching me. Mercs from all around the Red Sector. Some of them know each other well. Let me take a look.”

“Why?”

“Well, first, I really want to know who’s going after me. And second of all, I want to see if we could use a little misdirection.”

She shakes her head. “It’s too risky.”

“Well, everything that’s up there right now is risky by definition. We just have to manage it.”

There are eight channels on the server. One general chat, two named Ground Patrol, numbered one to five, and two named ‘UAV support one’ and ‘UAV support two.’ I can access only Ground Patrol 3 and the General Chat.

I check the general chat first. It started about a month ago, and whoever runs this chat has at least some rudimentary understanding of operational security. More importantly, he doesn’t say a word beyond what needs to be said.

…

RRM53: Welcome to the channel, everybody. We’re gonna use this server for the coordination of our activities. Please make yourself familiar with a brief from the leader of your team. You won’t have access to individual channels of other teams, but your leader will. [a month ago]

…

Slim889: I can do this, as you know, but with no clarity on the route, I can’t guarantee that I can meet them.

RRM53: We’re working on it. [two weeks ago]

…

JayFunnyGuy56: With things in position in locations 19 and 55, I’ll make necessary adjustments later once we confirm the route. Is there any news?

RRM53: Yes, we have an insider. [a week ago]

…

As I read this, I feel my spine being yanked back, and my breathing stops for a second. I knew that. I want to see if they’re going to drop any hints about who. Let’s check newer messages.

…

[deleted]

[deleted]

[deleted]

RRM53: I removed what you posted because you have to think before you click things. This is not what you should post anywhere. Forget you ever saw it. [six days ago]

…

RRM53: We have another one, another mole. Has some gripe with that asshole Rods. [six days ago]

> new member joined: LeslieOrestios.

LeslieOrestios: Hi guys, it’s nice to be here.

RRM53: Welcome, @LeslieOrestios. Thanks for joining us. Your information was very useful. I’m going to put you with Ground Patrol 4.

LeslieOrestios: ty!

…

RRM53: Attention, everybody, we have the final confirmation of the route. I’m attaching this via text file.

JakeFunnyGuy55: You might have to move the points 4 and 60 for both devices. We got the departure date, by the way.

RRM53: Finally. @LeslieOrestios, you have to provide me with the outline. Everything about how the cargo is being transported. Reinforcement location. Everything.

LeslieOrestios: I thought you were just about to shoot the thing down, @RRM53.

RRM53: Listen, it’s not your position to tell us what to do. The cargo goes to the insider. The company gets the payout, and we get our fees. Everything is nice, smooth, and everybody keeps their mouth shut. Understand?

LeslieOrestios: Okay, I’ll send you a DM with everything I know.

…

Two days ago, the channel lit up:

…

RRM53: They’ve come into position. Engaging them right now.

…

I scroll down. There’s a photo of our helicopter with black smoke escaping from its tail. A dot on the ground filmed from the UAV hovering above. I keep scrolling. Interesting read, but I need to figure out something I can use right now.

Here, they talk about losing me.

…

RRM53: I’m gonna go talk to the sheriff. I know the guy. He’ll see it my way. We gotta get that asshole Rods out in the desert. You can’t have a shootout in Fossil. [two days ago]

…

I scroll down.

…

RRM53: Everybody, circle your designated squares. If you see anybody, shoot us a message immediately and we’ll converge.

…

Five messages later.

…

LeslieOrestios: There is no way we’re gonna find anything.

LCMiguelP725: Shut up and go back to your channel.

…

About thirty messages later.

…

LeslieOrestios: Found them. On till OP here. GPS coordinates.

JLLimerickDildo: I’m coming in. Expect us in twenty minutes.

…

There haven’t been any messages in the general chat list since.

I go and check Ground Patrol 3. There’s a little trick I can use to hopefully divert them away from where Olivia and I are heading. To pull this off, I need to see how this asshole - this phone I’m holding - used to communicate.

Ground Patrol 3 has over a thousand messages, and I skim through them all.

…

AAA55: Have you seen the list of what you’re not supposed to do with the cargo? That shit is crazy, yo. Why the fuck does anyone want this at the end of the day?

…

I put my phone down.

Could it be Siya?. What is your endgame here? Why did she… Is she bored? If her corporate position is safe enough to gamble everything away, I’ve got to talk to her and figure out if she’s doing this out of her own stupidity or if somebody else is pulling the strings.

I keep scrolling.

…

EL15: @me wake the fuck up

Me: sry man, my girl wouldbn’t let me go

EL15: Hurry up already

Me: k k

EL15: Hey, @J88 can you get beer and some froskies

J88: I ain’t your bitch

Me: dont be shit bro

J88: froskies are three fifty each here I ain’t paying that

Me: dude, we got that Pemberton money coming in. dont be a fool

…

Olivia says, “Did you get what you wanted?”

“Yes. They are well-organized, but they are not as smart as they think.”

“What do you plan to do? Send them south?”

“Almost. South is too conspicuous - there is no reason to go south for you or me. I’ll send them west. I’d go west if I trusted the shipper.”

I type in the general chat:

…

Me: Les is gone rod’s got guys tagged car gone bro

…

I press send. Ten seconds later, the message from the Admin:

…

RRM53: Where are they going?

Me: 293 west

RRM53: Roger that. @MoOrtGOort, you go to Madras if he goes 97 south @HhunHord3 go up 197. @me keep us posted. I’m getting a lot of heat on this one.”

…

I lean back and relax my spine, numb from a strained posture, “They took the bait.”

“You’ve been doing this for a long time?”

“Doing what?”

“What you did back in the bar and then now?” she asks.

“I’m a logistics contractor. Everything I do is done to get myself and cargo from point A to point B.”

“And in that line of work - do you get to use your rifle often?”

“I use it whenever appropriate. I’ll tell you this though - this is the hottest job I’ve ever had.”

With a note of anxiety in her voice, checking mirrors and looking around the darkness through which we were plowing seventy miles per hour, she asks, “Are they gonna follow us into the Yellow Sector?”

I shake my head. “I don’t think so. This seems like a local crew. The guy who runs it is pretty serious, but I don’t think they even have Yellow Sector passes. Do you have one?”

She says, “I do.”

“Good. Let me double-check.”

I go to the WHO app. Just like I suspected - no Yellow pass for the recently deceased Ed.

“However, we’ve got more problems. The shipper whose cargo I’m carrying… I don’t understand the whole thing yet, but there’s an insider, another one, aside from Les. I might know who that insider is, but I can’t confirm it.”

She says, “What does it all mean?”

“It means we can’t just dash back into Seattle. It seems like this company is playing games with me. Not to mention, it looks like this local crew that destroyed your bar is working on behalf of some Pemberton people.”

“Who is that?”

“I don’t know yet. Sounds familiar, but I can’t place it yet.”

“Can’t place it?” she sheers, “What are we going to do meanwhile? If you don’t want to go to Seattle?”

“Listen. In my travels in and out of Red Sectors, Yellow Sectors, and Black Sectors, I’ve earned quite a few friends. I think it’s time I start calling in some favors, because I’m really getting pissed off at this whole thing.”

She shrugs and keeps driving into the night.

We drive in silence.

Frustration, suppressed by the adrenaline rush and concentration I had to maintain to get through the thick of the situation, starts to wane. And along with the tiredness, the anger begins to set in.

I’ve spent so much time dutifully doing what I’m supposed to do. All these years. I stayed true to the end - always. I was always playing by the rules. And all I get in return is that the company uses me as a pawn in these games.

Watching the horizon and the Umpqua River ahead of me, I see red and blue lights flicker in the distance. I turn to Olivia and say, “We need to get off the road. I don’t think we should be talking to the law right now.”

She says, “I know a spot. It’s a place we’ve used for off-roading.”

“Do you know that place well?”

“I could drive it with my eyes closed.”

“Go there. I suggest you go there right now.”

Five hundred yards later, she slows down, makes a sharp right turn, and drives towards the hills.

I say, Were you serious about driving with your eyes closed?”

“Yes.”

I say, “Then kill the headlights.”

Debrief

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Previous Chapter

Prologue

Soundtrack

Crossfire - Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble

Fire - The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Light My Fire - The Doors

Chapter 16.

With my vision blinded by the headlights, I dash sideways, lunging into the gap between the bar and the neighboring building, a barn or some kind of storage shed. Gunshots crack behind me.

A sharp bite singes my left hand. I drop my backpack as my grip loosens and my fingers spring open. The gunfire intensifies - the bar patrons must be shooting back.

Yells and screams.

A burst of machine gun fire.

Glass shattering.

When I reach the end of the alley separating the bar and some storage facility, I stumble over bags of trash piled there, catch my balance, and turn around. The bar is on my right, its back door stands propped open. To the left is the rear wall of the barn. Ahead of me - nothing: wilderness, hills, bushes, trees swallowed by darkness. Maybe that’s where I need to go. Leave this shootout behind as one big messy knot that my enemies - whoever Les was working for, the Red Sector law, and the locals - can sort out among themselves.

Slip away. Not a bad decision, huh?

This thought flashes through my head and wanes into oblivion the same instant. I do what I have to do to earn my living, but if that’s all I ever do - if I’m always humming a tune to drown out the world around - the bitter end will be waiting just around the corner, and there won’t be anybody around to help. And I have already been helped in advance, no more than ten minutes ago. The least I could do is to return the favor. I bring the rifle up with my right hand, but when my left hand moves to support the fore-end, pain flares - whining and sharp. I wince.

The rifle drops again. With my right hand, I fumble along my left sleeve. The fabric. The edge. There’s a hole in my shirt. Just one hole.

It’s wet.

But only that.

I got clipped. I can live with that. If it had been an arterial hit, there would be a pulsating stream, but this - what I’ve got - I can live with for a while. Still can’t use my left hand though, so I raise the rifle with my right one, bracing the stock against my shoulder and moving along the backside of the barn. I thank the Lord that the weight of my AUG is balanced around the grip. I don’t need to be accurate - all I need to do is take care of the people from the truck by circling their position.

An eternity passes in my head as I stalk along the wooden wall of the barn. The red dot on my rifle is too bright for the darkness. I can’t use the flashlight either, even though it’s mounted on the laser aiming module. The moment I turn it on, I’ll give away my position, telegraphing it so hard that they’ll see me all the way from Fossil. So I keep moving along the wall, watching the space ahead of me.

Gunfire cracks to the left. Another burst of machine-gun chatter rattles through the night.

I press my jaw tight. As I near the corner, I step back from the wall, bring the rifle up, aim down the sights, and sweep the area in front of me - the best I can do in my situation. The truck, its headlights still on, stands in the middle of the street. I can’t see anyone. Crouching low, I edge back toward the main road, the red dot of my rifle - that red whiplash - dancing ahead of me.

A man walks backward into view. He’s holding a machine gun, firing down the street. He hasn’t seen me yet. While he’s aiming down his sights, I aim and fire.

My rifle jumps. I push it back down and fire again. Three, four shots. The man drops and stops moving. I move halfway along the side wall of the barn, watching the main street opening to my view.

A bullet whips past me. The corner of the wooden wall explodes into splinters.

Damn it. I need to pull back. I crouch and move backward. I can’t see who’s shooting at me, and I don’t care to find out, so I retreat all the way to the rear of the barn. As I reach the mouth of the alley I walked only a minute ago, I sweep the corner with my sights again.

A body lies near the entrance. One of the patrons, probably.

I keep sweeping.

When my rifle lines up parallel with the wall, I catch movement across the street. Another man from the truck. He’s crouched behind a parked car, firing into the bar to my left. I can only see his upper torso.

I press my teeth together and bite my tongue.

Fuck me.

I lift my left hand to the wall, and the pain spikes immediately. I rest the rifle over my arm, using it as a brace against the wall, and aim at the man behind the car.

Red dot on his head.

One shot.

My rifle jumps, and my left hand slips off the wall, screaming in pain. As I stumble down, I watch my adversary drop as his head snaps back.

The shots come farther apart now. Fewer of them, too. I don’t care to walk into a crossfire. I’m going back into the bar. As I turn and walk back, still aiming down the alley, a deafening explosion erupts to my left. Glass bursts outward in a thousand shards.

I fall back down the alley. The back door to the bar is still open, and I step inside. Dust hangs in the air. Two bodies lie on the floor near the spot where I’d been drinking my beer. Smoke spreads along the ceiling. Shadows pool across the room. Fire licks at the walls. Holding my breath, I lunge forward. When I reach the main hall, I see two people on the floor clutching their heads. A whole section of the building is gone, replaced by twisted, jagged remains.

Flames are beginning to crawl up the walls.

I grab the closest person with my right hand and yank him toward the back exit and drag him across the floor. Gunfire still cracks outside. At the door, I shove him out like a bouncer tossing a drunk and take a long breath before turning back.

The smoke inside is thick now. The air turned milky, opalescent.

I grab the second man by the back of his shirt and drag him toward the exit. As I stumble, a dark shape appears in my vision. I raise my head, blinking through the smoke. It’s Olivia. She’s still holding her rifle.

“Let me help you,” she says, grabbing the man by the arm.

Together, we haul him out through the back door. When we burst into the open air, I drag in a rough breath, lungs burning, and stumble aside. Thick clouds of smoke roll out through the back door and the shattered windows. In this dry wilderness air, the wind will finish the bar fast enough.

I still don’t see Olivia.

I shout as loud as I can, “Hey! Anyone else in there?”

“No,” she calls back.

I clear my throat. The air tastes like chemicals and ash.

“I got two,” I say.

“You got what?”

“I got two of them. These fucking people, from that car. Do you know how many they had?”

“Four. Plus that other guy.”

“Did you get anyone?”

“I got one,” I say. “And I saw another one drop. So there’s only one left.”

“I guess so.”

“All right. I’ll go check.”

I raise my rifle and start down the alley again, the fire and smoke to my left growing stronger.

From behind me, she calls, “What’s wrong with your arm?”

“Nothing.”

“I’m coming with you anyway.”

“Are those two guys all right?” I point at the guys we’ve pulled out of the fire.

Olivia comes up beside me. “They’ll be fine.”

We crouch and move along the side of the barn. When we reach the main street, we sweep the corner with our rifles. There is no one standing out there, but at the entrance to the bar, three bodies lie on the ground. The bar patrons who had stepped outside to watch my duel were cut down where they stood. They lay sprawled on the ground, arms and legs thrown wide. It looked like they hadn’t even had time to run. To the right, I see the bodies of four of the bandits. Each of them had tried to find cover.

It didn’t save them.

A shot cracks in the distance. I turn and stare in that direction - somewhere behind the buildings on the opposite side of the street. Better to be ready than not. I stand in the middle of the main street and pick up my backpack.

In front of the burning bar stands Olivia. Her red eyes are watering. She covers her tense, curved mouth with her left hand.

I step closer, place my right hand on her shoulder, and say, “I’m sorry.”

Without taking her eyes off the bar, she asks, “What are you sorry about?”

“I’m sorry it turned out this way. And those patrons… they were good people.” I pause, wincing as the chemical taste on my tongue grows unbearable, “And I’m sorry about the bar, too.”

She turns to look at me. Tears run down her face. In a thin, suppressed voice, she whispers, “This was all I had. These people…”

Her voice trails off. She pulls her shoulders away from my hand.

A car bounces into view. It jumps over the field where the last shot came from, springing up like it hit a trampoline. I raise my rifle and step back toward it.

The driver leans out the window. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

I lower the rifle. Two men climb out and walk toward Olivia and me. The driver nods toward the fields:

“That other guy,” he says, “We got him.”

Char and heat and flickers of orange flames devour the wooden building. Tongues of fire burst from the windows, and a heavy column of smoke climbs into the dark sky, lit by the glow of the blaze. The heart of the peaceful town is gone - steel warping, sparks bursting into the air, the noxious stink of melting plastic, bodies of sinners and saints lying together on the asphalt. The ‘Horn and Honey’ sign falls off and crumbles into pieces. People approach Olivia, trying to talk to her and console her, but she stands in the middle of the street motionless, watching and watching and watching, and in her tear-filled eyes, the reflection of the fire prances.

Holding my wounded left arm, I look at the bodies in front of me. And to the left, near the car, lies Les. Lord, have Mercy on his soul.

I step back and turn my head south towards the wilderness. More bandits will be coming here soon, in all likelihood. I need to get going. Now. I figure I’ll take their car. Not too many bullet holes. With any luck, I can get far enough north to cross into the Yellow Zone. I turn to leave when I hear Olivia’s voice behind me.

“Was that you - that helicopter down south?”

“So you’ve heard,” I reply.

“You’d better get out of here before there’s any more trouble.”

We both watch the flames finish off the wooden skeleton of her bar. Olivia says:

“You just had to stop here, didn’t you? Couldn’t have kept on going wherever you were going to?”

“This bar looked nice,” I say. “Real nice, for whatever that’s worth.”

“I think it’s time you get going, though. Before another party arrives.”

A short glance at a car with its door ajar, still blasting its sterile light onto the street covered with bodies. “I might need some help with that. I’ll pay you for this, too.”

She thrusts her head up as if trying to gasp for air after swimming in the water and says with her hand on the pistol grip of her rifle, “Haven’t I helped you enough for my own good?”

Without an argument, I head over to the car that used to belong to my pursuers. Keys in the ignition, the motor running, phone connected to a palm-sized display with a charging cord. When I pick it up, a dreadful thought runs through my mind - I might have to go back out with the device and point its frontal camera at the cadavers on the street to unlock it. It’s grim, and it’s time-consuming.

And it’s nasty. Unchristian.

I swipe the crackled screen, and the phone unlocks. Praise the people who don’t care about operational security.

Last glance at the scene of the shootout. A momentary loss of breath. A pinch at the stomach. Steering with my right hand, I’m getting onto the road and going north.

The rolling tires consume the road, gulping down the dashed line on the road marking. I’m going to put some distance between me and this mess. Then, I’ll take care of my left arm, which is starting to bother me, and then I’ll dig through that phone.

The ‘low coolant’ sign lights up.

Well, it was fun while it lasted. I keep driving, watching for the next omen to come. The air coming from the vent, hot and stuffy, makes me lower the windows.

Temperature warning.

With an indignant smirk, I keep driving. I only get a couple of minutes before the ‘check engine’ light turns on. Whatever mileage I can get out of this car is going to make my walking shorter.

‘Check engine.’

Rattling sound, and the engine shuts off. I roll forward by inertia, and as the damaged vehicle slows down to a walking speed, headlights pop in the rear-view mirror. I get out of the car with my rifle on a sling, walk around the front of the car.

Lord, have Mercy. I hope this engine can stop some more bullets. The steam hisses out of the gap between the hood and the frame, and I spit on it and go prone and aim at the car rapidly gaining on me.

It’s Olivia.

Alone.

I put my rifle on safe, kneel, and stand up. She stops one yard away from me with the window down and says, “How much were you going to pay me?”

I cough and reply, “Fifty gees.”

“Make it a hundred, and I’m in.”

“Deal.”

“Come on in.”

As fast as I can, I move the phone and the backpack into the leg space of the passenger seat and climb inside. “What changed your mind?”

“They’ll be looking for me now, too. And they won’t buy my excuses. You headed north?” She asks without taking her eyes off the road.

“Yep,” I settle in my seat and put the belt on and open the backpack, looking for the trauma kit.”

“Don’t you dare get blood all over my seats.”

“Fine, I won’t. Can we stop by your house? I might need some water.”

“My house? You just saw it burn down.”

Her profile, lit by the dim glow of the dashboard, was still, like an ancient statue carved out of a monolith, a resolute calmness betrayed only by a momentary twitch of her tightly pressed lips.

Debrief

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Previous Chapter

Prologue

Soundtrack

Jack the Ripper - Link Wray & His Ray Men

Strange Face - Tito & Tarantula

Jokermobile - Messer Chups

Chapter 15.

Sneering, round cheeks, and puffy bags under the inflamed eyes of a sick piglet give away Les’s general struggle with life. He did not age gracefully - instead, he deteriorated into bitterness and impotent aggression. He drops into the chair across from me, smug and confident.

I lean back in my chair and take the beer mug in my left hand, masking my right as it crawls toward the grip of the pistol.

Les finally speaks. From his open mouth rolls the foul stench of halitosis and stale booze. Playful - like a cat with a mouse - and with mocking reproach, he says:

“Good evening, Rods. Nice run through the desert you pulled off. I’m almost impressed.”

Without raising my finger or my voice, I take a fake sip of my beer. I make my swallow visible and deliberate and set the glass back down and wipe my mouth with the back of my left hand and look Les straight in the eyes:

“What are you doing here, Les? You were dismissed from the project for your inability to contain your drinking. You may leave now.”

He sits there with his jaw open. His red, scruffy face twitches into motion. “What the fuck are you saying, you miserable ass? You’ve got two options here. Either you play nice, or…”

“Or what?” I cut in. “What are you going to do? You show up here with your boyfriend, stumble around, and threaten me. What are you going to do with what I’m carrying? Do you even know what it is?”

He scratches his double-stacked chin, “Listen, asshole, I don’t care what it is. I don’t give a fuck.”

I tilt my head, “Well then, Les, why don’t you head to the restroom over there and look under the toilet lid? That’s where I keep the cargo. Bring it back here, would ya?”

He slams his fist on the table. Teeth clenched. Spit flying. “There are people who know what it is. I’m giving you one last chance before - before you can…” He stutters.

I lift the mug again. Another fake sip. “Oh? You what? Are you going to shoot yourself out of anger? Les, go home. This is a game for big boys and girls. Come back when you learn how to act like an adult.”

He points at my beer, “You’re on the job right now, and you’re drinking? Shouldn’t you dismiss yourself?”

I lean forward. My right hand closes around my pistol, steady, like I’m about to mag-dump at the range. “This, Leslie, is why people like you are nervous, ineffectual wrecks, and people like me get things done. All you’ve got is false equivalence, whataboutism, and cheap demagoguery. People like me can tell the difference between one situation and another. And that, Leslie, is why I’m where I am - and you are where you are. Sitting across from me. Disheveled. About to fail at this, too. Just like you’ve failed at everything else in your unremarkable life.”

Leslie taps his belt and starts to reach for his gun - but a contralto yell cuts across the bar and freezes him in place:

“There are no fights in my bar. You got that?”

The bartender’s face is tight, like a farmer watching her cows wander into the drinking reservoir.

Leslie turns his head toward her. “How about you shut your goddamn…”

“Hey!” a customer shouts from under the square Fender sign mounted on the wall. An old guy with a mustache, bits of burger still caught in it. “You’d better apologize before you get yourself in trouble.”

Leslie swings toward him and snaps, “This is none of your business. Stay out of it unless you want to get hurt.”

Another patron from across the bar says, “Turn around and face me, mister, for I…”

Les throws his hands in the air and says, “Fine. You…” he didn’t finish his speech to the crowd, and he addressed me again:

“Give the cargo to me. Where is it?”

“I don’t have it.”

The companion of Les makes two steps and asks, “Where is it?”

“Close by.”

“Where close by? The tall guy keeps pushing, approaching me and grinning.

“I told you already. Have you looked in the crapper?”

The jumpy tune of the blues guitar shuts off, and as the loose trembling chord takes its place in the track rotation, the bartender ducks behind the bar - she drops so fast her ponytail whips straight into the air.

My legs, bent at the knees, snap into motion, and I try to slide off the stool and under the table.

Looks like it’s starting.

My head still sticks above the tabletop, and through the distorted yellow lens of my beer, I see the bartender rise behind the counter again. In her hands - a short rifle, leveled. From where I sit, it narrows into a black stripe pointed straight at me.

I push off the table with my left hand, trying to slip out of her line of fire.

Too late.

A deafening shot.

Then a second.

A third.

Les jumps. He and his companion both jerk in place, mouths open, eyes blown wide.

I stare into the black dot of the muzzle device.

Why am I still alive?

The bartender’s face is quiet and focused as she keeps aiming down her sights. The thud outside makes my head swivel over the window. Three bullet holes surrounded by the spiderweb of cracks - and a toppled body wearing a coat of a color imperceptible in the sparse illumination of the twilight.

The rifle - a shorty AR - swings over and now points at Les’s companion. Bartender speaks slowly but loudly, measured as the rambling music rocks the bar once again:

“Only lowlife limpdick cowards shoot people in the back. We don’t serve cowards here.”

Les rubs his nose and, stuttering and breaking into an awkward smile, says, “Well, he - he wasn’t inside…”

“Shut the fuck up and get out.”

“No can do, sister - I’ve got some business with this gentleman right here.” Says Les and points at me as I sit back up.

“Get out and have a proper shootout outside then. You didn’t build this place, you don’t get to foul it.”

Les looks at me as if I’m supposed to be the man of the hour.

I take my rifle from the seat beside me, sling it, grab my backpack, and step past Les and his companion. As I near the door, I glance back over my shoulder and nod toward the exit, “Chop-chop, Leslie. You heard the lady. And you - the plus one - that goes for you too.”

The bartender lowers her rifle. I step through the door, catch it with my right hand, and turn back.

“Hey. Can I ask you something?”

She looks at me. “What’s that?”

“Could you leave the music on?”

She shrugs. “Wasn’t planning on turning it off.”

“Good.”

I step outside.

A cool evening sits over the hills. One by one, the bar patrons drift out after me, forming a loose crowd. Then Les and his companion. Then the bartender.

I look at the crowd. “You really want to be here? Shootouts aren’t a spectator sport.”

The bartender, without lifting her head, locks the top and bottom of the door, and music is carried outside.

“You clearly don’t know these people, do you?” she says.

Leslie stands about ten yards from me, looking around. He makes a short trot across the dusty asphalt, rolls his shoulders, and trades a glance with his companion.

“Hey. Hey. Over here,” I call. “So what’s it going to be, Leslie? How are we solving our little problem?”

“I’m going to shoot you right here.”

“You got a pistol?”

He looks at me, eyebrows raised, then taps his right hip. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ve got a pistol.”

“Good. I wasn’t sure you were allowed to have one, considering your DVs.”

“That’s it, goddammit…”

He reaches inside his jacket, but his companion grabs his arm and stops him.

Too bad.

The bartender steps forward, her rifle hanging on a sling, muzzle down but ready.

“I’m going to count to three,” she says. “Then you can do whatever you want. But don’t you dare move before that.”

I nod.

Les’s forehead shines with sweat. “Yeah,” he mutters.

His companion drifts off to the side, joining the spectators. They edge away from Les as if he’s carrying something contagious. I set my backpack on the ground and clear the garment away from the Glock’s grip.

“Ma’am,” I ask, “Where do you want our hands?”

“Up. Shoulder level.”

I raise mine. Les does the same. He’s panting. I can see his chest rising faster and faster.

“You ready?” she asks.

“I’m ready.”

Les nods, an uncertain, breathy sound escaping him.

“One.”

I tighten my jaw and lock onto Les’s torso.

“Two.”

A wave runs through the fingers of my right hand - thumb and index extended, the rest curved, rehearsing the grip in the air.

“Three.”

My right hand drops to the pistol. I make a side step and draw the pistol up and forward. The left hand comes on the grip, and my eyes snap to the front post glowing with toxic green in the dark, and I activate the flashlight with the thumb of my left hand, and the red dot comes up along the vertical line as a fiery whiplash, and I squeeze the trigger as the whiplash touches Les’s chest.

The slide snaps in my hands.

I move sideways, and the red whiplash settles over the gray, collapsing silhouette on the road. Caught in the cone of white light, he’s fully exposed.

I press the trigger three more times.

When the gun settles, I keep my left thumb on the light and step closer to see what happened.

With a dry groan and a wet, gurgling sound, Les lies on his back. Four dark holes spread across his chest, blooming red through his shirt. His right hand jerks wildly, trying to draw the pistol from his holster. His fingers tug at the grip, but the weapon, locked in place, wouldn’t come free. A thin film of dust coats his face - clinging to his hair, settling on his lashes, gluing his eyes half shut. A narrow thread of blood slips from the corner of his mouth. His head rolls to the side and thuds against the asphalt.

I switch off the light and address the bartender.

“Well,” I say, “This is it, I believe.”

“Looks like it,” she replies.

Off to the left, about ten meters from the bar, the body of the bastard who’d tried to circle behind me lies still. I jerked my thumb toward him.

“Looks like I owe you one.”

“Yes, you do.”

I holster my gun, pick up my backpack, and with exaggerated reverence say, “Nice to meet you. Name’s Rods.”

She nods. “Olivia. Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

A shadow to the right breaks loose and bolts away from the bar.

I turn my head. “Hey. You. Les’s friend - what’s your name?”

“I’m Rob!” he shouts back.

“Hey, Rob. Don’t go anywhere. We might still have business to settle.”

He runs across the street, ducks behind the corner of a barn, and yells, his voice cracking into falsetto, “Yeah, you asshole! That we do.”

The car’s coming.

I turn - a truck rolls into view - the same truck I saw in the desert on my way to Horse Haven - still packed with people. It screeches to a stop. Doors fly open. Sounds of footsteps and angry yells, men pouring out behind the headlights, overwhelming my vision

I dash to the side, grabbing my rifle.

I knew these assholes wouldn’t play fair.

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Debrief

This week’s illustration is made by . His drawing style and the execution are a perfect match for how I envisioned Olivia and her rifle and the bar behind her. I plan to commission more illustrations from him in the future - and I plan to open up paid subscriptions to fund this effort. If you elect to pick a paid plan, you will automatically enter a lottery with the prize being the physical copy of the illustration you’ve helped to fund.

Steven’s art style is amazing, and we should all support him.

Previous Chapter

Prologue

Soundtrack

German Fräulein - Tito & Tarantula

Boogie Woogie - One Rusty Band

Whiskey, Beer & Wine - Buddy Guy

Chapter 14.

With my right shoulder, I push the door and stumble inside the bar. The muffled bass of rowdy blues swells into a groovy, watery tune, smutty and sludgy. The playful tune of bent guitar strings and shuffling bass blasts from the speakers. The rubber soles of my boots spring against the surprisingly clean floor as I walk toward the counter. My shoulders loosen - I walk with a sway, rolling them to the rhythm of the music, the smooth over compressed guitar with warm middle - the filthiest sound I’ve ever heard north of Vegas.

This bar doesn’t look like any of the ones I’ve been to in the Red Sector. Identical chairs. Identical, neat, clean tables. Not a single streak or stain on the painted windows. Only photographs of musicians, a deer skull with antlers, and two guitars mounted on the wall. The neon light is bright but not irritating - soft pink and mint blue-green.

Eight patrons. Stubbled faces, mouths twisted in half-smiles, worn clothes. Most of them with pistols in holsters. To the right, two sit at a table, their rifles laid across their travel bags.

Surprised looks follow me. Conversations taper off. And to the accompaniment of the rowdy blues, I move toward the bartender.

A short, middle-aged woman with dark hair pulled into a tight bun gives me a sharp look. Her makeup is appropriate, expressive, but not loud, accentuating the soft oval of her face. She isn’t heavy, but there is delightful firmness in her - a steady grip in her hands, an energetic straight back, and eyes. And those eyes follow every movement I make.

I sit on a barstool and place my hand on the counter. Dust scatters from my sleeve.

A row of liquor bottles faces the room, labels turned outward, arranged in a line that strikes a fine balance between tall and short, wide and narrow - tequila, whiskey, cognac. Macallan. Balvenie.

My eyebrows raise, and my lips bend upwards.

Beer mugs hanging above the bar - the cleanest mugs I’d ever seen, washed with the diligence of a chemical lab technician. I grimace and brush the dust off the bar and onto the floor.

She presses her lips together and asks in a low contralto, “You aren’t from these parts, are you?”

I nod. “You could say that.”

“I can say whatever I want. It’s my bar.”

“It’s a nice place you got,” I say, nodding over my shoulder.

“I know,” she says and frowns for some reason.

“Can I get something to drink?”

“Before I pour you anything, I’ve got to tell you the house rules.”

Her rapport intrigues me. “All right.”

“There are no fights in this bar. You got a problem, you take it outside. Got it?”

I nod and lower my backpack to the ground. “Seems easy enough. I’ve been to a few places that shared the same approach.”

“Don’t you be smart with me.”

I chuckle, “I don’t think you’d want me being stupid.”

She leans in slightly. “Haha. Very finny. The second rule - nobody jumps anybody when their back is turned.”

I tilt my head. “Wouldn’t that be covered by rule number one?”

“First rule gets you ejected. The second rule gets you killed. You got that?”

“That’s a lot of rules. But you don’t need to worry. I am a quiet one. Just need a drink to freshen up my mood.”

She exhales sharply through her nose, nostrils flaring, and points at the list of drinks written in chalk on the blackboard.

“I’ll take a Euro lager.”

“We’ve got Heineken.”

“That’ll do.”

She sizes me up, what she can see of me, and pours the beer from an unmarked tap into a sparkling clean mug. “I’d take you for a porter drinker.”

I sit and brush the dust off the bar with my left hand. “Apologies. I’m parched. Lager’s what I drink for water.”

“As you say. Seven fifty.”

I catch a metal gleam of the grill in the back, sitting under the hood and ask, “Do you make burgers?”

The bartender says, “Yeah. What would you like?”

“Just a cheeseburger. Medium.”

“Okay. Give me a couple of minutes. That would be eight fifty.”

I pull my pouch from the backpack - the one I use to carry cash - count out the amount, and slide it toward her across the bar.

Her fingers are quick, her movements deft and practiced. I take the glass of cold beer and drink. It’s real Heineken. She could’ve poured me anything, and I would’ve swallowed it. But she didn’t.

As she starts working on my burger, I grab my backpack with my left hand and walk to the corner of the bar. She follows me with a watchful look from beneath a slightly raised brow. Her right hand smooths a stray lock of hair back into place.

I walk toward the table I’ve picked, and my gaze lingers on her for a split second longer than pure politeness would allow. Her tight black blouse contours her body, her pronounced figure. I’m probably not the first and won’t be the last to look at her with that kind of oily gaze. But her tone - confident, unafraid of conflict, edged with teasing and lived-in understanding - that’s a kind of strength worthy of respect.

If I’d met her in the White Sector, she would’ve been the foreman of some crew of workers. I would’ve invited her to a bar - a bar just like this one. I would’ve asked her about her life and told her a dirty joke. She would’ve laughed and answered with such sharp vulgarity that I would’ve sprayed beer across the table and onto her, wiping it off with a towel, apologizing in embarrassed haste. And she would’ve flushed crimson and smiled at me with a different, softer smile.

I drop into the seat. From where I sit, I can see the entrance to the bar. I take the rifle off my shoulder and set it beside me, place my beer on the table, take a deep breath, catching the scent of amber freshness, and take a drink. A cold calm runs through me.

From my spot, I can watch the bartender. I can’t take my eyes off her. She’s just too well put together.

All right, Rodion. Cut it out. Enough.

I take a long sip of beer and swish it around my mouth to catch the full taste. Bland, but light. Refreshing. It hits the spot, and I close my eyes for a second.

When I open them, a stranger is standing in front of my table.

I choke on my beer and splash some onto the table, and wipe it away with my sleeve and look at the man in front of me, “What do you want?”

He isn’t old, but his face - sunburned and wrinkled - carries the mark of sun and wind. He’s dressed in a brown coat, and his long gray hair hangs loose, like the rockers in the photographs on the walls of this bar. His eyes are gray, steel-cold, watching me with a smirk.

He asks, “Mind if I sit?”

I answer, “I prefer my own company to that of strangers.”

He sits down before I can raise my left hand to protest.

He watches me and says, “Pardon my intrusion. I didn’t mean to spook you.”

“You didn’t spook me,” I say. “I just don’t… I just want to be alone right now.”

He glances at the bartender and says, “Alone is an interesting concept. Do you truly wish to be alone?”

I clear my throat, cough into my hand, and say, “I don’t appreciate your insinuations.”

He throws his hands up and leans back.

“There’s no insinuation,” he says. “It’s just - being alone is a dangerous thing. Especially when you’re walking that walk in hostile territory.”

I squint my eyes. I shift in my seat, slide my right hand under the table, and change my posture to mask the movement. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re walking that walk,” he says calmly. “You know you’ve got what it takes to run for a long time. But the real question is - what happens when you fall? When you’re struck down. Are you immune to that? Can you claim deliverance from that?”

“What I do is none of your concern, old man.”

He sighs. Looks to the side. Up at the guitar on the wall, a Gibson SG clone.

“People call these lands a wasteland. Say nothing grows here, everything is scarce. But look around.” His eyes trace the ceiling. “All of this was built by capable hands. It’s running well. It’s solid. Do you know this town once had a great writer born in it?”

I shake my head. “No. I don’t know anybody who’d come from this place.”

He nods slowly. “Oh yes. A great writer.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that there is greatness in everything. Everywhere. One just needs the resolve to reach into the depths of his soul and bring it up. Rise above the noise. Above distractions. And we both know the power of distractions.”

I sit still. My fingers fidget under the table. My right hand inches toward my Glock - then stops. I bite the loose strip of skin inside my cheek. My eyes fix on the fine scratches in the lacquered surface of the table.

“It’s all right,” he says softly. “There’s no shame in that. Just something to think about.”

The dryness in my mouth becomes unbearable. I bring my hand back up, grab the mug, and raise it.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

I freeze mid-motion. “Why not?”

“What you’re running from is closer than you think. You’re not as smart or as slick as you imagine. A lone wolf only gets so far. And that beer…” He tilts his head. “It’ll slow you down. I’m telling you, Rodion. The northern winds are cold, but it’s the southern winds that bring storms and misery.”

When he says my name, I flinch. I set the mug down slowly. Open my mouth to ask how he knows me - but he cuts in:

“You have the face of a man who has killed before.”

Watching his sharp chin, I mutter through clenched teeth, “And?”

“How do you feel about that burden?”

After a short pause, I reply, “I’ve said my prayers.”

“And you imagine yourself to be free of sin now, Rodion?”

“Nobody is free of sin. But you do what you got to do.”

A soft smile on a stranger’s face, “How about turning the other cheek?”

My face twitches, and I raise my voice, “Don’t you dare to pull those quotes out of the Book, stripped of context. I did forgive them all for coming at me.”

“Carrying what you’re carrying, you have to be careful,” he points to my backpack underneath the table, “You have to be content with yourself. Tell me - are you content with yourself?”

His brows remain lifted, frozen there, waiting. I open my mouth to answer him. My eyes follow the direction of his finger.

A needle pricks me.

If someone who shouldn’t know about the cargo is asking about it, I have only one response.

Out of breath, I rasp, “Leave. Now.”

He leans back, lifts his chin slightly.

I close my eyes. The blue shuffle of the music - out of rhythm with my accelerating heartbeat - pulses through my body.

When I open my eyes, the man is gone.

I never saw the door move.

And through the window, I don’t see him anywhere.

The mug in front of me beads with cold sweat, fine droplets gathering on its glass walls. I push it aside and sit still, listening to a spanky solo - rattling strings, wild slides, sharp tremolos.

“Here’s your burger,” the voice above says, and I look up to see the bartender with a tray, my food glistening with juice.

I thank her and bite into the bun.

There is nothing on it but a single patty, some cheese, a couple of slices of cucumber, and ketchup. And yet, the sheer flavor of the meat, charred just enough to bring out the full body of the ground beef, soft and juicy but not undercooked, with salt and pepper balanced, not overwhelming, but complementing the taste.

I pull the burger away and look at the patty, cooked through perfectly. Thirty more seconds and it would’ve burned. Thirty seconds less and it would’ve been pink.

Is it just hunger? No. I’ve eaten burgers while being this hungry before. I wish we had more of this in the white sector.

A car pulls up outside.

Two men get out and walk through the front door.

My right hand settles on the grip of my Glock.

The man in front - I know him.

It’s Les.

He spots me, and a nasty grin spreads across his face. He heads straight toward my table, hands raised in a mock gesture of heartfelt greeting. His companion hangs back, wearing that smug, triumphant look.

Les stops in front of me, gestures at the chair.

“How you been, Rods?” he asks. “Mind if I take a seat?”

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Previous Chapter

Prologue

Soundtrack

The Sniper At The Gates Of Heaven - The Black Angels

Kashmir (1990 Remaster) - Led Zeppelin

(Ghost) Riders in the Sky [Instrumental] - Wylie & the Wild West

Chapter 13.

A shiver runs down my spine - the kind I have never felt in my life. It makes me brace against my faith like a sailor on a mast during a storm. The object that moved by itself, escaping the pouch in my backpack, and the sinister quietness of its movement were unnatural.

I could feel it.

The primordial fear that gripped me lingered until the clinking of the silver cross on my neck reminded me of a simple thing - I’m not superstitious, I can’t be - that’s unchristian.

That pulls me back into concentration, but as I lie at the foot of the hill, looking up through the sight of my rifle, the residual twitches come and go, probing at the edge of my consciousness.

Not a single thought in my head, but a prayer that repeated so many times over that the words dissolved into sounds and sounds lost all meaning. There is an incantation that speaks to the heart without being understood by the forces of the rational reasoning of the overextended mind.

My eyes are watering and I squint, and I watch the crest through the magnifier of my rifle. I double-check the shelter that I’ve built out of a thermal blanket underneath a piece of sprawling bush. I’m outside a 52-yard radius. That should be safe. It must be safe.

Whoever’s looking for me isn’t likely to look anywhere near the abandoned town of Horse Haven, and even if they would, the overwhelming fatigue that I feel drags me down to a point that I wouldn’t be able to fight for long anyway.

I need that rest.

The shiver subsides, and with the adrenaline, the last resolve to stay alert fades. I close my eyes, and pull my makeshift hat over them to block the sun, and curl underneath the bush, covered by a thermal blanket, covering myself and my backpack with a thermal blanket, cuddling my rifle.

Whatever happens, happens. My God will put me where I’ll need to be, in the state where I’ll need to be.

I give myself to God.

I woke up from a gust of cold air coming downhill. It rustled my hair, and I snapped into alertness, grabbed my rifle, and looked around. All I saw was darkness lit by the moon above and the stars around. I drank from my water canister and set my gaze on the hill.

Lord have mercy - there’s aurora borealis in the mountains and hills of what used to be the state of Oregon. Dancing feathers of green and blue reach into the sky, shuffling columns moving fast like a deck of cards being shuffled, like sun glare reflected from a mirror or a flat glass face or some other instrument made by the hand of man. The shapes above contort and twist, bending as if an enormous pressure is being exerted upon them - unseen and relentless - bending those bands and turning them into the shapes, scaled beyond anything proportionate. I lift my eyes, and the dance in the sky reveals itself within the translucent glow crossing the dotted night sky - shapes reminiscent of human beings, coming in motion, descending in a whirlwind, dashing like a stream of uninterrupted matter.

A blob of light turning in the unreachable heights above, as if watching me. My very soul lies bare under the gaze of that malformed, speechless contour.

The green and blue reflections dance on the slope of the hill and spill into the valleys. The abandoned house on the crest is no longer empty. Shadows, prancing in the light, twist, bend, and sprawl. They slip through cracks, spill like streaks of ink - pitch black, concentrated in beams - reaching out. A black wriggling spurt of shadow sweeps the ground in front of me.

It slows down, as if taking aim.

I grip the earth, and I pray.

The shadow extends until it runs out of will, or power, or desire - or capacity to touch me - and then it retracts and disappears into the galloping light.

I dare not avert my gaze. The scene unfolding captivates my mind. I rise from prone to kneeling, watching and praying.

Mr. Hanson was serious when he said what he said. Siya has smirked. And I - I can’t tell what expression I’d made, but I’ve never been more thankful that the person whose cargo I’m transporting was so forthcoming with the instructions. I must give thanks to God for opening my eyes and clearing my mind, letting me see that the cargo has moved.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to be inside that dance of light and shadows. I could go there. I can still go there. All I would need to do to learn, once and for all, what it’s like to be near the most precious and unexplainable thing I’ve ever seen in my life is stand up and walk up the hill, past the bushes, closer and closer to the object - seeing what it looks like, seeing what it reveals. No mind can comprehend this, only the heart. And my heart is a curious thing.

I brace myself back through sheer force of will. I do what I do. And I’m the best at it. Where others fail, I prevail. I remain in this ditch until my timer beeps - and then some more.

The light fades, and the shadows lose their invertebrate agility. To watch what I have watched is to witness a part of creation that feels abandoned by God for a long time.

Dawn breaks, and I make my way up the hill. I cross myself and walk into the abandoned building.

The Geiger counter in my hand makes a singling, cracking chirps - the radiation reading is barely above the background. The smell of paint thinner lingers in the air - a fresh coat of paint reflects the rays of the newborn sun. The stack of magazines in the corner is bright, as if it just came off the press. The bicycle by the wall looks as if it just came off the assembly line, its chain pristine and glittering with a thick layer of oil.

The cargo - the ball - lies in the corner of the neighboring room, glowing with a faint blue light. I pick it up, and its cold surface drains the warmth from my palm. I put it in a bag, then place the bag back in the pouch.

Walking back, I look at the bicycle again. At the end of the day - why not? It’d be faster that way.

I roll it out and check the brakes. I spin the wheels and turn the pedals. This old implement is in perfect order, as standing on this crest in the chilling winds of the dry wilderness has failed to harm it. This bicycle, the paint, the magazines - all that persists as the sobering reminder of the miracle that had happened in front of my eyes.

Or maybe it was all a dream. Maybe I didn’t really see the condition of those magazines. And the bicycle - maybe it’s all a deception, a figment of imagination. I shake my head, adjust the height of the seat, climb on, and head west. I know what I saw the day before and during the night.

Maybe I should have left the Hellhazard here in this old building and walked away, saying it was lost. I’m sure the Company would come after me with everything they have. Maybe I could have left it here, let it sit until I came back for it. With everybody in this desert possibly going after me, and not knowing whom to trust, I don’t know if I’d ever be able to return.

And finally, most importantly, after what I saw, I don’t wish to part with this cargo. Once I’m back in Seattle and hand it over to Mr. Hanson or whoever the recipient is, I’ll have to deal with that attachment.

Until then, I’m doing what I’m paid to do.

There are two more towns I’m going to hit - Kilts and Ashwood, both the kind that’s written in cursive. And once I reach Ashwood, I’ll look around and make plans.

Cycling helps me move faster through this terrain. The sun is beating down harder and harder. I have to stop and wet my makeshift bandana so I don’t get heatstroke, and drink some more. After careful consideration, I smoke my penultimate cigarette. Whatever happened to me needs a rational explanation - however flimsy.

First, whatever Mr. Hanson told me was unequivocally true. So far, I’ve encountered ultrasound coming out of nowhere and receding as we were flying in the helicopter and as I was walking on foot. That was unpleasant and unsettling, but at the end of the day, as long as I follow the direction - same direction, same speed - no problem. The ultrasound part should present no problem.

Now for this fifty-two-yard rule. This glow is, in all likelihood, Cherenkov radiation. As particles trace through a medium, they emit that glow - flashes of blue, splashes of bright light. That could explain part of what I saw. With no residual radiation, my only conclusion is that Hellhazard 4 emitted something - some particles, maybe from within.

Mr. Hanson didn’t tell me about what causes the core to move. And that part I cannot explain. When it came out of my pocket and onto the floor, I felt nothing. If there were some motor or hidden legs, I would have noticed how the cargo got out of my pocket and dropped to the floor. But it never made a sound. Not a vibration.

And what bothered me was the bend in the shadows. Shadows are supposed to be straight. They’re not supposed to reach and recede. And for sure, normal shadows would have extended past the fifty-two-yard exclusion zone.

There isn’t a single physical phenomenon that I know of that can lead to that. Well, maybe if the flux of ionized particles has some contour or shape, then I suppose the glow could appear in a non-uniform fashion, which at first glance would present itself as a curved shadow.

I’m no physicist, but I’m smiling as I convince myself I’ve figured out the nature of Hellhazard 4 and what happened when the sky above Horse Haven Hill lit up. There are still some unanswered questions, sure, but for the most part, I’ve got it solved.

But then why, every time I think about those cold blue and green flames bursting through the sky and the shadows wriggling, reaching out to me, does a cold shiver zap along my spine? And why did my palms sweat? Why did I feel the need to grab my cross and say a prayer?

Unsettled, I ride on across the hills on the dull beige terrain, keeping myself in the shadow of the groves, watching the skies whenever I can. I pass the kilns and take short rests in a dilapidated shack. Sleep a little too. This amount of physical activity is exhausting.

I keep going west until I reach Ashwood. The town was written in cursive on the map, but the trailers parked on that dusty land are surrounded by the neatly parked pickup trucks. Staying low, I observe.

Two cars are parked on a road west of the tony settlement. On the side, it says ‘Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.’

News of my daring escape has spread from the Wheeler Country all across these parts. I rise from the bushes and walk the bicycle back down the hill. The Red Sector law is looking for me, expecting my move west. The longer I remain in a no man’s land on the wastes, the better my chances of evading both the law and whoever set up the ambush.

Up north, there is a dot on the map called Antelope. Maybe they haven’t heard about any of this yet, about the helicopter, too. And maybe there I’ll be able to blend in among the locals, however many of them there are. The fact that this town is printed on the map, not in cursive but in straight font, gives me hope.

I get on my bicycle and pedal north. I pedal and pedal and pedal. The numbness dissolves. I want to finally reach civilization again and switch to a car.

But in the end, I’m grateful to my cargo for making this bicycle usable again.

At dusk, I arrive at Antelope. Shielding the interior of the scattered houses, the drawn-down blinds are growing with the soft yellow. There are cars on the road - driving by and paying little attention to me.

Next to a blocky building of weathered green, there is a bar with a sparkling neon sign. It says ‘The Horn and Honey.’

I leave my bike outside and have a cigarette, my last one. The quiet smile stretches my face as I nod to the music pulsing through the door, a groovy tune. I crumble the Marlboro pack and shove it in my pocket, brush my hands, clear my throat, and head inside.

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