“Opus, I know you don’t want to, just… do it, buddy, okay? Rick is in trouble.”
Opus whined, complaining, but I felt the back end move as he leaped in. I heard metal rattling and then Tina grunt as she loaded the backpacks.
“What’s this about?” I asked Craig.
“Shut up,” Rick said, then both back doors closed.
I heard gravel crunching and then saw Tina out of the right mirror as she walked up. Her whole body was trembling, and she had a streak of dampness that ran down one side of her face as she held back the tears. With shaking hands, she opened the van and got in.
“Drive north, turn left,” Craig said, his voice full of anger and hate, using the shotgun to point.
“Can I adjust the seat? I can’t reach the pedals,” Tina said.
“If you don’t do it faster than the next five seconds, I’m going to paint the inside of the van here with his guts.”
Tina looked at me, her eyes wide, but she was reaching between the seats and found the catch. She rolled it forward and as soon as it clicked she dropped the shifter on the steering column into drive. She didn’t spin much gravel, but we left with a heavier foot than Craig had probably been hoping for. I took a chance and turned halfway to see that Craig had taken the seat behind Tina, the shotgun in his lap, his hand near the trigger as he gripped it.
“Craig, what’s going on?” I asked again, and heard Opus growl threateningly from the back.
He didn’t answer for a minute, but his face was a rictus of rage and barely contained fury. Then he pointed.
“What?” I asked him.
“Put down the visor, Tina,” he said.
She reached up for the sun visor and pulled it down into position. A photo fell into Tina’s lap. She grabbed it and held it up in front of the dash with a hand that was suddenly shaking badly.
“What’s your brother got to do with this?” I asked as the same time that Tina asked, “How do you know my ex?”
24
Rick
Lance had been Craig’s younger brother. He’d hung out with us, and when he’d kissed his first girl, he’d told us all about it. It was strange to think about it, I hadn’t been as much of an introvert then as I was now, though, in our early teenage years, none of us were who we are today.
Everybody changes.
I had changed.
Craig had changed.
And Lance definitely had changed.
That was when I realized that none of this was about me. I knew I wasn’t the center of the universe, but I hadn’t seen this coming, at all.
Because I hadn’t wanted to further traumatize Tina, I’d avoided the topic of her ex as much as possible. Somehow, I’d missed the news of Lance’s death, but it’d happened in prison.
Actually, I’d missed the arrest and everything else. Maybe it had come out after his arrest that he’d been responsible for the torture and murder of the women Tina had told me about. Then again, I avoided the news, I avoided politics, and I tried to avoid people. It was only the last year or so with Tina that I’d been paying more attention.
“My little brother was shanked over a dozen times in the showers,” Craig said, his voice a low growl that could barely be heard over Opus’s own. “He died naked, alone on the floor, for something he didn’t do.”
Tina spoke up defiantly. “He kept breaking into my house and tried to kill me! And when they arrested him, they found all that stuff in his trunk,” she said through tears, her voice shaking as bad as my hands were.
“Stuff you or the cops planted,” Craig spat. “My little brother would never hurt anybody. He said you were some goody two shoes who wouldn’t put out and was probably a closet lesbian. How the hell do you justify him trying to give you a second chance with him being a kidnapper and murderer?”
“I just wanted him out of my life,” Tina sobbed.
“Craig, no matter what happens, you know this isn’t going to end well for you. You know that, right?” I said, not sure why I was goading him.
“You know, when Tina contacted me about a protection dog, I couldn’t believe it. I almost said something to her then, but I thought what the hell, maybe I could work this to my advantage someday. So, I sold her the damned dog. You want to know what’s funny?” he asked rhetorically, the shotgun moving in my direction as I was sitting sideways now.
“What?” I asked, my mouth dry. The tremor in my hands hadn’t left yet.
“I got a call a week later. My cancer screening wasn’t clean. At all. Needed more tests. Needed more medication. Pancreatic cancer,” he said after a moment.
“You’re dying,” Tina said softly.
“What’s that?” Craig yelled back.
“You’re dying?” she screamed at the windshield.
“Yeah, but I’m not going to die alone, am I? I’m sorry you got caught up in this, Rick, but you’re going to be a casualty of war, so to speak. See, you more than anybody else here understands about losing family. About losing everyone you love. Don’t you?”
“Shut up,” I said, my anger bubbling up from the pit of my stomach.
“Oh? You have a spine? That’s surprising.”
“You’re holding the gun, that’s the only reason I’m holding back. If it was just you and me—”
His laughter interrupted me, and I turned to give him the finger.
I was jabbed with the barrel of the shotgun hard enough to make me see stars, and my head almost hit the side window, the force of the blow was so great. Something warm cascaded down my face and I saw red splatters hit my shirt and pant legs. A pink haze covered my eye as the blood dripped into it. The anger dissolved and for the third or fourth time that day, I felt fear. We might not walk away from this. It didn’t look good.
My hand went up over my right eye. The skin under my eyebrow had been split. I winced, put pressure on it and closed my eye, blinking it rapidly, trying to wipe my face on my shoulder.
“Don’t do that,” Tina screamed at him.
“I’m okay, it’s just a flesh wound,” I told her lamely.
“None of this is okay!” Tina screamed, her voice had a panicked quality I wasn’t happy to hear.
“Ok, there’s a turn off in half a mile,” Craig said. “Turn right on it and then a quick left at the exit.” He acted like he hadn’t just split my head open for the second time in a day, the first from the ricochet or rock chip.
I lift my shirt and felt the shotgun touch my ribcage. I froze a second and then pulled the shirt off, careful around my eye.
“What are you doing?” Craig asked me as I felt the van slow down, hearing the click click click of Tina’s blinker.
“Going to press this on my eye. I can’t see,” I lied.
“Hurry up, not that it’s going to matter in an hour anyway.”
I did, and wadded my shirt, pressing it over my right eye. The blood over it was drying, though I’d pulled the wound back open getting my shirt off and it was bleeding again.
“Good, now Tina, in a thousand yards, there’s a two-track. Turn right on it.”
I’d been paying attention to the roads, and we’d gotten off on a service road that had followed the highway for a little bit before curving sharply to the right as the mountains seemed to be further away from the highway than before. The left had sent us roughly north, if I had my bearings straight, but this next turn was sending us right back to the mountains and nothing else.
Tina turned the vehicle, and I could see a little better with my left eye. We were heading toward the mountains again, more of the shrub and stunted trees littered the landscape. We weren’t driving fast, and the crunching of the tires was almost as loud as the rumble of the van’s motor.
The blue van.
It had been with us most of the trip. I hadn’t picked up on it right away, but now that I thought about it, it had been staring me in the face the entire time. I tried to pay attention to Craig, but he was extolling the virtues of his little brother and spouting a manife
sto about family and how an eye for an eye applied in this case because it had been Tina’s lies that had got him locked up and ultimately killed.
It was important, but my mind was on the discomfort in my back pocket. My Gerber was still there. It was a little larger than legal, a folding tanto-style knife.
It was one of my favorites, and when we were hiking, it had been more comfortable to be in my back pocket than my front pocket, so I’d moved it. Since the boat ride and now the van ride, it was wearing me raw, reminding me of that, the way I was sitting. But, there was no way for me to pull it out and use it without the shotgun going off.
“Opus, buddy, you okay back there?” I called suddenly.
Opus immediately barked back and then another dog barked. I heard Opus make a growling whine sound and then both of them were howling softly.
“Shut up,” Craig screamed, and both dogs went silent.
“Who do you have back there?” I asked.
“This is the real funny part,” Craig said, suddenly sounding amused. “Remember when I called you guys?”
“Yeah, you left Tina a message about a dog…”
“You’re finally getting it,” Craig said after a second. “I knew where you were going because of your Facebook posts, and I used the dog I told Tina was available to track you guys.”
“But how did you know to break off and drive around?” Tina asked.
“Fish and Wildlife showed up looking for whoever was doing the shooting,” Craig said with a chuckle. “I broke my AR down when I saw them driving around and put it in my pack and walked right out with Ophelia. They never even looked at me.”
I wondered why he hadn’t stuck closer to my van, which was the way we’d been going to head until we got lost, but then he’d probably realized the direction we were going in, and decided to cut us off on the other side after we were worn out and tired.
Damn, I couldn’t write bad guys this good and get away with it. In my books, the bad guys do stupid things, not smart things. And in the end, the bear gets his girl, and the girl gets her happily ever after. None of which was looking very likely for us.
“Right here, pull off. Right here,” Craig said testily.
Opus let out a growl as the van seemed to shudder to a stop. This was it? This was the end?
“Tina, hand me the keys,” he said, and Tina shut the van off, handing the keys back over her shoulder.
He snatched them from her with his left hand, his right still on the shotgun in a tight grip. Once he pocketed them, he pointed at me with the shotgun.
“Rick, out. Leave your shirt.”
I opened the door and got out, tossing the bloody shirt on the floorboards, hoping enough would soak into the floor to leave some sort of DNA evidence. The wind was hot and dry, and although I was shirtless, I could feel the areas of my skin that had started to slowly burn before lightening back up as the full sunlight hit my upper torso.
“Back this way,” he said, pointing with his shotgun.
I noted finally that it was a short-barreled shotgun, one of the super shorties the Mossberg platform was known for. I walked with him behind me.
“Open the back doors and get the shovel. Tina, you can come out,” he said, as I opened the first door. “But if you run, I’ll make sure he dies slowly and painfully before I track you down and do the same.”
I opened the second door. Two dog crates were in the space where the back bench-seat normally would be. A blanket had been thrown over the tops and backs of them, and I lifted the edge for a minute. Opus was on the right, and he let out a piteous whine, pleading me to do something.
“Hey, buddy,” I said, putting my hand on the wire of the crate.
He sniffed it, and the dog in the left crate moved, startling me. In the dark, I only saw a shape, but when Ophelia moved, I realized she was a pitch-black Shepherd, almost as large as Opus, still filling out by the looks of her.
She sniffed my hand, and her tail wagged once.
“Get the shovel,” he said.
“Where is it?” I asked, turning just in time to catch the barrel of the shotgun across my face again.
I fell, the blow ringing my bell. I’d felt something in my nose crunch and could taste copper at the back of my throat, like sucking on an old penny.
“You don’t have to do that,” Tina said. “I can see it.”
I spit into the dry sand as blood dripped down off my face. The soil was so parched, it beaded in ruby red drops and then was suddenly sucked into the desert. My head was ringing, and part of me wondered if it was from getting smacked around, getting hit by whatever had hit me much earlier, and getting pistol whipped just now… or could I be dehydrated?
I had to think.
I pushed myself onto my knees and tried to stand when I heard Tina cry out and felt something hit me between the shoulder blades.
The pain made me stiffen out, and I managed a choked cry before I could breathe again.
“You’re mad at me! Take it out on me!” Tina screamed at him.
I was trying not to black out when a foot came in low and kicked me in the stomach. All the air I’d gotten back after the shock of being beaten down went out in a whoosh.
Good news though, I was now on my back and could see them both. Bad news, he kept stomping and kicking me. Craig had the shotgun on Tina, but I couldn’t hear his words because Opus was going insane, barking and snarling.
Ophelia barked as well, but I didn’t hear the rage in her voice like I did in Opus’s.
Sucker better hope Opus didn’t get out of his cage—
I rolled over and felt myself gagging. I opened my eyes as soon as I vomited. I was still laying on the desert floor, one side of my face burnt from where I’d been passed out in the sun.
“Rick?” Tina asked.
“I’m okay,” I said, coughing and spitting the foul taste out of my mouth.
“Don’t you go nowhere. I’m about through,” I heard Craig say, though he wasn’t close.
“Are you—”
“I’m fine,” Tina said, and I looked over.
Something was wrong with my right eye; I really couldn’t see out of it, just a sliver that had been smeared with red, and my eyelids weren’t wanting to move. Out of my left, I could see that she had her arms behind her back and a clear white zip-tie around her ankles.
“I love you,” I told her, and rolled away from the vomit and toward her.
“No, no, lover boy. You’re coming this way.”
My hands touched her side for a moment before I was yanked by my hair and I could feel a round, circular shape pressed at the back of my skull.
“Hole’s getting too deep for me to do it without a ladder. Get in,” Craig said and then shoved me.
The hole was remarkable in the fact that he could dig it in the rocky, sandy soil. Hard patches stuck out of the sides, but what was even more remarkable, was when I was thrown face first into it and fell four feet, that it didn’t hurt when I landed on my side.
It was almost as if I had that weightless sensation of a roller coaster with an abrupt stop on a mattress made of feathers. What hurt, was when he tossed the shovel in, the wooden handle hit me across the back. I felt my nausea rising again and rolled onto my back, getting the shovel in my hands.
I rose to my feet slowly to see the barrel of the shotgun aimed at my face. My everything hurt at this point, and my head was swimming, but I was scared this was it. He could pull the trigger, leave me in the hole and I’d never know what happened to Tina. Real fear made a cold trickle of sweat run down my back and I’m not afraid to admit to myself that I almost sobbed, this was too soon. This shouldn’t be happening.
“Dig,” Craig said.
I looked behind him and saw Tina. Her cheeks were tear-streaked, and the dust and dirt had made marks like running mascara down her face.
She gave me a nod.
I put the shovel in the dirt and stepped on it.
25
Rick
I
dug for twenty minutes, faking that the nausea worse than it really was, but I did have to stop twice and throw up.
“You know, I really am sorry about all of this,” Craig told me.
“You’re taking your rage out on me, I know. You’ve not hurt Tina so far,” I told him, knowing he was trying to assuage his guilt.
“That’s coming, soon enough.”
“Whatever happened to you? You know, your brother obviously turned into a slimeball, and he was killed in prison. Tina didn’t plant that stuff in his car,” I told him after I saw him looking over in Tina’s direction.
“He wouldn’t have hurt all those women,” Craig said, turning back to me.
The hole was now deep enough, just my eyes and the top of my head peered out. Any time now. It might be deep enough, but any time now.
“He did,” I said softly. “Listen, I’m not going to beg for my life, but leave Tina alone. Take it out on me.”
“She’s the one who had him arrested, it’s her fault,” Craig insisted.
I put the shovel in the ground and stepped on it, leaning my blind side against the wood. I didn’t have to pretend nausea this time, it was there, full force.
“Your brother was a kidnapping, raping and murderous son of a bitch. If there’s any blame to be had, it should fall at his feet.”
“Shut up!” Craig screamed, and for the second time of the day, I heard the safety click off.
“You don’t want to do this,” I said softly, pulling the shovel out of the dirt, shaking the clump of clay free.
“Oh, yes I do. When you’re dead, I’ll put Tina in there, and that’ll be it. It’ll be done, and I can die in peace.”
“No, I mean, you really don’t want to do this,” I told him a little louder. “You probably want to put down your gun while you’re at it.”
“What are you talking about?” Craig shouted, spittle flying. “There’s nobody around…” his words trailed off as I was smiling over his shoulder, blowing a kiss with my left hand.
Opus Odyssey_A Survival and Preparedness Story Page 17