Anello DeVolta's further adventures through time, alternate universes, and an ever-changing doomsday.
By David Cocco (Writer)
Anello waited in the rusty station wagon for Lengua to show himself. The file had a layout of his schedule, as well as usual hangouts. Anello usually tried to keep his time to twelve hours. He had already burned two of them driving from western Massachusetts to an alley in Cambridge. Wilson Lengua was on his way down from the lab to buy more Sour Patch Kids from the 711.
The picture in his file showed a prim young man. He looked like a future business leader of America, from back when that was a thing. The bleary-eyed fool Anello saw now was a disheveled mess of cow-licked hair and wrinkled clothes with high fructose corn syrup and aspartame in his veins. It was almost like he was putting him out of his misery. Anello was thankful for that.
While the dead man walked into the store and selected his last meal, Anello got into position. He was dressed in rags and looked about like your average vagrant. He heard a bell clatter against the doorframe and watched Lengua walk out of the store, making his way past the mouth of the alley as Anello waited in darkness. He raised his pistol and put two shells behind the young programmer’s ear. Anello did Lengua the favor of killing him after he had a chance to eat one of his gummies. He felt that was important.
He dragged the lifeless body into the dark of the alley. He rifled through his pockets and took the cash out of the young man’s wallet, even though the last 4 times he returned to 2152 cash was useless. Still, it was important to uphold the fantasy. No time-traveling assassin here, just a robbery gone wrong…
* * *
With the help of the most advanced radar detector available Anello arrived in Westchester just after two in the morning. His beat up station wagon stuck out like a sore thumb on the tree-lined street. The place looked like a Norman Rockwell painting. If his job got noisy the neighbors would definitely remember the car.
There were pages upon pages of information on Stevens, his typical schedule, his security detail of 3 men, all of their typical schedules, the weapons they carried, and finally a complete rundown of his security system at home. Usually one of the easiest places to take down a target; a mouse couldn’t pass a stool in Stevens’ house without him knowing about it. This was all in addition to the full dossier the coalition prepared, including a report on his time in Sudan, and his acts of valor at the battle of El Fasher. He got a Bronze Star for that one.
He had a daughter and another one on the way. That was a shame. It was also the reason the poor sap was going to die.
As Anello sat there pouring over his notes, Melissa Stevens woke with an ungodly craving for peanut butter ice cream. She did not want vanilla ice cream with peanut butter sauce, or peanut butter cup ice cream, just peanut butter ice cream. Before Anello knew it, the man himself was walking through the grass in his slippers and ducking into his Audi. Anello didn’t wait to formulate a plan; he just followed.
He still had on the rags from when he took out Lengua. If you were looking for it you would even be able to see a spattered red pattern across his clavicle. Anello looked through the window at Stevens peering through tired eyes and fluorescent lights at a dizzying conglomeration of frozen delicacies, then grabbed his shotgun.
Anello was gifted at many things, but first and foremost, he moved like a specter. The clerk was nowhere to be seen. Anello skulked through the aisle and brought the barrel of his gun up to take aim at the expecting father’s head. He was usually able to compartmentalize these issues, but this time was different. As his finger lingered on the trigger, he could not escape the image of an expecting mother waiting for a husband who would never come home, a girl growing up never knowing her father.
Stevens turned and his eyes were flush with the barrel. Without a thought, Stevens deflected the blast toward the ceiling and with the smoking barrel scorching his hand he bashed the butt of the gun into Anello’s face. The clerk stormed through the back storage room and ran for the register. Anello swung the butt around, dealing a brutal blow to Stevens’ jaw as he unloaded another shell at the clerk, his lifeless body tumbling to the ground. Anello turned in time to watch Stevens, with a valor forged in a desert warzone, plunge a switchblade into Anello’s stomach. He then watched the determined face turn to horror as Stevens looked into his hand and saw a bent and useless blade with not a trace of blood. Anello relieved Stevens of the twisted paperclip as he backed away.
“What...”
Anello hated this part.
“Please, I’m a father.”
“I know,” said Anello, and for the first time, in all his missions, he really felt bad about what he was going to do. “I’m sorry, but it has to be this way.”
Anello ran the twisted metal across Stevens’ throat. The pint of peanut butter ice cream sat next to the lifeless body. Anello gathered up the shotgun and went back to the car. Hopefully he could get to the farm before sun-up.
* * *
The barn was still musty with shafts of light piercing through the darkness at the edges of the door. He placed the bloody rags from the night before into an old oil barrel and set them ablaze with a soupçon of kerosene. He kept thinking about Stevens’ face, that frozen vacant look when the light went out in his eyes. He had seen it plenty of other times, but it never ripped at him this way.
He thought of the new life he would wake to: the new disasters, new fuck-ups, new horrors, new timeline, and new brain. Would every job be like this from now on? He felt the ocean of guilt stir inside him in places that had been made of weapons-grade metal for quite some time.
He opened the chamber and prepared himself for his next mission.
* * *
They walk down a quiet street. He holds her close beneath the umbrella as the rain dances around them. He’s been with women before, but never like her. All he wants is to freeze this moment, let it exist in a vacuum. He doesn’t have time to think about this plane ticket or the desert or the fear that’s been bubbling up since he was approved for active duty. He just wants this.
They stop beneath a streetlight and he leans in. She stops after the first kiss and suppresses a shy giggle. He smiles, but it’s too perfect a moment to stop. Soon their eyes are closed beneath the umbrella and the streetlight’s halo and the pounding rain and he doesn’t think a moment could be more fucking beautiful if-
He falls to his knees in an instant, his tendon retracted like the blinds on a window pulled too tight-too fast. Blood gushes on the wet concrete and she’s screaming. The pain is spiking in his head and as he sees the dark figure he decides it doesn’t matter how much it hurts. He will gouge out his… he’s leaving. She’s crying, tying her scarf around his ankle to stop the bleeding and fumbling to call 911.
* * *
Anello stepped into the chamber. He didn’t know what to expect. Maybe that slashed and useless kid on the wet pavement would stay home. He’d never know what an SG was, and whatever Armageddon came to pass he would confront it with her by his side. Maybe not… If the synthogenic wiped the woman from his grey matter, he might be able to press on. If not, he suspected a self-destruct was somewhere in his future. He had no clue. He didn’t know how the science worked, if the current timeline would negate the others… That was above his pay grade.
DAVID COCCO lives south of Boston with his fiance and cat. Cocco Beware
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