Dead Weight

by Casamassina, Matt

  “Hey Cowboy,” Zephyr said. “The girls you guys are holding hostage. Do you know if they’re related?” It was a long shot, he knew.

  “I’m bleeding real bad here. Can I—”

  “I understand that. Now, answer the question,” Zephyr said.

  The man shook his head. “No. One of ’em old enough to be your mother — she’s been with us all week. The other is younger like you, we just met her today. They ain’t related.”

  “This is intriguing, Zeph, but can we get this shit done and worry about this later?” Ben asked.

  He was right. Although, he dreaded what lay in wait. The men in there were dangerous and for all they knew, they were stepping into an ambush. “Yes,” he said and turned to Cowboy. “All right. Details. All of them.”

  Their prisoner reiterated that his brother and the other one— someone named Fran, which sounded like a girl’s name to Zephyr— would probably be drunk by now, trying to “get in the pants of the MILF,” as he explained it.

  “What kind of security do you have?” Ben asked.

  Cowboy stared at him, perplexed. “Security?”

  “Cameras, alarms—freakin’ turrets? Jesus. What do you think security means, you idiot?” His next words came slowly, as if he were trying to explain one of Einstein’s equations to a caveman. “Do. You. Have. Any. Seh-cure-it-ee?”

  “Let me phrase it another way,” Zephyr said before Cowboy could answer. “How do we get in there unnoticed? And before you answer, remember that you’ll be going in first, bound and with both of our guns trained on your back. So make sure you think this one through.”

  “Yeah, I know, I know,” Cowboy said, winced as he tried to pivot in his seat, and continued. “We got a little system rigged up, is all. Nothing too fancy. When we lost the main power, we jimmied open one of the automatic doors. So now it’s open all the time, forever. Then Fran went out and stole a few of those doohickeys that some stores got so when you walk through a door, it gives a little ding. You know what I mean?”

  Zephyr nodded and explained it, mostly for Ben’s consumption. “They’ve got door chimes. A little box on one side of the door frame beams an invisible signal to a receptor on the other side. If anybody walks through it, the interruption sounds a chime.”

  “Yeah, that’s the kind,” Cowboy said. “We got one of those and another that works the same way, but it triggers a strobe light.”

  “Wait, don’t you just step over the beams to get past those?” Ben asked.

  Zephyr nodded, and smiled. “Pretty much. I don’t think we’re gonna need Tom Cruise for this mission.” Back to Cowboy. “Is that it?”

  “We got the warning outside, too,” the man said and shrugged. “Ain’t nobody tried to come in yet.”

  “So to answer my own question then, no, there’s no security,” Ben said.

  “The chime will be on the front door itself, but what’s the range on the strobe? Where do you keep it?” Zephyr asked.

  “We got our main setup about a couple hundred feet in there. Couches, some TVs, a few beds, oven, microwave, pretty much everything you could ever want. The strobe wouldn’t work that far out, but it still worked when we dropped it back about thirty feet. We got it on a little coffee table, which faces our direction,” the man explained, paused, and added, “We cleared out what used to be the women’s clothes area and moved all of our stuff there. It feels more homely because it’s got some carpet.”

  “Good for you, Martha Stewart,” Ben said. When Cowboy started to say something, the twin waved him off. “Dude, just shut it. My wit is wasted on you, anyway.”

  They checked their weapons. Zephyr’s Uzi still held all twenty-three bullets. Ben’s clip, meanwhile, had dwindled from thirty-two to four, but he had another Uzi with seventeen more bullets. In addition, they kept the shotgun and its single round. Also, they’d been smart enough to pillage the weapons of their hostage and his dead friend before moving on, and had gained two handguns— one of them a Glock like the one Zephyr looted back in Firefly Valley. That one belonged to Lapdog. True to form, though, Cowboy’s gun was a six-shooter like the ones Clint Eastwood used in the old Westerns Zephyr’s dad loved. This did not go unnoticed by Ben, who made some crack about their hostage being a little too slow on the draw. They decided to leave the shotgun in the car and take everything else.

  Cowboy limped, shuffled, and hopped his way across the parking lot. Every so often, he’d give a little yelp before threatening to fall over and one time Zephyr had to run to his aid before he did. It was a pitiful showing made worse by the fact that the man was dressed only in bloodstained underwear, hat and boots.

  They originally positioned their hostage in the lead, but as they slid and strafed alongside Target’s outer wall like professional burglars out to steal the Mona Lisa, they decided to reorder the man to the middle. Ben kept his weapon trained on him while they navigated the perimeter, white hot spotlights blasting them against the graffiti messages. Eventually, Zephyr dared to peek around the corner of the wall at the entryway.

  He leaned back and whispered, “It’s like Cowboy said, as far as I can tell. The opening is on our side. All we have to do is turn the wall and we’ll be there.”

  “You see any of them?” Ben whispered back.

  “No, not yet. When you walk in, there’s a food court on the right and on the left, all the shopping carts. Just beyond those, there’s a few lamps, but I didn’t see any of them.”

  “That’s too close,” Cowboy breathed, shaking his head. “They’re in the women’s section. It’s past the carts. You turn to the right, follow it for a little bit, and then you’ll see them on the other side.”

  Zephyr undid the safety locks on both of his guns, which was difficult because his hands wouldn’t stop trembling. When he caught Cowboy looking at him, he made an effort to steady himself and then tried for a casual comment about the freezing weather. The bleeding man barely acknowledged it. Instead, he begged them not to harm his brother.

  “If you gotta get revenge here, Fran’s your man,” he said. “My brother is a dimwitted fool, I’ll give ya that, but ever since we picked him up, it’s the other one’s who’s been calling the shots. I told Dick to just get rid of him but for some reason he keeps him around.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Ben hissed and Zephyr thought, Cowboy, you are trying to convince a wall, man. There was no way the twin would stop until he felt like his brother’s death was repaid.

  “I’ll go first. Wait twenty seconds and then follow,” Zephyr said to Ben. “Cowboy. You’ll stay second. If you try anything funny, Ben shoots you.” Their hostage was apparently accustomed to their death threats because he nodded as though he’d been asked if he liked chocolate.

  “Not a whimper, dummy,” Ben warned him. “You have to fart, you better hold it. Otherwise you’ll find my gun barrel up your ass.”

  For all of their reservations about the mission, the ordeal itself was painless. At least for Zephyr, anyway. He simply dropped to his belly and pulled himself through. It took seconds. In contrast, Cowboy was all skin and blood, not to mention a hundred pounds heavier. He gritted his teeth and by the time he finally squirmed about halfway underneath the obstacle, sweat beaded on his forehead, he sucked air and stopped moving. So Zephyr grabbed his arm and tugged him through, leaving a streak of smeared blood on the cold tile of the store.

  He looked at Cowboy as the man massaged his naked upper body and then at Ben, who just shook his head.

  “How’s the leg?” Zephyr finally whispered. “Good to walk?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good,” he said and pointed to the darkened aisles that waited off to one side of the radiance. “You say they’re over there, so we’re all going to walk that way instead.” He fingered the opposite region of the store. “We’ll go around and come at them from the inside.”

  The deeper they went, the darker it grew. Nobody said anything, the walkways they navigated so freely in light now transformed into po
tential obstacle courses, every step a new hazard. Zephyr imagined the loud clank of wrenches and screwdrivers jumping as his clumsy feet connected hard with an unseen toolbox, or the creaking wheels of a rusty clothing rack jarred from its hiding spot in the darkness, and moved ever slower.

  Minutes passed as he held his breath and agonized over every step. He couldn’t stop thinking about the other slavers and what untold and unseen advantages they might possess. For instance, night vision goggles. If either one of the men wore a pair, they could be watching three of them right now.

  He turned toward the blanket of blackness beyond them and as he did there came a thud from behind followed by groans. He spun and pointed his gun but there was nothing to see; they might as well have been in the depths of a cave without a candle.

  “Ben,” he hissed and simultaneously grabbed at thin air. “Cowboy, where’s—”

  The thump, thump, thump of feet and then a cacophony of noise as something toppled in the darkness. Zephyr waved his gun toward the commotion. More movement, more things crashing over, and then Ben was shouting at him from the other direction, not even bothering to lower his voice.

  “Fucker clocked me! The Cowboy! He’s getting away!”

  “Diiiick!” the escapee bellowed from somewhere in the darkness ahead, already winded but still moving. Zephyr’s ears turned him to the sound and his feet started moving. When he felt someone brush by him, he knew it was Ben. “They got guns!” the man continued. “Help me! Get out here and help me!”

  Brilliant light flashed in and out of existence and Zephyr recoiled as sprays or gunfire pierced the stillness. For a second, he thought he saw Cowboy taking refuge behind a clothing rack down the aisle, yet when the strobe of light returned the man was gone. If he had ever been there at all. He longed to drop his weapon and cup his ears. The discharges were so intense, so loud, and his eardrums were already ringing. The element of surprise was lost to them and Ben seemed oblivious to this fact as he screamed obscenities into the darkness and fired his weapon at what the boy thought must be imagined or purely arbitrary targets.

  “Stop it!” he finally screamed and after a moment, Ben did.

  “Listen,” he whispered. “Just… listen.”

  At first, there was nothing, but then they heard it. Heavy breathing and the shuffling of heavier feet. Zephyr grabbed Ben by the shoulders and turned him so that the twin faced the direction of the new noise.

  “He’s that way,” he whispered just as a lamp light flickered on some fifty feet ahead.

  It wasn’t bright, and yet Cowboy was caught between it and them like a pickled baseball player. Perhaps realizing this, the silhouetted figure shouted something indecipherable, started to run, tripped up, and then seemed to reconsider. In the end, he simply raised up his hands and turned around.

  “Had to try, right. You can’t blam—” he began before Ben pumped him full of bullets and he fell to the ground shuddering.

  “Try that!” the twin barked as his gun clicked empty. “Try that, you stupid bitch!” He tossed it on the ground and pulled the spare Glock from his waistline.

  People shouted nearby — cowboy’s brother and the other man roused from their drunken slumber, no doubt. And they’d still be sleeping now if we hadn’t blown it, he thought. The boy couldn’t believe they had been so stupid as to trust the dead man before them to go along with their plan, especially when the plan involved killing his sibling.

  “What should we do?” Ben asked.

  He wanted to reply in turn, how the hell should I know? This is your thing, not mine. He wanted to scream it. To shake some sense into his friend. Then, there came the close clap of boots. Someone running. So instead, Zephyr pushed Ben to one side of the aisle and made for the shadows of the other. Then he fell back into the lane, crouched and waited.

  Closer than expected, someone murmured something and another responded. He cocked his head and tried to focus on any noise. There was a whispered conversation, but he couldn’t make out the words. He was about to slink forward when a great crash sent him skidding into the opposite direction as boxes exploded from the unseen end-cap ahead of him.

  “You goin’ die!” someone raged as another blast cleared away more boxes and with sudden horror Zephyr realized that his pursuers carried flashlights. The beams tore blinding holes into the blackness that had previously offered some cover. Any advantage they had was gone. The boy crawled backward so that he could take shelter behind the opposite end-cap. With any luck, they’d walk by him and he could either attack them from behind or run away, an option that grew more appealing with every breath.

  Something clanked on the ground and another blast of gunfire sounded.

  “Oh, you wanna play?” the voice called out from nowhere. “Well, then, let’s play!” At this, another enormous blast seemed to shake Zephyr’s world and consequently his resolve.

  Clang, clang, clang, a new disruption echoed in the distance. More murmurs and then footsteps speeding after the noise. Was Ben just clumsy or throwing stuff? The latter, he figured, which was a lot more than he’d tried. The thought of the twin keeping his cool as he cowered behind a pyramid of diaper boxes brought Zephyr back to his senses and he strafed to the next aisle so that he could ascertain a better viewpoint of the man who remained behind. Without warning, a beam of light shone down the corridor as he whipped back to the safety of the end-cap, and a heartbeat later, the luminescence faded back to black.

  More shouting, but the voices were different. Muffled somehow. Zephyr listened but couldn’t make them out. Then a second set of footsteps returned.

  “Shut those bitches up,” one man muttered.

  “Not now.”

  Zephyr was mustering the courage to creep ahead and take aim at the voices when another shot rang out and one of the men yelped.

  “Right there!” someone screamed and then the scene was a symphony of piercing gunshots.

  The boy had no idea how long this thundering war lasted, but it seemed to rage forever. Lifetimes. The explosions were peppered in shouts and calls and then terrible shrieks. All at once, he was running toward the source of the pandemonium, his gun ready to take part in the ensemble, and somehow he knew he was too late.

  He rounded the corner and there stood a man who wasn’t Ben. The figure swiveled on his heels and Zephyr shot him. A flashlight flew from the man’s grasp as bullets sank into his chest, neck and face, and he was dead before he hit the ground. The other man already lay on the tile, badly wounded. Zephyr picked up the beam and shone it on him. Blood soaked his T-shirt but his eyes widened and he tried to move as Zephyr approached him. A shotgun lay only a few feet away. Zephyr picked it up and stared at him.

  “I’m sorry you chose this for yourself,” he said, aimed the weapon, and without any hesitation, blew his face off.

  He didn’t see any other bodies.

  “Ben!” he called, tears already streaming down his cheeks. “Ben! Where are you!”

  The teenager was sprawled on the floor beneath a rack of clothes, hidden but for his outstretched legs.

  “Ben! We got ’em, man,” he said, and pushed away the racked sweaters which covered the older boy. As soon as he did, he knew there was no hope. Ben’s shirt was drenched in dark blood and he barely moved. Zephyr, too, seemed unable to move. Why did we do this? You made us do this, you damned idiot, he thought. And now look what’s happened.

  Ben’s eyes darted and his mouth moved, although no words came.

  “Ssshhh, no. It’s OK. No, don’t talk. No, don’t try to talk,” Zephyr said, his voice wobbly. He fell to the floor, slid over to his friend and held his head in his lap. When he did, Ben’s foot kicked the flashlight and it rolled to a nearby stop, its beam a final spotlight on the disintegrated face of the slaver he just killed.

  “You got ’em, Ben. You did it, man,” he said while he stroked the boy’s hair. The twin — his friend, however brief — seemed to nod in reaction, although Zephyr wasn’t certain it was voluntary. He tr
ied not to think about the inevitability before him. He searched instead for the right words but they eluded him. All he could do was stay, so that’s what he did.

  Some time passed— maybe seconds, maybe minutes. Ben struggled and choked for air and his body tensed and arched in regular order. Twice he tried to whisper something but couldn’t get it out and instead pounded his fist against Zephyr’s thigh, some final desperate act of defiance. And when at last he took his final exhausted gulp of air, his exit of the world wasn’t noble or graceful, but smeared in dread, pain, and blood.

  Zephyr sat with him for a long while and then he thought of Jordan, and slowly, he rose. He started toward the slavers’ living space, doubled back, bent over and grasped the shoulder of his fallen companion. He didn’t want to cry. He wouldn’t.

  Instead, he said, “You did it, Ben.”

  Then he turned and left him.

  31

  Cowboy’s description of the space was accurate. What Zephyr didn’t anticipate, though, was the smell, which was pungent. It reeked of food, sweat, sex, and above all else, rot. A few lamps shone, revealing messy accumulations of goods, as well as an array of cheap furniture and wiry electronics. Several big beds littered the premises. There were dressers, microwaves, and a row of behemoth refrigerators. Not one, but four big-screen flat-panel televisions waited at each side of the square perimeter and towering stacks of Blu-rays threatened to topple over a couple of the adjacent sets.

  So this is what kings do with their spare time, he thought, and there was movement in his periphery. Gun drawn, his arm shot out and he was ready to fire before he realized what he was looking at. Not what, but who. It was one of the girls. She was cuffed to an enormous oven, and naked. He glanced away, blushing, and yet he’d seen enough to know that it was the older and consequently most unfortunate of the captives. In her thirties. Dirty blonde hair curled at her shoulders. There were bruises on her face and body. Something else, too— were they bite marks?