John Gilstrap - At all costs

“Only because I-”

Jake cut him off. “Look, I don’t want to argue with you here. Fact is, I didn’t kill you. My motivations can be whatever you’d like, but I’m telling you that you’re alive because I don’t kill people. Never have, hopefully never will. People don’t want to believe that, but there you go.”

Sherman broke eye contact and looked at the sky. By all appearances, if he could have stuck his fingers in his ears to keep from listening, he’d have done just that.

“When you write your report-and I’m sure you’ll be writing a lot of them in the next couple of days-I want you to remember this: we’re here to prove that we never did any of the things they accuse us of doing.”

“Yeah, right,” Sherman snorted.

Jake felt himself flush with anger and fought the urge to strike out at the man. He wanted to explain everything in detail; to tell Deputy Quill about the bodies on the inside and about just how miserable their lives had been. But he didn’t. This cop was just a cop. At the end of the day, his opinion wouldn’t mean a thing, anyway.

Jake stood again, intentionally towering over his prisoner, who now, finally, was beginning to look frightened. “Okay, Deputy,” he said at last. “Don’t believe anything. Just be sure to report it accurately, because what I’m about to give you is evidence: We didn’t kill those people back in 1983. We didn’t blow anything up. In fact, we damn near got blown up ourselves. Now, when your bosses ask you what we had to say for ourselves, you tell them that we didn’t do a damn thing wrong. And we mean to prove it.”

Travis felt the first stab of pain about an hour into their drive back toward Little Rock. It wasn’t much, really; just a slight pinprick in his chest, deep down. He’d felt twinges of it earlier, back when he was wrapping himself up in that policeman’s pants, but he didn’t say anything. He wasn’t speaking to either of his parents. He was too pissed off about being stripped naked and nearly drowned. He’d saved their lives, dammit, and that was the thanks he got! As it was, he felt thoroughly humiliated. The pants might as well have been a dress, they were so huge, and he didn’t even have a shirt. With the cop tied to the tree, there was no way to get his off of him, and he’d refused his father’s offer to give him his own shirt, just on principle. As for the work of the day, Travis had retired. He didn’t even lift a finger to help as his parents and Nick loaded stuff into the trunk of the Cadillac. His resolve to stay sullen and disinterested nearly broke when they built the bonfire to burn their protective clothing and equipment-everything that might carry a fingerprint-but in the end, he remained silent.

So he just sat there, pressed up against the back door, sulking and feeling stupid. And pretending not to feel the pain delivered by every breath. If his parents hadn’t been asking him every five seconds how he felt, maybe he’d have spoken up and told them something, but right now he didn’t want to hear the lecture again about how stupid he was to go in there and to save their sorry butts.

He’d be okay. He was sure of it.

Ow!

That breath really hurt, and on both sides, too, making him want to cough. But as he drew in his breath to do just that, the pinpricks grew to razor blades, and the air made a rumbling sound deep down inside of him. When he finally coughed, it felt like it was in slow motion, as if something were blocking the air from escaping.

He looked over to his mom, just as she looked over to him from the other end of the backseat, and the look that twisted her face scared him more than the pain in his chest ever could.

“Travis!” she yelled. “Oh, my God, Jake. Travis!”

Jake whirled around to look at him from the front passenger seat and showed a look that terrified Travis even more. He said, “Oh, no,” then scrambled over the seat back to join them in the rear.

What is it? Travis tried to ask. What’s wrong? But his voice wouldn’t work. The pain in his chest was worse than ever, and his heart raced at three times its normal rate. This time when he coughed, he could imagine someone ripping a piece of super-sticky tape off the lining of his lungs.

“Oh, my God! My baby! Jake!”

There was blood in his mouth now. And on his hands, too. Where did that come from? He needed to take a breath, but when he tried, he coughed again, and then he bled some more. He’d never seen his mother look so frightened. Or his dad.

Travis felt like he should be afraid. In fact, he remembered being afraid just a moment before. That was today, wasn’t it? He wanted to talk, but suddenly, he didn’t know how. And even if he did, he couldn’t remember what it was that he wanted to say. He needed air. He forced himself to draw in a huge breath, and the pain came again, worse than ever, but, curiously, he didn’t care much about it anymore.

His dad was in the backseat with him now, and from the look on his face, he was shouting something, but for the life of him, Travis couldn’t hear a word of it. He tried for a second or two to watch his father’s lips, to figure out what he was saying, but he became distracted by the way everything on the periphery of his vision had begun to sparkle.

Once the colors drained from the world, it was time to go to sleep.

Irene was surprised to see George Sparks waiting for her as she stepped off the jetway and into the lobby of the airport. As supervisory agent in charge of the Little Rock field office, he should have had more important things to do than greet arriving passengers. Historically rail-thin, he looked like he’d put on a few pounds over the years, and what had once been a headful of flaming-red hair had receded to little more than a graying ring encircling a freckled pate.

Irene shifted the load of her garment bag to her left shoulder and extended her hand as she approached. “Hello, George,” she said cheerily. “It’s been a long time.”

Sparks shot her a knowing smirk. “Yeah, I know,” he said, reading her look for what it was. “But you haven’t changed a bit.”

She laughed. “God help you, George,” she scoffed. “Haven’t you heard that liars go to hell?”

He leaned forward and planted a friendly peck on her cheek. “This is Arkansas, my dear. The buckle of the Bible Belt. I’m already there.” Back in the days when they went through the academy together, George was a proselytizing atheist, believing in essentially nothing but the Bureau and a good martini.

Irene introduced Paul, then let Sparks take her bag. “I heard you were out of the country,” she said.

Sparks nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been in Iraq, working on my melanoma.” He rubbed the top of his head. “Picked up quite a collection of hats over the past three weeks.”

“Okay,” Paul said, “I’ll bite. Why was the SAC for Little Rock over in Iraq?”

George leaned forward a bit to see past Irene as they walked. “The world got real small,” he answered. “Seems that what’s left of the Republican Guard has been squirreling away chemical warheads. The U.N. inspectors stumbled onto one of their stashes and found serial numbers traceable to the Grant Plant.”

“You’re kidding,” Irene said.

“No joke. Stuff was old as shit-dates back to the sixties-but the weps experts tell me it’ll still work. Well, not anymore. They’ve got an incinerator out in the desert working overtime.”

Paul made a face. “That’s kind of Twilight Zone ish, don’t you think?” he said. “All of a sudden, Newark, Arkansas, is the center of the universe.”

George laughed. “Clearly, you’ve never seen Newark. Armpit of the universe maybe, but never the center. Come to think of it, it is sort of the Twilight Zone,” he said, enjoying his own joke.