Somnambulist

by Andrew Mackay

  “Jila?” Freddie repeated.

  “Yeah, man.”

  “It’s Exit J-Eleven-A, you idiot,” Freddie screamed. “We just passed it back there.”

  “What?”

  Freddie held the screen to Ahmed’s face and pointed to each character on the screen. “Jay, one, one, A. Look. Fuckin’ Jila. Pfft. You dick head.”

  “Freddie, man, move the phone outta my face, I can’t see—”

  Neeaaawwww.

  The truck screamed forward, forcing a blue Ford to swerve out of its way and into the middle lane. The driver blared the horn and flipped Ahmed the bird.

  Ahmed returned the sentiment, and then index his middle finger.

  “Yeah, up yours, too, with piss in it.”

  “You moron,” Freddie said as he opened the Roadz app on Ahmed’s phone. “It says we’re ten minutes away at least. Now we really are gonna be late.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Look at you, man. Know-it-all. Think you’re so smart, don’t you?”

  Freddie typed Chrome Valley Industrial Estate into the Roadz app and hit “Start Directions.”

  “Hey, Ahmed. I ain’t claiming to be smart, bro. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out an exit number. The app reckons we’ll be there just after twelve.”

  Ahmed drove the Mack truck off at the next junction; a relief to every other road user.

  ***

  12:10 pm.

  Iris watched the warehouse door roll up its rails and across the ceiling. Big Six waited patiently alongside Wydron for the door to fully open.

  “Yo, Big. Take this.”

  He handed the big guy a pistol.

  “If they move wrong, execute ‘em. Ain’t no nigga gonna fuck with my cash, or my exports.”

  “Okay.”

  Big Six inspected the pistol and slipped it into the belt of his jeans. He nodded at the catatonic-looking Iris standing in the corner of the warehouse, unaffected by the cool breeze blowing in through the opening door.

  “What about her?”

  “They can take her with,” Wydron said. “Let her handle the duffel. That’s all she’s good for.”

  “I hear you,” Big Six said.

  Wydron cleared his throat and felt for his gun. “I don’t want Muslim terrorist prints on the bag, or the exports. They roll in, we pay ‘em, then we release the exports in the back of the truck.”

  “All good.”

  Iris heard the conversation despite it being conducted in semi-hushed tones. The two men turned to darkness as the lamps of the truck flooded them in a brilliant white light.

  Outside, Cind’rella waved his arms at the approaching truck, causing his wedding dress to jump up his legs.

  Ahmed leaned forward and hit the brakes. “What the fuck is that?”

  “Is that a black man in a wedding dress?” Freddie said. “I’ve seen it all, now.”

  Ahmed tried to ascertain why Cind’rella was waving at him. Freddie arrived at the answer way before his brother.

  “I think he wants you to reverse up in there.”

  “Back-first? Fine.”

  Ahmed shifted the gears into reverse, kick-starting the warning alarm.

  Beep-beep-beep.

  “Freddie?.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, you know.”

  Freddie snorted at the warehouse creeping closer in the side window. “Oh, fuckin’ fantastic. Now you tell me. What’s up?”

  “They ain’t made a sound since a couple hours before I hit the last border.”

  “Who hasn’t made a sound since?”

  “Them in the back, man.”

  “What do you mean them in the back?”

  “Never mind.”

  Cind’rella hitched his wedding dress up his legs as he ran alongside the truck. He lifted his head and hollered to Wydron and Big Six.

  “Yo. They’s here.”

  “I can see ‘em. I’m not blind, unlike your fashion sense,” Wydron said.

  Toe Tag waved the truck further and further into the warehouse proper. “Back up, c’mon. C’mon.”

  The truck’s tires rolled along the cold ground and finally stopped by the back wall, close to Iris.

  “Okay, stop there,” Toe Tag said before turning to Wydron. “We cool.”

  Ahmed applied the handbrake and took a deep breath. “This is them. They’re gonna pay us. We leave the truck here.”

  Freddie watched the big black man approach the strange-looking woman at the corner of the room. “Something ain’t right, bro. I don’t like this one bit.”

  “Chill, man,” Ahmed snapped, clearly just as anxious as his brother. “It’ll be fine. Take the strap.”

  Freddie wasted no time in opening the glove compartment and grabbing the gun. He stuffed it in his side jacket pocket and took a deep breath to calm his nerves.

  “Fuckin’ blacks, man. You never said we was gonna be dealing with black when you called me to help you do this.”

  “Black, white, yellow, brown, who gives a shit? It’s all about the green, yeah?”

  “The green?”

  “Yea, the money,” Ahmed revealed. “Even the yellow, when you see what I’m deliverin’.”

  Freddie clutched the gun as he witnessed Big Six usher Iris over to the table and the green bag.

  “Yeah. Any minute now we’re gonna have a full set for a pool table.”

  Ahmed’s look of confusion told Freddie everything he needed to know.

  “Eh?”

  “Never mind, man.”

  Ahmed grabbed the driver’s side handle and went to open it. “Okay, let’s do this. Hopefully you won’t need the gun.”

  “Better to have it and not need it,” Freddie said. “After this is done I’m gonna mess you up so bad for getting me mixed up in this shit.”

  Big Six barked in Iris’s ear. “Move.”

  She closed her eyes, lost in a world of her own, as the duffel drew closer and closer on the table.

  Wydron held out his arms and laughed as Ahmed and Freddie climbed out of the truck.

  “Well, well, well. If it isn’t our Pakistani connection doing all the deliveries. I don’t remember ordering a pizza.”

  “Are you Wide-on?” Ahmed asked as he extended his hand for shaking.

  Wydron’s demeanor shifted from glee to devilment on a dime. “Do I look like a pussy hole?”

  “Huh?”

  “Nah, brother,” Wydron snapped. “I ain’t a wide-on. It’s Wydron, and you got my delivery.”

  “Uh, yeah. I do.”

  Wydron eyed the nervous Freddie and snorted. “Who’s the bitch?”

  “My brother, Freddie.”

  “I don’t give a shit about names. Just open up the fuckin’ ‘ting, brother. Let me see what’s doin’ so we can go our separate ways.”

  “Yeah, man. Sure.”

  Iris opened her hand and slipped it under the two handles on the bag. She closed them, slowly, and felt the weight.

  Freddie saw everything.

  The two looked at each other.

  “Who’s she?”

  “Ooh, your girlfriend has a voice,” Wydron said. “Never mind about her, my Paki friend. You’re gonna be gettin’ to know her inside and out real soon.”

  Cind’rella reached into his dress and gripped something clipped to his belt, as did Toe Tag, and Big Six. Ready for war, the anticipation of what the truck contained tore through them like a knife through butter.

  Wydron stood at the back of the truck and watched Ahmed open the bolts.

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Show me the goods.”

  Clunk-whump.

  A plume of white smog puked out from the two back doors as they folded apart. Frosty and lucid, an accompanying stench of death rolled up Wydron’s nostrils.

  “Didn’t you make any rest stops?”

  Ahmed waved his hands through the cloud of white gas and coughed. “Yeah, just before the border. They’ll be cold, but they’re well wrapped up.
All fed and watered about twelve hours ago, so they’ll be hungry.”

  Big Six clicked his fingers and pointed at the truck. “Listen to me. When we’re cool, you give the bag to our brown friend, here. Okay?”

  Iris didn’t nod nor acknowledge the instruction. She turned to the back of the van and held her breath as Ahmed and Wydron climbed into the back.

  “You talk too much,” Big Six said to Iris. “Did nobody ever tell you that?”

  Toe Tag and Cind’rella chuckled at his remark, but mostly out of fear that something wasn’t quite right about the proceedings.

  Freddie held his nerve as the place fell silent. He felt the contour of the pistol on his hip, successfully making out to the others that it was merely an itch that demanded scratching.

  Toe Tag, Cind’rella, and Big Six did the same.

  Everyone seemed to register the look of unspoken truth in their eyes; all were armed, and nobody dared be the first to demonstrate it.

  Before anyone had the chance to do just that, Wydron’s voice whirled out through the drifting smog. “What the—?”

  “—Oh shit,” Ahmed’s voice followed. “They’re dead.”

  A thoroughly confused Toe Tag mouthed at Big Six. “Dead?”

  Cind’rella stepped toward the truck with caution and felt for the gun in his garter belt. “Shh.”

  Ahmed and Wydron couldn’t believe what they saw in the back of the truck. Several ceramic boxes lined each side and covered the devastation that needed processing.

  “What happened?” Wydron asked with caution. “Why they ain’t movin’?”

  Ahmed gave little thought to his response as he took in the sight behind the crates. “The boxes?”

  “No, you fuckin’ dope. Them.”

  Wydron pulled out his gun and pointed it at the bundles of thick, fabric sheets. Plump at one end, and thinned-out in the middle, it was clear to both men what had happened.

  Wydron knocked Ahmed’s arm as he moved forward. “Turn off the cooler. They best just be asleep because if they’re dead, then so are you.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Ahmed reached for the lever on the truck’s interior wall, shutting off the coolant. The low hum was the first to die, taking with it the frost and ghost-like wisp in the air.

  Ahmed waved his hand forward and took another step forward. “Jesus. It fuckin’ stinks in here, man.”

  He crouched down and lifted the first sheet he could reach.

  “Oh my God.”

  Wydron opened up the crate and tried his best to ignore the bad news. Buried inside the first of many boxes lay tiny bullet-shaped capsules of the narcotics he expected.

  “What is it?” Wydron asked.

  Ahmed pulled the sheet further.

  A forehead.

  Purple lips underneath the frosted nose.

  A chin, smothered with blood.

  Ahmed turned his head to the person’s eyes, which were glazed with a thin film of ice. The fine, black eyelashes had frozen solid.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” he yelped as he pushed forward and whipped the next sheet away. “Oh, fuck me.”

  “What?” Wydron asked, and then clamped eyes on the first of what was surely going to be dozens of dead bodies. “What happened?”

  Ahmed pulled the next away to reveal another dead body.

  Then another, and another.

  Ahmed stepped over the three frozen corpses and looked at the scratch marks on the freezing cold wall. A quick glance at the third body confirmed what he knew for sure.

  All its fingernails had been torn off, many of which were scattered in the grooves on the truck floor. The blood soaked into the protruding bone.

  “They’re dead. They’re all dead, man,” Ahmed shouted. “Is anyone alive?”

  Whip-whip-whip.

  Wydron watched Ahmed uncover the huddled mass of foreign immigrants.

  “I don’t get it,” Ahmed stuttered, fearing for his life. “They were fine when we crossed the b-border. Complaining about bathroom breaks, but they were alive.”

  Click.

  Ahmed knew the sound - that of a hammer being pulled back on a gun. He closed his eyes and held out his hands. He didn’t need telling just how much trouble he was in. His knees were close to buckling.

  “Shit.”

  “Motherfucker,” Wydron’s voice crept into his ears. “Step out.”

  Freddie placed his hands on his hips. He knew something was wrong. “Yo, Ahmed, man. What’s going on?”

  Big Six pointed his gun at Freddie’s face. “Shut your mouth, ISIS.”

  Iris stepped forward and into the middle of the circle, inadvertently created by Big Six, Cind’rella, Toe Tag, and Freddie. She clutched the duffel and concentrated her eyes on the back of the truck.

  Ahmed stumbled forward, having been pushed by Wydron. He hit the ground and kept his hands in the air.

  “It weren’t my fault,” he exclaimed.

  “Nigga, step out of the truck,” Wydron screamed as he jumped out of the back of the truck. “Go join your girlfriend over there.”

  “Yo, Wydron?” Cind’rella asked, still confused. “What’s good?”

  Ahmed ran over to Freddie and cowered behind him.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Shit’s all fucked up, brother.”

  Freddie felt for his gun with extreme apprehension. “What you got us into, man?”

  “Shh, man. Shut up, yeah?”

  A deeply unhappy Wydron punched his fists together and lowered his gun. On the verge of a stroke, he cleared his throat before his announcement.

  Cind’rella didn’t know which way to turn. “Uh, Wydron? What we doing—”

  “—Nigger, shut your mouth,” Wydron returned and held his gun at Cind’rella’s face.

  “What I do?”

  “Listen up,” Wydron continued and swung his gun at Ahmed and Freddie. “Our terrorists friends, here, have gon’ fucked up real good.”

  Both Freddie and Ahmed turned to stone with fear in their eyes. Iris looked at the pair with little emotion.

  “How, man?” Big Six dared to ask.

  “Well, my fat friend, they’re all dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Dead as a motherfucker,” Wydron explained. “Imagine that. Traveling across six borders, more than two thousand miles. Forty little Chinese motherfuckers looking for a new start in their lives, paying over and above to get brought into the fuckin’ country. Only for these two dick heads to transport them in the back of a freezer truck and forgets to turn off the freezer.”

  Freddie’s face contorted at the news. “My God.”

  Ahmed nearly burst into tears at the genocide he’d created. “I d-didn’t do nothing, bro, I swear.”

  Angered, Wydron sniffed. He scanned the bag in Iris’s hands. She shot him a look of sadness in return and let her teardrops roll down her cheek.

  “No nigga gettin’ paid today,” he said. “Just death. Only dead bodies. No use to man nor beast, which is what these two motherfuckers are.”

  Ahmed took a chance to placate the man with the gun. “Wydron, man. I swear, we—”

  “—I said shut the fuck up, ISIS.”

  Big Six and Toe Tag turned their guns on the two brothers. If Iris had a firearm, she might have done the same thing. All she could do was snore at them with her pale gray eyes threatening to bury into their souls and rip them apart.

  Cind’rella took the news badly.

  He leaned against the side of the truck and hitched his dress. “And it was meant to be my perfect day, too.”

  “Why you cryin’?” Wydron asked Cind’rella.

  “I was gonna take one of them pretty Chinks as a bridegroom.”

  “You’re crazy in the head.”

  Wydron turned to Ahmed and Freddie who kept their arms in the air.

  “Shit, just my luck today, huh? I got forty dead Chinks worth shit in the back of a truck full of gear,” Wydron said as he turned to Iris. “And I got this w
eird random bitch who’s seen everything. So, motherfuckers need executing.”

  Big Six approached Iris and held his hand out at the duffel. “Bitch, gimme the thing.”

  Iris didn’t move.

  “I said gimme the bag.”

  Contrary to his request, she lifted it to her chest and pressed it against her bosom. Angered, he pressed the end of his gun against her temple.

  “Motherfucker, gimme the Goddamn bag.”

  Toe Tag looked on in horror, “No. Big Six, man, don’t touch her.”

  “Why not?”

  Big Six looked into her eyes for the first time. The second his pupils met hers, he felt a nauseating sensation biting at his chest.

  “Shit.”

  She stared him out completely, refusing to let go of the bag.

  Freddie folded his fingers around the gun under his jacket and prepared to launch forward.

  “Enough,” Wydron shouted at all concerned and pointed his gun at Ahmed. “I’mma do this rag head first. We kill both the brown boys and the girl, then we get outta here—”

  “—No,” Freddie jumped away from Ahmed and swung his gun up at Wydron’s face. “You shoot us, and I’ll shoot you.”

  Freddie and Wydron were now in a stand-off. Cind’rella wiped his face and aimed his gun at Freddie.

  Toe Tag did the same.

  Big Six kept his firearm trained at Iris’s head.

  Ahmed, conversely, dropped to his knees and wept like a pathetic child.

  Wydron prepared to pull his trigger and take Freddie out for good. “Motherfucker, pull the trigger.”

  “No! Let us walk, man. We ain’t gonna tell no-one, I swear. Just let us walk away. No harm done.”

  Wydron’s index finger pressed back on the trigger.

  “Try tellin’ that to those forty slanty-eyed yellow sons of bitches in the back of the truck. My fuckin’ imports. My fuckin’ money.”

  Freddie swallowed hard and enacted the same movement with his own gun. “Just let us go—”

  Bang-bang-bang.

  A chorus of bullets and gunfire erupted as Wydron pulled the trigger and shot at Freddie, who returned fire. Big Six, Toe Tag, and Cindr’ella opened fire, too…

  Chapter XIV

  Dozens of fireworks exploded against the blanket of darkness in the sky, right above Irene’s head as she hopped out of her car and up the Goddard’s driveway.