The Rising

by Eli Constant

  I could hear Sherry shouting for them to stop. I could hear Marty crying.

  I didn’t see them though, because after a while, I closed my eyes and gave into the madness of it all. I gave into the feel of my blood rushing to injured areas of my body.

  It felt like dozens of legs were kicking me. Eight men. Sixteen legs.

  I found solace in the numbers.

  And then it stopped, stopped as if the storm had half passed and I was caught in the eye, in the complete stillness that precedes a second wave of carnage. I risked parting my lashes. Reece was still manhandling Sherry and Marty. They looked lost. Scared. I didn’t want to die and leave them to their own devices.

  I knew they wouldn’t survive.

  Not for an hour.

  Not for a day.

  Big John and Lucas were still side by side. They hadn’t joined in the beating. The larger man was pulling a needle through Lucas’s face. A curved, shudder-inducing thing that glinted in the Texas light. It yanked the skin of his cheek at an odd angle as he extracted the stitching thread.

  And it created a craterous dimple as he pushed it back in, a small amount of blood pooling around the stainless-steel point. The sight was brutal.

  And it brought back more memories of my life before America.

  The gang fights of childhood. The knifings. The drive-bys.

  One man with little expertise stitching up another man.

  It hadn’t been much better in the rougher part of Miami. When that teenager had been left on my doorstep, cut up and on the edge of death, I’d shut down my training school and left. If I’d known back then that the entire world would eventually be a war zone… shit, I’d have taken my chances in that shithole area of Florida.

  The memories were horrible. They brought with them the shadow of old pain, but it somehow built my resolve to make every one of the dirt bags surrounding me suffer.

  I closed my eyes and reopened them once more. I was right on the brink of the body trauma sending me into a black out. They were good at what they were doing- good at keeping me just on this side of consciousness. The kicking hadn’t resumed, so I tried to push my body up on my elbows, tried to get myself into a position to do something. Anything.

  The butt of a shotgun slammed into my lower spine just above the tailbone. It forced me back to the ground, my palms and right cheek hitting the concrete and getting scrapped up by loose gravel. A voice chimed out three words, dropping them like acid. “Stay down, fucker.” It was someone who hadn’t spoken yet. The voice brash and crunchy around the edges, like he was talking as he finished up a bag of chips, holding the container up to his mouth and simultaneously crushing the foil-like material.

  Afterward, the beating resumed. Like it had never stopped. The second side of the storm. With winds infinitely more intense.

  Only this time, I thought they were going to keep at it until I either passed out or died. Just when I knew my body couldn’t take anymore, just when the world started to go dark at the edges, I heard Bobby speak. “Looks like you’re about ready to watch the show, crop picker, so let’s set you up so you can see how your pretty lady likes real men.”

  Sometime during the beating one of the humanoids had brought an old bench seat from an SUV out and set it on the ground. Its sharp springs were exposed through the dry, maroon leather cover. Without ceremony, they yanked my battered body to my feet and dropped me on the seat. A spring jabbed hard into my right ass check and I barely felt the pain as one of the men grabbed my hair and yanked my head back roughly. I tried to stand, but rough hands pushed me back down. Three men. Three men holding me.

  Two holding Sherry.

  Bobby.

  Lucas.

  John.

  Eight men.

  When my eyes focused and my head cleared again, I could see that two men who’d helped in the kicking fest—the stormy eyed inexperienced kid and the bigger threat I’d planned on taking out first—were holding Sherry over a double stack of blown-out truck tires, her upper chest being shoved into the hard rubber. She faced me, her face streaked with tears. Her whimpering and crying was barely discernible over the jeers and whistles of the men. Big John and Lucas had returned—Lucas now having the most hideous face I had ever seen. A patchwork rag doll best suited for a voodoo den—to join in the sick festivities. The glint of revenge was in Lucas’s eyes and I knew it wasn’t gonna be pretty.

  “Okay, Lucas, you got a raw deal in this situation. You go first. Which end of this fine piece of ass do you want? I’ll take the other. Figure she can take two at a time and it’s too damn hot out here to do it single file. We can do that later.” Bobby paused for effect, letting the men around him laugh again. It was animalistic and sickening. “Just want to give her old man a good show before I ‘ICE’ him.” Bobby walked over to where Sherry was being held and he slapped her across the ass. Her skirt was stretched tight because of the way she was bent over and the sound of him hitting her was loud. A rubber band being pulled and then released against a hard surface.

  My mind went to Marty. I tried to turn my head and find him. It took effort; the man holding my hair wasn’t allowing much slack. I found him though, tucked against my peripheral vision. He was gone. Not physically, but mentally. He sat in the hot sun by himself crying, rocking back and forth with his knees tucked tightly against his chest. No one was around him, but he was just too afraid to run. I willed him to look at me so I could wink or smile or something to give him hope, but it wasn’t going to happen. He was gone. Just gone.

  Innocence doesn’t survive forever. It can hold on, like a candle flickering in the dark, but eventually something will come along that is strong enough to snuff it out.

  I turned back to Sherry when I heard the rip of her clothing. I tried to shut my eyes, but the swollen tissue kept them from closing all the way. My face felt like a punching bag hung in a gym for a decade. A decade of boxing wannabes with nothing else to hit.

  “Now you keep watching, boy,” Bobby’s voice, with his tree rings of smoke, filtered into my ears. I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to see what was going to happen. I had to fucking stop it. But I was being held. A man at each arm. A third yanking my hair.

  Lucas approached me then. He got right up in my face, our noses almost touching. “This is gonna be like your own personal porno movie and the best part about it is there ain’t no fat tex-mex chick fucking a burro.” He stood up and bellowed then, his face tilting up to the sky and sunlight glinting off a gold tooth tucked back in his mouth. He turned away from me and I couldn’t think of what to do.

  God, I should be able to do something. All my years of training. Shit. I had to fucking do something. I began to struggle then, as Lucas approached Sherry, walking around the tires and her held-down body to position himself behind her. Her skirt had been ripped, laid open like a corpse’s chest on an autopsy table. I couldn’t see the full back of her from this angle. And I was grateful for that.

  “I think he needs a better view, boys,” Bobby said as he joined Lucas next to Sherry. “Turn her sideways.”

  The two men holding her down, pushed and pulled Sherry until I viewed her side profile. Lucas was behind her again, undoing his belt and unzipping his pants. He looked at me as he slid a finger beneath the waistline of her panties. “Think I might have to take back what I said about not having a fat tex-mex chick. She’s got a little junk in the trunk, don’t she?” He pushed forward, shoving his still-clothed groin against her. “Damn,” he pulled away, leaning down to look at her more closely, “bitch is bleeding.”

  “No waiting for her to get wet then,” Bobby spoke, raw need and a trace of venom in his voice, was in front of Sherry. He reached forward and rubbed a filthy index finger across her mouth. She flinched away, turning her head and beginning to sob harder. He began to unzip, shoving his hand into the open fly of his jeans and wriggling his lower body. He was just pulling himself out, hard and ready, when a new voice stopped him in his tracks.

  It
stopped Lucas too, in the middle of shifting Sherry’s underwear to the side to make way.

  “Looks like you boys are having a really good time.” The voice was hard and serious, but also holding notes of decided femininity. It came from behind me, somewhere near the store entrance, but I couldn’t move my head to see the owner. Maybe it was nerves at being interrupted, but the hand gripping my hair started pulling so hard that I thought he might scalp me accidentally.

  Everything stayed still for a moment, a snapshot in time. The facial expressions on the hoods holding Sherry were ones of surprise and bewilderment, as if they were seeing something that really shouldn’t be there. I felt the hands which had been firmly holding me into place relax, including the vice grip on my hair, and I twisted my body around in the seat to get a look.

  What I saw made me blink more than once to make sure it wasn’t some sort of hallucination from having the shit beat out of me. Two Border Patrol officers dressed in full uniform, including bullet resistant vests and issue weapons, were standing there like bright freaking beacons of hope. My heart leapt in my chest, an over-excited horse at the race’s starting line.

  “I really advise you to let the lady up.” The woman who had spoken was slight, not more than 115 pounds soaking wet, with black hair pulled up in a high, sleek ponytail. She managed to look cool and breezy, despite the heat, and her glare was apparent even through the dark glasses she was wearing. Her partner was the biggest ‘cop’ I’d ever seen, easily as large as the bad guys’

  Big John. He stood there with a menacing-looking shotgun, black on black, but not shiny, held loosely in his right hand, the barrel pointed at the ground.

  “What the hell do you two want?” Bobby was in no mood for a couple of hot shot DHS agents bothering him. I thought the sight of the two officers would have shaped him up, but it hadn’t. In fact, it seemed to be having the opposite effect. He’d set himself up as a king of this new world, this changed world with the monsters. He didn’t want to recognize authorities of the old world.

  “Originally, we just stopped for a little fuel, but now it looks like we’re going to be breaking up one hell of a party,” The woman took a single step forward, her right hand moving to her weapon.

  “Lady, I don’t know who you think you are. But I caught this guy in a criminal act and plan on punishing him as I see fit.” Bobby had shoved himself back into his pants and zipped. He turned away from Sherry. She wasn’t crying now. She looked…angry. That was better. Anger would shield her psyche. It would keep her from dying inside.

  “So you big ‘ol macho guys decided that raping this woman was going to be his punishment. Jesus H. Christ. How much hell does the world have to go to for women to start being treated as goddamn people?” Her right hand slid over her holster and released the locking mechanism. “Now, step away from her. Let him go. And we can end this peacefully.”

  Marty made a sound then, a sound that drew the male DHS agent’s attention. “Shit, they were doing this in front of a kid.” It was the first time he’d spoken and his voice was smooth as butter and just as thick. He sounded like he should be singing lead vocal on an R&B album, not out in the Texas weather rounding up bad guys.

  “Son of a bitch,” the female murmured, glancing at Marty and then back at the potentially explosive situation in front of her. “Get the fuck away from her and let the man go.”

  “Like hell!” Bobby yelled only seconds before he went for his shotgun so fast that he caught his own men off guard. Only his own men though. The border patrol officers were primed for a conflict and moved with the type of efficiency and effectiveness only obtained from training. Bobby’s shot went wild and I heard the glass in the store window behind the agents shatter from the .12 gauge double 00 load. The men holding me finally fully let go. I didn’t wait to see what else was about to happen as I threw myself to the ground and made my way to Sherry and the kid, low crawling as if a net of barbwire hung above my head.

  Gun fire erupted from all directions, each crack of a shot fired making me sink lower to the hard ground. From behind me, I could hear the crack and boom of the DHS troops’ controlled fire and answering chaotic rapid-fire response. I was almost to Sherry when Big John fell directly in front of me, his face destroyed by a close-range blast. Brain matter spilled out from where his eyes and nose once resided. The gray hue of the fluids was odd against his dark skin. He wasn’t as bad as the others. At least, I didn’t feel like he had been. They’d kept him around to play nursemaid.

  And now he was dead. Maybe he’d done enough in his time to end up in a nice afterlife. Maybe.

  In his hand was a huge revolver, I grabbed it and crawled over his body, a damn mountain rising out of the concrete that took me more effort to get over than I liked to admit. It seemed like every movement I made, my injuries swelled more. It was getting to the point that I could barely see, peering through the thin slits that were created when I forced my eyes to open as much as they were able. I wondered how I’d sound when I talked. My mouth felt like I was holding a large strawberry between my lower lip and gum.

  I was close to Sherry by now. I had to be. Squinting, I could make out what looked like a dark pillar. Two tires stacked on top of one another.

  The rounds kept flying as I reached the tires and found Sherry crouched down on the concrete. She was leaning on her side, keeping the ripped back of her skirt from touching. The agents might have been well-trained, but the truckers weren’t going to give up without a fight.

  “You okay,” I spoke at a normal level, knowing a whisper wouldn’t have cut across the gunfire. Sherry didn’t respond with words, but her face spoke volumes. “Here, take this.” I shoved the large revolver towards her. “Take this and get Marty.”

  Her expression warred between anger, confusion, fear, and anger again. “Great choice of a rest stop, Juan.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that and she didn’t seem to need an answer. She turned her body, getting ready to crawl towards Marty, who had moved from the sunshine to hide against one of the vending machines. We could see him, but thank God everyone else had forgotten the young boy.

  Sherry got about a foot away from me but was stopped by the disfigured image of Lucas. “Where ya going, princess? I ain’t done with ya yet.” His sneer as he spoke was psychotic and his words sounded more full-bodied than they should, like he was cheap wine left out too long to air. I think it was because of the way he had to speak now, his Picasso painting face of stitches changing the way his mouth formed letters. He’d be scarred for life. He deserved a shittier fate. “Now, let’s get those panties down. We still got some partying to do. I like my women a little bloody.”

  The man had completely lost it, drowning in his lust for revenge and physical release. He didn’t even seem to be worried that bullets were flying around us like birds trying to find a perch. A perch within flesh and bones and blood.

  Sherry’s gasp of fear was short and swallowed quickly. Lucas came at her, hands extended to push her shoulders down to the ground. I moved up behind her, but I wasn’t fast enough. Sherry was going towards the ground, Lucas riding her down. For an instant, I could see between their bodies. I saw the revolver pointed into Lucas’s body.

  And then I heard the gun fire.

  A violent bang.

  Flesh and fluid spurted like a geyser from the assaulter’s back, to rain down in a spray across Sherry’s hair which was splayed out on the ground behind her head. Ever since Sherry had found me on the road, driving up in Kyle’s T-bird, she hadn’t been the woman who could escape a town of monsters and survive. I hadn’t seen that side of her. No, I’d seen the woman mourning, collapsing, introverting. She’d taken care of Marty, but she had to be more than motherly.

  Now she had been. She’d been the woman I could imagine tearing through town, stealing a car, raiding supplies.

  Sherry was struggling to get out from under the lifeless body of Lucas. I scrambled closer, as fast as my battered body would let me, and hel
ped her push the corpse off. Lucas’s shell rolled, his blood-covered back glinting in the sunlight. A peek of spine pushed through the ruined flesh.

  She looked at me and I opened my mouth to ask if she was okay again, she stopped me. “Don’t ask me if I’m okay, Juan. Just don’t.” With that, she got up on her feet, keeping her upper body crouched down. The bullets had slowed. A shot fired matched by a shot fired. A stand-off. I looked away from Sherry, but where I was now, the tires blocked my view of what was happening directly in front of the convenience store entrance.

  I dragged myself over to the now-dead scum that was lying on the concrete, his exposed, meaty back already starting to smell and cook in the heat like rancid ground beef in a skillet. A pistol was stuck in Lucas’s waistband. I pried it out. It was smaller than the gun I gave Sherry, but a weapon was a weapon. Rolling over on my back, not being able to stand because pretty much my entire body hurt so bad I wanted to cry, I began looking for bad guys.

  The scene was chaos. Blurry fucking chaos through busted-up eyes. Everyone that was left was hunkered down behind something, and there weren’t many left. The two border patrol agents were still alive, although the big man was sitting behind the ice freezer and peering around looking for a shot. The sun was in his eyes and he wasn’t moving much, not taking any risky shots. That made me think he’d been hit. Hit bad if he wasn’t moving to get to his partner who was on the other side of the entrance door, hunkered down between a soda and a candy vending machine.

  The female seemed to be trying to say something to him—leaning forward and opening her mouth more than once to yell. I couldn’t hear her, not over the intermittent fire and the way my ears were beginning to ring. I watched her, my gaze sometimes going to find one of the still-alive truckers. Every time she tried to make a move forward to get to her partner, a round stopped her—glancing off one of the vending machines or slamming into the building behind her. The gunfire was coming from a single source and I traced it, finding a pair of hazy legs and a butt squatting behind a blue Peterbilt truck. The truck only moved a little as I blinked. And blinked again to clear my vision.