Light It Up

by Nick Petrie

  “Fucking bitch,” Leonard shouted. Peter heard the soft clank of a magazine hitting the ground, the hard click of a new magazine slammed home.

  Boom. The shotgun went off. Peter felt the shrapnel of brick fragments as buckshot hit the building.

  Boom. More brick fragments. Boom. Boom.

  “Ow, shit, fuck this,” said Leonard’s voice. Peter found the big Colt submerged in a puddle. He pivoted on his belly, looking for feet.

  “You’re driving, bitch. Get in the Jeep. Go, you pussy, or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

  Peter saw two pairs of shoes, close together. Boots and some kind of sleek retro Nikes.

  “June,” Peter shouted. “June!”

  He aimed at the boots and pulled the Colt’s hammer back and pressed the trigger.

  The hammer dropped but the Colt didn’t go off.

  The boots shoved the Nikes into the Jeep and climbed into the back seat. The Jeep roared forward and out of the parking lot.

  Peter scrambled out from under the Kia, the Colt dripping in his hand, the rain pounding down.

  Dixon lay in a twitching heap ten feet away.

  Lewis was on his side, pulling himself across the gravel toward June, who stood holding the shotgun at her waist like a street fighter, blind and coughing from her own windblown pepper spray, pulling the trigger on an empty chamber.

  “Hey.” Peter dropped the Colt and caught the shotgun just as June shifted her grip to swing it like a club. He pulled her, red-eyed and weeping, into his arms. “I got you, I got you.”

  “Jesus Christ,” she said, her whole body shaking. “I did not like it in there.”

  “I know,” Peter said, holding her tight. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  “Save that lovey shit for later,” Lewis called. “Some asshole put a hole in me. And that other asshole got away.”

  47

  Peter sat June on the wet gravel next to Lewis. She took Lewis’s hand in hers. Lightning crackled overhead. Their clothes were all soaked through.

  Peter knelt beside them both and pulled out his phone, which was dripping water but somehow still working, to call 911.

  Lewis had a sizable chunk of muscle blown out of the side of his calf, although with the rain and his black jeans, Peter couldn’t quite tell how much blood he’d lost. There was an angry red crease along his side where another bullet had skidded along his ribs and torn away some skin.

  “Good thing you’re so tough,” Peter said. “Bet it hurts, though.”

  “Like a motherfucker,” Lewis said. “Gimme the drugs.”

  Peter got closer to the leg wound. There was quite a bit of blood. He slipped off Lewis’s belt and wrapped it above the leg wound as a tourniquet. “Leonard took McSweeney?”

  “Yeah.”

  Peter placed June’s hand on the tourniquet to keep it tight and walked over to Dixon, who blinked slowly up at him. Lewis had put two clusters of buckshot into his belly, wrecked most of his internal organs and probably his spine. His heart and lungs still worked, but he was pale and cold. A slow, ugly way to die.

  The Beretta was still in Dixon’s hand. The Winchester lay on the ground beside him. Peter didn’t bother to take them away.

  He thought Dixon might want the Beretta, if the pain got too bad.

  “You have to go,” Dixon said. “After Leonard.”

  “You’re worried about McSweeney?”

  “Leonard.” Dixon’s voice was ragged. Fluid in his lungs. Maybe it wouldn’t be so slow. “He’ll always be coming. Up behind you. And her.”

  “The cops will catch him,” Peter said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You don’t understand,” Dixon said, each breath a labored sigh. “I didn’t, either. He’s a predator. He’ll take his time. Other women. More than a few. Before coming for her.”

  Not what Peter wanted to hear.

  He looked at June.

  She was still coughing, but it seemed to be slowing. Her eyes were red and puffy. She raised her face to the sky, maybe hoping the rain would wash out the windblown pepper spray.

  Lewis looked at Peter. Even in considerable pain, with a chunk out of his leg, the force of his stare was palpable.

  “If you going, Jarhead, you best go now,” he said. “Cops be here any minute. Then you ain’t going nowhere.”

  June coughed and spit and cleared her throat. “Hey. Marine.”

  “Yes?” Peter went to her and bent close. She looped an arm around his neck and crushed her lips against his. A kiss like the spiciest pepper he’d ever tasted.

  When she let him go, she said, “I’m coming with you. I owe that fucker.”

  “You stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “No, goddamn it,” she said, peering at him through her puffy red eyes. “You’re not going alone, for one thing. For another, I’m fucking in love with you, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said. His heart breaking wide open. “Okay. Got it. Just give me a second.”

  He scooped up the Winchester and the wet Colt Army revolver and walked to the Kia.

  Opened the door and climbed in.

  Put it in drive and hit the gas hard.

  Through the gate and away.

  Tears rolling down his face like rain.

  48

  Peter had been driving for thirty minutes when the rain turned to snow, just past Idaho Springs.

  June had stopped trying to reach him after five unanswered calls.

  Peter couldn’t talk to her. He wasn’t going to tell her he loved her.

  Not if he wasn’t coming back.

  Because Peter was responsible for June being trapped in that trunk to begin with, just like he was for the hole in Lewis’s leg. For all of them nearly getting killed. Even McSweeney.

  War was one thing. But this was supposed to be something like normal life.

  Wasn’t it?

  Maybe Peter was too damaged. Maybe he was just plain broken.

  Maybe he’d never manage to live anything like a normal life because he couldn’t keep himself from getting into the middle of things.

  It’s just how he was wired. To be useful. To help.

  That was how he thought of it, anyway. Take out the bad guys, do some good in the world.

  But it wasn’t so good for the people he cared about. Lewis had almost gotten killed. June had almost gotten worse than that.

  As Peter saw it, he had two choices.

  He could butt out of the world, stop trying to solve problems.

  He didn’t think he could do that.

  Or he could keep doing his jarhead thing, but alone.

  Without June, without Lewis.

  It occurred to him, as the Kia slid on the first patch of ice, that maybe he was looking to die. As his penance for all those dead Marines under his care, over there.

  It wasn’t the first time this had occurred to him. But it was the first time he allowed himself to acknowledge the thought. To think it out loud.

  The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

  But I have promises to keep.

  And miles to go before I sleep.

  Leonard would be waiting for him at McSweeney’s cabin, seventy miles into the Rockies. Peter wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he did. And Leonard knew it, too, that Peter was coming behind him. Some kind of fucked-up promise.

  A promise Peter was planning to keep.

  —

  He made good time in the Kia, which felt like a rocket ship after driving his 1968 Chevy pickup truck with the homemade mahogany cap on the back. Ninety or a hundred in the Kia was no problem until he hit the first of the snow.

  It fell thick and wet, sticky on the wiper blades, accumulating on the outer edges of the windshield.

  Leonard would be making good time, too.

  As the snow got deeper, the Jeep would be a lot better than the Kia.

  This far into the Front Range, the interstate was almost empty. The long-haul truckers and mountain residents, really anyone
with any sense, had gotten off the road well in advance of this weather. The radio said it was a big storm system coming down from the Pacific Northwest. Even in late September, a big rain in Denver could be a blizzard in the Rockies.

  When he left the city, Peter was soaked to the skin, shivering and still bleeding from the half round of flesh missing from his right triceps where a stray round from Leonard’s MAC-10 had grazed him.

  He’d cranked the heat and it made a difference, but he knew it would be a lot colder where he was headed. He’d spent a lot of time in the mountains, had seen powerful storms blow in again and again, but he still hadn’t thought it would turn this ugly in late September.

  He should have stopped earlier for better gear. He should have found a gun shop in Denver for more ammunition, at least. But he’d felt strongly that he had only a narrow window of time. Leonard would want to get to the cabin to take what he could, but he wouldn’t stay too long. He’d know Peter was coming behind him, and he’d want to deal with Peter. But Leonard also had to know the police would come soon after.

  The storm would delay that, Peter was now sure. The police in every jurisdiction would have their hands full without organizing a manhunt for one freaky shithead.

  Past Lawson, he stopped at a lonely commercial strip. He’d seen a sign for a gun shop, but it had closed early because of the weather, a handmade paper sign taped to the door glass behind the steel grate. Almost every other place was closed, too. They knew what was coming. Four inches of snow were already on the ground.

  He filled the Kia’s tank at an off-brand gas station attached to a taco stand and antique shop. He wolfed down five tacos loaded with green chili carnitas, standing at the front window, watching the snow, thinking that he hadn’t actually cooked himself a meal in days. Hadn’t even made his own coffee. There seemed to be something wrong about that. He wondered if he’d ever cook for June again. For anyone.

  The taco man watched impassively as Peter dampened paper napkins under the water dispenser and cleaned the clotted blood from his upper arm.

  He made a quick run through the antique shop, hoping for another weapon, or at least some ammunition—this was Colorado, after all. Turned out it wasn’t that kind of place, mostly tattered quilts and rickety chairs and chipped tin cups.

  But among all the knickknacks he found a glass-fronted case of old tools, including a decent Hart framing hammer with a straight claw and a long hatchet-style handle. It was a duplicate of a hammer Peter happened to own already, in a wooden box in the back of his old Chevy, parked outside McSweeney’s grow.

  The Hart wasn’t an antique, but Peter thought it might be useful.

  The balance was perfect.

  He went back to the gas station and bought what clothes he could: an itchy blue Broncos T-shirt, a heavy hooded Broncos sweatshirt, an insulated Broncos hard-shell jacket that claimed to be waterproof, and a goofy Broncos stocking cap with the blue puffball on top.

  As he changed in the bathroom, Peter smiled briefly at himself in the mirror, thinking that if his dad, a lifelong Packers fan, could see Peter now, he’d shit a brick.

  Warmer now, Peter was more ready for what was ahead. His pants and boots were still wet, but there wasn’t much more he could do about that. He bought fleece gloves and a half-decent folding knife he could open with one thumb. He bought ten feet of nylon rope, and a cloth Broncos flag on a two-foot wooden dowel. He bought a roll of paper towels, a can of 3-in-1 oil, four Snickers bars, and two giant coffees. It was amazing what you could find in a gas station.

  Walking out to the car, he saw that another inch of snow had accumulated in the time he’d spent shopping.

  He sat in the driver’s seat with the defrost on high while he ejected the rounds from the Colt and the Winchester. He finished the first coffee while he dried the rounds and the weapons with the paper towels, cleaned and oiled each one using the flag’s dowel for a cleaning rod, then laid it all out on the passenger seat with the framing hammer. Five rounds for the pistol, seven for the rifle.

  It wasn’t much, he thought, heading for the on-ramp.

  No vest, no helmet. No extra ammunition. The guns were fifty years old, or older.

  But they were good weapons. Durable in their design and well maintained, if you didn’t count the abuse of the last few hours.

  He was pretty sure they’d still shoot straight.

  —

  He got off the interstate at Silverthorne, heading northwest on a narrower state highway.

  The snow was eight inches deep and getting deeper by the minute.

  He saw only a single set of tire tracks ahead of him on the road.

  Night was falling now, the clouds low and dark. Mountains rose on both sides, lit by frequent flashes of lightning, strange through the thick white flakes. Thunder rolled down the long, crooked valleys. Thundersnow.

  It wasn’t going to be easy to take Leonard out.

  To kill him. The Marines had taught him that, among other things. To destroy the enemy with any means at his disposal. No sugarcoating it, what Peter was going there to do. Erase that man from the earth.

  Leonard would have the advantage, as long as his eyes had recovered from the pepper spray. He’d have gotten to the cabin first, a head start of thirty minutes to an hour, maybe more. He’d have McSweeney to tell him where things were, another weapon, maybe a scoped deer rifle. Any kind of ambush was possible.

  Peter was still sure of where Leonard was headed. As sure as he’d ever been of anything.

  And he knew he might not be the one who did the killing.

  He’d seen Leonard move. He was as deadly a man as Peter had ever met, including any number of formidable killers he’d known.

  There was no guarantee. Ever.

  And that was the thing, right there. Not dumb risk, but real consequence. Depending for his life on his own heart and mind and skill. Because truly living meant the risk of truly dying.

  He felt the thrill of it, rising up in him again. The static and the adrenaline become one powerful force shackled to his own will. Goddamn, he was alive.

  It was possible, Peter thought, that he was kind of an asshole.

  Could he truly not find another way to feel this vividly awake in the world?

  This was why he couldn’t be with June. This kind of behavior, courting his own death. It put her at risk, and Lewis, too. Best to keep going on his own.

  He found the next turn onto a state road. Following the single pair of tire tracks ahead of him in the deepening snow.

  —

  The Kia didn’t like the state road, steep and winding and climbing ever higher. Its tires were made for more polite weather. In this thick slop, they slipped at speeds over forty. Then over thirty. Soon Peter was creeping along uphill through the dark at twenty miles an hour, peering through the heavy falling snow.

  Full night now.

  The last time Peter was on that road, he’d been driving the red wrecker downhill with Henry dying behind him.

  It looked different now, covered with snow.

  Peter had seen too much to think it looked peaceful.

  At fifteen miles an hour, he saw the wide pull-off where he’d steered Henry’s stretcher off the road.

  Where he’d shot the hijacker through the windshield and taken the wrecker.

  A few miles farther was the embankment where Henry’s truck had lain, broken and bleeding all manner of fluids into the drainage ditch. He saw where the hijackers had loaded Henry and Banjo and Deacon and Peter into the fake ambulance. Henry dying, Deacon already dead.

  Where Leonard, dressed as a state trooper, had watched and smiled and waved the traffic past.

  Remembering the hijackers, Peter felt a twitch in the long muscles of his arm, the tug of tissue parting under his blade. He took the turn onto the rough gravel forest service road that led to McSweeney’s cabin.

  The Jeep’s tire tracks led the way.

  The Kia didn’t make it over the first hump. The wheels spun wi
thout purpose. But at least it blocked the road.

  He got out of the car and left it there, unlocked, the key in his pocket.

  Maybe he’d come back for the car. Maybe he wouldn’t.

  If Leonard wanted to get the Jeep past, he was going to have to take the key from Peter.

  —

  His breath steamed in the high, thin air. The cold seared his lungs, and the snow tangled his feet, twelve inches deep or more. Coming almost up to his knees in places.

  The wind had stopped, although Peter knew that wouldn’t hold.

  His boots were dry but his socks were still wet. His pants were dry in the front where the heater had warmed him, but damp still on the backs of his thighs and ass, and cooling by the second in the high alpine air.

  He used his new knife to cut the tips of the thumbs, index and middle fingers from the fleece gloves. He was going to need whatever dexterity he could manage.

  He’d already reloaded the pistol and the rifle. Twelve rounds total. Not much.

  Leonard’s MAC-10 magazine held thirty.

  But that shitty little stamped-metal machine pistol couldn’t hit the side of a barn at fifty yards. Or twenty, on full auto. Whereas Peter’s Winchester would put the round where he was pointing it, a two-inch group at a hundred yards if he was paying attention. And the lever action made it fast, too.

  He did wish he’d found another box of rounds. Lewis had a box under the blanket on the back seat of the Jeep, but Peter figured it was long gone.

  He tucked the long-barreled Colt into the deep left-side pocket of the big Broncos coat. He could get to it pretty well. He used the gas-station knife to cut a length of nylon rope to make a shoulder sling for the Winchester, fussing a little to get the length right so he could bring the rifle around quickly. He was planning to get off the forest road and would need his hands free for climbing through the trees. The knife went into the right pocket. The Hart framing hammer he jammed through the back of his belt under the coat, out of the way. It wouldn’t be a quick-draw kind of thing, but he wasn’t expecting a hammer duel. It was just insurance.

  Despite the low, dark clouds, the night was lit from below, the thick wet snow luminous on the rocky slopes and the sky-reaching trees.