Brian Freeman - Marathon

There was Eagle.

He lay on top of a purple sleeping bag, facing away from her, with his head on a pillow. His body was stretched out; his feet wore no shoes, just socks that were worn through at the heels. Two empty plastic vodka bottles were tipped on the floor near him, along with an empty bag of Jack Link’s beef jerky and an open can of tortilla soup.

“Eagle,” Cat called. “Hey, it’s Cat. I need to talk to you.”

She took a step closer. That was when she noticed the smell. She also noticed that the wall near Eagle’s face dripped with a burst of something that looked like pus and snot.

“Eagle?”

She squatted next to him and tugged on his shoulder. His body drooped onto his back.

Cat couldn’t stop the scream this time.

Eagle had no face. Someone had shot it away.

“Settle down, buddy,” Wade Ralston told Travis. “You need to be cool.”

The two men stood on the sprawling lawn outside Wade’s farmhouse on Five Corners Road. It was raining hard, but Wade wasn’t about to let Travis track evidence into his house. The kid reeked of gasoline that had soaked into his clothes, and his skin was almost black.

The hospital had discharged Wade an hour earlier, and he’d ordered an Uber ride to get home when he couldn’t reach Travis. When he’d spotted the Bug Zappers van parked askew outside his garage, he’d told the driver to drop him off on the deserted farm road rather than approach the house. He’d waited until the Uber car was gone and then hiked past the huge evergreens and found Travis asleep in the front seat of the van. When Wade yanked open the door and smelled the interior, he knew exactly what the kid had done. And the idiot had done it in the company van! Sometimes Travis was nothing but a swearing, drinking, cheating waste of a sperm cell.

“Be cool?” Travis exclaimed. “Are you kidding? How am I supposed to do that?”

“I’m saying, you’re in big trouble, so you better not panic.”

Travis eyed the dirt road for the twentieth time to make sure they were alone. “Man, you have to believe me, I didn’t know anybody was there! Far as I could tell, the place was empty! How was I to know those people were upstairs?”

“You think that’s going to matter to the cops?” Wade asked.

“I know! Shit, I can’t believe this. I killed those people, man. I burned them up. They’re going to put me away.”

That was true.

Wade knew Travis was looking at twenty-five years behind bars, maybe more. They might even hang a terrorism charge around his neck and call it murder one and put him away for life. Wade couldn’t imagine what that would be like. He’d rather die than spend year after year staring at the walls of a small cell.

“Did anybody see you?” Wade asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“What the hell were you thinking, huh? Are you out of your mind?”

“I was just so pissed,” Travis told him. “I mean, seeing Shelly like that, and thinking about Joni. I wanted to do something. Just like you told me. God saved me so I could hit them back.”

“Don’t be saying I put this idea in your head, Travis,” Wade snapped. “This was all you.”

“Yeah, but you told me—” Travis stopped talking and shook his head. “No, I get it, man. This is on me. I’m not bringing you down with me. The thing is, what the hell do I do now?”

Wade thought about it. He’d expected Travis to do something stupid, but he’d never thought that the kid would do something so stupid. Regardless, he didn’t want any fingers pointing his way. Travis had probably gotten lucky, because if anybody had spotted The Bug Zappers on a truck speeding from the firebombing, the cops would already be knocking on his door. But they were alone, and there were no sirens. Not yet. They had a little time.

“What do I do, Wade?” Travis asked again.

“First thing you do is air out the truck. Thing smells like a Texaco station. Open the doors and windows and spray the whole thing down with Lysol. Wash the exterior, too. What did you do with the gas tanks?”

“They’re still in back. I was gonna put ’em back in the garage.”

“You used my tanks?” Wade asked. “Shit, Travis, are you kidding me?”

“I’m sorry, man. I saw the tanks, and I thought, yeah, that’s it. That’s what I’m supposed to do. Burn down a Muslim building. Eye for an eye.”

“The tanks were empty. Where’d you fill them up?”

“I stopped at a bunch of different places. I figured, if I did it all in one place, somebody might notice, you know?”

“No kidding.”

Wade thought about any evidence that might trace this whole thing back to Travis and from Travis to himself. He wasn’t sure if the cops could match gasoline from the fire to gasoline that was left in the tanks, but he wasn’t taking any chances. His own fingerprints were on those tanks. And the Feds loved a conspiracy.

“Take the cans into the woods and bury them. Then dump leaves, branches, and pine needles over the whole area. Got it? I better not be able to go back there and figure out where you did it.”

“Yeah. Yeah, will do, man. Then what?”

“Then strip naked behind the house and hose yourself down. Wash everything — your hair, your eyebrows, your nose, your fingernails, your toenails, everything.”

“What about my clothes?” Travis asked.

“Burn them. You got any spare clothes at my house?”

“Uh, yeah, I think so. Joni did some laundry for me after I got caught in the last storm.”

“Okay, I’ll get it,” Wade told him, frowning. “Don’t you set foot in my house, you got that?”

Travis nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I got it. Thanks, man.”

“Don’t go anywhere near Shelly’s place tonight,” he told Travis. “Hide the van somewhere, and stay under the radar. If the cops come after you, you’re a sitting duck staying at her apartment, and I don’t want you anywhere near me.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Travis replied. “Do you think they’ll figure out it was me?”

Of course, they will, you dumb shit.

“I have no idea,” Wade said. “If they do, we never talked about any of this, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay, get the shovel, and get moving.”

Travis stood frozen on the ground. He blinked back tears. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, Wade. Really. No way I wanted to kill anybody. Especially not a kid.”

“It’s too late to cry about it,” Wade said.

“Shelly’s going to be so mad.”

Wade jabbed a finger in the kid’s face. “Do not tell Shelly.”

“She’ll know,” Travis said. “She always knows when I’ve done something wrong.”

“Then don’t go see her until you can keep it together.”

“No, I gotta see her. I told her I’d be back at the hospital tonight. I don’t want her all alone.”

“I’ll go,” Wade said. “You lay low until we figure out if the cops are on to you.”

Travis shook his head. “I’m telling you, Shelly will figure out the truth. She always does. And her and her God stuff, she’ll say I’m going to hell.”

Wade reached out to grab a fistful of Travis’s shirt, but he pulled his hand back. He smothered the rage he felt. He wanted to take the shovel from the garage, swing it into the kid’s brain, and bury him in the forest with the gas cans. He never wanted to see Travis’s face again. He wished he’d never met him. He wished Shelly had never brought her brother to work at Ralston Extermination and that Joni hadn’t twisted his arm to hire the kid.

“Maybe you are going to hell,” Wade told him. “I don’t know how those things work, Travis. Fact is, you crossed a line. You’re a murderer. All you can do is get used to the idea, because there’s no going back.”