by Susanne Beck
Her drunken giggles were cut off when the man reached down and grabbed her by the back of her shirt. Hauling her up out of her chair, he belched once again, in her face this time, before tossing her to his buddies who stood behind him. Then he turned his attention to the rest of us.
A leer barely had its chance to curve his lips before Rio flattened them for him with a sweet right cross to the jaw. His stumble backward into the bodies of his cronies allowed Nia to slip nimbly away. When she was in range, Rio grabbed her roughly by the shirt and shoved her behind her large body. The rest of us closed ranks in a tight formation around her.
Wiping the trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, the walking mountain smiled at us; a smile very much like something I’d seen Ice use on occasion, white and dangerous, like the smile of a shark as it spots a floundering seal. Or, in our case, a group of seals.
"Ohhh shit," Critter breathed.
The group came at us en masse, each more than double our size (except, of course, for Rio, who towered over everyone save the largest of the group). As was usual in these type of fights, the littlest one came for me. While that fact should, perhaps, have threatened my ego slightly, I found myself once again thanking God for small favors (pun intended) and chopping the cocky little banty rooster down a peg or two as he tried to grab for parts of my anatomy which were reserved for someone a lot taller, a lot stronger, and a hell of a lot meaner than he could ever hope to be.
The look on his face as he toppled over from a foot to his chest should have pleased me less than it did, but I went with it, happy to be feeling anything positive at all at that point.
A chair flew past my head, and when I looked up, I saw that the entire bar had erupted into a massive brawl complete with flying bodies and flying furniture.
As my friends seemed to be holding their own quite well, I concentrated on keeping Nia in my sights and defending us both against the onslaught of testosterone-fueled flesh which came after us, fists clenched and teeth gritted. It was easier that I’d had a right to hope, and I felt my muscles respond eagerly to their call to action, slipping into time honored rhythms of advance, block, and retreat as if I’d been born to do that very thing.
The fight hadn’t been going on very long when a young man blew in from the outside and shouted loudly into the din. The only words I heard were "prisa!", "amigos" and "policia!". And those words I understood only too well. The brawl stopped almost immediately as the men broke away from each other and dove for the windows and doors of the bar, leaving only a few of us still standing.
Unfortunately, one of the ones still standing chose to take advantage of the brief lapse of concentration the announcement had brought and landed a solid uppercut to Rio’s chin. I looked up in time to see the whites of her eyes flash before she tumbled bonelessly to the ground in an unconscious heap.
Time seemed to slow down then. As I jumped to cover Rio’s helpless body with my own, from the corner of my eye, I saw Nia pick up a miraculously unbroken bottle from our table and grasp it by the neck.
"You son of a bitch!!!!" she shouted, rushing past me before I could stop her and smashing the bottle against the man’s head.
Everything went dark for me then, as my body hit Rio’s, and his body fell on top of mine, making me the unfortunate meat in a rather unappetizing sandwich and chasing the breath from my lungs in an undignified whoosh.
It might have been a second, it might have been a century, but when the man’s body was finally rolled off of mine, I thought I would weep for the simple joy of being able to breathe freely once again. I was hauled up to my feet by the scruff of my neck and stood watching as Pony’s wild, frightened eyes bore down into mine. "Are you alright, Angel?" Her voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a very long tunnel, but as oxygen began to clear the cobwebs from my brain, I nodded.
"Are you sure? How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Um... seven?"
My feeble joke only caused her eyes to widen further and, taking pity on my distraught friend, I laid a hand on her arm and gave it a brief squeeze. "I’m alright. Really. Just a little winded."
Just then, the bartender, who’d spent the duration of the brawl tucked safely behind his bar, rushed up to us, jabbering so quickly, my head started to spin again. "What’s he saying?"
"There’s a back door that leads to an alley. He’s begging us to leave now before the police come," Critter replied, holding on to a struggling Nia. "Goddamn it, Nia, stop struggling."
"Let me go then!" Nia hissed, redoubling her efforts to break free.
"Not a chance. We’re getting out of here."
"Not without Rio!"
"She’s coming with us," Pony stated, looking back at me. "Can you help me with her? She’s too heavy for me to carry by myself."
"Just tell me what to do."
"Grab her feet. I’ll grab her arms. We’ll drag her until we get outside. Then we’ll figure out something else."
"Too late," I heard Critter shout a split second before the doors blew open and what seemed to be an entire army of Mexican police entered, their guns drawn and pointing in our direction.
"Motherfucker," Pony grunted, dropping Rio’s hands and raising her own.
In a word, that pretty much summed it up.
* * *
"I don’t feel so good."
"There’s the toilet. Go puke in it."
"I don’t know why you’ve got such a pissy attitude. If it wasn’t for me, tall, dark and gruesome would have finished your ass for sure!"
"If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t be in this fucking mess in the first place."
"Says who?"
"Says me."
"Yeah, well who died and made you God, huh?"
Closing my eyes, I rested my head back against the crumbling cement wall that made up my new, and hopefully temporary, home—a prison cell. Rio and Nia had been at it since Rio’d regained consciousness in the back of what passed for a police van in these parts and I was trying my level best to get their voices out of my head before I really did something to earn my stay here.
As if reading my mind, Critter leaned over to whisper in my ear. "Wonder how long a term murder gets around here?"
"I heard that," Rio growled at Critter, and received an abbreviated peace sign for her troubles. Her scowl deepened.
I felt something tickle my hand, and opened my eyes just in time to see a cockroach the size of a sparrow skitter across it in search of more hospitable surroundings. "I hate bugs," I said through gritted teeth.
"Welcome to Chez Roach Motel. Ya check in, but ya don’t check out."
"That’s not even close to being funny, Nia," Critter remarked.
"Sor-ry!"
I looked over at Critter. "You know the saying ‘be careful what you wish for’?"
"Yeah."
"Remind me to have it tattooed across my forehead when we get out of here, ok?"
"Easy for you to say," Pony interjected from her place by the cell’s barred door. "You’re not on parole. If we don’t find a way of getting out of here before something worse happens, me and Critter will wind up back in the Bog faster than shit through a goose."
"We’ll get out of here," I replied with a confidence I didn’t really feel.
She spun around to look at me. "Yeah? How? Gonna get Scotty to beam us out or something?"
"Pony, calm down, please," Critter said. "It’s not Angel’s fault we’re here."
Pony sagged against the bars, sighing. "I know. It’s just... damn. I just got outta prison. I really don’t want to be back in here so damn soon." Straightening, she returned to wearing a hole in the ground with her incessant pacing.
As a brief silence descended, I looked around the room once again. Three walls of crumbling cement stared blindly back at me, painted in a color that might once have been just about anything, but which time and harsh conditions had reduced to that dirty beige no-color which characterized many a prison cell a
nd cheap motel. Bars made up the fourth wall and brought with them memories which I was trying desperately to fight against receiving.
A splintered wooden bench ran the length of the back wall, and in the far corner, a hole in the ground which doubled as a toilet rounded out the décor. The wet, cement floor was a moving tide of roaches, beetles and insects I didn’t even want to try and identify, even to take my mind off of less pleasant thoughts.
Like what was going to happen to us. Like how we were going to get out of here. Like if I was going to ever see Ice again.
The sound of Nia losing the contents of her stomach brought the distraction I needed.
"Montana knows where we are, right?" I asked Critter, who was staring at Nia with an expression of deep distaste.
"Wha--? Oh. Yeah. Pony told her we’d be picking up some meds down here and we’d be back by midnight at the latest." Sighing, she looked at her watch. "Which is an hour from now."
"So, once she realizes we’re overdue, she’ll put together a search, right?"
"We’d just damn well better be way the fuck gone from here by then," Pony replied, still looking out into the dim, empty hallway.
"Why’s that?"
She turned to face us, her expression serious as a heart attack. "There are plenty of places to bury the bodies on that ranch of hers, Angel."
I gave a nervous sort of laugh. "C’mon, Pony. She’s not that bad."
"No," she agreed, nodding. "She’s worse."
"Worse than spending the rest of our lives in this hell hole?"
Her expression never changed as she turned back around to stare into the hallway once again.
* * *
I must have fallen asleep shortly after Pony’s pronouncement of doom, because when I next opened my eyes, it was to find myself crushed between the wall and Critter, who was snoring lightly and drooling on my shirt.
Yawning—and cursing myself for the indrawn breath given the stench sharing the cell with us—I gently removed Critter’s lolling head from my shoulder and eased my tired and stiff body off the bench.
Pony was still awake and still pressed, face first, against the bars, her head turned to face down the long hallway.
"Morning," I whispered, padding over to her and laying a gentle hand on her tense back.
Turning, she favored me with a slight smile before looking back down the hallway again. "Mornin. Sleep well?"
"Not... exactly. What time is it, anyway?"
"A little after four," she replied, not even bothering to check her watch.
I sighed. "Means Montana’s on the hunt by now."
"That’s what I’m worried about."
Yawning again, I rubbed her back and tried to see past the bars. Only a dim, blank nothingness greeted me. "I wonder what time this place gets cracking in the mornings?"
As if in response to my query, a bank of bright lights snapped on, temporarily blinding my dilated pupils with their brilliance. As I rubbed my smarting eyes, I heard the sound of keys rattling, followed by a barred door opening and several sets of booted feet beginning their trek down the tiled corridor.
As the steps came closer, Pony’s already tense back stiffened even more and I heard her gasp slightly for air.
"What is it?" I asked, feeling a tendril of fear curl into my belly.
She turned her head to face me, her eyes huge, her face as white as a freshly laundered sheet. "You know when we were talking about Montana versus spending the rest of our lives in here?"
"Yes..."
"Those..." Her throat bobbed as she took a hard swallow. "...were the good choices."
PART 6
"WHAT’S GOING ON?" I demanded, pushing myself against the bars and craning my neck to look as far as I could down the now brightly lit hall. All I could see were shadows moving steadily closer.
"Never mind that now. Help me get everyone up and ready to move."
"But... ." Whatever I might have said was cut off abruptly as Pony grabbed my arm and yanked me away from the bars. Bowing to the inevitable, I set to waking up Critter and Nia while Pony worked on Rio.
Critter was easy. One shake, and she was wide awake and ready for action. Nia, however, was a different story altogether. Trying to wake her up was like trying to rouse a corpse. Not effective in the slightest, in other words.
Fully awake, Rio took matters into her own hands by simply hauling Nia up off the bench and plopping her, so to speak, on her own two feet, then bracing the younger woman until she could more or less stand on her own.
For awhile there, it was a toss up as to who was the more green: Pony, who looked like she’d spent the night with her head in a bottle, or Nia, who actually had.
With my back to the bars, I listened as the bootsteps came closer and closer until they stopped just outside. A jangle of keys, and then I heard the cell door being opened, its rusting hinges squealing loudly in protest.
Pivoting on my heel, I turned in time to see several large guards file through, handcuffs and belly-chains in their hands. As they entered the cell, they fanned out, surrounding the five of us, their faces expressionless.
"Jesus."
The epithet whispered by Critter took my attention from one of the guards, a brutally ugly man with a thick, red and twisted scar running from temple to jaw, and I followed her line of sight back to the cell’s entrance.
If looking caused Lot’s wife to be turned to salt, it caused me to be turned into rock. Everything in me froze; my heart, my lungs, my muscles, the blood in my veins. An atom bomb could have exploded from an inch away and I would never have known it.
My life stood before me; a vision in monochrome.
From the low, slanted visor of her stiff peaked cap to the tips of her highly polished boots, to the wide gunbelt which coiled around her lean hips like Eden’s tempting snake, to the deep, burnished tan of her skin, she looked like every bad girl’s fantasy come to life, drawn by an incredibly talented hand all in shades of charcoal brown.
Though I couldn’t see her eyes, I knew they were flashing as silver as the mirrored sunglasses which covered them.
The set of her jaw and the tense, coiled power of her body fairly radiated her emotions to those with eyes to see beyond simple (if indeed anything about her could be considered as mundane as ‘simple’) outward appearances.
Anger. And something else. Something more.
Fear.
No, not for herself. Never for herself.
When one considers themselves as living on borrowed time, things like pain and death and captivity hold very little sway over them.
Fear for those they hold dear, however, is a major force which steers the course of their lives.
This maxim holds doubly true for the woman shares my soul. I see it in her eyes every morning when she thinks me asleep and so lowers her guard for those few precious moments. I see it each and every time we make love and her arms come up to enfold me, holding me close as if I were the most cherished object on earth. I see it, too, each night when we slide between the cool, fragrant sheets of our bed and she tenderly kisses me, then spoons against my body to keep me safe from the demons of the night.
I knew that same look was in her eyes then, hidden behind the blank lenses of the glasses she was wearing. Knew it as well as I knew my own name and the sound of my own heart as it beat in my ears. Where others looked and saw rage, I looked and saw fear and so, though perhaps I should have been, I wasn’t afraid.
"Formación y asimiento fuera de sus muñecas. No intente cualquier cosa estúpido o usted morirá."
I marveled at the way the foreign words rolled from her lips like warm honey. Though I didn’t understand a word of what she said, I was enraptured. Not so intent as I at the sound of her voice, but rather the words she was speaking and the meaning behind them, the others hastened to form a line and yanked me into the middle of it. My wrists were thrust upwards, and then cuffed, pretty as you please.
As we stood like soldiers at attention before the Que
en, the prison guards wrapped the chains around our bellies and shackled our bound wrists to them. Then we were chained together, and almost before I knew what was happening, we were wordlessly paraded, single file, out of our cell and down the long, featureless hallway.
In short order, we were led through the building and out into early morning darkness. Though the air outside was quite chilly, the fear-induced body heat of my companions fore and aft kept me quite toasty. It wouldn’t have mattered if my skin froze up and shattered, though. What power did the elements when the woman who held my heart stood scant feet away?
A dusty, beaten van bearing the logo of some Mexican government agency stood idling in the cool morning air. Two of the guards opened the rear doors, and with a quick jerk of her chin, Ice started us moving forward again. I stumbled a bit going in, but her strong hand on my back eased my steps, and I wore the touch of her like a brand upon my skin.
When we were finally all in and settled on the narrow bench which ran along the van’s interior, the doors were slammed and locked, throwing us into total blackness.
Five sets of held breaths were simultaneously expelled.
"We’re dead," Pony grumbled morosely to my left.
"Dead as dogshit," Rio agreed to my right.
"Wonderful image, Rio. Thanks," Critter chimed in.
"Can I throw up now?" was Nia’s contribution.
"No!" came the reply. In stereo.
As for me, well, let’s just say I was trying hard to smother my grin, as well as the fire my lover’s simple, innocent touch had managed to spark in me.
And as the truck slipped into gear and pulled away with the feeling somewhat akin to being in a coffee can being shot into outer space, I slumped back against the interior wall and just enjoyed the ride.
* * *
An hour or so later (at least, that’s what my kidneys and the fillings in my teeth were telling me), the van pulled to a merciful stop...somewhere. We could have driven to Timbuktu or Outer Mongolia for all I knew, trapped as I was in the back of a windowless van with four women who were trying desperately not to throw up, either from fear or from an overabundance of alcohol. Or both. The stench of it was almost overwhelming, and I found myself wishing for nothing so much as a simple breath of fresh air.
