by Zack Klika
What the fuck happened to me?
He had found his calling by luck. When he was fourteen, he saw a man punch a woman outside of a local bar his parents were drinking at. Designated drivers were hard to come by, so his parents brought him along and made him wait outside in the truck until they were ready to be driven home. After the man punched her, he went back into the bar. Buck ran over to her and offered her his sleeve to clean up her bloody nose. And then he had an idea. He could never remember where the idea came from. The feeling he had when he saw that woman get hit touched a deep-rooted nerve he hadn’t known existed: an aversion to violence against women.
He asked the woman how much she would give him to hurt the man who had hit her. If she was not drunk, she probably would have told him to get lost. But she was drunk. And pissed off. She pulled a ten-dollar bill from her back pocket and put it in Buck’s hand. That was more than enough for him. He walked back to his dad’s truck, grabbed a tire iron, and headed into the bar.
Sitting at the bar, the man never saw a thing coming. Buck gave him a blow to the back of the head that later took thirty stitches to keep closed. A calm surrounding him, Buck walked back to the truck and sat in it.
Buck snapped back to reality and turned the volume up as far as it would go in the Barracuda he had dropped $10,000 on in stereo equipment alone, almost loud enough to drown out his thoughts. Pitch-black trees continued to pass by. From his left, a sliver of moonlight caught his eye. He turned into the hidden opening and gunned it down the narrow path that led to another bad deed to add to his list.
Chapter 19
Lee came to in the trunk. His mouth was dry, his lips crusted with blood and sweat. He could taste the salt more than anything else. It made his mouth feel even drier. A wrecking ball swung from side to side in his head, the impending demolition of his sanity growing nearer with every direct hit. A subwoofer kicked hard against his feet. Through the pain, he tried to concentrate and remember what day it was. Friday. Okay, you might be all right.
There were a lot of bumps on his face—and on the back road he reasoned he must be heading down. He remembered why his face hurt. But he wasn’t sure what to make of the bumps in the road.
He reached into his pocket. No cell phone. Danny must have taken it. Of course. There was enough room in the trunk for three more Lees. If it weren’t for the state he was in, he would have spent the next precious few minutes figuring out a way to escape his current situation. Even if he had his phone, no one would be able to hear him over the sound of the music. He could have sent a text. But what?
In Buck’s trunk. Going to be murdered. Help???
Yeah, that would be helpful. And he doubted there was any cell reception where he was. His eyes tried to adjust to the darkness. No use. He felt around for anything that might help him escape. Nothing. Not even a tire iron or spare tire. The Barracuda was bare-bones. Build for speed.
Lee started to think about all the things he had never done. He should have traveled more. He should have loved wildly. He should have left Clarksville when he had the chance. He would never have a family of his own. He would never know what he really wanted to do with his life. The fact he had always been afraid hit him all at once. Not afraid of any one thing in particular. Afraid of life. He realized all of this in the trunk of a car that was taking him to his grave. Then he realized why.
It had to be about the dead soldier. But that meant that Buck had made the decision to kill him in less than fifteen seconds. That was really all the time that had passed between Danny saying something about the girl, Buck hitting Danny, and Buck inviting Lee to the races the next night. Fifteen seconds. Was that really how quickly someone like Buck sentenced someone to death? It didn’t seem fair.
The car rumbled to a stop and Lee almost shit his pants. He’d spent his last few minutes alive thinking about how quickly Buck had decided to kill him. There wasn’t enough time to formulate a plan to get out of the mess he was in.
The engine cut out and with it the music. Two doors opened and slammed shut. Soggy and dry patches of dirt and leaves sucked and crunched beneath heavy boots. Lee’s attackers were about to dispose of him.
He wouldn’t go out without a fight. No weapon. But that was fine. His buddy Chris had taught him a nice little jab routine. Adrenaline surged through his body. He tried to suppress it. Long ago, he had read an article that mentioned adrenaline wasn’t any good for fighting because it made you shaky. It didn’t help that his hand-eye coordination was nonexistent.
Damn it. Concentrate.
Indistinct chatter lay on the other side of the trunk. Lee’s mind drew blanks. Keys rattled against the metal lock. Only two options. Click. Lee caught sight of the jet-black tree line. It was fight or flight.
Cool air rushed over Lee’s face. The trunk was wide-open. Leaves rustled in the distance. Maybe closer. Lee couldn’t really tell. His eyes were closed, so he was relying solely on the sounds slipping into the deep trunk. He remembered pretending to sleep when he was a child and his dad always knowing he was faking. Maybe parents just always knew. So far his attackers seemed to buy it. Maybe that improv elective he took his freshman year of college wasn’t a total bust after all.
Two sets of hands lifted him at opposite ends. Then his body seemed to be free-falling. He was dropped on his side. A “motherfucker” almost whooshed out of him when he hit the ground. The dirt was harder than he had expected. And wet. Water began to seep through his pants and hoodie. Already, he could feel it touching his skin in some spots.
The demolition crew still worked overtime between his temples. Not as bad now that the bass from the music was gone. Lee wondered what the cut on the side of his head looked like. Footsteps shuffled around him and stopped. He couldn’t pinpoint where they had stopped in relation to his body. Something slammed shut. The trunk. From behind him.
“Get it done out there,” someone said.
Lee recognized the voice. Buck. He noted that it came from behind him. Buck must have closed the trunk.
“Alright,” Danny said.
Another voice from behind Lee. Safe enough to steal a peek of his surroundings. He kept his left eye closed. It hurt too much to even try opening it. Squinting out of his right eye, he realized he was engulfed by tall, swaying trees. In the middle of nowhere. Killed and left for dead in the middle of nowhere. Like room service for any and every carnivore within a ten-mile radius.
Footsteps squished behind him. He closed his eye.
Hands squeezed around Lee’s shoulders and rolled him onto his back. Then the same person grabbed his arms and held them up like a puppet’s.
“You gonna help carry him at least?” Danny asked.
Simultaneously, a thud and the creak of shocks came from behind Lee.
“I’m gonna enjoy the scenery,” said Buck, “while you take care of that.”
“That’s fucked up.”
Lee agreed. Buck made it sound like he was just a bag of trash being taken out.
Danny gripped Lee’s wrists and began to drag his body over dirt and leaves and roots. There was nothing Lee could do but let himself be pulled deeper into the woods. Danny was alone, though. A plus. He could probably break free and make a run for it. But how far would he get without a clue as to where he was, and with unconsciousness nearing as well. He needed medical attention and water. Definitely water, he thought. Danny stopped to readjust his grip, deciding on a different hold: the underarms. Lee could hear Buck laughing in the distance.
Ten minutes had passed. Maybe more. Maybe less. Lee was in and out of consciousness. The back of his clothes was completely soaked through. Leaves and twigs passed by his limited field of view. Holding on to a slim degree of alertness was all he could muster. The thought of making a run for it made his muscles ache, his head pound, his mouth dry. Death was closing in around him. And he was beginning to come to terms with it. Would it be better if he didn’t fight it?
Lee’s head entered a free fall. Again. The impact with the
dead leaves made for a slight cushion, but not enough to stop the hard earth beneath them. Pain branched throughout his entire body again. Danny pulled him up and leaned him against something hard. A tree. That’s all it could be. Lee made sure his head fell to the left in a casual and believable way so he could see more with his right eye.
Footsteps receded within the clearing Lee found himself in. He took in the surrounding as best he could. Danny stood about fifteen feet away, hands on his hips, trying to catch his breath; then he turned back around. Lee closed his eye in a snap. But he had seen something. Something that might help him get out of his immediate predicament. Any other life problems Lee had washed away in the face of death. A clean slate. Nothing but fear in his mind. The wrecking ball was starting to ease up. Not a good thing. Without the pain, Lee could dose off. If that happened, he might not ever wake up again. Danny’s bowie knife was tucked into the front of his waistband. Its handle protruding from the top of the jeans. Possible scenarios of getting his hands on the knife popped into Lee’s head. And then the unexpected happened.
Chimes rang from Danny’s pocket. Internally, Lee cursed himself. It was his phone’s text-message ringtone. Could only be one person. Danny reached for the phone, his back to Lee.
Usually the phone was on vibrate, but somewhere between traveling from Lee’s pocket after he was smashed in the face with a two-by-four and being put in Danny’s pocket, it had accidentally been switched to the ringer. Lee thought about running again, even leaned forward an inch, and then slumped back against the tree as complete exhaustion overwhelmed him.
Danny took a step to the side, giving Lee a view of his profile, the glow from the cell phone’s screen illuminating his overly tanned face. Lee saw Danny’s body go rigid. Then it began to tremble. Rage. Yes, rage. Lee had seen it before, back at Buck’s place where this all started. Everything from that moment on was a blur to Lee. Danny’s head swiveled too fast, catching Lee off guard with his good eye wide-open. Even in the dark, from the distance Danny was at, Lee could see the hate in his eyes. Busted. Conn must have written something back.
“Son of a bitch,” Danny said, pivoting on his left foot and closing in on Lee. Fast.
Yup. She definitely wrote something back.
Without any hesitation, just as Danny came into arm’s reach, fist swinging wide, Lee lunged for the knife with every bit of energy he had left and ripped it from its sheath. Midswing, Danny tried to dodge when he saw what was going on, but forward momentum and gravity took hold. His fist swung through the air, missed its mark, and sent him off balance. He tripped over a piece of tree trunk and crashed hard onto his back.
Lee stared at him for a split second, all the hate in Danny’s eyes replaced with fear. The same look Lee knew all too well.
“Don’t—” Danny tried to plead.
The words didn’t register with Lee. He dived on top of Danny and began stabbing wildly at his chest and face, like some crazed animal that had been poked and prodded for far too long in its lifetime. All of the anger he’d kept bottled up his entire life was unleashed as the purest form of rage in those few moments. Fear transformed into a will to live.
An unrecognizable face stared back at Lee when he finally stopped. Feelings of pleasure and triumph and accomplishment flowed through Lee’s body. The knife slid out of his slick grip as he tried to rationalize the past ten seconds and shake the feeling that he was happy with what he had just done.
“What the fuck,” he said to anyone listening.
Chapter 20
Buck sat on the trunk of his Barracuda, a cigarette dangling from his lips. Twenty minutes had passed since Danny dragged Lee into the woods. He didn’t feel bad about making Danny handle it himself. After all, it was his big mouth that brought them to this dark patch of wilderness.
“Hurry up,” he shouted into the woods.
Silence shot back.
Buck shook his head and hopped off the trunk. His boots squished in the muck and leaves as he made his way into the woods. Everything about the past couple days left a bad taste in his mouth. He was a killer, but he wasn’t a killer of women. Everyone had their rules they followed. A moral compass as unique as a fingerprint. A personal code of ethics that anyone else could find something wrong with. One of his rules was to always stand up for women, and yet he had agreed to get rid of Jennifer’s body as a favor. He shouldn’t have. He knew that. But the consequences of not doing it scared him. And Buck Miller did not scare easily.
The sound Jennifer’s head had made when it hit the ground told Buck she was dead. He didn’t need to see the final blow from her opponent to know it. But he did see it. Anyone would die from that kind of beating. No doubt the image would stay with him for life.
On the bridge, just as Buck was about to slit Jennifer Carlson’s throat with Danny’s knife, she heaved and coughed up blood. How she had lived through that beating was beyond him. The decision to kill her wasn’t as fast as the one to kill Lee. But with Danny watching, and the man waiting for confirmation that the favor was done, he knew what he had to do. The stabbing, the slitting of her throat . . . Those were all necessary. Anything to confuse the detective that would eventually catch the case.
“Danny,” Buck shouted, a soft tremble in his voice. Jennifer was already haunting his thoughts. “Answer me, motherfucker.”
Buck pushed a branch out of his way and entered a clearing. Sticking out from the side of one of the trees was a leg. Recognizing the leg, he threw out his cigarette and gritted his teeth. Ready to give Danny another black eye.
“What the fuck are you doing over there?” Buck said. Pissed off he had to walk through the woods to find Danny just hanging out.
Buck walked over with an agitated step and, rounding the tree, froze. Beneath a cloudless night lay Danny’s lifeless body, moonlight falling on him from an opening in the sparse canopy above. Blood and dirt and leaves stuck to the numerous patches of blood that littered his midsection and face. Buck knew he was dead. No one with that many holes in his face could be alive. He spotted the bowie knife off to the side of Danny. And a smashed phone not far from it. He had almost forgotten about Lee until the situation hit home. Where was he? Was Lee watching him? Tires crunched in the distance and Buck’s eyes shot wide.
Survival instinct kicked in, and Buck took off through the woods, pushing his legs as hard as they could be pushed, trying to get to his car. Jennifer’s murder had showed up in the local paper less than twenty-four hours after Buck and Danny left her on the bridge. He knew Lee was smart and would eventually connect all the dots, becoming a liability to Buck’s way of life. The decision to kill him was easy. It was self-preservation.
Buck shot into the clearing where his car had been just in time to see the brake lights disappear into the distance and darkness. Without hesitation, he began to run again. As hard as he could. His life depended on it.
Chapter 21
Lee floored it down the hidden road, then hooked right. Could have gone left. But right felt right. The only thing that had felt right in the past few months. Saddened by the thought, Lee pushed his foot harder on the gas pedal. Music was blaring in the Barracuda as he tried to concentrate and figure out where he was. No phone, no help—he had stepped on it when he made his hasty escape. The stab wounds on Danny’s face were already affecting his unconscious mind. Would for the rest of his life. Realizing the music was probably not helping his train of thought and the pounding in his head, he punched the off switch. The rumble of the Hemi engine was all he could hear now.
He looked in the rearview mirror and saw a black so deep and sinister that it reminded him of a black hole. And much like in a black hole, anything could happen if he turned around and went back. His plan had worked, though. He was free. He looked at himself in the rearview mirror. Dirt stuck to the crusted blood covering the left side of his head and face. The back of his pants and hoodie were soaked all the way through. Chills ran to his bones. Slowly, the heater began to work its magic. All in all, h
e was filthy and looked like death had just missed him. But it did miss. And that was something to be happy about.
There were two options: run and hide and hope Buck never found him, even though he knew he eventually would, or go to the police. But he was apprehensive of the latter, surmising that they would somehow put this all back on him. If his run-ins with the law told him anything, it was that you can’t trust the cops. And how would he explain Danny? There was self-defense and then there was whatever the hell that was that he had done to Danny. These thoughts swirled around in his unsteady mind as the logical conclusion to his situation began to emerge.
He emerged from the tree-lined dirt road and saw he was back at the speedway. He slammed on the brakes and looked around. The only car in the parking lot was his Honda. Conn had left him. She fucking left him. How could she do that? He was angry, but after a moment became sensible. Of course she left. He had told her there were no fights tonight. Why would she stick around? He wouldn’t under the circumstances.
Deprived of a simple way out, Lee weighed his options in that split second and made up his mind as fast as he imagined Buck had made up his mind about killing him—even though, other than the deep-rooted instinct to survive, they had nothing in common.
Lee Parsons mashed on the gas, the roar of the ’Cuda ripping through the soundless night. He was going to make it out of this, no matter who he had to throw under the bus.
Chapter 22
A crystal clear night illuminating the ground awaited Riley as she pulled into the gravel driveway of her parent’s decrepit mobile home. Riley got out, shut her car door, locked it, and walked to the front door. Her mom needed money and her dad needed pills. All those years spent painting had exposed him to more than his fair share of asbestos, and her mother’s spending habits didn’t leave much for health insurance. Five years prior, an ER doctor had told him he had less than a year to live. He was a fighter and made sure Riley was as well. His health was one of the main reasons she needed to get away from home. Watching him wither away was unbearable.
