by Barr, Jeff
"Pedro." Tear-tracks cut lines down the kid's dirty face.
"We've got Pedro out here, and he's coming in hot, face first. You shoot, and his brains go everywhere."
No answer. Arneson shrugged. Together they grabbed Pedro and ran him through the door. He smashed through the particle-board like it was nothing more than movie set-dressing.
An old bed, shrouded in a coverlet that might have been washed back when Reagan got shot. A closet with no doors. A used rubber lay curled in the middle of the floor like a question mark.
Arneson jumped up on to the bed, and Sonch follow a second later. The snout of a shotgun poked from under the bed and exploded. The sound in the tiny room was like the cannons of heaven. Pedro's right leg exploded. Gory loops and snarls painted the bottom half of the wall.
Pedro screamed and dropped to the ground.
"Oh shit, Pedro, I'm sorry, man!" The guy under the bed started wriggling his way out, leading with the shotgun. Sonch waited until he could see the guy's right hand where it clutched the riot grip of the shotgun, then he jumped down and landed on the gun. There was a crunch like a dog biting into a bone as his fingers crushed under Sonch's weight.
"Gotcha, shitheel!" Sonch cried.
There was a slithering bump from down the hall, and Arneson leaped off the bed and charged through the door. The heavyset blond guy thundered out of the master bedroom and down the hallway. H slammed the the bathroom door shut behind him. Arneson followed, smashing through the cheap veneer and skidding to a halt.
The blond guy was backed up against a mini washer-dryer combo, panting for breath. He held a box of laundry soap in front of him like a shield.
"Good luck with that," Arneson said. He pulled up the bottom of his shirt a moment, exposing the butt of his gun, then held his hands up. "You must be Jescoe. So what do you say we settle down and discuss this—"
Jescoe lowered the soap box, snarling, and both men froze. His eyes widened until Arneson thought they would pop out of his head.
"Holy shit," Jescoe said. "I know you."
Arneson stared. God-damnit.
"Yeah, you were at that thing in Texas, that preacher who went bad and killed all those—"
Arneson lunged forward and slammed Jescoe into the washer. It clanged like a bell. He gritted out a whisper. "Shut the fuck up. You don't know me. You've never seen me." He stepped back to the bathroom door and checked for movement. He heard the muffled sound of Sonch remonstrating and the scritch of duct tape unspooling. He returned to the laundry room. "Now hit me."
"Oh man, this is bad fucking timing," the guy moaned. Greasy-looking sweat sheened his forehead. "I am so close here. Listen, I got to tell you something. The woman, she—"
"I don't care. Fucking hit me," Arneson said.
Jescoe thought about it for a second. He looked around a moment, then down at the box of laundry soap in his hands. He grabbed it by the handle, took a long wind-up, and smashed the box across Arneson's jaw. Powdered soap flew like Christmas. Arneson staggered, slamming into the wall as loudly as possible. If you didn't know what to look for, you might almost think it was real. Jescoe took another look at him, then sprinted past, back down the hall to the kitchen.
Arneson staggered out in time to see Sonch staring after the fleeing Jescoe.
"Shit, man! Did you let that guy get away?" Sonch cried. He looked at Arneson and started laughing. "Holy shit! Did he get you good, or what! Sheeee-it!"
"He surprised me." There was a thump from the master bedroom. Arneson gestured toward the room containing Pedro and Rennie. "Everything under control in there?"
"They're good. Trussed up like a couple of piggies."
They paused outside of the master bedroom. Arneson turned to whisper to Sonch, but it was too late.
"Hi-yahhhhh!" Sonch cried, and kicked in the door. He lunged inside, swinging the sword. Arneson rushed in afterward, scanning, staying clear of the flashing blade. He looked to his right, and his blood cooled. He saw what was about to happen, and he lunged. Sonch brought the sword down, swinging as he turned, the blade catching the dusty light, flashing back a cruel grin of chromed steel, toward—
thunk
The sound of Sonch's sword cleaving into Arneson's forearm was like an ax chopping into a block of wood. Arneson had thrown his arm across the baby bassinet where it sat on the bed.
Arneson grunted with pain. The shock of the strike reverberated up his arm, sending a bolt of livid purple agony into his brain. The blade was stuck, all the way to the bone.
From the bassinet; not a sound.
The pain was excruciating. Arneson breathed, his tongue on the roof of his mouth, willing the pain to recede.
"Christ, that was close." Sonch panted. He yanked his sword out and watched avidly as blood welled up from the gaping wound. "Sorry, bro." Blood pattered serenely down on the puke-green carpeting.
Arneson ripped a pillow off the bed and held it to his arm. "You didn't cut anything major. Check under the—"
The closet doors crashed open and the woman charged, sweaty black hair flying out in a fright-wig, teeth bared in a harridan mask of hate. She smashed into Sonch and both of them crashed to the floor. She was skinny as a fence-slat, face covered with the pitted scars of long-term meth use. She groaned and screeched nonsense, lunging into Sonch, tearing at his face with her teeth and nails.
"Get off me, you bitch!" Sonch, half-laughing, covering his face with his arms, trying to keep her nails out of his eyes. "Arneson, little help?"
Arneson ignored him and stepped to the bassinet. He drew back the blanket.
A real baby. Where they had gotten it was a question he didn't want to ask, or contemplate. It looked peaceful. Pale as soap, and still as a painting. He reached out, and his hand seemed to stretch miles before touching the cold flesh. He had heard stories, of course; rumors, urban legends. The sure-fire way of getting past any checkpoint. He felt something well up in his chest. Not sadness or regret, but a screaming red chord of anger. His hands clenched and unclenched with the need to take the woman's throat in his hands, squeeze until her eyes popped and she choked on blood. Then he would find the men that had committed this abomination, he would hold them down, one by one, force the barrel of his gun into their mouths, make them taste the bullet before it smashed through their brain. He would take pieces off of them, inch by screaming inch, and set their bodies ablaze. He could taste his anger, his need to kill and kill until the wrong had come undone. He had tasted it before.
Arneson breathed. He closed his eyes. The pain in his arm receded by inches.
He dropped the blanket, turned, and pulled the woman off of Sonch. She collapsed to the floor, spitting and snarling like a cat.
"About fuckin' time, man!" Sonch said. He straightened and dusted his clothes theatrically, and bent to retrieve his sword. "This bitch was about to take my eyes out. I probably have scabies or some shit." He leveled the sword at her. "You're lucky I'm in a good mood, chickie-boo, or I'd fuck you with this." She glared, panted for breath, and said nothing.
Arneson breathed until the pain was removed from the front of his brain, shunted off somewhere else to be considered at a later time.
Sonch peered into the basket, his face creasing with disgust. He shook his head. "Goddamn, the shit people get up to." He grabbed the woman by her hair and dragged her out the door, back to the kitchen. Arneson followed.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Sugar was convinced she had felt it. Moving inside her, like bugs crawling under her skin. The Skunge had returned, she knew it. Felt it. She slashed with the razor, peering in the blood like a gypsy soothsayer, pulling apart the lips of the cuts to see inside. Nothing but flesh and the bright curse of blood. She sobbed with relief, blotted at the red stripes, and chugged from the bottle. She was safe from it, here.
Safe.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
Back in the poisonous yellow kitchen, they dropped the woman into a chair, ankles and wrists zip-tied, and threw the
two duct-taped men down on the dirty linoleum floor.
"Class is in session, boys and girls," Sonch said. He used the sword as a pointing stick, thwock-ing the flat of the blade down on the counter, sending a fine powder of into the air. "First lesson: this county—hell, this whole part of the state—is off limits to you and your meth shit. Is that clear?"
The woman's voice was every bit as screechy and ragged as Arneson expected. She snorted laughter. "You think you can stop meth now? That ship has sailed, man. You going to bust through the doors of every crank house and muscle them out? That's a laugh."
"Are you saying I can't?" Sonch pointed the tip of the sword at her nose until she crossed her eyes to follow it. "Because believe you me, sister, I can, and I will."
Rennie, wriggling on the floor, grunted through his duct-tape gag. Arneson leaned down and tore it away. "I can help! I can help you guys, I swear. I know where most of the other crank houses are in Santa Colima, and a lot of the other ones in the county. But please, you gotta get Pedro and me to a doctor. I got asthma, and I lost my inhaler somewhere, and Pedro, he's hurt bad. If he dies, I'm going to be in so much shit with my family. They'll hate me forever, man." Except for the red clown stripe where the tape had been ripped off, his face was ghost-pale.
"Oh, shut up, Rennie. You don't know shit; you think people are gonna tell your dumb ass anything?" The woman had a runner of blood seeping from her right nostril; Arneson couldn't seem to keep his eyes off it.
"Oh, fuck you Carla, you skank."
"Asshole."
"Bitch!"
Pedro's eyes stuttered back and forth like a spectator at a tennis match.
"Enough!" Arneson slammed his uninjured arm into the wall hard enough to shake the trailer. He stepped to Rennie and jammed his boot down on the other man's throat until he spluttered and started turning purple. "Both of you, shut the fuck up." He turned to the woman. "Where did you get the baby?"
She smirked at Rennie, but after one look at Arneson's face, the smile wilted like old grapes. "I don't know. Jescoe brought it."
Arneson closed his eyes. He had already guessed as much; these losers could barely find a decent car to drive, much less a dead infant to use as a drug mule. The expected answer, and the worst possible one.
Rennie wheezed a breath and spat on the floor as Arneson stepped closer to Carla. Her eyes went wide and sexual as he loomed over her. He took her chin in his hand and squeezed until she whimpered. "You better be giving me the truth."
She stared at him, eyes deadly-fascinated, like a rat watching an owl approach on the night wind. Something in her face suggested she'd been in this position so many times she had come to accept it as her lot in life. The rage in him guttered like a flame and went out. He felt sick. Sick that the world he lived in could be like this.
"Yes, it's the truth. God's honest."
He let go of her and knelt down beside Pedro to examine the shotgun injury. The kid was pale, in shock, but Arneson had seen worse wounds. Shotguns were messy and explosive, but good old Rennie had loaded it with small-gauge birdshot, which would take down a squirrel or a pheasant but not much else. He ripped the tape from Pedro's mouth. Sonch snickered at the pained squeak the kid spit out. He may have been relatively innocent compared to the rest of the low-lifes, but he had gone along with everything. Arneson felt no sympathy for him.
"I'm dyin' man, I'm dyin'," Pedro said. His skinny chest rose and fell like a bellows. "Please, you gotta get me to a hospital, I don't wanna die, I don't wanna dieeee—"
Arneson slapped him to shut him up, then stood up, grimacing at his aches and pains.
"We need to get this shit cleaned up and get this kid to a hospital," he told Sonch, who was leaning against the counter smoking a cigarette. "You ready?"
Sonch was staring at Pedro. Something in his face made Arneson's gut twist. "I think I know this cat," Sonch said.
"What?"
"This asshole right here. The kid. Hey, Pedro, I know you from somewhere?"
The kid's eyes rolled to Sonch then returned to Arneson. "I ain't never seen him before. Please, I need a hospital, man."
"No, I know you. I know you from somewhere." Sonch held up the sword, examining it in the shitty light of the kitchen. He walked over to Pedro, put a boot on his chest, and rolled him onto his back. He began to kneel, and with a sudden shriek, brought the sword stabbing downward. The steel edge stopped an inch from the kid's face. Pedro cried out miserably. Sonch laughed. "Tell me how I know you."
"You don't know me, man! I swear, you don't! Jesus, I'm not even from here, I'm from Loleta."
Sonch leaned in closer, cigarettes clamped in his teeth so the ashes fell in Pedro's face. He squinted through the smoke at him. "You know Marci Benevidez?"
Pedro's eyes lit with relief. "Shit, yeah!" He smiled tentatively. "She's my cousin, man, we go way back."
Sonch examined the sword, turning it this way and that to catch the light. He chuffed smoke out his nostrils. "Pedro, do you know the difference between a bitch and a slut?"
The kid's smile trembled and died. "W-what do you mean? I don't get—"
Sonch brought the sword back, as if to set it on the floor, and them rammed it forward through Pedro's throat. An energetic jet of arterial blood splurted into Rennie's staring eyes. Carla screamed. Rennie began wheezing and gasping like a failing engine. Pedro thrashed and gurgled black blood, his eyes rolling fruitlessly, trying to see the blade where it had punched through his throat.
"A slut fucks everyone, and a bitch fucks everyone but you," Sonch said. He giggled. "And Marci never would give me none of that pussy. What a bitch."
CHAPTER THIRTY
Sugar watched as Arneson returned to the compound. His face was thunderous, his posture stiff with tension. He passed through the courtyard on the way to his casita, sparing Maas a scant nod. Sugar didn't acknowledge him, but her eyes followed him as he stalked past. She wondered if he was hot, wearing all black under the California sun.
"Like what you see?" Maas said from beneath her, once Arneson had passed. She started, then resumed kneading the muscles in his back. Maas snickered, and her face grew hot. "You want to watch out for that guy," he said.
"Oh? Why's that?"
"He's a real bad guy."
"He doesn't look so bad to me."
"If you spent a little time around him, you'd change your mind."
She kneaded harder, and was rewarded with a groan from Maas. "Well, I'll be sure to avoid that."
"You do that. I don't want you forgetting what your job is here."
Maas twisted like an eel underneath her, and suddenly he was looking up at her from between her legs. His hands, surprisingly strong, captured and held her wrists.
Sugar felt the familiar, curdled feeling in her stomach, and tried to twist her arms away. His hands gripped like steel manacles. She forced a smile. She was safe here. Not from everything, but from the things that mattered. The rest was only the price you paid for safety. "Of course." Nausea bubbled up her throat, and she had to swallow to choke the feeling down. His hands loosened as she smiled. Her hands traced lower, to the waistband of his shorts. "Just relax, Daddy. I know why I'm here." Her hand slid into his shorts, and he moaned.
"Good girl."
From a window overlooking the pool, Sonch looked down on them and smiled.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Sugar held up her mother's green dress, brushing away the clinging dust and spiderwebs. Whether by accident or by design, Maas had stored her mother's things in the closet of Sugar's old room. She held the dress to her face, breathing in. She could still smell her mother's perfume—or at least thought she could. You never forget the way your mother smells. She let her mind wander.
Sugar looked on from above, watching like a camera in the sky, seeing a tiny rusty car as it races down a wet road. The asphalt of the road is incredibly black, because of the rain, and the lush trees that line the road are crowned in brilliant emerald. Her mother wears the same d
ress Sugar holds now; it is the same envious green as their eyes.
"Where are we going?" Sugar asks.
Her mother lights a cigarette with the car lighter and squints up at the sky through the windshield. Smoke wreaths her head like a laurel. "We're going to stay with a friend of mine."
"Who is it?"
"You've never met him, honey. His name is Dennis Maas."
"Is he nice?"
Sugar's mother snorts humorlessly and hits the windshield wipers. They begin their hypnotic dance.
Sugar, impossibly young and small, looks out the car window, tapping her fingers on the glass where the raindrops fall. "Is Daddy coming too?"
A long pause while her mother puffs smoke like a dragon. Sugar's memories of her mother's face are always seen through that shifting membrane of blue smoke. "No, honey. Your Daddy is a lizard-people now."
Sugar knows enough to stay quiet. The lizard-people have appeared more and more in her mother's stories lately, and when she starts talking about them, Sugar doesn't say boo. Her mother, Vika, will fly into a rage if Sugar asks too many questions about the lizard-people. Up until now, it's been a good day. Sugar hopes it will continue to be a good day. Too many days have ended in tears and screaming, from both Sugar and Vika.
Sugar hopes her Daddy will arrive soon. It's always better after he arrives. There would be some quiet time, when her parents didn't talk much, especially to each other, and Sugar feels like the air between her parents is cold and breakable as ice. Years later she will learn the word 'brittle', and she will flash back to those quiet times. But those times had always ended, and her Mommy and Daddy would return to normal.
She has no memory earlier than this, but her recall of that day is as clear and precise as a video recording. Her mother talks, sings, sometimes cries (Sugar curls up miserably against the passenger door when the tears come), and finally, they arrive. It is this place. Maas' compound in the high desert of northern California.