by Paula Cox
Joseph drops the duffle bag in the snow and we kneel down.
“Good, kid,” I say, taking an automatic rifle and a few ammo clips. I shove the ammo clips in the pockets of my leather, and then I take a snub-nosed pistol and put it in my boot for backup.
Once we’re all armed, we start walking across the street toward the warehouse. The building is large and long, a building that was once a factory, which became a warehouse, and now is nothing but a large abandoned cavern. It sits on the outskirts of a built-up industrial estate, ignored, with a few working factories a quarter-mile down the road. Zeke and I have been here a few times to stake it out. We’ve watched men walking to and fro, leather-wearing men, but we’ve never seen Trent here. But still, this is the place he would come if he had any kind of plan. We’ve seen more of his men here than any of his other locations combined. The plan was to raid all his places at the same time in a coordinated hit. But that’s out the window now. I don’t give a shit about the big plan; the big club-versus-club battle can sort itself out. All I care about is getting Allison back.
We make our way down an alleyway, the ground slushy beneath us. I hear the kid breathing heavy, hefting the gun in his hand, and I want to turn to him and tell him that everything is going to be okay. But I can’t think about anything other than Allison and Bump. I never knew emotion like this existed. I never knew a protective urge like this existed. It’s crazy to me. I never knew a man could care this much: that a man’s mind could be completely consumed with two people, one a woman he could not live without and one a child he has not met yet. I used to look at men who were in love and wonder what the hell had come over them, wonder why they didn’t just fuck and move on. And now I can’t understand how I used to think that; I have a deep ache in my chest when I think of my family, terrified and alone, waiting for me to save them. I think of Bump, my son…or my daughter. Right now, as we approach the small door which was once used for the workers of the factory, I don’t care if Bump is a boy or a girl. I just want my child to be safe, the mother to be safe: my family, in my arms.
I wipe snow and blood from my face, the pain still sharp. I ignore it as we gather outside the door, Joseph and Zeke on one side, me on the other. Zeke tries the door, but it’s locked.
“Alright, let’s smash this fucker down,” Zeke says, hefting the butt of his rifle and aiming at the handle.
“Wait,” Joseph mutters. “Wait a sec.”
Zeke, holding his gun ready to strike, raises an eyebrow. “Huh?”
Joseph reaches into his pocket and brings out a small black pouch, similar to a wallet. He unfolds it and reveals lock-picking equipment. “No reason to be loud when we don’t need to be,” he mutters.
Zeke directs his arched eyebrow at me.
I shrug. “If he’s quick, I don’t care.”
“Where did you learn this, kid?” Zeke asks, as Joseph kneels down and starts fiddling with the lock.
“Junkies learn lots of useful stuff,” Joseph says. “Problem is, we forget most of it. Luckily I didn’t forget this.” He fiddles with the lock, and after about twenty seconds, there’s a click and the door opens into a dark passageway, creaking on its hinges.
“Okay,” I say, aiming my rifle and walking into the building. “Stay alert, watch the corners, listen. Be careful, and be ruthless if you have to be.”
The three of us creep into the passageway, rifles aimed ahead of us, me in the front, Joseph in the middle, and Zeke in the rear. Zeke and I don’t need to discuss the details; he’ll watch our backs without us having to talk about it. We’ve been doing this long enough so that speech isn’t necessary. We walk through the building for a few minutes before coming to a large factory floor. I hold my hand up, meaning for everybody to stop, but Joseph walks into my back.
“Sorry,” he says, too loud. His voice echoes into the rafters above, his sorry reverberating around us.
We all freeze as the echo gets quieter and quieter and finally becomes silent. Alright, nobody heard. I point forward, and we keep walking. I guess we’ll scout the factory floor, and then move up the staircase which is off to one side, barely visible in the darkness: the only light being the waning sunlight which shines through slit windows set high in the wall, near the ceiling. The factory floor is dotted here and there with disused equipment and crates.
We’re walking by a large, squat metal machine when gunfire explodes from the top of the staircase and across the room, clanging off the metal and peppering the floor at our feet.
“Get the fuck down!” Zeke roars, and the three of us jump to the floor, ducking down behind the machine.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Allison
I sit in silence, not daring to speak, after Trent punches me in the belly. Terror like I have never felt before grips me, feeling like hands inside my belly, twisting and hurting Bump, cruel, powerful hands doing things nobody should ever do to a growing baby. Tears sting my eyes, slide down my cheeks, but I can’t sob; if I sob, he will hit me again. I keep staring at Bump, because something is not right. It feels wrong. Something feels out of place. There is the pain, but there is another element, too, almost like a dislocation in my stomach. I bite down. I want to scream for help. I want to scream for a doctor. What if he’s killed my baby? What if this evil man has killed my child?
He sits at his desk, looking at his monitors, every now and then muttering something under his breath. He hasn’t tried to kiss me again, which I am thankful for, but I am also furious with myself for letting my pride harm Bump; I should’ve just kissed him. I should do anything he wants to protect my baby.
Now…I wince as my belly cramps up, something churning deep inside of me, a feeling like flesh tearing. It reminds me of dry-heaving, the tightness in my belly. The fear grows and grows until I am on the verge of panic. I need to get out of here. I need to get to a doctor. Miscarriage…I try and close my mind to the word: an evil word; a foreboding word. But I cannot. The possibility is too real. Maybe the baby is already dead. Maybe the life I have been tending these past four months is already dead inside of me. I bite my lip, but still a whimper escapes me. The whimper sounds pitiful and small compared with the panic and fear which attacks me. It sounds far too weak.
“Shut up,” Trent says casually, without turning. “You could’ve made this so much easier, you pregnant slut. You could’ve made everything so easy. Why didn’t you just give yourself to me, that day in summer, eh? Why didn’t you just be a good whore and give yourself to me? That’s what you whores never seem to understand. You don’t get it, do you? You’re not meant to flap your stupid fucking lips every time a stupid thought enters your stupid head. No, no, you’re not meant for that. Why not just shut your cunt mouth and let me do the thinking for you, huh? Oh, god, I hate whores like you. Ungrateful, pathetic whores. And you’re the most pathetic whore I’ve ever met, easy. No question about that. No way.”
He turns, stands, walks over me to. “Look at you,” he says, disgust in his voice. I don’t look up at him, but stare down at my feet. I don’t whimper. I hold my breath. I do nothing which could give him cause to strike me again. I close my mind to pride, I close my mind to the woman who was somehow able to stand up to him that day in summer. I close my mind to all of that and become the meek, obedient woman I would’ve been had I stayed in my parents’ pre-planned suburban life. I become less than nothing; I become a shadow. I make myself so small and meaningless that it would seem like a chore to harm me—or my baby.
“You see,” Trent says with satisfaction. “You whores are so pathetic that all it takes is a little jab in the belly and you turn into mice.” He chuckles softly, and then kneels down, elbows resting on his knees. “Look at me,” he whispers.
I don’t want to look at him, but I know I don’t have a choice. I say to myself: everything I do now, I do for my baby. Whatever is required for me to survive, I do for my child. The pain in my belly is still twisting and aching and throbbing, and detaching. That is the strangest part. I
t’s like I can feel my baby lifting his/her tiny hands and pushing away from his/her life support system. Mad, impossible, and yet the thought plants itself in my mind, and grows bigger and bigger as I lift my gaze and look at Trent.
“Good,” he says. He licks his lips. I force myself not to cringe. “I think it’s about time I had that kiss, don’t you?” At first I think this is a rhetorical question, but when I don’t reply he lets out a long sigh. “I said, I think it’s about time I had that kiss.”
I swallow: pride, dignity, everything. I swallow it deep down, and then nod shortly. “Y-yes,” I say. “I think so.”
He smiles. The worst part is that the smile looks real. It’s like he actually thinks I want to kiss him, like he’s forgotten that he brutally punched me in the belly, like he has given no thought that I might be agreeing to this solely because I am afraid that my child might be in grave danger.
“Good,” he says, standing up and taking two steps to me, and then kneeling down again. “What a good slut you’ve turned out to bet. Close your eyes, and open your mouth.”
I almost whimper at this, the thought is so revolting, but somehow I manage to bury those feelings and do as he says. I close my eyes, plunging myself into a world of darkness, and then open my mouth. My lips are dry, tongue heavy. I hear him lean across to me, the crinkle of his leather jacket, the way his breathing gets quicker.
“Good whore,” he whispers, and his breath spreads over me, just as Rust’s has many times now, but this makes me want to vomit again. No—I can’t vomit. I can’t. I have to stay strong. He is less than half an inch from my lips now, not seeming to care that I reek of sick, my shirt and my lips covered with it. In less than a second, he will kiss me. In less than a second, this psychotic, greasy, violent, sickening man will lay his lips on me. “Good,” he repeats, and now he’s so close that his breath is in my mouth.
His lips are about to touch mine when, suddenly, a sound like a car backfiring repeatedly comes from below, shaking the floor.
“Fuck!” he roars, jumping back to the table. “What the fuck!”
I open my eyes, panting. The sound gets louder and more frequent, repeated bang-bang-bangs, and then I realize what it is: gunfire. Trent’s men are firing. I look over his shoulder at the monitors, some of which are green with night vision. There, three tiny figures on one of the monitors, crouching down behind a large piece of disused machinery. Is that Rust? Is that man with the swollen, bulging face Rust? I can’t tell, not from here, not with the quality of the image.
The gunfire stops for a moment—perhaps they are reloading—and then carries on, the men on the monitor peeking their heads up to fire a couple of shots and then being pinned down straightaway.
Trent picks up his cellphone. “What the fuck is this?” he screams. “How the fuck did they get in here—No, I wasn’t watching the fucking outside because I was fucking busy you fucking fuck! Kill them! Fucking shoot them!”
He waves his arms as he talks, and then in one quick movement he spins on me. I instinctively drop my gaze, staring down at Bump and my legs…and the blossoming red patch which stains my pants, spreading out over my thighs, and then dripping down my calves. So much blood: too much blood. More blood than I knew a person could produce. More blood than any single person should be able to produce. That’s my baby. My baby is bleeding out of me. Oh Christ, oh fucking god…my baby is bleeding out of me.
My mind clouds. Nothing else exists but that spreading pool of blood. All at once, I am screaming, not thinking, just screaming as loud as I can. “Rust! Rust! Our baby! Rust! Please! Rust! Help! Rust! Rust! Help me! Rust! Rust! Rust!”
Trent grits his teeth, growling, and then looks around the room. He picks up a length of wood which might’ve come from a desk or one of the crates in the factory. Still muttering on the phone—words which I cannot hear over the sound of the gunfire and my screaming, words which I don’t want to hear when my baby is oozing onto my legs—he walks across the room and brings the length of wood down on the top of my head.
I am vaguely aware that the wood snaps in two, and then the spot begins to throb. But I don’t stop screaming. Somehow, my desperation pushes me on. Trent curses, picks up another piece of wood, and then advances on me again.
“Stupid pointless little whore,” he says, lifting the wood up. “Stupid fucking cunt.”
This time when he brings the wood down, my head slumps down and my eyelids grow heavy. In those last few moments before sleep—or death, maybe it is death, maybe this is how it all ends for me—takes me, I watch as my pants turn dark red, the blood shifting and blossoming and spreading like the patterns of some grim Rorschach test.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rust
The muzzle flare of the rifles light up the room, flashing like a strobe light and then pausing as the unpatched reload. As they fire on us, I manage to poke my head up—just an inch, just enough to see—and get a layout of the room. There’s more machinery in the middle than I first thought, the unpatched ducking down behind it, and up at the top of the staircase the unpatched lean over the railing firing wildly. They should’ve killed us by now. We should be lying dead on the floor. So either they’ve never fired these kinds of weapons before or they’re very new. I hear someone grunt, trying to shove their clip into their rifle; they’re new at this, then, I confirm. That’s good. We can use that.
I relate all this to Zeke in a few muttered words.
“Alright,” he says, voice loud over the rat-tat-tat of gunfire against metal.
On the floor with his hand over his ears, Joseph squeaks something too quiet to hear. The kid is scared shitless. Zeke and I are the only veterans in a sea of newbies. It’s ridiculous to think that all this time it’s these bastards—who fire blindly from their positions instead of alternating fire and advancing on us—are the bastards who’ve been running circles around The Damned. For a moment, I think I hear Allison screaming. But just for a moment, and then the gunfire drowns it out, and when they stop to reload, the sound has stopped—if it was ever there.
“You know what we have to do,” Zeke says.
“Yeah,” I grunt. “You drawin’, or me?”
“You’re the better shot,” Zeke says.
“Alright. Be careful.”
Zeke nods. Then he lies flat on the floor and crawls to the edge of the machinery. I do the same, but crawl to the other edge. Joseph stays facedown behind me, squeaking in fear. I can’t blame him. The kid has never been in a gunfight before. The ringing out of bullets and the scent of gun smoke is way different to movies. When I’m at the end of the machinery, I wait for Zeke. I close my eyes and count, as I have done before: five, four, three…Calming myself, getting myself ready. I’ll have to time it perfectly. As soon as Zeke jumps up and fires, drawing their fire, I need to jump up and kill as many as possible. Two, one …
“Motherfuckers!” Zeke roars, leaping to his feet and firing into the air, making ’em think he can’t shoot for shit and turning them to him.
I wait for half a second until the unpatched start firing on Zeke’s position, and then I quietly climb to my feet and aim my rifle over the edge of the metal. I aim carefully, lining up my targets, and then I fire: five controlled bursts, turning the heads of five men into exploding melons. Blood sprays everywhere and they collapse onto their fronts and backs, gurgling and gasping, clawing at their ruined flesh before dying. The remaining men—the ones at the top of the staircase and a couple behind crates at the rear of the floor—begin firing on me, which is when Zeke and I duck down and wait. We crawl to different areas of the machinery, nod at each other, and then I wait for Zeke to jump up.
That’s why you don’t hire rookies for protection. Any man can hold a gun, but it takes a man who has been fired at all his life to stay calm when the bullets are pounding around him. I start counting down again, slowly, calmly. It’s strange, but since the bullets have started smashing all around us, the pain in my face has subsided, and even my overactive m
ind has subsided. Just calm: just the fight. That is all that I need to worry about. Five, four, three…And I watch Zeke rise to one knee, keeping his head low, two, one…Zeke leaps to his feet, fires, and then ducks.
I lean up and take aim. The men at the top of the staircase are clustered. I take them out with one controlled spray, the bullets thudding into their chests and heads and necks, causing some of them to fall over the railing and land on the floor. The other two, the ones behind the crates, drop their weapons and turn on their heels. Their weapons make metallic resounding clanging sounds, echoing above us, and then I hear them open and slam a door.
“Alright,” I mutter, scanning the room, which stinks of blood and piss and gun smoke and death. “Let’s make our way upstairs. There seems to be something those assholes were guarding up there. Let’s hope it’s Allison.”
I turn to Zeke, waiting for a response, but he’s just slumped on the floor, unmoving. I watch as Joseph peeks between his fingers and glances around, surprised that the shooting has stopped. “Zeke,” I say. “Come on, man.”