The Desert Standoff

by Nadia Siddiqui

  Suzi is quiet for a moment, thinking. “Are you sure there’s nothing you want from your house?”

  “No. Mother broke my sewing machine about seven months ago so I don’t need that. There’s nothing left there for me anyway.”

  Suzi has never been to Natalie’s house. They always stay in her house. Partly because it has running water and food and partly because Natalie doesn’t want Suzi anywhere near her mother. The stories Natalie tells are enough for Suzi to know better than to press the subject.

  She tried to go over there once. Suzi knocked on the door with the intention of returning something of Natalie’s that had been left at her house. Suzi’s parents were waiting at the curb in their car with the windows rolled down, which is a very normal thing for people to do. However, Natalie didn’t live in a normal house. Mother answered the door half dressed, her robe hanging open and her dirty, ruddy skin on full display. Her hair was a rat’s nest piled atop her head and she came out brandishing a whole vacuum. She lifted it over her head with the thing powered on and proceeded to chase Suzi across the unkempt lawn. Suzi’s father had to get out of the car to scream at her to stop. Eventually, the power cord on the vacuum snapped with a jolt of electricity Natalie’s mother was hauled backward in the yard where she lay, exposed and screaming at some unseen devil for tripping her. Suzi’s parents never asked Natalie about anything regarding her homelife again. Instead, they just started doting on her in any way they could. Natalie can never explain to them just how grateful she is to them for everything they have done for her. She just hopes they know. They have to know.

  “Okay. As long as you’re sure,” Suzi answers.

  That’s how it normally goes. Suzi probes and then drops it if the subject matter starts to feel just a little bit too uncomfortable.

  “We’re going to have a new home soon anyway, isn’t that right?”

  Suzi rolls over and drapes her arms around Natalie, her cheek pressing firmly into the soft cotton covering her friend’s shoulder. Natalie nods, attempting to picture it in her mind's eye. A bedroom all to herself; an apartment that belongs to the both of them, free to work dead-end jobs or not or just do whatever they want.

  “That’s right.”

  Soon everything is going to be better. She doesn’t even know what she wants to study in school, but she knows that she's not going to waste this chance in the same way that she wasted high school. She is going to do more than the bare minimum. She’s going to figure out what she wants to do with the rest of her life now that she’s being given the chance to actually explore it. She’s going to be able to break the mold and actually make something of herself. She and Suzi both. She can’t wait.

  7

  The Car

  S he’s dead.

  Somewhere in the back of Natalie’s head it is starting to register. Her best friend is dead. He hit her too hard. Now he isn’t going to be able to sell her, which means that whatever was going to happen to Natalie is now going to be so much worse. Her lips feel chapped and raw. She wants to cry, but she knows she can’t. She wants to kick him in the back of the head but doesn’t know how to manage it any more than she knows how to survive the car going off of the road. She’s not fastened down by anything. She also would have to dislodge the weight on top of her, and while Suzi is a small girl, she doesn’t feel as small as she should at this moment. She feels too heavy.

  Like dead weight, the evil voice in Natalie’s head supplies. She instantly attempts to squash that voice down. She doesn’t want it to be right. Her mind can’t believe that it’s possible. It is Suzi’s birthday. They have so many plans that are unfinished. There is no way that her bright, shining, happy friend might possibly be dead right now. There is just no way that her best friend’s dead body is lying on top of her right now. Tears threaten her. The anguish in her throat is so heavy that it feels like it’s going to choke her. Natalie pokes and pinches at Suzi more and more with every passing second. What did he do to her? Hopefully, he just hit her really hard and it’s taking even longer for her to wake up than it normally does. Hopefully that’s all that this is. Natalie keeps telling herself that over and over again.

  She will never make it out of this car alive if she succumbs to the grief running rampant through her body. If she was just destined to die, then she should have let her mom finish her off. Lord only knows how many things her mother has done to her over the years that should have ended in Natalie being dead. It’s a wonder she even survived infancy. Dad left when she was only four. The memories that she has of him are faint and probably only rosy colored for the fact that they might be the only “happy” memories that she’s ever had. She can’t even remember if they are things that actually happened or if she just made up the happy things with her dad in order to cope with the traumatic realities of her everyday life. Natalie wants to blame him for leaving. She wants to blame him for leaving her with her toxic mother. The twisted, abusive, crazy bitch. She should hate him for not taking her with him, for not loving her enough to rescue her or even attempt to come back for her. Mother certainly never spoke about him. She would just start screaming and holding her ears whenever he was mentioned. He could have thrown her off of a bridge when she was a child. That might have been a kinder thing to do than to subject her to all of the years with that horrible beast as her mother. He could have come back and had the state take her away, that would have been kinder.

  Apparently it was all for nothing because now she’s on the fast track to be sold like cattle into a market where her fortune is to be raped to death by monsters wearing human faces. Something that she couldn’t have imagined in her worst nightmare. She doesn’t like being touched in the best possible circumstances, and she will be devastated if this happens. Perhaps she can simply ... stop breathing. She can’t allow this man to be the one to kill her.

  Tears leak down the corners of her eyes despite the way that she is trying to keep them closed. He is going to hear her. He is going to notice the change in her breathing. She can’t get her hands free. She cannot get them out from under Suzi. She needs to wake up. Cold is settling in her limbs and they feel like iron.

  Natalie attempts to open her eyes again, hoping to see a highway marker of some kind, of any kind that might help her see where it is that she has found herself. At least then, if she has some sort of bearings, maybe she can ... do something.

  “I know you’re awake.” Dapper Man’s voice is like velvet as he addresses her. “Why do you keep pretending? You have to know that it isn’t going to make a difference in the end, Snow.”

  Snow. That’s right. He’s going to sell her as some virgin prospect for a lot of money. The tears start anew.

  “Just try to relax. I know it’s frightening now, but there is no way for you to get out of this. There is nothing you can do, and nobody is coming to save you. Soon I’ll give you a very happy concoction to make things sort of ... fade away for a while, that is if you continue to be a good girl, Snow. If you’re not, I will pull this car over right now and ravish you in a way that you will not enjoy, and no, not in the place you’re thinking either.”

  She is going to puke. She’s going to vomit. She’s not going to be able to help it. Natalie’s torso retches and she empties up all of the liquor that she drank earlier this evening right into the floor of his car. Dapper Man doesn’t even seem fazed; he simply rolls down the top cracks of all of the windows just a fraction so that the smell will not contaminate the rest of his vehicle. If only she could turn herself into something small and float away. She used to imagine that she could turn herself into other creatures whenever Mother hit her. Whenever she chased her with a shoe around the house she would imagine herself turning into a bird and flying very far, far away from there so that nobody could ever touch her again. Certainly never without her permission. Natalie doesn’t want to process what he’s saying. She doesn’t want to be good or bad. She doesn’t want to live in a world that doesn’t have Suzi in it.

  “Please…” Nat
alie hears herself begging. No doubt something he has heard before. “Please, she needs a doctor... Please …I’ll do anything you say.”

  Dapper Man’s hazel eyes stare at Natalie through the rearview mirror with curiosity. “Interesting—for her and not yourself?”

  “No. Please. Please, she needs a doctor ... she needs medical help. Please. I won’t fight you. Please just get her help ... please.” Natalie’s sobs are broken up with tears. She wants to sound more convincing, but her desperation is evident. The car rolls to a slow stop and Dapper Man puts the vehicle into park in the dead center of the road. He twists in his seat and makes a face at the liquid vomit still sloshing around the floorboards. He reaches his hand back and pushes Suzi’s pretty hair away from her face and Natalie recoils from the mottled bruising that spiderwebs over the side of her friend’s face and the way that her crystal-blue eyes are open and staring straight ahead—her features in her face frozen into an expression of terror. Her final moments are forever preserved on her face and Natalie can’t breathe.

  Dapper Man smiles and nods. “Sure thing, she’s definitely still breathing,” he says as he pulls his hand away from the spot on her throat where he pretended to check for her pulse. He chuckles and places his hands back on the steering wheel and starts to drive away.

  Something inside of Natalie fractures. She cannot be here, with Suzi looking like that. Her body scrambles in an effort to get as far away from her as possible, she feels like she’s tainting her body just by touching it in the way that she is. Natalie screams ... and screams and then she screams some more as her body dissolves into a state of shock.

  Dapper Man’s features turn from passive bemusement at the situation to outright fury. Her shock needs to be quiet or he simply cannot tolerate it. He whips around to hit her, the intention being to render her unconscious again, but something changes. They drive over something that makes the car rattle in a strange way and Dapper Man swears loudly. Natalie is thrashing and attempting to get her hands on the handle of the door, fully intent on throwing herself from the still moving vehicle that she simply cannot be in for another second. Dapper Man is losing control of the car and it is evident that whatever they have driven over has punctured one or more of the tires. The vehicle is screaming as Dapper Man attempts to keep the wheel straight and come to a proper stop. Natalie has never heard anything like it. She’s never been more terrified in her life. The car jerks out of Dapper Man’s control because he can no longer control the vehicle at the speed that they are moving at. The hunk of metal goes careening into a guard rail and the front end of the car crumples and the airbags deploy.

  Natalie’s bound hands finally find purchase on the metal of the door handle and she yanks. Her body falls halfway out of the car sideways and she lands heavily on her shoulder. In the dim lighting of this highway there doesn’t seem to be another hint of a headlight in any direction for as far as she can see. She is alone out here. She might as well just lie down and die ... but the dapper man isn’t out of the car just yet. His head no doubt hit the steering wheel pretty hard when they hit whatever it was. Natalie’s attention turns to the road where something metal glints—a long, spiked strip, lying across the entirety of both sides of the road. A man dressed entirely in black is standing on the far side of the road, pulling off the metal strip. She doesn't know who this man is, but he clearly isn’t working with the dapper man. She doesn’t want to trust him, but what other choice does she have? At least it’s obvious that she is being held inside of this car against her will by the way that she is bound.

  Natalie pushes herself as far out of the car as she possibly can get and is struggling to find a way to get her feet up underneath her when the man in black finishes winding up that spike strip and pulls a gun from the bag that he dumped the spike strip into. He moves slowly as if he doesn’t have anywhere else to be in the world. Natalie watches with terror in her heart as he screws on a metal silencer to the end of his gun. Is it possible that she escaped one would-be murderer just to fall into the hands of another? How can that even possibly happen? The man in black moves closer to her and grabs her by the shoulder, hauling her up to her feet, and she is too scared to move. He pulls out a large knife from his pocket and bends in order to cut the bonds on her feet and then on her hands. He looks at her dead in her face.

  “Run.”

  Natalie doesn’t wait to question him. She doesn’t want to know what is going to happen or why she is chosen to be lucky. Grief nearly cripples her as she runs, not even feeling worthy of keeping her life in the first place. Adrenaline keeps her moving, keeps her legs pumping underneath her as she tears down the road, not aware that her feet are in high heels or that her dress is torn in a strange way. She cannot stop. She can’t stop going any more than she can stop crying.

  Somewhere behind her she hears pops going off and she can only hope that it’s the man in black who is the one firing the gun and not the other way around.

  Natalie runs until she feels like she is going to vibrate into pieces when the headlights of a minivan finally come into view. she stands in the dead center of the road, waving her arms above her head like a crazy person, sobbing the whole time as the minivan slows to a stop and she pounds on the windows, hoping to be given a ride. She almost collapses in elation when the door unlocks and she throws herself inside. “Turn around!” she commands, and, much to her surprise, they listen. It seems to be an elderly couple, and the woman in the passenger seat is literally clutching at her pearls as Natalie brings her legs up to her chest and bites down on her finger to keep from thinking. To keep from feeling anything else at all.

  8

  Nathan

  T he dismissal isn’t what he thought it was going to be. Nathan has spent so much time attempting to figure out what is going to happen to him since he got that final message. Despite all of the waffling back and forth in an effort to determine what they were going to do to him, and if in fact there was even a peaceful resolution to the contract that he has been living, this was never an outcome that he imagined. The most likely, the one he thought about the most, was receiving a message to the effect of “Good Job,” and then, once he finished reading the words, something would emit from his phone to cause him to forget the whole thing had ever happened. Nathan never expected to wake up again.

  Instead, he woke up to a message with another set of coordinates unlike anything that he has ever gotten before. Never in all of his years working for the company has he been directed to a helicopter pad. Never has he worked with another person, so as he arrives today to a helicopter pad that is already roaring with the sound of blades warming up for takeoff, he is surprised to see a man in a perfectly pressed white suit standing just beside the helicopter. Nathan finds it strange the way that the mass amounts of wind don’t seem to be ruffling his hair in the slightest. There is another man in a white suit in the pilot's chair, but he wears very dark sunglasses to where it is impossible to see his eyes. Nathan expected to be nervous, but instead he felt nothing as he left the keys sitting in the front seat of the black car that he drove here. He doesn’t hesitate or even bother to take anything with him as he heads toward the helicopter. This is the first time he’s ever had cause to wonder what might happen if he attempts to refuse this mission. What if he just got right back into that car and drove away? What if he decided that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with this, whatever they might have in store for him, and just ran in the opposite direction? Would they follow him? Has he done something so heinous to deserve to have an escort to his next job?

  However, a part of Nathan knows there will not be another job and whatever location he is about to be taken to is going to be his last. The man doesn’t greet him as he approaches, he says nothing but gestures to Nathan’s seat on the inside of the helicopter, and Nathan does as he is asked. The man hands Nathan a headset without a microphone and then puts on one his own head before getting into the helicopter and buckling in.

  It’s only a short jou
rney to their destination, but Nathan thinks it’s rather nice to be able to stare at the city from a bird’s eye view like this. He never would have seen something like this without the company he assumes. No matter what life it was they plucked him from, it certainly wouldn’t have been something that allowed him to travel across the country as much as he has. Does the company have a retirement program or does it simply decommission them all? Nathan knows in his gut that he is about to find out exactly what happens when an operative is no longer useful to the company. Perhaps he is simply getting too old. The questions in his mind quiet as they pull higher into the sky and Nathan is lost in the view, wanting to take in everything he sees. He sits quietly with his hands folded in his lap and waits for the helicopter to touch down once more. This time it’s on a private helicopter pad on top of a very tall building. Nathan doesn’t even want to look over the edge to see how many floors up they must be. The man in the white suit doesn’t bother getting out of the helicopter, but Nathan assumes he is supposed to, so he does. There are two more identical looking men in white suits standing on either side of a pair of double doors. They look almost the same as the man in the helicopter. How strange. Perhaps they are triplets. Perhaps the company insists on hiring people who look alike or, even more likely, they simply changed the faces of these particular operatives to make sure that they all look the same.

  Nathan starts towards the doors and they are opened for him before he even gets there. As he steps inside he can hear the helicopter start to whir and pull away from the building off to whatever its next destination might be. Inside of his pants pocket, his cell phone vibrates as the doors are closed behind him.

  Congratulations, Operative Nathan Doe.

  Your contract has been fulfilled. You have granted us one thousand souls.