CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Sitting amongst the corpses, Nate watched the city burn.
The night sky was flush with stars, bright and eager to be seen. Nate could not remember the last time he’d seen the stars like this. Childhood?
There was a time when his asshole father took him and his mother on a camping trip. Like everything else about his father, it was a joke. The man drunk himself into oblivion, pissing into the camp fire. When his mom complained his father started to beat her. Despite being only eight or nine, Nate tried to defend her and was beaten in turn.
The stars were beautiful back then, too.
Ah, memories.
But now that he thought about it, these stars were unusually bright. Like thousands of little spotlights trying to illuminate the chaos below.
Over the fence across the bar’s back parking lot, fires burned in the distance. Nate couldn’t see them directly, but their hot glow pushed against the night like little suns trying to break up out of the horizon.
Nate had his own fire, thanks to Morse the screw-up. The flames within the barrel flickered and crackled. When it started to die down Nate went into Unger’s office and found more things to burn. Nate chose a bunch of Unger’s photos and a mound of bills and papers from the desk.
He dumped them in and the fire blazed.
“Won’t be needing those anymore, eh, boss?” Nate said to Unger’s cooling corpse.
Not getting an answer, Nate went and sat back down in one of the comfy chairs, shotgun across his lap.
He listened to the sound of the fire. Somewhere, far off, popping indicated a rifle being used. He’d heard more throughout the night as he sat there and watched the city die. Old scores needed to be settled and what better time to do it?
Nate had many of his own to get to. The list was long with only a few names being of distinguishing merit. But they were all shit that needed to be shoveled.
He patted the shotgun. This was his shovel.
A squishy noise emanated from Morse, causing Nate to raise his rifle. When he recognized it as a body expelling gas, he laughed.
“Full of shit both in life and in death,” Nate said. “Not surprised.”
Morse responded with more death farts.
Nate fished a beer out of a small cooler next to the chair and examined the label in the fire light. God damned german import. Unger always had bad taste in drink. Nate shrugged, twisted off the cap and took a swig.
He grimaced. Bitter and heavy, just like Unger and his family.
Unger’s family.
In a normal situation, Nate would be running for his life right now, having gunned downed the organization’s up and comer. He didn’t have permission to take Unger out, nor would he have ever sought it. That would have been a death sentence, being just a piddly gun-for-hire. A contract would be put on his head and the countdown would begin. Nate was certain he could have given any would-be bounty hunters a run for their money.
But this wasn’t a normal situation. He doubted things would ever be normal again.
It made him smile.
A sudden scream from his left made him drop the beer bottle with a smash and stand up, shotgun at the ready. It had come from the little apartment building located next door to the Spectacular. There were a couple of windows which had small pulses of glowing candles. One of them was brighter than the rest and growing brighter. Frantic shadow puppets danced around inside trying to put out the errant flames.
Nate laughed and dragged the chair over so he could see better. He grabbed another bitter beer and sat down to enjoy the show. This little sun was closer than the rest, eager to be born.
For nearly twenty minutes he watched as the fire went out of control and consumed the little apartment. Soon its flames licked out from the open balcony window, the curtains coiling into hot ash.
As he watched, he thought about what his next move would be. Killing Unger was an automatic death sentence, but only if other’s found out about it. Or if he got to them first.
And with this strange day drawing to an end, Nate felt certain Unger’s death would rank fairly low on priorities to those who might care. The world was being reborn, like these little suns.
No alarms sounded from the apartment building. The little batteries in the smoke detectors had been nixed along with everything else.
Maybe it was what the aliens intended. Kill the batteries. Kill the electricity. Let humanity kill itself.
Nate took another swig and watched the apartment fire spread across the floors. Who was he to try and understand what this event was meant to accomplish? To the aliens, he was nothing more than another human they hoped would die in an apartment fire.
But Nate felt he was more than that and would prove it. If anything, he was an opportunist and had shown he could grab an opportunity by the hair and make it his bitch.
“Hello?” a voice called out.
Nate blinked out of his thoughts. It had come from inside the bar. Quietly, he placed the beer on the ground and went over to the open back door, shotgun in both hands. He peered inside.
Other than the orange flickering light from the barrel fire he couldn’t make out anything past Unger’s office at the end of the little hall.
“Hello?” the voice said, again. It was a man. Sounded like he was in the main room of the bar.
Nate entered and walked down the hall, shotgun pointed forward ready to spit out death. When he reached the office, he noticed another light through the office door, this one coming from within the bar itself. Someone with a light source?
With a glance behind him, Nate moved to the office door and peeked around its frame.
A man was standing in the middle of the bar, short and fat. A lantern sat on a table next to him, its inner flame bright and strong.
A quick look told Nate the man was not carrying any weapons in his hands, but he needed to be cautious.
Certain there was no one else present, Nate stepped through the door.
The fat man gave a quivering start when he noticed Nate. “Oh, damn,” he said. “You scared me. I didn’t think anyone was around.”
“I’m scary,” Nate said as he approached. “And I’m around.” He kept two tables between them, the shotgun pointed at the other man. “Who are you?”
The man glanced at the shotgun with wide eyes and slowly raised his empty hands. “Hey, I’m just here to make a delivery. No need to get all worried about it.”
“I’m not worried. Who are you?”
“Martin,” the fat man said. Wide spots of sweat stained his shirt. Nate could see the man was shaking.
“Hello, Martin, I’m Nate.”
When Nate didn’t say anymore, Martin said, “Hello, Nate.” He swallowed hard.
“What are you delivering today? Better not be anymore of that crappy german beer because that would put me in a really foul mood.”
Martin shook his head. “No, no crappy german beer.”
Fear kept the man from speaking. “Then what?” Nate said.
“Prawns.”
Nate burst into laughter. When he settled down he shook a finger at Martin, shotgun still held steady. “Ah, Marty, I did not expect you to say that. Beer, sure. But prawns?”
Martin shrugged. “Unger likes them, even though they don’t sell very well here.”
“Yeah, who comes to a bar to eat prawns trucked in from an ocean which is miles and miles away.”
“They’re from Japan,” Martin said, looking worried he might be speaking out of turn. “Unger likes those especially.”
Nate laughed, again, this time louder and longer. “Oh, that is funny, Marty.” He looked around. “Where are these Japanese prawns? I know you didn’t bring them in a truck.”
Martin shook his head. “No, my truck died on the freeway this morning. Along with everyone else.”