No Stopping

by Nolon King

  The best part had been the look in Eddie’s eyes when he realized what was about to happen — his total and utter realization that he had no control, that the evil fucker who’d lorded his power over unconscious women had become the helpless victim. It gave Mal a rush that might have been better than her pills.

  Come on, Dre, where the fuck are you?

  It was getting cold, and now she was shivering.

  Forty minutes passed. Mal bounced up and down to stay warm as she wondered if she should come back another night.

  Then she heard a car pulling up in the front yard.

  She readied herself, stretching her limbs to pump warmth into her extremities.

  The light came on, bleeding through the verticals.

  She heard several male voices, talking, then laughing.

  Fuck, he’s got company!

  Someone yelled, “What the fuck?”

  Mal flashed over the scene in her mind, wondering if she’d left something out. Then she remembered — she’d left the door to the gaming room open.

  Lights flickered on above her.

  Fuck!

  She bolted toward the woods.

  Seconds later, still ten yards from the tree line, Mal heard the sliding glass door slamming hard in its tracks, the wrestling of verticals, and a man shouting, “Hey!”

  Mal ran as fast as she could without looking back.

  A gunshot thundered behind her.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck!

  She didn’t dare turn back as she raced into the woods and tore through the darkness, ignoring the brush threatening to trip her and the uneven ground trying to topple her.

  Footsteps and bellows thundered behind her.

  At least three men, judging from the voices.

  She raced deeper into the thicket, deeper into the darkness, her heart pounding and adrenaline pumping.

  Another gunshot.

  This one she heard whiz by.

  Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  She barely dodged a tree and stumbled forward, nearly losing her step.

  Mal was no longer certain of her direction, only that she was running away from them.

  “Get him!” shouted one of the men.

  Well, at least they think I’m a guy. Makes it less likely this is traced back to me when they report it to the police. Assuming they don’t catch, rape, and kill me.

  Mal kept running, feet pumping, hands tearing at branches as they clawed at her face.

  A branch would surely poke her eyes out, or she would run straight into—

  Another gunshot.

  Then a yell from behind her and to the right. Another behind and to the left.

  They were splitting up. A terrifying thought, thinking how well they might know these woods.

  Mal kept running straight, wondering how deep the forest went. It didn’t seem that big when she’d driven through the neighborhood, but outside appearances were often deceiving. And the woods always seemed more sprawling in the dark.

  She kept running until she no longer heard the yelling behind her.

  Mal dared to glance back, but it was too dark to see anything.

  When she turned forward, she glimpsed light ahead of her — someone’s phone being used as a flashlight, not even twenty feet away.

  She froze, hugged the nearest tree. Put it between herself and the light.

  Footsteps drew nearer, crunching on dried leaves.

  Her heart pounded. Surely they could hear it.

  The glowing light crept to her right.

  Any second, he’d be right beside her.

  If he turned, he would see her for sure.

  “You find him, Al?”

  “No,” shouted the guy right beside her.

  The light brightened. Mal had to move, carefully.

  She pressed her weight against the tree then stepped gingerly forward, trying to keep the trunk between her and Al until he passed.

  The light was only inches away.

  Mal heard him panting, heard his footsteps.

  Heard him say, “Fucking bullshit.”

  The light was so close, he seemed to be walking toward her tree instead of past it.

  She moved another inch, watching the light swell on either side of the tree, its shadow grew larger as he approached, concealing her within it.

  Which way was he coming from?

  If Mal stepped the wrong way, she’d run right into him.

  She chose left just as he passed on the right, and would have exhaled with relief, but a branch snapped underfoot and the light swiveled toward her instead.

  Fuck!

  “I got him!” Al screamed.

  Mal launched herself at the enemy, throat punching him right in the Adam’s apple.

  He fell to the ground, gasping as he clawed at his throat.

  Mal ran again.

  Footsteps approached.

  Someone screamed, “Al?”

  But Al couldn’t answer yet.

  She kept running, but moving fast meant abandoning silence.

  Mal didn’t care. She saw light through thinning branches ahead and was terrified she might run into someone’s yard, so she veered left. The land swelled higher.

  Running grew harder as the grade grew steeper, but the men continued yelling. They weren’t about to surrender now, so she couldn’t, either.

  Her lungs were on fire, her legs were burning jelly. She wasn’t sure how much more she had in her. But still she kept going.

  Then Mal hit something hard with her face, with her entire body.

  She fell backward down the hill, into the darkness.

  Chapter 9 - Jasper Parish

  Jasper had been trying to reach Spider all morning. An uneasy dread had settled into his gut as he drove back to the Butler projects where she lived, whispering three simple words on repeat in his mind.

  You’re too late.

  And now, just miles away from her apartment, that message had crept through his entire body like tendrils of disease threatening to decimate his hope.

  He turned to Jordyn, who stared out the window. She hadn’t said much of anything since they left the motel in St. Pete.

  Since they’d left the bodies.

  “You get any visions on her yet?”

  Jordyn shook her head. “Sorry, Dad.”

  He nodded, driving faster as rain fell harder.

  As they arrived at the apartment complex, red and blue lights reflected and distorted through the rivulets racing down his windshield.

  Too late.

  Butler PD and Creek County Sheriff vehicles packed the parking lot.

  More than forty people were gathered outside the perimeter of the complex, watching, some of them staring down the cops and deputies with the same hate and distrust he’d felt on his own body before.

  People here had a love-hate relationship with the police. Older folks tended to want the cops more involved in the community. More feet on the ground, more community outreach. Keeping the streets safe and getting drugs out of their neighborhood. While the younger generation — those most likely to be pulled over or randomly harassed — had nothing but contempt for a powerful force that seemed hell-bent on crushing them. This segment of the community saw all law enforcement officials as the problem. Jasper had lived both sides of that line and was intimately familiar with how few easy answers there were, despite what glad-handing politicians might promise or preach with their silver tongues.

  He needed to find out what happened. Did they get to Spider?

  Jasper turned on his scanner but wasn’t getting any answers outside of multiple fatalities. No names yet.

  He drove slowly through the neighborhood, searching for anyone who might know something.

  Somebody always knew something.

  Jasper was about to circle back past Spider’s complex when he spotted a group of young men standing in front of Hightower Gardens — government housing comprised of single-story apartments packed so tightly together that one garishly faded color and crack
ed pavement yard blended right into the next.

  One of them — a tall, thin young man in his early twenties wearing a Heat jersey and a curly fade — nodded at Jasper.

  Maybe he was one of the men hanging around Spider’s place, or maybe the guy mistook Jasper for someone looking to buy drugs. Either way, he wasn’t hostile, and that made him the most approachable person in the area.

  Jasper pulled up to the men and lowered his window, keeping his hand on his gun, just in case they wanted to jack his ride.

  Heat Jersey came to the car while the other guys hung back. He looked even younger up close. Had sleepy eyes and reeked of weed. He looked Jasper up and down. “You the Professor, right?”

  Jasper nodded. “You know what happened to Spider?”

  “No, but I was told if you came ’round to bring you to her. Open your back door.”

  “Bring me to who?” Jasper asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  Jasper turned to Jordyn, her eyes apprehensive and scared.

  “What are you doing, Dad?”

  He opened the back door, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake.

  “Yo, gotta take the man to see someone,” Heat Jersey called out to his friends. “Hit me if anyone comes ’round.”

  The other five young men nodded as their buddy climbed into the back of Jasper’s car.

  He expected to feel the barrel of a gun press against the back of his head as the door closed, but Heat Jersey leaned forward between the seats and pointed north instead. The pungent skunk stung his nostrils.

  This dude bathe in the shit?

  “Go that way.”

  Jasper obeyed, his gun now transferred from his right to left hand. “What happened? What do you know?”

  “Patience, Professor. She’ll tell you soon enough.”

  Was he taking her to Spider? Had she gotten out of there in time?

  Hope swelled in his chest, but Jasper knew not to expect much.

  They drove out of Butler and into unincorporated Creek County, out in the sticks, where farmland and large swathes of nothing dotted either side of the old, cracked county road.

  Jordyn was still in her seat, staring straight ahead. Without her uttering a word, Jasper knew what she was thinking.

  This guy’s taking us out to the middle of nowhere to kill us.

  He met the man’s gaze in the mirror. There was a look people had when they intended to kill you. Sometimes it was fear. Other times it was a cold, steely gaze. But this man’s expression was neither. He had the sleepy eyes of the perpetually stoned, a casual coolness Jasper couldn’t entirely read.

  “Yo,” Jasper said. “Where we headed? There ain’t much out here but rednecks and trees.”

  “We’re almost there.” The young man leaned back and lit a joint.

  Jasper would’ve normally told him to put it out, maybe even stopped the car to make his point, but he needed the information the kid was leading him to. Plus, if Heat Jersey intended to try to kill them at some point, his reflexes would be slowed enough that Jasper could drop him first.

  The young man leaned forward, eyes squinting. “Up here, there’s a dirt road. Turn right.”

  Jasper slowed down, turned the wheel with his right hand, kept his left hand on the gun.

  The car jostled and jerked on the narrow one-lane dirt road. Jasper had to ease up on the trigger so as not to accidentally pull it. He slowed down — it was hard to navigate with only one hand on the wheel.

  Pines and brush crowded the road as if the forest would swallow it. Jasper had never been down this way. Maybe nobody had in ages. They were like vestiges of some grand plans for the land, a city to be that had never been born, and now nature was reclaiming her roads by the inch.

  Heat Jersey instructed Jasper to turn left down another dirt road a few minutes later.

  He did, and they came up to an RV parked in the middle of a clearing.

  Spider?

  “Stop,” Heat Jersey instructed as Jasper neared the vehicle. Then he got on his phone and dialed a number. “Yo, Professor is here … A’ight.” “She’ll see you now.” He leaned back and took a long drag on his pre-roll.

  Jasper killed the engine. He got out with Jordyn, taking his keys with him.

  Heat Jersey didn’t seem to mind.

  Jordyn looked at Jasper as he knocked on the door, her worried optimism mirroring his own.

  “Come in,” said a woman whose voice didn’t sound like Spider’s.

  And it wasn’t Spider inside. It was Kim. Her bright pink-and-blue hair was covered with a black beanie. Her face was bruised, lip fat and bloodied. She sat at a table in the RV’s kitchenette, a pistol, a laptop, and a pair of matching phones on the table in front of her

  “Kim, what happened?”

  “Fuckers took Spider, and they killed Tyrell, Sammy, Big G, Jayce, and Calvin.”

  Tyrell was the only name he recognized.

  “Shit. I’m sorry. Who did this? Why did they take her?”

  She glared at him. “I’m guessing some people you pissed off. A big Russian fucker, told me to give it to ‘the Professor.’”

  The Professor?

  Only Spider, and her associates, knew him by that name. It was Spider’s nickname for him, comparing him to Professor X like in the X-Men comics, as though Jasper was collecting mutant kids, or in her case, a brilliant hacker, to wage a war against the bad guys.

  Kim handed Jasper one of the cell phones on the table, a cheap burner. “He told you to call the only number on there.”

  Jasper glanced from Kim to Jordyn then dialed.

  A man answered — American, not Russian. “Yes?”

  “What did you do with the girl?” Jasper asked.

  “Ah, this must be the mysterious black man giving me so many headaches. Mexico, Anders, the Madam, and now my money man. What did I do to earn such dogged interest in me?”

  Victor Forbes.

  “Hurt her, and I’ll destroy everything in your world.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt. But here’s the deal, Professor. You’re going to give me my money back — all of it.”

  “A trade, the money for the girl?”

  “Yes. But not until she’s finished decrypting the drive. Then you’ll get her back — if I have my money. But if you try anything, or if you contact the police, the feds, or the fucking U.S. Army — she’s dead. We clear?”

  Jasper was about to try and bargain, or perhaps threaten the man, but Victor hung up before he could. Jasper dialed again.

  “Do not call me,” Victor said before the first ring had finished. “I call you.”

  “Damn it,” Jasper hissed, checking to make sure the ringer was on before dropping the phone into his pocket.

  “So, what the hell did you get Spider all mixed up in?” Kim asked. “Who the fuck are these people?”

  Jasper sighed, closed his eyes, and contemplated the situation, searching for some answer. “The less you know the better.”

  Kim said, “Silence isn’t an option.”

  “Dad?”

  Jasper opened his eyes. He looked at Jordyn before turning to Kim.

  And that’s when he saw her aiming a gun at his skull.

  “Talk, Professor.”

  Chapter 10 - Mallory Black

  Mal was back in Mexico and didn’t yet recognize her world as a dream.

  She was cuffed to the bed, watching helplessly as Jasper fell to the ground.

  Paul Dodd picked up the gun, laughing as he turned to Mal. “Well, looks like the cavalry ain’t coming to save you this time.”

  Jessi was dead.

  Now Jasper was gone, too.

  Mal was beyond caring if she died. A part of her wanted the pain of living to end immediately.

  “Do it,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Kill me like you did my girl. Then, at least, I can be with her.”

  Dodd stared at Mal then shook his head. “I asked you to kill me last time, but noooo, you had to arrest m
e. You should have fucking ended me! Then none of this would’ve happened. I wouldn’t have been raped, and they wouldn’t be dead. But you couldn’t do it. You had to be the hero.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “No, Mallory. Fuck you. And now I’m going to make you regret your entire pitiful life. I’ll kill you, but only after you’re begging for death. Only after you feel what Ashley felt.”

  This was the end. Dodd was going to torture then murder her.

  But Lucia showed up. And soon, Mal had a gun on him.

  Dodd begged, pleaded for his life. Offered up a list of Voluptatem’s members.

  Jasper, wounded but alive, begged her not to kill him. Said they could use the list to save others like Jessi, like Lucia.

  But Mal was too consumed with everything Dodd had done — to her, Jessi, and Ashley worst of all.

  “If I could take it all back, I would,” Dodd cried, wiping at his tears.

  “But you can’t.”

  “Don’t do it, Mallory,” Jasper said from behind her.

  “You wanted me to feel what my daughter felt, right?” She placed the gun against his head. “I asked you a question.”

  “Please …” he cried.

  “Don’t do it, Mallory!”

  She could hear Jasper moving, trying to crawl toward her.

  “Answer the fucking question, Paul. Did you want me to feel what Ashley felt?”

  Tears were streaming down her face.

  Dodd nodded.

  “Then I want the same for you.”

  She pulled the trigger and fell to her knees.

  Then Mal was in the club, the rapist Eddie begging her not to hurt him. And she could only think about all the women who never had a choice.

  Fuck him.

  She dug in with the knife.

  Then Mal woke up, gasping for air, heart racing, wet cheeks and sunlight pouring onto her face. Her head was pounding. Her nose hurt like a bitch, same for her chest and shoulder.

  She looked around, confused, then remembered.

  The woods.

  The men chasing her.

  But she was alone at the bottom of a hill, surrounded by trees.

  Mal sat up, pulled out her phone to look at the time. 11:10 AM.

  She was under a long time and damned lucky no one found her.

  After opening the camera app then flipping the screen, she assessed her appearance. Blood caked her nose, purple from impact. Her right cheek bone was the color of uncooked eggplant. Scratches and scrapes dug into her face.