Her Last Scream

by J. A. Kerley

  Most of the Beacon’s action was in back, folks dividing their attention between a pool game and two darts matches. Behind the bar was a door to a side room. Some kind of meeting was in progress, a dozen middle-aged people at pushed-together tables. Someone was talking about making posters and sponsoring an awareness-raising dance. Yesterday the folks in the room had been younger and the topic was an arts festival. A bulletin board beside the door was plastered with info about a charity car wash, a block party and so forth. I figured the Beacon was the de facto neighborhood center.

  I noted an older guy at one of the front tables, late forties or early fifties, big and fit-looking and heavily bearded, in a dark suit and open-neck white shirt. He had an old-school briefcase at his knee and was nursing a whiskey and scowling into the night. He sat where I wanted to and I cursed his presence under my breath, ambling toward the bar weighing my options.

  “Mind if I sit here?” I chirped, walking to him. As if the answer was already Yes, I set my foamy green Grasshopper on the table, not one but two cocktail umbrellas rising from the rim, along with the heady vapors of crème de menthe. The dark eyes turned the scowl from the window to me. He nodded at the adjoining wooden circle. “There’s another table over there.”

  I brushed hair from my eyes with my fingers, venting my gayest persona, stolen from the Georgia Peach hisself, Little Richard. “You look lak a pro-fes-sor,” I tremoloed. “Do you work at the universiteee?”

  He looked away. “Not interested.”

  “Just talk?”

  “Get the fuck away from me.”

  I sat at the table two feet over and threw one leg over the other. “This is such a nice place,” I said. “Are y’all a reg’lar?”

  He vacated the bar a moment later, muttering as he went past. I traded the candied froth for a bourbon and slipped into Mr Professor’s still-warm chair, checking my watch. Two minutes later the big Hummer rolled to a stop across the street. I whispered Good luck, bro, and leaned back into the shadows.

  Hearing the door, Carol Madrone looked up from folding her birds. She saw what had crossed the threshold and loomed above. She swallowed hard, hoping her terror didn’t show. Where was Meelia? She’d been here a second ago. “Meelia …” she called to the door at her back. Meelia Reston was a dozen feet away, one door down the hall in the file room.

  “What is it, Carol?” Reston called.

  “Could you come here, please?”

  Madrone pasted a tight smile on her face and looked at the arrival, a black man approximately the size of a refrigerator crate, his garb leaving no doubt as to his occupation. Madrone glanced at the phone, estimating the time it would take to call 911.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  The hulking monster said nothing, studying the surroundings like an appraiser. He went to the window and parted the curtains, peeking outside as if checking the safety of his vehicle. Madrone saw an outlandishly green Hummer outlined in the dim streetlight, mirror-bright reflections from chrome and polish.

  Madrone cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she repeated, trying to keep the fear from her voice. “May I help you with something?”

  The man turned from the window as if seeing the woman for the first time. His eyes were like twin drills boring into her soul. “I’m looking for a friend. There’s a chance she might have come here.”

  When he spoke, his teeth were like flashes of silver lightning and his voice was a cross between a rumble and a hiss, the most frightening voice Madrone had ever heard.

  “What’s your friend’s name?” she asked. Three numbers and the police would be on the way. How long would it take them to get here?

  The man seemed to consider the question carefully. “Her name’s Sondra, but she don’t go by that all the time. She’s a fine-looking sister: mid twenties, real light skin, five-nine. Big eyes, long legs, short hair. She got a pretty little mouth, too. Her lips look like candy tastes.”

  The two women shot each other a glance. “We’ve never heard of anyone with that name,” Madrone said.

  “Or description,” Reston hurriedly added. “Why would you think she’d be here?”

  The hulking monster thought about the question for several seconds. “She gets confused,” he said quietly, eyes roaming the walls, posters, windows. “About who she is and what she needs. It’s been a problem.” The man nodded toward the hall at the rear of Madrone’s desk. “Who’s back there?”

  “It’s just an empty room and a door to the outside,” Reston said. “Check if you wish, but there’s no one here but us.”

  Madrone took a deep breath and stood. “I don’t mean to be rude, but we’d prefer that you leave. This is a place for –”

  The man stepped to the desk with motions as smooth as quicksilver over glass. He picked up the paper crane from Madrone’s desk, grinning with his fierce metal teeth.

  “Pretty birdie.”

  “Take it,” Madrone whispered. “My gift to you. Your gift to me is leaving, like I just asked you to. Please leave before there’s a …” Madrone’s voice failed.

  “Before there’s a what?”

  Madrone steeled the courage to let her hand rest on the phone, an implied threat to call the police. “Before there’s a problem.”

  The man looked between Madrone and the phone. “I got no problems with you fine ladies,” he said. “My problem is with Sondra. She owes me money. All I’m looking for is what I’m owed.” He paused, twirling the white bird in his black fingers. “If my friend shows up here, I want you to tell her something.”

  “What’s that?”

  Nautilus cocked the hat, lifting his arm enough to open his jacket, giving the women a glimpse of the holstered nine-millimeter. “Work starts tomorrow. Same time, same place. If she ain’t there, she ain’t nowhere no more, get my drift?”

  He squeezed the bird into a broken clump and let it drop to Madrone’s desk, grinned the metal teeth, and slid out the door, leaving it open as he walked down the drive like a man without a care in the world. He slid into the Hummer, stared for a long moment toward the women at the center, and was gone.

  “Holy shit,” Reston whispered, leaning back against the wall, sweat beaded on her forehead. “What the fuck just happened?”

  “I’m getting everyone together for a decision,” Madrone said. “This is an emergency.”

  Chapter 29

  Professor Thalius Sinclair was still muttering as he arrived home, having walked for a half-hour to vent his anger at being cruised by some preposterous gay. Probably should have lifted the flit like a sack of feathers and pitched him from the bar, and maybe would have, except there was something odd about the guy – something in the fluidity of his walk, maybe – that said he wouldn’t go that easy. Something had felt off in the exchange, but what? Sinclair was a good reader of people and thought maybe he’d held his fire because there was something – threatening? was that the word? – about the gay guy.

  Sinclair shook off his thoughts, rolled a joint, and sat at his computer. He steered to the familiar website, five users online. He watched the conversation for several minutes until all had signed off save for Drifter.

  PROMALE: I’ve been lurking. Checking for RAISE-HELL.

  HPDRIFTER: Raisehell hasn’t been on since you told me your misgivings. Now that you’ve told me what to look for, I saw the anomalies. You have superior perception, Promale. I salute you.

  PROMALE: I suspect he is a she, Drifter.

  HPDRIFTER: Like you noted, the FemiNazis are always trying to storm the gate. Cunts! They’re about to get a fierce comeuppance, and right where they live.

  PROMALE: Where is that, Drifter?

  HPDRIFTER: I’m not at liberty to say. Not because I don’t trust you, because I trust no one. RAISE-HELL shows us why.

  PROMALE: But the women say whatever they want.

  HPDRIFTER: We have no free speech. You know where the oppression is the worst? The universities. Try to put together a course called Men’s Stud
ies. You’ll be excoriated. But every university in the country indulges in something called WOMEN’S STUDIES. The whores have whole departments, grants, symposia. What do we get? Goddamn nothing!

  PROMALE: One could put the history of females into a two-hour survey course: ten minutes of history, an hour and fifty minutes for them to whine about everything you left out.

  HPDRIFTER: LOL Nicely put.

  PROMALE: Women are mentally and physically inferior to men and built for one purpose. There are dozens of studies proving it, all suppressed before they can get to publication. I myself have just authored such a piece, a breakthrough: a pure scholastic dissertation without shackles.

  HPDRIFTER: Surely you know there are many such works on the net. Most are simplistic echoes of one another.

  PROMALE: I don’t echo, Drifter. I pioneer.

  HPDRIFTER: Given your exposure of RAISEHELL, I’m interested in how your mind works, Promale. Here’s a gmail addy. Send me your works, but soon, as I get a new addy every week.

  Sinclair’s phone rang. He reached to shut it off – no one important ever called this late at night – but instead pulled it up and saw the caller’s coded name. His fingers ran back to the computer keyboard.

  PROMALE: A cautious man … very good, Drifter. We’re of like minds. I’ll send the piece later tonight.

  Sinclair logged off and re-dialed the phone to the last caller. Heard it picked up on the other end. He felt sweat prickle on his forehead.

  “Do we have one?” he asked.

  I waited in the Beacon until Harry drove away. The meeting in the side room broke up, spilling laughing people out into the street, their mirth late counterpoint to the menace Harry projected as he left the center. When I arrived at the motel Harry was stripping off the costumery like it burned his skin. The fedora was upside-down on the bed, the grillz inside, still shiny with saliva.

  “How’d it go?” I asked.

  “There were two women in the center, a stout lady doing origami, and a skinny lady with big glasses. I said I was looking for a friend who might have gotten confused.”

  “They were scared?” I asked.

  “The lady at the desk kept her hand on the phone. I was afraid she’d freak and call in an air strike. But she stayed cool.”

  “I’ll go in again tomorrow, say you’re out on the streets threatening everyone, trying to get Rein back.”

  “Will I go in again?” Harry asked.

  I shrugged. “We’ll see how it goes. Hopefully it’ll just take a couple–three days to convince them this is a get-Rein-gone situation. We’ll fix her up with the electronics and start following.”

  I heard Harry tossing through the night. This was a guy who could sleep standing up, like a horse. Rein’s safe somewhere only blocks from us, I thought, hearing the springs complain beneath him. What’s he going to be like when she’s undercover and on the road?

  Chapter 30

  “Sondra?” a voice said. “Sondra, wake up.”

  Rein blinked her waking eyes toward the window to see a sky still dark, the bedside clock indicating four a.m. Shapes at the foot of her bed resolved into Carol and Meelia. They’d brought her to the safe house last night, a garage apartment only blocks from the center.

  “You had a visitor this evening,” Carol said. “At the center.”

  “Tee Bull?” Rein knew she’d hear about Harry Nautilus’s visit, but didn’t expect to hear so early. “A big man with … things on his teeth?”

  Carol’s voice got hard. Inquisitorial. “Did you tell him where you were? You did, right?”

  Rein snapped up in bed, eyes wide for surprise, hand on heart for sincerity. A quiver in the voice for fear. “I’ve never mentioned anything about this place, ever. But other women Tee Bull knows … they’ve gone to shelters to hide. That must have been it.”

  Meelia stepped forward. “This – this monster wanted you to get back to the same place. What did that mean? The truth, Sondra.”

  Rein looked away, shame. “You know what Tee Bull is?” she whispered.

  Meelia nodded. “We’re not stupid, Sondra. He’s your pimp.”

  “Then you know what he wants from me.”

  “But isn’t that where you want to be, Sondra? You’re here taking a vacation, right? A few days off to show Tee Bull how much he needs you. When you go back, he’ll have the crack pipe waiting and you’ll happily suck every –”

  “I don’t do that shit no more,” Rein hissed. “I hate drugs, they steal me away from me.”

  Rein knew this was part of the process, a hard-edged interrogation. It was like banging a hammer on a ship to make sure the hull was resistant to leaks.

  “Off drugs one day, on the next,” Meelia sneered. “You’re like a light switch, girl, on, off, on, off. Getting clean for a while makes the dope that much nicer, right?”

  “I told you, I don’t do that now,” Rein said. “Why are you being so mean?”

  Meelia made her mouth into an O and performed air fellatio. “How many cocks you suck a day for Tee Bull, girl? Fifty? A hundred? I bet you especially like the ones that haven’t been washed in a week.”

  Rein puffed out her cheeks, made gagging sounds and put her hand to her mouth, pushing past the two women and into the bathroom. She slammed the door and knelt beside the toilet, making vomiting noises.

  A knocking at the door. “Sondra,” Carol asked tentatively. “Sondra, are you all right?”

  “I-I’m OK,” Rein said. “I need to wash my face.”

  Rein opened the door to hugs from the women, explaining their cruelty had been necessary. “We had to know you really want out of that life,” Carol said. “That you’ll do anything to escape.”

  “All I want is freedom.”

  “We’re gonna get you out of the area, out of the region,” Meelia said. “We’re going to put you into a system that will aim you toward a new life. It may take a week, it may take three, but you’ll be free and far away.”

  “Tee Bull has eyes everywhere. He’ll track me down.”

  “He can’t have eyes in the system, Sondra. It’s a chain made of black holes. No one can see in.”

  Rein let her Sondra character consider the words, then washed joy over her face. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

  “You have anywhere to go?” Carol asked. “A place Tee Bull will never look?”

  “Don’t tell us where it is,” Meelia cautioned. “Just if there is one. And where it is from here: east, west …?”

  “Down south on the Gulf,” Rein said. “I have a couple aunts near Mobile, wonderful people. I was always too ashamed to go there.”

  “Tee Bull doesn’t know?”

  “I never wanted a person like that to know my true past, y’know? I always told Tee I’d grown up in Detroit, left when my husband started drinking and beating on me. It was true, but not Detroit.”

  The women looked between one another, communicating with glances. Something was going on, Rein knew. A decision was being made. But if they’d already decided to put her in the system, what was now being decided?

  Within seconds, she had her answer.

  “We’ve cleared things with people,” Carol said. “It’s never done this fast, but having a monster like Tee Bull after you makes you a special case. You’re leaving in a half an hour.”

  Rein fought to control her surprise, thinking, The suitcase. I have to get the GPS suitcase. And my gun.

  “I need to run to my apartment,” Rein said. “I’ve got some money there. Clothes.”

  Carol shook her head. “We’ve dug into our clothing stores and made you up a traveling kit with everything you need – clothes, hygiene items, some money. People at the other end will help you build a new life.”

  “I just need a few minutes,” Rein pressed. “I’ll come right back and –”

  Meelia stepped in. “You just said Tee Bull has eyes everywhere, Sondra. Going back is way too dangerous.”

  Carole looked at her watch. “Bes
t get showered and dressed, dear. You’re on the road in twenty minutes.”

  Chapter 31

  Nine a.m. and I stared at my phone in disbelief. Harry was snoring in his small room, a fitful sleep overtaking him in the early hours. I called Amica Cruz with the news.

  “It worked,” she said quietly. “But I never expected them to hit the launch button so fast.”

  Gritting my teeth, I opened Harry’s door and jostled his shoulder. “Get up, bro. We overplayed the threats.”

  He grunted to an elbow, looked up with blinking eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  “Rein’s in the system. They put her on the railroad.”

  Harry sat bolt upright in the bed.

  “What?”

  “She just sent me a text.”

  Harry grabbed the phone from my hand, squinted at the screen:

  Srprs! In trnst. Wll cll w/chnc. HGTWYWH

  I said, “It translates to, ‘Surprise! I’m in transit and will call when I get a chance.’”

  Harry stared. “She has nothing with her. Gun, the suitcase with the –”

  “I know,” I said.

  Harry stared at the message again, maybe hoping she’d texted April Fools’ in the interim. “What’s that gobbledygook at the end?” he asked.

  “She says she’s having a great time and wishes we were there.”

  Harry glared at me. “That’s not funny, Carson. That’s not funny at all.”

  “I’m not the one saying it.”

  I was actually buoyed by Rein’s flip sign-off – staying cool – but kept it to myself, Harry was clearly not in the mood for glass-half-full optimism.

  He was pulling on his pants as Cruz entered, shaking her head. “I’ve never heard of someone put on a train so fast. Usually there’s a meeting of the top brass. It takes days.” She raised an eyebrow at Harry. “What did you do last night?”