Run (25 page)

Gabe waited until John and Fran settled, then said, "I’ve got some food in the oven I’ve gotta take out.  You want anything?"

John and Fran shook their heads, and the big, solidly built man ambled through the kitchen door, which swung open on well-oiled hinges, then fell shut behind him.  The whisper of the door was loud in the quiet room.  The noise gave John the chills, and he shuddered. 

"See?" said Fran.  "I told you normalcy runs in my family." 

John nodded, but wasn’t convinced.  He had glimpsed the kitchen as the door swung open, and the sight did little to encourage him.  It wasn’t unlike his friend to be cooking – Gabe was a fine cook, able to wield a spatula with the same finesse he exhibited with his treasured whistle. 

But still, John understood that when people were cooking, most of them turned on the lights.

***     

The phone rang.  Malachi picked up the receiver.

"Hullo?" he said, and sniffled.  Deirdre and Jenna knew immediately what he was doing.  To a friend of the people who worked in the sheriff’s station, Malachi’s voice might be unfamiliar, and therefore suspicious.  But if he had a cold, the caller would expect his voice to be different than usual.  "No, Tal’s home heavin’ his guts out," Malachi said thickly.  Deirdre admired his performance.  He sounded as though he really
were
sick.   "Well, who de hell do you think it is?" he asked.  A pause, then, "Yub, id’s Bill.  Hode on."  He blew his nose loudly next to the receiver.  "Oh, I got a cold.  What can I do you for?"  Malachi listened a moment.  "Really?  Well, you just keep on doin’ what you’re doin’, and I’ll be there in a few....  Right....  Just stay calm....  We’ll take care of everything."

He hung up and smiled at the two women.

"What?" asked Jenna.

"Once again, the Controllers have completely stuck to their program."

He picked up his gun and headed to the door, grabbing the keys to one of the police cruisers off a board on the wall.

***

John and Fran were still alone.  Even Fran, obviously determined to believe that everything was all right here, that her cousin was going to help them, had a frown tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"Hey, Gabe?" John called out.

"Yeah?" came the coach’s voice from the kitchen.

"What are you cooking?"

"Just some bread."

"Come to think of it, I am a bit hungry.  Can I have some?"

A long silence greeted his question.  Fran looked at him.  Her eyebrow cocked, and John could see she was surprised at his hunger.  In fact, he wasn’t hungry in the least.  Rather, he was trying to find out if Gabe was actually cooking anything at all.  Somehow, he doubted that there was any kind of culinary activity going on in the coach’s dark kitchen.

The kitchen door swung open again and Gabe reentered the living room, still wearing a jovial smile.  To John, however, the smile seemed forced.

"Sorry, John.  Looks like I burned it.  You know how I am with food."  He laughed, and John managed a chuckle.  Fran smiled a wan smile that grew tighter with every second.  John didn’t know why, but he was convinced that Gabe was playing a part of some kind.  He felt like he was a lackadaisical understudy in a play, only half-sure what was going on around him and completely in the dark about what his next line was supposed to be.

"So how was your night on the town tonight?" he asked, easing back into the La-Z-Boy.  He tried to appear relaxed, to put Gabe at ease.  Whatever was going on here, the coach seemed to have some part in it, and John didn’t want to spook his friend.  Keep calm, keep cool, and find out what was going on.  That was all he wanted right now. 

"Well, Gabriel," said Fran, "that’s what we came to ask about –"

"You know Gabe," John cut in.  "I don’t think I’d mind burnt bread.  I’m pretty hungry." 

Gabe straightened up again.  "Oh, you’d mind this stuff.  I turned it to charcoal."  Gabe turned back to the kitchen.  "But I’ve got some Wonder bread in the fridge.  You want me to make you a sandwich?"

John’s voice halted Gabe at the door.

"How come it doesn’t smell like burnt bread in here?" he asked quietly.

Gabe stood still a moment, then spun suddenly.  He grabbed a rifle off the wall and aimed it in a sinuous motion that John knew came from long hours in the woods, hunting.  While waiting in a deer blind or hunched in some brush, a good hunter had to be able to go from complete silence, with his gun at rest, to full aim and fire in only a fraction of a second.  Gabe was an excellent hunter. 

He was also a crack shot.  Whatever he aimed at, he hit.

"Gabe!" screamed Fran.  "What are you –"

"You just ease away from him, Franny," said Gabe.  John saw that the rifle was aimed at his head.  Not a shotgun, so Gabe wouldn’t worry about hitting Fran if he had to shoot it, but the bullet would still blow John’s whole head off at this range.  "Come over here where it’s safe."

"Don’t do it, Fran," said John.  He put his arm around her.

Gabe cocked the rifle.  "Don’t touch her, John.  I mean it."

John slowly pulled his arm back.

"What are you doing, Gabriel?" asked Fran.  She looked back and forth between the two men.  John sympathized with her confusion.  Another layer of insanity had been added to the already strange night.  He himself would have been hard-pressed to maintain his calm in such a situation, and again he admired her apparent fortitude. 

When it became obvious that Fran wasn’t going to move, Gabe seemed to weigh his options, trying to divine some way of getting his cousin away from John.  At last, he slowly moved to the TV set in the corner of the room.  He kept the rifle at his shoulder, though, aimed at John.  He reached behind him with one hand and flicked on the television, then had the hand back on the rifle barrel in a flash, so that John had no chance to move without being killed.

The TV came on, a white pinlight appearing in the center of the screen that rapidly expanded and took shape.  Whatever news report had been playing before was still going strong, and a lanky journalist was now onscreen.  "...Once again, reports are flooding in from three different counties.  No one knows what caused the murder spree, we only know that its effects have been terrible and widely felt." 

The news anchor spoke with professional detachment, but John felt a very real nervousness under the man’s cool exterior, as though something extremely horrifying had happened.  The dread that had been with him since he first saw Devorough now rose again, rearing up and pawing at John’s throat with icy claws.

"The death toll has reached seventeen," the reporter continued, "in the wake of two deadly attacks over the last day and a half.  Reports are still unclear, but several eyewitnesses have identified John Trent –" John jumped.  Fran glanced at him, then turned back to the set.  "- a teacher at Loston High School, as the man responsible for the shootings."

Behind the newsman, a pair of coroners pushed a body by on a stretcher.  The man on it had a blank gaze and gaping mouth that John had seen too often: the stare of the dead. 

"The cabbie," Fran breathed.

"What?" asked John.

She turned to look at him, and John saw that she was afraid.  Not just of what might be going on, she was afraid of him, and that knowledge worried him more than all the events of the night. 

"The man who picked me up at the airport.  He brought me here...."

On the TV, a picture of John with his squad filled the frame.  "Trent, an ex-Green Beret, is considered highly dangerous.  Police are urging anyone who comes in contact with him to avoid confronting or even so much as speaking to him."

A new face now appeared on the screen, a strong-jawed man in an army uniform.  "Men like Trent are trained not only to use their weapons, but their words.  Even talking to such a man could prove fatal."

Gabriel shut off the television.  Once again, he motioned with the gun.  "Now why don’t you just move away, Franny."

John was aghast.  He had no idea what was happening.  Of course, the whole night had gone on without him understanding one whit of it, but this new development shocked him in a way he couldn’t fully comprehend.  To be implicated in what were apparently a set of violent murders....

He looked at Fran, who still gazed at him with shocked and fearful eyes.  She was tough, he knew, but he didn’t know how much more of this she would be able to deal with.  "Fran," he said.  "I didn’t –"

Gabe interrupted.  "You say one more word and I’ll kill you right now."

John looked at him.  He saw his friend meant it.  He knew that Gabe was rattled; shaken.  But even so, he also saw determination there and he realized that he faced death now at the hands of his best friend.

He stared into his lap, trying frantically to figure out some way to talk to his friend.  He desperately needed to explain things to Gabe.  Yet at the same time he feared that the more he said, the more danger the coach would be in. 

He did not know what was happening, but he knew that he had just seen a classic example of government propaganda on the television.  To put out a false news story, with that many people involved, spoke of a high level of government involvement.  Probably federal.  John had seen that kind of thing before, during counterintelligence training.  If you had a cooperative media, putting out a false story could get quick results when you wanted to apprehend someone.  John had no idea what was going on or what he might know, but to tell Gabe might only implicate the man. 

Flashing lights illuminated the windows behind Gabe then, whirling pinwheels of red and blue that signaled the arrival of the police. 

A car door opened and shut outside.  Another.  And then a third.

John tensed.  He knew who was outside, and it wasn’t the police.  Gabe must have phoned the sheriff’s office when he went into the kitchen.  And of course he would not have reached Tal, who had been splashed all over the interior of the prison block.  No, it would have been the others.  It would have been
them
.

Gabe moved to the door, keeping his gun on John.  Fran continued looking back and forth between the two men, torn between whom to believe but obviously leaning toward Gabe’s story.

"I called the police from the kitchen," said Gabe as he moved to the door. 

"Gabe," said John, reaching out for him, "don’t –"

"Shut up!  I want to believe you, John, but right is right and I had to call ‘em."

"Don’t go to the door, Gabe."

"If you’re innocent, we’ll clear this all up in a jif."

He reached behind him.

Touched the doorknob.

"Gabe,
don’t touch the
–"

Gabe turned the knob.

Shots punched through the door, knocking fist-sized holes in the thick wood of the door and its frame.  The shots took Gabe in the chest and head, pulping him.  He sunk to his knees, then went facedown on the floor.

Before Gabe had time to fall, John had already grabbed Fran and pushed her over the back of the couch, hunching over her cowering form as the shots continued, this time peppering the front window.

Fran screamed as two shots slammed through the couch, narrowly missing her and John.  Stuffing floated down around them like feathers before settling to the floor.  The red couch fabric mixed with the stuffing, and John thought it looked like bloody popcorn.

A pause came in the firing.  Fran started to move, but John pressed her back down.  "No," he said.  "They’re reloading."

Sure enough, a moment later more shots blitzed the front room.  John listened to the shots, concentrating, trying to pinpoint the number of shooters and their locations.  It was hard in this confined space, the thunderous sound of the gunfire bouncing off the walls and fixtures, creating twisted echoes that inhibited any sense of direction.

Another pause came in the firing.  John looked at Fran.  She was biting her lip, trying not to scream.

"Only two people are shooting," he told her.  "The third is probably circling around back.  Next pause, you run up the stairs as fast as you can.  Understand?"

She said something, but her answer was drowned out by a storm of bullets shattering the rest of the room.  She nodded through the melee, and John kissed her on the forehead.

The gunfire ceased, and Fran sprang for the stairs.  At the same moment, John screamed.  "Oh, God," he cried.  "My arms,
my arms
!  Please, God!"  His terror and agony sheared through the momentary still. 

DOM#67A

LOSTON, COLORADO

AD 1999

8:49 PM MONDAY

Fran stopped in the dark stairwell as John continued screaming.  She was terrified for him, as he had evidently been shot.  But she was also confused: in spite of the fearsome sounds of agony he was making, she could not see any wounds on his person.  He didn’t look as though he’d been hit.

He kept screaming, but waved her up the stairs.

Then she understood.

He was faking it, luring them into complacency with his apparent injury.  And doing a good job of it, too.  She could hardly believe he hadn’t had his arms blown off at the shoulders, the way he was shrieking.

He waved at her again, and she turned back to the stairwell.  Before she completed her rotation, though, she spotted Gabriel.

Her cousin lay face down in a pool of his own blood, gallons of it it looked like.  She saw the mangled meat of the entry wounds in his back and neck and head, and almost lost control of herself.

"Gabe," she whispered.  The sound was drowned out by John’s agonized screeching and the pounding swell of blood that crashed and coursed through her ears.  She could hear her heartbeat, like rhythmic mortar fire, and that was what convinced her, more than anything, that this was real.  She had toyed with the idea that perhaps this was all a dream.  That maybe she was just asleep on the plane to Loston.  That she had never met anyone named John, and all this would turn out to be just a nightmare. 

But in nightmares, you couldn’t hear the sound of your own blood, moving with adrenalized speed through your body.  No, this was all real.  It was terribly real, and her cousin was dead.