Trinity (21 page)

33

There was a sharp crack from the direction of the house, and Val turned to see Rich, coming out of his house, holding Kate, using her hair to control her. He whipped back to the aliens, but they were gone. Did they see?

“Val, run!” Kate cried. Her face was red and puffy, she’d been crying, and it looked like she had a bruise on her forehead. That fucker had hit her.

Before Val could charge, Rich reached down into a holster and pulled out a little silver pistol. He pointed it at Kate. Instead of speaking, he smiled. A very final smile.

Val made a stupid, empty, fish-out-of-water sound.

He could manipulate his environment. He could visualize Rich’s heart. A fist-sized hunk of throbbing muscle…and the fat veins leading to it…

“You gone stupid, boy?” Rich crowed, leering at him over Kate’s head.

Was there blood on her hairline? In her hair?

Val sucked in a great heap of air and squeezed.

Rich’s eyes bulged. Now it was his turn to gasp. He struggled to disentangle his hand from his sister’s hair, the side of his face twitching, the color leeched from his face. Once free, Kate bolted, and Rich clasped at his chest.

When Kate came to him he didn’t move, he had to keep squeezing, keep the pressure on. How long could the brain go without blood? The blood carried the oxygen, so the real question was how long could he go without air?

The strength left him in a non-tangible
whoosh
, and he crumpled.

Through the hum and a high-pitched whine in his ears he could hear Kate’s questions:
Where were you? How did you get here? What’s wrong? Are you all right?
But he couldn’t find words for them.

“Is he dead?” Val managed to ask, squeaking the words out, feeling like he’d run for ten miles.

“I don’t know.”

“See if he’s dead.”

“What if he is?”

“Good.”

Val turned away from the look she gave him. She went to the body, touched the throat. His skin had to still be warm.

“He was my brother,” she said.

Good. He was dead.

“He…wasn’t a nice guy.” Val could have said a mouthful on this topic, but Kate’s sad eyes convinced him to leave it at that.

The hum backed off in his head to background levels, and Val wiped at his nose. His hand came away with a delicate ribbon of snotty blood. Moving things with his brain didn’t feel like it was particularly good for him. A parlor trick for special occasions only.

“You used to like him,” Kate said.

Why was she getting into this?

“We need to get out of here,” Val said, struggling to stand.

Kate came back to him, offering her shoulder. Her eyes were wet with tears. Blood matted her hair near one temple, a bruise marked the other. He’d hit her. Did she have a concussion? Her pupils looked okay. Val resisted the urge to spit on his corpse.

“Go where?”

“Anywhere. We need to run.”

“There’s no evidence you killed him,” Kate said. “Did you do that?”

“I’m not worried about the cops.”

“Then who?”

Val shook his head. “This is going to sound crazy. Like my mother.” He paused, scanning the yard. “I have been abducted by aliens.”

“Is that why you can...” she let her voice trail off and she pointed at her temple.

“Yeah. They’ll be back for me. Felix is one of them.”

“Are you all right?” she asked, she reached out and touched his forehead. “And what are you wearing?”

Val looked down at the khaki pants and white cotton shirt, a v-necked thing like an orderly would wear. Both were streaked with dirt.

“These are the kind of clothes aliens give you, I guess. When you and Rich came out, did you see anyone with me?”

“Anyone with you? No. You were standing there, looking out into the desert. How did you get here?”

“They brought me. We...never mind. Let’s get some shit packed and hit the road.”

“What about my car?”

“Shit.” Val rubbed at his face. “I can’t go to the mine. I really can’t handle the thought of going there.”

“What else are we going to do? I’ve been trying to figure how to burn the car up. What if we drop the whole car down the shaft?”

Val chewed at his lip until he tasted blood. Tasted his own contaminated blood. He sucked at it while he thought. “We don’t know what’s down there. It could blow some shit up. And if we did, then everyone would know it was us.”

He glanced up and saw Kate was staring at him, her eyes locked with his.

“We can frame Rich.”

“What?”

“Get his prints on the shovel, put him in the car. I can report it stolen, and they can find it.”

“They’ll know the body’s been in there longer than the car’s been stolen. They can do tests. With the maggots and shit. I don’t even want to look in there to see what shape she’s in.”

“Can we burn it with both of them inside? A murder-suicide thing?”

They needed to decide, and they needed to decide now. The options flitted around his mind like crazed bats, if only one would settle long enough so he could get a good look at it. He rubbed at his eyes. Fuck all of this. When he was in jail, everything was simple. He didn’t have to worry about a thing. Well, about some things. But he was nice, and people generally only tried to kick his ass (or worse) once, so it was mostly only the new guys he had to worry about.

Fucking Felix.

“Let’s take it out to the woods, as deep in as we can get, douse it in gas, a lot on her in the back, so all the stained carpet burns up.”

“Then I’ll report it stolen. Spence knows we’re out of here. I told him three days ago you and I were blowing town as soon as we could.”

“It’s been that long? Are you kidding?” They had him for three days. Amazing how time stretched and flexed. It didn’t feel like that long, but it also felt like it had been much longer. Three days.

“I was worried sick about you. I was starting to think about taking your truck and heading up to Santa Fe without you. Then Rich showed up.”

“Are you all right?”

She started out nodding, but it turned into shaking her head no, then she started to cry, loud braying sobs. Val touched her hair, feeling the blood in it. He wanted to ask “what did he do to you,” but he was afraid to. He didn’t want to hear it, not again. They’d been through this before.

But this time, the bastard was dead.

Val glanced back and saw the body was gone.

No. That was horror movie stuff.

“Fuck.”

Kate looked at him, hearing his tone.

“What?”

“He’s not dead.”

Her muscles went tight, all of them, all at once. She whipped her head around, flogging him with hair. He reached up and stroked it down, out of his face and mouth. Where was he?

“Rich?” Val called, leaving her. “Let’s get this done.” He turned back to Kate. “Get in the truck, let me handle this.”

She looked at him, her face blank. Then she narrowed her eyes. “Fuck you. You wait in the truck. He’s
my
brother.”

“Or that.”

The driveway was baked in afternoon sunlight, but it still left too many places to hide. Val shielded his eyes from the sun and scanned the brown earth. Where was the fucking Space Puma when he needed it? He could really use those claws right about now.

Rich could be anywhere. He could have circled around behind them by now. Who knows how long he’d been gone? Val turned three hundred and sixty degrees, looking for anything out of place. Crickets chirped, insects droned past his face, and a flock of swifts called from the trees. If only nature would shut up to let him listen. He remembered the quiet in his white cell and took it back.

Rich was a big guy, and wounded or at least confused. He wouldn’t be terribly stealthy.

Kate took a few steps away from him. “Rich!” she called. He’d have to be an idiot to respond to something like that. She moved away, and Val gritted his teeth, he didn’t want to see her grabbed, or shot, or anything. Maybe they should get in the truck and drive. He wondered if they could get across the border into Mexico, live out the rest of their days on the beach. Probably not. The cops were the least of his worries.

He moved up next to Kate. “Is the gun still in Mom’s room?” he asked, his words a breath on her neck. She nodded. “I’m going to go get it.” She nodded again, but he didn’t move. Was he supposed to leave her here, exposed, and out in the open? “Come with me.”

And they moved towards the trailer together. The shovel he’d used on Maria was with her in the trunk. It wasn’t worth it to get it. He didn’t want to see or smell that. He dismissed the idea of getting a kitchen knife, Rich had always been better than he was with knives. The gun was where it was at, either that or something big and blunt. He had an aluminum baseball bat in the cab of the truck.

Val went for it, leaving Kate’s side, opening the door as quietly as he could, trying to quiet the grinding sound the truck’s door made. It felt good and sturdy in his hands, and he couldn’t wait to place it upside Rich’s skull. Wanting it almost made him salivate, the fucker had made every day of his life miserable for the past six years.

He turned back to Kate, who stood in the middle of the driveway. She gestured towards the trailer with her head. He wasn’t sure if it meant “let’s go get the gun” or “Rich is over there.” He went to her.

“I saw the curtain move.”

“The AC is on.”

“Or he’s in there.”

“Let’s go find out.” Val took the lead, hefting the bat in his hands. He threw open the door. It looked very dark in the trailer, in contrast with the sun. The curtains were all drawn to keep the heat out, and there were no lights on inside. Advantage there would go to Rich.

It was even darker than he feared. The familiar shapes of the sofa, the counter where the boy had died were hulking shadows, and the air smelled of bleach and blood. They were getting out of here as soon as this little problem was taken care of. Val hefted the bat in his hands, his grip firm but not too tight. Kate turned the light on. Everything looked normal, except the counter was too clean. As a pair they moved down the hall. The back door hung open, kicked in, the latch busted.

“That’s how he got in,” she whispered.

They checked the bathroom. Val’s room, with the shower curtain on the floor? He looked at Kate, questioning. She looked away. He squeezed the aluminum, his knuckles going white. No more playing. This was it.

Only his mother’s room was left. Was her ghost inside? That inspired a whole new level of paranoia, would her ghost help Rich, since he’d been such a shitty son?

Kate opened the door and clicked on the light while he brandished the bat. Nothing. Kate went for the gun while Val covered the door.

Rich wouldn’t have gone away, would he?

As soon as Kate got her security blanket, they went back outside. The sunlight flared in their eyes, reflected from the truck’s windshield.

Rich hadn’t gone away.

Kate pointed the gun at him and fired, cringing as she did so. There was a miserable click, and Val knew it was because he’d left the stupid thing loaded all those years. He’d kind of been amazed it fired the first time.

Val didn’t get a chance to swing his bat before Rich was upon him. His head bounced off the trailer wall and he saw bright flashes of white. Rich punched at him, and he twisted his head to the side, but still caught a grazing from hairy knuckles. Val sucked in Rich’s old-sweat smell, like rancid onions, with every inhale, could feel his heat through his thin shirt. Val was outweighed by at least a hundred pounds. But that was why he went to the gym. He shoved up and Rich shifted, enough so Val and his pounding skull could move away. He swung the bat and it glanced off Rich’s shoulder. They looked at one another.

Rich’s skin had a bluish tint to it, from lack of oxygen, maybe? Deep black circles lurked under his eyes. Sweat glossed his unshaven, flabby face, and his breath caught in his throat with a rattle every time he breathed. Should be easy to finish him off. If only he could get the weight off of him. Rich hit him in the side, and Val couldn’t tell if that sound had been the snapping of his rib or not. He kneed at Rich, not able to get enough momentum to make his jabs hurt. After one more failed attempt, the aluminum bat rolled out of his fingers. Well, shit.

The next time Rich hit him, he was pretty sure his rib did break. Breathing was getting to be a challenge, and now it was accompanied by a sharp pain in his side.

Rich had time to get him once more, a left hook into his kidney, when all of his almost three hundred pounds dropped onto Val, dead weight. Rich’s face landed on Val’s, like they were kissing, and some of the salty mucus, sweat or spit dripped into Val’s mouth. The weight on him twitched once before Val could shrug him off, almost in time to get Kate’s baseball bat to the face.

He turned away, and it smashed the wood by his head.

Val spat and spat, trying to clear his mouth of salty slime. It made him think of prison. He pawed at his tongue with dirty hands, preferring the earthy grit to Rich’s salty warmth. He pushed himself up, standing, using the trailer wall, siding warm in the sun, as a support.

Kate stood over Rich like a tyrant, dropping the bat on him over and over again, reducing the flabby face to a pulp. Tears streamed down her face and her shoulders shook. Now wasn’t the time to comfort her. Val winced as she gave Rich’s junk a soccer style kick, she threw the bloody bat down into the dirt so she could focus on kicking him, drilling her sneakers into him with all she had. Val watched; a hand on his ribcage. Almost a decade of hate for Rich bubbled inside him, and watching the bastard’s poor sister get her revenge was the sweetest prize for Val.

They still needed to get out of here. He suspected if his little gray friends didn’t come along, Felix would, and he still wasn’t sure what that monster’s agenda was.

He was about to clear his throat, not sure how to go about pulling Kate away from her grisly task when she stopped. She stood, looking down at her brother. Then she turned her watery, red-rimmed eyes to Val. Her hair was a tangle and she had blood on her shoes. She reached out her arms to him, and though he thought she might be turning on him now, he took her in his arms where she dissolved into sobs.