122 Rules (13 page)

Unlike Chet though, Jake had developed an affinity for mind-altering substances. The recreational hobby had grown teeth and wicked-sharp claws, becoming a demon that took control of and eventually claimed the man’s life. The spiral had seemed long and arduous at the time, but it had only taken the monster a couple of years to eat Jake’s essence, rotting him from the inside out until nothing existed but the chaff of the former all-star athlete.

In spite of Sam’s conviction that he hadn’t gone crazy, conversations like the one he’d just had with Chet made him wonder if his brother had decided to haunt him, continuing his mockery from within Sam’s own mind. Whoever or whatever Chet turned out to be, Sam had never breathed a word of it to anyone. Not his handler, Josha; not the military; not his ex-wife when they were together. No one.

As he flew down the macadam, the feeling of wrongness didn’t go away. But he trusted Josha, who had never given him a reason not to, so he would, as always, do the job.

15

Sam had planned to spend his life serving his country. But during his second tour in Afghanistan, a single bullet changed everything. Several surgeries and months of rehabilitation hadn’t been enough. Of the dozen men that had gone out on the routine patrol that afternoon, two of them had returned on gurneys, and only one of the injured had returned to service. The Marines no longer wanted Sam. The truth of his insignificance had hit him like a hammer, and he’d fallen into a routine of disheartened listlessness.

Forced retirement left Sam with nowhere to go and nothing to do, so he spent hours a day in the gym, working the injured muscles of his leg. During one of these marathon sessions, a tall, reed-thin man in a dark suit approached.

“Hello, Sam.”

Regarding the intruder, Sam continued working the leg extension machine without reply.

The suit-wearing man appeared nonplussed by Sam’s indifference. “I am aware of your circumstances and have been authorized to offer you a position in my agency.”

He loathed being treated like an invalid. He didn’t want their handouts. He didn’t want anything except to be left alone. “I don’t need your pity position. I can take care of myself.”

“I’m sure you can, but this is not some half-rate middle management job in the bowels of a government agency. We are looking for men and women with your background who are still interested in serving their country.”

Sam finished his set then sat up. He studied the man’s face as he wiped his neck with a grimy towel. The man looked to be in his fifties. His face, long and drawn out, was weathered and hard. Slicked-back, almost shiny silver hair—like the follicles hadn’t lost their color due to age but instead retained their natural hue. His midnight-black suit appeared to be custom tailored, wrapping his gaunt frame like a second skin. Sam met the arctic, steel-colored eyes boring into him from a wan complexion. A miniature, malignant serpent slithered and coiled between the vertebrae of Sam’s neck. The apparition before him looked like Death without the flowing robes and razor-sharp scythe.

A low lump of fear, as cold and merciless as cancer, formed in his gut. His nerves unraveled, and he had an almost overwhelming urge to flee.

“By my ‘background,’ you mean someone who’s been damaged and deemed unworthy to hold a weapon?” Sam put as much sarcasm into the words as possible.

Sam waited for this doppelgänger of the Grim Reaper to back down, like everyone else who had approached him with similar offers. Instead, the piercing steel eyes flared with anger. “Are you through with your little pity party?”

“Look, I don’t know what your angle is, but my plan is to be back on the front lines in a few months. I should have recovered enough—”

“We both know that isn’t going to happen.” The rail-thin man leaned in, his eyes blazing. “You are getting stronger, but you’ll never be the man you once were. And once you’re cut, that’s it. So knock off the bullshit, and give me your attention.”

Sam glared at him but refrained from further comment.

“We need good men like you to do jobs no one else is qualified to do. You will be back out in the field, working for your country, still fighting the enemy, just from a different perspective.” The man didn’t wait for a reply but instead reached into the inside pocket of his suit coat and pulled out a business card. “Give me a call.”

Only an embossed phone number blemished the card’s pristine, white surface. Sam looked up to ask the stranger’s name, but he had vanished. Impossible given the open floor plan of the gym, but as Sam looked around, perplexed, he could find no trace of the odd, steel-eyed man.

The heavy ball of dread deep inside him shifted. After a few troubling minutes, he tucked the card in his pocket and continued working out.

* * *

A month later, Sam emptied the storage unit his ex-wife had rented in his name. She had not included any furniture in the little ten-by-ten space with the large roll-up door, having kept all of it along with the house. He went shopping to fill the emptiness of his new apartment. Using the stipend from his injury, he bought a bed, couch, dresser, TV, a simple dining set, essentials such as dishes, and general whatnot from the local big box store. He hadn’t realized how much time and energy it took to set up a new place from scratch.

For the next two weeks, he unpacked and washed dishes, wiped down cupboards, ran loads of towels and sheets at the local Laundromat in between workout sessions. By the end of each evening, he collapsed into bed, exhausted, his leg throbbing as if medieval blacksmiths had used it to quench their glowing irons.

His physical therapist pronounced him as “healed as he ever would get.” In spite of the grim diagnosis, Sam could run five miles and had regained some of the speed of his former athletic years. He went to see his former commanding officer about reenlisting. But the man Sam respected gave him a pitying look he detested, confirming the truth: Sam would never again follow this, or any other soldier, into combat.

He sank into a deep depression, becoming despondent and listless. Years after joining the military, he had come full circle, arriving at the exact same place he had been when he used to drive his bike aimlessly in the deserted city streets. At least now he didn’t have to come home to his ex pushing him to get his life together so they could have a family. The thought of being tied down with the commitments of a father and husband filled Sam’s stomach with dread. She’d done him a favor by leaving him. He would only be able to screw up his own life instead of that of his wife and their two-point-five tax deductions.

But, free from domestic responsibility or not, his recent purchases had carved a considerable divot into his checking account. He had been so focused on getting back into the military he hadn’t started looking for work. Soon, Sam would be forced into taking some piss-ant job he hated or lose his apartment. But if he remained frugal, t
he money would last another six weeks.

He had spent another long day at the gym. Physical therapist or no physical therapist, he still worked out like a demon. So instead of searching the want ads, he popped a beer and plopped down on the couch, shoving the whole becoming-a-functioning-member-of-society problem aside as he flipped through TV channels.

His stomach gurgled, and from his lax position on the sofa, he could see into the kitchen. He had stocked it with enough supplies to film one of those celebrity cooking shows featuring an ill-mannered, short-tempered chef and his sorry lot of hopefuls. But thawing, chopping, and sautéing felt like an overwhelming undertaking. Besides, it didn’t seem worth the effort for just one person. Instead, he wandered into the unused space, opened his junk drawer, and rummaged through the slew of bright, various-colored take-out menus he had accumulated in the months since he and the military parted company.

Sam selected a blue one featuring happy shrimp and indecipherable Chinese characters on the front. He opened the menu for the dirty little restaurant up the street, and something fell out, flittering and tumbling end-over-end to the floor. He reached down to pick up the mysterious escapee, intending to toss it back into the drawer, then froze. Standing stock-still, hand grasping the drawer’s dull brass knob, he could have been a department store mannequin displaying the latest in worn hoodies and aging sweat pants.

Sam stared at the business card the silver-haired reaper had given him, and something substantial and ponderous inside him worked loose.

As if some maniacal puppeteer had taken residence in his skull, throwing switches and pulling levers to manipulate both his body and thoughts, he reached for the small black phone. He’d brought the device with him to place an order for kung pao chicken and fried rice. Instead, he typed in the ten digits from the card and tapped the little image of a handset
.
A hundred years of innovation and technological evolution designed the intricate circuits and relays that created the link between the phone pressed to his ear and the one carried by the steel-eyed man. Yet for all that advancement, when the call connected, Sam hesitated and fumbled the words like a butterfingered quarterback. “Yeah, this is...”

“Mr. Bradford,” the cool, authoritative voice on the other end of the line interrupted him. “I’m glad you called. Yes, the position is still available. When will you be able to pry yourself from your
busy
schedule and come meet with us?”

Weird
, Chet said,
it’s as if he was expecting you.

Eeriness filled his stomach, driving away the hunger that had been plaguing him just minutes before. He felt that thing inside him shift again. It—that thing he could neither see nor identify but which felt as black and jagged as a plummeting meteor—sat perched on the edge of a precipice. If it broke free, it would release a furious energy that would tear him and his life apart. When that happened, Sam had no idea what, if anything, would be left. Something more permanent and dire than the accident in college, joining the military, and getting shot in Afghanistan combined awaited him.

Hang up!
Chet screamed.
Hang up before it’s too late.

For once, Sam ignored his alter ego. “Tomorrow.”

“Fine. Tomorrow at oh eight hundred. Write this down.” Sam flipped over the little menu with the happy cartoon shrimp and indecipherable Chinese writing, grabbed a pen, and jotted the address down in the margin.

Sam started to say, “Okay, let me make sure I’ve got this,” but the line had gone dead. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. The serpent had returned.

* * *

Sam’s GPS led him to a small, nondescript office in a strip mall. The sign next to the door read, “International Relations.” He went in and gave his name to the receptionist—a young, pretty woman, professional to the point of being cold. The plate on her desk declared her name to be Claudia, and she told him they had been expecting him and to have a seat.

Three chairs and a small coffee table with ancient magazines adorned the tiny waiting area. Uninterested in the five-year-old copies of
Field and Stream
, Sam sat, staring at nothing. A hazy thought of whether he had gone insane drifted through his mind when he sensed someone watching him. Snapping back to reality, he looked up to see the icy steel eyes observing him from the doorway.

“Please follow me,” the silver-haired man instructed.

Sam hesitated, a feeling of being at a crossroads grasping him. The man had already disappeared down the hall. Sam glanced at the front door and then to the hallway, going back and forth as though watching a tennis match. He had been trained to evaluate a situation where lives were on the line and make snap judgments. Now, a severe case of indecision racked him, the feeling so intense he could almost hear the gears of his mind grinding, flailing from one choice to another.

Claudia cleared her throat. “He does not like being kept waiting. I suggest you decide.”

Sam took one last look at the door, glanced at Claudia who still watched him, and got up. In a daze he took one step, then another, following the path down the darkened hallway and into a future unknown.

16

At the end of the corridor, Sam trailed the silver-eyed man into a utilitarian room with stark white walls, a plain, pattern-free tiled floor, and harsh florescent lights. A long, simple table with a single chair sat square in the center of the space, a neat stack of papers the only thing on its plain brown surface.

At military attention against the far wall stood four stern-looking men and one woman. They wore navy-and-gray, starched wool uniforms, second cousin to the Marine Dress Blues he used for ceremonies and other formal occasions. Sam didn’t recognize either the clothes or, save for the small American flags on their shoulders, the insignias that adorned them.

The silent sentinels stared straight ahead yet seemed to be watching him at the same time. He knew how to do that, look without moving his eyes. He’d done it a thousand times.

Like the day he handed Sam the business card, the steel-eyed man wore an impeccably-tailored black suit. In comparison to everyone else, Sam felt slovenly in his jeans and hoodie.