The Things We Bury - Part 1: In Anticipation of the End of the World [Completed]

Chapter 2: The Music Box (Part 6 of 6)

The night had brought peace to the parking lot.  The asphalt still trapped heat and pushed it up through the rubber soles of Tray Cullen's shoes, but the air had tempered to a more relaxed temperature.  Only a few cars remained scattered about the newly paved, gray expanse.  All of the pretend office workers of Aira had gone home for the day.  Beyond the chain link, the desert stretched far beyond the light cast by the perimeter of light posts.

High and remote, in the clear sky, the moon sat bloated and expectant.

Tray wiped the clammy sweat from his forehead with his bare arm, as he hustled to his car.  The thorough search he had undergone before leaving had left him shaken.  The security was so much tighter than anything he had expected.

It worried him.

He felt sick. And not just from the search and the scans.  That horrible episode in the OC had left his stomach feeling cold and quivering, and his blood feeling stretched thin in his veins.

Tray had hung out in crack dens and heroin houses.  He'd seen some awfully bad shit go down – nasty, unspeakable things.  He had even done some of them.  But the way that doctor had demolished that little girl...  It left him wanting to vomit.

He could still hear her howls— not wolf howls, just sobs of anguish.  When she had collapsed onto the floor, she rocked despondently on her hands and knees and made this pitiful noise that was halfway between a scream and whimper.  It would have been easy to call it the sound of a wounded animal, but it wasn't.  It was a wounded person.  It was the sound of torment and sorrow.

R.J. was yelling something over the intercom, but the words were lost on Tray, who had turned away and was trying to shut everything out.

He hadn't seen how the doctor finally managed to get the needle into the girl and put her out. There was just suddenly silence.  And when he dared to look into the bedroom again, he saw her lying in bed, asleep, and Gracie getting ready to perform her examination.

She got her easy way after all.  What a psycho bitch.

He reached his red Civic.  The keys slipped from his fingers and crashed to the ground.  Glancing over his shoulder at the building, he knelt to pick them up.  His knuckles grazed the hot pavement in their scramble.

Shit.  Security cameras probably saw me look back.  Fucking cameras everywhere.

Tray couldn't have been happier to pull out of the lot and get moving.  He rolled down the windows and blasted the car's air conditioning.  The fresh air would do him good, and the day's heat needed to exorcized from the car.  He headed straight for the highway.  

He could really use a fix.  Just a joint or a Valium would help so much.  Hell, he'd settle for a shot of tequila.  But all of that was off-limits.  Three trips to rehab had proved his resolve wasn't the strongest, but getting drug tested by two separate agencies had put the fear of God into him.  He couldn't afford to get kicked off the team.  As much as he might want to retreat away from the harsh, bright world to the dim, safe land in the center of his skull, he needed to walk the straight and narrow.  For the first time in his life, the consequences of his failure were too great.

Six miles from work, he pulled into a Sonic and spoke his order into the call box.  He didn't even have to think about it: a large Blast.  That beautifully disgusting concoction that was somewhere between milkshake and sundae and filled with bits of candy bar.  At twenty-six years old, this was what he was reduced to: relying on ice-cream as the only abuse he was allowed to unleash on his body.

It seemed so ridiculously juvenile.  But the luxuriant coldness of the calorie bomb actually helped to ease his nerves. 

He waited impatiently for the server to bring it out to the car, fidgeting the entire time.  The moment her back was turned, he scarfed it down, accepting the ice pang down the center of his skull as the necessary price for the brief moment of pleasure.

The ice cream sat in his unsettled stomach like a small, burrowing animal, but it left him with a pleasant chocolate, sugar daze.

When he recovered himself, he pulled out of the well-lit parking space and drove into the lot next door.  The walls of the real estate office draped the car in shadow.  All around him, the world looked barren and deserted.  If it weren't for the occasional car speeding down the road, he might have been the last man alive.

Tray carefully pulled the SIM card out of the smartphone the DTAA had given him and placed it on the dash.  Then he reached under the driver's seat.  His fingers probed until they found the tear in the fabric.  Buried in the foam rubber stuffing, he dug out the burner phone.

Tray selected the one number stored in its memory.

A blunt, male voice answered.  "You're late.  You better have something to report."

"I'm in," Tray said.

***

 Author's Note:

The next chapter is called "The Big Show."  I bet you can guess what it'll be about.

So tell me what you think of Barbara? And who do you think Tray is working for? I'm anxious to hear your theories. And if you like what you're reading, please don't forget to vote.