by Josh Law
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Table of Contents
Hook~
Chapter 1:
Chapter 2:
Chapter 3:
Chapter 4:
Chapter 5:
Chapter 6:
Chapter 7:
Chapter 8:
Chapter 9:
Chapter 10:
Chapter 11:
Chapter 12:
Chapter 13:
Chapter 14:
Chapter 15:
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THANK YOU MESSAGE
Hook~
Pirre Mountain was crowned with smoke in the twilight. Alex tore through the forest, the jungle trees slicing into his arms. He felt blood sprayed back on him like red dew. Decidedly ignoring it, he scrambled over river rocks and looked to the blacked-out sky.
His brother was bounding to the edge of a cliff overlooking the river. Fight dog’s braying echoed off the shell-shocked trees. A howl rippled over the rocks and Alex felt his bones rattle with pain and anxiety. Nicolas had chains driven into his legs and arms by nine-inch nails. The dogs were entangled with these weighty chains and around their necks were brass censers that emitted some bitter, purple-tinged chemical.
Nick stumbled into plain view of the veiled sun. Alex felt his tongue recoil like a rider’s crop against the walls of his mouth, barely stifling a petrified sob. His brother had inexplicably become engulfed in flames.
Without hesitation, Nick dove from the cliff. It was suicide. Anything to be rid of this tormenting vendetta. Mercenary voices cried out in anguish to see their prize-fighter dogs chain choked against tree stubs. The nails had been ripped free of Nick’s body. He sailed towards the water with a trail of crimson and sparks left in his wake, like a comet falling from the midst of God’s crucible.
Alex was beyond arguing life with Nicolas. He took a peeling leap and dove into the murky water.
Blindly he dashed through the water, feeling the hail of underwater grenades as they were hurled from the cliff. One blast was enough to light his path through this Darien Styx. He opened his eyes to see the silhouette of his brother thrashing with poisoned convulsions in his drowning throws.
He hauled him to the surface, hands around his convulsing waist and shoulders. The boy’s head cleared the water with an agonized gasp. He sputtered like a dehydrated fish, eyes orbiting his skull in waking REM. He was on his way back to Death’s custody.
Not if Alex could help it.
“Ah, crap. What do they have you on this time, buddy? Hang tight to me, got it? It’s time to stick it to these geeks, huh?” Alex hauled Nick over his shoulder. This would be fairly impossible, but he’d need to contend with the river’s might with his feet alone.
A stray grenade blew the trees along the shoreline onto their side like a dominoes failure. Flames engulfed the sand sending frightened creatures scrambling from the brush.
Alex heard his siblings’ voices but wasn’t going to be able to reach them this way. That was no good. Cipriano had entrusted Sally with the antidotes kit. Nick didn’t have long to get to that before he choked on his own bloody vomit.
Alex paused in the water and gripped his brother’s face, forcing him to look at him with fluttering eyes.
“Hey, listen. I know this is hard for you as whacked out as you’ve been recently. Look at me, boy! I need you to hang on, okay? Put some muscle to it, man. I’ve got you. Just…don’t give up yet, Nicky. Please don’t do this to me again.”
Alex dove under the water with his brother in tow. His instant plan was suicide but a desperate man has no choice.
Chapter 1:
* * *
Before you go on and have a thrill ride in your imagination,
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I guarantee you that I’m not going to sell you anything or make you join a group or anything
It’s just a thank you message that I know you deserve
>>JUST GO TROUGH THE END OF THIS BOOK<<
* * *
Three Weeks Earlier~
Nicolas told himself to breathe. He had Renee’s Mosin-Nagant pressed against his chest and his back pressed against a massive cedar in Bianca’s yard. Tonight he was burdened with the salvation of his entire household. How could he succeed with this rage in his mind’s machine?
Macho to the last beat of his heart, he refused to cry his panicked tears. He leaned against the wood, feeling the bark scratch his shoulders.
“Nicky? You’re alive?!” Sally’s voice spoke out of the dark. She skidded to her knees beside him. He jumped so hard he felt his teeth click together. Even though their relationship had always been a struggle, Nick was relieved to see his little sister.
“What the heck is going on?” Sally leaned closer to her brother noticing the rifle in his arms with eyes growing wide.
“You’re not going to like it.” He leaned backward looking into the forest when he heard the tramp of many anxious feet.
“That’s a full 30. We’re ready to move to phase two.” Alex hit his knees beside his brother, brows twisted in concern. He laid a hand on the side of his throat discreetly taking his pulse. Nick nodded and looked to his sister.
“We’re kidnapping you, Sal. Sorry, there’s no sugar coating this.” Nick stood up, knees knocking together. He nodded to Alex and took a mental inventory of his siblings. Brandon stood at the forefront, a toothbrush still clutched in his fist.
“Nick? What the heck, man? It’s like 2 AM!”
“You guys just won a free trip to Panama for being related to me! Let’s move.” Nick twisted his whole body around. A twig snapped and he clicked the bolt back on the rifle instantly in firing position.
“Ay! Take it easy, ‘mano! I’m just bringing the truck!” It was Peyo. Nick lowered the gun with a nervous laugh.
“Easy, Nicky. We’ve got this now.” Alex pressed his hand heavily between his brother’s shoulders and turned back to face their siblings. They all drew back in anxious. Had Nick just said they were going to Panama? Why in God’s name? What was wrong with him anyway? He was wound up like a spring.
They all spiraled around when they heard the sound of fire engulfing the only real home they’d ever had. Out of the midst of the blaze strode a Hell-walking man, clothes filled with chemical fire blotches teeth capped in melted brass. He shouldered a chainsaw and cackled like Hell’s own clown. The kids squeaked with terror, moving in a mosh-pit of defensiveness and falling into each other’s shoulders.
From the east and west wings of the burning house strode Renee Vierra and Marilyn Avalon. They each had rifles pressed to their shoulders, grave expressions clouding their intentions.
Renee smiled at her children, knowingly.
“Trust me, gang. This is going to save your life.”
She held out a hand to Sally who shook off her transfixed stupor at the idea of imposed eviction. No one had taken the time to ex
plain the events of the last few months to them. Either it was too painful for the adults, or something far more sinister was going on. The Prescott kids were all in their teens now. They weren’t stupid. They’d seen the news footage when Durango had gone up in flames and when Marilyn, Renee, Chance and the Police Chief had gone to street war in Mexico they’d been on the sofa watching the footage and rooting for their survival.
Anger and pain afflicted them. Why were they not being trusted with the full truth? How exactly had Nick risen from the dead? They all remembered that intolerable day that they’d buried him. Then the police and Papa Vierra had brought him home, smiling with sparks in his eyes just as he’d always done. They’d given them some explanations and reasoning enough to slake their curiosity. At first, they’d believed they’d been told everything. But after the Lady Sicario had laid siege to Santa Bianca’s, they were starting to think the adults had lied to them, or at least concealed some of the truth.
If only because they were so overjoyed to have their brother home and alive, they might have been content with this half-truth. But when their home had been threatened by Mexican mafia they collectively began to feel it was their right and responsibility to know what in literal blazes was going on. Nick and Alex had been escorted off the property at gunpoint just to save Sally’s life!
Now tonight a man came walking up from the Gates of Hell, to take them away, God knew where. How did they accept this? Should they dig in their heels, demand and answer? Cling to the burning remnant of the only home they’d ever had and hope that maybe they’d find some comfort in the ashes?
No, there was no choice. No time for explanations. It hurt in ways the average man would never understand.
Sally swallowed the urge to scream and cry. It was her nature to fight back. Only, she remembered the night that her brothers had saved her. Here they were again. Alive and unhurt, for now at least. Nicky winked at her like he was saying it was okay.
She nodded in silence and took Renee’s hand. The home mother chuckled in delight, her eyes dancing as if a great pain had been alieved even at some great risk.
Slowly the other kids followed Sally’s example and began to move as they were directed to a series of trucks and Jeeps parked in the shadows surrounding what had been their sanctuary once upon a time.
Together they departed never to return.
Chapter 2:
Present~
Alex hauled his brother onto his shoulders. The boy had fallen into a cryogenic stupor from the icy water. He wouldn’t be mentally present to question the sanity of this plan.
Alex turned to face the shoreline. He could see Snake standing there surrounded by the blazing trees. They had forced the grenades into the end of a skeet shooter to increase the length of their throw.
Alex counted backward on his pulse, hoping he had enough of his high-school football team spirit left in him to pull this off. He posed his hands like a baseball umpire. His head hurt from the stupidity of his plan. When it came to his brother, there was no risk to high to chance.
“What are you doing, Alex? I have the antidote! Come on!” Sally beat her hands on her knees, motioning to him from the shoreline. Bacardi stood beside her. She’d pulled up Cipriano’s Jeep and was unraveling a winch line to throw to them.
“C’mon, just grab it, Alex!”
Alex knew that if he didn’t think fast and daring these guys who outnumbered them at least 10 to 1 would never stop hunting them. They’d chase them all the way to Hell and cause such a stir there as to be bounced out. It was time to teach these fools just who they were messing with. Just the kind of salt that was rubbed in the Prescott’s wounds.
A white phosphorous grenade came sailing at him. He had to leap to catch it. The pin was already pulled. He’d only have a few seconds to aim this throw. Without allowing himself to overthink it, he hurled the grenade towards the cliff. It landed in the middle of a jagged ring of stones. If his aim had been true and it actually landed in that spot half of the cliff would topple into the water. The impact would be enough to take him and his brother down to an eternal rest in the river bottom. There was also the chance that it could propel them to deliverance and this was the chance he’d had to take.
There is never time to rationalize our lives in the moment they unfold. Had he had the time to think it through, he may have been too afraid to do it. Yet now when the occasion had risen to meet his spirit, all he could do was watch and wait. The river bank blew and thousands of years of erosion happened in a single instant of war’s brutality.
He’d become a man in that inglorious moment. Seasoned by fire and the dying shriek of the dogs. The heat rolled him back. He tangled in Bacardi’s line. His brother moaned against his shoulder, filled with exquisite pain.
His consciousness was translated into the smoke, disembodied, aware of everything at once and yet totally oblivious to himself and the destruction to his soul this moment had caused. Out of the sudden blast of clay and water cast into the atmosphere, the river began to flow red with the blood pressed from mercenaries’ veins like the juice from finest grapes. Trees sagged into the water with a popping squeak, bleeding their sap like dissected bones ooze marrow, with birds twittering in pitiful dying chirps as their homes were ravaged by the decimation. An owl called out in panic and fell to his death in the smoke’s asphyxia.
The winch yanked the brothers free of death’s teeth as fractured stone gnashed at them in the avalanche’s wake.
Snake staggered in the dust and smoke but didn’t fall. He stumbled on locked knees searing Alex even from this distance with his countenance of pure hatred.
This war had only just begun. He’d hoped coming to Panama would be the solution to this incessant struggle running from those who sought to profit off their DNA, but he’d been wrong.
Bacardi pulled Alex gently away from Nick. They both turned to see the kid thrashing like a roasting frog in the mud. Brandon wrapped a belt in his teeth to keep him from chewing off his tongue.
“Easy… I need you to breathe, Nicky.” Sally sank weakly to her knees and drew a hand over Nick’s sweat-drenched brow. Her hands ghosted over him accessing his damage and how she should proceed. He was badly burned down his forearms. She chewed her lip trying to decide what the best procedure would be in his situation.
She drug him to a log and bowed him over it backward where his lower body was elevated and his head was on the ground. Gently, she rolled his head to the left and motioned for Brandon to keep it positioned there even as wildly as Nick was trying to thrash the rest of his body.
Toweling his neck dry of river water, she washed the battlefield grime away with a tiny soapy sponge and began antiseptically cleaning the spot over his external jugular vein.
She brought a large needle attached to a catheter to his throat and inserted it meticulously into his vein. Then she connected the tube to a tiny IV bag full of strange copper-colored antidote fluids that Brandon dangled from the end of a metal coat hook. With quaking hands, she bandaged off the spot with paper tape.
Nick mustered one last intensive thrash and then laid still, face gone alabaster with his fearful reaction to all the chemicals tearing through him.
“It’s okay…They’ve been teaching me a lot of things at the Mission. I know I did it right. You’re going to make it, Nicky. Just weather it and breathe.” Sally held his head. His lips oozed root-beer thick foam and his eyes rolled like a crazy horse. Finally, the tormented boy passed out.
Alex looked back over the rubble. Snake was gone but he knew he’d seen him on the move. They had no time.
“Quick! We’ve got to get rolling. That psycho is coming for us and he won’t stop until we’re worse than dead.”
Chapter 3:
Marilyn Avalon stepped out of the dense forest into the sun.
For the first time in weeks, she felt the warmth of real light on her face. Where she’d been the leaves folded in a thick canopy that rendered the forest floor a strange ever-twilight dominion
.
She looked to either side of her. Renee Vierra stood to her right blinking in the daylight as the light washed her dirty face and the wind ran gentle fingers through her chin-cropped golden hair. Marilyn remembered when it had been beautifully long. She’d only known her for a year but it already felt like forever. The things they’d weathered as friends and mothers had been scientifically impossible before they’d experienced it.
Renee returned the look with a knowing smile. A year ago if someone had come to her and said she’d be leading her foster kids through the Darien Gap following a Latino gangster’s makeshift attempt at forming witness protection for them, she’d have laughed (and spat) in their face. Yet here she was standing in the sun. It was all a little surreal, which somehow made it easier to navigate. Had she had the time to actualize it, she might not be able to swallow it down.
Chance came up alongside Marilyn on the left. He looked into the sun, eyes squinted nearly shut and the Mossberg on his shoulder. Marilyn had a sinking feeling in her stomach as she realized that Chance Vierra was the only person here that had been 100% Shang-Hai-ed into this situation. That had been her fault. Knights in shining armor were a difficult breed to come by and so she and Renee had opted for a daring little brother with a pickup truck. Here they were. In the wild. Facing the giants one more time.
Marilyn looked ahead the intense green of South America making her eyes swim. There stood Cipriano the Death Angel on a small mossy hill-rise. Marilyn felt her stomach swirl like troubled waters. Just the sight of him was bone-chilling with his chemical burn splotched clothes and raven-dark hair. He was staring off into the cliff’s bloody clay wounded face and oblivion. Something stirred below them that made the old sicario uneasy.