by Shawn Bartek
Because it wouldn’t only be Ami and Dana; who knew what her mother would do? Pam losing her entire family within four months—all to freak circumstances, would be a heartbreak too unbearable to suffer for very long.
But the animal inside Ami knocked at the door; if she was to die, she would die administering justice. Missoula had now returned to its Wild West days and she was going to be the law, doling out righteousness. She owed it to her mother to find out what happened to Dana and take their vengeance if her greatest fear was realized.
Her six-shooter would be a bottle of Tilex.
Marc and Ami were first through the back door into the backyard. They came around through the carport and ducked down between the house and the LaCrosse. Leslie supported Scott as they followed, who was now drifting in and out of conscious. As they lifted him into the back seat, Leslie hopped into the front seat.
“You better go too,” Ami said to Marc.
“You are out of your goddamn mind if you think I’m leaving you here alone,” he said to her.
“You will die, Marc. I can’t be responsible for you too,” Ami said.
“It’s my choice, Ami,” he said, “I am not fucking leaving you here alone.”
“Okay,” she said.
Ami peered around the corner into the front yard. Their captors were dancing in front of the flames of Juice’s truck. She could see that the bikes that Scott and Leslie had rode were now red hot and the air was foul with burning rubber. It must have been one of those bottles-with-the-rag things. She couldn’t remember what they were called. Monorail Cocktails? No, that was stupid.
Their gun was now on the ground, but the Balloon Head held a giant bowie knife.
Ami sprinted across the lawn, Tilex in hand. She met them in the lawn and began to spray full doses in their direction. She was careful to avoid the flaming truck, unsure if the tub cleaner was flammable. One stream reached the Balloon Head on his pink tubular throat. He tried to wipe it off with his shirt, but the fumes reached his face and be began to choke.
The LaCrosse came to life, bursting out of the carport and into the driveway. Leslie was in the driver’s seat, with the pellet gun aimed out the window. She shot at their attackers, but missed. One of the pellets grazed Marc’s pants.
Ami sprayed a direct hit of Tilex into the Balloon Head’s eyes. He fell to the ground and held his eyes; cries escaping between his shaking fingers.
When the LaCrosse burst into the street, the Rat’s Nest turned from them and ran after it. As the LaCrosse slowed to make a left hand turn out of the neighborhood, Rat’s Nest had caught up and jumped in front of the car. Marc could see Leslie’s internal monologue through the brake lights. They briefly shone bright, showing her reservations.
Then the brake lights went off and the LaCrosse sent the Rat’s Nest over the car. He rolled to the ground; no longer protected with the nest of bushy hair, his head cracked hard on the cement. He did not get up.
And as the LaCrosse started to pull away, the driver’s door opened and Leslie popped out. She yelled out to Ami and threw something into the grass. Just as quickly, she was back in the car and gone from sight.
Ami ran to where she estimated the object had landed and found the pellet gun awaiting her. She could only hope it still had ammunition. She’d be ready to test it if the Rat’s Nest Man were to suddenly pop up. She kept the gun on his lifeless body as she ran back to Marc.
The Balloon Head struggled to his feet. His eyes were bloodshot and he swung the knife through the air like a blender. Ami looked for the right time to strike, like she was joining in on a game of fatal jump-rope.
When Ami saw her opportunity, she tried spraying the bleach again, but the stream was dying. There was still bleach in bottle, but she knew the trigger’s limitations all too well, having faced it numerous times when doing chores. The trend of cheap manufacturing was failing her at point when life and death was on the line.
Balloon Head swung the knife at the blur he could barely make out against the flames. The knife narrowly missed Marc and then Marc charged at him, shoving the man into the side of the flaming truck. As he shielded himself from the flames using the Balloon Head’s body, the burning tire smell was overcome by burning flesh.
Holding him against the truck became too hot for Marc to continue, but the damage had been done. The smoking Balloon Head collapsed on the lawn.
Marc hadn’t noticed that the Rat’s Nest Man had gotten up from his seemingly final resting place on Harrison Street and had tackled Ami from behind.
And he was on top of her now; his stringy hands wrapped around her neck. Her tough eyes could not contain the fear.
When this picture tore into Marc’s eyes, his heart began to feel secondhand throttling from the Rat’s Nest Man’s grip and the pain struck him like a train.
All of the time he had been infatuated with her would now just end. The entire possibility that they could be together would now become nothing. All of the waiting he had suffered through to even begin his journey with her would be for nothing. He would never again be able to admire what was beneath her shell of strength and playfulness: the sweet, fragile girl that deserved to be loved thoroughly.
Marc realized that he would need to kill to keep their journey going.
He charged at the Rat’s Nest Man.
Marc flung his entire one hundred and seventy pound frame at the strangler. He rolled on top of him and put his knees on his chest. The Rat’s Nest Man had bloody snot bubbling from his nostrils. He spoke through his gelatinous mouth.
“Back off me or you’ll never find out what we did with her sister.”
There was only wrath now. He wrapped his hands around the man’s neck and felt it squeeze like putty beneath his palms.
Fuck these demented beasts. Fuck their sick, damaged minds.
Tears were streaming down his face and he didn’t even know that he had started crying. They just came.
He also hadn’t even noticed that he was no longer choking the man, but that Ami was wailing her fists into the grotesque face.
There was a sound from the East that caught their attentions.
* * *
It was a difficult sound to identify. It was like the sound of a hunting rifle, rolling off the hills. It was like a large firecracker, muted from the distance. It was like a ton of rocks being dropped on a giant creek bed. They could feel the sound reverberate through the earth; giving the impression that the ground below was hollow. They had never heard anything like it, but each one of them knew exactly what it was.
It was a tanker.
Ami was the first to move. A jolt of reason pulled her away from pounding flesh and self-preservation took over.
Highest Ground. Leslie had mentioned highest ground. Or highest grund as the news channel had erred. It was the fail-safe that popped into her mind the moment they drove into the Rattlesnake.
Ami could only get out the word “Jumbo” before darting across Harrison Street and entering the abandoned schoolyard across from the house. She could hear Marc running behind, but was too scared to look backwards. She could also hear the barking of the beaten man laid out in her lawn.
Ami continued to sprint, flying past the jungle gyms, her shoes kicking up wood chips. For some reason, her mind wandered to freshman year; the year she had attempted cross-country track. It was the right sport for her; she could run alone and be with her thoughts as she pushed herself to the finish. She felt the old groove come back into her muscle memory. Still keeping the keen awareness of Marc following behind, just as she’d keep track of an approaching competitor.
Her ears detected that he was closing in, the advantage of having longer legs. She thought of stepping back a step so they’d be together, but instead she moved faster. She would think of him as an opponent, knowing that the faster she could run, the faster he would go. She could hear him panting. Too many cigarettes this evening.
They reached a small dead-end street at the base of the mountain, lined wit
h early twentieth-century houses. Ami hopped into the yard of a recently remodeled bungalow-style home. She jumped over a stack of two-by-fours laid out in the lawn; the last orphans from renovations that could soon become pointless.
A shock to her tightly running system: she heard more wails of the man that had throttled her and they were not fading in the distance. She hit the base of the mountain; her thighs burned, rising above her waist as she plowed through a tall patch of crabgrass. Her thighs burned as they rose above her waist. The scratchy weeds left streaks on her arms as she pushed through.
And then the grade of the mountain began to rise. Her thighs burned more; her toes digging her shoes into the earth and springing her up the incline.
Dawn was approaching and the atmosphere began to make its appearance, a clear piece of blue cellophane overlapping the starry night. The lights of the city appeared behind them as they pushed farther into the sky. The flaming truck below was becoming a small bonfire.
Marc had almost caught up to her. She turned her head backwards for a split-second to see where he was at. It was the wrong split-second; she did not see the bed of large rocks and her foot came down on a rounded stone. Her ankle buckled, she shrieked as her leg went out from underneath her. Her knee fell onto another stone.
Marc stopped and whisked her up from underneath her armpit.
“We have to get up as high as we can,” she panted, “Just keep going up. Don’t stop.”
They scaled the hill for every yard, every foot, every inch, but it was not long before the wild thing had caught up to them.
“Perfect, you waited for me,” The Rat’s Nest Man said, the knife extended, ready to strike.
She saw Marc glide down a bed of rocks with a slide attack. It swooped the Rat’s Nest off of his stringy legs and down to his knees. They struggled over the knife. Marc pushed his legs against the twiggy man and forced him into downhill somersaults. The twig regained his footing and scaled up the hill again. He pulled Marc back to the ground by his shirt. Marc’s soft melon met with a large block of sandstone and Ami saw his head lay down in the weeds.
Ami felt sympathy pains from the hit. She saw the Rat’s Nest Man approaching Marc with the knife, ready to call the game over. The ache in her stomach was shooting electricity to her limbs. Her ankle didn’t hurt anymore. Nothing hurt. And with this jolt of adrenaline, clarity struck her like a train.
He was more than just the art-class buddy she palled around with for the last four months. It was the first time she’d felt an affection for a boy that was beyond theoretical. This entire day had connected them more intimately than anyone she could think of in the cosmos. And she knew he needed her in his life as much as she wanted him in hers.
Ami realized she would need to kill to keep their journey going.
She charged at the Rat’s Nest Man.
Ami jumped onto his back, her arm locked around his neck. He struggled to keep his balance on the hill.
“Get the fuck off me, you whore!” he screamed.
“Can you smell the gas yet?” she said, “It’s coming to kill you.”
He hopelessly spit blood at her.
“I won’t give it the chance,” Ami said.
Ami pulled the pellet gun from the back of her jeans and stuck the thin barrel into his ear. She repeatedly pulled the trigger until her finger lost steam. He collapsed beneath her like a deck of cards.
The fire was surging through her and her thinking was razor sharp. If the gas came, she was going to need more than her bawdy t-shirt for a makeshift gas mask. She yanked the dead man’s flannel coat off, knowing it could probably be big enough for her and Marc to share. The stink of the coat would be terrible, but it would certainly be better than bleach and asphyxia.
There was still no time to rest or to take any consideration about what she had just done. She was on autopilot and her focus returned to getting up the hill. Marc crawled up to her and they continued to scale upwards.
Within thirty yards, the met a giant patch of white gravel rocks. They had made it to the “L”. They still couldn’t smell anything yet.
“I have no idea how high we should go.” Ami said, “I remember seeing on the news they talked about getting to higher ground. Then Leslie said the same thing. Once we got to the Rattlesnake, I planned from minute-one that if there was any indication something happened with a tanker, I was going to make a break for the L.”
There was still no scent of anything out of the ordinary. In fact, the air smelled perfectly fresh. They parked their tired bodies.
The Rat’s Nest Man convulsed downhill with his face planted into the ground. Ami hoped that it was only death rattles, but with how everything had gone tonight, she was positive he would be getting up again. But with each passing minute, the body remained where it was until the twitching eventually stopped.
Ami nursed her rolled ankle. Another fucking injury. She screamed inside for the night to end. The pain was returning again. Every limb hurt and her head pounded. The endorphins had done what they could, but her strength was failing. If they survived this, pain would have its day of reckoning.
At the back of her beaten mind, there was Dana. Ami thought of their morning exchange, though it seemed like forever ago. Dana had said that morning that she hated Ami, and Ami returned the sentiment with such glibness. It didn’t matter if it was in jest; she now regretted not spending every moment with Dana in celebration of her. From her birth to today, her entire existence shot into Ami’s mind. Dana’s life was gone because of these deranged collections of atoms that she couldn’t call human beings.
She’d promised Dana that she’d be home for her.
She reflected on how all of the events of the evening had led those psychopaths to her house. If she hadn’t made the left onto Reserve and almost run into them, they wouldn’t have been followed. If Shane hadn’t flipped them off, they might not have rear-ended them off the road. What if Ami hadn’t dropped her phone in the fight?
Now both of these fucks were dead and the answers would never come. That was the good part, the part from which Ami could actually take a shred of enjoyment. Every sliver of anger and pain that sprang from this day culminated through the pulls of the pellet gun trigger.
She sat nearly catatonic now, staring over the city that was gradually transforming from a sea of lights to decipherable buildings in the approaching daylight.
Marc crawled over and wrapped himself around her. There was nothing he could think of to say, so he kissed her on the head. She buried her head under his chin and began to cry.
Ami was letting it all out. Her dad. Her sister. This day. Her life. She would have to explain everything to her mother if they ever made it down from here.
He knew she wanted to go running back down the hill and let the gas take her over. He wrapped his arms and legs around her and it was just barely enough.
* * *
They sat for a while longer. Ami wiped her face off with Marc’s shirt and the clearance of her nostrils began to pick up the scent of bleach. She lifted the flannel coat to her face to protect from the gas. Marc pulled his shirt collar over his nose.
They jumped up and continued to run up the hill, leaving the L in their wake. They were nearly to the apex of the mountain and stopped when there was no higher ground they could take. They wouldn’t have any other choice but to stop and hope for the best. They could always continue north if they wanted, but it would take them down grade. Even if going north would probably put them out of the airstream, it was a risk.
Right now, the gas would be heading out of the Hellgate Canyon and spreading its way west, the cool morning air dissipating it and bringing it farther into the valley.
They removed their makeshift gas masks. They couldn’t be sure, the bleach scent was still there, but it was faint enough that they were unable to tell if it was actually in the air, or just left over from the first whiff.
They lied down on the weeds. Ami held the filthy Pendleton back up to her face
. She noticed something crinkling from the inside pocket. She pulled out a white sheet of notebook paper.
Marc saw her face light up in a way he thought would be impossible for what she’d just experienced. Her eyes brightened and became glossy. A smile rose on her face.
She spoke, “Those are two of the most evil motherfuckers to walk the Earth. I’m glad they’re dead.”
She handed Marc the sheet of paper. It was a handwritten note in a barely legible scrawl that read:
Chapter XVI
Mrs. Gibb-
We received a call from Ami and had a unit in the immediate area to pick Dana up. If you return before you receive our messages, we have taken her to the Frenchtown shelter, where you can pick her up. Call emergency dispatch and ask for Officer Frank Oliver, Badge #MSO-38675. If you can’t reach me there, you can call the sheriff’s office direct line at 406-555-2334 if you receive this note.
Chapter XVII
Ami hung her head between her knees and the tears flowed over a beaming smile. Marc moved closer and fell down beside her.
They laid on the houndstongue; Marc slipped his arm around her waist to bring her closer. They never lost eye contact. Their bodies relaxed nearly to death.
“What is this shirt you’re wearing?” he panted. The infamous stick figures.
“Oh, just something I was thinking of wearing to prom,” she batted her eyes, then rolled them.
They were the beautiful eyes that resonated with Marc so long ago. The eyes that were now staring at him with such love and relief.
Marc spoke again to her with no hesitation and not a single tremble in his voice. His hands were not shaking anymore.
“Let’s go to prom together,” he said, “It’ll be good for you. We’ll have fun.”
Chapter XVIII
They won by taking the highest ground. The tankers could not destroy them.