by Ryan Schow
As a voyeur into their lives, hearing what they were hearing, you just have to know that these people, these parents who gave birth to this beautiful child, will not survive this intact.
This nightmare is merely the beginning of a long and torturous end. Why? Because in truth, the human heart can and will take this kind of pain. And so I know I can take this pain, too. That is why I now ask myself, what are you going to do with it?
I know the answer.
I’ve always known the answer.
I’m going to take this pain and treat it as the blunt end of a weapon. If Diaab Buhari has irrevocably harmed one hair on the head of any of the three children he’s taken, I swear to God I will bring a reckoning to him and his family not even my wicked mind can fathom.
These are the things I think to myself before I promise Adeline I will bring our kids back. None of this should surprise you—not the way I think, and certainly not what I’m prepared to do. But there’s one surprise not even I saw coming. An added incentive, if you will.
Before I leave the room, Adeline sits up and says to me: “If you get our kids back, I will find a way to work things out with you.”
That’s all I needed to hear. Now it’s time to unleash hell.
Chapter Fourteen
Guns, water, warm clothes and our bad attitudes. That’s all we need to go hunting. The way my head’s now spinning, nothing can stop me. Ice is talking about a cold front that’s moving in, but I’m not worried. Not right now. I’m still stuck in this moment’s crisis. Besides, when I think about the weather or my kids’ lives, I don’t give a rat’s ass how cold it gets, someone’s going to pay for messing with my family.
Down in the kitchen, Eliana sees we’re about to leave so she says, “I would come with you, but I want to stay with Carolina if you two are just doing recon. But you also need time together.”
Ice nods his head, but he looks like he doesn’t know how to be with her. This confuses me. Are they or are they not together?
“Okay,” Ice says. “Well, thank you.”
“When you go in though, when you need an extra gun,” she says, looking right into his eyes, deep with no hesitation, “I want to be there.”
“As long as you aim for the kneecaps,” I tell her. “I want the kill shot.”
“Fair enough.”
When it gets really awkward and it looks like Ice is ready to leave, Eliana moves in to him, wraps her arms around him and says, “Come back to me.”
He looks down at her and she gets on her tippy-toes and kisses him.
“I will,” he says, looking relieved, but also happy and surprised at the same time.
“I think now that we’re safe,” Eliana says, looking at me first, and then Ice, “maybe we’ll hold off on that trip to Guatemala. See what becomes of this world.”
“Eliana, I need you to do me a favor,” I ask because I have to and I’m starting to feel a bit manic here. “Can you and Adeline check on Xavier? We need to figure out how to help the other girls.”
“I don’t know the way,” she says. “But if Adeline—”
“She knows how to get to his house,” I tell her. “Xavier buried his wife yesterday, so he’s fragile. He won’t show it, but Adeline will know it. Maybe you can take Carolina with you, if she’s feeling up to it.”
“I will ask her.”
“There are a lot of mouths to feed and as you can see, we’re up to our necks in this freaking nightmare. For the girls, he’ll need water, beds, blankets, toiletries…”
“As soon as you leave,” she assures me, “I will talk to Adeline about this.”
“Good,” I tell her. “Thank you. Oh, and the keys to the Tahoe are on the hook back by the garage. Adeline should know this, but now you know this, too.”
She smiles at me. I turn to Ice and he’s not voicing his objections.
“I want to be perfectly clear about our arrangements,” I tell her, saying this as kindly as I can, “the second we get my kids, we’re out of here, all of us. The big city, even the outskirts, are going to get very dangerous. We have to fortify our position here for now, but the second everyone’s back, we have to be prepared to leave.”
“But we just got here,” Eliana says.
“What my brother is saying,” Ice says, “is that as soon as everyone realizes there’s no way back from this attack, that the country is in this position and there are no rules, no laws, no law enforcement but the gun, then this is going to be ground zero for the madhouse.”
“Meaning?”
“Starvation, desperation, all out conflict,” I say. “If it comes to eating or dying, would you rather eat or die?”
“Eat, obviously,” Eliana says.
“What if eating meant killing someone else and taking their food?” I ask. “Or worse, what if you’re forced to kill an entire family for blankets, supplies, a home?”
“There are plenty of homes,” she says, swallowing hard.
“Right now there are,” Ice replies, “but when they start burning, or when it gets so cold that all of these new homes with their fake fireplaces and no heat turn into iceboxes, what will you do?”
“You don’t have real fireplaces?” she asks.
“Environmentalists have a big say in the way things work in America, and the climate change agenda has us making rules that, under these circumstances, don’t make sense,” I tell her. “That means a lot of homes here don’t have real fireplaces because a lot of people think that burning logs is the same as killing the planet.”
“What is the climate change agenda?” she asks.
Waving off the question because it’s complicated and we have to go, I say, “Once we reach the point of no return, we’ll have to fight our way out. If we run lean, that’s possible. But if we’ve got extra people slowing us down and taxing our resources, which we do, that’s going to require some planning.”
“I agree,” Eliana says.
“There will be more people to move, more targets to hit, more mouths to feed and more water to carry.”
The light in her eyes begins to dim. Had she not just been reunited with Carolina, she might have figured these things out. Eliana seems both smart and capable.
I like her already.
“What he’s trying to say,” Ice says, “is that the longer we stand here talking about fireplaces and worst case scenarios, the harder it’s going to be for us to escape. We do not want to be in the city one second longer than we have to.”
“But where will we go?” she asks.
I look at Ice; he looks at me. Neither of us know the right answer, but I know the only answer and it’s got myriad problems no matter how you look at it.
“California,” I say, thinking about my brother, Rock.
“Is that far from here?” she asks.
“No,” Ice replies. Then he looks at me and says, “Time to go.”
Outside, we get into the Barracuda, fire it up, let the heater blow. Looking outside at the dreary skies, the smoke nearly indistinguishable from the deep grey cloud cover, I realize I’ve got to change my tunnel vision mentality.
“This is the cold front we don’t want coming in,” I hear myself say.
“It’s coming in anyway,” Ice adds. “You can feel it. How the pressure’s changed.”
Not only is the smoky air more concentrated, there’s a heavy wetness to it that’s starting to feel like a developing storm.
“It’s too early for this,” I say.
“Mother Nature doesn’t care about your schedule,” he says.
I put the muscle car in gear, cruise out of the neighborhood, then bury the accelerator where I can while Ice watches the skies and I watch the mirrors. We see a lot of destruction, so many things damaged. Garbage, destroyed cars, broken mailboxes and bodies litter the streets. These are things you can’t stop looking at, the things you will never unsee.
In some places the pockets of smoke are thicker than others, but then there are areas where the haze thins out and
we can see ahead.
Right now all I care about are drones. With none threatening, however, it gives me time to think and that’s something I don’t need. What I need to do is hunt, kill, rescue. I’m back to primal, but for a different reason. This is not about revenge, although I will get my due—this is about rescue and escape.
Thinking of Diaab Buhari, I realize there are bigger problems than me cutting him down. I hope when push comes to shove, I’ll remember that. Not let the anger that’s mounting in me by the day become all consuming. As for now, I’m playing bumper cars with trash cans and stalled cars, mail boxes and potted plants. I’ve ripped up three lawns having to drive around obstacles, and we had to backtrack entirely because we were heading into an entire neighborhood at the tail end of a raging inferno.
When I finally see the open road, even though it’s still a residential neighborhood, I stomp on the gas and the Hemi gets loose. We run two stop signs, then three.
“Either you’ve lost your mind, or you’re crazier than ever, brother,” Ice says, his voice uptight, his body tense.
I look over at him and say, “It might be a combina—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Ice says holding his hand up in time for me to look over and see a subcompact car slamming into us.
The muscle car jolts hard, spinning around, our bodies jerked and tossed and beaten up in the process. When everything slows and I get my bearings about me, I check on Ice.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I think so,” he says, shaken and rubbing his neck.
“Nothing cut or broken?” I ask.
“No.”
I push the car door open, look at the purple beast where it was hit. There’s damage, but it’s not debilitating. This pansy import metal is no match for old school Detroit. It’s hammered, steam riding from the tented hood, fluids draining under the engine bay. My neck is stiff now and I’m pissed. The rage I tried to hold down, it’s not working. All this mania, this frustration, the flat out insanity I’ve got tucked down inside me, it wants out.
That’s when I see it. The distinct lack of rubber on the road. The little turd he never even hit the brakes.
At the Hyundai’s door, I lay eyes on the kid in the driver’s seat. He’s got to be twenty, twenty-one years old. I pull open the door and smell him. Alcohol, weed. His face is beet red and splotchy. He’s got scabs on his arms where he’s been scratching. Freaking meth head.
This is the match that lights the fuse.
Everything from here happens in a fog, and in a vacuum. The kid is on the ground, then he’s squirming, then bleeding and all the while my hands have become fists and these fists are opening holes in the kid, but now I’m bleeding too and thinking about AIDS or syphilis or whatever so then my hands stop and my feet start.
I don’t hear the other car pull up that’s how badly I’ve gone to tunnel vision, but I do see four guys my size get out and say, “Leave him alone,” to which my mouth begins saying the most vile things.
I see the bat in the guy’s hand, but it doesn’t matter. This meltdown I was hoping to avoid? It’s here.
All the focused, driven energy in me is now unraveling, creating radioactive decay. There’s about to be massive fallout and I don’t care. It’s like I want it.
Yes, I have a problem.
As three of the four guys converge on me, all I see are targets. The smallest, most powerful parts of me—love and hate—smash together to form something explosive, something highly toxic and self-destructive.
The bat is swinging, but I’m dropping low, driving a soccer ball kick into his forward ankle, snapping it. Two sets of fists pummel me, but I turn into them, take a few to the face and body, but manage to grab hair, hit things, break things, smash things down. More fists hit me, I don’t care. I’m too juiced to feel it. This violent frenzy somehow feels like home. Swinging fists, guys screaming in pain, my hands throbbing but my mouth set in single, seething slash.
Adeline would say I’ve lost it.
She’d be right.
So then there’s me kicking and squirming, and then there’s something breaking over my head—a bottle I think—and then me finding a new body I can beat until all this energy in me is spent. I’m bent over, clobbering knocked-out guys when a gunshot cuts through the air, startling me out of this dizzying wash of insanity.
I stand up, everything hurting, my breath coming high in my chest and hard. Sweat drips off my hair, blood off my nose. No, blood from my nose. I look over and the driver is on the ground, fallen shotgun beside him, bleeding out with a hole in the center of his head.
I turn back, my senses returning, the feeling of what just happened completely consuming me. Ice is standing there with a gun at his side.
He shot the man.
“He was going to kill you,” Ice says. “Not that I blame him, you freaking nut job.”
For the first time since I saw the scabbed injection points on the kid’s arms, I start to see things clearly, get a grasp of the situation.
The kid that hit me is dead, his head cranked sideways and pulped. The three guys at my feet are faring much worse. I look away, ashamed of what I’ve done. The sickness takes over and I wonder what the hell is happening to me.
I stumble to the car, my hangdog eyes on Ice. He’s just standing there, a slight smirk forming on his face.
“Good to see you still got some fight in you, brother.”
“You shouldn’t have shot that guy,” I hear myself say, even though part of me is glad he did. Not that I’ll admit it.
“He would have killed you.”
“If he wanted to kill me, he wouldn’t have hesitated so long. He was weak, in over his head like the rest of them.”
“Tell yourself all the lies you want,” he replies.
Getting pissed off, the fire still inside me and getting stoked by this conversation, I say, “I had it under control.”
His smirk is gone. He turns to me, squaring off his shoulders.
“You don’t have squat under control. You’re pissed off and I get it, but you can’t carry that kind of rage into a fight with me, brother. You’ll only end up getting us killed.”
I swipe at the bloody dribble coming from my nose, spit a glob of blood out, then touch my eye. It feels tight. I must have gotten cracked. Hell, I know I got cracked.
“You’re one to talk about death,” I hear myself say.
The second I say it, I want to take it back.
“Yeah, well you spent your youth on the sidelines,” Ice says. “Always worried about what Adeline thought, how she felt. You never lived your life fully.”
“We all lost your wife and kids that day, Ice,” I say, an old wound resurfacing. “I didn’t want to lose mine.”
“How’s that working out for you now?”
I didn’t mean to swing on him, but apparently the flames weren’t doused just yet. He stepped away easily, my swing going wide.
“You’re tired, Fire,” he says. “Tired makes you slow.”
I’m not thinking straight, and I don’t need to be pushed by Ice. “I could have taken that guy,” I grumble.
“No you couldn’t have,” he says, somber.
Feeling the beating pulse in my eye, each and every cut on my knuckle, my brain takes a detour and I’m not sure it’s a good one.
“Why didn’t you help me earlier?” I ask.
“Because when you’re mad, you scream and yell and break things. I knew you needed to break something. Everyone felt it, Fire.”
“I had that last guy.”
Maybe I didn’t. Maybe he’s right. With everything I’ve gone through these last few days, my body might finally be slowing down. And my mind certainly isn’t right. I know this, too.
“You can’t even hit me right now without stumbling around like a drunk.”
I drove a shot in, fast and loose. Ice checked it, then snapped a kick off my family jewels, that son of a—
Yeah, so my body is definitely forsaking me. It�
�s bending to the pain, which is embarrassing. Fighting through it, I rush him, but he steps out of the way and the next thing I know, I’ve been flipped on my back, gasping for breath and looking straight up at the chalky, grey sky.
Any other time, I wouldn’t have been caught, but maybe Ice is right: I’m tired, worn out and dangerous when it comes to our safety. I catch my breath, look up at my younger brother who’s looking down on me without expression, then frown. He steps on my kneecap, leans on it hard. It takes every last ounce of energy to not show pain, but dammit, if he does permanent damage…
“Ask me the question,” Ice says, calm.
“I don’t want to know anything about you,” I growl. “Get off my knee.”
“Stop lying to yourself.”
He leans on my knee a little harder.
“Fine,” I say, my tone too sharp because of the pain and too nasty because of the shame. “Where have you been?”
“Juarez.”
“Why?”
“I went to do what you are doing now. Make someone pay. Make everyone you can find pay.”
He doesn’t let off my knee and I’m thinking about going for my gun, the one I don’t have.
“I just want him.”
“That’s how it started with me, too,” Ice says, finally taking his foot off my knee. He sits down beside me, Indian style, and more solemn, he says, “I found the people who called the hit on my family.”
I manage to sit up. “Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“When?”
He smiles a long time, memories cascading through his expression, through his eyes—eyes that are now vibrant and alive.
“It took six months.”
“And?”
“I let myself get swept up in the moment. Found myself wanting to make it last as long for them as it had for me, but that wasn’t possible. I’m still living with my pain. The people I found, they’re not living with anything. They’re in pieces all along Av De Los Montes Urales. That’s a long, wide road in Juarez populated by restaurants and houses. There were seven of them. Seven guys. By the time I was done, I spread their body parts out over a full mile. Every time a car drove over them, the tires flattened them, squashed them into nothing, made them permanent road kill. You can still see the streaks today. I did that. And you know what?”