The Holocaust Engine, page 17
It changed everything. She could remember the way her mother’s third husband’s shouts turned shrill, like a child’s temper tantrum, his face distorted, like a reflection on the waves, when she was high. Her mother had been afraid of him, but Lindsey MC just laughed, and when he punched her in the face, her mother left him. Lots of people were different from how they looked. So many were like bad 3-D renderings of themselves, where the back-shadow was never quite in sync.
And the island, Key West itself, was an island of wrongness. All around them, in the gulf to the west and the open ocean to the east, whirlpools of utter darkness swirled, not on the water itself—she could see this when she got high and sat on the beach, especially after nightfall—but underneath. Not even at depth from the surface, but truly underneath! It lurked below the fabric of what we could see or smell or touch, the real world of darkness behind the serene, illusionary world, with its props of buildings and bushes and trees.
Even the island had them. Lindsey MC had counted seven, or maybe ten. There was one in the pool at Mallory Square, and another next to the botanical garden. She had seen one under the pavement on Duval Street, threatening to swallow the road and all the tourists making their crawl from one bar to the next. There was one next to the school, beneath the lower salt pond.
That was why she’d been sitting on the grass, on the other side of the buildings out by the big metal conch shell, by herself, the day Hunter Grant came for her.
He wanted to buy marijuana from her, not for himself—he could barely bring himself to say the words—but for some old lady at his church who had a broken back and hurt all the time, and none of the doctors could give her anything that really worked for the pain.
Lindsey MC said she would get some, just to make him leave. The older Hunter made her nervous—something about his appearance. He had no back-shadow, and even buzzed, she could hear each one of his words as if they were spoken past all the fuzzy parts of her brain and directly into the middle, as if by some sort of intercom system she hadn’t realize existed.
She got it for him, and he got arrested a few months later.
The episode had been one of those paradoxical elements that could only be rendered plain by the dope. The Jesus freak went to jail, juvenile jail. This kicked up a dust storm of gossip. Hunter Grant had been doing something—selling health food?—that had him dealing with the sick and the nasty. He must have taken the seeds out of the dime bag and grown plants, because that was the thing that got him busted. Rumor had it that someone at the church had taken offense, when the old lady’s children had let slip why it was that grandma didn’t need prayer for her chronic pain anymore.
Something else happened next, but it was hard for Lindsey to arrange memories in a particular order. Maybe this had been when he got into the fight where he put the other kid in the hospital. He was always strong—zealot strength. Or maybe this had been when Susan Cribbage, the sluttiest girl in her whole grade, got the hots for him. Whatever. One year, he was a Jesus freak you avoided unless you wanted to hear what God was doing in his life right at that very moment; the next, he was a fallen bad boy that never smiled, and whom girls would hit on if they wanted to teach their overprotective fathers a lesson.
The sequence didn’t matter. The whole joke was that he hadn’t changed. The other kids saw him as different. Even his straight-laced parents, whom she heard wanted to kick him out of the house, thought he was different. But he was exactly the same.
She was at a party one night, buzzed out of her skull, in a bedroom with one of the boys on top of her, and Hunter threw the boy off and probably hurt him—he hurt a lot of people, once the drop-outs starting hanging around him—and he took her home and put some strong-smelling oil under her nose, and when she could see plainly, he starting preaching to her about consequences.
He still thought his God was in control.
And Lindsey MC had just sent her best friend out to him. What would he think? That God had sent one of his angels down from heaven just to get his rocks off? Or maybe that Vera was another fallen woman that he had to bring into the loving arms of his savior? Either way, Lindsey MC believed Hunter Grant was about to meet his back-shadow. His voice would distort and his eyes would darken, and she wouldn’t have to turn away anymore.
Still, it was a dick move. Vera had been a good friend to her through all the times she’d been messed up—the time she tried to dry out, the abortion, the two times she almost killed herself.
Lindsey MC felt the pangs of guilt and knew that she needed a hit of something to make those feelings go away. She rifled through both of her purses and found a little baggie with a bit of stuff left in it. She walked past the bed, where Granny snored like an old outboard motor, and stopped in the hallway. She couldn’t see anything except a little moonlight filtering through the kitchen glass and the general shape of the couch. No sound. She waited a moment, then padded into the bathroom and closed the door.
She heated up and injected what was probably the absolute last of her black tar—not a lot, but enough. The world stretched apart, unraveled, and slithered out into its true reality.
Back in the bedroom, she sat against the wall, pondering the past, the present, the future, when Hunter Grant walked in and looked down at her. She did nothing to acknowledge his presence. She saw his legs and his feet in the morning light, just as solid as they always were.
Life is a stupid bitch!
She wanted nothing to do with his face, not when it could ruin the moment.
“Ms. Krasinski?”
The snoring stopped. “Yes.”
“I’d like to talk to you when you’re awake enough for it.”
“I’m awake.”
“It’s about Vera.”
When he finished and left, Lindsey MC was smiling on the outside, but not like on the inside. On the inside she, bawled in laughter. If ever anything had proved that the sober world made no sense of any kind, it was Hunter Grant, standing at the foot of Granny’s bed, in a house full of armed teenagers and looted foodstuffs, on an island where the sick sometimes tried to kill you, surrounded by soldiers whose only job was to keep you from escaping, talking to an 85-year-old about courtship. His solid outline could kiss her ass.
When he left, Lindsey MC needed to go be sick. She staggered into the bathroom and vomited into the toilet. Then Vera was there with her, looking at her with her best-friend’s concern, holding her around the shoulders when she tried to stand.
“Guess what?” Lindsey MC wiped her mouth, smiled wickedly at her friend, and said, “You’re getting married.”
By 1922, Sister Mary Louis Gabriel had lived through three hurricanes while housed in the convent on Key West. The last of these officially took 778 lives, although since “officially” had a rather more humble meaning in 1919, the total may have been as high as 1,500. To keep it from ever happening again, Sister Mary built a grotto of mortared rocks with an engraving that read:
As long as the grotto stands, Key West will never again experience the full brunt of a hurricane.
In the 95 years since she built the grotto, not one single life had been lost on the island from hurricane.
At the grotto, Hunter Grant and Carter Lacewood found Reverend Barclay.
When Hunter said that morning that he had somewhere to go... alone... Lacewood put on his shoes. They’d done this before. For Hunter, ‘alone’ didn’t quite mean alone. It just meant that it would not be on official Wharf Rat business. None of them ever went outside of the house alone anymore. Unless Hunter specified a team, Lacewood needed to get dressed.
Hunter expected him to do this, but it didn’t bother Lacewood. In fact, he’d come to consider this a solemn duty. If anyone of them would ever tell their story, it would have to be him. None of the others could ever have written a story. Most had never even read a book from cover to cover. That left Lacewood to keep tabs. Each day, he got the details from the twins on their previous night’s runs. If it was his turn to guard the house while the others went out, he took notes when they came back. And, as the heart and soul of all things Wharf Rat, it only made sense that Lacewood went out with Hunter to make sure nothing was ever missed.
These things just were—like the grotto, engraved in stone.
This morning, Hunter had asked Lacewood, “Do you know where the Catholic church is?”
Know? Lacewood had been there. He’d attended mass with his mother, a devout Catholic. After she died, and his father moved the two of them to Key West, he still went from time to time, until his father remarried the first of his non-Catholic wives.
When Lacewood asked what they needed at the church, Hunter said simply, “I got to find someone Catholic to do a wedding.”
Lacewood laughed as they walked out the back door, stepping over the tripwires Face had set next to the fence. “Who’s getting hitched?”
“Me and Vera. Maybe. I just got to see if he’s willing to do it. Granny says it has to be a Catholic wedding.”
Lacewood could only stare. Hunter Grant didn’t talk like anyone else he’d ever met. The things he said were not for Lacewood to question, or even to understand. It was like Lacewood had just started a game, and Hunter was giving the mission parameters.
Hunter and Vera are getting married. Maybe.
That statement would shape other details, like computer code shaping a simulation. It didn’t have to make sense to the player.
Lacewood liked the Basilica of Saint Mary Star of the Sea better than the church they’d attended up in Miami. It had the island feel. It contained wood pews and stained glass, and a big statue of Jesus on the cross—just like a thousand other churches—but in nice weather, they opened the louvered doors on both sides and let the Caribbean breeze blow through.
Today, the side doors were closed. Hunter and Lacewood entered through the front and found forty-odd people sitting in the pews turning to look at them. No one they could see wore robes or clerical collars—just ragged leftovers of Key West there to ask God to get them the hell off the island. So Lacewood and Hunter went down the center aisle and, in whispers, asked if anyone knew where the Father was.
An older woman with stringy hair and a mouth that opened and closed like a fish, even though she was not saying anything, pointed toward the grotto.
The grass had overgrown a brick pathway shaped like a string of rosary beads. To the left of the grotto, a small iron fence separated the place of prayer from a little cemetery. The single gnarled tree, with mats of moss hanging off of its limbs, shaded both grotto and tombstones. Three kneelers, made of the same rough stone as the grotto, were occupied at that moment by the penitent. One of them sobbed as she lifted her hands. More of them lay face down on the grass. The grotto itself was the size of an average shotgun shack, with two statues of the Virgin Mary—one set into the stones up high, like an attic vent on a house; the other set back inside a smooth, square cave, with iron gates that stood open. In both, halos of light bulbs hung suspended above their heads. The one in the cave rested at the back of a metal candle rack covered in lit candles.
“Father Barclay?”
A bookish, middle-aged man wearing glasses and protectively holding an old woman’s shoulders, turned from inside the cave. Though both sat in shadows, Lacewood could still see the white of the Father’s collar.
“Father, we need to ask you something,” Lacewood ventured.
“We hope to have more food this evening.” His voice sounded as though he’d been crying.
“We don’t need food. We need someone catholic who can officiate a wedding.”
Now the Father stared.
The old woman next to him turned, still crying, holding a cloth to her swollen face.
“What happened?” asked Hunter. Up until then, he’d been holding Defiance, wrapped in a large rain jacket like an umbrella, under his left arm. Now, still wrapped, he held it in his hand, ready to be swung.
Lacewood was still trying to understand the question—How did he know something had happened?—when the woman answered.
“They took them, three of the sisters, from the convent.”
Hunter’s voice became a growl. “Mother... fucker.”
Lacewood had never heard him utter profanity before.
“They kidnapped them,” said the priest, his voice lilting on every third word as he struggled to maintain control. “We tried to talk to them... begged them... to give them back. They won’t. They... threw rocks. They beat us—”
“Who?” said Hunter Grant, losing patience.
“Those... people in the naval base. The ones... with the megaphone.”
“I’ll need their names.”
Both the priest and the older woman straightened. “They won’t give them back,” cried the woman.
“I don’t care what they’ll give. I’m not going there to ask.”
“Don’t be silly. There are hundreds of them,” Father Barclay insisted.
“So it can’t be done”
Neither answered.
“So if it can be done, and we do it, will you do the wedding?”
“Listen, young man,” said Father Barclay. “You’re going to make it worse.”
“Worse than being raped?”
“If you get yourselves killed—”
“Miss, we’re the Wharf Rats. We killed the giant zombie at the Southern Cross. We just need the girls’ names.
“You think that’s what we want? More killing and—”
“Just give us the names.”
“If they catch the girls trying to escape—”
“The names!”
“Bethany, Kristen, and Coral!” shouted a young woman praying at one of the stone kneelers.
Hunter was already turning to leave. “We’ll be back by this time tomorrow.”
“Don’t—”
“Three girls!” Hunter stopped and shouted over his shoulder to the priest. “One wedding. That’s the deal.” Then they walked quickly. “It can be short,” Hunter shouted as they left. “There won’t be many people there.”
Glen ‘Face’ Waldron’s father was not a bad man. At least, Glen didn’t think so. He just had a run of bad luck and figured that nothing really mattered anymore, that was all—a that lasted about twelve years.
It started when their mother went crazy. He never knew what had set her off. Carl always told him that it wasn’t their fault, and that they should never blame themselves, but Glen didn’t know what to think of this. It sounded as though she was normal before becoming the mother of two wild boys.
When Glen was six and Carl nine, she walked out into the water from Dog Beach, swam out about a hundred yards, and tried to drown herself. Before rescuers could hoist her up onto a boat and get her breathing again, she’d managed to keep herself facedown long enough to give herself permanent brain damage. She came out of the coma different, affected, and would never live without around-the-clock care again.
Her insurance wouldn’t cover it, though, so their dad sold the house and declared bankruptcy. After that, things just went downhill. His heavy drinking didn’t help. He wrecked their only car and got arrested... twice. His boss at the auto shop was an old friend, so he never lost his job, but his wages never covered everything—like when Carl broke his leg trick-jumping his skateboard, or when Glen got pneumonia, which his dad said was because he “didn’t take care of his God-damned cold like he should have.” Debt collectors left a constant string of messages.
In spite of what everyone thought—because he once bashed in the side of Glen’s face with the pipe wrench—he rarely got mad at his sons. Mostly, he just lived in a state of perpetual sadness. Then, one day, it was if he could not feel anything anymore—like a drug he’d grown tolerant to. Nothing mattered.
He told his sons, again and again, “Nothing matters. Nothing is important. Don’t be fooled.”
Carl finished high school and did one year at the college on Stock Island while working at the body shop. He didn’t go back the next year. He got a job at a boat shop and spent most of his free time getting high. Carl wasn’t around much—most nights, he crashed on the floor at a friend’s place—not that it mattered.
Glen was good at math and better with tools than either his brother or his father. Not that this mattered either, but he enjoyed going into the little garage where his dad had the two work benches, and figure out what was wrong with whatever he was working on, even if this did sometimes piss off the old man.
When the disease hit and the Army closed off the island, Carl came back full time. He helped Glen board up the house and stock the fridge, and even though it seemed like he was being a good big brother, now that Dad had made it off on a friend’s boat, Carl made sure that Glen knew it wasn’t any big deal. None of it made any difference.
He’d told Lacewood and Hunter Grant that when they came to check on him. Glen knew right away that they were looking for some kind of safety in numbers, but who cared? Not him. If they wanted to stay over, they could. Sure, he would come back and play some games, since Lacewood’s place had power, but that was all. He might even stay the night, if Carl didn’t mind, but it wouldn’t mean anything.
Then it happened.
He and Lacewood had paused a game of Counterstrike so Lacewood could use the john, and Glen walked around the house just to stretch his legs, and saw the sofa in the living room that Hunter had turned into a living space. He had his bat, a few changes of clothes, a Gideon Bible for some reason, and a stack of papers.
Glen Waldron had peered down at the papers, and knew what they meant as soon as he saw them. Right then, Hunter Grant came in the back door from where he’d been scouting around the house.
Glen sputtered out a laugh and pointed at the papers. “This is... these are registration papers.”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d you get ‘em?”
“Boca.”
Glen smiled. He was more than just a little afraid of Hunter Grant, but the absurdity of that statement compelled him to press the issue. “You were out? You were outside of the barricade?”
