The Liberator, fiction by Brandon Barrows
We were hanging out in Kelvin Dander’s basement—me, Kelvin, and Dan Roque—drinking stolen Coors and playing Call of Duty on co-op. It was kind of half-assed, each of us taking a turn on the controller, not really caring if we helped the guy online or not. It was just something to kill time.
There was a burst of gunfire from the television and then the rando whose game we’d joined was screaming at us through the headset. “A/D/S, you idiot! A/D/S! You’re never gonna—“
I pulled the headset off. Kid sounded about twelve years old. I tossed the headset and the controller onto the couch. Dan reached for them but the outside door to the basement opened, spilling sunlight across the room, washing out the TV screen.
Caleb Meyer was standing at the top of the three steps that led to the Danders’ side yard. He hopped down to the concrete floor, not bothering to shut the door. Backlit like that, it made it hard to look at Caleb head-on and he probably knew it. I was pretty sure he thought about that kind of thing.
“Boys,” Caleb said. “What’s good?”
“Close the door!” Kelvin shouted. “Can’t see the damned TV.”
“Don’t be like that.” Caleb was smiling, but that didn’t mean anything.
Caleb was tall and thin, with dark curly hair that did whatever it wanted. He always looked like he just got out of bed. He might have actually—it was summer and there wasn’t fuck all to do. But yeah, his smile—there wasn’t anything behind it. It was just always there as long as I knew him.
Smiling or not, I was surprised to see Caleb. He was a couple years older than us but he was only halfway through school. The rest of us would be seniors in the fall. Caleb dropped out when he was sixteen and later on did a few months in juvie after he beat down a kid pretty bad. He told me once that going back to school was part of his parole, but he was still catching up. Everybody knew he was supposed to be in remedial classes for the summer.
Caleb also wasn’t really our friend. I mean, he sort of was, but I don’t think he was really anybody’s friend. Caleb could be funny when he felt like it and he was nineteen so he could buy cigs for the kids who wanted ‘em, and usually he could get his hands on booze or weed if you asked him, so he usually found someone to hang out with. Sometimes it was us, even though Dan, Kelvin and I weren’t exactly the most popular guys in town. But real friends? Like, someone who cared about him? No way.
Maybe that was his own fault. I mean, I didn’t dislike Caleb, but whenever he was around I felt like we were the leftovers, the kids he found when there was nobody better or when he had something in mind he didn’t want anybody more popular to know about—you know, people who might do some bragging and maybe get everybody in trouble. But Kelvin, Dan, and I were pretty much all we had so there wasn’t much danger of that.
Caleb’s idea of fun was kind of bat-shit too. Like when he convinced me and Dan to break into the middle school with him and steal a bunch of instruments from the band room. We did a little shoplifting before and once, Caleb got us to tag the skate-park with him, but I never could understand how he convinced us to go along with robbing the school. We were pretty high when Caleb showed up at my house that night, but even so it was like he knew exactly what to say to get us to nod our heads and fall in line.
Before I knew it, we were inside the school and tossing stuff out a window. I was coming down about then and nearly shit myself when I realized what we were doing. I was a nervous wreck for days after—bad enough that my mom let me stay home from school for a while, thinking it was the flu. The nerves didn’t really wear off ‘til days later when Caleb came around to divvy up the money he got for all those trumpets and trombones and shit. At least you could count on him to not welsh out and having the money in my hand made me realize that we really got away with it.
“I said close the door,” Kelvin told Caleb again.
Everything was still for a second, and I was afraid this was going to be one of those rage moments of Caleb’s. He had a serious temper and the record to prove it. But then he turned, closed the basement door, and walked over to the couch where we all sat. The game was still moving on the screen, sound effects blaring. Faintly, I could hear the kid online saying something through the headset.
“Kelvin, you like guns, right?” Caleb asked, still smiling. “All that army shit?”
Understatement of the year. Kelvin was a military nerd for as long as I knew him. He always used to say he was going to enlist as soon as he graduated high school. It made sense—his uncle and grandpa were both career Army and when we were little he told me his dad died in “the war.” I found out later he just ran out on Kelvin and his mom and never turned back up. Graduation was less than a year off now though and he hadn’t talked about joining the service in a while.
Caleb on the other hand, talked about guns and the army a lot last time I saw him—facts and shit about all different kinds of weapons he’d seen online. I told him my dad took me hunting once, and that shooting the gun was cool, but that I didn’t feel like I needed to do it again. Caleb just smiled and explained to me about what kind of survival gear the army used. Maybe he was thinking about enlisting and wanted to talk to Kelvin about it.
Kelvin glanced over his shoulder at Caleb. “Yeah, I guess. What’re you doing here? Don’t you have school?”
“Screw school. Wanted to show you something.” Caleb’s smile slid from Kelvin to me to Dan. “You’ll appreciate it.”
Kelvin twisted in his seat. He looked sort of interested, which surprised me. He didn’t like Caleb at all; I knew that for a fact cuz he’d told me more than once—a few times he really bitched about me and Dan hanging around with Caleb. But when he had to, Kelvin put up with him cuz Dan and I quasi-liked him and Kelvin didn’t want to lose us as friends, I guess. He must have been a lot more bored than I realized if he was willing to humor Caleb.
“Oh yeah?” Kelvin said, kind of blasé.
Caleb lifted the back of his shirt, pulled something from his belt and held it out for us to see. It was a weird, blocky sort of gun-looking thing made of blue plastic. It looked like some really cheap kid’s—
“A fuckin’ toy?” Kelvin said. “Get out of here, Caleb.” He turned back towards the TV and reached for the game controller.
Caleb’s smile went a little wider, but his eyes blazed. Something cold went down my back and I tensed up. Caleb could be cool, but that mean streak of his… he’d never given me any shit, but he was a wildcard.
“It’s not a toy. This here,” pride on his face, Caleb held the thing up to the ceiling light, “is a Liberator.” He looked me right in the eye. “It’s a real gun—3-D printed. What they call a ‘ghost gun.’” He sounded smug.
“Where’d you get it?” I didn’t want to encourage him, but I was curious.
“You can find anything on the ‘net. Files are everywhere. A guy I know printed it for me. But fuck where it came from—you should be asking what we’re gonna do with it.”
“We?” Dan frowned.
“Sure.” Caleb’s smile was back. “I got an idea, but it’s too good to keep to myself.”
My heart fluttered, remembering the middle school. “What are you gonna do?” I asked.
“Let me ask you something, Mikey. What do you need for the summer? I mean a good summer.”
Dan looked at me. Kelvin pretended to ignore us but I knew he was listening.
I had no idea what answer Caleb was looking for, and his vibe was weird. He was more keyed up than I’d ever seen him, like a spring wound too tightly. I didn’t think he was high or anything though.
“I don’t know.”
Caleb shook his head, the way teachers do when someone gets an easy question wrong. “Money, man. Money. With it the world’s your oyster. Girls, weed, booze, freedom. Without it, you’re just some asshat in his mom’s basement.” His smile turned smirky.
“Get out of my house, Caleb,” Kelvin said over his shoulder.
Caleb was smiling, but I could see he was getting angry. Nobody talked to him like that and Kelvin should have known better.
“Let’s go outside,” I told Caleb quickly, trying to head off trouble. He looked at me then nodded. Dan followed us, closing the basement door behind him, leaving Kelvin on his own.
In the yard I asked, “Can I see it?”
Caleb hesitated, but handed the plastic gun to me.
It was lighter than I expected and the surface felt rough, like it wasn’t quite finished. There were only a few moving parts and they made clicking noises, just like a toy. I turned the “Liberator” over in my hands, accidentally tilting it sideways. Something dropped out of the chamber and tunked onto the ground. I picked it up. It was a bullet. This blocky, cheap-looking plastic thing really was a gun.
“What’s this idea?” Dan asked Caleb.
Caleb’s smile got a little brighter. “Like I said, money, and there’s an easy place to get some.”
“The school again?” I asked.
“Shut up about that.” Caleb reached for the gun. I let him have it. “I told you not to say anything about that shit ever.”
“Okay, forget I asked.” I turned back towards the basement door. I didn’t want to piss Caleb off, but I didn’t need any hassle either.
“Wait,” Caleb said, putting his hand on my arm. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. Look, I need you for this one and I swear there’s money in it. Just listen, okay?”
Caleb Meyer “needed” us? That was pretty sus. I didn’t think he needed anyone.
“Why us?”
“Not ‘us’—you. You can drive. I never learned. Can’t get my license ‘til I’m 21 cuz of my record anyway.” Caleb actually sounded embarrassed. “I thought of you guys first. I figured Army boy would be hyped on this shit, but—well fuck him.” He shrugged and shoved the gun back into his belt then flipped his shirt-tail over it.
I didn’t answer. The only sound was insects screaming. I had my license and my own car—my sixteenth birthday present; a shit-box Civic, but a car all the same—but I couldn’t be the only one Caleb knew who did.
“Look, Mike.” Caleb’s smile crept back into place. “I know we aren’t, like, friends exactly. You know, real friends. But you’ve always been cool to me. I know how shitty it can be when there’s nothing to do but sit around.”
An image of Caleb in a bright orange jumpsuit, sitting in a cell all by himself sprang to mind. Was juvie really like that or was it just on TV?
“So, like, we’re cool and I appreciate it and I could get anyone with a car in on this, but I just wanted to repay the favor, okay? Trust me, it’ll be a snap. I show this thing,” he patted the small of his back, “And we’ll, like, liberate that cash and liberate ourselves from boredom.” He laughed. “So you in? We split fifty-fifty. Sound good?”
It sounded insane. The guy was asking me to help him commit a literal crime—armed robbery. I didn’t count the shoplifting or even the burglary as crime cuz that’s kid stuff. Bringing a gun into anything made it real. I’m not stupid and I’m sure as hell not crazy. But I wasn’t so sure about Caleb anymore. Maybe he wasn’t just a wildcard, maybe there really was something wrong with him. Maybe that was the vibe I felt.
So why wasn’t I walking away, going back inside to play video games with Kelvin?
“I don’t know.”
“Mike…” Dan said. I looked at him, he looked at Caleb. “We’re out,” Dan told him, holding up his hands and backing away a step.
“You weren’t even invited,” Caleb snapped then reined himself in. To me he said, “Sorry, sorry. I know you guys’re tight, but—“
I remembered what a wreck I was after breaking into the school the winter before, how I was sure that cops were gonna kick in my front door any second and drag me away in handcuffs. I remembered the sick feeling in my stomach and the nightmares. I also remembered the fistful of cash Caleb handed me a few days later—only a couple hundred but more money than I’d ever had at one time.
“Dan comes along and gets a share.”
“What?” the two of them said almost in sync.
I didn’t trust Caleb, but I was curious—and excited. I was seventeen years old. Maybe it was stupid and crazy but aren’t you supposed to do stupid shit when you’re seventeen? Except for breaking into the school, I hadn’t done a thing with my life and I was so high I didn’t know what was going on ‘til it was almost over. Maybe this thing Caleb had in mind was the place to start. Some little voice in the back of my head laughed and said why not?
Caleb was right too. The summer was only a couple of weeks old and I was already bored out of my god-damned mind. Without money, there was nothing to do, and the only way I was gonna get any was to flip burgers or bag groceries. But if I had to spend all my time at some shitty minimum-wage job, when would I even get to use any of the money I earned? Thinking about it that way, the memory of the money from the school robbery grew bigger while the fear shrank.
Caleb hadn’t said much, but it sounded like he had a plan. Standing there, looking at him, I was getting ideas too. He was the one with the record and he was the one with the gun. If we got caught, I could say he forced me to help, that between his rep and the gun, I felt like I had no choice. I’d never gotten into any trouble so I was pretty sure people would believe me. That sounds super shitty of me, but so what? Like Caleb said, we weren’t “real” friends anyway. And if we didn’t get caught, screw boredom and screw looking for a summer job.
“Okay,” I told him. “I’ll go along, but Dan rides with us and he gets a share.”
Caleb glowered. “If that’s the only way.” His voice was sulky.
“Mike, I really don’t—“
“Shut it, Dan. You’re in,” I told him. Dan was my best friend and I knew him well enough to realize that he might whine now but he’d thank me later when we were counting loot. “I’ll run home and get my car.”
*
It was after two o’clock. Most people were working, so there wasn’t much traffic as Caleb directed me towards the edge of town. He wouldn’t say where we were going, but I was pretty sure it was the Gas’n’Gulp station by the highway. He admitted it when I asked. He was disappointed, but it wouldn’t have been much of a surprise anyway. Holding up a convenience store is a classic.
“Listen,” Caleb told us when we were nearly there. “I been hiking out here and watching the place off and on the last few days. Between two-thirty and three there’s only one cashier in there—this mousy little chick. There’s a guy works there days too, but he takes his lunch late so she’ll be all alone for at least half an hour.”
It wasn’t hard to see Caleb’s plan. “You make her empty the register and we jump right on the highway?”
Caleb’s smile was almost radiant. “Mikey, I knew you were the right guy for this.”
He meant it as a compliment, but I didn’t like hearing it. I wanted easy money—everybody does—but he made it sound like I was a criminal. I guess I would be afterwards but… That other-me voice in my head was psyched—the part of me that wanted the excitement, the experience.
I shook the thought away. I didn’t want to think about where the money was coming from, only what I could do with it. It’d be a story to tell when I was old and gray and nobody cared anymore.
“You pull into the lot, Mike,” Caleb explained, “but keep off to the far left, by the chain-link fence that separates the store from the highway. The monitors for the cameras are right by the cash register and I checked—you can see the gas-pumps and the parking spaces up by the front but over there, you’re home free. You just park, wait in the car, keep it running, and I’ll do the thing.”
“What about me?” Dan asked from the backseat.
“You just sit tight,” Caleb told him, disgust in his voice.
It sounded simple. Caleb obviously put thought and effort into this. It seemed fairly safe too. Even if things went bad, I had my excuse ready. That’s what my brain said, but my stomach was telling a different story. All of it sudden it hurt bad, worse even than after the middle school. It felt like I had to use the bathroom in the worst way. I tried to ignore it and just think about how I’d spend the rest of the summer with some cash in my pocket.
I pulled the car into the lot, parked where Caleb told me. He pushed the gun into the back of his jeans and put on a black, skull-patterned COVID mask. He checked himself in the rearview mirror then got out, and walked—almost swaggered—towards the store. Caleb was an edge-lord as long as I knew him, but he was legit tough and with the gun, he looked pretty badass.
The way the car was parked, I could see the front of the store and through the big plate-glass windows. The cash register was right by the door and the girl Caleb told us about leaned on the counter. I couldn’t tell much about her at that distance, just recognize the girl shape and the dark color of her hair. I’d take his word that she was mousy.
Caleb opened the door. The girl looked up and said something to him, probably welcoming him or asking if she could help him find something. There was no way to hear what Caleb said back, but from her body language the girl didn’t like it. She pointed towards the door.
Caleb’s arm came up, the gun at the end of it, and the girl’s hands were suddenly pointed towards the ceiling. Caleb gestured with the gun but the girl didn’t move. He stepped closer and slapped her right across the face with his free hand.
“Let’s get out of here, Mike. Please.” Dan shook my shoulder. “C’mon, let’s go.”
“Shut up,” I told him, fascinated by what was happening inside the store. Caleb wasn’t doing anything I’d never seen before, but it wasn’t like watching TV or a movie because I knew this was real. That made it entirely different. My heart was pounding and I couldn’t have torn my eyes away even if Caleb had pointed the gun at me instead of the girl. I forgot all about the ache in my stomach. I forgot all about the money. I just wanted to know what came next.
There was movement finally. I couldn’t hear a sound from inside the store, but I could follow easy enough. The girl’s shoulders shook as she opened the cash register. I was pretty sure she was crying. Caleb had the gun on her but suddenly turned on his heel and pointed it towards something deeper in the store, something I couldn’t see from way out in the car.
But I could hear the sound—even outside the gunshot was a short, deep-throated bark.
Caleb tumbled ass-backwards, collapsing against the glass door, half pushing it open with his weight. I could already see the blood and I could hear him screaming. It reminded me of the sound my dog Betsy made when she was hit by a car, back when I was little. She pulled through but I didn’t think Caleb was going to make it. There was a lot of blood.
“Jesus Christ!” Dan screamed, right in my ear, breaking me out of the trance.
I wanted the easy money, like everyone else, and I wanted the excitement, to know that I’d actually done something for once in my life—and Caleb made it sound like a lock. I wanted all that, but I should have listened to my guts instead of the voice inside my head. The pain from my stomach was in my whole body now and my brain was just fucking soaked in whatever chemical makes fear. My gut told me before that I couldn’t trust Caleb and now I knew that Caleb shouldn’t have trusted himself either.
“Go, go, go!” Dan punched my shoulder, punctuating each word, as a heavyset guy stepped out of the store, a pump shotgun in his hand. He pointed towards the car then looked back at the store and shouted something at the girl.
Dan screamed, “Go, you stupid fucker!” and I finally got it together, slammed the car into gear and pushed the pedal to the floor, roaring towards the highway, just like Caleb planned.
My half-bald tires screamed up the ramp and I popped out onto the highway right ahead of a big gas-tanker who put on his horn and flipped me off as he swung into the passing lane. It scared me so bad that I lost control for a second, but I’d been driving for over a year and the muscle memory kicked in and got me back on track.
I pushed it to seventy, just over the speed-limit, and wove in and out of the interstate traffic, not going anywhere, just wanting to put miles and other cars between me and the Gas’n’Gulp. Dan was babbling too fast for me to make out anything he was saying.
“Put on your seatbelt!” I shouted at him, more to feel like I was doing something than because I actually cared. I needed to get some sort of control over the situation.
I was shaking all over, seeing Caleb fly backwards into the door again, hearing him screaming, wondering what the hell went wrong. Obviously the guy he told us about wasn’t on any lunchbreak, but what happened to Caleb’s gun? Not that I had wanted anyone to die—did they call an ambulance for Caleb? How bad was he hurt? Was he even still alive? Somehow I didn’t think so—but Caleb seemed pretty eager to use it, so why didn’t he? At least to protect himself.
For maybe half an hour, I just drove as fast as I dared until I could breathe normally and the shakes started to fade. Dan had shut up somewhere along the way, but that was almost worse than the babbling. Now I had no idea at all what he was thinking.
I pulled into a highway rest area and parked by a little open-faced hut with vending machines. Twisting in the seat I asked, “You want a drink or something?”
Dan was laying on his side on the backseat, knees curled almost to his chest, hands clasped under his chin. He met my eyes but didn’t say anything. I wished he would say something. Anything at all would have been better than the way he looked at me.
I got out, went up to the Coke machine, dug in my pocket for change and felt something small and hard and entirely the wrong shape for a coin. My fingers closed around it and brought it out into the light. The bullet. The bullet that fell out of Caleb’s gun when I was messing with it. The bullet I picked up and then forgot all about.
For a long minute I stared at the bullet, noticing the way the copper shell caught the light, then pulled out my phone. I was going to call 9-1-1, to turn myself in, but my fingers wouldn’t work. The shakes were back so bad that I couldn’t even dial and dropped my phone trying. I heard it clatter and crunch against the concrete sidewalk but I couldn’t see where it landed through the tears. All I could do was slide down the side of the hut, press my face against my knees and sob, thinking that Caleb’s smile was gone for good and that it was all my fault.
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