The Tempest

by A. J. Scudiere

  In the back room he found a ratty looking girl and a baby. He couldn’t pick them up. That would be the end of him. But a beckoning hand made the girl jump up, grab at the half naked and dirty infant who was too scared to cry, and follow him.

  If he’d had a heart that might have broken it – that the baby stayed quiet. To be that young and already know that crying did you no good. Or worse.

  He gathered guns as he left the house. Weighted down to the point where he could feel it, he pushed back at the hate and despair in him. He was leaving with more ammo on him than he came in with. And that was just the leftovers in the guns. Jesus, he could start a militia with what he was carrying. But he knew better than to leave it for the few he’d left behind to get any stupid bright ideas.

  The girl followed him up to his vantage point on the hill, baby expertly balanced on one hip. Lee guessed life was bad when following the gunman looked like a good idea. He pointed to an ear-safe distance and watched as the girl hunkered down and managed to cover both her own ears and the baby’s. He didn’t look at them again, knowing he wouldn’t like what he learned.

  Instead he trained his focus on the doors to the house. He planted bullets at the feet of anyone who tried to leave. When he saw the sirens in the distance he started gathering his things, but stayed put until car doors were opening up and bullhorns were put to use.

  His hand gestured to the girl to follow him again, and she obeyed, even as he tugged the plain ball cap a little lower. It wouldn’t do for her to see his face. He knew what the tale from the house would be. All they’d be able to accurately give was the average mouth and square jaw. His eyes would be described as everything from savior blue to silver to gleaming red. In some descriptions he would quote the bible and in others he’d have horns. Every hair color imaginable would be conveyed and some would say ponytail while others would swear he was bald. Few would get the color of the nondescript ball cap right, or even if he was wearing it.

  But if the girl got a good look she could give him away. So he walked ahead and kept the bill low. He thought about packing them into the car, but the car was a piece of work and he couldn’t afford to ditch it. Which meant he couldn’t afford to put them in it. And he didn’t have car seats anyway.

  That thought almost made him laugh out loud. Car seats were from another world. Certainly one this girl and the baby hadn’t lived in. He led them through trees and along back streets, leaving them at a park. Without making eye contact, he told the girl to wait an hour, pointing out the clock on the bank, then to go into the church across the street and tell them about her and the baby. He told her to ask for sanctuary. Even though she didn’t know what it meant, she needed it.

  Two months later he had done his research and was in Chicago to take out one of the people who was in the ring responsible for him. Only rarely did he allow himself luxuries, and today he got one. He stood in front of the lot where the house had stood. It was, of all things, a daycare now. No one would move into the house he’d left behind. And no one wanted to put their own home on that site. There was an Indian burial ground feel to the place, he knew.

  Regardless, the new daycare buildings denied him the simple moment of looking at the front steps and imagining Sam and Bethy climbing up them, groceries in hand . . . he didn’t get any further than that.

  He had walked away, thinking that he had gotten a little better, a little further from the pain, or maybe just a little colder.

  But now he pushed out the back window of the house he himself had just violated, as close to happy as he got. This last guy hadn’t died of gunshot wounds per se. Lee had found a better method, thanks to a nice handful of anatomy books hidden in the cabin in the Appalachians. The first three rounds, fired through the silencer and purposefully sunk into the plaster walls, had effectively corralled the guy and made him scared. But the fourth and fifth, the only two intended for the victim, had punctured lungs.

  Lee felt lighter just thinking about it. The man hadn’t bled to death, although he had bled more than Lee had expected. He was still pooling in his own living room, having asphyxiated because the bullets had punctured the chest wall. From his reading, Lee had learned that lungs collapsed without an intact chest cavity. If it were only one side, then there was simply a lot of pain and terror, and the lung could be re-inflated at the hospital.

  He had enjoyed watching this man who had given the orders, or at least rubber-stamped the massacre of his wife and daughter, suffer the inability to breathe air. Lee hadn’t been able to watch as long as he would have liked, because the wheezing and kneeling and chest grasping‒the look that life was denied to his victim‒hit a little too close to home. He remembered doing just those things himself when he’d found the broken bodies and the blood that had splattered so many directions that everything was red. The cops had later said they couldn’t tell what had been his wife’s and what had been his daughter’s. So, very quickly, Lee had shot out the other lung and watched this asshole smother in open air.

  While it had been brutal to relive those moments, it seemed perversely fitting. If he could steel himself a little he might just keep using this method. He hopped to the ground, leaving bent grass beneath his feet. He considered a nice gut shot before deflating the lungs next time. It would require more reading.

  Knowing full well that he was leaving blatant evidence of his entrance and exit, Lee continued. What did he care if they knew who he was? They’d have a hard time finding him. He didn’t exist. Hadn’t since the day he’d found his wife and kid. Well, technically his brother had propped him up long enough to collect the life insurance policies. He’d drunk several thousand of the dollars away, before ‘they’ had showed up demanding his cooperation.

  He’d been smaller then. And he’d agreed. Although the urge to laugh at them had been overwhelming‒what else was there for them to threaten? But he’d held it together even though he smelled like a brewery and felt like the mouse in the vat. Then he’d gone to the bar to look drunk while he planned. He cashed out his account about five minutes before he drove his car off a bridge and disappeared. Looking back, it had been a pretty amateur job he’d done of ‘killing’ himself.

  He was much better at these things now.

  Which was why it was such a shock to look up and find out he’d run into her. With eyebrows raised, she was standing right in front of him in the dark back alley. He’d spent too much effort thinking and not enough acting.

  The houses here were too far apart, trees had been planted along these back roads offering plenty of cover that would only be broken if a car came through with headlights blazing.

  The girl was glaring daggers at him and, having seen her work, he wondered if actual metal just might come out of her eyes.

  Lee took a moment to look her over. He’d been so startled the last time he’d seen her that he hadn’t really seen. She was slim and dressed in her leather shadows again. Her skin was slightly olive and her eyes dark. Even God had made her for blending into the night. He might have called her pretty, but she was much too young. She was actually ‘cute’. And that alone was scarier than any demons he could think up.

  She was also about six inches shorter than him, which he guessed put her at five-six, five-seven. And she had her little hands clenched on her hips, her body rigid. “Did you kill him?”

  Lee let himself look a little taken aback at the demand. “Yes, honey, I did.”

  “I am not your honey.”

  He hmphed. “Maybe not, but you owe me one.”

  She shrugged back into a blue quilted jacket, and slung a red standard high school backpack over her shoulder. “I don’t owe you shit.” She turned to walk away, but Lee hadn’t heard enough.

  The Heckler came out from his back and he shot a silenced round into the tree next to her.

  She stopped even as the bark still flew, then slowly turned. He had to hand it too her, she didn’t look intimidated. Even people with guns were often intimidated by him. He was big, brawny,
and bad ass. And he didn’t care what anyone did to him. He’d just keep coming ‘til he was dead. But this girl looked almost bored with him.

  “What the hell do you want? You ruined my evening.” The light from the moon filtered through the trees and barely bounced off her. He might have looked past her if he hadn’t almost run smack into her.

  “Your name.” He held the gun trained only a few lethal inches from her.

  “Sin.”

  He laughed. That was perfect for her.

  Laughing was a mistake.

  She was near enough to take advantage of his momentary change of focus. With swift movements, she grabbed his hand in both of hers so softly that he didn’t even realize what she was doing. But she put pressure on the pulse point at his wrist and against the back of his hand, easily turning the gun away from her and almost around to him.

  He felt himself jerk with surprise, and in that moment she yanked the Heckler from his grasp.

  A quick bite to his tongue was all that kept him from yelling out “Shit!”

  With the haughty air of a sheriff punishing a delinquent, she slipped the ammo from the gun, tucking the clip into her pocket before handing the gun back to him with a look that said she thought he ought to be a little more careful with it in the future.

  Two could play at that.

  With a sigh, he moved his hand along the front of his belt and pulled another clip loose. He casually slid it into the gun and re-aimed it at her.

  She should have at least kept the gun, he had three more on him and had been reaching for another even as she had popped the clip out of the one she’d taken. At least then it would have been a fair fight.

  She flung her hands out to the side. “Fine then, shoot me already.”

  She wasn’t afraid. Not of him, or his gun, or the fact that the two together could easily remove her from this life.

  She looked like a high-schooler‒with her backpack and her hair hanging down in French braids this time. There was every possibility that she didn’t just look like a school-girl but was one.

  She was also an artist. She’d gotten in his face, although a good part of that was his own fault. But she’d gotten his gun off him, which had never happened before.

  The first thing he’d learned about guns was that you never aimed at anything you didn’t intend to kill. So Lee lowered the gun.

  He couldn’t shoot Sin.

  One Click VENGEANCE now

  About the Author

  A.J.’s world is strange place where patterns jump out and catch the eye, little is missed, and most of it can be recalled with a deep breath. In this world, the smell of Florida takes three weeks to fully leave the senses and the air in Dallas is so thick that the planes “sink” to the runways rather than actually landing.

  For A.J., reality is always a little bit off from the norm and something usually lurks right under the surface. As a storyteller, A.J. loves irony, the unexpected, and a puzzle where all the pieces fit and make sense. Originally a scientist and a teacher, the writer says research is always a key player in the stories. AJ’s motto is “It could happen. It wouldn’t. But it could.”

  A.J. has lived in Florida and Los Angeles among a handful of other places. Recent whims have brought the dark writer to Tennessee, where home is a deceptively normal-looking neighborhood just outside Nashville.

  For more information:

  www.ReadAJS.com

  AJ@ReadAJS.com