Resurrection Express (34 page)

He almost laughs. “You ever been to Houston before, lady?”

She looks insulted. “Of course I have.”

“This place has the highest concentration of gangland shootings outside of Los Angeles. The police don’t give a shit about who gets killed if they were scum to begin with. It’s like trying to call ‘time out’ on the beaches of Normandy.”

“That may be true,” I say. “But Kim Hammer was a major player. She would have had contacts inside the Houston Metro divisions. Somebody has to be curious. And that’s not even counting what happened at the hotel last night.”

Franklin shrugs. “Those people were all scumbags, too.”

“Maybe,” I say. “But you can’t blow up the lobby of the Sheraton and walk away clean. Not for long. That kind of property damage paints a big red bull’s-eye on your forehead.”

“You think the cops have any idea it was
you and me
in there?”

“Jenison told me her people had the place locked—but she couldn’t have covered all the bases. I mean you guys got in, right?”

“That took a lot of doing, man.”

“Someone had to see the security recordings. The cameras in those places all stream to offsite locations now.”

Unless the cameras were shut down by the bad guys.

That makes a lot of sense—but it also scares the hell out of me.

“Kim wouldn’t be the only one with friends in the police department,” I say. “Jenison’s foot soldiers are everywhere—that’s what she told me. They’ll be using every dirty trick they know to track us.”

Toni leans forward in her chair. “Then what’s the plan?”

“That depends,” I say.

“On what?”

“On what Death Ray has to tell us.”

Franklin makes a resigned sound that could be a laugh. “One thing I’ve learned in these situations, kid. Never ask too many questions, because everyone’s got a different answer.”

“And God against all?”

“There ain’t no God, just like there ain’t no hell.”

“Maybe. I still have things to do. You should come with us. I could use your help, even after we’re done with the scary guy.”

“No thanks, kid. I figure I’ll retire after this.”

I still can’t tell if he feels any remorse at all about his buddies. He’s cold and efficient—a man of war. You don’t make friends on the front lines, his stare tells me. You run from score to score and live off the profits. Street mercenaries are all the same.

“Your people died,” Toni says to him. “Every damn one of them.”

“No hard feelings about it. You roll the dice when you’re in close combat. If the kid comes across with what he owes me, we’re square. I’ll help you guys one last time, then we go our separate ways. No more adventures for this old man. I’m gonna get myself out of the world. Drop out of sight for a while.”

“That might be a good idea,” I say. “But . . .”

My words freeze into silence between us.

He hovers on the edge of an uncertain laugh. “But what?”

I take a deep breath. “What if the world
isn’t there anymore
when you decide to come back?”

Toni cocks her head. “What are you talking about?”

“This whole thing . . . everything I’m figuring out about it . . . it’s all adding up to something crazy. Hartman knew Jenison’s plot. So Hartman was stockpiling women. There’s something else, too. Something underground. Groups of people all over the world, holing up in fortresses.”

Franklin shrugs again. “People have been doing that for years.”

“What if there was a reason for it all along? What if some of those people were
organized
?”

“You sound like a crazy conspiracy guy now,” Toni says.

“Something started the rumor,” I say.

Franklin settles back in the couch and dismisses the whole idea. “Shit.”

I don’t let him off that easy. “Whatever’s going on, it was enough to scare the hell out of a monster like David Hartman, and that has to be really big. Maybe bigger than all of us.”

He tosses his hands up. “So, what, you think it’s some kinda nutty doomsday plot?”

He doesn’t sound straight-up when he says that.

The nut jobs and the above-ground mainline hot-weather crowd have been crying about the end of the world for years.

But.

“The stuff on those hard drives is really sophisticated,” I say. “Texas Data Concepts does government contracting for Strategic Air Command. They could have developed some sort of new defense application. Something state-of-the-art that nobody knows about. If Jenison is really planning on using it for whatever reason . . . then maybe her people have figured out some way to survive what happens next.”

Toni loses a breath. “Jesus, Elroy. You’re not serious.”

“It’s serious enough for these jerks to send shooters into public places and kill innocents in broad daylight. Serious enough to keep us all in the dark about what they were really doing.”

“Starting a global nuclear war, though?” she says. “That would make the whole planet toxic.”

I don’t smile. “Yeah.”

She starts shaking her head now. “It wouldn’t work. Even with a hundred giant bomb shelters. If all your primary and secondary targets were hit on both sides, it would be a soup for decades. All the fallout and everything. It’s the kind of cosmic stuff you see in movies.”

“These are pretty cosmic people we’re talking about.”

Franklin laughs. “She’s right. It just ain’t
possible
. Jenison would inherit a world of shit. Someone inside her organization would wise up sooner or later and go against her. They can’t
all
be that crazy.”

No, they can’t.

Not if it wasn’t a nuclear war they were plotting.

Not if they knew exactly what they were doing.

Not if they had their apocalypse mapped out with surgical precision.

“Someone
did
go against her,” I say, looking right at Toni. “And I saw it in his
eyes
before he died.”

“You mean Hartman,” she says.

“He was terrified.”

Franklin laughs again. “Yeah, well, everyone’s terrified when someone’s about to kill them.”

I shake my head. “It was something else.
Big
fear.”

“How would you know?” he says. “Have you ever killed a man before?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.”

I let a sigh roll out. Maybe he’s right. Maybe Hartman was just looking death in the eye and being a pussy.

And maybe he wasn’t.

“My father was a killer,” I say. “It was easy for him.”

“It’ll be easy for you too,” Franklin says. “When the time comes.”

“I don’t want to kill anyone.”

“You won’t have any choice.”

“I wasn’t able to do it before, even when there was someone aiming a gun at my head. Remember back at the toy store?
You
had to take the shot. It saved my life.”

“You’re welcome, by the way. But that doesn’t mean anything. It was just
your life
on the line when that went down. Had nothing to do with making a real choice.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Let me put it to you this way: how many decisions have you made that involved someone getting wasted?”

“A lot, I guess.”

“Then you’re already there. Don’t kid yourself.” He sighs in that macho Zen way he’s got, and leans forward in the comfy chair. “See, there’s this big lie in the world that the hardest kill is the
first one.
I’ve heard some people say it’s like falling down a well, like you lose your soul in that moment or something. It’s bullshit. Guys like us, we get people snuffed just by making a phone call. Every animal on earth kills because they have to. We’re the only species smart enough to call it a sin.”

“Doesn’t make it right.”

“Hell . . . some people just
need
to be killed. You know that.”

I almost laugh, but then I don’t.

Toni lets out a sigh and stands up. “This is fucking
nuts
. And I’m too tired to think about it anymore.”

She starts for the master bedroom, then turns to me.

“Are you coming, Elroy?”

Yes.

Of course I am.

•  •  •

S
he stands in the center of the room, at the foot of a bed that smells like clean things, decent things. A bed I stole for her, so we could rest and be here. Just for a moment. Before we run again.

My head swims, so close to her.

My pain, so deep and so permanent.

Love cannot stay.

Walled on all sides of us are glass cases filled with Barbie dolls. Hundreds of them. All reshaped and customized in really elaborate handmade outfits and hairstyles. There’s Punk Rock Barbie, Soccer Mom Barbie, Army Paratrooper Barbie, Rock Star Barbie . . . and every other walk of life that bridges worlds, all with the same face, all with the same eyes. There’s even a series of Homeless Gutter-trash Barbies and Rotting Zombie-Freako Barbies, and they look real happy, too. I can’t imagine why.

I close the door, and we’re alone together.

“Nice bedroom,” she says, not looking at me. Then she sort of laughs. “The little lady must be a collector.”

“It’s a whole Internet subculture. Customizable dolls like this. I’ve never seen this many in one place before.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“Kind of creepy if you ask me.”

She hangs her head and sighs. “You know, if you wanted to play house with me, we could have just found a cheap motel. This is a little much, don’t you think?”

“No. We need a solid position. I need to check some things before we move again, and a motel is way too public now.”

“What kind of things?”

“A minute ago, you said something,” I say, staring deep into her. “It was something Toni never would have said.”

“You still think . . .”

“You dropped the F-bomb. In ten years, I don’t think I’ve ever heard Toni say that. Not even with my father. Not even Hartman.”

She moves closer to me.

I take one step back.

“My memories have been ruined for years,” I say. “You can’t know what a nightmare that’s been. The most important thing in your life, taken away and replaced with . . .
nothing
. I came to find my wife in that awful place. I wanted so badly to find her there. All I’ve had for years to go on was the smell of her. The smell of
you
 . . .”

I breathe her in.

It’s still Toni, but weaker and weaker all the time. Like the memories that abandoned my mind on the operating table. Like the years that teased me, shadows and whispers.

“And now I can’t be sure at all,” I say. “I feel like I’m floating in some far-off place, surrounded by strange new faces.”

“You’re wrong,” she says. “Can’t you believe your
eyes
?”

“I didn’t even know what my wife would look like when I found her.”

“I’ll prove that I am who I am. Right here, right now.”

The smell of her armors my heart—makes me believe again. Does it even matter who she really is? Could she be Toni anyway? A new version of her that came back to rescue me in the burning dark—to rescue me from Hartman?

We all tell ourselves lies. We all sell out every day.

I could stop right here and accept the lie and move on. I could be happy with it. Because even if I saw the real Toni now—even if she’s still alive and she still loves me—I would always remember
this version of her
. She would always be here in this room full of dolls, her scent filling my heart and burning my soul. Does that convince me, deep down? Am I Jimmy Stewart, dressing up Kim Novak in fancy clothes?

Am I really that far gone?

I put my hands gently on her shoulders. My breath touches her ear, and she whispers softly that she loves me.

I love you.

She closes her eyes and all the breath leaves her body, resigned.

And she kisses me.

•  •  •

T
he kiss is good, full of things you remember. Like promises made and secrets kept, anger and fear and desperation colliding somewhere in a dark place you can’t find your way out of. I feel the uncertainty in that moment and I want to believe more than ever that she is my wife, the electric bolt of it shocking through my body and leaving me breathless, as we melt into one another. I caress the slope of her neck with one hand. My lips meld with hers. It all comes so easy. Like we’ve been here so many times. Like we know each other this well, just by sensing. Just by feeling.

I love her because she is my wife.

But she isn’t.

Nothing ever felt more right and more confused.

So we go deeper.

Our souls vanish in the hot shimmer, leaving us naked of all our sins, hovering without flesh, without blood, without anything but this endless longing to find each other. To find anything.

Even if it’s not real.

It’s full of fear, this one moment of love, but it’s also beautiful. I think it might be the most beautiful moment I’ve ever shared with a woman. Because it moves through me so fast and the taste is so sweet that I don’t even know it’s there when it happens, and the memory fades instantly. Like we made something together, something to survive the ages, and then we shattered it, because it was perfect. Because it couldn’t last. Because happiness is not something that stays in this world, even when it does. All that’s left is the trace of something vague and promising, like a dream that breaks your heart to wake up from, and then you make yourself forget because it hurts to remember. It’s something you have
to let go. Something impossible to define. Something that never really existed.

Or maybe it did.

•  •  •

I
pull away from her when the kiss is done, unsure of everything.

She bites her lower lip softly.

“Why did we do that, Elroy?”

“I’m not sure.”

“It felt good. Didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

She touches my shoulder, looking up into my eyes. “We’re still in a lot of danger. They could grab us any time. The cops. What’s left of Hartman’s crew.”

She stops, then looks away. “I love you, Elroy.”

I know it’s a lie.