by Carey Lewis
He got an idea as he was driving. He’d follow all the other cop cars that were speeding down the streets with their lights flashing and their sirens going.
Jamal opened the door and had Max stick one hand through the window, handcuffed the other hand on the other side, then rushed over to the porch where Dax laid on his back, his chest oozing out blood. He looked down at the boy, saw the blood bubble out of his mouth, like he was desperately trying to say something. Dax looked scared.
Kenzie’s mom told him what happened. How they heard the gunshots, how Dax grabbed Lex when he spun around to look, how there were two shots fired and Dax fell, one to the gut and one high on his chest. How Lex saw Kenzie and took off after her, how Kenzie’s father did the same.
The people were starting to come out of their houses now. Everyone taking a look at the event that started their day. They’d all say the same thing - they were in bed asleep or they were having their morning coffee when they heard pops, sounded like firecrackers but louder. Maybe they would say backfires from a car. It was a noise most of them never heard before outside of their television sets.
Jamal knelt over the boy and tried his best to offer him a smile, tell him everything was okay, but dammit did he ever look scared. He’d never seen this look on someone before. The complete and utter terror in someone’s eyes. The helplessness. He’d seen dead bodies before, but one was almost comical, the naked body without a head that was shot in the ass. That didn’t bother him. This one did. Seeing the fear on a boy having the life drain from his eyes.
The difference here was he only saw one other person go from living to not. He saw Zax dead, the body without a head dead, but they were already gone when he got there. He only saw the transition from life to death one other time, and he wasn’t sure it even counted. It was his father in the hospital when Jamal was a boy. The old man had Alzheimer's and was so doped up on morphine, he wasn’t really there anyway. He’d been gone for awhile.
He died with his eyes closed and a smile on his face. That’s not the way Dax was going. Dax was going to go knowing what happened to him and being complete aware of his surroundings. Jamal took his bloody hand in his own.
Watching his chest rise and fall with each rapid, shallow breath. He wanted to cry. Those watery eyes locked on his, screaming for help. The complete feeling of impotence fell over Jamal as all he could do was hold the boy’s fucking hand. Just kneel beside him, this boy covered in blood pouring out of his chest and belly, looking at him because he didn’t want to die and was scared to, wanting to ask for help but couldn’t. Jamal knew that’s what he wanted but could offer nothing. All Jamal could do was be here and hold his bloody hand and pretend like everything was okay and nothing happened and just wait for the kid to die.
The neighbors were coming onto the street, trying to get a closer look to find out what happened. The sound of the sirens were getting closer. The murmurs among the onlookers were rising in tone, everyone trying to get a look at the boy’s last moments.
A bubble popped in his mouth and Jamal noticed the bubbles coming out of his chest. The breathing was less frequent now. His chest was no longer moving in a rapid succession of up and down, but quite slow. It was almost time. His eyes became cloudy. He was no longer looking at Jamal, but rather through him. His eyes had no focus. Jamal tried to smile again, reassure him that everything was going to be okay.
“My daughter,” he heard someone say, looked up to see Mrs. Sandoval sitting on the porch, also covered in blood, her face already puffy from the tears. She was sweating and her eyes were bloodshot. It came back to Jamal, seeing Kenzie on the sidewalk, watching her run, watching Lex chase her followed by her father. Two more victims probably. It was Jamal’s fate, to go pick up the dead that got in Lex’s path.
Fuck Jamal, you’re the one that put them there. You’re the one that manipulated Lex to take Dax to the house, what other choice did he have, saying the mother would know something bad was happening. Something bad was happening Jamal, and it was you. What did you think was going to happen, sending that kid with Lex, knowing Lex wanted him dead. What the fuck did you think was going to happen?
He looked from Mrs. Sandoval to Dax. Saw those vacant eyes staring through him. His body there but his spirit and soul gone. Jamal, you weren’t even there for the kid when he died. You held his hand pretending to be a good guy and a hero but you couldn’t even look him in the eye when he passed.
“Get my daughter. Help her.”
You aren’t a good guy Jamal, fooling yourself has cost lives. How long do you want to keep pretending?
Jamal stood up, looked down at the hand that held Dax’s, looked at the fresh blood on it, dripping from his fingertips.
“Please.”
Jamal turned and walked down the steps of the porch, not feeling his feet underneath him, started walking down the street as the neighbors watched. The sirens were getting closer.
With the sun starting to come up, casting it’s orange glow, Jamal walked down the street knowing what kind of man he was.
She had seen the car before, but she didn’t recognize who was in it. The big guy in the front seat trying his best to turn and talk to the kid in the back. It wasn’t until she saw a flash of movement from her house that she saw Lex and Dax, her mom swinging at them.
Heard the shots coming from the car, muffled more than the ones she heard in the basement, looking to the car, seeing the flashes inside. Looked back to her house, saw Lex staring back.
She had to run.
Kenzie ran down the street, threw off her backpack, ran as fast as she could, feeling like her legs were going to give out.
She wasn’t going to win in a straight up sprint, she knew that. She’d have to weave, maybe hide somewhere. She went down a driveway, into the Cooper’s backyard, saw the Rhodesian Ridgeback in the dog pen. Big Ben was what they named him, the dog.
“They’re bred to hunt lions in Africa,” they told her eight or ten years ago when she was a lot younger, when they first brought him home. Telling her not to worry, they’re great with children.
She grew up with the dog, asking the Coopers if she could take Big Ben for walks, back before she was worried about being cool and impressing boys. Back when she did what she wanted and didn’t care what other people thought. That first summer when they brought him home, they’d find Kenzie in the backyard playing with the dog almost everyday.
Now Kenzie ran up to the cage, saw Big Ben wagging his tail and shaking his whole body, the big tongue sticking out. She opened the gate and closed it, fighting off Ben to get in the doghouse. He followed her in as she crawled to the side opposite the door, the dog’s tail thumping against the plywood, licking her face. She held him, petting the burnt amber colored fur, trying to get it to calm down.
And then Big Ben stopped. He closed his mouth and looked up, then bolted out of the dog house and started barking. Jumped up against the fence and barked madly, a blood curdling growl. She heard footsteps coming toward her.
“Hey boy,” she heard. The barking continued. And then the footsteps went away.
“Ben, shut up,” she heard Mr. Cooper yell from the back door. There were a couple more barks then Ben stopped, came back into the doghouse, sat beside Kenzie looking sad.
“Good boy,” Kenzie said and started crying. Crying uncontrollably and holding the dog, saying “good boy,” over and over and crying harder and harder.
“Kenzie?”
She went quiet, her breath sucked into her chest. She dared not breathe. Her eyes wide in terror. Ben closed his mouth, turned to the door of the doghouse. Why wasn’t he barking?
“Kenzie?” again.
“Dad?”
Ben left the dog house and she could see his tail wagging. She crawled out to see her dad on the other side of the fence, “he’s gone,” he told her.
She opened the gate and her dad scooped her into his arms, lifting her off her feet with a giant hug.
“You’re not safe,” she sai
d between tears.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
So he put her back on her feet and took her hand. She closed the gate, Ben wagged his tail from the other side. She was confident he saved her life, this dog she hadn’t played with in years. She felt silly, crouching down and thanking him. But she didn’t care.
“Everything okay?” Mr. Cooper asked from the back door.
“Just saying hi to Ben,” Mr. Sandoval smiled. It’s not that Mr. Cooper believed her dad - he saw them, both of them crying and walking away, out of the yard.
“Should take him for a walk sometime Kenzie,” Mr. Cooper said, smiling, all of them ignoring what was really going on. Acting like they were in the cliche’s of the fifties where there were no problems and everyone was friends. Where nothing bad happened and everything was always okay.
“I’d like that,” Kenzie smiled, but it wasn’t fake. She meant it, not realizing how much she missed her childhood. Seeing how much she gave up trying to be an adult.
They walked down the street back to their house, hand in hand, giving Kenzie a flashback to one of her first memories - her dad walking her around the neighborhood, hand in hand, introducing everyone to his daughter. She remembered thinking at the time how big the world was, how safe she felt.
Her mom came out of nowhere to take Kenzie in her arms. The three of them stood on the sidewalk holding each other and crying as the first cop car rolled up to the house, the officers jumped out, trying to figure out what was going on. Everyone in the neighborhood asked questions, stared at them, but Kenzie didn’t care.
She grabbed her small backpack from the ground and went home, going to the back door. Her parents shielded her from having to look at Dax’s dead body on the porch. The body of the boy that saved her life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
He checked the phone after the hard ass with the sunglasses and beret left to make sure the tracker was still working. He wondered how long the batteries on the phones would last. That’s when he saw the other two dots moving. The thought of someone else using the phones to track him didn’t even cross his mind until The Boss asked about it.
Cowboy tried to play it off as nothing when The Boss asked. He was going to get those other phones when the guy called, that was something he found hard to believe. Decided it was more important to meet the guy he was tracking. He was glad he did, didn’t think he’d run into anyone as dangerous as the guy that just walked away from him.
The guy wanted to have a showdown, that much was certain. Saw his arm moving to the piece he had tucked in his back. Not ever going for it but his arm twitched that way. It wouldn’t be fair, him having to reach behind him and Cowboy just having to move his hand to his hip. Hell, if the guy’s piece had been on his hip, it still wouldn’t have been fair. Some gang banger with a gun tucked down in his pants wouldn’t have experience at a quick draw. If the guy went for his gun, Cowboy doubted he would’ve even cleared it before he shot him.
They’d meet again, they both knew that. Cowboy wondered how he’d want to do it. Maybe let the guy start with the gun in his hand, he would just have to lift it up. That would be more fair. Cowboy would have to draw and the guy would just have to lift his arm. He probably held the gun sideways when he shot, big time gangster he thought he was.
But all of that would have to wait. The dots were moving, seeming to go somewhere across the canal into farm territory. Watched the gang banger’s dot do the same, making circles on the map to make sure he wasn’t followed. As long as Cowboy knew where he was, he wasn’t a problem.
He drove his bike along the canal, coming to the drawbridge to go across then down the steep bend, coming out on a straightaway with farm land to either side. Just farmland and four way stops. Looked at the dots again, saw the one dot was gone, the kids he took the phone from probably taking the tracking thing off, unsure why, he was positive the kids knew he meant them no harm.
Got onto a main road, drove through a small town to come out onto farm land again. Took a left and drove for awhile, the dot stationary now. Went up a slight hill and took another left along a dirt road. Came to a wooden fence built to keep cattle inside, went down the dirt road there, onto a farm.
He drove slowly, passing the rows of cherry trees to the left, came up alongside the fenced in area, the pigpen, when he saw the ranch up ahead on the left, the white paint peeling. The barn straight ahead of him was in worse shape, the giant double doors barely hanging on. The owner of the property not able to keep up with the weather or the wear and tear of time.
There were a couple of pickup trucks pulled to the right by a water reservoir and a generator Cowboy guessed. The pickups looked rundown, like they were out of a country music video - rusted and dirty, the color faded from the sun.
The door to the ranch flung open, the spring stretching on the screen door to give it that squealing sound as the guy dressed like a cowboy came running out with a rifle. The door slapped shut behind him as he stood at the end of the wraparound porch. Saw another cowboy looking fella come out of the barn, rope in his hands. Shit, they even had a watering hole beside the ranch where he saw the one that must be called The Kid lift his head from the water. He put on his gun belt and marched over too.
Cowboy turned the bike off and unmounted it, looked over at the boys, the dust still settling in the air.
“Well holy shit,” the one on the porch said, the blond hair sticking out of his hat. Cowboy thought he’d be the one that modeled himself after Doc Scurlock. Another one came out of the barn now, standing behind the first one, his cheeks puffed up with chewing tobacco. Dirty Steve. The Lincoln Regulators.
“You the one come to pick up the boys?” the one on the porch asked, coming down after seeing his backup emerge.
“I see you boys take this serious. Serious as you can wearing your costumes. Imagine you’ll tell me this is John Tunstall’s ranch,” Cowboy said.
“He’s not here right now,” the first one out of the barn said.
“You’re the one I can’t place,” Cowboy said, “thinking this is Doc Scurlock, behind you there is Dirty Steve, and the short one would be Billy.”
“Dick Brewer,” he said, taking a step forward. “We got Bowdre up in the barn there and Scroggins in the house. Both of them got rifles pointed at your head.”
Cowboy didn’t believe him.
“So you better give us our money and no funny business,” Dirty Steve said. He seemed like the anxious type.
“Ain’t got no money for you. Thought I’d come by, get what’s mine, be on my way.”
“That’s not how this works outlaw,” Dirty Steve again.
“You guys really get into this don’t you?” watched The Kid walk forward, his head titled low, eying him from under his brow. “Think that’s far enough.”
“Don’t seem to realize,” The Kid said, “but you ain’t leaving here unless we get the money promised us.”
“Who you got in the barn?”
“You’ll pay to find out,” The Kid said, taking the time to smile.
“One of us will,” Cowboy said.
“That’s not how we do business round here. Not how we do it,” Dirty Steve getting worked up.
“Whoever’s in that barn, come on out.”
“They’re tied up,” Dick said. And then behind them he saw their faces, the four of them. Three boys with bushy hair and a skinny girl, each dropping the loose rope from their wrists.
“You said you could tie rope,” Dick said to Dirty Steve.
“Why don’t you kids go on over there, by the water jugs in case these folk decide on being stupid.”
“They’re not leaving unless we got our money. You don’t want to be making this mistake,” The Kid said.
“I been meaning to ask, you guys fight over who got to be Billy? Seems to me that’s the one everyone would want to be.”
“He’s the shortest,” Doc said.
“You got that part down. Why’d you drop ‘Billy’ from the name
and just go by ‘The Kid?’ I’ll tell you, it does sound cooler.”
“My name’s not Billy.”
“That’s the reason huh? Tell you what, these folk are going to borrow one of those trucks if you don’t mind. Can’t take them all on my bike.”
“I’ve had just about enough of you” not Billy the Kid said, Cowboy saw his hand twitching at the firearm on his side. He wanted to draw.
“Then we should be on our way.”
“I’m thinking something else.”
“You like to talk don’t you?”
The Kid reached for his gun, got the grip in his hand and started pulling. It wasn’t even out of the holster before he was shot in the chest. He fired his gun straight into the ground. Cowboy was quick to put it on Doc, having the rifle, knowing the other two weren’t holding a weapon.
“Jesus Christ, that’s a real gun?” Dick yelled.
“What?”
“These are replicas,” Doc said, turning the rifle sideways to show Cowboy, “they don’t fire.”
“His fired.”
“He found that in the park and thought it was a toy. Jesus, what did you do?”
Doc ran to stand over The Kid. Dirty Steve was jumping up and down, muttering holy shit to himself and asking what they were supposed to do now.
He didn’t want to shoot a kid, but his gun worked and he drew on him. He felt bad but knew he shouldn’t. If The Kid had his chance, he would’ve put Cowboy down.
“You got boys coming for these kids, they’ll know what to do when they get here,” Cowboy said. He looked at the phone, saw the dot that belonged to the gangster was back at headquarters. Mesiah must be sending someone else.
“You’re the Boppers?”
“Were.” They were all staring at The Kid laying in the dirt, his buddies gathered around him.
“Boss wants to see you.”
Well, if this wasn’t a stroke of luck, seeing Jamal walk down the street like that. Bulldog followed the speeding police cars, found them all settling into a residential neighborhood, coming to surround a house. They blocked off the street pretty quick, one of the cops asking Bulldog what he was doing. He told them he was trying to go home and the cop told him to find another way. He turned and drove around the residential streets, looking between the houses, trying to figure out what the cops were looking for and found Jamal taking a stroll on the sidewalk, his hands covered in blood, so Bulldog figured they were looking for him.
