Tracey sat sniffling and shivering in the holding cell of the Lake County jail. She wore a tan crew neck t-shirt and tan trousers with an elastic band, just like all of the other women in the cell. Most of them she recognized from the long night of processing—having all been arrested at once on the spot of the rally in downtown Libertyville...the protest...the riot. There were just two women who looked like they had been in here for a little while longer than the lot of them. Their hair was all frizzed and unkempt, their eyes were dead, tired mostly, world weary. Tracey figured that's what she looked like to them. The only difference, a long stream of tears that never stopped the whole night long.
She knew that she just had to wait a little while longer, but the wait was worse than anything. This was worse than Antony's office, alone, being touched. This was worse than Kelly's stupid plans and her angry eyes and her rough hands. This was far worse than the worst night at Osaka-ya. This seemed liked it would never end. Tracey was sure she would be blamed for it all, for the whole entirety of the race war that must have been raging on outside. Perhaps this had been Antony's plan all along. If she just could wait a little longer.
The line was moving, for the phones. They had been kept overnight for processing and all were refused phone calls to family or lawyers while they waited for the rest of the counter-protesters to be processed. They shuffled from a van to a waiting room to a counter for prints and paperwork to a small, empty room where they were searched and given the tan uniforms, and then, to the cell. The hours that passed were longer than a whole day. She was exhausted but too afraid to feel any of it.
“Next!”
Tracey jumped up and made her way to the end of the cell where the bars were open just wide enough for her to go through and be supervised at a telephone booth. She stared at the phone for a minute before being jostled from behind to hurry up.
She dialed the number for home. Each tone of the keypad sounding harsh and dissonant.
“Hello?” Carol Lamki's voice so bright and unassuming. Tracey had no idea what time it was, morning she figured. Her voice choked in her throat. Carol never left the house anymore, she couldn't, she relied on Tracey.
“Mom?” Tracey sobbed. She wanted out, of everything.
Antony and Trent hovered in the bushes of the Miller's house on 3rd avenue, while Kory went on ahead and tried the lock. It was still relatively dark in the early morning hours after the Nazi rally. Antony had followed Richard closely through out the evening and saw that he had left shortly after the worst of the riots threatened to bring federal forces in and come after them. Richard had been flanked by Boyd and Nowak the entire evening and the three had left together. Antony had to assume they were all inside, that Debra was also inside, and that Brad was the rogue unknown.
But they had guns and Dicks were all locked away downstairs.
Kory stepped out a little ways back into the back yard of the home and gestured for the others to come along. The door was open, the lights were all down but there were cars in the drive so someone was home at least. The trio silently entered the house by the back door and quickly spread around the kitchen and into the hallway.
Antony had been waiting for this moment, the exact moment that Dick Miller would feel on top of the world, the moment Antony would slaughter him. Trent and Kory, whether convinced or not that this was all to forward some communal goals, were here to assist. Both young men were running on a high of adrenaline that had started hours earlier at the precipice above the rally. They wouldn't know it for another couple of hours, but they were absolute fools.
Kelly dropped her blood soaked clothes on the floor of the basement of her duplex. She let them fall wherever they might as she slowly stepped out of them and wandered around the room. Her energy was quickly waning. Her muscles were all overused, her brain still buzzing from the work of analyzing and acting as fiercely as she had.
She did her job, she incited chaos and rioting in Libertyville not far from the civic center and the community summer splash pad. She set her knives down on the banquet style table that held her most prized possessions. The bulletin board that had long been host to a hit list had been emptied of all victims and now was posted a single solitary list of names on letter paper tacked in the center. The names of the Order of the Rose. Kelly walked over and eyed the list, bringing a blood stained finger up to scroll through and mentally check off the names she could.
She wasn't sure how many, of total people, she had killed, or if she had been seen. She would need an alibi and was certain she'd sneak in and convince the world that she had been with the filmmakers the entire time, prepping for her role. That would have to do unless she could find Linh and ask her in person to corroborate something. This couldn't be left to chance.
Kelly pulled out her phone and messaged Linh. I'll be at the Miller Industrial Paints and Chemicals warehouse in the Mayview Industrial Park, come see me on set babe. Sent. Kelly wanted to sit back and relish in a night of good work but knew she'd need to be there early on set to solidify her backup story. She turned and rummaged in a backpack in the corner and pulled out a gray tank top and too short gray athletic shorts—her costume—and jogged back up the stairs. A shower and then she'd be an actress. She briefly wondered if she could give herself a stage name, if this could be a whole new, beautiful beginning.
Gary Stu walked one late spring morning to a warehouse on the edge of town. His name wasn't really Gary Stu, but he won't be around long enough to earn a real one. It was early and bright. Spring mornings in Illinois were cold and he wrapped himself inside his heavy winter coat, with the hood up and pulled tight against his cheeks, but still the wind got him deep into his bones. He supposed he should have asked his mother for a ride, but he had little going for him and had long since used up whatever pity his parents had remaining for their failed actor of a son. Besides, the brisk walk reminded him that he was alive and excited and going somewhere.
The business park soon came into view and Gary Stu turned inward to Miller Industrial Paints and Chemicals. It was not the shadiest place he had gone to for a job, by far, he had been a “rent-a-friend” two months ago out on the far side of the airport and that was at touch more dangerous. But a nagging feeling in his gut told him to be mindful of no trespassing signs. It wasn't the kind of business park a legitimate township wanted to have, none of the prosperity it promised had followed through. And empty warehouses had a tendency to attract the wrong kind of activity.
He saw the sign for Miller Industrial rise up out of the expanse of frosted grass and gravel. A couple of cars were parked in front of the warehouse and the lights inside the front office were all turned on—good signs. Gary Stu sniffled against the cold as he made his way into the parking lot and towards the heavy front door. To the right there was a dock leading into the warehouse and a trailer was parked here, up on blocks, with no cab. This wasn't the main factory, he knew, the rest of it was closer to the city. This seemed to be a left over space, rarely used, but necessary to keep overflow inventory. It was the kind of place, if you had a brat son who wanted to be somebody, that you could loan out to him and his friends for a low budget indie movie. Yes, that kind of place exactly.
Before our Gary Stu even got to the door, however, a space ship materialized in the gray sky above him and beamed down a column of shadow. He looked up, eyes staring into the underside of a genuine UFO, too stunned to move or even register what was happening to him. From a hatch on the bottom, figure walked out. It was tall and thin, stretched out and gaunt looking from far away, classically otherworldly. Gary Stu gawked at the sight, a sudden wind blowing his hood down and whipping his sandy hair across his forehead. He squinted into the shadow until the figure stepped closer, out from underneath its ship and into the whiteness of the early dawn.
“Hi there!” Gary Stu pulled a hand out of his pocket and waved, moronically, at the alien in front of him. The figure tilted its head to the side and seemed to smile. Up close he could see the skin of the figure, leathery and a bit sharp along the edges where cheekbones or shoulders or clavicles would be. It was not as unnerving as it ought to have been because Gary Stu had always wanted to be a part of a production like this. He had always wanted a step away from reality, from the humdrum, from the pure boredom of his lacking personality and basic good looks.
“You will do, quite well,” the alien said, his voice calm and patient. The sharpness of the cold wintry wind turned at once stale and heavy.
Gary Stu smiled despite himself, and in an instant the alien was at his neck, his pulse beating one last time through the artery now separated from his body and spilling blood across that particularly reptilian face.
As incredibly regular as Gary Stu was, by human standards, he was really quite tasty by Idec's.
To be continued...here.
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