by Matt Lincoln
The man down the alley started to scream, quieter now. His body jerked around and twisted up into a weird position. The other people were talking to each other at this time, and Nohemi recognized my little guy’s voice again above the rest of the noise.
“This is unfortunate,” the contact said. “He was doing so well. What was the dosage you gave him, Mirha? I told you nothing above five cc’s.” He looked to be scolding the woman. “You don’t listen properly enough to me.”
He sounded upset, but maybe that was just the way he spoke. He didn’t talk much when Nohemi handled a run for him. He just gave him a street or shop address, and Nohemi took whatever he gave him to the drop-off. It was an easy job, and far easier when Nohemi kept silent and didn’t ask any questions.
“I did as you said. Shut up and pay attention.” The woman spoke, pointing to the sick guy as she talked. Nohemi noticed that she had an unusual accent, too. He had no clue about hers, either.
Nohemi wondered if anyone else could hear what was going on. He looked around, but it was dead down this way at this time of night. He checked back down the alley just in time to see the man in the green shirt fall to the ground. His seizure-like behavior started again, and Nohemi’d seen this before. The man had overdosed on something, and he was losing it.
The woman reached out and down to feel for his pulse. He was still shaking and twitching, but it was slowing down and only lasting a few seconds each time.
“He’s close,” she commented. “I do not wish to stay and watch this again. He’s dead. This batch is no good. Let’s move on.” Her words were so cold. It was as if she didn’t care about anything at all.
The little man looked up at her. “You have his information, correct? We need to start tracking them better.”
“Yes,” she replied curtly. “His name is Colby Tamez.”
“I don’t need to know his name,” the little man growled. “I simply need to know that you have the information.”
“My only concern is the community center,” she replied. “Edler Community Center has been finding more survivors. No one has talked yet. But it could be a problem.”
“We’ll deal with that if it comes to it,” the little man commented. “The Center won’t be an issue if we track their movements from the beginning, like this one.”
“If he talks, we will know,” she assured him.
“Good.”
The three of them stepped back as the dying guy started to throw up blood, and from even where Nohemi stood, he could smell the strong odor of him messing on himself. Whatever the man took or was given, it was doing a horrible thing to him.
Nohemi needed to get out of there. He took one last look around the corner and saw the bigger guy dragging the dead or dying man off into one of the trash heaps in the alley. That was bad enough, but the man was still trying to cough stuff up. So, that meant that he wasn’t all the way dead. What a way to go, Nohemi thought morbidly to myself.
Nohemi heard his little guy speaking, giving orders to the others by the sound of it. “I still need to see how this compound affects a pregnant woman and a person with diabetes. There should be one a few streets down. I saw a woman last night, and I gave her some money. She should remember me. That will make her easy to test this on.”
“What about your pickup? Weren’t you supposed to send something over to Astreya tonight?” The woman said this, and for the first time, Nohemi could see her face, even though it was pretty dark. She wore glasses, little metal ones. Her hair was pulled back, but Nohemi couldn’t tell the color or anything. She was darker-skinned, though. Not black, but maybe Latina? But with her accent, no, that wasn’t it.
“Nohemi! I forgot about him.” The little guy checked his watch. “He is gone by now. I will call him and tell him to do it tomorrow.” He pulled out his phone. A nice new one. And then Nohemi started to panic.
Nohemi dug into his own pocket and grabbed his phone as fast as he could. He had to turn it off or put it on silent or something before the little man dialed him. Crap! He was going to get caught. As Nohemi fumbled to change the settings quickly, he just started to run away. He figured that the further he got, the less likely they were to hear the phone ring.
Nohemi was going hard, and then he dropped the phone, just as the ringtone sounded in the middle of the empty street. He had almost managed to mute it, but not quite. He swooped down, snatched it up, and hit full speed as he ran. He could only hope that he was far enough away for them not to have heard his phone ringing. He’d let it go to voicemail and pretend that he was busy with something else. That should cover him. He just had to get out of there.
“He saw us!” The little man’s voice echoed through the night as the young runner sprinted away down the darkened and empty streets. “That is… disappointing.”
“You know where he lives, correct?” The woman called out. “Then let’s go take care of it. One more dead runner will hurt nothing. You can even try out the new batch on him if you’d like.”
“I would like that.” The little man made a small noise that sounded pleased. “Caris, go see that Nohemi there makes it home on time and safely.” The twist in his words implied that the trio wanted anything but that to happen.
A set of footsteps took off after the young runner, easily catching up to him and tailing him for several blocks. Nohemi looked over his shoulder a few times, checking to see if he was being followed. This Caris guy was very, very good at avoiding detection, but Nohemi knew he was there.
Nohemi wasn’t new to this type of danger. He had to get to a crowded area with lights and hopefully security cameras if he was going to feel safe tonight. His heart pounded, and his instincts kicked in. Nohemi took off running, staying on the sidewalks, and trying to keep in the lit areas of the quiet streets.
Caris was right after him, though. The large man must have been in the best shape of his life, and Nohemi knew he was going to get to his target no matter what. Nohemi knew these streets pretty well, though, whereas Caris had probably only ever traveled them while on the prowl for more victims for his other two partners. He most likely saw this place as a predator did, but his current prey, Nohemi, knew where to go to keep from making himself an easier target.
Nohemi was picking his path well, running and jumping behind barriers and giving himself every known opportunity to hide and stay safely alive. But Caris was anything if not diligent. All it took was one shot from a small-caliber pistol to drop the young man behind a parked vehicle.
Nohemi hit the asphalt, bleeding and in excruciating pain, but he knew he couldn’t slow down. Caris would be sure to come over to finish the job, and Nohemi had to be gone, and fast. He scrambled up to his hands and knees and used the cover of the parked car to keep himself hidden. There was a gap in the chain-link fence beside him, and Nohemi shoved himself through it. Behind the chain-link was a large, torn tarp, and past that, Nohemi found a few tents set up in a small homeless encampment. He couldn’t believe his luck. He ducked into the nearest one, yanked a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket, and shoved it into the occupant’s shocked face.
“Stay quiet,” Nohemi whispered sharply. “I’ll be gone in a minute.”
Nohemi thought back to the man in the green shirt. What had they called him again? Colby Tamez? Nohemi hoped that someone would find him, and fast, before it was too late for Colby.
Nohemi’s heart rate slowed slightly as he processed what had just happened. The pain in his leg burned through his body, and he knew he couldn’t go home, not unless he wanted to end up like Colby, alone and dying in a Miami alleyway. The only safe place he could run to was his grandmother’s house, which meant only one thing. He’d have to leave Miami. Tonight.
2
LaShawn
I had come into work tonight at the Edler Memorial Community Center with every intention of finishing up the files on last year's admissions. I was only about seventy-five hundred cases away from getting them all done, and then I could begin on this year for a he
ad start. I had even made up an energized playlist on my phone to help me get through it. It was a good, well-thought-out plan. Then I walked into the building.
There was an alarm blaring off somewhere in the back of the structure. Cing was running down the corridor with a bunch of prepackaged care kits. She must have been carrying about fifty of them and dropping some along the way. When she saw me, her eyes just melted with relief.
“LaShawn! I’m so happy to see you! The shelter over on Ninety-ninth called and said that they’d run out of care kits, so I told them that I’d send some over, but then they were all, ‘that’s okay, we’ll come to get them,’ and I’ve been running all over the place trying to gather them up, and they’ll be here any minute.” She took a single breath before diving in again. “And Room Five still needs to be set up, and I need to switch out the coffee pots because that one in there isn’t working and I forgot to get the bagels that I’d promised everyone and…” Cing stopped and looked around for a place to put her armload of stuff. She was in full panic mode.
I motioned to the open door behind her, leading into the employee lounge. Cing turned too quickly and spilled more of the care kits on the floor. I rushed up and picked up her trail from the floor. The alarm still sounded through the first floor.
“Well, I’m here now, so let me help you,” I insisted. “Where is Bonnie?” The intern was supposed to still be here.
“Oh, she had a family emergency, and I let her go early.” Cing was way too willing to be burdened. You couldn’t work this kind of job without having a big heart for people, but I knew from experience that you couldn’t let them take advantage of you, either.
I rushed into the back room and shut off the alarm. Cing must have forgotten to de-arm the second-floor storage room when she was looking for the care kits up there. It was an easy thing to do, as we rarely headed up there when working the night shift. Once I got that taken care of, I went to help her out.
“Cing…” Once I got into the lounge, I thought it best to mention something. I wasn’t going to pick on her, but she may not have been aware of certain events. “Bonnie’s called in three times in the last two weeks. This makes four events. And I know that she knows the rules about absences.”
The black-haired Cing turned to look at me after she set the goods down on the table. “You think she was making excuses again? To avoid staying?” The idea appeared foreign to her, and I felt kind of bad for mentioning it. “I don’t know about that, LaShawn. I just don’t know.” Cing went back to organizing the kits.
There was a lot to admire about Cing Leyva. She had a degree in Social Work, and she was working on her master’s in Psychology. All that, and she still spent close to fifty hours a week here and was raising her granddaughter while her son was overseas, serving in South Korea.
Yeah, Cing was the type of middle-aged dynamo I could only hope to grow up into. I could do without the spiky hairdo and the penchant for wearing flip flops and Winnie the Pooh tee shirts, but other than that, she was a role model to aspire to. Even for me.
I brought over the rest of the care kits that she’d dropped out in the hallway and placed them on the table with the rest. “Did you get the ones in the storage lockers already? I think we put the left-over Halloween ones in there.” We’d normally hand those out with sugar-free candy and energy bars to trick or treaters.
“Yes, I got those,” Cing answered as she continued to count up the kits. “And the ones from the second floor that you stashed for Hurricane Relief.” She looked a little guilty at admitting that. “I know, I know, but the Ninety-ninth needs them now. I’ll replace them later.”
We kept care kits like this year-round and did drives nearly every month. Each care kit consisted of two toothbrushes, some baking soda packs, alcohol wipes, a comb, dental floss, and a map to every hospital, clinic, and shelter in Miami. Sometimes we’d add seasonal items, and around the holidays, there were freeze-dried food and snacks when the Center could afford it or get it donated.
These were just the basic kinds tonight, though. “I’ll send out an email, get a drive going, Cing. No problem.” I headed over to the sink and reached above it to find the spare shopping bags we kept. I took half a dozen and headed back to the table.
The employee lounge was dull and boring, but it served its purpose. There was a big round table in the middle of the room with several chairs around it. The table Cing and I were using was long, rectangular, and pushed up against the west wall. There was a fridge, cabinets, counters, and a double sink on the east wall. The north end had a rundown couch that no one liked to sit on, more stacks of chairs, and some plastic filing cabinets. ‘Lounge’ was a generous word for this room, to say the least.
“Thank you, LaShawn.” Cing seemed to relax a bit for only a moment before she remembered everything else going on. “The coffee pot! And I need to set up the room still.” She grabbed a handful of kits and started to stuff the bags hurriedly.
“I’ll go take care of Room Five. And the coffee pot. You just keep an eye out for the guys coming to get this, okay?” I nodded to her, gave her a reassuring smile, and headed out to the corridor.
Room Five was a good place for early night meetings. You got a nice breeze from the windows on the south side, and the lighting was better than most other rooms. I unlocked the door and surveyed it. The purple chairs were stacked up and ready to go. The countertop was empty, except for the offending coffee pot that was just sitting there, not doing its job at all. So, I started there.
I tossed it into the big can over by the exit and went to get the machine from Room Eight. I knew that it was nearly as old as me, but it worked fine. As for the bagels that Cing had forgotten, I wouldn’t have time to go get them now. As I walked back down the hall to Room Five with the coffee pot, I called into the lounge at Cing.
“Hey, Cing? Would you mind checking out the fridge to see if there’s something we can use for snacks before we get busy?” I walked in and hooked up the machine, and got the first pot of coffee going for the night. By the time I finished setting up the chairs and got back out into the hall, I saw Cing heading back inside, having delivered the care kits to whoever had come to pick them up.
She had a big bag in her hand, and she looked a bit winded. “I just hopped on over to that bodega and grabbed some goodies. You don’t think anyone will mind that they’re not all bagels, will they?”
“I don’t think a single one of them will care, Cing. Free food is free food. What did you get?” I started to do the rounds down the hall, checking doors and locking up anything we weren’t going to be using tonight. It was a precautionary measure that we had to take, unfortunately.
I also made sure to switch on the new doorbell thing. It would sound a loud old-fashioned chiming noise all throughout the first floor, including the bathrooms, just so that no one could slip in without us knowing it. It came in handy and made for a security measure that didn’t feel too ominous.
“I got some bananas and some graham cracker cookie pies, I think they’re called. I don’t know. They looked good, and they came individually wrapped. I also found some mini-muffins and a bunch of dehydrated fruit things.” Cing disappeared into Room Five, and I presumed that she was getting the stuff all laid out for our guests coming in tonight.
We kept Edler open all night as a safe haven for the community. As a place for anyone who maybe needed a dry room to hang out in or to escape whatever was bothering them for a few hours. We helped a lot of addicts and homeless overnight, along with runaways and others who just didn’t know where else to go.
Once I made it back into Room Five, Cing was finishing up the coffee cups and the packets of creamer, sugar, and salt. I didn’t know why, but we did have that one guy that liked salt in his coffee. We just went with it. To each their own, I guessed.
“Looks good, Cing. I think we’re all ready to go.” We had made it by the skin of our teeth tonight, which around here, was an average workday. Not even a minute had passed before the
chime sounded, and in walked one of our regulars, Bryelle Foltz.
She was a brunette with gray starting to weave its way into her long, curly hair. She was thin and frail-looking, having starved herself for years in her attempts to be a fashion model. And she had been. I saw the magazines and photos from local businesses that had hired her. She had been quite a looker back then, with her massive hairstyles, blue eyes, and olive skin. Even now, I could see it. Bryelle was a lovely person.
Tonight, she was having a meltdown, though. She came in and went straight to Cing for a hug. Bryelle was sobbing, and through those sobs, she told us what had been going down.
“My boyfriend kicked me out, and he stole all my clothes. He wants to sell our rings, the ones I bought at the beach last month!” Bryelle was distraught, and as if on cue, she started in on her regular tirade. “He’s only doing this because I told him that Mary had cheated on him with Steve when they were together, and now, he thinks I’m horrible for bringing up her past.”
I had gone for the tissues under the counter. I handed them to Cing, who was moving Bryelle into a chair. The sobbing lady was quite a bit taller than her, and the hugging stance was difficult to maintain. Cing pulled her own chair close and put her arm around Bryelle in comfort.
“That’s terrible, Bryelle,” Cing said softly. “Maybe you two should just take some time and think about what you both want and need from this relationship. It’s never a bad thing to consider how going into the past to force a conflict can severely affect not only other people but ourselves.” Cing was so kind and gentle. It was as if she’d never given this exact speech to Bryelle before, which she had. A lot.
While I let them talk woman-to-woman, I heard the chime again, so I went to the door to see who had arrived. There was a girl, maybe fifteen years old, looking scared and confused. I let her see that I was there, and that I had seen her, to not frighten the newcomer.