Blood Soaked and Contagious

by James Crawford

  The thought hit me like a ton of bricks to the nuts. They could go after the kids and force us to give up Baj and Jaya.

  “Nate! Barbara! Go!” He heard his wife’s name, pulled his weapon, and shot off in a different direction. I turned around. Flower had heard me and taken off at a run, too, in a slightly different direction.

  I must have looked like I was about to go all the way crazy, because Siddig tapped me on the shoulder and told me that he’d organize things until I got back. Then I took off after Nate.

  There’s an alley across the street, between the shops and services that line Route 29 and our neighborhood. Nate’s house was two blocks down the alley and one block in. Flower had taken off down Bajali’s side yard, which would have him approaching from the front of the house, unless he jinked sideways. Knowing Nate, he’d go for the kitchen door.

  That would mean if they were going to snatch and grab the kids, they would have to have a vehicle on Route 29, or no more than a block away. They’d have to move very fast, and distance was a killer if you’re trying to keep a group of people under control. Failing that, they’d create a hostage situation right here.

  Their other option, if the hostage taking didn’t work, would be to just start blowing shit up. Kids. People. Anything and everything that might make us want to hand our friends over.

  Yes, we all shared a lot of love, but there are things that even a loving community can’t suffer for the people that live in it. I imagine the faces of our dead children would motivate enough people to eject Baj and Jaya, even in the face of what Hightower would use him for.

  I heard gunshots. One burst of three rounds, followed by a single shot. Then I got tackled by someone who had very bad breath. I couldn’t help but yell when we landed on my bandaged arm and slid across the gravel and into the chain-link fence on the other side.

  Black fatigues, goggles, helmet, black gloves with holes cut for claws, and a pistol rubbing into my right eye socket. Pretty full “utility belt.”

  “Don’t fucking move.” It was a hoarse whisper with fetid halitosis.

  Two more bursts of gunfire. Four more single shots.

  My attacker reached for the .45 holstered on my right hip. He shifted his balance to the right, and I helped him. The gun came away from my eye as he started to fall, and I turned my head towards the ground because I’d rather have a bullet graze my skull than take off an ear.

  He hit the ground, and the gun didn’t go off. Professional. We rolled in opposite directions; he went backward, but I went forward and to the right. Neither one of us was in a perfect position for a quick squeeze of the trigger. Of course, he had my gun, and I had nothing.

  He started to sit up and bring both pistols to bear on me, and I had two choices. Stay still and get shot for sure, or move anywhere and gain a second or two. Easy choice, and I made it before I finished the thought. I moved straight for him, springing forward from my crouch.

  Neither of the guns lined up fast enough, so I slapped his arms out as I cannoned into his midsection. I didn’t follow him to the ground, but I did make a quick swipe at his utility belt as he fell.

  Both guns went off when he hit the ground, and I turned around and ran like Hell towards Nate’s house. I was too focused on running to hear if he got up, stayed down, or what. In fact, in that moment I only knew two things: I had to get away immediately, and I had the pin of a hand grenade in my right hand.

  It seemed like an eternity of waiting to be shot before I heard a comforting explosion somewhere behind me. Not so comforting to be lifted off my feet, peppered with hot metal, and delivered onto asphalt on my left arm. Again.

  It was dark, and then it was really dark. Twice in one day. That was a record I never wanted to break ever again.

  Sometime later, the dark gave way to murky light and some very gummy noises, none of which made me eager to open my eyes any further. Something hurt a whole bunch, like someone was poking a pair of tweezers into an empty tooth socket. Very burny, very ouchy.

  I may have groaned, because I got the tweezer feeling again, and I wanted someone to know I was immensely bothered by it. Given a choice, I’d prefer they’d stop. No such luck.

  Maybe it wasn’t tweezers? I suppose it could have been a bird with a sharp beak, reaching down and trying to pull out my nerve endings. Do nerve endings look like worms, or are they just bright and shiny enough to attract your average raven?

  Great. There I was, laid flat out somewhere with strange noises, shitty lighting, and a sadistic bird pulling on my nerve endings. Maybe the grenade killed me, too? Seriously, if being in Hell is to be nibbled by birds for eternity, somebody got a huge fucking budget cutback! I rate a team of quality perdition engineers!

  So, I decided to make my complaint to the customer service department. “Satan! You stinky ball of fudgy turd, I deserve a better damnation experience than this! One bird is not enough to make me regret anything! No wonder God threw you out! You suck!”

  I was getting some kind of response, but it was thick and garbled. It did make a little bit of sense, but that could be because no one ever said demons would speak English. Then again, perhaps being dead meant I could speak their language? The soul is free from the body and all that past life historic crap is accessible to my unbound spirit.

  Cool.

  It never hurts to give things a try! I decided to express myself and let the language come to me naturally; after all, as a soul, it’s all right there anyway.

  “Aaaan! Ooo nkeee baaa uh geeee urd! Ooo uk! Ooo uk sa rd! Aiii omma ud ick ooo ass!”

  That’s when the raven went fucking bananas on me. I had gotten my point across in Satan’s own tongue, and now I was going to get to see if my ass could be handed to me by a demonic bird in a low-rent section of Hell. No point screaming in English if they’re not going to understand.

  “Aaaan! Ow! At uckin urts! Ow! Uck ooo! Uck ooo! Eezus uvs ooo! Eezus! Eezus!” It made sense to call out for help to someone who would piss of His Demonic Lordship. Jesus loves me, this I know.

  I sang it at the top of my lungs, in his own language. Kiss my ass! Yeah, baby! I got yer Man Scythe right here! If I’d been on my feet, instead of being held down by the bird, I would have done a touchdown dance full of slapping my own ass. The Prince of Darkness is a prideful old fucker, and it had to piss him off something fierce that someone as inconsequential as me could own him this hard.

  YEAH!

  Everything went black. Shit.

  Chapter 11

  An infinite amount of time later, my crusty eyelids ratcheted open. The light was brighter than when I was in Hell. Maybe I pissed Satan off so much that he vomited me out... somewhere else?

  The raven on my back was gone. Maybe it got lunch breaks or went out for a smoke. I wasn’t going to think about it too hard; I was having enough trouble with that activity to begin with. I thought I heard children, or maybe one child crying. I couldn’t focus very well.

  Then there were legs. Right in front of my face, wearing jeans. That was a nice, familiar sort of sight, and I wanted to reach out and touch one of the legs so I’d know if they were real legs or just some kind of demonic illusion meant to lull me into a false sense of security.

  “Muh,” I grunted and swung an arm at the closest leg. Swell! It was a real leg! I know because it jumped back after my arm hit it.

  “Are you awake?” Somebody with a pleasant voice asked me, in English, no less.

  “Is this,” I coughed a little because my throat was dry and sore, “Hell? Raven on a lunch break?”

  The person squatted down and I could see it was some cute African-American woman wearing glasses. She looked a lot like my friend Nate’s wife, Barbara. I really hoped it wasn’t Barb, because that would mean she was here in Hell, too.

  “Oh, Honey! This isn’t Hell. Let me run and get Jayashri. You stay there, okay?”

  “Not goin’ anywhere.”

  She went away. Then sometime later, she came back with a second pair of legs
. Wow! Two sets of legs! I wondered how she kept them coordinated when she walked.

  Oh, it was another person. Silly me. This one squatted down, too, but she looked like Jayashri, not like Barbara.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Can you tell me your name? What is the last thing you remember?” She took my pulse.

  I told her my name and explained about Satan, the Raven munching my nerve endings, and how I pissed him off so much he sent me back. And could I have some water?

  Barbara-legs went to get me some water, and I wanted to remind myself to kiss her knees in gratitude when she got back. I told this woman who looked like Jayashri how I felt about Barbara-legs and their kindness to me in my peculiar situation.

  “That is sweet of you. Now, I want you to try and focus, so I can tell you what really happened. Will you try to do that for me?”

  “Sure. You look like the sweetest woman from India that I know. She’s a doctor and has the nicest-smelling lap in the world!”

  I got a very funny look.

  “You were hit by shrapnel from a hand grenade. We brought you back here to your store. What you remember from ‘Hell’ is when you tried to regain consciousness during surgery. I had to remove as many of the fragments as I was able, as quickly as I could, because we have no blood to replace what you’ve lost. It was a very near thing.”

  “Oh.” Barbara-legs came back and helped me sip some water. “What else happened?”

  “We can talk more about that later. Right now, you need to rest. I have you on morphine at the moment, but I need you conscious and alert, so I will not be giving you more. You will start to feel very uncomfortable soon. I’m very sorry about that.”

  “Oh. Okay.” I didn’t really have much more to say about it than that, so I went back to sleep.

  I learned that “very uncomfortable” is Doctor-Speak for intense pain. It woke me up with gentle aching when I tried to shift my position, so I decided to wake up all the way and sit up. The moment when the flat of my ass came face to face with the table I’d been lying on is one I am likely to remember for a good long time to come.

  Some sort of strangled wail erupted from my mouth and I heaved my body into a standing position without a thought. Little Siddy, Siddig and Miryam’s son, was scooting around the floor with a toy dump truck, and he yelped when I suddenly appeared in front of the toy. He picked up the truck, started to cry, and ran away.

  There was a puddle on the linoleum.

  Poor little guy!

  “Honey, you probably shouldn’t be standing up,” Barbara said, somewhere behind me.

  “I tried to sit, but it made me jump up,” I replied, turning around to face her. We were in the meeting room at my store, which comforted me greatly.

  “I’m not surprised. When Nate and Flower brought you in, the back side of your body was not a pretty sight, and your front wasn’t looking all that great either.”

  “Yeah, I thought the explosion would make me that much more sexy. You know, suburban hero with an ass full of scars.” Ow. “I’d shake my booty for you, but all my booty hurts.”

  She smiled, and it was one of the best things in the world that very moment. I smiled back and looked around for something to lean on, since sitting was not on the current menu. There wasn’t anything tall enough to lean on, and I had a sinking suspicion I wouldn’t be able to lean against a wall either. Having a friend smile at you is great, but when you hurt, sometimes sitting down is what you really crave.

  “Barb? Is there a pillow around here, or something I could try to sit on? Or should I just lie down again?”

  I watched her look around the room, tapping her bottom lip with a finger. Clearly, she didn’t see comfortable objects either. “How about this, you lie down, and I’ll go see what I can fix up? And I’ll tell Shawn to come see you, now that you’re up. Okay?”

  What choice did I have? I nodded and climbed back onto the table, hissing when my left arm settled on the Formica. It was still bandaged like a well-wrapped baguette and seemed to hurt worse than before. I had been tossed into the air by an explosion and probably landed on it. More pain after something like that shouldn’t be at all surprising, but I was a little taken aback by it.

  Then my back and ass decided my forearm was getting too much attention.

  Barbara came back with a pillow-like object that turned out to be a polar fleece blanket stuffed inside a pillowcase. Strung behind her like pearls on a necklace were all the neighborhood children: Juan and Julia, Yolanda’s little ones; Nancy, Billy, and Matt Smith; Ezra, Rebekah, and David Klein; and Little Siddig, Junior, brought up the rear, and it looked like someone had changed his diaper.

  Barb turned to the kids and said, “Now, what was it you all wanted to say?”

  The kids looked at me with grave little eyes and did their best to say in unison, “Thank you very much for coming to save us! We hope your behind feels better!” They redefined “cute” in my internal Wikipedia, and I was caught between laughter and tears. Thankfully, none of them tried to hug me, or the tears would have been from pain, not emotional wobbliness.

  They trooped back out of the room, and Barb helped me situate my rump on the makeshift pillow. It was a near thing, because the only parts of me she could touch without making me wince were my right arm and most of the front of my body.

  I lamented to her that the heroes in movies never got banged up to the point of not being able to sit on their asses. She reminded me some heroes do get that messed up in films, but just keep forcing themselves into superhuman tasks when they really should just lay still and let the bad guy get away. I had to admit she made an excellent point, and if Hollywood ever gets back to making movies, I want someone really hot and hung like a barnacle to play me.

  “Why, in the name of God, would you want someone who has a penis like a barnacle’s to play you?”

  Fount of strange information that I am, I explained. “The common barnacle’s manly equipment is four to five times the length of his body.”

  “You know, I love you to bits, but you are such an odd person.” All she could do to follow up was shake her head.

  “If I had more women who loved me like you do, they could make stew out of me with all the little love bits.” I was forcing myself to be amusing to try and cope with the immense amount of pain I was feeling from the backs of my knees to the base of my skull. I think she knew I was trying to hide it.

  “Well, Captain Barnacle Dick, I will be sure you get a good gumbo as your final resting place,” she said and patted me on the cheek.

  “Could I be some other captain? That one doesn’t sound... hygienic.”

  “You just sit still. Shawn will be here soon, and you’ll get a whole bunch of stuff to think about. That nasty mental image will be long gone.”

  She walked off to go do something, and I was left alone with my thoughts. The kids were safe, I knew, because I saw them with my own two eyes. Nate and Flower had brought me in, so it was a reasonable bet they were still alive. Even better, it didn’t look like any of the kids were hurt. I allowed myself a sigh of relief over that.

  I heard Shawn’s footfalls and lifted my head. He was smiling.

  “Brother, don’t go scram like that when I tell you to scram. All right?”

  “Yes, Sir, Captain Shawn, Sir.” I saluted. “I will not scram in front of a grenade ever again, Sir.”

  “Better damned well not.” He grabbed my hand and squeezed the jelly right out of it. If he had given me a hug, I would have wet my pants and screamed at the top of my lungs in a high-pitched girly octave. “Anybody tell you what all happened?”

  “No, but the kids came by, so I know that they’re okay.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know how you figured that out, but you all got there in the nick of time. There were two goons in the house, the one you blew up, and a dude in a truck waiting on Route 29. The boys got the ones you didn’t get. No casualties but you on our side.”

  “I’m really glad I’m all that got woun
ded.”

  “So are we! You’re too ornery to die.”

  “Shawn, you’re not telling me how long I’ve been out of commission. Why aren’t you telling me that?”

  “Because, if I tell you that, you’ll probably pop some stitches and we’d really prefer to have you on the mend.” He frowned in his own legendary way, and I knew it was bad.

  “I need you to give it to me straight; don’t be a pussy about it.”

  He heaved a massive sigh and told me, “You’ve been in and out of consciousness for the past three days. Yes, before you even ask, Baj agreed to go to Hightower and work on the project. Jayashri was allowed to remain here. This was the best we could do in the face of much superior firepower.”

  Surprisingly enough, I didn’t explode when I heard all of that. I guess there was still enough morphine in my system to keep me calmer than I usually am when confronted with a situation that makes me want to piss nails. I found myself nodding, as though what Shawn said made sense or I could understand why Baj would do such a thing.

  “Why?”

  Shawn was doing an excellent job of not meeting my eyes. “It was the kids. No one expected they’d do that. No one but you. Problem is, you didn’t even figure it out until it was almost too late.”

  “We were naive. We didn’t want to think Hightower would stoop that low. FUCK! Not even his own spy thought he was watching us that hard!”

  “Cool your jets. Nothin’ we can do right now. People made decisions, and Bajali made the best deal he could to keep everybody safe. You know, as well as I do, he won’t burn the midnight oil to get that nano-thing done. Hell, if he finds a way to fuck it up, you know he’ll do it.”

  I went off the hook. The frustration, rage, and my own inability to do a damned thing about what happened while I was down climbed up my ass and throttled the Hell out of my brain. I don’t remember what I said, but I got right up in my friend’s face and poured shit out of my mouth…it might have been the drugs, or the stress, but I’ll never know for sure.