by Schow, Ryan
Orlando finally gets one of Draven’s arms, shrimps out from underneath him and works to get his back, and finally the mount. Draven won’t let him. But Orlando manages to get free and get to his feet. Draven is on his, too. Orlando’s hair is messed up, he’s dirty and his face is red. He’s pumped full of anger and ready to go.
He takes that big, deep breath—which is when I’d attack—but Draven lets it slide. That’s how I know he’s in teaching mode, not combat mode.
The second the boy is ready, Draven rushes him. Orlando kicks him right in the baby maker, just as we’ve been taught, then drops an elbow on his head. Not hard like he could, and not with the sharp end of the bone, but enough to let him know he was in control.
The fight stops and Draven stands up, rubbing what will surely be a goose egg knot. The pain behind his face is pushing the surface pretty hard, but in the end, all Draven does is smile.
“Why didn’t you knock me out?” he asks Orlando.
“You could have hit me harder when you were on top of me,” he answers, brushing off his jeans and straightening his hair.
“Did you think about that move when I rushed you?” Draven asks. “Or did you just do it?”
“I just did it.”
“That’s why we repeat the moves over and over again. Because you didn’t have much of a chance on the ground with me, but standing up, you had that one move that you executed with precision without having to think about it. Your body already knew the moves. In a real fight, that is what will save your life.”
“So when do I learn the ground game?” he asks.
“Your ground game will be when a guy is laying on you, you stab him to death and get the hell back on your feet as quickly as possible. Which is why I always have my knife on me and you’ll always have a knife on you.”
Chicago pops into my mind. I can see Orlando making the connection, too. When Orlando and Draven were attacked and Draven was dog piled, it didn’t matter to him because with that many people on him, the fight was tight and close. The instant he got a weapon (in the case of Chicago, I think it was his knife), he started killing his way out. That’s not the smartest fight in the world, and no one in their right mind would ask for it, but it worked then and it would work again.
“I suppose it’s time to level up,” Draven finally says as Eliana and the girls go back to work. “Who wants to know how to stab someone to death with Phillip’s and Nasr’s spears?”
Every single hand shoots up, mine included.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The days are blending, each running into the next with a monotony that makes me want to scream sometimes, and sometimes I want to punch people just for the sake of venting. Maybe that’s why Draven and I are now leading the neighborhood raids. He’s every bit as agitated as me.
It makes us dangerous.
Lethal.
Some of these neighborhoods we case, they’re quiet as a tomb. Others are simmering with activity. We won’t take any unnecessary risks, but risk is unavoidable. Especially in those neighborhoods that appear to be abandoned. Lurking beneath the surface of some of these unimposing neighborhoods, there is a current, a violent underbelly.
We got caught in that current a few times.
The first time we were called out by a handful of neighbors for ransacking the block, we were out in the street, getting ready to leave. The neighborhood came out to meet us. Six of them surrounded us.
“Look guys,” I said, “we don’t want any trouble.”
“Whatever you took, you ain’t leaving with it,” one of them said, his arms crossed over his chest like we should do exactly what he said.
I can’t really blame them for their stance. Those in defense of their homes and their neighbor’s homes had every right to stop us.
Unfortunately they pushed the issue and they died. Draven and I put them down. Ice, Phillip and Orlando were with us. Fortunately the boys didn’t have to get their hands dirty. But now they knew the score. They saw what happened if you get caught.
Since then we’ve talked about better ways to case and canvas a neighborhood. We thought we had it down, that we’d learned from our mistakes, but we ran into trouble once more. This time it was worse than before. We were shot at and forced to take cover. Then we realized we were trapped.
Draven came up with a quick plan. He went in one side, Ice and I went in the other and Orlando and Phillip hung back as lookouts. When we finished with the shooters, we came back to the boys bloody.
None of the blood was ours.
All the confiscated food and supplies, however, was.
In most cases, when we encounter people, they’re more scared of us than we are of them. But then there are those other people. I won’t bore you with the details of our numerous excursions, but I will tell you this: people died. Not our people. Just people who thought we were weak, unorganized, too cultured for wet work. We knew the score, which is why some people were beaten to death outside their home. They weren’t nice people. They weren’t even remotely polite. Such is life on the road.
The point is, sometimes you’re the hammer and sometimes you’re the nail.
We prefer to be the hammer.
If there’s a silver lining to any of this, it’s that we’re eating again, our supplies are good and now we’re collecting obscure things that might be of use later. Chase even found a four pack of fire extinguishers the other day.
In the bus, after lunch, we get to talking about them.
“If we’re being chased,” Chase says, “we can throw one of the fire extinguishers out the back in the bus and then shoot it, like in the movies.”
Ice says, “First off, a round from the guns we have won’t go through a fully charged fire extinguisher. And second, even if it does go off, it’ll just hose out a cloud of fire retardant all over everything.”
“Causing people to crash,” Chase says with a knowing look.
“Why would I waste a bullet and a fire extinguisher to make a guy crash and hopefully die when I could just shoot him and save myself the silliness?” Ice asks.
“It’s not that cool just shooting a guy,” Phillip says.
“It’s not cool shooting anyone,” Adeline adds. She takes his head and gives it a shake, then she makes a big deal of looking in his ear and says, “What kind of poison did the movies leave in there?”
Phillip starts to laugh and then he says, “Won’t it at least explode?”
“Fire retardant won’t ignite, even with a spark, so no.”
“What about a gas can?” Chase asks.
“This is ridiculous,” Eliana grumbles at the boy. The two of them look at each other. I have to say, Eliana has gotten even more scary than before. Then: “If you want to waste gas, why don’t you go in back and fart.”
He wants to laugh, but he’s not willing to push his luck with Eliana.
“That crap you see in the movies would never work in real life,” I tell him, “but that’s not to say we won’t find another use for your fire extinguishers.”
We’re about three hundred miles from Cheyenne when we pick up a tail. It’s a guy on an old motorcycle. He’s got a half-skull facemask on, a clamshell helmet and leathers.
Ice is in front of us with the ‘Cuda, Adeline is driving the bus and Xavier is behind us in the Byzantine. The two-way crackles to life.
Xavier says, “You guys see this clown?”
“Yeah,” Ice says.
Draven is in the back of the bus asleep. Being a light sleeper and hearing them talking, he wakes up, looks over his shoulder and stands up. He makes the sign through the back window at Xavier to let him know we see him. Up ahead, there’s an abandoned filling station.
“Tell Ice to pull into the gas station,” Draven says.
Eliana keys the walkie-talkie and says, “Ice, pull into the gas station.”
The three of us drive in to the station and the biker passes us up. We take a pee break, Phillip takes a dump and then the guys check the tires.
The tread isn’t great, and we’ve hit more than our fair share of debris, but so far, we’re doing okay.
“If I don’t get out of this car, I swear I’m going to kill someone,” Ice says, confiding in me.
“That’s why we put you in there by yourself,” I tell him. “I’ll spell you off, though. I could use the quiet.”
“That rattletrap is anything but quiet,” he says.
“You know what I mean.”
Draven has taken the lead with the Byzantine, the bus is second with Eliana in the driver’s seat, and me and Xavier are in the ‘Cuda. X is asleep in the passenger seat. As for me? I’m chewing through my teeth with agitation. If I could not be in a car for another ten years, it’ll be too soon.
That’s when the biker shows up again.
“What the hell?” I mutter under my breath so as not to wake Xavier.
We’re about twenty miles outside Cheyenne and this idiot shouldn’t be behind us, but he is. When he gets up on the ‘Cuda’s ass and stays there, I start to get pissed. I mean, I’m already on edge, but having this guy taunting us the way he is has me spiraling.
I roll down the window, wave a hand signaling for him to go around us. He doesn’t. He just stays on my ass. That’s when I stand on the brakes.
I don’t think about it.
I just do it.
The bike smashes into the back of the purple beast, jolting Xavier out of his slumber. In the mirror, I see the back end of the bike lift, which puts the front wheel into a hard wobble. The biker loses control and dumps his bike hard. I power slide the Barracuda to a stop on the side of the road.
Getting out, I grab my lawnmower blade, the one the boys made me, and I walk back to where Mr. Motorcycle is laid out on the ground.
He’s pulled his facemask down and flipped his helmet off. He looks up at me and his face is tuberculosis. We’re talking about raised red bumps everywhere. Some of them scabbed over yellow while others are open and weeping.
“Good Christ, man,” I say. “What the balls?”
“I need one of the kids,” he says, his lips splitting open as he talks. “They look healthy. I just need some good blood. A pint, maybe two. Just to get some good antibodies in me.”
The guy is looney. He’s lost his freaking mind.
“They won’t help,” I tell him.
“Wrong!” he screams, swiping at me.
I stand back, look at the backs of his hands and know he’s terminal. “You’re going to die, brother.”
“I just need the blood,” he says, looking up at me with watery, red eyes. He reaches for me, desperate, but I step back. “Maybe some food and ibuprofen,” he says. “Oh my God, brother…my head is killing me.”
I think about Ice, how he went to town on those guys with the chainsaw. I couldn’t have done that. I can’t. But now, with this guy, I can’t help thinking back to something Ice said.
“The thing about the cartel is they’re worse than you can imagine,” he’d said. “They’re violent, beyond sadistic. They have no regard for anyone. I saw firsthand how they thought, but I was never like them. I care about people, and life, but even I came to see the human body differently. When you can cut off a hand, an arm, a leg or a head as easily as you’d pull the legs off a spider, or the wings off a butterfly, then you truly understand what it means to be soulless.”
This isn’t like that, I tell myself as I stare at this diseased miscreant.
My humanitarian instincts tell me I have to help this man. Visualizing what I’m about to do, I don’t feel very benevolent. The guy starts to cry.
“Please, mister,” he pleads, his body slumping. “I just need some help.”
“I can leave you here, let you bleed out,” I tell him. “Or I can put you out of your misery. It’s up to you.”
The guy is now blubbering, shaking, wiping his eyes with spotted hands, leaving smears of dirt and blood behind to be turned to small mud puddles.
Then he says, “Please, make it quick.”
Don’t think about it…
I raise the blade, then drive it down on the man’s head, splitting it in two. His head lolls back a bit, his eyes rolling sideways. Then, on either side of the blade, he blinks.
Startled, I stumble back a step, realize he’s not quite dead. I step forward, jostle the big blade out, swing it down again, harder this time.
This does the trick.
Yanking the blade out of his head, I fall to a knee, lean over and puke. I don’t know where the tears came from, but dammit they’re here and I want to scream and hit something and run. If I had a gun, I might have eaten a bullet in that moment, that’s how awful this is. But then I’m telling myself to pull myself together, to be strong, to know this man is no longer suffering because I helped put that to a stop.
Then a hand comes on my shoulder, causing me to jump. I look up with wet eyes and see my friend, Xavier.
“You okay, Fire?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“Why did you kill him?”
“He asked me to. He’s…sick. He was. The guy…he wanted blood from the kids. Thought it would help.”
“He probably lost his wits,” Xavier says.
I nod my head, wiping my eyes.
“It was a mercy killing,” I mumble, my tears slowing. “But this isn’t merciful. It’s just more crap I’ve got to carry around up here.”
I’m tapping my head, then I’m hitting it, then I’m crumbling back down again, my skull full of wasps, my hands shaking with something between anxiety and rage.
This is what it’s like to lose your mind, I tell myself. Then: Don’t be so dramatic. Get up you sorry sack of monkey nuts!
Leaning back, the blade falling from my hand, clanking on the ground, I turn my face up to the sky and let out the mother of all screams.
By now, other people are coming to see this, but Xavier is turning them away. For some reason, in this moment, I know what Veronica was going through when she broke. Somehow, this makes me feel better, like I’m letting the demons out.
“We have to go, Fire,” Xavier says. “Don’t torture yourself anymore.”
He helps me up, walks me to the ‘Cuda, then gets me into the passenger seat. He then climbs in the car, signals the lead with a flick of the headlamps, then falls in line behind the bus as Draven and Eliana take to the road once more. Turning around, I watch the dead biker get smaller and smaller.
“I’m sorry, X,” I say.
“Is this what it was like being undercover? I mean, in the end. Is that how you felt? Like you were losing your mind?”
His voice is placid yet concerned, his tone overflowing with compassion. It’s a side of him I didn’t know existed. I nod my head, look out the window.
“I didn’t know,” he says.
I try to say something, but no words come out.
“I’m sorry, Fire,” he adds. “I really am.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
DAY 31…
In Cheyenne, we’re stopped by a military vehicle telling us there’s safety ahead, medicine and doctors at Curt Gowdy State Park. He’s pretty straightforward, his hand on his weapon at all times. Behind him, two more guys are carrying MP5s. He gives us directions and we thank him and pull ahead. Xavier gets on the two-way and asks for input.
I think we should push through to Salt Lake City, but after everything we’ve been through, it gets vetoed quick. Adeline makes the point that if there’s medicine to be had at Curt Gowdy, Veronica could use some.
After that, it’s not even a discussion.
Looking at Veronica, she’s still a little under the weather. Thankfully she’s showing no signs of the illness Constanza was inflicted with. Which is good, because if I see another black boil on someone’s body, I don’t think I’ll be able to hang on to my sanity.
We make the trek to the former State Park. When we get there, we’re greeted by a pair of men in fatigues. They’re armed and holding up their hands to stop. We do. They give us camp inst
ructions in very serious tones. It’s reassuring.
“If there’s trouble,” they tell us, “we shoot first then investigate later, got it?”
“Yeah, we’re good,” Ice says.
“Pull in and head right. You’ll have to leave the vehicles in the main lot, but you’ll be able to see them from your site.”
We drive in to a dirt parking lot. Xavier calls out over the two-way, suggests a parking strategy we all agree upon. The bus parks and Xavier pulls the ‘Cuda behind it, snugging the brush guard against the emergency door. Everyone gets out of the bus, and then Draven cinches the Byzantine in against the side of the bus where the door opens.
The bars covering our windows will keep people from breaking in through the glass, but if anyone tries, we’ll hear them.
I have to say, if there’s anything unexpected about this place, it’s me being surprised by how clean it is. And there’s no shortage of people. We walk to our campsite, which overlooks the ten foot wide river with what we’re told are the Happy Jack mountains surrounding us on three sides. The trees feel extra green to me, the rust colored mountains bright and gorgeous. I breathe the fresh air and feel that restlessness in my soul pull back.
“It’s beautiful,” Bianca says. She’s holding Brooklyn’s hand. “Are we going to stay awhile?”
“Yes,” Brooklyn says.
“I’ll help you guys set up your tents,” Draven says. To Chase he says, “Come with me. This will be a perfect place for the fire extinguishers.”
He looks at Draven funny.
“We can’t shoot intruders. But if we blast them with fire extinguishers, no one will get shot, we won’t get kicked out and people won’t fu—, I mean, people won’t mess with us.”
Now he gets it.
Smiling, he says, “I can carry other stuff, too.”
We all work the next hour to get our site set up. We circle a camp fire, keeping our tents in close proximity.
After we’re settled in, we head to the site with the medicine tent. A doctor looks at Veronica and gives her some Amoxicillin and some warm electrolytes that she drinks like a shot.