by Jim Heskett
She slipped the handset back into its cradle and slowed down as Dave piloted the rig into the left lane of I-15, then into the service station. Two pumps, two buildings. One of the buildings was much smaller, probably a stand-alone bathroom.
As she parked, she took her 9mm from under the seat and flipped off the safety.
Dave jumped down from the rig, and she got out of her car, weapon pointed at the ground. She smiled at him. “I want to check out these buildings before you do anything, okay?”
“Sure, want me to stay here?”
She nodded. The night of the Colorado Springs bombing, Dave had fired a weapon, but since then, he wouldn’t even touch one. Lucky for him, Isabelle had trained at the firing range since she was sixteen. Came with having a cop for a dad.
She took a few steps toward the smaller building, but Dave whistled. She looked back at him and he waved her over.
“Did I miss something?” she said.
“You sure did,” he said as he pointed to his face.
She planted a wet kiss on his cheekbone. “My adorable pacifist boyfriend.”
“Hey, though, seriously: be careful.”
“I will. You be the big man and figure out what’s wrong with our rig. I’ll handle the girly stuff,” she said as she chambered a round into the pistol.
He jiggled the air lines coiling out of the back of the cab as she walked toward the smaller building. Pistol still at the ground, but she listened intently at the sound of her footfalls on the concrete. They hadn’t been so careful outside San Diego, where they’d started this trip. The well-worn trick of the broken down car by the side of the road, man waving for help. They should have known better. If Dave hadn’t kept the rig running, they might not have survived that stop.
Two doors faced out from the small building, no signs on the front but they had to be men’s and women’s bathrooms. She raised the pistol as she stepped in front of the left one. Eased close and gently pressed the lever, then pushed the door open as she jumped back with gun raised. Empty. Must have been the men’s room, since there was a urinal. And also, as an added bonus, there was a big brown dump right in the middle of it. Typical, when there was a perfectly good toilet two feet away from it.
The rest of the bathroom seemed as normal as any of the restrooms back in the old days. But when she opened the door to the women’s restroom, what she saw there was anything but normal.
Her free hand rushed to her mouth to halt the rush of bile up through her throat. She went a little woozy and wobbled on her feet for a couple of seconds before her head cleared and she regained her balance.
In the middle of the room, an outline of dried rose petals surrounded a decaying woman’s body. Hands at her sides and feet together. Her throat had been cut and the blood made a circle around her head and neck. The skin over her stomach and chest had been sliced open and folded back to reveal her ribcage.
But the most disturbing part was the single dead rose pointing up from an incision in her chest.
Three or four dozen candles littered the floor, sink, and baby changing station. Most of them were burned down to wax puddles. Lettering, the color of rust, spread all over the walls. Could have been shit or blood, either one was possible. Aside from a few pentagrams, the only legible text read:
Isabelle took a step back and slammed the door. Pinpricks of light danced across her eyes. Heat from the desert billowed and made the surrounding flatlands appear to be shimmering like water.
She and Dave had seen some messed-up things in the last few years, but nothing like this. Nothing Satanic.
When she turned back toward the rig, her boyfriend had slumped to the ground, his back up against the gas tank. She stumbled over to him.
“What happened?” he said.
“You don’t want to know.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Okay, do you need to check out the main gas station too?”
She looked at the larger building, with its unbroken windows covered with newspaper. “I really don’t want to. Tell me what’s going on with the truck.”
He rubbed his face with his hands. “Brakes. It’s not good. I need to at least replace the hoses, but I have no idea where we’ll find something like that. Bigger town, probably, but not here.”
“We can take the car and look for something back in Vegas.”
He pointed behind him. “We can’t leave this here. If those guys from San Diego figure out how we got away… they’re going to know the rig on sight, and then we’re screwed. Why don’t I stay here and you go scout something out? Maybe you can find some hoses and bring them back, and I can fix it up here.”
She looked back at the horror of the women’s bathroom. Even with the door shut, knowing what had happened in there sent bugs crawling all over her skin. “I’m not comfortable leaving you alone.”
He stood and paced. Found a little rock in the parking lot and whipped it at the cylindrical semi-trailer. The pebble pinged off the metal surface and scattered on the ground. “Then I don’t know what the hell we’re supposed to do. We never should have taken this job from Boss Chalmers to transport this stuff. It’s too valuable.”
He stopped pacing, and she walked behind him and slipped her arms around his waist. She squeezed, and he put his hands over her hands. “What about duct tape?” she said.
“Sure, if we had some. But I wouldn’t feel great about going too many miles without new hoses. We’re in a bit of a time crunch here, you know. Our pass to get into the Eastern Territories expires in… three days, four days?”
She removed a worn paper map from her pocket. “We’re maybe 30 miles from Sagurro. Looks small, but I’m sure they’ll have a body shop, right?”
“Probably. I’ll go check in the convenience store for the duct tape.”
Her hand shot out to grab his wrist. “No, you stay here with the rig. I’ll look for it.”
He nodded and tapped his cheek. She kissed him, then re-seated the clip in her pistol.
***
The last time Isabelle had seen duct tape was when Dave had ripped it off her bound hands and feet in the trunk of Mitchell’s car, the night Castillo and his men detonated C-4 at the Air Force Academy. She never wanted to see that gummy gray substance again after that night, but now they needed it to escape.
Every step toward the convenience store sent a rumbling pulse through her chest. What had bothered her most about the scene in the bathroom wasn’t the dead woman, it was the rose stem embedded in her chest. Why would someone do that?
At the glass front door of the store, she tried to peek through gaps in the newspapers, but didn’t see much beyond a few rows of empty shelves and a soda machine. She pulled on the door and it opened. No dinging bell to welcome her to the inside of the store.
What she found inside wasn’t as disturbing as the bathroom, but still not the typical pre-end times convenience store scene. The shelves were mostly barren except for a few empty packages of chips, a can or two of beans and a packaged toothbrush here and there. One large section of the back wall contained glass doors with small drink shelves, all of them empty. Wax-puddle candles dotted the room, from shelves to floors. Maybe a hundred of them. She swept up and down each aisle, careful where she placed her feet to avoid tripping on the slick wax. No duct tape. A large pentagram occupied most of one wall, and scratched around the pentagram, three phrases repeated over and over:
Infinity
Five Suns of Lies
To please the mistress
To her left was a glassed-in booth, and straight ahead was a large metal door, probably leading to a stockroom or cooler.
Pistol at shoulder height, she decided to check the glass booth first. She rounded the side to where a small latch would grant access. Looking through the glass partition, she couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. She unlatched the door and stepped inside. The only things behind the counter were cans of dip and a few packages of cigarettes, both of which were so old and dry that no one would have bother
ed to take them. She’d heard there were still tobacco growers in South Carolina, but hadn’t personally seen fresh tobacco in five years or more.
The cash register sat open, a few bills still inside. The money was even less worthwhile than the tobacco.
And then she saw it. Under the register on a shelf built into the wall: duct tape. The little gray roll looked like it had maybe six inches of duct tape left, but that would have to do. She snatched it up, folded the roll and stuffed it in her back pocket.
She should have left then, but something nagged at her. That back room. Maybe there would be nothing in there, or maybe there would be food. It was worth a shot, and she had a gun if she found anything more lively than food awaiting her.
She left the glassed booth and crept to the metal door. Transferred the gun to her left hand and gripped the door latch with her right. She pressed the lever as slowly as humanly possible, then pulled the door back toward her. A whoosh of air blew against her face as she peered inside and saw darkness. In a few seconds, her eyes adjusted.
The room was a walk-in cooler with a row of empty metal shelves. On the floor, no candles, but instead a series of bedrolls occupied the floor space. In one of those bedrolls, a large lump of clothes or trash reached a couple feet into the air.
The lump of clothes moved.
Isabelle tensed when the lump turned over. Not clothes, but a man, sleeping on his side. She watched his shoulder wriggle as he breathed. Then he turned onto his back, and she got a good look at him. His face was scarred and burned, barely recognizable, with a tiny wisp of hair sticking up from his head. He was bare-chested, and the burn marks twisted most of his flesh into a blurry mess. Except for a brand on his chest, which was like an infinity symbol under a cross with an extra horizontal arm. She’d seen the symbol before.
A machete sat on the floor next to him, gleaming and sharp.
Isabelle raised the gun. Had this been the man who had mutilated the woman in the bathroom? Or had this man been the victim of someone, a survivor of the people who had done this to her?
His grotesque chest rose and fell. He mumbled something in his sleep, but his eyes remained closed.
She didn’t know what to do. Opening the door hadn’t awoken him, but closing the door might. Or the light penetrating the gaps through the newspaper-covered store windows might wake him at any second.
Before she had time to decide, the door to the gas station flew open behind her. “Isabelle,” Dave said, “we have to go now. They found us.”
The man on the floor sat up and snatched his machete. Without any thought or hesitation, Isabelle pulled the trigger. The bullet passed through the man’s chest and he jerked, then looked down at the wound, then slumped to his side. He released his grip on the machete and it clanged to the floor.
Dave rushed to her and gripped her shoulder. “Oh my god, are you okay?” He squinted into the darkness of the cooler. “What did you shoot at?”
“Shit, what did I do?” she said as tears welled in her eyes. Her head throbbed.
Dave tugged on her arm. His face was riddled with panic. “We don’t have time for this. Those guys are coming. I don’t know how, but they found us.”
***
Isabelle tore herself away from the horror inside the gas station to follow her boyfriend out into the parking lot. Just as he’d said, dots of movement crawled along the highway. A warble of heat surrounded the cars, rippling the air around them. But she could see the tractor-trailer in the rear of the four cars, growing larger by the second.
She pressed the duct tape into Dave’s chest. “Can you fix it?”
“I can wrap the lines, but it’ll take me a couple minutes to get the rig started up. They’ll be here before then.”
No time to debate what would come next. She took the pistol and held it out to him. He glanced at it and shook his head.
“Don’t argue with me, Dave. Take the gun, and go get the truck started.”
He slipped the gun into the back of his jeans and raced toward the truck. She went to the car, popped the trunk, and pulled out a large case.
Dave hopped onto the back of the rig and pulled the last of the duct tape from the roll. “Where are you going to be?” he said.
“I’ll be close,” she said as she gripped the case. “Whatever happens, you get that truck started and get back on the road. I’ll catch up with you if I have to.”
He jumped down from the back of the rig and stared at her.
“Babe,” she yelled, “I need you to get that truck started, now!”
He hopped into the truck and she ran for the bathrooms. The sloped roof was only eight feet tall at the back, and she moved three milk crates from the side of the building into a pyramid so she could reach the roof.
She tossed the case on top and then hoisted herself up. The tin roof burned at her hands and forearms as she struggled to get her waist high enough to swing her legs over.
Back at the truck, she heard the startup sounds of Dave flipping the rig’s electronics. The enemy caravan was now less than a mile away, hurtling along I-15.
She got to her knees and opened the lid of the case. Lifted the M24 sniper rifle from its foam casing, then extended the kickstands. She placed it at the peak of the sloped roof and went prone behind it. With deep breaths to lower her heart rate, she lifted the caps on the front and back of the scope and adjusted the target knobs to bring the caravan into focus. They were still too far away for a clean shot. Even if they were close enough, she didn’t feel confident in her aim. A pistol felt much more natural in her hands than this beast.
“Come on Dave, get that rig running.”
The caravan of four cars and the tractor-trailer slowed as they approached the gas station. She heard the rig’s ignition turn over, once, twice, but not catch.
Too late. Two of the cars pulled in front of the rig, and the other two pulled in behind. The tractor-trailer idled on the highway. She adjusted the elevation and parallax knobs, but the incoming cars had kicked up a cloud of dust and she couldn’t see clearly enough.
“Get out of the truck or we blow it the fuck up,” shouted someone through the dust cloud.
Five seconds later, when the air had cleared, Four men were standing beside their cars, guns out. Three of them had pistols, one an automatic. If she had to fire, the guy with the automatic would die first.
Dave opened the door to the rig, his hands coming out first, then he stepped out and jumped down. His head darted left and right, probably looking for Isabelle. She should have told him where she was going, but it didn’t matter now.
She would get one shot before they emptied the gun into Dave and then turned on her; one shot before they knew her location.
One of the men stepped toward Dave, and she resisted the urge to pull the trigger. Not yet.
“You wouldn’t think it’d be hard to hide a semi full of gasoline like this one,” said the man with the spiky blond hair, “But we have sure had a bitch of a time finding you.”
“I’ll give you the truck,” Dave said, his eyes still darting around, searching for Isabelle. “Just let me walk away and it’s all yours.”
“Where’s the girl?” said another man, this one squat and balding.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dave said.
Spiky blond man raised his gun at Dave’s head. “Do not fuck with me. We saw her with you in California. Pretty sure that’s her car over there.”
Isabelle adjusted the knobs, with the spiky blond’s head right underneath the crosshairs.
Dave shook his head. “No idea what you’re talking about.”
The front door of the gas station opened. The burned man, the one Isabelle had been sure was dead, stumbled outside. One hand on his bleeding chest, the other with the machete raised above his head. The burned man screamed an awful, caterwauling kind of sound.
All four of the thieves turned toward the burned man and started firing.
Isabelle pulled the trigger.
She clipped the spiky blond in the head, then pivoted and shot the squat man next. The two others dashed behind their cars. She blew out the windows, hoping maybe the shattered glass might get them.
Dave dropped to his knees and pulled out the pistol. “If you listen to me and do what I say, you’ll live. Drop your guns, stand up, and walk back to the highway. You don’t have to die out here today.”
The thieves’ semi trailer jerked into gear and drove off. The driver seemed to have made a wise choice.
“Did you hear that?” Dave said. “That’s your friend, driving off. It’s over, guys, so let’s not do this anymore.”
Both of the men popped up behind their cars at once. They fired, and Dave hit the ground.
Isabelle screamed and pulled the trigger, four quick shots. Both of the men flew back as the close-range large caliber bullets knocked them off their feet.
She jumped off the roof and scrambled across the parking lot. Dust kicked up all around her, and her ears filled with the sound of one or more of the caravan men still alive and screaming.
Dave was on the ground, writhing in pain, one hand over his ear.
“Let me see,” she said as she tried to pull his hand away.
Underneath, his ear was a bloody mess. Half of it had been torn away and a stream of blood covered the side of his face.
“It’s okay, that’s my bad ear, anyway,” he said, wincing. “Is it bleeding a lot?”
“A little bit. We can fix it, though.” She pulled on the sleeve of her shirt until it tore away. Then she pressed it against his ear, and he moaned as she applied pressure.
“Hold that there. When we get to the next town, we’ll find some bandages and hydrogen peroxide. You’re going to be fine.”
When she said this, he calmed down. His breathing went from labored to even in a few seconds. “I didn’t want to shoot,” he said.
“I know you didn’t, babe. You did good though.”
She helped him to his feet, then she tore a strip from the bottom of her shirt and tied it around his head to hold the makeshift bandage in place.
