SHE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY WHEN SLAUGHT came up to her, said, “I’d like you to go for a ride with me.”
She was with Verla in the workbay. It was dark, and the light in the bay was harsh. She hadn’t seen Slaught since yesterday morning, right after the funeral. Before the sun was up, they’d wrapped Kirstie in a green sleeping bag and Mrs. Merrill had said a prayer and Slaught mumbled a few words about Kirstie being a great kid. Larose looked rough, said that he and Shaun were Kirstie’s only family, and that Shaun and her had been going out for three years. Lived pretty much as man and wife, he said.
When the funeral was just about over, Shaun had shown up. He’d turned away from the coffin, said he was going to go fuck those bastards up bad, but Johnny had said quietly, “Not now. Not yet,” in a way that quieted Shaun down. Larose took his son out of the room, Shaun not even noticing he was being led out, and they’d finished the funeral. Then they’d taken Kirstie out so they could bury her, finding a place deep in the cedars with thick layers of needles. They cleared the layers, then poured some old fuel oil over the patch and set it alight, watching it burn down, thawing the ground enough to get the pick axes going. Took them four hours, taking turns with the pick axes and shovels, to break through the frozen topsoil and dig down far enough to bury her.
And then Slaught just up and disappeared. When he’d said he’d be going after the funeral she had sort of thought he wouldn’t, but then he was gone. So when he just came walking up to her in the workbay she felt like saying, “Where the hell have you been?” but instead she said, “A ride? Where?”
“Doesn’t really matter.” His tone scaring her a bit, making her think that she didn’t really know this man very well. Kind of man that that just takes off, what was that? None of the guys had said anything, maybe seemed pissed off but weren’t saying if they were. A couple of the women had taken her aside, asked where he was, was everything going to be okay? She’d finally gone to Tiny, asked if this was like Slaught, to run off like that, and Tiny had said, “He’s gone all fucking soft on us,” but then Chumboy had said later that Slaught was having some serious Kierkegaard time but he’d be back. She had to ask who Kierkegaard was and Chumboy said he was the daddy of angst and maybe they were teaching midwives the wrong things. “Wrong things? Don’t be a smartass,” she’d said. “Bet your Auntie doesn’t know this guy either,” and Chumboy said his Auntie didn’t need to but the rest of them did.
Seeing Slaught now, standing there, snowmobile helmet in hand, his face impassive, she wasn’t sure it was angst that he was feeling. When she’d heard the snowmachine coming and then pull up outside the workbay she knew it was him, and felt a wave of nerves flood over her. But then she thought, what if it’d been Laskin, what would have happened then?
“Well, I promised Verla I’d help with the, you know, the cleaning. Thought for Shaun we should get it scrubbed up.”
Verla said, “I don’t mind going ahead without you,” smiling and giving Susun a push. “Go on. We’ll see you two later then.”
Feeling stuck, she shrugged, grabbed her snow gear, and followed Slaught, asking him if she should take someone else’s machine and he said no, telling her to just hop on, that they weren’t going that far.
He said, “Just hold on tight, okay?”
She climbed on and he revved it up, turning and bombing down the main street towards the south end of town, Susun thinking the town must have looked nice back in the day this time of year, people with their Christmas lights on, probably a creche or something in the little park.
Slaught followed the highway out of town a ways, then bolted up and over a big snow bank to go cross-country, the flying snow taking nasty little bites at her neck. She was afraid to let go to pull the throat of her snowsuit tighter so she closed her eyes as he drove and drove, pounding down along the edge of a lake, patches of it still open, gunmetal water slapping onto the ice, and then they were into a line of scraggly jack pine. Slaught slowed and then killed the engine, pushing open his helmet and looking over his shoulder at her, said, “Great view, eh?”
Yeah, it was great, she thought, the sky a deep cobalt, the snow a few shades lighter. And there was a yellow moon, big and round, pasted up on the sky.
He took off his helmet and she did the same, cradling it in her arms, then clumsily pulled herself off the machine, hearing the snow squeak under her feet. Johnny pushed himself back and swung his leg over, sitting to face her and said, “I wanted to tell you something.”
He sounded serious. He wasn’t looking at her, just staring up at the sky.
She managed, “Okay.”
He waited, just sitting in the silence for a while so she just stood, trying not to fidget, him all sombre and still, both of them now just staring out at the sky.
The stars were coming out now, slipping out bright against the dark. Slaught said, “I always look for Orion, makes me feel good, seeing him up there, doing his thing.”
Susun nodded but didn’t say anything, surprised that he was talking star gazing, then he finally said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about killing.”
She waited a second to see if there was more coming but he fell quiet again so she asked, “Killing? Killing what?” hoping it wasn’t a stupid question.
“Other people. I’ve been thinking about killing other people.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Seemed like the time to think it over.”
“You’ve already done it, haven’t you, killed somebody?”
“Yeah,” he said, “but that was awhile back. And then I didn’t have time to think about it, I just did it. Been thinking about doing it again though.”
“Come on,” she said, “let’s go back.”
“What? You didn’t think about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“After you saw what they’d done, didn’t you think about it?”
“No, I guess I was thinking about other things.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
Was he calling her out? She couldn’t hear it in his voice, just seemed like a simple question, maybe he really just wanted to know. She said, “If everyone was going to be okay, if Shaun would be able to put himself back together. And Jordan, seeing that happened and not being able to stop it, not being able to protect someone else, that’s hard to climb back from.”
There was silence for a bit and then Slaught nodded, said, “Well, it made me think about killing.”
“And?”
“Well, I came out here,” he said. “I mean, look at it.”
And she followed his gaze, the moon going to a pale lemon now, not sure what he was going to say. She said, “It’s beautiful. But what does it make you think about killing?”
He turned to her, said, “I don’t like the idea.”
“The idea of killing?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“Maybe it is, maybe it’s not, but there it is anyway. In my head I can do it, I can see it, each one of them, pop, pop,” him making the sound of a gun, “but it’s so ugly when it isn’t in your head, when it’s right in front of you.” Again looking right at her, “Know what I mean?”
She put her hand on his shoulder, said, “I do. But let’s get back, we don’t want to worry anyone.”
He just looked at her for a bit, said, “Yeah, okay, I just wanted to tell you that.”
He drove back slower, like whatever it was that had been chasing him down the trail had let up. Susun was feeling good for some reason, holding onto to more of him than just the edges of his coat, thinking that whatever had just happened meant something, she just wasn’t sure what.
When they got back to the work bay she found herself watching him as he pulled closed the big doors, as he glanced over to where the workbench had been, maybe seeing if all the blood had come off the floor. Coming back towards her, she thought maybe he was smiling at her, but he also seemed business as usual.
“So was that your idea of a heart to heart?” she asked, trying to tease him, but really trying to get a bead on the guy too, not trusting her instincts and thinking maybe she read too much into it.
Frowning, sort of surprised, he said, “No. That was my idea of a date.”
Chumboy was just saying, “Hey Chubbycheckers, slide that folder over here, let’s see if there are any beauty shots of me in there,” when Slaught came in. He’d been gone too long and lots of people were beginning to notice. He looked like shit. Chumboy just said, “Hey Johnny, pull up a chair. How was the hunting? Tiny told me you brought him in a dozen sparrows and were pretending to have bagged a moose.”
Slaught sort of smiled. “That wasn’t what he said when he laid his greedy little eyes on that pile of partridge.” Then he looked over at Larose. “Hey, sorry man, about everything.”
Larose nodded but didn’t say anything, Slaught glad about that. He looked over at Chumboy. “So?”
Chumboy had decided they needed a game plan, in case Slaught didn’t come back, or came back and was haywire, so he had called a meeting in his room, which was really the library, or at least that’s what Chumboy called it. He slept on the floor on a pile of coats in the far corner and everywhere else was books.
They were all just watching Slaught now as he crossed the room, not saying anything, not explaining where he’d been. Chumboy, worried to shit, had gone to his Auntie and asked her what she thought about Slaught leaving, saying, “It isn’t like him, just to up and leave like that, think he’s going to be okay?” and she didn’t look up from her knitting, her hands flying through some scarf that was lime green and navy blue and just said, “You won’t know until he makes up his mind.”
“Well, how long is that gonna take?”
“Every man is different.”
Chumboy said that wasn’t exactly illuminating, could she ballpark the time it might be before Johnny came back. She said, “I’m not a psychic down at the mall, Chumboy.”
“Yeah, I know Auntie, but things could get pretty bad soon. Just hoping he’ll come back.”
“Me too.”
“That’s it then?”
“No, pass me that yellow wool there, I don’t think this scarf is happy enough.”
She’d once complained that only the women and children would wear her scarves and Chumboy had said, “Well Auntie, the colours, I mean come on,” and she had said she thought men were all colour blind anyway, what difference did it make, and Chumboy said men weren’t that colour blind.
He sighed, passed her the tight ball of wool. “That is one ugly scarf Auntie, who’s it for?”
“Johnny.”
Watching now as Slaught pushed a stack of books to the edge of the small table and leaned back, stubble on his chin, eyes bloodshot, Chumboy figured he could use a happy scarf.
Slaught said, “Okay boys, what have you come up with?”
There was a nervous looking guy there, Slaught assumed he was Ricky based on what Susun had told him. Larose and Jeff were there, sitting on milk crates against the wall. Chumboy was leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest.
“So Rick’s been telling us some stuff about our Mr. Laskin you might want to know Johnny,” Chumboy said.
Slaught said, “Oh?”
Ricky blinked, looked questioningly over at Chumboy.
Chumboy said, “Oh, sorry Rickyman, this is Johnny Slaught. You might know him as the Winterman.”
Slaught said, “How’ya doing Ricky, heard all about you, heard you got some great info for us.”
Ricky was just sort of staring, so Slaught prompted, “Laskin, tell me about Laskin.”
Ricky swallowed hard, said, “I recognize you from your picture.”
Slaught said, “Yeah, what picture?”
“The one in the file. Says lots of things about you.”
“Any of it true?”
As Ricky just kept staring at Slaught, mouth turned down like he was concentrating on a math problem, Chumboy tried, “Hey Rickyman, tell Johnny here about Laskin.”
“Uh, okay. Well, he’s a pretty famous guy and all. Mr. Laskin was a regular on I-TIME before things got real bad, now it’s only on once in a while, when we get the energy-hours. His show is called Man Up or something like that. I’ve only seen it a couple of times.”
“They hired an actor?” Slaught couldn’t believe it, thinking of the surveillance footage Jeff had shown him, Laskin saying “This isn’t a party, jerkoff, it’s a fucking home invasion” like some badass from the movies, playing a part.
“Well, he’s an actor I guess, but he does real things, he does extreme things, done all kinds of adventure things.”
“Like what?”
Ricky was about to continue but Shaun came in, dragging a crate over beside his Dad and sitting down. Slaught nodded at him. Man, the kid looked bad.
Shaun spoke up right away. “We know they’re coming back, right? So what’s there to talk about? Let’s just finish it, meet ’em at the top of Thibeault Hill and blast the fucking shit outta them.”
No one said anything and Shaun said, “Fuck, guys, come on.”
Slaught said “Christ, Shaun, we don’t have the people or the guns for that, or even a way of knowing when they’re coming.”
Shaun looked across at his Dad. “Well, what are we going to do, just roll over? After what they did?” almost shouting now. “We gonna go hide? Call the cops? Run away? For fuck’s sake, these guys murdered Kirstie.”
Larose just shaking his head, and Chumboy said, “Shaun, we got to make sure that nothing like what happened to Kirstie is going to happen to anybody else, we got kids here, and old people, we have to really think this thing through.”
“I’m not afraid of those bastards,” Shaun red in the face, his Dad’s hand on his sleeve and him not noticing, and Slaught seeing the image from the tape, Shaun bent over, blood over his face, moaning, and Kirstie crying. He wished to Christ he hadn’t seen it, it was like a stain inside his head. He could only imagine what was inside Shaun’s head.
Slaught said, “Yeah, I know Shaun, I know you aren’t, but we’re fighting a battle we didn’t expect, not just with Laskin, but the government too. That’s a big fight.”
“I don’t care if it’s a fucking war, Johnny,” Shaun answered, saying it like a challenge.
Chumboy interrupted, “If it’s a war, we need a strategy.”
Slaught looked over at Chumboy. “Yeah, guess so. Like what’s his name, sunzoo?”
“Sun Tzu,” Chumboy corrected, “and no, all that shit’s too vague.”
Shaun stood up. “For fuck’s sake, we aren’t going to fix this with some book.”
There was a few seconds of silence, Shaun then exhaling loudly, like he’d been holding his breath for a week and said, “I’m fucking outta here.”
Slaught grabbed Shaun as he pushed past.
“Don’t do anything crazy man, understand?”
Shaun tried to get past him, but Slaught didn’t move. “We’re in this together, and we’ll figure it out together.”
“Yeah, is that what you were doing when you took off, figuring it out together,” Shaun now yelling, staring back at Slaught, “’cause that wasn’t how it felt. Some people thought you weren’t coming back. They were scared.”
Slaught had been waiting for that. He could almost feel people holding their breath, saw Ricky’s eye’s darting around, Jeff looking down at his feet. Slaught said evenly, “I had that coming. I just needed to clear my head, think things over, I can’t do much to change everything that’s happened, except not fuck it up again.”
Shaun didn’t look back as he left, saying, “You’re well on your way.”
Slaught figured the kid had a point. He’d been going over things again and again since Shaun had shown up in the doorway, bloodied, incoherent. He should’ve known, by their gear, by Laskin’s smirk, he should have known they meant business. He was so off the fucking mark he couldn’t even put it into words.
Slaught knew Chumboy could see it all over his face when he said, “Hey, you couldn’t have known they were out of control.”
“I read it wrong Chum, playing at it.”
“Wear it if you want bud, but we all read it wrong. We didn’t know what we were up against, but now we do. And you’re right, we’re in it together.”
Slaught said, “The hard part now is to get back on track, and I guess we gotta figure that we’re taking on the government. So that is a lot of bullshit to battle…”
“No, you’re taking on Talos. That’s worse.”
It was Ricky who spoke up, sitting on his milk crate, squirming every now and then as the plastic dug into his bum.
Slaught said, “Take on Talos? Guess so, but all they’ll have to do is get a few special ops guys in some choppers up here and bomb the shit out of us.”
“Well, then, I guess the question would be, like, why haven’t they?” Jeff asked. “They got all the military-industrial, evil empire shit in their back pockets, so why didn’t they just do that in the first place?”
“Yeah, that’s a good question.” Slaught thinking, “Maybe the expense of sending up choppers, maybe they don’t have any, who knows. Maybe they don’t want people to really know what’s going on…”
“…or that we’re even up here anymore,” Jeff said.
Slaught was mulling it over, figuring that up here, in the middle of nowhere, they were sitting ducks that nobody knew or cared about. But also thinking of that stain in his brain, if other people saw that they might see Talos in a different light. Might see the monster. Maybe they should get Talos the beast onto this I-TIME crap, see what happens.
“Maybe we need to get our perspective out there, on that I-TIME, let people know,” said Slaught.
Larose was shaking his head. “But Ricky said you’ve been on this I-TIME thing, as a terrorist or something, there’s probably a lot of people who think we’re criminals. They’d probably just as soon hang us out to dry.”
“That was sort of what went down for the Scottish nobles who were riding with Bonnie Prince Charlie way back when,” Chumboy offered, “went marching through Scotland, sacking and winning, got to England, weren’t greeted like the rock stars they thought they were, got a bad case of the jitters, and hightailed it back to the Highlands.”
“Then what happened?”
“Wasn’t pretty Johnny, the British kicked the crap out of everyone and old Charlie had to sneak out of Scotland in a dress.”
“Thanks for that Chum, that was extremely helpful.”
“I don’t know anything about that Scottish guy,” Ricky said, “but Mr. Scott is worried about you guys, and he is sending Talos in to get you.”
Slaught asked. “How do you know that Ricky?”
“I heard him, I heard him say that he didn’t want anymore warm bodies down in the city because everything was falling apart, and he didn’t want anyone down there knowing there were warm bodies up here.”
The room fell quiet for a minute, Slaught glad for the time to think, letting his eyes roam over Chumboy’s walls, every inch of which was covered by posters, magazine articles, pictures from ads.
Pointing to a poster tacked up between a children’s drawing of a big red tow truck and a photo of Madonna in her black corset, Slaught asked, “Who’s that?”
Chumboy looked over his shoulder to see the image of a man on a horse, pipe jutting out from the balaclava that hid his face.
“That’s Subcommander Marcos, that Zapatista guy,” he said, turning around to see the poster better. “Led the uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, late 1990s.”
“Did he win?”
“Sort of, I guess. And he wrote some trippy shit on revolution and all. Most the time I can’t tell what he’s talking about what with the Four Horsemen and quoting Shakespeare and all the deconstruction and chupacabras. Guess I have to start reading more.”
“Chupacabras?”
“Goatsuckers. Some sort of werewolf creature that sucks the blood of goats.”
Slaught told Chumboy he thought he was reading more than enough, asked him what this Marcos guy actually did.
“Traveled all over Mexico fighting for the poor. Raised himself sort of a guerilla army, most of them using wooden guns. Fought their way through small towns and then straight into Mexico City to confront the government. Think he even had a return stint, you know, came back to keep fighting later on.”
“Yeah?” Slaught interested now.
“Ever big cojones, him,” Chumboy said, then added, “I prefer Hannibal, tying torches to the cattle so the Romans thought he was leaving, and then sneaking out the other way.”
“You like the sneaky guys, eh?”
Chumboy nodded, “Sneaky can be smart.”
“I think the time for sneaking is over for us Chum. We need to head for open ground.”
“So we’re going with the Subcommander then are we?”
Slaught stared at the picture for a second, said, “I like his gear.”
“Better than sneaking outta town in a dress?”
“That’s for sure. But no pipes. I mean, who the Christ smokes a pipe anymore?”