Revenence (Novella 2): Dead Tired

by M. E. Betts

  Walking to the rear of the van, he saw that the gas cap was still closed. It boded well for him, letting him know that it was unlikely that the gas had already been siphoned from the van, as it was doubtful that most people would go to the trouble of closing the cap again after scavenging gas, especially under the given circumstances.

  Adrian took a length of tube from his trunk and prepared to transport the gas from the minivan into his tank. As he worked, he wondered how long it would be before all the gas was expired. He had already noticed a reduction in miles per gallon, and since he kept his motorcycle in reliably good shape, he was certain that the drop in performance was attributable to the gasoline, not his bike. He filled his tank until it was full, being of a much smaller capacity than the minivan. Replacing his cap and putting the tube back in its place in the trunk, he surveyed the area, then straddled and started his bike, heading south again.

  As the outskirts of Sapulpa began to loom ahead in the distance, the sound of the sadists' motors ahead of him resounded off of the buildings on the outskirts of town. Adrian sighed. Once again, he reflected upon the fact that back in Kentucky, when his daughter had first been taken, he hadn't dreamed that he would be chasing her abductors all the way through Missouri and into Oklahoma. He glared down the road, knowing more than ever that he had to catch up with them before they made it to Amarillo. He didn't know how many people or resources this Pfeifer character had at his disposal, so he didn't know that he would be able to get Celia out alive.

  He reached the edge of town, likely as the sadists were already headed down the road on the opposite side. Coming to the intersection of 51 and 44, he turned right onto the latter of the the two roads. He made his way across the northern edge of Salulpa, and after only minutes, he found himself surrounded by rural landscapes. After a few miles, he saw a sign to his right informing him that there was a strict minimum speed of 50 miles per hour. NO TOLERANCE, the sign read.

  "Can do," Adrian said, his speedometer reading sixty-two.

  As he drove through the expansive, monotonous countryside that made up the vast bulk of the ninety-some miles between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, his thoughts slipped back again to the past as he attempted to distract himself from the exhaustion beginning to set in.

  In his thoughts, he found himself in Iraq under an unrelenting sun. He and Christopher walked side by side, on their way back to their vehicle during a routine survey mission.

  "We get back home," Christopher told him, "I think I'm gonna get a bike. We can go riding together. It's only, what? A couple hours from your place to mine? Maybe we can meet in the middle."

  "I'm in," Adrian said. "You're gonna love it, man. But let me ask, what made you decide all of a sudden you wanna get a bike? You said those things were dangerous."

  Christopher shook his head, gesturing around him. "This place. This life, and the things we've seen. Things we've had to do. I'm just thinking it's time to do a lot of living when I get back. Finances be damned. Risk be damned. I want to see and do some shit before I die, and I don't mean this," he concluded, referring to the harsh desert dotted with semi-ruined villages.

  Adrian's thoughts drifted from there, touching briefly on a random memory before his mind flitted to the next one which was perhaps related in a tangential way, one after another. At one point, his mind skirted around some memory half-buried in the sands of his consciousness, something he had repressed by necessity in order to rejoin everyday American society upon his return to the United States. The next second, the memory of burning husks of cars which had gotten through the barrier of his consciousness prompted the recollection of small toy cars he had set afire as a child with his cousin behind the shed of his aunt Jan and uncle Tim. The two children had been re-enacting scenes from cheesy seventies films filled with car stunts.

  Although he smiled at the memory some two and a half decades later as he sped through rural Oklahoma, he and his cousin hadn't been laughing after being caught by aunt Jan. They had each received thorough spankings, and then spent the remainder of the afternoon standing with their noses in opposite corners of the living room, staring at the wallpaper until supper was ready. When aunt Jan left the room to see to the pork roast in the oven, Adrian and his cousin, Sadie, risked quick glances back over their shoulders at one another.

  "It was worth it," Adrian saw Sadie, his cousin and partner in crime, mouth defiantly under her breath, and he smiled and flashed her a silent thumbs-up before returning his face to the corner.

  Adrian wondered about his cousin. Her parents had taught her to shoot at an early age, so she had that in her favor. Her health wasn't the greatest, however, as she had slipped at an early age into a comfort-geared lifestyle. By her mid-twenties, her mobility was well below what it should have been for her age, and her diet was unapologetically poor, meaning her health had only gotten worse over the years. Adrian knew that if she were able to get somewhere safe, her shooting skills would be an asset to any group. What he couldn't picture, though, was her survival on the road for any extended period of time.

  The random thoughts kept coming, playing relay tag with his consciousness. He was startled when he passed beneath a sign telling him that Oklahoma City was approaching in only eight miles. He realized that he didn't remember anything he had seen or passed through since shortly after leaving Sapulpa, though he did remember hearing the sound of the sadists far ahead on a couple of occasions. It sounded as if they were passing beneath tunnels at those times when the noise level was intense enough to reach him far to the north. He realized that the sounds of the motors ahead of him had been the only thing to attach him to the world for the eighty-some miles he had traveled while his mind was somewhere else.

  Long as I was awake, he thought, furrowing his brows down until they eclipsed the tops of his nearly sable irises.

  As Oklahoma City loomed closer, he contemplated detouring north on upcoming 35 before heading west on a rural road, swinging above and around the city. Before he could reach the exit, though, he heard the sadists' motors again, rumbling through the city far to his left. The sound beckoned and seduced him to turn southward onto 35 instead, toward the dense heart of the city, even though he wasn't sure he could handle any major confrontations.

  He ignored his exhaustion as he raced past tourist attractions, eateries and travel centers, all tragically quiet. In late August, the amusement park should have been filled with laughing, screaming children, and the gas stations should have had a steady flow of motorists. Instead, the ferris wheel and coasters sat eerily still, never to run again, and the last vehicles to pull into the gas stations sat day after day, ad infinitum, in the congested parking lots, abandoned and rusting. As he passed a budget motel to his left, he read the front sign. VACANCIES AVAILABLE.

  He drove through several miles of industrial and undeveloped land, able to actually see the sadists a few times, far in the distance. As he passed through the second major intersection without incident, he was reminded again that someone, probably the sadists themselves, must have cleared the road. He supposed it likely meant that the route was an important one for the sadists. He wondered how many times they had traveled the route, and to what purpose.

  Sweet Jesus, he thought, checking his odometer. It's gotta be over 500 miles already. He couldn't help but to be impressed. To clear a several-hundred-mile-long route was no small feat, though he shuddered to think of the sorts of things they had done to people in order to accomplish it.

  His eyelids tried to droop, threatening to close, as he kept to the outside lane, taking the elevated stretch up to a bridge. He turned right as he kept his lids open with his sense of urgency, heading north, and sped toward the heart of town with its tight cluster of high-rises.

  Just as he was reaching the congested metropolitan district, he heard and felt a large-caliber round that rendered him alert, fully and immediately, as it whizzed through the air just inches from his face. As a younger man, such an event may have caused him to panic and lose contr
ol of his bike. After his experiences overseas, however, he barely flinched before slowing the bike, coming to a stop near an overturned semi-trailer.

  He dismounted, arming himself with his AR-15 as he prepared to use the trailer for cover, though he wasn't sure from what direction the round had come. He loaded a magazine into his assault rifle as he looked around him, noting a figure atop the entrance to a building on the east side of the street, twenty-five feet above street level. He crouched as he momentarily left his cover to take a shot.

  Adrian side-stepped to the west side of the truck, putting the vehicle between himself and his aggressor as another heavy round was discharged toward him from the east side of the street. As he pointed his barrel at the target, the unknown man appeared to be looking past him, across the street, as he dropped to his belly to evade the shot Adrian was discharging in his direction.

  Adrian thought for a fraction of a second to spin around in order to see at what or whom the shooter had been looking, but instead his instinct took over, and his body decided to evade first and then look. As he jumped over the coupling mechanism between the cab and trailer, he looked briefly back west, where a figure on a two-story roof stepped out from behind a concrete stairwell leading down into the building beneath . The figure threw a lit stick of dynamite toward the coupling before ducking back into the stairway and out of sight.

  Adrian saw the stick leave the figure's hand. Since he didn't have time to run, he huddled instead behind the undercarriage of the overturned trailer in anticipation of the blast, covering his head and neck as best as he could with his hands and forearms. The trailer rocked slightly on the pavement as the detonation occurred, a wave of sound and force that ripped through the city streets lined with high buildings.

  Although the undercarriage of the truck was spared from the wrath of the explosion, the exposed trailer was ripped wide open. Its final cargo, a shipment of foodservice items, was yielded first toward the sky, then downward again as a rain of napkins, paper cups and rancid food items. Spoiled meats, twisted metal and shards of fiberglass all littered the ground.

  On Adrian's side of the truck, a hail of rotten tomatoes struck the asphalt, splattering in a twenty-foot radius and peppering the back of his duster, boots and jeans with moldy, gelatinous matter that was mostly unrecognizable. He only knew that they were tomatoes because of the cardboard box that landed, still intact, on the road after all of its fruit had fallen. On the face of the box was a smiling, red cartoon tomato. Keep me cool! read a dialogue bubble coming from the tomato's mouth, instructing the recipient to keep the produce below fifty degrees.

  Adrian raised the barrel of his assault rifle to aim at the unknown person atop the high vestibule to the east, who was discharging another heavy round in his direction. He pulled the trigger, sending a round of three shots into the five-foot-tall capital letter D behind which the sadist had ducked, leading the word DOWNTOWN. The veneer of the D splintered and fragmented into small shards, leaving behind a rebar skeleton. The sadist shot back from behind the O, joined after a moment by another across the street, the one who had thrown the dynamite. As he exited the stairwell again, he was armed with what appeared to be a scoped hunting rifle instead of explosives.

  Adrian shielded himself behind a six-foot-tall privacy partition obscuring a side entrance to a business, leaning out from the side to take a shot at the sadist across the street. He ducked back briefly behind the wall to evade a round from the sadist's rifle, which drove into the sidewalk and sent chunks of concrete up and outward. Adrian stepped out from behind the partition, kneeling and steadying his shotgun as he pointed upward at the sadist on the roof. The sadist had been aiming, preparing to take a shot, but decided to try and take cover instead as Adrian pulled the trigger.

  He didn't make it to safety before Adrian's rounds found their mark in the sadist's rear left upper arm, causing a messy near-amputation. The enemy fled into the stairwell with his dangling arm, leaving Adrian for the moment to deal with the other sadist lurking nearby. He approached the first building again, the one whose front sign now read OWNTOWN in large, unlit letters atop its entrance. The roof of the entrance appeared to be empty, the shooter having presumably entered the building through the open window Adrian spotted, leading into the building's second story.

  Although Adrian wanted the chance to interrogate the two unknown adversaries, he also knew that he had the opportunity to get away, return to the highway and continue his chase. He made his way to his motorcycle left in the street, straddling and starting it as he prepared to make a one-hundred-eighty-degree change of direction. He planned to head south to the ramp that would lead him back onto the highway, but he only got around one-hundred feet before he was stopped again in his tracks by what he saw just ahead.

  The sadist who had been shooting at him was now two buildings south from where he had been, and apparently unarmed. As Adrian approached, he saw the sadist's right hand delve into his pocket. He let up on the gas, looking around him to gauge his options as he prepared to evade. He noted an alleyway to his left, pushing his motorcycle to the limits of its balance as he made the tight, last-minute turn.

  Just as his motorcycle probed into the alleyway, a blast erupted in the street mere yards behind him as another stick of dynamite was thrown, but this time by the other of the two sadists. Adrian was just barely able to slow and stop his motorcycle without allowing it to skid out. He dismounted and returned to the street with his shotgun drawn and his visage tired but livid.

  As he stepped out of the alleyway, he spotted the sadist climbing down from a two-story section of roof. When he saw Adrian, he dropped the final eight feet and unslung what Adrian recognized as a scoped M1 Garand with a gleaming hickory stock. It was a futile effort, however, as Adrian's slug was already sailing through the air in his direction as he wielded his weapon. The slug made contact with his head, blowing off the top portion from around eyebrow-level. Adrian smirked slightly, glad to have left the sadist's fine gun intact.

  Glancing behind him, he confirmed that the other sadist with the ruined arm, who was presently unaccounted for, wasn't lurking behind him. Gathering that he was alone for the time being, Adrian sauntered over to the dead sadist, taking possession of the gun lying on the ground. He checked the corpse, securing the few clips. With the weapon in his inventory, he left his motorcycle in the alley for the time being and approached the building across the street, the one from which the first stick of dynamite had been thrown.

  It was a municipal building with a front and rear facade composed mostly of glass. From the street, Adrian could see through the bulk of the interior, out the rear side and into an open courtyard area behind the building. Inside the structure, Adrian saw an arrangement of cubicles, stairs and elevators, but detected no sign of movement.

  He reached the front entrance, where the wide, glass double doors had been broken out, leaving only the metal frame and a fringe of small, sparkling glass shards to line it. He entered the building, surveying the floor for the tell-tale trail of blood sure to be pouring from the sadist's arm stump, if he were still alive. Good chance the fucker's upstairs, he thought, recalling that the sadist had appeared to disappear into the building via a roof stairwell.

  He stood listening for a moment, his ears straining to pick up any small noises. The only sounds he could detect came from outside, the sounds of wind and wildlife. He progressed further into the building, noting three staircases on the first floor, which was one open room other than the five-foot-tall cubicles occupying most of the rear half.

  He prowled cautiously toward a staircase, then around to its rear. Looking up and down the width of the building, he was reasonably sure that the stairways were all empty, including the spaces beneath them. He ascended the middle of the three staircases, his shotgun drawn. There was no immediate sign of activity on the second and uppermost level, which had a single staircase leading up to a landing and out onto the roof. Other than the stairs and the restrooms lining the northe
rn wall, the second floor was one open area, a collection of desks, office chairs and filing cabinets.

  Adrian's eyes trailed down the stairs, following the stream of blood and crimson footprints. They led to to the men's room, going right to the threshold of the closed door. Adrian drifted over, the click of his boots muted and his gaze steady and steeled as he pushed the door open. The sadist was draped over the marble counter, the bulk of his weight inside the bowl of a large handsink stained red from large amounts of blood pumping from his stump. Although the handles were turned inward, there was no water flowing from the faucet. Upon seeing Adrian, the sadist slumped to the floor and reached for his revolver with his intact right arm, pointing its barrel not at Adrian, but instead toward his own mouth.

  "Not so fast, fella," Adrian muttered as he strode across the five feet between himself and the sadist, reaching down and knocking the weapon from the man's hand. It skidded loudly across the stone tile floor, sliding beneath a partitioned stall and pinging off of a toilet. As the sadist reached for another handgun tucked inside his jacket, Adrian swung the back of his hand loosely into the other man's pale, blood-drained face. He rubbed the muzzle of his shotgun on the end of the sadist's stump, causing his eyes to bug out and a ragged scream to emanate from his lungs. Adrian reached into the sadist's inner chest pocket, plucking the semi-automatic pistol out placing it into his own coat pocket.

  "You tried to blow me up," Adrian admonished, clicking his tongue. "You wouldn't be the first, and probably not the last, either." He paused, the fingers of his left hand grazing the hip bone on the same side as he turned briefly to spit over his right shoulder. "Now, it's a fact that I'm gonna kill you. A given." He reached into an inner pocket, producing one of the deer-anusing tools he had taken from the hunting supply shop.

  "What's that?" demanded the sadist.

  "I remember reading somewhere," Adrian said, his tone distracted as he fiddled with the small contraption, "before all this, back in the old world--that we were all just assholes in the beginning. In the womb, I mean. We formed anus-first, before all other parts and organs came to be. You must not be a good ol' boy, like me, or you'd likely know where I'm headed here." His gaze moved from the tool to the sadist as he held it up for the other man to see. "This--is an anus remover, used for deer. I figure it works just as well on humans. I guess we're gonna see, right?"