The slamming against the front door had stopped. But as the child cried in his arms, a new sound began. A buzzing. The buzzer that meant someone at the street door. If he’d die here or die at the hands of those outside, he’d little choice. Blinded by the fire, Foster carried the blood-sticky, shivering infant boy up the stairs to where he fumbled with the locks and threw the door open.
On the street stood a solitary figure. No army. No police. Only a woman with a limousine parked near her. In the lapse between the retreating mercenaries and the approaching fire engines, there was just this woman. She said, “You have a baby.”
She wore a gleaming double strand of natural pearls around her neck.
He offered the child, and Blush Gentry took it into her arms.
As if just by joining forces, every Pomeranian and Chihuahua in the neighborhood, every corgi and dachshund in the city, they howled to manifest a siren. The siren created the flashing strobes of red and blue. The lights brought the first fire engine. Their combined voices conjured a second, a third, and a fourth, but it was too late. Flames exploded through the roof of Ives Foley Arts. Flames roared from the street door left ajar.
Inside, flaming microphones drooped on their stands. Suspended mics dropped from the ceiling. In the prop room the axes burned, the ice picks and Bowie knives and bludgeons burned. The flames, fed by the endless lengths of magnetic tape. Wires melted. Meters ticked as if monitoring their own death.
In this, these final moments, a reel found the power to turn. A tape began to play and the sound issued from the last small speaker. A little girl said, “Close your eyes. Listen and guess.”
A gentle sound followed, a soft pattering noise.
Another girl cried out, “Rain!”
The older girl said, “Now tell me what you had for breakfast, Lucy.”
The younger said, “Cheerios. Scrambled egg. A glass of milk.”
A door opened and closed, footsteps. A man’s voice said, “Mitzi, who’s your new friend?”
The older girl said, “Lucy, I’d like you to meet my father.”
And at this, the last tape began to melt and burn.
On the television a young woman was tied to an elaborate brass bed in a dingy log cabin. A mob of Confederate soldiers crowded into the room, one among them holding a carving knife. Another asked, “Are you going to tell us where them slaves is hid, Tammie Belle, or are we gonna have to execution you?”
Gates sat on a sofa eating popcorn from a bowl in his lap. Beside him Blush held their son, Lawton.
The soldiers attacked the woman, and she screamed. At least a scream occurred, clearly dubbed in. Gates Foster clicked to another channel. There, there was not-Lucinda. She was television’s newest discovery, Meredith Marshall, playing the lead in a sitcom about a wisecracking father and daughter who ran a detective agency. The man playing her father was not-Robb Laurence. Just two of the entirely new generation of film and television stars, their ratings were stellar.
A laugh track roared after every line of dialogue.
As he chewed popcorn, Foster asked himself if anything was real in the world. Anything or anyone. Even the popcorn didn’t taste right. He clicked back to the Civil War flick. He said, “This movie is terrible.”
The baby woke and began to fuss. Blush hushed the child, saying, “The scream was good.”
Her husband didn’t reply. He checked his emails, holding the phone so his wife couldn’t see. And opened the one from the Idaho Department of Statistics, reading it not for the first time that day. Not even the tenth time. He’d learned it by heart. In summary, the state records showed that no Lawton Koestler had ever been registered in any Idaho school. No birth certificate had ever been issued for a child with that name. No boy had ever died of a peanut allergy, died clutching the hand of a future movie star atop a chilly mountain while menaced by wild cats.
Idaho didn’t even have a fucking Beech Mountain.
Blush Gentry, or whoever she was, she’d made it up. Played him like a fish and reeled him in. Or the story had been taught to her by whoever had trained Robb, the same party who’d staged the fake support group and taunted Foster at the fake funeral they’d held. Whatever deep state operation, it had funneled the child abuse pictures to him. To stoke his rage for their own purpose.
When he’d been mired in despair, the operation had sent him the video of Lucinda’s scream.
Foster crammed his mouth with popcorn and wiped his greasy fingers on the sofa cushion. His rage wasn’t gone.
It only needed a refresh.
For this he scrolled through his gallery of monsters. If his guess was correct, he could have his pick, now. The people he chose from the dark web, they would be delivered to him like pizzas for him to do with as he pleased. Like meat to be bled or carved or burned.
It would be healing.
Granted, his methods weren’t perfect. Mistakes would be made. But even the innocent dead wouldn’t suffer in vain. There was that. Foster could conduct his interrogations and vent his frustrations. And, if nothing else, motion pictures would see an improvement.
Foster looked at his beautiful wife—whoever she was. He looked at their baby—the offspring of strangers. One day this boy, his own son would follow in his footsteps.
Gates Foster would never be stopped because he worked for the people who did the stopping. Likewise, he would never be caught.
His future looked simple. Simple and bright. Bright and bottomless.
Discover Your Next Great Read
Get sneak peeks, book recommendations, and news about your favorite authors.
Tap here to learn more.
About the Author
Chuck Palahniuk has been a nationally bestselling author since his first novel, 1996’s Fight Club, was made into the acclaimed David Fincher film
