Ch.8) TF /k/ ed: Headpats ain't gonna dispense themselves

“The fuck you mean, “It’s a long story”? Why the fuck did you kill a gang member and decide my house is the best place to hold up in? “

“Later. Like I said, it’s a long story. Get back to watching the door. It was dangerous enough to give you that piss break.”

“Why here.” I put my foot down, proverbially. Just like the CZ had said my neighbor gave the all-clear for a few minutes, giving me time to go and grab some real ammunition for Sylvie. That and to stockpile what meager supplies I had into an upper room. He called it a fallback point, a last line of defense. I called it my grandmother’s old sewing room. The stairs and hallway formed a natural bottle neck, one that we could abuse if it came down to a fight. When it came down. My grandfather’s home is going to become a dying ground and this fat fuck thinks he doesn’t have to tell me why. I feel a soft hand touch my right wrist; I don’t know how Sylvie noticed how tightly I gripped the CZ. I don’t care.

He ignores me and stays there, kneeling behind the old dinner table that my grandfather used to have Thanksgiving dinner on. The table that he flipped on its side for concealment. His eyes don’t register me as he nervously switches between staring at the windows and the front door.

Enough.

“Answer me you fat fuck. Why the hell did you come here and bring me into this?” I grab his shoulder with my free hand and forcefully jerk him to face me. I see the rage in his glare, the wrath in the disgusted curl of his lips. For a few tense seconds, neither of us moved except with the unconscious tremble fueled by a potent mixture of anger and fear. In the corner of one eye, I saw the AR in his hand shift; in the corner of the other I saw the red-eyed woman lift her head up just a tad, just enough to look at me with that accursed, mocking stare. For those few seconds an eternity passed. The only thought I had was an apology.

Sorry Sylvie, I might shoot another gun for my first time right now.

An explosion broke the stand-off.  Both of our heads jerked towards the source. It was far off, a blessing. If it had been closer, it might have lit the tinderbox of the situation we were in. My mouth is dry, a thousand words come to me but I can only gape like the well-worn anus of an educated prostitute. But his lips do still carry the power of speech. His scowl warps into a demented grin, tinges of lunacy enter his gleeful eyes. Staring off towards the source of the explosion, back to where I now remember his home is, he speaks to some unknown figure.

“Serves you fuckers right.”

He lightly turns away from me and my hand falls back to my side. With a meaty paw he lifts the table back onto its legs proper and sets the AR down on it. He goes to grab his duffle bag; behind him I see the 1911 girl stretching to and fro, her lazy smile gracing her face again as if the tension from before were just a fever dream. The woman with the evil eyes also relaxed, the aura of death that exuded from her dissipated like morning fog. Her roving eye, her maleficent iris glowing like hellfire soaked in the souls of the damned, stopped and focused on my sofa. She cracked a soft smile and with stately, fluid steps she laid claim to her spot to sit. She passed me and oddly I couldn’t smell or feel anything at all. Not the least obeisance made she, not a minute stopped or stayed she, but with mien of a lady she perched herself on sofa. Perched and sat and nothing more.

“You down for a drink? I got some pretty hard shit here, damn near pure ethanol. But it’s…”

“Look man, just tell me what the fuck is going on. Did you booby-trap your house to…” Words began to fail me just as soon as I came back to my senses. I look at him and I can almost see tiredness wrenching at him. He’s slouched, holding on to that plastic bottle with a raven logo for dear life with hands that tremble from exertion. He stumbles over to my recliner and with a pained groan falls back onto it heavily. He closes his eyes.

“Just give me a minute. I promise, just a second.” He pleads with a humility born from exhaustion. Irritation floods me, but the wretched sight he makes cools down my fractured nerves. He twists off the lid and takes the bottle to his lips with desperation. As if the drink could offer some kind of absolution. I let him drink while I go to leave the pistol in my hand next to the AR on the table. In my vision I see that girl, the CZ.

I don’t know what I was expecting to see. Anger, perhaps? Judging by how the night was going, she must have expected to see her old owner’s killer brought down. That chance seems to have gone up in smoke, like the fatty’s house. Sadness, at being unable to avenge him herself? Didn’t she say her heart belong to another? She didn’t give off the same vibe that the 1911 has; no love could be lost between her and the fat man. Who else could she have loved besides the dead man? Still, I didn’t see that on her.

Boredom. Her smile was nowhere to be seen, but like a young teen at a particularly long church service her mouth contorted to a long-suffering grimace and her eyes rolled so far back a priest at said service would start loading a super-soaker full of holy water for a long-range exorcism. She swayed back and forth with all the pent-up frustration of a child waiting for her mother to decide to leave a family function. Finally, she hunched over. With zombie-like steps and an undead groan she made her way to the sofa. She plopped back onto it with all the grace of a slab of meat and zoned out next to the AR.

“So, sit down and take a shot. I’ll be quick.” He finally gathered himself together, huh? I walk over to the sofa; it seems that the girls intentionally left room for me. I ease myself down and lean forward to give him my full attention. I did ask for this.

Sylvie was not where I last left her. Without my notice, she appeared at my left, sitting on the arm of the sofa, leaning against me in a territorial embrace. At least, that’s what it seems like. It takes all my effort to not reveal my power-level in front of fatty here, but best I can tell she’s glaring at the CZ who simply does not notice.

“So, let’s start nice and easy. Why here?” I shoot out the question I wanted to know the most. Everything else doesn’t matter.  “Why not someone else?”

He takes another swig and passes the bottle over to me. I reach out to push it aside, but notice my hands are still shaking. I accept the bottle and take it to my lips. The pungent odor gives me pause, but I force myself to drink. The liquid burns and I start hacking and coughing.  He waits for me to finish and starts.

“I had nowhere else to go. My only chance was to lure them into a trap and disappear. They’ve been watching me, every safe house I made, every stash I placed; they were waiting for me to get careless. I figure they’re going to be looking for me now at some place I’ve already prepared. So, I had to outthink them. Appear where I shouldn’t be, where it wouldn’t make sense to be. “

“The other neighbors-“

“Those candy-ass bitches would leave me out to die. Or invite me in so they could sell me out while I sleep. Out of everyone in this fucking state, you’re the only one I could count on.” He took the bottle from me and drank deep. He drank and drank. I could feel his desperation, if not some empathy for him. I was the only one he could trust? A guy who he only met once, for less than an hour? He winced as some liquid apparently went down the wrong pipe, but didn’t spill a drop. “Figured you might have some of your grandpa in you.  Help me kill a few of those sons of bitches like he did.”

I don’t have any vinyl records, so why did I hear one scratch?

“Hold up, what? I thought you said you and him only met up for beers and pool?”

“Yeah. It’s just…” He dropped his head down, reminiscing. “He was a good man, best I’ve known for a long time. Your nan never did like me, but he always… I didn’t want you to think bad of him or anything.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. My grandpa helped you kill gangbangers before?” It was a lot to process. I never really knew him well, but I never saw him to be the rough and tumble type. He was hardy, yes, but not a killer. “I mean, I’m glad he helped…” What the hell am I saying? “But… what?”

My lack of eloquence prompted him to pass the bottle. I took it and he took the responsibility of explaining. “Yeah, I got caught up in some shit bad. Me and my…” He paused, wrenching his eyes shut as if stop something from coming out. “We… I did some stupid shit in the past, wrong place, wrong crowd. Some… things… happened and scared me straight. I came here to be an honest man again and your grandpa took me in. Helped me get clean. Got me good, honest work. But some of them found me. I ran here and your grandpa… well, I didn’t hear from them again.” He reached for the bottle and I passed it to him. A long swig and he continued with red in his eyes. “I’ve been settling my score with them for a while now. Now some of their young blood found me and I got to go to ground again.”

Silence reigned. The 1911, who seemingly came out of nowhere, wrapped her arms around him, nestling his neck into her bosom. He didn’t notice. But he threw his head back into her chest. Subconsciously feeling her pillows?

“I know I’ve already asked a lot out of you, but I need two favors. Two favors and I’m out of your hair for good.” He looks at me, jowls pulled down by more than simple gravity. I don’t know if I have a hero complex, but I nod. He smiles, but exhaustion makes it a simple lifting of the eyes. “The first is to hold some stuff for me. Every stash I have is compromised. All the gear I have is all the gear I have on me. But it’s too much. I need to go lighter. I need to get lost in the crowd and I can’t do it carrying a big duffle bag like this. Your grandpa left one of them old safes in the farmhouse out back. Gave me the combo to it a while back. When I leave, can you put this stuff in there? The guns on the table too.”

Ah, shit. “We cut that safe open and threw it away.” Grandpa never told us the numbers to it, so my cousins and I took some power tools to it. Didn’t find anything worth mentioning in it. He curses and wracks his brain, taking a deep draught from the dangerously close to empty bottle. He burps and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Fuck me. Okay, new plan. Go… you got a spare key?” I nod and he continues. “Alright, you still got that shitty tractor out back there?” I nod again; my family wanted to get rid of it, but I fought to keep that rusty old thing. It had a certain aesthetic to it and if they were going to sell the farm later then they could deal with it themselves later. “Alright, get some duct tape and tape the key to the seat on the tractor. Leave the gear in that one room with the mirror, in the closet. I don’t think I’ll need it, but if I do come to get it then I’ll warn you first thing. You got a cell-phone? Give me your number; I’ll call you before I come get my shit.” He rambles on, but catches himself in a moment of sobriety. “If you’re compromised, say “Sammy says hi.” I’ll know what it means and what to do.”

That was all one favor? Maybe I’m going over my head with this, but all that talk about my grandfather and the adrenaline crash I’m going through is probably affecting my decision-making. He starts drifting off, the bottle slipping from his hands onto the floor. The 1911 sways ever so gently with his head in her arms, lightly humming a lullaby that floats ephemerally in the air. But before he falls asleep, I rouse him.

“And the second favor?”

He opens his groggy eyes, the toll of the liquor and the day weighing them down.

“Can you let me sleep here for about 15 minutes or so? As soon as they find out their boys ain’t coming back they’ll be hunting me down and I don’t want to die tired.”

I don’t know what impels me to do this, what madness befell me, to move me to help this man. But whatever insanity it is, it gives me my second wind. I push up off my knees, knocking the head of the CZ girl off my shoulder where she had fallen asleep to Sylvie’s dismay, and pull Sylvie from out of her holster. A quick check, okay all chambers full. I pat my pocket and feel the reassuring weight of loose rounds. Okay, systems go. Let’s do this.

“Take a shower and sleep as long as you like. I’ll be your overwatch.”

He sighs a deep sigh of relief, mumbling his thanks. The 1911 girl gives me an appreciative nod, before nuzzling her cheek against the top of his head. And, to my surprise, she speaks. Not to me, but to her owner.

“Cheers love. The cavalry’s here.”