Delton was more than outraged when Rhea and Mirek returned with a crumpled truck instead of his Pontiac. "You weren't even supposed to take it!" he shouted. "And now I hear it was blown up?!"
"Yeah…well, that was her fault," Mirek said as he pointed at Rhea, who was sitting lightheaded in a chair at one of the tables in the bar with a glass of water while Alton treated her wound. Her whole leg was smeared with red as he removed the shrapnel. Alton needed Delton's help with Sawyer as they removed all the pieces lodged in his back. They cleaned him, bandaged him, and was now passed out upstairs on the living room couch.
"I'm really sorry, Delton…" Rhea began, but he cut her off.
"Shut it. I need a break from you idiots." He glanced at Alton. "When you're done with her close up. I'm taking the night off."
After he walked out the door, Mirek went behind the counter and started drinking Bacardi from the bottle. He needed something to block out the pain of the bones he had fractured and muscles that had been sliced and shot. He never accepted aid from Alton.
"You think he'll kick me out?" Rhea asked Alton in a low voice, fearing she would have to join those huddled and homeless on the streets. Or maybe she could live in her shop, but there were no lights, and the place felt haunted after the sun went down.
"I doubt it. As long as Rusakov can make use of you, you should be safe. However, I would try not to get onto Delton's bad side anymore. Find something of his that's busted that you can fix. Air conditioning has been malfunctioning lately if you haven't already noticed."
Rhea watched as Alton sauntered her wound. Her hair was still dripping wet, making the curls heavy on her head.
"You're pretty good at this kind of stuff," she said to him.
"I used to be an associate of Hans Bernard and his doctors. They taught me much about the human body, including how to mend it. Lucky for you, this is just a flesh wound, and I could remove the shrapnel easily. Also, a good thing you didn't go into shock. If that had been the case, I might not be able to help you depending on the damage, and you would have to go to Bernard." He looked over at Mirek as he finished the bottle. After that, he headed out the door, leaving Alton and Rhea alone. "Mirek's been forced to go to him twice. One for a shattered collarbone and another time for a spinal fracture. But don't tell him I told you that. He prefers people to think himself unbreakable."
"Maybe not, but he is nearly so. Never would have made it out of Talun had he not been there. Why did you work with Bernard?"
"I used to be a cleaner."
"Was it good work?"
"Here it is. Plenty of people looking to get rid of bodies."
"You quit?"
He nodded.
"Why?"
Alton shrugged. "Got boring. I deconstructed so many bodies, that I have every inch of human anatomy memorized. When I no longer began to learn anything, my interest began to lag. After all, I began my work around the age of sixteen. But I found a new hobby. Experimentation with dangerous chemicals led me to demolitions and pyrotechnics."
"You've been in Samadoya since you've been sixteen?"
"I arrived here when I was thirteen; and lived on the Hara-Kiri bridge for a few years. Took my first life here. Took a lot of lives. I liked it. I really do hate people, if you didn't know. I find inflicting pain doesn't bother me. But I was not too fond of the corpses' stench and began to learn ways to get rid of them. Cremation, mummification, dissolution, composting. I began to perfect these methods; and found the practices interesting. Word spread—as it always does here—of my final disposition methods. Bernard caught wind and offered a side job removing organs for trafficking. It got me off the street, which I liked.
"But explosives are a different kind of killing. I didn't like knives or guns. But an explosion is a burst of power that ruptures the body in a whole new way. I blew off a man's legs with nitroglycerin, and I'll never forget the sound of his screaming and crying," Alton laughed.
Rhea didn't know what to say. But there was guilelessness in his words. He did not pretend to be someone else. He gave her a grin of a different kind of crazy. When Alton smiled, the man possessed no empathy.
"Well, I think I have done all I can here," he said. "Go upstairs and get some rest."
Rhea hesitated, wanting to tell Alton about the figure she had seen, but decided to seal her lips. She grabbed the bottle of painkillers and retreated to her room.