The Remaining: Fractured (25 page)

It gave him a sense of purpose. It was nice to be important.

He reached the ball at the edge of the building and bent over to pick it up.

In The Square, people began cheering. It wasn’t overly loud, but it almost drowned out another noise. It was a noise that, when Sam heard it, his gut instinctively tightened and his arms and legs felt shivery. It was the sound of some sort of altercation, something more than just words being exchanged. This was what people sounded like when they were about to hurt each other.

He held the ball in his arms, standing still as stone and staring at the corner of the wall in front of him, as though he might see through it and discover what was occurring just on the other side. There were two men talking…no…three men. Two of them were young, and very angry. The kind of angry where Sam just knew that something bad was about to happen. The third voice was older…and…

Mr. Keith?

Sam inched closer to the corner, pounding heart and adrenaline preventing any logical thought. He knew that each inch got him closer to trouble, but the consequences of that trouble seemed fuzzy. Was it “yelling and scolding” trouble? Or “you’re gonna get hurt” trouble?

And what about Mr. Keith? Why were the other men so angry with him?

He found his face pressed against the cold concrete. Listening.

“We fuckin’ trusted you, Keith! We thought to ourselves, ‘what the fuck is an old man gonna do to us? There’s no need to throw him out of the camp’.” The voice was livid, the voice of someone betrayed. “But then you go and pull some shit like this.”

Keith’s voice: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We knew you were with Harden and Bus and all the other fuckers. We could’ve arranged for you to disappear a long time ago. But we didn’t!”

“Jesus Christ…”

“We gave you the same chance we gave everyone else. And you fuckin’ threw it in our faces.”

“Would you explain to me what the fuck you’re doing?” Keith’s voice sounded tired, exasperated.

Sam leaned out from the corner, just slightly. His hand touched the wall, felt the cool grittiness of it. Sam leaned so that just one of his eyes could see around the corner. Behind the building, the three men were crowded close to the wall. Keith was on his knees, one of the men holding him there, the other man standing in front of him, moving his hands angrily as he spoke.

“What’d we tell you, Keith? What did we tell you?”

Keith hung his head. “Damn. I don’t recall. Senior moment.”

“We told you not to rock the boat. And what did you do?”

“I didn’t do shit, Arnie.”

The other man shook his head, and for the first time Sam realized he held a pipe. “No. You rocked the boat. You fucked us hard. You went behind our back, and you started spreading some fucking lies about us, and about Jerry. You tried to undermine what we’re doing here, and that is fucking unacceptable.”

Keith looked up at the man—one of the men that Sam had seen hanging around with Greg the scavenger—but didn’t say anything. He just sighed. Shook his head. Looked off into the woods.

“Who did you talk to?” the man demanded.

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

“We need. To know. Who the fuck you talked to.” The man bent down, the pipe working up and down in his grip.  “You are going to tell us, or you are going to die. If you tell us, we will let you go with a good beating as a reminder. If you don’t…then we’ll make an example out of you.”

Keith just laughed, a very old sound. “You gonna kill me, boy? You’d be doin’ me a goddamned favor. You think I wanna live in this shithole anymore? In these conditions? I’ve only got a few years left anyways. And that’s being generous. So why don’t you go fuck yourself. Do whatever you want.”

The younger man standing beside Keith looked distressed. “Come on, Mr. Keith. Don’t be like this. You know we gotta do what we gotta do. Don’t put us in a bad spot. No one wants to hurt you, especially not me and Arnie.”

“Well,” Keith spat into the dirt. “Maybe not you, Kyle. But Arnie here seems to like the idea.”

Arnie—the one with the pipe in his hand—raised his hands in surrender. “Look…the man’s right, Keith. We don’t want to hurt you. You tell us who you were talking to and we’ll just drop the whole thing, okay?”

“Yeah?” Keith sat back on his heels, wincing as though the position was painful. “I don’t think you will. I think you’ll hurt me anyways. And I think you’ll hurt or kill whoever’s name I give you. So where’s it gonna end? You keep killin’ everyone that don’t agree with you, ain’t gonna be many left by the end of the year.” A wan smile. “Be a lonely Christmas for Jerry and the boys.”

Arnie stood over the old man. “Well…if that’s how it’s gonna be, then that’s how it’s gonna be.”

“Yeah, I s’pose so.”

Arnie swung once, connected with the side of Keith’s face. Blood and brain erupted out of ears and eye sockets. Keith slouched with a groan, one hand keeping him from falling over. One eye hung out, and with the other he stared up at Arnie, convulsing violently, his mouth working soundlessly.

Sam felt his bladder empty into his pants.

“Oh fuck!” Arnie jumped back.

“Jesus! Fucking kill him already!” Kyle cried out.

Arnie hesitated. Keith mumbled something unintelligible, desperate, his un-socketed eye twitching about madly. Arnie got his guts up again and stepped into Keith, swinging again, this time a downward trajectory that cracked Keith in the middle of his skull, caused a spurt of blood from his nostrils, and all the life to flee from his body, as though a puppeteer had simply dropped the strings.

Sam stared at the dead body on the ground. The warmth on his legs turned suddenly cold. His heart burned like it pumped fire. A sob worked its way up his throat and he tried to stop it, tried to keep it down because he knew he had to be quiet, because this was not “yelling and scolding” trouble this was
I’m going to die
trouble.

But it came out anyways.

One short, sharp sound of grief and shock.

He ran. He knew he had to get out of there, knew that they would have heard him make that noise, so he ran. His legs were wobbly, rubbery, just weak muscles with no bones to support him. The other kids stood in the field, staring, wondering where the soccer ball was, but he’d dropped it somewhere back behind him. He ran, he fled, he had to get away. Some of the kids asked him what was wrong, but he didn’t hear them, couldn’t hear anything accept the sound of fear, which was like being caught in a windstorm, or strapped into a car with all of the windows down as it hurtled down the road at a hundred miles an hour.

He ran clear across the field where they played soccer and disappeared into the rows of shanties.

At the corner of the Camp Ryder building, Kyle stumbled around the corner, pale in the face, his eyes sickened and rushed with adrenaline. He looked around desperately, trying to find the kid that he had seen dip around the corner—the little Middle Eastern kid that hung around with Angela and Keith. He looked at each of the kids that stood in the soccer field, saw that some of them stared out towards the shanties, while some of the others looked straight at Kyle.

But none of them were the kid he was looking for.

He put a hand to his head. “Shit.”

CHAPTER 16: WITNESSES

Jerry opened the door to his office and found Arnie and Kyle standing there with looks on their faces that immediately made Jerry stop in his tracks, hand still on the doorknob. He looked behind him at Greg. The man in the Yankees ball cap stood outside the office, hands on his hips, regarding Arnie and Kyle with that special brand of disdain reserved for friends who’ve screwed up.

“Goddammit, guys,” Greg mumbled and edged past Jerry, closing the door behind him. “Tell me you didn’t fuck this up.”

Arnie wrung his hand. “Well…”

“Lemme guess,” Jerry touched his fingers to his temples. “Something happened, you guys turned your back for a second, let your guard down, or maybe he asked you for a cigarette and it confused you because, shit, no one has had a cigarette in two months, so it completely distracted you…and he got away.”

Arnie shook his head, his fatless jowls swinging like empty bags. “No, no. We did the job.”

Jerry glared at them. “So what’s the problem?”

Kyle looked at Arnie.

Jerry and Greg looked at Arnie.

Arnie looked at the floor. “Kid saw us do it.”

Jerry threw his hands up. “Oh, Jesus H. Christ!”

Greg stepped forward, his fingers stabbing the air. “Wait. Whose kid?”

More uncomfortable fidgeting. “The Hadji kid…the one that hangs around with Mr. Keith and Angela.”

“What?” Jerry almost screamed. He glanced behind him, to see if the door was shut, then spun back to Arnie and Kyle. “The fucking kid…the one that hangs out with Keith and Angela…
he’s
the one that saw you two mopes do this shit? Un-fucking-believable!”

Greg closed his eyes. “What did the kid see?”

“Everything.”

“Everything?” Jerry swore loudly again. Kicked a chair.

Arnie shrugged. “I guess so. I mean, I didn’t notice him until he let out this weird little noise, and then I turned and saw him runnin’ away from us. Not really sure how long he’d been watchin’ us, but he saw Mr. Keith dead, that’s for damn sure.”

“Did you hide the fucking body?” Greg steamed.

“Yeah,” Arnie quickly seized on what he’d done right. “Pulled it through the cut in the fence and hauled him into the woods, just like you told us to.”

Jerry put on a fake smile. “Oh, that’s great. Super great. Fucking fantastic. You got half of the job right.” He crossed the distance between him and Arnie with a single long stride and grabbed the man’s jacket. “You have any idea how much fucking trouble you’ve caused me? This kid fucking sees this shit, and he lives with Angela. With
Angela
. Of all the fucking people, you do this shit in front of
Angela’s
kid. Fuck me! You know what that means? I want
you
to tell me what it means! Please fucking explain it to me, so that I can feel secure in the knowledge that you at least have some sort of brain cells floating around in there. Tell me!”

Arnie blew out a shaky breath. “The kid’s gonna tell Angela.”

“Yeah.” Jerry pushed the man back into the wall of the office, sneering with disgust. He shook his head, walked around the desk and flopped into the seat, staring up at the ceiling. He seemed boneless, as though his outburst were some exercise in anger and he had spent himself out on yelling at Arnie. “Everyone just shut the fuck up and let me think for a second.”

The chair behind the desk creaked. Jerry stared at the ceiling, unmoving.

Creak.

Creak.

Greg stared at the two men.

Arnie mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.”

Greg gave him a furious look and gave the other man an almost imperceptible shake of his head. He balled his fist and raised it from his side just slightly, the inference very obvious:
Say one damn thing and I will knock your teeth down your throat.

After a lengthy few minutes, the steady creaking sound stopped.

Jerry leaned forward, the chair making an odd springy noise as he settled his elbows on the desk, fingers interlaced, face suddenly calm again as though the three men simply stood before him in order to be interviewed for a position.

The only sign that Jerry was still angry with Arnie and Kyle was that he refused to look at them, and instead bored straight into Greg. “We can make this work, Greg. So here’s what I want. I’m going to tell you what I want, and you are going to relay it to these two fucks, in whatever dialect you believe might result in the job being understood and carried out
correctly
.”

Greg nodded.

“You,” he pointed at Greg, “Go and get Angela. She should be in the medical trailer with Jenny. Go quickly, before that snot-nosed little brat shows up and cries his eyes out. Bring her to me. I will keep her distracted.” His finger shifted to Greg’s left, so it now pointed at Arnie and Kyle. “While I’m doing this, your two fuckhead partners will find this kid, and they will explain to him, clearly and concisely and in terms that a child will understand, why he should not speak to anyone about what he saw today.” Jerry steepled his fingers in front of his face. “They are not to hurt the kid.”

Greg took a slow breath. “It’d be smarter to just…”

“Kill him?” Jerry offered. “Yes. Kill the kid. Kill the little kid that everyone in the fucking camp loves.” He slapped the top of the desk. “No. Like I said, no one is going to hurt the kid. Not yet anyways. No one is going to miss Keith, the crusty old bastard, but when you get the kids involved then you open a fucking floodgate of every annoying parental instinct these people have and they won’t turn a blind eye to it. They will get suspicious. And when they get suspicious, they will ask questions. And I don’t think any of us are prepared to answer any fucking questions.” Jerry raised his eyebrows. “I can’t be any clearer than that.”

Greg looked at the others. “Come with me.”

***

Greg closed the office door and led the two men halfway down the stairs until he felt sure that Jerry couldn’t hear him. He glanced around first, checking the interior of the Camp Ryder building but it was mid-morning and everyone was still out doing the things that needed to be done. Two older men held a quiet conversation in the far corner but didn’t appear too interested in what he or the two men who followed him were doing. He turned on Arnie and Kyle and held up a hand for them to stop.

“You guys wanna tell me what the fuck happened?” he said in a low tone. He glanced around again, cautious as ever. “Did you guys really kill the old man behind the building?”

Kyle and Arnie exchanged glances.

They weren’t unintelligent, Greg knew, despite what Jerry thought. Jerry was a hothead, and Greg recognized it for what it was: the passion of leadership. He wanted shit done a certain way, and naturally got pissed when it didn’t happen. That same passion was why people followed him. Because he appeared to have everything under control. And the worse the times became, the more control they were willing to give over.