by Shawn Bartek
* * *
They approached the bright street lights of Orange Street. About a few hundred yards north, they could see a solitary road block at the I-90 onramp. There was one officer sitting on the hood of his car. Leslie turned off the truck lamps.
In the bed, Scott whispered to Juice, “Why aren’t you screaming to that cop?”
“‘Cause fuck the police, that’s why,” Juice said.
Leslie turned her head to Ami, “Maybe we should go talk to the officer?”
“We had one spray mace at us earlier, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Were you a bitch about it? Maybe I could try it.”
“No, I wasn’t a bitch. I don’t know, maybe. I don’t think so. Anyways, we’ve stolen a guy’s truck and he’s tied up back here.”
“Yeah, that could be a problem.”
“We’re so close, let’s not put another variable into this fucked up algebra problem. If you just keep it in drive and idle, we’ll coast across the road, it’ll be quieter.”
When Leslie did so and they began to roll slowly across Orange Street, Ami squinted her eyes and pretended they were invisible. It could not be disproved that this magic hadn’t worked; the officer stayed anchored to the black and white Caprice.
Thirty feet later, they were back under the cover of darkness again.
Chapter XV
Ami and Leslie continued to sit in silence.
The Rattlesnake was finally upon them. They were at the Black Gate of Mordor. Ami’s Sam (she was Frodo, she still maintained) was sitting in the bed of the truck.
The exhaustion was setting in. She’d been running on adrenaline all night and now that she was sitting, the energy was going away. The second wind had come and passed and the springy bench seating in the truck’s cab felt like the plushest of brand-new couches in a furniture store.
Her arm stung from the gouging. Her heartbeat pounded where her head had spider-webbed Marc’s windshield. Her calf was undoubtedly going to be colored with a fresh bruise from where this most recent piece of shit had stepped on it. There was also a sting coming from her right temple; probably from where Juice had decked her. She was still stewing that they decided to bring that piece of white trash along.
Leslie finally spoke, “Ami, I'm…sorry. I was out of line. I've never slapped anyone before."
"If it makes you feel any better, you're quite good at it," Ami said.
"That's a relief. I hate being bad at something.”
Ami let out a small chortle. “I might have been a bitch.”
“If it makes you feel any better, you’re quite good at it,” Leslie said.
Ami’s chortle turned into a cackle. She sighed, “Jesus Christ, what a night.”
Leslie looked up at the sky, “It’d be kind of a pretty night actually if I wasn’t constantly afraid of, you know, poisoning. They said on the news that the gas can actually melt stainless steel.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“Yup.”
“Did you guys hear anything else?”
“Not really, they were just repeating their recommendations for anyone that stayed behind. Get inside, seal the windows with tape. Cover your face with a wet cloth. The kind of stuff that’s just wasting time before you croak.”
“What if you’re outside?”
“They said to get to higher ground, whatever that means. And how high is high enough? Are we supposed to, like, climb up on a roof or something? I think we’d be screwed.”
“Good thing that’s not gonna happen,” Ami said, “It’s like when there’s a bomb. A bomb in real life, not on T.V. They bring in the bomb squad, the bomb squad disables the bomb like ninety plus percent of the time. I bet the same thing happens here. People make their living by preparing for this kind of thing.”
“Yeah, I guess nothing’s happened yet after this many hours. How much longer could it take them?”
* * *
At last, they reached Harrison Street. Ami did another inventory of her journey to get here. Car wreck? Check. Attacked by lunatics? Check. Twice actually, so double check. Nearly drowning in a river? It’s in there.
Scott’s arms were getting tired holding the gun on Juice. Juice had been surprisingly quiet for the last mile; as if they’d remembered to wrap his mouth with the duct tape. But it was just his feet and his—
Marc noticed one of Juice’s arms was not pinned back as far as it should have been. And in Juice’s eyes there was not a shred of benevolence anymore. It was all animal.
Marc could only get out “Oh, sh—” before Juice made the jump at him.
They rolled over the tailgate and onto the cement. Marc’s head made a hollow sound on the concrete. Juice fell on his elbow and let out a howl through gritted teeth. The gun went flying into the darkness.
Leslie jammed on the brakes. Scott met the cab window hard.
Juice stood over Marc, ready to repay him for his time spent as a hostage.
“You’ll be the lucky one,” Juice said, brandishing a pocket knife from his jeans and cutting into the duct tape cuffing his ankles, “You won’t have to see what I do to your friends.”
Marc’s head was pounding and Juice’s voice amplified the throbs vibrating across his skull. He began to realize he wasn’t going to make it after all.
The truck’s V8 brought the tailgate right behind Juice. He turned to see Scott hoisting a chunky spare tire above his head and firing it like a missile in his direction. The edge of the tire’s jagged tread dug into Juice’s scalp. He fell to the cement.
Marc jumped up and stepped on top of Juice’s right leg, springing himself off of thigh muscle into the pickup bed.
Leslie peeled off. When they were two blocks down, the riders in the bed saw the tire pushed into the air and the shape rise from the ground. It meandered for a few seconds and then began to run after them.
Ami yelled to Leslie, “My house is the one directly across from the school there. The one with the big tree. I’m gonna get my keys ready. Pull up right to the lawn. Right to the door. We’re gonna make a break an inside. I can’t wait anymore to get Dana.”
“But should we bring her into this?”
“Shit,” Ami hissed out, “I don’t know. There’s four of us and one of him. We’ll barricade ourselves inside and try the police again. I think we could hold him off.”
Ami began to think of the potential arsenal of common household items they could stock pile for defense. It was a pretty short list. No guns; her parents were pacifists. Not hunters, either. There were a couple of baseball bats in the basement. There would be a fair amount of kitchen cutlery. Fire extinguisher?
None of it would amount to much if Juice had picked up the gun.
The tire tread fired clumps of sod into the air as the F150 plowed through the Gibb’s front lawn. The truck slid to a halt; Marc and Scott sprung out of the bed before it had stopped rolling. Leslie pulled the keys out and swung her door open, Ami followed behind out of the driver’s door.
Ami sung hymns when she saw her mom’s LaCrosse parked in the car port; sitting since Pam left for Toronto. It was one thing that had finally gone right in this day of nightmares. She hoped her mom chose to gas it up before leaving.
The house was dark. She had the house key out of her pocket and ready to slip into the lock. When she arrived at the keyhole, panic struck. The door was slightly ajar. Not simply ajar, a small glass pane had been broken out.
“Did somebody have to bust in to evacuate her?” Scott asked.
“Jesus, I hope that was the case,” Ami said.
They filed into the small foyer and slammed the door behind them. With the broken window pane, Juice could simply reach in and then feast on them. A small solid bookshelf sat against the nearest wall in the living room. Marc and Scott heaved it across the floor, trailing scratches along the hardwoods. They pushed it over to sit at a forty-five degree angle; its back lip jammed under the door knob, its feet pressed against the walls of the narrow space
.
Ami panted, “We pounded Stranger-Danger into her head, but I hope she understood if it was a cop.”
She yelled out for Dana. There was nothing and her head began to immediately become light as ether.
Ami walked into the living room and switched on the first lamp. A quick survey of the room didn’t produce Dana. There was a soggy bowl of cereal on the floor next to the couch. The situation grew grimmer; the flatscreen now featured three bullseye cracks on its surface.
Okay, that looks a little above Dana’s bar for destruction, she thought.
She heard Marc and Scott yell out. Juice was at their doorstep, pounding on the door.
“Fuck you little bitches!” he yelled, “Get out here so I can slice your dicks off.”
Ami and Leslie tore through the house, first searching the closest two bedrooms; there was no sign of Dana.
Their trip to the kitchen gave more alarming clues. Two bottles of liquor were sitting empty on the ground. It was Pam’s premier stash. Glenlivit and Johnny Walker Blue Label. Both bottles were cashed.
Ami picked up the phone and dialed 9-1-1 yet again; hoping that some help would finally be the result. But the phone line was dead.
Did Juice cut the phone line?
She slammed the receiver on the kitchen counter. The earpiece split and scattered into the air. Leslie ducked when a shard of plastic and circuit board flew by her head. Ami dropped the last bit of phone next to the answering machine, which had already been crushed and resting on the ground.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have…” Leslie said.
Ami knew she was right, but the smashing felt too cathartic.
Marc appeared. “No 9-1-1?” he asked.
“Uh, no,” Ami said, looking at the mess on the ground.
“What happened?”
“The phone got smashed,” Ami, leaving out the by whom part.
Leslie kept mum.
“Jesus Christ, Marc,” Ami said, “I can’t fucking find her. And that asshole is at the front door. Find chemicals or something. Grab the 409 or the Lysol under the counter and shoot him if he busts in. I’m gonna check the basement.”
Ami knew right where the baseball bats were, or at least where they were supposed to be. It was also the last possible place Dana could be. The basement always gave her chills. It was her house, but she did what she could to avoid the cellar like it was an area quarantined for disease. To add another layer of its creepiness, the house was built in 1910, so the basement was a cavernous maze of claustrophobic rooms.
She yelled out for Dana. There was no response. The weight compressed her chest and her breathing became shallow. She tried to imagine the possible scenarios. If the neighbors or the cops had reached her, then why was the house in such disorder?
She hopped down the steep stairs two at a time and pulled the small chain on a dangling light bulb. Each corner of the basement was without Dana. The bats were not where they were supposed to be, either.
Shit, were they in the Durango when dad died?
They certainly could have been. Softball season would have been over for months when the accident happened, but that still was not an abnormally long stretch of time for her dad to avoid cleaning the SUV out.
And after the accident, keeping track of baseball bats was a very low priority.
Ami reunited with Leslie and Marc in the living room. They were carrying steak knives; neither was keen on the chemical idea.
“What the hell?” she asked, “Why would she be gone?”
“Maybe she screwed around and broke the flat screen,” Leslie said, “She thought she’d be safer if she just ran away.”
“Not her style, she goes to sleep instead,” Ami said, “I checked, she’s not in her bedroom. Even checked the closet.”
They could hear Juice yelling at Scott through the front door. Scott was yelling back at him, and making sure that the bookshelf didn’t leave its firm position. Maybe Juice had been bluffing about having the gun. They hadn’t seen it waved around through the frosted glass windows of the front door.
"Do you think the cops came by?" Leslie asked
"And then trashed the place?" Ami said, “I doubt it. Maybe. You know, not a single goddamn person in authority has been any help tonight."
Marc ran to the front door.
“Look, man,” he yelled to Juice, “We didn’t leave you behind. We helped you out. You’d have been stuck on your floor without us.”
“Yeah, that was your mistake, fag.”
“Just leave us alone! All we give a shit about right now is where a little girl is. You’re free. Just move the fuck on already.”
“Not good enough. You need to be taught a—”
And then a gunshot rang out. Juice’s head pounded against window of the front door. It left a red streak on the glass and he slipped out of sight. Somewhere out in the fog of the frosted glass, a bright flashing light appeared. It looked like fire. And then another shot rang out, this time exploding the window. A red cloud sprayed on Marc’s chest, the spatter emanating from Scott’s shoulder. Scott fell to the ground, crawling into the fetal position. Marc ducked down below the bookshelf, but not before he saw that it was Juice’s truck that was on fire.
"There’s somebody fucking shooting at us!" Marc yelled out, "Get down!"
They hugged the floor. Marc pulled Scott into the living room. Leslie readied the pellet gun.
The shooting ceased from outside and they heard two heavy thumps hit the front lawn. Ami peered out the front window and couldn't comprehend the odds of what she saw.
Under the maple tree, it was the goddamned man whose head looked like a flesh balloon. The balloon now had a stripe of white bandage over a purple nose. Next to him, there was also the man formerly known as Rat’s Nest Man. Formerly known, because now his hair was mostly gone; Scott’s quick thinking at the grocery store had burned up most of it. All that was left was scattered patches of brillo.
It was impossible. They just showed up at random? Where was their truck?
Oh my God, could they have Dana?
“You can tell whoever that hard-on was that we’re real sorry,” Rat’s Nest yelled, “In a few minutes, ya’ll get to meet up with him again.”
“So where’s that sweet honey dew melon girl?” Balloon Head yelled.
“Fuck you!” Ami shouted, still hugging the carpet.
“Ah, there’s my sweet honey dew! But she ain’t just sweet honey dew. She got a name. And it’s Ami!" Balloon Head yelled.
Oh shiiiiiiit, they know my name? Ami thought.
"Ami Gibb, come on down!" Balloon laughed.
“Thought you were pretty fuckin’ clever takin’ the river, huh?” the Rat’s Nest said, “Took a coon’s age to get our fucking truck out of there.”
“But we didn’t give a shit, ‘cause we figured out where’d you’d be going,” Balloon said.
Something solid bounced off the front bay window. Ami picked up a magazine from a side table and held it up into the window, waiting for any shots to be fired. None came. She peeked over the edge. It was the remains of her demolished smartphone.
“And do you think we’d forget you told us a little girl was sitting home alone somewhere? Opportunity like that is too tasty to pass up,” Rat’s Nest then added, “And when we seen your emails where you had a scarf or some shit sent to you, we kinda figured that’s where we’d find you.”
Ami was speechless as the possible reasons for Dana’s absence were leading her down to dark places.
“Just what do you want already?” Marc yelled, “Can’t you just leave us alone?”
Rat’s Nest spoke, “I want the dumb motherfuckers that thought it was a good idea to set me on fire. Plus, I still got some fuckin’ to get out of my system. Kill two birds.”
“We’ve had plenty of shit to deal with tonight, why this, huh?” Marc said, “Seriously, why do you give a shit?”
“Got nothin’ better to do,” Balloon said, “Frankly, this is more fun than
beatin’ up a roadside whore. When else are we gonna get a chance at some prime teen meat?”
Rat’s Nest said, "Alright, look, maybe this will get you to come out. If you come out, I’ll tell you what we did with your sister."
What?! Ami’s blood fried like hot oil.
Dana was nowhere in sight and this only confirmed to Ami the conclusion too impossible to believe.
The world ceased to exist for her.
There was no tanker filled with gas waiting to poison them.
There was no school, no homework.
There were no exclusive drinking parties.
There were no concerts.
There were no memes, virals, planking, twerking, or lol catz.
What was television again?
There was only the wild animal inside of her; the kind of animal that she had seen Juice turn into.
Seven more bullets entered the living room. One lodged in a painting, two in the grandfather clock, another one into a lamp shade, one in the chandelier, and two in her dad’s recliner. Then the bullet parade stopped.
“Looks like we get to do this the fun way,” the Balloon Head yelled from the lawn, “Up close and personal.”
Leslie tended to Scott, whose shoulder was leaking all over the carpet. After they dragged him to the kitchen, Leslie fastened a makeshift sling out of a towel.
“It fucking burns!” Scott hyperventilated as his eyes began to droop.
“You have to get him out of here,” Ami said to Leslie, “We’ll all go out the backdoor and come around to the car port.”
She pulled the LaCrosse keys off of a hook in the kitchen and handed it to her.
“What about you?” Leslie asked.
Ami reached for her favorite of her arsenal plans, grabbing the bottle of Tilex under the sink. “I will get out of here. I don’t care if I have to run to Frenchtown, but I have to deal with these assholes first.”
“They’ll kill you,” Leslie said.
And Ami knew that was probably true.
So the tankers would extinguish their family after all. Not directly, not with the poisoning of chlorine gas. The tankers were only the catalyst; the igniter. The fuse that unleashed the darkness in this city and allowed it to run wild. It didn’t matter whether the tankers fell or not; they had already finished off the Gibb family.