Chapter Thirty

Mikel

When Mikel picks up the call, it’s Ray on the other end. He had previously arranged with him to call in the middle of dinner so that they can fake an emergency reason for him to leave in the middle of it. The plan is to keep the others occupied for a while.

“Everything good to go on your end?”

“Yeah, you were right, she never planned on bringing Five-Two back. It has to be tonight. I’ve got everything ready, go ahead and let Barry know that I’m bringing the machine out tonight. I’m not going to sit on it till the morning, no way.”

“Alright bud, I’ll be watching my phone.”

When Mikel gets back to the table, he doesn’t sit down. He puts his hands on Clarice’s shoulders and waits for the others to pause. “I’m terribly sorry for this, but I’m afraid I have to deal with something urgent and am going to have to leave. Please do stay and have dinner, and stay as late as you wish. I’ve already covered the tab and everything, so take advantage of it.”

Clarice puts her hand on his and looks up at him. “Aw honey, what is it? Is everything going to be alright?”

He gives her a kiss and shakes Aaron’s hand. “Everything’s going to be fine, I’ll let you know if otherwise though. Aaron, I trust you’ll get our girls home safe tonight. I’ll see you all tomorrow, or so.”

The three of them easily agree to honor his wishes to spend the rest of the night drinking and enjoying each other’s company. As soon as their next round arrives, Valery slides Clarice’s drink away from her and puts it alongside her own. Aaron immediately picks up on what’s going on.

“Yeah, I guess I am. I only found out this morning. I haven’t told Mikel yet though.”

“Well, congratulations to both of you. I really wish the best for you.” He does his best to not look directly into Valerie’s eyes this time. He doesn’t need her getting baby fever.

Even from up as high as they are, over the din of the city, they can hear Mikel’s diesel truck when the valet retrieves it from the garage. By the sound of it, when he leaves, the matter must really be urgent.

When Mikel gets back to the garage under Clarice’s apartment complex, he has a hell of a time finding a parking spot. All the residents have come back and he has to park way in the back, where it’s almost dark. It’s better that he park out of the way, but it still makes for a shit mood.

As soon as he finds a spot he can even fit his truck in, he parks and gets out to change out of his nice shirt. He leans against the running boards of his truck and quickly takes off his dress shoes and slides his boots on too. While he’s mentally going over his plans again, he starts to wonder if he’s doing the wrong thing. This distant nagging feeling is starting to make him doubt himself.

Twenty grand each sounds like an awful lot for a simple round-up. He wonders if maybe Barry knows what Valerie is planning and knows it’ll be personal. He can certainly see them wanting to avoid using the authorities. I would turn into a real mess, especially with Five. She could make for a real convincing rights case.

In his gut, he can already feel that this job is not going to be worth the pay, not by a long shot. He knows Valerie is attached to Five and would be an absolute hell-storm if she discovered his involvement. Tonight Five is alone. They won’t find out. They won’t even know he was there. It’ll look like she left on her own.

Tapping into his core morals, he reassures himself of what is at stake if he doesn’t go through with it. He shakes his head at the thought that she was going to give Five a chance at a life of her own. It makes him sick. He starts grumbling to himself, getting more and more worked up about it.

“What about the poor fuckers living on the street, Valerie? Huh? Where’s your bleeding heart for them? Fucking robot lover.”

He’s starting to get himself going, the more he thinks about it. If situations like this are allowed to continue, it’ll be the end of everyone’s future, the end of what humanity is. They’ll all be living in the ditch while the robots sneer at them like they would mangy animals.

He takes the hammer out from under his seat and flips it in his hand, feeling the weight of it. He looks around himself and quietly sets it on top of the fender-well in the bed for when they get back. It makes it all the more real to him and what he is committing to. He coils up a few of the large cable ties and puts them in his back pocket to go. When he’s all ready, he throws his shoes across the seat and angrily slams the door of his truck closed. Every step he takes towards the elevator seems to sharpen his resolve.

“I have to do this for everyone’s sake before it gets any worse.”

While taking the elevator to the sixth floor, he pats at his back pocket and checks himself over, to make sure he doesn’t look out of place. He stands up straight, tilts his head back, and shakes the tension out of his arms and legs. When the doors open, all seriousness returns to his face.

While slowly entering into Clarice’s living room, he innocently calls out for Five. The apartment is dark, all except for Valerie’s room down the hall. He can see light coming out from underneath the door and he knows she’s in there alone.

Inside Valerie’s room, Five and Arma perk up to the sound of someone calling for her from the living room. They both recognize the man’s voice and know that it’s not Aaron. Arma begins to feel uneasy and puts her finger in front of her lips for Five to not answer. She whispers Mikel’s name, positive it is him. Her eyebrows lower in anger and her fists creak when they close tight.

Five’s eyes go wide and she shakes her head at her. She points to the closet and mouths the words that she cannot be seen, very insistently. When Mikel calls out for her again, he is just outside their door. She aggressively points for Arma to go and hide just in time for him to not find her there.

He can hear Five moving about on the other side of the door and cautiously watches her shadow moving in the sliver of light on the floor. When she opens the door for him, she looks up at him suspiciously.

“Where’s Valerie and Aaron?”

“Oh, they’re not with me. Valerie is having me pick you up to bring you downtown. We’re going to the club again. That’s if you want to go.”

“She sent YOU to come to get ME?”

He slumps a little and forces a sigh. “Five, don’t make it awkward, ok?”

Five waits for a moment, considering. She can’t imagine he’ll do anything stupid. They know about him now. “Fine, I’ll go.”

Mikel doesn’t want to chit chat with her any more than he has to. It’ll only make it more difficult. His eyes see a kind and beautiful woman, like Clarice, in front of him, but his mind can see what she truly is inside, a calculating and manipulative machine. He has to steel himself against her.

Before getting up to leave with him, Five glances over into the closet at Arma. All she can see is her wary eyes peeking over the top of some of the clothes hangers. They are moving side to side, telling her to not go. She can see the fear in her eyes, but also plenty of fight.

“I just have to get my shoes on and I’ll be right out.”

He needs to keep things as calm as he can, so he tries to be patient with her. “Alright, I’ll just be in the living room.”

She quickly approaches Arma in the back, reaches out to her, and puts her hands on the sides of her arms. “I’ll be back tonight. It’ll just be a few hours. I promise.”

As calm as can be, he leads Five out of the apartment and down to the garage where he is parked. She is naturally untrustworthy of him and stays back from him a few paces the whole way. When she starts asking a bunch of questions as usual, he grows tired of playing nice. As soon as they get to the truck, he firmly tells her to face and stand against the side of it. She is reluctant to do it, but she hasn’t completely lost her trained reaction to do what she is told. He even manages to get her to put her hands together behind her back for him.

“Why are we doing this Mikel? Why do I need to stand like this? It’ll be easier if you just tell me what we’re doing.”

He huffs impatiently. “I just need you to hold something for me. Are you ready?”

As soon as he has the cable tie out, he slips it over her hands and yanks it tight as fast as he can. The second he feels her start to jerk away and yelp, he kicks her feet out from under her and takes her to the ground. While still holding onto her bound wrists, he slams his weight down on top of her with his knee on her back.

Unable to stop her from trying to wriggle away, he takes his big hammer and smacks it on the concrete right in front of her face. Flying chips of aggregate make her shut her eyes tightly. With one final thrust, he shoves her body back down onto the ground.

“Listen here goddamn it! I’m gonna crush your fucking head in if you move one more inch you little bitch!”

She immediately stops resisting and holds still. A puff of dust rolls across the floor when she lets out her breath in a pitiful whimper. “Nooooo, Mikel!” She only pleads those two words, and quietly, so that he doesn’t hurt her worse.

He cinches her ankles together with another couple of ties, pulls them back, and then ties them to the ones on her wrists. Bound like that, he knows she’s going to be completely helpless. Drowning in an unstoppable tide of panic, she begins to squirm and shake uncontrollably. That upsets him again.

Mikel understands what she is going through, so he gives her one last chance to stop making it worse. When he grinds the head of the hammer into the pavement in front of her face and growls her name, she can still herself again. He can’t get her to stop her muffled whimpering, nor her tears. He doesn’t want to know if they are real or not, so he can’t bring himself to bust her up over it.

He can hardly stand doing what he’s doing as it is. Every sound she makes tears away at the wall he has built between the two of them. He has to move even more quickly now, just to try and get it over with before he ends up faltering. One thing is for sure, he won’t be able to bring himself to kill her anymore.

With one arm around her thighs and the other under her elbows, he picks her up off the ground and dumps her over the edge into the pickup bed. With his eyes closed, he covers the last bit of her with the tarp. He won’t dare look her in the face again. It’s like he is doing this to Clarice. It hurts to see the pain in her eyes, fake or not.

After taking a few deep breaths, he secures the tarp down with a few more bungees so that it can’t flap up in the wind. In the cab, the faint sound of her struggling under the tarp sends chills up his spine. He can’t help but feel like a true monster now. All he can do is his very best to shut her out of his thoughts. There is no backing out now.

His mind tells his heart that he can’t empathize with the machine, it would mean nothing to it to even try. Trying to not chirp the tires in reverse like usual, he calmly backs out of the spot and slowly makes his way out onto the street. While on his way to Werker, he messages Ray.

“It wasn’t easy, but it’s done. I’m on my way to the plant. Tell them I’m ten minutes out.”

“Wow, alright man! Cha-ching eh! Think of the ring you can get your lady now!”

Ray’s enthusiasm is still of no help. Even the loud droning of the diesel engine can’t keep the sound of her crying out of his head. He presses down on the throttle and picks up more speed, needing to get it over with. The best he can do now is to rid himself of Five as quickly as possible.

When he pulls into Werker, he sees a pair of men waiting for him in at one of the loading docks in the back. He immediately recognizes Gabriel with his curly red hair and belly hanging out the front of his jacket. He assumes the other short older man in the suit is Barry, but they haven’t met before. He backs the truck up to the open bay door and looks them over in his rearview mirror before getting out.

Before he even gets his door open, Gabriel climbs into the bed and starts undoing the bungee cords around the tarp. He is stepping on Five, making her squirm. With a foot on the rear tire, he leaps up into the back and grabs Gabriel by the back of his neck, mad as all hell, and drags him back out onto the dock.

“Get the fuck out of my truck, you fat grub!” Gabriel falls all over himself as he scampers back up onto his own feet. Barry finally looks right at him and steps forward under the overhead light. He drops a small duffel bag on the edge of the dock and looks down at what is shifting under the tarp. “What have you got for me, Mr. Hawkes?”

He grabs Five by the tarp wrapped around her ankles and drags her out onto the dock for Barry. Without any more than “This never happened”, he grabs the duffel bag and hops back down to get into his truck. Just as his door slams shut, he overhears Barry say something to Gabriel.

“You did a good job choosing the right man for the job.”

It makes him feel gross. Just knowing that creep recommended him for a job like this is enough to be sure he’s done the wrong thing. That’s what it feels like right now. Once he’s back on the road to Ray’s place, he unzips the small duffle bag to see what he stuck his neck out for. He can’t deny the feel of such thick stacks of cash making him feel a little bit better about it.

After turning the dim cab light on, he pulls out one of the bundles and thumbs through the edges. Every one of them is marked with a one hundred on it. It doesn’t look like they’ve tried to screw him.

Even though he did the entire job of retrieving Five himself, he still feels it’s only fair to split the money with Ray. After all, Five did break his arm. He could never feel right about leaving his best friend out of such a windfall either way.

Most of the way out to the farm country, he can still hear Five whimpering in his mind. He finds himself constantly looking in the rearview mirror. When the tarp suddenly slaps up against the back window, he nearly has a heart attack and swerves on the road.

By the time he reaches the farm, he is more than happy to get the hell out of the truck. On his way to the front door, he notices an extra black pickup parked out by the side of the garage. The fire pit in the back still has a good amount of coals in it. It looks like someone might have had a little bit to drink and is staying in the bunkhouse for the night.

A happy Roy is waiting for him on the other side of the door, wagging his tail. Ray says he has learned the sound of his truck and never barks when he comes out in the middle of the night. He opens the door and closes it slowly so that he doesn’t wake Ray’s Father. On a small shelf next to the door are some dog treats. He gives Roy two, otherwise he’ll whine about not getting any. He scratches him around the ears and smooches him on the forehead, telling him he’s such a good-ol’ boy. Ray is sunken down into the couch with his readers on, asleep. Roy shoves his wet nose against the side of Ray’s face, waking him up.

Ray jolts awake, looks at him, and then looks at his phone, hoping he didn’t miss something. “Oh, hey, you’re back already. Got it taken care of, just like that?”

“Yeah, I guess. Sounds like we have a reputation for being good at our job. Who would have guessed?”

“Not me. All anyone knows me by is the guy that smokes out back.” They both get a chuckle out of it.

Mikel takes his stack of cash out of the bag and stuffs it in his pocket before plopping the bag down on the coffee table. When Ray grabs his stack, he immediately puts it back in the bag and looks over his shoulders. “Holy balls, yeah man!”

It takes a little while for the excitement to wear off, but as soon as he starts to think about Five again, he loses his appetite for any more celebrating. The two of them still have to fabricate the emergency that he was supposed to come out for, but they decide to go over it in the morning. As always, he takes the couch, and Ray heads back to his room.