The Fever Dream

by Sam Jones

  Silence held thick in the air as the rear wheels on the truck spun mindlessly.

  Amanda was the first one to wake up.

  She had a nasty welt on the side of her head from when she was thrown backwards inside the truck, a fun, little headache partnered up with it. The last thing she remembered was stabbing Roenick in the back. Literally.

  As soon as she rallied her senses and stood to her feet, she noticed that the truck was upside down. Guns and bodies and medical tools were all over the place.

  Blood was on the walls. Blood was the floor.

  Blood was everywhere.

  She stumbled her way towards the side door, which had been dented inwards but was still open enough that she could slip out of it.

  She shimmied her way through and fell to the desert on her hands and knees. Amanda drew heavy breaths as she attempted to lower her heart rate.

  Something metallic clicked behind her. Amanda turned around to the source of the noise—

  It was Roenick, bloody and bruised with a pair of scissors sticking out of his back. He looked like a reanimated corpse holding a grip on his now bloody Walther.

  “Close,” he said to Amanda. “But no cigar.”

  He raised his weapon.

  Another metallic click emitted behind Roenick. Just as he turned his head—

  The barrel of Black’s Beretta was jammed into his cheek.

  “Drop it, dickhead,” Black said, fresh cut across his chin, silver suit now ripped, blood-soaked and greasy as he stood directly behind Roenick.

  “Unbelievable…” Roenick said as he threw the Walther a few feet away and to the left with a casual toss.

  “Brownie points on the music you played coming in here, by the way,” he added on.

  “Thank you,” replied Black.

  Black shoved him forward.

  “Of all the options, Martin,” said Roenick. “This is the one you went with. You had all the time and every opportunity to better your situation, but instead, you chose to save a poor, little girl… How admirable.”

  Black looked at Amanda, standing there drenched in sweat, blood and disinfectant, the gown she was wearing barely concealed her exposed upper half.

  “Hey, you,” he said to Amanda.

  “Hey, Martin,” she replied. Relieved.

  Black stared at Roenick as he turned around to face him.

  “This doesn’t have to end like this,” Roenick said.

  “Don’t start with the last minute negotiations,” Black interjected. “Please don’t pull that shit right now. I’ve got a really, really bad headache.”

  Roenick smiled and took a moment. “I suppose I’m not walking out of here alive, am I?” he asked Black.

  Black shook his head.

  “Then you mind if we settle this with our fists? Man to man. I’d prefer a more fitting end than just a straight-up execution.”

  Amanda stepped forward.

  “Kill him, Martin,” she said. Flat. All business.

  Whatever innocence or victim-like traces she had on her when they first met were gone.

  Now she was a stone-cold bitch.

  “Don’t hesitate,” she told him, sounding a lot like Trask.

  Creepy…

  Roenick and Black connected eyes.

  “Come on, Martin,” Roenick said to him. “I’m not going anywhere. Finish me like a man. Call it a current Trust employee doing a former Trust employee a favor.”

  Black grinned. “You’d like that,” he said. “Wouldn’t you?”

  Black engaged the safety and tossed the Beretta to his right.

  “Martin!” Amanda screamed in protest.

  “Move aside, Mandy,” Black replied.

  Roenick removed the surgical scissors from his lower back and tossed the bloody instrument to the ground, his right hand clenching into a fist as he and Black squared off about four feet of distance from one another.

  Gazes locked in.

  Fists at the ready.

  The two charged towards one another. As Roenick went to throw a hook—

  Black produced a carbon fiber knife he was hiding in his sleeve and jammed it underhand into Roenick’s gut.

  Roenick keeled over. Air shot out of his lungs from the shock, his body now slumped against Black’s shoulder. He clutched onto to his fellow brother from The Trust in a reluctant embrace as he bled out on Black’s silver suit.

  “Hey, Roenick,” Black said to him.

  Roenick’s skin went snow white as Black pulled him in closer and said—

  “I think the world has grown weary of the white boy villain. Don’t you think?”

  Black then pulled out the knife from Roenick’s gut and stabbed it into his heart.

  Roenick released one, final breath. His pupils dilated and his knees gave out. Black shoved him off with his right hand, and the man’s body fell onto the sand, a pool of blood gathering in the grain around him as the last remnants of life evacuated his corpse.

  And just like that, the tragic and complicated tale of Marcus Silver had come to an end.

  For a good while, Black stared on at Roenick’s body and the carbon fiber knife sticking out of his chest.

  Amanda cleared her throat as the dust settled and said to Black—

  “That was a really bad joke.”

  Black nodded. “Sorry,” he said. “I never land the one-liners. I’m working on it.”

  Then a thought hit him—

  Cassie!

  Black ran around to the overturned cab of the semi and started tugging on the door to the driver’s side, which was dented in at such a wicked angle that it was two steps shy of needing the Jaws of Life to pry it open.

  With three hard pulls he opened the door.

  Inside, still harnessed in by her seatbelt and dangling upside down was Cassie, her eyes closed and dried blood running down her face.

  No, no, no, no…

  Her eyelids fluttered and opened. She craned her weary head towards Black as she coughed.

  “Did we get all the bad guys?” she asked him with an exhausted tone.

  He smiled and nodded.

  “We got ‘em.”

  Black assisted Cassie out of the cab. Her left wrist was sprained, and she was pretty sure she had a concussion. As soon as she stood upright, Black looked her over.

  “You look like shit,” he said. “But I think you’ll be okay.”

  Cassie looked at Black’s tattered appearance. “I think you’ll have to retire that suit of yours,” she replied. “Look a little worse for the wear.”

  She spotted Roenick’s body on the sand, Black’s carbon fiber knife sticking out of his chest.

  “Sorry about your brother,” he whispered to Cassie.

  “Don’t be,” she replied, her focus still on Roenick’s corpse. “He was an asshole.”

  Amanda approached them both with cautious steps, her eyes glued onto Cassie like she was some sort of reincarnation of Roenick.

  Black could feel the tension.

  “She’s okay,” he said to Amanda. “She’s with me.”

  Cassie moved past Black and towards Amanda, a slight limp in her step as she walked.

  The two bloody and bruised women examined each other’s faces for about twenty seconds. Both of them managed to spot the similarities in their appearance. Cassie did her best to not indicate.

  Maybe Amanda knows…

  Cassie opened her mouth, but the words took a few moments to make their way out.

  “Do you know who I am?” she asked Amanda.

  Amanda shook her head.

  Cassie decided to not tell her. She turned around and began examining the wreckage of the semi. “We should probably skip out of here,” Cassie said.

  Black removed the knife from Roenick’s chest, cleaned the blade with his shirttail, and pocketed it.

  He looked back down the road at the multiple scenes of wreckage scattered several miles apart from one other along the highway – destruction and collateral damage from the m
ission to save Amanda Dubin’s life.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Black said.

  The trio rallied and began their walk along the highway, the remains of the semi and the lifeless body of Roenick becoming a faded fever dream.

  Martin Black, Cassie Palizzi, and Amanda Dubin traveled two miles up the road to a town called Ruth. During their walk, all of them had done their best to clean up their appearance for fear of flagging down any unwanted attention. Black donated his jacket as a towel so the three of them could wipe off as much blood and grime from their faces as possible.

  Cassie gave Amanda her high-collared jacket to cover her slightly exposed top half.

  Amanda accepted it with a sincere ‘thank you.’

  It made Cassie feel a little bit better.

  It had been an hour since the semi crashed alongside the highway. They made it to a run-down and rusty convenience store just outside the small township, made up of a handful of hermits. Nothing was around except for the store, a semi-circle of trailers to the west, and a handful of one-story shacks.

  Sirens from the emergency vehicles heading to the scene of the semi accident rang out in the distance.

  “We can’t stay here,” Cassie said to Black. “Someone driving by is going to take one look at us and know what’s going on.”

  Black looked around for something. Anything.

  Come on…

  There’s always an exit.

  There’s always a way out.

  As he scanned around, his eyes fell upon a green tin shack that looked like it was built to withstand hurricanes; an old man with overalls and corncob pipe swayed back-and-forth in a rocking chair right next to it.

  Resting alongside the shack was a vintage, 1970s pick-up truck with glossless, white paint that looked like it had been crudely layered over a pre-existing tone of blue.

  The old man locked eyes with Black and nodded.

  Black smiled.

  “Hey, Cas,” he said. “Still have that hundred grand Roenick wanted to bribe me with?”

  Cassie reached into the pocket of the jacket she had just used as a towel.

  Black drove the three of them to a bus stop ten miles away from Ruth. The entire way, Black played the radio news to track the police’s progress on the overturned semi.

  We’re in the clear.

  For now…

  The old man they bought the truck from, grateful for the five grand Black slipped him in exchange, had donated a slightly baggy pair of faded jeans and cowboys boots, which were a half size too big for Amanda, after he realized the woman was slightly underdressed.

  Black parked the truck just outside of the bus stop, resting in between Lund and another hole-in-the-wall town about five miles away. A fleet of silver steel busses were queued up outside the small, photo-mat sized terminal where a lonely man with a mullet reading a book was selling and ripping tickets with the enthusiasm of a carnival worker.

  “What are we doing here?” Amanda asked, sitting in the middle seat between Cassie and Black.

  “You’re going to hop a bus out of town,” Black told her as he pulled out a pair of hundred dollar bills from the envelope for whatever bus she decided to take.

  “You’re free now.”

  Amanda hesitated, but she wasn’t sure why. The tale was over and there was nothing but opportunity in front of her. Whatever was tethering her to Black and Cassie’s company was a frivolous and slightly Stockholm-like feeling.

  It was time to break free.

  She prepared to say something that looked like ‘thank you,’ but instead, she closed her mouth and nodded.

  Cassie opened her door, stepped out and held it open.

  Amanda exited the car and looked towards the bus station.

  “Hey,” Black said to her.

  Amanda turned around.

  “You were never planning on paying me the money, should this have gone down how it was supposed to. Were you?”

  Amanda shook her head.

  “Do you have to kill me now?” she asked.

  Black also shook his head. “You can owe me,” he replied.

  Amanda snickered. “Take care of yourself, Martin Black.”

  Amanda turned away from the truck and walked towards the terminal, a slight pep in her step, her eyes never once looking back at Black or Cassie.

  Cassie piled back into the truck and shut the door as Amanda approached the terminal.

  Black started the ignition. The two of the sat in silence for a good ten seconds.

  “You want some coffee?” he asked her.

  Cassie was ready to skip town and never come back to this area of the states again. She was eager to ditch the life she had left behind in a wrecked eighteen-wheeler and adamant about (maybe) never touching another firearm again.

  A cup of coffee sounded like a good way to kick her resolutions into motion. She nodded to Black who drove off to a bar about a half-mile away from the bus stop.

  Hope, a feeling that had eluded Amanda for the past several years, was beginning to become familiar with her once again as she purchased a ticket at the terminal, got on a bus, and was driven off to some unknown destination in an unknown part of the world.

  And just like that, the complex tale of Amanda Dubin had come to an end.

  The purple sweater Black wore shouted ‘Viva Las Vegas!’ across the front in gold letters. It was terribly tacky and made for Floridian retirees and people over their 60s who didn’t know what a proper vacation looked like.

  But it covered up the bruises and blood he was unable to wash off, and that was all that mattered.

  Cassie purchased two of the sweaters at a local roadside retailer on their way to the bar, along with a bottle of water and a rag that the vender, a Latino man, had stuffed in his back pocket.

  After a quick hobo bath in the cab of the truck, their appearances were a lot less eye-catching as they pulled up to a one-story house in front of a forested area that had been converted into a watering hole called ‘Ruth’s Club.’

  Black parked in front of a row of rusted, barrel barbecues that were up for sale. No other cars in sight. A sign on the front of the green-tiled shack advertised Budweiser.

  Off to the left was a porch that looked like it had been added to the bar around the time of its conversion. There was a wooden roundtable resting on it with three plastic chairs that could have come from K-Mart.

  Without a word exchanged between them, Cassie and Black sat down and waited for someone inside to come serve them.

  It had been a good stretch of time since either of them had actually relaxed, so as soon as they plopped down into their chairs, fatigue and soreness washed over every inch of their bodies.

  Cassie examined her red and sprained wrist. “I might have broken it,” she said.

  Black rubbed his neck. “I think my skull was internally decapitated,” he added on.

  The door leading inside Ruth’s Club swung open. A thin man, clad entirely in denim with liver spots, poked his head out, one foot lingering inside the door. He spotted the welts and bruises on his new customers. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about asking what happened to them.

  “Help ya’ll?” he asked.

  “You got coffee?” Cassie inquired.

  “Just put a pot on,” the thin man said.

  Black held up two fingers.

  The thin man went back inside.

  “So…” Cassie began. “What happens now, Martin Black?”

  Black stretched out and rubbed his shoulder.

  “I think I gotta see a doctor,” he said.

  “Me too,” Cassie replied. “But what about after that?”

  Black shrugged. He felt the pain from the bullet that had grazed his shoulder sharpening.

  “Why?” he asked. “You looking for a date?”

  Cassie shook her head.

  “Not really. I’m just curious what a guy like you does to unwind after a long weekend at the office.”

  “Well, after I turn in
my paperwork, I’m gonna try and find a good book to read.”

  Cassie laughed.

  “I’m an English teacher,” Black said. “Remember?”

  “That’s right,” Cassie replied. “You told me that the last time we had a drink.”

  “The last time we had a drink, you tried to knock me unconscious.”

  The thin man re-entered with a pair of black coffees in porcelain mugs. He set them down on the table. Black slid him a twenty from his stack of cash for the effort before the man disappeared back inside.

  Cassie raised her mug. “I promise I didn’t taint this one,” she said.

  Black grabbed his own mug and raised it to his lips. “Cross your heart?” he asked.

  Cassie crossed her chest with her index finger.

  They drank and held the silence for several more moments.

  “Why blow up that strip club. And who did it?” asked Black.

  Cassie shook her head.

  “I dunno,” she said.

  Black thought back to the body count—

  Eleven.

  Then it was fourteen.

  “Three extra bodies got planted after the fact,” he told Cassie.

  Cassie caught his gaze.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Eleven people died. The news said fourteen.”

  “Huh…”

  “Yeah… I kind of want to know why… I’m sure I’ll find out... I have a knack for getting into trouble.”

  His eyes wandered.

  “I know you said you wouldn’t tell me your reasons for turning away from the dark side,” Black said.

  “I still won’t,” Cassie told him.

  “I just want to know one thing: why didn’t you tell her the truth? About Roenick? About you being related?”

  Cassie thought over her answer, long and hard. “Would it have made a difference?” she asked him.

  Black mulled it over.

  I don’t know.

  Cassie took another swig of her coffee. “What about you, Martin Black?”

  Black looked up from his mug.

  “Why didn’t you just take the money and your CW and go home?”

  Black’s eyes wandered as he answered. The truth more apparent and clear than a lighthouse guiding a ship lost in the darkness. “I think I was trying to make up for something,” he said. “For someone.”