Yellow Medicine

by Anthony Neil Smith

  “Tonight. You call those two bozos you’ve got working over there and get them on the road tonight. You pack up the butchers in Minneapolis who killed my favorite band. And if you planned on dumping anthrax in the Mississippi River, I’d suggest rethinking that, too.”

  “I said I understand.” A little testy. “Minnesota is off-limits.”

  “Now, swear to Allah.”

  That burned him. His face grew tight and dark.

  “Come on,” I said. “Say four little words and everybody’s happy, okay?”

  It took him a few swallows to get down all that pride, but he finally squeaked out, “I swear.”

  “You know what I want. Almost.”

  “Okay, yes. I swear to Allah.”

  Was it satisfying? Not at all. I had a sour taste in my mouth, didn’t know how to react. Stayed there beside him. Should we shake on it? A hug? I loathed him. I’d sold out to him.

  “Good. That’s fine.” I stood, waved my gun towards the clerk. “Get him cleaned up.”

  Shook his head. “We have our own way of handling this situation.”

  “What?” It was Umar. “Please, I beg you.”

  I wanted to laugh. Big shots in killing, but not so much when it came to sacrifice. Their Middle Eastern brothers would have been ashamed of these clowns.

  I backed towards Graham, still ready for anything. I chirped Drew on the two-way.

  “I‘m here,” she said.

  “We’re good. You can leave the girl now. Our boy did his job.” I suspected that Aziz wouldn’t be going home to her, though. He looked relieved for barely a second before realizing what this meant for him.

  Graham gripped my shoulder as we walked back-to-back towards the door, but it wasn’t enough for me. I watched them all, knowing good and damn well we’d just shown them that we didn’t have balls the size of theirs. So, fine. We just wanted some peace and quiet. Being heroes took something we didn’t have.

  But I could be myself. “And just in case you didn’t think we were serious, how’s this?”

  I took aim at Umar, shot him in the face. No chance of living through that one. Graham screamed. I took aim at the cell leader, was going to give him one, but Graham jostled me, made my shot go wide. The guy ran back into the depths of his house.

  The greeter pulled a pistol from the towel in his hand, but Graham grabbed my collar and dragged me out of the house before he could get off a shot. We sprinted to the sidewalk and into our car. The sky was darker, purple clashing with gray as night fell. No one chased us or took potshots as we drove away, Graham in the driver’s seat again.

  As soon as we started rolling, Graham was frantic. “What were you thinking? Oh man, oh God, oh Jesus.”

  “Calm down. They would’ve killed him anyway.” Fell out of my mouth nice and casual, but my chest was thumping double-time. I pictured him praying on the floor of the video store. Contrasted that to his fear on the floor back there. Yeah, what had I been thinking? Some ridiculous idea that I’d scare them off by killing another one of theirs? I was too used to dealing with meth dealers, good ol’ boys who just wanted the easy life instead of the backbreaking work their fathers had slaved over. I’d crossed the line.

  Graham was still breathing too hard. “I need to call home. Oh god, Billy, you know how they work.”

  “They’re not going to hurt your family, all right? It’s gotten too hot for them now. Don’t worry about it.”

  I didn’t believe it, not really. Wanted to. I’d acted like the gung ho cop again instead of thinking for a moment, not remembering until it was too late that it’s always tit-for-tat with these guys. Shit. And they would feel a lot less bad about it than I did right then.

  “Hey,” I said, “I’m sorry, really. I just couldn’t let what they did to Paul stand without…you know. Still, we got the point across. It’ll be fine.”

  When he finally spoke again, it was a whisper while exhaling. “Jesus have mercy on us.”

  “On you,” I said. “How do you know Jesus didn’t want us to smoke ‘em?”

  Hands tight on the wheel, eyes on the road. “Call it a hunch.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  An icy and quiet drive back to the hotel, Graham not speaking the entire way. His shoulders were hunched. He kept glancing at his cell phone plugged into its charger. Desperate to call his wife, kids, Tordsen, anyone. I wished he had, too. If I’d brought on another massacre, might as well load six bullets into the revolver next time I played my game. Stack the deck in my favor. We planned to drive back to Minnesota the next morning because we just couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  Graham had eventually said, “I’ll call Agent Rome in the morning, tell him what we’ve found.”

  “He’s not going to like it. We probably sent those guys into hiding again.”

  Graham shrugged, said, “Doesn’t matter. It’s over. We’re screwed. We tried, and now we’ve got to get out of the way.”

  “It’s not that easy for me. He wants my head.”

  “I’ll back you the whole way. You’ll be just fine. Maybe we’ll get in a little trouble, but then again we might get a medal out of the deal. I just want to go home and never do anything like this again.” Then he headed for the shower, leaving me alone with Drew.

  We never really expected our little terrorist wannabes to keep their word and pull out, leaving our citizens to worry about simpler things—new breeds of corn, pesticides, preparing the fields for spring planting, helping their kids get summer jobs or waiting for them to come help out on the farm. Anything else but what we had dealt with the past week. It might take months to dull the image of the college girl’s severed head and the bodies of Ian and Heather every time I rested my eyes or tried to fall asleep. Longer for Graham, I imagined. Killing Umar wasn’t going to do a damn thing except add another shot of gore to the slide show. This wasn’t justice. This was a nightmare.

  As I stood at the window, the nasty yawn in my stomach quieted down and it seemed as if I might get a few decent hours of sleep. I lifted my shirt, found that a few stitches had popped and bled through, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected. Still stung dully through the Vicodin buffer zone.

  Then, those shadows outside the window, stopping in front of our room. It hit me before I even knew who they were—they weren’t taking it out on the family, but on me.

  Drew followed my instructions, tossing over my pistol and hiding on the far side of the far bed, ready to climb under the mattress.

  I called out, “Graham? Maybe you’d better get in here.”

  Someone knocked on the door. One of the men was shielding his eyes to stare through the window, but the glare from the lamps and the darkness outside made it hard to tell exactly who we were dealing with.

  “Who is it?”

  A muffled voice, trying hard to do a flat Midwestern accent but stumbling miserably. “Is manager. We, I, need to talk with you about bill.”

  I was tempted to get a fisheye view from the peephole but figured they were waiting for something like that. Maybe a shotgun already flush against the door, ready to take me out of the game. Instead of falling for it, I trusted that the locks would hold and I shouted, “We’ll deal with it tomorrow. Trying to sleep right now.”

  “No! Is very important you talk now. I have paper for you. Come, open the door and take.”

  “No can do. First thing in the morning, I swear.”

  Once Graham came out of the bathroom, I signaled, three fingers up, then I pointed towards the door.

  He reached behind him for the gun he had left by the sink. He was just a little bit late.

  Explosion, bright and sudden, the force dropping me to the floor. I fought to keep myself in the zone. The window cracked from the blast, and the men finished the job with sledgehammers. The bulbs in the lamps blew. Pebbles of glass flew across the room, bouncing off the bedspreads and our skin. I fired towards the curtains, heard a grunt and thought I’d hit one. Couldn’t tell. Dark, dark, dark except for our gu
ns and their guns.

  I heard loud Arab voices and finally was able to focus on someone stepping through the hole in the window into our room. A glimpse of his profile—the greeter from the house in Ann Arbor, but much fatter. He had a gut. An oddly shaped gut.

  I figured it out. Leapt from the floor over the far bed, pulled Drew from the mattress and covered her with my body, then turned to tell Graham, “Get in the bathroom! The tub! Now!”

  The greeter screamed over my words. Graham planted his feet and fired at the greeter. Chest shot. Head shot.

  Too goddamned late.

  The greeter detonated himself.

  It was one of those moments you never expected to see with your own eyes. On the nightly news, sure. The aftermath, dulled by editing and commentary, in a far away place overseas. A centuries old war that we had no part of.

  So we thought.

  The flash came first, blinding me. I turned my head on instinct, braced it against Drew’s back. Then the bang, a real bang, not a movie extravaganza full of layers and reverb and resonance. It was a loud pop, fraction of a second, that I thought might have taken out my ears for good. Immediately heard two banshee wails. One in my head. It took me another long moment to realize the other was coming from Drew, pounding me with her fists from below. She must’ve thought I was unconscious or dead.

  I pushed myself up, the dark disorienting me, colors flashing in my bad eye. Wiped it. Blood, glass, no pain but no sight either. Sprinklers raining down cold, steam coming off the floor and the walls. The charred flesh odor made me gag. I helped Drew up. She seemed okay, coughing and crying, clinging to me. We found Graham, felt him moving, and each took an arm, dragged him out of the room into the parking lot.

  We were instantly surrounded, hotel guests and workers in their pajamas out in the near freezing air. I looked back at the room, some sight returning to my injured eye. The door was hanging open. Smoke poured out. It hadn’t been as powerful as the suicide bombers overseas, but it devastated the room. No idea how I had survived, let alone Graham.

  Then I looked down at him. Holy God.

  He was alive, but his face was ground beef, unrecognizable. Blood was seeping through the skin. I didn’t see a source. Everywhere. Drew knelt across from him, taking towels from other guests, trying to stop the bleeding. Graham was writhing but fading. I held his hands high. Three fingers on his left, gone. Two on the right burned to stubs. I ripped his shirt to ribbons—his chest was raw, pulpy—and tied off his wrists. Still couldn’t hear anything, still seeing spots.

  Frantic to save Graham. In the back of my mind, though, coming up fast, was the truth: he was gone. Too much trauma, too much blood. I wanted to pray. I shouted to him, “Hold on, help’s coming. You be strong, you hear? Answer me!”

  He stared at me, locked in. Nodded. I could barely hear the world around me so I knew goddamned well he couldn’t. No way his wires were playing the scene straight for him. But he locked in and moved his mouth. Shards of teeth. He lifted his chin, motioned me closer.

  He knew. Saw it in Drew’s eyes that he was on his way out, saw in mine what I wanted to do about it.

  I leaned closer, closer, ear touching his lips. I heard him breathing. The words came out wheezy: “Don’t do it.”

  I turned my head, wanted him to read my lips. “I don’t have a choice.”

  Head shake. More blood seeping. He winced, held his breath. Then again formed the words carefully. “Don’t. Do. It.”

  I laid my hand on top of his head. “Okay. Okay. I hear you.”

  The next word was tougher to make out. It took me hours running through possibilities to understand. “Peace.”

  His breath stalled. Then he sucked in a lungful. Sirens. My hearing was coming back slowly, the banshee wail still louder than everything else. Drew called for a doctor, a nurse. A young black lady with glasses knelt beside her, said she worked in a pediatric clinic. A fit white guy stood above us, said he was a physical therapist. He recruited a couple of guests—”Need ice! Water. I need lots of towels!”

  I backed away, sat on my ass in the parking lot. Counted my fingers and toes. All there. Legs and arms working, no broken bones. Sharp pains in my back. I imagined I was a mess. But alive, willing, and able. I crawled to Drew and pulled her away. She didn’t want to let go. The nurse loosened Drew’s fingers from Graham’s shoulder. She slid towards me and dug her nails into me. Not crying anymore.

  We were thinking the same thing. If we stayed here, we were useless. We were done for. We would have come all this way only to give up the rest of our lives to the Federal Government, either as prisoners or “material witnesses”, same sort of life—caged.

  The sirens were closer. We needed to run before the cops showed up if we were going to do this.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  It only took one glance. She stood, helped me up, and dug the keys out of her pocket. A few of the people on the crowd tried to stop us as we walked towards our car. I pushed them away. Drew dropped into the driver’s seat. I climbed in the other side.

  She cranked up, blew the horn to clear off the four people trying to keep us on the scene, then headed out for Ann Arbor.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  If there was an APB out on our vehicle—and how could there not be?—we must have slipped the net. We barreled down the dark highways and mourned quietly. I’d never thought of Graham as anything more than a well-meaning figurehead until this past week, and certainly not like a brother. Drew hardly knew him at all. What we’d seen together made us family, though. A family that didn’t forgive all that easily.

  The terrorists had broken their word so the deal was null and void. Ends justifying means, all that. I didn’t even want to get into the ethics—how could they claim religious piety when their whole movement depended on lies? I just wanted cold vicious revenge. Graham deserved justice more than Asimov did. Regardless of the man’s dying words, I couldn’t let this one lie.

  We had left in a hurry to avoid the cops and med techs and TV cameras, so we weren’t prepared for our assault. Had to stop in a taco shack parking lot so I could grab a shotgun and revolver, pretty much all we had left. Two cops and a bass player do not an arsenal make. We had to make our shots count. I pulled out the guns, a few boxes of ammo, and noticed a couple inside the taco shack staring at us through the window. I grinned and waved. This isn’t for you. Enjoy your date.

  I spread myself and the guns across the backseat and we were off again, Drew like a bat out of hell. I watched her eyes in the rearview mirror. Hard on the road, no blinking. This might not have been what she was used to in her small-town, low-ambition lifestyle, but she hadn’t wavered once. Like a rock. I had felt sorry for bringing her into this at first, but at that moment all I felt was pride.

  Her eyes flicked up to me. “I don’t hear shells being loaded.”

  Thumbed one in. Schick.

  “That’s better.”

  *

  A few cruisers passed us going in the opposite direction. We were lucky. If they had lit us up, I would have told Drew to floor it. We were above the law. Lucky was better.

  We were in sync and didn’t need words until we got to the outskirts. Drew pulled to the shoulder and I took the wheel.

  “Don’t pull up right in front,” she said.

  “I won’t.”

  “I’m sure they know by now that we got out alive.”

  “Yeah.”

  Another quiet street. I slowed down at an intersection and turned left. Six more blocks.

  Drew said, “I’m coming with you.”

  I expected her to say that. This wasn’t a movie, no need for me to say, No, it’s too dangerous. You wait right here. She didn’t need to say, I’m just as big a part of this as you are. You need me in there.

  Movie guys never realize what they’re pushing away until it’s too late.

  “Of course you are,” I said. “That was always the plan.”

  At the final corner I slowed to a stop at the
curb. “It’s five down on the right.”

  “Counting the corner house?”

  “Five driveways. Let’s go.”

  Left the key in the ignition as we climbed out, guns ready like they were extensions of our bodies. Let the neighbors see. That wasn’t our concern anymore. What happened after was out of our hands. This was about something bigger than us. If we failed, then we’d probably be tortured like Heather and Ian before they took our heads off. I’d seen more horrible things done to the human body in the past few days than I ever had expected to see in my lifetime.

  Two driveways. Dogs barked. Porch lights, a couple of Subarus, a basketball goal above them. Crickets.

  Four driveways. Drew smoothed her palm across my back, slipped it off, wrapped it around her fingers already tight on the gun.

  The fifth driveway. No cars. All dark. We stood on the sidewalk and stared, waiting for signs of life. A faint glow in one of the windows, maybe some lights on in the back room. We eased through the yard to the left side of the house. A motion sensor from the house next door caused a light in front of the garage to wake up and glow. We kept on. A tall wooden fence separated us from the backyard. Voices from nearby¾the neighbor’s backyard, a handful of friends sitting around having a few beers, laughing it up. I wondered if our terrorists had ever been invited over for dinner or had asked to borrow a cup of sugar, the whole time labeling everyone else in the neighborhood as the enemy.

  I shook my head, sighed loudly.

  Drew said, “Don’t get sentimental on me. I need the corrupt side of you switched on right now.”

  I turned to her, whispered, “You really think of me like that?”

  She worked the latch on the gate. “It’s who you are. But it’s not all you are, so deal with it.”

  No lock on the gate. They didn’t want to look like they had anything to hide, right? Of course it also made it appear they had nothing to steal, and that wasn’t normal either.