This is the final installment of the short story "Ink" by Steve Metcalf as it first appeared in the second Event collection "Iron Bay."
INK
Steve Metcalf
Epilogue
How It Really Happened
They were driving the stolen-ish van through the huge industrial area just north of San Bernardino. The rigid collection of factories, warehouses and shipping facilities was lovingly called Fog City – and was generally avoided by all but those who actually worked there. The van was beat up just enough to look like it belonged.
They had bought it from some guy for $500 cash. No questions. No answers. Jones was driving, bobbing his head to whatever music his drug-addled brain was playing for him. Certainly, the van had no working radio. Bren Kira Duk was in the passenger seat flipping pages back and forth on a stenographer’s notepad. She was wearing a dark, sleeveless hoodie with the cords pulled all the way tight. She had taken her shoes off and was wiggling her toes as they rested on the filthy dashboard.
Her cheerful pink toenails belied the dark, nervous energy that was coursing through her. She took another look at the notepad. A circled section of text jumped out at her.
Marty Gustavson. Smoke break in the parking lot at 2 a.m.
“Turn left up there,” she said, closing the notepad and stuffing it into the deep pocket of the hoodie.
“Whatever you say, nice radio lady,” Jones said. “Yep. Got it. I see the parking lot.”
Jones slowed the van to a crawl and hit the left turn signal. Of course, it didn’t work.
“Showtime,” Bren said, cracking a rare smile.
Jones hauled the wheel to the left and pulled into a large parking lot. It was fairly dark, with randomly spaced lightpoles. The lot was empty save for one person. He was a middle-aged man strolling through the lot holding a lunch pail.
“There,” Bren shouted, pointing.
Jones saw the man and turned the wheel hard to the right. The man panicked and tried to jump out of the way, but the van was coming too fast. There was a dull, sickening thump as Jones hit him. The man flew across the grill of the van from right to left and crumpled against the wheel of a battered Toyota SUV.
The van slid to a halt and Bren jumped out of the passenger door. She began walking around the hood of the van and paused to look at Jones, who, quizzically, followed her out of the same door. Jones jogged around the front of the vehicle and knelt down next to the man, Marty Gustavson. Bren paused in the glare of the headlights and just stared at the injured man. Rage welling up and igniting her insides.
Marty looked up at Jones. He seemed to be fading in and out of consciousness. He was wheezing, coughing up blood and while his left arm was twitching uncontrollably, both of his legs remained bone-still.
There was a moment of recognition.
“Hi?” Marty wheezed from the blood-slick pavement. “What are you -?”
Bren couldn’t hear the response. She could see Jones’s lips moving but all she could hear was one sentence over and over again. Jones had placed his right hand in some chunks of broken glass that had fallen off the van’s driver-side headlamp.
“Hi,” Marty said again and then his eyelids drooped. Bren moved to about six feet away from the two men. She cleared her throat. Jones looked back at her and Martin’s eyes fluttered open. He seemed to see the woman for the first time and, again, what was left of his mind flashed in recognition. This time, however, his eyes weren’t clouded with confusion … this time the look on his face was absolute terror. “Bren?” he whispered. “Oh my God.”
Bren leaned in close, closing the distance between her and the dying man. Jones had stood up and looked to be walking away from the party. She cleared her throat again.
“It would have been more fun if you had just stayed asleep,” she said.
“No,” Marty wailed. “Nonononononooooooo!” The word died in his throat and he died along with it.
“I told you that you’d pay,” she smiled. “You’ll all fucking pay with your lives.”
She was careful to not spit on him because she didn’t want to leave any trace DNA. But she wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to.
The Actual End
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