Blackbirds

by Chuck Wendig

  "The pubic what?" Jimmy says. He really doesn't get it.

  And those were his last words. The worst last words ever, I might add. Whoever has the white tennis sneaks moves fast behind Jimmy, and then I hear choking, and Jimmy's feet do this epileptic dance on the cement floor of the garage, and I'm goddamn paralyzed with fear. I want to scream and run and piss myself and vomit, but I can't do any of those things. My mouth is open and my hands are frozen.

  Then dots of blood hit the cement. Pit, pat, pit.

  His foot kicks out, knocks the case back. It's not far from me. I could just reach out –

  Something happens in my head. A switch flips. I don't know why I did it. It wasn't something I thought about in a conscious, "do this" kind of way.

  There's a mop to my left. I grab it, and I stand up.

  I see who's there now – the Italian asshole and this short, stocky bitch. She's got a wire around Jimmy's neck, a wire that dead-ends in two black rubber ball handles, handles she's got tight in her pudgy grip.

  The wire's biting into his neck. That's where the blood's coming from.

  They all pause to look at me. They're shocked to see me. Even Jimmy, because right then and there, he's still alive, though not for much longer.

  That gives me the time I need.

  The dago reaches into his jacket, and I jam the mop into the lights. The fluorescents above our heads pop, throwing us back into the dark, and I grab the case and haul ass back into the kitchen. I slam the door behind me, toss a microwave cart under the handle, and it buys me enough time to get back out to my Mustang, throw this heavy-ass case into the passenger side, and get out of town. Only later do I even find out what's in it – it wasn't locked, Jimmy never did up the combination.

  So now, here we are.

  I never thought they'd find me. Never.

  We're fucked.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Everybody's Fucked

  "No, you're fucked," Miriam says.

  "We have to go," Ashley says. His smile is gone. She thinks back to the story he told, about how Jimmy the Dealer was on edge, itchy, twitchy – and that's Ashley right here, right now. He looks genuinely scared. The façade has cracked.

  Miriam spins the keys in her hand. "Settle down, cupcake. They didn't follow me."

  "You're sure?"

  "I'm sure."

  "We still have to get out of here."

  "Fine. So we get out of here."

  He shifts from foot to foot.

  "The drugs," she says. "What were you planning on doing with them? That case looks heavy."

  His gaze darts to the windows, the door. "It is heavy. Fifty pounds or so. It's worth it."

  "How worth it?"

  "I dunno. Ten grand a pound. Maybe more."

  "Jesus. Ten grand a pound, for meth?" She does some quick math. "You're looking at a half-a-million bucks in that suitcase. Why the hell do you need me again? You're sitting on a fat bank account. You've got a high-stakes table, and you're dicking around at the nickel slots."

  "I'm not a goddamn drug dealer!" he yells out – his patience and smiling charm have worn away entirely. "I haven't the first clue how to unload this much meth. Or any meth! Honestly? You really want to know? I figured you might be able to push it."

  "Me? Are you kidding?"

  "You look… like you maybe do meth. Or did."

  "No," she seethes, "I look like I do heroin – and I don't do that, either. I have all my teeth and I don't smell like cat piss, so don't think I'm some basehead tweaker fuckface."

  He throws up his hands. "Fine. Sorry to offend your delicate sensibilities. Can we go now?"

  With a grunt of frustration, she tosses him the keys and shoulders her messenger bag.

  "Go," he says, shepherding her toward the door.

  Miriam is first out.

  She doesn't see it – the car is matte black, and the darkness damn near swallows it whole. But then, bam, the headlights are on, right in her face: the Cutlass Ciera from the other motel is sitting there, right in the driveway. Shielding her eyes from the light, Miriam can't make out the shapes of the driver and passenger, but she knows they're in there. Waiting.

  From behind her, she hears: "Oh, no. Fuck. No no no."

  The car's still running when the front doors swing open. Harriet Adams and Frankie Gallo get out of the car. Neither hurries. Both carry pistols.

  Miriam formulates the route – go back inside, back through the motel room, kick out the bathroom window, escape through the field that hugs the back of the motel, or maybe the woods that sit off to the right – and she turns around to enact her plan, but…

  Ashley stands in her way, holding the metal suitcase. Their eyes meet.

  She sees it click in his mind – the way the clock in Del Amico's motel room flipped over from one number to the next. Your time is up, a voice rings in her head.

  Ashley gives her a shove and slams the door. The lock engages.

  She's alone out here. With them. With two loaded pistols.

  Miriam screams his name. Her blood's a dull roar. She pounds on the door. Behind her, Harriet marches slow and steady, a serial killer, a terminator, an unstoppable and ineluctable force. Harriet waves the man, Frankie, around, yells at him to follow out back.

  Miriam turns to run, but somehow the woman is already on her.

  Miriam thinks: I can take her. Just look at her. I can outmaneuver this little human buttplug.

  Grunting, she hefts the messenger bag, swinging it like a weapon, but the woman leans back and the bag finds nothing but air. Bam. Miriam sees bright lights as the woman pistolwhips her, the barrel catching her hard – the gun's barrel sight cutting her cheek.

  Miriam's heel catches on a hunk of broken parking lot. She falls backward, her tailbone slamming hard on asphalt.

  Before she even knows what's happening, the gun barrel is pressed against her cheek, right where the weapon's sight sliced her. The business end of the pistol is cold. It stings as Harriet presses it harder into her face. Miriam winces.

  "Stay a while," Harriet says, and Miriam sees a mad glint in the woman's eyes.

  "Just let me go. I don't have anything. This isn't my business."

  "Shh."

  "I'm just a girl, just a stupid girl caught up with a stupid boy–"

  Harriet shakes her head. "Do not attempt to appeal to my mercies, as I promise you that I have none. Now, stand up. Slowly." With her free hand, Harriet reaches into her pants pocket and pulls out a thin white plastic cord: a zip tie. "We're going to walk over to the car, and you're going to get in, and we're going to go for a little–"

  Bang, bang: two gunshots in quick succession from out back of the motel. Miriam knows that Ashley isn't dead – because Ashley isn't an eighty-year-old man in a nursing home missing a foot, yet – and she knows she's not dead, either, because she can still hear her heart punching her eardrums.

  At the sound of the gunshots, Harriet flinches. It's barely that; her gaze narrows and her eyes dart: the look of a hawk who's spotted a mouse. It's just enough time.

  Miriam's hand darts into the bag, finds purchase. She whips it back out, flicks her wrist – and sticks the butterfly knife into Harriet's thigh.

  The gun goes off, but Miriam's head isn't there.

  She palms a hunk of broken curb. Bashes it hard against Harriet's hand.

  The pistol barks another shot. Miriam hears the bullet whine off the ground near her head, but it doesn't matter – the weapon flies from Harriet's grip, pirouetting through the air until it clatters against the parking lot some ten feet away.

  Miriam doesn't wait.

  She runs.

  Her getaway sticks carry her forward even though she feels dizzy and sick and trapped. She leaves it all behind: Harriet, the pistol, the knife in the woman's leg, and her messenger bag. Shit, she thinks, my bag. I need my bag. It's got the diary in it; it's got the rest of my life. Turn around, turn around and –

  Two more gunshots. Harriet's already retrieve
d the pistol. Miriam feels one of those bullets go by her head, just a whisper from her cheek. She can't stop. If she stops, she dies. She reaches the end of the L-shaped motel, the last room, rounds the corner, and sees the woods only ten feet away.

  Another gunshot. As she ducks into the tree-line, a bullet smashes into an oak by her head, coughing splinters.

  Miriam crashes through the brush.

  It's all shapes and shadows in the woods. Any moonlight she had is gone. A tangle of dark lines, whipped lashes of biting branches – she smashes through thorn and thicket like a spooked deer, barreling forth, almost falling forward as her escaping feet catch her.

  She runs – she doesn't know for how long.

  She thinks, I'm safe, it's okay, stop running, take a breath, hide in the shadows –

  But another thought reaches her: You're never safe. Run, you stupid girl, run.

  That's when something hits her in the face.

  Her feet go out from under her, and everything spins into total darkness.

  Footsteps. Crunching brush. Snapping twigs.

  Miriam's eyes jolt open.

  It's still dark. She feels across her head – the blood there is already crusting over. She sees a dark shape above her, a black line illuminated by the moonlight around it.

  I ran into a tree branch, she thinks, still dizzy.

  And now?

  Someone's out here. She hears their steps. She hears them breathing.

  Then they stop.

  A breeze murmurs through the nighttime trees; leaves rustle against other leaves. Everything else is silent.

  Sudden movement. Footsteps. Running, crashing through the brush – toward her.

  Miriam clambers to her feet, grabs hold of a tree branch and launches herself forward, and now she's up and running, too. Her follower is in close pursuit; it can't be true, but Miriam imagines she can feel breath on the back of her neck, hands snatching the air just behind her heels, teeth biting into the meat of her shoulder.

  It's Harriet, she thinks. It's that awful woman. I'm dead meat.

  But then the sound stops. It's gone. As if it never existed.

  Which is a lot weirder, and a whole lot more disturbing.

  Miriam stops. Waits. Looks around. Everything is back to shape and shadow – no movement, no sound but the leaves against leaves.

  Did she imagine it?

  Was it some kind of waking dream?

  She smells soap. A whiff of it. Hand soap, like soap from a bathroom.

  Miriam turns around.

  A red snow shovel catches her in the face. As she drops to the ground, she hears the laughter of Louis, which becomes the laughter of Ben Hodge, which becomes the laughter of her mother – all of them above her head, a circle of moon faces cackling. Darkness returns, singing its cricket's song.

  Frankie plods around the corner from the back of the motel, holding his forearm up to a busted, bloody nose. The blood runs down his chin, his arm.

  He sees Harriet sitting on the front bumper of her Oldsmobile, her dark pants made darker by an oval of blood. The butterfly knife sits in her hand, slick and red.

  "Prick hit me in the face," Frankie says, though it sounds more like Prig hid bee in da vase.

  "With the case, I presume."

  "Dat case is vuckin' heaby."

  "The girl escaped. She stabbed me in the leg with this… flea market knife."

  "Gahdabbit."

  "I'm calling Ingersoll. He's going to want to come here. He'll want to attend to this personally."

  "Gahdabbit!"

  "Let's go before the police arrive."

  INTERLUDE

  The Dream

  She knows it's just a dream. It doesn't make it any better. Or easier.

  Louis hangs on a dead oak tree like Jesus on the cross. He's illuminated by a single shaft of moonlight: God's own spotlight on the stage. His outstretched arms play host to a row of crows and blackbirds. One blackbird – a little one with a dab of red at the fore of its wing, like a drop of blood – hops over and clings to his collarbone. It pecks at the electrical tape pressed over his left eye.

  Miriam stands at his feet looking up. She falls to her knees. She doesn't mean to; it's what the dream demands she do. It's like she's lost control. No autonomy at all.

  "I die for your sins," Louis says. In between the words is a throaty chuckle.

  "You're not dead yet," she protests.

  He ignores her comment.

  "The cross. The crux. The horizontal line is the line of man. It's the temporal world, the world of matter and flesh and dirt. Mud, blood, stone, and bone. The vertical line is the divine line. The ascendant. It runs perpendicular to the world of man and is the axis of the otherworldly and unknowable."

  "That's super. I want to wake up now."

  "In a minute. I'm not done talking to you, little lady. The cross is also representative of the crossroads. A juncture of choice. Decisions, decisions. It's time for you to start making some choices, Miriam. It's time to rock out with your cock out. It's time to jam out with your clam out."

  Louis grins. Earthworms play between his rotten teeth.

  "Now I know you're just a manifestation of my own voice," she says, almost laughing. "No divine figure, no future ghost, would use the phrase 'jam out with your clam out.'"

  Even crucified, Louis manages to shrug. "If you say so. Then how do I know so much about crosses? Did you take a comparative religion course that I missed?"

  "Go to hell."

  "Decisions, decisions, Miriam."

  "I have no decisions. I'm fate's hand-puppet."

  "Remember. The cross – the crux, the crossroads – is about sacrifice. Jesus stands at the crossroads, and he chooses not the horizontal line of man but the vertical line of God."

  "This is fascinating, but–"

  The blackbirds and crows take flight. They screech and holler. Wings flap; all she can see is dark shadows fluttering. Talons claw at her eyes, tearing them out –

  TWENTY-THREE

  What Fate Wants

  It's one of those mornings. Sky's just a Vaseline smear of formless clouds – a bright, greasy layer of gray. Doesn't look like rain. Doesn't look like sun. Doesn't look like much at all.

  Miriam's head pounds.

  Tree branch. Bad dreams. A shitty combination.

  The gash across her forehead pulses, but the cut on her cheek where the pistol bit her isn't taking the competition sitting down; it nibbles, like a hungry worm, with her face the apple.

  Plus, her butt-bone still throbs.

  And worst of all, she doesn't have any cigarettes. They were in her bag. A bag that is now God Knows Where. Probably in the hands of that horrible bulldog of a woman.

  Sighing, she thunks her head against the door behind her.

  She doesn't intend for it to be a knock, but that's how it happens. She hears shuffling inside. Louis opens the door, obviously surprised to find a battered girl sitting outside his motor lodge bungalow just past the ass-crack of dawn.

  "Morning," she croaks. Even speaking a single word makes her body hurt.

  "Oh my god," he says. She can see it on his face: a very real look of pain, pain possibly worse than what she's experiencing. His large hands reach behind her, and he helps her stand with a gentle lift. Her legs wobble, and for a second she's not sure if she's going to make it – but she fights back dizziness and takes a deep breath.

  "Sorry. I would've brought donuts."

  "What happened?"

  She seriously considers telling him the truth. Something inside her wants to spray out of her like popping a raw, red zit. Festering pus. Pbbtt. Miriam wants to tell Louis everything: all about her strange ability, how she got it, how she saw him die a death that was coming way too soon, how Ashley isn't her brother, how they almost got killed over a metal suitcase filled to the brim with baggies of crystal meth, every last horrible nugget of truth.

  But she doesn't.

  She convinces herself that it would only hu
rt him. It'd be selfish. He doesn't deserve that laid across his shoulders (doesn't deserve to be crucified for your sins), and it's not like he'd believe her anyway. She's lied so much already.

  "The boyfriend." Keep on lying. You go, girl. "He found me. I didn't think he would, but he's a talented asshole. He found out where I was staying and…"