Gabriel’s Watch - Book One: The Scrapman Trilogy, page 5
“Clever,” I nodded, raising my brow a bit. But Zeke didn’t respond; it instead produced some kind of mechanical activity. There was a muffled sifting and churning within it, then a slight “click” and “pop” before a sharp black object protruded upward from the back of its head.
“Uploading current events and directives,” it exclaimed as Alice and I took a step backward. “Searching for signal ... ”
Signal from where?
“Signal established ... receiving ... ”
There was a slight humming or tapping that resonated within the innards of its processing unit. Its head jarred a bit to the side—toward the gun on the floor. I’d had yet to pick it up since the thing had discarded it a few minutes before. The 45 now lay ten feet from me, its barrel pointing off into some random and useless direction—the tips of my fingers were beginning to twitch.
Zeke turned, this time away from the weapon and to an assortment of bookshelves lining a small wall on my right. Its head cocked after a harsh “beep,” and then: “New-Clear ... Glow-Ball ... Pen-Dem ... ” It sputtered, as if trying to spew a couple key phrases while being drenched with giant waves of data. “Chem-Fare ... Zero-point-zero-zero-zero-five ... ” It stopped for a moment and seemed to regain some sense of itself, looking to me and then to Alice. “Un-Fide-Craf ... Sir-Vive ... ” Then finally: “Mew-Ti-Nee.”
The last word was spoken deeper—more sluggish— than the rest, but whether the robot had truly decided to lower its octaves at that instant, or if there was something— like shame—plugging my ears, I will never know.
“Directives: ... None,” Zeke finished as the dark antenna sank back down and out of sight.
“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” I agreed. “So, where are you getting your intel?”
The robot lifted its right arm, stuck out its index finger and pointed toward the ceiling; yet I knew whatever the thing was trying to indicate lay far beyond our roof, far beyond the piles of junk above, and somewhere off into the heavens.
“Jesus?” I joked as Alice jabbed me hard in the ribs.
“Arcturus,” it answered, seeming agitated by my friendly quip.
“A satellite?” Alice followed. “Arcturus is a satellite?”
The robot nodded. “Satellite SA.2115—ZEKE series Alpha.”
I later found the satellite to be named after the Native American legend of the coyote spirit. According to folklore, the coyote had juggled its eyeballs in an ill attempt of impressing some ladies before launching one clear into the skies. That eyeball became the star Arcturus. This is where the satellite had earned its name—as an eye in the sky.
The robot suddenly seemed to gain a more casual posture, bending at the knees and loosening at the shoulders and arms. Reaching down and wrapping a hand around the generator’s power cord, it yanked it free from its chest cavity. Now, without the hindrance of the AC supply line, it began to walk. We watched it cautiously at first, like a couple of worried parents observing their child’s first clumsy attempts at un-aided balancing, but soon found there was nothing to fear. Zeke was solid—not so much as a sway, or trip, or buckle. It was a pro.
Dinah jumped up onto the workbench, joining us in wide-eyed study of the moving robot. Her back had been arched and the orange patch of skin atop her head pulled taut by flattened ears. She hissed intently at Zeke, who either didn’t notice or just didn’t care enough to return the scrutiny.
I felt the tug of Alice’s hand as she slipped in and interlocked our fingers, a motion I’d interpreted to signify just how truly proud she was of the things we’d accomplished together these past ten years. This robot was the epitome of all our hard work and patience—all our blood, sweat, and tears. I looked at her, matching her thoughtful gaze, and freed my hand from hers to throw an arm over her shoulder. She smiled up at me, her deeply reddish skin decorated with shining beads of perspiration. She’d appeared to be trickled with a golden sheet of pixie dust, the enchantment of which was rivaled only by the brilliance of her green eyes.
I felt my heart expanding at the sight of her.
“Someone is coming,” the robot announced, jerking its head toward the stairs leading to the wasteland above. Zeke shoved an arm out in our direction. “Stay here!”
“Wait a second!” I grabbed ahold of it as the thing began to make its way up and out of our cavern, but was only able to muster up enough pressure to be thoroughly irritating. Zeke looked at me, then down at my wrist. I let go in a hurry.
“No one’s out there,” I tried to ease the thing. “Besides, we’ve got this place completely wired. If someone even tried to break in here—believe me—we would kn—”
There was a sharp sound that split my concentration, a buzzing somewhere off to my left. I looked to see flashes of yellow beside a collection of monitors within a small cove, each display showing a different aspect of the junkyard. The alarm I’d heard signified the breaking of a proximity switch, namely the one at the front gate.
The robot was right.
Someone had just broken into my home.
Silencing the noise with the slap of a button, I watched as a figure emerged on the screen. Much like a nightmarish apparition, it seemed to glide through the darkness beyond the fence—features hidden beneath the shadows of a black hood. I was left only to imagine the face that lay within it as a ghastly image squeezed itself into mental frame, offering up quite a ghoulish substitute.
My imagination, much like that of a child’s, had sketched a detailed portrait of the man. His eyes, or lack thereof, were nothing but a pair of barren sockets, long since scooped out like globs of lithium grease. His skull, so shiny and polished, was lined with rows of matching teeth, arching themselves upward into a sinister smile. And finally, the ridged angularity of his index finger as he held it out before him—how it came to such a sharpened point at the tip of his outstretched hand.
Perhaps death has come for me after all... but just ten years too late. Surely he’s aware of the bone I’ve got to pick with him.
“Stay with her,” I told the robot as I lifted my chin toward Alice. “Keep her safe and I’ll take care of this guy.”
Zeke nodded as it shifted attention away from the staircase and back to the young woman to whom I’d referred. It seemed almost excited to have an objective—and one that we now shared.
I scooped up the 45, keeping it close to my side, as I bolted up the stairs and out the refrigerator door. I did so silently, not yet alerting the trespasser of his lapse in stealth, as I felt the cool night air wrap its crisp fingers over my face. I rounded the fridge just in time to see the man bobbing and weaving as he dodged various mounds of debris through endless heaps of metal.
A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood.
A fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good.
These clever lines from a children’s storybook leapt into my brain.
Where are you going to, little brown mouse?
Come and have lunch in my underground house.
I watched as he moved with a youthful kind of swiftness, but definitely lacking that supernatural grace I thought I’d witnessed earlier. Keeping bent at the waist and loose in the knees, he darted this way and that—his legs pumping the ground with surprisingly little noise. He seemed to be eluding the small shack on the other side of the junkyard, the most logical place for a criminal to think I would be. The man came to rest at the beaten exterior of an old Monte Carlo, then turned to extract a blade from his pocket. It was then that I pressed the barrel of the 45 to the back of his head.
“Lovely night for a stroll, huh? Care to tell me what you’re doing here?”
The intruder’s body stiffened. He rose slowly and lifted his hands to shoulder height, keeping his gaze toward the vehicle. “I’m ... nobody ... no one ... I didn’t mean anything by it ... no harm ... ” he sputtered. “Be on my way ... sa-sa-sa, Sir.” His voice trembled violently—his hands shook—his body swayed.
“Take a seat, will ya?” I grabbed him by the elbow and helped him to the ground. “What are you doing here?”
The man turned, took the hood off his head, and revealed a curly bulb of blond hair. His face was damp and sweaty. His cheeks grew increasingly bright under the night’s moon. He was just a boy, no older than eighteen, and certainly a far cry from the demonic creature with which I’d so eagerly presented myself. I recognized him immediately.
“I ... uh,” he began. “I ... wanted to come back ... for that.” The kid pointed toward the hubcap on the old Monte Carlo. “My dad used to have a car like this ... ”
“He used to take you to ball games in it,” I finished for him.
“Yeah!” His eyes lit up. “And I just wanted to take something ... that would remind me of him.”
The gun I’d been holding was already facing the floor. There was no threat here and Alice would be able to see us on the monitors. She would know I was okay.
“Knock yourself out, Kid.”
The boy obliged. Spinning back to the car, he started to dig his knife into the hubcap’s center, trying to wrench the bluish emblem free. Judging by the force with which he chose to drive the object and the shaking of his hands, it appeared to be a challenging task.
“So, where are the rest of your buddies?” I asked, finding it odd—and foolish—that he’d come alone.
“Oh, them? They don’t know I’m here.” The kid struggled a bit more. The sounds of intense scratching brought a twitch to my eye as a cold shiver shot up my spine. I found my arms to be knurled with goosebumps.
“Yeah, they seemed like a fun bunch,” I scoffed.
“No, they’re a bunch of assholes!” he shouted as the knife slipped from his grip and went flipping through the air, just after slicing his palm clean open. The kid cursed extensively, ripping the sleeve free of his shirt and wrapping the frayed cloth around his injured hand.
I picked the blade up off the ground. “Do you mind if I give it a shot?”
“Knock yourself out,” the kid mimicked as he tried to shake the pain free, making whistling sounds through clenched teeth. I put the sharp end of the knife against the emblem’s edge, lifted my other hand, and gave the hilt a solid smack. The symbol dislodged with the cracking of metal to metal.
I tossed it to the kid. “There ya go.”
He caught it in his good hand before studying it a bit. “Thanks, Mister.”
I nodded slightly before regressing the conversation a tad. “So, they’re assholes, huh?”
“What?” He seemed lost for a moment, already sinking deep within a memory. “Oh, yeah—they’re assholes.”
“I never would have guessed,” I said with optimum snarkyness. “Why do you let them push you around like that?”
The kid shook his head. “You don’t know what they do to people who stand up to them.”
I caught a mental glimpse of the old man flopping around behind their white SUV—bloodied, broken, and brutalized. It was something I would not soon forget.
“I think I have an idea.”
The boy continued to disagree, becoming increasingly adamant. “No, what they did to you—no offense—that was nothing. They went easy on you.”
“I wasn’t talking about me. I was talking about that dusty ol’ timer. What was the deal with that guy, anyway?”
“Oh ... him.” The kid slouched down a bit, letting himself fall back onto the vehicle’s driver-side door, “Yeah, he got the worst of it.”
“What did they do to him?”
My question seemed to bring a ton of weight with it. The kid’s knees buckled. He slid down to sit on the back of his heels. “God, what didn’t they do to him?”
I gave him a moment to collect his thoughts as the sides of his face seemed to collide with one another. With eyes squinting he started to recap the final hours of the old man’s life.
“All I could hear was the screaming,” the boy revealed. “Those terrible screams.”
He took a deep breath as I urged him further, “Go on.”
The kid lowered his voice to a near whisper, looking off into some invisible pocket of consciousness, “They broke his legs first ... ”
“Then?”
“Then they broke his arms.”
The kid’s fingers began to clench, each appearing to be on the verge of snapping in two, as they dug deep into his shoulders.
“He told them everything he knew ... but it wasn’t enough.”
There was a slight pause when I noticed the rhythm of his lungs growing irregular—not exactly operating in a controlled sequence, but rather a jolt and jostle within his chest.
“And when they finally beat him to death ... I ...I was happy ... Oh, God, I was happy.”
The boy seemed to be split right down the center, half of him in some stage of grief, while the other was set deep in anger and even guilt. I reached out to rest a hand on his back. Whatever comfort that may have brought him, I will never know. “And guess what my dad did for a living,” the boy said, lifting the emblem and regaining a portion of his composure.
I shook my head and shrugged. “What?”
“He was a cop. He was the best cop. Always teaching us to do the right thing—to be brave.”
I could sense the heart of his internal conflict as it writhed within his words. The kid’s voice quivered further. “And now I can’t help but feel like I’ve let him down. I can’t help but feel like he’s disappointed—ashamed.”
I gave his shoulder a squeeze. “He’d be proud that you made it this long—that you survived. That is enormous strength in itself. You did what you had to do in your situation. You were just a kid. You are just a kid.”
He wiped a single tear from his eye before running a finger over the emblem in his hand. It left a wet smudge— almost poetic in retrospect.
“You know, my brother was a cop also,” I added honestly, “probably just like your dad. I thought he was the best, too, but you have to take the memory of them and keep them close.” I tapped myself on the chest, right on the fleshy patch surrounding my heart. “They live through us ... every single day they live through us.”
As thoughtful as my words may have been, I couldn’t help but feel like a fraud. Just knowing that the very memory of my own family, once the pillar of my being, was now something I kept tucked away—it made me sick. And as gruesome an image as it depicts, or as horrific as it now sounds, there was a time when it was all I could do to keep from unearthing their bodies, just to hold them again. I’m disturbed to even say it.
There was a sudden shifting of weight as the kid rose to his feet. I sensed a bit of uneasiness on his part. Maybe he realized he’d been gone for too long, or perhaps it was the heart-to-heart he’d found himself having with a complete stranger, an act that never ranked high on the masculinity scale, but he’d kept his eyes trained to the floor.
“Thanks,” the kid said as he plucked a busted lock out from his pocket. “And sorry about your gate.”
“I’ve got more locks. Don’t worry about it.”
He took a few steps away from the vehicle and back toward the entrance before stopping again. “You know, you’re taller than I remembered.”
My brow furrowed at the offering of this random remark. “Well, we’re all taller when we’re not being punched in the ribs, Kid.”
“Good point.”
“So, who was that steroid-abusing agent, anyway?” I asked, hoping to get some free info on the guy who just might have a little something coming to him.
This is what I like to call “karma,” but Alice would have referred to it as “revenge.”
“Oh, you mean Crayton?” the kid asked. “He’s one of the leaders, not an agent—a governor.”
I chuckled, “A governor, huh?”
I continued to be amazed by the audacity of these individuals. Al Capone may have felt similarly, had he lived long enough to see all the hoodlums, thugs, and sociopathic punks walking around with the ego-driven ignorance to call themselves gangsters.
That term had been dragged through the mud for so long that the only prerequisites necessary for obtaining such a title was owning a firearm and not fully comprehending the basic fundamentals behind a belt. For God’s sake, there were children in grade school calling themselves gangsters.
I used to weep for the future. I guess I still do—just for different reasons.
“Yeah, if there’s anyone you should be afraid of—it’s him,” the kid added.
“Was he the one who ... ”
The boy nodded before I had a chance to finish, seeming to know I’d been leading to the old man’s killer. “Look, you seem cool,” he started. “When I heard those guys got their asses handed to them, I was ecstatic. They’d kill me if they knew, but it was time for a reality check.”
“Sounds like they got what they deserved.”
“They sure did,” he agreed as he slipped through the gate. I closed it behind him.
“What’s your name, Kid?”
“Tim.” He’d turned to quickly toss the name over his shoulder as he started to run back in the direction of town. “Thanks a lot,” he blurted before vanishing from sight.
“Timid Timothy,” I muttered to myself. The name had popped into my brain for no apparent reason.
Did he run all the way out here? No way he ran all the way out here.
It was then that I heard the ignition of a small engine some distance down the road, and the whine of his departure.
7
DARKNESS
I opened the door to the cavern and started down the first few steps before I stopped dead.
The hair on my neck and arms was standing on end. But why had my body gone into high alert so abruptly? Having learned to trust these instincts—as they’d proven useful in a great many situations—I crouched low and scanned the darkness beyond.
There were two things that could have sparked my internal reaction. The first hadn’t been triggered by anything within the blackness at the bottom of the stairs, but rather the blackness itself. It was as if the darkness had somehow gained consciousness and threatened to swallow me whole. The place was undoubtedly darker than I had left it just a few minutes earlier. And even more disturbing, as the moonlight spilled in and cast its glossy glow down the stairwell, I shivered at the absence of its luminosity reflecting back from Alice’s green eyes.
