“… so stay down, and make sure your marker is out there.”
“The lieutenant is down!” Andy reported. “We’re taking RPG fire!”
“Acknowledged,” came a voice, just as a low rumble began to build in the sky. “Stay under cover, and keep your heads down.”
“Roger that!” Andy said, and looked around the others as the roar from above grew louder. He grinned.
“Our turn,” he said to the others.
As the din of the pair of F/A-18D hornets reached an apex and began to subside, the satellite guided JDAMs slammed into the large building at the end of the village, and two enormous explosions rang out. The concussion from the two thousand pound bombs shook the ground, and the fireballs and towers of smoke left nothing but a stub where the building had been. The marines in the building kept their heads down as stone, mortar, plaster and other debris rained down after the explosions.
Forsythe’s eyes opened, and he looked at Andy on top of him.
“I suppose in some countries this means we’re married,” Forsythe joked.
“You wish,” Andy said. “You ain’t good enough for me.”
“Dream on, shit ball,” Forsythe countered as the two men were getting up, and the squad was gathering. “Now let’s get everybody ready, and go clean this toilet up before we head to the rendezvous.”
“RAH!” Andy acknowledged, and started to check himself and his weapons over.
CHAPTER FOUR- ASH’S WOES
She was gorgeous; a stunner with a fine figure, and a sparkling smile. As she strode across the room, her tall heels clicked on the floor, and what was left of her clothing was being held by a towering, mountain of muscle who smiled at her as her eyes glittered from the applause sending her back stage.
She smiled broadly as the man, Mo, handed off the pile of clothing and accessories that had made her into a sort of glittering, sexy cowgirl, and she shot a wink at Mo as she passed him. He watched her ass as she strode past toward the dressing rooms of the Foxtail Lounge, and then he turned his attention back to the stage as the place’s DJ was beginning to announce the next dancer, bringing forth a round of hooting and cheers from the place’s crowd.
Her name was Ashley Welles, and she slowed her pace as she neared the dressing room door, drawing in a long breath and letting her face glow a bit less. She stopped, listening to the roar of the filthy, leering old drunks out front, and at once, her skin crawled at the very thought that many of them had just had their paws all over her. She swallowed, and was set to head into the dressing room when she heard a voice, and turned toward it.
“It was like I was watching the queen of the whores out there,” came the voice, and she turned to see the well-tanned face of Marco, the Fox Tail’s owner. He was, as usual, dressed well, and he adjusted a large ring on his right hand as he looked at Ash, whose expression soured at him.
“What do you want, Marco?” she asked.
“Take it easy, baby,” he oozed back at her. “Just wanted to congratulate you for tonight, huh? They loved you out there.”
“Yeah, it was real crowd pleasing,” she agreed sarcastically. He laughed, dangerously.
“Don’t pretend you don’t love all the attention,” he said.
“If there was anything else I could do to get out of here I’d-”
“Yeah, well there ain’t,” he snarled, cutting her off. “So you just remember that, and you keep shakin’ those tits and that pretty little ass of yours out there. I don’t want to ever hear about something like Tuesday again.”
“The son of a bitch tried getting his hand-”
“That’s my problem, not yours,” Marco interrupted again, and her eyes rolled up at the ceiling. Now, he strode casually toward her. There was an inherent danger in his tone, his posture, and the fact that he was now within striking range of her. “That’s a very good friend of mine, and you? Your job is to make the people who pay money in here happy. Now, if I think he crossed the line? I’ll make sure he knows it.”
Her gaze shifted down on him.
“Are we done?” she asked.
He smiled. His hand rose, so quickly it made her flinch, and he laughed.
“Yeah, we’re done,” he said, using his raised hand to dab at the corner of one eye. “Go clean that cake off your face, and then go home so you can try to wash the whore off.”
He walked away, and she glared after him, then walked into the dressing room, angrily throwing down the cowgirl costume, and hurling herself heavily onto the chair before the mirrors. She was alone in the room, and she stared into the mirror for a moment. She then felt a quiver in her face, and broke down to sobbing as her head lowered. Before she could completely lose it, she heard the sound of music from beside her, and she looked over to see that her cell phone was making the music, and vibrating.
Snatching it up, and drawing in a long breath, she looked at the phone to see that it was her mother, and she took another breath. She couldn’t have her mother knowing that life was finally swallowing her. After the fights they’d had, and the scolding that Ashley, or Ash as everyone called her, had taken for the lack of direction in her life, the stripping, the weed, the more than questionable boyfriends… She answered.
“Mom! Hey!” she said.
“Ash?” came her mother’s nervous-sounding voice. “Are you coming over tonight?”
Ash’s head rolled to the side as her shoulders sagged in annoyance.
“I don’t know,” she groaned. “I don’t want to hear any more about how shitty I am at living my own life.”
“This isn’t about that,” Susan Welles said at the other end of the call. “Your father was just here, and he scares me. Mike was going to try to come down from his place, but he can’t get here for a couple weeks. Can you please just stop over?”
Now, Ash recognized the fear in her mother’s voice, and though her mother couldn’t see it, she nodded.
“Yeah, mom,” Ash said. “I’ll be over.”
While Ash had taken to cleaning the makeup from her face, Susan had hung up the phone, and returned to the front room of the house where her other daughter, the seventeen year old Dana, turning into another Ash, in terms of her beauty, was sitting.
Dana was unlike her sister, though, in that she was trying hard to escape the fate that she had noted almost every other family member had. She was determined to finish high school strong, and get to college, and get away from these people. Especially her father, who had not so much divorced Susan as he’d just left and that was that.
“Everything’s going to be all right, honey,” Susan said to Dana, who looked up from the phone she was holding.
“I’m not worried,” Dana said. “Dad will go somewhere and keep drinking, and pass out. When he wakes up, he won’t even remember he was here.”
“I don’t know,” Susan said. “He was so angry tonight.”
“Why now?”
“I had him served with the papers, Dana,” Susan said. “I want him out of our lives, for real, and for good.”
“Good for you, mom,” Dana said, sounding almost disbelieving. “Maybe you should move up near Uncle Mike.”
“We talked about that,” Susan said, softly. “I haven’t been up there in ages.”
“Good time to go,” Dana remarked. “Sounds like the war may be ending.”
Susan smiled.
“I hadn’t heard that,” she said to Dana, who shrugged.
“That’s because it’s not true,” Dana said with a smile. “But it’s still a good time to get up there, and just get out of here. I wouldn’t even take any of this if it doesn’t mean anything to you. Start totally clean.”
“Clean…” Susan sighed.
But the door burst open, kicked from the outside, and in an instant, the startled women were on their feet in terror. A rough, bearded man stepped in from behind the power of his big, black motorcycle boots that had nearly taken the door from its hinges, and he smiled at them. He had a chain from his nose to one lip, a
tattoo of a teardrop below his left eye, and long, black hair as he stared down at them from his six-foot-five frame. This was Tommy “Tank” Hollister, and he gave a quick nod to them. Clumping from behind tank gave the indication that others were with him, and they came.
The first was Susan’s estranged husband- Ash and Dana’s father- and he still looked angry as he shoved Tank aside to glare at Susan. He was a hard-looking man of about forty five, thin, and shorter than Tank, with a working man’s muscles from many years of construction jobs. His fists were balled tight, and he stepped toward her as another of them came
This was a solid, shorter, brute of a man. He had a patch over his right eye, and a rough layer of facial hair growing around the goatee he had. He was smirking as he entered, his thumbs hooked into the belt loops of his jeans as his tattooed arms hung at his sides. Clyde Farrington was a pig, and a thug, and there was not one of the Welles women that liked the way his eyes roved. Dana could remember a time that her father, in a rage, had gotten into a vicious fight with Clyde in the yard after a lot of shouting- something about Ash.
“Burt…” Susan said to Mr. Welles as he stopped before her. “What are you doing back?”
“Whatever the fuck I want,” he snarled back, which brought a laugh from Clyde and Tank.
“You should just go,” Susan cautioned him. “I don’t want any trouble, and-”
“Well you got trouble!” Welles roared at her. “I know what you got up to. You been up and seen some lawyer, and you’re gonna get rid of me. Me! You think I’m going that easy?”
“What more do you want from me, Burt?” she asked, her eyes welling with tears.
“I want you to just stay right where you are, and love your damn husband,” he said. “How hard has that ever been?”
“Pretty hard, when your husband’s out with other women, and spending all the money on booze,” Dana interjected hotly. A hand swished across, and the back of it caught her on the face, knocking her to the ground. Welles’ finger thrust down at his younger daughter, and his teeth clenched as he fixed his gaze on her.
“You just shut your fucking trap, girl!” he boomed, but Susan had stepped between them, leveling her own slap on Welles.
“Don’t you ever touch her again!” Susan cried out. Welles had drawn back his hand, but Susan was quick to thrust her knee up, getting him right between the legs. He sucked in a breath and wobbled, with Clyde and Tank rounding him toward the women. There was a dreadful moment as Susan, her own eyes glittering with anger, regarded the two moron sidekicks her husband had brought with him.
In this, she failed to notice Welles, as he brought his hand out from under his jacket with a gun in it. The Glock pistol was already leveled on her when she noticed it, and Dana had just looked up as there was a loud roar. The gun went off again, and once more as Dana shrieked in terror, and both Clyde and Tank backed off, away from the shooting. Susan gasped, two dark red blotches spreading across her gray t-shirt as Welles continued to stare at her a moment, before Clyde rushed forward Taking him by the shoulders.
“Come on… come ON!” Clyde demanded, pulling Welles backward toward the door of the double-wide trailer. Tank joined in, and together, they forced Welles from the place, as Susan fell limply to the floor, blood beginning to flow from her lips. Dana was to her own phone in a flash, dialing.
Susan could not even hear the frantic voice of her daughter as Dana relayed the incident to the 911 operator, begging them to get an ambulance to the place. She was fading even as Dana returned to her and grasped her now-bloody hands, crying and laying her head on her mother. As sirens could begin to be heard, Susan was already gone, but at that moment, Ash burst through the door to the place, staring in horror at the scene inside the place. Dana looked up with red eyes, flowing with tears.
“It was dad… daddy shot her…”
Ash shook her head, almost shoved out of the way by police officers and paramedics beginning to rush in. Ash backed away, and then rushed forward to wrap her arms around Dana as they watched their mother being checked over, coated in her own blood. Ash’s tears had begun to flow as well.
Sometime later, after the police had gotten a hotel room for Ash and Dana, and they had been told their mother was pronounced dead at the scene, Ash watched Dana sleeping, having been given valium by the doctor that saw her about the injuries from her father. The police had promised to find all three of the men and lock them up, but Ash barely believed them, as the entire time they were telling her this, both officers had been eyeing she and Dana, knowing full well what Ash’s job was. The town was small.
“I’m gonna go and find Dad,” Ash said quietly to Dana, who was asleep. “He’s going to pay for this.”
She then left, going and getting into her car- a dreadful little hatchback beater that had been her mom’s for so many years. She sped through the little town in Virginia, headed back to the Fox Tail. She knew Marco could help with this, and knew that if she appealed to him, he’d make sure her father, and the other two, would be sorry they ever drew a breath. She regarded what it would cost her, but the dreadful misogynistic things Marco would want to do to her would be something she could wash away with chemicals. And the sweetness of it meaning revenge on her dad would help.
She arrived at the Fox Tail, which was dark, and quiet, but she knew Marco would still be inside, and it was better that there wasn’t loud music and a bunch of dirty old men about. She could more easily sway him into helping her if it was just Mo and the other bouncer, Davis, lurking around the place. She had just put her hand on the door when she felt a grasp like iron on her wrist, and she was spun around, only then realizing she was in real trouble.
Tank had her by the wrist, and he pulled her away from the door, along the side of the building.
“Where you going, girl?” Tank asked her as Clyde joined him. “You headed in there to tattle on your daddy to bad old Marco?”
“He’s gonna cut you motherfuckers!” Ash cried, lashing out at Tank with her foot. She got him on the shin, but he merely stiffened through the pain, and his grasp on her wrist became so tight she was worried he might break it. Clyde was now grabbing her from the other side, and he nodded to Tank.
“Hey asshole, don’t break the merchandise,” he growled at Tank, who sneered at Clyde, but a moment later, relaxed his grip.
“Fuck you,” Ash spat at Clyde, who merely smiled at her.
“Damn, girl, you got the DEVIL in you tonight!” he said, which caused both he and Tank to laugh.
“Let me go!” she demanded of them.
“No, see, your daddy’s in there with Marco right now,” Clyde said. “So you see, you are just gonna keep doing what you do, and Marco’s gonna help us lay low somewhere’s else for a while. You say a fucking word, Mo and Davis are gonna be forced to do some terrible things to ya.”
Now, she barely struggled in their grasp, feeling the burn of tears again.
“Awww, reality sinkin’ in?” Clyde asked, and his free hand slid over her body, which made Tank laugh again.
“Don’t touch me,” she protested.
“See, touchin’ you, and your mom,” Clyde drawled. “Passin’ you around is just like a family tradition, for your daddy. Your ma was a firecracker.”
“I’m gonna-”
“You gonna what?” Clyde demanded, his hand moving from her breasts to her throat. “You gonna what? Scream? Kill me? Go on girl, tell me all that nasty shit you wanna do to me.”
“CLYDE!” Welles roared from nearby. “Let her go.”
At once, Clyde and Tank released Ash, who could see that Marco, Mo, and Davis were with them. Her father smiled, and walked toward his daughter. Marco remained back, and smirked as Welles approached her.
“Guess you came to get some revenge, huh?” Welles said to her.
“You’re gonna pay for what you did to mom,” Ash vowed to him.
“Oh yeah?” Welles retorted. “I tell you what’s really gonna happen. Marco’s gonna make sure you kee
p on dancin’, and making some money for your old man while he keeps the cops off his back. In exchange, we’ll be bringing back some… gifts for Marco to hand out at Christmas time.”
There was a rumble of laughter from everyone but Ash.
“He’s right,” Marco said, approaching. “You know that candy you love so much? Yeah, we’ll have a bunch of it soon. You’ll like that- it makes being a whore so much easier.”
“So why don’t you head on back to your sister, and you just let the grown-ups handle everything else,” Welles said. Her decision was made easier as he leveled the gun on her. “And don’t come back here until Marco calls you. I mean… you wouldn’t want anything to happen to your pretty little sister, right?”
Ash said no more, and walked slowly, in a daze, back toward her car. As she got in, and started it, she felt destroyed. Her hands worked only from memory as she turned the key, and put the car in gear to drive away.
The road was barren, and dark as her headlights cut through it during her journey. A few times, tears welled in her eyes, but her mind was barely working as she returned to the hotel, ascended the stairs to the second level, entered the room, and curled up with Dana to go to sleep. Though it took two of the valium and another hour for her to fall asleep, Ash eventually was freed from the day’s events by slumber.
CHAPTER FIVE- A VISITOR FROM SPACE
At first, they hadn’t known what to make of it- just a blip on a scope that they didn’t understand at first. Then, the discovery turned to horror as experts at NASA realized what it was, and where it was headed. It was an asteroid, roughly the size of Asia, and its trajectory put it on a collision course with the earth. This news was quickly disseminated to the White House, which then found its way to military commanders and foreign nations all around the world. The different sides of the global war distrusted this information at first, but the truth of it soon set in, and meetings were hastily called. They had just over seventy two hours.
Escape from the Dead Page 3