Blood Men

chapter fifty

Turns out the Serial Killer choice of food isn’t a Happy Meal, but a Big Mac. Dad complains how it falls apart in his hands but still eats it as I drive, probably faster than any Big Mac has ever been eaten.

“I don’t think your doctor would approve,” I say.

“Probably not,” he answers, following it with a Coke, “but he probably wouldn’t have approved of me being stabbed either.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“Not much to tell,” he says, then takes another bite.

I keep driving. Dad works away at the fries. When he’s done, he balls up the wrappers and tosses everything out the window.

“Dad. .”

“What?” he says. “People don’t throw things out the window these days?”

“Where are we heading?”

“It all looks the same,” he says. “Newer, maybe, but not much. A couple of apartment complexes, some new homes, other than that it’s like I was here yesterday.”

“Fascinating, Dad, it really is. Now, where are we heading?”

“You’ve killed four men starting with Shane Kingsly, is that right?”

“Something like that.”

“So you’ve been listening to the monster, as you call it.”

“Something like that.”

“And now the rest of them have Sam and you’re going to do what it takes to get her back.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that we’re certainly alike.”

“We’re nothing alike.”

“Whatever you say, Jack.”

“Where to?”

“You know what, son, suddenly I don’t feel so good,” he says, and he grips his stomach.

I slow down. “I’ll take you back to the hospital.”

“No, no, it’s not that. My stomach’s bloated. Oh shit, I need to find a bathroom. This food, I haven’t eaten food like this in twenty years, oh shit, oh shit, this is going to be bad.”

“Just hold on,” I say.

“That’s great advice, son,” he says, doubling over and holding an arm across his stomach.

I make a left and drive to a nearby service station, pulling up around the side where there’s a bathroom door and Dad, hunched over, makes his way inside. I wait inside the car and five minutes later he comes back out, his skin even paler than when he went in.

“It’s going to take a while getting used to the outside world,” he says.

“Don’t get too used to it. Once I get Sam back I’m taking you in.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Get in the car, Dad.”

He gets in the car and we’re back on the road. His skin is clammy and he doesn’t look too good: I’m not sure whether it’s the food or the stabbing he took earlier in the day. The roads are empty except for an occasional taxi taking the drunk home, or other killers out there looking for their daughters.

Dad gives me the address and I punch it into the GPS unit and it gives us the directions. Dad stares out the window watching the city, remembering it as best as he can. Occasionally we come across a new intersection that confuses him, but for the most part he knows his way around. I wonder if I’d be doing as good a job as him if I’d been inside for twenty years. I suspect there are plenty of other things my dad is still good at, other things that instinct and muscle memory would help him complete.

The neighborhood the GPS directs us into is another of the areas hit heavy by the virus-only this one has been hit by a rust epidemic too: the cars parked out front are all beaten up and gardens as dry as a bone. It’s all out of date, as if the GPS has brought us to 1982 instead. Dad’s still wobbly when I get him out of the car, but nowhere near as clammy as he was ten minutes ago.

“Tyler Layton,” Dad says.

“He one of the guys?”

“He’s why we’re here.”

I look at the street and the houses and the cars and I think, I’ve been here before, maybe not this exact location but certainly one just like it, certainly in a similar frame of mind to the one I’m in now, except instead of the monster in the passenger seat it’s my father-a different type of monster but a monster nonetheless. Maybe we’re all here, Dad’s darkness and my monster riding in the backseat, chatting to each other, comparing stories and wagering on the outcome of the night. Schroder was wrong when he said the city is on a precipice. He’s wrong in thinking it can still be saved. Just ask Jodie.

“Tell me about him,” I say.

“There isn’t much to tell.”

“There has to be something.”

“What do you want to hear, son? That he’s a bad person who has whatever is coming to him coming to him?”

“Something like that.”

“Let’s go inside.”

I follow Dad up to the front doorstep. We’re only a couple of hours away until the dawn lights up this part of the world. It’s becoming routine to me now. I knock on the door a couple of times and wait a minute before knocking again, and when the guy comes to the door I jam the shotgun into his face-and the rest is so familiar now I don’t even need the monster.

Tyler Layton is exactly like the kind of person you’d expect to hold up a service station or a bank with a shotgun-except maybe a bit older than I’d expected. A shaved head with tattoos adorning his scalp, prison tear tattoos raining down his face, he’s around ten years shy of Dad’s age. He doesn’t say a single word from the moment he sees the shotgun to the moment my dad finishes tying him up with cord he cuts from the venetian blinds. We don’t get into any semantics about right and wrong and the ends justifying the means.

“Start talking,” I say.

“About what?”

“About my daughter. Where is she?”

“This your son, Jack?” Tyler asks, watching my father.

“Answer the damn question,” I say to Tyler.

“I don’t know anything about your daughter,” he says, keeping his eyes on Dad. “Been a long time, Jack. The security guard uniform doesn’t suit you.”

“Not that long,” my dad says. “Not for me. Seems like it was only yesterday.”

“It’s been four years,” Tyler says.

“Where’s my daughter?” I ask.

“What’s he talking about, Jack?” he asks my father.

“What the hell is going on here?” I ask.

“I knew your father real well,” Tyler says, “if you catch my drift. Quite a few times if I remember correctly-though after the first few times I stopped remembering. Was it the same for you, Jack?”

“Tyler here was kind enough to introduce me to one of the darker elements of prison,” my father says, but there is nothing kind-sounding about his voice at all. “He was there when I first got thrown in jail. My first night there and he broke four of my fingers and cracked two molars and shredded my asshole so hard I couldn’t sit down for a month. I was barely fixed up before he went at it again. He was in and out of jail over the years, but he always came looking for me.”

“And now you’ve come looking for me,” he says.

“What the hell, Dad? Does he have anything to do with Jodie or Sam?”

“No,” Dad says.

“Then why are we here?”

“If we had more time,” Dad says, talking to Tyler, “I’d cut you apart piece by piece.”

Tyler doesn’t answer him. For all his attempts to act as if he doesn’t care, like this is just one more day in the life of one really tough bastard, there is a fear in his eyes identical to the look in that dog’s eyes twenty years ago when it was chomping on a steak full of nails. He tightens the muscles in his arms.

“I always knew prison was going to be tough,” Dad says. “I always knew it was going to be one of those places that turns out exactly as awful as you figured it would be before you ever set foot in the place. Thing is-” he says, and then I interrupt him.

“Dad, we don’t have time for this. Sam is out there, we have to find her.”

He looks at me, his eyes sharp, cutting into me. After a few seconds, he nods.

“You’re right, son,” he says. He puts his hands out. “The shotgun?”

“No,” I say. “I didn’t free you so you could kill people.”

“Yes you did.”

“Not people who have nothing to do with what happened.”

“Give me the gun, son.”

“Don’t give it to him,” Tyler says.

Give it to him. Let him take control for a bit. We’ll get over this speed bump and find Sam.

“He’s a bad man, son. If we turn our back on him other people will suffer for it.”

Give him the shotgun.

“Do you want to know how many people he’s hurt? How many women he’s raped? Women like Jodie? Teenagers like the kind of girl Sam will become?”

I hand him the shotgun.