Get Real

by Erik Carter

That’s why he’d stopped. Why he hadn’t ran to his car. Because there were people out in the trees. Two people. And one of them was undoubtedly El Vacío.

  Marco turned around, resting his back against the boards, and brought his knees to his chest. He put his elbows on his thighs, placed his hands together, and dropped his head.

  He began to pray. For the first time in a really, really long time. He tried to remember any of his Latin. And couldn’t. English, then.

  “God,” he said aloud, “if you spare me from this monster, I promise I can be a better man. A solemn oath.”

  Footsteps again.

  Closer.

  Marco whipped around, stuck his eye to the crack again.

  Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.

  He could see a figure among the trunks right on the other side of the gravel road.

  But it wasn’t El Vacío.

  It was the man who had been in the cabin when Marco and the others had arrived. The man who’d had his gun pointed toward the table.

  He was evidently chasing El Vacío. He must have been a cop.

  What luck!

  Maybe this stranger would end up being Marco’s savior, his knight in shining armor.

  Maybe Marco would make it through this after all.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Dale ran out into the pillar-like trunks, illuminated so ghostly in the bluish moonlight, massive black cylinders bolting up into the air and disappearing into the night.

  It was quiet. And still. Dale thought about the Steinbeck quote again, and even in the midst of his current situation—chasing after a shadowy assassin who had just slaughtered a roomful of people—the echoes of the trees’ age weighed heavy on him. They truly were ambassadors from another time, as Steinbeck had called them. Some of these trees were 2,000 years old. That put them back to the time of Christ. They’d seen the Romans. They’d seen the Middle Ages. They’d seen Napoleon. They’d been around long before the United States. It made Dale’s current situation seem trivial—silly, even—and it made him feel rather small.

  But that didn’t change the fact that there was a monster out in those trees. And right now, as Dale slipped in among the enormous trunks, he was the hunter, chasing down the assassin. But the roles could very quickly switch.

  And Dale could end up being the hunted.

  After all, the assassin could be waiting for him, ready to let loose of more bullets.

  The forest floor was soft, flat, and smooth. No thorny undergrowth to tear at his jeans. No shrubs to trip him up. In the bright moonlight, everything seemed surreal, almost like some kind of mystical fairytale. And Dale felt the presence of the trees all around him. They had their own gravitational pulls.

  Dale hadn’t heard an engine start, but he presumed that the assassin would be making his way toward a vehicle, an escape. So Dale’s best bet was to keep an eye toward the road, which was now clogged with an array of luxury vehicles and a beaten-up Cordoba.

  He stopped, posted himself behind one of the trunks—which dwarfed him, making him look like a toy soldier—and listened. No footsteps. He had to be cautious, but he also had to hurry.

  So he darted off.

  And then there was a loud snap.

  Gunfire. Rapid-fire.

  From the MAC-10.

  Dale bolted behind one of the gigantic trees. There were heavy, deep thunks as the bullets ripped into the trunk. Dale thought of the scarring that would happen to the tree and then quickly remembered that it was likely a thousand years old at least. This incident would be but a blip in its history. The marks would be gone soon enough.

  The bullets stopped. There was a brief pause and then a metallic thud, the sound of the MAC-10 dropping to the ground.

  Dale knew that the assassin had depleted his MAC-10. That weapon could run through a high-capacity magazine in a matter of seconds. Now the assassin was going to be using his custom sniper rifle. And from what Dale saw, it was likely a single-shot bolt-action. El Vacío would have to choose his shot carefully.

  Dale angled his ear to the side of the trunk. Listened. More quiet all around him, the eerie stillness.

  A small patter.

  An animal, probably.

  Then more sounds. Subtle. But just noticeable. El Vacío was about fifty feet away from him.

  A world-class assassin. Only yards away. The same one who had just singlehandedly plowed through a small army of mobsters.

  Dale could be precise and methodical, use his ample brain to its fullest. But he knew that wouldn’t be enough. This assassin was clearly intelligent as well, so if Dale were to try to match wits with him, he’d end up a piece of Swiss cheese like the people back in the cabin. Dale held no advantage over the assassin intellectually.

  In addition to brainpower, Dale was known for his ingenuity, and in a situation like this, ingenuity was all that was going to keep him alive.

  To win this round, Dale had to play a wildcard.

  He began unbuttoning his shirt.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  El Vacío concealed himself alongside an enormous fallen tree—the top curve of the trunk twelve feet in the air—and rested the barrel of his sniper rifle on a snapped branch. The scope’s crosshairs fell directly on the tree he’d fired upon, where the cop was hiding. There were wide stretches of open forest floor on either side of the tree.

  Which meant the cop had nowhere to run.

  El Vacío would make it a quick, clean kill. The man deserved as much. He’d earned an honorable, warrior’s death.

  Any moment now, El Vacío would see movement. The man would dash out on from behind the tree, make a run for it. El Vacío had his scope aimed directly dead-center on the trunk, waiting. He could quickly swing the rifle in either direction.

  Any moment now….

  And there it was. A flurry of movement to the left, the man’s arms flailing. El Vacío squeezed. He saw the impact, watched the man’s body twist in the air.

  And he noticed something strange.

  An extremely thin shaft from the bottom of the cop’s shirt. And he noticed that everything else about the man looked … wrong.

  A split second. That’s all the time it took to figure out what had happened.

  He hadn’t shot the cop.

  He shot his shirt, affixed to the top of a branch that the cop had thrown like a javelin.

  Clever. El Vacío respected him even more.

  But there was no time for professional admiration. Because the cop would be upon him at any moment.

  As if in response to El Vacío’s prophecy, he heard footsteps. Approaching. Rapidly. At a run.

  He yanked the bolt back, cleared the empty cartridge, and was reaching into his pocket for another round, when the man was upon him, turning the corner and leveling his gun at him.

  And for just a moment, El Vacío saw him in the moonlight before he fired his gun, a Smith & Wesson Model 36, nickel-plated, round-butt. The man was shirtless, and his eyes showed cold determination. He squeezed the trigger. The flash of the shot lit the cop’s face.

  And then there was blinding pain.

  A warm splatter of blood against El Vacío’s cheek and an eruption from his shoulder. El Vacío let out a scream that roared through the stillness of the trees. Somewhere, far, far above, there was the flapping of a bird’s wings.

  El Vacío had no opportunity to register his destroyed right shoulder, because the man leapt upon him. Another jolt of pain in his shoulder. There was a flurry of movement, and El Vacío welcomed the action, as the adrenaline pulled his mind away from the pulsing destruction in his shoulder.

  The cop got an arm around El Vacío’s neck and yanked. El Vacío swung his left elbow back into the man’s ribs, pushing him back. The cop threw his weight toward El Vacío, putting both hands forward, going for his neck. El Vacío tried to get his right arm to move in response. It wasn’t listening. So he took a swing with his left, missing, but then was able to knee the man in the side.

  From the corner of his eye
, El Vacío saw his sniper rifle, only a couple feet away, angled against the trunk. He reached for it. His fingers touched the stock before the cop yanked him back. El Vacío ducked a roundhouse then kicked his foot toward the gun. He smashed his heel down, and teetered the rifle up, grabbed it by the stock, and swung it up like a golf club, hitting the cop squarely under the jaw.

  The cop stumbled back, and when the two men looked at each other, El Vacío knew he had gotten a winning shot. The man’s eyes had that bizarre look a person gets when they’ve been truly rattled. That look a boxer gets after a devastating hook, the look that makes the referee call the fight. A stunned look. Completely senseless. He stumbled about aimlessly, like a plastered wino.

  Normally this would give El Vacío a chance to finish a person off. But now he had an opportunity to flee, and he also knew that this man was one of the most ingenious people he’d ever met. If he didn’t take advantage of this opportunity, El Vacío might not get out at all.

  As the cop staggered about the forest, that shellshocked look on his face, El Vacío scuttled forward, his right arm dangling painfully. The Cordoba was in front of him. He was on the gravel road. He dug into his pocket. Retrieved the keys. Got in. Fired it up.

  He did a quick three-point turn—awkwardly with one arm—then gunned the gas. Tires sprayed gravel, and then he was off, barreling down the road.

  El Vacío looked to the rear view mirror. The cop stumbled out onto the road, looking toward him. And he fired his gun. Twice. Missing badly.

  Jesus, this guy really was a survivor.

  As he watched in the mirror, El Vacío could see that the cop was still uneven, but not as wobbly as he had been. His senses were starting to return. He stumbled toward the Pantera

  And El Vacío floored the gas pedal.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Dale lumbered toward Arancia She was only a few feet away, swinging about violently in his vision. With each step, he tried to put one foot carefully in front of the other, but he kept teetering to either side. Dizziness. Off-balance. The branches and mighty trunks surrounding him moved and swirled. His boots shuffled in the gravel. He felt badly inebriated. Dale wasn’t a drinker and had only been drunk a handful of times in his life. It wasn’t a sensation he enjoyed. And he didn’t like this either. Not at all.

  As he got to Arancia, he stumbled over, whacked into her fender. Put his hands on the hood. Hoped he hadn’t dented her. He quickly looked. He hadn’t.

  He was breathing heavily. He looked up to the road. The Cordoba was nowhere to be seen. He could just hear it in the distance.

  He shuffled forward. To the door. He reached for the handle. Missed. Reached. Missed again. Got his hand on it. And stumbled. He fell over. Onto the road.

  If he could just catch his breath.

  He swung his back around to Arancia. The metal of the door felt ice-cold against his bare back. He let his head rest against the door as well. His hair was sweaty. He breathed in, trying to gather himself. Reached up for the handle. His hand dropped down, hit him in the side.

  It was then he knew. He wasn’t going to be able to chase after the assassin. He was in no way going to be safe enough to drive.

  But there was the cabin.

  And Jane and Jonathan.

  So he could at least try to walk. He put his hands to the gravel and pushed up.

  Back on his feet. Left foot forward. Then the right. He was feeling a little bit steadier.

  The cabin was before him. He picked up the pace. The road twisted and wavered, but he was at least walking steadily now.

  Ahead, the cabin’s windows were still alight. One of them was busted. And Dale could see movement. At the door. A figure. He put both hands on his gun.

  But as he drew closer, he saw that it was Jane. And she was struggling. She was pulling at Jonathan—still unconscious and tied to the chair—trying to get him out of the cabin.

  Dale picked up the pace even more. To help her.

  But then he saw something.

  To the left. At the side of the porch. There were boards lying on the ground. Someone had busted open the side of the porch and gone under.

  And they could be hiding there now.

  Right beneath Jane.

  Running now. Everything swam around him.

  Keep your balance. Stay steady.

  When he got to the porch, he dropped to his knees and positioned himself near the opening by the discarded boards. He cleared the corner, aiming his gun under the porch.

  And there was nothing there.

  Moonlight flowed in through the opening and through the gaps of the floorboards above. But there was no one there beneath the porch. Just weeds and rocks. Whoever had been there was long gone.

  Dale stood back up. He was feeling steadier now. His surroundings swam around him less than they had been.

  He went to the steps, up the porch, and to Jane. Her eyes glanced up as he approached, but she didn’t acknowledge him, just kept struggling to pull the heavy chair over the body of one of the gangsters that was blocking the doorway.

  Dale hurried over to her, grabbed the other side of the chair. Jane was breathing rapidly, a frustrated desperation on her face. Together they lifted Jonathan out and onto the porch.

  Dale looked inside at the carnage. Only for a moment. Only long enough for him to determine that, while there had been groans and gasping before he left, everyone in there was now dead.

  He saw Beau Lawton, lying on the table in a pool of blood and missing a hand. A few feet away, lying among the other bodies, was Kimble. Bullet wound to the head.

  Dale turned back around. Jane was frantically clawing with her fingernails at the ropes on Jonathan’s wrists. She was clearly in a state of mental shock.

  Dale put his hand on her shoulder

  She stopped. Looked up at him.

  He took his pocketknife out and cut the binds on Jonathan’s wrists and arms, and then together, without saying a word, he and Jane lifted Jonathan from the chair and propped him up against the wall.

  Jane sat beside her brother, put her hand on his knee, and looked out to the road blankly.

  Dale turned to sit beside her, and as he did, he stumbled backwards into the wall, slid down. He hadn’t recovered as much as he thought. He was still dizzy. Adrenaline and purpose had been fueling him, but now the effects of the blow were returning. As he slid down to the floor, he began to drift to the side, but before he could collapse, Jane grabbed his arm, pulled him up.

  She brushed some dirt from his bare shoulder then rested her head on it. And together the three of them sat, looking out into the redwoods.

  They didn’t say a word.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  The pain in El Vacío’s shoulder was relentless.

  He kept his eyes focused on the highway’s lines. Something to draw his mind away from the fire in his shoulder. Anything to distract himself.

  He had been right about the cop. The man was worthy of his respect. Few people had bested El Vacío, and from the first moment he’d seen the man in action back in Chinatown, he knew that this one was special.

  Part of El Vacío wanted immediate revenge. Naturally, he wasn’t the sort of person to take something lying down. But respect came with certain privileges. Sort of a professional courtesy. El Vacío could make it his vendetta to hunt the cop down, even chasing the guy all over the country if he was a fed, which he seemed to be. But that would be like killing an animal that had survived multiple hunts. At a point, you had to give the prey its due deference. Of course, if El Vacío ever crossed paths with the cop again, he would have no hesitation in striking him down—and, in fact, he hoped that he would get such an opportunity—but for now, he would let him be.

  El Vacío was not the sort of person who could walk into a hospital and ask for service, so he was headed back to San Francisco—Daly City, technically—where there was an establishment that tended to the wounds of people in his world. The sort of place that asked no questions and had n
o alliances. The sort of place only a few people knew.

  He still had another two full hours of driving to get there.

  And the pain was getting insurmountable.

  He could no longer distract his mind by watching the lines on the road. The initial adrenaline rush had worn off, that adrenaline that shields you from the reality of pain. Now the pain was very much real. Upfront and personal.

  Tearing at him.

  His head felt airy. His vision began to lighten.

  So he developed a system to help him manage the pain. He’d take a couple deep breaths. Then scream, using the howl to absorb some of his agony. Then repeat.

  Ahhhhhhhhhh!

  Deep breath. Deep breath.

  Ahhhhhhhhhh!

  He could keep the system going.

  He only had two hours left.

  By the time the Cordoba came to a halt at the end of the alley in Daly City, El Vacío could hardly see.

  He fell out of the car and stumbled toward the door. Though it was dark outside and the alley was poorly lit, everything within El Vacío’s vision was going to white. The peripheral blurred and lightened and came in on itself, closing into a small tunnel. He kept the tiny sphere of clear vision focused on the single door fifty feet ahead of him. It was a plain, metal door, painted blood red with a single light fixture hanging above it.

  His tunnel vision continued to close. He stumbled forward the last few feet completely blind.

  The next morning.

  El Vacío sat on a bench in Mussel Rock Park. He wore a new sweatshirt he’d bought from a convenience store, and he pulled it in tight around his torso. His right arm was folded under the sweatshirt, held up with a sling. It was still very cool outside, and the sky was a bit grayish.

  There were large rocks on either side of him and one jutting out of the ocean directly ahead, waves crashing violently against it. Only a few people were out this early. A woman walked her dog in the sand before him and smiled as she walked by.