by Mike McCrary
I practice aiming the gun at the front door.
Getting the weight distribution right in my stance.
Applying the theory of muscle memory.
After working the math on a little yellow legal pad, I’ve determined at her current rate of spending we will be completely broke in three years. That’s assuming we dine out conservatively, don’t make any large household purchases, and of course, she doesn’t kill me.
I’ve finished the last of all the calculations. I’ve set aside the calculator. I have pored over the possibilities and studied the angles of this little pickle I’m in. Looked at it as both a mental and physical exercise. As I lay down my pen, I look at what I’ve come up with, what I’ve written down. The sum of all this madness is, to put it in simple terms…
When Ruby walks through that door, I have to kill her.
122
Half of Shaw’s body is covered in burns of various degrees and levels of severity.
He stopped listening to the veterinarian he has on the payroll after the first hour of their time together. The vet did an admirable job. The drugs were good, and at least the vet’s wife works part-time at a hospital for humans.
Weeks of being in and out of consciousness gave Shaw time to think. Time to think about what he was going to do to Ruby and her strange little man. Shaw’s people had time to comb over the intel and triangulate the possibilities of where Ruby and her boy might be holding up.
They started with a list of possible destinations with favorable extradition policies then worked through a short list of whom Choke’s family knew and whom they would logically have connections with.
Know thy enemy.
Shaw and what’s left of his much-diminished army have been hunting them down for the last several months. Their door-to-door searches of the possibilities led to dead ends all over the globe. Although after a while, due to their can-do attitudes, outside-the-box thinking, and penchant for violence, their efforts did bear some fruit. Picking up a bit here and bit there did eventually put them on a path.
A path that has led them here.
To this door.
Today.
Now.
Shaw has been forced to execute at least five people along the way to this door. Two were uncooperative, and the other three were so cooperative Shaw killed them because they talked way too much and he felt they would give him up at the drop of a hat. There’s a very small window of opportunity for survival when you encounter Shaw and company, and his criteria for letting someone live changes all the time. Much like kicking a game-winning, fifty-five-yard field goal through a moving goalpost.
This morning, as in twenty minutes ago per their plan based on reliable information, Shaw led a charge into a small Croatian coffee shop and bum-rushed Ruby. Guns were drawn and fists flew, but in the end Shaw’s men were able to surround her and dragged her out kicking and screaming. Shaw threw a fistful of kuna on the coffee shop counter and put a finger to his lips, giving the terrified storeowner the international sign for “shut the fuck up.”
Ruby has taken a pretty good beating.
She’s tough.
She’s going to die soon, but not until Shaw gets ahold of that strange little fuckhead with the cameras.
Shaw’s guys drag and pull Ruby toward the front door of the house he knows she lives in. Ruby tried some bullshit about how she doesn’t live there. How she’s never seen this house before. Shaw punched her while his men held her upright. Ruby’s head dropped for a moment but came up smiling, spitting out a tooth.
Shaw instructs his men to push her up to the door as he walks behind them. He wants distance, space between himself and whatever is about to happen. Including Shaw, there are five of them.
Five armed, pissed-off men.
None more pissed than Shaw.
He can taste killing these people.
Shaw shoves his Beretta into his belt and pulls a tactical knife. He wants to feel the life leave them, and a knife is a better instrument for that exercise. But if he has to end it all quickly by the way of the gun, he will. Better to be done with them than risk letting them slip away during the torture.
Shaw’s stomach bounces with excitement.
The men push Ruby to the door.
Shaw has already commandeered the keys from her. He motions for two of his men to peel off and go around back. With shotguns in hand, the two stay low, moving fast around the side of the house. This has been planned carefully. They are to rush in after they hear the word from Shaw. They are a just-in-case measure. Another layer of protection for Shaw.
Once Shaw feels his men have made it around and taken their proper positions, he looks to the remaining men by his side. They are ready. They are always ready, and he can’t ask for much more than that. He looks at Ruby. Her eyes burn, her face is bright red—she’d kill all of them if she could break free, and Shaw knows it.
With a nod from Shaw, one of the men turns the key.
123
A key enters the lock.
Hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I actually gulp.
I re-grip my gun as the door opens.
Ruby is standing between two dead men with her knee planted on Shaw’s throat, feeding him his own eyeball. One guy’s head is completely turned around, and the other has the handle of a tactical blade jammed into his neck, pumping crimson. Resting in the pooling blood are the remains of the ties I assume were used to bind Ruby.
These things happen, I guess.
Watching Ruby force the eye into Shaw’s mouth, it’s clear her madness has reached a new high. It’s the look on her face—she’s having the time of her life.
“Ruby,” I yell out.
She looks up at me.
“Those people from the house, in the woods, are they safe?”
She tilts her head, squints her eyes.
I pull the trigger. The gun blasts. Didn’t want to allow a moment of weakness to enter my brain as I put a bullet in hers. Her face goes slack, eyes freeze in a blank stare, locked in disbelief, disbelief of what I’ve done to her.
Me, the one, I have failed her.
Her body falls.
I try to imitate her voice. It’s bad, but I try it anyway. “Yes, Jasper, they are safe and living happily on a hill near a lake.”
I wanted an answer I could live with.
There’s movement toward the back of the house. Sliding to my knees, I come around behind Shaw, jamming my gun into his temple.
He spits out his eye and says, “That fucking fucked-up bitch.”
Two shotgun-toting men enter the living room. They track their guns toward us as they come outside.
“Tell them to put the guns down and their hands up,” I say into Shaw’s ear.
Shaw tells them.
They do it.
As fast as I can, I make sure Shaw is disarmed and I remove the leftover zip ties he has on him. Probably meant for me. Getting him to his feet, I shove him inside. He eyes me with his lone good eye—a lot of hate in that one eyeball. Fuck this guy. I tell his boys to drag in the other two bodies along with Ruby, and then I shut the door.
Must keep the neighborhood out of this as much as possible.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I’ve been training for this moment. All the time spent with Choke and company, the extra time with Ruby, all of it has prepared me for this special moment in my life. I never would have been able to do this before. If I’d been in this situation a few short months ago, I would have curled up in a ball and begged for my life.
Never would have had them all strip naked and tie one another up using the zip ties. Never in a million years would I have been able to use a zip tie, but I work them like a fucking champ now, making sure the hands and feet of Shaw and his boys are secure. Taking a moment, I make note of his burns. Really fucked him up at the beach.
Price you pay for this line of work, I suppose.
I toss their cell phones, along with the hard drives to my and
Ruby’s computers, into the microwave and hit Popcorn. Fishing through Shaw and company’s clothing, I find about a grand in US dollars and wad of sweaty kuna. Need to be fast here. No time to dilly. I pack up a bag of clothes and snatch up the rest of the IDs and bank info. The cash is still in a good spot, so I can wait and pick that up on the way out of town. I have to assume everything is blown to shit, so I can’t use the IDs much, but it’ll at least buy me some breathing room until I can get my head together.
Maybe hit reset on life.
Moving back into the living room, I feel a moral dilemma rattle around my brain. The new me knows damn well I need to kill these three men. They are highly trained people who will figure a way out of this and will keep coming after me. There is a chance that all this, this whole thing, this life I’ve been living lately, can end with them. That they are the only ones, save for US law enforcement, who are truly looking for me.
Need to hurry.
This is a tough one, for sure.
I’m not a killer.
I have killed, but I am not a killer. It’s subtle, but there is a difference. Of course these three men were coming here to kill me, among other things, I’m sure of it, and given the chance they will try to kill me again.
Decisions, decisions.
Pops, clicks, and hisses come from the microwave.
Grunts sound from my little dilemmas tied up on the floor.
I raise my gun, taking aim.
Finger the trigger.
Something in me lowers it. Need to hold on to something that’s still me. Hold on to that thing that Lucy knew. That person who told her what I needed to say before I left that motel room. God knows what she’s heard since that conversation. The news. Internet. Friends of friends. I’m sure it’s not flattering. Still, I got to tell her what I wanted her to know. Hopefully she will cling to that, take it to heart, and not dwell on what they are saying about me.
What they’re saying I am.
However…
If she did hold on to what I am, then she’d want that person to stay alive, and the best chance that person would have to stay alive is to kill these naked bastards on the floor.
Well, shit, now I’m back where I started.
I exit the house, carrying my bags and whatever I can manage to bring along. The cash is a few miles from here. There’s a motorcycle in the garage. Ruby thought it would be romantic to ride around the city on a motorcycle. She was right, on some level. Fugitives on the run in a foreign land on a motorcycle, one could argue romance there.
In the garage I load up the bike and push it out the back door.
As I pour the gas can on and around the back door of the house, I can’t help but wonder how things would be if I’d gone to law school or got an MBA like my mother wanted. I, of course, ignored her wishes and chased a dream instead, as some fools do, but keep in mind I achieved that dream.
To a certain extent.
124
Not many can say that.
Not many can say they’ve made movies for a living. Not many can say they’ve lit a house on fire that contains three bound, naked men hell-bent on killing them. Not many can say they’ve done any of the things I’ve done, especially recently.
As I ride off, the house burns behind me.
To my way of thinking, Lucy would want me to live, and as I said before, I’m not a killer. So if Shaw and his boys can get out of the house before the fire gets them, so be it. It’s fate. If they can get out of there and come kill me, then the universe has predetermined I was meant to die by their hands and there’s nothing more I can do about it.
Lucy will always remain intact in my brain.
I can’t go back to America. I will never see her again. She will stay the way I remember her. The way we were together. Much like an actress or a rock star who dies too young and wasn’t allowed to age. Not allowed to tarnish by life taking its pound of flesh, dulling away that shine of indestructible youth, and later revealing the ugliness that lies within us that aging eventually uncovers. She is now and will always remain perfect.
I’ve heard a theory there are multiple universes running parallel to ours, each one splintering off based on the choices you’ve made during the moments of your life. Meaning if you go left in one, you will go right in another. The life you chose to go left in carries on with that choice, and the one where you hung a right moves along with the results and consequences of that choice.
A cosmic Choose Your Own Adventure book.
I’m guessing several of my parallel lives ended recently. Ended badly. One probably dropped off at the park in New Jersey. One was more than likely cut short in a trunk of a car, another at the bank, in the cabin, the alley behind the Jiggle Queen. Tisha probably actually did kill me in at least one, and more than a few stopped with me getting popped on the sands of that beach. More than positive I overdosed in a few and had a massive coronary in more than one. Probably resting peacefully in a coma in a few as well. Others probably ended prematurely way before all this. Those stupid times in high school when I could have easily bought it, and did so in some of those splintered-life universes running alongside this one.
I imagine all of these parallel lives are kept in a metaphysical file cabinet with each life tucked away neatly in its own file. The cabinet of Jasper Tripp sitting in some warehouse in heaven, the depths of hell, or in the belly of an alien, depending on your point of view or religious slant.
As I ride away, I’d like to think there are only two lives left.
Only two files left to move forward.
One is the one I’m living at the moment, and the second one is where I have a life with Lucy. Where I told her my thoughts and feelings years ago. Where we are married with three great kids living in Southern California. I’m a successful writer-director of critically acclaimed independent films, and she has a promising career as a painter and works with the homeless. We vacation in Aspen and Spain. We are involved at the kids’ school. We genuinely enjoy our time together, and we never take a moment of it for granted. We are the couple you love to hate. The one you wish you were. The couple that is happy and will always be.
Alex, my sister, and their families spend the holidays with us.
I like that.
I’ll hold on to that.
Need to because the coming days are going to be challenging.
If I have to continue on with this splinter of my life, if I have to absorb the fear, the pain, and the guilt of all the things this life has brought just so the one with Lucy can continue on its own—so be it.
Bring it on.
I’ll carry that weight and do it gladly if that’s the price to pay for having that Lucy life go on. I’ll see this one through to the bitter end so that the other, the one with her, can continue on happily.
I do like that idea.
Yeah, need to hang on to that.
I hope Madman’s Jazz is doing well at the box office back home.
Imagine this scene, the one I’m living in right now, with the burning house, me on the motorcycle. I mean, really think of what it would look like if I were able to capture this on film. If I only had my GoPros, what a jaw-dropping shot this would be. Mouth cam getting the front angle, camera mounted on the handlebars capturing me riding with a satisfied yet somber look on my face. And finally, one more camera mounted on the seat pointed back, getting the blazing house as I leave it behind. I’d cut it all together using the beats of the classic rock soundtrack to punctuate the buttons, the fades, the moments I’d piece together for worldwide audiences to devour. Think of it.
Me speeding away like James Dean as the house behind me burns.
Wild flames roaring, licking at the sky.
Would’ve been the perfect ending to my little project. My little engine that could.
This is me breathing.
It’s all so damn cinematic.
ALSO BY MIKE McCRARY
Remo Went Rogue
Getting Ugly
ACKNOWLEDGMEN
TS
I’ve said it before, but it still holds true—You can’t do a damn thing alone. I’ve tried. Don’t work. So, I’d like to thank a few of the many folks that have given me help and hope during this writing thing. So, in no particular order…
Mike McCrary, John Rector, Johnny Shaw, Jay Stringer, Blake Crouch, Tom Pitts, Joe Clifford, people I got drunk with in high school, people I got drunk with in college, Matthew Louis, people I got drunk with after college, crime writers, crime writers I got drunk with and continue to do so, Elizabeth A. White, Jennifer Zaczek, JT Lindroos, Snake Plissken, Mike Monson, Scott Montgomery, Benoit Lelievre, AC/DC, The National, Christa Faust, Bcon, Eric Beetner, coffee, that fuckstick I pitched a movie to, 52 Novels, that fuckstick I pitched a TV show to, Red Raiders, Matthew McBride, every fuckstick I ever pitched to from years 2002 to 2014, all the amazing and talented people I will pitch movies and TV shows to in the future, breakfast tacos, the good people of 114, water, BookPeople in Austin, Tyler Durden, Chewbacca, Heisler, John Belushi, Mason Novick, Michelle Knudsen, Christy Canyon, Matthew FitzSimmons, Don Winslow, Duane Swierczynski, Chuck Palahniuk, Sean Doolittle, Charlie Huston, DHS and, finally, the kind people I live with.
Big sloppy thanks, y’all.
ABOUT MIKE McCRARY
Mike McCrary is the author of Remo Went Rogue and Getting Ugly. His shorter work has appeared in Thuglit, All Due Respect, Dark Corners, Out of the Gutter, and Shotgun Honey.
Mike has been a waiter, securities trader, dishwasher, investment manager, and an unpaid Hollywood intern. He’s quit corporate America, come back, been fired, been promoted, been fired, and currently, from his home in Texas, he writes stories about questionable people making questionable decisions.
Visit Mike at www.mikemccrary.com or follow him on Twitter @mcmccrary
