The Holocaust Engine, page 3
Of everything Charles Stratton had seen on this day, his daughter’s brainless boyfriend knifing a madman with the cool precision of a contract killer easily counted as the most bizarre.
“Ms. Stratton!” the Castaneda thing called out, coming up onto his knees so that his body covered his victim’s head. “Call 911! Charles is hurt. We need an ambulance. Krissy. Krissy! I need that towel, the one on the chair. Throw me the towel.”
Charles Stratton did not see a young man coming into his own right before his eyes. He saw a completely different human being than the one that had been agreeably grinning at him these last three days. The towel dropped nearby, and Charles watched as Reagan leaned over to pick it up, still hunched over the madman’s ruined face. At this moment, Charles didn’t know what the boy planned to do to him with the towel. Would he use it to staunch the bleeding, or did he intend to smother him? Was this what he did to witnesses? Either way, his body started to register pain, and although he couldn’t speak or make coordinated movements, a tremor had seized his extremities, and he now shook as if he were being electrocuted. Still, he could not look away from Castaneda.
Then Charles saw why Reagan had wanted the towel. It had nothing to do with him. Reagan took the dead man’s head in the crook of his arm and used the towel to cover his face. It first stood atop the knife like a little tent with a huge center support. Then he turned the dead man’s skull to the right, set it back down, and tucked the cloth in on both sides of the man’s shoulders. If the girls had not seen the killing as it occurred, they would have no idea what Castaneda had just done.
“I can’t get through,” Mary screamed hysterically. “It says all the lines are busy.”
“Keep trying!” Castaneda yelled.
“What happened,” Krissy cried.
I got stabbed in the chest by some psychopath, and your frat boy/mob enforcer boyfriend just rammed the knife into his skull.
“Your dad’s been stabbed.”
“Oh God.”
He could see Krissy now, hunched over on the dock as if she’d been punched, shouting, “Daddy, Daddy!”
Reagan turned her back toward the boat. “Get your mom. Right now!”
Charles tried to speak when the boy came for him, but the best he could manage was a barely audible stream of mush. When Reagan looked him up and down, Charles would have cringed in anticipation if he could. Then Reagan hurriedly removed his shirt, took the collar in his teeth, and used both arms to tear it into strips. Charles didn’t see any tattoos. If anything, the body now wrapping cloth strips around his arm and tying them off looked like the after-picture of some torturous workout system’s advertisement page.
“You’re breathing too fast.” Reagan’s voice was pure intent—no passion, no emotion—like a doctor delivering the fact to a patient whose name he’d just read off a clipboard. “You gotta slow it down, Stratton, or you’re going to die. Think about Mary. Think about Krissy.” The last of his shirt he wadded into a ball and pressed against his side, and Charles thought he might black out. “Think about holding your grandkid and the great story you’re going get to tell all the other Wall Street drones at work.” He turned his head and shouted, “Ms. Stratton!”
“I still can’t get anything! What are we going to do?”
“What the hell?” Castaneda looked all around, taking in the surroundings. When he looked back down, his eyes flashed condescension. “You better hope this works.”
The boy vanished, and Charles could no longer move his neck enough to turn and see what Reagan was doing. After a few seconds, he heard the jingle of keys and the beep of a car alarm. Then he reappeared, and Reagan lifted Charles in his arms like an oversized sack of dog food. He’d never imagined pain so intense.
“Ladies,” Castaneda called out. “We are leaving.”
“How?” Mary said.
“We’re taking the other guy’s car.”
“Did you knock him out?” Krissy said. “What about the boat?”
“Now!” And then he moved.
They both moved—upstairs, onto pavement, every bounce sending shock waves of agony to his steadily unhinging brain.
“You just had to tell off the peasant, didn’t you, Charles?” Reagan said. “Couldn’t keep it together enough to realize that we just stepped into some kind of shit storm.”
They stopped. Another beep, a moment’s pause, and they were moving again.
“It’s this one in the middle of the parking lot,” Reagan called over his shoulder. “Krissy, I need you to open the back door and get in. I’m going to hand him to you.”
They stopped again. Another pause.
“Krissy,” a voice as cold as a knife sliding into an eye socket said. “Get in the car right now or your dad is going to die.”
A whimper. A door opening. From far off in the distance came something that sounded like a woman screaming, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Passenger seat, Mary.” Reagan continued taking charge. “Knock all that stuff on the floorboard.”
Charles Stratton’s back slid across a car seat, his vision aimed up at his steely-eyed rescuer, then only at fabric and a dome light.
“His head on your lap. Hold it. Hold it!”
And there was Krissy, crying, her delicate chin quivering, terrified. Now a hand was pressing the clump of blood-soaked cloth against his ribs.
A door slammed, then another and another.
“Is that other man dead?” said Mary, sobbing.
“We’ll worry about that later,” Reagan said, and the car started. “Krissy, you’ve got to keep him from moving.” They lurched forward. “I have to take some hard turns, but you gotta keep him as still as possible. Mary, pull up a map.”
“I’m getting directions.”
“I don’t need directions! I need a map!” The car speed up and then slowed. “I never plotted alternate routes to the hospital by car. If we have to get off the main road, I need you to tell me where to turn.”
Plotted alternate routes to the hospital? What the hell does that mean? Strange. All so strange.
Whatever it meant, it sounded good to Charles’s ears. Reagan was not trying to kill him; that was clear. Charles was beginning to feel real affection for this young man, a pronounced warmth in the center of his being, even as his arms and legs sizzled with the painful stings of nerve sleep. Guido the frat boy was trying to keep him alive—trying like the devil. The car sped up and turned hard enough to make the tires screech.
“Reagan!”
“I see it.”
A hard right, and Charles felt his mind starting to drift. He thought it might not be so bad to have a connected mobster in the family. A picture of his office, sitting behind his desk, Tom Barnett seated opposite, gradually materialized: Tom, if you and your FTC cronies don’t get out of my office right now, I’m going to make one God damned phone call and you can kiss your ass goodbye.
Nice.
“Ms. Stratton.”
It didn’t make sense. He still knew that much. Why would a mobster hide out in a state college?
“Ms. Stratton!”
“I know. I know. Left. Left here!”
But lots of things didn’t make sense. That didn’t mean they weren’t real.
“Here. Here. Okay. The next. Another left. Here!”
His marriage, for example.... He’d been so hard on Mary. Why? What did she ever do to deserve it? She was four months pregnant at the wedding—with the only child she would ever be able to bear—and he’d always considered that she trapped him. So odd. Why had he ever thought that? He had practically forced himself on her.
“Oh my God!” Mary cried.
“What is happening?” Krissy sobbed.
“No time!” Reagan was still in charge.
They swerved right and back to the left. Straight now, and accelerating.
“Okay,” Mary said, forcing a small level of calm. “We’re getting close.”
Listen to her, Charles thought. All that emotion for me. Even seeing... whatever they were seeing. So frightened. Yet still fighting. Fighting for me.
He was sorry, so sorry, for the pain he’d caused. Why had he ever thought any of it was important? The late nights, the socials, the affairs. The affairs, he thought with a kind of sorrowful laugh. Not just the one Mary knew about, but the dozen others she did not—Rachel at the office; Evelyn, whom he’d not seen since high school; the girl—what was her name, Xiao Ling?—and the rest of the little Taipei girls who were basically just another perk to anyone working in the Hong Kong office. None of it was important. This was important. Mary giving everything to keep him alive was important. He wanted to cry. He wanted to tell her that if he lived, it was all going to be different.
Oh, Mary. Sweet Mary.
“We’re coming up to the channel,” Reagan said. “I don’t know what this is going to be. Krissy, hold him tight.”
They sped up, faster and faster.
What’s he doing? Is he going to jump the channel? This is amazing.
“Reagan!”
A hard right and then impact. Damage. Both sides. They were sliding. Scraping. Squeezing the car through... something. The girls screaming. Car horns. The scraping gone and then grass. Then gravel. Tires shrieking their way back onto hardtop road. A left, and then the throaty roar of an engine feeling its accelerator pedal pushed all the way to the floor. The wheel jerking them around another car horn.
“This is it,” Mary managed through her tears—at least, it sounde like she was crying. She could barely speak.
Oh, Mary, if I don’t make it, stay close to Reagan. You and Krissy both. Stay close.
One more right. Charles hardly felt it. A sudden stop. Doors opened. He was being lifted. Moved. He saw lights. Growing brighter, but only fragments of movement through his fluttering eyelids. Sliding doors moving apart?
“I’ve got a stabbing!” Reagan yelled. “Hey!”
“I can see that,” a woman’s voice. She sounded put out. “We’re doing our best!”
Oh, Lady, Charles thought as darkness closed in on him. You better watch your tone with this one.
A Paradox
Lower Keys Medical Center, Stock Island
Since childhood, Reagan Castaneda had only broken character in public one time: college, freshman year. It was just a mumble, under the breath. He’d never even looked up at the professor droning on about the inherent patriotism of ‘civil unrest.’
“You morons and your anarchy,” he’d said. When he looked up, he was surrounded by staring faces... like now.
He stood shirtless in a waiting room and watched cable news for twenty minutes before he prepared to leave the hospital. His hair was still wet from the scrubbing he had given himself in the bathroom sink.
Key West was one of four locations covered by on-scene news crews—four cities, four riots. He gazed directly up, only a few feet away, when the feed switched over to Duval Street. A few seconds of bouncing footage appeared, people running in every direction on the narrow street.
A woman with a microphone said, “Mark, the third night of unrest since the police shooting of two unarmed bikers has been the most chaotic. So far, the heightened police presence has done nothing to calm the—” A series of loud bangs sent the camera into a frenzy. “Gunshots. I... I think we’re hearing gunshots.”
Then the screen went black.
Reagan shook his head and chuckled as, seated nearby, a mother and her young son watched him. “Riots on Key West,” he said, his voice suddenly timid and uncertain. “Who would’ve guessed?”
The screen again showed the newsroom, and the anchorman promised an update as soon as the feed could be restored, but it never came. The rest of it was flashes of the rioting in Philadelphia, which had whole sections of the city ablaze, a few snippets from San Francisco and Memphis, and endless commentary on the nature of the most recent wave of protests. After a commercial break, the anchor assured viewers that every member of the news crew in Key West was alive and uninjured.
The ticker at the bottom of screen read:
Violence in Key West, unconfirmed reports of dozens hurt.
Reagan didn’t need the news to know this. The hospital looked like a forward MASH unit overrun with wounded. He’d stood in the ER, the eye of the hurricane, holding Charles Stratton as the blood from his unconscious body dripped steadily onto the floor.
They’d found him a room... finally! Reagan had only slightly exaggerated the man’s wealth and importance, and although the triage nurse had acted unimpressed, a few minutes later, they had their room.
Two doors down, a body lay on a gurney, covered in a sheet—the second he’d seen. Tonight, the dead had to wait.
Reagan made his way through a current of medical staff, running and fast walking, back to the girls. Before they looked up, he crossed his arms tightly over his chest and let his face go slack.
“Hey, guys,” he said. “Something is happening with the riots and stuff. The news showed us, but it was short, and it was all weird. I’m going to try and find out what’s going on out there.”
“They’re working on him right now,” Mary said flatly, and wiped at her dry cheeks. “They’re working so hard.” Her voice came slow and even.
Did she even hear a word I said?
It was as though she’d exhausted all capacity for emotion, and was now only acting on habit. Huddled in a hospital hallway, still wearing the black one-piece swimsuit and a flimsy pullover, she again wiped at tears that were not falling. Then she composed herself, and held out both arms, as if Reagan were a child and she were inviting him into her loving, motherly embrace.
Reagan’s breath caught in his throat. Does she know what I just did? Does she suspect what I really am? What’s really going through my head?
“Ms. Stratton.”
When he made no move, she stepped over and wrapped her arms around him. Her pullover parted, and the sheer material of her swimsuit pressed over his crossed arms against his bare chest. For a split second, he felt her tender breath on his shoulder. His hands slowly dropped to his side. For a moment, he could only hold still.
“It’s Mary,” she said, just above a whisper. “After tonight, it’s only ever Mary.”
“Mary,” he said, and had to force the air into his lungs to say anything else. “It will be all right.” He looked over Mary’s shoulder at her daughter, and cleared his throat. “H-hey, Krissy.”
Krissy was still absorbed with her phone. Her jaw was quivering, and her eyes were moist, but otherwise she appeared calm. She looked up and said, “One of the nurses told me we have to make a police report. She said they’re really busy with the crowd control and stuff, but we still have to talk to the cops.”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said.
Mary let go of him and once more wiped reflexively under each eye. “Reagan, why did you put the towel on that man’s face?”
“You didn’t need to see that.”
“See what?”
“We... we were wrestling with the knife and he got cut and just stopped moving. The whole thing was nuts. Something is wrong. That guy at the pier was crazy. And then that other guy.... You saw that naked dude running down the street. It’s like there’s something in the water. I’m kinda freaked out. I need to talk to some people that have been here for the last couple nights. Maybe the cops can tell me what’s going on.” He nodded down at Krissy’s phone. “Have you found anything online?”
Krissy looked down, and started to shake her head but stopped.
“Is that a no?”
She stopped texting and cried, “I literally just got a signal. Literally just now. My dad just got stabbed. You might try being a little supportive, you know. You’re my boyfriend, Cas. Remember?”
He went to Krissy and wrapped his arms around her. Standing there in a t-shirt and shorts, hair held back by designer sunglasses, white bikini straps visible on each shoulder, an 18-year-old beauty that caught the eye of every man who walked by, she held stiff, her arms down at her side, and Reagan held her like a sister.
He told Mary, “I don’t know when I’ll talk to the cops. If the road is clear, I’m going to try to get back and put up the boat.”
Mary sighed. “What about the crazy man?”
“I’ll be careful. Maybe I can come back with some of our stuff.” He patted Krissy’s shoulder when he disengaged, but she still didn’t look up. “We don’t know how long we’re going to be here. It could be days.”
“Days? Oh, God.” Krissy started to cry again.
He left them with a promise to be back just as soon as he could, and exited the hospital chaos. He started to jog, and felt the car keys in his pocket. The crazy man’s vehicle would still drive, but Reagan wasn’t worried about speed. He wanted to hear the island, wanted to sense it, and in no way wanted to be confined in a strange car if suddenly attacked.
On this spring night on Stock Island, a few blocks away from Cow Channel and the short bridge onto Key West, stars smattered the sky and a breeze carried the smell of something burning, along with the usual scents of seawater and tropical plants. There had been no police in the ER, and no police cars outside, and he wondered how long it would be until he had to explain the killing on the pier. A normal soon-to-be college graduate would have been a wreck of emotions.
But there was very little normal about Reagan Castaneda.
He didn’t grow up obsessed with the end of the world. Until the age of fifteen, he’d been something of a momma’s boy. His father worked construction, rode a motorcycle, drank heavily, and did little else. He and his sister, Miranda, were raised by their mother, a sweet-hearted, cherub-faced woman with wide hips and an abiding belief that she was blessed, no matter how many times she had to help her inebriated husband get into bed at night.
One day, Miranda told Reagan that she was going to start working at a yogurt shop. She wasn’t worried about money, just wanted to buy their mother a birthday present.
