Chapter Thirty Two

The company you keep at death is, of all things, most dependent on chance. - Keri Hulme

Chapter Thirty Two

Ares was a much bigger pain in the ass than Hep had ever expected him to be. He was starting to get a little rough around the edges and fighting back when they tried to move him around, which was good, but also bad because he could never be sure how much fight Ares had in him at a given time.

Hep had learned pretty quickly that hanging around for a long time waiting for someone to die was a drag. Unfortunately, that was the only way they could be sure they’d get there in time, since Ares kept finding new and interesting ways to slow them down.

Hep, Scroat and of course Ares were running late for a death. This one was a construction accident of some kind at a site where a skyscraper was being built. According to his notes, Scott Shermer was going to be hit by falling debris in thirty seconds. The three of them were easily thirty minutes away from the construction site, and that’s without factoring in the extra road time the construction itself was causing.

Hep was hoping that Scott would be nicely impaled on something and waiting for them to collect him. It would be a relief, and a nice change of pace if they didn’t have to chase somebody down.

“Hep, I still don’t want to do this. Could you just stop and let me out?” Ares asked.

“I know you still don’t want to do this. No. You’re still coming with us. We’re trying to get Ares back.”

“That was the old me. The new me doesn’t go in for death and suffering, just peace and love!”

“Yeah. We all liked the old you better,” Hep said.

He couldn’t believe how much the construction of the new building had screwed up traffic. They could see the structure about a mile away, but the impact of closing two lanes on the road was huge. They rolled along at under five miles per hour.

Ares started fighting against the handcuffs again.

“Will you cut that out? It’s just making you tired.”

Between grunts, Ares said, “Well, it’s annoying you as well, so it isn’t a completely wasted effort. Jerk.”

“I thought you hippies were all about passive resistance,” Hep said.

Just then was a loud CLANG as one of the welds holding the grab bar Ares was handcuffed to broke loose.

“Ha ha!” Ares said, and leapt out of the sidecar. He ran through the slow traffic to the sidewalk and fled in the opposite direction. His hands were still cuffed together.

“Shit!” Hep said. He was almost as irritated with himself for the bad weld as he was with Ares getting away.

“Fuck!” Scroat said.

Hep did a hard u-turn and hopped his motorcycle up on to the sidewalk Ares was running on. Scroat followed Hep, and the two of them sped down the sidewalk. Pedestrians leapt out of the way as Hep called “Sorry!” as he roared past them. They quickly caught up to Ares, who jumped back into traffic and started running down the centerline between two lanes of oncoming traffic.

Scroat followed him, flinging his motorcycle from side to side to dodge traffic and get in behind Ares again. Hep kept pace with them on the sidewalk, doing his best to keep an eye on Ares and avoid running over other sidewalk users.

They were approaching an intersection, and Hep sped up in order to get ahead of Ares. He turned hard to the right, bounding off the sidewalk onto the road and coming to a stop in front of Ares. Ares wasn’t quite able to stop in time, and stumbled over Hep’s sidecar.

Scroat hopped off of his bike and was on Ares in a matter of seconds.

Traffic around them was now thoroughly messed up.

“Well, Ares, I’d tried to make sure you were comfortable in the sidecar, but you messed that up. Now I’ve got to handcuff you to the spare,” Hep said.

In order for Ares to be handcuffed to the spare wheel, he had to face backwards and kneel on the seat in the sidecar. This meant that oncoming traffic saw the ugliest biker they would ever see and his passenger - Ares’s ass in tan cargo shorts.

When Ares was secured and thoroughly uncomfortable, Hep decided that they might as well not waste any more time, and rode right back up on to the sidewalk.

The three of them reached the construction site in a matter of minutes, leaving behind them a wake of frustrated motorists and terrified pedestrians.

Hep and Scroat did a quick tour around the construction site, looking for some kind of clue as to where the dead guy might be. There were a couple of workers around, but not many, and they all looked very alive. They also looked somewhat freaked out.

The reason they looked freaked out was not, as you might suspect, because two motorcycles had ridden up the sidewalk into their construction site and one of the riders was handcuffed backwards in a sidecar. They hardly seemed to notice that.

What they were freaked out about appeared to be the not inconsiderable amount of wreckage caused by a collapsed crane. Bent and broken chunks of metal lay scattered about the site. The operators cockpit was absolutely destroyed. Hep had a sneaking suspicion that Scott had been the crane’s operator.

While Ares was carrying on, yelling things like “Hey, some one help me,” to the construction workers, who ignored him, Hep walked over to the guy who looked the most like the foreman.

“Hey, is there a Scott Shermer here?”

“Naw, they sent him home when the crane collapsed,” the foreman said. “He was pretty shaken up. That was a two-hundred foot fall in a steel and glass box, and he walked away without a scratch on him.”

“Son of a bitch!” Hep said. The foreman misunderstood Hep’s frustration as amazement.

“Yeah, pretty incredible, I know. Look, Scott will be back tomorrow, but you’d better get out of here. This isn’t a safe place at the best of times, and you don’t have a hard hat on.”

“Yeah, all right. You have a good day,” Hep said.

“Not likely,” the foreman said, and walked away.

Ares and Scroat were waiting back by the entrance to the site, where Hep had left his bike.

“Well, thanks Ares, now the guy isn’t even here,” Hep said as he climbed on his bike.

“Good. I told you I didn’t want a part of this,” Ares said.

“Yeah, well, you’re still going to have to be a part of it, we’re just stuck going to Scott’s house now.”

“Where does he live?” Scroat asked.

Hep pulled out the phone and pushed a few buttons. “Well, according to this, about an hour away,”

“Fuck. Ares, you shithead,” Scroat said.

“I thought you liked to ride as much as you can,” Ares said.

“Yeah, for fun. Not chasing after some guy who is supposed to be dead already.”

“Let’s just get moving,” Hep said.

Ares was fairly subdued for the trip to Scott’s house. His relative calmness was probably because kneeling for a couple of hours straight gets uncomfortable quickly, and thrashing around doesn’t do much to help that.

They arrived at Scott’s house. Hep was disappointed to see that Scott’s house was a single floor rambler, with no pool. It was going to be tough to fabricate an accident. There were, however, tall hedges on either side of his property, which meant his neighbors would be unable to see what was going on in his yard.

Scott lived alone, which made it fairly easy for Hep and Scroat to sneak around and keep tabs on Scott without being seen.

After watching Scott watch TV for three hours, they saw him go into the bathroom, and could hear water running. He was filling the bathtub.

“Maybe he’ll slip?” Hep said.

“I fucking hope so,” Scroat said.

“Mrfle mrfle mrf” Ares said. Hep had apologized profusely, and gagged Ares before letting him out of the sidecar. Ares calling for help would probably ruin their attempts at stealth.

They waited, and listened for a nasty thump from Scott falling in the tub. No such luck.

“Aw, fuck this,” Scroat said and marched off.

“Where the hell are you going?” Hep stage whispered to Scroat. Scroat did not answer.

A few minutes later, Hep peeked through window and saw Scroat wander into Scott’s kitchen carrying an orange extension cord. Shortly after that, Scroat came back out of the kitchen carrying the extension cord which was now attached to a toaster. He walked towards the bathroom.

Scroat stopped in the hallway and plugged in the extension cord. He pushed down the lever to turn the toaster on, and kicked open the door to the bathroom.

Scott shouted, “Who the fuck are you?”

Scroat didn’t answer, just casually tossed the toaster into the bathtub. It sparked and hissed, and a few minutes later the circuit breaker went off somewhere in the house leaving him in the dark with a toasty, dead Scott.

Hep came into the bathroom a few seconds later.

“You know, we’re really not supposed to be doing the actual killing,” Hep said.

“Well, how long did you want to wait? I want a fucking beer already, and it’s getting late.”

“What the hell is going on?” Scott’s soul asked.

“You’re dead. Let’s go,” Hep said.

“Aw, man. That totally sucks!”

“Yep. Get used to it,” Hep said, and grabbed the soul’s arm. “Let’s go, now.”

Hep and the soul stepped out of this world, while Scroat wandered back outside. He saw Ares was now chained to Scott’s gas meter.

“Mrfle mrf!” Ares said. His tone was quiet irritated.

“Yeah, it was a pain in the ass,” Scroat said. “But, now we can go get some beer. I’ve got a powerful thirst tonight.”

Hep appeared again next to the two of them. “All right, that’s over with. Let’s go get a drink and relax.”

“Fuck yeah!”

“Mrfle!”

“Yeah, give me a second Ares, Hep said. He unlocked Ares, then removed the gag.

“If you ever gag me again, I’ll rip out your spleen and feed it to your mom,” Ares said.

“Hey, that sounds a little more like the Ares I know,” Hep said.

“Whatever, Hep. Let me go back to California,” Ares said.

“Nope. You’ve got far too much hippiness lingering. You can go when I’m sure that you’re going to resume hunting down the family and friends of everyone who wrongs you in order to play volleyball with their heads.”

“I told you, that’s the old me!”

“Yep. Good old Ares. Come on, new sucky Ares, let’s get a beer.”

“I don’t like beer,” Ares said, petulant.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Scroat said. “Everyone likes beer.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Hep, we gotta get him cured quick. Or else mercy-kill him.”