En El Medio

by Christopher Metcalf

  "I'm nobody. Just a kid, no one."

  "I see. Just a kid who happened to execute five people at point blank range. Nice."

  "Oh, that. I can explain." The punk started to move his right hand from his pocket then stopped, leaving it in. "That was payback. They deserved it."

  Preacher shook his head, but floating in the air 20-feet up, his alter ego went on alert. The kid's hand. Focus on the hand.

  "So you gave them what they deserved. It just happened to be a general, a high-level police official and Mendoza. Who was the woman?"

  "You don't know?"

  "No. Who is, who was she?"

  The kid's turn to shake his head. "Who are you? Who sent you here?"

  Watch the hand. Preacher looked the kid in the eye, but focused his peripheral vision on his right hand in the pocket.

  "I came here to help a friend out of a jam. How did you get down here, so far from your home in Dallas?"

  That brought a chuckle from the kid. "You don't have the story straight at all, do you? You don't have a clue what's really going on."

  Preacher's turn to chuckle. "I've got it pretty straight. Build a cover, build a network, always be in motion, never in one place for long. For your cover, you started with weed and moved up to cocaine and it's probably heroin next, right? Pretty impressive for a teenager."

  "I'll ask one more time and then I need to go. Who are you? Who sent you? Was it them? Are you here to kill me?" The kid's bearing changed. Preacher saw it from behind his eyes and from up above. He was prepared to explode.

  Be ready. He waited a couple of seconds and figured it out. Delay.

  They had been talking for 41 seconds. It was facade. The right hand was the key and Preacher saw it from up there. As the hand began to come out of the pocket, the earthbound Preacher dove to the right, rolled then burst back toward the kid as the shots were fired from a building top about 230 yards to the south. The kid had moved, dodged left and then turned to run back the way he'd come minutes earlier. The humans gathered in the vicinity screamed and ran and hit the ground.

  Preacher powered off his left foot, dove, rolled, rose, spun, raced eight steps, stopped, rolled again and sprinted toward the shooter, then left, then right. Shots continued to be fired. He could see the explosions, like a pinprick of orange flashing light.

  The rhythm of Preacher's motions was hectic and effective and totally contradictory to the steady beat of the Van Halen song blaring in his head. It was a tune he knew well. In fact, he'd been in the 7th row rockin' out to the original lineup of the band back in Tulsa as a teenager. He reached the first of two trees he had been heading for and jumped behind the trunk of the first.

  He looked back over at the cops who had hit the ground when the shots started. The three-dozen people in the immediate vicinity had also hit the deck or ran for cover. Many of them still screamed. There was less light over here by the trees, but it still wasn't pitch black like Preacher preferred.

  He looked over in the direction the kid had been and could see him running across the street and then between two buildings. Preacher planted his right foot and raced forward in a full sprint. Two more shots were fired.

  Then a strange thing happened.

  A dozen shots were fired from somewhere back across the open square. These shots were not fired at him. He glanced up to see the concrete wall at the top of the building explode as several rounds struck just below where the shooter had been firing at him.

  Damn.

  Preacher took this as his cue to turn and explode in the direction the kid had run. He reached the opening between two buildings 19 seconds later and tore into the dark alleyway and then to the right into another tight lane before turning left at the next intersection. He was moving on instinct and being powered along by the pounding beat of the Van Halen rocker.

  When he reached the next intersection, he stopped and stepped over into a doorway to examine the surroundings and catch his breath. He was doing fine as far as cardio. The elevation of Juarez at 3,700-feet was almost 9,000-feet below the altitude he had been running through trees and up mountainsides and across glorious meadows for the past six months.

  He concentrated, listened, became the night. His dark time as the Black Angel permitted him to learn how humans, like other creatures moving about the face of this earth, disturbed the world around them as they did so. Whether a bird through still night air or a deer through swaying branches or a human along a darkened concrete alley. The atmosphere is altered, unsettled by the movement. Sound is often the only lingering evidence.

  Preacher squatted and allowed the echoes of the night and tight alleys to tell him the story. The true secret of tracking prey through this dark world is an understanding of sound wave propagation and dynamics. Preacher consumed a dry as hell manual on the mechanics of sound as a freshman deep in the bowels of McFarlin Library on the campus of the University of Tulsa. Like so many other reference books and manuals and treatises, the information imparted in print and image changed the young man's life.

  When one understands the mechanisms of the hidden secrets of this world, life and living and being take on new meaning. None of this realization from eight-plus years ago occupied Preacher's mind as he took in the sequential waves of pressure moving through the air, echoing off concrete and asphalt and ricocheting off every available surfaces until attenuation deteriorates the sound waves to a quiet and reserved death.

  He heard it, the slip of a rubber shoe sole across a granular surface. Take in the variety of reflective options resulting from particle velocity and hone in on the ultimate source.

  Preacher was up and rocketing across the open space to the other side of the courtyard and moving along the wall to a very tight walkway, a tunnel really, leading from the alley. He couldn't see the way from above. He had the street details in the vicinity of the three main Juarez/El Paso border crossings memorized. But covered alleys and walkways and back doors and tunnels were beyond the powers of his photographic memory.

  Into the walkway, he tracked the steps racing ahead. He could not see the kid yet, but that was coming. He pushed forward into the dark and instinctively brought his left forearm up in front of his face. He held the silenced Berretta in his right hand. He switched from left forearm to right as he veered around the corner. And switched again as he moved into an open space.

  The footsteps stopped. He immediately dropped to his side and onto his back with the gun aimed forward. Shots came, five of them. They struck the wall just feet above him.

  He identified the location of the muzzle flashes and spun back onto his stomach to launch four silenced bullets into that space. As he squeezed the trigger the fourth time, he rolled to the right twice and waited two seconds before rising to a knee, prepared to fire again.

  Instead, footsteps sounded again, running the opposite direction.

  He was up and sprinting after the rhythmic sound of rubber soles lightly slapping concrete, then asphalt, then gravel, then dirt. They were out into an open lot. Clouds obscured the moonlight. Preacher tracked the kid across the dirt lot into another alley.

  The kid bound up a cinderblock wall. Not smart. It slowed him down. Preacher was at the wall an instant later and over it even quicker. They were in a back yard with children's toys scattered about and a family's laundry hanging on lines. The kid knew he couldn't make it over the next wall before his assailant was on him.

  Preacher had been examining the kid's movements. They were powerful, explosive. He was a natural athlete. Thin, wiry, strong, light on his feet.

  But the lanky frame was also the younger man's weakness. For upon the wiry framework was insufficient muscle mass to propel him at a sustained speed necessary to shake his stronger, faster foe. So Preacher was not surprised in the least when the kid planted his left foot. He watched the planterflexion, stiffening of the foot as toes were extended within the kid's shoe, planting the foot for the turn back toward his pursuer. Preacher knew the physiological actions taking place fro
m the punk's tippy toes, up through his gastrocnemius muscles in his calves, the fibularis longus, the gluteus maximus, the latissimus dorsi, trapezius and finally the longus colli rotating the kid's head upon his neck.

  The entire sequence of coordinated movements lasted less than a second. But because the kid tried to lift and aim the gun in his right hand, it took too long, far too long when a tiger, a panther, an hyper-violent leopard is a half-step behind.

  Preacher intercepted the gun arcing his direction, blocking it with the back of his right hand with the Berretta in his grip. The blow caused the kid to flex and squeeze the trigger, sending a bullet into the cinderblock wall, waking the dead with the noise. Preacher surmised that inside the house, awakened and frightened children were about to scream out for their parents. He thought about his own child doing the same in the years to come. Resolve hardened; termination of a threat elevated to ultra necessity.

  He planned to end this now. Ahora.

  Funny thing about plans. They infrequently work as expected, as planned.

  In the same jumpstep that he blocked the kid's gun with his outstretched right arm, he brought a cocked left arm, and more specifically his left elbow, up to meet the right temple of his target. The blow would deliver pain and disorientation, concussion as brain smashed against skull. It is usually followed by unconsciousness. Usually.

  Just as Preacher had a plan to disable and end, the kid initiated a split-second plan to receive and end.

  It started with a head roll.

  Instead of Preacher rolling his head to loosen his neck before taking aggressive action, it was the kid rolling his. The concept is simple and timeless where human hand-to-hand combat is concerned. Roll with the punches. Move your head in the same direction as the incoming blow to lessen the impact. Simple physics. Preacher knew the concept intricately.

  So it was with some surprise, and yet not, that Preacher's flying elbow strike met with a rolling head by the kid, who then did a somewhat amazing move and completely reversed his previous momentum and trajectory by ducking to the left, pivoting and spinning back around so that he too could deliver a left elbow blow to his attacker. Friggin' brilliant move.

  The reverse spinning elbow caught Preacher on his left cheekbone, just below temple. His forward momentum combined the impact of the blow and the resulting collision of brain against skull brought about immediate disorientation and caused him to tumble over the kid's planted right leg onto the sparse grass below.

  Confusion was micro-momentary as Preacher landed on his right shoulder, rolled onto his back, left side and exploded back toward the kid off his planted right foot. His target for the upward thrust was the punk's gun.

  He found the gun, but unfortunately, it was the barrel striking him on the top of his skull. Damn.

  Preacher absorbed the metal bashing his head with a cringe and a shudder, but no time to recover. He brought his own gun up to fire, but his right forearm was met by the kid's left knee. The impact caused the muscles in Preacher's forearm to seize and release. The Berretta flew away. Huh. This was definitely not going as planned.

  Without delay, Preacher exploded up off firmly planted shoes to lift the kid above him up off the ground and into the air where he could reverse upward inertia force and bring the fabric he had gripped in hand and the human clothed within it down to the ground in a hard, painful thud. It was a vicious act and he heard what he'd hoped for. The kid's gun skittered across the ground upon impact.

  But the kid wasn't done. Not even close. With Preacher on top of him, he brought a knee up to the exposed rib cage. The blow surprised and convulsed lungs to expel air within. But it was not powerful enough to move the assailant off of the younger man. So each grasped, pulled tight, removed any leverage, any pivot points. It was a wrestling match now.

  The two of them grappled and huffed and struggled for any advantage. Preacher, who'd been caught off guard by the reverse elbow and gun barrel blow to his skull, was clearing the clouds from his head. Their faces were inches apart. The kid pulled his head back and used it as a sledgehammer against Preacher's face. He turned his head just enough so the blow missed his nose but viciously struck his cheek again.

  Preacher reciprocated by jamming his chin into the kid's right eye socket and then jack hammering up and down several times. It too was vicious. The kid released his right hand and reached up to grab hair on his opponent's head. He grasped a handful and pulled. It hurt, but only momentarily. Preacher reversed this action by slamming his head down again into the boy's face. The hair the kid had a hold of was yanked from Preacher's scalp.

  The blow to the punk's face proved to be too much as Preacher's forehead struck nose, crushing and breaking it badly. Blood spurted immediately.

  The kid reacted with a torrent, a tornado of action, which included spinning, rolling, kicking, punching and raising knees.

  It was an impressive sequence of movements. Several of the blows found purchase, landing on face, neck, shoulder and thigh. But the blows were not the only ones delivered. For Preacher knew the golden rule of combat -- the best defense is a vicious and merciless offense.

  The kid's blows, although impressive in their placement, delivery and strength, were not as skillfully placed and not with as much strength and accuracy as those of his opponent. Preacher saw the right cross coming and moved to the left to let the blow make contact with right shoulder so that his right knee could be lifted up violently into unprotected diaphragm.

  Similarly, a swinging left kick by the kid was gladly met with a right thigh so that a spinning reverse right elbow could batter an exposed neckline. The older, stronger male dominated each exchange of blows. Preacher knew this lesson. He had learned it painfully at the hands of Mikel Fuchs more than seven years earlier.

  Strength and experience and knowledge and understanding are nearly insurmountable challenges during hand-to-hand combat.

  After 47 seconds of this battle, the kid was bloody, brutalized and suffering from at least two broken bones. But the human spirit is the one element that combatants cannot see, cannot forecast. The kid had no intention, absolutely zero intention, of being beaten. The punk could not fathom the idea. And so he launched a Tasmanian Devil, Whirling Dervish, Chinese karate B-movie attack that would have overwhelmed, subdued and likely killed most humans.

  It was viciousness and ferocity elevated to an intensity Preacher had never before experienced. This was a human who would truly, honestly, rather die than lose.

  The ferocious attack, involving spitting, gouging, biting and multiple crotch shots was an onslaught. It was awesome. Preacher actually thought that in the midst, "en el medio," of the attack. He paused for the minutest sliver of a second and admired the fighting taking place.

  "Awesome." The word slipped from his tongue just after a chomping mouth passed within a quarter inch of his face. They were back on the ground with the kid now on top raining down punches and kicks and knees and spittle and curses.

  Preacher should be out, dead, or at minimum, barely hanging onto life and reality. The attack was that good, that comprehensive in its blatant disdain for humanity.

  But alas, some evil in this world doesn't know the depth of true evil when it encounters it. And no one, literally no one Preacher had met moving about on the surface of this big rock, shared his unique level of disdain and hatred and enmity toward others. He was indeed a hate machine. No one was his equal in this regard. Not even Marta. Preacher was singularly unique upon this planet in his ability to see and decipher and comprehend the stain that is humanity.

  We are animals evolved from a swirling sea of hatred and hopelessness that have been cursed with brain function that allows intellectual capacity to understand this reality. All is lost and gained and lost again in a meaningless lifetime that permits both the utterance of hope and submission to death. Often within the same breath.

  Preacher painfully absorbed the kid's shots and blows and curses. The punk was the real thing. A formidable opponent.


  But an end must come to every episode.

  Preacher convulsed his entire body, constricting every muscle to explode into his opponent, lift him up again and then drive him down into the hard ground with head contacting head, elbow crushing throat, knee slamming into testicles. The human beneath him received this singular explosion of violent malevolence in the only manner an organism can. Compliance and submission.

  He stayed atop the kid for a few seconds to confirm oblivion. He rolled off and lay on the ground looking up at the night sky above. Clouds got in the way of his stargazing. He imagined Marta looking up at the hidden stars above last evening before going to sleep. He closed his eyes and was there with her, up on that mountain, above the troubles and tribulations of the world. Preacher smiled, a real smile. Not his fake for the world smile he had used the day before and almost every day before that.

  The echoing disharmony of sirens and engines and tires on pavement rolling into the neighborhood caused him to open his eyes and rise. He turned to see lights on inside the house. Parents had undoubtedly gathered crying children in their arms and called la policia.

  He rolled to his feet, took a few steps over to his Berretta and bent to pick it up when he heard the movement behind. The cinderblock walls echoed the sound of a human getting to his feet. Preacher spun with the Berretta aimed and ready to fire.

  The kid stood on shaky legs and reached behind his back to his belt and retrieved a knife. Wonder why he hadn't pulled that already?

  Preacher rose to full upright position but lowered the gun to his side. The dark of early morning, with sunrise just a half an hour away over the eastern horizon, obscured some the wildness in the kid's eyes. But not all of it. He took a step toward Preacher as sirens came nearer. They were on the next block over. No time.

  But there is universal law.

  And universal law clearly states that pulling a knife and attempting to use it against Preacher is a no-no. In a universe bound by physics and equal reaction to every action, this act by any human is met with much more than equal reaction. People who pull knives on Lance Priest usually die.