"Hale and Hearty 1" by Toni J Kaukinen

At around 2:14 AM, on a dark and hot night, a shotgun boomed, followed by the sound of  breaking glass. From the third floor, a man’s body and broken glass fell down neatly, finally landing on the roof of an old first generation Crown Victoria. The roof crumpled with the weight of the body, the car alarm began to blare and for a precious thirty seconds everything else was quiet. The only sets of eyes watching this happen were the man’s, of those in the apartment and those of a few kids loitering in the nearby car park, smoking cigarettes and making plans. The seconds passed. The car alarm still wailed.

At the end of those thirty seconds, I craned my neck, surveyed the damage and rolled dizzily down to the pavement and fought my way back to my feet. The glass tinkled off me, as did the buckshot. Five seconds later, I hobbled forward. Ten seconds: I began to walk hurriedly. Fifteen seconds: I ran for the car park, shaking off the jitters and the pain. The car park was a mistake: I saw the kids openly gape at me, a man shot with buckshot from nine feet away and fresh off the roof of a crumpled Crown Vic run as if nothing had happened.

That wasn’t specifically true, though. My ribs still ached. My arm was numb, but getting better, but my knee no longer bothered me. I ran like hell, and hoped I still had time to hide. The kids were going to be a problem.

Even so, I had chosen my cover, and I ran into the car park with just seconds to spare when I ducked behind some retard’s SUV. It looked like a 2012 model Ford, I noted with vague interest.

Then I began to pick out the buckshot from my shoulder. One ball or two had lodged itself somewhere there. All that time I was busy hoping the bastards hadn’t thought to follow me, that the kids would keep their mouths shut and that I was still carrying.

It turned out I was. Good. It turned out the kids were rushing down the car park to see what was going on. Bad. The goons were ambling around the old Crown Vic, shouting and showing each other where to go. Good. None were coming my way.

The buckshot out, I made a run for it before the kids could start shouting. I was in no mood for another surprise.

“Hey!” one kid shouted, just as I was clearing the first ten feet. Goddammit. I whipped around to watch the motley group of greasy teenagers, who were regarding me with confusion and surprise. It made sense. They’d seen a big guy fall down, hit the roof of a car and then start running – and now he was standing in front of them, coat tattered, clotted blood peeking from holes and possibly more than a little dirty.

“Get,” I said, waving them off with a hand. “And shut up.”

“Dude, are you okay?”

“What happened?”

Two asked questions. One was staring at the goons, listening.

Oh, for the love of – “Look, get home. Those guys are armed.”

That finally led to some smarter thinking. “You a cop?” asked the lead kid, all piercings and dreadlocks, tearing his eyes off the goons and the car.

I grinned, teeth bared. I was too tired, hungry, low on energy to deal with these smartass brats. “That’ll be the least of your problems if you don’t get the #### out of my way.” A thought struck me. “You got a car here?”

Apparently my question surprised them as much as it did me. But I needed wheels under me.

A couple of minutes later I was wheeling out of the car park in a small Toyota. I wasn’t alone, though. I didn’t want to add grand theft auto to my list of criminal activities for that night.

The questions never stopped until they realized I wasn’t going to speak a word. One of the kids, a boy, was staring at the bits of my clothes where the buckshot had passed. I still didn’t say anything. Nobody was going to believe him anyway even if he told his friends. “You got shot, man. You bleeding?”

I said nothing. I glared at him when he wanted to have a closer look, and pointedly took out a chocolate bar. I ate, they stopped talking. It was just as well. I needed energy, and talking and moving weren’t exactly good for that. At some point, I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I was still in the Toyota, but outside of town.

I startled, nearly broke a car window and damn near kicked the door off. When I had more wits about me, I realized I was holding on to a blanket (it smelled of old coffee and something like a wet dog) and still had my clothes on. My wallet wasn’t there, though. Nor was my gun.

That was enough to set me off. I glared at the little tent village until I realized exactly what kind of hippie crowd I was dealing with. Eco hippies. Of all the things. I glared around, found the kid with the dreadlocks and piercings cooking something with tofu just on the other side of the Toyota… which, I finally realized, was a Prius.

I groaned, threw the blanket on the car and stomped over. “The #### are my things?” I said to him, just as he was about to say good morning or some other tripe like that.

Then he grinned. “Relax, Davies. We’re not thieves.”

Retard. “Where?”

He pointed at the car. “Glove compartment. Didn’t want anyone else here stealing your things. You were, like, dead to the world.”

“That’s for sure,” I snorted, glaring at the camp. “Is this HippieCon or something?” I had to ask. Looking at all the tents, the music, singing and the stench of what these people called food really left little to consider. I could have sworn I felt a headache coming, even if that was impossible.

The kid looked around. “This? Dude, we’re scouts.”

I did a double take at him. Looked around some more. It clicked.  “Holy crap. Are you serious? You brought me here?”

He shrugged. “Why not? We’re not exactly official. We’re just likeminded… er…”

“Ex-scouts,” I guessed, feeling sadistically glad when his expression told me I was right. “General misconduct, I’d guess. Or either you got sick of it and decided to set up a little club of your own.”

He spread his arms helplessly. “Sure, Mark.”

That kicked me back to doing some thinking. Mark Davies was not my real name. “Yeah. Who are you, by the way?”

“Skylar.” He didn’t even seem ashamed of his name. Good for him. “You got your guesses right. Most of us got into some kind of trouble. Some like Jenny over there,” he nodded over to one of the kids who’d been in the car, a thin girl in jeans and a t-shirt with the text “TALK GEEKY TO ME” on it. “She just left on her own. Decided it wasn’t for her. Too military-ish.”

I could have told him I knew all about it, but not through experience. “Yeah. And I don’t suppose you’re all very law-abiding citizens either, Skylar?”

He grinned. “Some of us are. I don’t believe in gun control, and I don’t really give a damn whether or not you’re on the run from the law. Whatever happened there, I don’t want to get involved farther than this. Those guys sure weren’t cops, unless they hire guys who speak Estonian these days.”

Curveball. I stared at him, said nothing.

“Studied Baltic languages once. Dropped out and went to work.”

I had a hard time seeing him as a nine-to-five kind of guy. I guessed IT.

Skylar stared back. “Look, man, I know. By all rights I should be in the Army now, what with the war going on, but I got the old 4-F.”

I sat down next to him and liberated some coffee for myself, giving no thought to how many people had drank from the cup I took. I didn’t bother to look into it either. A peek at the food Skylar was making told me it wasn’t tofu at all, but chicken soup. I finally realized I had to skirt back a few steps in my evaluation of this place.

“4-F. Good for you.”

We drank coffee and listened to someone playing Diamonds and Rust in the background. Once I had some coffee in my system, I was beginning to feel better and less cranky.

Skylar said, “So, uh, what is it you do?”

“Eat, breathe and sleep,” I said just to spite him. Then: “I’m just a hobo.”

He found this hilarious. “A hobo with an M1911, a bulletproof vest and buckshot in his clothes? Tell me another one, man.”

I was about to growl something when Jenny came over. She wasn’t all that beautiful, but had an interesting face nonetheless. Shame about the teeth. “So, the mystery wakes up,” she said cheerfully: I found it possible she was the one singing just a moment ago. “How do you do? I’m…”

“He told me,” I said blandly, ignoring her accent. Cornwall, England, I guessed. I was more interested in the bowl of chicken soup Skylar gave to me.

I ignored them and wolfed down the contents, even though the soup was scalding hot. It was good, though. Plenty of herbs; I could taste basil and coriander, at least. Creamy, with mushrooms and rice. Not bad at all. Once I was done, I yawned and poured myself more coffee.

Finally: “Thanks for everything. Can you point me toward the next town?”

Skylar was slowly beginning to anger, Jenny just stared at me. “If you answer a few questions for once,” he said, faking a smile and waving at another camper. “We’re not in trouble for helping you, are we?”

I had a look toward him. Drank more coffee. “I don’t think so. I’ll be brief. Their problem is with me, and I dealt with my problem with them already. They won’t call the cops, and they won’t be looking for me in some camp like this.”

“Sure,” Jenny said, and hit me with the question I didn’t want to answer. “So why, despite that fall and the buckshot you were dropping all around the car, are you unhurt?”

I glared. “None of your business.”

She smiled. “Sure it is, hero. You’re not human, are you?”

I stood up. “That’s enough.” I was going to find my way to a motel or some town myself.

I heard a click from behind me. I whirled around, staring. It was the third kid, slightly overweight, but with clean skin and a pleasant face.

He had my gun.

“That’s not really necessary,” I said, weighing the cup in my hand.

Skylar stood back, hands open and up. He was trying to placate me, but he was about to get his face torn off if he was going to stop me in anyway.

“We’re not one of those idiots,” he explained. “Sure, it’s been only a few years since… you know, weird things started to happen, Davies.”

“I’m just as human as you are,” I said, still glaring at the pudgy guy.

“Not really,” Jenny said. “Mercer.”

Oh crapola. That was my name.

“Tut, tut,” said Jenny. ”Mind your language.”

”Get out of my head,” I said, looking frantically from one person to another. My temper was really on the fritz now. Just to not mind my language, I repeated: “Get the hell out of my head, my way, and nobody gets hurt.”

Jenny thought about that for a while, pondering, wondering.

Annoyed at the invasion of my privacy, I thought about the possible outcome of the situation in as much detail as possible. I hoped she was still reading me.

Yes.

She paled and took a few steps backward, knocking over the coffee pot and nearly stepping into the fire.

“Joey, give him the gun,” she said as calmly as she could.

I smiled at Joey.

He looked at Jenny awkwardly. “Um?”

“Do it,” she said again, slowly edging toward Skylar as if to hide behind him. I smiled some more.

Joey shrugged, ejected the clip, weighed it for a moment and then handed both gun and clip to me. He too sensed something was wrong here.

“Give me my wallet,” I said next.

Joey complied. I stared at Jenny. She had obviously stopped reading my mind, if that’s what she did for a living, but she was still pale. I couldn’t blame her.

Then I looked at Skylar and waited.

Skylar cleared his throat. “Left, two miles down the road.”

“And the other direction?” I asked as I wrenched my wallet from Joey.

“Three miles.”

“Great. Have a ####### nice day, kids.”

With that, I walked away. Or began to, when they called out for me. Skylar, in fact. “Hey! We just wanted some answers!”

“Go get them from Wikipedia, smart guy!” I shouted back, still walking. Satisfied and not really listening to what else they were saying, I began my trek.

I took the longer road, discarding my coat and vest. It was a hot day, anyway, and they were mostly in the way, bloodied and dirty. My t-shirt had some blood on it as well, but I was going to buy new ones in town anyway.  I would have tried to hitch a ride, but it was a quiet Sunday morning: most people all over this area of New Mexico were either in church, or eating out after church. So I jogged the three miles, taking in the scenery and enjoying the weather.

I didn’t pay attention to my suspicions concerning the intrepid trio just then. To me, they were just another bunch of lunatics wanting to be left alone but left with the chance of bothering others. I had other plans, and by the time I reached the motel, signed in and asked if they had a computer I could use, I was way over that experience.

I paid in cash, went to my room, showered, watched the news and took a while to relax before I headed for the local restaurant. I needed beer and food. Last night had been chaos through and through. So I had my beer, had my steak and left to find new clothes. I travel light, but in this case I mostly needed some proper clothes. The total came to far more than I had thought, but I had the money to pay for it all. In cash, of course.

After a trip to the liquor store and one of the many 7/11s, I went back to the motel and tried to relax again. After a quart of Laphroiag, I went to talk to the night shift guy and went online to check the local news. My email, too, on my own connection.

A shooting in New Mexico, victim one Estonian immigrant with US citizenship, culprit still at large. Culprit rumored to be a tall, large man with red hair and armed. Considered dangerous.

Fair enough. That’s what I was. The guard shooting at me with a shotgun was left out of the article, of course. There were more pressing news from the front, more pundits bickering about the war and the draft and all the insanities of this war. That the war was against something not quite understood, that was left unsaid. Everybody knew there was something unexplained going on, and that people like Jenny or me were to be blamed somehow. In Texas, they had started sequestering abnormals like us from the common, decent folk. As it happens, I was more concerned with news of us different people. Those of us who had been born or had developed strange abilities. Jenny, for instance, would have been a tremendously useful border guard, shrink or polygraph. I wasn’t too sure about all the others, a doubt that grew stronger when I read of a schizophrenic gone loony before burning down two blocks with pyrokinetic powers. I sighed. People, how different they all are. How stupid, too.

I surfed and surfed before the night shift guy told me I had five minutes. I plugged in my own wireless modem and quickly checked my email.

Sure enough, the confirmation of payment sat there in my inbox. I didn’t open it yet. I checked my Cayman Islands account instead, finding that the amount had been paid. One less Russian (they called her Estonian, but I knew better) witch left, one more lost sheep richer. One more supremacist happy, until I was going to visit him and leave a wake of destruction behind me.

I went to sleep and finished the bottle of Laphroiag. My M1911 was underneath me when I fell asleep on the floor, under the window.

When I woke up, I opened my next bottle of whisky, then the TV and went straight for the news. I don’t know what it was, but for some reason it seemed important. I’d learned to trust my hunches, though they sometimes got me into more trouble than I wanted.

A news anchor had just about finished his sentence:  “…the camp site was burned. The police have not yet released any information as to what might have set fire to the area. More news at eleven.”

I stared, transfixed, at the video footage for all the ten seconds they deigned to show.

I took the door nearly off its hinges as I ran out with my personal effects. I checked out and began my short run three miles southeast toward the camp site where Skylar, Jenny and Joey had been staying. The weight of the M1911 in the small of my back felt reassuring, but all too ominous for my liking. Instead of running straight to the camp, I detoured through the sparse woods and saw, for the first time in a while, something that shocked me.

It was all gone. The Prius had been torched, the tents were still smoking and there were corpses here and there amid the sickly-looking police officers who were trying to make a sense of this travesty. Myself? I had a bad feeling about the whole shebang. I lay myself down on the ground and surveyed the area, wondering for a moment, and then seriously contemplating the scene.

Technicians were gathering bits and pieces from the ground. Casings, I decided.

It was only then that I began to consider why Skylar, Jenny and Joey had been at the car park at that specific time. I didn’t know, but I knew where to start. I also knew that if my suspicions were correct and that I had already been paid for a job I had not done, I was in deep, deep trouble. I didn’t care much for the Troublesome Trio, but at least they had, so far, seemed to be innocent idiots who had been caught in the crossfire.

I was there too, in the crossfire, if my employer already knew that I had failed.