Green Ice: A Deadly High

by Christian Fletcher

  “Howdy, Jorge,” he chirped.

  Jorge groaned once more. “Mancini, I might have guessed. How the hell did you escape that infested town?”

  “I always turn up like the bad penny, Jorge.”

  “Good to see you alive and kicking, man,” Trey said.

  Mancini nodded in acknowledgement and tossed Trey his phone. “Who is the guy with all the shooters?” He nodded back to Sonny’s prone body.

  “Did you put him out of action?” Trey asked.

  Mancini nodded.

  “I figure he’s some escaped con from the States someplace,” Trey said. “The guy’s got prison tattoos all over him and he seems on the desperate side of life. He collared me and Leticia at gunpoint outside that garage back in the town.”

  “That explains a lot,” Mancini muttered.

  “He goes by the name of Sonny. At least, that’s what he told us. What happened to you, anyhow? Jorge told me you got munched by the infected goons, man.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear,” Mancini said. “Jorge tried to cut me loose and nearly succeeded, I’ll give him that.”

  Jorge sighed and his gaze dropped to the ground in front of him. He cut the impression of a beaten man.

  “I think you still have something of mine, Jorge,” Mancini said. “Hand it over.”

  Jorge sighed, pulled Mancini’s cell phone from his pocket and handed it back.

  Trey looked back to the Thunderbird but he couldn’t see Leticia. He called her name several times and finally saw her crawl out from beneath the vehicle. She hurried over and crouched down beside Trey. He slid his arm around her shoulders and hugged her close.

  “So what do we do now, man?” Trey asked.

  Mancini dipped his head. “We carry on with the mission. We have to try and stop this green stuff getting distributed to any place else. Look what the hell it did to that small town back there.” He nodded into the distance along the road behind them. “Is that T-Bird back up and running okay?”

  “Seems to be okay,” Trey answered. “We’ve only driven a couple of miles but Sonny seemed to know what he was doing when he fixed it up.”

  “Okay, we’ll carry on our journey in your ride, Trey, seeing as the other two vehicles are pretty much wrecked.”

  Trey glanced over the clustered Dodge and the VW. “Hey, is that the pickup truck from the garage?”

  Mancini nodded. “I just about got out of that place. I’ll tell you all about it once we’re back on the road. Help me move Laughing Boy down there out of the way or we’ll run over him on our way out of here.” He nodded at Sonny on the ground.

  “What about him?” Trey gestured at Jorge.

  “Give the gun to Leticia and she can cover him.”

  Trey handed over the Heckler and Koch to Leticia, who looked suddenly nervous.

  “What do I do if he tries to run?” she asked.

  “Shoot him,” Mancini snapped. He wasn’t in the mood for messing around any further.

  Trey helped Mancini lift Sonny’s unconscious body and they walked him to the truck cab. They shoved him across the front seats and closed the driver’s door.

  “He’ll wake up with one hell of a headache,” Mancini said. “But at least he’ll still be alive. Come on, let’s hit the road.”

  Mancini ushered them back to the Thunderbird and Trey took the handgun back from Leticia. Jorge walked back to the Thunderbird with his shoulders sagging in defeat and a morose expression on his face. He’d been so close to escaping and would have succeeded if it hadn’t been for that asshole who’d pulled a gun on him.

  “Want me to drive?” Trey asked, as they drew alongside the T-Bird.

  Jorge and Leticia clambered back into the rear seats. Mancini reloaded both the Heckler and Koch handguns and hid the Beretta in the trunk. Maybe they’d need the extra firearm at a later stage in the operation.

  Mancini nodded. “Go for it,” he said and climbed into the front passenger seat.

  Trey fired up the engine and pulled back onto the highway. Mancini felt relieved to be back on track but wondered how much impact their prolonged stay in the town would affect the outcome of the mission.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Mancini retrieved the map from the glove box and tried to calculate how far they still had to go to reach La Paz. He found Chorro de Arena on the map and groaned at the length of distance they still had to run.

  “We’ll possibly have to keep going all through the night to get to La Paz,” he sighed. “We’ve still got a hell of a way to drive.”

  “I just want to get this over with,” Trey said. “I’m done with all this fucking around.”

  Mancini felt slightly uplifted with Trey’s enthusiasm but he knew they still faced an arduous task ahead of them. Trey flicked on the Thunderbird’s one working headlamp when the light faded into dusk.

  “We don’t stop for anything or anybody,” Mancini said. “We keep right on going until we hit La Paz.”

  “Amen to that,” Trey agreed.

  Sonny awoke with a pounding pain in his head that spread in pulsing waves across his nose and the front of his face. He was surrounded in total darkness and he couldn’t think where he was or what had happened. He groaned and tried to sit up but the pain in his head stopped him. The memories came flooding back into his mind as he lay in the darkness for a while. The kid, Trey and his girlfriend, that son of a bitch in the blue VW and that bastard who whacked him with the club swirled through his thoughts.

  He finally forced himself upright, gripping the steering wheel in front of him and hauling his upper body weight to a vertical position. Sonny realized he was inside the truck’s cab as he stared out through the windshield. The crocked VW still lay in front of the truck, half tilted on its side. The landscape beyond the Beetle was almost deep sea blue in color, slightly illuminated by the moon in a cloudless sky.

  Sonny sat still for a few minutes, slumped against the steering wheel and waiting for the worst of the pain to pass. Then he heard screeches of creatures that were once human from somewhere in close proximity. The screams continued and sounded as though they were drawing near. He patted his waistband and felt his pockets but both the firearms and the cell phone were gone. He knew he had to move and hoped the truck was still drivable.

  Feeling around the steering column, Sonny found the ignition key and pumped the gas pedal with his foot. He turned the key and heard the starter whine and breathed a sigh of relief when the engine rumbled into life. The transmission crunched when Sonny rammed the gear shift into reverse and he heard the creaking of metal as the truck’s front fender edged away from the crushed VW.

  Sonny reversed onto the highway and flicked on the truck’s lights. He checked the gas gauge and cursed when he saw it read empty.

  “Son of a bitch,” he hissed and thumped the steering wheel. He wasn’t going to risk going back into Chorro de Arena to try and find some gas but he didn’t know how far the next town or gas station was. He’d have to improvise.

  Sonny drove the truck back onto the shoulder, alongside the VW then turned at a slight angle so the headlamps were directed at the rear engine compartment. He turned off the engine and scrabbled around the cab, searching for some kind of container. He found a large, half empty soda bottle and tipped the remaining contents out of the door.

  The night air felt cold and the wind blew in his face as he approached the VW. He grabbed the Beetle keys from the ignition and opened up the engine compartment at the rear end. The light generated by the truck’s cracked headlamps wasn’t ideal and the VW engine compartment was mainly dark and shadowed. Sonny felt around inside and located the fuel line and jerked it free at its lowest point. The stench of gasoline wafted from the engine and Sonny heard a trickling sound from the fuel line. He grabbed the soda bottle and slid the end of the fuel line inside the container.

  Howls and screeches drifted through the night air and Sonny knew the infected were getting closer. He had to hurry.

  He
poured the gas from the soda bottle into the truck’s fuel tank and figured every full load would allow him around forty miles of road time. Repeating the process until the gas line ran dry, Sonny was ready to go. He fired up the truck and hit the gas pedal, fishtailing in the dust on the shoulder, before driving back onto the highway, leaving the howling infected behind.

  Sonny hadn’t broken out of prison only to be ripped apart by a bunch of crazy heads. So far, things had gone his way until he’d been battered over the head. He’d escaped from the vehicle carrying him to the George F. Bailey Detention Facility when a deliberate road collision, organized by another traveling inmate had halted their journey. Sonny and three other prisoners escaped the scene, overpowering the guards and relieving them of their firearms. Sonny had split from the three other escapees and headed for the unguarded sections of the Mexican border. He neither knew nor cared if the others were still at large or had been recaptured. His own liberty was his only concern.

  A career criminal with a long record, Sonny’s latest conviction was for armed robbery and attempted murder. This time he’d been sentenced to life behind bars. No way was he going to endure that particular scenario. Once he’d crossed the border into Mexico, the country of his ancestry before his parents moved to Texas, he vowed never to set foot in the United States. He was going to find someplace to hole up and take some time to plan the rest of his life.

  Sonny’s future arrangements were now temporarily on hold. Revenge burned through his thoughts and brutal retribution was his immediate aim. He was alive and mobile and on a mission of his own.

  Now he could pursue those bastards that had left him for dead. He remembered that Trey kid had said they were on their way to La Paz. Sonny wondered if he could catch up with them before they reached their destination.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The Thunderbird ate up the miles on the Trans Peninsular Highway. Jorge and Leticia dozed in the backseat but Trey and Mancini were determined to reach La Paz by daybreak. They didn’t know what they were going to be faced with once they arrived at their destination, but were going to do their best to succeed.

  The remaining, working headlamp shone over a signpost on the shoulder, as darkness descended.

  “Ciudad Constitución – 35,000 Habitants,” Trey read aloud.

  “I hope that number is still a true estimate,” Mancini sighed. He opened the glove box and studied the map in the dim light. “I figure we’re around one hundred and thirty miles north of La Paz. If we can get through this city, the route is nearly all open roads. How we doing for gas?”

  Trey glanced at the gauge. The needle hovered between half and three quarters full. “We’re okay. We should reach La Paz on this tank, no problem. I just hope Sonny’s repair work holds out.”

  Mancini sighed. “The car still looks beat up though. That busted front headlamp is like a ‘stop me’ alert to the cops.”

  “We can always try a bribe if they stop us, man.” Trey said as they sped through the city limits. “Nothing a cop likes more than a fistful of cash to look the other way.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Mancini muttered. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, huh?”

  Trey shrugged. “The only illegal thing we’re carrying is our shooters.”

  “That’s another thing I ‘aint comfortable with,” Mancini growled. “Cops in Mexico love stopping Americans and finding firearms. The whole thing is a jail sentence waiting to happen. Did you ditch that green ice?”

  Trey gulped. He’d totally forgotten about the small stash of the narcotic. “Jeez, that totally slipped my mind, dude.”

  “Where the hell is it?” Mancini seethed.

  “I tucked it away in one of those CD cases in the glove box. One of the Surf Rock discs, I think.”

  “You think or you know?” Mancini barked, searching through the stack of CDs.

  “Whoa, what the hell is this, man?”

  Mancini glanced up from the glove box back onto the road ahead. Blue and red lights flashed out of the darkness up ahead. A line of stationary vehicles stood along the road entering the main hub of the city. Trey slowed the Thunderbird and joined the procession of immobile vehicles. Jorge and Leticia both yawned and awoke from their slumber.

  “What’s happening? Where are we?” Leticia asked, rubbing her eyes.

  “Ah, this isn’t good, man,” Trey moaned. “It looks like some kind of road block.”

  Mancini returned his attention to the map on his lap. “Let’s see if we can figure a way around the main route through the city. What is this place, anyhow?”

  “It’s a city, man, we know that,” Trey said.

  “No, I mean what kind of a place is it? A vacation resort, an industrial town, a den of fucking iniquity, what?” Mancini hissed. “Would Luiz have stopped off here to pedal his samples?”

  “Beats me, man,” Trey said, shrugging.

  “Whatever kind of place it is, we need to get the hell around this damn road block,” Mancini groaned, returning his concentration to the map.

  Leticia leaned into the front seat and took a look over the map in Mancini’s lap. “Ciudad Constitución, it’s a place where they cultivate much of the food and clothing materials for the region,” she said.

  “Can we get around the main highway?” Mancini asked, flapping his hand at the map.

  “We can try,” Leticia answered. She pointed to a turning off the main highway, around a half mile further back the way they’d come. “We can take that route and bypass the main city, which will lead us out here.” She dabbed another point on the map at the southern end of the city. “Hopefully, the cops won’t be patrolling every road on every block.”

  Trey glanced over at the map. “All right, I got it,” he said.

  Emergency service sirens blared somewhere in the distance as Trey U-turned the Thunderbird in the center of the highway. The driver behind honked his horn and Trey flipped him the bird.

  They slowly drove back along the highway and Leticia pointed out the turning to the left. Trey turned into the side road and the street lighting became increasingly sparse. Dark alleyways spurred off the side street and gloomy looking industrial buildings stood in a row along the roadside. A few vehicles with missing wheels and bricks placed beneath the axles were parked along the curbs. Industrial fans hummed from some of the buildings, wafting a stench of fried food and dispersed steam across the street.

  “Keep going along this route, then take a left turn at the end of the road,” Mancini instructed.

  Trey nodded. “Looks a little like the rough spot in town,” he muttered.

  “Quit worrying about that,” Mancini said. “The state this car is in, we fit right in. Let’s just keep going and get the fuck out of here.”

  “I don’t like this,” Jorge muttered from the back. “We should have stuck to the main highway.”

  Mancini half turned in his seat. “There are cops all over the damn place on that route, dipshit. You want to get busted now, huh?”

  Jorge rubbed his forehead. “All I’m saying is - this looks like a bad neighborhood.”

  Mancini didn’t want to hear Jorge’s worthless gripes. “Just shut the fuck up, will you, Jorge? You’ve already pissed me off on a fucking meteorological scale with your idiotic behavior back in that town. Now, sit back and don’t express your opinions any further.” He spoke with an authority to his voice that Jorge found threatening.

  “All right, fine,” Jorge sighed and slumped back in his seat.

  “You tell that guy, man,” Trey said, holding back a laugh. “You’re one mean motherfucker, man. I mean, you can totally kick a guy’s ass just by talking down to him and…”

  “Watch out!” Leticia shrieked, pointing to the road ahead.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Trey looked around in time to see a lone figure shuffling across the road in front of the Thunderbird, caught in the glare of the single headlamp. He hit the brakes and brought the vehicle to a halt a few inches f
rom the shambling individual, wearing a long brown coat and a battered black panama hat.

  “Jeez, is he some kind of stoned hobo or something, man?” Trey groaned and gave the horn a solitary blast.

  “Hey,” Mancini hissed. “Quit making any excess noise. We don’t want any more unnecessary attention.”

  The figure stopped moving and turned in the direction of the single headlamp. His eyes looked half closed and his face was deathly pale.

  “What’s he doing?” Leticia whispered.

  “Ah, my god, the dude is smashed out of his mind,” Trey scoffed at the shuddering figure.

  Mancini studied the guy in front of the car. “I don’t think so. I think he’s turning into…”

  The guy suddenly stood rigid then shook wildly as if he was convulsing but still remained on his feet.

  “Steer around him, Trey. Get the fuck out of here,” Mancini hissed, waving his hands in a forward motion.

  “All right, man. Keep cool.” Trey rolled the steering wheel to the left.

  The guy in front of them suddenly opened his mouth wide in a scowl, emitting a throaty growl. His eyes snapped open, revealing totally dark eyeballs and he slammed his right hand down hard on the hood.

  “He’s one of those things,” Leticia screeched.

  “Come on, Trey, get us out of here,” Mancini yelled.

  Trey pumped the gas, rolling the car slowly forward and tried to steer around the guy but the figure leaned further onto the hood, growling like an angry dog.

  “Fuck it, stop the car,” Mancini instructed, tossing the map into the foot well.

  “What?” Trey gasped.

  “Just stop the damn car, will you?”

  Trey braked again, stopping the Thunderbird’s forward motion. Mancini hopped out, whipping the Heckler and Koch from the back of his waistband. He briskly strolled around the side of the car, aimed the barrel at the infected figure’s head and squeezed the trigger. A single shot echoed through the street and an orange flash briefly illuminated the scene.