by Hunter Blain
“Yes, jefe,” Junior said before following Other Jose’s path.
“Everyone else,” Hector said loudly to the room, “grab the biggest fucking guns we have and get ready. The bastard’s path has been confirmed, and it is heading straight for us. There hasn’t been any word from the northeast, so we will assume they are all dead. We will not follow suit. Am I understood?”
“Yes, jefe,” the room said in disciplined uniformness before filing out, leaving Jose alone with Hector. Jose looked from the door to Hector and back again.
“You can stay. Please, enjoy,” Hector waved a hand out in front of him, indicating the jerky and water Jose held in either hand. The butler returned with a pristinely ironed flannel button-up and handed it to Jose. Taking his cue, Jose set the glass and jerky on the tray, took off his shirt, and winced as it pulled on the dried wound. For some reason, he folded it and set it in his lap. After buttoning the starched shirt, Jose grabbed the glass and beef again. The butler retreated back to his spot on the wall, eyes forward like a statue. The empty water bottle rested on the silver tray, alone. Jose looked down and saw his bloodied shirt and understood he would be asking too much of the employee.
Hector inched forward in his seat, set his cigar on a marble ashtray, and leaned both elbows on the desk.
“Tell me, what was it like?” His eyes gleamed as he spoke.
“Wh-what was what like, jefe?” Jose asked.
“Oh, drop the formalities,” Hector said, falling back into his chair, which reclined at his command.
“What do you mean, jefe?”
“Jefe this. Jefe that. Just drop it and tell me what it was like.” He leaned forward again and stared expectantly at Jose. It was nerve-racking for a low-level employee to be speaking to the head honcho of the region. Plus, he could kill him on a whim and no one would even care. No one except his wife and son. His daughter was still too young to care about anything except feeding and sleeping.
“I don’t know what you are asking me.”
“THE FUCKING WOLF. WHAT. WAS. IT. LIKE?”
“Scary! It-it scared the shit out of me! I pissed my pants, man! I haven’t done that since I was a kid.”
Hector leaned back in his chair, squinted his eyes, and steepled his hands in front of his face in thought.
“Go on.”
“It-it was huge, man. It pushed into the goddamn ceiling and tore the front of the house clean off! It bit Martin’s head in half and licked his fucking brains out like an ice cream cone.” Jose started to get animated as the story went on. Water sloshed from his glass, spilling a little on his lap. “Two AKs were emptied into it and the thing didn’t die! They clicked empty, man. I saw its blood cover the wall, and it didn’t die.”
“How did you manage to survive?”
Jose considered the question as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him before. Probably because it hadn’t.
“Luck,” he whispered as his unfocused eyes fell to the floor.
“I don’t believe in luck,” Hector said, spitting the last word out like it was bitter in his mouth.
“That’s the only thing I can think of.” Still images from last night’s movie played in his mind, depicting decimated men a split second before they transitioned into lifeless husks. Martin’s face had been one of confusion at the end rather than fear. Then the same face had become nothing more than shapeless skin dangling from a protruding tooth.
Jose glanced at his wedding band and ran his thumb over the gold. At that moment, he really wanted to dunk his hands in hot alcohol and scrub them with steel wool.
“Well, you’re going to have a chance to take control of your fate when the beast comes-a-callen. Go now and pick the biggest gun we can offer, and take revenge for your friends.”
“Yes, jefe. Thank you, jefe,” Jose responded, not daring to be informal, even if it had been requested.
Jose drained the remainder of the water and shoved the rest of the jerky into his mouth before passing the empty crystal to the butler as he walked past his station.
The blacked-out room was only a few doors down, being easily identifiable by the insulating strip at the bottom. It felt odd to walk by now that he was out of the Hector’s crosshairs. Jose recognized the feeling in his chest and tried to describe it to himself, with the word “cold” repeating over and over. Another descriptive word would attempt to rise to the surface only to be swallowed by the jealous “cold” again and again. Jose felt . . . coldness pulsating from his core like a radioactive isotope.
Jose’s boots thudded down the stairs, and he noticed a smudge across his toes on one. At the foot of the landing, he licked his thumb and knelt to rub at the smudge. It was then that Jose decided he did not want to fight the wolf. There was only one thing in the world Jose wanted: to hold his family in his arms and thank the Mother Mary for blessing him with their existence. He would take the money he had and revitalize the walnut fields if given the chance.
Jose flicked a glance upstairs and knew Hector would take his desire to be with his wife and children as a sign of weakness and betrayal.
A dark thought cruised through his head as frigid as ice and black as sin: there might not be anyone left to care soon.
He continued to stare, feeling the weight of his decision teeter first one way, and then the other, with all the possible outcomes bouncing around in his head. From what he could deduce, the wolf had completely wiped the entire northeast region off the map.
Jose let his gaze roam across the walls until it found its way to the garage located down the hall to his right. Having made up his mind, he threw away his shirt in the kitchen before making his way to the modest collection of cars, and into the territory of an unknown future.
Chapter 5
J ose,” someone called out, causing Jose’s heart to skip a beat while his breath caught in his throat and he froze for an instant, “where are you going?”
With one foot already in the blacked-out Chevy Tahoe SUV, Jose turned to the man — Jose thought his name was Josue or something close to that — and said, “Boss wants me to get some big guns from house four.”
“House four? But that’s across town.”
“That’s where the big ones are.”
“Ah. Okay then,” Josue — or something — waved Jose off before focusing back on the stacks of ammo he was sorting.
Jose’s eyes hovered on the man a moment longer before he imperceptibly shook his head, knowing what fate had in store for Josue — or something. They would not stop the beast.
Closing the driver’s side door, Jose grabbed the key from the usual cupholder, noticed it was a keyless fob, and pressed the start button next to the steering wheel.
The Tahoe rumbled to life with blue lights dancing across the expensive-looking center console screen. Fastening his seat belt, Jose put the huge vehicle into drive and let off the brakes, allowing the SUV to roll out of the garage carefully. The expensive show cars on either side of the SUV dared even the gentlest of caresses from the huge vehicle, seemingly promising an overdramatic explosion should even the side mirrors graze the roofline.
Once clear, Jose depressed the gas pedal, and he was on his way. The vehicle was powerful yet quiet. It was even odd to Jose that the thick leather-wrapped steering wheel didn’t vibrate like he was accustomed to.
Jose glanced at the rearview mirror and regarded the shrinking house at the top of the hill. It looked to the man like a priceless marble statue in the middle of a cornfield; completely out of place amongst its neighbors.
Within fifteen minutes, he was out of the city and on the rural road to his home on the outskirts of the city. Jose’s grandfather, whom he was named after, had built the house with his bare hands and passed it on to his son. After Jose’s papa had died suddenly from a broken neck after a snake had scared his horse, followed closely by his beautiful mother being taken by breast cancer, Jose had inherited the property.
As he pulled up the long gravel drive to his modest house, Jose fe
lt a pang of guilt at the ranch that once was. Where only the finest walnuts once grew, now mere skeletons of trees remained, reaching with leafless branches into the sky as if begging for water.
The guilt evaporated as he reminded himself that he made in one quarter with the cartel what he had once made in an entire year at the highest peak of his farming. Plus, Jose didn’t have the knack for the walnut-growing life that his papa and abuelo had.
The thought of sticking around and giving it another go came to his mind before Jose shook his head like an Etch A Sketch and erased the notion. Regardless of what happened tonight, Jose needed to flee, if only temporarily.
Throwing the huge black tank into park, Jose lightly pressed his finger to the ignition button before hesitation froze his digit in place. Keeping the SUV running, he pulled his finger away and got out, but not before slipping the key fob into his shirt pocket. The night was growing cool as the sun slipped below the horizon. For some reason Jose couldn’t explain, he felt that the sunset was a bad omen for things to come.
He walked to the front door and opened it, calling out as he did, “Isabel? I’m home.” Jose tried his best to keep his voice calm for fear of preemptively causing panic. There would be plenty of time for that later.
“Where on Earth have you been?” Isa asked as she scurried to her husband while holding Ana, their infant child. Her silver brooch flashed under the light for a moment.
“Got caught up at work,” Jose replied with a hoarse voice. For the briefest moment, he felt like smiling, as if he had made a joke that no one else would get. The desire faded quickly.
“You couldn’t call? I was so worried,” Isa said, apprehension giving way to frustration. A scowl knitted her brows as she examined her husband’s face, particularly just under his eyes.
“I-I broke my phone. I fell and it, ah, broke.”
“You could have used someone else’s ph—”
“Listen,” Jose interjected with surprising urgency as he grabbed both of her shoulders, “we need to get out of here. Don’t ask me about it now, just pack your things and let’s go. Where’s Julian?”
Isa’s brow deeply furrowed, and she instinctively tightened her grip on her infant baby, and after a moment said, “In his room doing homework.”
Jose kissed his wife’s scrunched brow, tasting her skin and inhaling the sweet perfume that reminded him of spring flowers.
“Everything’s going to be alright. We just need to go somewhere for a little bit. Pack your things, okay, baby?”
After a few heartbeats, Isabel quickly nodded her head.
“I told you this would happen,” she cursed to the air as she turned and rushed to their bedroom. “And you smell like piss,” she added over her shoulder.
Jose went down the hall to his son’s room and opened it. Julian was working on his letters while chewing on his yellow pencil.
“Papa!” Julian cried out as Jose rushed to embrace him.
“Hey, buddy,” Jose said before kissing his son’s head. The man winced somewhat as his son wrapped his arms around part of the scabbed wound on his back. His son looked up at him expectantly, feeling something was different in the air. Jose pretended to gasp and made his eyes go wide with excitement as he asked his son, “Hey! Wanna go for a trip with mama and me?”
“Right now?” Julian asked, building off his father’s excitement.
“Yeah, buddy! Right now! Get some stuff together and let’s go have an adventure!”
“Okay!” the child exclaimed. Jose had never felt so terrible for lying to his child before.
Jose smiled, but felt it was a mere curling of the lips with a complete absence of joy from his eyes that almost seemed to pain him.
Contented, he made his way out of the room, turning to glance at Julian as he feverishly packed a blue backpack with toys, colored pencils, and a stuffed wolf.
Jose shuddered as the stuffed animal seemed to taunt him, reminding him of the dire situation he was trying to escape. It felt like trying to sprint up a muddy embankment in the rain or pulling yourself out of quicksand; the harder you tried, the more you floundered.
Jose wouldn’t flounder, not with his family on the line. The risks were calculated. The plan was sound. They would thrive and look back on this day to appreciate how lucky they were.
He pulled his eyes off the toy, which seemed to be a demanding magnet for his eyes, and walked determinedly to his bedroom.
Isa was putting the last of her toiletries into her purple luggage. Ana was staring up at the ceiling while blowing spit bubbles and kicking her arms and feet out. Jose took note that his luggage had not been pulled from the closet for him, and he knew Isabel had done that intentionally. He also knew he deserved it. Jose made up his mind right then and there that he would spend the rest of his life making it up to her.
Undoing his belt and sliding the leather from the loops, Jose removed his urine-soaked underwear and jeans before putting on fresh pairs, leaving the dirty ones to sit on the floor. He could see Isa glancing at him from the corner of his eye, but she didn’t say anything.
Next, he pulled his luggage out of the closet and began packing the bare essentials, including The Judge, which was a revolver chambered in .410 shot shells or the .45 Colt cartridge. Jose filled the five empty chambers with alternating shells for good measure. He slipped the bulky handgun into his waist at the small of his back and wondered how people carried it like this all the time. It was vastly uncomfortable and tugged at his attention like a child wanting a toy at the store.
Still in the closet, he pulled out a shoebox, grabbed a solid brick of cash from inside, and threw it into his bag on the bed.
Jose pocketed a handful of the .410 shot shells because they were lighter and put a full box of .45 Colt into his suitcase before zipping it closed. He then remembered his toothbrush and strode to the bathroom, annoyed at the audacity of said toothbrush forgetting to climb into his suitcase on its own volition. Not having the patience to unzip his bag, place the brush, and then rezip the bag, Jose slipped the toiletry into his front pocket and returned to the bed. Isa was looking at him with an unreadable expression as she held baby Ana against her shoulder and rocked the baby gently.
Without a word, she turned and left the bedroom with aggressive steps. Jose looked down to see not only his bag, but hers as well.
With a sigh, he grabbed the extending handles for both bags and attempted to squeeze through the doorway awkwardly. After a few moments of struggling, he pressed the buttons on the handles, shoved them back to their lowest setting, and picked up the handholds on the outside of the bags. A bolt of pain lanced from his back, making Jose gasp.
Jose felt anger rising up in him, but the briefest appearance of normality was violently extinguished by the undeniable existence of that which lurked in your closet.
His fast-paced walk to the SUV began to slow down as his brain once again attempted to tell him that nothing had happened and it had all been a bad dream. He fought this notion, knowing that if he were to submit to the overwhelming desire of ignorance, his family would pay the price. They were a life preserver in the churning ocean of his warring mind, his brain fighting zealously to forget.
“No,” he told himself before setting his jaw and continuing his fervent stride to the back of the Tahoe. Sensing the key fob, it opened as he neared, slightly startling Jose. He set the bags down before returning to the house.
Once he crossed the threshold to his house, he called out, “Isa. Isa, come on, we need to go.”
“I was grabbing your son,” she sniped as she approached. He lightly grabbed her by the arm in a gesture that said, “Please wait.” Isabel turned with tight lips to her husband of six years, and waited.
“You were right. I’m sorry. It’ll all be over soon, I promise.” He pulled her close and kissed her head. She looked at him, eyes softening, and she pressed her lips to her foolish husband, lingering a moment as she did. Isabel pulled away and hustled to the car with Julian behind
.
Jose looked over his home and took in the significance of its contents and history. He had a creeping feeling that he would never see it again, and a tear rolled down the crevice between cheek and nose. He had always wanted to move away from the modest ranch to a big house in the city. Now that he was leaving his home, a pang of uncertainty and regret tightened his chest for a heartbeat before retreating at the severity of why he was fleeing.
Jose locked the door behind him, knowing it was merely a gesture, and jogged to the idling SUV.
The aroma of expensive leather wafted out of the Tahoe as he opened the driver’s side door and slid in. His wife’s perfume sat atop the dominating smell, battling for the attention of Jose’s olfactory receptors.
Isabel was letting her gaze drift outside her window purposefully while cradling Ana in her arms. Jose unconsciously gave her a half smile in understanding before turning in his seat to see Julian looking around. His eyes were wide with wonder and his mouth hung open in awe as if he were in a spaceship that was about to take off to parts unknown. Jose’s half smile faded as the thought stuck. He had no idea where to go. All of Jose’s family was long since gone.
“Is this our new car?” Julian asked with excitement.
“Yeah, buddy. Do you like it?” Jose lied.
“Yeah!” Julian answered while bouncing up and down in his seat.
“Do your seat belt, okay, buddy?”
“Okay, papa,” Julian answered while fastening his safety harness.
“What do you think about staying with your family?” Jose asked, turning to his wife.
“No,” she shook her head aggressively. “Whatever mess you are in, keep my family out of it.”
“Isa . . . I . . . I-I,” Jose began.
The universe, it would seem, had a cosmic sense of timing as three speeding, blacked-out Tahoes that were identical to Jose’s pulled down the drive, billowing dust behind them.
“Hold on!” Jose yelled as he stomped on the pedal.
“Where are you going?!” Isabel shrieked as Jose steered the monster of a vehicle toward the back of the house and the barren field of skeleton trees beyond.