Ted Kosmatka - Prophet of Bones

Gavin eased the car to a stop with a squeak of brakes.

“Well?” he said.

Paul studied the surroundings. The clouds that had threatened all morning finally let loose with a gentle drizzle, dotting the windshield with drops of moisture. “I think we’re here,” he said simply.

Gavin shifted into park and turned the engine off. They climbed out. The sprinkles felt good on Paul’s face.

“Are we early?” Lilli asked.

Gavin checked his watch. “We’re right on time.” He gestured toward the pavilion. “Let’s get out of the weather.”

They walked to the musty pavilion and Paul took a seat on one of the warped wooden picnic tables. It shifted dangerously under his weight, so he stood again. Behind him, a steel drum overflowed with garbage, the refuse of picnics past.

“So this is a pickup?” Lilli asked.

“Yeah,” Gavin said. “Protection in exchange for the sample. That’s what he said.”

The sound of an engine turned Paul’s head. In the distance, coming around the curve in the road, was a van. A moment later, a second van came into view. Both identical. Dark blue. The vans followed the road to the back of the turnaround and pulled to a stop a dozen yards from their parked car.

The vans idled there. Paul shot Gavin a nervous look. Then, the vehicles cut their engines.

The passenger door of the lead van opened and out stepped a man Paul had never seen before. A moment later the driver stepped out, and the two men approached.

The first man was tall and brown-haired, in his mid-thirties. He wore a button-down shirt and looked like an accountant, if your accountant happened to be six-five. The second man was shorter with darker hair, the thinner of the two.

When they finally crossed the empty lot, it was the taller man who spoke. “I’m glad to see you found the place,” he said.

“It’s a bit out of the way,” Gavin said.

“Our mutual acquaintance thought it would give us a chance to discuss things.” The man looked at each of them in turn, pointing a finger: “Paul Carlsson, Gavin McMaster, and you must be Lillivati.” His smile widened. “So we’re all here then, present and accounted for.”

Paul felt Lilli’s hand go into his. A nervous hole opened in Paul’s stomach. As far as he knew, Lillivati’s presence should have been a surprise.

“Where’s Congressman Lacefield?” Gavin asked.

“Oh, you didn’t think he’d be here personally, did you?”

“That’s what he said. Very specifically.”

“Plans have changed. Did you bring the bone sample?”

The nervous hole in Paul’s stomach grew larger.

“I don’t like plans changing,” Gavin said.

“Well,” the man said. “Nonetheless.” He turned and looked directly at Lilli.

“The sample, miss, did you bring it?”

Lilli’s eyes went to Gavin for a moment. Then she looked back at the man who’d addressed her. “Yeah,” she said. “I have it.”

“Excellent. Then we’re all set.” The man gestured toward the vans. “If you’ll come with us, we’ll be on our way.”

Gavin didn’t move. The pit in the base of Paul’s stomach had blossomed into something different. No longer a hole but a familiar coldness that was spreading out from the center of him.

“Who’s in the other van?” Gavin asked.

“Nobody to worry about,” the man said.

“I worry.”

“Well, you needn’t. We’re all friends here, are we not?”

“How do we know you’re with the congressman?”

The tall man smiled again, a broad, white-toothed grin. “Well, how would we have known where to find you if we weren’t with the congressman? Do you think we stumbled upon you by accident and happened to know your names?”

“Why isn’t the congressman here?”

“He’s indisposed at the moment. Pressing business. So he sent us to come pick you up.”

Gavin nodded, but he didn’t look convinced. “That’s all fine and good. But I think we’ll need to get the congressman on the phone before we go any further.” He pulled out his phone and prepared to dial.

“You’re wasting your time,” the man said.

Gavin looked him in the face, then echoed his own word back at him: “Nonetheless.”

The man straightened. “As I said, the congressman is indisposed. You need to come with us now.”

“And what will happen if we don’t ?”

The smile on the man’s face slid away. He looked suddenly resigned. “Then you get to see what’s in the second van after all.”

For a long time nobody said anything. The stranger’s words hung in the air as both sides took time to arrive at an accommodation with how things had shifted and continued to shift—the subtle balance of their interaction tilting more with each passing second, until all pretense had come crashing down. The man sighed.

He flicked his hand, a subtle gesture. The tiniest gesture. Toward the second van.

A moment later there was the sound of metal on metal as the van door slid open. The door faced away from them, hidden on the side of the van next to the woods.

There was only silence.

Then a footfall. The van rocked slightly as weight shifted—the barest suggestion of movement from beneath its undercarriage, a shuffle of shadows, then gone. Slowly Paul bent to get a lower perspective, tilting his head to see beneath the van.

He saw the dark feet, bare and strange. The chill in the base of his stomach filled his entire body, surging up and out his throat to take the form of a wordless shout—

—and in the next instant Gavin screamed, “Get back!” and shoved Paul hard. Lilli whirled around, eyes wide, and Gavin grabbed the edge of the picnic table and flipped it on its side, and then his gun was out and firing.

The men were almost as fast. The sound of gunfire was deafening. Shots rang out as Gavin dropped to a crouch behind the overturned picnic table. “Get down!” he shouted.

Lilli screamed and clawed her way across the cement patio, keeping low to the ground as Paul dove behind a metal drum. Bullets zinged through the drum as the men returned fire.

Gavin stuck his hand around the side of the table and fired blindly . Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

Splinters of wood flew from the edge of the table before the men seemed to reconsider their exposed position. They bolted for cover, sprinting behind the protection of their vans.

The gunfire subsided.

“Is anyone hurt?” Gavin growled.

Lilli only shook her head, eyes still wide with terror. She was huddled behind a square wooden support pillar, her narrow body almost the exact dimensions of the post.

Gavin looked to Paul. “No,” Paul answered. “I’m good.”

Shots rang out again, chipping the picnic table into puffs of splinters. Some of the rounds passed straight through the wood to make thwick noises in the trees behind the pavilion. Gavin stuck his hand around the side of the table and fired again, but this time, from their protected position, the men didn’t stop shooting. More bullets whizzed through the table. Wood chips exploded near Gavin’s face. “Shit!” he hissed. He scrambled backward, away from the table, keeping low.

Gavin fired as he retreated. Paul eased his good eye around the side of the metal barrel just enough to sneak a look. Dark shapes spread out from the van, moving through the shrubs at the edge of the parking lot. The men fired from around the front of the van but didn’t advance.

Paul ducked back behind the barrel as another barrage of bullets plinked through the pavilion.

After a moment, the shots went quiet.

Paul made eye contact with Gavin. Gavin pulled a clip from inside the breast pocket of his suit jacket. He’d come prepared. Who the fuck are you, Paul wondered. Gavin ejected the clip from his gun and slammed the new clip home.