by Ryan Schow
Being naked online for millions to see wasn’t a big deal if you were hot.
That’s what Brooklyn said.
It sounded slutty to me, but I kept my mouth shut and heard her out. She tried to tell me the culture these days was way different than it was in my time, but I wasn’t buying it. Some things, no matter how tough you act, no matter what you believe, can cut to the bone and leave a long, nasty scar.
“Did they hurt you, yes or no?” I asked.
Sitting on her bed, talking with me openly, she stopped, thought about it, then said, “Yes.”
“Did they humiliate you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you want them to do these things to you?”
“Of course not!”
“Then stop telling me about your life and your crappy culture versus mine, and how this might not be a huge deal like I’m thinking it should be. Wrong is wrong.”
She really seemed to mull this over. After a long, contemplative moment, she looked up at me with the shiniest, most eager eyes and she said I needed to hurt them.
I want to hurt them.
And now that I’ve seen the pictures on Eric’s camera, now that I’ve seen that look on my daughter’s face—the terror in those eyes, the humiliation—I cannot stop the rage crawling tooth and nail up my spine. It starts as a trembling in my hand, a fixing of the jaw, hands becoming fists; but then I become this thing, this mutant made to mete out punishment, this abomination that’s about to go flat out nuclear.
Somewhere outside the school, I hear the deep, far away concussion bursts of what sound like bombs going off. The booms begin to stack one on top of the other. In my state of mind, right now, it doesn’t matter.
I grab the circular aluminum knob, open the classroom door and step inside.
“Excuse me?” the teacher says. He’s a white man with a starving artist’s beard, a Goodwill sweater one size too small and skinny jeans over camel colored felt shoes.
“Sit down and be quiet,” I say, showing him my badge. “I’m a federal agent working under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security—”
“Your badge says DEA.”
“Be quiet,” I explain, “means don’t talk.”
“Why is the DEA here?”
My eyes turn to the classroom of students. There must be twenty-five kids in here. These same bloodshot eyes find Brooklyn and she looks relieved to see me. She also looks rattled. When I asked her if she could face her attackers so soon, if she could sit next to them in class and pretend they didn’t beat her up, drag her into a car and tear away her clothes only to photograph her, she said she could do it so long as I showed up.
Well here I am.
“I am indeed here as a DEA agent, but I’m here for personal reasons, too.”
My eyes find the two boys who decided they wanted to put their hands on and in my daughter’s body, and then I realize with mounting dread they are as old as they look.
According to Brooklyn, both men were in their early twenties, part of the sanctuary cities initiative. They are not legal citizens, but they are allowed to be here.
Full disclosure: I am not a political person by any stretch of the imagination, so I don’t have a problem with undocumented aliens, or illegals, or whatever designation they’re supposed to have these days that won’t hurt anyone’s feelings. If they obey the law and pay taxes, and someone said I could treat them like anyone else in society as well as in a court of law, then I wasn’t putting an ounce of brain power into either the rightness or wrongness of the matter. Unfortunately, since disarming the public here in Chicago and allowing sanctuary for the good as well as the bad, crime here has changed. It’s deepened. And in many ways, our open arms to everyone has compounded an already difficult issue. One of the dead guys still in my trunk, he’s from Honduras.
He’s not legal.
I didn’t kill him for that reason; I killed him purely out of self-preservation. But in killing him I came face-to-face with feelings I’ve fought long and hard to bury: I hate this life, this world, my job, how far I’ve fallen from grace, how far I’ve fallen from the hearts of my family.
Now I learn my wife is having an affair.
And now I’m here because my daughter was violently abused, photographed and then dumped out on a curb in broad daylight like a bag of trash.
Do I care if they’re in their twenties or that they’re illegal?
No.
What I care most about is not failing my daughter in this. She said from their pain, she will heal. So I’ll follow her wishes.
I’ll bring the pain.
From the scabbard on my back, I remove the shotgun and everyone gasps. Outside the classroom, the boom, boom, boom sounds of things blowing up registers through the fog of rage circling through my brain. I’m seeing red. My phone vibrates in my pocket but I don’t care.
Whoever’s calling will have to wait.
Outside, much closer to the school, something explodes. A car maybe? Someone’s house? I can’t tell, but that’s not my problem. In situations like this, you’re either all in or all out, and I’m all in. I glance to the window, as does everyone else, albeit quickly and nervously.
For me, however, I’m thinking the noise and chaos will give me adequate cover.
“I am here for two people and two people only,” I announce to the classroom, who now has half its attention on me and half its attention on the noises outside. “If you all remain seated and do not attempt to flee the classroom, no one will get hurt. I am an agent with the federal government, so all the law abiding kids in this room have nothing to fear. And if you need counseling when this is all over, the school will provide that.”
With that said, I drop the barrel of the shotgun, squeeze the trigger and put one round right on Farhad Buhari’s torso, or Freddy B as Brooklyn said he was known amongst his peers.
The Kevlar sack of shot clobbers Freddy B right in the ribs, causing a gigantic shock among the students and an even worse shock to the boy rumored to be twenty-three or twenty-four years old.
Outside, things continue to blow up, which now has me concerned. Does any of this have to do with the drones? Is Chicago under attack?
A student stands to run, but I wheel the gun her way and say, “Sit down!”
She sits.
“These are bean bag rounds,” I tell the kids above the noise outside, “which means they hurt but they will not maim or kill.”
The next round finds Marcello Gomez, another undocumented citizen from our friends down south of El Paso. He’s twenty years old or older for sure, and a smug looking prick who just got all his confidence wiped away.
Marcello gasps for breath the same way Freddie B is gasping for breath. No one tries to run this time even as the noise outside dies out, and because of my position as a deep cover agent, no one from the school has seen me with Brooklyn enough to know she is both my daughter and the victim.
“These two boys,” I say as I’m shoving them forward in their desks and zip-tying their wrists behind their backs, “took a student from this school yesterday and they beat her up, tore off her clothes, violated her and dumped her on the street like garbage all while catching the entire thing on camera.”
“Yes, but you’re the DEA,” the teacher says, a man who clearly doesn’t know the meaning of the words be quiet.
As I haul Freddie B to his feet, a fully grown man the size of me with a beard as full as mine, I feel him getting some of that fight back. I drive a fist right into his kidney, feel the buckle in his legs enough to know he’s going to be compliant for the moment.
“I am also a father,” I tell the teacher, who begins to understand.
“Ah, okay,” the teacher says, now fully getting it. He then asks, “Does all that noise outside…is all that…you guys?”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Well then this is very concerning,” he says, matter-of-fact.
Just then the overhead intercom buzzes to life as the Pri
ncipal makes an announcement.
“This is Principal Roberts speaking. As many of you have just heard, there have been some explosions and reports of gunfire both outside the school and deeper in the city. We do not know the exact nature of these explosions but in all likelihood there is a reasonable explanation that may mean our safety is not at risk. Until we are given more details regarding this incident, or incidents, the school’s staff has been charged with your safety and they are now in charge. For now, everyone is to remain calm and stay seated until further instruction. Thank you.”
“Are you here in an official capacity?” the teacher asks me.
“You know I’m not.”
“These boys really did this?” he says as the white noise of students starting to panic elevates above the regular din of hushed conversation.
“I have seen the photos,” I say, “so yes.”
The teacher looks at the boys, who will not look at him, and then he says, “I’m going to assume you were here in an official capacity, and that’s why I will let you go.”
“Thank you,” I tell him.
He nods, then claps his hands loudly three times and says, “Okay kids, you heard Principal Roberts. We are to remain calm and in our seats!”
As I’m hustling the boys out into the surprisingly empty hallway, I hear the shuffling of feet out of chairs and a scampering towards the windows. Whatever in God’s name is going on out there can’t be good. Then again, it provided me the distraction I needed to fire the shotgun, something I hadn’t quite figured out until it happened, so it couldn’t be all that bad…
In the bathroom, I force Freddy B and Marcello into a stall together, pull the door shut. Eric is two stalls over, sitting with his zip-tied wrists locked to a door handle he’d tried to rip off, much to the obvious displeasure of his wrist. The skin is scuffed, red and bleeding. The zip-ties held, however, same as they always did. Eric is crying, sniffling with a broken face, a turned sideways nose and a fat lip with a mouth full of broken teeth and blood.
I withdraw a small knife, flip the blade out with my thumb, then cut the zip-tie holding his wrists to the door.
“Get up.”
He gets up.
“We’re going to walk together and you’re going to get in my car.”
“Where are we—”
Lightning quick, but one-hundred percent business, I slap the side of his face to get his attention. He is horrorstruck and in pain, nearly speechless against the violence.
“You are not to speak anymore, not unless I direct a question at you. Am I clear?”
His eyes watery red, his face plastered with terror, he nods his head, a few wayward tears dripping from his eyes onto his cheeks.
“Good.”
I open the door and bring all three boys in front of me.
“We’re going to walk out the front doors stopping for no one. I don’t care what you see, who you see, or what is said. My commands are the only commands you follow. If you fail to comply, I will shoot you in the spine with a bean bag that may or may not cripple you for life. Now walk.”
As we get into view of the guard I hobbled, he stands up and tries to hold his tongue. Finally he can’t keep his mouth shut any longer. “Who do I call to make sure you got those boys into proper custody?”
“They’re in my custody,” I say, “and I deem this proper.”
I walk past him and I hear him thinking of something to ask, anything to assuage his guilt, or his misguided sense of school security.
He never finds the words.
Outside, there are pillars of smoke in the sky over the downtown area and the flurry of black dots buzzing is absolutely baffling. My pocket vibrates again. The phone. I ignore it and say, “Purple car at the end of the block.”
“With the gaudy rims?” Freddie B says.
“Yes.”
On the other side of the school, big clouds of smoke are lifting into the early morning sky. It looks like a house is on fire. What the hell is going on?
My phone gives three tight buzzes.
DHS alert?
I usher the boys across the street to the Barracuda without incident, tell them to press their bellies on the passenger door, then I go to the back of the car and pop open the trunk.
“Freddy B, you sackless bitch, get back here.”
Hard eyes, unflinching stare, all bluster and machismo, he walks back like he isn’t afraid of anything. With that beard and at least a five year age advantage on his fellow students, this man has developed a persona that may work in high school, but won’t work on someone like me.
When he gets around to the back of the car and sees three dead bodies in the trunk, his eyes shoot wide as I say, “In case you’re wondering if I’ve got the stones to end your life.”
He starts to shake his head until I sock it with all my might, staggering him. I grab him by the hair and the back of his shirt and drag him around my side of the car, open it up and shove him in back.
“You give me an ounce of crap, we go from bean bag rounds to hollow points, capisce?”
“I get it,” he says.
Through the side window, I see Eric getting antsy and wanting to move.
“I will shoot you dead in the street, Eric!”
He stays put.
Walking around the other side of the car, I say, “You’re up next, Marcello. Eric, go around and sit on the curb facing me. Don’t move until I tell you.”
Both boys comply.
Marcello goes in the back seat where I bind his and Freddie B’s already bound wrists together with another zip-tie. Their bodies are twisted toward each other, and they will begin to have back and shoulder pain within a few minutes, but when I measure their pain against the pain they caused Brooklyn, my wells of sympathy feel extra dry.
“Eric, get up.”
He gets up, but right then a trio of drones zips through the street not a hundred yards away. They’re flying very low and have to be doing at least a hundred miles an hour or more. That side of the street, it appears, sustained a fair amount of damage. This is the point where my brain starts to wiggle and buck with concern. Then my phone rings. Again.
I fish it out of my pocket, answer it.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Where are you, bro?” Paco Loco growls in a stern Mexican accent. “Where are your boys? Where’s all my stuff? And why haven’t you been answering your damn phone?!”
“Trying to find them now,” I lie.
“You’re trying to what? Find what? I will tell you this, ese, if you don’t find your boys and my product, your head will have a hard time ever finding the body it was once attached to, you feel me?”
“I feel you.”
The line goes dead. I glance over at Eric who is clearly terrified not only of the city being under attack and drones jetting through the streets, but of me.
“The girl you did those things to yesterday, Brooklyn, she was my daughter.”
His face becomes a pale mask of understanding. Something new passes through his expression; I’m not sure, but it may be remorse.
“I’m tho thorry, thir,” he says with a bloody, painful looking fat lip. “I really am, I mean theriouthly…”
“Just shut up and get in the car,” I tell him, the resolution in me now more solid than ever. I jostle him in the front seat, roll down the window, bring his hands out through the window and zip-tie them to the arm of the side mirror.
“My armth hurt,” he says.
“Tho what?” I reply. “Your backth gonna hurt pretty thoon, too.”
Yeah, so I’m being a bit juvenile I know, but like I said (and I promith not to beat thith dead horth to death), my capacity for caring has hit an all-time low, quite possibly even rock bottom. I’m not sure what this makes me, or how I’ll explain myself if I have to, but I can say one thing for sure—no one stops to look at the bullets in a war-zone.
Chapter Eleven
As I navigate the purple beast through what looks like the start
of a fallout zone, my hands grip the wheel a little tighter, the bunching in my shoulders more obvious. The skies over downtown Chicago are smudged with charcoal clouds of smoke, much of it creating a thick haze blanketing the expanding metropolis.
It’s bad up ahead, but I can’t believe how bad it is just outside the downtown district.
Everywhere I look, buildings are pocked with gunfire and set ablaze, people are milling about—some running, others wandering aimlessly with empty eyes—and every car I see is either destroyed, stopped or moving at light speed.
A Subaru WRX rips by us like some scene from The Fast and the Furious, and I can’t blame them. It’s not like the cops will take chase. They’ll be dealing with whomever it is attacking us. Which is whom exactly? And why can’t my heart convince my head to care? Have I grown so callous that seeing such wholesale devastation fails even in the slightest to move me?
I check my phone, see a gazillion missed calls, warnings from DHS, text messages from friends who know I was once with Chicago PD. I ignore them all. What I’m thinking is that I’ve just been given the gift of a lifetime. There’s a good chance I can unload this scumbag death mobile and not draw much suspicion seeing as how the world looks like it’s officially ending.
“Whath the hell ith going on?” Eric asks.
“Shut up,” I say.
Earlier I had some half-cocked plan to head down to the docks, shoot all three of these walking, talking derelicts, then turn myself in and let that be that. But now everything has changed. There may actually be a way out of this. Or maybe I’ve screwed myself.
It’s hard to tell right now…
Raking a hand through my hair, then down my beard, I feel the instability inside me. I hate how agitated all this is making me.
“You gonna kill uth?” Eric asks.
“Probably.”
If not for the barely tempered rage crackling inside my head, I might make better decisions. I used to make great decisions. Not anymore. That was the past, as in past-tense. Beyond the need to inflict untold amounts of pain on this trio of rodents, and maybe even Adeline and her untimely lover, there is something else, something more.