Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition

by Matthew Howard

  The smile returned to Slim’s face. “He trusts you, too, Mags.”

  She laughed. “He probably trusts me to rack up a body count if anyone so much as touches a hair on your head. At the very least.”

  “Auntie Mags shall avenge me,” he said with mock seriousness.

  “Hahaha. That’s right, darling. Okay, let’s hit the road. You want to drive for a bit?”

  “As long as we can listen to something besides that Pearl Jam album again. Don’t you have any other tapes?”

  “I have Mother Love Bone.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Mags, Mother Love Bone basically is Pearl Jam.”

  “Oh, they are? I had no idea,” she lied.

  “Yeah, right.” Smiling, he took the keys from her. “First, we get some new tapes.”

  “Fine! I need to send Gramma a postcard anyway. Let’s go.”

  ★ ○•♥•○ ★

  She pulled the van into the driveway of a farmhouse, a two-story bungalow with a barn in the back. It sat on a large lawn on a wooded plot with no neighbors in sight. The sun had set. Two men sat on a bench on the porch below a single light. At the sight of the van, one of them got up and went inside.

  “This must be the place,” said Mags. “Stay here for a second.”

  “No sweat. By the way, nice driving.”

  “Thanks, little man. We should be able to wrap up this deal and use the same station to make our exit before dawn. I’ll just be a second.”

  A third man came out onto the porch. He had pulled his grey hair into a pony tail. Tattoos covered his bare arms. He raised two fingers to his temple and flicked them towards Mags in a casual salute. “Welcome to Canada. Have any problems at the border?”

  “Not a one.”

  Slim watched their casual banter from his seat in the van. Mags stood on the lawn with her pistol holstered. She wanted to take her time and get a feel for these men before going ahead with the deal. But then, as if she heard something, she spun around. Her hand went to her pistol.

  Mags stumbled forward once, twice, and fell to the ground.

  “Oh, fuck!” Slim clicked the door locks into place.

  The man with the ponytail gestured, and the men on the porch ran to the van, guns drawn.

  Slim climbed into the driver’s seat, but the window on that side exploded inward. He shielded his face.

  A muzzle appeared in the open window, and it shot him.

  ★ ○•♥•○ ★

  “Wake up, kid. We don’t have all night.” The man with the grey ponytail slapped Slim across the face. “Wake up! Jesus, how long does this stuff take to wear off?”

  “Couple hours, usually,” one of his associates replied.

  “It’s been two hours. Come on!”

  “You said you wanted them taken down fast.” The man shrugged his shoulders. “They went down fast.”

  Slim shook his head. He tried to speak, but the gag in his mouth stifled the sound. The world slowly came back in to focus. He could see the van parked in the barn with them now. It had come through a large sliding door which shared a wall with a normal-sized door for entry and exit. He heard Mags’ muffled voice beside him, incoherent.

  Like Slim, her hands were handcuffed behind her to a metal chair. The chair was bolted into the floor of the barn. Her feet were bound with rope. She seethed. She growled. But she could not escape.

  “Alright, he’s coming around,” said the ponytailed man. “Bring the phone over here. Listen, kid. I’m gonna take this gag off. But if you yell or scream or pull any shit, I’ll put a bullet right between your eyes. Got it?”

  Slim nodded.

  “Good. We just need you to say hi to your old man. Let him know you’re alive. Let him know you’d like to stay that way. Okay?” The man removed the gag. “Here. Give me the phone.” He held the receiver of a cordless phone up to Slim’s ear.

  “Dad? Is that you?” Slim listened. “The whole thing is a set-up! They shot—”

  The ponytailed man pulled the phone away. “Quiet, kid!” He spoke into the phone. “I’ll call you back.”

  He stuffed the gag back into Slim’s mouth and tied it tightly. “Okay. The two of you keep an eye on them. No one leaves this barn.”

  “What if I gotta take a leak?”

  “Piss in the corner! No one leaves this barn. Understand?”

  “Got it, boss. What do you want to do with the girl?”

  Mags forced her eyes to focus. They shone with pure hate. She uttered a string of muffled curses.

  “Start dosing her with heroin. If she seems like she’s coming out of it, shoot her up again. In a few days, she’ll be so strung out she won’t know what planet she’s on. Then I suppose we can sell her off.” He walked towards the door to leave.

  “She’s, uh—she’s a little big for that, don’t you think?”

  The ponytailed man snorted. “She’ll slim down after a week or two on H. Believe me. I’ll send someone out to relieve you in a couple hours.”

  “Okay, boss.”

  The two remaining men sat down casually at a table where they set their pistols. Each pistol had a silencer mounted on it.

  One man prepared a syringe of heroin. “You tie her arm with this tubing, and I’ll shoot her up.”

  “Sure thing,” his partner answered, picking up a length of tubing.

  The man with the syringe got up.

  Slim could only imagine the words Mags growled through her gag. But the man with the syringe only made it two steps. His partner snatched a pistol from the table and fired three silent rounds into his back. The syringe dropped to the ground, and the man quickly followed. A pool of blood spread on the wooden slats of the barn floor.

  Mags and Slim stared in disbelief. The shooter stood and took his keys from his pocket. “Listen up, you two. This whole deal’s gone south. But we can change that, if we work together, okay? My name’s Paul du Maurier. I’m going to take your cuffs off now, but if you mess with me, I swear to fucking god I will put you down. Now pay attention.”

  Paul stepped behind Slim and unlocked the boy’s cuffs. Slim rubbed his wrists. He set about untying the gag.

  “This whole gang has been bought off,” said Paul, “by your dad’s enemies. Ching wants to smuggle cigarettes, but they’d rather go big and bring heroin up here. Nothing personal, you know. Just money.” He unlocked Mags’ cuffs.

  Mags snapped her arms forward and furiously tore off the gag. “Motherfucker! Get these goddamn ropes off me!”

  “Shhh! Keep it down, lady! You want to get us killed?”

  “Oh, there’s gonna be some killing, alright.” She struggled to untie the knots which bound her feet. She reached for her boot knife, only to find it gone. “How many of them are there?”

  “Ten of us.” Paul’s eyes fell on the dead man. “Make that nine. Eight if you don’t count me.”

  “And why shouldn’t I count you, Paulie?”

  “It’s just Paul.”

  “Whatever you say, Pall Mall. Now give me a reason or go to hell.”

  “You know, I heard you were a real tough girl.”

  “You heard right.” Mags tore the ropes free. She knelt on the floor to help Slim with his. “You okay, little man?”

  “I’m good. I think. Kinda fuzzy.”

  “Okay. Talk, Paul!”

  “Listen, tough girl. I don’t want heroin in my neighborhood any more than Ching does. There’s not a single thing I like about that garbage. But if we wipe out the opposition here, you and me can do cigarette business all goddamn day.”

  Mags smiled. She flung the ropes aside and stood up. “Shit,” she said, placing her hand on the back of the chair for support. “What did they shoot us with?”

  “Animal tranquilizers. I hope you’re up for a fight.”

  “Paulie, I am always up for a fight. And I have a little surprise in the van for these fuckers. Come here. You too, Slim. Oh, bloody hell. What happened to my window?”

  “They busted it out,”
said Slim. “I saw you fall. I tried to get to the driver’s seat. Then they smashed it in. I’m sorry, Mags.”

  “Don’t be.” She opened the back doors of the van, grabbed the corner of the plastic covering one of the door’s interiors, and ripped it away.

  In the interior cavity of the door stood two shotguns strapped in place with Velcro. In the bottom of the cavity, a half dozen boxes of buckshot shells sat on two pairs of bandoliers, also loaded with shells. Mags draped two of the bandoliers across her like an X. “Crew, this would be a real good time to come up with a plan.”

  “Paul could use that phone, call the house, and lure them out here,” Slim suggested.

  “Nope,” said Paul. “The cordless is on the same line as the house. And if I know Anderson, he’s got two guys watching the barn.”

  “Those two turds on the porch?” She shoved shells into the Benelli as fast as she could.

  “Maybe. But the porch doesn’t face the barn. I’d guess he’s got two guys at the back of the house and then those two guys on the porch. And the rest inside.”

  “Anderson’s the creep with the ponytail?”

  “That’s him.”

  “This barn got a hay loft?”

  “Sure does,” said Paul, pointing to a wooden ladder. “Right up there.”

  “Here’s what we do then. Paul, you got a silencer, so you cover the door. Slim, you come with me and—” Mags suddenly grabbed the boy and shoved him towards the front of the van. “Take cover!”

  Neither Slim nor Paul had heard a sound, but they lacked her sensitive ears. She brought the Benelli to her shoulder and aimed at the door. Paul turned just in time to see it open into the room. A shotgun blast destroyed the silence. The door splintered and filled with holes. It slammed back on the person opening it.

  Mags advanced on the door. She fired twice more in rapid succession. A body slumped to the ground, its foot sticking through the doorway. “So much for surprise. Slim, get to the loft! Paul, shotgun!” Mags dropped to a crouch and opened the door.

  Just as Paul had said, she saw two figures at the back. They had raised their weapons at the sound of the blasts. Her pupils expanded like a cat’s in the darkness. Wood splintered above her head. Mags shot five more times in less than two seconds. The men fell to the ground.

  She backed up and slammed the door shut. “Come on, Paul. High ground! Now!” She ran past him and up the ladder. “Come on!”

  Paul shoved a final shell into the second Benelli and grabbed a bandolier from the van. He followed her up. When he got to the top, Mags had already taken a position at the open door to the hay loft facing the back of the house. Slim stayed back from the opening, in relative safety near the wall.

  Mags got on her stomach on the floor of the loft. The two sentries at the front of the house ran around the side. She sighted them, leading the target. She fired. One fell. The second one looked up, confused. Mags looked into his eyes and fired twice. Buckshot shredded his shirt. He stumbled and fell on his back.

  “Second story,” Paul shouted at her. His ears rang. He dropped to the floor.

  Mags rolled to the side. A barrage of thirteen pistol rounds tore into the wood where she had been a second before. She pulled more shells from her bandolier and pressed them into the magazine.

  In the silence that followed, Paul lunged at the loft’s open door. He aimed at the second story window of the house and fired all eight of his shells into it. The window exploded. His shots ripped holes into the house’s wood siding.

  “Reload!” Mags shouted at him.

  She rolled back into the opening and pounded eight more rounds into the second story window. She scanned the grounds as fast as lightning but saw no one out there. She rolled back to cover.

  “Three down for sure, five maybes. Paulie, you got a light?”

  “The fuck? A smoke break?”

  “Fuck you! Give it to Slim.” Mags pressed eight more shells from her bandolier into her shotgun. “Slim, drag a bale of hay over here and light that bitch up!”

  He caught the lighter. The boy pushed a bale of hay to the open door and held the flame to it.

  “Are you nuts?” Paul asked.

  “Yes! Kick it out and light another!”

  Slim kicked the burning bale out the doorway. It fell to the ground. A second bale tumbled down on it. More return fire came from the second story window. Mags tried to count the shots and realized she had at least two shooters in the window. Puffs of hay and wood splinters exploded to her side. The barn wall below them began to burn.

  “A couple more, Slim!”

  “On it!” He set two more bales on fire and shoved them out the opening.

  “You two go get the van,” Mags ordered them. “Open the big door and drive it out.”

  “What about you?” Slim asked.

  “Just make sure you drive it right by the front porch, okay? As close as you can. Then get away from the house! Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Mags, what the—”

  “Just fucking do it, Paul! Go!”

  She rolled back into the opening and fired four shots at the second story window. She fired four more into the pair of windows on the first story of the back of the house. Glass exploded. Someone cried out in pain. Her lips curled in vicious satisfaction as she reloaded.

  “Anderson, you gutless fuck! Give it up!”

  “Go to hell,” came the reply. Mags’ ears twitched at the sound. She guessed he was in the second story. Two up top, she thought, and one wounded on the bottom. That left two unknowns. Smoke and flame curled up towards her from the burning bales. Then she heard the big door slide open below her, and the sound of the van starting up.

  Paul then understood the reasoning behind her arsonist impulse. As he slid the door open, the burning bales provided him cover and chaos. He dropped behind them as shots rang out from the house. He crawled behind the bales, got out of the line of fire, then ran to the van.

  Slim hit the gas. The van crashed through the burning bales in a fiery explosion.

  Paul had cranked his window down and stuck his shotgun out. But a loud thud on top of the van startled him, and he fired wildly at the house.

  Slim steered the van across the lawn and as close as he could to the porch.

  The loud thud was Mags. She had jumped from the loft onto the van’s roof. As the van sped by the front porch, she jumped again. Her feet landed on the second-story overhang above the porch.

  Mags scrambled to the window hoping to gain the advantage. But the panes of glass exploded out onto the roof top. Bullets tore into the inside wall and whipped past her through the window frame. She cursed.

  “She’s over the porch,” Anderson called to his men.

  The porch door slammed open directly below her. Mags ran along the wall to a second window two meters away. Shotgun blasts ripped into the ceiling of the porch below her. She smashed out the window with the butt of her shotgun and climbed inside.

  This window lacked a line of sight into the room where Anderson and his other shooter were. She could not see them, but they could not see her either. It put her on a landing right next to the top of a narrow stairwell set off with a wooden railing. Mags stuck her shotgun over the side of the rails and fired blindly. A man cried out.

  Mags pointed her shotgun out the broken window. One of Anderson’s men had left the porch and gone onto the lawn to get a line of sight on her. She dropped below the window as two more shotgun blasts ripped into the wall. Mags brought the Benelli back up and fired. The man in the yard fell backwards, his torso torn apart by buckshot. She leapt over the railing and onto the stairs.

  The wounded man at the bottom of the stairs tried to draw a bead on her, but she obliterated him with a blast from the Benelli. She scanned the room, then headed to the kitchen.

  Above her, two pairs of feet stomped into the hall. She called up to them. “Come on down and play, you little bitches!”

  In the kitchen, she grabbed a roll of ti
nfoil from the pantry shelf. Opening the refrigerator, she purred. “It’s my lucky day.” She snatched up a two-liter soda bottle.

  The footsteps stopped at the top of the stairs. Clearly Anderson and his companion had reservations about walking down the potential death trap of the narrow stairwell. She set her shotgun on the counter.

  Mags dumped the soda into the sink. From below the sink she took a bottle of drain cleaner and poured its contents into the soda bottle. Her nose wrinkled at the smell. She crushed some tinfoil into a little ball.

  Faint footsteps on the stairs. She swept up her shotgun and dashed to the edge of the kitchen.

  Anderson’s mate peeked around the corner of the stairwell. Mags blasted the wall then fired again and again. His body hit the floor.

  She grabbed the fixings for her homemade bomb and ran to the corner she had destroyed. She stuffed the foil ball into the bottle and quickly sealed the cap. Giving it a few firm shakes, she flung it up the stairs.

  It exploded above the stairwell. It rattled the remaining windows and sprayed toxic chemicals all across the landing at the top.

  Anderson dropped his pistol, and a shot escaped it. But there was no escape for him. He screamed, and his skin burned, and his eyes.

  Mags shoved more shells into the Benelli and charged up the stairs. The air reeked of drain cleaner. She fired at his legs. Perforated by buckshot, he collapsed. More screaming.

  “Shoot me up with heroin, will ya? Sell me off? Fuck you, Anderson!” Mags fired her remaining shells into his legs. Then she took her empty shotgun and beat him to death with it.

  Moments later, she ran out the front door. The barn burned like a giant torch behind the house. The hay bales had set the lawn ablaze, too. She heard the van’s horn and ran down the road.

  Mags flung open the back door and jumped in. “Paul! Which way is the nearest fire station?”

  “Just west of here,” he said, jerking his thumb in that direction.

  “Slim! Drive like hell the other way!”

  “On it!” He put the pedal to the floor. “Paul’s got a place just north of here where we can ditch this van.”

  She made her way to the front. There, the smuggler put her hand on his good shoulder and patted it several times. “Little man, you are one stand-up criminal.”