Machines of the Dead 2 (17 page)

David Bernstein is the author of Machines of the Dead: Book 1, Tears of No Return, and Amongst the Dead, with more novels forthcoming, including
the highly anticipated, Machines of the Dead 3. He lives in NYC and still hates car horns and traffic. You can visit him at davidbernsteinauthor.blogspot.com, email him at [email protected] and visit him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/david.bernstein.3. He’d love to hear from you.

One

It was going to end tonight. It had to.

Amanda Church had never been through New England before, and if the current surroundings were any indication of what it had to offer, this was going to be a one-time stop.

There was nothing to see as the navy blue Chevy pick-up barrel-assed down the narrow two-lane blacktop. The night sky was dark and stretched endlessly over rows of roving farmland.  Darkness was everywhere beyond the yellowish glow of the truck’s headlights, strengthening the illusion that she hadn’t just crossed state lines, but also traveled back through time.

Did places like this really still exist?

She cracked the window as her eyelids threatened to close. A gust of cool mountain air wafted into the cab, chasing sleep away like an unwanted friend. She cranked the volume on her Sirius radio and found herself rocking out to REM’s Pretty Persuasion.

It was all she could do to keep driving.

The road, Route 90 East, was as rural as rural got. Signs of life were sporadic at best, often coming in the guise of dilapidated farm land and homes that resembled a shantytown in 1930s Chicago. Occasionally, a fellow traveler would zip past, leaving only trailing taillights to disappear into the black void. 

They weren’t big on streetlights out here, either. Hadn’t been one since the edge of New York. Amanda was surprised by how isolated she’d been made to feel by the Massachusetts countryside. Never mind the fact that she’d grown accustomed to living in Los Angeles - the lack of a two-hour traffic hold up freaked her out –  but the absence of sufficient light made a motorist’s life a living hell. It meant having to kill your speed at every twist in the bend. The road was the beginning of a mountain range and the blacktop was ever rising and falling. Bad enough her job resulted in the occasional skirt with death, but one wrong turn out here could send her careening to a certain demise.

An anticlimactic end to this life, she thought while reducing her speed to 35 around the bend. 

There was a lot that needed to be done tonight, she needed to do it, and there was no time to die in a car wreck. With fresh air circulating in the cab and her attention pulled back from the brink of dreamland, she flexed her eyes and tapped her palms against the steering wheel. There was still five hours of darkness left in this early Tuesday morning. Enough time to get the job done if she could find this fucking place.

“The Thunderbird, is it?”  That’s what her contact had said before adding, “You’ll know it when you see it.” Instructions had been to follow Route 90 right to it. That meant it had to be the first motel this road had to offer. Not many options out here. If Massachusetts had a pulse, and people claimed it did, Route 90 wasn’t about to show it to her.

Amanda shuddered at the thought of her ‘work.’ She hated thinking about it beforehand. It aroused a bevy of mixed emotions in her that she hadn’t figured out how to deal with. Anxiety, anger, fear, excitement and, strangest of all, pride. She held a certain satisfaction for what she did, even when it fucked with her head.   

At last, the road wound back into a straightaway. Amanda heaved down on the pedal, determined to make up for lost time. Now she was jamming to The Smiths’ William, it was Really Nothing. Morrissey could do no wrong and she sang along as enthusiastically as possible, while the unpleasantness of the day dangled over head like sinister mistletoe.  

The song fell into a brief instrumental bit and Amanda took the opportunity to take a few deep breaths to steady her nerves. Nothing to fret, she told herself. How many times have you done this, anyway?

But her rationale failed to quell the apprehension chipping away at her cool demeanor.  She’d done this before – many times - but that didn’t make it any easier. You never got used to it…just wasn’t possible. She wasn’t manning a teller window, or answering phones for an important CEO. There were times when she wished she were, though. Structure and routine were things her life could use but she hadn’t come to expect it. Normalcy had been a tricky thing to obtain ever since childhood and as an adult, Amanda had learned to dismiss it as a myth.

A bright, intrusive light wrestled her attention back to the lonely stretch of road. Ahead, a red neon glow beamed just above the tree line. It looked ridiculously out of place against the quiet wilderness. Her contact’s words rang true in her head:  “You’ll know it when you see it.” 

Amanda pulled into a small dirt patch off the side of Route 90, killed the engine and waited. Her neck lolled from side to side and her heart thumped heavily against her ribs. Through the trees ahead, she could see a motel, or at least, the loud sign used to advertise the place. It announced the Thunderbird and incorrectly (she guessed) promised luxury accommodations in every room. Last summer’s trip to Dubai was lavish, this looked like a dive. No way was the sign telling the truth.  Suddenly, she realized how much she missed the 24-hour masseuse service. After this job, a Caribbean sabbatical sounded like the only option. Days spent lounging on a white, sandy beach while sipping margaritas and enjoying endless back massages were the only incentives to survive this.

Amanda sat quietly and observed her surroundings while watching the next hour tick past. What little indicators of life she’d seen on her way here had ceased entirely. There hadn’t been one vehicle in either direction since stopping. A good sign, she hoped. It was impossible to gauge foreign surroundings accurately, but when a job needed doing, a power hour of observation would help. Despite the lack of action out here, Western Massachusetts shared many traits with other sparsely populated and rural areas. Commuter traffic typically wound itself down by 7 PM and straggler traffic all but ceased by 9 or 10 during the workweek. Since there’s not much in the way of nightlife in these small towns and outreaching areas, the local bars saw the most activity. They were usually found closer to the town center. If there were to be any travelers on a quiet stretch of road such as this one, it would likely be some teenagers out for a bone ride or a blowjob. But even the dope smokers petered out before now. In the early morning hours of Tuesday, there was barely an excuse for someone to be traveling on a desolate road.

Except me, she thought.

She sat for another minute or so, her mind running over the possible ways to carry out her task. After settling on the best course of action, she nodded to herself. It was always stressful, this part of the job. There was no feasible way to figure out what the ‘best course of action’ could be. Things never happened as they did in the movies, when the hero manages to slip into the enemy lair and find his way to the self-destruct button. 

Her heart pumped harder and faster as her thoughts returned to the task at hand.

There’s no better time to do this.

She tugged at the seat beside her, pulling it down and reaching into the storage section beyond. Her fingers slid around the comfortable handle of an MP5 submachine gun. Fumbling further, she retrieved two ammunition clips before propping the seat back to its familiar position. She loaded the weapon, listened for the satisfying click, and jammed the spare clip into the deep pocket of her coat. Amanda switched off her phone and placed it in the opposite pocket. Then she climbed free of the cab and headed for the neon flash of the Thunderbird’s sign.

She slinked through the shadows, moving forward in between the rows of trees closest to the road. She wondered if two clips of ammo would be enough. It wasn’t too late to cram another one into her blue jeans, but it felt like overkill. A baggy polyester top hung loosely from her shoulders, wrapped inside a zipped olive green bomber jacket that hid the holstered Glock – another insurance policy.

Normally, Amanda Church wouldn’t be caught wearing such a drab get up. Life was too short to wander among society looking like a fashion victim and she did her best to abide by that credo on a regular basis. Today wasn’t about her fashion sense, however. You had to dress accordingly while in the field. The last thing she wanted was for locals to take note of the fashionably chic young woman seen walking away from a murder scene. Not only did people have a tendency to remember someone dressed so nicely, but she’d be the proverbial sore thumb out in these parts wearing a designer suit. Best to dress as unremarkably as possible.

The path was dark and trees loomed on either side of it. Branches curved and drooped downward, enveloping her as she approached the motel. Amanda didn’t consider herself claustrophobic, but this feeling of isolation was so extreme that it bothered her. She was all alone out here. 

Fitting, she thought. My job guarantees segregation from the rest of the world.

The motel appeared before her as she stepped from the trees. Its vacated parking lot and buzzing neon sign only compounded the feelings of isolation. It was the type of thing Matheson would write about. 

She kept to the tree line where the shadows would best camouflage her if someone passed by. There was bound to be an employee on duty somewhere and there was no reason for them to get involved. She tightened a suppressor to the barrel of the submachine gun as she walked. Not that it would be much of a concern out here, but it would help keep the noise to a minimum. 

With the silencer fully attached, Amanda pulled open her coat and stuffed the gun beneath her jacket flap with her finger still on the trigger. Casually, she strolled into the Thunderbird parking lot. It wasn’t hard to find the car. It was the only one there. Her eyes settled on the battered Chevy Corsica parked in the darkest corner of the lot, just out of the neon sign’s reach.

No question, she thought, her boots crunching gravel as she approached. That’s them. 

Amanda took one last look around to make sure she simply hadn’t missed anyone and the empty parking lot stared back at her.

The Thunderbird itself wasn’t any busier. It was two stories and looked like it offered a total of twelve rooms, six on bottom and six on top. It was your standard roadside accommodation, a dilapidated hole that you’d find on any dying stretch of road while passing through Anywhere USA. With the exception of a faint emission of yellow light that bordered the drawn shade pulled down over the door marked “office,” most of the lights were out. The manager on duty was probably asleep and she did not intend to wake him.

On the second floor, a faint beam of light emanated from beneath one door - room twelve. She might not have noticed it had the loud neon sign not buzzed the parking lot into occasional blackness.   

Has to be them, she thought.

Their car was dirty; didn’t even have to examine it to see that. She’d known the color as dark grey from having seen it on the road so many times over the past few weeks. Another flash of neon revealed dirty windows and a mud-caked body. It might’ve looked like an off-roading vehicle had it been any other make other than a Chevy Corsica. Its ‘owner’ – something to be stressed loosely, considering it had been stolen off a murdered teenager all the way back in Valencia - simply didn’t care about its cosmetic value and had been squatting out of it for as long as she’d been in pursuit.  

The desolation of the Thunderbird worked to ease her nerves. Things were so much easier when you didn’t have to blend in among a crowd to perform your job. Amanda tightened her grip on the MP5, heightening her sense of security. She squinted through the dirty windows into the interior, wondering what the next neon flash would reveal...

... nothing of interest. Empty soda bottles, fast food wrappers and porno magazines. The interior of the Corsica had been decorated expertly to match its exterior. The upholstery was littered with clothes strewn across the back seat and the floor consisted of crinkled up papers and magazines caked with mud and dirt. A dire lifestyle choice made more surprising by the fact that one of the travelers was a woman. Why anyone would opt to exist in such squalor was beyond her, but of greater interest was that she allowed it.

She turned her attention back toward the motel and crossed the gravel lot, opting to avoid the wooden staircase directly beside room twelve. It was most probably a creaky old relic, and there was no sense in altering the tenants to her approach. The element of surprise was one she couldn’t afford to forgo.

She walked to the opposite edge of the motel and climbed the steps there. Her boots creaked during her slow but steady ascension. At the top, she continued to room twelve while stepping on the balls of her boots. 

Amanda ripped the MP5 from beneath her jacket and adopted the stance of a trained soldier:  legs bent at the knees, back crouched and weapon steadied at what would be the chest of any approaching hostile. From behind the red, paint-flaked door labeled with a brass ‘12’, Amanda heard faint moans and cries, a mixture of ecstasy and anguish.