Harden

by D. J. Molles

  ARE YOU SURE? His mind seemed to ask him.

  Yes. I’m sure.

  TWENTY-THREE

  ─▬▬▬─

  CAPTIVES

  “Welcome to the Wilds, gents,” Mitch said as they passed the sign on the road that told them they were entering Alabama.

  At the wheel, Rudy harrumphed.

  Mitch looked at him with a half-smile. “What? You not skeered?”

  “Ain’t skeered,” Rudy drawled.

  Mitch turned in his seat and looked to Morrow, who was right behind Rudy. The man’s dark eyes were looking out his window at the passing countryside. Everything around them was a dense and heavy green, darkened and thickened by the overcast day.

  A strong wind was blowing out of the south, buffeting the truck, like it was trying to repel them. It shivered through the leaves in the trees, making them spin and flash, first green, then silver. It whipped up little walls of detritus from the roads which then clattered over the windshield.

  Beneath the granite sky, darker smudges of clouds caught the strong winds and sailed towards them rapidly, like an invading armada.

  “What about you, Morrow?” Mitch asked the man in the back seat. “You skeered by The Wilds?”

  Morrow glanced at his team lead, then went back to his window. “I’m appropriately cautious.”

  “Appropriately cautious,” Mitch nodded. “Mm. Wise words.” He turned even further to look at Logan and Blake. “How about our two young padawans?”

  Logan smirked. “Can’t be any worse than Afghanistan.”

  Mitch chuckled and faced forward.

  Rudy made another grumble noise. “It can always be worse.”

  Mitch nodded. “Huckleberry’s right. It can always be worse. We could all be on fire.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Mitch gave him a nudge with his elbow. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  Their pickup truck was in the lead. In the sideview mirror, Mitch saw Lee’s truck behind them, keeping a sensible fifty-yard distance.

  Logan spoke up again: “At least we haven’t hit any roadblocks. You know?”

  Rudy glanced up sharply in his rearview mirror. “Boy, you better knock on some fucking wood.”

  Logan gently knuckled his crotch. “Shit, Rudy. You’re so salty today.”

  “Rudy’s always salty,” Blake agreed.

  “We buried one of our own today,” Rudy grunted.

  Silence.

  Mitch eyed his friend in the driver’s seat, but Rudy kept his frowning face on the road.

  “Now, that might not mean much to you hard chargers,” Rudy continued. “But it means somethin’ to me. Maybe y’all didn’t know Brian Tomlin like I knew him, but I tell you one thing, the man was no slouch. No easy pickings.” Rudy jacked a thumb behind him. “You see that pickup back there? Lee, Carl, Abe, Julia. They’re no slouches either. And look at them. Shot through the fucking chest. Shot through the leg. Carl’s beaten to a fucking pulp. Nate and Brian are just…fucking dead.” Rudy gripped the wheel in both hands. “These ain’t no goatherds we’re dealing with. And y’all should remember that.”

  “M-hm,” Morrow intoned.

  Well, that took a dark turn, Mitch thought. But then he couldn’t exactly deny what Rudy was saying. There was a survivor’s wisdom in it. Being smart about your opponent wasn’t cowardice. Some things should rightfully be feared. Young bucks had to convince themselves they were the baddest motherfuckers in the valley, but the wisened warriors walked on the edge of a harder reality: You are the man, until you meet the man.

  “Rudy’s right, gents,” Mitch said with a sigh. “So’s Morrow. Appropriate caution is the name of the game.”

  They drove on quietly for a bit. A splash of sun managed to pierce the cloud cover, and was immediately covered again.

  “So,” Logan began again, more circumspectly. “Y’all don’t think we can take that prison?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Mitch replied. “Fact is, I think we should. It’d be a nice defensible location for us to stage out of. Yes, I think it would be dangerous. But everything we do out here is dangerous. And I don’t think they can match us. I think we could take that place over.”

  “Why didn’t you say that to Lee?”

  Mitch turned in his seat and looked Logan in the eye. “Because I’ve learned to—”

  “Shit!” Rudy grunted and slammed on the brakes.

  Mitch hit the dashboard hard.

  Tires screeched.

  Rudy yelled, “Contact! Contact!”

  Mitch twisted, looked out the windshield.

  Saw three figures in the road.

  Three figures…on their knees.

  Twenty yards behind them, a brown Suburban.

  ***

  The second that their truck stopped, Paolo was out and running. He’d blurted, “That’s Braxton!” and then threw his door open before Lee could reach in the back and restrain him.

  Lee had no time to assess.

  He’d seen the three figures, and he’d seen that they were on their knees.

  But he’d also seen the brown Suburban further past them.

  First instinct: Get the fuck out!

  Second: Cover Paolo!

  “Fuck!” Lee shouted at Abe, slapping the dash. “Go forward! Go forward! Get between the Suburban and them!”

  Abe cranked the wheel hard to get around Mitch’s truck, then rammed the accelerator, throwing them all back in their seats. The door that Paolo had left open slammed closed as the truck hurtled forward.

  Lee shouldered his rifle and got his hand on his door latch. “As soon as we stop put fire on that fucking Suburban!”

  The yardage between them and the string of three people evaporated.

  Abe swung them wide around the left side of the three figures in the road, then brought them to a skidding halt.

  Lee was focused on the Suburban, but he glimpsed the big coil of rope sitting in the middle of the road, a short distance ahead of them, and as he threw his door open and unassed the vehicle, his mind seized on it, not quite able to connect the dots.

  He swung around the door and hit the front of the truck, using the engine block as cover, and bringing his rifle up over the top of it.

  The rope

  The brake lights on the Suburban winked out. A gout of gray exhaust plumed out of the tailpipe. The chirp of tires on concrete.

  The rope

  The rope.

  One big coil.

  A strand that went to the tow hitch on the Suburban.

  Three more strands coming out of that big coil.

  “Oh fuck,” Lee murmured.

  Someone started shooting.

  Lee watched the back glass of the Suburban disintegrate as it sped away from them, rope unspooling rapidly out of the coil in the middle of the road.

  Lee looked to his right, to the three figures in the road.

  The three strands of rope.

  Each ending in a knot tied around a neck.

  In that microsecond, Lee made the connection, and acted all at once.

  He dropped his rifle. Let his sling catch it. Snatched out his knife. Dove for the first strand of rope that was closest to him.

  He got his hand on it. Gripped it hard. Put the knife to it.

  It was Braxton. The younger guy turned on his knees, his eyes wide and terrified. The rope was tied around his neck. He blurted, “I’m sorry!”

  “Don’t—”

  The slack in the rope ran out.

  Lee’s whole body jolted like he’d touched a live power line. The rope ripped out of his hands, went taut against his left leg, sent him flying. His whole body lifted up, his legs pulled out from under him.

  But his eyes somehow stayed locked with Braxton’s.

  In midair, Lee watched the man’s head separate from his shoulder.

  Then Lee hit the concrete.

  Braxton’s head went spinning past him.

  The three bodies in the road fell backwar
ds.

  Lee found himself on his stomach, staring up at the stump of a neck that spewed hot blood at him. Speckled his face. His whole body hummed from the shock of the rope hitting him. He tried to breathe and couldn’t, his lungs and diaphragm locked up.

  The three bodies didn’t move.

  Not a twitch. Not a stir.

  Paolo hit the concrete on his knees, right in front of the middle body, too late to do anything. His hands flew up to his head, clawed the dirty hat from his scalp. His eyes wild and unmoored.

  “Jesus Christ!” he screamed. “Oh Christ! Oh fuck!”

  Lee pushed himself up off the ground as the rapidly-spreading pool of blood reached his fingertips. It touched. Wet and warm. He pulled them away.

  He felt hands on him, pulling him upright, all the way up to his feet.

  “You okay?” Julia asked him. “You with me?”

  “’D’you get ‘em?” Lee slurred. Coughed. Finally managed an intake of breath.

  It was Abe who answered, limping around the front of the truck. “We got the Suburban. I don’t know if we got the fuckers inside.”

  Paolo was still screaming.

  Mitch and his team were running up.

  Lee swayed on his feet, then roughly separated himself from Julia. He pawed his way around the front of his truck, the hood hot on his hands. He swung around the driver’s door. Clambered into the driver’s seat.

  His lungs felt raw. Wet. He coughed. Wheezed. Didn’t bother shutting his door. Pulled the truck into drive.

  At the last second before he hit the gas pedal, Abe and Julia vaulted back into the car. Carl had never even exited the back seat.

  The truck went forward. All the doors swung closed on their own.

  The truck roared down the road and no one asked where they were going. They faced forward, one hand on the grip of their rifles, one hand on their door latches. Faces drawn. Eyes dark.

  Lee’s vision seemed overbright.

  Did I hit my head?

  It didn’t hurt like he’d taken a blow, but he felt a hot-cold prickle on his scalp…

  They blasted through a bend in the road.

  Up ahead, about a quarter mile, the Suburban had gone off the road and crumpled itself against a tree.

  Lee didn’t let up on the accelerator.

  The driver’s door on the Suburban came open.

  A man tumbled out. Saw them coming. Saw them chewing up the distance between them. Tried to run a few steps, then stopped, raised something in one hand.

  It bloomed fire.

  A bullet crashed through the windshield.

  Lee went low behind the engine block.

  He heard bullets hitting the front of the truck.

  Glass trickled down on him.

  He peeked up over the dash.

  Saw the man’s face, dead ahead.

  Lee slammed on the brakes.

  A hard THUMP reverberated through the truck.

  They lurched to a stop.

  Lee rammed the shifter into park.

  The doors were opening.

  Lee spilled out, his vision struggling to catch up with his movements. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath.

  The man from the Suburban had been punched in the chest with a two-ton fist. It had launched him ten yards down the road. He lay on his back, legs twisted underneath him, hands wavering insensibly in the air.

  Lee staggered towards the form in the road. His breath rattled wetly. He tasted pennies.

  Beyond the veil of physical pain, Lee felt a dark burning seething up inside of him. It seemed to pull him along, like a force that possessed his body, and Lee didn’t fight it, he didn’t want to fight it. All he wanted was to destroy.

  The man on the ground watched Lee approach. His empty hands trembling.

  “No!” the man struggled to say, kept showing his palms to Lee.

  Surrendering.

  Lee stood over him.

  The man stared up.

  Pathetic eyes, gone from killer to prey.

  How quickly they go from merciless, to begging for mercy.

  It only made Lee hate him more.

  “Please, don’t—” the man stammered.

  Lee put three rounds into the man’s head, shattering it against the concrete.

  One of the hands fell. The other remained up, by some sparking of nerves, the fingers convulsing in the air, like they might find something to hold onto.

  Then that hand fell, too.

  Lee looked at what he’d done and felt nothing inside of him but a bitter and bracing satisfaction.

  All rivers lead to it eventually.

  Behind him, he heard Abe call out: “Got a live one!”

  Darkness danced at the edges of his vision.

  Something’s wrong.

  He tried to take a breath. Coughed more.

  He turned. Looked back.

  A short distance from him, their pickup truck. Beside it, the Suburban, with the passenger’s side rammed against a wall of trees. Abe bodily hauling someone out through the driver’s door, then slinging them onto the ground.

  “Don’t fucking move!” Abe screamed, punching the man in the face with the muzzle of his rifle, then kicking him over onto his belly and planting a knee in his back.

  Lee started walking.

  His feet felt like rubber blocks.

  Julia stood there, covering the man that Abe had, but she looked up at Lee. Made eye contact with him. Her gaze was blank.

  Irradiated. Uninhabitable.

  Lee didn’t realize his feet were scuffing the ground until he stumbled.

  Julia’s eyes narrowed. “Lee?”

  Lee nodded at her, willed his feet to move properly. If he could just get a goddamned breath…

  More coughing. He spat into his hand.

  Bright, almost neon-red, across his palm.

  Well, shit, he thought, and then collapsed.

  ***

  Reality and unconsciousness swirled. Mixed. Intertwined.

  Lee wasn’t sure what was real and what was imagined.

  He was looking at concrete. Black top. A layer of two years’ worth of dirt accumulated there. It hurt to breathe. Julia was running towards him.

  And then Julia was a tree.

  The concrete and dirt turned to lush, green fields.

  He was walking towards the tree again, the tree on the hilltop.

  He was closer this time. He could definitely see someone there.

  There was a swing hanging from one of the big branches.

  The figure was on the swing…

  And then he was in the truck again. Julia’s face in front of his, slapping him.

  “Wake up, Lee!”

  I’m awake, don’t slap me.

  He thought he’d said it, but then realized he must not have, because she slapped him again.

  “Fuck,” he murmured.

  “There you go,” she said.

  Lee became conscious of the engine. They were moving. Abe was driving. Lee and Julia were sprawled across the backseat. Deuce was on the floorboard, whining.

  “Where’s Carl?” Lee managed.

  “He’s in the bed with the guy,” Julia said. “Can you lift your arms?”

  She was trying to get his rig off of him.

  Lee tried to sit up. Pain lanced through his chest. He lifted his arms and she ripped the Velcro straps keeping his plate carrier to his body, then pulled them quickly up and over his head. The rough canvas scraped against his ears.

  Lee managed to catch a glimpse out the back glass and saw Carl sitting in the back, rifle trained on something that Lee couldn’t see, something laying in the bed of the truck.

  The guy.

  The live one.

  Lee felt the truck decelerate. Come to a stop.

  The back passenger door behind Julia came open and Mitch thrust his head in. “What the fuck happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Julia said. Her fingers went under Lee’s shirt and lifted it up on his left side,
looking at his stitched up wound.

  “Was he shot?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I wasn’t shot,” Lee said. He grabbed the headrest on the front seat and used it to pull himself upright. “Help me sit up. I’m fine.”

  Julia helped him, but then put a hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye. “Lee, you’re not fucking fine. You were coughing blood and you passed out. That’s not fine. Quit saying that you’re fine.”

  “It just jarred me,” Lee said. “The rope.”

  The image came back to him.

  The rope going taut.

  The heads coming off.

  God…

  Lee saw past Julia and Mitch. Saw the roadway beyond. The headless shoulders of one of the bodies, but he saw the spray of blood from each, darkening on the pavement.

  “Where’s Paolo?” Lee asked.

  Mitch jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “He’s in our truck. He was losing his goddamn mind.”

  Shouting from outside.

  Mitch craned his neck and swore. “Well, he was in the truck.” He shoved off the side of the truck and held up a hand. “Paolo, chill out, brother!”

  Paolo’s voice: “Is that the motherfucker that did this? Is that him? Is that him in the truck bed?”

  Lee tried to move for the open door, but Julia held onto his shoulder.

  He met her gaze. “Julia, let me talk to him.”

  “You can’t do everything yourself, Lee.”

  But she took her hand off his shoulder.

  Lee pushed himself out of the door. His feet hit concrete and he suddenly realized that Julia was right, he should have kept himself in the car. Coming upright took all the blood out of his head again, and his legs were watery like Jell-O left out in the sun.

  He grabbed the side of the truck bed and barely kept himself from falling.

  The south wind tugged at his pants legs, like it wanted to trip him.

  Outside was calamity.

  Bodies in the roadway. Blood spewed. Mitch raising his hands to try to get Paolo to back away from the truck bed, while Mitch’s team quietly started to surround Paolo, sensing that things might go bad.

  Paolo stood at the tailgate, looking up at Carl. His face was flushed red, his eyes wild. “You give me that motherfucker! You give him to me right now!”

  Carl remained calm. “Not yet, Paolo.”