by R. A. McGee
Fifty-Four
Just as Seth was working up the courage to try to take the gun from Chuy, there was a flash of light from across the street and a deafening boom. The explosion went high into the air, and rather than being alarmed, Seth just stared at the big light show.
Chuy ducked his head and looked behind him, pistol dropping to his side as he looked at the group of men who were no longer there.
Seth realized he had an opening. He pulled his pistol and started pulling the trigger. Sound from the explosion still echoing off the mountain, Chuy didn’t move until Seth’s rounds found their mark.
“Qué la chinga?” Chuy said as he fell, then pulled himself to his feet and dived over the hood, taking cover behind the car.
Seth jumped against the car at the same time, the two men on opposite sides.
“You shoot at me, huh?” Chuy yelled out, his pistol firing back at Seth, who ducked his head behind the engine block. “Do you know who I am?”
“Fuck you,” Seth said, looking under the car and seeing a pair of basketball shoes sticking out from behind the tire.
He pulled the trigger twice, hitting the shoe both times, then ran to the back of the car and leaned against the trunk.
Chuy howled in pain. “You son of a bitch. Get over here.”
Seth looked around the trunk. Chuy was on his side, aiming under the car, pointing his pistol where Seth had been.
Click. Click. Click.
He stood up, walking over to the fallen hitman. “You out of bullets, amigo?”
Chuy looked up at Seth and tossed his pistol away. “You know you’re a dead man, right?”
“I am?” Seth said. “From where I’m standing, it looks like you’re the refried beans.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’ll get you eventually. You can’t run from us.”
“Yeah? Well, who’s running?” Seth said. He leaned down and stuck the gun into Chuy’s face, then pulled the trigger.
He stood up and yelled at the top of his lungs, his head and hands tingling. He wasn’t sure if it was the meth or the adrenaline that was making him fuzzy all over. He didn’t care.
High was high.
He looked left and right. “Dusty? Dusty?”
Seth ran to the front of the car and found Dusty on top of the man who had, until moments ago, had a gun in his face. His hands were clamped around the man’s throat and the cartel gunman’s face was purple.
“You okay?”
Dusty looked at Seth, but didn’t let of go of the man’s neck.
“Finish up with that guy. They’re all dead. Can you believe this shit?”
Dusty looked back to the man he was choking. “I don’t like when people point guns at me.”
Seth watched Dusty for a moment. “Yeah, I get it.”
Seth jogged to the stairwell. “When you get done with him, get all the shit they have and put it in our car. I’m gonna get Laura Bell and finally take care of that kid. She ain’t coming with us.”
Dusty nodded, fingers still embedded in the man’s throat.
Seth ran up the stairs toward the second level. His shot-up arm was useless. It had slammed against the pavement when he dived and was bleeding again.
No matter. With the Mexicans gone, he could spend as long as he wanted rehabbing his shoulder.
An all-expenses paid vacation, courtesy of the cartel.
Without hesitation, Seth ran through the doorway of the room where Laura Bell was hiding.
“Holy shit,” Laura Bell said. “It’s you.” She lowered her revolver once she saw it was her brother.
“They’re all dead, Sis. All of ’em,” Seth said, rocking bath and forth as he talked.
“But how? What was that explosion?” she said.
“They’re dead because they fucked with the wrong people, that’s why.”
“Wait, stop for a minute. What happened?” Laura Bell said.
Seth jumped on the empty bed and screamed, loud and long. He ripped his red hat off and threw it down to the floor triumphantly. “It don’t matter. All you need to know is we’re good now.”
“Where’s Dusty?” Laura Bell said.
“Wrist deep in some cholo.” Seth jumped off the bed.
“What was that boom?”
“Hell if I know. Who cares?” Seth said. It felt like his blood was on fire.
“Was it the Mexicans?” Laura Bell said.
“I just said I don’t know. Get your shit, we’re leaving.”
Laura Bell stood up and tucked the revolver into her waistband. She reached her hand out. “Come on, Pima.”
Seth’s brain was on fire now, his eyes feeling like they hadn’t blinked in hours. “Uh-uh. That shit stops right now.”
Pima stepped behind Laura Bell.
“We dragged her ass around enough. Perfect place to leave her. Everybody else is dead. Cops will think she was just part of them. Maybe think the Mexicans took her ass. This is where she stays.”
“We can’t just leave her here. She could talk. Remember the kidnapping charges?” Laura Bell said, grasping for anything she could to deter her brother.
Seth growled. He wanted to sprint and scream, and Laura Bell was stopping him. He needed to get out of the room. Seth pulled his pistol. “She’s never gonna talk again.”
Laura Bell was between him and Pima.
“Why are you always in the way?” Seth tried to push her out of the way, his arm not responding when he told it to.
Laura Bell grabbed him and pulled him. “You can’t hurt her. Leave her alone.”
“I said move, bitch,” Seth said. He hit Laura Bell in the arm with the gun, knocking her out of the way. He stopped for a moment, trying to figure out why his arm felt like it was ten feet long and dragging on the floor. He blinked hard and looked at the other girl on the floor.
“You been nothing but problems. I should have done this a long time ago,” he said, and raised his pistol toward her.
He blinked again, the young girl’s face looking like a burst of light for a moment, then everything snapped back into place. “There you are.”
When the gun went off, Pima’s face was showered with blood. When she opened her eyes, Seth was missing half his head. He fell over, stiff as a board.
Laura Bell was standing behind him, holding her revolver protectively in front of her. Smoke was coming out of the barrel and the pistol was trembling in her hand. There were tears in her eyes and her nose was bleeding again.
“I said no. I said no. I said no. I said no,” she repeated.
Pima stepped over Seth’s body, which was now twitching, and wrapped her arms around Laura Bell. The pair of them sank to the floor together.
“Thank you.”
Fifty-Five
It all happened in quick succession: the recoil of the rifle into his shoulder, the deep boom of his homemade explosive, and the flash of light that followed. Porter had never set off that much of the Quickee-Boom at one time and was impressed at its potency.
The men who’d been huddled around the bundle were inert, in various stages of blown up and lying on the ground.
Porter fought the urge to jump off the roof, to go running down and see if he could find Pima. Instead, he flicked his rifle back to safe and watched the mayhem below him.
As the explosion happened, Dusty reached out and grabbed the cartel man closest to him and introduced his lunchbox-sized hands to the man’s throat.
Seth shot a man and ran off somewhere Porter couldn’t see. Things were about as fair as they were going to be. All the cartel men were dead and now only Dusty and Seth remained. Porter didn’t like being outnumbered, but this was as good as it would get. He rolled onto his back and carefully slid his way down the rotten roof, pausing to shine his flashlight in front of him to make sure he wasn’t going to end up an involuntary guest of the room below.
He got to the edge and pushed off, dropping the eight or nine feet and landing softly in the grass. He quickly stepped over to the first window, hop
ing he’d see Seth.
It was dark.
The next room was dark as well, and Porter moved on to a third.
The snap of a gunshot rang out from the room directly ahead of him. He moved faster, rifle on his shoulder, and paused for a moment just to the side of the window. He heard crying and took a quick look, sticking his face in front of the window.
The room was brightly lit, a camping lantern on the table by the wall. There were two people on the floor, holding each other.
“Who the hell is that?” he muttered to himself.
Porter passed the window and moved to the walkway, which would lead to the staircase down and the balcony, where he could gain access to the rooms he’d been peeking in.
Before he walked around the corner, he stuck his head out, checking to see if the coast was clear.
Dusty Walker came ambling up the stairs and turned right, onto the walkway, then disappeared in front of the building.
Porter waited several seconds for the man to move away, then hurried through the walkway to the front of the building. He didn’t peek around the corner this time, hoping to see Dusty’s large back as it walked away, and let his rifle put the massive man down quickly.
As his muzzle cleared the corner, a bear paw grabbed it and pinned it to the wall to Porter’s left.
“I saw you hiding. I don’t like it when people point guns at me.”
Porter’s rifle was nowhere near Dusty, but he fired it anyway, trying to frighten the man into letting go. It didn’t work—Dusty still held the muzzle pointed toward the wall as the round tore through the siding of the Teddy Bear, kicking up wood shavings and splinters.
“You another one of them Mexicans? You the biggest I ever seen.”
“You’re one to talk, Bubba,” Porter said. Dusty was easily four inches taller than Porter, and probably had a hundred pounds on him.
“I’m not Bubba,” Dusty said, trying to yank the rifle from Porter’s hands.
Porter took a step backward, trying to use his weight to pull the rifle into position to shoot Dusty.
It didn’t work. Dusty grabbed Porter’s arm and, with his other hand still on the barrel, slammed Porter and the rifle into the wall. Porter pushed back, heaving Dusty off him, but the drug trafficker responded by slamming Porter into the hard side of the motel half a dozen more times.
There was a crunch and Porter glanced down at his rifle, the barrel now bent askew. It was worthless to him, even if he had a shot. He didn’t want to take the chance; pulling the trigger could result in the top end of the weapon blowing up in his own face.
He hammer-fisted Dusty's hand, breaking the grip on his arm and giving him a bit of space. While Porter believed every rifle needed a sling, the only drawback was a situation like this. With the sling attached to his body, he couldn’t just let go of the rifle.
“Let go,” Porter growled. He slammed a punch into Dusty’s collarbone. The man took it without flinching.
Porter changed tactics. Instead of trying to get away, he bulled into Dusty, which was like trying to move a tree. Porter let go of his useless rifle and grabbed Dusty by the back of the head, smashing a head-butt into his nose. The man’s nose opened up, blood freely flowing down his face.
“Shit!” Dusty yelled as he let go of the rifle.
“I told you to let go.” Porter’s back was against the front wall of the motel and he couldn’t move far, so he wasted no time reaching for his pistol, which was waiting patiently in its holster.
Dusty looked up, lower face covered in blood and charged into Porter again. He grabbed Porter in a bear hug and trapped his arms by his side. Porter couldn’t get his gun free.
Then Dusty slammed him to the ground.
Porter felt the air driven from his lungs by the impact. The big man’s bulk landed on top of him, leaving tiny pinpricks of light dancing in front of his face.
Dusty released the bear hug, now content to introduce his hands to Porter’s throat. Porter’s newly released hands did him no good—his head was swimming from the impact of the slam. Dusty was straddling him, and squeezed.
The pressure was incredible. Porter felt like an eye might pop out, like the top of his head would spurt out like a geyser. He first went to Dusty’s hands, trying to move them, but quickly realized that was impossible. The man’s size and strength made him impossible to move.
As the darkness closed in around his face, Porter reached down and felt the grip of his pistol. He closed his hand around it and pulled as hard as he could, ripping it past Dusty’s thigh where it was trapped.
With no way to see where he was aiming, Porter pointed the pistol up and into the big man, squeezing the trigger three times.
There was a howl of pain from on top of him. At the same time, the vise on his neck was released and fresh, cool air came rushing into his lungs.
He’d hit Dusty in the armpit, rendering his left arm useless. His arm hung limply at his side as he rose, trying to get away from Porter. For his part, Porter lifted the pistol, trying to aim it at the man on top of him.
Dusty must have seen what Porter was doing, and he reached out with his good arm to grab the pistol. The two men silently struggled for the gun. Dusty’s reach left him off balance and Porter grabbed him by the collar, pulling him down toward the ground while he pushed up with his gun hand.
The two men rolled and now Porter was on top.
Dusty’s left arm flopped uselessly by his side, and he used his good hand to try to push Porter’s gun away from him. Now that he was in control, Porter grabbed Dusty’s hand and, using two arms against the drug man’s one, wrenched the pistol back into position.
Dusty was definitely bigger than Porter, and he was stronger. Probably. But there was no way he could stop Porter from moving the gun now. Porter yanked and yanked the pistol, turning and torquing, until it was hovering in the space above Dusty’s body.
His face covered in blood, his arm dead weight, Dusty spoke out. “Wait, wait, wai—”
Porter pulled the trigger over and over, until Dusty stopped moving and struggling underneath him. Then he stood up, coughing and sputtering, trying to catch his breath.
“I… told you… to let go.”
Fifty-Six
Porter sucked wind as he leaned against the motel wall. Below him, Dusty was a bloody mess, Porter’s rounds having torn through his upper torso. He adjusted his rifle, now useless, and tightened it to his back. He couldn’t use it, but he didn’t want to leave it behind. A few fixes and it would be good as new.
When his head was mostly clear, Porter leveled the pistol in front of him and moved down the walkway in front of the rooms, trying to remember which room held the two people sitting on the floor.
The curtains were shut tightly on a room several doors down, but the light of the lantern was still spilling through the holes and rips. Porter walked to the front door, swung it open and stepped in behind the barrel of his gun.
“Who the hell are you?” he said, lowering his pistol. “Huh? Speak up.”
The two girls looked up, their arms wrapped tightly around each other. One, with dark hair, had her head buried in the chest of the one who was blonder and bigger.
Porter looked on the floor at a motionless body. There was enough of the face left to identify the body as Seth Rollins. “What the hell happened to him?”
“Same thing that’ll happen to you,” the bigger woman said. Porter saw her go for a revolver on the floor. As she reached for it, he stepped forward and kicked her in the chest, flipping her onto her back and knocking her cold.
The raven-haired girl looked at him, and for the first time, he could see her striking blue eyes. “Please don’t kill us.”
“Pima?” Porter said.
“Huh?”
“Damn it, listen to me. Are you Pima Newton?”
“Y…yes.”
“Good. Come on, we're leaving,” Porter said.
Pima’s eyes went wide and she started to run, but Porter caught h
er by the arm.
“No, no, let me go!”
“Stop it,” Porter said, holding the girl tightly by the arms. “Look at me.”
The struggling girl didn’t.
“Your dad is Mike, right? Your mom’s Terri? They sent me. I’m here to help.”
“Huh?”
“I’m here to help. Come on, we have to leave,” Porter said.
“My dad?” Pima said softly.
“Yeah, FBI agent. Ring any bells?”
Pima nodded her head. For the first time, Porter saw a glimmer of coherence.
“Good. Now we have to go. There are dangerous men around.”
Pima pointed toward the woman on the floor as Porter dragged her from the room. “Wait, what about her? She helped me.”
Porter paused in the doorway and looked at the unconscious woman. “Did she get taken or is she one of them?”
“She’s one of them, but—”
“Then I don’t care. Let’s go.”
“But—”
“Let’s go!” Porter said. “Grab my belt and stick close to me, got it?”
Pima nodded, taking one last look at the woman on the floor. She grabbed Porter’s belt.
“Good. Now keep up,” he said.
Porter moved quickly down the hall. Cognizant that Pima had shorter legs, he slowed down enough for her to keep up. They walked past Dusty’s lifeless body and Porter heard the girl retch. “Come on, we don’t have time for that now.”
She held tight to his belt as he led her down the stairs and into the parking lot. Porter’s head was constantly moving, back and forth, again and again, eyes moving to find any hidden assailants.
The pair crossed into the bright beams of the Civic’s headlights and Porter looked at the bodies of the cartel men Seth and Dusty had left in their wake.
He opened the passenger door and let Pima into the idling Honda. Porter shut the door tightly behind her and stepped out into the field of light, reaching down and grabbing the rolling suitcase of money that the cartel had tossed to Seth. It was lying there in need of a new owner, and Porter was happy to oblige.
