The Forgotten Girl

by Rio Youers

  “You know what you’re doing, right?” Steve-O gasped.

  I didn’t. This was seat-of-the-pants improvisation. The one thing I did know: With the inside of the Altima splashed with blood and brains, and with a corpse lolling around in the front seat, the hunt dog would avoid the busier neighborhoods. This worked in my favor. My half-assed plan was to run him off the road, then drag him from the wreckage. I’d throw him in the trunk with Steve-O’s wheelchair, then drive to an abandoned lot to bleed—or break—the information out of him; I had a feeling the bonesnapper would want to get involved.

  A tight left turn, leaving rubber on the blacktop. We blazed down a near-empty street, bumpers touching, across an all-way, then over a series of uneven railroad tracks that almost bounced me off the road. These were the backstreets of South Nashville, mostly industrial and residential, with police and pedestrian presence at a minimum. The reckless way we were driving, though, it was just a matter of time before I saw red-and-blue lights flashing in the rearview. I had to end this.

  I tore into the oncoming lane, foot to the deck, edged alongside the Altima. We traded more paint and I lost the passenger side mirror. The steering wheel jolted in my hands and the car’s interior shook.

  “Whoa, fuck.” Steve-O had both hands pressed to the roof. I’m sure his phantom legs were similarly extended to the floor.

  I eased off the gas, jerked the wheel right, trying to catch the Altima’s back end and spin it out. There was a metallic crunch as I buckled the rear door. The Altima swayed but kept control. I was about to hit it again when the driver’s window scrolled down and the semi-automatic appeared.

  “Harvey…”

  “I see it.”

  I jumped on the brakes—saw two flashes. The first bullet struck the hood. The second went wild. I rolled back behind the Altima, punched the gas, and thudded into its rear bumper. One of my headlights exploded and a deep crease appeared in the hood. The Altima veered into the left lane, then back into the right. I thought it was about to lose control, but the hunt dog braked hard, threaded the needle between two parked cars, then ripped through a chain-link fence and across a patch of scrub.

  The maneuver was sudden. It took me by surprise and I couldn’t follow. I lost sight of him momentarily—made a right at the next intersection and howled down a narrow street lined with low-income houses. Another right turn—cutting across someone’s yard, hitting a garbage can—and I saw the Altima burst across the road ahead of me, trailing a strip of chain link.

  I got the rental under control and followed, the needle rising from thirty to sixty miles per hour. We tore down streets not much wider than our cars, tires rumbling off the cracked asphalt. We made mazy right and left turns, hitting fences and mailboxes, occasionally causing pedestrians to spring out of our paths. Tatum groaned on the backseat, sliding this way and that. The last time I was involved in a high-speed chase, her daughter—also unconscious—had been flopping around in the foot well. It had ended favorably for me on that occasion. I prayed for lightning to strike twice.

  Also on the backseat, secured somewhat by Tatum’s prone body: the ninja smoke bombs I’d made at the motel. I’d packaged them sensibly—in an egg carton, on little cotton wool pillows, just like Dad had shown me—but was acutely aware how volatile they were. One too many bumps and the car would be filled with blinding smoke.

  The Altima steered off-road, popped over the curb, smashed through a wooden fence. I was right on its ass. We careened across what looked like a graveyard for trucks, with old Macks and Peterbilts sitting on their rims. I avoided a trailer with a collapsed landing gear, then put my foot down and took another swipe at the Altima’s back end. We bounced off each other, shimmied, veered in opposite directions around the remains of a semi. As I sped toward him again, I saw the handgun reappear. There was a sequence of muzzle flashes. Two bullets pocked the rental’s front fender and a third struck the A-frame on the passenger side.

  “Motherfucker,” Steve-O screamed. If his guns—Bonnie and Clyde—had been within reach, he would have fired back. One good tire shot and he might have ended this where I could not.

  “Can you get a latch?” I asked desperately, swinging behind the Altima again. “Break his arms, or something?”

  “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” Steve-O replied. His balding head glistened with sweat. “I need to be close. Eye to eye. And ideally not getting shot at.”

  The handgun slid through the window as the hunt dog switched his attention back to driving. We exited the lot the way we’d entered it: by crashing through a flimsy wooden fence. On the backstreets again, we made wild left and right turns, our dented panels clattering, tires smoking. We motored through another residential area and came out on Lafayette Street. This was a busier road, four lanes, plenty of traffic. I saw a university campus, a McDonald’s, a news station—a fucking news station. Cop presence was inevitable. Live coverage was possible. The hunt dog wouldn’t want to be on this road for long.

  “Abort fuckin’ mission,” Steve-O said. “This is bullshit, Harvey. We’ll think of another plan.”

  “There is no other plan.”

  The hunt dog turned off Lafayette, narrowly missing a city bus. I roared up behind him and slammed his bumper again. He lurched, almost lost control.

  “We’ll get him,” I said unconvincingly.

  “This is bullshit,” Steve-O said again.

  We flew across an all-way, then the road swept right into an industrial zone. It was partially blocked by a truck reversing into a loading bay. Off-road again, through one empty parking lot, then another. There was a factory to the right and a warehouse to the left. Directly ahead, the lot was enclosed by chain-link fence with thin trees and bushes beyond this. The hunt dog would have to brake unless he wanted to drive through them. I saw the chance to make my move.

  I swerved right, came up on the Altima’s passenger side so that the hunt dog wouldn’t get a clean shot at us. He slowed like I knew he would and I crunched into him. The impact was impressive. Our airbags ballooned, driving us back into our seats, coating us with powder. One of the rental’s tires blew and we spun out of control. The Altima spun, too. We crashed together through the fence and our momentum carried us through the trees and bushes. There was a ten-foot drop on the other side into—ironically—a junkyard, where I assumed our vehicles would remain. We hit the ground hard. The Altima rolled onto its side and skated twenty feet trailing a comet tail of sparks. The rental landed on all fours and bounced, and even then I may have gotten it under control if not for the smoke bombs.

  They spilled from their comfortable pillows and detonated simultaneously. A single earsplitting crack. White smoke flooded the interior. I dimly heard Steve-O—“Whafucksat?”—but couldn’t see him. I couldn’t see anything. My heart exploded from my mouth. My fears and failures leapt onto my chest and stomped. I turned the wheel hopelessly, struck something too hard, and the rental flipped, first onto its roof, then back onto its wheels.

  Blood as warm as bath water filled my left eye and the ringing in my ears was more like screaming.

  * * *

  I unbuckled my seatbelt, threw my shoulder against the door. It jammed, then opened with a creak. I spilled onto the ground, coughing, crawling through broken glass and fluids. All I could think about was dragging the hunt dog from his wrecked vehicle and getting Sally’s whereabouts out of him. It wasn’t too late, I could still—

  A gunshot halted me. The bullet met the ground an inch from my right hand, spraying me with glass and chips of concrete. I fell backward with a cry, then fanned at the smoke still swirling from the rental and saw the hunt dog standing ten feet away. He was injured, poised crookedly. Some of the blood on his smudged face was his partner’s but not all of it. The hand holding the gun was remarkably steady, though.

  “You are one stupid bastard,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  Steve-O dragged himself from the rental. Needles of
glass glittered in his face and a flap of loose skin hung across his brow. I wondered if his psychic coil was amped and ready to deal some damage—snap every bone in this motherfucker’s body. Even then I believed we could pull this off. One stupid bastard, indeed.

  “Where is she?” I asked again, pushing myself to one knee.

  The hunt dog switched the sights from me to Steve-O.

  “Move and I’ll kill him,” he said.

  “WHERE IS SHE?”

  Another gunshot, and this wasn’t designed to miss. The bullet caught Steve-O high in the chest and drove him backward. He cracked his skull on the rental’s buckled wheel arch and flopped loosely to one side.

  “The bitch in the backseat will be next,” the hunt dog promised, then leered through the bloody mask of his face. “Although the guys will want to have some good ol’ hokeypokey with her.”

  I raised my hands. My stomach clenched and my groin turned to ice.

  The hunt dog staggered a little, wiped blood from his eyes, then with his free hand pulled his cell phone from his pants pocket. He dialed someone, never taking his eyes—or the gun—off me.

  I lowered my head and conceded that it was over. I was beaten. Sally was beaten. The bad guys would win, and not for the first time.

  “Where are you?” the hunt dog spoke into his phone. “Okay, listen: MNPD may be en route to Big Jim’s Auto Salvage in South Nashville. Have them redirected. Then get your ass out here. Call the rest of the guys. Fuck yeah, all of them. You’re not going to believe this shit.”

  He ended the call, slipped the phone back into his pocket, staggered toward me. I indulged in the fantasy of Tatum springing from the backseat, taking control of the hunt dog’s mind, then having him point the barrel at his own head. This didn’t happen, of course. No Hollywood moments for this kid. Instead, the hunt dog raised the gun to shoulder height and hammered the grip off the top of my skull.

  I saw stars. Again. They were brilliant and many.

  Twenty-Nine

  This all began in a cinderblock room. Made perfect sense that it should end in one.

  My cheek was flat to the cement floor. I tasted blood and oil. My eyelids fluttered and I saw a pair of polished shoes with blood on the soles. Beyond these, a pair of boots large enough to belong to Frankenstein’s monster, also with blood on the soles.

  Ah, fuck, I thought.

  “Get him up. I want him to see this.”

  I recognized that voice. Characterless, emotionless, as nondescript as the car he drove and the clothes he wore. My eyes followed the polished shoes up. Jackhammer, with his stitched-together face and low fists swinging.

  Ah, fuck.

  Two sets of arms dragged me to my feet. The room pirouetted. I moaned, screwed my eyes shut.

  Bright pain, suddenly. An open-handed slap rocked my head to the left and I would’ve dropped if I wasn’t being held up. My face filled with heat. Someone laughed and said, “Oh mama, that was a tasty slap-cake.” More laughter and murmuring. I wondered how many hunt dogs were in the room.

  Another slap, backhanded, not as hard, but again I would have dropped if those meaty arms hadn’t been keeping me upright. This was followed by a rapid slap-slap-slap on my glowing right cheek. I groaned, shook my head. One eye cracked open.

  “That’s it, loverboy. Wakey-wakey.”

  I didn’t recognize the hunt dog slapping me, but he had the same tough hands and blank face as his counterparts. I pulled away from him. My head rolled back. I blinked and looked at the roof. It was high and wide, crisscrossed with steel girders. It was the roof of a building that didn’t have neighbors. I could scream for as long and loud as I wanted, but no one would hear me.

  My head rolled back down. Mr. Slap had gone and now Jackhammer stood in front of me. I blinked again, cleared my vision. His face was still healing—stitches across his forehead and cheeks. The sling had gone, though. He had use of both arms.

  “Mr. Lang apologizes for not being here in person,” he said with a smile. “He’s somewhat preoccupied at the moment, but he asked me to extend his warmest regards.”

  “Where … is she?”

  Jackhammer made a grunting sound that was almost a laugh. “That’s what I like about you, Harvey. You’re a tough, ballsy little prick, and you stand up for the things you believe in. There’s simply not enough of that … that tenacity in the world today.”

  I licked blood from my lips, still split from the last beating he’d given me.

  “Sadly, it won’t do you any good.” Jackhammer gripped my shoulder and squeezed, like an uncle offering advice. “In fact, it’s only going to hurt you.”

  I doubled over, the air exploding from my chest, as he drove one of those signature fists into my solar plexus. Both pairs of arms strained to keep me from dropping, then heaved me upright again. Jackhammer clasped my jaw, setting my head on a tee for his next punch. It came. A wide, dull fist booming off my cheek. It reopened the incision I’d made to extract the tracking device. Blood spouted. I spilled to my right and this time the arms, muscular as they were, couldn’t hold me up. I hit the floor in a shower of pain. I spat out a tooth.

  “Get him up.”

  I was hoisted to my feet. Everything was limp and hurting. Jackhammer gave my face a couple of crisp slaps.

  “Eyes open, Harvey. You need to see this.” He clasped my jaw again, cranked my head to the left. “This is all on you.”

  Steve-O was slumped in his wheelchair, coated in blood. That flap of loose skin drooped over his left eye and the hole in his chest oozed slowly. He didn’t appear to be breathing; I’d have believed him dead if not for his right forefinger twitching. He should have been dead, of course—he’d taken a bullet to the chest. I wondered if he was using his bio-PK power to slow his heartbeat, slow the blood flow.

  Tatum was next to him. Clearly more of a threat, she had a burlap sack over her head and her wrists had been duct-taped to the arms of a wooden chair. I couldn’t tell if she was conscious or not. Judging by how still she was, I didn’t think so.

  More disturbing than their condition: the bright red jerrycan on the floor between them. It stank of gasoline.

  My eyes widened. So did my focus. That’s when I saw the hunt dogs. They circled us, penned in by the cinderblock walls. I looked from one unremarkable face to the next.

  I counted eighteen—most, but not all of them—and passed out again.

  * * *

  Slap-slap-slap.

  “The fun is about to begin, Harvey. You’re not sleeping through this.”

  My eyes shot open. I screamed and struggled, kicking my legs, pulling at the gorilla arms still holding me from behind. Jackhammer pacified me with a swift, brutal blow to the stomach. I curled and cried.

  “No … please, no.”

  Jackhammer used a blood-spotted handkerchief to dab his stitched face, then gestured at one of the many hunt dogs. He—smooth-skulled, blank-eyed—stepped forward, grabbed the jerrycan, and splashed Steve-O with gasoline. It poured over his wounded face, over that raw flap of skin, onto his shoulders and chest. Steve-O writhed in his chair. The wheels rolled back and forth.

  “Don’t do this,” I begged. “Please.”

  “Fuck you, Harvey,” Jackhammer said.

  “I dragged them into this. They didn’t want to do it.” I freed my arms and clawed at Jackhammer. He slapped my hands away. “I blackmailed them.”

  “What part of ‘fuck you’ don’t you understand?”

  “Please.”

  He rocked me with a stinging backhand slap that started my nose bleeding. I looked at the cement floor, then at Steve-O—still writhing—then back at Jackhammer. He was holding Corvino’s wallet.

  “We found this in your bag. Where’d you get it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Did you kill him?” Jackhammer raised his eyebrows. “Nah, I can’t believe a little pissant like you killed Jackie. Your girlfriend, maybe. But you had something to do with it. Why else would you have his wall
et?”

  “They had nothing to do with it.” I pointed at Steve-O and Tatum.

  “Jackie was my best friend,” Jackhammer said. “We were in the marines together. We were like brothers.”

  I looked at Tatum. She was awake now—roused, no doubt, by the gasoline fumes and Steve-O’s whimpers. Her arms strained at the duct tape binding them. Her head moved inside the burlap sack, scrolling steadily from left to right. I thought of Dad pointing his radio telescope at the sky, trying to get a signal.

  “How long have you known these redneck assholes?” Jackhammer asked, jerking his thumb at Steve-O and Tatum. “A day? Two days? Not exactly friends for life. Killing them doesn’t begin to make up for Jackie.”

  Tatum’s head moved this way and that. I knew what she was doing: registering the sounds—not just Jackhammer’s voice, but every breath, sniff, and cough in the room. She was gauging her targets. Not that it would do any good; there was a reason that sack was over her head.

  I need a line—a bridge, she’d said as we’d followed the Altima through the Nashville streets. I can’t even see them.

  I looked at the twenty-plus hunt dogs gathered around us. Even if Tatum could see them, how many could she take out? Three? Six?

  All of them?

  “You’ve caused a lot of problems, Harvey,” Jackhammer continued. I smelled his pungent breath, even over the reek of gasoline. “We’re down numbers—lost another man tonight. A damn good soldier. This is where we get even.”

  I gestured toward Steve-O and Tatum. “They’ve suffered enough.”

  “But you haven’t.”

  “Don’t do this.”

  “Once again: fuck you.”

  I lowered my arms, discreetly ran my fingers over the cherry-sized pellet secured in the lining of my front pocket. Jackhammer bumped his chest against mine, growled like a real dog, then pointed at Steve-O.

  “Light him up,” he said.

  The hunt dog who’d been holding my right arm stepped around me, walked toward Steve-O. He took a Zippo from his pocket, flipped it open, spun the wheel.