Selena

by Greg Barth

  I stepped around the front counter. His chair squeaked as he stood up. The sound of footsteps grew louder as he approached the door.

  He emerged from the office. When the bulk of his body filled the doorway, I swung the machete. The blade caught him on the cheek. The steel made contact with his teeth and jawbone. I pulled the blade free. A line of red ran along his cheek; the skin of his jaw flapped loose.

  He backed away. He stumbled backward and fell on his back to the floor.

  I came through the door, machete raised over my head. I straddled his fat body and leaned over him.

  He was fumbling at his belt—he was reaching for his gun. When his hand came up with a can of pepper spray, I knew that I must be worth a lot of money to Faranacci.

  Dumbass.

  I came down hard with the machete. He blocked the blow with his arm. I repeated the motion, hacking savagely at his forearm with the sharp blade over and over again. The machete was heavy and unwieldy in my grip, but with each swipe the blade cleaved through flesh and muscle and bit into bone.

  Droplets of blood were flung across the floor and against the TV screen from the blade. A crimson shower of gore dripped down from his forearm and coated his face.

  “Stop, stop, stop!” he shouted.

  I kept chopping at his arm. The blade wobbled in my flimsy grip, but it was getting the job done. When he’d had enough, he lowered his bloodied arm.

  He screamed up at me. “STOP! PLEASE!”

  I brought the blade down and buried it deep in his neck. Blood spurted against the wall from the gaping wound.

  I looked him in the eye and watched him die. With each weakening spurt of blood, the light in his eyes faded.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll stop.”

  I threw the machete down.

  EIGHTEEN

  I found my stolen money and my shotgun in the back office closet. The cash and shotgun shells were in a sack.

  I put the shotgun together. I opened the breech and loaded both chambers with green Remington shells each containing double-aught buckshot.

  I closed the breech and grabbed the sack of money. My intention was to grab some clothes from my room and get out of there. I had no idea where Harvey was, and I didn’t have time to look for him. I would let things blow over then come back for Harvey another day. I didn’t want to take any chances that I would have to deal with Faranacci’s guy too, who I thought would arrive at any moment.

  I exited the office and made my way down the walkway that wound around the room entrances.

  Before I got to my room, a door further down opened. It was the door to Emily’s room. Harvey stepped out. He was carrying a trash bag over his shoulder. He took a few steps down the walk toward me before he looked up and saw me. His eyes went wide, and he dropped the trash bag.

  I raised the shotgun and pointed it at him.

  He put his hands up and looked me in the eye. “Don’t do it,” he said.

  “You’re fucking kidding, right?” I said.

  He jumped to the side just as I fired. My shot missed him, the shotgun pellets peppering the side of the motel.

  He rolled in the dusty lot and came up on one knee. He reached behind his back with one hand and brought around a small pistol. He pointed it at me and squeezed off three quick shots.

  I felt something sting the side of my left bicep.

  I pointed the shotgun at his face and fired the second round. His head burst apart in a splatter of blood as his body jerked and fell to the side. The air took on the sweet smell of burnt gunpowder. I breathed it in. The reek of human shit came next. Harvey’s last bowel movement.

  I broke open the breech of the shotgun and ejected the spent shells. I dug two more out and reloaded.

  I considered my options. I could stay and face Faranacci’s man, or I could run.

  Lights came on in a couple of the rooms and a door opened. An old man peered out through the door.

  That settled it. The police would arrive soon. They wouldn’t be happy with me murdering their sheriff with a machete.

  Time to leave.

  The old man came out of the room, pulling his pants on. He looked familiar. It took a second, but I recognized him as the man that had given me a ride to the motel my first night in town.

  I walked up to him, my shotgun at the ready.

  “Hi, Henry,” I said to him.

  “Morning,” he said. His eyes were on the shotgun.

  “Is that your testosterone shot showing, or are you just happy to see me?”

  “Well, you do look pretty good in your, uh...underwear there.” He chuckled. “Guess you’ll be wanting a ride going the other way?”

  “Please,” I said. “You give me a lift, and I’ll double your pension check. How does that sound?” My voice trembled as I spoke.

  “Okay. Just don’t point that gun at me.”

  I lowered it.

  We walked out to his truck and he unlocked my door. The black-and-white border collie was in the passenger seat. “Make room, Max,” I said. He moved over. I climbed in the passenger side of the pickup and the old man got in the driver’s side. He started it up and backed out of the parking space.

  There were two empty hooks under his lever-action Winchester on the gunrack on the back glass of the truck cab. I hung the shotgun on the hooks.

  “Which way?” he said.

  I pointed in the direction that would take me further away from everything.

  He pulled the truck onto the road.

  “You keep that rifle loaded, Henry?”

  “I do. Ain’t much good otherwise.”

  I nodded.

  I rubbed Max under his chin, and he licked blood from my fingers. I shivered violently.

  “Here,” the old man said and turned on the heat. He reached around behind his seat and handed me a shirt.

  It was a dark blue Kentucky Wildcats hoodie. “Good taste,” I said. I slipped it on and pulled the hood over my head.

  “I’d give you some pants if I had some.”

  “It’s okay.” I smoothed my short skirt over my tattered stockings. My hands were shaking uncontrollably.

  Henry’s tone softened. “You going to be okay, kid?”

  I leaned my head against the truck window. I shivered again. I closed my eyes as tight as I could, clenched my hands and pressed them against my eyes, but I couldn’t stop the tears from coming.

  PART THREE: RAVAGE

  “Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries—for heavy ones they cannot.”

  - Niccolo Machiavelli

  “Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to give them all ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.”

  - Marquis de Sade

  “Of Peleus’ son, Achilles, sing, O Muse,

  The vengeance, deep and deadly; whence to Greece

  Unnumbered ills arose; which many a souls

  Of mighty warriors to the viewless shades

  Untimely sent; they on the battle plain

  Unburied lay, a prey to rav’ning dogs”

  - Homer, The Iliad

  ONE

  SELENA

  I DRIED MY TEARS with the sweatshirt cuffs. I wiped my nose on the sleeve, leaving a dark trail of wet snot on the cotton fabric. It wasn’t my sweatshirt, but I didn’t think Henry would want it back. It’s not like I had any other clothes to put on.

  “We have to get off this road,” Henry said.

  I nodded.

  The cab of the truck smelled like a mixture of clean dog and old coffee.

  “They’ll set up a roadblock along the county line in no time,” he said.

  Max sat on the seat between us in the cab of the dark pickup truck. I patted his head.

  “I wouldn’t have killed them if they hadn’t murdered a...a friend of mine.”

  We came to a straight stretch of road illuminated by the pickup’s high-b
eam headlights, and Henry gave the old truck more gas.

  “You killed the sheriff. That’ll stir them up and get them out in force. We have a few minutes at most.”

  I shivered.

  Henry turned the heat to its highest setting.

  I was dressed only in the borrowed sweatshirt, a short mini-skirt, and a pair of tattered pink stockings. Mud and the blood of my victims covered my body. “There’s something else you need to know,” I said.

  Henry took his eyes off the road long enough to make eye contact. Henry looked to be at least seventy years old. He was tall and slim. He wore jeans, a red-checkered flannel shirt, and a Case XX ball cap. His hair was white and a length that suggested he didn’t hit the local barbershop every two weeks like most men his age. “What?” he said.

  “There’s another guy coming after me. I don’t know anything about him, but he works for someone named Faranacci back in Johnson City.”

  I didn’t know anything about Henry, just that he was a kind old man who had spent some time in ’Nam and liked visiting a certain whore that worked out of the Apple Valley Inn. And he was doing me, a complete stranger, a great kindness—one that could put him in danger.

  Max lapped at my knuckles.

  I rubbed his black and white spotted neck. His long fur was soft to my touch.

  Henry nodded his head. The lines that spread back from his eyes deepened and lengthened as he squinted in thought. “I’ve heard of Faranacci,” he said.

  “What have you heard of him?”

  He scraped a yellowed thumbnail across the white stubble that sprouted from his chin. “Your shotgun loaded?”

  “It is.”

  “You got more shells in your bag?”

  “Yes. Double-aught buckshot. Couple of boxes.”

  “Good. If Faranacci’s after you, we need to be ready for anything.”

  “You want me to check your rifle?”

  “No. It’s loaded. And it’s got one in the chamber. Just pull back the hammer to full cock, and it’s ready to fire. There’s more cartridges in the glove box.”

  I ran a trembling hand through my hair. I couldn’t do anything with it. It was matted with mud and blood and hung to my shoulders in a tangled mess.

  Max rested his snout across my bare thighs, and I started to warm up.

  “So who is this Faranacci guy?”

  “I don’t know much, just what I’ve heard through the grapevine and what’s been in the papers. They say he runs the hard-core drug trade in Northeast Tennessee. Ruthless, from what I hear.”

  “So if people know that much about him, why is he still running around free? I mean, I get a couple of DUI’s and get caught turning a trick, and the next thing I know, I’m not allowed to cross state lines. How’s this guy getting away with it?”

  “I don’t know, kid. He’s that powerful, I guess.”

  There was no other traffic on the dark country road.

  “His name sounds Italian. Is this guy connected?”

  Henry shook his head. “I doubt it. But don’t take any comfort in that. These guys, if they’re after you, they won’t stop until they’ve pissed on your corpse.”

  “They gotta make me a corpse first,” I said.

  “They say Faranacci’s been trying to clean out the independent drug dealers in his territory. From what I hear, he takes a heavy-handed approach.”

  Henry gave the truck more throttle. He was driving faster than his headlights could illuminate the curved road ahead. I put my hand on the dash.

  “We have to get lost quick,” he said. “It’s okay. I know the road. ”

  “Henry, you don’t have to do this, you know. I mean, I appreciate the help and all, but don’t risk yourself for me.”

  Henry didn’t respond. We road in silence for another mile. Exhaustion set in. Everything from the night before was taking its toll on me.

  I had shaken my ass in a coked-up frenzy at the Champagne Lounge, made out with the owner in an upstairs office, gotten zapped with a Taser in the parking lot, ridden in the trunk of a car, buried my best friend with a shovel, and ended things by murdering two men with a machete and one with a shotgun. To top everything off, I had an emotional breakdown in the passenger seat of Henry’s truck.

  A girl can only do so much.

  Henry broke the silence. “Why would Faranacci be coming after you to begin with?”

  “Some other guys I killed. Previously. Some bad men that did horrible things to me.”

  Henry considered this in silence. He puckered his lips then stretched them back tight as he thought.

  “You see any action in Vietnam?” I asked.

  He nodded, still deep in thought. “Yeah, I did. I was at the Battle of Ia Drang. I was with the First Air Cav.”

  “That sounds kind of familiar.”

  “Mel Gibson made a movie about it. A lot of people watched it.”

  “That’s right. I saw that.”

  “It started with that one, but I saw a bunch of other shit over there, girl. It was all one big cluster, uh...you know, clustered up situation over there.”

  “I think ‘fuck’ is the word you’re looking for, Henry.”

  “Yeah. ‘Fuck’ it is.”

  “So why are you helping me? Don’t you have a family waiting back at home?”

  “No family. I’ll just tell it to you straight, kid.” He paused. I gave him space to think. “I’m dying. It won’t happen today, and it won’t happen this week, but it’s a sure thing.”

  I reached out my hand. He took the steering wheel in his left hand and took my hand with his right.

  A tear slipped down his cheek. When he spoke next, I could tell by the quiver in his words that he was trying to control the emotion in his whispered voice. “Thing is. You’re the first person I’ve told.”

  I gripped his hand tight. I thought I had cried all my tears out earlier, but I felt fresh ones welling up.

  “There’s nobody to tell,” he said. “I thought about telling Chloe over at the Apple Valley Inn and let her know that I’m leaving her my farm and Max and this old truck, but…” he shook his head.

  I patted the top of his hand. “Still. You don’t have to do this. You have days yet to enjoy.”

  “I want to help. I know those guys back there treated you badly. Whatever you did to them, they had it coming. I can’t just sit off to the side and let you fall back into the hands of these people.” He looked over at me. “Besides, this will get my mind off of things. Could be good for me. I like to fight. It’s good for the soul. I know just the place where you can lay low for a while until we can figure this all out.”

  “Fighting is not good for the soul, Henry.”

  He laughed.

  “What is it that you have? Cancer?”

  “Yeah. The kind that you don’t need to bother with fighting. I’m just trying to stay comfortable and enjoy my last few months as best I can.”

  “How do we get out of here?” I said.

  “We’ll take a turn just up ahead. I know these old country roads better than anybody. We won’t hit a major highway or interstate. I’ll get you out of here, and nobody will ever find you.”

  The sky was starting to turn gray in the east.

  Henry looked up at his rearview mirror.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “Headlights coming behind us.”

  He turned without signaling. Once we were on the new road, he floored the accelerator.

  I could make out forest blurring by on either side of the truck as we sped through the night.

  I felt a growing sense of unease creep into my gut.

  TWO

  RAGUS

  When Ragus Breed turned the Audi into the parking lot of the Apple Valley Inn, two young women were standing outside of one of the motel rooms looking down at the dead man on the ground in front of them.

  The Apple Valley Inn was an L-shaped motel on the side of the road. It had been freshly painted rece
ntly, but the building was old and had seen better days.

  There were only three cars in the parking lot. One was a sheriff’s cruiser.

  Ragus pulled up close to the two bystanders, parked the car, and got out. One end of an 18-inch length of lead pipe was cupped in the palm of his hand. The length of it ran up the back of his arm, keeping it concealed from view.

  The women were dressed like strippers. One had her hair in long blonde pig-tails and was wearing a sheer top and cutoff shorts. The other was a brunette with short hair in a mini-skirt and a half t-shirt that showed her stomach.

  They looked up at Ragus as he approached.

  “Are you a cop?” the blonde asked.

  Ragus Breed was a tall, hulking figure of a man. He had wavy black hair speckled with gray. He wore it long and wild in Jim Morrison fashion. Ragus was six-foot four-inches tall and weighed in just shy of 300 pounds.

  “What happened here?” he said to the girls.

  “Somebody shot the motel owner,” the brunette said. She pointed down at the corpse.

  “Is that Harvey?” Ragus asked.

  “Yeah,” the blonde said.

  Ragus got down on one knee and looked at the man. He had been shot in the head. It looked like he had been hit with a load of buckshot. Half of his face had been ripped away. His teeth and jawbone were exposed. The side of his head was cratered in and blackened with blood. The body reeked of shit.

  “When did this happen?” he asked.

  “Just now,” the brunette said.

  “Like, not even five minutes ago,” the blonde said.

  “You call the police?” he said.

  “Yeah, I dialed 911. You’re the first one here,” she said.

  Ragus stood. “Did you see who did it?”

  “Yeah, some girl,” the brunette said. “She got in the truck with Henry and they just drove off.”

  “Henry?”

  “He’s a...customer of mine,” the blonde said.

  Ragus nodded. “What did the truck look like?”

  “It’s an old red Ford pickup,” the brunette said.