Rough Men

by Aric Davis

  They left the tree line, Jason running low and Will mimicking him. The snow before them was speckled with blood again, and Will could see a mess on the door where a great deal of blood had been spilled. He ignored the sickening feeling in his stomach and kept running just behind Jason.

  They made the door without seeing any of the MS-13 members, but the storm’s racket would have smothered the approach of an armored division on their heels. Hail the size of golf balls had swept after them from the trees, pummeling their backs and the building before them. The metal near the door was warped in spots, as though the building itself had been bent.

  Jason turned the knob, and it shocked them both when it turned over. Jason held his finger over his lips. “Shhh.”

  Will rolled his eyes—like any amount of noise they might make could possibly be heard over the Armageddon coming down on the world—and followed Jason inside, the AR-15 stuck to his shoulder, his right eye looking through the sight and past the reticule, toward possible targets that could appear from nowhere.

  The door from outside led into what was basically a kill room. A buffer space meant to stop an attack or raid before it even got started. Bars on the doors, slick walls, a perfect spot to slow an attack, like the spot in a castle before the portcullis but after the moat. Will figured there might be cameras trained on it, but also figured it didn’t matter.

  Jason moved to the second door. This was the building Chris said he’d been brought to with the hood over his face. It was just as he’d described it: the two doors divided by a short, defensible position so that two doormen could operate separately and help render the normal techniques of a SWAT team useless. Will couldn’t see from where he was—the room they were in was lit by just a single lightbulb—but he had a good feeling that there were holes cut high above them to shoot guns and drop grenades into the fishbowl.

  Jason turned the second knob, and it was unlocked, just like the first. First Will and then Jason slid into the room, as quietly as they were able.

  This room was just as Chris had said as well, though much messier. Blood was all over the room. Across the floor there was a great smear of it, as well as several crimson handprints on the floor, ahead of the smear. Looking at the mess, Will felt a little sick, as though following and chasing death just led to more of the same.

  Jason knelt next to the smear, pulled off one glove, and swirled a finger in the mess. “Still warm,” he murmured to Will. “And do you smell the gas? That’s why they still have lights, must be running a genny the size of my fucking house to keep a goddamn warehouse lit up.”

  Jason walked to the next door, looking like he was getting some of his swagger back. Will felt better too. There was pain in his fingers and feet that was almost comforting—pain meant they couldn’t have been too damaged, or at least that’s what he was hoping. Jason opened the door, even more slowly than he had the last two, and Will followed him through it.

  They were in the real warehouse now, though there wasn’t much being stored in it. There were a few pallets of boxed high-end electronics—computers, mainly, but also stereo equipment and televisions. Stolen merchandise, Will imagined. He and Jason hugged close to the stacks and peeked around the last one.

  There were at least four men inside the warehouse with them.

  Three of them looked to be MS-13 members. Two of those were wearing suits, and Will assumed that one of them was the number one man Chris had spoken to earlier. There was a fourth banger lying on his side on the cement floor by the others, and there was blood pooled around him. Will imagined he was probably the one whose draining life had inadvertently led them there. The last man was Chris. He was sitting on a folding chair, and even though Will couldn’t see the cocky expression on his face, he felt quite sure that it was there.

  Chris was facing away from Will and Jason; the three bangers were facing their way, but cocked away. The man Will assumed was dead was staring at the floor.

  Jason slid back and began to move around the row of pallets, farther out of the bangers’ line of sight and closer to Chris’s. Will followed, listening to the men talking—the bangers in dense Latin accents, Chris repeating something that sounded like, “How long?”

  They’d reached the end of the row of pallets and, unless one of the bangers turned, out of the bangers’ periphery.

  The noise of the hail let up for a moment, and though the wind was still shrieking and making the walls shudder, Will distinctly heard Chris say, “Yeah, but how much longer? No one else can see this shit. I have to give it to him.” The hail started again, drowning out whatever response Chris might have gotten.

  Will had heard enough, though. The guy who had hired Chris in the first place—the dude who’d ordered the very specific robbery and who may as well have pulled the trigger on Alex himself—wasn’t there yet.

  Will tapped Wixom’s shoulder, and he jumped, whipping around to glare at Will. “Did you hear that?” Will whispered.

  “Yeah, big shot ain’t here. Storm probably either held him up or killed him.”

  “So what should we do?”

  “Kill them all, then figure out what the fuck is going on. And figure it out somewhere else. This building sounds like it’s going to come down around our goddamn ears.”

  “OK, so let’s do it. Try not to hit Chris, the backpack is by his feet, and I still want to see to him myself. Plus, I highly doubt that he’s armed.”

  “All right, I’m in. You take the guy on the left; I’ll get the right and then the middle. Before you start moving, lean your rifle against these boxes. They’re pretty solid. Shoot through the torso; don’t try for the head.” Jason took a last look, then turned back to him. “One more thing, there’s only the one door, so don’t let anyone get to it. Ready?”

  Will placed the dot at the center of the circle over the center of the back of the banger on the left. It would be an easy shot, less than a hundred feet and indoors, so there would be no need to compensate for wind or distance. He just had to leave the dot where it was, let out the air from his lungs, and slowly squeeze the trigger.

  It wasn’t like aiming at paper, and it wasn’t even like shooting Rob had been earlier, when he’d made his dive for his pants. That had been a direct threat; this was quite literally shooting a man in the back.

  Will was easing his finger back on the trigger, letting pressure build, on a gun he had never fired before, when, at the exact second that the hammer on his rifle punched the primer on the cartridge, the door they’d entered through opened.

  The two men coming in through the door hit the floor and were out of Will’s view almost instantly. Jason had dropped his man, and Chris lay on the floor with the backpack next to him. The third banger, the one who Jason had planned to attack second, was firing back at them with a pistol. Will was able to fire at him, but not accurately—it turns out that aiming a gun is quite a bit harder when your target is firing back.

  One of the men near the door tried to open it to leave, and Jason volleyed a pair of shots his way, dropping him to the floor, though not from injury. Will tried to get the other banger back in his sights, but the man was running toward the door, making Chris the only living thing still in the middle of the warehouse.

  “Chris! Come here!” Will screamed as Jason kept the men by the door honest about keeping their heads and guns down. Chris stood, hesitating for just a moment, and then began to sprint across the warehouse. Neither side was likely much good for him at this point, but there must have been something he saw in Will and Jason that wasn’t there in the other three.

  Pistol fire bucked from the door, and Jason fired toward the position again, two more quick shots. More pistol fire. Chris was almost to them when blood blossomed on his shirt. He was still moving when he was hit again and slid in a pile next to Will, backpack still in hand.

  The blood drained from Chris, his heart pumping away in his chest waiting for the memo that it could take the rest of the day off. He was trying to say something, but the g
unfire was too loud and the blood on his lips too thick for Will to make any of it out. A crash of lightning met the occasion of his death, thunder rumbling like cannon fire, and then came a noise unlike anything Will had ever heard before.

  The explosion began behind them, Will only realizing that he should move as the lights went out and Jason was grabbing him. They were moving across the building, buffeted by wind and noise as the top of the warehouse was torn off from the ground up and a burst of flame roared across the floor, shooting up in great blasts of blue fire from cracks and holes in the cement floor.

  What was left of the door was covered in flames, the door frame itself collapsing. Jason kept driving toward the door, ignoring the flames and dragging Will with him. He’s going to kill us, Will thought in a flash of hallucinatory clarity as the flames engulfed the world around them, and then it was Will who was pulling Jason, away from the door and the fire, to the wall opposite of their shooting position.

  “Wrong way, Will!” Jason screamed, but the voice was small in Will’s head, and he ignored the words, continuing to haul Jason like an ornery calf toward a wall while the fire built around them, burning hotter by the second and stealing the oxygen from his lungs.

  There was a smell within the flames—an odor of burning chemicals and something almost euphoric Will had a hard time figuring out—but he didn’t hate the smell, it was just overpowering. Jason shoved him around a blast of purple flame that appeared from the concrete to Will’s left, and then there was nothing in front of them but a wall. Will put his left hand on Jason’s shoulder, the AR still clutched in his right, and shoved him into the wall, directly into a square of aluminum divided by two steel beams. Jason flew into it without resistance, Will jumping behind him into it.

  Jason landed in the snow, and Will fell next to him. An aluminum panel from the warehouse wall was smoldering underneath them, and Will rolled away from the heat to the surprising comfort of the wet snow.

  The flames had scorched his coat, taken the hair from his head. His eyebrows and scalp felt raw and sticky and chafed in the wind.

  As noise from the collapsing building continued, Jason stood, looking to Will like some Viking warrior. Smoke poured off his smoldering friend, the wind and ruins of the building adding to the picture, as Jason shouldered the AK-47 and fired four shots into the retreating black Cadillac SUV. Then the magazine was empty, the last round left the barrel, and the bolt locked back, ready for a new magazine. Jason dropped the gun and grabbed Will by what remained of the back of his coat, forcing him to stand.

  “OK, OK,” Jason said, grabbing his knees. “Time to get our shit togeth—”

  An explosion from behind them sent both men staggering forward. Chunks of the building were going everywhere, and the storm was still exploding around them.

  When things had settled down, at least as far as the disintegrating building was concerned, Jason turned to him. “Will, this is going to suck, but we need to get back to your brother and that gas station. Can you help me?”

  “Sure. What’s wrong?”

  Jason collapsed in his arms then, blood gurgling from his mouth, more body heat rolling off his torso than Will could believe. He set his friend down onto the ground and saw for the first time that somehow Jason had taken Chris’s backpack from the burning building. Will took and shouldered the backpack, then ran back toward the building, back to where they’d left the chunk of aluminum from the wall that he’d shoved Jason through. He dragged it back to Jason, rolled his friend onto the metal, and slapped him, the man’s eyes coming alive with rage. Will lay his stolen AR-15 on Jason’s chest.

  “You’ve got to stay awake,” said Will. “You hold this while I pull you out of here, you got that?”

  Jason grunted something indistinguishable, and Will slapped him again. Jason’s eyes came back iron, flecked with green and gold. “You hit me again,” he said, “and I’ll kill you.”

  “You fall asleep again, I’ll leave you for dead.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Fuck you right back,” said Will, pulling the makeshift sled through the snow. “Fuck you very much. Keep that gun ready, you fucker.”

  “Fuck you,” said Jason as Will moved them up the driveway. “This is all your fault.”

  “You’re the one that knocked her up,” said Will, “I guarantee it. Now stop telling me to fuck off, and make sure that Caddy doesn’t come back. Bitch.”

  “Fuck you,” said Jason, lucid now, or at least somewhat. “Damn my head hurts, Will.”

  “I know, mine too. What the fuck was in that place?” He shook his head, loosing a fresh wave of pain. “Doesn’t matter. I’m getting us back to Isaac.”

  “I’ve got your back.”

  Will’s arms were freezing. Everything else was too, but the cold was the worst in his arms. Jason was having an on-again, off-again battle with lucidity, and Will was no longer just scared that the tattooed ex-con might shoot him in the back, he was expecting it. If anything, he was shocked it had taken so long to happen.

  Every slogging step through the slush and snow was hell, every gust of wind a knee-buckling hurricane, every noise terrifying. Will had no idea what time it was, no idea how much farther the gas station was, or if there was even any point to dragging Jason there. If his wounds were too bad, there was nothing he was going to be able to do about them, not on his own and certainly not with the supplies he’d be limited to in the battered Sunoco. Still, Will continued dragging the alternately babbling and snoring Jason behind him and just tried to worry about the step he was taking, not the one after it.

  When the gas station finally came into sight, Will was sure he was just imagining things, but he pushed on.

  It was the real deal. And Will smelled smoke. Christ, had he made it all the way there only to watch the fucker burn?

  As he dragged Jason into the gas station’s fueling area, he saw that his nose hadn’t betrayed him: smoke was billowing from the gas station. Forgetting Jason, Will ran to the building and to his brother.

  “Isaac!” Will screamed as he crunched over the broken glass, then slowed, then stopped. The smoke was coming from a fire set in the middle of the service area’s floor. The office door opened, and Isaac was walking toward him.

  “Will, holy shit. Thank God. Where’s Jason? And what the fuck happened to you?”

  “He’s outside. Can you help me get him?”

  “I can use my left arm,” said Isaac, pointing with his left arm to his right, which was tied up in a homemade sling, “but I’m pretty sure this one’s broken.”

  “That’s fine. Just help me bring him in.”

  Will left the gas station with his brother in tow and found Jason lying flat on his back in the snow atop the makeshift sled. Ignoring his brother’s questioning look, Will grabbed a piece of the sled and began pulling, while Isaac attempted to do the same on his side. After just a few moments, Jason had been moved to the doorway, and Will slipped the gun from his fingers, then slung it over his shoulders.

  “Let’s pick him up,” Will said. “You get on his right side; I’ll be on the left.” Will moved into position, his right arm under Jason’s left, and wrapped around his upper back. Will felt Isaac doing similar maneuvering, and then his brother grabbed his forearm. “You ready?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “All right, three, two, one.”

  The brothers stood with Jason between them and slowly entered the gas station, trying to keep Jason’s face away from the smoke, as well as their own. They knelt with him a few feet from the fire, and Will took off what was left of his coat to give Jason a place to lay his head.

  “Goddamn, that fire feels nice,” Will said. “Where’d you get all the wood?”

  “There was a bunch out back,” said Isaac, grinning. “All split, packaged, and ready for sale. I figured that stealing it was a minor party foul, considering all of the other insurance work these poor bastards are going to see.”

  Will walked to the back of th
e store and helped himself to a bottle of water from one of the broken coolers. He unscrewed the lid and took a drink, then spit onto the floor. The fluid that came from his mouth was black, with chunks in it. He repeated the act three more times, then blew his nose, farmer style, onto the floor, pinching off one nostril and blowing, then doing the other side.

  “Make yourself at home,” said Isaac, “but if you could avoid shitting on the floor, that would be great.”

  Perusing an aisle of snacks that had been blown on the floor, Will said, “No promises.” He left the snacks, figuring the water was good enough for a start, and walked back to Jason. He was in rough shape, Will could tell that by just looking at him. He knelt next to the prone body, unslinging his AR-15 and laying it on the floor. He slid Jason’s left arm from his jacket, and then the right. Will rolled his friend’s shirt up, cringing at what he saw.

  Jason’s left side was black with bruising, and his ribs rose and fell in weirdly disordered hills and valleys that brought the words multiple fracture to Will’s mind. His breathing was hitched, normal enough on the right side, but labored on his savaged left side.

  “Christ,” Isaac said. “Looks like your buddy punctured his lung. That’s not good.”

  “No, it isn’t. When was the last time you checked the land line in the office?”

  “Only about every ten minutes since I woke up. Fill me in. The last thing I remember, we got tricked somehow and were getting into a van with a bunch of bastards. Did they have tattooed faces, or was that just a bad dream?”

  “No,” said Will, taking a drink of water and keeping it down this time, “not a dream. Bunch of gangbangers from something called MS-Thirteen kidnapped us and were bringing us out here to die. The storm got to be too much for the driver, and Jason got to be too much for just about everybody. When I woke up, he was killing people left and right, and I dragged you out of the wreck.”