Into the Fire

by Mark Tufo

  “I give up, man.” BT looked up at me. “Tracy, what the hell is he doing?”

  “Mike, I’m with BT on this one. What are you doing?”

  “What are the odds that truck driver isn’t going to see mini-mountain over there? I mean, Tracy, if it were just you and me we could probably get small enough to hide and go unnoticed, but Mount Vesuvius over there is going to give us away. What’s going to look more suspicious, us lying there on the ground, or standing? And the last time I checked, Mutes didn’t use wheeled transportation.”

  “Well, I guess what they say is right, light does shine on a dog’s ass from time to time. The man is correct.” BT stood up and dusted himself off.

  “Although, now that you’re standing, they’ll probably drive on by without offering to help.”

  “Shut up, Mike,” he told me.

  “What has my beloved Corps come to?” Tracy stood as well.

  It wasn’t long before we saw a big rig off in the distance.

  “Safe to say it isn’t military.” Tracy was shielding her eyes to look down the roadway. The truck was bright red and hauling something, it was just impossible to tell what the hell it was from this distance.

  “I really hate being out in the open like this,” I said.

  “Pssh. You’re the one that argued to stand up,” BT reminded me.

  “I didn’t want to lay down in the open either.”

  “What is he pulling?” Tracy was peering intently, whereas my attention deficit disorder had already kicked in and I was on to the next thing.

  “It’s big whatever it is.” I had turned to look now.

  “It’s a damn carnival ride I think.” Tracy was now walking towards the truck.

  “The truck will get to us before you get to it,” I told her. “And we shouldn’t separate, don’t you know that carnies are generally criminals who couldn’t get jobs anywhere else?”

  “Do you ever listen to the words that come out of your mouth?” BT asked before he began to follow Tracy.

  “I already said them. Why do I need to hear them back or even think about them?” I asked as I followed.

  We could hear the air brakes puffing and whooshing as the driver began to slow the behemoth down. When he came to a complete stop, he was about fifty yards from us. We stopped as well.

  “I don’t like this,” I said, grabbing hold of the handgrip on my rifle.

  “Relax, Mike, he probably feels the same way. Think about it from his side, he sees three armed people on the side of the road all paying attention to him.”

  “I’m more concerned about my side,” I told her in no uncertain terms.

  “Wow, I really didn’t expect to see you guys out here!” the man said. Pretty affably I have to admit, like he knew us and had been looking for us. He’d jumped out of the truck and was approaching fast. Had to be in his mid-forties or so. He was wearing a wide sombrero that hid most of his face, except for the salt and pepper beard that hung down nearly to chest level. A thick woolen poncho swirled around him.

  “He could be hiding a damned bazooka under that thing,” I said “Who wears a fucking poncho in the desert?”

  “Screw the poncho. You see what he’s wearing on his feet?” BT whispered.

  His shoe wear was easy enough to see because the man was wearing denim cut-off shorts that rode entirely too high up his legs, exposing his alabaster legs. “Clogs? Is he wearing clogs?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Whip!” he said, extending his hand to Tracy.

  “Excuse me?” she asked, not yet returning the gesture.

  “Back there, on the back of my truck. The ride is called the Whip.”

  “Oh, okay.” I could see Tracy reflexively backing up. It’s a known fact that Native Americans feared insane people; it was safe to say that so did most people regardless of race. You cannot predict what someone who does not have all his or her faculties under control is ever going to do. By its nature, that is the definition of insanity. A sane, rational person could never know what an insane, irrational person was ever going to do. You can’t predict and you can’t figure it out, and if you could, you’d either be insane yourself or the other person actually sane. That’s why when you say something like, “Why would someone do that?” you could never really know because their answer would be so foreign from your realm of knowledge.

  I was moving closer to put myself between the strange man and my wife. His eyebrows furrowed. “When are we, man?”

  “What?” I cut off his approach, his outstretched hand smacked into my rifle.

  He seemed to completely forget his question; though I’d think on it more later on, he bore a strong resemblance to the man I’d seen under the overpass, albeit a younger version.

  Whatever film had obscured his visage seemed to be lifted free, and for a moment, I would use the word lucid to describe him at this point.

  “My name’s John. You guys need a ride?”

  “We could use one, sure.” BT had come up and was closer to the man than he needed to be…almost, I think, as a form of intimidation. If John felt that way, he didn’t show it.

  “Well then, let’s go. I’m not supposed to be here,” he said, turning back around.

  BT looked a little perturbed that his immense size for once did not so much as elicit a “well, how do you do?”

  “I don’t like him,” BT said.

  “I’m not asking you to date him. Come on, it’s a ride,” Tracy said as she headed towards the truck.

  “You letting her do this?”

  “I don’t ‘let’ her do anything. Do you not know how the opposite sex works? How’d it go the last time you told a woman she couldn’t do something?”

  BT followed me. We got in and started back down the road.

  “Where are you supposed to be, John?” Tracy asked.

  “Spokane. It’s the annual Yeti Spotting Fair. Although, I’ve never seen one that close to town.” He said it like he had indeed spotted the elusive monster.

  “John, you do realize you’re headed the wrong way if you’re going to Spokane, right?” Tracy asked.

  “Oh I know that. I shouldn’t be here at all. I do not believe I am long for this world.”

  BT leaned back and was looking at me as he swirled his finger next to his temple in the “crazy” gesture. He sure did seem to have a few loosened bolts, but somehow it sounded more prophetic than insane, although I guess that’s how people get sucked into cults. The leader has this incredible quality of making his deranged rants sound like the Second Coming.

  As far as I was concerned, he could dance around fires naked while smearing blueberry frosting around himself as long as he was taking my wife and I to see our son. Not sure why I brought that visual so far down the road but now that it’s out there, I’m going to have a hard time reeling it back in.

  We drove for a few hours before John pulled off the highway and into Amarillo.

  “When the hell did we get to Texas?” I apparently had dozed off.

  “This is as far as I can go, I’ve got to get back.”

  Something was off about him. I wanted to ask, “back to where” but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to process his answer or, more likely, believe him.

  “Thank you, John,” Tracy told him. “Are you going back the way we came?”

  John nodded.

  “It’s not safe that way,” she told him.

  “Did I ever tell you that I saved Jerry Garcia once?”

  “Fucking looney tunes.” BT walked away.

  John stage-whispered to Tracy and me. “He always acts surly, big teddy bear, that one.”

  Tracy had to hide her mouth with her hand to keep from laughing, especially when BT roared back, “I am not a fucking teddy bear!”

  “More like a grizzly,” I said, backing up because I meant my words. I was afraid John was about to become road-kill. A former gang-banger bigger than any pro football linebacker I’d ever seen, and he was pissed off. Yeah, that was frigh
tening.

  “I don’t think I’ll see you again in this time.” John had turned and walked away. He was smiling even as BT had come up on him.

  “What is he talking about?” Tracy asked me.

  I shrugged and waved to John. He was lighting something, at first I thought it was a cigarette, but it looked too skinny.

  “You didn’t think to share?” I yelled at him, cupping my mouth with my hands so I could propel my voice like a bullhorn.

  “I didn’t think this Mike smoked, you look so young!” And with that, he blew his horn and, in a great swirl of smokestack residue, pulled out. He stopped not fifty feet after he got rolling. “I think you need this. I don’t know, it gets so confusing. Gotta do drugs to keep it all straight.” He laid a large black bag on the ground, climbed back in, gave a long loud toot of his horn, then left.

  “What the fuck just happened?” I asked, turning around to look at BT and Tracy.

  Nobody had an answer that would hold any weight so we started walking over to the bag.

  “Any chance it could be a bomb?” I asked, as we all stood staring down at the canvas pack.

  “Only one way to find out.” Tracy reached down and unzipped it. I half expected to see some wires and sticks of dynamite, instead I saw gauze and topical cream.

  “Advanced first aid kit,” Tracy said, rooting around inside.

  “I hope we don’t need that stuff.” BT was sweating as he looked at the needles inside.

  “Weird,” I said. Everyone nodded in agreement.

  BT grabbed the bag from Tracy, and we started to walk into town. Amarillo had once been a huge hub of activity in Texas. It was still populated, but not by many; most people throughout the world had learned to flee big cities as they suffered the wrath of the Progerians first. Sure, the Progs would get everywhere eventually, but you could at least eke out an existence if you ran for the proverbial hills. Those who didn’t clear out where usually the young, the old, the infirm, or the dregs who finally got to claim what they felt was their due all along. So if you were a betting person, which type do you think we ran into?

  “Whooo-eee, ain’t you a looker!” We were on a main thoroughfare in the business district. Most of the buildings that lined the road were of the three-story or less variety. We were being hailed from the third story of what once housed MacRiley’s Auto Parts.

  “Why, thank you. I’ve been working out, trying to keep an eye on my figure, eating right, exercising, that kind of thing. I do a little jazzercise on the side.”

  “That’s right, Mike, egg him on,” BT growled.

  “Not you, dumb ass!” the man yelled.

  I flipped my lever selector from safe to fire.

  “What are you doing?” Tracy asked.

  “Come on, don’t we all know how this is going to end?”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Really? Someone in post-apocalyptic America catcalls a woman in a group of three heavily armed people, and that doesn’t sound like something that’s already scripted out?”

  “We can’t just go shooting people because he likes the way I look.”

  “Oh, so because it was a compliment it’s alright?”

  Her eyebrows furrowed. “Of course not, but it doesn’t mean we can shoot him either.”

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  “You lovebirds done? I think there’s more of them.”

  “No shit, why else would he be starting crap with us.” I’d been to this rodeo before, and I didn’t like it the first time. I’d be damned if I was going to sit through another showing. I brought my rifle up and, as soon as I realized I was past BT, I began firing. A line of bullets struck the front of the auto shop store and climbed up to where our original contact had made himself known. Not more than three rounds had left my barrel when return fire was already coming down range at us.

  “The auto store!” I yelled, running.

  It was closest, and as near as I could tell, the only person in it was on the third floor. Bullets whined all around us, some striking the pavement not more than inches from my feet. Once I was by the storefront, I turned to allow Tracy and BT in and gave them some covering fire. I dove in right after them—straight through where a large glass pane window had once sat. Bullets pinged off the nearly empty shelving as we crawled deeper into the store.

  “What the fuck, Mike? I don’t know how much longer I can be around you if you keep doing this shit.” BT was peeking around the end of the aisle to see if anyone was approaching.

  “You can thank me later,” I told him, doing a once over to check where my fresh magazines were.

  “Thank you?”

  “I just saved your life. Most times, the socially acceptable thing to do is to say thank you.”

  Bullets were tearing up bits of floor tiles and sending sharp shards like mini-missiles throughout the store, along with the raining down of the much softer ceiling tiles that were catching their fair share of abuse.

  “Does this look like you saved me?!” BT was yelling.

  “Sure seems like it,” I said, as I pressed my ear closed on the side he was on. “Dead men don’t yell.”

  “Cypress, you alright?” someone shouted from outside.

  He must have stood up and waved or something, because the question wasn’t asked again.

  “They’re in the store below you,” that same voice said.

  “Shit, anyone see a staircase leading up?” I was looking towards the back, where I would imagine the auto parts storeroom and the upstairs access most likely was located. “I wish I knew how many of them there were.”

  “Knowing your penchant for getting into trouble, I’d say thirty.” BT was pissed.

  “No more than four, including Cypress upstairs.” Tracy had her rifle against the shelving for aiming support. She had it trained on the bad guys’ easiest egress.

  “You know that how?” I asked her.

  “The amount of bullets that were being shot at us.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I’m not you, Mike. I find this particular time to be wholly unsuited for joking.”

  “At least there’s one Talbot here that gets it,” BT said.

  “We need to neutralize the threat upstairs.” She had not turned to look. “I’ll keep these other idiots from coming in.”

  My part just became crystal clear. “What do you want the not-so-jolly-giant to do?”

  “I’m fine here, they won’t come in just yet,” she replied.

  “You ready?” I asked him.

  He nodded curtly. Rifles were being shot randomly without a target to aim in on. They seemed to be in a rush to waste their ammunition. BT and I hunched over and ran from the cover of one aisle end cap to the next. I was slightly emboldened when no one shot at me. We had two more aisles to traverse before getting to the small warehouse door. I took a calming breath and ran to the next one, BT immediately following. The men outside now had no angle to shoot at us, so unless someone was in the store, we were fairly safe. Fairly and entirely have two completely different meanings when the end result can be a bullet in your brain.

  I quickly glanced down the aisle and, save an old muffler and enough dried blood to slick half the walkway, it was clear. I motioned for BT to follow as I made my way to the last aisle. I was now directly across from the door that said, “Employees Only”. This was where it was going to get dicey. There was a good chance Cypress had come down to greet his customers. The door was a standard oak door, pretty sure it was a solid core, wouldn’t stop a bullet though.

  “Need you to open the door,” I told BT as I got into position on the side. I was kneeling with BT leaning over me. He gripped the knob, turned it and sent the door slamming into the far wall. The resultant crash shook the frame of the building. I peeked in quickly. There was an empty narrow corridor, to the right was a door labeled “parts” and at the end was another that had to lead up.

  “Well, I guess he knows we’re coming now. Any chance you co
uld have tried to not embed the door into the drywall?”

  “Fuck you, Mike.”

  We were slowly approaching the door leading up.

  “What about the warehouse?” BT asked.

  I hesitated. I knew he was right. If we went upstairs and someone was in the warehouse, they could follow us up and we’d be caught both front and back…or worse, they could sneak up on Tracy’s exposed flank.

  “Shit. Alright, same routine, this time, though, pretend the door is your friend. And not like me-and-you friends, but like a friend you care about.”

  He grunted. Because of the position of the door in the hallway, BT could not hide all of himself as he reached for the handle.

  “Get on the other side, man,” I told him, so he wouldn’t be exposed.

  “That would make more sense.”

  I would have smacked myself in the forehead with the palm of my hand, if I hadn’t felt like retching.

  “Ready?”

  I nodded. He turned the knob, a godawful squeal emanating from the handle. He pushed the door open. A bullet passed over my left shoulder and into the wall behind me. I started firing before I’d even acquired a target. I’m glad I hadn’t seen the person I was shooting at, or I would have most likely hesitated. A skinny girl, maybe a couple of years younger than myself, had been pointing an AK at the door, that was, until my second of three bullets ripped through the side of her neck. She dropped the gun to the ground as she cupped the blood-pulsating wound in her hands.

  “Dammit,” I said as I stood, scanning the immediate area with my rifle. Unlike the inside of the store the warehouse was packed, but not with auto parts. It looked like they’d found the closest Piggly Wiggly grocery store and moved its entire contents onto the shelves here. I noticed a silvery foil packet on the ground by the girl’s feet. Blood was beginning to conceal it completely as her carotid artery bled out. She fell to her knees, crushing the box of off-brand cherry toaster pastries.