The Devil's Stop

by Scott Blade

  Widow collapsed onto his knees like a grand piano dropping out of a four-story window.

  His vision became dizzy. His upper back throbbed as if he had been hit with a Louisville Slugger in the back by a professional baseball player at full force.

  His primal brain barked orders at him.

  Move! Move!

  He instinctively ducked and rolled as far to the left as he could. It was just in time to see the leader of the lumberjacks hammer down a broken board onto the concrete where he had been hobbled over.

  The lumberjack had slugged him across the back with a long, fresh-looking plank. Not a two-by-four but some thinner measurement. Which Widow was grateful for. A two-by-four would’ve hurt a hell of a lot more.

  Still, lumberjacks swing axes all day. They have all kinds of overly developed triceps and biceps combined with powerful forearms. Getting hit across the back by a board wielded by one of these guys was no day at the beach. Widow stood up straight. He was slightly dizzy. He was having trouble getting his breathing steady. He reached up and clutched at his chest. At first, he panicked that maybe the vicious blow had ruptured or collapsed a lung, but then his breath came back. The wind had gotten knocked out of him. It was severe enough, but not critical, not life-ending or even game-changing. He had been lucky the guy didn’t aim for the back of his head, or worse, his neck.

  The back of the neck, at the base of the head, is where all kinds of utilities are housed. It is the utility box of the body .

  Widow staggered a bit, trying to step forward. He decided to stay where he was.

  “Not so tough now! Are you?” the lead lumberjack said.

  Widow’s vision came into focus, and he saw the other two lumberjacks also had weapons now. They must’ve gone to the back of their truck while he was taking out their friends.

  One guy had a huge wrench, and the other one had his work ax, which was a vicious-looking thing. The head on it looked razor sharp.

  “You should’ve taken a beating,” the leader said.

  “I don’t take beatings.”

  “That’s too bad. ‘Cause we would’ve just given you a good one. Probably tossed you in the back of the truck and dumped you outside of town. You’da had a bad headache, some bruises, but you’d be able to walk.”

  Widow stayed quiet. But the truth was he did not like where this was going.

  “Now, we’re going to have to dump you at the town clinic. Hope they're open.”

  “You talk too much,” Widow said.

  The lead lumberjack tossed the broken board off to the side. He reached back without looking and said, “Ax.”

  The lumberjack holding the ax stepped up and handed it to him.

  That’s when Widow saw the guy hadn’t been carrying one ax. He had two.

  The guy with the wrench charged at Widow first. He ran up the middle of his friends. The guy swung the wrench fast and hard, another powerful swing. But wrenches are all thick metal and very heavy.

  Widow sidestepped right and leaned back on his heels. The wrench narrowly missed him. He felt a gust of wind from the grapple at his shirt like ghostly hands.

  He took advantage of the guy missing and stepped back forward into the after-swing. His right hand clamped down on the lumberjack’s forearm. His left reared back, fast, and exploded forward. He clocked the guy square in the ear with a colossal left hook. This time he didn’t hold back. He hit the guy with deadly intents. Although he wasn’t aiming to kill him, now they had lethal weapons. Holding back was out the window as far as Widow was concerned.

  The blow rocked the guy’s brain in his skull.

  Widow kept a solid grip on the guy’s forearm and jerked him down to the ground at the same time. The blow sent him toppling over, no problem.

  And now, Widow had the wrench in his hand.

  The two lumberjacks left standing held their axes and stared as Widow stepped back one big step and swung the wrench up over his shoulder and slammed it down on their friend’s stomach, a hard, vicious blow.

  Widow made it look worse than it was. He aimed to incapacitate, to hurt, to injure, but not to cause internal bleeding or rupture the guy’s stomach .

  The guy who had had the wrench screamed out and puked his guts out right there on the concrete.

  “Come on, guys. Just the two of you left.”

  The two last lumberjacks looked at each other.

  Widow could see one of them trembled a bit.

  Truth was that he was not looking forward to two huge guys wielding axes to run at him, but one element of the many mottoes of SEALs is to never show fear. For Widow, that was automatic. He didn’t show fear. He didn’t run from fear. He ran toward it.

  The two remaining lumberjacks finally made a correct tactical decision. They decided to charge him at the same time.

  Widow braced his feet apart and held the wrench out like a balancing bar. Right hand on the base and left hand near the head.

  The lumberjacks raised their axes and charged.

  They never got to Widow because right then they all heard a loud blast that echoed into the night.

  Chapter 14

  T HE BLAST ECHOED between the trucks and the buildings. Widow knew exactly what the sound was the moment he heard it. He figured that the lumberjacks also recognized the sound. It was universally known.

  The sound was a gunshot from a handgun.

  The two lumberjacks froze where the stood, axes still in hand. They both spun around fast to see the origin of the gunshot.

  Widow peered past them and saw it had been fired up in the air from a Glock 17. Soft smoke plumed around the muzzle.

  Standing there in the same outfit Widow saw earlier was the pregnant woman from the train platform.

  “Seven on one seems unfair. Don’t you boys think?” she asked. She lowered the Glock to just over her belly and pointed it at the leader of the lumberjacks.

  “Ma’am, this don’t concern you.”

  “Don’t give me that ma’am shit, like you guys’re polite gentlemen.”

  The leader said nothing to that .

  “Drop the hatchets.”

  They looked at each other.

  She pointed the Glock at the leader, full out in front of her like a cop catching a perp at gunpoint.

  Widow noticed that her feet were planted firmly. She kept both eyes open and aimed over the Glock’s sights with her right eye. She did not close one eye. She did not use her left eye while firing with her right like most amateur shooters do.

  She had a lot of practice with firearms.

  The leader dropped the ax.

  The other guy said, “These are our work axes.”

  The woman flicked her target over to him, fast, like someone who did a lot of live drills.

  “Drop it, Paul Bunyan.”

  The lumberjack glanced over at his leader. Widow saw he looked confused. Then he glanced back at the woman and spoke.

  “My name’s Ryan, ma’am.”

  “I see we got a Rhodes Scholar here.”

  “Pardon me, ma’am.”

  “I told you to cut the ma’am shit. Now drop the weapon.”

  The guy complied and tossed the ax. He looked over at the leader who was holding his hands up over his shoulders like you do when you’re at gunpoint.

  Widow stayed quiet.

  The leader said, “What about him?”

  “What about him? ”

  “He still has the wrench.”

  She walked in closer to them but stayed out of reach in case one of them got it in his head to try and swipe the Glock out of her hands.

  “You morons let one guy kick your ass. And then you let a pregnant woman get the drop on you. So, the way I see it, that wrench belongs to him now. Spoils of war or whatever.”

  They said nothing to that.

  “What now?”

  “Now, you scoop up your friends, pile them into one of the trucks and then get the hell out of here.”

  They looked at each other and then a
round at their friends on the ground. Two of them looked pretty bad. The first two guys Widow hit were both awake and holding their heads like they’d been hit in the head with sledgehammers.

  “What the hell are you waiting for? Skip to it!”

  She moved away from them, stepped toward Widow, but stayed out of his reach as well. She backed up a little behind him to the other lane and watched as the two remaining lumberjacks helped their two friends that were conscious, but dizzy. Another lumberjack came to after the leader shook him. He seemed like he didn’t know what day it was. The last two were trickier. Three of the lumberjacks had to lift both of them up, one after the other, and bring them back to the truck’s rear. The fourth one was in charge of dropping the tailgate, which was about all he was capable of doing right then .

  Finally, six of the lumberjacks were piled into the truck with one broken headlamp. The leader came back and stopped to speak, but the woman cut him off before he started.

  “No. Nope. Nothing to say. Just keep on going.”

  The leader nodded. He never looked at Widow.

  Widow stayed there the whole time. He stayed quiet and watched the entire spectacle.

  The lumberjack leader piled into his truck and cranked the engine, and the two trucks and seven lumberjacks drove away.

  The pregnant woman stepped back forward onto the street and stood by him. This time she was in reach.

  “You going to keep that wrench?”

  Widow looked down at his hands. He was still holding the wrench. He looked up, scanned the street and saw a pair of large garbage cans. He walked over and tossed it in. Then he walked over to the axes, picked them up and threw them into the garbage with the wrench.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Don’t want to leave those lying in the street. Could really mess up the undercarriage of someone’s car. Or worse, kids could find them and chop off a thumb.”

  She asked, “You think kids can do that?”

  Widow paused a beat and raised his right hand to show it to her. He faced the back of his hand to her and bent his thumb down to look like it was missing .

  “Happened to me once.”

  She stared at the fake stump and then at him.

  “How old are you?”

  He revealed the thumb and smiled.

  “Missing thumbs are always funny.”

  “Right.”

  He shrugged.

  She reached down with her free hand, and in fast movements, she racked the slide on the Glock, ejected the round in the chamber. It went flying up into the air. She caught it and kept it in hand and then ejected the magazine. She faced the Glock away from both of them, pointed it at the blacktop and squeezed the trigger. Now the weapon was reset, unable to fire, and safe. Then she handed the magazine over to Widow.

  He stared at it, a little confused.

  “Can you take that?”

  He took it.

  She handed him the bullet.

  “Would you put that mag back in for me? It’s a little tough for me because the mag is almost full.”

  Widow nodded and thumbed the round in one-handed.

  She nodded and said, “You’re military.”

  He handed the magazine to her.

  “Not in a long time.”

  She took the magazine, reinserted it into the Glock and pulled her jacket back. She took a concealed holster out of an inside pocket, slipped the Glock into it, and put them both back into the inside pocket of her jacket.

  Widow asked, “You got a conceal permit?”

  “You a cop now?”

  “I was.”

  “So what? You gonna call your buddies to come and bust me?”

  “Nope. Just curious.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you seem to know how to handle that thing. Figured you got a conceal and carry permit.”

  “I do.”

  “Does New Hampshire allow conceal and carry?”

  She shrugged.

  “I’ve got no idea.”

  “You’re not from here?”

  “Nope. You neither, I guess.”

  “What gave me away?”

  “The seven lumberjacks trying to kill you.”

  Widow twisted and looked off in the distance where they had driven away.

  “I don’t think they wanted to kill me. Just get me to run the hell out of Dodge.”

  “So hospitable.”

  “Happens more often than you think.”

  “You piss everyone off that you meet?”

  Widow looked back down at her and smiled.

  “Why do you think I’m all alone?”

  She said nothing to that.

  “Where you staying?” she asked .

  “Nowhere right now. I was just about to walk into this bed and breakfast to see if I could rent a room.”

  He looked in the direction of the bed and breakfast’s front door. She followed his gaze and looked at it.

  They could both see that the window next to the door had white curtains and they were whipping around like someone was there, trying to hide behind them.

  “I don’t think you’re going to get a room here.”

  An old man stuck his head out from behind the curtain.

  “Yeah. You’re right. What about you? Where’re you staying?”

  “I’m in the same boat as you. Come on. I saw a motel on the other side of town. We’d better try there.”

  Widow nodded, and they started walking. She led the way.

  “Let me carry your bag for you.”

  She said, “You don’t have to.”

  “It’s no problem.”

  She passed it to him, and Widow slung it over his shoulder, carried like he was hauling Santa’s sack of toys.

  They walked side by side back through part of town. They wound around trees, past closed daytime shops, past Mable’s Diner, past residential sales offices, past a bank, and past a church with a tall, spiral steeple like something out of the Civil War era. They walked past the street that led to the road where Widow had seen the lone grave.

  Widow introduced himself in name only and asked her name.

  “I’m Star. Star Harvard.”

  “You knew I was military. Are you military?”

  “What makes you ask me that? You think I’m butch?”

  Widow shook his head.

  “No. I think you’re the most feminine woman in this whole town.”

  “So what makes you ask me that?”

  “The Glock.”

  “Well, Jack Widow, I don’t know if you knew this but every American has the right to bear arms. It’s this little thing called the Second Amendment. It’s not just military personnel.”

  “No arguing from me. But it’s not just the Glock. It’s how you handle it.”

  “What’s strange about the way I handle it?”

  “You seem to know what you’re doing with it. You checked it properly.”

  “I shoot a lot.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  “I was taught gun responsibility.”

  “I’m not talking about how safe you are with it. I’m talking about how you pointed it at the lumberjacks.”

  She stopped and looked both ways and pointed at the street across a four-way stop.

  “That way, I think.”

  He followed her across the street .

  She asked, “What about the way I pointed it at them. There’s only one way to point a gun at someone; muzzle end goes toward the bad guys.”

  “It wasn’t the physical way you held it. It was the fact that you were going to shoot it. If they had provoked you.”

  “Well, of course, I was going to shoot it. A gun pointed at a target is useless if you don’t intend to use it.”

  “Yeah, but for most people, there’s a question in their eyes. For you, I had no question. If you’d pointed at me, I would’ve been scared of getting shot.”

  “And normally when someone points a gun at you, you’re not scar
ed of getting shot?”

  “Truthfully, no, I’m hardly ever afraid of getting shot when someone points a gun at me.”

  She stopped near a wall of an all-night aundromat. Someone came out a glass door to the front, and a bell dinged from above the door.

  “Do you have guns pointed at you a lot?”

  He smiled.

  “You could say that.”

  She continued and he followed. She pointed down the street.

  “That’s a motel I saw earlier when I was price shopping. It looks like it was here before the town. But it’s cheap.”

  “I’m not the queen of England. Cheap will do for me.”

  After a moment passed, she said, “I was military police. ”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Army?”

  “Air Force.”

  “Security Services.”

  “Yeah. What branch were you in?”

  “Navy.”

  “Nice. What were you?”

  “Most of my time I was a SEAL.”

  “Funny.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I was just thinking about how it must feel for a big, bad Navy SEAL like you to have your life saved by a chick.”

  She smiled.

  “I’ve had it saved by many chicks.”

  “There are women in the SEALs, are there?”

  “Not so far. But plenty in uniform.”

  They entered the motel and saw a young man standing behind the counter with another one seated on an armchair not far from the counter. The one in the chair appeared to be his friend, hanging out with his buddy while he worked. Nothing else to do around here at night for teenagers. Widow knew the predicament well. Decades ago, but still fresh in his memory.

  “Got empty rooms?” Harvard asked.

  “We do. But…” the kid trailed off and took a long look at Widow. He stared for a good, long minute.

  Harvard snapped her fingers at him like she was breaking him out of a hypnotic trance.

  “But what? ”

  “Oh. But we don’t have any king-sized beds left. Not for the night.”

  “You got queens?”

  “No. None left.”