BURY - Melt Book 3: (A Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series)

by JJ Pike

  “They let me hold her for an hour.” Barb came to a stop, her arms wrapped around herself as if she could contain the grief.

  Alice urged her on with soft sounds and murmurings. There were no words that would help. Barb was a young mother in mourning. There’s no word for a person who has lost a child. If you lose your parents, you’re an orphan. Alice knew all about that. If you lose your husband, you’re a widow. Well, normal people would be a widow or widower. She would be a basket case if she lost Bill. She was glad, for the millionth time, that he was safe in the cabin with their kids.

  Alice: not a basket case because: Bill.

  But what was Barb? She was barely old enough to be out of pigtails. A year or so older than Petra, maybe. So, twenty? A baby herself. She was un-mothered and undone.

  “Then they took her away.”

  “Hold my hand, Barbara. You’re going to be okay.”

  “This is why you can never leave anyone behind,” said Barb. “Life is precious. Life is good. Life is life.”

  Alice hesitated. Should she go in first, make sure the coast was clear? Or should she hoist Barb up first, make sure she got in there?

  Barb put her hands on the back step of the train. “It’s wet,” she said. “Look.”

  Barb held her hand up to Alice’s face. Even in the dark, Alice could see that it wasn’t water dripping off the back of the train. It was blood.

  Chapter Twenty

  There was no question as to what Bill had to do next. He had to kill Mateo Hernandez. Whatever qualms he’d had when he’d arrived at the bar had been smashed to a heap of rubble when Mateo had quoted Julius Caesar, then were washed away when they stumbled out of the bar into the cool night air.

  Arthur was tearful, mouthy, hugging his new friends and lamenting their parting. Only Bill and Mateo were steady on their feet.

  Mateo reached out and grabbed Bill’s hand with both of his. “Friend…” He spoke English. Bill couldn’t hide his shock. “To the victor, go the spoils.”

  Bill pulled his hand back from that viper’s grasp. He wanted to draw his gun and blast Mateo's smug face all over the plaster walls and wrought iron gates of the bar, but he had to wait. The only sensible move in that moment was to smile, nod, and hold his temper. Everyone in the town knew they’d been drinking together. If Mateo went missing they’d be the first on the list of suspects. They needed a new plan. Something to distract everyone’s attention.

  Arthur slapped his arm around Bill’s shoulders, leaning in hard. “Shall we vamoose my friend?”

  “My car’s this way,” said Bill.

  “Goodbye, goodbye…” Arthur’s drinking buddies were made bold by the alcohol. They tested their English as they stumbled into the dark. “Farewell, friend Arturo.”

  The waitress hung back, unwilling to mingle with a bunch of drunks. Bill waved her over. “Tell her it’s okay. We’ll take her home. Tell her she’s safe with us.”

  Arthur burbled at the waitress. She inched along the far side of the bar, pointing at the road. Apparently, their protection wasn’t convincing enough.

  Bill let Arthur lean on him and tell him what pals they were, what buddies, how glad he was they’d made this trip to the county of his birth. Bill tuned him out.

  When he was on the plane, Bill had thought of all the ways you might harm a man without taking his life. He wanted Mateo to suffer, just as Alice had suffered. As he had suffered. As Aggie had suffered. You can do more harm to a person if you take what they love and destroy it in front of their eyes. But who was Mateo’s wife that she should suffer for her husband’s deeds? Who were his grandchildren that they should be burdened with his sin? No, there was only one choice. That choice was death. If it made him a murderer, so be it.

  Bill’s mind was churning. How would he do it? He couldn’t go to Mateo’s house and fake a burglary. The man had too many neighbors who might see an intruder and recognize him. He poured Arthur into the back of the car. The man was asleep before he hit the seat. The waitress—shoot, he didn’t know her name—sat up front. He let her fiddle with the radio and find something she liked.

  There were no lights on the road. He had to drive with care. It couldn’t be a burglary, nor a kidnapping, nor a shoot-out in the street. He needed to lure Mateo away from his home, create a disturbance close to the center of town, and take the evil SOB to a remote place and dump his worthless body where the maggots and blow flies could have him.

  The waitress signaled that he should take a left. He followed her directions and eventually dropped her by a traffic light close to the joint where they’d had breakfast. He couldn’t ask if she wanted him to walk her home. He didn’t have the words and he was sure the gestures could go wrong, fast. She picked a traffic light in the middle of town rather than a residential street. She was savvy. She’d be safe. She leaned into the back seat, pointing at Arthur and laughing. It meant the same where Bill came from. “That was a lucky escape. To think, I could have slept with him.” She slammed the door and trotted away from the car, one hand on her bag, the other in her pocket. Bill hoped she was armed. Suddenly, he hoped everyone was armed.

  Arthur sat up. “Is the coast all clear?”

  Bill jumped. “Man, you scared me.”

  Arthur climbed from the back seat into the front. “Figured we needed as much cover as we could get. They won’t forget the drunken jester. Neither will she. Tell me what you’re thinking. We’re going back, right?”

  “You don’t need to. I can take you to your motel.” Bill pulled through the traffic lights and headed east.

  Arthur shook his head. “The stories, man. If you’d heard what I heard, you’d go back there now and take care of him.”

  Bill pulled over and stopped the car. “The stories?”

  Arthur told him their war stories. Not just the raids and the gunfights, but the wholesale theft and slaughter. Bill gripped the steering wheel. Did Mateo know who he was? Had he let his men spew this poison deliberately? Was it a trap?

  It didn’t matter. If it was a trap, they’d deal with that head on.

  Bill did a U-turn and headed back towards Mateo Hernandez. What had he learned about the man? He was a thug, an opportunist, a gun for hire. He had no principles, no backbone, no moral compass. He’d committed crimes to line his pockets, not for a cause he believed in.

  Bill laid out his plan. Arthur listened carefully.

  He killed his headlights as they neared the town. The main drag was deserted. It wasn’t like New York, the town that never slept. Shops were shuttered, market stands wrapped in their tent-like covers and bungee cords to make it as hard as possible for someone to walk away with a wooden table and an umbrella. The bar where he’d met his wife’s abductor was closed, the gates padlocked against intruders.

  Bill pulled into the alley behind the bar and parked. The back of the bar was as dark as the front. If anyone lived above it, they’d turned in. Still, they needed to be silent, stealthy, invisible.

  Arthur laced his fingers together and made a stirrup for Bill to stand on. Bill used his friend’s shoulder to steady himself then hoisted himself up on the window sill, pressing the glass of the men’s bathroom window until it opened. He heard the beer bottle he’d left there not an hour earlier shatter in the sink below. The two men waited, searching the windows for a light. There was nothing. They could move forward.

  Bill heaved himself into the bar, using the sink as his ladder, and snuck to the back door. How many locks and chains did one bar need? The place was like a fortress. He didn’t have time to undo all of those and, in any case, it’d make too much noise. He was still worried that someone might live in the building. He needed to adapt. He’d gotten in through the window, he could get out the same way.

  He tiptoed to the bar. He needed as many bottles of spirits as the two of them could carry. He loaded his arms with vodka and slunk to the men’s bathroom window. “Adapt,” he whispered.

  If Arthur didn’t understand, he didn’t say. He took t
he bottles and placed them gently on the pavement at his feet.

  Bill did a second run. Better safe than sorry. He stacked his arms with as many bottles as he could safely carry, then added the bottle of dish soap to the top of the heap.

  He mounted the sink, handing off the final bottle to Arthur, and leaned towards the window. The sink gave out from under him, buckling and crashing, tearing his pant leg and gouging his calf. He managed not to scream, but he was sure they’d blown their cover. Someone had to come now. He scrambled up and out the window, falling into Arthur in a heap.

  “There’s blood everywhere. My blood.” It changed everything.

  “Give me your shirt,” said Arthur.

  Bill did as he was told. Arthur tore the shirt into strips, stuffed one into the neck of a bottle, and pulled out his lighter. “We adapt, right?”

  “We adapt, sure, but don’t do this on the hop. Make the rest of the bottles up so we can throw a series of them, one on top of the other.”

  Arthur put his lighter away and went to it, making Molotov cocktails of all the bottles.

  They’d planned to do this prep in the relative safety of the car, but Arthur was right, burning the bar was the best way to get rid of the evidence.

  Bill needed to staunch the flow of blood from his wound. He barely felt the pain, but he didn’t want a trail leading his enemies directly to him. He took one of the strips Arthur had made of his shirt and wrapped it around his leg, cinching it tight. It wasn’t going to last long, but they didn’t need long.

  He had hoped to be closer to Mateo’s house when they set off their makeshift Molotov cocktails, but this was a better target, all things told. The men of this village loved their local drinking hole. If it was on fire, they’d all come running.

  Bill grabbed the dish soap, but Arthur had already filled all the liquor bottles with cloth stoppers. Bill pulled the stopper out of a bottle and emptied the liquor into the street, then coated the inside of the bottle with soap. He lobbed the soap-filled bottle in through the open window and heard it splinter against the far wall, next to the toilet stall. That was good. The soap would adhere to the wooden doors, causing the flame to burn long after the alcohol burned off. If the doors caught, the fire would be out of control in minutes, not hours.

  They were ready. The stage was set. Part one of Bill’s plan was complete. He nodded at Arthur.

  Arthur lit the first fuse, drew his arm back like a baseball player, and threw the bottle as hard as he could. Bill grabbed another bottle and did the same. The flames shot up, brighter than he’d expected. He picked up another bottle and threw it. Then another. And another.

  The fire blazed, curling up the walls and sending black smoke out into the street. It wouldn’t be long before people came running.

  Bill and Arthur ran back to the car, Bill did his best not to hobble. Even if someone saw his shadow, his unusual gait might be something they’d remember.

  “I’ll go,” said Arthur. “You bring the car to meet me.”

  That wasn’t the plan, but Bill was injured and it made sense. The fastest way to Mateo’s house was by foot. Arthur took off running and Bill drove the car—slowly, carefully, no lights—towards the street. He needed to go at this just as he’d told Arthur to: in a measured way, drawing no attention to the car. That meant going the long way ’round, using backroads, hoping that anyone running to the fire would be looking the other way.

  Getting to Mateo’s house took an age. He parked in the alley closest to the house and waited. The good news was he’d only seen men running towards the fire from a couple of streets away. That meant it was unlikely anyone had seen him. The bad news was that he hadn’t spotted Arthur or Mateo.

  A massive thump to the back of the car startled him. He twisted in his seat. It was Arthur. He waved wildly, urging Bill to open the trunk.

  Mateo Hernandez was out cold. Turned out getting any man into the trunk of a car—be he dead or alive—was a work of art. Bill felt their efforts were more Pollack than Rembrandt. The operation was fast and violent and messy, with a powerful amount of swearing and not a lot of finesse. Arms had to be folded, legs sorted, the man’s wrists bound, in case he woke while they were in transit.

  He closed the trunk as quietly as he could and edged to the front of the car.

  Arthur had a cut across his forehead and a split lip. It hadn’t gone down smoothly. Bill hadn’t expected it to, but he’d thought he’d be the one throwing punches and overpowering Mateo.

  “You good?”

  “Just get us out of here. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Bill didn’t turn the car lights on until they were well out of town. He could see the light from the fire in his rearview mirror. It had done its job, even though they’d been forced to improvise. That homey, inviting little bar deserved to go up in smoke. For years, it had hosted war criminals who sat on their self-satisfied behinds and talked of their glory days as if a race hadn’t almost been exterminated and thousands of people “vanished” and his beloved wife broken.

  The place he’d chosen for Mateo’s execution was a dilapidated stone structure, halfway between his home and Alicia’s. Perhaps Mateo had murdered someone in this very spot. Perhaps not. The country was steeped in the blood of his victims. It didn’t much matter where they went.

  Bill popped the trunk and jumped back as fast as his injured leg would allow. He was too smart to let Mateo kick at him or use a tire iron to batter his way out. But the man was still unconscious. No threat. He never would be again.

  He let Arthur help him bundle Mateo into the shack and lay him on the floor.

  “I want to do this alone.”

  “I’ll stay,” said Arthur.

  “Stay outside. Be on the lookout. This is not someone who won’t be missed. There will be some confusion, but he’s a big fish in a small pond. Soon enough someone will notice he’s not there.”

  “That’s right.” Mateo was awake. “They will miss me. Soon.”

  Bill snapped the button on his holster and drew his weapon. “You’ll be quiet.”

  “For you, Bill Everlee? No.” Mateo was still bound at the wrists, but he was able to crab-walk himself over to the wall and sit up. “You think I don’t know who you are?”

  Bill didn’t know what he thought. He barely had room for thought. His heart was racing and his gun shaking. He’d planned all this: hired Arthur as a translator, borrowed money from his mother for the plane tickets so Alice wouldn’t ask questions, lied to his wife about where he was going, fantasized about snuffing this lowlife’s light out permanently. But now that the moment was here, he wasn’t sure what he thought. If he pulled the trigger, he was no better than this piece of human excrement. He’d be a murderer.

  “I have people all over the country,” said Mateo. “I knew you were coming. My ‘cousin’ from the north who has an inheritance for me. I laughed. Let him come, I said. Let him bring me what I am owed.”

  Bill tried to steady his gun.

  “You think this is some backwater where you can come unseen and do as you please?”

  Bill had thought that. What did he know of Guatemala apart from what Alice had told him? Almost nothing.

  “You are Bill Everlee. An engineer. You have four children. Your wife is Alice. She lived not far from here.”

  The man knew who he was. He’d been playing with him all night. He knew who Alice was. Someone in that town square, where they’d been so kind and warm and inviting, sending him off with gifts of oranges and cake. Someone had ratted him out.

  “How is Alicia?”

  “Do not say her name.” The rage rose in Bill’s belly and clouded his vision.

  “She was such a good girl, so…” He paused, a smile on his lips. “…So compliant.”

  Bill was over Mateo in two strides, emptying his gun into him as he went. The man jerked and spasmed, but never spoke again.

  Bill didn’t know how much time had passed when Arthur eased the gun from his hands and st
eered him back to the car. Arthur didn’t speak. Bill couldn’t. They drove back to the city. Bill waited in the car while Arthur collected his own bag, then again when he went to Bill’s room and packed for him. They left the car at the rental center, showed their passports and tickets to all the right people, and waited at their gate.

  Somewhere in there, Bill didn’t know when or how, Arthur had dressed his wound and given him a clean set of clothes. He owed him, big time. He’d never have made it out of there without him. If it hadn’t been for Arthur, he would still have been in that shack, emptying bullets into Mateo Hernandez until the police came looking. He owed him and he was never going to forget it.

  Bill checked his phone, wishing he and Alice hadn’t ever come up with that ridiculous “no phone calls when I am at work” rule. She’d be suspicious if he called her now, when she thought he was in Texas on a build. He scrolled through pictures of his children. Christmases, birthdays, trips to Six Flags. They were all there, laughing with such abandon. It was only when he looked closely that he could see Alice was detached, apart, smiling for the camera but not fully engaged.