by Jane Brooke
“Ya think Tony’s gonna kill her?” Paulie Jr. asks, as the other thug’s chuckle.
“Naw, The Fat Man loves her. He ain’t gonna kill her.” Paulie, not Jr. replied.
“Come on, lets get the Fat Mans dough.” Mikey, says.
In total agreement about the smokes, the money, they stand before the door. Paulie Jr. twist’s the door knob and, then barges into the room, his two nicotine addicted cronies following in right behind him.
“CLICK.”
The tied by string trigger of the 38 under the bed moves.
The hammer of the thirty eight, tied to the string, nailed to the door, pierces the copper firing cap,
“KABOOM.”
The bullet hits the blasting cap, detonating the dynamite, the cans of bulls eyes, it all go.
“KABOOOM.”
The BLAST is so violent it literally vaporizes the three men as well as most of the Motel. Blasting into the air, schrapanel, debris, cash from under the bed, body parts, fire, smoke all of it engulf the complex.
The blast, far enough away not to destroy the cafe/bar setup rumbles the bar and as collateral damage rains down upon Tony, Mandal, Bobby, and Dim Dim, who is staring at the pretty fire works, Mandal sighs.
Mandal goes to moves and wraps his vice grip around her wrist. Bobby begins to lift his gun, as Tony seethes. “You don’t love me.”
She smirks as he bucks her off of her lap, one knee jerk. She hits the floor, on her golden butt, twists around, kneels before him, arms out stretched as if she is praying to Jesus, beg storming from her trembling lips and pretty blue eyes as she does.
Tony looks at Bobby Ugo, whispers. “Kill her.”
Bobby slowly shakes his head back and forth, grins, lifts the 9 MM and point’s the silenced barrel directly at her forehead.
They lock eyes. They are two great predators knowing now one will die.
Bobby whispers. “You’re pathetic.”
She closes her eyes, then “Psssst, pssssst.”
The bullets whiz, she is dead. She thinks.
No angels, no harps, no flames of a burning hell, just not yet.
Her eyes open.
She looks at Bobby Ugo, smoke drifting out of the tip of the silencer snugged tight to his 9 MM hand gun. He is leering at Tony.
She turns, sees a bullet hole between Tony’s eyes and, then red blood pumping out from a hole in his heart.
Mandal, back and forth, Tony, Dim Dim, Bobby, Dim Dim as she pretty much knows what is coming by the look in Bobbies eyes.
He flicks the silencer at her, says through ice cubes for a voice.
“You, whore. You didn’t think you’d get off as easy as that, did ya?”
He tics the barrel at Tony and, then like he is scolding her, he waves the barrel back and forth in front of her eyes.
“Noo, noo, noo, noo. It ain’t gonna be nice, like I done fer Tony. If I remember, right. Ya like pain, don’t ya?”
She remains silent. She has a head ache, no Tylenol, no Cyanide either to make the pain that’s coming, to make it go away.
“What...Ya got nothin’ cleaver to say? What! No French, Italian smart remarks? No grift?” He laughs.
“The fucking Braniac. What, cat got yer tongue?”
He moves before her, tilts her face up with the tip of the silencer under her chin.
He has waited for this moment for ten years, is enjoying it and does not want it to end.
She lowers her face to her breasts, not feeling fear, but actually relief that it is finally going to end.
“Nothing up lifting, brilliant to say? How about some a that French poetry always spewing from your filthy lips...No...?”
He giggles, taps her hard on the top of her head with the silencer, whispers. “Hello, nobody home?”
His joke makes him laugh, she does not.
He looks down on her, feels disgust, say’s. “Yer no fun. But your gonna be. No, no more cute stuff?”
No more fight, she is simply silent.
“I didn’t think so.” Bobby says, happy now.
Turning to Dim Dim, he says casually. “Dim, get the torches.”
“Okay Bobby.”
Dim Dim begins to turn and, then.
“THWACK” an arrow impacts his thick chest.
As if entertaining a bee sting, the giant glances at the carbon, steel tipped arrow embedded into his beer keg chest
He looks at his mentor and says. “Bobby.”
Turning his head, Bobby Ugo looks at his Dim, his brow crinkles; there’s a fucking arrow protruding out of his chest.
“THWACK.”
Another arrow thumps into Dim Dim’s chest. “Bobby.”
“Dim.” Bobby whispers, as he feels Mandal scurrying around his feet.
“THWACK.”
A third arrow impacts Dim Dim’s beef shoulder.
“Bobby.”
“Dim.”
Mandal, finally fumbling her 38 out of her boot, Bobby leers at her, groans and as she lifts it with vibrating hands he disgustedly kicks it out of her fingers, breaking two of them.
Flopping to the floor, she screams in agony, rolling around, clutching her fingers.
Bobby, standing on the porch, looks through the beginning of dawn at Dim and, then out across the mauve world. His eyebrows crinkle, for a man, in a crouch, at least he thinks it’s a man, is pulling back on a bow string, arrow slotting on the guide.
Seeing the silhouette of Jason Cox can be unsettling, eerie, not to mention down right queer as Bobby whispers. “What the fuck.”
He watches, as if in slow motion as the arrow whizzes out of the shadows and, then.
“THWACK.”
His eyes go stark, as he whips his head, stares in disbelief as the arrow stakes right through Dim Dim’ throat, staking him to the wall. The giant clutching the arrow, his carotid artery severed, gurgles in blood.
“Bo...Bo...Bobby.”
Instantly, Bobby whips around, aims his 99 M at the crouching figure,
PSSST, PSSSST, PSSST, PSSST, spits out of the barrel of his silenced automatic.
The cowled man goes down as Bobby leers at his Dim Dim, hands wrapped around the arrow, eyes numb, staring straight ahead, dead, maybe.
Stunned at the death of his giant friend, he stares down at Mandal who now is kneeling, straight up, glaring at him, a knife in her hands, suspended in her shaking hands.
He seethes, cocks the hammer, presses the silencer to her head, seethe’s again. “You whore.”
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Angel appears, attacking his ankle, digging her sharp teeth into his flesh, growling, shaking her head back and forth.
Like Billy had done, he flicks his leg, sending her yelping, sprawling into the dust, smoke and the debris of the atomized Motel.
She does a tumble, rights herself, growls. He fires a shot off at her. Dust kicks up, she squeals, yelps, yelps, yelps away.
With every ounce of her straining against the pain she is consumed in, she rises to a full kneeling position with both hands holding the hunting knife raised above her head.
She bellows, plunges the knife down through Bobby’ Ugo’s expensive alligator loafer, impaling his foot to the floor.
Bobby Ugo screams, twists around, gawking down at his blood soaked foot and, then at the swaying whore, hands at her side, giggling, leering back at him.
He tries to move his foot, he cannot.
Enraged, he lifts the 9 millimeters silenced barrel, presses it against her forehead.
Their eyes fuse for the last time. They are two ultimate warriors locked within a final battle of a war created by only one of them.
She grins, causing him to hesitate for the briefest moment.
His fin
ger presses, against the trigger.
She grins through blood teeth at him.
“THWACK.”
An arrow detonates into his forehead, piercing out through the back of his head, staking his head too the wooden wall.
She stares at him, gun barrel pressing to her forehead, she does not move, she is enthralled.
His eyes are curious, pad locked to hers.
Shes sees his finger pressing against the trigger, it is vibrating. Their eyes, never friends before, are now as one.
She sees him struggling, he wants to make that finger work, just a centimeter more; one spasm more, just a bit more and he will win. Yet, whatever part of his brain that issues such a command, seems UN wired, and she sees it in his eyes.
Still alive, she smiles as his hand, still holding the gun as it slides to his side. His finger’s open and the 9 millimeter clangs at the lucky whore’s knees.
With a super human will, she bends, groans from the physical pain, wrap’s her fingers around the gun.
She stares at Bobby Ugo, stands, doubles over from her injured rib, straightens, looks into Bobby Ugo’s still living eyes.
She knows he can see her. He knows she can see him. She grins.
She backs up a step and with out hesitation, she raises the 9 millimeter in her good hand; the one with out the broken fingers and points it at his heart.
His eyes tick, blink as.
Pssst, pssst, pssst.” She shoots him three times in the heart.
With dead eyes never leaving her eyes, he slumos, still impalied by the arroew staked into the wall.
She crumples to her knees, lowers her head, vomits blood and bile, trying to keep from passing out.
Slowly, she rises to her knees, looks at the arrow in his forehead, whispers. “Jason.”
Bobby’s gun along her hip, she moves past Dim Dim who is gurgling something, maybe after death breath words about candy bars.
Just in case, she shoots him twice in the heart.
Turning, she stares at the first rays of the sun filtering over the mountain tops into the morning. She sees him, covered in his cape and laying on the ground.
Head spinning, she kicks the double vision out of her head, begins to limp towards him. Once along his side, she falls to her knees, peeks at the arrow quiver, the bow and, then gently the blood on his chest, staining against his white cotton tunic. On her knees, a new purple light bathing his face, she takes his head, sweetly lays it on her lap.
His eyes open, he sees her, he coughs and, then smiles, says. “How’d we do, Sluggo?”
He begins to cough lightly, blood gathering on his lips as she touches strands of hair from his face, loving the feeling of his long hair entwined within her fingers.
She giggles, more in pain, more from loss now, this loss of love.
“We won, darling...We won.”
He smiles, coughs, looks up at her, smiling, loving her, cherishing her, adoring her, he whispers.
“Just think...all...all I had to...to do.” He coughs. She holds his hands tight, “Wa...was sit in a barn for so many years.” Coughs, blood seeping out of the side of his mouth, “And the most amazing woman on earth, found me...He tenses, his beautiful face straining, “Loved me.”
He goes silent, as tears flow down her eyes, her body trembling, knowing now; knowing that his love has given her a second chance at life.
“No, not so amazing, darling.” She whispers, as he coughs, closing his eyes and, then reopening them, he whispers.
“No sadness. No more pain. Promise me, beauty?”
Pushing a strand of hair away from his face, she murmurs. “Promise.”
He smiles, closes his eyes as she squeezes his cold hands, which men of greed would feel as cold.
She felt as if it were fashioned of gold..
His breath ceases and, then time moved and as she held him his body becomes cold.
As the world turned to greys and the color of a mauve dawn she did now know how much time passed, she did not know.
With tears spilling down her face, mixing with so much blood she leans in, one more kiss, she places it along his lips.
Slowly, ever so tenderly, she raises her face as the first true yellow beams of sunlight spill from the sky, gracing her face.
She feels warm.
The Sun is keeping her alive, nourishing her as he had done as has transformed a monster into a human being, she knows now, for the first time.
Epilogue
Twilight has come to Inferno Flats and it was welcomed.
The cooling evening winds, black clouds, billowing in the sky brings piece finally to a world that has only ever know violence.
Ranger Keats, hours after the holocaust, seeing black funnels of smoke, had pulled into the Cox complex, parked, scratched his red hair and simply stared at the purest case of Animal Predation he thought possible.
He had once seen on the National Geographic Channel, the effects of a two year drought on an African Savannah. The animals, dying, thirsting for life, had turned on one another. They had twisted borders, turfs, changing the rules of survival, thus killing, butchering each other in a blood lust of the survival of the strongest.
After his intial scrutiny after making the rounds, he pretty much knew he was witinessing that story retold.
On arrival, the first thing that he had done was move into the junk yard where the smoke was spiraling out of seemingly no where. After poking around the burnt out meth lab, it all made sense to him now.
“Those cleaver boys.” He had whispered.
As he was leaving, he saw an old man, white hair, blue lips, spiral out of a Silver Air Stream, pirouette, throw his hands into the air and, then walk right back into the Air Steam.
He decided that he would check on that odd ball later.
Back at the bar, where in a pleasureable awe, he stood, cowboy hat in hand, he simply stared at the dead bodies that were everywhere.
Having no idea who the players were and after walking through the remenants of body parts, cadeavors, motel parts, burnt money, none of it did anything to quell his grateful curiosity.
Finding Billy, Art, Mava and Arvan shot to death, did not surprise him at all. Who ever had been so thorough, he figured, had done nothing but move the inevitable process to fast forward; at least he thought so.
Standing at the back porch, scratching his head again, he simply looked around.
The bodies had not begun to decompose yet, so the surreal experience, though gruesome, was not an unpleasant one. There was a giant man with arrows sticking out of his huge body, everywhere. An arrow had impailed him through the throat, staking him to the walls, his thick hands were still clutching at the arrow. A few arrows were still struck into his massive chest.
A few feet away, there was an obese man, in a beautiful suit, a bullet hole in his head, also one in his heart. On a table next to him, was a bottle of soady pop, a straw sticking out it.
Nail gunned to the wall by an arrow through his head, was a small, nicely coiffured dark skinned diminutive man, thin cut moustache, three bullet holes in his chest.
Keats grinned to himself, looked at the arrow, chuckled. “Injuns.” More chuckles.
Moving off the porch, to where enough brand new black Lincoln Town cars were parked to easily start a Chrysler dealership, he begins to pop open their trunks with keys from their ignitions, nosing around a bit.
Trunk one and two were no surpsises, for they held various automatic rifles, hand gun, boxes of ammunition, and lots and lots of cartons of cigarettes.
Laughing, Keats says “If the bullets don’t get ya, the coffin nails will.” More giggles.
Moving to trunk three, he fumbles with the key he had retrived form the ignition, pops it open and, then sighs as sadness fills his eyes.
/>
Sue, with her throat slit from ear to ear stares at him, her once blue eyes, now opaque.
Her blue eyes are frozen in terror.
Having been in Iraq # 1, he knows collateral damage when he sees it.
He leans forward, closes her eyes and straightens looking at some unusal stuff in the trunk.
Lying near her stiff, blood drained body, is a blow torch, heavy bold cutters, various knives, sharp implements, pliars and a pot of some kind; looks to him, could melt something.
A bit sad, for Sue was just a fringe player in the Cox movie, he slams her coffin lid closed.
He moseys over to the motel, peek’s his big head in, sees a floor safe open, nothing in it. He shrugs his shoulders, closes the door and walks on.
Glancing at the barns, he knows exactly who lives there and feels dread, for the soldiers horses are not to be seen and an eerie silence prevades the area.
In a matter of moments, he is past the corrals, through the corridor of stalls and through the door of Captain Cox’s room.
Except for the glowing green monitor, the room is dark.
Snapping his thick flashlight off of his utility belt, he sweeps the beam around the almost empty room. Besides a matress, many Indian blankets, a photo tacked to the wall, some mismatched tables, empty book shelves, the room is vacant of anything else.
Moving before a wall, he shines his flashlight on a single framed photograph.
Deep sigh as he remembers his own time in Iraq.
The smiling camoflaged soldiers bring back memories that he would just as soon forget.
He knows Jason Cox’s story well.
There are few Medal of Honor winners around and it is almost impossible to keep their stories secret, though the recusive man had done that job, almost to perfection.
He stands at attention and with reverence salutes the smiling blond Green Beret.
After a few moments more, he steps away, looks around a bit and, then moves before the computer monitor. Peering at the single line of black print, he sighs.
JASON COX. WE LOVE HIM SO.
Furrowing his brow, he lingers for a moment, hopes the best for the valiant hero and walks from the room.