by M. E. Betts
"Can't let myself get distracted again," Adrian said. "I'm here in Amarillo for one woman, and one woman only."
"Don't be too hard on yourself," Ragtop said. "Shelby isn't likely to take 'no' for an answer. Most everyone around here has had a go at her, including yours truly. At least she knows to be safe, as far as I've ever heard."
"No shit," Adrian said, smirking. "And here I was, feeling special that she picked me."
"So Adrian," Ragtop said, his eyes on the road. "I've been thinking."
"Yeah?" Adrian said. "'Bout what?"
"You were in the service, right? Over in the Middle East?"
"That's right," Adrian said. "Why do you ask?"
"You have any idea how to make IEDs?"
Adrian glanced leftward at Ragtop before he replied, already guessing where Ragtop was going with the conversation. If they could produce explosives, it would go a long way toward arming them for their escape. "Not a bad idea," Adrian said. "I guess the two of us are due for some overtime in the shop one of these nights, huh?"
When they arrived at work, the parking area was already mostly full with cars. Things were in full swing for the day, with most bays open and various pieces of music lilting out into the daylight. He and Ragtop entered directly through their open bay, rather than going through the lobby. The other members of the group were already there, and the two of them had already started, their tools out and their hands dirty.
"Look who finally decided to join us," said Dale, the stern-faced mechanic.
"Sorry to leave y'all waiting," Adrian said. "It's not Ragtop's fault, it's mine."
"You can make up for it by grabbing us all some coffee from the lobby," said the other mechanic, Larry.
Adrian thought back to the cup of hot coffee Shelby had handed him, the one that had been abandoned on the aluminum patio table in her haste to seduce him.
"I could go for a cup, myself," Adrian said as he started toward the rear wall of the shop area, from which he could access the lobby.
He reached the clear doors leading to the front desk, pushing them open. As he exited the shop, he saw the same blonde from the previous day, Irene, typing at her laptop. He also saw Duncan, although only from the rear as he exited the building and started into the parking lot.
"Morning, ma'am." Adrian said.
"Mm-hmm," she replied.
Adrian looked around the room. "The guys said there's some coffee around here somewhere?"
Irene raised her hand without looking up from her screen, pointing to the far side of the room. Adrian walked around the counter to the area indicated, spotting the coffee behind a partition.
"Thanks," he said to no response. He poured four cups, fitting them into a brown cardboard cup holder. He jammed a handful of sugar and creamer packets into his pocket, then lifted the cup holder and made his way around the partition and toward the shop. As he passed the anxious woman, he noticed her tighten her jaw and pull upward slightly on the top of her shirt, concealing more of her chest. Although Adrian was offended, he tried to consider her behavior in context of the current time and place, under which conditions her fear made perfect sense. She don't know me, he thought as he brushed past her, pushing the shop door open with his elbow.
As he made his way toward bay two, he found that although it felt slightly irrational, he still couldn't shake his annoyance at being thought of as a lowlife rapist, a sadist like the others. A part of him wanted to go back and take the blonde by the shoulders, to tell her that he had no idea what was happening to his twelve-year-old daughter, that she was all he had left in the world. He wanted to tell her that there wasn't likely to be a single human being left alive on Earth who didn't have their own trauma-borne baggage. He also wanted to tell her that everybody treating each other as wolves in sheep's clothing only served to camouflage true wolves with masses of innocent sheep. As he reached his bay, he reminded himself that he was, after all, in the belly of the beast. People were rightly terrified, and rational thinking was off the table.
"Here we are, fellas," Adrian said, setting the coffee down onto an open space on the counter, which was cluttered with tools. He reached into his pocket and produced a fistful of stir-in packets, which he laid on the counter beside the cupholder. A few bays over, someone turned on a stereo and cranked the volume up to maximum output, flooding the entire garage with the sound of a working man's blues spun in moody, methodical vocals and chords played in 4/4 time.
"If you dandies don't mind," Dale said, "I say we cut this tea party short. Get our hands dirty in this truck's private parts."
For the following five days, Adrian and his fellow crew members poured all of their time at work into the truck, laboring from early morning through evening. In that time, they managed to fortify the side storage panels, install heavy-duty chain link fencing over all the windows, and outfit the truck to run on bio-diesel. On three separate occasions, Adrian and Ragtop pulled fifteen-hour shifts, remaining at the shop long after all of their co-workers had gone home.
"It should only help us to keep up the act," Adrian had said. "Keep Dale and Larry in the dark as to what's already been done and what hasn't."
Shelby had re-assigned Adrian to stay with her, as she had indicated. Adrian's quarters were separate from the rest of the dwelling, a caretaker's apartment on the first floor with its own entrance. Since Adrian spent the bulk of his time at the shop, he managed to avoid running into anybody while leaving or returning home, even Shelby herself, for several days.
That all changed one evening upon his return, when he discovered Shelby's brother and another male loitering on the small wooden deck that led to his door. They were both smoking and drinking from gilded flasks. As Adrian drew closer to the pair, he gathered from the smell that it was clove cigarettes they were smoking.
"You two lost?" Adrian asked as he reached the short flight of stairs, ascending them to the deck top.
"As a matter of fact," Shelby's brother slurred, "we know exactly where we're at. It's you's somewhere you ought not be."
Adrian rubbed his eyes, wincing. It had been a long day, and prior to finding himself in the present situation, he had been looking forward to getting into his apartment, filling his gut and then emptying his bowel before calling it a non-eventful evening and retiring to bed. "Beg your pardon?" he muttered.
"Clean the shit out your ears," drawled the other man, whom Adrian could smell vaguely even from a few feet away and through the thick odor of clove cigarettes. His long, unkempt beard was patchy, not well filled out, and littered with small bits of debris and a couple of burnt spots.
"You shouldn't be in Amarillo," the first one elaborated, "let alone stayin' here with my sister. Lemme tell you something--you touch her, I'll tear off your nutsack, then make you eat it and shit it out."
Adrian wrinkled his nose, then clicked his tongue. "Kiss your mama with that mouth?"
From the left, out of the corner of his eye, Adrian saw a flash of hurried movement. He turned his head, noting that it was Shelby.
"Kenny, what the fuck?" she snapped as she rushed over to Adrian's front porch. "Get out of here, and take your friend with you!"
"Fuck," Kenny said as he and his companion started toward the porch steps, "maybe I should leave Chester here." He intentionally butted Adrian with his shoulder as he passed, looking him in the eye. "If you want someone can be considered a man, that is."
"Ew," Shelby moaned, eyeing Chester in distaste. "Isn't he the one keeping that young brunette against her will, using her as a sex slave? What was she again, twelve? Thirteen?" Adrian reeled internally, attempting to process what he heard while simultaneously trying to appear relatively unmoved. Shelby continued. "Chester, the molester. No, thanks."
Shelby, Kenny and Chester moved toward the front of the house, where the main entrance was located. The two siblings continued to squabble over Shelby's taste in men, though Chester didn't bother defending himself. He wore the expression of one who was in full acceptance of hi
s tendencies, and therefore unmoved by attacks on his character.
Adrian stood rooted to the wooden deck, watching as the small group disappeared around the corner. After roughly a week in Amarillo, he had gotten his first potential lead regarding Celia's whereabouts. If it ain't my brunette twelve-year-old daughter, he thought, It's still someone's. Still bad enough. His primary urge was to run around to the front of the house, locate Chester and drag him back, by the beard, into his apartment, where he would interrogate him, likely to an untimely death. He restrained himself, however, and focused on trying to form a plan prior to acting.
He heard the front door slam shut, with all three individuals having entered the house. Adrian's mind raced as he opened his own front door, gaining entry to the small unit. He approached the rear wall of the open-concept living and dining area, then turned left to find himself in the utility room.
Between the washer and dryer was a former pet door, long since boarded over, that led at one time into the kitchen of the main building. The hole had been covered with a thin, painted sheet of particle board, and Adrian had previously noticed that it afforded decent audibility of any conversations taking place in the kitchen next door. At the time, he hadn't been interested in eavesdropping. Currently, however, he crouched between the two appliances, straining his ears for voices on the other side of the wall.
He heard vague, muffled clattering, then the sounds of empty aluminum cans rattling across the ceramic tile floor.
"Pick that shit up!" Shelby was heard yelling. "Go mess up your own place, you damn pigs!"
"Seriously though, Shelby," Kenny said, "fuck that guy."
"I'm confused," Chester piped up. Adrian's blood pumped harder upon hearing the man's voice. "Isn't the problem that you don't want her to fuck him?" He cackled, and Adrian heard what sounded like a large, metal pot being thrown.
"Piss off, Chester," Shelby said.
"Alright, alright," Chester said, laughing. "I'm outta here, seeing as I'm risking serious bodily harm."
"See you tonight at Lou's," Kenny said just before the other man exited.
"For sure, my man," Chester replied.
A moment later, Adrian heard the front door close. He stood and walked back toward his front door, peering out a window through a crack between the curtains. He saw a motorcycle pull past the guard post and onto the road.
Adrian stood perfectly still, in contrast to his torrid, raging internal state. The place to which Chester had referred, Lou's, was a bar popular with the locals. He walked to the front door, pulled it open, and picked up his keys, turning the lock and pulling the door closed behind him as he set off on foot.
Chester peered through the dark, smoky interior of Lou's bar, searching for the exit sign. He squinted, his vision hazy and doubled. As he struggled to focus, the breasts of the woman down the bar, whom he had been ogling for the past twenty minutes, shrunk first from four mammaries to three, then down to two briefly as he achieved focus and promptly lost it again. He did, however, locate the side exit leading to the alley within that time.
He groaned as he rose from the stool, the world spinning around him, and began to make his unsteady way through the crowd. Murmuring voices surrounded him, the words obscured both by the thumping music of the live band playing on stage, and by his own inebriated state.
Before he knew what was happening, he realized that he had stumbled and broken his fall by planting both hands into the back of a man standing beside a bar stool. Upon the considerable impact, the man reeled forward, sprawling across the bar stool, and knocked teeth with the woman with whom he had been conversing. Without hesitation, the male punched Chester in the side of the head after righting himself. Chester sprawled backward and to the side, landing on his elbow and rear end. The crowd parted just in time to avoid being hit by the drunken man.
"Watch it, faggot," the other man sneered, a few drops of blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.
Chester, barely fazed, rose to his feet and continued to shamble toward the exit. This time, however, the wary patrons parted in anticipation of his passage, providing him a wide berth as they scowled at him in distaste.
"How you doin'?" Chester muttered to the young lady at whom he had been leering.
"Avert your eyes, creep," she said, brandishing her revolver.
"Alright, then," Chester said as he reached the doorway leading to the alley. He turned to regard her once more before stepping outdoors. "We'll talk later." He ducked outside as the woman rose from her seat, her movement threatening and her expression menacing. Chester laughed, moving slightly deeper into the alleyway as the door swung closed.
He faced the red brick exterior of the building next door to Lou's bar, unzipping his fly. He leaned on one palm against the red brick wall as he began to empty his very full bladder. He had consumed no fewer than half a dozen beers since his last bathroom break, and many more before that. He tilted his head back, eyes closed, as he let the stream lazily flow.
All at once, Chester felt himself being thrown into the wall before him, then pulled backward. He found himself lying on his back upon the broken asphalt floor of the alley, glass shards and trash surrounding him, and some beneath him. The urine continued to flow from him, wetting the front of his pants. There was also a substantial puddle of scummy alley sludge beneath him.
As he lay, slightly sobered and attempting to gather his bearings, he saw a male figure standing over him, his face obscured by a black ski mask. Chester's hands moved toward his fly in an attempt to put his private parts away.
"Nope," said the masked figure, leaning down to grab Chester by one of his belt loops. He yanked, hard and fast, and rolled him onto his belly.
"Aw, sick!" Chester protested, squeezing his eyes closed as the reeking sludge hit him in the face, splashing into his open mouth. He spit and gagged, vomiting a bit of his alcohol into the puddle. Used condoms lay inches from his face. He found himself sufficiently sobered to think about making a break for it, struggling but managing to climb to his feet. He headed toward the mouth of the alley, the point where it joined the street, with his pants around his ankles.
He risked a quick glance to his rear, where his assailant stalked calmly toward him. Spinning around in his still-drunken state, pants about his ankles, proved to be a bad idea. He sprawled forward, the side of his face breaking his fall. The figure to his rear dragged him by the ankles back into the alley.
Chester grasped and clawed at the alley floor, kicking his legs and bucking his torso in his attempt to free himself. Two of his fingernails were torn free, and his filthy palms were embedded with small pieces of glass. He managed to kick the unknown figure clumsily in the jaw with his steel-toed boot.
The masked man momentarily lost his grip on Chester, who took the opportunity to climb to his feet, his head spinning and more liquid threatening to evacuate his stomach. He retched again briefly, then continued his attempted escape. As he lunged once more toward the mouth of the alley, he found that the figure had moved in front of him, blocking his path and clicking his tongue while he rubbed his jaw.
Forced to turn and run deeper into the alleyway, Chester found himself facing a dead end, a terminus of cinderblock that ran from Lou's bar to the building next door. He stumbled onto all fours and began to sob, knowing deep down that there was no way out for him. He continued to crawl away from the figure, sobbing harder as he reached the wall. He turned his head to gauge the proximity of his certain demise.
As heavy rock music from within Lou's bar ripped and blasted through the alley, all but shaking the brick walls, Chester watched the mystery man's boots approach him with slow assurance, his pointed spurs jingling as he moved. The aggressor flipped Chester once more onto his belly, then hovered over his victim's prone back side. He then yanked Chester's pants down, pulling them until they were inside-out and stuck firmly around his boots.
Chester lifted himself up slightly onto his elbows, his expression bewildered. "You wanna rape me?" he asked
, his expression one of disbelief as he struggled to peer over his shoulder. "Why?"
The stranger ignored the question, pulling a small, orange device from his pocket. He grabbed Chester by the back of the head, winding his fingers through the greasy hair, and slammed his face down into another puddle. As the world spun around Chester faster than ever, he felt an object, small but unyielding, being inserted into his rear orifice. All at once, he forgot about the biohazardous material beneath him, opening his mouth fully to scream at maximum capacity.
"Go ahead," the unidentified man said, "sing pretty. Ain't nobody gonna hear you, though."
It was true. The music had amped up to an even higher decibel as the band and crowd worked themselves into a frenzy. Chester, however, continued to scream, all the same. Deep in his heart, he had always suspected that at some point, his life would come to an untimely end at the hands of someone he had gravely wronged. He wasn't particularly surprised by the predicament in which he found himself.
As Chester gazed toward the brick wall, everything in his field of vision tilting to and fro, the stranger made a quick twisting motion with the apparatus, then yanked back. The motion was similar to the one used to start a chainsaw. Immediately afterward, Chester became vaguely aware of a blow to the back of his skull, where the assailant's knuckles touched down.
With no capacity left for words, Chester gurgled and grunted in his state of shock.
"Oh," the stranger said. "Still alive, are we? Even after I took this from you?" He set the orange device down onto the ground beside Chester's face. It now contained a chunk of the sadist's flesh, still connected to the intestine. The stranger continued.
"You even have the foggiest idea who I could be, or what you coulda done to piss me off?"
Chester declined to respond, still gurgling and staring into space.
"Course you don't," the masked man continued. "Let me tell you, though--I doubt there's anything on this Earth like the wrath of a mom or pop trying to get their child back after they got stolen away. Stolen by scum like you." He paused. "The gears starting to turn in your head yet? Hmm? Maybe I scrambled your brains a little too much already. Might as well finish the job, I guess. I rode through hell and high water to find you, Chester the Molester."
