The Rising

by Eli Constant

  It wasn’t enough. I was on the edge of losing it, of collapsing. I hadn’t realized the extent of the damage, but it was rearing its ugly head now.

  The man shooting at the female agent wasn’t far from me, no more than twenty feet. I laid down on the ground, supporting myself on my elbows and steadying the gun as best I could with the way my arms felt like limp noodles.

  I began pulling the trigger. I couldn’t see clearly enough to fire a well-aimed bullet, so I let it rip. Sometime around the fourth round, I heard a yelp of pain as a round found the target. The person who’d found haven behind the truck stood and staggered out into the open. It was Bobby. He was using a pistol to continue fighting now, the shotgun nowhere to be seen. I fired again.

  And again.

  But I didn’t hit him this time.

  My head felt swimmy, as if someone had filled it like a fish tank and was just waiting for a batch of guppies.

  “You piece of shit wetback. You shot me in the ass,” Bobby spat as he began limping towards me. He lifted the black pistol in my direction.

  I tried to shoot again, but the click of an empty chamber sent my pulse into my throat. It pounded there, as if reminding me that I was alive. For now.

  It was over; I was out of ammo and couldn’t run. I closed my eyes not wanting to see the flash as the pistol round headed my way. I heard the reports of the handgun, but that seemed distant…like in a dream. There wasn’t any pain, no agonizing tearing of flesh as the bullets ripped through me, just that sound. Distant firecrackers that wouldn’t brighten the already sun-filled day.

  Slowly, I opened my eyes and saw the now-dead Bobby lying in front of me, his pistol still gripped in his hand and a small pool of blood leaching out from underneath his body to add a splash of color to the dark grey concrete. I moved myself to a sitting position, my body protesting the movement, and I saw Sherry holding Marty, slowly rocking him in her arms as he cried. I forced myself into a standing position. The pain shot through me like white-hot arrows.

  I found the person who had to be my savior. She was kneeling over her partner and trying to do something my foggy mind couldn’t comprehend. The sun was still shining, but it wasn’t in the male agent’s eyes anymore, because he was lying on his back. Her head lifted and her eyes found mine. Through the mind-numbing agony that wracked my body, I heard her yells for help and began staggering towards her.

  “Get over here! Get over here now!” she screamed. I could tell that her voice was raised as high as it would go. But to me, it sounded filtered through pillows. Muffled and low. I shook my head roughly as I walked, forcing any residual strength I possessed into my legs.

  When I reached her, I fell to my knees and stared. The big border patrol man was bleeding out. A round gained sometime during the fight, had torn through his leg, ripping away the femoral artery. He had tried to put a tourniquet on it, but the blood was everywhere, streaming from beneath him like ruby fingers painting rivers across the ground to wet his partner’s standard issue pants.

  And the female agent was doing her best to stem the flow of the crimson, no care for her clothes or the way the blood was seeping to stain beneath her nails.

  “It’s going to be okay, Mike. I’ll get the med kit. Just hold on!” She looked over at me, her face almost pleading for help. She was no longer wearing the dark glasses and I was fascinated at the brilliance of her green eyes. I wanted to fall into them, drown in them. Let go. “You, whatever your name is, push down on this rag. It’s the only way to slow the bleeding.”

  I rose out of the water I was lost in, the green-blue waves I’d found within her gaze, and I did as she told me to. Apparently not to her liking though.

  “No, push hard. Really hard. You have to keep the pressure on until I get back!” She put her hands over mine and she pushed. “Please, hold on. Don’t go anywhere.” She looked at her partner and not at me when she said it.

  I leaned into the wound. The blood felt slick, as if my fingers were trailing against the ocean-damp back of a dolphin, and my hands wanted to slide off the big man’s thigh. The rag I was pressing against the crimson-spurting wound seemed to be a band tee shirt, but with all the blood I couldn’t really tell. It didn’t really matter, but in that moment, I wanted to know. It’s funny how watching someone’s life end makes minute details come to life, buzzing about in your brain clamoring for attention. It was avoidance. I knew he wouldn’t make it.

  So much blood.

  It was fucking everywhere.

  Watching a person die changes your paradigm. It forces you to realize the fragility of the human body. It forces you to recognize your own fleeting time upon this Earth. It sticks with you, as you see the final time the person’s chest will rise and fall, as you hear the staggered, final exhalation of breath. It changes you.

  I’d had my share of people dying. I willed the man to live.

  The slight woman determined to save her partner gave one more ‘Hold On!’ and then she left. I didn’t know if she was talking to me or her fallen friend, but it didn’t matter, because it applied either way. And, in both cases, it fell on deaf ears. I felt dizzy leaning over the man. I fought for consciousness, because if I passed out, he would die faster. I pushed harder. At least, if I was awake and trying, I could pretend that he had a chance. Again, I willed him to live.

  Sometime, while the female officer was gone, the big man began to talk. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, the noise in my ears kept me from hearing his soft tone. He was smiling at me, like he knew me and was saying something about his family back home. I tried to comfort him, but my words came out more like an incoherent mumble than a strong statement of hope. Just when I thought I couldn’t hold on any longer, just when I felt like the world was about to collapse, the female agent was back, her black hair fallen from the ponytail to hang loosely around her face.

  “Get out of the way,” the female agent barked. I did as I was told, rocking back on my heels in an over-exaggerated movement that sent me sprawling to land on my back. It knocked the wind out of me, but she didn’t seem to notice. I watched as she ripped open a package and began shoving some type of gauze into the wound. After three packages, I saw the crimson wetness begin to ebb and then stop.

  “Blood stop gauze. It’s his only chance,” she said like she really didn’t care if anyone heard her. “He’s lost a lot of blood.” She turned her head, finding my face, and her voice grew stronger. “Help me move him inside, into the shade. Damn man sunburns quicker than a ginger in California. Help, please.” The second ‘help’ and ‘please’ was an afterthought. She was calming down, her body movements becoming less urgent. I wondered if she was dealing internally with what I was seeing, that the big man’s breathing was becoming increasingly more shallow. I didn’t think the gauze was going to be enough.

  I grabbed onto the man’s shoulders and began to drag him towards the store entrance. It was a struggle, but the female agent was stronger than she seemed. Even so, every step of lugging the at least three hundred-plus pound man still strapped down with all of his issue equipment, the several yards into the building reminded me that I was very much worse for the wear. Thank God we didn’t have to handle the door. It was still open. Open and inviting. This fucking place was anything but open and inviting. Hillbilly bigots on aisle one, right next to the cans of nuts.

  When we finally settled the big man down, his chest barely rising and falling now, my savior looked at me and then out the door towards Sherry and Marty.

  “Go take care of the kid and your girl. I got this.” Her voice sounded tired. Not just normal tired, but weight-of-the-world tired. I couldn’t even imagine what it was like to be a law enforcement agent of any kind while something like this was happening. Did officers even get to go home at night? Did they have a home to go to? Did they…God, did they have kids that were dying while they were trying to save strangers?

  I didn’t have the energy or the will to try and explain that Sherry wasn’t my girl. I was kn
eeling on the ground next to the immobile agent and it hurt like a bitch to stand up. I groaned involuntarily. The female agent stood up quickly, walking around her partner’s body and putting a hand on my shoulder. “How banged up are you?”

  “I’ll live,” I mumbled around the lumpy mess of my mouth and turned from her to head out of the building.

  Her hand stayed on my shoulder, stopping me. “Just stop. I can’t stand macho men.” Without asking and with a shit bedside manner, she lifted up my shirt and examined the blue-purple bruising sprouting up all across my body, flowering like a perverse garden of black dahlias. The woman’s fingers ran across my body, tracing each petal. And then she pushed gently, testing me inch by inch. It hurt like a bitch, but I didn’t make any sound. “It’s a miracle that nothing’s broken. You’re going to have some deep tissue bruising, maybe even bone bruising. Hell, you could be hemorrhaging on the inside.” Her voice almost sounded absentminded. She looked up at me and she smiled. It was small, still holding a modicum of the hardness she must constantly wear to keep surviving. “But I don’t think you are. I’ll scrounge up some pain killers in here and I’ve got an ace bandage in my rig we can wrap you up tight, just in case I’m wrong about the ribs.”

  “Thanks,” I spoke at a normal pitch this time, but the word was garbled. I didn’t return her smile. I don’t know why I didn’t. She’d just helped save my life. Sherry’s life. And Marty’s. But I didn’t know her outside of playing the best gunslinger at the gas station OK Corral. I left her then, her and her bright green eyes and black hair sticking to her high forehead.

  I walked slowly, my upper body slightly bent over against the pain. Marty had stopped crying and Sherry was in the middle of getting him to his feet to take him back to the safety of the RV when I got to them. She stopped what she was doing and looked at me. There was something different about her gaze, something changed.

  “I’m so sorry they hurt you, Juan. I hate to think what would have happened if…” She couldn’t finish the sentence, her eyes moving behind me and towards the store. I knew she was looking at the carnage and the agents beyond. “Good thing they came along, huh? Who’d have expected two border agents would show up out of nowhere.” She took Marty by the shoulders and led him away. I wanted her to look back at me. I wanted to see a spark of the Sherry I’d known before the monsters. Such a short time and so much had changed.

  She’d been crazy and irrational. She’d been confident and ecstatic that we’d found salvation in the marina. She’d been crushed and out of her mind. Now, she’d nearly been raped and was dealing with the aftermath.

  And it was changing her.

  I could see it in the set of her shoulders as she walked away from me, the distance growing between us. It wasn’t purely physical. I could feel it emotionally as well. As if the tentative attraction between us, the thread of companionship, was being stretched too thin, thin as gum on a hot day pulled between fingers and thumbs.

  I watched them go and then walked over to the bench that had once been my front row seat to a gang rape. Plopping down, I looked at my surroundings. I really looked at them. The carnage was everywhere. None of the truckers had survived. They were scattered around the asphalt, their bodies in different configurations, all dead where they had been hit. All of them dead. I thanked God for the avenging angels he had sent, but it was also clear that, in this world, I had to be careful what I wished for.

  A prayer can get as twisted up as a curse. And a curse can seem like salvation when the world is dark as hell.

  Still, I prayed. I prayed that the two agents who saved us would live and thrive. That they’d be taken care of the way they’d taken care of us.

  I had just finished my little prayer, prayer that may turn curse in this twisted world, when a shadow cast over me. I jumped and turned to look at who stood over me.

  “He’s gone.” The woman who had come to our rescue looked exhausted, her face truly showing all the shit she’d been through recently. Her expression was full of dark, haunting things. The sparkle in her emerald eyes had dulled. I tried to say I was sorry, but my mouth had become so swollen now that I could hardly speak anymore. I made a sympathetic nod.

  She knelt down beside me and opened a black bag. “They had a lot of fun with you.”

  Once again, I nodded.

  “I’m going to check you again. I…wasn’t concentrating the way I should have earlier. Mike’s gone now. Nothing like a dying partner to muddle your brain.” Her voice was neutral. Too neutral. People only did that voice when they were putting on a front. She ran her hands over my body pushing here and there and trying to get a clearer idea of the extent of my injuries. Every time she hit a sore spot I flinched and she gave a heartfelt ‘sorry’.

  “Well, I stand by my first assessment. I don’t think anything’s broken. May have a slight crack in one of your ribs. Mostly it’s just cuts and some serious bruises. Looks like you’ve been in the ring with Joe Frazier. You’re going to live, but you’re also going to be real sore for the next few days. Can you see much out of those eyes?”

  I forced ‘a little’ out of my lips and then quit trying; the pain was just too much, even to voice two words. She nodded and then dropped into silence as she started wrapping an ace bandage around my body. She pulled it tight, making sure it stayed that way with each loop around my chest and waist. When she was finished, she fastened the end of the bandage with a spiked silver plate.

  “All right, let’s get you into that big home on wheels and get the air on. We’ll have a little discussion with your partner and see what we do next.” The slight woman, who’d put her hair back up in the high ponytail at some point, bent down and closed the black bag. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small bottle. “Here. Aspirin. It’s all I could find in the store.”

  When I took the bottle from her, I remembered I’d never gotten supplies for Sherry.

  “It’s empty,” I forced out, indicating the state of the RV. Dammit, it hurt to talk.

  “No, the bottle’s full. I just—”

  I interrupted her by lifting my arm and pointing at the RV. “Empty,” I repeated.

  “Oh, out of gas. Well, we’ll take care of that, too. But first, let’s get you into it and have a discussion with your wife,” She pushed a hand under my arm and started lifting. I didn’t have much of a choice but to stand and let her lead me.

  I wanted to try and explain that I wasn’t married, but I wasn’t sure why. Sherry was in the motor home. Sherry, a woman I’ve found attractive for years. Fate had brought us together on that road when all of this had started. My need to tell this stranger that I was a single, Puerto Rican male who liked long walks on the beach and poetry, had to stem from some sort of reverse white knight syndrome.

  My being amorous with Sherry was an assumption I could correct later. All I wanted to do now was down a thousand pain pills, lay up in bed, and lick my wounds. She had mentioned Smokin’ Joe, and if this was what it felt like to be in the ring with him, then I had a newfound appreciation for professional boxers.

  The hobble to the RV was awkward because of our height difference. When we reached the open vehicle door, she let go of me. Climbing up the few steps was pretty much like mounting Everest. Sherry and Marty were sitting on the floor. What they were sitting next to didn’t register for a moment, but when it did, my heart sank.

  Frank.

  The unmoving mass of Rottweiler was worse than the human carnage outside.

  “Shit,” I breathed out the word, not caring how much it hurt my mouth.

  The border agent entered the RV, coming around my body to see what had made me stop in my tracks. “I’m sorry.” She said it to all of us, and there was more feeling in her words talking about Frank than there was for her own partner. I took it for what it was—just a grieving woman who had to direct the pain at something. It was easier to be sad for the dog than it was for the man outside; the man who’d probably had her back a million times. Frank might not h
ave been with me for long, but he was a partner as well. He’d saved us.

  Marty heard her speak and he lifted his tear-streaked face. “He was a really good dog.”

  I felt tears form in my own eyes. Hot, burning things. They streaked down and salted the wounds on my face. That only made the tears flow faster.

  “Bed.” What I say makes no sense to my own ears, garbled and wet from blood and bruises and tears, but the female officer seems to understand. She takes me by the arm, supporting me and helping me move past the kitchen area and twin bunks and into the bedroom. When she lowered me to the bed, she stayed standing, looking out to the main RV area at the boy and woman still huddled around the Rottie’s body.

  “I really am sorry they killed your dog. I had a Rottweiler growing up. They’re great animals.” She bent down and set her black bag on the floor. I hadn’t even realized she’d been carrying it. My mind was swimming again, more violently. A river instead of a fresh-filled fish bowl.

  “Sleep,” I said, my voice that rushing water, all wet and searching for oxygen.

  “Yeah, you need it.” She turned from me, getting ready to walk out. When she turned back, a funny expression had changed her face. “I’ll bury your dog for you if you want. I’ve gotta bury Mike. Not that hard to make a larger hole. He wasn’t a dog person, but I don’t think he’ll care. Not now.”

  I’d already lain down, but I pushed back up on my elbows and stared at the woman. It occurred to me that I didn’t know her name. She’d lost her partner to rescue us. She’d doctored me. Now, she was going to bury her partner and mine. She was going to do it alone because I was too banged up to help. And I didn’t even know her name.

  “Name?” It was more of a squeak than a question and my lips burned with the effort. The waves were pushing against my skull. Pushing and then pulling. A tide coming in and out, taking particles of sand as it did so. And the sands it was taking from me were my faculties.