Page 3 of Fortress (A Monster By Any Other Name #4)

“ T here is no such thing as monsters,” Mr. Ernest Krueger declared.

Several nearby patrons of the bright, clean diner winced or hunched a little closer to their coffee, but not one head turned. Tobias and Jake, seated across from the gray-haired and suspender-clad septuagenarian, glanced at each other, just to check there hadn’t been some mistake in the hearing.

“It’s all a government lie,” Mr. Krueger continued at an aggressively loud volume, either oblivious or resistant to the general mood of his neighbors. “Just a smokescreen for the real story.” He took a gulp of water from the glass in front of him, then turned his focus back to the Hawthornes.

“So,” Tobias said carefully. “When the president was attacked in 1983...”

“That footage was completely doctored! Those were people in costume, not even good costuming, just some contact lenses and fake teeth and hair extensions, and they were sent by the White House itself! It was all a ploy to get the First Lady out of the picture. They knew she wouldn’t keep quiet!”

“Okay,” Jake said after a long pause, during which Mr. Krueger looked at them with hopeful, wild sincerity from his rheumy blue eyes. “I’ll bite. Keep quiet about what?”

Mr. Krueger leaned forward, hands planted on his knees, eyes fiercely squinted. “That the president was actually a Soviet plant. Yes,” he added, seeing their faces. “Yes, he was. Do you know what’s in the FREACS facility?Do you?”

Jake opened his mouth and then closed it again, lips tight, but Tobias leaned forward, eyes wide. “What is it?”

“It’s people !” Mr. Krueger shook his bent finger emphatically, and Tobias twitched, then covered by reaching for his own glass. “It’s people that get too close to the truth. The government tosses them in that black hole, calls them monsters, and it’s safe , see, because no one wants to look too close, no one cares about a freak, right? But it’s just propaganda instituted by the Red State!”

Jake took a breath and leaned back, reminding himself that the guy was a nutjob. “Look, Mr. Krueger, what does that have to do with...” And then it hit him, the last words catching in his throat.

Tobias finished for him. “What does that have to do with children?” Compared to Jake he looked unruffled, but the hundred-kilowatt smile he’d given the waitress was gone like the old man had flipped a switch. “At least,” he amended, “with the eight children who’ve recently come down with an illness no doctor can diagnose?”

“Well, it’s all the same brand of evil, ain’t it? This government’s just the old government in a new suit! You think this is new, how these kids are getting poisoned? Happened back in the seventies when all the flower girls and boys thought they were gonna make peace with the Reds by taking off their clothes and smoking them psycho-Daleks, and back in the fifties right when the Reds were moving into our turf, scoping out the ground after Hitler. You remember Hitler?”

“Not personally,” Jake said.

“Well, he was the first Red Spy, the preeminent tsar! But they found him out in the end.”

“What happened in the seventies and fifties, Mr. Krueger?” Tobias’s voice was firm, focused, and Jake would never stop being so goddamn proud of him.

Mr. Krueger, delighted at having a no doubt rare captive audience, raised both hands to gesture. “The commies seeded the city water tank—which was in Rosebud in those days—with an experimental toxin compound. It was meant to soften us up for the invasion, but when old McClellan kicked up a fuss in Washington, they had to call it off. About a dozen kids died. Same thing happened in 1978, and that time we almost lost the whole dang town, except the EPA opened an investigation, and the socialist Fed goons had to back off before they got their paws dirty.”

“I... see.” Tobias, who could usually wear a bland mask at the most outrageous witness statements, couldn’t completely cover his confusion. “So, you’re saying that twice, about twenty years apart, this town has suffered from a number of children falling mysteriously ill?”

Mr. Krueger looked disgruntled. “Didn’t I just say that?”

“Yes, you did,” Jake agreed. “Perfectly clear, thank you for your time, Mr. K.” He stood, dropped a couple bills on the table, and raised his eyebrows at Toby. “We’re just gonna head out now and look for some of those commies.”

The man smiled so happily that for a moment Jake almost felt bad. “You boys take care out there. You can’t trust anybody these days. Not neighbors, not television, and definitely not the government. You see a van full of those alphabet organization types poking their noses into this thing, you get out. They get wind of this in Washington, those ASC goons’ll be all over this. I’ve had people flashing their badges and asking me questions about those kids before, and I was lucky they didn’t haul me away to that prison, so you watch yourselves. Never take a wooden nickel, don’t talk politics in church, and never trust the ASC.”

Jake paused in the act of handing Tobias his jacket, one hand lingering over his shoulder as he helped him pull it on. Toby wasn’t a child who needed the help, but it was a safe way to touch when Toby’s eyes were a little too wide and fixed on Krueger, his movements belated and jerky as he got up.

Jake quirked a smile at the old man, but it wasn’t pretty. “Oh, I never do.”

A couple blocks past the diner, Jake huffed out a breath that steamed in the sharp December air and tugged up the collar of his jacket. “What a kook.”

“Was he... ill, do you think? Like, not right in the head?” Tobias split his attention between Jake and the sidewalk traffic, but Jake didn’t spare a glance for the other pedestrians. Most of them dodged out of his way without much trouble, but when it looked like he might collide with a particularly zoned-out businessman fumbling with his pager, Tobias grabbed Jake by the sleeve and pulled him to the side. “Should we contact a doctor or someone?”

Jake sighed. “Probably wouldn’t do any good. Did you see the side-eye he was getting? I could hear Oh, Ernest’s waylaid another innocent bystander . He’s just one of those nutcase conspiracy theorists who wouldn’t believe in the supernatural if they got strung up by a djinn. But this is the first time I’ve run into one or tried to get info off of ’em. Fuck. Since he’s clearly playing without any face cards, it’s going to be damned hard to trust the details he did give us.”

“We can easily verify the childhood illnesses in the previous decades,” Tobias offered. “If the pattern he identified can be tied to our current case, we’ll at least have a lead.”

“Dammit, Toby.” Jake stopped abruptly and leaned against a wall, resting one elbow against the peeling paint over his head. His gray eyes were stormy and distant. “It’s awesome, don’t get me wrong, but how can you be cool about that asshole just... getting it wrong, just dismissing... everything, the crap we deal with every day? Sure, people can be really messed up sometimes, but how can he refuse to acknowledge everything laid out in front of him?” He punched the wall, a short sharp jab that would have scared Tobias months before and now just made him worry that Jake might hurt his hand.

“Hey.” Tobias lay a hand on his shoulder. “We can focus on the hunt. We don’t need to talk to him again.”

Jake looked at him, and his eyes were clearer, lighter. Something in Tobias’s chest eased. Before, it looked like it might be a night that Jake went out and drank so much that he gave Tobias the keys.

“He was right about one thing,” Jake said.

Tobias blinked. “What?”

Jake shrugged and tucked his arm over Tobias’s shoulders, pulling him close enough that Tobias could feel the warmth of his breath against his cheek. “Don’t trust the ASC. And not everyone they take is a monster.”

Tobias looked down, feeling heat flush his face. Glancing to make sure no one was close enough to overhear, he whispered, “D-do you think—the A-ASC will come? Like he said?”

“Hey.” Jake tightened his grip, his voice also pitched low. “Don’t worry about that, dude. Mostly those attention hounds go after bigger fish. Whatever brings in the dough or is already on the nightly news. ’Sides, I grew up dodging those assholes. I’ve got a sixth sense for whenever they’re within a mile. They decide to take up this case, we’ll be a couple counties away before they book a motel room.”

“Okay.” Tobias took in a full breath, trying to relax. They hadn’t yet run into any other hunters on a case, but Mr. Krueger’s remark was a sharp reminder that a lot of civilians were perfectly capable of spotting supernatural evidence and dialing the ASC hotline. Tobias had to trust Jake and stay focused if they wanted to wrap up the hunt before anyone else got wind of it. “W-we’re going to have to wait on t-the research until the library opens tomorrow, b-but we have a witness who works on this street we can question. Do you remember Rob O’Malley?”

“Yeah, that guy who’s related to most of the victims through blood, marriage, and shopping addiction? The one with the junk shop?”

Tobias managed a smirk and attempted to match the aloof tone of one of the mothers they’d talked to earlier. “He prefers antique boutique. ”

Jake snorted. “I bet he does.”

Rob’s Antique Boutique, the much-discussed pawn shop and secondhand store, was a block down from the diner, right where the small town’s main tourist street morphed from gift shops, cafes, and quaint streetlights into the humdrum of Subway and Walmart.

The copper chimes that rang as they stepped through the door were fashioned in the shape of little Día de los Muertos skulls, grinning out through their patina of green.

Jake narrowed his eyes at them and glanced at Tobias. “I’m gonna talk to Robbie. Watch my back, maybe case the rest of the joint?”

Tobias nodded. “Should I look for anything in particular?”

“Anything that looks suspicious, supernatural, or like a good deal.” Jake glared at a dusty stuffed emu that had somehow, hideously, been worked into a coffee table. “Though there’s a hell of a lot of suspicious in here.”

Tobias smiled. “I’ll manage. And let you know if I find any evidence of the imminent commie invasion.”

“You guys were talking to old man Krueger!”

The Hawthornes whirled, Tobias’s hands rising defensively, Jake’s twitching toward his pistol. But the guy who had spoken was grinning at them with crooked teeth and a sleeveless white undershirt.

“Your mama ever tell you it’s not nice to sneak up on people?” Jake demanded.

“She told me not to listen in on other people’s conversations too, but it didn’t stick. Know how I know you was talking to old man Krueger? Because he’s the only guy I know who worries about commies.”

Jake let his hand fall from the butt of his gun. “Are you Rob O’Malley?”

“In the flesh.” The guy plucked his shirt away from his thin chest, still grinning. “And not much of that.”

“I’ve got some questions for you,” Jake said and nodded slightly at Tobias.

Sure that Jake would be able to handle one witness who seemed more... peculiar than argumentative, Tobias turned away to investigate the rest of the store.

The first few phrases that came to his mind ( hoarder’s stash ; dragon or kobold lair ) were probably not what a real would use to describe the piles of bent metalwork, chipped china, rusted nails, and unpolished glass lamps without bulbs hanging from the ceiling, sometimes low enough that Tobias had to duck his head to avoid them. Jake would probably have called it junk, but as Tobias moved between the irregular shelves and small tables crammed two-deep in figurines fashioned out of pop cans, he found something comforting about it: so many things in one place, reals’ things that might have passed their usefulness but were still there, given a second chance in this little shop. It reminded him a little of Roger’s scrapyard.

With Jake’s and O’Malley’s voices fading behind him, the smell of dust and rust and strong tea mingling in the air, Tobias was pretty sure there was nothing particularly evil in this place. Strange things, maybe (like the wooden figurine of a small, smiling man whose round stomach had been carved out to make a cup holder), but nothing truly evil.

That was when he saw it: the glint and curve of bright metal, half-buried in a carpet of felted birds, beasts, and flowers.

Cautious, checking around for any reals watching him, Tobias picked it up.

The coin looked handmade, a little bigger than a quarter. The surface was inscribed as a compass with eight arrows, four big and four small, marking each direction with small letters: N, E, S, W. The circumference was a little uneven, one side thicker than the other, but the metal was solid and sturdy.

It felt heavy and cool in his hand, a good weight, the back worn smooth as though someone had rubbed it down over time.

A small ring pierced a hole in the coin directly above the N for north, like it might have been intended to attach to a key chain. But as Tobias held it in his palm, another idea came to him.

A moment ago, he’d stopped by a stand with a collection of chains—not the ugly things meant to hurt and confine that he’d grown up with, but thinner and far more refined, glinting prettily. The kind meant for reals. He’d studied their clasps, how easily they could be opened with just his thumb and forefinger, and one in particular had caught his eye because it was connected only by two small, round magnets.

He liked that one best because it was the safest. Any strong jerk would break it apart, so it couldn’t be used to hurt or trap the wearer.

Not daring to think too much about it, he brought the ring connecting the compass coin to the end of the silver chain with the magnetic clasp. At first, it didn’t look like it would fit—the ring was too small to fit around the end of the magnet. But then he saw how the magnet unscrewed with a twist of his fingers, allowing him to drop the coin onto the chain before reattaching the magnet end.

He held it up, thinking.

Jake wore a silver ring and a thin, black, braided band around his wrist, so it wasn’t impossible that he would wear this too, that he might like it. And even if he didn’t, he’d probably thank Tobias anyway and tuck it away, leave it in the trunk, or let it drop somewhere, probably when Tobias wasn’t looking, because he was kind.

Even if Jake hated it, maybe he would still appreciate the idea of a gift, a piece of physical proof that Tobias understood more now, that he could pretend to be real as hard as anyone, and that he... cared. It wouldn’t be as though Tobias were trying to lay a claim on him. It wouldn’t be like any kind of collar. Jake wouldn’t see it that way. And if it were, he definitely wouldn’t wear it.

A month ago, Tobias wouldn’t have even considered this kind of risk. Buying something as a gift—he wouldn’t have thought it possible, much less attempted it. This new understanding made him brave, even through the clenching fear in his stomach, the slight dizziness that hit him when he turned back toward the front of the store, the newly made necklace clutched in his hand.

Jake was still talking with the shop owner, but they’d gotten through the case details and were now arguing about the Rolling Stones versus the Beatles. Tobias knew which Jake preferred, so he knew which side of this argument would win, even if the fight never formally concluded.

“Hey, Jake, you good?” he called, keeping his hand tucked to his side.

“And you’re thinking with a modified vacuum cleaner instead of a brain if you think ‘Yellow Submarine’—hey, Toby! Yeah, we’re good.”

“I’m going to go to the restroom. I’ll meet you at the car?”

Jake raised an eyebrow, glanced at Rob O’Malley, and shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Shout if this idiot tries to tell you shit about Keith Richards.”

“Sure, Jake.” Tobias waited until the big doors swung closed after Jake before turning to O’Malley. “I’d like to purchase this, please, quickly?”

The man took one look at the compass necklace and grinned. “Good choice. Because I got to be honest with you, we don’t actually have a restroom , if you know what I’m saying. And this is a nice piece, not many like it. I was in kindergarten when this old traveler came through and sold a box of these coins to my granddad—”

The Eldorado’s horn honked once, and Tobias hurriedly scooped up his change. “I have to go. Thank you very much!”

Shoving the necklace deep in the inner pocket of his jacket, he dashed outside to catch up with Jake.

The next day, after a couple more fruitless witness interviews, they finally made it to the library, which offered proof that Mr. Krueger had been right about something. Records showed a similar pattern of child illnesses and deaths occurring about twenty years apart, as regular as a generation. Within five minutes, Tobias compiled a list of known monster types that attacked cyclically, along with an even longer list of possibilities. He headed back to the microfilm while Jake paced over to the archive shelves.

By an hour in, Tobias had narrowed the list to either a striga or an extremely comprehensive family curse. Then, just before the two-hour mark, he hit pay dirt. Newspaper photographs from the previous two attacks showed a doctor in 1954 and a schoolteacher in 1976 who looked like identical twins, and they each wore the same “I’m attempting to look sympathetic but I’m not pleased about getting my picture taken” expression. When no family connection could be found between them, Tobias felt the excitement of an accelerating hunt in his gut.

He printed both images and Jake showed the best of the two to the head librarian, a silver-haired woman in her late sixties with a kind smile and the ability to raise only one eyebrow, as she did at the photograph.

“Well, that’s odd,” she said. “Yes, Dr. Earl Wilson, my granddaughter’s pediatrician, is a dead ringer for that man. But I could have sworn he didn’t have any family in this area. You printed this off the microfilm? I could check the genealogies if you’d like, or call Annie. She would have Dr. Wilson’s phone number.”

“No thanks, that’s all we need,” Jake told her, already turning on his heel toward Tobias.

“That’s it,” Tobias said as the library doors closed behind them. “He must be the striga. That fits with the cyclical attacks, the external handprint evidence on the houses, and how it’s moving through the families. Which means...”

“Shit, the Sanchezes,” Jake said. “Their second daughter was the last to get hit—”

“So their oldest son is the next target,” Tobias finished. “Jake, it could be tonight.”

“You said that blessed iron works on this fucker?” Jake was already popping the Eldorado’s trunk, getting out what they needed.

“But only when it’s feeding. Even in Freak Camp, records show no one’s never been exterminated unless it opens itself up to absorb life force. How are we going to force it?”

Jake paused in rummaging through the trunk. “I’ve never iced one of these bastards before, but the fact that we gotta catch it in the act means we have to be really damn close.”

“Ah.” Tobias shifted, hefting the bag of ammo Jake had handed him. “D-does that m-m-mean we’re letting it a-a-attack?”

Jake straightened up and swore, quietly, viciously to himself. He hit the bumper of the Eldorado, and then turned to look Tobias in the eye. “I don’t see another way around it. It wants kids, it’s marked out its next vic—these things move like the fucking wind, we don’t got a chance in hell of catching it in the open. If we don’t stop it now, it’ll zap someone else maybe tomorrow, maybe twenty years from now. Look, we’re the fucking Hawthornes, right? So nothing’s going to happen to the kid. We’ll keep close and jump it soon as it’s inside and make sure it never leaves.”

Tobias nodded, slow and unhappy. “I don’t remember ever reading another way to do it.”

“And it’s not like we can wait around forever. It only takes one cocky son of a bitch to tip him off, and then it’s the same old shit in a couple decades, except we’ll be slower and creakier. We’ve got to give this our best shot now.”

Sixteen minutes later, they pulled up across the street from the Sanchez house. They had a decent view of three sides of the house, but if the striga sneaked in from the back, they wouldn’t know it was there until the scream—if there was a scream. Tobias hated that they were putting a real child at risk, but he had to have faith that Jake knew what he was doing, that this was a risk worth taking if it would save other children.

This wasn’t the kind of threat that they usually faced. The ASC bounty on a striga was huge, and that thought had left his hands shaking as he carefully replaced the books that he’d cross-referenced. This had to be done quietly if they didn’t want the ASC landing like a ton of bricks.

When he caught sight of a flicker along the top of the neighbor’s fence, he twisted in his seat, expecting it to be nothing more than another tree waving in the wind. Instead, a pile of black rags disappeared into the bushes below. It appeared a second later, creeping toward the window with something between animalistic grace and haphazard wind catcher movements, its spidery fingers caressing the window joints.

“Jake!” Tobias hissed.

Jake was already reaching for his door handle as the window eased open, and in another breath the figure had folded itself inside.

“Yeah, I see it. On three,” Jake said as they tensed to spring out. “One—”

Something crashed in the house, a child began to scream but was abruptly cut off, and both Hawthornes bolted out of the car and across the street before Jake could even draw breath for two .

They ran full out, Tobias pulling ahead of Jake and making the leap through the half-open window a full stride ahead of him.

He ducked and rolled, the window frame clipping his shoulder, but he came to his feet with the shotgun braced to his shoulder.

The striga had already disengaged from the child. It was an ugly creature: twisted, sickly pale features framed by a cloak that reeked of ozone and moldering leaves. Its hands were as long and thin as the shoots of a strangling vine.

The expression on its face as it gazed at Tobias was something close to a smile. It closed its mouth, pale blue glow vanishing, a second before he pulled the trigger.

The shotgun blast hit the striga full in the chest. It jerked at the impact but shrugged it off and then skittered for the window.

Jake was there to meet it. The next two blessed rounds emptied into its body didn’t do much but move it closer toward the door, away from the child, pale and coughing on his bed.

“Jake, it has to—” That was as far as Tobias got before the monster wheeled, grabbed him by the throat, and opened its mouth to reveal the pale glow within.

Tobias clawed at the striga’s hand around his throat, but the brittle-looking fingers were surprisingly strong. The edges of the world went blue, his strength seeping out of him as surely as when he’d hung from a hook in FREACS. He wondered, distantly, if Jake could get enough blessed rounds off before the striga completely drained his life force.

Then the bedroom door burst open with a blaze of light, a man’s high-pitched swearing, a woman screaming, and Ernest Krueger, an American flag bandana tied over his grizzled hair and a muzzle-loading rifle in his hand, strode into the room.

“I told you!” he shouted. “I told you they were coming for your children, but did you listen? Bet you’ll listen now, Sanchez.” He pointed the barrel at the striga and bellowed, “Go back home, you commie bastard!”

Tobias had long enough to wonder whether even the ASC made blessed ammo for a weapon that ancient before Mr. Krueger slammed the gun straight into the striga’s head.

Reeling back—more in surprise than pain—the monster gave a breathy roar, dropped Tobias, and wheeled around to face the new threat. With one sweep of its arm, the striga threw Mr. Krueger into the wall hard enough to knock down several mounted soccer trophies, and Tobias, wheezing and dizzy, dashed forward to get the old man up and out of the room.

Then the monster had its bony hand around his throat again. It lifted and turned Tobias until he could barely make out the beady eyes within the ragged hood, see the burgeoning glow from the mouth, feel his chest tighten as the air was sucked from his lungs.

Jake slammed into Tobias’s side, firing twice in quick succession into the striga’s glowing maw, and the striga caved down in a pile of ash and ragged black cloth.

Tobias crumpled with it, but Jake caught him, hauling him back and against him. “Shit, Toby, are you okay?”

He coughed hard, even as air and energy rushed back into his lungs. Finally he croaked, “I’m okay. What about Mr. Krueger?”

The old man groaned in the corner, and Tobias stumbled toward him. Blood shone on the side of Mr. Krueger’s head, but his pulse was steady when Tobias put his fingers on his throat.

“Commies, my ass,” Jake muttered. He already had his phone to his ear to call an ambulance, just as the frantic parents pushed past to take their trembling child into their arms.

Fordyce General Hospital wasn’t very busy that time of night, and Mr. Krueger received immediate care from the harried ER staff, who replaced the bloody American flag bandana with bandages. The old man was as pale as the freak he’d helped take down, but it still took two medics to pry his old muzzleloader out of his hands.

Toby had been so anxious about him that Jake drove after the ambulance, and they loitered in the hospital entryway, Jake keeping an eye on the news scrolling across the corner TV. It had been a good hunt (okay, the damned thing had gone pear-shaped in the end, but they’d killed the bastard, and everyone, especially Toby, was alive, so that covered everything that really mattered), but he didn’t want to be anywhere close by when the ASC arrived. And those bastards would. There had been too many witnesses, too much fuss, 911 called, and a civvy hurt in the line of fire.

The nurses were tight-lipped with the old man’s personal medical information no matter how hard Jake insisted they were Uncle Ernest’s family. Jake was just about to do something stupid (the pinched look in Toby’s face had been getting more and more worried) when an elderly woman strode through the automatic doors and up to the desk. A brown leather handbag swung from her elbow, and her fur-lined cream coat showed some wear around the shoulders and elbows. Her oversized, dark-rimmed glasses made her eyes twice as large, and her swollen fingers showed a golden band with a modest diamond.

“Excuse me, I’m Catherine Krueger.” She spoke a shade too loudly with precise enunciation, like someone used to dealing with the hard-of-hearing. “I need to see my husband, Ernest Krueger.”

“I’ll be happy to give you a room number once I see some ID,” the nurse said, more cordially. “Your nephews have been pretty anxious about Mr. Krueger’s condition as well.”

Mrs. Krueger looked at them in surprise, and Jake coughed and said, “Well, we’re like family. I’m Jake, and this is Tobias. We were with your husband at the, uh, attack. Just wanted to make sure he pulled through okay.”

Mrs. Krueger’s eyes moved over the pair of them. “I’ve already spoken to the paramedics and George Sanchez. I take it you’re the boys responsible for saving Ernest from the freak that’s been sickening those children.”

Toby shifted backward, and Jake said, “Oh, we were just lucky to be there. I guess you don’t...?”

She smiled thinly. “Think everything wrong in the world is the fault of the Red Menace? No. Ernest hasn’t been right in the head for quite some time, and most days I’m grateful that he’s got a fixation, not a... loss. But not, you can imagine, on days when he throws himself into the breach with an unloaded weapon.”

Toby lifted his head, frowning. “H-how did you know that, ma’am?” Cleaning up before the cops arrived, they’d realized the muzzleloader had been as empty as a frat keg on Monday.

“I’ve been hiding and selling off his ammunition since he started insisting commies killed poor Sally Dixon because she knew too much and were digging up our petunias in their spare time.” The woman sighed, and Jake, looking down at his own clenched fist, saw Toby’s hand jerk toward him but stop short.

“No, I don’t share his delusion,” she went on. “Couldn’t believe most of the awful things he assumed about the world. I assume my own evils but keep my mouth shut. It makes the world, if not a better place, a quieter one. But I’d like to thank you anyway. Ernest... hasn’t got enough cards to play go fish, but my life would be a sorrier place without the old coot.”

“I’m s-sorry that we c-couldn’t protect him better,” Toby said softly to the floor.

She chuckled dryly. “Young man, all the good citizens of this town combined couldn’t keep Ernest out of trouble. If he’s up for visitors, I’ll let you come along so he can thank you in person.”

Mr. Krueger was quite ready for visitors. They found him sitting up in bed, haranguing the nurse about the contents of the IV bag attached to the back of his hand.

“Ernest, that’s quite enough of that,” Mrs. Krueger said, formidable without raising her voice, and Mr. Krueger fell quiet at once. “You’ll give me your spare car keys when we get home. I can’t believe you still had anything that would start that old rust bucket. And you scared me half to death disappearing like that without a word. We will have a talk, but right now I think you have something to say to these boys.”

Mr. Krueger, who had been nodding abashedly, looked up at them, eyes lit. “See, boys! Those Russians are the only kind of freaks we need to worry about. Ugly sons of bitches, aren’t they?”

Jake snorted, though last minute he tried to turn it into a cough. Glancing to the side, he caught sight of Toby’s grin.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Ernest,” Mrs. Krueger sighed, but Jake cleared his throat.

“Yes, sir, we won’t forget that anytime soon. Gonna keep an eye out for those commies at every turn.”

Mr. Krueger raised both hands, beckoning both of them forward. They approached slowly until he could lean forward and grasp them with a hand on each of their shoulders. “You are good boys,” he pronounced, looking between them, and Jake would’ve had to fight back a laugh at the old man’s intensity if there wasn’t something deadly serious in it.

“Good, American boys,” Mr. Krueger repeated. “You’re fighting a good fight. Me, I’m not as young as I used to be, can’t do so much. But you two have time on your side, and you’re smart and quick. Quick as a whip. That’s good. I’ll sleep better knowing there’s Americans like you fighting the good fight, keeping watch. So thank you.” He smiled, wide and sincere.

For once, Jake didn’t have a ready response. Toby’s eyes held Mr. Krueger’s, his cheeks flushed and lips parted in amazement.

“All right, Ernest, you’ve said your piece, now let those boys go home and get some rest,” Mrs. Krueger said, and she gently chivvied them toward the door.

They didn’t speak until they’d reached the Eldorado, when Toby said, in an awed tone, “He said I was... a good American.”

“Well, yeah,” Jake said, and tried to catch his eye. “Even he’s got enough marbles to see that.”

Toby’s mouth quirked. “I dunno. Have you ever considered that I might’ve been born in Russia?”

Snorting a laugh, Jake knocked his shoulder against Toby’s before turning over the engine.