9.0 - Sanctum Read Free

the Fucker Upper done anything to be proud of?
    Murphy said, “You’re breathing that funny way you do when you’re stewing about something.”
    “What?”
    “You know what I’m talking about.  Like a little white troll, snorting and huffing.”
    I shook my head.  “Whatever.”
    “You can’t hide in your troll hole forever?” Murphy grinned.  He loved his sense of humor.  “Spill it.”
    I leaned on my elbows, fidgeted with my fingers, and watched the tiny stick figures of Whites among the nearby houses and tiny specks of grayish-white moving in the distance.  I didn’t feel like I needed to say anything until I’d sorted out what was bothering me.
    “I told you,” said Murphy.
    Told me? I looked at him.  “Told me what?”
    “Revenge ain’t all that.”
    A Murphy Smalls motivational speech.  I grimaced and grabbed the binoculars back from Murphy.  Maybe if I looked long enough at the Whites loitering around Killeen, it would be as obvious to me as it was to Murphy that most of them were gone.
    He said, “Killing Mark didn’t fix anything, did it?”
    I ignored the question.
    Murphy nudged me.  “Answer me, man.”
    Ignoring Murphy never worked.  I said, "Yes, it did.”  Of course it did.  It didn't undo any of the evil that had been done.  The killing didn't bring Steph, or Mandi, or Amber back to life.  At least, a measure of justice had been served.  I just didn't have any idea of what justice was outside of a lofty aspiration from a dead world crumbling to waste.  Was justice now anything but revenge? Yes! It had to be something more.  "At least, he won't kill anybody else."
    Murphy turned serious.  "That's one of the things I told myself about those thugs behind the convenience store that time we talked about."
    “It was true wasn’t it?” I argued.  “It wasn’t just something you told yourself.  It was true.  Those punks would have gone on to hurt other people.”
    “True.”  Murphy leaned on the wall.  “But you know as well as I do, when you chased these naked dipshits halfway across the state you weren’t on a mission to do anything like that.  You were bent on killing.  All that saving-somebody-somewhere-in-the-future stuff is just bullshit icing on your revenge cake.”
    “My revenge cake?” I laughed.  “Is that like a metaphor or something?”
    “Yes.”  Murphy straightened up and proudly looked to the horizon.  “Zed Zane’s revenge cupcake.  Hell, you got about a dozen of them, right, when you torched those Whites with the lighter fluid and ran them through that drainage tunnel?”
    I nodded and smiled.  Whatever demon lived in my soul, he'd loved it.  The bit of justice had been gruesome and brutal.  Nothing about killing those Smart Ones that day felt immoral.  Nothing in the act felt wrong.  It felt satisfying and victorious, but none of the gruesome good lasted.  It morphed into an emptiness in my heart that made no sense to me.  "I don't think it's that."
    “What?” asked Murphy.  “You lost me.”
    "It's not the revenge thing.  The killing needed to be done.  It's that simple.  It's in the past now.  A prerequisite for my future."
    “Uh oh,” said Murphy.  “I know overthinking when I hear it.”
    “I just need something to do.  I need a purpose.”
    “You need to get laid.”
    “Are you offering?”
    Murphy leaned an elbow on the waist-high wall around the edge of the roof and looked at me.  “You’re deflecting.  You never want to give me a straight answer to anything.”
    “That’s not true.”
    Murphy laughed.  “You just did it.”
    I shook my head and thought more about it as I futilely tried to focus on counting Whites out on the streets I could see.  “I miss Steph.”  I had no idea why that came to the surface.  It found its own way out.
    Murphy let that lie for a bit before he stood up straight and announced, “Here’s what I’m thinking.  Tonight, we head out, search the convenience