The Road to Amistad

by Ken Dickson

“Ah, you’re lucky. I never experienced it that way: all at once. I had to piece it together over time. For me, it was similar to learning to catch a ball. As a child, I must have panicked when someone first threw me a ball, or it bounced off me before I even considered grabbing it. I’m sure that I wondered if I’d ever catch a ball like others. Nevertheless, I kept trying. In time, catching the ball became second nature. Automatic. I don’t remember the first time I caught it, or the tenth or hundredth time. All I know is that I can catch a ball now. That’s how it was for me putting all of this together. Ultimately, we are both the same, though. Our minds are free—mine by choice and yours by chance just like almost everyone else here. All but a few of us changed overnight, just like you.”

  “Just as I couldn’t relate to your conversation about change back then, I’m not exactly sure what you’re saying now.”

  “I doubt that anyone can make sense of it in a day or a week for that matter, but there’s no hurry. It will make sense in its own time. In any case, this is merely your first step on an amazing journey. Let’s take a walk together and savor it.”

  As he and Carlos walked and talked on the lit bike trail surrounding Primera, he learned a great deal more about the community and its inhabitants than he had the first time that he met Carlos. Of course, his objective back then was different, and he was blinded by a mission. Now, he understood the significance of Primera, and appreciated the uniqueness of its residents. As it all became clear, he knew that he’d made a mistake writing that article, but it was out of his hands now. With luck, public interest would wane over time and normal life would resume in Primera.

  By the time they returned to Carlos’s home, he definitely had answers, but felt a long way from fully understanding. Carlos sensed that.

  “I noticed that you have a pen in your pocket.”

  Frank smiled. “Yeah, I nearly ran it out of ink today.”

  “Mind if I borrow it?” Frank handed him the pen. Carlos removed his wallet from his pants pocket, opened it, and searched through its various pockets for something to write on. “Ah, this will do.” He removed a business card, turned it over and began writing. “This woman works with people like you every day. I’m sure that I’ve answered some of your questions, but she can help you much more than I can. She certainly made a huge difference in my life. Her name is Jessie.” He handed Frank the card and his pen.

  “I can’t thank you enough for tonight. You’ve been incredibly kind and helpful. I hope that we’ll see more of each other.”

  “I hope so, too. You have a good night, now.”

  As Frank entered the 4Runner, he looked at Jessie’s number on the card, and then flipped it over. With all the strange goings-on, it didn’t surprise him in the least that the card was from Casa Classico.

  Chapter 41

  GOODBYE, MY FRIEND

  At 9:00 p.m. on June 14, 2014, Willy slowed the Vanquish, downshifted to second gear and made a hard right at the end of Pecos Road. He accelerated through two gears and then slowed and downshifted again, rounding a corner onto Shaughnessey Road. Beside him, Antone filled the last of the Glock 17 and Colt 1911A magazines and rammed home a full magazine in each handgun. He then pulled the slides back, chambering the first rounds. Unexpectedly, Willy made a sharp left onto Twenty-Eighth Avenue.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Fueling up.” After pulling over to the curb, Willy produced a vial of cocaine, poured a ragged line on his wrist, snorted it and then tipped his head back. “Ah, that’s more like it. You want some?”

  “Hell, yeah.” Antone did the same and then returned the vial. “Let’s roll.”

  ***

  By providing knowledge that we needed to design Amistad, Primera had served its purpose, and according to the world at least, had outlived its usefulness. It was the first home for some of the younger community members and was certainly a unique home for many others. We’d had our warnings and were still here, still unwelcome. As if to drive that point home, a bang reverberated through Primera. Its source: a handgun fired by the driver of a silver Aston Martin Vanquish racing down Shaughnessey Road. More shots rang out, some passing through bedroom windows or garage doors. The car squealed around the cul-de-sac and sped from the neighborhood, its two occupants firing repeatedly toward homes on both sides of the street until they were out of sight.

  ***

  The Vanquish raced down Shaughnessey Road and again turned abruptly on Twenty-Eighth Avenue.

  “Now what?” asked Antone.

  “After what I read in that rag about the elite fighting force and the armory, I expected a real battle. Now, I’m wondering if there’s even a gun in that whole place. That’s just un-fucking-American. They really must be aliens. We still got a couple hundred rounds. What say we light them up again?”

  “Fuck, yeah.” As the two men reloaded, the regularly scheduled BRI security team passed right behind them, arriving ahead of schedule in response to urgent calls. Although essentially unarmed, they did have something useful in thwarting future attacks in the back of their vehicle. They barely had time to ready it before Willy and Antone returned. As the Vanquish cleared the top of the hill, two DynaSpike remotely operated spike strips deployed directly in its path in less than a second. Unable to react in time, Willy drove directly over them, filling all four of the Vanquish’s tires with sharpened hollow spikes and deflating them in seconds. Still traveling at a high rate of speed, the car swerved wildly until he wrestled it to a halt in the middle of Primera. Meanwhile, the security team made their way through brush to help the residents any way they could. Unfortunately, their Tasers, pepper spray and hand-to-hand combat skills would prove useless against a rain of gunfire.

  “Jesus fucking Christ. Call backup while I teach these motherfuckers a lesson. And warn them about the spike strips.” Willy stepped fearlessly from the car and fired the Glock at homes on both sides of the street, shattering picture windows and turning exterior lighting into showers of glass and sparks. Antone finished the call and joined him.

  “Backup is ten or fifteen minutes out,” he yelled over the gun blasts.

  The slide of the Glock locked, indicating that the nineteenth round had fired. Willy ejected and pocketed the magazine, inserted a fresh one and released the slide.

  “I should have brought earplugs. My ears are going to ring for days,” Antone shouted.

  “Shut up and shoot—and keep your eyes open. Something’s got to give. No one would allow this shit to continue forever.” Willy shot more purposefully now, celebrating whenever he took out an interior room light. Inside the homes, people lay flat on the floor, some with sofa cushions over their heads to protect themselves from flying debris. A few people, caught outside when the shooting recommenced, hid behind the homes. Miraculously, no had been seriously injured, but that was about to change. A single round shattered a side window, pierced a rear wall, and found a human target on the other side. A man screamed and then toppled onto the lawn beside the home.

  “Hallelujah. Cover me.” As the bleeding man dragged himself back toward cover, Willy approached, his gun aimed directly at his head. Meanwhile, Antone scanned the neighborhood in all directions, firing at the slightest sound or movement until the Colt slide locked. He ejected the magazine, shoved in another and continued firing.

  “Aren’t you a piece of work,” Willy hissed, butting the Glock against the man’s head.

  “Please, don’t shoot me.”

  “Oh, I’m not going to shoot you, but by the time I’m finished with you, you’ll wish I had. How much time we got?” he yelled to Antone.

  “Five or ten minutes.”

  “Plenty of time for some fun. How’d you like to go for a ride?”

  “I... I don’t know.”

  “At death’s door and that’s all you can come up with? Fuck you!” He stepped back and kicked the man in the head so hard that teeth spilled from his mouth followed by blood. The man collapsed un
conscious to the ground. Willy grabbed him by his feet and dragged him into the street behind the Vanquish. Then, he removed the man’s belt, slid its end through the buckle and placed the loop around the man’s right ankle.

  “What the hell are you doing?” demanded Antone.

  “Sending a message.” He then removed his own belt, lay on the road behind the Vanquish, fed the end of it through the chassis, pulled it through the buckle and cinched it tight. Finally, he tied the two belt ends together in a double knot. “Hold down the fort,” he said as he stepped into the Vanquish, depressed the clutch and fired up the V12.

  He revved the engine and released the clutch. The car barely moved at first as the rims spun in loose rubber, generating clouds of white, acrid smoke, but it gradually gained speed, in good part due to gravity as he headed downhill. Behind him, the man regained consciousness, but Willy could not hear his screams over the roar of the engine.

  He swerved wildly as he drove, partly intentional and partly due to the deflated tires, sending the man tumbling one way and then another. The man tried in vain to protect himself until he lost consciousness. After that, his tattered and bloody body flopped like a rag doll in response to each swerve. Willy attempted a U-turn in the cul-de-sac but ran over the sidewalk and drove through several lawns before returning to the street. With gravity now working against him, the tires again spun in the rims, generating even more smoke and leaving half the neighborhood in a fog.

  “Shut it off, damn it!” Antone yelled, and then buckled over in a fit of coughing. Moments later, Willy killed the engine and calmly exited. He untied the double-knotted belts, removed his from the chassis and laced it through his belt loops. Then, he pulled the Glock from his pocket and joined Antone, who had just finished coughing.

  “You never fail to shock me. That was sick, even for you.”

  “It’s time to leave, you fucking freaks, or this is what’s going to happen to all of you!” Willy bellowed, ignoring Antone’s comment. He then fired off two remaining rounds and replaced another empty magazine.

  “How are we doing for time? I’ve only got fifty-seven rounds left.” Bang! “Fifty-six.”

  “Only? I’ve got less than twenty. They should be here any minute.”

  “You should’ve brought the bigger magazines like I told you.”

  “I didn’t plan on covering your little joy ride.” Willy fired off ten rounds. “Jesus, could you give me some space? You’re raining shells all over me.”

  ***

  Two more men from security arrived at the top of Shaughnessey Road. They leapt from their car, each wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a high power paintball gun. Although their hoppers could hold considerably more, Engineering barely had time to fill fifty of the special adhesive loads they carried between them: paintballs purchased as empty casings and filled with an obnoxiously sticky, fast setting adhesive. The men ran to either side of the road and then crept stealthily through the desert toward the homes below. They’d barely made headway when another vehicle raced toward Primera, stopping just short of the spike strips.

  Antone’s phone chimed. “They’re here. Haul ass up the hill.”

  Just then, popping sounds erupted from atop of the hill followed by cursing and gunfire. The two men who had just arrived to rescue Willy and Antone were easy targets for the security team in the brush. In no time, their gun actions jammed, and the men could barely move. The security team again headed down through the brush toward the homes. No sooner had the gunfire stopped when Willy and Antone crested the top of the hill anticipating, but surprisingly not encountering, resistance.

  “What a fucking mess,” said Willy, shaking his head at the two men.

  “If you boys are coming, you better get a move on,” Antone yelled, motioning toward the car. The men grunted in frustration, their lips and one man’s eye glued shut. They struggled to escape, but were firmly glued to their shoes and the road.

  “Antone, get in the fucking car.”

  “Thanks for the assist, boys. Sorry we gotta ditch you.” He climbed into the car and shut the door as Willy hit the accelerator.

  ***

  While Willy and Antone made their escape, residents cautiously left the safety of their homes and made their way by the glow of streetlamps to the victim. Sadly, he was beyond help. Moments later, my cell phone rang. Unaware of the catastrophe that had just befallen Primera, I was walking the aisles of the Foothills Safeway filling a grocery cart.

  “Hello?”

  “Ken, it’s Diane from home three. I’m sorry to have to tell you this. Carlos is dead.”

  I left the shopping cart, ran from the store and sped from the parking lot. As I approached the top of the hill near Primera, I swerved, barely missing two men in the road who made no attempt to avoid me and then ran over something that instantly flattened all of my tires.

  Struggling to maintain control of the car, I raced down Shaughnessey Road and ground to a halt behind a silver Aston Martin Vanquish with four flat tires and both of its doors open. The stench of burned rubber enveloped me as I leapt from the car and ran toward the crowd gathered behind the Vanquish. They parted as I approached.

  At their feet lay the man who used to shuffle with an apple in his hand and a big grin on his face, someone in whom I saw so much promise, who lived up to everything I’d dreamed for him, a quiet man with many friends who would never hurt anyone. Now he was gone in a manner more brutal than I could dream in my worst nightmares. I knelt by his side and stared in disbelief at his barely recognizable features. Then, I cried long and hard.

  ***

  Heading west on I-10, Willy pounded the steering wheel with his fists. “Those fucking bastards are going to pay for what they did to my ride.”

  “Maybe we ought to leave well enough alone. We barely made it out of there tonight, and who knows what will happen after that stunt you pulled. That was crazy.”

  “Fuckin’ wimp. I don’t know why I put up with you.”

  “Fuck you, too.” Antone punched him in the shoulder, and he winced. He hated to admit it, but Antone was one strong son-of-a-bitch.

  ***

  That night, the police finally did respond. The two men glued to Shaughnessey Road were handcuffed and read their rights. It took considerable effort to detach them from the pavement. Detectives spent hours collecting evidence and recording eyewitness accounts. The disabled Vanquish, stolen from California, went to an impound lot. AAA towed my car to a repair shop. The county coroner covered Carlos’s body in a sheet, placed him in a body bag and took him unceremoniously away. The police finally left just after 2:00 a.m. I went to my trailer and tried to sleep after that, but tossed and turned until nearly 5:00 a.m. before finally succumbing to a deep sleep.

  Chapter 42

  TEN DOWN

  I walked into my cubicle at Nanosys and closed the flimsy door for privacy, or at least that’s what I thought I’d done. The six-foot high cubicle walls finished in earthy fabric were gone, replaced by tall, rusting steel walls vanishing upward into darkness. Instead of cool overhead fluorescent lighting, a single, clear filament bulb hung from the black void, glowing like a toaster element. The dimly lit floor, once fitted with industrial carpet, was now bare—chipped, cracked and stained by who knows what. Scattered around it were stacks of shirts, pants, underwear and socks. I felt a chill and realized with dismay that I was naked. Fearing my co-workers would brand me a pervert or worse, mentally ill, I frantically tried to dress myself, but all of the clothes were exceedingly large. I felt like a young boy trying on his father’s clothes. Soon, I’d tried them all, and ill-fitting clothes lay everywhere.

  As my anxiety peaked, my surroundings abruptly transformed leaving me standing in a darkened room lit only by a sliver of sterile white light reflected off polished vinyl flooring from under a closed door. The dry chill of air conditioning made me shiver even worse. I hugged myself for warmth and discovered that I was no longer naked. Instead, I wor
e scrubs. I walked toward the door, opened it and recognized immediately where I was: back in a psych ward. My anxiety turned to panic. I left the room hastily, determined to find out where I was and why I was there.

  I wandered through a maze of stark, empty hallways lined with heavy oak doors, each displaying the names of patients scrawled with blue marker on masking tape. Finally, I arrived at a nurses’ station. I knocked loudly on the reinforced glass of the door to gain attention.

  Without saying a word, two nurses swung the door wide, took me by the arms and forcibly escorted me away. They led me deep into the maze to a room without names on the door. One nurse opened the door, and the other shoved me inside. As I stumbled into the room, the door slammed closed behind me.

  Once again, I found myself in a room lit only by a thin sliver of light under the door. As my vision slowly adjusted, a patient leapt in front of me, his wild eyes burning with hate, his hair in disarray, his body reeking of perspiration and his breath foul. He leaned inches from my face and shouted matter-of-factly, “You don’t fucking belong here!”

  I awoke with a start. It was bad enough knowing how hated we were without a nightmare driving it further home. Although I wasn’t sure of all of the symbolism of the dream, it did leave me with a sense that nothing had changed, that it wasn’t over. Anyone else would have taken time to continue grieving, but a strong urge directed me to put emotions aside and prepare for worse. I thought to call Steve, but someone else came to mind: a man seasoned in battle, both inside the ring and out. Someone who’d fought for his own life and selflessly sacrificed himself to save others. Although it was early, I called him immediately.

  “Yeah?” Nick answered groggily.

  “Sorry to bother you so early. I heard that you finally bought a car. Can you come to Primera?”

  “Can’t it wait? It’s not even 6:00 a.m.”

  “Did you hear about Carlos?”

  “What about him?”