Warpath

by Ryan Sayles

Uppercut to his guts and whatever he was going to finish that sentence with gets lost in the forced exhale. His feet leave the street and my knuckles rub along the interior of his spine. I let go of his collar. He hits the ground hard.

  I go down to one knee beside him, dig through his pockets. Gasping, he squirms. Tries to get stupid. Now, I’ve punched a lot of people. Hitting them while they’re standing up is best because you’ve got all that room behind their head to snap back. When you drill someone lying down—especially on concrete—the give ain’t what it is when they’re upright. The plus side they get hit twice. The downside is I’ve broken my hand more times than I can count. Oh well.

  I drill him.

  The concrete hits the back of his head as hard as I hit his jaw and lights out.

  Find his cellphone in a pocket and pull it out. Some weed and rolling papers fall out as well. A condom. Some pocket change. This guy must have had only one pocket he trusts. Scroll through the phone—which is a cheap piece of shit, by the way—find Thug Dawg. Winner winner chicken dinner. Dial the number.

  One eye on the phone, one eye on the punk before me. He stirs just a bit. Blinks a bunch. Groans and one hand rubs his face. He probably doesn’t think it, but I see him reaching behind his back.

  “What?” Answers the phone.

  “Thuggie?”

  “’Course! Man, what the fuck is going—”

  “Thuggie, you must think I’m the turd whose name is on your caller ID. I’m the guy who rolled your Baltimore and Forty-second intersection crew. Burned down your cathedral. Know me?”

  A moment of recognition and I can hear him draw in a furious breath. “Mother fucka, you ain’t got no idea how bad it’s gonna be when—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I don’t think you have the hair on your balls to come get me yourself. I don’t think you’ve got ’em.”

  “You don’t? For real? Are you playin’?”

  “Nope. I hear you’re too big of a bitch to do the work yourself ’cuz you’re afraid of sucking more dick inside prison. Am I right?”

  “Oh...oh you’re goin’ die slow ’cuz of that. Slow.”

  “Liar liar pants on fire.”

  “Put Jamoneon back on. We’re gonna make some arrangements—”

  “Is Jamone the guy quivering on the ground in front of me?”

  Jamone hears that and makes his move. He starts to swing a gun around from his lower back—a tiny thing I should have found in the search. Damn you, Richard, stupid, stupid—and I plug one round through him. He drops, the gun clattering to the road.

  “Correction, was Jamone the guy quivering on the ground in front of me?”

  “I will fuckin’ kill you! I will—”

  “You and whoever you wanna bring, meet me at the corner of Parker Avenue and Thirty-fifth Terrace. Twenty minutes. You got me? Twenty minutes or I tell the world how you pussed out and how easy I’m rollin’ up on your turf. When you get there call this number.”

  “Mother fu—”

  Click.

  Back in the car. Gone.

  43

  Back to the construction site and I park behind some pile of debris, see that Molly’s shitbox is still there.

  Can’t roll up the window. I grab her phone, stash in it my jacket. Pull out Molly’s keys and move the vehicle up the block and into the parking lot of a church. Hotfoot it back. I hit the building and take the stairs two at a time until I reach the third floor landing. Stop. Listen for that wonderful snoring again. Still there. I cut the trip wire. Move a wooden crate about waist-high over by the window that has an unobstructed view out to the other building. Put two cardboard boxes on it. Inside one box I put the explosive.

  Pull out my knife, grab the gasoline jug. Cut the whole top off.

  The rapist wakes up when I throw the entire jug on him.

  “Ahhhh!” he jumps up, starts jiggling and writhing like he was fighting for the lead role in Flashdance.

  I close the gap, swing a right hook so hard he spins in a pirouette and a loose tooth flies out, hits the wall. He drops, rolls around cradling his jaw.

  “I got the girl.”

  He nods as much as one can while their face is cracked. Coughs. Wipes at his face as the gasoline stench clears my nostrils.

  He spits on me. Snarls. “If they didn’t want it they should have fought harder,” he says. Vindictive. He wants to cry. I can see it, but he won’t give me the satisfaction. He tears off his shirt, uses his forearms to scrub at his face.

  “Just smearing it around, home boy,” I say.

  He coughs so hard it triggers his gag reflex. Gets one eye open enough to look at me. “Men like you...and bitches. If bitches earned...the things they have it would’ve been—would’ve been them who...conquered nations and built buildings and—and—and created reading and writing and diverted rivers. But fuck no. Fuck no! They want to be...equal to men without being equal. I’m—I’m no twat’s fucking equal and if if if...some chick looks at me like she’s better than me she’s gonna—she’s gonna fuckin’ learn she ain’t!”

  “Said every pussy ever.” I circle him like a lion around prey. “I was married once, and I put her on a pedestal. Not because she could lift as much weight as me, but because she was everything I was not, and that made me want to lift the weights for her.”

  “So Goliath has his inner teddy bear.” Coughs, hacks up whatever bile is in his stomach. “Go fuck yourself.”

  “Actually,” I say, leaning back against a wall, “this ends here. And that leads me to my next point. I would lift all the burdens in the world for my wife, but you, you’re gonna have to do it yourself.”

  “They’ll never take me alive.”

  “I know. Which is why you’re soaked in gasoline.” I produce a matchbook. Drop it next to him. “So get it going.”

  “Get what going?”

  “Your exit.”

  “Are you outta your fuckin’ mind?”

  “Nope.” I light a smoke. “Right now, some gangbangers I know are on their way over here. Remember this necklace?” I show him the pearls he stole from me. “These rightfully belong to the aunt of the gang’s head honcho. The big cheese. And he’s gonna be pissed when he finds them in your possession.”

  “I’ll dime you out in a heartbeat.”

  I casually stroll over. He braces as he sees the lit cigarette in my right hand. Never sees the left hook coming.

  I back up. Take a drag. “You won’t be diming out anybody with that broken mouth.”

  He’s on his back rolling around, his entire jaw in pieces, held as shards inside his skin. Sounds like he’s choking but I bet it’s only another tooth. He hacks and gags, clears his airway.

  “Your deviance has led you here. Your thirst for hurting others has led you here. Your filth has led you here. And now, I’m making sure it gets stomped out. I didn’t ask you to butcher the lives of so many helpless people. So light the match before they get here.”

  He just rolls, lays on his side.

  I kneel down, whisper, “You’ve heard of the Carnivore Messiahs? You’ve heard of their rivals? How they die? They rape men, you know. Prison justice. They do things that would make BTK poop his britches. And for a serial killer who took his time with children, that’s saying something.”

  I stand, walk away. Turn my back as I near the stairs. “Leave the matches alone, I don’t care. Take your chances.”

  I hear him, ever so slightly, inch against his conscience across the floor. The slide of wet fabric across concrete. Trepidatious fingers, scrawling gasoline swirls and lines until those fingertips touch the matchbook. He starts to cry, and all I hear are the whimpers and pleadings of so many women under his bulk, their underwear being torn at until they rest limp around their ankles. Tears wetting their bloody cheeks. Finding that far-off place where they can be away from what’s happening.

  All I hear is Petticoat’s wife as she beseeches her unconscious husband to defend her. All I hear is Molly trying to scratch her way through the t
runk lid, wanting to know why Graham actually went down when he was bashed over the head. All I hear is the muffled voices of however many other women this guy has destroyed throughout his hideous career.

  Then I hear the match head flare up, whoosh, and heat play against my back. I hear screaming. Real screaming. Accepting his fate but not the agony of it, apparently. I count to five and pick up the bucket of water I brought with me, turn around and throw it on him.

  The flames hiss and go back to hell, sizzling out to nothing and the rapist is here with me, lobster red and every nerve exposed.

  But alive.

  I think back to Willibald’s WWII story about the French woman. I remember how she just grasped her groin and moaned like she had been set on fire for a minute and put out. Left to suffer until Death swooped in with its talons. Just never came. Not that way, anyhow.

  “Death is coming, perv,” I say, rolling my head on my shoulders. “Death is coming.”

  44

  “Bye, Ursa. They’ll be here soon.”

  And I roll down the stairs, leave his squeaking mewls up on the third floor. I hit the second landing and the phone rings.

  I look out a window, see three ghetto sleds roll up; queefs pile out like they were clowns in the center ring. “Yo, Thuggie?”

  One guy stalks around like he owns the place. All the others give him a wide birth but circle him like he was radiating their source of power. “Where you at, mother fucka? I’ma get my hands on you—”

  “Right here, sexy boy.” And I fire four rounds. The night comes to life with sparks as I shoot to piss them off.

  They drop and swing their barrels up and around, looking for something to zero in on. I give them the other two rounds, leaving a muzzle flash in the night sky.

  They see it, send lead my way. Good girls. I duck, find the first floor as quiet as a two hundred sixty pound mouse. Tiptoe out a window, barrel across the space between the two buildings in a wide arc. While they’re staring at the empty air near the muzzle flash I’m entering the next house.

  I hit a room, brace against a wall and pop my cylinder. Reload. Go up the stairs. Keep it low, scan the shadows until I see them again, racing around across the way, their silhouettes darker against a dark background inside. Heads bobbing as their idiotic, blind rage takes them up the stairs in a manner that makes me yearn to be at the top with a machine gun. This is what fish in a barrel look like.

  Tactics out the window. Revenge’s handicapped little brother has removed his safety helmet and taken the wheel. I see them pour onto the second floor and I bide my time while they search and toss over every shadow and dust mote looking for that guy who jumped their crew.

  And then, the rapist’s pathetic mewling must catch their ears. I hear them explode in acknowledgements; “There’s that moutha fucka!” “Upstairs! Go! Go!” “Cap his ass!”

  Head on up, fellas. And they do. Nuts to butts they charge up there, spilling onto the third floor. I see the last guy nearly trip over himself getting up there, zooming around. I think about Ursa, about all those times he called me Dick. If there’s one thing I insist upon, it’s that no one calls me Dick. No one.

  I take a deep breath and put the front sight on the box with the gel explosive in it. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Surprise.

  My barrel barks into the still night and the third floor comes alive with all the fury of the sun.

  45

  Orange roils outward, the shade of a tiger after you stab him in the ass.

  Boiling, the explosion is red at the edges like what any man sees as he enters his bedroom to find his wife occupying another man’s time. Black curls in as the first real precursors of death. The fat burst rises and sweeps in under itself; bulging out into a bulb. Rising on a column of flame. Mushroom.

  The building around me snaps to life with peppered debris. Concrete slabs and pebbles, no doubt razor blades and ball bearings as well. I duck, feel a rain of dirt and rubble sprinkle down on me for long, long seconds.

  I wait until I hear the quiet susurration of hissing flame, of ruins settling down into piles. Then I look up. Where the third floor was, there is now a black char mark. The outer walls are jagged teeth of blasted wreckage. Smoke billowing. Holes in the floor, pocked about like acne in all its varying degrees of severity. No rapist. No gang.

  I stand up.

  Something crunches behind me and I feel the gunshot before I hear it. My breath leaves in a great whoosh as powerful as that explosion and my face hits the window frame. Down. Guts on fire. Feel a fist grab me around the ankle and yank me back. Taste the concrete as it slides across my teeth.

  Try and roll, try and struggle. Futile. Every organ I have just quivers and has teeth, chewing at my insides. Vision blurs and gets grainy. If I can just stand up, if I can just make a fist. But in the end my spine just quits bending and my hands quit clenching and my will to stop acting like a flopping fish on the shoreline evaporates. I’ll just rest a second. Get my second wind.

  A fire has started in the back of my ribs, left side. Maybe right. Can’t tell anymore. Hard to breathe.

  Footsteps around me. Shoes sliding along the bare concrete, shuffle shuffle shuffle. Whoever it is they need to pick up their feet when they walk. Kick to help me roll over on my back. Someone else’s hand in my jacket, taking my iron. Kicked once, twice in the face. Before my eye swells shut I see Thuggie standing over me.

  46

  “This is it, mother fucka. This is where your war led you.”

  “Thuggie...” that name slides off my tongue the way a stomach rejects rotten food. The night of Willibald’s death comes rushing back, bulldozing. I see his face just enough to feel secure in the fact that the next time I see it’ll be beating to death the right coward. The facial hair, the baby cheeks and high eyebrows. Ugly.

  “I recognize you. Pussy,” I say. “Always shooting when your target isn’t ready.”

  He aims his piece down over my face. He looms there like the angel of death; gun metal gray scythe with a four-inch barrel guiding the way. His foot on my chest and all I can think about is how baggie his fucking pants are. They pool around his ankle the way a dad’s slacks do when his child tries them on for size.

  “I ain’t got no rules, pig. And I play the game to win.”

  “You got not balls, either.”

  I groan, arch my back. I can feel the slug shift in my ribs. I scream. The agony of that little critter burrowing. My toes curl and as stupid as it sounds that tiny sensation puts life in my blood. The bullet, shallow and low. Missed my spine. My heart. I feel it throb through my neck, flooding my brain. My lungs burn but no pressure is building. They’re intact.

  “War?” I ask through gritted teeth. “How ’bout your fucking foot soldiers shoot up the right house? This is where your war led to.”

  “Fuck that old lady.” His tone is flat. The life of a woman wasted means literally nothing.

  I spit some blood across his shoe. “Tell me somethin’, bro. Word on the street was...when you came back for—for the second drive-by, you. You were the shooter.”

  He gives me the cockiest half-smile this side of Magnum P.I. “Fuck that old geezer, too.”

  He points my own gun at me with his other hand, adjusts his grip, finger on the trigger. “Fuck you. I ain’t never killed a cop before.”

  Shadows shift from across the room. I smell a change in the wind. I laugh. “I’m not a cop. But you will be killing the last swinging dick to make your mama slip around in her own goo.”

  “You funny. You very—” And Thuggie’s head snaps forward. He pitches over against the wall behind me just as blood and brains start finding their way out of his mouth.

  “You heard that?” I squeak out. The shadows shift again and Graham comes forward, looking like shit.

  “The your mama joke?”

  “No.”

  “The part about killing my grandfather?” Graham asks.

  “Yup. You heard it.”

  I try to roll onto
my side and the pain floods up. Nearly pass out.

  “Stop. Stop.” Graham’s hands lay on and things come in snatches from there. I know I take my weapon back from Thuggie. Then darkness. We make it downstairs. I know that much. Next thing I remember is trying to ask how he found me.

  He says something like his heart led me to him. Graham pats me down, pulls out Molly’s cellphone. I see his laptop in the backseat. A little dot blinking on its screen. I lay my head against the window; pass out as we drive off.

  Last thing I remember is him gunning it onto the highway and thanking God we missed the emergency responders.

  47

  At first I think Graham is talking to me, but when I look over he’s on the phone.

  “Yes, I can make that go away,” he says, looking annoyed. “You do this for me, I do that for you.”

  Out the window and the highway is long gone. Blacktop has changed to gravel. Buildings to thickets of trees. The drone of insects has replaced the roar of engines. We hit a bump and the flare of pain in my back nearly puts me out again. My vision constricts and I want to vomit.

  I hear Graham say, “Deal. I’m around the corner now.”

  I pass out as he turns down a driveway in the middle of nowhere.

  Manhandled out of the car.

  “You’re not drunk right now, are you?” Graham asks. I want to say no, but another voice chimes in.

  “Nah. Just a nip, just to take the edge off.”

  “What edge?” Graham asks. I can feel his hands under my armpits, carrying me. Someone else has my feet. Speaking of a drink, I need one. My head swims and I can’t fight through the semi-unconscious fog.

  “When a cop calls you in the middle of the night to sew up one of his buddies, I’m not stupid,” that other voice says. Gruff. Female. “I know this is some shady shit. I’m down; you’re one of the good guys. But, you’re lucky I need the money.”