Ain't Talkin'

After Roche had dealt with Patchy Wilkes, he’d gone to find Andrew Vickers. The scumbag’s dossier from the copper station made it clear that he had been the culprit with the least amount of guilt. He’d been there that night, and he’d wanted nothing to do with what went down. But that didn’t mean he had stopped it. He may not have put his thing in Mollie Groux, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t watched while the other two did.

When Walter Roche had walked into the last known address of Andrew Vickers, he’d found an old man seated in a chair, sipping scotch and working through a book of puzzles. He’d protested when Roche had kicked out the front door, he’d protested unintelligibly when Roche put his gun in Andrew’s mouth and forced him to the floor.

There was a nice little creek outside the house, gurgling full with runoff from the mountains. Roche dragged the old man that he’d known as a pie-eyed kid with a knack for getting himself out of trouble outside and left him a good ten yards from the stream. The morning had been heavy with fog, somehow that part of the memory had stuck, and the amphibians were singing.

Beside Andrew’s truck, Roche had found gasoline, these were days before the stock of gas had been so scarce that men killed one another over it. Roche returned to Vickers, found him climbing to his feet and kicked him in the ribs until he was down and stayed down.

He poured the gasoline over him until his clothes were soaked.

He held Vickers by the hair and spoke calmly into his ear. If you’re truly not guilty, get yourself in that stream and I’ll accept it. If you’re guilty of what happened that night, and I think you are you fuck, then you’ll burn, burn, burn.

Roche lit a cigarette and smoked most of it while Andrew whimpered on the frosty grass, cryin’ like a beaten dog.

When the walker thought enough time had gone by, he dropped the cigarette on Andrew’s back.

Poor sucker went up like a match. He screamed and he cried a godawful sound. When he finally stood to run for the stream, it felt like minutes had gone by but it might only have been seconds, Roche put a bullet in the small of his back, right above the crack of his ass hanging through his belt.

That kept him down.

He may have thought, in those last minutes that he wasn’t guilty, and deserved a bath after a good burn, but Roche thought differently. That bullet kept him down. The fire did the rest.

When it was all over there was a wide ring in the frost where all the infinitely small water crystals had melted from the heat.