wilted streets: a novella & stories

by Steve Shadow

  “Keep low; get on the floor. The car is bullet proof but who knows what they have.”

  We could hear rounds pinging off the vehicle. Johnson scanned the area. He seemed to be unable to locate the direction of the incoming fire. He pulled out a phone. Roxanne and I were huddled on the floor in a tangled mess. She remained calm while I was shaking like a leaf. I was so panicked that I couldn’t even speak.

  “This is ATF agent Johnson. We have an agent down. GPS is on, send a chopper, now. Repeat agent down and we are taking automatic fire. Is anyone there? Can you hear me?”

  The shooting stopped. A quiet fell over us. I found my voice.

  “What is going on? Who is shooting at us? You said I would be safe. Christ, do something.”

  Roxanne squeezed my hand. “Easy, Billy, help is on the way. Just try and stay calm.”

  “Stay calm; are you both nuts. If we sit here we are going to die.”

  “No one’s going to die.” Johnson said. “If that call went through a chopper will be here soon.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? How about your partner splattered all over the outside of the truck and all over you? You figure he ain’t dead?”

  Another burst of gunfire rang out and the rear window shattered. Johnson fell to the floor of the car. He was screaming with his hands covering his bleeding face.

  He fell down into the back of the vehicle and began moaning. I reached over the seat and took the rifle that was laying there. Shit, I had been the compliant patsy since this little drama began. May be I had no idea what was going on but hell if I was going to just sit here and be killed for nothing. It was time to cowboy up. I had grown up in the military and spent most of my life around weapons. That along with all the research I had done for my books had gotten me very familiar with all types of guns. I dropped the seatback and pulled Johnson’s hands from his face. He was a bloody mess. I could not tell what blood was his and what was Brecks.

  “I can’t see,” he moaned. “Glass must have got in my eyes. It hurts like hell.”

  Roxanne crawled over the seat and poured some water over his face. I scanned the area around us.

  I reached over and shook the agent. He screamed in pain. Roxanne shot me a dirty look.

  “What the hell is going on? What have you gotten us into? Say something.” He just kept moaning.

  I saw two figures approaching from a ravine ahead of us that I had not noticed before. Now I was more mad than scared. I took a few deep breaths.

  “Roxanne, do you have a weapon?”

  “No, I’m a doctor not an agent.”

  “Well stay down and see what you can do for him. He said help is on the way but I think that call never went through.”

  I picked up the radio he dropped and tried to get a signal. It was not working.

  Johnson had passed out. All the color had drained from Roxanne’s face. I rolled into the front seat after taking two full magazines from the compartment in the SUV’s floor. I knew how to handle an AR-15, having fired one many times. This, however, was not a practice range. I did my best to keep calm. They were coming from the rear and side of the car so I opened the driver’s side door, sliding through the gore that used to be agent Breck, and rolled out onto the ground. I slid off of Breck’s body and got under the truck just as they began firing again. I put the rifle to my shoulder. I fought to remember my training, to breathe slowly and squeeze the trigger. I waited until they were close enough so that I had a better angle. For the first time in my life I was going to fire a weapon at a human being. From my angle I could only see their lower halves. My first round took out a kneecap from the man on the left. As the shooter fell forward I placed two more rounds into his chest. The other shooter spun around, unsure at first, where the bullets were coming from. He let loose with a long burst and I heard screaming from the car above me. He turned to run. I shot him in the back of the leg. As he sunk to his knees I put rounds into his back and head. I rolled out from under the car and ran to the men. One of them was dead. The other was on his back. He was gasping slowly as blood pumped from his chest wounds. I knelt beside him.

  He looked Mexican to me. “Do you speak English?” I yelled into his ear. “Who sent you? Who do you work for? Answer me or I will kill you now.”

  He turned his head towards me. His face was pitted with acne scars. He had long black hair and a moustache. His face pulled into an evil grin.

  “Fuck you, I am already dead.” He said in accented English. 58

  “I can call for help. Just tell me who sent you? Were you working for the agents? Why did you shoot them?”

  He moaned again. The blood coming out of him was lessening. He said something that I could not hear. I got close to his mouth. “Say it again.”

  He whispered, “Sergoo.”

  “What was that? Sergoo? What is Sergoo?”

  His eyes rolled back and I think he died at that moment.

  To be sure they were dead I put a bullet into each of their heads, just as my father had trained me to do. I turned the other shooter onto his back; he also looked Mexican. I went through their pockets but they had nothing in them.

  I rushed to the SUV and opened the back hatch. Roxanne was sitting in a puddle of blood. She was rocking back and forth while holding Johnson and crying. He must have tried to get up and had caught a burst across his neck. He was dead. I reached in and pulled Roxanne out of the vehicle.

  “Come on, we have to get away. There may be more of them.” She looked at me with a blank stare. I hoped that she was not in shock. I wondered why I wasn’t in shock myself but something had kicked in and I felt in control for the first time in days.

  I pulled her from the truck as she slung her backpack over her shoulder. I half dragged her in a staggering run to the ravine from where I had seen the shooters emerge. The heat and dust were overwhelming. It was hard to breath. The short run to the ravine left me sweating and thirsty. The smell of the sun baked blood that covered us was turning my stomach. We rolled into the ravine and lay there gasping for air and covered in dust. The heat was a palpable force that was sucking the life out of us. I looked around. A short way off I saw a beat up small red truck. We ran to it. Luckily the keys were in it. I shoved Roxanne into the front seat and started the thing up. She was staring straight ahead with her eyes wide open. She was covered in blood. She sat clutching her backpack to her chest and rocking back and forth. I was a mess of dirt and gore myself.

  “Roxanne, what the hell is going on? That dead Mexican looking guy said something to me. It sounded like Sergoo. Does that mean anything to you? Should we wait and see if he really called for a chopper or should we run? What were you trying to tell me before we left?”

  She remained silent, only staring straight ahead. I took her face in my hand and turned it to me. She looked at me in silence. I shook her head. “Talk to me. Snap out of it.”

  She blinked her eyes. “There is no helicopter coming. We have got to run.”

  “Run? Why do we have to run?”

  “Because those two ATF agents were dirty, that’s why. Something must have gone wrong or we would be dead. Hurry Billy, no time to talk, we have to get out of here.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I started the truck and threw it into gear. The tires spun in the loose dirt and the back end of the truck started to swerve back and forth in a cloud of dust. I eased off the gas and we began to move down the wash. After a quarter of a mile we came to a concrete abutment that allowed me to pull the truck out of the ravine. We were now running on a dirt road along side a wire fence. The flat treeless ground seemed to have no end. After speeding along the fence line for a few minutes I spotted a lean-to next to the fence with a trough that I hoped was full of water. It was probably a shade and watering spot for animals.

  I stopped the truck. “Listen Roxanne, we got to get this gore off of us. The smell is making me sick. Come with me.”

  I got out and pulled her from the truck. I lifted the wire fence and we crawled
through. I had the rifle with me. Luckily I was right and the trough was full of water. I told her to remove her shoes and socks and get in the trough and try and wash off as much blood as she could. I followed her in and did the same. The water felt good even though it was hot. I kept looking for

  62 anyone to show up but we seemed to be alone. We got as clean as we were going to get. While we were washing off I saw a cloud of dust approaching. I jumped out of the water and grabbed the rifle. I motioned for Roxanne to stay low in the water. In a surreal scene out of a movie a group of six or seven ostriches emerged from the dust and came running to the trough. They were nasty looking beasts. I put the AR-15 to my shoulder but they stopped when they saw me.

  “Jesus, is this some damn Monty Python skit? I can’t believe that after what we just survived we are going to be pecked to death by Big Bird.”

  Roxanne was standing in the trough wringing out her shirt. Any other time in my life and I would have been staring in wonder at her redbra encased breasts. This time, though, all I could think of was getting away from these damn prehistoric looking birds.

  “They won’t bother us.” She said. “I used to ride them at the ostrich festival when I was a kid. Just ignore them.”

  She was right. Once she climbed out of the trough they only came and sipped at the water. When I waved my arms and shouted at them the birds scattered. They ran off trailing more clouds of dust in their wake. This whole scene was getting more bizarre by the moment.

  I helped Roxanne with her shoes and socks. She was still trembling so bad that she was having trouble controlling her hands. We stood in the sun drying off. The air was so hot that our clothes began to dry almost immediately. I went back to the truck and pulled her backpack out.

  “Do you have any water in here?” I asked. She took the pack from me and with still unsteady hands unzipped a compartment and pulled out a bottle of spring water. We shared it but it was not enough. I turned to her and despite our situation I began to laugh.

  “What is so funny?” she asked. I pointed to her head. “It’s your hair. It got all frizzed up; you sort of look like a stoned Rastafarian.”

  “That’s really observant of you.” She said as she began to put on her shirt. “We better get moving. I don’t know how long it will be until someone finds out what happened here. As you can see no helicopter showed up. That was a bogus call that Johnson made. I think he was in on something with the men you killed. Something must have gone wrong and they decided to eliminate us all. We have got to get out of here.”

  “Sure, but where are we going? Shouldn’t we call someone like the FBI or the cops?”

  “Billy, I don’t know. I am so scared and confused. I don’t know who to trust. I have no idea what is going on or why I am part of this.” 64

  “I have to get hold of Ridley, my lawyer friend. He’ll know what to do. Let’s get in the truck and back to civilization.”

  The sun had dried us out and the heat was beginning to make me dizzy. We climbed in the truck. I had to put my shirt over the steering wheel because it was too hot to touch. The truck had no air conditioning and it was hard to breath.

  With the windows open we were choking on the dust that the truck threw up. I followed the fence line to a road that fortunately led us back to Highway 10. We turned north and headed back to Phoenix. We debated about who we should see. I asked Roxanne what made her suspicious of the agents.

  “I wondered about the whole thing from the beginning,” she said in a shaky voice. “Usually I am contacted by the same female agent who sets up the appointments for my services. I am then sent a contract that I have to sign for confidentiality and renumeration. I am then given a date and time to be at ATF headquarters or at a hospital or prison. I am always briefed before hand and given time to study the case and what is needed by the agency. This time it was different. I got a call from Johnson, who I knew only slightly from a past case. He told me this was top priority and the agency had no time to set up the usual arrangement. He made it sound like it was some national emergency and we had to work as fast as possible or lives would be lost. He only told me briefly what they were looking for and said he would pick me up at my home the next morning. I started to question him but he said he had to go and reiterated how urgent this was and that I should be ready at 10 AM in the morning. Before I could say another word he hung up. I guess in retrospect I should have verified this with the ATF but I had no reason to doubt him.

  When he picked me up this morning he was very cryptic about where we were going or why the interview was being done at the safe house. I should have asked him why he was picking me up at home. I did not think to question him because I had been here once before to interview a witsec person, that’s witness protection, so everything seemed legitimate. But when we got there something seemed wrong. First of all I had never seen this agent Breck before. Second of all the paperwork they gave me on your case was photocopied from the Scottsdale Police Department and there was nothing from the ATF. That is very unusual. All cases that I have worked on have been vetted and printed up on agency letterheads. Aside from the local police report, I had nothing. Also on the way out here Johnson was very circumspect about what they were looking for. I think now that they were only trying to see what you knew before they decided what to do with you. I doubt that the agency knows what is going on.”

  See stared ahead in silence. I didn’t know what to think but I did not want anything more to do with the ATF.

  “Listen Roxanne, I am not going any further with this. I am going back to my place and getting my weapons and whatever cash I have and I am leaving town. I’ll call Ridley and run this shit by him but you have got me all spooked. Plus if they were going to kill me then they would have to kill you to. But it is all crazy because why did those Mexicans shoot the agents? Who or what is Sergoo? None of this is making any sense.”

  “I know, Billy. I don’t understand any of this business either. But we can’t just run. We witnessed the murder of two, or at least one, federal agent. You murdered two men. It may have been in self defense but somebody is going to come across the SUV and the bodies. I know we should go to the authorities but which agency can we trust?”

  She looked at me and pushed herself against the door. “You killed two men and we left the scene of the crime. I have to confess that I would not have thought you capable of such a thing.”

  “Yeah, me neither but what else was I supposed to do? I saved our lives. It’s lucky that I grew up in the military and was in the service. I just got tired of being shoved around and treated like a criminal by Breck and Johnson. Although I guess I am one now. I surely thought that shooting two people to death would be a traumatic event but I feel nothing now except anger. I think I’m getting blood simple because now I feel as if I could easily shoot anyone that fucks with me.

  This is all so bizarre; I feel like I am in the middle of one of my books. What are you going to do? You know too much now. Do you think you can just go home and forget about all this? Who ever set this up had to know you were there if the Agents were in on this. Shit, I can’t make any sense out of any of this. Did Johnson say anything about who the people at the house were? Or why they had that dead girl spying on them?”

  Still huddled in the corner of the front seat, she only shook her head. I think the trouble she was in was just beginning to sink in. She began shaking again despite the brutal heat. I hoped she wasn’t going to lose it completely and go catatonic on me.

  68

  CHAPTER EIGHT We finally arrived in downtown Scottsdale after what seemed like an eternity. I parked the truck a few blocks from my apartment. I got Roxanne out and stood her against a wall. She leaned there with her backpack hanging off one shoulder looking like a zombie. I found a rag under the driver’s seat and wiped down all the areas in the truck that I could remember having touched. I left the keys in the ignition and hoped someone would steal it. We began the walk to my building. I could not think of anywhere else to go. The hea
t was almost like a lead weight that was crushing the life out of us. We looked like two homeless people but at least the gore was off us. The blood had faded to a dull series of splatters across our clothing. I had to get us some liquid before we passed out from dehydration. I pulled Roxanne into a Starbucks and got us two iced coffees and a couple of bottled waters. I needed the caffeine and the liquid. She had totally shut down and just sat there sipping at her drink.

  “Hurry up and finish. We should be off the streets.” I pulled her out of her seat and we

  69 continued to my place. I knew this was a risk but I had to get my stash if I was going on the run. I had managed to get my cell phone out of my case before we left. I hit Ridley’s number but it went to voice-mail.

  Luckily it was late afternoon when the heat was at its worst and the streets were empty. The oppressive heat and building humidity made it feel as if we were walking through thick mud. We managed to get into the building unseen. I dragged her up to the third floor. We trudged down the hallway to my place. I opened the door and threw her pack on the couch. She stood in the middle of the room.

  I shook her gently. “Roxanne, snap out of it. We have to think. I don’t know how long we can stay here.”

  “I’m OK, Billy. It is just so much to take in. This is a nightmare; I can’t think clearly.” “Never mind that, we have to clean up and

  make a plan. You take a shower while I get my

  stuff together.”

  I led her to the bathroom. I brought her some