by BB Easton
“Shit.”
I crouch down and pick up the toothbrush as Hoyt shuffles over.
“I’ll get ya a new one,” he mumbles, taking the cup from my outstretched hand as he glances up at the ceiling at the end of the hall.
A security camera. Of course.
“Thanks, man.” I stand up, palming the toothbrush so that it’s out of sight and hopefully out of mind. “You know, for what it’s worth, Doug really did like you.”
Hoyt finally looks at me, trying and failing to make eye contact as his glassy eyes swim in his bloated, ruddy face. He smells like a potent mixture of brown liquor and body odor, and I genuinely feel bad for the guy.
Just not as bad as I feel for myself.
He returns a few minutes later with a new cup and toothbrush.
“Got you a clean set,” he mumbles, glancing at the camera and then back at his feet. “Wash up. It’s gon’ be lights out soon.”
From the weight of the cup, I know as soon as he hands it to me that it’s full of bottom-shelf whiskey, but that’s not really what I was after.
What I wanted was an ally.
The spare toothbrush was just a bonus.
Rain
“In one mile, turn right onto West Paces Ferry Road.”
Evidently, Jimbo got all the bells and whistles when he bought this truck. It even has GPS built right into the dashboard. And thank God because even though I found my phone in the duffel bag Q gave me, it’s dead as a doornail, and there was no way I’d have been able to find my way to downtown Atlanta with the back roads being as clogged up as they are.
“So … are you gonna tell us what’s goin’ on or what?” Quint asks, eyeing me suspiciously from the passenger seat.
“I already told you. We’re going to get Wes.”
“Not about that. I’m talkin’ ’bout how your man beat the shit outta Carter yesterday; then Jimbo almost shot his ass and chased y’all outta the mall; then Agnes called the cops, and they took her to find you guys; then she came back in this truck to pick up Carter, Sophie, and Jimbo; and now, you’re drivin’ it even though they hate your ass right now.”
“Oh. That.” My mouth goes dry, and my palms begin to sweat as I think about the events that led up to me stealing this truck. I picture Agnes, facedown and bleeding in the garage. I picture sweet Sophie and Jimbo finding her there. Then, I picture Carter, sprinting up the driveway toward me, his mangled face twisted in rage.
I focus on the road in front of my headlights and try my best to breathe as I blink the unwanted images away. “The Renshaws stole my house, so I stole their truck.”
I hope that’s enough of an explanation for them, but of course, it’s not.
“Stole your house? How the hell do you steal a house?” Lamar yells over the sound of the wind whipping through the busted-out windows from his spot on the tiny, fold-down backseat.
“They literally just moved in and took it over. I was too shocked and upset to fight back right away, but after I saw Wes’s sentencing, I just … I don’t know … I snapped. Agnes had Carter tie me up in the garage and said she was gonna keep me out there ‘til the baby was born, but I escaped and stole their truck.”
Quint’s and Lamar’s questions come rapid-fire after that.
“They tied you up?”
“The garage? Hell nah!”
“She was gonna keep you out there ‘til what baby was born? The second coming of Christ?”
“Wait.”
“Hold up.”
“Are you …”
“No.”
“You’re pregnant?”
“Do you know who the daddy is?”
I glare at Lamar, who asked that last question.
“What?” He holds his hands up. “No shade. I probably got a coupl’a baby mamas out there I don’t know about.”
“Boy!” Quint reaches into the backseat and smacks Lamar upside the head. “You can’t get a girl pregnant just by starin’ at her, and that’s about as far as you ever got.”
“Pssh! You don’t know my life. I got hos in different area codes.”
“You been ridin’ your bike to all those area codes? ’Cause you know you ain’t got no license.”
“It’s Wes’s,” I snap, cutting them both off.
“Ohhhh shit.” Quint’s expression goes flat as he turns to face me again.
“Yeah.”
“Sorry, Rain.” Lamar drops his voice and gives me an awkward pat on the shoulder.
“Don’t be sorry,” I say, swerving to avoid a mangled muffler in the road. “Just help me get him out.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I see Lamar give me a little salute in the rearview mirror.
Quint nods in agreement.
Thankfully, the GPS lady chooses that exact moment to change the subject. “Turn right onto West Paces Ferry Road.”
“Somebody should really make a post–April 23 GPS system,” Lamar jokes. Then, he switches to his best robotic lady voice. “Turn right at the burning school bus.”
Quint chuckles. “Or how ’bout, Ignore that Stop sign unless you would like to be robbed at gunpoint.”
I can’t help but smile. Even Quint’s GPS voice sounds Southern.
“I don’t think we have to worry about getting robbed in a giant truck that says DEATH TO SHEEP on the side of it,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“You know it probably just has dicks on the other side.” Lamar laughs. “You can’t give a dude a can of spray paint and not end up with a buncha dicks.”
“Oh shit.” Quint laughs, rummaging in the glove box until he finds a flashlight. Then, he leans out the broken passenger window and shines it on the side of the truck. “Gotdamn it! There’s one right here on my door! Why does it hafta be on my side?”
We all laugh, which feels strange and wrong, considering the circumstances, before Quint pulls his head back into the truck.
“Jesus. Who the hell do you s’pose lives there?”
I follow his gaze out the window and find a house—no, a mansion—set back from the road behind a perfectly manicured lawn and a brightly lit fountain. The brick monstrosity is illuminated from all sides, making the white plantation-style columns—and the police cars lining the circular driveway—glow in the dark.
“That’s the governor’s mansion,” Lamar says. “They didn’t make y’all go there on a field trip?”
Quint and I shake our heads.
“Pssh. Y’all lucky. They made us go in sixth grade. Pissed me off so bad. How you gonna drag a buncha country kids all the way into the city just to show us a buncha shit we ain’t never gonna have?”
“Yeah, especially when our tax money paid for all that shit,” Quint adds, still staring out the window.
The property seems to go on forever.
“I didn’t even learn nuthin’. ’Cept that Governor Steele has, like, thirty rooms in his house, a heated pool, a helicopter pad, some kinda marble floors that came from Italy or France or some-fuckin’-place. Oh, and at Christmastime every year, somebody makes a giant gotdamn four-foot-wide gingerbread house that looks just like the mansion, and then they just throw the whole thing away in January. Homeless people down the street would eat tha hell outta that thing!”
“And they say sharing what we got with sick people and old people is why we were facin’ extinction. If you ask me, it was from assholes like this taking all the damn resources for themselves.” Quint clicks off his flashlight and tosses it back into the glove box. “I saw on TV that one percent of the world’s population owns ninety-nine percent of the wealth. If anything goes against nature, it’s that shit.”
“You’re right.” I nod, trying to keep my eyes on the road instead of the mansion my mama and daddy helped pay for with their hard-earned money. “I remember watchin’ an episode of Hoarders once where they said that no other species on Earth hoards like humans do. I mean, animals will store food for winter or whatever, but they never take more than they actually need. Not like us.”
B
y the time we get to the end of the property and pass the fully illuminated tennis court, I’m convinced that Governor Beauregard Steele’s house is more than anybody actually needs.
“Turn left onto Northside Drive,” the GPS lady says.
“How much longer?” Lamar whines from the backseat.
I glance at the glowing screen in the dashboard. “That’s weird.”
“What?”
“It says we’re only nine miles away, but …”
“Ten hours?” Lamar yells, his face between Quint and me as he reads the dash for himself.
I assume it’s a mistake until I come around a curve and have to jerk the wheel to avoid hitting a stopped car. The truck bounces as I careen over the curb and onto the grass, slamming on the brakes and coming to a stop inches away from a telephone pole.
Lamar flies into the dashboard and lands in Quint’s lap. “What the hell, Rain?”
“Look!” I point through my broken window at the sea of parked cars stretching all the way down Northside Drive. At first, I assume there’s just a bad wreck up ahead that never got cleared, but then I hear the sound of bass in the distance.
And screaming.
And gunshots.
The streetlights are still working, but that’s more than I can say for the businesses lining the road. Smashed windows, busted neon signs … the bank has an actual car sticking out the side of it.
“We still have nine miles to go?” Quint asks.
“Uh-huh.”
“There is heavier than expected traffic up ahead,” the GPS lady announces.
“Yeah, no shit,” Lamar grunts as he peels himself off the dash.
“I have an idea.” I flip on the high beams and decide to try to drive down the side of the road. There are a few cars and mangled, twisted bumpers blocking the sidewalk, but I think I have just enough space to maneuver around them in the truck.
“Rain, are you sure we should go this way?” Quint asks.
The br-r-r-r-r-ap of a machine gun in the distance answers him with a resounding no.
“This is how the GPS said to go,” I snap. “You got any better ideas?”
Quint shuts his mouth, and we creep alongside the road in silence, the sound of thumping hip-hop and excitement and fear and desperation growing louder with every passing second.
“Where is everybody?” Lamar asks, securely buckled in the backseat this time.
“I think we’re about to find out.”
We creep over the top of a hill, and the scene laid out before us looks like an anthill after it’s been stepped on. There are people everywhere—fighting in the street, having sex in the street, standing on cars while watching other people fight and have sex in the street, shooting up in doorways, firing guns into the air, and walking around with homemade signs advertising whatever weapons, drugs, sex acts, or snacks they’re selling.
I see two guys holding leashes and fistfuls of dollar bills while their pit bulls maul each other.
I see a guy pushing a grocery cart full of colorful bongs.
I see a man holding a machine gun, guarding a naked woman dancing on the corner in clear six-inch heels.
Then, I see a body lying facedown on the sidewalk in my headlights, and I have to slam on the brakes.
“Dude, are you crazy? You can’t stop here,” Lamar whines.
“I can’t run her over either!”
“That bitch is already dead!”
“What if she isn’t?”
“Maybe somebody should go check,” Quint offers.
“One, two, three—”
“Not it!” We all shout in unison.
“Ahh! That was you, big bro! Go do it!”
“Whatever! We all said it at the same time!”
“Nuh-uh. You said it late.”
“Ugh!” I groan. “I’ll do it, okay?” I go to pull the gun out of my waistband when the sound of motorcycle engines perks my ears.
I lift my head and stare through the windshield as a group of neon-orange skeletons on motorcycles rushes down the street toward us like an approaching tidal wave. They crisscross between the parked cars, bashing them with baseball bats and shooting out their windshields with wolf-like howls.
Br-r-r-r-r-r-ap!
One of them mows down a group of semiconscious junkies leaning against a dumpster with a machine gun that’s been mounted to the front of his motorcycle. Their bodies jerk and fall to the ground as screams fill the air. The folks on the street scatter like rats, diving for the alleys and huddling in vacant doorways.
“What the hell are y’all waitin’ for? Let’s go!” Lamar yells, pushing on the back of his brother’s seat.
I reach out to grab my door handle when I notice the neon-orange bones painted on my sleeve.
“No,” I mumble, letting go of the door.
“Rain!”
“Just … just shut up, okay?” I wave Quint off while keeping my eyes locked on the leader of the pack. I couldn’t look away if I wanted to.
“Fuck this!” Quint goes to open his door, but my hand shoots out and grabs a fistful of his T-shirt.
“The Bony kid said to tell ’em we’re from Pritchard Park, remember? Maybe they can help us!”
Quint stares at me like I just sprouted a third eye. “Are you fuckin’ crazy?”
“You’re crazy if you think they aren’t gonna shoot you the second you jump outta this truck!” I yell over the sound of approaching motorcycles and gunfire and howling.
It’s so loud now I know they’re on top of us … even before Quint’s terrified eyes look past me and out the broken window.
“License and registration, ma’am,” a sinister voice bellows in my ear.
With a deep breath, I turn and smile, which I realize a moment too late is the exact opposite of the hardened gangster vibe I was supposed to be going for. It’s also the exact opposite of what I want to do when I take in the blood-spattered King Burger mask staring back at me. The eyes and nose have been painted black, and his grinning mouth has extra-white teeth painted on either side of it to resemble the lip-less smile of a skull. But instead of Día de Muertos designs painted on the cheeks and forehead, it’s pot leaves and dollar signs. Not that I can see much of the forehead. The top half of the Bony’s mask is shaded by the brim of an old velvet top hat, and his neon-orange bones have been spray-painted directly onto a fur coat that looks like it was made from the hides of a thousand calico cats. I can’t really see his eyes, but I can feel them looking us over.
“Um …” I swallow. “We represent Pritchard Park?”
“Oh, do you now?”
The Bony’s pack begins to surround the truck. I wince as the one on the dirt bike drives right over the woman on the sidewalk to position himself next to Quint’s door.
“Mmhmm.” My voice trembles as I force myself to stare into the black voids where his eyes should be.
“A’ight.” He nods. His voice is calm—loud due to the engine noise but calm. Then, just as I begin to relax, he throws me a curveball.
“You say you a Bony bitch? Then, tell me … who’s ya prez?”
My prez? Like, my president?
I assume he doesn’t mean the president of the United States. It must be a biker-gang thing. Like who’s my leader.
Crap.
My mind hurtles back in time to our run-in with the Pritchard Park Bonys. None of them mentioned any names, let alone the name of their leader. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen any Bonys anywhere who seemed like leadership material.
Except for this guy.
“You?” I say, going out on a limb.
“You damn right!”
The masked man tips his head back and laughs. The sound allows me to breathe again. And sounds strangely familiar.
“What brings y’all to A-town?”
“I … uh …”
I glance at Quint, who looks like he’s about to piss himself, but thankfully, Lamar pipes up from the backseat, trying to sound more hood than country, “Her
baby daddy caught a case, yo. So, we goin’ to the capitol to bust his ass out!”
“Ohhhh shiiiiiit!” The leader of the Bonys covers his toothy rubber mouth with a fist. Then, he offers it to Lamar for a bump. “Yo, Fat Sacks!” he yells to the Bony in front of the truck, wearing a black ski mask and a neck full of heavy gold chains. “These muhfuckas is gonna storm tha castle!”
The other Bony says something, but evidently, I’m not the only one who can’t hear it because the prez shouts at him to repeat it. The gold-chain guy pulls up his ski mask and shouts louder, and everyone in the car gasps audibly.
“Holy shit!” Quint whisper-shouts.
“Is that Big Boi?” Lamar asks.
“From OutKast?” I squint, trying to get a better look at him before he pulls his ski mask back down. “No way.”
Lamar, Quint, and I all turn to stare at The Prez in unison. I want to ask him if he’s André 3000 so bad, but I also want to live, so I keep my mouth shut and pray that Lamar does the same for once in his life.
“It’s y’alls’ lucky day,” The Prez announces, slapping the roof of the truck and making us jump. “My VP and his boys here are gonna give you cats a lift. It’d take y’all ten hours to get through this shit in that redneck mobile.”
“Oh my God! That’s what the GPS lady said!” Lamar whispers as Quint and I open our doors.
May 7
Wes
Three hundred fifty-four cinder blocks, and not a damn one of them is even a little bit fucking loose.
I know because I stayed up all goddamn night, checking every single one.
The air vent is too small for a toddler to crawl through.
The floor is solid cement.
There are no fucking windows.
No fucking outlets.
And because the lock is unpickable without a bent nail, they put everything in here together with screws.
Out of options and ideas, I’ve been lying on my cot for the last few hours with my hands under my pillow, whittling the end of my bonus toothbrush into a spike, using the side of a screw. I don’t want to have to hurt these guys. I actually kind of like them—well, except for Mac. But if it comes down to them or me …
“Mornin’, sunshine. How you doin’?” Elliott calls from the hallway before appearing with a plastic tray. His smile fades as soon as he sees me. “Sorry. I guess that’s a silly question, ain’t it?”