Chapter 1
Rand Carter was a stranger to violence. Although he acted as
a gateway into the armed forces for hundreds of military recruits, none of them
ever called him from their wars. Over the eight years of his career, he waited
for an email or a letter. He wanted something from one of the young, nervous
people he had vetted into service. A note about how killing a stranger can
unsettle you or how narrowly avoiding death can make the air taste sweeter. However,
no one shared their experiences and he remained ignorant.
On a
dry, hot day in the summer of 2013; Carter played the same mental game he
always did when getting dressed. He pretended each layer was a kind of armor
and that he was gearing up to participate in an epic battle. His white
undershirt was chainmail, his button-down blue long-sleeve was Kevlar and his
suit jacket was sturdy body armor. It was a silly distraction he had
entertained in his mind ever since he was little. A fantasy meant to make the
application of clothes a little more fun, a little less adult.
The sun caught his wedding ring at
just the proper angle to dazzle him as he pulled out of his garage and the rest
of the drive was spent remembering a sunlit day at Innsmouth Park, years ago.
Entering the Naval base, talk radio played in his car. He wasn’t listening. He
was eating warm macaroni and cheese with a plastic spoon while laughing about a
story Elizabeth was telling.
Pulling
into a visitor’s space, several of the employees waved and smiled at him. He
had been conducting background investigations for the government for the past eight
years, but he never bothered to learn people’s names because there would always
be new ones. Rand waved back and tried to smile in return.
Ushered
past the polite but stern base security, Rand was shown to his usual interview
room in the usual nondescript hallway lined with open doors. He noticed a
half-eaten birthday cake sitting in a break room and secretly hoped that some
would be offered before he left.
His interview room had once been
someone’s office, he supposed. Little rings where hot mugs had rested stained
the desk top. Patches of wall were darker in the places that once housed frames
(perhaps family photos or diplomas) and had therefore been protected from the
bleaching efforts of the sun. The little swivel chair groaned under his weight
and he opened his briefcase to begin sorting the papers.
Another
mental game to make his job less tedious: he imagined he was interrogating an
enemy agent. Looking for lies, trying to catch someone in a contradiction, all
of these were essential to a winning condition. To make an interviewee cry was
a pyrrhic victory. In reality, Carter felt guilty after causing someone to
dredge up painful experiences. While his job was to search out exploitable
weaknesses, he never fully relaxed into that role.
His
interview that day was with Gus Johanson. Johanson was applying for a top
secret clearance to move into a better job and to earn more money in the Navy.
Looking through the paperwork, Carter knew the interview would be easy. No
criminal record, no mental illness, no dark secrets. Just a Polish grandmother
that technically gave him ties to a foreign country. By this time in his
career, Carter was rarely surprised.
When
Johanson appeared in the room, he was affable and polite. The interview moved
along smoothly, as Carter knew it would. Johanson admitted to a speeding ticket
he had omitted from his paperwork but, otherwise, he was clean. As Carter was
going into his final questions (what he mentally called “The Lightning Round”),
the first gunshots reached their ears.
Carter
had stopped reading and held up his hand to silence Johanson. Neither of the
men had ever been in a war but Johanson recognized the noise immediately.
Carter heard the screaming next, the two men shared a look of utter fear that
somehow reassured them both.
“What
do we…” Carter said.
Johanson
was already standing, his hand unconsciously reaching for a sidearm that wasn’t
there. “Just stay in here, sir,” he said to Carter.
As
Johanson cracked the door to the interview room open, the sound of chaos came
pouring into the space, fire alarms and panicked calls. The bright, antiseptic
lights of the corridor were diffused through smoke. Acting on some instinct he
was likely not aware of, Johanson turned the lights off in the interview room.
Carter
could only think to stack the papers he was using into a folder and replace
them into his briefcase. Two shots rang out and something thudded, then a
skittering sound, across the hallway floor. Johanson eyed the lockers adjacent to
the interview room where his gun had been placed. He said a barely audible
prayer and crouched into the hall, pulling the door shut behind him.
Carter
willed himself to move, approaching the door to look for a locking mechanism.
There was not one. There was a small window in the heavy metal door, crisscrossed
with wire mesh to reinforce it. Carter looked out and saw that Johanson had
made it to the lockers. Another shot rang out, this time followed by a pained
groan somewhere closer (Carter guessed it was coming from the break room with
the ruined cake).
Johanson
had his gun. He looked towards Carter’s face in the window, motioning for him
to stay there. Johanson moved in the direction of the groan and the previous
shots. With a louder bang, the groaning stopped. Carter could make out a voice
yelling something. (Was it Johanson?) The only response to the yell was another
gunshot, the action just out of view. Craning his head to the furthest angle
the window would allow, Carter saw the white flooring was flecked with
darkening red splashes.
Carter
quickly moved back into the shadows of the room. He pressed himself against the
wall furthest from the door. He became aware of his heart hammering, his dry
throat. He thought of prayer and dismissed it just as quickly. Instead, he
touched his wedding band. A relief flooded over him. He understood he had been
on borrowed time for months now.
Silence
dominated the moment. No screams, no yelling and no gunshots. Even the blaring
fire alarms faded. No shadows passed in front of the door. Carter thought of
his cell phone and realized it would be in the same lockers in which Johanson
had left his gun. Surely, they would announce things were all clear? He
wondered if Johanson was hurt, lying in the hall, bleeding out.
At that
moment, the door was kicked so hard it bounced off the adjacent wall,
shattering the glass that Carter had his face against just moments before.
Carter’s eyes had already adjusted to the darkness, even the lights dimmed by
smoke seemed blinding. A hulking form filled the doorway.
A man
in fatigues switched the lights on, further straining Carter’s eyes. Carter
lifted his hands in the universal sign for “I give up.” He blinked as his
vision returned, seeing the man before him clearly at last. It was Chief Petty
Officer Hank Wilcox.
Months
earlier, in that very room, Carter had faced Wilcox across the same table and
interviewed him. Wilcox had applied for a top secret clearance but there had
been some issues with domestic violence that needed to be discussed. Wilcox had
seemed cagey and raw for the entire interview. Carter hadn’t liked him but
couldn’t find a shred of proof that Wilcox was unfit to hold his clearance.
Carter did not consider that interview a “win.”
Wilcox,
covered in the gore of his former co-workers, lifted his gun towards Carter. As
Wilcox took careful aim, a flash of recognition crossed his face.
“Hey,
it’s you…Carver.”
“Carter,
actually.”
Wilcox
said, “Carter, right, sorry. I hate to do this. You were very nice to me,
helped me a lot.”
Carter
realized he was clutching his briefcase. He saw the gun return to a position
level with his head and acted without thinking. Slinging the briefcase with all
his might, he caused Wilcox to move to the side. The gun went off and a burning
shaft of pain passed through Carter’s right thigh.
Looking
down at the wound, Carter saw his own blood cascading from the ragged hole in
his suit pants. He slowly slid down the wall, gravity winning at last. He
looked up again to see the barrel of Wilcox’s gun aimed squarely at his face,
not inches away.
“If
they don’t hurry up, we’re going to have to find someone else,” Wilcox
whispered.
“What?”
asked Carter.
Carter
was barely aware of the figure entering the room behind Wilcox. A thunderous
noise caused Carter to squeeze his eyes shut. Carter felt a weight on him, and
a warm liquid pouring over his shoulder.
“Sir,
are you alright?”
Carter
opened his eyes to find himself in darkness again. The corpse of Chief Petty
Officer Wilcox was resting partially on him, and against the corner where he
had fallen. The top of his head was missing and the blood continued to trickle
over Carter from above.
“Yes, I
think, yes…” said Carter from underneath the dead man. “Johanson, where is he?
Is he safe?”
Footsteps
and then the burden of Wilcox was removed from Carter. Someone said, “We need a
medic!” Carter didn’t know the man who was yelling. As his eyes closed, he saw
that his paperwork was scattered all over the room.
In a hospital room, the next day, Carter read about the
massacre in a national newspaper. Wilcox had murdered four of his co-workers
and two civilians, injured fourteen others and caused untold damage to the
actual base before he was put down. A search of his home off-base revealed his
wife and four-year old son murdered. Carter placed the paper down and saw an ad
for fabric softener, a small article about cooking with fish oil, a picture of
someone in Hollywood smiling. He began to cry, deep sobs that shook him.
Reaching
up to his eyes, he noticed his wedding ring was gone. He never asked where it
went.
The
next few days would consist of interviews with federal and local law
enforcement as well as Naval investigators; a parade of men with frowns and
leading questions. Carter would discover that Johanson was found dead just
outside the interview room. Also, Wilcox had been shot several times by his
victims before finding Carter. His reactions would have been slowed by the
injuries. Otherwise, Carter could have never caught him off guard. Carter could
only remember Wilcox’s gun.
Upon
Carter’s release from the hospital (no major arteries hit, but his femur was
broken and surgeries were required), he was called into the district office by
his manager. Still on pain killers and barely paying attention, Carter was
informed that his investigation into Hank Wilcox was deemed negligent. A local
psychiatrist would have readily admitted to Wilcox’s mental instability if she
had only been asked (of course, she only stated this after the fact). If Wilcox
hadn’t been given a clearance, he would not have had such access to the base on
the day of the massacre. Carter was told he was indirectly responsible for all
the “unpleasantness.”
“You
know you haven’t been as thorough since the accident,” his manager said. Carter
couldn’t remember his manager’s name. This blank face in a suit had bought him
lunch, given him performance reviews and sent him generic “holiday greeting”
cards every December. Carter just nodded and stared at the small speck of dried
mustard on his manager’s tie.
Carter
couldn’t argue. He turned in his badge, his laptop and the keys to his company
car. A co-worker he had never met drove him home without conversation.
Carter
stood in front of his empty house, looking at the flower bed his wife had
tended when she was alive. As a summer
storm swept in, Carter’s thoughts turned dark. He stood still in the rain and
thought about how empty the house already was. He assumed it would be emptier
with him inside it. Finally stepping in to pack a suitcase, he walked past a
room filled with her things that he kept locked on purpose.
Within a week, Rand Carter found
himself in a rental car that smelled of ancient cigarettes. He drove the back
roads and lonesome highways to the town of Still Creek, South Carolina.
