by Mark Tufo
“Don’t shoot the woman, kill the rest.”
I turned to Tommy, relatively sure he was the one that controlled the divine intervention.
He nodded to me, an intense glare shone from his eyes. Pain, rage and sorrow warred for his attention.
“They’re readying their weapons Talbot!” BT yelled, rivaling the explosions that were about to be issued forth.
“Tracy, this is gonna suck.” I said as I half crawled over her, stickin the barrel of my AR out the window.
“Just get it done,” she said through clenched teeth.
Travis hopped into the rear of the minivan. I jumped when he smashed out the large side glass window.
Our furtive movements did not go unnoticed. One of the gunmen got so nervous he dropped the magazine to his rifle. Like two warships of old we broadsided each other.
“FIRE!” I yelled.
Bullets screamed! Lead struck. Metal, plastic, rubber and wood shattered under the assault. The noise was deafening and the clouds of smoke were blinding. Screams of savagery and pain were muffled by the explosions. The gunman closest to us was fatally struck. He leaned forward and pitched out of the truck bed. His crudely fashioned harness had not saved him from the disgrace of being unceremoniously dragged along the side of the truck. Redneck number one watched as his friend bounced and skipped along on the ground. A smear of blood and bone trailed for miles. Talk about chumming for zombies. BT roared in pain as a bullet struck. I didn’t have the time to look and see how bad it was. I was fumbling with a new magazine. My thinking was that if he had enough life in him to scream, then he was still breathing. Travis’ shotgun ripped through the rear quarter panel of the truck; fuel was leaking from their truck like a sieve. Our front windshield exploded outwards, Tracy yelled and swerved and then she smashed sideways into the truck. The impact loosened the body of the hijacker. He tumbled backwards, seemingly gaining new heights as he bounced like a super ball. His springiness landed him onto the windshield of one of the trailing trucks. Our luck wasn’t strong enough to hope he would take them out. They swerved sharply but recovered quickly.
We had all been watching the macabre accident. As I turned back around I caught the gaze of Redneck number one. We locked onto each other for a heartbeat. I could feel his malice.
“Kill them all!” He screeched so loud, Tommy’s special skills weren’t needed.
A renewed vigor of bullets whined through our shell-pocked car. The cars were going so fast, the slightest imperfection in the roadway made anything less than a pure luck shot damn near impossible. But that didn’t keep Travis from pumping round after round into the shredded gas tank. I kept waiting for the Hollywood explosion but apparently they only know how to do that in Hollywood. It never happened.
Wisps of smoke emanated from the rear minivan. Brendon and Jen had joined into the fray. Sometime during our sea battle they had pulled in behind the leading Ford and were now adding their two cented lead. The two gunmen in the rear swung their attention to the new threat.
“Wrong move motherfuckers.” I took a calming breath and unloaded a full magazine into them. They danced like marionettes on springs as round after round of high-powered steel jacketed rounds burst through their bodies. Blood arced, teeth shattered. Their paid out bodies dropped faster than my spent bullet casings. My reverie was short lived as Redneck number one had at some point pulled out a Desert Eagle 45 and was busy trying to place a hole in my forehead. The top of our steering wheel exploded into fragments of ragged materials. It was long moments after that thunderous concussion that I noticed there were no more shots being fired. The odds were beyond hope that the spectacular weapon had jammed or the idiot was too dim to keep it fully loaded. No, finally Travis’s fuel tank shredding tactic had come to fruition. I watched as Redneck number one slammed his fists in frustration against his dashboard. I would have loved to hear his expletives. By the way he was going I was convinced I would learn some new and interesting words and colorful phrases.
“Talbot, I’m hit.” BT said through a clamped mouth.
Fucken reality. “Shit, where BT?”
He moved his hand slightly on his thigh, blood pulsed through his fingers.
“Is it bad?” he asked without looking down.
‘Fuck if I know?’ “Naw, it’s only a flesh wound.”
“Yeah, but it’s my flesh,” he said, trying to joke.
Tracy had completely turned around and over her shoulder to look at the wound. Sure, we weren’t going the earth shattering speed of 120 mph, but at 70 we could still get into a lot of trouble real quickly. “Do you want me to stop?” she asked, her concern for BT apparent.
“Can’t.”
“What?” she asked incredulously.
“Do you think our friends back there are going to stop? They’re just transferring their stuff over and will be following us in a minute or two.”
Tracy looked over to BT. “He’s right,” BT answered.
Now I’m no doctor and I didn’t even play one on TV, but even if BT's wound wasn’t fatal now, I could tell he would bleed out sooner rather than later.
“Fuck that,” Tracy said quietly.
I was thrown against the passenger door violently as she did something physics wise I didn’t think was possible. She had u-turned a minivan at 70 miles per hour and we didn’t violently flip down the roadway. Somehow Tommy had had the foresight to grip the roof- mounted handgrip and hadn’t even lost a beat as he popped what appeared to be the remainder of a Kit-Kat bar into his mouth. It would have been humorous if I wasn’t pinned nearly upside down by the g-forces being applied to my body. Brendon respected applied pressures (even if Tracy didn’t) and slowed his car down to a saner but still scary 45 miles per hour before he tried to do the same maneuver. Within a quarter mile he was alongside our right side.
He nearly shattered his voice to be heard above the whistling wind as it came in through our now defunct windshield. “What’s going on Mike?”
I wanted to give him the full story about BT’s injury and the need to get him some attention and quickly. Being succinct seemed more prudent. “We’re going to finish what they started.” He nodded gravely at my words. Jen had replaced Nicole in the front seat and was busy loading her extra magazines. There was a barbarous set to her features. BT was breathing laboriously through the haze of pain as Travis and Tommy fashioned a crude tourniquet on his upper thigh.
“Dad, I think it broke his leg but we got the blood stopped.”
“Holy shit BT, does it hurt?” I asked stupidly. It’s common knowledge that there is no greater pain on the planet than a broken femur, yet he hadn’t cried out since the initial shot that caused his injury.
“What do you think, Talbot.” BT winced as Tommy pulled the slipknot tighter on the tourniquet.
I winced in sympathy with him. And then like an idiot, I let my thoughts wander and wonder. Is a broken leg worse pain than say, someone gripping one of your nuts in a pair of pliers and crushing it? Oh, God, I nearly vomited at my own speculation. Better not to go there at all.
Within thirty seconds of cresting a small rise in the road, our quarry was in sight. The hunters had become the hunted. Redneck number one might be an asshole but he wasn’t a dipshit. While his traveling companions were staring at awe at us as we bore down on them, he was punching and cajoling and kicking them into action. They were nearly done with the transfer of supplies and the unceremonious disposal of their brethren when we had come upon them. If they got behind the wheels of those trucks and got them moving this was going to become a very dangerous game of chicken.
I saw Tracy hesitate. She wasn’t sure if she should keep going or turn around. The odds of making another 70 mile per hour u-turn unscathed weighed heavily against us. She pinned the gas pedal down. I tasted tooth fragments as my head slammed back into the headrest and my teeth snapped together. Tracy used the minivan like a guided missile as she smashed the living shit out of the nearest redneck that had not been thoroughl
y convinced to get his ass moving. His ass was moving now, at least what was left of it. His broken body hurtled into the air like he carried his own jetpack. I prayed that I would not be able to hear the sound his body made when it crashed back to earth. What was not already broken would shatter like dry sticks under a hefty moose’s hoof. I barely had time to recover as Tracy peeled the car off to the left. I’d like to say she narrowly missed the parked truck but that would be an outright lie. The shower of sparks and the squeal of metal on metal would have made me a liar. The caustic smell of burning paint assaulted my nostrils. Sparks showered my lap looking for fuel to grow into a larger version of itself. A loud tell-tale report let me know that someone’s tire had burst. I could only hope it wasn’t ours. I was thinking it was going to be a bitch to get Triple A out here on such short notice.
And then it was over. The metallic burnt smell whisked out of our car. The din of war was reduced to just wind coming though our various new ventilation systems. Brendon had come through the far side in much better shape than us. They had decided wisely to use more conventional weapons. They had struck at least two and possibly three men. What was left of our would-be hijackers would fit comfortably in a tollbooth. Tracy had tears streaming down her face as the stress finally wore her down. How the hell she could see through the stream of tears and the shear of wind through the dispersed windshield was once again something that eluded me.
“Tracy,” I said softly. She looked over. “We need to go back.” She didn’t question my sanity, she merely acknowledged my words. BT was near to passing out as his eyes were beginning to roll up into his head. “Do you want me to drive?”
She turned the car around and sped back to the trucks. That was sufficient answer for me. This time, however, there was no call to arms as Redneck number one and one of his militia sprinted out into the snow-covered field, throwing their weapons to the side as they did so.
“So much for comrades in arms,” I said as I pointed to the lone injured gunmen that hobbled desperately to keep up with his fleeing leader. By the time we were abreast of the trucks, the two lead runners were nearly out of sight and didn’t look like they were going to stop any time soon. The injured one had fallen over maybe a hundred yards away and seemed to be rapidly succumbing to whatever injury had taken him down. “Stop,” I told Tracy.
Now she did question my sanity in a rapid fire of neatly phrased expletives. I was duly impressed.
“Hon,” I placed my hand on her shoulder. “We need to work on BT. Plus, how far do you think we can go in this cold weather without a windshield? I’m already freezing my ass off and I must have a couple of quarts of adrenaline running through me.” She didn’t think I was any saner for my response, but she did as I asked. I knew appealing to a lack of warmth would get to her. I have the heating bills to prove it.
I shivered as I went through the contents of the trucks. Not because of the cold but because of what they contained. There were handcuffs, zip ties, duct tape, rope, a variety of knives and what could only be described as medieval torture tools. Everything the home rapist could wish for. Jen had been more and more disgusted as we moved from cargo hold to cargo hold. There was food and medical supplies and even some Oxycodone, which I knew BT would appreciate. But interlaced with this were the true purport of what these animals were up to. There were S&M magazines strewn about that would only arouse the sickest and twisted that society had to offer. Polaroids of previous victims spilled out from the glove compartment as I searched through the truck. These pictures made the magazines seem tame in comparison. The reality of how close we were to disaster struck me physically. I could see the tortured faces of my wife and daughter in these pictures of misery. These women and girls screamed in agony as every inconceivable act of depravity was forced upon them. I had not noticed Jen as she peered over my shoulder. I bumped into her as I grabbed the pictures and headed for the nearest snow bank. No one else needed to see this.
She walked wordlessly away from me as I dug a hole in the snow and tossed the offending images in, covering them quickly. Fearful that the infused evil on them would seep through my gloves, I hastily wiped snow vigorously on them. Two pistol shots pulled me away from my infected finger wear. Jen was standing in the field over the prone body of our intended assailant. If he had had a flicker of life in him before, Jen had made sure to extinguish it. I felt no pity. I don’t think that under his tutelage our demises would have been so ‘clean’ for lack of a better word.
Tracy hadn’t flinched at Jen’s actions. I rightly assumed she must have come across her own grotesque cache of monstrous mementos.
“I can’t find an exit wound on BT. I’m pretty sure that bullet is lodged on his bone.” She said.
I turned to her. My eyes just plain felt heavy. If there were such thing as a stressometer, mine was rapidly red lining. I was pretty good at field sutures and staunching blood flow, even setting the occasional bone, but this would require full on surgery. There was no way around it. I blanched at the prospect. Sewing torn skin was vastly different from intentionally cutting someone open and feeling around for a bullet. Rooting around in muscle and tissue, making sure to not nick any major arteries while also insuring that I did not cut myself on any of his bone fragments was not something I was looking forward to. Pondering leads to hesitation which leads to mistakes.
“Brendon, hey man, come over here. You’ve got to help me get BT into the truck bed.”
“I’ll help Mr. T,” Tommy said as he handed a bottle of whiskey to Tracy.
Tommy’s helping turned into a one-man wonder show. If I hadn’t been watching it with my own eyes, I would have cried ‘bullshit’ and still I almost did. Short of having an engine lift I don’t know how Tommy could do it. It wasn’t with the ease he had displayed during the Wal-Mart encounter but still I watched in awe as Tommy hefted the burly giant out of the minivan. Twenty feet later he gently placed BT in the bed of the truck as Brendon and Travis hopped up on the back to help.
“Tracy, put a couple of those smaller knives to flame,” I said as I grabbed the bottle of liquor from her.
“What do you need that for?” she asked.
“Disinfectant,” I told her, right before I unscrewed the cap and took a long pull of the bitter, burnt gasoline derivative.
“Yeah, disinfectant,” she said mockingly as she went to sterilize some knives.
Jen returned, seemingly no worse for the wear. She looked basically like she had just returned from taking out the garbage and I guess in reality that was all she had really done. She grabbed the bottle from me. I felt a little ashamed as she made my rather significant drag from the bottle seem child-like in comparison. She wiped her sleeve over her mouth before she spoke. The tenor of her voice belied her true feelings to a point, but not completely.
“What are you doing, Talbot? Besides drinking this rot gut. Oh what I wouldn’t do for a nice Pinot Noir.” She took another long pull.
“Uh, could you save me some, I need it for BT.”
She smiled abashedly. “Sorry,” she said as she absently wiped her mouth again. “For what?”
“Huh?”
“Why do you need this?” as she shook the bottle in front of my face, not really handing it back.
“The bullet didn’t come out. I’ve got to go in and get it.”
“Have you ever done that?” she queried, quickly thrusting the bottle into my hands. I guess she thought whoever possessed the bottle had to perform the surgery.
“I filled in pot holes, Jen. Not much call for field surgery in that line of work.”
“What about before that?” she grasped.
“Oh yeah sure, I left a lucrative and life fulfilling job as a highly skilled surgeon to live the prosaic life of a road crew man. Filling holes seemed a much nobler profession.”
“Don’t go there Talbot. Don’t cover over your insecurities with sarcasm. You know what I mean.”
I sighed. I knew what she meant. She was asking if I had ever had
the need to put any of my friends back together after some raghead had done their best to make Humpty Dumpty fall. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “No, there was never time during the heat of battle to help and by the time the last bullets had flown the injured would have been medi-vacced out. Some I got to visit in the hospital while they recovered. Others I watched as their bodies got loaded on a plane and sent back home.”
She witnessed the pain in my eyes as I pulled the band-aid off a wound that would not heal. “I’m sorry Mike.”
“Me too.” I took another pull of the disgusting concoction while leaning over a moaning BT who was luckily still passed out. How long he was going to remain in that status while I delved into his leg was another story all together. I grabbed some sani-wipes from Tracy and cleaned off my hands as best I could, then drizzled whiskey over them. If it didn’t kill the germs, at least it would get them drunk enough to be cooperative. Then I took a deep breath.
“One for me,” I took another swig. “And one for you,” as I poured a liberal amount of the elixir into the wound.
BT’s eyes flared open. Fiery pain seared across his brain plate. He looked right at the source of this intrusion. “What the fuck are you doing Talbot!?” The gods shook under the assault of those words.
It must have been the warmth of the liquor as it spread throughout my body. I felt no fear, only resolve as I explained to BT what was happening. It was tough to tell which of us was more detached as I clinically laid out my plan. I sounded scholarly as I slurred my way through the procedure. BT nodded at all the right moments. I handed him two Oxycodones and the bottle. He didn’t shun either one away or question what they were.
