Henry

“This sucks,” Tim complained, as we sprinted up the broken escalator past the ominous chartreuse-yellow caution tape. Already I could feel my breaths fall in synch with my heartbeat and the rhythm of my feet thudding on the ground, like a well-oiled machine. The one that I sometimes feel like I am. Same thing drilled over and over like the American military. I would say our military but sadly it is rather inexistent, and the American military isn’t as foreign to me as it should be...

Berntine

        My hand cramped and my wrist dug into the spiral of my notebook, the side of my palm smudged with graphite and my elbow bumping into the person next to me. Sorry dude, I didn’t get to chose where I sit. I wondered where Henry was, and instantly thought of old moldy caution tape on the escalator in the mall where H&M is. Aaaaand he is at it again.

        The entire class stared as Frank slammed the English Language text book onto my desk, dragging me back into the present. Sorry man, I wasn’t even sleeping this time.

        “Be careful, you’re getting too obvious. Henry’s fine,” Frank, the teacher whispered in my ear. See, Frank is rather convenient, being on the inside of the SSBA, which stands for something but I don’t remember what. So it is not actually that creepy that my teacher knows my twin and I are kind of telepathic because Henry and I are part of the SSBA too.

When Henry and I talk, it is not exactly like talking. It’s more like we come up with really random things all of a sudden. That is the other person trying to say something.

        The real SSAB is an insanely rich mining company here in Kiruna, Sweden. So rich in fact, that they are going to move the entire city so that they can get their precious rocks. Not that theirs are as precious as the ones we are looking for in Montana. That is kind of who we are named after. Even Henry’s name is mixed into this mess.

Henry

Tim and I walked into the upstairs part if H&M, the part that is closed off for ‘renovation’. What bull. I mean if you were going to come up with a lame excuse,  you couldn’t exactly get lamer. I guess we didn’t have much time to come up with a better one, and after three years of ‘renovation’, people still believe it for some reason. It’s interesting how people can just ignore things, no matter how obvious they are. Like, when I whip a toy car out of my pocket and it turns into a full sized Camaro. They just turn away, they never saw anything. What they did see was a figment of their imagination- something they dreamed up.

        My breath turns to microscopic icicles that fog my vision as I walk over the broken particles of glass that fell out of the windows eons ago. They don’t bother to turn on the heat up here anymore. Empty clothes racks give off a frigid metallic feeling, not helping those of us who would rather live without solid ice for blood. In the back there was a door that said ‘Employees only’. I guess I could be considered an employee, just not for H&M.

        I looked over and Tim was holding his breath, his sandy blond hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, his green brown eyes bulging. He was scared, but so was I. A chilling silence filled the room and it felt as if it pressed from all sides.

The door was a bland creamy color, so familiar that cream colored doors now intimidate me. As we approached, breaths evening out but hearts pounding faster, the door swung open. Both well trained 14 year olds with pistols ready we aimed before we even tried to see who it was. Only when my gun was pointed so that the bullet would make a clean shot through between his eyes did I finally recognised him. His cold blue eyes were evil as he pulled an object out of his pocket. I would have been relieved if it had been a gun. Too bad it wasn’t. I heard Tim let out a long breath. To clarify, it wasn’t a sigh of relief.

Berntine

        Henry wasn’t letting me see his thoughts, which is never a good thing. It means either he doesn’t want me to see what he is thinking, or he was too shocked to remember to think of me. Frank had assured me he was fine, but I knew better. Henry knew when I would be nervous, he would never let me down, no matter how unimportant it was. I know twins don’t always get along, and that it might be weird that we do, but he is my brother and I need him.

        Screw this essay, sorry Frank, my twin and Tim’s lives might be in danger. Tim lives with his uncle, who hates him. Needless to say, the feeling is mutual. Sometimes kids at school like to call him Timmy Turner because they think it is funny, but I know what his life is actually like, and it isn’t funny. His messed up little world is the reason he decided to join the SSBA.

        When the bell rang, Frank held me back. He is my older brother, but most kids in school don’t know that. Besides it’s not like I get good grades just because he is my brother. Maybe. We are probably the only three people in all of Northern Sweden with our raven black hair besides the Soumi people. Unlike Henry and I though, Frank’s eyes were a dark brown, darker than Tim’s.

        “We’re going to America,” he told me.

        “You’re funny,” is what I would have said if I hadn’t been so shocked. It makes sense though. We would go to Montana and find whatever it was that Henry Plummer had lost in his northern hideout in Creston. Henry Plummer was a Sheriff in Virginia City by day, and a Highway man by night. He and his gang of ‘Innocents’ were caught by the Vigilantes, a group citizens working to save their gold, and hanged. This is when this group of vigilantism began and now we, the Sweden chapter, call ourselves the SSBA. Ever since Plummer, when someone messed with the law, the Vigilantes would give the offender the numbers 3-7-77, the dimensions of a grave, making their intentions rather clear. This was the beginning, and to this day, Montana police have those numbers sewed into their shoulder patch. Next time you see a Montana cop, remember to look.

Henry

        It was my dear old friend Bjorn, the ‘manager’ of H&M. He would show up every once in awhile and try to catch us red handed. His name means bear in English, which kind of fits because he’s not the smallest individual. My last name, Bjork, means birch. Not sure what that is supposed to mean.

Bjorn never actually knew what was going on, but now he had been in headquarters. Shizzle snitzer. In his hand he held my favorite friend in the world, Polly. My plastic toy car of course. It was a Camaro zl1, the coruscant one that turns into an actual car that doesn’t need gas. It was a gift from the Montanans as a thank you and if I lose it, that’s it for us. No more Sweden Chapter, no more SSBA. No more finding the maps to the underground road created by The Innocents, and no more searching for millions dollars in gold. With that much money, no one can know about us. That is the kind of money that people kill for.

        I started to wonder why, out of all of the things he could have picked up in that room, he would grab a toy car.

        “I was starting to suspect you guys were doing something illegal up here,” Duh “But this is all I found. Is this of any significance to you?” He interrogated, full of conviviality (note the sarcasm). I decided to play it cool- pretend like that car meant nothing- maybe be would be persuaded.

        “Nah. Unless there are papers rolled up inside. They would have critical information on them.”

 He rolled his eyes at me. “Put your gun down.”

        Tim quickly responded with a “Don’t tell me what to do,” Which was acknowledged by a raised eyebrow. “Besides, it’s not like you haven’t came in here shooting a couple rounds before, like you have the Carte Blanche. Trust me, that got some questions from the neighbors seen as how guns are illegal.”

        The car was all he found though? Either he was bluffing, or there really was nothing left in there. Only one way to find out. I shot him in the leg while he and Tim were arguing and ran past him into the room.

Berntine

        Frank explained to me that we had to leave one by one so that we would not be too obvious to the people watching us. I was to leave that very day, and Henry didn’t know. He said that he sent Henry to pick up his car from headquarters, hoping that Bjorn wouldn’t be there today.

        “Headquarters were cleaned out so we can leave quickly. Your plane is boarding in three hours and Tim is supposed to take you in Henry’s car, but he should have been here by now," That is when I started to hear gun shots.

        “Did you hear that?” I asked Frank. I was starting to get scared because we aren’t allowed guns here. The only people that I know of are Me, Frank, Henry, and Tim.

        “Hear what?” Frank asked, confused. He couldn’t have just not hear that.

I was starting to question my sanity when I heard Tim’s voice hollering, “What are you thinking?!” Suddenly, Bjorn was on the floor writhing in pain as blood seeped through his pant leg and all over the broken glass and dry blood from before. I shook my head as I gained full access to Henry’s thoughts again.

“What? What did you see?” My older brother demanded. My brains rattled as he shook me for good measure.

“Bjorn was there.” I answered.

“No.”

“What? Yes he was!”

“I know I just can’t believe it. There was more though, what else did you see?” He Prompted

“You remember the Innocents right?”

“Umm...How could I forget?”

“Well he is one of them,” That got a reaction out of him.

Henry

I couldn’t hardly process the information. Tim was always the one to play it cool. He wouldn’t freak out, just take the information and all of the emotions stayed inside. Maybe Bjorn was trying to buy time by shocking us. But no, you don’t just come up with things like that.

“You think you are so secretive. Little did you know that there are Innocents left too. We were not all killed off like you might think, and that gold is much more ours than it is yours,” Bjorn had told us. My brain was on overdrive. One question kept coming back- how many? I stood there trying to solve puzzles with inexistent answers and getting nowhere.

 Tim, the acumen, sprinted toward Bjorn and grabbed him by the collar. But Bjorn just smiled as an entire SWAT team busted up the escalator. As they approached I could see the numbers 3-7-77 tattooed over their jugular, right where a noose would sit. A cold shiver went down my spine, goosebumps littered my biceps and my face grew warm and I could almost feel how red hot my cheeks were. The temperature in the room dropped several degrees but energy hit me like a shock wave. Adrenaline. We were getting out alive, I could feel it.

Berntine

Frank and I stalked up the deactivated escalator as stealthily as we could. We left behind the rotten caution tape, as it was already in fragments on the floor. I sucked in a breath so that it would not be shaky and give us away. Three steps. Two steps. One.

Right before we entered the room, gun shots exploded not only in my ears, but in my brain also. Alright I’m here bro! We sat facing backwards on the stairs, trying to catch our breath, as we unholstered our pistols in a room of complete cacophony. Here we go again. I turned around and peeked over the top stair.

Too late, someone saw me and went down drooling blood. Every time I see that I get this feeling in my stomach, a lurch of sickness, but something in my heart too. I know that it is kill or be killed, but sometimes I would much rather die than see that last look of disappointment in their eye. Right before they fall it is as if they are a child again and I know that my life can never be the same after I see that. I know they are ruthless criminals who wouldn’t think twice about killing me, and if that is their language than I have to speak it.  But that last look of letdown in their eyes is worse than if it was me who was shot. Maybe they can’t see the disappointment in my eyes, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see it in theirs.

Eight, nine, ten, twenty-nine or something. I lost count of the number of highly trained individuals as they moved around, picking Bjorn up off the debris littered floor while others were charging after Henry and Tim. I could feel it as my emotions simply shut off, making me into an unfeeling robot who just doesn’t care. Strategies circulated through my brain as I weighed options, none without potential fatalities. I needed a hostage, but any old pawn won’t do- that is not how chess is played. To win, you need the king.

“Cover me,” I tell Frank. “I’m going for Bjorn.”

I kept my head down as I took out the two men supporting Bjorn and tear toward him faster than I can run. Blood sprouts from my achilles but I can’t feel anything. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

Yes I could. My foot was falling off. I couldn’t help everyone. Someone might die. Someone might kill Bjorn, and there goes my plan. Frank might not have heard me. Frank might die. Henry might die. Tim might die.

No!! I tell myself, I just can’t think!

I place the cold barrel of the gun to Bjorn’s throat and face his subjects.

“Everyone leave or Buddy boy here gets it!” I put another bullet in his leg for good measure. “Except for you, Blondie, you stay here.” I made sure my back was pressed up against the reassuring, icy wall in case of a mutiny. One started to erupt but quieted down rather abruptly when I put another shot into the whimpering Bjorn. I could feel him shaking. He was in so much pain he practically forgot to be scared.

Henry

        I continuously tried to tell Berntine to stop, that she was going to get hurt, but she wouldn’t listen. In fact, she plainly told me to get out now. I guess I just wasn’t listening either. It’s hard, trying to tell your sister what to do while fist fighting with some forty year old dude who just isn’t backing down.

        I’ll admit, I almost wet myself when she said, “Everyone leave or Buddy boy here gets it!” I stood there shocked while bloody knuckles collided with my jaw over and over, knocking it out of place. I returned a throw to the guys gut, then pushed him out the broken window, shards of glass drawing blood from his back. But before he descended to the snowy pavement to contaminate it with his blood, he pulled something out of his pocket.

        And that something was Polly.

        I didn’t think twice before jumping after him, plummeting through the winter air. Before the impact paralyzed me, I tucked myself into a ball and hit the ground rolling. I ended up in a standing position, and ran after the stranger with the tattooed neck as he ducked through alleys and down to the train tracks. I almost lost sight of his neon constuction shirt as he dodged passersby.

        He crossed the tracks while a three minute train was coming, precious time I couldn’t afford to lose. I could feel sweat run down my back and freeze in the cold Kiruna air. I felt the metal taste of blood in my mouth, and I felt the small wound in my thigh, prohibiting me to move. There was no way I could beat that train.

        ‘Where are you?’ Berntine asked me.

        ‘By the train station, get here as fast as you can,’ I replied

        I climbed on top of the stinging glacial statue of the four men carrying a steel rail by the tracks. As I waited for my Limited Elite Team for backup, I watched the citizens milling about. They carried their purses and pushed their strollers. They didn’t have to fight for their lives each and every day, and I debated weather I even wanted to cross the tracks when the train was gone.

One lady babbled away on her phone as she pulled her toddler along by the arm, his snow suit covering all but his innocent brown eyes.

        I promised myself that I would have a life like that someday.

Berntine

        Tim helped me down the immobile escalator because Bjorn had gotten a good knife to my side. Otherwise I might have managed, shattered achilles and all.

        “Just let me help you,” Tim told me quietly. “You keep trying to be independent even when you need help the most. We are all vulnerable, that doesn’t make you weak!” He was right though. Whenever something happened, it was my fault- even when I had nothing to do with it. Even so, I allowed myself to lean on his shoulder more, feeling comforted by his warmth.

        “But Henry needs us!” I complained.  He just sighed in response as we continued out the door and onto the street. Wind whipped at out torn clothes and reddened our cheeks.

        As we approached the tracks, Henry lept off of the statue and ran toward us.

“Whats going on? I thought you had everything under control,” he commented on my wound.

“Shut up,” I told him.

“He went into those outhouses over there,” Henry reported. “Hey, where’s Frank?”

“Stayed to interrogate blondie, but Bjorn got away,” Tim provided, squeezing me closer as if afraid Bjorn would come after me. I looked up just as Henry raised an eyebrow. ‘Chariiiisma,’ He teased.

Getting impatient, I cleared my throat and announced, “We’re wasting time!”

Henry

I skipped over and picked up my fragile little twin sister and carried her over the tracks, Tim keeping pace. She would hate me if she ever knew I thought of her as fragile, she tries to be too tough, and sometimes I’m scared that I won’t be there to catch her when she falls.

Berntine grasped onto Tim’s shoulder when I accidentally set her down too hard. I could tell she was masking pain from the way she gripped the hem of her ripped black t-shirt, and the way her blue eyes glossed over, her face too straight. She also wasn’t letting me see what she was thinking, but she does that a lot.

I looked up and saw constuction shirt come out of the peewee, no car with him. There was nothing I could have done while he took off in the direction of town.

Deciding the only thing he could have done was leave Polly in the toilet, I approached the outhouse. The distinct scent of non-cow manure hit me hard, and was accompanied by what we call kissa. I held my breath to keep from throwing upchuck all over the clean snow. The last time I had thrown up was in Dokkas, some hours from here, when we had stayed up all night drinking monsters and eating candy and went on a joyride to a town, Gallivare, that was about an half hour to an hour away at five in the morning. That is the story of when I puked all over my cousin’s cousin’s soda cans that were supposed to be recycled.

        I toughened up by putting my face in my shirt, and entered. I scrounged frantically for about thirty seconds for my Camaro, coming up short, before bursting out.

        “Your turn,” I choked at Tim, trying desperately to catch my breath.

        “What do you think you are doing?” An old privileged man demanded, eyeing our beat up state.

“Im Chief Firefox,” Tim answered, playing up the innocent native, “We have come from a great war with the… enemies.”  Tim was making a hard bet that Mr.Suit-and-Tie here didn’t know much about the Soumi people, and he seemed to buy it. Then he turned to me.

I couldn’t think fast enough as I said, “I’m Cheif Google.”

I watched out of the corner of my eye as Berntine face palmed.

Berntine

“Incorrect. You are the SSBA, and you were looking for this,” He taunted as he held up a toy car. I looked at Henry and could almost see the smoke coming out of his ears. His face was red and his fists were clenched. Again, I told him not to move, but, again, he didn’t listen.

He snapped, and time slowed down as I watched every painful millisecond of the bullet flying towards him. I stood there, immobile, helpless, anchored to the ground in this caustic moment as his shirt drowned in red liquid.

Tim was beating Mr.Money senseless, but all I could see was Henry. I saw his beautiful future kids to be that he had described to me during class one day. I saw the mustache that he was going to grow, one like a cowboy that would twirl at the ends. I saw our perfectly peaceful life that we were supposed to live when we got to America. I saw the bay-roan Morgan horse that he was going to ride, whose name was going to be Strawberry.

And I tried to save it, to save him. To keep him here because he can’t leave me! He won’t! He can’t do that to me!

With skilled fingers I plied the bullet out of his chest, blood freezing on my hands. I pushed on the wound, like they told me to. I gave him CPR.

His eyes opened, and relief flooded me, warming my bones and replacing all sorrow. A smile played on his lips, but never opened his mouth. Instead he took my hand and looked me in the eye and thought, ‘I'll be waiting for you,’ With that, he closed his eyes and his hand went limp. ‘It’s ok, we’ll get through this,’ I tried to reassure him. ‘Let’s get you to the hospital’ I told him. He wasn’t answering. I could feel the pit nothingness.

“Get up,” I told him aloud, “Get up you lazy piece of crap!” I hollered at him, tears streaking down my face. Then all of my energy left me and I hugged his body close, begging him to respond. I rocked back and forth on my heels, faster and faster and faster. Get up get up get up. I became aware of someone holding me, but faintly. I was worlds away, a different universe. Whoever it was was on dry land and I was drowning, drowning, drowning.

“He’s waiting for me,” I whispered to myself, my arms wrapped around myself- trying to cover the crater Henry left in his wake. The strong arm held me tighter. Then he lifted my face so I could look into his eyes. I almost recognised the person, almost.

Almost.

I almost saved Henry. The person said something to me but I couldn’t hear him. Thats funny, since when am I deaf? I started to giggle, my head dizzy.

Henry was waiting for me.

I saw a train coming and sprinted for the tracks. I’m coming Henry!

But something held me back, and I was mad! I kicked, I screamed, I bit.

Then I collapsed into Tim’s arms. And we sat there for ages, just waiting till we see Henry again.

****

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