Degüello

by Billy Kring

  “I want to go.”

  “I don’t want you to step on a nail and hurt your foot. Let me find a safe way to go, and I’ll come get you.”

  “Okay. I will watch you, and if you fall, I’ll come help.”

  “That’s fine.” She hugged the child, then walked with care across the rafters, being cautious not to step between them where the chance of falling through was a real possibility. She pretended she was a tightrope walker in the circus, and that helped her concentrate on her foot placement.

  The most light came in where an aluminum panel of louvers had been mounted in the attic wall. Kelly made her way to it and wiggled the frame. It wasn’t screwed to the wood, only placed in the rectangular hole that had been cut for it.

  She peeked through the gaps, looking for people outside, but didn’t see anyone. Next to the outside wall was a long, upright pole about two inches in diameter that extended from the ground, beyond the roof eaves to an ancient television antenna, and all of it held to the wall by small, one-inch wide aluminum straps screwed into the wood. Fifty yards from the house she made out brush and trees lining a small river that meandered off to her right as far as she could see. Across the stream on the far bank was the big park she’d seen before, with the baseball fields. She didn’t see any houses beyond that, only grass and brush, like down by the river. If they could make it to there, they could hide.

  She took off the louvered cover, which let in a good bit of light from streetlights. She walked to Anita and pointed at the rectangle of light, “Come on, we can get out that way.”

  Anita came beside her and peeked outside “Where are we going? Oh my gosh, we’re high. How can we get down?”

  Kelly put her fingers to the child’s lips, “I’ll show you.”.

  She eased her head out of the opening and looked every direction, but saw no others. The antenna pole was an easy reach, and she grasped it with her right hand, shaking it to see how attached it was. The pole seemed solid.

  Pulling her head inside, she said to Anita, “Can you get to this pole and climb down?”

  Anita looked, first at the pole then down at the ground. “It’s too high, Kelly.”

  Someone moved in the house below them. Kelly’s heart beat faster.

  She hurried out the opening and held to the pole, with her feet spread on either side and braced against the house wall. “Come on out. I’ll help you.”

  Anita looked at the ground, then at Kelly and shook her head no.

  Kelly’s nerves were stretched, and she said, as calm as could be, “It’ll be fun, like going down a slide. I won’t let you fall.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Anita came out the opening and Kelly guided her feet and body so she sat in her lap, with both of them facing the antenna pole and their feet braced against the house wall.

  Voices reached their ears, voices coming from around the edge of the house.

  Kelly put her fear aside and said to Anita, “Here we go, and quiet as mice.” Kelly walked down the side of the house, using her hands on the pole and her feet on either side against the house’s wall, moving them six inches at a time, and slow. It seemed to take an hour, but at last Kelly touched the ground with a foot. Her heart thumped so hard that her shirt moved with every beat.

  From around the corner of the house, Nadine said, “We don’t find them, Suretta’s gonna shoot us. Let’s do the search again, and starting in the house.”

  Kelly put Anita on the ground as she felt sweat on her forehead and a trembling in her arms and legs, then she moved beside her. “Ready to go?”

  Anita nodded. They crouched and hurried toward the brush line by the river.

  They made it twenty-five yards when Nadine yelled, “I see ‘em. They’re running for the river!”

  Kelly grabbed Anita’s hand and both ran as hard as they could.

  A hard bam sounded and Kelly realized Nadine had shot at them. No, at her. Pulling Anita to the right, she headed for a curve in the river where it narrowed to only a few feet wide, and where brush grew thick.

  They entered the thick brush and pushed through some of it as they went in a weaving path to go around the others. Some places were so dense that the two girls crawled on their hands and knees to get beyond the worst of it.

  Behind them Nadine and the others stumbled and cursed, and when someone spotted Kelly, they fired. The sound of bullets hitting limbs and branches scared the two girls every time, but they continued on, with Anita breathing hard but keeping up.

  Kelly didn’t stop at the water, but instead picked up Anita and carried her as they eased into the stream. Kelly put one foot forward, then the other. The water became deeper, and Anita’s eyes grew wide, but she clung to her friend. Near the far bank the streambed made a small dip and Kelly and Anita went into it up to their necks, with the older girl holding the younger one up higher because of it. The water wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t clear, either, and Kelly wondered what was in it,

  swirling and swimming around her legs.

  A small limb touched her ankle underwater and she jerked, almost dropping Anita into the water. Anita clung to her, saying, “If I fall in, come save me?”

  “I will.”

  Brush cracked behind them, and Nadine’s angry voice yelled, “You bitches better come back here!”

  Other brush made sounds, and Kelly realized there were three out there, two others with Nadine, and all of them hunting two children.

  Kelly reached the far bank and put Anita down on the grass. She whispered to the girl, “See that dark brush over there? I think it’ll be a good place for us to go. Wait for me there, and I’ll be over when I get out of the water.”

  Anita nodded and went to the bush, moving behind it and peeking out at Kelly as the older girl struggled to get out of the river.

  The cut into the far bank didn’t slope gradually up, but rather the water cut deeper on that side and left a flat place, like a five-foot tall cliff under the water. She scrambled for footholds, but all her feet did was slip down the muddy underwater bank like it was covered with teflon.

  A loud Bam exploded from the brush behind her and a bullet slapped into the wet river bank a foot to her left, exploding clods of mud into the air like a small cannon shot. Kelly looked back and spotted Nadine, holding her pistol over her head to clear the brush and fire at her. “Don’t run!” She yelled, and her flush, scratched face looked murderous.

  Kelly slid to the right in the water, going downstream and making the river gurgle around her chest as she hurried to find a way up the bank. She found it five feet later, where a small draw entered the water, but was hidden by the brush. She put one foot up, then the other, and was on dry land and crawling under the cenizo, cedar and mesquite, following the draw as it went away from the river.

  Nadine asked, “Where’d she go?”

  Another voice said, “Maybe you hit her and she floated away.”

  Kelly felt hope from that, and crawled further as she peeked under the brush, looking for Anita. The violet-eyed girl was five feet from her, hiding under a small cedar. She showed her excitement, with her cheeks flushed as she crawled to her friend. She hugged Kelly’s neck and Kelly hugged her back for a while, both crying a little. They heard a splash as someone waded into the river behind them, and Kelly whispered, “Let’s go.”

  She led the way, following the bottom of the small draw as it snaked further up through the land, growing deeper as it went as other draws cut into it.

  The tension in Kelly made her heart beat fast and, if she dwelled on it, made it hard to breathe because of the squeezing feeling in her chest. Kelly had endured days of mental and physical abuse, through the kidnapping, the escape and chase, seeing her friends Bobbi and Consuela killed by these same people so close to her now, and the running, running, running that she did now, all with Anita in tow. Kelly knew she didn’t have much stamina left, and she felt a failure because of it, the same way she felt when her father left, w
earing his uniform.

  She shook it off and looked at Anita, “You still okay?”

  Anita nodded, “How much longer?”

  “I don’t know, but we just keep going, okay?”

  “I go with you, Kelly.” She grasped Kelly’s hand and looked up at her.

  The hand-holding helped. “Let’s go a little further.” They continued up the draw, and the strata in the walls changed from soil to caliche, and from that to stone and gravel mixed in the bone-colored caliche. Dark roots emerged from the walls in places, looking like black snakes going in and out of the pale soil.

  Kelly used the roots as handrails in places where the draw’s floor was uneven. Anita held her other hand in a tight grip, and Kelly caught her several times as the child tripped and fell, keeping her from hitting the rocky floor of the draw by lifting her up by the arm.

  Kelly heard vehicles driving on a road off to her left, maybe a half-mile away. It would be a place to go to, soon. A short distance up the draw Kelly spotted evidence of road construction, and a caliche road that extended across the draw. She and Anita walked to it and looked around, all the while checking behind them for pursuit. No people were in sight, so they stepped onto the makeshift road.

  To their left was a part of the sports fields Kelly had spotted from the opposite side of the river. Much larger than she’d first thought, there were twelve baseball fields grouped in fours, and another area with what looked like three more for little league, plus a few other areas for play. It looked very nice, with good grass and fences, and the paved road they could see paralleling the ball fields on the north side. No people there, though. Maybe it was too early in the morning, she thought. Vehicles drove on the road in the distance, and a large portion of the sports field complex had been paved for parking. “Come on,” she said to Anita.

  They stepped onto the caliche road and trotted to the edge of the parking area, then stepped off it, where they could hide behind the berm. It looked safe. Kelly held Anita’s hand and they stepped to the paved road to begin walking toward the convenience store, a Stripes, in the distance beside the busy road. “That’s where we need to go,” she said to Anita.

  Anita was about done. She looked exhausted, and had several cuts and scrapes from the brush. “Can we rest there, Kelly?”

  “Yes, we can.”

  Anita liked that and said, “Okay.” She was a tough kid, Kelly thought.

  Once they stepped on the paved road, they made good time, and it made for easy walking compared to the draw. They only made it fifty yards when Nadine yelled at them from the caliche road crossing the draw, “Stop right there! I’ll shoot you if you don’t stop!”

  She looked terrible, with cuts on her face, mud on her ripped clothes, and her arms in the short sleeve tee shirt bloody from many scratches. She looked exhausted, too, with hair ratted and muddy.

  “I’m not kiddin’!” She said.

  Kelly said to Anita, “We have to run.”

  Anita’s lip trembled, but she nodded yes.

  Nadine said, “Shit!” She raised her pistol as the two women finally caught up to stand beside her. They looked terrible as well, and breathed heavily as they rested with their hands on their knees, heads down.

  Nadine fired, and the shot boomed loud out on the open flat, not muted like it had been down in the draw.

  Kelly jerked at the sound, and glanced back, but wasn’t hit. “Can you run faster?”

  Anita nodded. They sped up and put some distance between them and their hunters.

  Nadine didn’t expect the gun to be so loud up here out of the draw. She looked around, then put the pistol away and told her two accomplices, “We gotta catch them. Let’s go.” They took off at a run, trying to close the two-hundred-yard gap. Nadine also pulled out her phone and made a call, did more listening than talking, then put it back. They would have help, and soon. She told the others, “slow down, all we have to do now is watch.”

  Kelly glanced back and saw that Nadine and the two others were walking now, so she had Anita and her do the same. They could see the Stripes convenience store a hundred yards ahead, across the main street. Kelly couldn’t make out the street name yet, but she would soon.

  Inside the store they would be safe. The police would come and Kelly could tell them everything. And she would get to hug her mother after that. The thought made her eyes moist.

  A black pickup turned into the baseball park complex and came at a slow, deliberate pace toward them.

  Kelly felt her stomach turn to ice. It was Suretta. She thought about running, but Suretta stopped in the street after turning the pickup sideways across it. She emerged, dragging Ramona across the center console by her bound wrists.

  They stood by the open pickup door, and Suretta pulled her knife, touching it to Ramona’s throat. “Anita, come here and I won’t kill your mother.”

  Kelly was stunned. Suretta would kill this woman in broad daylight, and in this public place. Before she could say anything, Anita raced to her mother.

  “Anita, no!” Kelly said, but she didn’t chase after the child because Suretta had her eyes trained on Kelly, and those eyes chilled the eleven-year-old.

  Suretta waited for Anita to reach them.

  Kelly tried to think of something, anything she could do, but she only felt helpless as she watched things unfold. Her heart ached, and she almost sagged to the pavement.

  When Anita reached them, Suretta opened the rear door and ordered Ramona and Anita inside, then closed it. She turned to look at Kelly for a moment as if deciding something, then she beckoned her over, using one hand in a come here movement.

  Kelly didn’t move.

  Suretta took a deep breath, then reached into the cab of the pickup and withdrew the small pistol.

  Kelly skipped off the road and hid behind the trunk of a large mesquite, peeking out at the woman. She glanced behind and saw Nadine and the two others not moving, but standing two hundred yards away.

  Suretta looked at the increasing traffic on South Bell Street, and at the Stripes store on the opposite side of Bell, and thought about the risk of hunting down this tough, smart kid while people watched.

  She touched the pistol barrel to her head in a salute, hopped into the cab, and drove south on Bell.

  Kelly couldn’t breathe as she watched them leave, and her heart fell like a cold, heavy stone in her chest. She’d tried so hard to keep Anita safe, to protect her, and now she had failed. The emotion of it overwhelmed her, and all she could do was weep. Guilt and grief, so deep and black it was as if her father died again.

  Moving out from the tree, Kelly walked on the pavement like some sad zombie, shuffling toward South Bell, almost unaware of the speeding cars crossing left and right in front of her, and the three women coming behind her. She stopped at the intersection of the two roads and could go no further. She stood there, weeping and alone, and she wished so bad for someone to hold her.

  Chapter 17

  Hunter overslept. She awoke to early morning noises of traffic passing, and the brightness of a sliver of sun peeking over the horizon. Shadows still clung to the ground and the low places, but the tops of trees and buildings turned gold in the morning light. She stretched in the seat, then exited the Jeep and stretched her legs, walking into the convenience store to buy coffee and something to eat that she could hold while driving.

  She decided on coffee, two chorizo and egg breakfast tacos, and a bottle of water, since she’d emptied the one she bought yesterday. Carrying all of that made for tricky maneuvers because the store ran out of bags, and again when she had to open the vehicle’s door, but she got it done. She took a bite of the first chorizo and egg taco and sipped the coffee before she started up Bell Street.

  There were only a few side streets that she hadn’t checked yesterday, so doing them first thing this morning would be a good way start. Looming in her mind was the fear that the children were already taken, already gone, that she’d missed them somehow.

  Ike w
ould be throwing a fit right now to get out of the hospital, she thought. That would be the next place she went, after checking these last streets in the small neighborhood just across the river for cars she might recognize, but first she would cruise Bell Street and see what she could see. She had a hunch.

  As she came up on the Sport Complex on the left, just before the river, Hunter spotted a black pickup pull out of the street and leave a small child standing in the road. A hundred yards further from Bell Street was a group of three women, walking toward the child.

  Hunter slowed as she watched the child sit on the curb and cover her head with her arms as if she was crying.

  It was Kelly.

  Hunter turned into the Complex area on the road and stopped by Kelly.

  Hunter got out of the Jeep, with Kelly still not looking up, and she said, “Hey?” The girl stood and jumped in her arms, wrapping her legs around Hunter’s body and burying her face in Hunter’s neck.

  Kelly rocked both of them with her sobs, saying, “I…I couldn’t save her. I tried, hard, but I couldn’t.” She sobbed again, shaking her whole body.

  Hunter’s eyes welled as she held the child and attempted to comfort her. She was in such pain, my gosh, Hunter couldn’t imagine what Kelly had been through. ‘I’m here now. I’ve got you.”

  Looking over the crying girl’s shoulder, Hunter recognized one of the women coming their way. Nadine, from the ranch.

  She carried Kelly to the passenger side of the vehicle and attempted to put her down, but Kelly clung to her, saying, “Please.”

  Hunter said, “Nadine and two others are coming this way, honey. I have to stop them. I won’t leave you, I promise.”

  Kelly slowly removed her arms from Hunter’s neck and stood by the Jeep Cherokee. “She has a gun.”

  Anger flashed through Hunter, “Did she shoot at you?”

  “Yes, Anita and me.”

  “Okay, what I want you to do is get in the back seat and keep your head down.”

  “Okay.” Kelly got in, but didn’t take her eyes off Hunter, as if losing sight of her would leave her alone.