by Rio Youers
Snick.
I made my move. My only move.
* * *
When Dad had handed me the egg carton filled with smoke bombs, he’d advised me to keep one in my pocket. A loose pocket, he’d said. Away from keys and coins. I hadn’t heeded that advice, and when Jackhammer and Brickhead had jumped us in Kansas, it was only luck—the fact that I happened to be within arm’s reach of the carton—that saved us.
Having made a fresh batch at the motel in Nashville, the first thing I did was slip one into the pocket of my jeans. Then I forgot about it. At least until I saw Tatum gauging the position of the hunt dogs from behind the burlap sack.
I thought it would buy us three seconds. Maybe five. Surely not long enough for Tatum to achieve multiple latches and clear the room, but it was the best I could do.
Snick.
All eyes were drawn to the flame. Nobody noticed me slip my right hand into my pocket and pull out the smoke bomb. I waited for Mr. Zippo to get closer to Steve-O, then threw it on the floor between my dirty sneakers and Jackhammer’s polished shoes. I spiked it like a football, making damn sure it went BOOM. And it did. A skull-shaking sound, amplified within the cinderblock walls. Jackhammer staggered backward, quickly veiled by smoke. I spun clear of the hunt dog to my left, lowered my shoulder, and body-checked Mr. Zippo. He was a big dude—they were all big dudes—but I lifted him off his feet just the same. He went sprawling into his hunt-dog friends, knocking two of them to the ground.
Unbalanced, I stumbled into Steve-O’s wheelchair, rolling him backward, then lunged at Tatum and ripped the sack from her head.
“Now!” I screamed.
Her eyes were wide. They crackled with power.
Mom took care of them, I thought.
She came close.
* * *
Tatum’s crackling gaze snapped from one side of the room to the other. She knew exactly where her targets were.
She latched. Controlled. Released.
Again.
And again.
This happened: A total of seven hunt dogs lifted handguns from their holsters, shot the compadre opposite, then turned the barrels on themselves. In the time it took to draw a breath, fourteen hunt dogs lay dead on the floor around me, holes in their skulls, in their chests.
Fourteen.
That quick.
This moment has run through my mind a thousand times since, always chaotic, defying belief. I think now that Tatum drew upon her many pains and disappointments, the unsteady tract of her life. She went deeper than she’d ever been—a maelstrom of psychic energy, not without consequence. Her face palsied. Blood bubbled from her mouth and nose. It even trickled from her eyes. Even so, I like to believe she could have taken out a few more—Jesus, maybe even cleared the room—were it not for the smoke. It had provided a critical diversion, but it also obscured several targets, Jackhammer among them.
I didn’t see him until the smoke had mostly cleared, with Tatum a breath away from collapse and me struggling to make sense of what had just happened. He appeared gun first, then his face floated into view. He screamed. It came from the pit of him. A terrible sound. He had three hunt dogs to his left. Four to his right. Frankenstein’s Boots was one of these. So was Mr. Slap. All had weapons drawn.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Tatum managed. “I tried.”
I flashed back to her trailer, with its leopard-print rug and abstract paintings on the wall, and to what she’d said when I asked if she’d help me: But it’s suicide, hon. Plain and simple. We may as well head over to the range and offer ourselves up for target practice.
There were eight guns aimed at her.
Jackhammer fired first.
* * *
His bullet met her mid-chest and rocked her back in the chair so forcefully its front legs momentarily left the ground. He fired again. They all fired, multiple times. Tatum—already dead—jerked and bounced, deep red holes appearing in her chest and stomach, in the scarred web of her face. Her chair skated backward, through blood and gasoline, until it struck a dead hunt dog and toppled onto its side. Tatum sagged like something torn. The duct tape kept her from spilling to the floor.
* * *
The thunder of gunfire faded, replaced by Jackhammer, still screaming. Some of his stitches had popped. His face seeped and throbbed. He holstered his gun, splashed across the floor, took me by the throat.
“Motherfucker.” He rained blows upon me. Clumsy, numbing blows that rang off my shoulders, neck, the back of my skull. I huddled, trying to protect myself. He threw me to the floor, kicked me in the ribs, then picked me up with one powerful arm and tossed me to the other dogs.
“Hurt him,” he said.
I tried fighting, afraid they’d hollow my eye sockets or chainsaw my arms. But I also tried for Dad, who taught me never to underestimate myself, and who’d always believed in me. I tried for Tatum, who’d surrendered so much to amend her mistakes. And for Steve-O, still slumped in his wheelchair, barely breathing. Mostly I tried for Sally, not because I believed I had any hope of rescuing her, but because she deserved nothing less than everything I had.
Any one of these guys could break me in half with one arm tied behind their back, and I faced eight of them. I smeared blood from my face and raised my fists.
“Fuck you all,” I said.
I’m not a coward.
* * *
I threw laughable haymakers and not one landed. I kicked and clawed as I was pinballed from one hunt dog to another. It wasn’t a beating. Not yet. It was torture. They were toying with me.
“I said hurt him,” Jackhammer said. “Like this.”
He punched me. I hit the ground hard. Spat another tooth from my mouth.
I got to my feet.
He knocked me down again.
“Little fucker.”
I looked through the hunt dogs’ legs and saw, twelve feet away, a handgun that had been dropped by one of the dead men. I found it cruel, more than anything, that I should obtain a thread of hope: to retrieve the weapon and fire eight rapid, accurate shots before Jackhammer and his accomplices could fire but one. It was the kind of bullshit move that only worked in action movies. The reality would be catastrophic; if I didn’t drop the gun—assuming I managed to clamber through the hunt dogs’ legs and retrieve it—I would likely miss eight times, or catch a bullet in the head before my finger even touched the trigger.
Alternatively, I could do nothing. Let Jackhammer kill me. Slowly.
I was enclosed by the wall on one side and a semicircle of hunt dogs on the other. I had to go through them if I had any hope of reaching the gun, which meant looking for a weak point. I found it: Smudge Face, aka Mr. Altima, still dazed and crooked from the accident. I crawled in his direction, hand over elbow through the blood. My breathing was labored, wheezy, and that was good; I wanted them to think I had nothing in the tank. I made a show of collapsing facedown, took a moment to gather myself, then sprung to my knees. As I did, I planted my fist fully in Mr. Altima’s balls. It was as perfect a punch as I could have dreamed. I felt them first squish, then separate around my fist. “Smooooh,” he said, and hit the ground.
Nothing between me and the gun.
I lunged for it, knowing I could take a bullet at any time. My heart drummed. My focus narrowed. I splashed through the blood and gasoline, reached out …
My fingers brushed the grip. I had time to think that I just might do it, that I’d catch them by surprise and kill them all, then Jackhammer grabbed me by the waistband of my jeans and yanked me back. I clawed hopelessly at the floor but was thrown against the wall. The semicircle reformed around me.
“Get up,” Jackhammer snarled.
“Fuck you.”
He covered my face with one hand and pulled me to my feet. I threw wild punches that buzzed but fell short. He threw one—a classic jackhammer—that briefly shut out the lights.
I’m sorry, honey, I thought, stealing Tatum’s final words but thinking of Sally. I tried.
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I opened my eyes. The cinderblock room rolled and yawed. When it settled, I saw Jackhammer pointing a gun at me. His grin was insane.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” he said.
I turned away, and that was when I noticed Steve-O. In all the death and excitement, I’d kind of forgotten about him.
At their peril, so had the hunt dogs.
* * *
I’m sure they’d frisked Steve-O for weapons, but when they pulled his wheelchair from the trunk of the rental, they’d neglected to check the side pockets.
He was seriously wounded but managed to roll up behind the hunt dogs, his wheels silent on the cement floor. His hands moved to the pockets. He reached for the revolver—Bonnie—first. Then Clyde joined the party. For some reason, they looked roughly the size of cannons in his hands.
Bullets are gonna fly, he’d predicted that morning, and he was right.
He started in the middle of the semicircle and worked his way out. The sound was bone-rattling. Hunt dogs dropped one after the other, some dead before they realized what was happening, others reaching desperately for their weapons. I saw Mr. Slap take a bullet to the neck and die on his knees. Mr. Altima caught one to the shoulder that spun him one-eighty, then another to the chest that wheeled him back around. Jackhammer—his gun already drawn—turned and fired frantically. He accidentally shot Mr. Zippo between the eyes (another damn fine soldier lost) and popped one of the tires on Steve-O’s chair. That was as close as he got.
He was the last man standing. The other hunt dogs—twenty-one of them—were either dead or dying.
Steve-O aimed both guns at him and opened up.
* * *
One shot from the revolver, blowing a hole through Jackhammer’s right flank and dropping him to his knees. Three shots from the .45. The first tore through Jackhammer’s gun hand, sending the weapon and two of his fingers spinning through the air. The second hit him high in the shoulder and knocked him onto his back. The third was a gut shot.
“You took my legs,” Steve-O slurred. He wheeled himself closer, steering around Mr. Zippo so that he could look down at Jackhammer. “Took your turn with the chainsaw, huh? Two turns, if memory serves. Did you honestly think I’d kill you quickly?”
Jackhammer didn’t scream. He twisted in pain and growled. Blood oozed through his clenched teeth.
“You and your goddamn boss have made the last nine years of my life a living hell.” Steve-O’s voice was fragile but his eyes were intensely bright. I imagined his coil running, keeping his heartbeat slow, his blood from flowing. “You tortured—killed—the only woman I ever loved. Made her life hell. But worst of all, you’ve hunted my little girl, taken everything away from her.”
Jackhammer gurgled something. His eyes darted wildly, as if trying to look anywhere but at the juggernaut of death rumbling toward him.
“You say something, handsome?” Steve-O asked, leaning forward in his chair.
“Arrgah … doolay.”
“You’re right, payback is a bitch.”
“Too late,” he managed. He drew his knees to his stomach, curled in pain. “He … already got to her. You’re … you’re too late.”
I had slumped against the wall, mostly feeling nothing, riding the numb wave of disbelief. Now I stood upright, staggered toward Jackhammer.
“Where is she?”
“Fuck you.”
“Where is she?”
The sound that rose from his chest was nightmarish: part scream, part laughter. He slammed the back of his head against the cement floor, manic with pain, but in the midst of it all managed to flip me the bird. I knew he wasn’t going to tell us anything.
“Do what you’ve got to do,” I said to Steve-O.
“Yeah,” he drooled. He lifted the .45, squeezed the trigger twice, popped one bullet into Jackhammer’s groin and another into his left thigh. His scream was louder than the gunshots.
“You think that hurts as much as a chainsaw?” Steve-O asked.
“Faaahk oooooh.”
“I don’t think so, either.”
Steve-O pulled the trigger again but the .45 clicked empty. He switched to the revolver and that was empty, too. He sneered, opened his hands. Both guns clattered to the floor.
“Out of bullets,” he said.
He started snapping bones.
* * *
The peace-loving hippie was long dead. Exorcised by necessity. Mom once told me that violence is how stupid people negotiate, and I had followed that like a not-so-wise man following a star—something shimmering, but unattainable.
Changed, battle-hardened, desensitized to violence, I nonetheless turned away when Steve-O began breaking Jackhammer’s bones. I’m not sure it helped; hearing the crisp, snapping sounds was just as bad. It went on for a long time, too. Maybe ninety seconds. I know that doesn’t sound very long, but you can break a lot of bones in that amount of time. I couldn’t believe Steve-O had that much psychic—or physical—energy left inside him. I’m sure, like Tatum, he went deeper than he’d ever gone before, drawing on all his emotions. Or perhaps his coil had strengthened after the hunt dogs took his legs, like the muscles in his arms.
Eventually, the breaking sounds ended. So did the screams. I turned, looked at Steve-O, collapsed in his chair, then at Jackhammer. I expected him to look like he’d been thrown off an overpass, but most of the breaks were subtle, hidden by his clothes. There was a dip in his ribcage, though, the size of a footprint, and there were multiple fractures to his skull. His face had fallen inward. It collected the blood still pouring from his nose, like rainwater in a tarp.
I stepped over him and scanned the fallen hunt dogs, looking for movement. Someone groaned. I thought it was Steve-O, but then heard it again and placed it nearer the back wall. Shuffling closer, I noticed a pair of broad shoulders rise and fall. I approached the hunt dog, grabbed his upper arm, rolled him onto his back.
It was Frankenstein’s Boots. He looked up at me, his eyes wide and shocked. He’d taken a bullet to the abdomen. He clutched the wound. Blood seeped between his fingers.
I took his wallet and cell phone from his jacket pocket. The name on the driver’s license read Richard Black. There was a photograph of a woman in the wallet, too. I saw no family resemblance. A wife, then, or girlfriend.
“Are you going to help me, Richard?” I asked.
His eyes flicked away from me. He gritted his teeth.
I fished the photograph from his wallet, flipped it toward him. That was all it took.
“The red house,” he blurted. “That’s what you want to know, right?” He grimaced, eyes closed. “Lang … is there. With the girl.”
“Red house?”
“It’s Lang’s … private retreat.” He arched his back, gasped. Tears squeezed from his closed eyes. “It’s in Casper Creek. East … Tennessee.”
I powered on his cell.
“Password,” I snapped.
He gave it to me. It worked. A good sign. I accessed the Internet.
“Give me an address.”
“I don’t know it.”
“Then give me directions.”
He did. I brought up a satellite image of Casper Creek and zoomed in on a sizeable lakeside property a mile west of the village. It was accessible by a narrow road wending through deep forest. There were no neighbors for at least three hundred yards in either direction.
“Security,” I said.
“You just annihilated it.”
I looked around the room, taking in the bloodstained walls, the floor littered with corpses. I hadn’t annihilated anything. It was all Steve-O and Tatum, their rage and suffering. It was as if they had saved everything for this.
“Anything else?” I asked. “Alarms, attack dogs…?”
“An alarm, yeah.” Spittle popped from his lips. His eyes flashed open and closed. “Light sensors … in front. Nothing lakeside.”
“Any other surprises?”
“Only Lang himself.”
; “What do you mean?”
“He’s … different.”
“How?”
“Powerful,” Frankenstein’s Boots gasped. “More powerful. You don’t … stand a chance.”
I thought of Jackhammer garbling that we were too late, that Lang had already gotten to Sally. My blood couldn’t run any colder, but I felt something like a brick in my chest, pulling everything down.
I lowered my eyes, but not for long; I didn’t want him to see that he’d rattled me.
“I’d better find her there,” I said, showing him the photograph again.
“Why would I lie?” He almost grinned. “He’s going to kill you.”
I pocketed the wallet and cell phone, then stepped over more bodies and crouched in front of Steve-O’s chair. His eyes flashed in the red mask of his face. The smell of blood and gasoline was sickening.
“I’m going to drive you to a hospital,” I said. “I’ll have to leave you at the door, though. Someone will take—”
“No,” he said. “No doctor in the world can help me now, kiddo. Just wheel me over to Potato and I’ll die satisfied.”
“But—”
“No buts.” He shook his head. More blood pumped from the hole in his chest. “I’m almost out of juice. I’ll keep my heart rate down—or try—until the police show up. All this…” He flapped a hand at the corpses strewn around him. “This shit is on me. Ballistics can’t link anything to you. I’ll tell the cops that me ’n’ Potato stole your rental, too.”
“Steve-O…”
“What are they going to do? Throw me in jail?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know whether to cry or scream.
“You’re in the clear, kid,” Steve-O said. “Now get out of here.”
I placed my hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently, then wheeled him through the maze of bodies, righted the chair Tatum had been duct-taped to, and positioned them side by side.
“Together again,” Steve-O said, placing his hand over Tatum’s. “Elvis can kiss my ass.”
I recovered two semi-autos from the bloodbath. I checked they were both loaded (I’d read enough thriller novels to know how to release a magazine and count the rounds), slipped one into my waistband and gave the other to Steve-O. “Just in case he tries anything stupid,” I said, pointing at Frankenstein’s Boots. I then opened the door and took a dose of the cool night air, so clear it made me lightheaded. From what I could see, we were in an industrial lot, probably not far from the junkyard where I’d wrecked the rental. There were fewer vehicles outside than there were corpses on the floor, so I began digging through their pockets for keys, hitting the unlock button on the fobs until headlights flashed outside, indicating a match.