by Vivian Gray
“You’re in love with her, aren’t you?” he asks, though it’s not really a question. He knows the answer already.
“Oh, of course I am,” I say in a sort of feeble voice. “She’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a woman. And more. She’s smart, she’s beautiful, she knows her shit. Boss, I could be happy with her every day of my goddamn life. The fact that I just let Juan Espinoza get away with her, the fact that he’s probably going to hurt her – or – or worse—” I clear my throat before continuing, “I just… I’ve got to get her back. I can’t live without her, Crusher. I can’t.”
“Then we need to go back to HQ for now. We need to regroup – decide what our best plan of attack is.”
We ride back to headquarters, and the whole time, I’m bugging out. I’m truly concerned about what Juan might be doing to Maria right now. Is it possible he would kill his own daughter? I have to imagine that he might. He is a vindictive piece of crap, after all. But what does that mean for any semblance of a rescue I might be able to mount? I know I’m going to go after her. I just need her to get in touch with me.
It’s then that I realize my mistake: I never gave her back her phone. It’s still sitting in a locked cabinet in my kitchen, one she never even thought to look inside. That means she’s without a phone. I have no idea how I’m going to find her.
Hours pass. Crusher and I talk about how we’re going to find Juan, but neither one of us has any clues as to his whereabouts. He must be somewhere in the region, but we have no idea where. I sit around, crack a beer, and sit idly by, hoping for… I don’t even know what. Something. Maybe she’ll find one of the last payphones in existence and call my number. Maybe she’ll somehow run away from her demon of a father. Maybe I’ll get a tip from a friendly police officer… just something to let me know she’s still alive.
By the time the sun is going down, I’m beginning to lose hope. There’s just nothing, no word from anyone. We’ve sent sentries out in all directions, hoping to stumble upon Juan or Maria or something like that, but so far, everybody has come back empty handed. And I haven’t the faintest fucking clue what to do.
That’s when my phone buzzes.
I pick it up immediately, though I don’t recognize the number. It’s not a call, it’s a message. And instead of words, it just has coordinates. I tap the button to bring it up on my map app, and sure enough, the pin points to a little truck stop a ways away from where we are right now.
“Crusher!” I call out over the mass of guys at HQ. “I think I’ve got her!”
Crusher looks over the message. “I know this place. It’s a couple of hours away. They must have taken their sweet time getting there.”
“Or they doubled back a few times.”
“Whatever the case,” Crusher says, a hint of victory in his voice, “we now have a way of catching up with him. Let’s roll, boys!”
We all jump on our bikes, everybody following Crusher and me. We’re going to take down the son of a bitch once and for all, and there’s nothing he can do about it.
That’s when we encounter the resistance.
It starts with a lone sentry, a guy tracking our every movement. I notice him out of the corner of my eye, caught in my rearview mirror. He does a good job keeping his distance from us, but I notice his Espinoza colors flying behind his bike. I didn’t even know the Espinozas even rode motorcycles, but this is apparently now a thing.
I motion for the guys to flank Crusher and me across the open road, but I hear a gunshot ring out, and I see one of our guys in the back wince – he’s been hit. He pulls over to the side of the road and starts shooting at the kid of the Espinoza bike, but it’s too late. The kid swings by him and shoots him right in the head.
That’s all it takes for the Blood Ravens to go absolutely ballistic. Ten guns are immediately trained on the kid, who gets hit in the face, falls off his bike, and goes flying across the road, dead as a doornail.
That’s only the beginning.
Before we’re another five miles down the road, we’re flanked by about twelve more Espinozas, these guys in cars as well as on motorcycles. I motion to the six or so guys behind me to take out as many as they can, while some of our own sentries drive up the rear and start shooting like crazy.
I did not think today was going to go this way, honestly. I thought that I was going to have to put down the woman I love, not be fighting for my life against a cartel of bloodthirsty drug runners and their kingpin overlord. I had no idea that Juan had so many guys working for him either – or so many who were loyal to him. But here we are, and they’re now shooting at us with reckless abandon.
Crusher and I draw our guns, and I nod to him. We both slow up and drop back in order to take out the guys on bikes. Crusher manages to get a shot off, but mine misses its target pretty dramatically. I cock my gun and fire again, and this time it rings true, and the sorry son of a bitch falls off his bike and onto the ground.
Crusher’s man, however injured, doesn’t fall off his motorcycle, though, and he keeps coming towards us. He shoots towards us, and he happens to catch Crusher in the shoulder.
“Boss!” I yell out as we both kick our bikes into high gear and start speeding away from the scene. “Boss, are you okay?”
“No, I’m not fucking okay!” He almost laughs at the absurdity of my question. “I’ve been shot in the fucking shoulder, Blade!”
“Okay,” I yell to him. “Let’s pull over and get this sack of shit, and then we can take out the rest of the Espinozas before we patch you up.”
“No,” he screams back. “You’ve got to go, man. You’re the only one left who can take out that son of a bitch Juan. You can do it, brother. I believe in you. So go. Go get that asshole. Go save your woman. I’ll take care of these pieces of monkey shit.”
“Boss! I can’t leave you here like this! Going in without backup… it’s not exactly protocol now, is it?”
“Just go, Blade!” he screeches at me. “Fucking go! That’s a goddamn order! I better see you speeding off along that road in about half a second, or I’m gonna hop off my own goddamn bike, jump onto yours, and start wailing on your ass. And you know I can fucking take you!”
“Boss…” I call again to him, but I trail off. His mind is made up. “I’ll see you when I get back, Crusher!”
“You’re goddamn right you will, you lame son of a bitch.” He grins. “Now fucking get gone!”
With that, he swings his bike around and comes to a stop. He revs the engine and cocks his gun, ready to take out any Espinozas that come our way. I only have a moment to watch him getting ready for what seems like a kamikaze mission.
Then, I’m passing him by, on my way to this random truck stop to search for the woman I love.
Chapter Twenty
Maria
I come to, and I find that I am back in the car, this time in the back seat. It’s night; that much I can tell immediately. I open my eyes ever so slightly to see where my psychopathic father is, but he’s nowhere to be seen. I say a quick prayer of thanksgiving for that.
Without moving, I try to ascertain my whereabouts as well as possible, but that proves more than a little difficult from this angle. Dad must have picked me up after knocking me out and stuffed me in the back seat. It looks like we’re still at the truck stop, or maybe at another truck stop – I can’t be completely sure. Either way, Dad must be inside now because I don’t hear anything coming from the outside of the car.
My first instinct is to open the door and run away. It wouldn’t necessarily matter where I was running to, just that I did it. But as Dad mentioned earlier, there’s nothing to say that I would make it very far before he caught up with me. After all, we’re in the wastelands of New Mexico right now.
There’s not exactly a big city I can run through, to dodge in between buildings or hide out in someone’s backyard. No, my best bet, for the time being, is to stay still and figure out how to best approach the situation.
I still can barely believe
this is happening. The last few weeks seemed like a dream – living with Blade, getting to essentially play house with him. This… this feels like an absolute nightmare by comparison. My dad is a fucking madman. He’s now smacked me around – something he swore up and down he would never do when Mami was alive.
What a fucking phony. I don’t know what she ever saw in him, but she must have been attracted to him as part of her youthful rebellion. Now, I’m dealing with the fallout. I loved my mami unconditionally, but man, she had shit taste in men.
I don’t really know what my next move should be. My dad has clearly wised up and has taken his phone, so I can’t call Blade, or 9-1-1, or anything. All I can do is wait in the car, hoping that I come up with some kind of plan before he comes back. And at the moment, I’ve got absolutely nothing. There is no way I can make a run for it, and I have nowhere to go even if I tried. This whole fucking thing is a mess.
So, I do the one thing I haven’t really done this whole time: I pray. I haven’t prayed, not really, in a very, very long time, not since Mami died. But I can’t help myself. I’m in such a situation that I need some kind of divine inspiration to bring myself out of it. I don’t know what I’m going to do, so I do the one thing that comes most naturally to people in dire situations.
“Dear Lord,” I whisper, hoping my dad doesn’t come back and interrupt me or find me awake, “please, please help me get out of this alive. I’m so lost, and I don’t know what to do. I want to get out of this mess. I want to go home, to be with Blade. Please, Lord, I beg of you, help me find a way out of this and back into Blade’s arms. Hear my prayer. Amen.”
A few moments later, I hear my dad coming back out of the truck stop restaurant and towards the car. I know it’s him because I can hear him shouting on the phone. I can’t quite make out what he’s saying at first, but it’s perfectly clear to me that he’s angry. Something has gone very, very wrong.
“Do you mean, all of them?” he demands of the person on the other line. “How is that even possible? Come on, what’s wrong with you coños? Chingada, vamanos! You know what you have to do! I don’t want to know what the fuck is taking you guys so long to do the goddamn job I pay you for, but you had better clean up this fucking mess as quickly as possible. Do it, and then call me back. Don’t you dare fucking call me beforehand, you got it? Only when you’re done. And when you find that son of a bitch, put him down. No fucking questions asked.”
He hangs up the phone, and I wonder what he was talking about. Something hasn’t gone the way he thought it would. Perhaps it’s something with the Blood Ravens. Who was he talking about putting down? Surely, he can’t mean Slime. He must mean Crusher – or Blade. Oh God, what if he means Blade? I don’t know if I could handle that. I don’t know what the future is going to hold, but if it doesn’t hold Blade for me, I don’t know what the point of all this is, anyway.
I hear a click and realize Dad is putting gas in the car. He’s still distracted, on the far side of the car and facing the pump. I know I’m not going to get two chances to do this, so I’m going to have to make my move as quickly and quietly as possible.
I slowly, slowly, slowly inch my fingers up to the handle on the passenger side car door and get ready. In a swift move, much quicker than I usually can make myself go, I throw open the door and make a run for the convenience store on the other side of the parking lot.
Before my dad even realizes what has happened, I’m inside and staring at the clerk behind the cash register.
“Can – can I use your bathroom?” I ask, nervous as all hell. “It’s… it’s an emergency.”
He nods and passes me the key over the counter.
I take it and make it as far as the door before I hear my father’s voice echo through the convenience store.
“Maria!” he yells, clearly unconcerned with the clerk standing right there. “Come on out, honey. Come on now.”
“I – I have to go to the bathroom,” I tell him, and I dive inside, locking the door behind me.
“Maria, I’d very much like you to come the fuck out here, right the fuck now,” my dad rages, pounding on the door.
I don’t say anything. My heart is racing, blood pumping through it and going directly to my brain, making me a little woozy. What is my dad going to do? Is he going to break down the door? Is he going to kill the clerk behind the counter? Is he going to kill me? I have no way of knowing, no way of finding out.
I begin to shiver; I’m so terrified.
“Sir,” comes another voice – the voice of the kid from the counter, “I think the young lady is going to the restroom. I’m going to have to ask you to please return to your vehicle and wait for her.”
“Excuse me, son?” my father demands. “Are you kidding me, you pencil-necked little shit? You really think you’re going to tell fucking Juan Espinoza his fucking business? Get the fuck out of here. Go back behind your little counter and kindly fuck the fuck off!”
“Now, sir, I’m afraid I’m serious,” says the kid, though more than a hint of nervousness shows through his voice. “I’m going to ask you again to please return to your vehicle and wait for the young woman to return. If you’re unwilling or unable to do so, I will be forced to call for assistance.”
“Assistance?” My dad laughs. “You mean the fucking cops? You think the cops are going to be able to get here in time before—” I hear Dad’s gun safety click off.
He’s ready to roll, ready to shoot this poor kid if necessary.
“—I blast your fucking brains all over that back wall? You go ahead, and you call the cops, kid. But you’ll be fucking dead when they get here. Now, I’m going to tell you again, kindly fuck the fuck off!”
I can almost hear the kid pissing himself. He’s terrified. I don’t blame him. My dad is a scary guy on a normal day, and today has been anything but normal. Everything seems to be coming apart. But the kid is no shrinking violet. He’s got some gumption to him, I’ll give him that. Still, afraid for the poor guy’s life, I think, For fuck’s sake, kid, leave it alone! Don’t get yourself killed on my account. Just go back behind the counter and let everything be. It’s not worth losing your fucking life over.
If I could will the kid to leave my father alone, he would be back behind the counter right now, not worrying about me and letting my dad do whatever he wanted. But the kid, like I say, has gumption. He’s not backing down.
“Sir,” he says, his voice full of as much pride and might as he seems able to muster, “this is your last warning. Please leave the store immediately, or I am going to have to call the police.”
My dad doesn’t wait another second or give the kid any kind of warning. Two shots ring out through the store, causing me to scream out in horror, and then, a worse kind of loud silence.
The kid is dead.
The kid is dead because of my father.
The kid is dead because of me.
“Oh, Maria,” my dad calls out in a sing-songy voice, “your gallant knight in shining armor, I’m afraid, has had an accident. He seems to have tripped and fallen on a couple of bullets, and he’s now sitting out here, waiting to see you. Come on, Maria, it’s time for you to come along with me and leave this place.”
“I’m not going fucking anywhere with you, you fucking psycho,” I call through the door.
My dad loses his shit at that description. He begins banging on the door, demanding that I let him in. “Maria Cristina Maribel Espinoza, you open this goddamn door right the fuck now!” he screams at me, jostling the door, attempting to get it open.
Luckily for me, the door is reinforced steel, and it won’t just open with a bunch of banging or even if he were to try to kick it in. But he continues anyway, banging away and screaming at me.
“Maria! Now! Open it! Open this door, you fucking bitch!”
“I’m not opening the door for you, you absolute fucking monster!” I call through the door again. “And I’m not going anywhere with you. Not now, not ever. And you’re never gett
ing in here, do you hear me? Never! So you may as well just get the fuck out of here now. You are never getting in here.”
“Oh, really?” His anger gives way to some ironic giggling. “Well, we’ll just have to see about that. I’m going to go get my tools, Maria. I’m going to get my tools, and then I’m going to open this door. And as soon as I open this door, you are going to die. Do you understand me? I am going to fucking end your life, you turncoat little bitch!”
The chime on the door to the convenience store weirdly goes off as he leaves to go back to the car. I have no idea what to say. I have no idea what to do. If he does manage to get in the door, I’m out of luck. I am absolutely trapped, and I have nowhere left to run.
I’m dead.
Chapter Twenty-One
Blade
As I approach a truck stop off Route 9, my phone beeps. I pull over to the side of the road to check it. Yep, this is the place. This is where Maria messaged me from. And I know it has to be Maria who messaged me – who else would it be?
