Metro (25 page)

One of them is a sixteen-year-old kid named William Raycraft, the other a fifty-year-old man named Moonie Raycraft. They are father and son. They are the guys who kicked in Eddie Darling's door at three this afternoon and shot him in the back while he was watching TV. They did it together, just like they do everything together.

Right now, young William is about to shoot a man in the face.

• • •

J
ollie . . . Andy . . .

He shivers in the cab of the truck as they near the city limits and holds his fists in his lap, trying hard to focus on their faces, getting too much information—then trying to regulate it, check it, slow it down so it doesn't drive him crazy. The effect is maddening, like the throbbing gash on the back of his head. It's irritating and obvious—exactly the thing his teachers warned him about. Humanity, friendships, all the distractions of the mortal world—all of it rushing to mute and destroy his killer instinct.

And he needs a hit of something—anything.

Real bad.

Fuck, man. This just plain sucks.

He checks the phone again.

Just past two now.

• • •

Y
oung William holds the gun in the old fuck's face and the old fuck still won't give them the information they require. Some people are just hopeless, man.

So the old fuck's gotta go
.

His father taught him a long time ago—never make idle threats.

The shot is almost deafening, but the two of them are wearing earplugs. Brains go everywhere in a clap of thunder. They spend another ten minutes ransacking the office, looking for keys to the storage lockers. Nothing.

Then . . . a miracle.

• • •

M
ark tells the old man to pull up to the gated front driveway of Southside Storage when he sees that the lights in the front office are off. The driveway leads right into the maze of storage units, each with a big steel roll-down door. Near the gate is a small monolith with a lighted entryway keypad that allows anyone to punch in at any time of day or night. He's been here a million times, to get his shit.

He snorts in some air, wishes for the millionth time that he had a rail of something. Some speed maybe? Just a quick eye-opener to take the edge off. If he has to go into combat, it will get even worse. His hands are trembling harder than ever now. Gotta tough it out. Gotta do this fast.

He checks the phone one last time.

Two thirty in the morning.

Please be alive, Jollie. Andy. Please.

The old man punches in the number on the keypad and the gate clatters to the side on oiled rollers. The gate is made of solid steel bars, painted black—your basic automated apartment-complex security. Mark tells him to ease the truck forward, into the first aisle of the concrete mausoleum. The old man shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders. Does as he is told. Slowly.

Neither man sees Moonie and William Raycraft's Mazda CX5 Hybrid because it's parked just behind the little office shack, off to the left of the gate area. Neither man sees the two of them watching over the desk in the dark room, licking their lips, like baby wolves.

“I'll get the car,” Moonie says softly, whispering. “You wait right here.”

• • •

M
ark tells the old-timer to park the truck in front of his locker unit. It's just twenty feet from the front gate, near the end of the row, just at the intersection that splits into the maze.

The old man rolls them right up and shuts off the engine.

“Curbside service, son.”

Mark takes the key out of his pocket. “Thank you. For what you've done for me.”

“You don't gotta thank me none. Let's just get this business over with. I wanna get home before dawn. Old man gets tired, y'know?”

“Yeah. I do know.”

The old man gives him a look like
I don't think you do, son.
But thanks for playing.

Mark gets out of the truck and slams the door behind him. The key jingles on the ring in his hand—the key that survived, along with him.

Ridiculous. Impossible.

The voice of Dictator Ken mocks him:
Kill yourself, kiddo.
It's the only way you can redeem this whole shit sandwich.

SHUT UP.

The lock clicks and the roll-door comes open. And there the package sits, right on top of his filing cabinet.

Right where he left it.

• • •

M
oonie and young William watch them from just twenty feet away.

The gun is sweaty in the kid's hand. He says he's ready in a whisper. Moonie very quietly tells his son to be cool.
Don't blow this.

• • •

M
ark checks the package, and everything is still there. The Molly and his guns from the hit—along with the buy money, almost three million in seed cash. The street resale value would have quadrupled that, of course—made Razzle Schaeffer a rich man finally. But nobody ever really gets what they want, do they?

His hands shake again and he thinks about opening one of the packages and snorting some of the white stuff in there.

No. The package has to weigh out perfectly if I want to trade it for Jollie and Andy's life. And that shit is pure and uncut. One nose full would kill me dead, especially in my condition.

But still, he wants it.

He forces the nagging gnaw of it out of his head—focuses hard on his friends, on his one true love, and he feels his whole body weakening in the effort. Hardens himself again. Pulls out the smartphone and checks her location one more time.

It's 2:37 in the morning.

Please be alive.
Please be okay. I'm coming for you and I have what everyone wants. I have it right here. I'm going to give it right over to them and save your lives.

And I can do it sober.

I don't need the fucking drugs, goddammit.

He grabs the two Glocks. Both have full loads. (He'll need to get his Vestika back from the old man eventually, if he can.) Shoves them into the wide hip pockets of his greasy overalls. Does a deep breath before he zips the carry-on bag closed, unlocks the pull-up handle, and sets it on the concrete. Takes three steps forward, pulling the carry-on toward the truck on its rollers. The truck is right there, just outside the open roll-door. Just three steps and he's home free. He takes two steps and he's almost there. Steps out of the storage locker and smiles at the old man.

But guess what?

Nobody ever really gets what they want.

And you blew it, kid.

• • •

T
he old man senses the boy coming up fast behind him just a second too late, his ancient military training almost saving him in the moment before the shot rings out across the concrete mausoleum and the bullet hits him in the collarbone, smashing the hell out of cartilage and meat, sending it everywhere in a spray of pulpy liquid gore. As he goes under the pounding of his own heart, trying to make noise that comes out all garbled and wrong, he sees the boy charge in from behind with his big gun for the second shot, just before that shot kills him. Sees a snot-nose teenager wearing a weird white-on-white costume and a drugged-out heroin smile. (He's seen a lot of heroin smiles and they all look pretty terrifying, even at a quick half-glimpse.) Sees his whole life in one quick rewind before it blows through his chest and splatters the windshield, then shatters the windshield into a terrible crooked spider web that he falls straight forward into.

He's not even aware of the third shot, which misses him entirely and takes out the side-view mirror, just half a foot from where Mark Jones is letting go of the carry-on bag and diving for cover inside the open concrete bunker of the storage locker.

The shots ring out and roll away like fireworks in the open sky.

And Mark crouches just inside the locker, his ears ringing, the pain in his head throbbing—everything bad.

A voice yells: “You fucking
idiot
!”

And the package lies on the concrete, just outside, right there on the tarmac—a million miles away, as he hears the two men coming. But it's confusing because there's only
one set of footfalls
closing in, and a lot of angry cursing, someone yelling something about shooting first and asking questions later. A young man and an old man. He soaks up the information and fires it into his hands, moving for the guns at his side. His head throbbing and his ears ringing. Kill senses weakened. Needs the dope bad now. Hardly controlling the tremors in his hands.

And the voice yells again: “Okay,
you in there
! Come out with your hands where we can see them!”

No problem.

• • •

Y
oung William Raycraft has his big gun aimed right at the spot where he expects Mark to walk into his line of fire. Right there where the truck is parked, just ten feet away from where he stands. Right in front of the open storage locker. His father doesn't have a gun because he lets the kid do the shooting these days. Arthritis in his hands and all that. He's way too old to deal with the recoil on an automatic weapon—at least not with any guarantee that he'll hit whatever he's aiming at—but he sure wishes he'd taken the gun from his son and done something else with it in the next three seconds.

Because that's when Mark comes out.

With his hands where they can see them.

His hands, holding twin Glocks, aimed right back at them.

Moonie Raycraft gets his brain in gear fast and hits the lights.

Mark is blinded instantly by the high beams of a Mazda CX5 Hybrid, parked just ten feet away from him.

• • •

H
e almost sees the shape of young William standing next to the car, a white-on-white outline in the burning ghostly form of a man, and Mark tells himself he's a fucking idiot for not noticing the whisper-idle of the hybrid engine, his instincts so dull and strained now, dialed down so badly, even as he takes two steps forward in the glare of the headlights and somehow manages to blast six big holes in young William's chest, the recoil of the gun in his right hand like a pounding piston that mocks his weakened reflexes. Mark grabs the carry-on bag and dives for the concrete outside, and the car zooms forward and hits the truck just inches behind his heels, and it's an ear-destroying
crash-boom-smash
of tearing, scraping, rending metal, and Mark rolls on the concrete and comes up in a half-crouch, just in time to see young William Raycraft staggering backward like a drunken marionette, his arms and legs going all licorice-weird, spouting thick flowers of blood from the half dozen big holes in his body that Mark just put there, and William's outline is still white hot, but that's because he's wearing a white suit or something covered in blood and it's raining gore for a few more seconds, sprinkling Mark's head, and he curses again as he realizes that he had to drop one of his guns to grab the carry-on bag—had to do it, man,
had to save the package
—and primal survival instincts kick in again, still dull as hell, but there, goddammit—
and they tell him to
get up and RUN
—as Moonie Raycraft shifts gears and tears the Mazda out of the wreck and jerks the wheel and swings the whole mess around in a shrieking of rubber on tarmac that sounds like Godzilla claws scraping a chalkboard the size of Tokyo, showing Mark the half-destroyed front end of the car, one of the headlights busted, another one miraculously unscathed, still pinning Mark in a hot, blinding glow, and Mark turns and runs for the front gate as the roar of the engine rips at him, coming after him, and they are racing each other to the front gate, and the car is right behind him and the car is gonna run him down, the car is gonna take him from behind, the car is gonna grind his bones and spray his blood and wad him up like human wreckage . . .

 . . . and he sees his death . . .

. . . sees it happen . . .

. . .
and he doesn't let it happen
.

• • •

M
oonie Raycraft sees Mark vanish from the forward burn of his one good headlight, as Mark throws himself out of the way, bouncing hard off one of the concrete walls near the front gate. Mark ricochets like a pinball and comes up on one good knee, with the gun still in his hand, and he starts shooting at the Mazda's rear end as Moonie slams on the brakes way too late and the car smashes sideways into the gate, tearing the steel bars halfway loose from their moorings on either side, making his hands jerk the wheel in just the wrong way as the tires lock up at the moment of impact. Mark has no idea if any of his shots help out with what happens next, but he's still pretty amazed by it.

The Mazda reels into the gate, nose down, the rear end shoots straight up—and the whole goddamn thing cartwheels into space.

Inside the car, Moonie watches the world go upside down and right side up, the moon doing a roll in his line of sight like a slot machine tumbling pretty pictures in a fast-motion blur, pirouetting among the stars at sixty miles per hour. And the last thing Moonie Raycraft thinks of when the world ends . . .

. . . is his son.

That dumb little shit.

• • •

M
ark watches the Mazda finish its stunt-car wipeout—it does five big Hal Needham bounces before it crunches to a stop in the middle of the street. Inside the clouds of smoke, the thing looks like a toy run through the wringer of an abusive childhood. Mark even sees the rear axle catch on fire for some reason. He waits for the big explosion, but it never comes.

He gets up and starts moving, his ankle throbbing. Broken maybe? No. Just a twist. Still the Luckiest Man on Earth.

And he did it sober.

Goddamn.

Moonie Raycraft gets the door open and crawls out of the wreck.