The Swamp Killers

by Sarah M. Chen

  “Not that long.”

  “What you doing here, officer?”

  “Meeting someone.” Roland looked around to the other patrons, who all seemed focused on their drinks and each other. No trace of the bartender. He couldn’t spot the waitress either. “You?”

  “Meeting someone.” Levin’s eyes rolled in thought. “Is it you?”

  “What?”

  “You text me to meet you here?”

  “Of course I didn’t.”

  Roland’s contempt incensed Levin, who raised his gun to Roland’s temple, now putting the firearm on display for whomever might look in their direction. “I got a message from Mister Sheldon Duplass to come here. Was that you pretending?”

  Roland’s breath caught in his chest. Sheldon Duplass wouldn’t call a meeting with someone like this, would he? If not Sheldon, Roland didn’t know why he was here, and for what purpose. He was less afraid of Levin Colland and more confused about what was happening right now. He took a fresh look at the young, athletic men and women who sat at the tables. They had no reason to be at this shithole. Neither did the killers on the other side of the bar. Poor, dumb shit Levin hadn’t figured it out yet. The room was a thundercloud of electricity.

  A hammer clicked. But not Levin’s.

  Roland looked up to see El’s revolver pressed into at the base of Levin’s neck. El stage-whispered in Levin’s ear. “Put it down.” For a moment, Roland marveled at the boy. He felt proud of Elliot’s protective instincts, almost as if he were the one who raised him. He even thought of his daughter Jess and wondered if he might not have been such a horrible father after all. This illusory pride lasted for the smallest fleck of time, but a knot loosened in Roland, and he felt more at peace than he had in ages.

  A voice ripped through the room. “Gun!” A woman’s voice, by the entrance. One of the handsome people in nice clothes. Roland knew the tone. She had seen Levin’s gun, or El’s, or both. It didn’t sound like panic, but he was familiar with the tone.

  She shouted with the trained, authoritative command of a law enforcement officer.

  In a concert of movement, the groomed men and women pulled firearms from their suits and purses, knocking over the small tables as they leapt to their feet. A besuited man with a closely cropped beard shouted, “FBI! Drop your weapons!”

  Levin moved first, taking his gun off Roland to shoot a broad-chested hulk in a blue suit. The gunshot was thunderous, and a sharp sting pierced Roland’s eardrum, whining like a nest of those goddamned mosquitoes.

  The room erupted in gunfire. El, Levin, and all the gaunt men with tank tops and tattoos shot at anyone in a suit. The federal agents returned a volley of gunfire the way a firing squad dispatches the condemned.

  Time seemed to slow. In the deceleration of the surrounding world, a shot hit Levin Colland, and a crimson flower of blood and tissue blossomed from his chest. The thin man collapsed to the floor, and as he turned from a man to a corpse, Levin’s body shielded Roland from a bullet.

  El dropped to the floor and pulled Roland out of the line of fire. The ringing in his ears dimmed some, and Roland drew his sidearm. He had never been forced to shoot at law enforcement. He hesitated. When he fired, he aimed above their heads, shattering a Budweiser light over the front door.

  The killers at the bar never stood a chance. The lean man in the flannel shirt was shredded by gunfire, his body held up by mere shock as bullets ripped through him and fragmented bottles on the bar shelves.

  Behind the booth, Roland contemplated his options, trying to think amid the gunfire. His phone vibrated in his pocket. The way a drowning man grasps at a lifeline, he read the screen. Sheldon had texted him: OUT BACK. El must have felt something too, because he pulled out his own phone and showed Roland his screen. A new message for El. Same message. Same sender.

  Bodies fell to the floor. Roland caught a glimpse of the man with the half-shaved head and the man with the face piercings, both limp on the floor. The bullets burst bulbs in the pendant lamps and clouded the room with a fine mist of brick dust. El and Roland raced for the back door, El hauling the older man by his coat sleeve. When they charged through the steel fire door into the alley, El jettisoned the older man so he made it out first.

  Roland tripped over his own feet as he pitched forward onto his hands and knees. Both collapsed onto the asphalt, surrounded by the rainbow of domed tents.

  Roland scrambled to his feet, and started to bolt, but stopped when he saw El. The younger man lay facedown on the pavement, arms at his sides. His pistol lay unclaimed beside him. Roland tugged at El’s shirt collar. “Come on!” The boy didn’t move. Roland managed to lift his shoulders off the ground, and that’s when he saw the blood trailing from his mouth. He saw the wounds next, two holes in El’s back, raw and red. Roland probed one of the wounds, and the younger man didn’t budge.

  He should have run, but Roland remained rooted to the pavement. He forgot about the chaos inside the Tooth and Ale and was lost in the moment. His eyes watered. Roland kissed El through his wispy blond hair and picked up El’s gun.

  Roland heard the pop first. Then he felt the pain in his chest. Looking down, he saw a hole in his sport coat. Moments later, blood flowed through it. His knees buckled, and he collapsed on top of El. When he looked up, he saw a man standing on the fire escape landing. Roland recognized the face. Indeed, he had memorized every line of this face, from the dimpled chin to the penetrating stare. A young face, as young as El’s. In a sparkling daze, Roland called out to it. “Timmy.”

  The young man on the fire escape looked confused. While Roland knew his target intimately, it was clear Timmy didn’t recognize him. Roland had dropped both guns, but they were within reach. He considered reaching for one, but as he felt his vitality drain, he didn’t see the point. Someone was going to win and someone was going to lose down here. The winner might as well be Timmy.

  Another man rushed through the exit. One of the agents, a thin man with strong cheekbones. The agent arrived with a heaving chest and pointed his gun at the two men on the ground. Then, seeing one man lifeless and the other close to death, he lowered his weapon. The agent looked up to the fire escape to find Timmy. Roland watched the two men regard each other. He expected Timmy to fire another round into the agent, but his expression softened. The agent nodded at Timmy, and Timmy lowered his gun. As Roland’s blood drained out of him and his skin chilled, he took in their exchange.

  The agent called up to Timmy. “What did you make us do?” When Timmy didn’t respond, he gestured toward the fire door. “There are men down in there. Men you know.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be this messy,” Timmy called back.

  The agent looked down at Roland, who stared up weakly, barely hearing their voices as his brain grew foggy. “You called in your last favor. I hope it was worth it.” He holstered his weapon.

  “It wasn’t for me,” Timmy said.

  “Then I hope she was worth it.”

  Timmy scaled up the stairs and vanished through an open window, and the agent went back through the fire door into the bar.

  Roland’s vision clouded and his mouth soured with the taste of bile.

  Among the people who lived in the alley, most stayed in their tents. Those who were caught outside during the melee froze wherever they were. Once the agent had gone back into the bar and Timmy left the staircase, they watched Roland and El on the ground. Once Roland made his final twitches and stopped moving, the people of the alley moved again, going back to their business. No one intervened, even to inspect the bodies. None of them fully understood what had just happened. They just knew these were strangers, and they knew enough not to interfere with the business of strangers.

  Back to TOC

  Sunset Eyes

  E.A. Aymar

  The music’s loud, the windows are down, and Callie Whitlow is so happy she nearly forgets that Vic, her brother, is locked inside the trunk of the Honda Civic she’s
driving.

  And then she hears him shouting.

  Miranda Rodriguez looks over to her from the passenger seat, sighs, turns down the radio. The Beatles’ “Get Back” fades to excited whispers.

  “We should see if he’s okay,” Miranda tells her.

  “I guess.” Callie screeches to a stop on the side of the road, causing bumps and shouts from inside the trunk. She and Miranda step out into the cool Georgia night, into a stretch of highway empty of headlights.

  The night is starlit, and dark shadows of trees cluster on either side of the road.

  In contrast to the music and the wind and the engine and the sounds from the trunk, the world is now quiet.

  Miranda rubs her arms.

  “You cold?” Callie asks.

  The other woman zips up, disappears even further into her bulky camouflage jacket. “You know I’m always cold.”

  Callie grins, pops the trunk. Vic blinks up out of the sudden interior light.

  “Hi Vic!” Callie says brightly.

  His eyes tighten on his sister.

  “Oh, fuck me…Callie? What are you doing?”

  “Did you miss me? Where’s your motorcycle?”

  “Traded it.”

  “Good trade,” Miranda observes. “This Civic has great trunk space.”

  Vic turns his glare toward Miranda, the same glare he’d given her in the parking lot when she forced him, at gunpoint, to lie down in the trunk and taped up his wrists and ankles. Callie had watched the abduction knelt behind a van, hidden from view. She knew Vic was more likely to listen to a stranger than to her.

  She’d been too far away to see his face; now Callie realizes how much she’s missed it. Looking at him rustles tears.

  “You’re the worst driver,” Vic says.

  Of course the first thing Vic would do is criticize her. Even if he’s tied up in a trunk.

  Once a big brother, always a big brother.

  And Callie can’t hold back anymore.

  “I missed you so much!” she squeals, and ducks down to wrap her arms around Vic’s stiff shoulders. “How are you?”

  “How’d you get out of prison?” he asks, suspiciously.

  “That’s a big story, big b. We could talk all night and you wouldn’t be caught up. So many details, so much information.”

  “I got her out,” Miranda says.

  “That’s basically it,” Callie agrees. “She got me out. This is Miranda. Miranda Rodriguez.”

  “Hi Miranda. Are you and my goddamned sister planning on keeping me in this trunk?”

  “Bro,” Callie says, reprovingly. “All things considered, that’s a shitty tone to take.”

  “All things considered?”

  “I still have a limp from when you shot me in the leg.”

  “You were going to kill that kid, you psychopath!”

  “Don’t…” Callie starts to say, and stops. Her body tensed at the word “psychopath.” A rushing sound fills her ears. The world reddens.

  “Callie?” Miranda asks.

  She furiously blinks red away until the world returns.

  The quiet black night, the empty highway.

  Callie frowns. “Let’s stop talking about past stuff. Listen, Vic, I got a job for us.”

  “A job?”

  Callie nods excitedly. “Some crime boss’s daughter ran off with a guy from the family, a low-level hitter. And they stole a bunch of money. They’re heading down from Atlanta to Jacksonville. Which, from what I heard, looks like Everton after the flood hit.”

  Vic shifts his shoulders to get comfortable. “So?”

  “There’s a hit on them; well, on him. The girl’s not supposed to be touched. One million if you kill him and catch her. One million! And Miranda knows the guy who put the hit out.”

  “Big bald white fucker,” Miranda says. “Looks like a cross between Mr. Clean and a fridge. He’s down here hiring people and tracking them himself. They’re desperate to find these two, so he’s hiring like crazy, giving out cash like Christmas.”

  “Yeah?”

  Callie pulls out her knife, turns it so moonlight catches the blade, flashes it in Vic’s face.

  “His name’s Sheldon Duplass,” she says. “Let’s rob him!”

  There were times in Callie’s life that seemed like a blur, even as she was going through them.

  Prison had been one of those times.

  Ever since she’d buried a knife in Ken Woods and been sentenced to twenty years in the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institute, nothing seemed real. Callie was confused, barely understood where she was going from place to place, and no one bothered to tell her. The doctors and nurses who patched up her leg after Vic shot her were curt. The public defender didn’t give a shit about her or her trial. Didn’t even talk to her after the sentencing.

  Her first day of prison was a mess of orders, worry, and exhaustion. She watched the other women, their hooded eyes, the way wariness burrowed into their bones. The way they kept to themselves. But the distance was artificial. An uncomfortable realization spread through Callie.

  She belonged here.

  She knew that.

  But not yet.

  And they knew that.

  Later that first day she was standing alone in a corner of the yard, leg aching, when a female guard sidled next to her.

  “You were there, right?” the guard asked. “Back when they blew up that dam in Everton?”

  The question came easy, but Callie answered carefully. A lot of people had died that night.

  You never knew who someone knew.

  “Yep.”

  “I had a sister there.”

  “Had?”

  The guard nodded, took a step closer. Lowered her voice. “She was one of the good ones.”

  Callie squinted into the cold prison sunlight. She could feel eyes on her, the other women in the yard with their knife gazes.

  She took a chance.

  “Was she one of us? A Daughter?”

  Callie wasn’t sure why she claimed membership in the Daughters, the vigilante group who’d blown up the Everton town dam in an act of vengeance. Truthfully, Callie hadn’t had a clue who the Daughters were or why they were mad; she’d just gone along with Vic’s notion that the rioting consuming the town would be a good time to do some looting.

  And then she’d gotten too excited by all the blood and the crime.

  Stabbed Ken Woods.

  Nearly killed a kid.

  So Vic had shot her in the leg and left her for the cops.

  “You mean a terrorist?” the guard asked.

  Callie kept her face blank.

  The guard moved closer. Whispered, “At least, that’s what they’re calling them. And, yes. She was.”

  Callie had guessed right.

  A day later that same guard came back to Callie’s cell. Told her she had a visitor.

  Callie limped after the guard down the gray concrete hall, the smell of ammonia burning her nose. Passed women who stared at her like they knew something about her. Like they hated it.

  She was led to a small room with a table in the middle, chairs on either side. A woman wearing a gray business suit sat in one chair, pointed at the other.

  Callie hobbled over and sat.

  “I love your glasses!” Callie said. They were black and rectangular, framing a narrow face with pinned back brown and gray hair and thin lips.

  The woman was reading from a notepad and didn’t even look up as she began talking. Didn’t give a hello, a name, or a thank you for the compliment.

  “Involuntary manslaughter,” she said. “That’s what you should have been charged with. Involuntary manslaughter, as a result of self-defense. Ken Woods had a history of abuse and a criminal past associated with violence.”

  Callie blinked. “Sure.”

  “Normally, it would take a few months, even years, for a retrial.” The lawyer looked up, lowered
her voice. “But we have a judge with an interest in expediting these Everton cases. Particularly when the woman involved was…” She paused. “Associated.”

  “Associated?”

  “A Daughter.”

  Callie didn’t blink. “What does that mean?”

  “It means don’t unpack your things.”

  “Who’s doing this?” Callie asked. “Is it Vic?”

  It wasn’t Vic. Callie met her benefactor a day later, when she left prison. A pickup truck was waiting for her outside the gates. A dark-complexioned older woman leaned against it, arms crossed over her chest, wearing jeans, boots, and a white shirt underneath an open camouflage jacket.

  “Callie Whitlow?” the woman asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Miranda Rodriguez. We’re going for a drive. I can’t tell you where, and I can’t—”

  “Sounds good. Let’s go.”

  Callie stared out the truck’s window, the nerves and depression prison brought falling away, like the strands of a spider’s web slipping off her skin. She watched the gradual change of Pennsylvania’s trees and forests give way to towns and cities.

  “Are we going back to Everton?” Callie asked.

  Miranda played with the tips of her short brown hair. “We’re headed east, not west. And Everton’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “More like done. I heard the town’s still there, but there’s only a few businesses left. Everything’s shut down. Someone told me she gives it a year, tops, before it’s a parking lot for Pittsburgh.”

  “What happened to the Daughters?”

  The truck drove under a bridge, shadows passing in and out. “When other women like me found out what you all did, we reached out. Now we have women nationwide organizing. Planning protests, marches, demonstrations. And we’re not going to let one of our own, especially someone who killed a pig like Ken Woods, rot in some cell.”

  “Yay.”

  “You can stay with me for a couple of days,” Miranda said. “Till you figure out the next step.”

  “Do you know anything about my brother? Vic?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  The drive took hours; they arrived at dusk. Miranda’s cabin was buried deep inside the Black Hills woods in Maryland. Traffic thinned as they approached. Trees pressed hard on the road, nature eager to retake what it had lost.