Frightened Boy

Chapter Nine - Devils

9. Devils

“How did you even find us?” I asked the driver. “And who are you?”

“Erika called. I owe her. Who are you?”

“I’m Fri—I’m Clark. Clark Horton, what’s your name?”

“Call me Guts.” Black hair in tight cornrows jutting out the back of his bandana, shotgun resting haphazardly between us. “I’m a delivery driver.”

“So, what now?”

“Hide, I guess. I was hoping you had an idea. That was the extent of my heroics back there,” he said, rubbing his face with a big hand.

“I don’t even know if we can hide,” I said. “Can you really stay clear of them? Can’t they find us? And we have to save Erika.”

Guts shook his head. “There are gangs out there, and there are tribes—old military units, police forces that lost their paychecks and their patriotism. Every now and then, I meet someone who will talk about the Strangers, but no one fucks with them. They raid cities, they attack barracks. It’s an army.”

Guts plowed over decrepit super highways with cracks and fissures in the concrete as wide as my fist. His heavy steel-plated vehicle shuddered and groaned as the suspension bitched about every contour.

We were heading in the general direction of downtown Banlo Bay. The thick smog the metropolis emitted reflected the gangly mass of lights like some deep-sea organism that was its own sun.

“I have a place,” Guts said. “We’ll be safe there, at least for a while. What do the Strangers want from you anyway?”

“Footage,” I replied. “I don’t even have it, and I don’t know where it is.”

Erika might have known where to find it, but I wasn't about to tell Guts that. The less people knew, the safer she’d be.

We closed in on one of the inner loops of Banlo Bay. At last, Guts exited into a parking garage and hid his car in a back corner on the lowest level, as far away from human eyes as possible. We stepped out of the garage and into the dingy outdoor halls of the apartment complex Guts apparently called home.

As we approached the door, he halted and put his hand out to stop me. Guts ducked down, grunting as he threw himself onto the floor. I gawked as he dodged, and barely saw the small blue object hurtling through the air on a collision course with my face.

“Fuck!” I yelped as the hard plastic block bounced off the side of my head. My vision blurred, skull pulsed with pain.

“Did you see who threw that?” Guts asked.

“No! I didn’t see… I mean, shit. Ow! What the hell?”

The hard plastic block started ringing. While rubbing my head, I stretched down to pick up the cell phone. “Hello?” I asked, uncertain.

“Clark Horton?” the voice on the other end asked.

“Yeah? Hey, why’d you throw this phone at me?”

“That was only my courier. I need you to listen very carefully. We don’t have much time. I need to guarantee you are who you say you are.”

“I’m a little bit busy actually,” I said.

Guts had picked himself up from the floor and was examining the letter nailed to his door.

“I know all about the Secret Society of Strangers, and I know about Escher," the Voice on the Other End said. "I know you have something he wants, and I can help you… but first you have to prove you are who you say you are—that you are, in fact, Clark Horton.”