by Schow, Ryan
“I will see for myself,” he said. “At least until you get back to your friend.”
“So you’re coming with me then?” Skylar asked.
“Yes, if you’ll have me.”
“Your death is on you then,” she said.
“I accept that,” he replied. “I will get you a knife.”
Chapter Seven
Ryker was about to leave when one of the men began to moan. He ripped the hat off one of the dead Chicom soldiers and stuffed it into the dying man’s mouth to stop him from crying.
The soldier choked and gagged, giving Ryker time to pull a belt from one of the other dead men. He then strapped the belt around the man’s face and dragged him behind the front desk until he was confident no one else was coming.
When Ryker returned, he knelt down and pulled the belt off the man’s sweaty face. The soldier spit out the soft, canvas hat and started speaking Chinese. Ryker hit him in the ribs, slowing the man’s roll.
“Speak English or I’ll cut your tongue out.”
“Why are you doing this?” he said in broken English.
“Oh, that’s rich,” Ryker sneered. He picked up the Chicom hat and put it on, unconcerned with the dark stains of saliva.
“What do you want?” the Chicom asked.
“I want you to tell me everything you know,” he said, adjusting the hat. “I will tell you up front, I am going to kill you, so you can get any hope of living out of your mind. Consequently, you can erase all the fears you have about your own people retaliating. Tell me you understand.”
The man started to cry, but sniffled a few times and straightened his spine.
“If you are forthcoming, I will make your death clean and painless, but if you lie, if you hold out on me, I will cut every last rib from your body. I may not get what I want, but this will be a horrible way to die, and I can live with that.”
“Are you the kind of man who would do this to another human being?” he asked in broken English.
“I wasn’t. Not even close. But now, with you here? You had better believe it, you Chicom puke.”
“What do you want to know?” he asked, the look on his face one of compliance.
“I want to know what you know,” he said.
The man told him everything. When he was done, he said, “I don’t know anymore.”
Ryker nodded, the information enough.
“I appreciate your candid response,” he said. “That will go a long way with me.”
“One last thing,” the soldier said, weary, resigned to his end. “The men are going to return to the street any moment and see we have not returned. They will come in here and kill you.” He smiled, then said, “I may be dead by your hand, but you will be dead by theirs.”
He was certain this was the bluff of a man resigned to his fate, but he was taking no chances. He slid out from behind the waist-high front desk, crouched low, made his way to the front door. Outside, he saw the men gathering.
He hustled back to the Chicom, dragged him to his feet, then said, “One word from you and I gut you slowly.”
The Chicom strained against the pain, a bloom of red spreading across his upper thigh. He was compliant nevertheless.
They slowly walked up several flights of stairs, Ryker all but dragging the injured man up the last flight.
In the hallway, he knocked on several doors. No one was answering. Finally, he stood back and gave a random door a hearty kick. It cracked the door casing, but didn’t open.
He kicked it again and it swung open.
Ryker shoved the Chicom prisoner inside. He fell down and started to cry. He then rolled over on his back, the blood stains spreading down his pants.
He was bleeding out.
“Take off your coat, throw it to the side,” he said. The soldier did as Ryker said. “Good, now stay.”
Ryker left the broken door open, then went across the hall and knocked on the opposite door twice. While he was waiting, he glanced back on his prisoner. He hadn’t moved to run. To the incessant knocking, Ryker got no response. Knowing what he was about to do was going to hurt, he reared back and kicked in the door, the first shot as successful as it was jarring and painful.
Pushing through the pain, he hobbled across the room, peeked out the window, saw men moving into the building downstairs.
A sinking sense of dread filled him. His Chicom prisoner was right. Furthermore, the familiarity of this situation was not lost on him. It wasn’t that long ago that he’d been trapped in a building, albeit a burning one. The memory was so bad, in fact, that when he returned to the downed Chicom, he unsheathed his blade, drove it straight into the man’s throat, then ripped it out and let him die. By the time he bled out, Ryker was already buttoning up the discarded Chicom jacket.
He didn’t look Chinese, but with the hat pulled low, he could buy himself a few precious seconds should he be spotted.
He snuck into the hallway, saw that it was clear.
It wouldn’t be for long.
The Chicoms were heading up the stairwell to the left; he went after the stairwell on the right, moving quickly, gun now in hand.
Cautiously, he slipped into the stairwell, looking over the edge to make sure he wasn’t walking into a trap.
So far, the coast was clear.
He hurried downstairs, then vigilantly walked outside, into an empty street that had fallen under an unusual calm. Looking both ways, he headed over to a nearby troop truck, thinking he could pick up a weapon, a bottle of water, an MRE. But when he moved around the truck and looked inside, he saw about eight or nine guys, all of them chilling, like they were overworked and grateful to be off their feet.
Startled into action, he opened fire on them, catching them before they even realized what they were looking at.
Ryker tried not to panic. He was out in the open, exposed. That’s when a bullet smacked into the back of the truck, the sound of it piercing his ears. He spun around and there was a mercenary with a weapon leveled on him.
“Why did you kill them?” the SAA man asked with a Spanish accent.
“They stole my smokes.”
Gun still leveled on him, the SAA soldier walked up and said, “Chicom?” Ryker shook his head. “What about your uniform?”
“Stolen. Look at my pants, butthole,” he said. He was wearing old jeans, completely contrary to the Chicom greens. “In about two minutes, you’re going to have a dozen Chicoms pour out either one or two of those doors. They’re going to see us both, but they’ll only fire on you. That’s when I’ll run.”
“I’ll shoot you first,” the SAA man said in English.
“Shoot yourself first, cabrón,” he snarled.
The man smiled, gun unwavering.
“This is my home, and you’re a bad guest,” Ryker said. “But so are they.”
The door to the building opened, a pack of Chicoms hurrying out. The second they saw the SAA man, they all lifted their weapons. The SAA assassin spun and opened fire. Ryker raised his own weapon and joined the SAA man in the slaughter, knowing that if he ran, he’d most assuredly be shot.
When it was done, the SAA man dropped his rifle and whipped out a pistol, leveling it at him. Ryker took a wobbly step back, his body not cooperating due to the constant surges and dumps of adrenaline, and the creeping exhaustion.
“Are you hit?” the SAA soldier asked.
“No.”
“You move like an old lady.”
“A spry old lady,” he said, deadpan.
Another round pinged off the truck, ripped across the man’s face, rocking his forehead. He moved so quick, Ryker didn’t even see it coming. His head whipped back, but then he drove the butt of the gun into Ryker’s chin, hitting the button just right. He didn’t even feel himself drop to the ground, that’s how quickly this guy knocked his ass out.
When he came around, Ryker was being dragged through the dirty street to a late 40s, early 50s, sky blue hunk of junk. It had red spray painted rims, old black rubb
er, foggy windows. The paint was peeling, half of the body rusted.
The soldier cuffed Ryker, then hoisted him into the passenger seat of the two-door beater. Ryker looked down at a disintegrating floor, the dirt-encrusted surface of the asphalt visible below.
“This is nice,” he said when the soldier got in and started the car.
“Watch this,” he said.
The SAA man turned the motor on, the engine roaring to life.
“Watch what?” Ryker asked. “Are the panels going to fall off now?”
“Oldsmobile Rocket 88,” he said. “1949. V8 engine. 303 cubic inches.”
“Sounds like the last girl I was with.”
“One hundred and thirty five horsepower,” he said, all but purring.
“That’s nothing,” Ryker grumbled.
“Two hundred and eighty three foot-pounds of torque.”
Now Ryker sat up.
“Okay, that’s something.”
“Get ready to taste the top of your balls,” he said with a smile.
“Why are you thinking about my balls?”
The man leveled him with a sneer, blood draining down the side of his chin, a flap of skin hanging open.
“I was thinking of you tasting your own balls,” he said.
“My ribs may be hurt, but they’re not removed. You can’t have your floating ribs if you’re going to pull off that kind of a taste test.”
The soldier’s smile faded, almost like he was wondering what to say next. Instead of speaking, he reached over and punched Ryker in the crotch four or five vicious times, then said, “That’ll get them in your stomach.”
He took a breath, then reached back over and punched Ryker’s belly just as furiously. He was unable to stop the flurry of violence.
“You ready to not be funny?” the man finally said.
Ryker nodded, unable to speak.
“Good. My name is Emilio,” he said, “and today I will be your driver.”
Emilio took off the handbrake because the car didn’t have a selection for park. When he stepped on the gas, the tires dug in and the engine rocketed them forward. In the city, they didn’t need horsepower as much as they needed torque. They had that in spades.
Emilio had a good sense of the route ahead, avoiding all the dead cars, moving through the sidewalks, taking turns through alleyways and finding lines through the more scattered traffic. The two door car was big and lofty, the body roll on the hard corners insane. More often than not, Ryker found himself swaying hard with each and every turn.
“This thing handles like it’s on rails,” he said with overt sarcasm.
“All your fancy cars don’t work, do they?” Emilio said.
“No.”
“This one does.”
“Apparently,” he said. “Where is my seatbelt?”
“Broken.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“You have options, gringo,” he said as they screeched around another corner, then swerved hard to avoid a broken down car.
“Such as?”
“You can help us stop the Chicoms.”
“But you will stay when you’re done destroying everything,” Ryker reasoned.
“Perhaps.”
“No, there is no perhaps.”
“This was Mexico before it was California.”
“No it wasn’t,” Ryker said.
“Who’s to say otherwise?” he grinned.
“I am.”
“Talk to me in a year, pendejo. You watch who wins, you watch who gets California. There is no more United States. Only the Divided States. This state will be ours. Then Oregon, and then Washington. After that, we’ll move east until all of this is Mexico.”
“Do you have kids?” Ryker asked.
“Two,” the man said.
“Are they stupid?” Ryker asked. The SAA man backhanded him in the mouth. Reeling from the sting, he said, “I take that as a yes.”
He hit him again.
Ryker would not relent, though.
“I bet when your hideous wife farted out those two ugly kids—”
Emilio hit him three times, almost crashed the car in the tussle.
“But I bet you dreamed of them being pretty, and smart,” Ryker said, bleeding, his body in a state of so much pain it was heading toward numbness.
Emilio cocked the weapon, put it to his head. “Say another word,” he hissed.
“All I’m saying is that we all dream of something that seems outrageous considering the ingredients. You and an ugly woman don’t mean pretty children.”
“I’m not kidding, Mister.”
“You think just because we’re down, that we’re out? That just because we have these Chinese roaches in our country, and now you and your lot, that we’re a fallen nation?”
“Think of this country as your wife. Do you want to know what’s happening to your wife? She’s getting it in the mouth”—Emilio said, making a hard fist—“she’s getting it in the coochie, and she’s getting it in the butt. Your beautiful wife is being manhandled by Chinese infiltrators, but all of Africa is coming for her, and the EU Army is coming for her, but we’re going to take her from the Chicoms, and the EU and the African Army. And you? Where do you fit in this? You get to watch us all rail your wife, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”
“I’m not married,” he said, grinning.
Emilio cracked him again, then said, “Your country’s role is to shut your mouths, get on your knees and hope we don’t kill you. I’ll personally give you that option now. But understand, if you don’t shut that stupid mouth of yours, and I mean right now, I’m going to kill you myself.”
The second his eyes went back on the road, Ryker thrust his cuffed hands at the man’s wrist, spun it, wiggled a finger on the trigger and fired the weapon. The scuffle had the big car swerving toward the sidewalk and the corner of a building just beyond that.
They were going way too fast!
Ryker managed to pull the trigger, hitting Emilio. The man slumped over, a red discharge on the window. He spun the wheel hard, the back end swinging around, the rounded tires breaking grip.
They slammed into the gutter sideways, the wheels and tires catching on the tall curb. He was thrown so hard against the side of the door, his head broke the glass.
Thankfully, he blacked out.
While he was momentarily unconscious, the big car had rolled over and struck the corner of the building.
The drip, drip, dripping of something on his cheek dragged him back into the waking world. As his brain fog cleared, he felt the stickiness on the side of his head where he hit the glass.
But the dripping was coming from above him.
Somehow in the accident, he managed to get underneath Emilio. The dead man was hanging upside down in his seat, arms flopped down, blood draining on him. Shaking his head, holding up a hand to keep it out of his face, Ryker scooted out of the blood faucet, ignoring the pain, but having to face the fact that he was stuck. The door was suddenly pulled open, a small face appearing.
The boy said, “Mister, are you okay?” He was a scruffy looking kid, big inquisitive eyes that couldn’t stop seeing all the blood.
“I think,” Ryker said, “but I’m jammed in here pretty good.”
The kid grabbed hold of his legs and pulled him out, no sense of grace or care. When Ryker was finally out, the same kid rolled him over on the sidewalk and said, “Man, you look like hell took a dump.”
“I know,” he said, wiping his face. He showed the kid the cuffs then said, “Can you get the key out of his pocket, or out of the car?”
The kid nodded, then came back a few minutes later with a bunch of keys and the man’s gun. “You can have the keys,” the boy said, mesmerized, “but I’m keeping the gun.”
“You know how to use it?”
He nodded.
“That particular one?” Ryker asked, sitting up. He found the handcuff key, stood up and went to work.
Looki
ng too long at the gun, the kid hesitated, then said, “Yep.”
“Check the mag,” he said, undoing the cuffs, “then chamber a round.”
He dropped the cuffs on the sidewalk but the kid was still messing around with the levers and the grip.
“Here, let me show you,” Ryker said.
He started to take the gun from the kid, but the kid’s hands tightened on it. Ryker shoved the kid by the head, then ripped the gun loose.
“You don’t know how to use it, and I’m not going to have your death on my hands.”
“I found it!” he bellowed.
“Yeah, well I took it,” Ryker said. “How’s that?”
“That’s the thanks I get for saving you?”
“Thank you,” he said. “Now beat it before someone shoots you for real.”
“Where are you going?” the kid asked, his eyes flicking back to the gun.
Recalling the address he’d memorized, Ryker said, “Someplace new and unfamiliar.”
“I can’t believe you stole my gun,” he said, jogging off to where he came from.
Turning up the street, Ryker started limping in the right direction, praying for the cover of darkness, but dreading both the cold and the fight that was sure to follow.
Chapter Eight
Clay Nichols woke up in his little brother’s house, his body and most of his brain still asleep. The first thing he thought was that no human should have to feel this bad and still be awake. He started to move, but decided to lay there a little longer and just pinch himself. He was in an actual bed in an actual home owned by family. It took a few moments for the fog of a dream to burn off. He was sweating, not sure why, not sure if it was because he was someplace new, and warm, or because he was having war dreams again. Sometimes he woke in a sweat, his heart racing, with no idea why. He knew what this was, though. It was memories he thought he’d put in deep storage coming out to play when he wasn’t looking.
Dragging himself out of bed, he got his feet beneath him and managed to stand. He was a newborn calf though, wobbly and unsure.
“C’mon,” he growled, stabilizing his knees with both hands.
He walked to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, turned away from his reflection. It was impossible to see his old face anymore. At least to him.
