Chapter Thirty-Nine

Gabriel

Gabriel holds his nose as he shuffles through the debris in the main room of Barry’s home. He can’t fathom how no one has called the police after what happened here. All the stars in the damn universe had to of aligned in Mikel’s favor for this to go unnoticed. He puts a lot of thought into calling the police himself, and telling them everything.

They wouldn’t be able to arrest him for anything, at least anything they can prove. The only thing keeping him from doing so is a conceited need for him to exact revenge on the others. He has every intention of seeing the look in their eyes when the tables are turned back again. He imagines Five and Arma being his naked servants whose only job is to throw scraps of leftover food at Mikel through the bars of his cage. He can already hear Valerie cooing to him that she would do anything he wanted if he’d just let the others go.

Barry’s body is still crumpled up at the bottom of the stairs on the first landing where they left him. His waist is twisted most of the way around and his head is crushed sideways underneath his chest. His skinny old legs are draped on the steps below like they’re hanging off a marionette. It’s a rather grizzly sight, and he’s seen some things.

Even though Barry was a portly man, his arms were still thin and bony. One of them looks to have gotten caught between the railing posts on his way down. The skin on it is all twisted around like rope.

He tries to hold his face up and away from the sight of Barry while he grabs his body by the feet, attempting to drag him down the stairs. The smell and sound of his body thumping down the stairs sends him to his hands and knees, spraying vomit halfway across the floor.

“You motherfuckers!”

He shouts and curses Mikel as he crawls into the kitchen to clean himself up. When he comes back out, he has a sizable amount of tissue stuffed in his nose. On top of that, he has a long hand-towel wrapped around the front of his face and tied off in the back. He drags Barry down the hall and into the garage. He remembers seeing some things he’ll need in there.

In his later years, Barry had picked up the hobby of H.O. scale modeling and became quite good at it. He’s been making miniatures of everything he can think of since. In his office, at home, and work, he’s set out tiny sets, like a gas station, or a saloon that he’d put together.

The small modeling workshop in the corner of his large garage is surrounded in heavy clear plastic, to keep wood dust from finding its way into the house. Gabriel yanks a large portion of it down and wraps Barry’s body in it. He finishes sealing up the plastic with an entire roll of packing tape. He feels like kicking Barry’s corpse because he was a jerk, but he’s already gotten everything he deserves.

Without the immediate means to dispose of the body, he stuffs it far into the crawlspace entrance underneath the short set of wooden stairs leading into the house. He remembers carrying Five up these same steps. Even though Barry is dead, he figures it’ll still be best to continue housing Paul there, once he can make more copies of him.

He needs to figure out what to expect in Barry’s absence, so he goes through all of his personal things. Just like with most of the elderly, his family seldom corresponded with him. The only other messages Barry even gets are regarding work and other mundane things such as appointment reminders. It’ll be quite a while before anyone notices that he’s been missing. That’s what he gets for being such a son of a bitch.

As far as Mikel can remember, there isn’t anyone left of the Knapp family to carry the name on anymore. Ray and his father were the last. Even though there isn’t much of the family left in the area, it seems there are still a great many folks that cherished them as close friends. The front porch of the house is almost completely covered with bouquets and sympathy cards. It’s quite something to see how loved the two were by everyone else.

Even though the house has been cordoned off with crime scene tape, it hasn’t stopped anyone from crossing the line to put their sentiments on the front porch. He hates seeing the place wrapped in red and black tape like this. It makes everything look so shameful. He knows damn well the police don’t care what happens outside of town. It is none of their business, and they’ll never be back anyway.

With patient respect, he unties the boundary lines from the porch posts and coils it all up into a nice roll before throwing it on the ground and going inside. One by one, he takes all of the gifts left on the porch inside and places them about the house wherever is meaningful.

It’s difficult seeing the place so empty. Even the animals are gone, surely having been taken in by friends. He sits on the couch and cries when he places his hand down where old Roy would have sat between him and Ray. He figured there’d be someone around or something to do, but the place is so quiet. It feels like no one’s been there in years. He can’t remember the place ever being empty a single day in his life.

He wishes he could hate Arma more for what she did, but he can’t. She’s the last person that deserves to be punished. It’s like he can’t feel anymore. He and Ray did such awful things to her. They gunned her down, kidnapped Five, and then murdered Aaron too. It looked like he must’ve meant a lot to her. She got him and Ray back for all they’ve done, fair and square. He wishes she were as rotten of a person as he is, but she simply isn’t. He can’t hurt her back for this, it was his fault, and now he has to live with it.

After another hour or so of milling about, he finds himself standing in the driveway, trying to wrap his mind around what had happened that night. He shakes his head, wondering at what point it all took such a turn. All he can seem to remember is the dog barking and then finding everyone in the back, standing over Aaron’s body.

Shuttering, he recalls seeing Aaron’s shirt covered in dirt and pulled up from them dragging him across the yard. His ribs were all broken like they had really put the boots to him. One of his arms looked like it’d been broken and twisted around backward. He doesn’t know why it was all so violent. Somehow, they all just tried killing one another for god knows why.

The question of it all prompts him to go ahead and check the rest of the place out. He knows the law won’t be coming back, so he goes ahead and strolls about the place. There are still drag marks in the dirt and everything from the night it all went down. He follows them to the side yard, where the grass starts. Memories of what he saw start to get to him. Remembering the way his friends were left in the dirt starts to make him get the cold sweats, and he has to get the hell out of there. At his truck, he leans against it with his forearms up on the hood. He feels like a stranger to the place, or unwanted like he’s been left behind on purpose.

Before he reaches the first turnoff down the dirt road, someone in an old faded blue pickup heading towards him slows to a stop and rolls their window down. He does the same and pulls up next to them. It’s Gil, John’s old friend from way back. He’d be the one to keep a close eye on the place if anyone did. Roy is even with him in the passenger side. The sight of the old dog tears right through him. It takes a couple of minutes before he can even look Gil in the face.

“Aw god, Gil, I’m glad you got Roy with ya. I wouldn’t a let anyone but you have ‘im.”

“Yeah, I got ‘im… and the cat too. First thing I did, was get them two.” Gil reaches over and brushes his hand over the top of Roy’s head in consolation. “I don’t know what to say, Mikel, I ain’t never seen anything like it. I hate to get all into it here like this, but damn it, somethin’ went down here, somethin’ from not around here. They even brought a pair of Investigators out here, Mikel. Saw ‘em myself. They deserved better than this.”

“Don’t you worry about it Gil, I’ll get to the bottom of this. I’ll make it right.”

“I know you’d do right by them, son. You be sure to let me know if you need anything, alright?”

Gil is often long-winded and the last thing he wants to do is talk to him about what happened for the next half hour. While Gil pauses, he jumps at the opportunity to leave. He gives him a nod and then puts the truck back in drive.

Gil reaches out and puts his hand on his side-view mirror. “Now hold on son. God damn, where you off to in such a hurry? I wanna know what you know. They were my family too. Now, rumor is, a robot had something to do with all this, that’s what’s goin’ round. You two know a little bit about that business right…? Why else they bring the big guns out here for this then, huh?”

“Now Gil, don’t you let nobody get ya’ll’s feathers ruffled up over that kind of shit. That’s a bunch of rat talk is what it is. Even if it were, robots don’t do this kind of shit all on their own. There’d be someone behind it one way or another.”

“Hey now, don’t be callin’ nobody no rats. They’re just as fine a people as you and I. Don’t be spit’n on em like that.”

He can see how someone could have come up with such an idea. No ordinary man could have done what Arma did. The sight of the bodies was certainly beyond anything that’s happened around there in a long time. The folks in the community are a harder bunch than most, having all grown up embracing such a rough life, but seeing four men they knew bludgeoned in the night has strained their resolve.

Simply in some of the interviews with the locals on the news, he could tell they are all out for blood on this one. Anything to do with robots already sends them into conniptions. Having a dangerous one on the loose has them all starting to organize. He knows they aren’t going to go as far as to form a mob or anything, but that doesn’t mean the rats won’t. They’ll take any excuse they can get.

“Gil, I really appreciate you takin’ in Roy ‘n the cat ‘n all, but please, don’t get anyone any more freaked out over this than they already are. If anyone’s gonna be doing anything about this, it’ll be me.”

“You’re not the only one who lost their best friend, Mikel.” Gil sits back in the cab and pats Roy on the head again, speaking under his breath to the old dog. “No townies gonna fuck with us and get away with it, huh boy.” He raps his fingers across the mirror and then takes his hand back. “You take care of yourself son. I don’t think our troubles’ll be passing quietly.”

After Gil finally lets him get on down the road, he starts thinking of what kind of shit storm will brew over all this. Whatever’s coming, it’s going to get downright stupid, he can feel it. If rumors of a killer robot start spreading to the zealots in town, shit is going to happen. He shakes his head, wondering how in the hell someone from town would’ve been stupid enough to say anything about the possibility of a robot to anyone.

He considers if it might’ve been done on purpose, to get the rats to riot, to give the city a reason to clamp down on them. He’s just gonna have to pay, and pay, and keep paying for what he’s done. He’ll probably regret not dying when he had the chance to.

When Gil gets home, he sits down and pours some whiskey in what’s left of his coffee before grabbing the phone. His first call is to his buddy Norm, who runs the tavern. If anyone can get shit stirred up, he can count on him to do it. All he needs to do is shoot the shit about what he thinks happened and Norm’s big mouth will spread it all over hell. He’ll just plant a little seed and watch it grow. Mikel’s not doing this alone. There’s gonna be hell to pay for what happened to John and Ray.

“Hey Norm, how’s it goin’, bud? Hey, I saw Mikel a little bit ago, and got me a thinkin’.”

“Uh-oh, didn’t the doctor tell you to not do any more of that.”

“Oh har, har, Norm. Ok, so it just kinda got me rememberin’ somethin’ from a few months back. Y’ever hear Mikel or Ray mention anything about that Paul guy, the big wig out at the robot place, their boss.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact. I remember them goin’ on about that guy once like someone ought’a smoke his ass or somethin’.”

“Well, just a hunch, but, it uh, looks like that’s what happened. Now, why you think a robot might’a found its way this far outta town and uh… gone after our boys.”

“What’re you sayin’, Gil? I thought that was just a rumor, the melted plastic they found. Do you know something man?”

“Oh, nothing, no more’n anyone else. Was just thinkin’, putting two and two together ya know. Mikel told me to not get involved, so…”

“Hmm. Those rats… those city folk’ve been pushin’ Werker’s buttons pretty hard lately. Maybe it’s got em pushin’ back this time.”

The thought of it seems plausible enough, but more importantly, it sounds like something that’d get people’s attention. Gil imagines news headlines about a corporate robot assassin on the loose. It’s exactly what they need to get people to wake up to the nightmare they’re living.

When he thinks about it though, he begins to wonder if it really is what might’ve happened. The longer the thought sits in his mind, the more it makes sense. He considers Werker might do something like that too, to prove a point. A bit concerned with the actual legitimacy of the idea, he makes a couple of more calls, this time, to some of his more conspiracy-oriented acquaintances in town.

Gil doesn’t keep in touch with any of the city rats himself, they’re a bit too sketchy for his own comfort, but he does know who to call if he’s got something. He’s part of their watch-list and if his suspicions are right, the rats will surely sniff out the truth.

After finally setting the phone down, he heads into the back room of his smoky little home to get his shotgun out of the cabinet. He loads it full of buckshot and leans it against his recliner while he watches the TV. He didn’t mean to give himself the willies, but he has them now.

The one thing he cannot wrap his head around is Mikel. Everyone knows that he and Ray are Werker employees. If Werker had something to do with Ray’s death, Mikel would likely know about it. If for some crazy reason he doesn’t, then his neck is probably up next on the chopping block.

He considers the options of warning Mikel versus informing his contacts about it instead, so they can catch the killer in a trap. Given what happened to Ray, he feels that it’d only be right to give him a heads up first. He wouldn’t want another death on his hands because he didn’t say anything.

Only minutes after getting home, Mikel starts receiving repeated calls from more than one number he doesn’t recognize. He doesn’t answer the first three calls. He’s in no mood to talk to anyone right now. All he wants to do is sit on the couch and shut the world out for a good long while. When his phone rings for a fourth time, he figures it might be something important. He doesn’t pick it up either, but he does check the messages. The first voicemail he listens to is from Gil.

“Hey Mikel, Gil here, just wanted to say heads up, man. I remember how you were talkin’ about yer old boss a while back. Maybe Werker thought you and Ray had something to do with his death, maybe they’re after you? Just a crazy thought. Kinda weird sayin’ it out loud now, but I thought I’d say somethin’ anyway.”

The next caller completely baffles him when he picks up. He has no idea who they are and they don’t even offer their name. They sound like an older man, like Gil, but their heavy accent is definitely old-Welan. Somehow, the man is aware of surprisingly specific details around too many things. When he mentions that he’s been tracking a couple of unusual Werker prototypes, that changes things.

“Hold up, dude! You’d better not be stalking me or somethin’, I’ll fold you up ya li’l fucker!” He cuts them off before they can even get another word out. “Get a fuckin’ job ya rat!”

It has to have been someone involved with the zealots. He’d give anything for it to not be true, but he’s sure that’s what’s going on. He chuckles when he thinks about what he said. They get worked up when someone tells them to get a job. He loves using that line.

His farm community used to sympathize with the homeless, but when they all realized that the rats were just a bunch of troublemakers, they decided to keep clear of them. No one in the community has much of a tolerance for people that aren’t willing to work for their bread.

The derelicts in the city blame robots for their plight, just like everyone out in the farmland does, but they simply refuse to move on with their lives. They think they’re entitled to live on a free ticket like reparations are owed to them or something. When it became obvious they were willing to blame anyone but themselves for their hardships, the farm folk quit offering them any more help.

It upsets him that such trashy people have somehow managed to contact him. He doesn’t want them to know who he is, what his number is, or anything about him. They can only be up to no good. The fact that they’ve already been watching him and his friends disturb him a great deal. If they’re already aware of Five and Arma’s existence, it won’t be long before they make a move on them.

He shakes his head at the thought of how fast their fabled watch-list is. They’re all in big trouble now for sure. Any random individual they encounter might be a zealot. They’re going to have to be on their toes from here on out.

When he calls up Valerie to tell her, he’s surprised she even picks up the phone. It takes a while for him to realize she’s answered the call because she doesn’t say anything at first. All he hears is her sigh on the other side.

“Valerie, I just got a call from what I’m pretty sure was some random street rat. Apparently, they’ve been watching us. This fucker cold-called me, saying that they knew about two unusual Werker prototypes. I think they’re trying to connect them to what happened. They think Werker sent an assassin bot out because of what happened to Paul, or something like that.”

“That’s absurd! What’d you tell them?”

“Eh… to get a job?” He can hear her snort a suppressed laugh before she gets serious again.

“Well, I guess those two’ll have to be on strict lockdown from now on. Just fucking great!”

That’s all he gets out of her before she hangs up. No thanks for the heads up or anything. He supposes it’s all he could’ve expected. He knew he shouldn’t have answered the damn phone. It just never ends. He almost throws his phone across the room to break it on purpose. All he wanted was some goddamn quiet, just for a couple of hours. Sure as hell, he’s going to be paying for what he’s done, and this is only the start of it.

Valerie drags her hand down the front of her face. She doesn’t feel comfortable enough in her new position to take a day off yet, but she really needs to. After what happened to Aaron, having him ripped away from her like that, she just can’t fake keeping it together anymore. She’s so filled with resentment and regret, she can hardly make it through a day.

She wishes she could escape it all somehow, maybe just drive away and disappear for a week or something. She’s even grown tired of Five, and especially Arma. She finds herself jealous of her, for knowing things about Aaron that she didn’t, for being the one to save him, and for being the one that got revenge.

It makes her wonder what would’ve happened if she were in Arma’s shoes. Would she have had the guts to bring him in, or would she have just fallen apart and let that be the end of him? If they can really bring him back, he’ll be a rock in the flow of life. She wonders if he’ll be the kind of rock she can hold onto or one that she will break her as she’s swept on by with everyone else.

It makes her shiver and her shoulders shake, to think of him being remade as a machine. For some reason, because it’s him, everything about how it works feels so different. Even if it is the real him, he’ll still be a different man. It will change him.

She has tried her best to not think of all the details. They always just end up getting her down. There’s so much simplification done to the brains, she can’t understand how even Five and Arma function at all.

By itself, the chemistry of an organic brain is just as complex as its structure, and yet they’re simulating everything with only one stimulant solution. Even worse, the artificial systems can somehow only function with the use of action potential excitation, without any dedicated signal inhibiting. Now that she’s been looking into it a lot more, she can see the effects of having no synapse fatigue has on Five and Arma. Aaron is probably going to feel like he’s trapped on a carnival ride, and all she’ll be able to do for him is watch in terror.

All in all, she’s still really impressed with Five and Arma. If he’s able to function at a higher level than them, at all, he might have a chance at living a meaningful life. She just has to remember to not freak herself out so much, stand back, and see how far they’ve come. Both of them have passion, and that’s all that’s needed to keep a person going. She tries to wrap her thoughts up with at least some shred of hope, so the waiting doesn’t gnaw away at her so much.

Figuring she needs to take a break from all of the technical details that she still can’t wrap her mind around, she decides to head over to Aaron’s apartment to relax and reminisce. She misses him so much. Being at his place helps it not feel like he’s really gone. When she lays down on his bed and wraps up around a couple of his pillows she can still smell his scent and imagine him a little more easily. It doesn’t sadden her as she would expect but instead, it eases the pain of his absence.

After falling asleep for a couple of hours, she gets up and decides to look through some of his things. It’s hard to wrap her mind around whether she’s snooping or not. Being that he is technically dead, it should feel different, but in the back of her mind, she knows that he’ll be back. She wipes the tears off her cheeks, but also smiles, wondering if he’ll notice, or even remember.

She finds it a little sad that the only picture of him she comes across is on his work ID. There are no other pictures of anyone else either, just a pair of wolf husky mix dogs that must have been his when he was a kid. The picture looks old enough.

After remembering what Mikel had told her, she figures she should prepare his place for Arma and Five to stay in. She can’t burden Clarice with them anymore, especially now that they’ve begun to attract undesired attention. There’s no better place to hide them than at Aaron’s. As long as the two investigators don’t end up looking for him, no one else could know to look here.

When she finds Aaron’s backpack under his bed, she pulls it out and lays it across her legs. It still smells kind of nice, like a bag of potting soil. Surprised by the weight of it, she remembers the large knife he had strapped to the side of it and hunches over to find it.

When she pulls it free of its sheath, she’s alarmed by the size and weight of it. She remembers seeing it before but holding it is much different. The ten-inch blade is three-eighths of an inch thick, and over two and a half inches broad. The angled swage top of the tanto blade makes her think of a shark. The blade and handle are all one single piece of seamless heavy metal. The sawtooth on the back is not as coarse as some she’s seen in pictures, but it’ll certainly shred anything that it touches, for sure.

She waves it about in front of herself, pretending to slash with it. She can hardly hold the thing outright. It’s almost heavy enough to be tungsten, but the color seems to be a little off. When she notices the alloy stamp near the guard, she looks it up on her phone.

She didn’t know metals could be crystalline, but one web page says that it’s a tungsten titanium alloy with a nano-crystalline grain structure. Apparently, it’s regularly used industrially to form cutting blades that handle extremely high temperatures. It looks to have been custom made, and not refined enough to have been a production item. She can’t help but pause at some of his quirks.

Remembering what Mikel had said about the local city trash, she decides to keep the big knife out and sets it on top of his nightstand. If any of them have an encounter with rats, it’ll likely be violent. She wouldn’t be able to wield such a heavy thing herself, but Five might and Arma surely would.

The image of the bodies covered in bloody linen she saw on the TV crosses her thoughts. It makes her wonder what Aaron’s real past was like. The lore of the people from the north mountains way back in the day, the knife, the wolf dogs, what he told her about his fight with the farmers, it all points in an unsettling direction. She unwraps the belt and sheathe from around the backpack and puts it on the bed nearby. She realizes, that when the time comes, she probably isn’t going to be able to tell if the real Aaron has been brought back or not. “Who the hell are you, Aaron?”