Always You Part 18
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Just catching up? Read the previous installment here.
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And we’re back to the sprawling saga of half-baked wit and philosophical abandon: the one and only “Always You”.
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3.
We pulled up in front of an older apartment complex on the corner of North and Shenandoah. With its gross-looking lime green coat of stucco paint and the overall look of rectangle sitting on top of a small box, I was more surprised than not. Of course we’d be going to Kenneth’s house, probably to get some privacy as we lost all sense of self-control in the face of the apocalypse.
I did note the distinct lack of red, though. Forgive me, but I thought that his trademark color was red. Hence, you know, the hotrod red car he could barely afford.
We pulled into the complex’s parking lot. Kenneth pulled the ignition and hopped out over the door. He was already halfway up the stairs before he noticed some of us still open and close doors, not to mention wear seatbelts.
“I don’t like this,” Carina said as she got out and shouldered her laptop bag.
We just came from a drug house, mind you, but somehow this place was too far off.
“What are we doing here?” She ignored my sentiments.
“Well, Zack Forest may have his whole underhanded scheme revealed, or whatnot, but there’s only three of us.”
“There’s only one of him. I can operate from the car, if that’s what you’re—“
“There’s not just one of him, Carina. Did you forget the part where he has his own crew?” Good call. His Alchemists crew—you know, the official goon brigade of the year—would tear me and Kenneth apart before we even got close to Forest. And even then, it’s just me and Kenneth. Nobody to bail us out means that if we screw up, we’re done.
Color me a skeptic, but I didn’t like those odds very much.
“So, without further ado…” Kenneth came down from the stairs and waved his hand upward. His mouth curled up at the edge and his cowlick just barely out of place told me two things: this was wasting valuable time, and he was out of hair gel.
Carina looked at me with a tense look. It said something like “if this is a bad idea” with a tense look. It said something like “if this is a bad idea, it’s yours.”
It wouldn’t be. There’s a reason we needed Kenneth, and it’s not just because he can fight pretty well.
He’s got his own crew.
I tugged at Carina’s elbow and headed up the stairs, Kenneth and the resident computer girl following along. When we got to the top, Kenneth took out a pair of—what else?—bright-red keys and walked to the frontmost, largest-from-the-outside unit. The key unlocked the first two locks, and the crudely-added bottom one unlocked from the inside.
“Where’ve you been, man?” A voice came from the inside.
“Just taking care of business,” Kenneth said. I swear, his voice dropped a full octave. “Let us in.”
“Password?”
“There isn’t one.”
The door swung open. Huh. Clever password there, kid.
In light of the recent homes I had been forced to visit, nothing could be genuinely off-putting or disconcerning. That said, the sight of twenty or so guys my own age lying around on bean bags, busted-in sofas, and just the carpeted floor made me a bit on edge. Every one of them looked dumber than me and simultaneously stronger than me. Kenneth had his own goon squad lying around. Talk about convenient.
He walked to the far back corner of the room, dodging cans of Bud Light and empty Hot Cheetos bags, and found a power strip lying on the floor. Having it plugged into seven different things, one of them being another power strip, seemed anything but intelligent.
Kenneth yanked the cable from the wall hard enough that I was surprised the wall itself didn’t follow him.
“Hey! I was watching’ that.”
“What gives?”
“Who’s the jackass who cut the power?”
“Who’s the fuckin’ asshole who ate my cheese?”
Except for that last, bizarre one, the crew groaned and looked around at one another. Apparently the thought that they could have blown a fuse never came to mind. That said, once the one lying across a fitting bright-red bean bag got a look at the three of us, he jumped to attention. The remaining men followed suit.
Once I got a good look at them, I noticed these weren’t men at all. Well, legally speaking, they were, but nobody here was older than me or Kenneth. We all probably went to the same high school together.
No wonder Forest having grown men in his crew was downright weird. This was the way it was supposed to be, and it looked like a bunch of little kids playing dress-up. The uniform was simple enough: something red on your upper body. A few guys had on basic shirts, three more had wifebeaters, and one lone, probably lost and confused kid younger than us had on a collared shirt.
“At ease, Riders,” Kenneth said. His crew’s name was the ‘Riders’. Good to know. Suddenly the bright Freudian excuse on wheels didn’t seem as terribly out of place.
The guys went back to lying wherever they had been before. Kenneth motioned to the table taking up most of the living room space, which had somehow become the home of a local landfill. One of the wifebeater’d Riders brushed it all away with one muscular swipe.
“What’s the orders, Kenneth?” The youngest one said. His voice wasn’t high per se, but simply had a boyish quality to it. He reminded me of Aladdin.
Kenneth motioned to myself and a confused-looking Carina.
“You know our guests: Henry Collins and his Operator, Carina.”
I felt a tinge of annoyance at the ‘his’ part. It got overshadowed by the hushed, wowed tones. You know, I’m getting a little tired of being a local legend. Even if that legend is, you know, mine. Is that a little spoiled?
“Animal House,” the guy with the powerful hand-brush-away thing said. “Where’s the rest of them?”
“This is all of them.”
Worse than hushed tones: dead silence. I didn’t know if they believed him or found us a tad over-the-top.
“You also know Zack Forest and his Alchemists. They’re moving. Tonight.”
“What for?” The young one asked. Kenneth shrugged.
“No idea, Donny. I won’t lie: I’ve seen some weird shit today, and I can’t really explain it in detail. Still…believe me when I say, if we don’t do something in the next hour, we are all dead.”
The word ‘dead?’ rang out in every conceivable tone and confused voice.
“We’re going to help him. I’m still a member of Henry’s crew, and like it or not, he needs my help. He needs all our help.”
Imagine my surprise when they just went along with it.
“What do you need from us?” Donny asked without missing a beat.
“That table, for starters,” Carina interjected. “I’ll need a few external monitors and keyboards if you have them. I have to plug in the laptop, and I definitely need an Internet connection. Otherwise I won’t be able to call you and help.”
Awkward silence. A platoon of eyes looked at Carina with a fair bit of confusion, and then drifted back to Kenneth.
He groaned, ran a palm over his face, and looked up at them with an expectant eye roll. “What are you waiting for?” He announced, “You heard Carina. Get it set up! We’re going out in an hour.”
The hustle could have been something out of an ‘Army Strong’ advertisement. The Riders ran all around the apartment, finding cables, monitors, and keyboards, while Donny tinkered with the flashing wireless router. Carina awkwardly took a seat by the table and booted up the computer. A few keystrokes later and she felt right at home.
Kenneth folded his arms and watched the magic work. I couldn’t believe it.
“It’s not that I’m a tyrant or an asshole leader guy,” he said. “I hate those guys.”
I smiled a bit at that one.
“Then how do they follow you like this?”
“Because I’m almost as selective about who joins as you are. Every one of these men? I trust them with my life. That’s how it should be.”
Something told me that’s exactly not how the Alchemists worked, and therein lay the motive to help.
“That and the whole apocalypse thing,” he added. It’s funny, because he didn’t even know the half of it.
“And I don’t want to know the other half,” he said. “Just tell me what you need, and I’ll do it.”
Good man.
“Thanks, Ken. Really.”
“This is two you owe me, jerk-off,” Kenneth added with a flash of a grin.
“Uh, if your bromance is over, we have a bit of an issue here,” Carina announced. The Riders hadn’t finished setting up her workstation, but she was online already. Donny knew how to work.
“What’s wrong? Is the laptop okay?” Kenneth asked.
“That’s fine,” Carina’s eyes scanned the screen carefully, “But…well, I don’t really know what to say…I guess…”
“Spit it out already!” I said. “Suspense sucks.”
She nodded. You really can’t argue with such sound logic.
“Well, I’m back on the boards, right?”
The boards?
“Operator boards. Where we go to get maps and information and stuff. It’s one of those websites that’s secret, but like, openly public?”
Yeah, like 4chan.
“Not at all like…anyway, there’s an announcement. All official crews are supposed to be at the beach Boardwalk at 9 o’clock.”
I looked at the clock on the wall—there’s a clock on the wall in a glorified gang hideout—and read disaster.
That’s twenty minutes. What’s he doing in twenty minutes?
“I don’t want to know. There’s maps already thrown up online…we’re not the only ones planning on meeting Forest there, that’s pretty obvious.”
“No, but we are the only ones going there to foil a menacing scheme,” I suggested, “And he knows it.”
Ken concurred. “This whole thing feels like a trap.”
It’s a trap with two options: we go or we don’t.
We go.
We didn’t come this far to back out now, right?
Paloma and the Jack would get kinda pissed with us, too. I know I would be.
“We’re out of here in fifteen,” Ken announced to the moving troupe of young ass-kickers. “Donny, you stay here with Carina. The rest of you know the drill.”
The drill. Simple enough: go in, stop the Ultima reality from destroying Miranda Cove, go out.
How hard could this be?
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Read the next installment here.
