by James Hunt
Terry increased the pressure on Chuck’s throat until the cop’s cheeks turned a light shade of purple then released him. Chuck collapsed on all fours, gasping and hacking. Finally, after a few moments collecting himself on the ground, he rose and opened the door.
Chuck led Terry back to his desk and shuffled through the disorganized papers on top. He checked the drawers, then pulled out two sheets of paper and set them down for Terry to see.
“There. One female, aged thirty-seven, one male, aged thirty-three,” Chuck said.
Terry snatched the papers up and examined them with those dark-green eyes. He flipped through the pages, taking in every detail he could. Once finished, he tossed the papers back onto the desk and collected his knife.
Some of the officers kept eyeballing him on his way out, and once Terry was out the front door, Chuck practically fainted into his chair.
One of the other detectives leaned over to him. “Who the hell was that?”
“That was two hundred pounds of vicious, bloodhound, tracking terror,” Chuck answered.
“Bounty hunter?”
“Yeah.”
“God, those bastards have been coming out of the woodwork since the government started offering those rewards to catch folks trying to sneak over the border.”
“Yeah, well, this guy has been doing it for a long time. I feel sorry for these two.”
Chuck looked at Brooke and Eric’s pictures, provided by the DMV’s photos from their driver’s licenses.
“Terry always gets his mark,” Chuck said.
Chapter 2
The sunlight reflecting against the skyscrapers of Dallas beggared relief. A trail of footsteps followed Brooke in the Texas sand. Each step forward sank her boots a quarter inch deep. The weight of her backpack straps pressed hard against her shoulders. She could feel the heat of the sun baking her through the shemagh wrapped around her head.
Once she had awoken earlier that morning, she knew the closest town was Dallas. And if there were a good place to run out of fuel, this would be it. The drought had drained most of Texas’s economy. The cattle industry plummeted, and farmland become desolate fields of dust as the water levels slowly dissipated. However, the state of Texas had found riches in one of its oldest traditions: oil.
Oil reserves once hidden underneath pockets of fresh groundwater were now exposed. Since there was no longer the threat of damaging an underwater ecosystem that didn’t exist, Texas witnessed a massive resurgence in the oil drilling and refining industries.
Upon entering the streets of Dallas, Brooke made sure to adjust the shemagh concealing her face. She couldn’t be sure if the authorities were looking for her or how far their reach would go, but she wasn’t going to make it easy for them.
Lines of cars clogged the streets of downtown as Brooke weaved through the hordes of people walking along the suit-ridden sidewalks. With resources being shifted to protect the water supply, standards had dropped for air quality.
Before she started looking for fuel, she needed to make a call. She entered a small store and purchased a bottle of water with cash, giving her enough change to use the pay phone outside. She slid the coins into the slot and dialed her sister’s number. The phone rang, and Brooke prayed that Amy would pick up.
“Hello?” Amy asked.
“Amy! It’s Brooke.”
“Thank God. Are you okay? Where are you? What happened?”
“I’m fine. Me and the kids are fine. I’m in Dallas right now.”
“Dallas?”
“Yeah, we’re refueling, and then we’re going to head east.”
“Brooke, they’re arresting anyone that tries to come across. It’s been all over the news. Police officers, bounty hunters, people just trying to make a quick buck for the reward money are going nuts. It’s bad.”
“I know. I’m being careful. Look, can you talk to Daniel? See if there is anything he can do?”
“Of course. Should I call you?”
“No. If the authorities are watching things that closely, they’ll be looking at my phone records. I don’t want anything to get traced back to you. I’ll give you a call tomorrow, let you know where we’re at.”
“Okay. I love you.”
“Love you too.”
Brooke set the receiver down, and the change inside the pay phone clunked to the bottom. She readjusted her shemagh and continued down the busy Dallas streets. It felt like the entire population of Texas was in the city, which was one of the reasons Brooke had come alone. She wanted to avoid bringing the cruiser here to fuel up. It was her best bet for staying below police radar. Now that she was in the largest fuel capital in the United States, the question wasn’t finding gas but how to bring enough of it back to the cruiser.
The din of jackhammers filled the air. Road construction had slowed the traffic to a crawl, and the massive tankers filled with fuel formed clusters from the east. One of the truckers became caught behind the slowing traffic and stopped adjacent to Brooke. She waved at him through his open passenger window. When she caught his attention, she only pulled the shemagh down to expose her mouth. Nothing more.
“Hey! Where do you guys fuel up?” Brooke asked.
“Forty-Ninth Street. Ten blocks behind me.”
If she could convince a trucker to drive out with one of those tankers, then not only would she be able to fill the cruiser, but she could get a free ride home. As she walked, a gust of wind blew pieces of a newspaper against her leg. Before she tossed it into the trash, her eye caught the front page. “The War with Mexico,” was the headline.
According to the article, Congress was planning an emergency session to prepare a declaration of war later that afternoon. The president would also be giving a speech to address the nation. Brooke crumpled the newspaper in her fist. She’d heard enough of the president’s speeches.
Just below the lead story on the war, another article caught her eye. It highlighted the problem of thieves hijacking tankers. More than twenty thefts had been reported in the last month.
The closer Brooke moved to Forty-Ninth Street, the thicker the soot became. Plumes of smoke poisoned the sky above and cast a light rain of black over the city. Tanker truck tires rolled their imprints across the roads, cutting paths along the black pollutants lining the asphalt. Each of those tankers carried fuel that would be shipped to every corner of the country.
Brooke wondered how long the oil boom in Texas would last. Once there was no more water to keep the rest of the country alive, the black sludge extracted from the earth would do little but seep back down into the depths from which it had come.
Brooke made it to the chain-link fence of the fueling station. Her fingers poked through the patterned diamond spaces between metal wires. She leaned forward, the fence bending as she took in the semi-trucks being loaded down with cylindrical tanks of fuel.
A group of truckers stood in front of their rigs. Most of them sipped coffee, each of their faces smudged in grease and dirt. Their clothes were soiled, and those that didn’t wear hats had tangled and matted hair, all the attributes of someone Brooke would have normally avoided.
Brooke pinched her fingers in her mouth and let out a whistle that broke up whatever trucker stories the men were telling. They all turned and stared at the woman with her face concealed standing on the other side of the fence.
The truckers pointed to each other, shrugged, trying to figure out what she wanted. Eventually, one of them meandered over. Brooke thought he looked too thin to be a trucker. The rest of them were a little wide around the midsection, but he looked like he hadn’t eaten in a week. He took one last drag of the cigarette in his mouth and flicked it to the ground.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“I need fuel,” Brooke answered.
“There’s a station just down the road.”
“I know. But I need a lot of it and a way to transport it. My car broke down outside the city.”
“Then call a wrecker.” The trucker spat
on the ground and turned on his heel to leave.
“I can pay you,” Brooke said.
The trucker stopped. He walked over to the fence. This time he came nose to nose with Brooke and poked his own fingers through. Dirt and grime consumed his nails both underneath and on top. He gave a grin, flashing his yellow-stained teeth.
“How much?” he asked.
“Three hundred now. Another three hundred when we get to the vehicle.”
“A grand.”
“What? I don’t have that much money.”
“Then you’re shit out of luck, sweetheart.”
The trucker pursed his lips and kissed the air between them. Brooke recoiled as the trucker’s weight buckled the metal back toward her. He laughed and then started to walk back. She could try another refinery, but she didn’t want to waste more time. Every second spent idling was one more for the police to catch up with her. She rubbed her hand nervously and then felt the small bump under her glove.
“Wait!” Brooke said. “I don’t have a thousand in cash, but I have this.”
Brooke poked her hand through the fence, pinching her wedding ring. The sunlight caught the diamond, and it shimmered. The trucker’s face changed as he walked back over to her. When his hand went out to grab the ring, she pulled it back through her side of the fence.
“Three hundred now, and then you get the ring once we’re there,” Brooke said.
“All right. I leave in twenty minutes. I’ll pick you up on that street corner there when I come out,” he said then disappeared.
A thin circle of pale flesh was now exposed on her left ring finger. The small, circular golden band resting in Brooke’s palm felt foreign to her. Of all the memories that could have flooded her mind—from her wedding day or when Jason had asked her to marry him to their first date together—the only one that came to mind was Jason’s funeral. The sound of the guns firing. The lowering of the casket. Emily and John crying. The finely pressed uniforms. All of it came rushing back to her, and she felt disgusted with herself. She felt disgusted with the trucker, with the city surrounding her, with everything. This was what the world would cost her now. She had to give up pieces of her life that she would never get back.
***
The barrel of Brooke’s 9mm Ruger LCR double-action revolver wobbled slightly on the hot metal hood of the cruiser. John squinted his left eye shut and peered through the gun’s sight. Orange plugs filled his ears, and Eric stood right behind him, hunched over and making sure John was on target.
“Keep it steady. Just line up the sight and squeeze the trigger,” Eric said.
John’s finger rested on the trigger and, in one quick motion, pulled it back. The pistol bucked upward, and the 9mm shell ejected and clinked against the cruiser’s roof. A spray of sand flew into the air next to an empty bean can. John let out a sigh, and Eric patted him on the back.
“It’s all right. Just try it again,” Eric said.
“Yeah, John! You can do it!” Emily said, watching from inside the cruiser. Pieces of two similar orange plugs filled her smaller ears. Her hair flopped up and down as she bounced on the front seat.
John realigned the bean can in the pistol’s sights. He tried to keep the revolver steady, but the sight would slowly waver back and forth from the target. He tightened his arms and shoulders, attempting to stabilize his stance. The bean can finally rested permanently along the tip of the revolver’s barrel. He pulled the trigger, and the bullet made contact, sending the can flying backward into the desert.
“Nice shot!” Eric said.
John smiled. He could feel the strain of his shoulders and arms from the recoil. He wiped the beads of sweat forming on his forehead and handed the gun back to Eric like he’d showed him, with the barrel pointed away from anyone and his finger off the trigger.
“Good job. You’ve got your dad’s eye for shooting,” Eric said.
“Really?” John asked.
“Yeah, just be thankful you didn’t get his back hair. Gross.”
John had always been told he looked like his dad. The similarities grew along with his age. He’d once seen a picture of his father in high school, and even he had to admit the resemblance was unmistakable. A sense of pride rushed through him whenever someone told him he did things like his father. It made him feel like his dad wasn’t completely gone.
“What was my dad like when he was younger? Back when he first joined the Marines?” John asked.
“He was one of the toughest… Emily do you still have your ear plugs in?” Eric asked.
“What?” Emily asked.
Eric turned back to John. “One of the toughest sons of bitches I’d ever seen. He’d be real proud of you for helping take care of the family and making it this far.”
The smile across John’s face started to fade. Proud of what? He hadn’t done anything to help. His mother was the one who had saved Emily. Eric was the one who had rescued his mom in Phoenix. All John had done was tag along for the ride.
“I haven’t done much,” John said.
“Whoa, hey. What are you talking about? You being here, watching over your sister, that’s a big job. One that I know your dad would be glad you’re doing.”
“You really think so?”
“I do.”
John desperately wanted to make his father proud. He’d heard the stories of how Jason had saved people, facing death fearlessly. He knew his dad had saved Eric in Iraq a long time ago. Would I be able to do that? Would I be able to face death and save the people around me?
“Is it scary?” John asked.
“Is what scary?” Eric replied.
“Knowing you might die.”
“Hey, that’s not something you have to worry about for a long time.”
***
The trucker picked Brooke up from the corner, and she climbed inside the cab. She handed him the three hundred in cash. He counted it and shoved the money into his back pocket, and the semi jolted forward as he shifted into first gear.
The road construction up ahead was still bad, and it took them thirty minutes just to move a few blocks. Once they made it past the construction site, the roads opened up a bit.
“So where am I heading?” the trucker asked.
“Get on I-20 and head west. I’ll let you know when we’re getting close,” Brooke answered.
The sound of the jackhammers faded behind them and was replaced by honking horns and rumbling engines. Brooke wiped the smudge from her window to get a better look at the city. A layer of smog filtered the sunlight that came down in broken rays.
“So what did you do?” the trucker asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, you’re willing to pay a lot of money to fill up one gas tank. You’re hiding from somebody.”
“Just drive.”
“I’m just trying to make conversation. What happened to your husband?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“You leave him? That why you’re hiding? So he won’t find you.”
“He was killed in action in Afghanistan last year.”
The trucker was silent for a moment. Brooke crossed her arms and retreated farther into her seat.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” the trucker said.
Brooke didn’t say anything. Of all the people she wanted to discuss her dead husband with, some greasy trucker was at the very bottom of her list.
“Marines?” the trucker asked.
“Yes.”
“I lost my brother in Iraq back in ’04. It’s funny, isn’t it? We go over there to stop the desert from spreading and then low and behold, our own goes and decides that it’s time to take over.”
“The war didn’t have anything to do with the drought.”
“I know. I’m just saying it’s ironic. You got kids?”
“Look. If you need conversation, then turn on the radio.”
“All right. Geesh.”
The radio scrambled as the trucker turned
the dial, trying to find a station. He finally settled on a talk show that was discussing the issue of the United States declaring war on Mexico.
“Look, Tom. We did not declare war on Mexico. They did that themselves when they attacked our border. All we’re doing now is defending what’s ours.”
“You really think we can afford this war, Frank? Water has become so scarce that we exiled the entire Southwest to save ourselves. More farmland is drying up every year, and we have China knocking on our door demanding that we pay up our debt. Retaliating against the Mexican army isn’t just foolish.