Chapter Thirty-Two

Aaron

Since Clarice isn’t going to be drinking, Aaron and Valerie take advantage of having her being their designated driver. In return, she takes advantage of their being drunk, to ask them some personal questions. He sure doesn’t mind, but then again, he has been drinking whiskey. Now that the future of her relationship is pretty much set, she’s become much more curious about theirs. They have only been dating for a rather short time, but they are moving rather quickly.

She finally gets him to admit that he’s smitten with Valerie. It’s only obvious, but she wanted him to say it anyway. It’s way too soon for either of them to use the L-word, but he is pretty sure that it’s where he’s at. When she presses him, not letting him waffle about it, he doesn’t admit it to her. Instead, he looks at Valerie, right in the eyes, to say it to her.

“Yes, Clarice, I am in love with your sister.” It doesn’t matter to him if she doesn’t say it back. He couldn’t expect her to, but he’s not going to slink away from telling her just because it’s a little soon. He couldn’t not say it, it’s true.

Valerie looks at his face, in his eyes, and then shyly away from him. She puts her hand on his wrist and looks down. “You drive me crazy, Aaron.”

Neither he nor Clarice mentions anything about her technically not saying the word Love. He can tell she’s not ready to, and it’s perfectly ok.

Clarice makes sure to not make either of them feel awkward about it. “Well, you’re both adults, with seasoned hearts, and you can feel whatever you feel. The two of you are just wonderful. I really mean it.”

As they finally get up to leave, their server assures them that their car will be ready for them and then thanks them for being such wonderful guests. While Clarice drives, he accompanies Valerie in the back seat. She lays across the seat on her side and puts her head on his thigh. He caresses the back of her neck and lays his other hand over both of hers. He looks down at her and wonders what she’s thinking. He has her in his arms now, and that is more than he deserves.

When they get back to the apartment building Valerie can hardly stay awake. Clarice heads to her place while he gets Valerie comfortable on his bed. He takes her shoes off and drapes his side of the covers over her. She is quick to fall asleep on top of the sheets, but this is going to be another one of his all-nighters. He’s restless after admitted being in love with her.

When he gets up to change out of his clothes, he hears a soft but rapid knocking at his door. When he opens it, Clarice is standing in the hallway with Arma at her side. Both look to be concerned. He hangs his head and rubs at the back of his neck. He has no idea what to expect.

“Alright, what’s going on?”

Just as Arma is about to speak, Clarice butts in to explain.

Arma told me that Five left with Mikel over two hours ago. “That would be while we were at dinner, and they haven’t come back yet!”

“Ah hell!” He immediately steps out into the hall with them and shuts the door behind himself. “I’m not gonna wake Valerie for this, tell me exactly what’s going on. Wait… let's go over this in your apartment Clarice.”

When they reach her living room both of them start bombarding him with theories and questions, all at the same time. He holds his hands up and waits for them to shut up. “You were here Arma, what did you see, and what did he say?”

“Five made me hide in the closet, ‘cause no one’s supposed to know about me. While he was here, he told Five that he was going to take her to meet up with all of you somewhere. The club?”

When he turns to Clarice, he expects her to clarify, as if it might have been what was supposed to happen. Her eyes are as big as ever, but she doesn’t speak up. All she does is cover her mouth with her hand and shake her head.

“Now Clarice, you tell me what the hell is going on here.” He tries to not be harsh with her, but the sternness of his voice makes her eyes well up anyway.

“I don’t know Aaron, no one said anything about this to me.”

“Where would he go? Why he would do something like this? Does he still mean to harm Five?” His voice starts to get a little louder each time. It makes her break into tears. They all already have a pretty good idea of what’s going on without having to voice it.

“He isn’t answering his phone! The only place he would be if not here is fucking Ray’s. Ray should at least know where he is? It’s the only place he ever goes when he’s not home. I don’t have his number. I’d have to go to the office to find it.”

“You’ve been to his place. Tell me how to get there. I’ll hunt them down if I have to.”

While Clarice describes everything to him, she texts him directions as best she can. His place isn’t exactly on a mapped public road. He waits until she is done explaining before leaving. He knows damn well where the place is, but he can’t tell her that. It won’t be all that hard to find Ray’s place with the little bit of extra information she’s given him.

He has Arma follow him back to his apartment, planning to take her with him. He doesn’t care if she isn’t wearing anything, and neither does she. They have to get going right now. They don’t have time to take Runner all the way out to the lot to get a van, leaving them no choice but to grab Valerie’s keys out of her purse. He looks at Arma and shrugs. “At least we’ll be able to get there quickly.”

When they both climb into the small truck, he has to turn the cab light on and look around for a moment, to figure out how to start the thing. Arma points out the row of chrome toggle switches on the center of the dash as if they were common knowledge. They are all individually labeled, battery, fuel pump, ignition, and fan, among others. Before he can even reach for the first one, she starts telling him how to do everything. Five has told her all about it.

He flips each toggle in sequence, gives it a little pedal, and then the truck roars to life. The fuel gauge shows that it’s topped off, but by the snappy sound of the exhaust, he can only hope the ten-gallon fuel cell in the back will last long enough to get them all the way there.

Easing into the throttle and clutch he manages to get the truck going without lurching the truck too bad. Making sure Valerie doesn’t wake up to the sound of her truck, he only putts along down the road for a while before really getting into it. He’s never noticed the truck from his apartment before, so they should be fine.

Once they’re out on the open road, the two of them cruise at the mild pace of one hundred out until they reach the dirt roads. Every time he looks over at Arma, she is closely watching him, what his feet are doing, and how he’s running the transmission.

He takes the truck slowly down the dirt roads so that he doesn’t wake up everyone in the entire valley, or at least alarm them. As many years as it’s been, he still remembers a lot of the old country roads. They haven’t changed hardly at all. At one point in his life, he had thought he might move out there. That was before he overstayed his welcome. When he comes up on the big grain silos in the dark, he remembers Clarice telling him to take the third right after them. After going another mile, Ray’s house is where she said it would be. It’s the one with a dim yellow light hanging off the front of the garage.

When they cruise on past the place, he immediately recognizes one of the trucks in the driveway as being Mikel’s. He shifts the truck into neutral and coasts a little way farther past the house before pulling off to the side of the road. The fuel gauge still reads about a little less than half, so he figures they should be alright, as long as they take it slower on the way back. Before getting out of the truck, he lays down some clear ground rules on what they are doing there.

“We have to be absolutely quiet. Do not make any noise unless you have to, like if someone is gonna get hurt. It’ll be much easier if we can just find Five and leave without anyone knowing we were here, if she’s here. I have no idea what’s going on, but I don’t think it’s gonna be good. So be alert.”

“What if I see Mikel?”

“Don’t do anything, just find me and show me where he is. If he sees you first, ok, stop him, but don’t kill him. If he goes after you though… then he’s fair game.” He watches her give him a slow nod, hoping he didn’t just do something really stupid in telling her that.

“What if I find Five first?” She perks up with the thought of it.

“Then get her to the truck immediately, don’t wait for me. Then, I don’t know, start the truck. I’ll hear it.”

They come up with a quick plan and agree to stick to it. She is to check out all of the other out-buildings while he focuses on the house. When they step out of the truck, he closes the driver door as softly as he can, seeing that she does the same. He slowly makes his way across the road and through Ray’s yard, while she heads farther down the road before cutting across towards the far side of the big garage.

Out front, he looks at the vehicles parked in the driveway. He doesn’t find anything unusual about Mikel’s truck, but he does see that his phone is on the front seat, blinking. There’s a crappy tarp tied in a bundle in the back, but that’s all. He feels underneath the truck and feels for the oil pan of the engine. The exhaust is cold, but the pan is still a little warm. He’s been home for a while.

With all the lights in the house being off, he assumes anyone inside has gone to bed. As soon as he makes his way around to the side of the house, a dog inside begins to growl and bark. He freezes and hunkers down in the darkness next to the swamp cooler mounted to the side of the house.

Inside, an old man yells at the dog. “Shut the hell up Roy, ya dumb mutt, before I whip your dumb furry ass!” Surprisingly, the dog immediately quits barking. He can still hear it quietly growling intermittently though. The dog isn’t barking at a random noise, it knows he is out there.

Wiping the sweat from his face, he stands back up and begins to creep around the house again. He doesn’t get more than a couple more feet before the dog begins to bark again. When a light comes on in the window next to him, he hears someone stomp their way across the house. There’s a loud crashing sound and then a sharp yelp from the dog and then another light comes on.

“Now you wake me up again Roy, see what happens.”

“Dad! Don’t you kick my dog! He’s not a barker and you know it. How ‘bout I come ‘n there and kick you, ya old son of a bitch!

“How ‘bout you come in here and try, Ray.”

After the lights turn off again, he listens to Ray coo to his old dog for a minute. He waits for another few minutes in complete silence before moving on again. He only makes it a few more yards before freezing in his tracks. There are swift footsteps through the grass coming up from behind him. As he turns to see if it’s Arma, he takes a hard kick to the ribs, followed immediately by another. With only a breathless grunt, he crashes over on his side. Another blow strikes him in the middle, but this time he grabs hold of them.

With his legs, he sweeps the feet out from under his assailant and tries to climb on top of them as quickly as he can. Something shiny flicks in the moonlight and then he feels a heavy gash split his forearm wide open. He’s in trouble now, but he can’t back off, it’ll only get him slashed again. With all of his weight, he slams his shoulder down on the man. They yell out in pain. “Aw fuck!” It’s Ray, and he just landed on his arm, probably breaking it again. He rolls over a couple of times, trying to get away and back up on his feet.

He wraps his hand around his forearm, trying to hold some pressure where he’s been cut before his blood pressure drops. In the darkness, Ray is already coming back at him with the knife. When the lights inside come back on, it’s just in time, Ray’s face lights up in front of him at the perfect moment. He swings as hard as he can, landing knuckles across the side of his face. Both of them stagger back for a second, getting glances of one another in the dim light. Ray’s arm isn’t broken, but he is clearly protecting it. He holds the knife out, poised for deadly thrusting this time.

“Who the fuck are you!”

“What’d you do with Five you piece of shit!”

Ray’s stance changes a little bit. He pauses and then smiles back. “Well… I had a little bit of fun with her, as you could imagine. Figured I’d give her a little bit of dick before finishing her off.”

“Where is she you little fuck!”

“She’s in the fire pit. You didn’t see her… what’s left of her?”

Behind Ray, he can see the soft glow of some coals of a campfire out behind the house. Before he can go berserk on Ray and kick his head in, two more men come up from behind and take him to the ground. A whole bunch more kicking from the three of them makes sure he isn’t a threat anymore. Someone grabs his ankles and drags him across the ground. The pain is like nothing he’s ever felt in his life. He’s about to blackout, but he tries to hold on as best he can.

“Aw man Ray, look, his shits all backward.”

“Ooh, yep, them’s broken alright.”

They drag him to the back yard and dump him onto his knees under the porch light to look at him. He tries to shout Mikel’s name, but his jaw is broken and nothing but blood comes out. One of the men grabs a fist full of his hair to hold his head up while Ray holds the knife in front of his face.

The old man comes out the back wearing only a pair of work pants and no shirt on. He walks towards him, holding an old revolver behind his back. The other three stay quiet the whole time, letting the old man look him over. He leans down and looks in his face like he recognizes him.

“I know this boy… from back when he was just a boy. Killed one of my cousins, he did. I’d remember his face… in case I might find him down in hell one day. That you, Aaron? Not so tough now are ya boy? It’s a small world huh. Too bad. Where’d you boys find him?”

“He’s why Roy was barkin’ dad, told you he don’t bark for nuthin’. Found him out here lookin’ in our windows.”

“Good enough for me.”

His eyes are closed when he feels the cold steel end of the barrel press against the center of his sternum. The percussion of the shot feels like being hit in the chest by a bag of concrete off the tenth floor. When his eyes open, there is nothing to see but blackness, and he can only hear murmuring over the ringing in his ears.

He knows he’s done for now. He’s not going to make it through this one, and it is all over for good. Death has found him and taught him his lesson. He doesn’t feel stupid for telling Valerie he loved her now. He finally got to fall in love and isn’t going to die alone after all. That’s the most he could’ve ever asked for before dying, and he got it.

Out behind the barn, Arma stiffens at the sound of a gunshot. It’s an all too familiar sound to her. A flood of panic washes over her, making her want to crouch down in the darkness and hide, but she can’t do it. Everything from her past courses through her thoughts. Every rotten thing that was ever done to her comes back in a seething rage.

She knows they’ve shot Five, and she’s going to make them pay for it with their lives this time. They don’t deserve another chance anymore. She races around the building and then to the back of the garage, staying in the shadows. She isn’t going to stupidly give herself up just because she’s upset. Revenge must be had this time.

When she peeks around the edge of the building, she is confused by what she sees. There’s no Five, no Mikel, just Ray and three other men she’s never seen before, all standing around outside. The back door creaks open and a tall man, with his pants tucked into his boots, and still buttoning his shirt, walks over to the four. It’s Mikel

“What the hell’r ya’ll goin’ on about back here? You shoot a skunk or something. Geez, guys, it’s like one-o-clock!” He looks down at their feet and then jumps back. “Holy shit!”

The four all look down and then slowly stand back a step. There’s a fourth man on the ground that she hadn’t seen. They are covered in dirt and blood. Mikel crouches down on his heels to see who it is.

“What the fuck?” He quickly reaches down and turns the man’s head to face him. When he does, a shocking amount of blood starts pouring out of his mouth.

“OH no. No no no no. No, you guys! What’d you do! Not this, guys!” He recoils backward, falls on the ground, and scoots himself away in shock.

“Ray! That’s Aaron, Ray! Valerie’s Aaron! Ray… Clarice is…!” He rolls over and throws up all over the ground, gurgling “fuck.”

One of the men mumbles back “he was out here snooping around” His voice has no confidence in it.

Ray grabs a fist full of his own hair and turns about in a panic. “He came here looking for Five. He asked me what I did with her. I didn’t know who he was, I’ve never seen him before Mikel! They’ll know he came here!”

The old man stuffs the pistol in the back of his pants and puts his hand on Ray’s shoulder to get his attention. “What is done is done, Ray. We need to get rid of all this. We need to burn the body.”

Mikel freaks out and pipes back hysterically. “Burn the body? What, we gonna have a good-ol’ campfire, roast marshmallows and weenies… huh!”

The old man points to the pit where there’s still some good coals going from earlier.”

Ray is not too inclined on the idea either. “We ain't from the north, you crazy old bastard. I cook over that sometimes!”

“This man was from the north, that’s what they did to the people they killed. We’ll churn the ashes into the fields like we always do. Now quit pissing your shorts.” The other two men shrug, nod their heads and stand over by him in agreement.

Mikel gets up off all fours, not quite all-there. “I can’t do this, I can’t be here, I have to go… right now.” He saunters back into the house with his head down, leaving the others.

Arma is still having some difficulty in grasping what’s just happened. She’s never seen anyone die before. After all the things she and Aaron had talked about, she can’t accept that this is the end for him, the real end he talked about. It can’t be right now, not like this. He was alive not more than fifteen minutes ago.

She watches in shock while the old man and the other two picks Aaron’s lifeless body up, dump it into the coals, and start tossing more wood in on top of him. The old man sprays something all over everything and steps back. When flames burst into the air and all over Aaron’s body, she feels like she’s been kicked in the chest. She can’t let them do this to him.

All the muscles in her body have bound up so tight, they’re almost at the point of coming undone. A raging flood of pain drowns out all rational thought and leaves nothing behind but a hurricane of pure hate inside of her.

Visions of tearing them all apart with her hands and teeth race through her mind. Her entire body feels like it is going to erupt like a bomb, powerful enough to destroy the entire world. She doesn’t care if she gets herself killed again, or even forever this time, so long as she takes every single one of them into the void of death along with her and Aaron. Each consecutive breath she takes turns more into a snarl of pure rage.

Before she can even think of what to do, she finds herself careening toward the men at full speed, faster than she’s ever done before. None of them see her coming at all. In all-consuming, screaming savagery, she grabs Ray by his hair with one hand, reaches over his face with the other, and pulls his head back with her fingers clawing in under his teeth. She forces his head back so violently, it completely breaks free of his spine.

Seeing Ray standing there backward, staring at them with a wide-open dead scream, freezes the other two men in absolute horror. His head is hanging upside down between his shoulder blades and his eyes are still moving, watching them. Within the second the two men try to bolt for the house, it’s too late, she’s already upon them.

She hammers the first one she catches to the ground and lands on top of him. He begs and cries for her to not kill him, but like with any wild animal, the running and screaming only feeds the frenzy like a fire. Swinging as violently as she can, she slams her fists into the man’s face like an absolute maniac. His last gurgled words to his friend “Don’t… leave… me” are ended by her slamming her forehead into his, cracking his skull.

The sharp splitting sound gets the other two to look back, for only a second. Roaring with violence, she grabs Aaron’s ankle and reels him out of the fire. She snatches a lump of big smoldering coal off the ground and leaps after the next man. He and Ray’s father are struggling to get through the back door of the house at the same time, holding one another up. She grabs the younger man by his skull, digging her fingers into his eyes, and cranks his head back so hard that he cannot stop himself from screaming with his mouth wide open.

There is nothing he can do when she rams the billiard ball-sized ember in-between his teeth. When the coal refuses to fit into his mouth, she pulls his head down even harder and hammers it in with the bottom of her fist. The man makes a horrific scene as he writhes on the ground, fueling the bright coal with his last hissing screams.

The whole time, she never takes her eyes off the old man. He shakily snatches the pistol out of the back of his pants and draws it on her. She lurches at him with even more ferocity than with the others. He is the one that killed Aaron, and she cannot have him escaping her vengeance.

The moment she reaches him, he pulls the trigger, firing it from the hip. She doesn’t expect to live through any of this, nor does she care to. Instead of going for the gun, she strikes at him with everything she has. The muzzle flash illuminates both of their faces for a fraction of a second. Her eyes are open and wild, while his are flinching closed with fright.

The bullet misses her face by only a small amount and she feels the blast of it as it tears past the length her jawline. Her fist lands in his sternum with the entire strength and weight of her body behind it. She can feel her knuckles collapsing the bone in his chest until it bottoms out against his spine inside. The old man’s body recoils back against the wood door behind him and then flops down on the ground. She stands there straight and tall, with a face of absolute insanity, watching his last pitiful moment down in the dirt. On his chest, he tries to lift himself, but he can hardly even move. With a single last strained whine, he claws a fistful of dirt into his hand and dies.

When she looks around herself, she finds herself to be alone. Five dead men are now lying at her feet. She expected she would be dead by now. She wishes she didn’t have to go on after this. When her eyes find Aaron’s bloody face again, she hurries over to him, gets down on her knees, and scoops him up in her arms. His skin is burnt, one eye is grey, and blood is still trickling out of the hole in his chest.

It runs down her arm and drips off her elbow, making little splashes in the dust. She picks him up to the height of her shoulders and presses her face to his, letting out a sharp exhale in distress.

“Come back to me, Aaron.” There’s nothing left but silence and the darkness around her.

When Mikel peeks out the back screen door, to see what happened yet again, she hears him. He must not be able to see her dark body in the night, because he still comes out to check on the others. He slowly steps among them in disbelief, not knowing what to make of it all. Even when he looks her way, it takes a moment for him to notice her.

With his own shadow hiding her from the light, all he can see of her is her golden eyes staring back at him. All it takes is for her to blink. He startles and immediately peels the pistol out of the old man’s hand. He has no idea what or who she is and can only point the barrel in her direction.

She doesn’t have any more rage or hate left in her anymore, it has all been burnt out in one hell-fire. She can’t bring herself to get up and dismember him like the others this time. All she wants now is for him to see what he has brought down on all of them. She pulls Aaron to her chest tightly and lays her cheek back down on his head.

The moment he steps aside, for the dim light to bathe her, he lowers the pistol for a second and then raises it at her again. “What are you… you demon… you fucking thing?”

She remembers how he and Ray used to call her a monster. It makes her feel like her life is all so hopeless again. “You made this happen, not me. You’re the monster, you’re all monsters! We never did anything to you.” Her voice is quiet and not even directed at him. She’s pretty much talking to herself but he hears her all the same.

When she looks up at him, it’s with the saddest face that he’s ever seen in his life. He’s seen that same look before, but on someone else. That’s when it dawns on him who she is. Then and there, he remembers everything he has ever done to hurt her and Five. She is right, he is the one that caused all of it. She holds Aaron out in front of her, showing him what he’s done.

“Of course it’d all end with you, here, taking everything from me. We reap what we sow, don’t we Five-One?”

Her voice is shaky and has no hope left in it. “Bring him back, Mikel. He didn’t deserve this. He was just trying to save Five. What the hell did you do to her!”

“People can’t be brought back like you can, Five-One, that’s the point. No one gets to come back. It’s called life and death. He’s gone.” He doesn’t tell her that’s why he hates her, because she can always come back while his loved ones can’t. “We only ever get one chance.”

She becomes panicked and adamant. “I know you can do it. That’s what you did to me and Five! Do it again!” She stands up and stumbles toward him, holding Aaron’s burnt corpse out to him. “Bring him back, you can’t just let him die like this!”

“I can’t bring him back, Five-One! You’re a robot, that’s different! We can’t bring people back.”

Her voice is no longer weak this time, but commanding now. “Five and I were never robots you idiot! We were like all of you once, we were real! You tore our lives apart, killed us, and turned us into machines like this. We never even had a chance to start with! You made sure of that! Bring him back or I will drag you into the fucking darkness along with everyone else!”

He shakes his head in denial when he realizes what’s been going on at Werker this whole time. “You! It’s been you this whole time!”

Paul said she would be back for him and Ray. He just didn’t think he meant it literally. He doesn’t know how it’s possible, but he’s pretty sure he knows who she and Five are. He should’ve never gotten involved. Everything has come back around full circle, and now he is paying the price. He’s been pissing into the wind the whole time. If he and Ray had known, they would’ve been the ones breaking them out of Werker, not Valerie.

“I’m sorry, I can’t bring anyone back, I’m just a handler. I don’t know how to do any of that.” He feels so helpless and stupid. He can’t believe what he’s done so blindly.

“Take me and Aaron to Dr. Greco. He will do it.”

Still in disbelief about what is going on, he feels he doesn’t have much of a choice either way. He has to do something. If there’s a chance she’s not delusional, and actually telling the truth, he can at least try. He has to do something to at least try salvaging the situation. If it doesn’t work, he’ll never be able to face Clarice ever again.

Figuring there must be a short time limit on preserving Aaron’s body, he has her lay him in the back of his truck. He wraps him in the very same tarp he had covered Five in. It’s a clear reminder that if he wasn’t such a piece of shit to begin with, none of this would’ve happened.

He has her follow him in Valerie’s truck on the way out. There is no way either of their vehicles can be left at the scene of what’s happened. In his rearview mirror, he watches the farmhouse disappear behind him. It’s surely going to be the last time he’ll ever see it again.