Brian Keene - Terminal

Oscar laughed in surprise. “How’d you know that?”

“I read them myself, occasionally. They provide a fascinating look at pop culture. Characters like Superman and Batman and Captain America are our modern-day myths, much like Hercules and Zeus were to the Greeks. You can learn a lot about a society by studying its folklore.”

“That’s right,” Sherm shouted, “and it better have a full tank of gas!”

“I read comic books too,” Benjy chimed in.

Roy smiled. “What are your favorites, Benjy?”

“Dexter’s Laboratory and Scooby Doo. That’s the only two that Mommy lets me read. She says the other ones are too scary.”

“Maybe when you’re a little older,” Sheila assured him, kissing his head. I wished her hands were untied so she could smooth his hair, the way Michelle did with T.J. I thought it might make them both feel better—more secure.

“How about you?” I turned to Kim.

“Me? I have no life. I work here. I go home to my cat, Tessa. I curl up with a Karen Taylor book or maybe something by Nora Roberts, watch Will & Grace until bedtime, and then I go to sleep. Twice a week I take night courses at the community college. That’s it. Boring, huh?”

“No boyfriend?”

“No. Men are pigs—at least the ones in this town are. My girlfriends and I go clubbing in York on the weekends, but the men there aren’t much better. They’re all either players or losers. Or married.”

“Or all three.” Sheila laughed.

“You got that right,” Kim agreed.

“Dance halls,” Martha stirred, “are nothing more than dens of iniquity, centers of obscenity. Do you enjoy them? The wickedness? The filth? Do you feel a stirring in your loins when you go there? When a man grinds against you? Your body is Christ’s temple and you defile it with that behavior. Harlot! Jezebel! Then went Samson to Gaza, and saw there a harlot, and her name was Delilah…”

“Dammit, Martha, leave her alone,” Sharon warned.

“I will not leave her alone. I will have my say. This is her soul we’re talking about. Only through knowing Jesus can she—”

“Martha,” I interrupted, “if you don’t shut the hell up, so help me God I will shoot you. Right in the fucking head. I don’t care if I stopped Sherm before or not. I’ll do it.”

“Oh my…”

She was silent again, and the entire room exhaled in relief. Sheila winked at me and I smiled back. When Oscar’s and Kim’s cigarettes were down to the filter, I collected the butts and snuffed them out. Then I went back to John.

My headache was reaching the crippling point, and the nicotine hadn’t helped much. I winced, rubbing my brow with one hand while keeping the pressure on John with the other. Both my hands were cramping. The tourniquet needed changing again, but I wasn’t sure what to use. I considered Dugan’s chambray work shirt and decided that it didn’t really matter. To be honest, there wasn’t much blood coming from the wound anymore, and I’d relaxed my grip a bit. It was hard to concentrate on John’s situation. Hard to concentrate on anything. I’d never felt more exhausted in my life.

“Your head is hurting, isn’t it, Mr. Tommy?” Benjy observed.

“Yeah. Yeah it is, buddy. Pretty bad.”

“I’ve got aspirin in my pocketbook if you want some,” Kim offered.

“Thanks.”

“You don’t need aspirin,” Benjy insisted. “I can make your head better—and everything else too.”

“I wish you could, Benjy. I wish you could.”

And I did. I wished it more than anything. But I didn’t believe. I thought back to the church, and my rant at God. If He existed, if He could help us by acting through Benjy, then why hadn’t He answered me when I’d asked Him to? Why had He given me cancer to begin with? Maybe Benjy really could help me, but my lack of faith and my concern about what Sherm’s reaction would be if he caught us overrode my urge to try. And I think, deep down inside, even more than those two things, I was afraid of being disappointed once again. I didn’t want God to let me down one more time.

I reached out with my foot, snagged Kim’s pocketbook from the floor, and slid it toward me. Then I rifled through it, found the aspirin, and downed four of them. I tried to ignore the other glimpses of her life inside the bag—birth control pills, cell phone, lipstick, car keys, breath mints, loose change, and pads. It made me feel like I was spying, like I was going through her panty drawer or something. I zipped the purse shut and kicked it back over to her.

“Hey, what about you, Tommy?” Sheila asked. “If Dugan and Roy are right, and this is Stockholm Syndrome, then you might as well finish telling us about you.”

“There’s really nothing to say,” I insisted. “You guys already know about Michelle and T.J.”

“You started to tell your wife about something else when you were on the phone. And Benjy said you were sick, and he’s never been wrong. There’s something wrong, isn’t there? Something more than just this robbery?”

“Like you guys really care? I’m fucking holding you hostage here.”

“I do,” Sheila whispered.

Benjy’s head bobbed up and down. “You’ve got dark stuff inside you, Mr. Tommy. Black shadows. Not like the monster people in Mr. Sherm’s head, but dark just the same. And it’s spreading too.”

I sighed, wondering how to proceed.

Then I opened my mouth and said the words that I’d been unable to say to my wife.

“I—I have cancer.” At a very advanced stage, the doctor’s voice echoed through my head.

“Terminal?” Roy asked.

“Yeah. It’s terminal.” The word sounded like another gunshot. “It’s spreading through my body like crazy. The doctor thinks I’ve got a few weeks at the most. Like I said, John, Sherm, and I got laid off from the foundry, and Michelle and me are already way behind on the bills. This just seemed like a good idea at the time—a way out of it all. A solution. It was like life handed me a real plate of shit, so I might as well make one good thing out of it. Dying of cancer was the downside, but it seemed like there was an upside too, and that was the chance to help my family in ways I’d never have risked before. What was the worst that could happen, you know? If they caught me, I’d be dead soon anyway. That was how I saw it. It didn’t really hit me as to how this would affect Michelle and T.J. until I got here and things went bad. I guess I was cocky. I honestly didn’t think we’d get caught. And I definitely didn’t mean for anyone to get killed.”

I looked down at John, then back up at them all, meeting their eyes. In a way, it felt like I was cheating on Michelle by telling them this.

“Any of you ever hear the song ‘Hard Knock Life’?”

Oscar, Sheila, and Kim nodded. The others stared at me blankly.

“Well, if you’ve heard it, that pretty much sums up my life in a nutshell. It’s a hard knock life.”

“Me and you both,” Sheila agreed. “Believe it.”

“Me too,” Kim said. Oscar nodded along with her.

Sheila I could understand, but I didn’t see it with Kim and Oscar.

“Sounds to me like you two got it made, going to college and shit.”

“You think my life doesn’t suck?” Kim snorted. “I mean sure, maybe I don’t have cancer. That’s horrible, and I’m sorry for you and your family. I really am. I still don’t understand why you did this, but I do feel sorry for you. But I’ve had my share of hard knocks too.”

“Me too,” Oscar said. “Guys like you and Sherm have picked on me and fucked with me since the first grade. I’ve never had a date. I spent prom night jerking off in my bedroom, looking at porn on the Net. How pathetic is that?”