Dying for Rain

by Easton, BB

  “What are you doing here?” Quint asks, wincing as he tries to turn his neck to look in Q’s direction.

  “I’ll tell you in the truck,” I whisper, crouching down next to their table. “C’mon. Let’s go before the queen decides to—”

  “Ho. Lee. Shit,” a raspy voice announces from the back of the room. “Look what the fuck the cat dragged in, y’all.”

  I sigh and stand up. Turning to face Q, I hold my head up but keep my posture loose, like Wes did as he faced the judge today.

  Q stands and steps onto her chair before walking across the table and leaping down to the floor with the smug swagger of an untouchable kingpin. Her baggy black men’s T-shirt and dress pants, cut off at the knee, hang from her curves like high fashion as she tosses her faded green dreadlocks over her shoulder and levels me with an amused stare.

  “I knew as soon as I saw Surfer Boy on TV today that yo’ ass would come crawlin’ back to Mama Q, and here you is. Couldn’t even make it a day on ya own, huh, princess?” Q stalks toward me like a jungle cat, but I hold my ground.

  “I’m not here to stay. I just came back to get my friends.”

  “You mean, you came back to snatch my scouts.” Her tone turns venomous as she moves in closer.

  “Q, please,” I plead. “Just let them go. Wes scouted more than enough supplies to cover all four of our shares while he was here.”

  “Well, he ain’t here no more, now is he?”

  “No!” I shout, feeling my face get hot. “He’s not! And if you don’t let us go, you’re gonna get to watch him die on live TV in two days!” I shove my finger in the direction of the fast-food menu screens lining the left side of the food court.

  Q’s dark eyebrows shoot up as she reaches out and grabs my face with her right hand. Her chunky silver rings collide with the fading bruise on my cheekbone, and her long, sharp fingernails dig into my flushed skin.

  “Bitch,” she hisses, baring her teeth, “you done fucked up fo’ da last time. You think you can come up in my castle and talk shit to the queen?” Sinking her talons even deeper into my flesh, Q drags me by the face toward the food court entrance. “Errybody say, Bye, bitch.”

  “Bye, bitch!” a chorus erupts behind us, followed by laughing and clanking and banging around.

  I squeal into her palm, but she only tightens her grip on my face. My skin splits in all five places where her nails stab into it. I wrap my hands around her wrist—not to pull her hand away, but to pull it closer. Q cackles as she walks backward in front of me, dragging me down the hall, completely at her mercy. I consider pulling my gun out, but if Q saw me reach for my waistband, she’d probably grab my gun and stick it down my throat before I could even get a hand on it.

  I grunt in frustration and dig my own nails into her wrist.

  “Ow!” She jerks my face violently, opening the wounds even more. “Calm the fuck down, ho!”

  “Let me go!” I scream, but it comes out as three muffled syllables against her palm.

  Suddenly, Q shoves me away from her, and I land with a surprisingly soft thud. I open my eyes and find myself in a small room, sprawled out on a mattress on the floor. Q reaches behind a counter, and with a quiet click, a few strands of battery-powered Christmas lights come on. They snake back and forth across the ceiling, illuminating the small space just enough to indicate that it must have been a tiny boutique once, maybe even a candle store or a tobacco shop. Now, it just houses a wooden counter where the register once was, a mattress on the floor covered in black bedding, and an entire wall of shelves that now hold all of Q’s personal belongings.

  Out of every store in the entire mall, I never would have pictured her choosing such a cozy, modest spot to claim as her bedroom.

  I scramble to my feet and reach for my gun, but Q beats me to it, pulling hers out even faster.

  “Goddamn, you suck at this. Put it in the front of yo’ pants or somethin’. I coulda shot yo’ ass fifteen times by now.”

  “Why haven’t you?” I snap.

  “’Cause it’s mo’ fun to fuck wit’ you than it would be to mop you up.” She shoves her gun back into the pocket of her baggy shorts and smirks. “Put that thing down, bitch. You ain’t gonna shoot nobody.”

  I sigh and wrestle the gun into the front of my jeans, the waistband already starting to feel a little bit tighter than usual.

  Q walks behind the checkout counter and opens a cabinet underneath. “You really gon’ try to bust Surfer Boy outta jail?”

  “Um … yeah. I guess.” I shrug, losing confidence by the second.

  “Good. Here.” A pink bundle flies across the room, hitting me square in the chest.

  I groan as I catch it, smelling a hint of cigarette smoke and hazelnut coffee wafting off the shiny fabric.

  “Is this … my duffel bag?” I hold it out and look it over in the dim light. I haven’t seen it since Carter dumped it out in front of Q yesterday—God, was that only yesterday?—when he tried to bust Wes for hoarding supplies. It feels like everything must still be in here.

  “Take ya shit, and go get my boy. Hawaii Five-Oh’s too damn pretty to get turned into muhfuckin’ plant food.” Q shakes her head with sincerity. “Best scout I eva had.”

  I don’t even know what to say. I thought she was going to kill me—or at least beat the crap out of me—and here she is … helping me?

  “What about Quint and Lamar?”

  “Who, them?” Q flicks her chin at something over my shoulder.

  I turn my head to find the Jones brothers standing on the other side of the hall, huddled together but still watching my back.

  “I ain’t got no use for those pussies. I hope you fuckin’ take ‘em.”

  “But you said—”

  “Listen, bitch. I said what I said ’cause you was disrespectin’ me in front of my crew. I snatched ya face ’cause you was disrespectin’ me in front of my crew. But the truth is, the faster y’all get the fuck up out my castle, the betta. I got enough mouths to feed.”

  “Thank you, Q. Really. I don’t—”

  “Eh, eh, eh, eh,” she cuts me off with an aggravated wave of her hand. “Get the fuck outta here. Go on now, ’fore I change my mind and shoot yo’ ass.”

  I nod at the dreadlocked lioness and turn around to claim my last remaining friends.

  Quint’s and Lamar’s eyes go wide as I walk out of the queen’s lair with blood dripping down my face and a pink duffel bag in my arms.

  “Y’all wanna take a ride downtown?” I ask with an exhausted smile.

  “Fuck yeah!” Lamar punches the air in front of him.

  “You sure about this?” Quint asks, his eyebrows pulling together as we turn and walk toward the main entrance.

  “Quint,” I warn. “Without Wes, you’d be—”

  “I know; I know. I’m in. I just wanna make sure you thought about—oh shit. Look!” Quint raises a finger, and I follow his stare down the hall to the main entrance doors.

  Right outside, perfectly visible through all the panes of missing glass, a swarm of Bonys has descended upon the Renshaws’ truck like it’s a two-ton piñata. Hoots and hollers and glass breaking and metal smashing echo down the corridor as they take their crowbars and spray-paint cans and steel-toed boots to the massive GMC.

  “No!” I scream, shoving my duffel bag into Lamar’s arms as I take off running down the hallway.

  “Rain! Stop!”

  But I can’t. This is the moment when Wes would chastise me for being “impulsive.” Yell at me for “not listening.” Tell me I have “a death wish.” But Wes isn’t here. And the only hope I have of getting to him before he’s not here for good is that damn truck.

  Crash!

  A man in a leather jacket and a motorcycle helmet with nails drilled through it from the inside out smashes the driver’s side window as his buddy in a zombified clown mask spray-paints the words DEATH TO SHEEP in two-foot-tall letters on the side of the dented white truck. A third guy wearing a Scream mask climbs
up onto the hood and holds a crowbar over his head in a stabbing motion aimed at the windshield. All three of them have on black jackets with neon-orange skeleton bones spray-painted on them.

  “Stop!” I scream, pushing through the exit door and waving my hands in the air. “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

  My hands drop to my sides in relief when they actually do stop, but then my heart climbs into my throat as I look for an escape route when all three of their heads turn toward me like snakes spotting a mouse.

  “Please,” I say, holding my hands up. “There’s a purse on the passenger seat. Take it. Take whatever you want, just … please leave the truck.”

  Pinhead and the undead clown glance at each other with a chuckle, which turns into full-blown maniacal laughter as they turn and walk toward me in unison.

  “Take whatever we want, huh?” the guy with the nails sticking out of his helmet asks with a snaggletooth sneer.

  The rotting clown makes a slurping sound as he flicks his tongue in and out of the rubbery mouth hole on his mask.

  I don’t even realize I’ve been walking backward until my heel hits one of the metal doors behind me.

  “Whoa!” the guy in the Scream mask exclaims from somewhere near the truck.

  His friends turn, and I watch as he pulls my dad’s Smith & Wesson revolver out of Agnes’s purse. She must have stashed it in there after she swiped it from me yesterday.

  “Holy shit, bro!” Pinhead exclaims. “That looks like the gun from Dirty Harry!”

  “Who the fuck carries a .44 Magnum?” The creepy clown chuckles. “Fuckin’ thing weighs, like, six pounds and only shoots six bullets!”

  The guy holding the revolver lifts his mask to reveal the rounded baby face of a kid no older than Lamar. But these guys don’t treat him like a kid. They step aside so that he can approach me, eyes narrowed, gears turning.

  “I know a dude who carries a gun just like this,” he says, lifting the revolver in his hand. “You know him?”

  I don’t have to ask who he’s talking about. There’s a sadness in his tone, a fondness, a sense of loss that I recognize.

  “Yeah.” I nod, this single ounce of compassion making my chest ache and my eyes sting.

  “I saw him on TV today,” the kid says, softening his tone.

  “Oh shit! The nerd?” Pinhead asks.

  “No, dumbass,” the boy snaps back. “The dude from the sentencing. He was the one who used to come into the CVS all the time and pay me in hydro.”

  “Ohhhh, that guy. Yeah, he cool.”

  “That’s …” I clear my throat, hoping they won’t hear my voice shaking. “That’s why I need the truck. I’m gonna go to the capitol, and … I don’t know … try to …” I can’t even say it out loud. It sounds so stupid. It is stupid.

  But it wouldn’t be if I had help.

  “Hey … you guys could come too.” I try to smile, but it feels like a grimace. “Since you knew him. Know him, I mean. You could help me—”

  The zombified clown snorts into his rubber mask as his helmeted buddy erupts into hysterics.

  “Do we look like muhfuckin’ customer service to you?” The clown chuckles.

  “Yeah,” Pinhead blurts out through his hyena-like laughter, clicking his heels together and giving me a salute. “Do we look like fuckin’ Captain America and shit?”

  As his friends keel over, laughing, the kid shakes his head and levels me with a sympathetic stare. “Listen, I’m sorry your man caught a case, but we ain’t exactly in the helpin’ business.”

  “We in the stayin’ the fuck alive bidness, and bidness is gooood.” The clown flicks his tongue at me again.

  “Tell you what … I keep the bag, you keep the truck, and if anybody fucks with you”—the kid sets the purse and the gun on the hood of the GMC and picks up a can of orange spray paint one of them had tossed aside—“just tell ’em you’re reppin’ Pritchard Park.”

  I stand, petrified by a potent mixture of fear and shock and gratitude, as this Bony kid spray-paints stripes across my chest and down my arms to match his.

  Dropping the can to the ground, the boy grabs Mrs. Renshaw’s purse and climbs onto a motorcycle parked in front of the truck. He slides his Scream mask back into place and motions with his head for the two guys who had to be twice his age to follow.

  “Dude”—the clown elbows Pinhead, and they walk over to their bikes—“did you see somebody spray-painted the highway sign to say Bitch-Ass Park?”

  “Fuck yeah! I did that shit, man.”

  As the Bonys cackle and pull out of the parking lot on squealing tires, I stand like a newly decorated Christmas tree and wait for Quint and Lamar to come out from their hiding places.

  When the door beside me finally squeaks open, Lamar is the one who speaks first, “I just want you to know, we totally had your back, Rainy Lady.”

  “A hundred percent,” Quint chimes in.

  “Just shut up and get in the truck,” I snap.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Wes

  The Green Mile. That’s what Officer MacArthur called it when he came to get Doug for his execution a few hours ago. After he sobbed all over his shitty fucking beef Wellington.

  “Time to walk the Green Mile, buddy.”

  Who says that? Heartless motherfucker. That must be why they sent him instead of Hoyt or Elliott. Those two still have some shred of humanity left. But Mac? He’s older. Harder. His tightly cropped gray hair tells me he’s probably ex-military, and the trench-deep lines around his eyes and mouth tell me that he’s definitely seen some shit. That asshole looks like he eats nails for breakfast and tacks for snacks.

  Speaking of nails, I’ve spent the last hour feeling around under my cot and the sink-slash-toilet unit in my cell, trying to find one.

  As it turns out, I do not know how to pick a lock with a plastic fork.

  I mean, I do—I had to do it all the time in foster home number ten. Or was it eleven? My foster mom wanted to keep her whole government check for herself, so she used to keep a lock on the fridge and the pantry to keep me from eating the good shit. All she left out was a loaf of generic white bread and a jar of government peanut butter.

  So, I got real good at picking locks.

  Before she kicked me out, of course.

  As soon as Officer MacArthur left with Doug—poor fucking bastard—I knew I had a solid hour to get to work before everybody came back from the execution. They won’t let you keep forks, for obvious reasons, but I managed to break one of the tines off without getting caught. That’s all I needed to pick Ms. Irene’s pantry lock, but the motherfucker on my holding cell is a beast. There’s not a single mechanism you have to push inside—there are, like, five, and the fifth one is so far back I can’t even reach it.

  But maybe if I had a nail and figured out a way to bend the tip of it …

  “What are you mopin’ around fo’? I’m the one who had to walk his ass over to the hole!” Officer Elliott whines from somewhere down the hall.

  I stand and quietly step toward the bars.

  The mumbling I hear in response must be from Hoyt. He never talks much louder than a whisper. I can’t make out a word he’s saying.

  “Mm-mm-mm. Pissed himself right there on live TV. What a gotdamn shitshow. I need a drink.”

  I hear the unmistakable rumble of a file cabinet drawer opening, followed by clinking glasses and a painful hiss that, after working in a dive bar for the last few months, I know was probably caused by a throatful of cheap whiskey.

  “I think you need another one, big fella.”

  Clink.

  Hiss.

  “You know, when I got into this job, all I had to do was wear a uniform, walk some big, sexy men back and forth, listen to all that juicy drama in the courtroom, and collect my paycheck at the end of the month. I did not sign up for this shit.”

  Click.

  Hiss.

  Mumble. Mumble. Mumble.

  “Right? Good benefits. Good retirement plan
. Now, they got us killin’ muhfuckas on the daily.”

  Mumble. Mumble.

  “I know, hoss. They good folks. This shit ain’t right.”

  Mumble. Mumble.

  “You know what you need to do? You need to start workin’ on yo’ side hustle. Like me. I’mma get me some headshots done, get me a manager, a agent. What you gon’ do?”

  As Hoyt murmurs, I hear the file cabinet drawer close, and their voices grow louder as they move into the hallway. Elliott goes one way, and Hoyt heads toward me. I can tell it’s him by the slow, heavy shuffling of his feet across the dirty floor. I lean against the bars and wait for him to pass.

  When he does, he doesn’t even look at me.

  “Officer Hoyt?” I ask, using my least shitty tone.

  Hoyt stops walking but keeps his eyes on the floor.

  “I heard you guys talkin’. I just … I just want you to know that I don’t blame you for … you know. Doing what you gotta do. You and Elliott, y’all are good dudes.”

  Hoyt doesn’t say a word. He simply nods at the floor and keeps walking.

  “Hey, Hoyt? Sorry, Officer Hoyt? Can I ask you a question?”

  Hoyt stops again.

  “You know how you let Doug choose his last meal? That was real nice, man. Meant a lot to him.”

  The big guy’s chin drops almost to his chest, and I know I got him. It’s shitty of me to prey on someone’s kindness, but you know what else is shitty?

  Being shot in the face on live TV.

  “You know, I used to work in a bar, and we had last call. Everybody got one last drink before the bar closed for the night. It was good times, man. Some of the best times of my life. Anyway, I was wondering if, since I only got a day and half left, maybe I could get a drink. Like last call, you know? Somethin’ strong, to take the edge off.”

  Hoyt shakes his head and staggers a little on his feet. He must have had more of that whiskey than I realized.

  “Can’t let ya have nuthin’ glass in yer cell.”

  “Here. You can use this.” I grab the plastic cup, with my toothbrush and comb inside, off the sink and shove it in between the bars, knocking the toothbrush to the body fluid–covered floor in the process.