by JJ Zep
“Don’t hurt them,” Skye begged. “Please don’t hurt them.”
“Now princess,” Messenger said, easing the truck to a stop. “Would I do a thing like that?”
He reached into his breast pocket, removed a vial of his beloved blue gunk and took a miniscule sip, gargled it, then swallowed. The sickeningly sweet aroma of blueberries pervaded the cab. Skye had once asked him what the blue stuff was and Messenger’s answer had been cryptic. He’d found a stock of it in a bombed out prison in Oklahoma, he’d said, and it was like ‘heaven in a bottle, even if it did play hell with the ol’ wiener.’
The pickup idled on the blacktop like a keyed up bird dog. Three hundred yards away, the station wagon was a wounded game bird, just waiting to be plucked out of the water. The man was still struggling to loosen the wheel and was sitting flat on his butt, his legs pushed under the car. The woman meanwhile had stopped gesticulating and appeared to be in earnest conversation with the man.
Messenger carefully resealed the vial and slotted it into his pocket. He expelled a dry cough and made a hawking sound that Skye knew all too well. It meant trouble.
“Don’t. Please,” she begged.
If Messenger heard her, he ignored her pleas. “Don’t worry peoples,” he said. “Help is on the way.”
He slammed his foot down on the accelerator and the truck burned rubber before lurching forward and accelerating across the tarmac.
twenty nine
For a moment everything, including Skye’s thoughts, seemed to slip into super-slomo. She had time to think: ‘The crazy son-of-a-bitch is trying to kill us all,’ time to query why he would want to do that (why now? why like this?), time to realize that it was what he’d planned all along. He’d been bringing them to Phoenix to kill them (probably in some sadistic way involving Z’s). The car at the side of the road was a bonus, an opportunity to wreak even more havoc, to destroy more innocent lives. Such an opportunity was irresistible to a psychopath like Messenger.
The distance to the station wagon could now be measured in strides. The girl with the bat, probably caught between going left and going right, did neither and was folded under the pickup’s wheels in the moment before it plowed into the back of the station wagon.
Skye braced, clinging to Daniel for all she was worth. The impact wasn’t as bad as she’d expected, for a moment she was thrown forward, clutching her precious bundle. Then she was slammed back into the seat as though by an invisible hand. Sharp pain flared in her thigh, followed by the screeeee of metal on metal, the implosion of glass. Then the entire cab began shuddering as the pickup lost momentum and eventually ground to a halt. For the briefest of moments, it was dead silent. Then Daniel was awake and screaming and a chorus of wails reached her, the keening cry of the woman, the pain-inspired shriek of the man, “My legggggggs! Oh… God! Holy…sweet…Jeeeessssusss! Help…meeee!”
Above the cacophony, Skye heard the distinctive click of a seatbelt being released, a door yawning open. “Stay here,” Messenger said and stepped from the cab onto the tarmac.
She watched him through the shattered windshield, rounding the station wagon, stooping to pick something up. Now was her chance, she knew. Now while he was occupied. The man continued shrieking, his cries forming a discordant duet with those of the woman. Closer at hand, Daniel was crying, fists balled, face so red and contorted that she thought he might be suffering a seizure. She shushed him, held him closer, rocked him slightly, succeeded in muffling his screams.
But even as she tried to calm her son she knew she had to get moving. She couldn’t see the man and woman from her position, but she could see Messenger, his head and shoulders visible above the roofline of the station wagon.
Now the screams were elevated to a new level.
First the man: “Jesus mister, don’t do that…Don’t! No!”
Skye saw Messenger raise a baseball bat above his head, hold it there.
“Why are you doing this?” the woman cried, “Why?”
Then the bat came down with a dull thud, cutting short the man’s cries and ratcheting up the volume on the woman’s. The bat was raised again, coming up spattered with blood. Messenger half turned towards her, wearing the same look of maniacal glee she’d seen on his face the night he’d murdered her family.
That got her moving. Ignoring the pain in her thigh, the moisture she felt down there (which had to be blood) she reached over and released the seat belt. Then, as the belt slid away from her, she simultaneously levered the door catch and applied her shoulder to it. The door wouldn’t budge.
“No!” Skye screamed and attacked the door again. Useless, it was jammed. She drew back her elbow, prepared to slam it into the side window. It was then that she realized that she hadn’t released the lock. She did so now then tried the door again. It flipped open effortlessly.
The woman’s cries had by now been extinguished, but still Skye could see Messenger swinging the bat. He’d be coming for her soon. She clambered from the truck on her damaged leg. Daniel’s cries had now been reduced to whimpers. Her first priority was to find a safe place for him. Running wasn’t an option. Not with her damaged leg, not with no place to hide.
The sound of the bat clattering to the pavement drew her attention back to Messenger. He was standing in the road with his head thrown back, wiping sweat from his brow with a bloodied hand.
There was no time. Pulling Daniel’s blanket from the seat, she quickly arranged it in the footwell, then laid him down. He began wailing again, but she shut the car door cutting off his cries. She leaned her back against the truck, squinting against the brightness. A swoop of nausea passed over her and for a moment she thought that she might pass out. She sucked in a breath of scorching air, looked down and saw the bloody patch on her dress. She hadn’t bled out as much as she’d expected but still it looked bad, bad enough to make her feel like puking.
Moving as quickly as her quivering hands would allow, she parted the dress along the slit. What she saw caused her to pull in a sharp breath. The nail had entered her thigh pushing in by about four inches leaving the flesh around it bloody and inflamed. Fortunately, it appeared to have pushed in on a vertical trajectory. Hopefully that meant in hadn’t caused any muscle damage. It hurt like hell.
She suddenly realized that she hadn’t heard Messenger in a while. A panic-stricken glance through the side window, through the smashed windshield, told her why. Messenger wasn’t standing beside the station wagon anymore.
Skye directed her gaze back to the nail embedded in her thigh. Barely pausing to consider what she was about to do, she reached down, gripped the nail head between thumb and forefinger and yanked upwards. It came out easily, but with a lance of pain that caused her to cry out.
Wincing she maneuvered her makeshift dagger into her fist, her blood sticky and warm between her fingers. She scanned again to the road looking for Messenger, didn’t see him.
Something stirred behind her.
“Hello princess,” came his voice in her ear.
twenty thirty
There had never been a chance that she would survive this man. Skye realized that now, realized it as one of his arms snaked around her belly, pulled her in tight, as his hand found her wrist and gave it a crushing squeeze that loosened her grip on the weapon.
“Now what were you planning on doing with that, princess?” Messenger said, kicking the nail away. He smelled of blood and blueberries and sweat. Skye pummeled her legs, tried to wriggle out of his grasp. Her efforts were about as effective as those of a rabbit held in the jaws of a coyote.
“Let me go!” she screamed. “Let me go you son of a bitch!”
“Now is that any way to speak to your old man?” Messenger chuckled.
“You’re not my old man! You’re nothing to me, nothing but a finger-fucking rapist!”
“Shh,” Messenger whispered in her ear. “Easy now, princess. No need for name calling.”
“Let me go!” Skye screamed and tried again to free he
rself. She’d always believed that in a situation like this, faced with imminent death, with a threat to her son, she’d be able to muster the strength to fight. She fought now, kicked and thrashed in his grip, but to no avail. Eventually she lapsed into sobs of frustration.
“That’s it, princess,” Messenger’s hateful voice spoke in her ear. “Let it out.”
“What do you want with us?” Skye sobbed.
“What I’ve always wanted. For us to be happy together.”
“Let me go then. Let my son go.”
“Aw princess, don’t you understand that I could never do that? How would I live without you?”
“Please, let us go.” She was crying now, deep fetched sobs that racked her body, draining her of strength. His hand left her wrist, went to her hair and began stroking it. She allowed herself to relax, to lean into him, the back of her head resting against his chest. His grip on her waist loosened.
“That’s it princess. You relax. Daddy’s here.”
His hand headed south, leaving her waist, sliding through the slit in her dress. She felt his fingers brush across the front of her panties. At the same time his tongue, flicked against her neck and traced upward towards her earlobe. Skye fought back a wave of revulsion and let out a low moan.
“You like that?” he whispered.
His hand was inside her panties, his tongue still caressing her neck. Skye adjusted her balance slightly, bending her knees, shifting her weight to her toes, bunching her calf muscles.
“Yeah,” Messenger whispered as a shudder ran through his body. He relaxed his grip further and Skye took her chance. She thrust upward with all her strength, the top of her head slamming into his lower jaw. His teeth came together like a bear trap, catching his tongue between them.
Messenger let out a grunt that was part pain and part surprise. His hand flew to his injured mouth allowing Skye to wriggle free. She sprinted away from him, rounded the truck and cut left. The scene that greeted her there stopped her in her tracks like a punch to the gut.
Three corpses lay beside the car. One, the man, had his legs crushed under the weight of the vehicle. His head had been pulped to a mess of brains and blood and bone that was not recognizable as human. The woman lay nearby, her features similarly obliterated, her dead arms still cradling the corpse of her son. The boy appeared to have been killed by the initial impact. That, at least, was a mercy.
Skye saw the bloodied baseball bat lying on the tarmac and started towards it. But then she heard him coming after her and she knew there wasn’t time.
Messenger blundered into the side of the truck. “You fwucking bith!” he roared around his mangled tongue. “Come outh. I’m going to kee you!”
Skye rounded the front of the station wagon and ducked out of sight. She steadied her breathing, tried to gather her thoughts.
“Come outh!” Messenger screeched. He sounded like a demon with a speech impediment. Despite the gravity of the situation, Skye found herself almost erupting into maniacal laughter.
She crouched and looked under the vehicle to get a handle on his position and got an eyeful of the man’s mangled legs instead. In the next moment she heard the sound of smashing glass.
“Come outh, you bith!”
She realized what was happening now. Messenger had picked up the baseball bat and was venting his fury on the station wagon. That gave her a chance, a slim chance admittedly, but a chance. She crouched low and inched towards the far side of the vehicle, around it.
Smash! Another window on the car was obliterated.
Thunk! The baseball bat crashed into the roof.
“Sy! Sy! Come outh here!”
She wasn’t going to do that. She worked her way towards the back of the station wagon, peered around to where the truck stood. The corpse of the teenaged girl lay mangled under its wheels.
Behind her, Messenger continued his demolition of the station wagon, leaving Skye with a decision to make. Was she going to try to round the truck and come up on his blind side, or was she going to make a mad dash across his line of sight and hope that she could beat him into the cab? She decided that she’d have a better shot trying to sneak in.
But what if the truck didn’t start first time? Would it start at all after the collision? Whether it would or not, it was her only chance. She was all out of options. It was this or death.
She broke from cover, running crouched over towards the pickup. But even as she did, she realized that she’d made a fatal mistake. She hadn’t checked on Messenger before making her break, hadn’t noticed that he’d stopped beating up on the station wagon.
“Goth you now bith,” Messenger sneered as he appeared from behind the vehicle and cut off her path.
thirty one
Skye dropped her head, pummeled her arms and sprinted for the truck. But he was close, too close, and as he snaked out one of those long arms of his, she felt him snag the back of her dress, heard it rip. She was catapulted to the tarmac, came down hard on her knees, removing a layer of skin, even through the fabric of her dress. The pain of the collision was immediately eclipsed by another as she seemed to bounce and come down on her side. Her hip slammed into the ground, sending her sliding across the pavement.
In a flash, Messenger was on her, straddling her, delivering flat slaps to her face with his meaty paws. A constellation of stars exploded in her head. Skye kicked out and managed to free herself enough to gain a few inches before he pinned her again. She wrenched one of her arms free, twisted and tried to gain a handhold on the crash barrier. Her hand brushed against the steel and fell maddeningly short. Then his hands were on her throat and he was strangling her.
The sudden lack of oxygen dropped a mist over her vision. Through it she saw a flash of red glinting among the scrub grass sprouting around a barrier post. She reached for it, feeling almost as though she were squeezing herself out of her skin. Her fingers brushed the shard of broken taillight, caught a tenuous grip, worked it into her palm. Messenger continued throttling her, grunting with the effort.
Skye lashed out with her makeshift dagger, the arc of her blow connecting with the spot where Messenger’s ear joined his head. Messenger let out a yowl and threw up a hand to his damaged ear. Skye swung again, this time driving the weapon into the side of his throat.
A gush of dark arterial blood spurted from the wound like water from a geyser. Messenger quickly redirected his hands to this fresh wound, but Skye wasn’t letting up, she squirmed out from under him, staggered to her feet, flashed the blade at him as he kneeled on the tarmac with blood seeping between his fingers and soaking into the front of his shirt. A deep furrow appeared across Messenger’s face, unzipping the flesh from chin to forehead, rupturing an eyeball in the process. Messenger sagged sideways, began convulsing on the tarmac.
But still Skye wasn’t done. She straddled him, raised the dagger above her head and drove it into his chest two-handed. Grunting, she worked the dagger free, raised it and brought it down again, then again. She continued her attack until all that was left of the shard was a nub of blunt plastic. Then she directed her bloodstained face towards the heavens and unleashed a scream that would have scared the pants off a legion of harpies.
thirty two
“Chances are we ain’t going to make it,” Charlie said. “Think about that.” He looked around the room expecting hands to drop. None of them did. He tried again. “I’m not sure you all understand. This is pretty much a suicide mission. According to Morales, Mexicali is inundated, including with Quicks.”
“Might just be scare stories to keep us away from his personal larder,” Galvin said.
“Might be, but I don’t think so,” Charlie said. “If that were the case, why mention Mexicali at all? Why not keep it to himself?”
“Maybe this Mexicali stuff is all bullshit,” Fagan offered. He and Brunsden were the only two who weren’t volunteering for the mission. “Maybe there ain’t shit to be found south of the border but Z’s. Maybe he just wants you numbskulls
to go down there and get your asses chewed.”
“Maybe you’re full of crap,” someone said.
But, much as Charlie hated to admit it, Fagan had a point. He’d considered that possibility himself. What if Morales was leading him away from the camp so that he could snatch Jespersen? If that was the plan, he was going to be disappointed. Charlie had already decided. Jespersen (his weakest man outside of Fagan and Brunsden) was one of those he was taking along. Jespersen might well die down there, and if that was the case, so be it. But Charlie wasn’t going to leave him behind to be abducted by Morales and lynched.
Out loud he said. “I trust Morales.”
“Yeah well, good luck with that,” Fagan muttered under his breath.
Charlie ignored him. In the weeks since he’d called Fagan out, Fagan had slowly regained some of his bluster. He still trod lightly around Charlie, but he was pushing Pasquali’s buttons again and he was back to bullying Jespersen and some of the other men. Charlie had let it slide thus far.
“Okay,” Charlie said. “Drop your hands. Jespersen, you’re in, Galvin you too.”
“Yes!” Galvin said and gave a little air punch.
“I need one more,” Charlie said. “Anyone here ever been to Mexicali? Anyone have a handle on the place?”
A single hand shot up and Charlie was glad to see that it was Corporal Miguel Feng. Feng, who went by the nickname ‘Meegs,’ was one of the few men with combat experience and had assisted Charlie in training the others.
“You been to Mexicali, Meegs?” Charlie asked.
“My dad grew up in Chinatown,” Meegs said.
“Fucking brilliant,” Fagan said. “Your ol’ man grew up in gay San Fran. That’ll help.”
“Chinatown, Mexicali, dipshit.”
“Mexicali ain’t got no Chinatown,” Fagan said emphatically.