X2: Another Collection of Horror

by C. M. Saunders

  Without thinking about it too much, Jimmy seized Roadkill under the armpits and heaved with all his might, wincing as broken bones jarred horribly together. Jimmy hoisted him up and sat him atop the stretcher, where Roadkill obediently flopped backwards and allowed himself to be strapped in once more, dislocated jaw hanging at an angle allowing a stream of blood and mucus to leak out of his mouth.

  Jimmy paused long enough to admire a black serpentine tattoo inscribed with the words Vivo para Sempre, before jabbing the needle into the meat of Roadkill's upper arm,. Then he depressed the plunger, withdrew the syringe, and got the hell out of there as quickly as his shaking legs would carry him.

  “Everything okay back there? You look a little pale. Even paler than usual,” Tito said, chuckling at his own joke as Jimmy returned to the cab and handed over the keys.

  “Yeah, sure,” Jimmy said, trying not to sound as shaken as he felt.“Guy's alive, all right. Somehow. But I don't know for how much longer. He's pretty beat up. I gave him a sedative.”

  “Well, let's hope that sedative takes care of things,” Tito replied with a wink as he started up the engine and turned the radio back on.

  Jimmy didn't say anything. Instead, he buckled his seat belt and let out a heavy sigh. He had an awful feeling the sedative wouldn't take care of things. Not at all.

  A few miles down the road, the knocking started again. Tito glared over at Jimmy.“Thought you said you gave that sucker a sedative.”

  “I did,” Jimmy protested, his heart sinking a notch.“I stuck the needle right into the middle of this big God-damned snake tattoo he had.”

  Tito was quiet for a moment. Then he said,“Was it a black snake?”

  “What? Yeah, it was a black snake. With some Portuguese or Brazilian or whatever written underneath it.”

  “What'd the words say?”

  “Fuck should I know?” Jimmy shrugged.“I don't speak your weird-ass language.”

  “I know. But you can read, can't you? Same building blocks in a different order. That's what you told me, teacher. Tell me what the words said, and maybe you can do enough job that I can translate.”

  Jimmy frowned and thought for a few moments. Surprised at himself, even though he hadn't taken much notice at the time, he found he could remember what was written under the black snake. His grasp of Portuguese was poor, bordering on non-existent, but perhaps some instinct deep inside him recognized the significance of the words and burned them into his memory. He spoke slowly, trying to mimic what he assumed to be the correct pronunciation,“Vivo Para Sampro. I think. Some shit like that.”

  “Vivo Para Sempre?” Tito repeated in his flawless Brazilian Portuguese.

  Jimmy nodded,“Sounds about right.”

  Jimmy saw Tito stiffen and grip the steering wheel ever tighter.“Hey, what's up Tito, my man?”

  “Nothin'.”

  Jimmy spent ten hours or more a day with the guy, and had done for months. He knew him pretty well. Something had spooked his partner.“It's not nothin'. What's the deal, Tito? What's on your mind? What does the guy's ink have to do with anything?”

  Tito shifted nervously in his seat, hands holding the steering wheel so tight now that his knuckles were white, standing out against his brown skin. What started as a routine night, or as close to routine as any given night could be in this job, had turned into a literal white-knuckle ride.

  “Tito...”

  “Okay, dammit. It's a gang tattoo.”

  Jimmy was unimpressed.“Yeah, so?”

  “Every gang has their own tatts,” Tito continued.“They be like symbols. An' I guess we got us a member of da... in English I guess you would call 'em Devils?”

  “That's original,” Jimmy said dismissively.“So we picked up a gang-banger, so what? We do it all the time.”

  “These ain't your average gang-bangers. These are the real bad asses.”

  Thump, thump, thump!

  “They all are,” Jimmy said.“That's why they are gang bangers and not pizza delivery boys.”

  “Yeah well, the Devils, right,” Tito shifted awkwardly in his seat.“They're a little... different. Special.”

  “Oh yea? How so?”

  “They're known for messing about with black magic and shit. It's how they got the name, and the reputation. They put spells and hexes on people, conjure up demons and who knows what other bullshit. Like they think every day is fuckin' Halloween day. Scary fucks.”

  “Devil-worshipping gang members? Are you shitting me?” Jimmy threw up his hands in exasperation.

  Rather than attempt to answer a hypothetical question, Tito resorted to his go-to line,“This is Brazil, dude.”

  Jimmy shook his head disbelievingly.“And every day is a fuckin' adventure. Ain't I the lucky one? So what do the words mean?”

  “ Vivo Para Sempre?”

  “Yeah...”

  “It mean 'live forever,'” Tito explained, raising his voice to be heard over the increasing din behind them.“It's their motto.”

  “That's just fucking beautiful. So how far to the hospital?” Jimmy asked.

  “If we don't hit no traffic, maybe twenty or thirty minutes.”

  “Wonderful,” Jimmy said, though he wasn't sure Tito heard him. Or would even care if he did. He wasn't yet sure if his partner understood the concept of sarcasm.

  The banging behind them was gradually reaching a crescendo. What was more, it was now accompanied by a low, strangled gurgling punctuated by the occasional groan of vented frustration. Jimmy leaned forward and turn up the music. It was a relief when the thrashing strains of Metallica's Enter Sandman flooded the cab.

  But far from being a deterrent, Metallica only seemed to anger Roadkill, who let out a garbled, muffled cry of rage and began reigning blows down on the partition wall hard enough to make it shudder in its frame.

  “Don't know how much longer that cage back there will hold him...” Jimmy said.

  Tito didn't reply. Instead, he accelerated a little more and hunched his body protectively over the wheel, eyes fixed dead ahead. He had the air of a man on a mission.

  The banging, thumping and moaning continued unabated. Until a few miles later when Tito suddenly grumbled,“Fuck it!” and pulled Cigano over to the side of the deserted road.

  “What are you doing?” Jimmy asked, alarmed.“Let's just get the motherfucker to a hospital. Any hospital. Warm or cold. We'll just drop him off, fill out the paperwork, and then he'll be someone else's problem.”

  Jimmy couldn't tell Tito the real reason he didn't want to stop was because he didn't want to go look in the back. Not again.

  “He'll be someone else's problem, all right,” Tito said, unlocking the glove compartment.“I got something else for that tough hunk of living meat to be thinking about.” With that Tito opened the glove box and produced the biggest handgun Jimmy had ever seen. It was a silver six-shooter, like the kind you saw in westerns.

  “Jesus Christ, Tito!” Jimmy said, alarmed.“What the fuck is that?” Guns made him nervous.

  “Its my piece, what does it look like?”

  “It looks like trouble, that's what it looks like,” Jimmy complained. Tito had alluded to having a gun many times in the past, but that was something almost everyone did in South America. At least within the circles Jimmy moved in. The problem was that nobody was ever really sure if anyone else was really packing or if they were just talking shit. It was a continent-wide game of bluff and double-bluff. In a weird kind of way, just owning a real gun spoke volumes for Tito's integrity.

  For a horrible moment, Jimmy's thought the gun was meant for him. That maybe Tito was some kind of demented serial killer who got off on killing dumb foreigners and dumping their bodies in dark places where nobody would ever find them. That would explain what happened to his last partner.

  But instead of killing him, Tito killed the engine, and plucked the keys out of the ignition, causing the music to die mid-riff. The frantic banging stopped with it, and Jimmy could imagine Roadki
ll in the back, head cocked, wondering what had just happened.

  Without another word, Tito unclipped his seatbelt, swung open the driver's side door, and stepped out into the night.

  Jimmy stayed put, weighing up his options. He thought about making a run for it. But they were in the middle of nowhere. Anything could happen to him out here alone at night. It took just seconds to realize that there were no options. He wasn't just along for the ride, he was in this up to his neck. Cursing under his breath, he followed Tito out of the cab.

  As he walked unsteadily toward Cigano's rear, he heard the jangle of keys, followed by an exclamation of surprise. Then, Tito screamed. It wasn't a scream of rage or fear, it was a scream of pain. Jimmy knew the difference. In that instant, the gravity of the situation fully dawned on him. If big, tough Tito was in this much trouble, the situation must be dire.

  Jimmy broke into a dash, arriving at the rear of the old ambulance to find Tito on his back with Roadkill on top of him.“Get the fucker offa me!” the Brazilian shouted. Both of his thick hands were wrapped around the crash victim's throat, and it looked for all the world as if he was trying to take a bite straight out of Tito's face. There was blood, lots of blood, though at first it was unclear where it was coming from.

  The gun lay on the ground beside the struggling pair. Jimmy saw it, but didn't want to pick it up. Instead, he lashed out with a boot and caught Roadkill squarely in the sternum, the blow sending the thing that wouldn't die flailing into the dirt.

  Tito immediately scrambled and snatched up his weapon, ranting in Portuguese as he did so. Jimmy didn't need to understand the words to know what was on his partner's mind. He got the gist. Tito had finally lost it.

  Roadkill was trying to get to his knees, swaying wildly from side to side. All that head trauma must have knocked the shit out of his equilibrium.

  Tito, still ranting so much that spittle was flying out of his mouth, pushed the barrel of the gun against Roadkill's forehead and pulled the trigger.

  A deafening blam! shattered the stillness of the night, and the crash victim was thrown backward in a pink spray of blood and brain matter. He landed spread-eagled on his back, broken limbs twitching.

  Not satisfied, Tito stepped forward, tilted the gun to the side gangster style, and fired off three more quick rounds. What was left of Roadkill's head exploded with the impact of the large calibre bullets, leaving just a stumpy spinal column attached to a messy clump of matted hair and skull fragments.

  “Mofo bit me or summin,” Tito said, wiping at his wounded cheek with one hand whilst holding the still-smoking gun in the other.

  Unable to hold his last meal any longer, Jimmy doubled over and vomited into the vegetation lining the road. He wasn't ordinarily sick at the sight of carnage, but this was no ordinary case. Even for Brazil, this was a fucking freak show. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he straightened up and said,“Great move, Einstein, with the head shots and everything. How are we gonna explain that to your guy at the hospital?”

  “Who give's a flyin' fuck?” Tito replied nonchalantly.“We don't gotta explain nothin'. Just so long as no lead hit him in the parts them doctors can use. That's why I shot him in the head, see? Otherwise, they don't ask no questions. Now help me get him in the back. I'm startin' to losing patience with this stinky hunk of meat.”

  The body was a lot lighter minus the head, and easier to manoeuvre. This time, they didn't bother strapping it to the stretcher, there was no point, and within minutes they were back in the cab. Tito threw the handgun back in the glove compartment, put the vehicle into gear, and pulled off.

  Once back on the road, Tito turned the radio back on. It was still turned into the same rock station. Now The Ramones were singing 'Rockaway Beach,' the happy, go-lucky melody and lyrics completely at odds with the night's events. Tito sang along with the chorus in his flat monotone voice, as if he hadn't just blown somebody's head off.

  Jimmy tried to occupy his mind by thinking about what he was going to do when he got back to the tiny roach-infested apartment he rented. His usual routine after a night shift was a light breakfast of toast, eggs and maybe some fruit, a shower, and nine or ten hours of well-deserved sleep. Providing the noise of the city let him sleep. He had a feeling that today, sleep would be even more difficult to come by than usual.

  Just a few minutes later, the now-familiar banging started again. Tito and Jimmy exchanged a disbelieving look.

  “You gotta be fuckin' shitting me,” said the Brazilian with a shake of the head. Blood dripped down his chin from the bite on his cheek which had left a jagged hole.

  Jimmy felt the colour drain from his face. He suspected as much before, but now he knew for certain that tonight, he was treading within the realms of the supernatural.

  Live Forever.

  He didn't know the details. Didn't know whether the street gang called the Devils really used black magic to give themselves superpowers or make themselves unkillable, or if they had inadvertently driven Cigano onto the set of some kind of Romero-style horror movie.

  He didn't even want to know the details.

  He just wanted this night to end.

  “So what now, Tito?” He said, struggling to prevent his voice from wavering.“What now, big guy, huh? You already blew his head off. What's your next great idea?”

  Tito held the steering wheel steady and stared at the road ahead as Cigano streaked ever-nearer her destination. Some generic thrash metal music thundered and seared out of the speakers, and the beating on the partition increased, rocking it mercilessly within its frame.

  Suddenly, there was a crack and a splinter as the partition, the only thing separating Jimmy and Tito from the death-defying monstrosity occupying the space behind, finally began to succumb to the prolonged assault.

  “That wall ain't gonna last much longer...” Jimmy pointed out, as if it needed saying.

  Shouting to be heard above the rising din, Tito said,“Fuckin' Devils. Why can't they just stay dead?”

  “Maybe because they have some weird voodoo shit going on that lets them cheat death,” Jimmy replied. In the face of mounting evidence, what seemed so outlandish thirty minutes earlier was now the most plausible explanation.“If they are unstoppable, imagine how feared they must be on the street. One of those monsters could take out an entire opposition gang.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Tito.“And how's he gonna do that? By banging on their fuckin' door until they fuckin' kill themselves?”

  Jimmy ignored the comment.“That would explain why they ride their bikes so fast and live their lives so damn hard,” he reasoned.“They have no fear of death, or anything else. What else do you know about The Devils?”

  “I know they're fuckin' hard to kill,” Tito replied as he used the back of his hand to wipe blood off his chin.

  There was something written into his features that Jimmy didn't care for.“I know that, too,” he snapped.“What else, Tito. There's more. You got me into this. Now tell me everything you know before I walk away and let you deal with this whole sorry mess on your own!”

  As if to accentuate Jimmy's harsh words, the banging on the partition wall grew even more ferocious. There were no moans or shouts this time, probably only because Roadkill was missing a mouth, along with the rest of his face. But what he lacked in vocal dexterity he more than made up for in aggression and sheer determination.

  Another splintering sound.

  The partition could only be a few blows away from giving out.

  By way of riposte, Tito told Jimmy several times to go fuck himself in Portuguese. Jimmy was familiar enough with the vocabulary to understand that much.

  “Fine, Tito,” Jimmy said.“You have it your way, big guy. But tomorrow you are going to be trawling the bars again looking for a new partner.”

  Tito let out a frustrated sigh.“Okay, okay, partners is partners, right?”

  “Yes!” Jimmy barked, even as he decided that if things got too crazy he would skip out anyway. Jus
t save his own skin. Get out of there and find another job. Even being a bell boy in one of the hotels would be better than this. Hell, selling his ass for ten bucks a throw would be better than this.

  “The last guy who sat in that seat,” Tito tore his eyes off the road just long enough to thrust his bald, glistening head toward the passenger seat where Jimmy now sat, ashen-faced.“Well, he needed the money a lot more than you did. He was a junky see, and loved picking up dead gang-bangers just to get his hands on their stash. If you were lucky you got a dealer. Even if you were shit unlucky and just got a user, he would still have a pocket full of shit. It was him that introduced me to the good people over at Trinity Hospital.”

  “You're talking about your last partner?”

  “Yup. Had less morals than you, too. Do you say 'fewer' morals or 'less' morals than you?”

  “If you can't count them you have less,” Jimmy said, for once remembering something useful from his teaching stint.“Who gives a fuck, Tito? Just get on with the story.”

  “Right. Well, he was one of those bad guys that sometimes caused accidents himself so me n' him could pick up the pieces n' get paid. One night, we ran a motorcycle off the road and straight into a tree. Made a real mess of the guy. I swear, you could put what was left of him into a cigarette packet. Right before he croaked, he started freaking out. Screaming, cursing, dropping threats on us an' shit. Told us he knew what we done, and that nobody murdered no Devil and got away with it.”

  “Shit.”

  “Shit is right. He also said his boys would look us up someday. I thought he was just tripping. You know, off his head.”

  “What happened next?”

  “What d'ya think?”

  “The guy died?”

  “Damn fuckin' right he died,” Tito said. Jimmy noticed the Brazilian's eyes flick toward the glove compartment where he kept his gun, and hoped it didn't mean what he thought it meant. “And then?”