Wireman

CHAPTER 28

NICK ANSWERED the phone on the second ring.

“Are you coming in today?” Apex Alarm’s manager asked. “We really need the help, Nick.”

“I quit.”

“What?” the manager asked, not sure he had heard correctly.

“I said I quit,” Nick repeated. “I won’t be coming in anymore.”

“But Nick, what’s wrong?”

Nick hung up the phone and moved from the hall table beneath the stairs. He was incredibly hungry. His stomach rumbled from being empty too long.

In the kitchen he rummaged through the refrigerator. He found a foil-wrapped Hostess Twinkie, but the milk was gone. In the cabinet he searched for an envelope of instant hot-chocolate mix and found one crushed behind cans of green beans and corn. He ran the water from the sink faucet until it was hot, and made cocoa.

There was no place at the dining table where he could sit. The four chairs were broken and lying in heaps on the floor. The tabletop was littered with crusty dishes, empty cereal boxes, and two spatulas yellow with dried egg.

He sat on the floor amid the ruins and ate the cream-filled cake and drank the tepid cocoa. His stomach still growled.

He returned to the kitchen and opened a can of stewed tomatoes and ate them standing at the counter. He drank the leftover juice and felt his stomach relax a little.

Everything was the same. The same as when he had lost his temper with Daley on Thursday and wrecked the house. The living room was a shambles. He stepped carefully over a broken lamp and sat down on the sofa. He switched on the TV. It was the only untouched object in the room.

A church choir wavered hazily on the small screen. With the sound turned off, Nick could almost bear to watch. After a few minutes, he restlessly changed the channel. Sunday morning ministries. All the same.

All of them after his soul.

He changed the channel again. A black preacher standing behind a pulpit jabbed his fist into the air.

Another channel. A white-haired minister was dressed in a black robe with a scarlet band down the front.

Nick turned up the sound and listened to the civilized voice.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.”

Nick immediately turned off the sound. He cocked his head and studied the robed man. Perhaps there was a message there. He turned the sound up again.

“Be not a terror unto me: thou art my hope in the day of evil.” Savagely Nick switched off the TV and stared at the dot fading in the center of the screen as if daring it to leap into life again.

He left the living room and went to his bedroom. On the floor lay the box and the silently entreating garrote. He bent down and picked up the wire with two fingers. It swung easily, the wooden handles clacking.

“The heart is deceitful…”

He was in the heart of the foul Viet Cong cave, and it was deceitful. The man, his enemy, lurked in the subterranean dark, waiting with held breath and pumping fear.

I will get you, Nick thought.

“and desperately wicked…”

There is no one more wicked than you, no one more deadly.

Footsteps sounded behind him, and he wanted to push his brother away, push him into the night.

I have come for you, Nick thought. The dark won’t hide you and there’s no escape.

“…to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.”

Nick was near enough to the Cong to feel the enemy’s heat, his scent. Those seconds, just like the moments before sexual orgasm, could not be prolonged; it was no longer in his control.

I am here, next to your flesh, able to take you into my arms. There is nowhere to run and nothing, nothing to fear.

“Be not a terror unto me…”

He looped the wire around the neck and there was panting, then cursing, and finally pleading for mercy.

Footsteps neared, faltered, and stopped. The cave ceased being a part of the world. The wire tightened.

Muscles corded along the insides of his arms, his knees locked, his legs strained, and his toes curled under in his boots. He felt hot.

Don’t fight me now that I’ve won. You can ruin everything if you struggle.

“…my hope in the day of evil.”

The enemy fell, body and head, the air rich and bitter with the metallic scent of fresh blood. His arms went slack. His mighty erection thumped with sudden, exquisite release. A flame illuminated a haloed brother.

“I’m right here,” Nick said calmly. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore, Daley. I’ll always take care of you.”

The flame hissed against the shadows.

Daley wept in Nick’s arms.

Nick felt a demon at his side and welcomed the punishment. There was no need to cry.