CZM Book Club: The Barrow Will Send What it May, Chapter Five

Margaret reads chapter five of her book The Barrow Will Send What it May.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media book Club, book Club, book Club. It's
the Cool Zone Media book Club, and I'm your host,
Margaro Giljoy. This is the book club where you.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Don't have to do the reading because I do it
for you. And we are on chapter five of my book,
The Barrel will Send what it may, the second book
in the Daniel Kane series. And you could jump in here,
I guess, or you could go back a little bit
and listen from the beginning. The choice is yours. Okay,

(00:40):
where we last left our heroes, I'm going to do
the thing again where I read the last couple paragraphs,
although it's a sad last couple of paragraphs. What just
happened was that Heather died. What was the ora, Boris?
I asked, new start? Brent said. She choked up a
little on her words. She wanted a snake that eats

(01:03):
its own tail to remind herself that things go in cycles,
that it's never too late for a new start. There
wasn't anything to say to that, there's always time for
a new start, until one day there isn't holding each other,
try not to think about the world outside that bedroom.
We slowly let sleep come for us. Chapter five, Chapter

(01:26):
you came here to listen to rise and shine. It
was still dark out midsummer that far north. If it
was still dark out, then whoever the fock thought it
was time to get up was wrong. A soul is
on the move, and mister magic death door man just
left his house in his truck. It was Thursday banging

(01:49):
on the door being wrong. Give us a focking minute.
You've got thirty seconds meet us at the bookmobile. Another
beautiful day in the demon on her business. Is there
a coffee? Brynn asked, She was already standing, pulling on
her work pants and buckling her belt. No, Thursday shouted back.

(02:11):
Brynn was handsome. I knew that already. I mean I'd
had a weird sort of crush on her since I
first met her, But it kind of just hit me
again watching her pull the shirt over her muscled Torso
maybe I was delirious thinking about that instead of what
needed thinking. Maybe I'd rather be delirious. Thursday drove conspicuously

(02:34):
fast in the pre dawn light, taking turns far too
quickly for a clunky old bookmobile van. Doomsday had stayed
at the library to keep Vascillus from doing something stupid
Brynn was sitting shotgun and I was in the back
with the books shelves lined the walls with webbing straps,
holding in the mysteries and romances and sci fi like

(02:56):
how you batten things down on a ship, which was good,
even though we totally weren't going to flip over, definitely not.
I wasn't strapped down myself, though I was sprawled out
on a bean bag, trying and failing to find things
to hold on to every time we took a corner,
while I also tried to keep my wounded shoulders safe

(03:17):
for my vantage, I couldn't see out the window. All
I saw were the brief flashes of street lights and
head lights that fought against all that darkness. Not half
a minute later, we stopped the side of the van
slid open, and Vulture hopped in. He was panting, holding
his side graveyard. He said, she's at the graveyard. Take

(03:40):
this road another mile and then turn right on the
first road after you see some tombstones. What's up, I asked.
I saw a sola Lever house, he said, so I followed,
and at warranted, waking us up. Mister Miller left his
house shortly after Vulture said, dressed all in camo with
a duffel bag. Okay, that warrants waking us up. Wait,

(04:05):
Brynn said, they live on opposite ends of the town.
How'd you see them both? I set up a camera
outside mister Miller's house. Vulter said, what, Yeah, you just
take an old phone and set it up as a
surveillance camera. I set it to stream video to my
main phone, video whenever I asked her a detected motion.
Then I went to go watch a Solas place myself.

(04:25):
We must have gone that mile at a breath taking speed,
because Thursday yelled turn just as he jerked the wheel
and sent those of us in the back sliding into
one another. The books held, of all the ways to die,
I think being pummeled to death by trashy hetero romance
novels might be the worst or the best. Either way,

(04:48):
it didn't turn out to be my fate. We screeched
to a stop, which slammed us forward, and Thursday killed
the engine. I opened the side door and stumbled out,
desperate to stand solid ground. At the other end of
the short gravel parking lot, a nineteen fifties pickup truck
sat empty. We should split up, Thursday said, find her faster, Oh,

(05:12):
Walter said, pulling out his phone. I know where she is,
or at least her bicycle. He opened up an app
called find my Phone, and a map filled the screen
with a dot representing us and a dot representing presumably
some third phone he'd hidden on a Sola's bicycle. Where
do you get that many phones, I asked, I steal

(05:33):
them from people, Walter said. The graveyard was surprisingly large
for such a small town, and like the town itself,
it looked like it had seen better days. Most of
the stones were small and worn. Many were cracked or
tipped over. Huge oaks sat atop hills and cast moonshadows
across the haphazardly maintained lawn. Somewhere in all of this

(05:57):
was a back from the dead woman, and a magician
had pulled off the kind of miracles that people write
bibles about, who had also just killed Heather. Well, maybe
it wasn't fair to blame him for Heather. I wasn't
feeling fair. Whenever I got out of this alive and
not in prison, I was going to sit down and
have myself a well deserved panic attack. Thursday had his

(06:22):
gun held slack at his side as we moved through
the graveyard. Brynn had her baton out. Mine was lost
somewhere in Iowa, so I took out my knife. Vulture
stopped to take a picture of a tombstone with the
name Hardwood. We crossed to the very back of the cemetery,
where an iron fence separated lawn from forest. Several of

(06:43):
the vertical bars were missing, and Vulture led us through
the gap and into the trees. Not much farther, he whispered,
he was right. A muddy impromptu led us through young
pine trees to a small clearing. A red bicycle leaned
against a tree near us. Ten feet away, into light
of vultus phones flashlight. Aasla stood over two unmarked impromptu tombstones.

(07:09):
She still wore the same black slip dress, but she'd
paired it with sensible hiking shoes. Don't know how you
followed me, she said, without turning around. Cut wild flowers
and blues and red sat at the foot of each stone.
But you shouldn't have. Yeah, let me guess, I said.
It isn't safe, It isn't What are you doing here?

(07:32):
I asked, and she answered, I'm listening to advertisements uncool
zone media, unless, of course, she had cooler zone Media,
in which case she wouldn't have had to. She could
just skip the ads, but if she didn't have that,
she'd hear the ads much like you're about to and

(08:00):
we're back. What are you doing out here? I asked?
Her back was still to us, but she pointed at
each stone in turn. Loki, Damien, what happened to them?
The same thing that will happen to you, Sebastian Miller,
I asked, I had seen magic close up and personal. Still,

(08:22):
though it was hard to be afraid of some man
while I had my friends at my side, armed and
on guard. She turned to look at me. I doubted
that she could see us because we had a light
on her. She nodded, her blonde hair hung loose over
her black slip and alabaster's skin, and just for a moment,
I thought we were talking to a ghost. She was real,

(08:44):
though she was alive, which was scarier. Are you working
with him?

Speaker 3 (08:51):
I asked?

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Loki came to town in December, she said. Instead of answering me,
they rode in on a salt truck that had picked
them up hitch, and they showed up with a whole
suitcase full of stolen books and one hell of a
grin across their face. Said, we'd never believe it. They
showed us the Book of Barrow, and yeah, they were right.
We didn't believe it, didn't believe it was real. She

(09:17):
sat cross legged there in the mud, resting her head
against the stone she'd called Damien. So they said they'd
prove it. Bacillisen. Heather tried to talk us out of it,
but you don't talk Loki out of doing things. Loki
talks you into doing things. So we went out with
snow chains and snow shoes and snow boots and snow

(09:37):
everything to a backwood spot where Damien once saw a bear.
Figured we'd catch it hibernating, shoot it, bring it back
to life. What could be easier?

Speaker 1 (09:48):
I said.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
He found us the first night. We barely made it
three miles from the trailhead. He got us while we
were asleep tranquilizers. I think, I go to bed in
a tent. I wake up in a dark place, warm, damp, dark,
gag in my mouth, shooters, muffs over my ears. Then

(10:11):
I'm unconscious again. Then I'm awake that cycled who knows.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
How many times.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
Oh god, Vulter said, Oh God, he didn't torture me.
I think he wanted us out cold the entire time.
But I know that he killed me. It was so
delirious the whole time. Yet when he killed me, when
he put a needle in my arm and killed me,
I knew. I've never been more certain of anything in

(10:38):
my life. I knew I was dying. Then I was
awake months later. Why did he let you go? I asked,
Movement Thursday shouted. He held his gun in a two
handed grip, tracking something through the trees. Brian dashed into
the darkness, not toward the movement, not away from it, parallel.

(11:00):
A crack, not as loud as gunfire, pierced the air.
Thursday fired in response, and deafened us. Don't shoot, don't shoot.
It took a while before the words registered, but Sebastian
Miller came out of the trees and into the glow
of Vultra's flashlight. With his hands above his head, a
rifle held loose by the barrel, he wore camo head

(11:22):
to toe. Hunter's camo, the kind with actual pictures of trees,
and leaves printed on it. It had to be him.
I barely recognized him from his own photo, not that
he looked different, but that his face was so forgettable.
It was like face Camo, being as unremarkable looking as
all about. I turned back to a sola. Her head

(11:42):
lulled from side to side, and she dropped forward with
a confused look in her eyes. Her face struck the mud.
Two running strides, and I was next to her, my
hand feeling for a pulse for the second time in
less than twenty four hours. If she's dead, you're dead.
Thursday said, hear me out. Sebastian said, she's alive. I

(12:03):
said her pulse was strong. Then I found the dart,
a simple tranquilizer, a round projecting from her shoulder. He
was a pretty fucking bad shot. No one aims for
a shoulder. He was aiming center mass and hit high right.
I pulled out the dart, kill him anyway. Vulture said,
hear me out what Thursday roared, Well, maybe you should

(12:25):
try these goods and services. He said, That's not what
he said. That's what I said. Here's a bunch of.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
Ads, and Rebecca, one of you, asked why I'll let
her go.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
I let her go because I'm not a monster. I
won't keep a girl prisoner in my basement forever. And
I didn't think I had it in me to kill
her twice, but I should have. Why is that, Thursday asked,
I don't know how much you know about any of this.
Sebastian said, magic, resurrection, everything, but it's dangerous, real, real dangerous.

(13:09):
You came here to kill her because you actually bothered
finishing the fucking book, I accused him. You got to
the good part with the apocalypse, and you had what
resurrector's remorse? You could say that, he said, But listen,
I've got everything under control. This will all be over soon,
back to how it was, the world no closer to
its end. Kill him anyway, Vulture repeated. Bryn appeared behind Sebastian,

(13:33):
struck him with her baton. He stumbled, and she was
on him. He was half again her weight, and she
got him to the ground without a problem. Be gone,
he shouted. His words, cut through the air, louder than
I thought they ought to have a flash of light
caused my vision to stutter. A series of bangs deafened me,
and he was gone. Fuck Brent said, lurching to her feet. Fuck, fuck, fuck,

(13:58):
I'm going to kill that man. We got a Sola
to the van and drove back to the library in silence.
Two doors down from a Solas squat, the shiny black
suv was parked in front of the still operational bed
and breakfast fence. Don't stay at bed and breakfasts, do they?
Thursday pulled the van up alongside the curb next to

(14:21):
the library. Our bikes were back, presumably Vulture had grabbed
them the night before. Someone's got to get Gertrude. I said,
oh fuck. Thursday said he would kill her, wouldn't he.
I'll go. Brynn said, I'm coming with you. Thursday said,
good luck. I said fear of missing out and protectiveness

(14:42):
argued in favor of me going too. But if Brin
and Thursday couldn't handle it, having me along wouldn't change that.
Vulture reluctantly passed Brynn his phone and opened up a
map with Gertrude's house pinned on it. Vulture had been busy.
Brynn and Doomsday took off on bikes. Vulture and I
carried a Sola into the library and up the stairs

(15:02):
to lay her down in her old bed, where she'd
lived with her since murdered partner, the bed she'd consciously
avoided ever since her return. Still, we had to keep
her safe, as safe as we could, safer than we'd
kept Heather. Vasilis was sleeping in the living room when

(15:23):
we came in. Doomsday was absorbed in a book, sitting
with the window in sight and her handgun on the
table next to her in easy reach. What happened, she asked,
standing I'd been a bit jealous that she'd gotten to
stay at home, but she moved like a woman three
times her age, exhausted, presumably from the effort of researching,

(15:44):
standing guard and consoling our host, Frank dard I said.
Doomsday shot a look at Vulture, not me, he said,
I don't even own a dart gun. Yet he was
mister Miller, he was going to kill her again. How
long is she going to be out, Doomsday asked, again,
looking at Vulture. I don't know, because I've never tranquilized

(16:04):
a human. Then he thought for a moment, I have
never tranquilized a human with a dart, nor have I
tranquilized an unwilling human. I also don't know what agent
he used, and I basically have no idea. Screams broke
into the living room from the bedroom not long Vulture
answered authoritatively, I think he killed all three of us.

(16:25):
As Soulas said, she was sweating, maybe from the heat,
but probably from the drugs or just outright fear. I
think he killed one of us to resurrect me. I
think I was the test subject. Then he killed whoever
was left to bring back Gertrude. Now, fuck, I said,
I couldn't come up with a better way to comfort
someone had been through worse than I would have imagined possible.

(16:47):
You know what I've spent all this time thinking about,
instead of thinking about things like how do I get better?
Or how do I kill that man? What really keeps
me up at night? What's that I asked? We were strangers? Really,
I don't want to crowd her. I sat on the
bed about a foot away from her. Doomsday sat on
a chair next to us. I don't know which of

(17:08):
them died for which of us. I don't know if
Loki died to resurrect me or if Damien did. It
doesn't matter. I know that I don't think anyone's soul
has joined mine, but it it fucks me up. Barrow
stands by the gate and he let me slip out
into the land of the living when it opened for

(17:30):
when it opened for who. I put a tentative hand
on her shoulder. She jerked and I almost pulled it away,
but she grabbed my wrist and held my hand against her.
I haven't touched anyone in three months, she said, not once,
not since before I died. Oh, honey, Doomsday said. She

(17:51):
stood up from the chair, sat down next to me
on the bed. Do you want us to hold you,
I asked. She stared at the ceiling for a moment,
then nodded. We laid down on either side of her
and held her, and she cried. Nothing like the hacking,
fearful sobs we'd heard from Vascillis the night before. She

(18:11):
just cried. After a while, I did too. She'd killed
me if I told anyone, I don't doubt. But I'm
pretty sure Doomsday did too. We need people. It's not
really giving up our freedom to be close with people,
because freedom only exists in relation to other people. I

(18:31):
thought I needed to be left alone. I just needed people,
good people like my murderous witch friend or this dead
stranger Outside the window, the sun finally gracefully rose. Half
an hour later, the library door opened and shut, and

(18:52):
several pairs of feet tromped up the stairs. Hey, Thursday shouted,
we're back. More shuffling as someone presumably Thursday, walk through
the whole of the apartment. At last, he opened the
door to the room we were in. Where's vacillas? Dun, dun, dun.
That's a cliffhanger. You got cliffhanged. That's a terrible phrase.

(19:15):
Don't use that. But if you want to know what
happens next, one of your options is to wait till
next Sunday. Another option is to go get the book.
Those are some of your options. Anyway, I'm gonna go
play with my dog. See y all later bye. It

(19:35):
could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
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You can find sources where it Could Happen here, updated
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