The most basal of these feelings are not new to him. He had always been a predator of one sort or another. At a very young age he discovered that he lacked the morale compass that he had heard his parents and various therapists refer to so often. His parents and teachers believed this to be a character flaw that he would someday outgrow. They could not have been more wrong. The fact was that he had always known where the line between right and wrong resided; he had just chosen to ignore it. Something about praying on the weak; snapping their fragile little bones as they made feeble attempts to defend themselves, had given him such a rush. The power to bend someone to your will with nothing more than brute force had an animalistic appeal that he found was indescribable to most. At the tender age of five –when most kids are learning to ride a bike or catch a baseball- he would spend his time with Sox (the family dog) looking for new ways to torture him. The dog had proved to be the perfect prey because he was unable to explain to anyone who would have cared to listen what he had done to him. Sox was a sheep dog mix and by no means a small dog by today’s standards, but even at the age of five, the freeway-man had possessed a size and strength far beyond his years. Though he experimented with a bevy of painful scenarios for the hound –a particular favorite was tying a heavy rock to the dog’s scrotum with an old shoestring so that every step Sox made meant a new and even more painful swing of the weighted pendulum than the last- his go to was the sleeper hold. His father was a retired beat-cop and he had actually seen him use the maneuver once at a family party when his uncle Buck had drank far beyond his limit and made the incredibly ill advised decision to grope his mother. He watched wide-eyed with delight as his father –a large man in his own right- swooped up behind Uncle Buck and placed one beefy arm around his neck. He locked in the noose with his off hand and squeezed so hard that uncle Buck’s feet lost earthly purchase and his face morphed into a swollen red and straining mass. Seconds later, he fell as flaccid as an octogenarian’s penis, and then his father unhinged his mighty grip and watched Uncle Buck heap upon the ground.
Looking back, the freeway-man credited that day for his greatest lesson. The ability to physically oppress was the only absolute truth. Words, whether written or spoken had no meaning if there was no physicality to back them up. As the Dollar needed gold, words needed might. Without the other, they are both equally useless.
The freeway-man eventually graduated from pets to people when Sox mysteriously died of asphyxiation one day while playing with his young master. With the change in species came a change in style and tactic. He found that people were able to endure far more before breaking than any other animal he’d had the pleasure to play with. He bullied and beat whomever he could, and found that sometimes words did have a purpose. He loved to hear his prey beg and plead for amnesty as he bore down on already broken hands with the heel of his shoe. The sniveling little sounds they made increased his power like food for his soul. Once he had grown too old to accost his peers without fear of legal reprisals, he searched for a more acceptable outlet for his proclivities. He turned to mixed martial arts as a legal way to release a small amount of the chaos inside. When it turned out that he actually had quite a talent for the sport, the few who truly knew him were surprised. He was able to parlay his love for punishing others into a fairly lucrative career in various mixed martial arts leagues around the world. It was once said ‘if you want to be happy then figure out what you love to do and then find a way to get paid for it’. He had done exactly that. Eventually, his age and the reality of constantly giving and receiving the punishment of punches and kicks to the head caught up to him and he was forced into retirement. Without the blood sport he so loved, he was once again left with no outlet for his desires. He found himself a trophy wife in hopes that her relative youth, store bought beauty and a steady diet of rough sex would be enough to keep a lid on his yearnings. Inevitably, it did not and what had started out as a nipple twist here and a hard slap on the rear there, had devolved into frequent beatings. His wife’s once lovely face had become a patchwork canvas of corrective plastic surgeries.
Now he was free of her and he couldn’t have been gladder. She had served her purpose as a dutiful wife right up to the end when she had given her life’s blood to him like a flower gives its nectar to a butterfly that’s fresh from its cocoon and ready for flight. He had finally metamorphosed into the apex predator that he always longed to be. It is now his intention to become the reigning champion in the only blood-sport that truly matters.
The freeway-man breathes slowly, not wanting to overlook any olfactory delights that may be on the wind. He exhales and again takes a long drag of that sweet aroma. This time however, there’s another scent, more faint but still noticeable. There is the distinct bouquet of three delicious humans and another odor not quite as pleasing as the others. No matter, he would drink them all down with equal vigor when the time was right.
With the grace of a gazelle, he leaps up and with one hand swings himself up onto the roof of the clinic where he instantly disappears back into a darkness nearly as black as his soul.
***
Max, Brooke and Vinny continue down the flickering hallway slowly and deliberately. Tension is high and Max is careful not to keep his finger on the trigger lest he prematurely blow someone away that may be hiding from the biters in the dark folds of the building.
They approach the first door on their left and pause before entering. The door is windowless and with the exception of the letter ‘A’ it contains no markings or labels. Max raises the shotgun and gives Brooke a nod. She reaches for the handle and turns it slowly, being careful not to alert anyone or anything inside before Max makes his entrance. As soon as the door begins to open inward Max gives it a kick and steps through panning left and right with the 12 gauge.
“Looks clear. See what you can find.”
While Max stands vigil over the door, Vinny and Brooke busy themselves looking for useful items. The space turns out to be an examination room, about ten feet wide and thirteen feet long. The doorway faces a bank of high and low cabinets with a built-in washbasin. To the right of the door sits a tall counter-weight scale of the type that always weighs you ten pounds more than you believe yourself to be. To the left and on the same wall as the door lies an examination table complete with a paper roll for your hygienic protection.
Vinny rips through the upper cabinets and finds several bottles of alcohol and a couple of ace bandages but not much else. He sets them on the counter and retrieves his handgun from his waistband.
Brooke handles the drawers and lower cabinets. She finds some tweezers and a scalpel. She slips the scalpel into her back pocket and hopes that her jeans aren’t so tight that she regrets the scalpels placement later.
“Hurry it up. I think I heard something on the roof!” Max says without turning around or taking his eyes off of the unexplored portion of the hallway.
Brooke tosses all of Vinny’s findings into the shoulder bag along with the tweezers. She had no practical reason for holding onto the tweezers but it seems to her that no girl’s purse is complete without them.
Max silently steps into the hallway and is once again swathed in the disco strobe lights. He takes a moment to adjust to the effect before continuing onward. The next door is about 10 feet away and on the opposite side of the hall. Max takes slow deliberate steps -not wanting to alert anyone or anything to his presence, or to slip in the viscous layer of congealed bodily fluids that covers the floor here. He can hear Brooke behind him breathing heavily and trying not to retch. He figures her reaction to be more from an accumulation of all the blood they’d seen in recent hours than this puddle of blood in particular.
He reaches the door. Not wanting to ask any more of Brooke right now, he decides to turn the knob himself. He reaches with his left hand and keeps his right hand on the gun with his finger on the trigger. Max turns the knob slowly and doesn’t release it until the door has cleared the jam. He takes a step back and again kicks the door inw
ard in hopes of startling into confusion whoever may be on the other side. He immediately hears something move in the room. It’s a kind of scuttling sound like that of a small animal caught off guard and racing for the shadows. Max wishes he had a flashlight to shine into the space. The prospect of entering blind does not appeal to him even with the power of the shotgun on his side. The emergency light flickering over the doorway that he now faces only serves to exacerbate his lack of visibility.
Brooke -apparently reading his mind- begins to rummage through her newly acquired pack and produces the thin lady’s compact. Max looks a bit perplexed when she stretches her arm out and offers it to him. Sensing his confusion but not daring even a whisper to explain, she steps to the door and in front of Max. He opens his mouth to protest just before comprehension in her plan of action sets in.
Brooke opens the compact and tilts it so that it catches the light from above the door and shines it back into the room. Max and Vinny share a glance and half smile at each other in silent acknowledgement that Brooke always has been the brains of their operation. Brooke slowly pans her makeshift flashlight around the exceptionally dark area and finds it to be a storage room of sorts. It contains shelves, housing bandages and various sample medications, as well as cleaning supplies, toilet paper, paper towels, scrubs and surgical masks. She’s just about to share the good news of what she’s found when her light crosses something that doesn’t belong. The glimpse was too quick to be sure of what it was, and with the small circumference of intermittent light reflected by the compact she has great difficulty zeroing in on what she saw once more.
“I saw something!” She exclaims.
“What?” prods Vinny.
“Skin.”
Upon hearing this, Max leans in with the shotgun ready to blow whatever it is away.
“Wait!” Brooke puts up a hand and forces the shotgun to one side. “I think it’s a…” She pauses for a moment as her light finds its target, “child.”
Brooke’s light searches over a patch of bare skin as she tries to gain a more complete picture of whom or what it is. After a few moments and quick scans, the shape of a small, naked boy is revealed from the darkness. He is exceedingly thin and pale, no older than seven and without so much as a sock to cover his body; he shivers in the fetal position at the corner of the room with his back turned to the doorway.
“Oh my God he must be terrified!” Brooke pushes the compact at Max who reflexively grabs it, and before he can protest, she rushes toward the fragile child grabbing a folded pair of blue scrubs along the way.
Max –in his loudest whisper- says, “Wait!” But Brooke is almost to the child, with no intention of stopping short. His instinct is to rush after her, but he realizes that he has the compact and would be totally blind in the room without its light. He raises it up and reflects the light back to the corner where the child trembles in place. Brooke has reached the boy and is crouching down behind him.
Brooke can almost smell the fear rising from the small shaking child as she reaches in to comfort him. He must have been disrobing for an exam when the attack came and had been fortunate enough to remain hidden until it was over. That at least would account for his current state of nudity. To find someone so delicate still alive amongst so much bloodshed was akin to finding an orchid thriving in the middle of the freeway.
Brooke gently touches the boy’s shoulder and can immediately feel his tremors subside. His skin is cool to the touch and Brooke remembers the scrubs.
“You must be freezing,” she says as she begins to drape them over the boy’s bare back.
The child is still curled in on himself with his knees to his chest and face buried in his arms. Upon hearing Brooke’s voice, he slowly begins to turn toward her. His short dark hair bristles against the scrubs. Brooke leans in to adjust the clothing and permit the boy a bit more modesty. In doing so, she blocks the light from the compact, once again loosing sight of the boy for a moment. She shifts the scrubs until the boy’s small frame is adequately robed. She relaxes back on her heels and allows the light to shine once again on the child who has turned halfway and is looking back over his shoulder at her.
The light above the door flickers and dies for a moment. When it returns, it shines with greater intensity than it had previously. The beam from the compact shines hard across the boy’s face and startlingly yellow eyes. Before the meaning of this can sink in, the boy is on top of Brooke gnashing his small gapped teeth as he lunges for her throat.
Many in the past had accused Brooke of being overly sympathetic but no one ever dared to label her a fool. She grips the boy by the throat with one hand and levers him away from her body. With her other hand she grabs the pepper spray that she’d found in the thin lady’s purse. Unlike its previous owner, she has every intention of surviving long enough to use it. She swings it between her face and the face of the small fiend she grapples with. She strains to straighten her arm that holds him at bay and as soon as her elbow is locked, she depresses the plunger as hard as she can. She closes her eyes, holds her breath and hopes that the can of pepper spray is not empty. She is not disappointed. The choking smell of cayenne fills her nostrils and she struggles not to inhale it. From the child, she hears that increasingly familiar shriek and feels the weight on her arm lighten. Brooke fights the urge to open her eyes but loses. There is just enough light for her to witness the boy leaping straight up and through a ceiling pane, sending fragments of plaster and cardboard raining down on her. Brooke covers her face and rolls to one side in time to avoid the larger pieces of debris that fall in the biter’s wake.
The whole event had transpired in mere moments. Max and Vinny are just beginning to move through the door toward the hole in the ceiling and Brooke respectively. Max booms the shotgun up into the dark recess of the attic space. He doesn’t expect to hit anything but hopes to frighten the small predator enough to keep it from immediately returning to its prey.
Vinny kneels beside Brooke and asks her if she’s ok. She nods in response and the two of them hastily come to their feet with a pressing desire to be clear of the death from above.
“Go!” Max commands, as he stands sentry under the hole cocked and ready to let fly if he hears so much as a roach move overhead.
“Just a second.” Brooke begins filling her bag with various items of use and a minute later, the three have retreated to the hallway.
“Will they be coming now?” asks Brooke.
“Let them come.” Vinny raises his magnum and puts on a game face, “I’m ready to break ‘em off a piece.”
Max raises a hand to quiet them both, “I don’t think so. With only one shot, it’s hard to get a bearing on where it came from. We should be ok for now.”
“What about that little fucker in the ceiling?” Vinny asks and before Max can respond a gravely voice from the shadowy hallway commands, “Now boy you best drop that cannon… before I drop you.”
Chapter 12 – Comrades in Arms
The freeway-man slinks across the rooftop. The ever so palatable smell of fear has intensified in the corridors beneath him. His anticipation of their blood grows unbearably strong, but he must remain patient. Their adrenal glands must be pumping at full capacity when he dines. He will settle for nothing less than delicacy. He saddles up to an exhaust vent, moving with such fluidity that little sign of the trauma he endured when falling from the freeway overpass can be found in his gate. He feels no pain. In fact, he feels nothing- save hunger, pleasure and desire.
The freeway-man grabs hold of the exhaust vent’s grate and peels it back like the lid of a sardine can. He steps over the open vent and drops straight down into darkness.
***
Gilly was as green as they come. He was nineteen years old and fresh off the tobacco farm. He’d enlisted in the National Guard as soon as he was able to join without his parent’s consent. If it was up to them, he would have spent the rest of his life -and eventually his death- in the same small South Carolina town where his gr
andfather, great-grandfather and so on going back for generations had lived and died. Soon enough his father would be added to that number. He would be dammed if that farm would claim the best years of his life. He felt that he was meant for something greater than what his hometown had to offer. So first chance he got, he packed his high school gym bag with what few possessions he could call his own and headed for the National Guard’s local recruiting station.
He had been thrilled to learn that he would be stationed in Southern California. At the time, he couldn’t wait to see the bikini clad blondes with the perfect store-bought breast he’d heard so much about. He was finally going to do some living.
Boot camp had been a snap in comparison to farm life. He was no stranger to rising before the sun and working until his legs were weak. He had finally found his niche, a place where he could flourish and grow.
Now, looking back, that all seems so long ago. He can barely recall the euphoria of firing his weapon on the range for the first time, or the way the ladies batted their lashes whenever he walked by in his uniform. As the song says, ‘the thrill is gone’. It only took a couple of days for it all to go to hell in a hand basket. One moment he was on top of the world and the next, he was caught in the middle of a bloody typhoon washing its way across his newly adopted home. Ever since that damn earthquake everything had gone to shit, and quick.
All of that now brought him to this point; sequestered in a war torn clinic, standing in his comrades’ blood and staring down the barrel of a twelve-gauge shotgun attached to the hand of an angry looking black man.
***
“Respect my shit and I’ll respect yours,” Max entreats the sturdy looking soldier on the end of a military issued M4. “You might wound me but I’ll splatter your ass all over that wall.”
One Blink From Oblivion Page 12