The story of his miserable existence.

For where is worse and yet the best place for a sociopath murderer to hide if not at a suicide prevention clinic? What is the worse situation for a soldier if not peacekeeping? Where was the worst place for a burner to exist-and exist as a leader-if not a fire department?

Torment. Endless torment.

And yet, Ralph Maia deserved an Oscar for his performance to date. He possessed a talent to beguile the ma.s.ses, to appear as a ferocious advocate of fire safety. He brought in the ma.s.ses and toured them around the burned sites of buildings razed to the ground, black and smoking like a roast left too long on a spit. Commanded them to look, just look at what carelessness could do to a community. Of how a single act of negligence could unleash something that would consume everything. He was like a priest of old, preaching sermons of prevention at every venue he could manage during the day and then wishing for some of the worst blazes by night.

There should be some measure of reward for the act.

But there wasn't.

And now the beast was running free again in the greater Vancouver area. Unchecked and unreined, like some drunken imp full of flame jumping from house to house. Maia shook his head. The fire crews in the city had their hands full and it wasn't even summer. Already there was a dramatic increase in fire accidents for the month of March, and if someone didn't start doing something soon, people might just start asking questions. Not that Maia would ever be suspected. He only burned something when he absolutely had to. When the urge could not be suppressed any longer. And there were plenty of accidents and amateurs out there to take the blame.

Maia breathed out. The Kelowna fires had been an act of carelessness, and the man responsible had come forth to confess to the deed. That really p.i.s.sed Maia off. A lesser being actually apologizing for birthing such a monster by accident! It aggravated Maia to think about what he could unleash upon the world with a solid plan, the right materials and the knowledge of fire that he possessed. But he could not. Not until he got permission. And when he did occasionally get permission to let off steam, to burn something, it had to be controlled. His or his firemen's involvement had to be completely covert. And if he or any of the others did burn, he was still bound to defend these cattle called people. Instead of revelling in their agony, instead of prolonging their agony, he had to call out his forces, including those responsible for the fires, to save the ma.s.ses and put down the beasts.

He had to protect them.

And he was a burner, G.o.ddammit, a burner!

He faced his reflection in the mirror. The washroom was empty, the showers silent. Maia was alone as he gazed at his body. A skinny pear, but pear-shaped all the same. But if anyone really wanted to probe, they would discover a bear's strength rippling under his layer of fat. His thin goatee gave him a vampiric look, and he basked in it. He thought he looked cool. Yet it was a false face to fit in with the Mundanes. It was his Mundane face. He hated it so. He hated his day to day existence. He had convinced them all, and he so badly wanted to burn it all down. Torch the whole lie.

In frustration, he placed his hands on either side of the sink and hung his head.

"Pain is upon the world."

The words made him jerk his head up. Maia stared at the reflection in the mirror. It snarled at him, baring white teeth. The voice was the sound of a striking match.

"And there are those that wish to find the boatman."

Maia stood with enraptured eyes, locking gazes with his reflection. The mouth in the mirror moved while his did not. The eyes therein burned red.

This was the first time such a message had been delivered to him from beyond. After so many years, was this the sign he had been hoping for?

"What..." Ralph paused, thinking for a moment. His eyes were wide and uncertain. "What would you have me do?"

"Do not allow them to find the boatman," his reflection commanded, in that striking-match sound. In awe, Maia stroked his black beard. The reflection did not.

"Is this... the word?" Maia breathed, barely able to believe it.

"The word is..." and here the apparition in the mirror paused with a sinister air. When it spoke, again, the voice was abyssal-deep and choked with filth. "Do not allow them to find the boatman."

"For how long?" Maia asked, barely able to contain the excitement in his voice.

"Not long," said the thing in the mirror, its face blackening like cooking meat. A look of childlike smugness swept over it for the barest of seconds. "Not long."

The thing in the mirror vanished then without sound or smell, and Maia staggered and grabbed at the white porcelain sink as if he had been held by the throat. His breath heaved as if he had just run a marathon. He looked at the mirror and saw his own face looking back. Disappointed, he waited for something more, but nothing came.

He gripped the basin hard enough to make something crack in the wall. With a huff of breath, he released it and stepped back. He thought of smoke.

And where there was smoke...

"Stop them," he repeated to himself, nodding and rubbing his hands together eagerly. "Stop them. If the boatman isn't found, war will come."

War would ram itself home.

Ralph Maia's normally stoic face split into an unG.o.dly, ferocious grin. Elation ignited his core. It was not the word that he had been expecting, but anyone could plainly see that the real word was not far behind as long as the boatman remained unfound. The longer he did, the closer the word came into sound.

Maia slapped his hands together like a t.i.tanic sumo wrestler before battle. Lightening had not been called down yet, but the thunder could be heard in the distance. And it was coming Maia's way Coffee. Ralph needed coffee badly. Just one star burst cup to fire up his engines. Racket up them highs only felt by pilots and speed freaks. He had preparations to make and no time to lose.

The o.r.g.a.s.mic bliss known as War was coming like canon shot.

Chapter 22.

"So what happened?" South Carolina State Trooper Dean asked the biker sat down in front of him. Behind his mask of neutrality, the trooper felt more than a little satisfaction from seeing this road s.h.i.t quivering like he had just jumped into a winter river. Dean recognized the biker who had no particular gang affiliation; he had chased the f.u.c.ker enough times to recognize the back of his head from fifty yards out. He let his eyes drift past the man and inspected, for the third time since the troopers had arrived, the road side bar called the Crazy House. It was Redneck heaven. Paramedics swarmed over the worse of the unconscious lot, big burly bikers and a.s.sorted road sc.u.m, wearing grease streaked blue jeans, sleeveless shirts and torn denim vests or ripped leather jackets. Thick arms and hairy paunches were marked with laughing skulls, daggers and barbed wire entangled with roses. The screamers of the highway, an entire pack of them, perhaps twenty or more, and here they were writhing about on the ground with a growing list of injuries that sent one medic to radio in for a helicopter. One first responder believed that a train must have struck the whole lot, when another later clarified it was a bar fight. He got that from the owner of the Crazy House; a bar fight which had torn apart d.a.m.ned near two dozen brawlers, including the bar tenders.

Trooper Dean had seen this s.h.i.t before. Usually it was a fight over a woman, or a bike. Perhaps one of them didn't back down fast enough, and the wolves fell on the offender. Bad drugs or booze made a normal man unreasonable sometimes. They could make a bunch of animals like this become cannibals.

Of the many that were suffering from broken bones, concussions, torn ligaments, missing teeth, ruptured eyeb.a.l.l.s, punctured organs or even internal bleeding, only one biker looked to be in any condition to give a statement as to what happened. And whatever drugs he had been on during the fight looked as if they were running out. Dean didn't like talking to the guy as a medic had him on his belly, trying to ascertain why the victim was bleeding profusely from his rectal area. Dean shook his head. It was looking more like a bomb went off in the bar.

Trooper Dean decided to stoop down so that he could both hear better and not see the paramedic gingerly spread the man's a.s.s cheeks apart. "Well? You feel like talking any?"

The victim's head was right before Dean's black boots. Dean remembered the guy's nickname. They called him Squirrels.h.i.t. Right now, he looked like it. Not only was Squirrels.h.i.t's a.s.s gurgling blood, his right knee had been twisted around so that his boot toes were pointed at his right shoulder. Jeeeezus! Then there were his arms, both of which were snapped back at the elbows. The right side of Squirrels.h.i.t's face looked like the royal blue steak that Dean had eaten the night before, pulped and b.l.o.o.d.y. There was an imprint there that could be a boot print as well.

And this miserable survivor was the only one that was conscious and lucid enough to talk.

Squirrels.h.i.t's left eye, the one that had escaped the mash of the boot, moved about like a fish's. It looked like it wanted nothing better than to be free of this wreck of a body, especially before the drugs in its system wore off.

"A fight," Squirrels.h.i.t slurred.

Dean could see that the man's teeth. The air slicing across that broken window smile would just add to Squirrels.h.i.t's approaching joy of sobriety. Jeeezus!

"A fight," Dean smirked and shook his head. He gazed around the war scene and wondered if Bosnia or Somalia could produce worse. Maybe a herd of cattle had run through the place. h.e.l.l, perhaps even a missile strike. But a fight? Somehow the word did not fit the carnage around him.

"I was..." the eye seemed to recognize the law officer now, "drinking."

"Uh-huh."

"Clay was behind the bar."

"Right. That Clay?" Clay was currently holding his jaw in place. It looked as if someone had tried to rip the thing from his head with a meat hook. A leg had been broken too, by the odd angle of the limb. There weren't enough medicine men around to see to him yet. They were tending to the worse looking ones of the bunch.

The eye rolled in the direction of where Dean was looking. "No. That's not Clay. He's by... the cooler."

This made Trooper Dean scowl. He looked to the man lying by the cooler and wished he hadn't. Jesus, Joseph and Mary. Clay just might get the 'Most f.u.c.ked Up' award if he survived his wounds.

Squirrels.h.i.t took a breath. Sp.a.w.ny, red drool leaked from his mouth as he exhaled.

"Dewy was at the end... of the bar. Got his fingers caught in that... wooden piece that... goes up and down. Clay closed the piece down on Dewy's hand. Didn't see his hand there... Crushed it... Heard the clap of wood as... it came down. f.u.c.ker screeched. Getting your... b.a.l.l.s caught in a Harley's spokes... would be worse."

Squirrels.h.i.t's forehead rested against the gravel ground, and Dean almost felt a pang of sympathy for the amount of pain that had to be a.s.saulting his brain. But the man talked on.

"Dewy's hollerin'. Can't move his fingers. Clay pulls the countertop back up. Dewy's fingers are... shredded, man. One of the bar b.i.t.c.hes goes for ice or something... and then... then... he came out of nowhere. Big f.u.c.ker. Looked like a skin... head. Like a wrestler. He grabbed Dewy by the fingers and ripped them off..."

Squirrels.h.i.t started to giggle. More b.l.o.o.d.y froth gathered on the ground.

"Something funny?" Trooper Dean wanted to know.

"Dewy didn't know what hollerin' was... till that f.u.c.ker took his fingers off," another rusty giggle. "Right off."

"We got up... everyone in the place. Everything came out. Pool sticks, knives, guns, broken bottles, knuckles, tire irons, everything. We were... we were... gonna kill the rat f.u.c.k b.a.s.t.a.r.d. See how many... pool sticks we could shove up his a.s.s. Gonna make him a f.u.c.kin' urban legend man..."

"And?" Dean prompted when Squirrels.h.i.t looked to be about to go to sleep.

Squirrels.h.i.t smiled the grin of a desert skull. "The f.u.c.k came... at us, man. All of us. Our b.i.t.c.hes ran...when Cruise went down..."

Cruise. Trooper knew the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He was the one over yonder with the broken back and the potato mashed t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es.

Squirrels.h.i.t began to cry.

"He picked Cruise up and brought him down... across the counter... four or five times... then threw him out the window. Then... then... he came for..."

Squirrels.h.i.t's eye squeezed shut, and for a moment, Dean thought he had died.

"Me!" The biker's eye flew open. Whatever pain sedative was in the man's system looked to have finally worn off. Squirrels.h.i.t started to thrash. The medic working on his a.s.s yelled for a.s.sistance. Squirrels.h.i.t's eye found Dean. It was redder than before. "AND HE WAS LAUGHIN, MAN!! HE WAS LAUGHIN!"

Red spittle flew from his lips, and Squirrels.h.i.t began to scream. Another paramedic dropped on him, trying to contain the thrashing form. Dean stood up and away, fixing his hat and letting the professionals deal with fix the broken biker. He would not ever admit that Squirrels.h.i.t's rant unnerved him. Squirrels.h.i.t continued to shriek until one of the medicine men jabbed something into his a.s.s and arm. The biker began to relax almost immediately, but Dean did not see this.

Trooper Dean was heading for his car and the radio there.

Chapter 23.

After the battle of the Beacon, the Stickman parked his Chevrolet Sunbird on the parking lot of an Irving Service Station along the Trans-Canada highway, with the window rolled down just a crack. He tried to sleep. To heal. He was covered in blankets that he had stashed in the trunk of his car, a lesson taught by his uncle Marty: always have blankets in the trunk when driving a long distance in the winter. Stickman found it amusing-the little things that stuck in one's mind as time marched on. His eyes opened and closed in a dreamy haze. It was night outside, and the light from the station illuminated the ceiling of his old Sunbird. He was in the back seat, wearing a pulled down ski mask and heavy gloves underneath his blankets. It was a tight squeeze, lying down as he was with his legs bunched against the far window, but it beat paying for a room somewhere. Something that he could not quite afford. The wind would rise and fall, moving around the car like some deep sea current seeking to suck it away into the night. He was medicated on Methadone tablets-the strongest s.h.i.t he could get his hands on at such short notice. The fight with Boomer at the Beacon had wrecked the Stickman, and he would hurt even more if not for the drugs. His face looked like a piece of tenderized steak, and his head felt as if someone was trying to pitch a tent inside his skull. But he was still walking, which was more than he could say for the likes of Boomer and Mr. Tigh-and wondered why he still thought of Mr. Tigh as a 'mister.' Stickman's injuries were only bruises, and they would heal in time. They always did.

He thought about the fight. It had been a good one. He was glad he won it. He wasn't so happy he had to f.u.c.k up Boomer and Tigh, but if they hadn't given him the run around in the first place, none of this would have happened. Stick could understand why Tigh had protected this Tony Levin guy, but Stickman was after blood. Badge was going to get revenged.

As always, Stickman did most of his thinking and recollecting when the lights were out. The cold that crept into him wasn't that uncomfortable, and he wasn't sure if it was actually cold or simply too much painkiller. With each drifting breath, he relaxed a little more, and his mind disconnected. The winter wind encircled the car, moaning to his last bits of consciousness, and Stickman wished it would f.u.c.k off. It was the darkness that allowed him to think. The darkness covered all visual distractions. It was comforting to him. He thought of Badger, lying in his hospital bed near death. It was a s.h.i.tty way to go down. If Stick had been around, he would have covered his a.s.s, but Badge could be thick headed sometimes. Stickman should have been with him that night; cursed the fact he wasn't. Then, he was thinking of the Liquor Dome, the drinker's paradise.

Five separate bars all under the one roof, and a guy with a full wallet could not find a better place to lessen the load. The festivities began around nine, and it was a Friday night. Badger had brought him to the place, and a pitcher of beer later, the man was up wandering the dance floor. Stick followed, and together they slipped through the ma.s.ses of gyrating bodies like connected beads of mercury. This was difficult to do for the Stickman; he did not like so many people being around him, and if it hadn't been for the beer, he would probably have eventually snapped. Stickman only managed to hold onto his sanity because of Badger and the beer.

And Beverly.

The night was ripe for mingling. And mingle they did. Stickman, who believed he had less than zero s.e.xual attraction-except to soaped up convicts in showers-felt a soft exploring hand cup his pec from behind. It gave a squeeze before running down the tracks of his ribs. He was wearing a Moosehead beer t-shirt and blue jeans, and he supposed the clothes were snug, like the hand that was slinking downwards. When it reached his waist, it disappeared. Stickman whirled about, intent on targeting someone and pounding the s.h.i.t out of them. Badger was forgotten, lost in a pulsing tide of flesh and loud music.

Standing before the Stickman was a woman, an exceptionally fine woman. Brunette, permed, with well-done make-up. White t-shirt and black bra underneath. Stick made it a point to gawk. He wasn't up on small talk. Didn't know how really. But somehow, he had hooked her, attracted her, and she was a pretty piece of pie. She sized him up for seconds, the music thumping in the air like orkish war drums, and took a small step towards him with a smile on her face. Stick remembered that smile. Remembered the wetness of it. Even now, he could not fathom the depths of his luck in finding her. She could easily have any man in the whole place, and yet she gave him the quick rub down. She saw his face and stayed. She stepped in closer. Stick leaned forward as well, close to her ear, and shouted loud enough to be heard over the industrial beat.

"YOU'RE NOT A MAN, RIGHT?"

Thinking back on it, it was then disaster could have struck. But it didn't. Instead, her face lost its l.u.s.tre for a moment, as if wondering if she had been just insulted or joked with. Then, she saw the fear in Stick's face, and her smile returned, a little clouded.

"No. I can prove it."

And she had.

She stepped in close to him, close enough for him to cream his underwear in a flash and pressed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s up against his tight chest. She shouted in his ear if he could feel those.

He could indeed.

Her hand took his and guided it to her centre, right there in amidst all of those gyrating savages. Could he feel that?

Yup.

Any other questions?

"He'll be back in a moment, babe," Badger suddenly yelled as he yanked Stick away from his G.o.ddess. Her expression showed as much surprise as Stick's.

"Can't leave you for a minute, can I? Jesus!" Badger shouted as he hauled his man towards the bar, leaving the woman of Stick's dreams to be swallowed up by the crowd. Stick felt as if his only friend had just shot him in the back, and continued to feel that way even after Badger bought the fifth round of beers for them both. Stick remembered buying the sixth round, mostly because he was numb by then and felt he should do something, from a tall sleepy looking waiter who walked about with his mouth open. Stick handed the guy a twenty. The waiter inspected the bill, stared at the Stickman for a quick moment, and plucked a bill from his waist pouch and gave it back. Stick took the beer and the money.

"What are you doin'?" Badger suddenly roared.

"Huh?" Sleepy Eyes abruptly became alert, caught like a kid doing something very wrong, like snooping around in his parents' closet just as both mom and dad walked in.

"You f.u.c.king took a twenty. That was a twenty he gave you," Badger said loudly, smiling evilly at the accused. "Give him back the ten."

"Huh?" None too bright either, or bright enough to play stupid.

Badger stepped in close to the man. "I f.u.c.king saw you take his twenty and try to pa.s.s off a five. You choosing your tips these days?"

Stick remembered the five in his hand. He remembered moving in to flank the waiter. The waiter recognized the ma.s.s of the Stickman.

"I was heading back to the bar for change," Sleepy Eyes said. "I wasn't doing anything bad."

"You didn't tell him you were going back for change. You were just going," Badger's smile got wider, amused at this little s.h.i.t's pathetic lie.