by Hunter Blain
Jose threw the vehicle in reverse, hit the gas, and the wolf was almost dislodged before the Tahoe stopped again.
He shifted into drive and punched it right as the beast began blinking its eyes and lifting its head. While still in a vulnerable stage, the wolf yelped as the SUV ran over some part of the creature, causing the Tahoe to bounce like it had run over a massive boulder. They were free.
The road quickly approached and Jose dared a look behind him, seeing nothing but blackness.
“Jose!” Isabel called out, snapping his attention back to the road in front of them. He slammed on the brakes right as an eighteen-wheeler blared its horn and zoomed by, going well over the posted limit.
Jose’s eyes flicked back to the rearview mirror and saw the area illuminated by the bright red LED brake lights. The wolf was unsteadily approaching.
“Oh God,” Jose breathed before stomping on the gas again. Tires sent dirt flying, but did not find traction for several life-threatening seconds.
Sending a counterintuitive signal to his feet, Jose forced his muscles to relax and pull off the gas long enough for the tires to take hold of the road. Rubber gripped dirt before propelling the SUV forward and onto the welcoming concrete of the road.
His brain reversed the signal and gave the command for “weapons hot” to his feet, which responded by cracking the floorboard beneath his boot.
A roar of rage burst from the night behind him, causing Jose’s eye to flick back and forth between the road and the mirror like an anxious metronome.
Jose got the mammoth SUV up to full speed within a handful of ragged breaths, and heard another bellow from the monster. It sounded much farther away now, and Jose dared a molecule of hope to spread like a hungry bacterium in his core.
Squinting against the force of the wind tearing at his eyes, Jose kept the vehicle on the road and willed as much distance as possible between them and the monster of monsters.
Chapter 6
T hey drove south throughout the night, heading away from the wolf and Hector. A few hours after dawn had crested the horizon, a modest town came into view.
“What are you doing?” Isabel asked from the back seat as Jose pulled into a shady-looking car dealership. With the windshield missing, she had climbed into the back to put the passenger seat between her and the unrelenting wind. Julian had moved to just behind Jose.
“Hector will be able to track this,” Jose said as he parked and turned to face his wife. Her hair was in frizzy tangles that trailed behind her head. Julian and Ana were both fast asleep. Seeing Julian take deep, steady breaths made Jose yawn.
“I’ll be right back,” he said as he got out of the SUV, slid The Judge back into his waistband, and covered it with his shirt. His left hand was the size of an orange, but at least the throbbing had diminished, leaving behind a dull ache.
Jose walked to the back and opened the trunk, allowing access to his bag and a fresh shirt. He unbuttoned his flannel shirt, gritting his teeth as the fabric protested and clung to his body before giving in and tearing away with a sloshing sound. Jose didn’t know which was worse; the dried and cracking gash on his back or the new hole in his neck. One thing he did know was that he was probably going to need medical attention.
He used the already ruined shirt to scrape as much dried blood off of him as he could.
“What the . . .” Jose whispered as he patted at his neck with the shirt, fully expecting to pull back a crimson-coated mass dripping with wet blood. Only dry flakes, like brittle paint, adhered to the cotton.
Jose dropped the shirt and reached up to probe the wound with his fingers. It was tender, but there was no hole. After a moment of thinking, Jose snapped his fingers and said to himself, Wind must have dried the blood. Made a scab already.
Brisk footfalls approached on the concrete, prompting Jose to quickly put on a black T-shirt he had grabbed from his luggage.
“Hey there, fella,” said the bright and cheery voice of a used-car salesman. The footsteps — which had come directly toward the car’s side — began to slow as they circled around to the front like a predator looking for the best angle of attack on its dying prey.
“Whoa,” said the salesman, both impressed and dismayed. The value of the car plummeted the more he inspected it, but the man bet it was a doozy of a story.
Jose closed his eyes, steadied his frayed nerves, and slapped the phoniest grin he could manage.
“Morning!” he called out as he walked around to greet the salesman. They shook hands, all while the salesman, “Sebastian” read his name tag, never took his eyes from the damage.
“Werewolf,” Jose said with a smile that was no longer fake.
Sebastian regarded him for a moment, nodded his head slightly a few times, then said, “I think I understand.” After a friendly wave to Isabel, the salesman walked to the back and probed the multiple dents in the rear panel. His fingers glided over one such dent, and a mushroomed round pried free and clattered to the ground. Sebastian looked back at Jose with a deadpan face, and said, “Follow me.”
Jose did as told by the now completely serious — and no longer jovial — salesman. They stepped into the cramped old office building where the stale aroma of reheated day-old coffee and cigarettes tickled Jose’s nostrils, making his nose twitch as if to prevent a sneeze. They walked past the usual office cubicles and entered a conference room with blinds covering all the windows. They had probably once been white, but now the window treatments were a dull yellow from years of nicotine smoke.
Sebastian held the door open for Jose and the two men entered. Jose grabbed the first chair he came across and Sebastian sat at the end of the table close by, not really knowing what to expect. The Judge felt uncomfortable in his waistband, prompting Jose to lean forward slightly.
The wood of both the table and chairs was old, with multiple dents and dings in them. The cushions in the seats had blue stuffing coming out.
“We’ll take care of what’s left of the Tahoe, no worries there. What are you wanting to be put into today? Something that will blend in? Or are you looking for more comfort and style?”
“Something reliable. I’m not too worried about drawing attention. I just need to get far away.” Jose regretted spilling too much information in his tired state, and knew he had done so when Sebastian squinted at him in a microexpression.
Knowing there was no backtracking the man who had apparently done this kind of thing before, Jose pulled out a wad of bills and dropped three thousand American dollars on the table. Then he made a show of pulling another five hundred and slapping them on the table before sliding the money pointedly over to Sebastian.
“I never saw you,” Sebastian said without missing a beat. Jose knew this was not the man’s first rodeo and that he would forget the details, should he be asked.
Sebastian stood up, walked to a file cabinet while pulling a key out of his pocket, and unlocked the metal door. He slid it open and pulled out two keys that he looked back and forth between. Apparently, he made up his mind as one of the keys was returned to the cabinet, and the system was locked once more.
The salesman turned and underhand-tossed the fob with a key attached to Jose, who caught it on instinct. He looked down at it and saw it was for a Kia.
“Out back. Title is in the glove box and blank. Fill in your name when you get the chance,” Sebastian said with a nod of his head in the direction of the back door.
“Thank you,” Jose said, extending his hand out. Sebastian took it without hesitation, though his face still read “inconvenience” rather than “joy.”
Jose stood and took the few steps to the door before resting his hand on the handle and pausing. He turned and inspected the man, and with a curiosity that was louder in his head than common sense, he asked, “Why are yo—”
“I was you, once. That’s all I’m going to say about it,” Sebastian answered the question without taking his eyes off the table in front of him.
Jose nodded, though
he knew Sebastian couldn’t see it. He turned the handle and made his way out of the office and to the back. After taking a few steps, he could see the front where his family was standing with the bags in the parking lot where the SUV had been. Jose’s head scanned all around, but he couldn’t see the FUBARed Tahoe.
Isabel stood with Ana against her shoulder and Julian clutching her leg. His face was buried in her stomach. Jose recognized that as his son being in a cranky mood, and he couldn’t blame him.
Jose lifted his hand and clicked the lock button on the fob. A chirp from his left caught his attention and he followed the sound to land on a bright green Kia Soul against a chain-link fence. Jose’s eyebrows went up for a second, then he tilted his head while shrugging his shoulders slightly in acknowledgement that he had said he didn’t care about blending in. Then again, thanks to those popular commercials with the dancing hamsters, everyone and their mother seem to have Kia vehicles nowadays.
Jose unlocked the car, got in, turned the ignition, and drove to where his family stood. Puffy dark rings under Isa’s eyes told Jose he would need to get a hotel soon. A yawn expanded like a balloon in his throat before escaping through a wide jaw on the verge of unhinging.
He pulled alongside them, got out, and loaded the bags as Isa strapped Julian in the back. Once done, they got into the front and Jose put the car into drive.
“Where are we going?” Isa asked.
“We will go one more town over and then get a hotel to rest.”
“And after that?”
“I-I don’t know,” Jose admitted.
“Then let’s go to my sister’s,” Isa said, taking control of the situation. Now that she understood what they were running from — and maybe believing Jose when he said that it wasn’t his fault — she had decided family was safe.
Jose almost rolled his eyes at the thought of asking her brother-in-law to help them. He was such a pendejo, but right now, Jose didn’t have a better idea.
Isabel typed her sister’s address into her phone’s map app and pointed in the direction to go.
“I can do it,” Jose asked rather than insisted. Isa answered by pointing in the direction again while juggling her infant child. She wasn’t happy that her family would be involved, even if it wasn’t directly Jose’s fault.
Jose nodded his head while sighing and said, “I’m sorry.”
Isa pointed in the direction he needed to go, her eyes straight ahead.
Chapter 7
T hey pulled into a motel a few blocks off the main road, and Jose paid cash. The family unloaded and entered the room with two twin beds. Julian went right for the TV, which was an old fat CRT with its saturation too high. Julian didn’t seem to mind minus the fifteen seconds of complaining. It wasn’t that long ago that the family TV had also been an old-style CRT compared to the paper-thin LEDs of today.
Jose tousled Julian’s hair as he walked toward the bathroom. His son didn’t seem to notice, already forgetting the events that had preceded their arrival as if only a bad dream. Jose frowned as he thought about how this day — just one infinitesimal day represented as a grain of sand on a beach — would have such compounding repercussions throughout the rest of his son’s life. But for now, he was content with letting the human brain do its thing and compress and suppress the traumatic event.
He turned the shower to a nice medium-hot, stripped off his clothes, and then inspected himself in the tiny rectangle mirror while the water heated. Wary fingers lightly prodded the bullet wound which had scabbed over, the skin a noticeable pink around the edges.
“Shit,” Jose whispered to himself, knowing that pink meant it was probably infected. He couldn’t go to a hospital with a bullet wound without having to answer tough questions and alerting the police. Or worse, the cartel.
Fingers pushed into the flesh with an exploratory diligence, but there was still a surprising lack of pain.
“That . . . can’t be good,” he exhaled to himself in the mirror as his eyes met with a stranger’s. Sweat glistened on a haggard face, prompting Jose to break his gaze away from the man in the mirror and inspect the shower. A hand extended the short distance from the single-sink vanity to the shower and allowed cool water to flow over its fingers.
He pulled his hand out of the shower and quickly returned his gaze to the mirror, remembering the claw wound on his back. Turning, he pivoted his shoulder down to give himself as much visual access as he could using the small mirror. The gash was mostly healed and didn’t have the pink skin of the bullet hole. Squaring his torso to the wall, Jose stepped back and allowed more of his body to enter the shrinking mirror. Sweat gleamed off the portion of his body that he could see as if he had just gotten out of the shower rather than about to go in.
The palm of his hand shot to his forehead, and Jose attempted the physically impossible feat of testing his own temperature for a fever. To his biased mind, he — of course — had a temperature that threatened to melt his brain inside his own head.
Breaths came in ragged, shallow gasps as both hands explored his body in frantic swipes, as if he expected to find a metallic sweat-inducing, wound-healing dart piercing through his skin: a quick removal and all would be well. All would be normal.
Something whispered in the back of his mind, attempting to draw his focus away from the panic that was rising up his throat. Pressure began building behind his eyes, and for some reason Jose couldn’t think of, it reminded him of the strongman competitions where hulking competitors blew into hot water bottles until the rubber expanded and burst.
The whisper suddenly grew in intensity and became a resonating church bell inside his skull. His eyes reflexively moved to his left hand, which was now merely the size of a regular hand.
Jose, coated in sweat as if he had just jumped into a pool, held the hand up to inspect it like it belonged to an alien. He turned it over in the pale orange light of the motel bathroom, mouth hanging open in shock. He had known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he had shattered the small bones of his wrist. The crunch had been felt as much as heard, and the fresh memory made his stomach threaten to evacuate its contents.
“Oh, to heck with it,” said the stomach, and proceeded to squeeze itself into a tiny ball.
Jose collapsed to his knees and screamed into the toilet as vomit spewed from his lips. The pressure that had been building in his brain dropped a nuke between his temples and stole his breath from the earth-shattering agony. Then he was screaming into the porcelain bowl again with hot, bitter liquid streaming out of his throat and nose. He noticed stains around the water’s edge and almost threw up again from how disgusted he was from the lack of cleaning efficacy from this fine, upstanding motel.
Isabel began knocking on the door repeatedly while worriedly asking through the thin, hollow-core door, “Jose? Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine,” Jose returned while wiping his mouth on his already slick forearm. “Jus-just something I ate. I already feel better,” he lied.
Jose flushed the toilet and shakily stepped into the still cool shower. He opened his mouth under the stream and let the chlorinated water cleanse the bile from his mouth. His teeth felt gritty, like he had just eaten sand and half-assedly tried to spit it out, leaving behind enough grains to fill a golf course’s sand traps.
With a scowl, Jose’s hand flew out to smack the shower knob to its coldest setting. He attempted to steady himself for the breathtaking liquid ice, but instead found relief as the water cascaded from head to toe like a safety blanket. Jose sighed as his skin cooled and his volatile stomach calmed. He set his hands against the wall on either side of the showerhead, closed his eyes, and let his chin drop to his chest as water ran down his back.
With the immediate pain of his burning skin retreating, Jose started grinding his lower jaw back and forth, feeling the ache deep in his face like he had been chewing too much. He let his mind do a system check of his entire body and noticed all his bones seemed to hurt as if they were being pla
ced between a vise and slowly compressed.
“It’s just nerves. Need to sleep.” Water fell from his flapping lips as he lied to himself.
After what could have been ten minutes or ten hours under the stream of ice water, a knock once again graced the thin bathroom door, but softer this time.
“Jose?”
“Coming,” Jose answered as he forced himself to shut off the water and grabbed a towel from the rack.
After drying his hair and body, he patted his face and noticed the towel wafted a pungent aroma of harsh chemicals. Jose recoiled and scrunched his face as he regarded the scratchy cotton. He let the damp cloth drop to the floor and stepped out of the motel tub to open the door.
“Hand me my underwear, would ya?” Jose asked his wife with a fake smile.
She looked him up and down with a slight scowl on her face before meeting his eyes and nodding once. After a moment, Jose could hear his bag being unzipped before she walked back and handed him his white boxer briefs. He slipped them on before stepping into the room.
Isa caught his arm and he stopped to look down at first her hand, then her worried eyes.
“What’s going on?” she whispered low enough so that Julian couldn’t hear over the cartoon on TV.
“What do you mean?” Jose answered with a lack of conviction in his voice. He knew what she meant.
“Your hand,” she started, grabbing his recently broken wrist and examining it. “And the bullet. I knew you were hit when you jerked back in your seat. Now it’s scabbed like it happened a week ago. How is that?”
He dropped his eyes to the ground, took in a deep breath, and exhaled while saying, “I don’t know. I don’t feel like myself right now and just need to sleep.” He lifted his eyes back to hers and put on his best reassuring voice. “I just need to rest, okay? I’ll feel better when I wake up.”
“Okay,” she said hesitantly while letting her grip slide off his wrist. He caught her hands before they fell to her side, lifted them to his lips, and planted a loving kiss that seemed to last for eons. He opened his eyes and saw that her shoulders had relaxed at his gesture.