The Desert King: A Jack Trexlor Novel

by T. F. Torrey

  “Well, we were going to go attack them right now, using rocks,” I said. “I still think we should go, but now we can shoot them.”

  “All of us?” Erica asked.

  “No, just me and Macy.”

  Dubious silence.

  “Won’t they hear you coming like we heard Erica?” Sharon asked.

  “We’ll be sneaky,” I said.

  “They weren’t together when I left,” Erica pointed out. “Even if you get one of them, the other one could still get us.”

  “We’ll get them one at a time, then,” I said.

  “They’ve got more bullets than we do,” Macy said.

  “Look,” I said. “Does anyone else have a better plan? I’m open to suggestions.”

  Nobody had any.

  “I don’t like your plan,” Sharon said.

  I was flabbergasted. “What else can we do?” I asked. I desperately wished John would wake up. “We can’t just wait for them to find us.”

  Again we were quiet. Erica stared silently at John’s closed eyes. Macy and Sharon looked blankly at each other.

  “Okay,” I said softly. “This isn’t going to be easy, now that they took John from us. But we have to hang in there. John is. We’ve got to think of something, either to get away, or to get them off our backs, or both.”

  Macy and Sharon looked up at me.

  “And we’ve got to think of something fast,” I continued. “They could come after us at any minute.”

  Erica stood up and turned to go. “I’ll be right back,” she said.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  She looked back at me, her face as downcast as any I had ever seen. “Down to the river,” she said. “I want to get some water.”

  “Be careful,” Sharon said as Erica made her way through the bushes away from us.

  “Macy,” I said, “how far is it to Sheep Bridge?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe eight, nine miles.”

  “Eight or nine miles,” I repeated. “We could make a stretcher and carry John that far.”

  “We could,” he agreed.

  “Of course,” I said, “that would take a lot of time, though, and they’d have no problem catching up to us.”

  We continued the discussion, toying with various ideas of escape. Nothing seemed especially good. After several minutes Sharon piped up, asking what was taking Erica so long.

  That was a good question. Macy and Sharon stayed with John, and I went to find Erica.

  ***

  I found her on the rocks by the river, sitting with her chin on her knees and her arms wrapped around her legs. Glancing around suspiciously, I walked over to her.

  “Erica, I—” I said, and stopped. Moonlight glistened brightly on the tear-tracks down her cheeks. She didn’t sob; she cried silently. She stared up at the moon, eyes large and glowing softly.

  I sat down on the rocks beside her. “What’s wrong?” I asked. Immediately I knew it was a stupid question. What wasn't wrong?

  She didn’t answer.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’re all going to make it through this. We’ve just got to be strong, that’s all. We’ll figure something out.”

  She looked down at the rocks and the river. “You don’t understand,” she said softly. “They’ve taken everything from me.”

  I spoke softly also. “What do you mean?” I asked. “You mean John? Hey. Don’t give up on him. He’s strong enough for two people. Three. He’s going to be just fine.”

  She lowered her head so that her forehead rested on her knees. “You just don’t understand,” she said, her voice muffled by her pant legs.

  “Erica, I’m—” I stopped short, staring at her arm. The sleeve of her jumpsuit was torn at the shoulder.

  It hadn’t been earlier.

  Cogs and gears of my brain, long unused, switched on and began shifting through the gears.

  Suddenly many things I’d previously ignored leapt clearly into my mind. Erica, this beautiful and fragile female human being beside me, had just today been kidnapped by two heartless poachers. Earlier, these same poachers had remarked about her beautiful lips. Her story about being their prisoner had been sketchy at best. She’d said that they’d hurt her “not as bad” as they’d hurt John. Now she said that they had taken everything from her, and she insisted that I wouldn’t understand.

  She lifted her head again to stare at the moon. Drops of liquid moonlight flooded over her cheeks onto her pant legs.

  It wasn’t the night that chilled the blood flowing through my limbs. It was my own sudden, dark, and obvious conclusion.

  “Erica,” I asked, very softly, “did they rape you?”

  ***

  There are certain times and certain places where I despise and loathe silence with every fiber of my being. This was one of those times.

  I wanted her to laugh denial in my face. I wanted to hear the soft whisper of her hair as she shook her head in renunciation. I wanted her to scream NO! so loudly that the noise would pierce my eardrums.

  Instead, silence.

  They had.

  I turned my own gaze up to the moon. I wanted so desperately to break the silence, but what could I say? That I understood how she felt? I couldn’t possibly. That it wasn’t so bad? It was. That she would get over it? Maybe, but not soon. That they would have to answer for their crimes in the court of God? I wished I knew that myself.

  I could tell her that we would make them pay here, that we would carve our own revenge on their bodies.

  But would that help any? Would that change anything?

  The Song of Hatred goes on and on, and the only way you can truly change it is to not contribute a verse.

  Finally Erica broke that hated silence. “I just kept hoping and praying,” she said, “that you guys would come back and stop them.”

  The breath was gone from my chest, replaced with arctic ice. “Could we have?”

  She shook her head. “No. The other one was watching for you. If you’d come back to the truck he would have shot you.”

  “Did they hurt you? I mean … physically? Did they hit you or anything?”

  “No. I screamed once, and one of them grabbed my throat and put his fist over my face and said if I screamed again he’d fix it so it was my last ever. But they didn’t hit me.”

  The dreaded silence returned. This time Erica sent it away after only a moment.

  “It’s funny,” she said, completely without humor. “I would have thought they were too old to be still wearing class rings.”

  I think my heart stopped beating there. My throat was dry. “Class rings?” I choked out.

  “Yeah. I saw the one on the guy’s hand when he threatened me. Then I noticed the other guy had one, too. I thought nobody wore those after they got out of high school.”

  “What school?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “What school did the rings say on them?” I asked, but I already knew. I already knew, and I hated it. I hated everything.

  “Deer Valley.”

  Suddenly everything made sense. Absolutely insane, chaotic, fucking sense.

  It was all my fault.

  The poachers weren’t chasing us because of Macy’s bumper sticker. They were chasing us because John Lupo, coming to my rescue, had beaten them up in Phoenix on Friday night, while we were skating. Only bizarre fate or destiny had put their truck behind ours on the desert road coming out here.

  Of course it was them. Two giant Mexicans. Deer Valley class rings. The way they attacked as a team.

  When they’d surprised Erica and Sharon and me they’d said, “You guys havin’ a party?” They were repeating what I’d said at the doorway in Phoenix.

  This whole damn thing—Macy’s truck getting blown up, John getting shot, Erica getting raped—it hadn’t started when their truck came up behind us on the road. It had started when I hopped over the fence into that back yard. I had started it.

  It was all …
my … fault.

  I almost said so. I’d already opened my mouth to tell Erica, and I had to choke the words off in my throat.

  How could I tell her? How could I tell any of them?

  How could I make it up to them?

  I couldn’t. There was no way to undo the violence. The ink had dried on those pages. All I could do was my damnedest to get them out of this without causing any more damage.

  Erica’s voice again broke the silence. “We’re never going to make it out of here,” she said. “They’re going to catch us for sure.”

  “No,” I said. “We will make it out of here. They will not catch us.”

  “How?” she asked.

  I thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” I said glumly.

  She shook her head sadly and again lowered her head so that her forehead was on her knees. “It’s over,” she said softly.

  I tried desperately to think of something positive to say. There was nothing. Nothing but silence.

  “It’s over,” she said again. “They’ve won.”

  I stood up on the rocks beside her. Strangely, my heart seemed empty. Despite the tremendous guilt I felt for bringing these incidents on everyone, especially Erica, my heart remained an empty, cold, steel chamber, a solid part of a steady machine with a single purpose.

  Someone rustled through the bushes behind Erica and me. I turned as Sharon emerged from the undergrowth. “Hey,” she said when she saw us. “John woke up. He wants to talk to you.” She turned and rustled back through the bushes.

  I looked up at the cold white moon overhead. I couldn’t tell if it was a moon of hope or a moon of despair. When I turned my gaze down to Erica she was wiping the tears from her face. She finished and looked up at me.

  I felt like a strong machine.

  “Come on,” I said, extending my hand to help her up. “They haven’t won yet.”

  Chapter 22

  “It’s like I told Jack before,” John was telling Macy when Erica and I got back to the clearing. “Lust leads into greed and anger and back and forth, twisting around and around each other, growing tighter, closer, more evil.”

  Erica rushed to John and hugged him, careful of his bandaged right shoulder. They separated after a moment and looked at each other.

  The captain was back.

  “I’m glad you made it,” John said to her. “I was afraid you might not have jumped into the water.”

  Erica looked confused. “I didn’t,” she said.

  John looked up at me. “I thought you said—”

  “I did,” I said. “I thought she jumped. I didn’t want you to worry.”

  John looked back at Erica. “You’re here now, though,” he said. “How did you get away?”

  She told him how they took her back to the truck and how she tricked the one and got away. As she had with Macy and Sharon and me earlier, she wisely omitted the rape scene. I was afraid that if she told him then he’d go off looking for the poachers right then, and he’d get shot again, and that wouldn’t help us a bit.

  He perked up when she told him about getting the gun. “Excellent,” he said. He thought for a moment. “Did they see you take it?”

  Erica shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Perfect,” he said, smiling.

  That left us in a bit of an uncomfortable pause.

  “How do you feel?” I asked John.

  He looked up at my face, then up at his hat on my head. “Well, that bullet didn’t have my name on it,” he said. “But I think it might have had my initials on it.”

  “That’s too close for me,” Erica said.

  “Me, too,” John said. They hugged again briefly. He glanced around at the darkness and moonlight. “How long was I out?” he asked.

  “Four or five hours,” I said.

  John looked up at the moon and nodded. He touched his throat. “I’m really thirsty,” he said.

  “That’s because you lost a lot of blood,” Erica said.

  With his left hand, John felt the large pockets of his vest and pulled out the canteen. Of course he hadn’t lost that; that’s the way our luck was running. We couldn’t shoot anybody with a canteen. He shook it, not finding what he had hoped to. It was empty.

  “I’ll go fill it up,” Erica said, taking it from him.

  “I’ll go with you,” Sharon said.

  They made their way through the underbrush down to the riverbank, leaving Macy and me with John.

  “How are we going to get out of here, John?” Macy asked soberly.

  John sighed deeply, thinking. “Did they move while I was out?”

  “Not that we know of,” I said.

  “I didn’t hear their truck at all,” Macy said.

  John nodded thoughtfully. “I think I know what they’re up to, then,” he said. “They’ll probably come down the riverside first thing in the morning, looking for us.”

  “Why wouldn’t they just drive downriver and wait for us like before?” Macy asked.

  “Because they don’t know how bad I’m hurt,” John said. “For all they know maybe I can’t walk at all.”

  “Can you?” Macy asked.

  “Yeah,” John said. “Slowly. I don’t feel quite as strong as I used to.”

  “So what do we do?” Macy asked.

  “If we try to get away, they’ll catch us easily,” John said. “So we really only have one option.”

  “Shoot them first?” I asked enthusiastically.

  John shook his head. “Talk to them.”

  “What?” I was dumbfounded. “Talk to them?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll tell them you guys walked all night and you’re bringing back help. I’ll tell them that we’ll say I got shot accidentally. I’ll tell them that the choice is theirs whether they want to go home, or go to prison for murder.”

  “How would the police even know who to prosecute?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell them you got the license number off their truck before you left.”

  “Why don’t we just really go?” Macy asked. “Just go now.”

  “Because we don’t have time to make it now,” John said. “I’m going to tell them you walked all night. If we left now, they’d catch us before we got halfway, and then I wouldn’t be able to say you were already there.”

  That made sense, but I didn’t like it.

  “What if they don’t want to talk?” Macy asked. “What if they attack you?”

  “Then we will have no choice,” John answered, “except to kill them. You’ll be in position on the bluff across the river, where you can see me talking to them. Jack will be hiding close to me. If they start to get rough, you’ll shoot one. I’ll jump on the other one and Jack will come out and help me hold him down. If he gets away, shoot him, too.” His voice was calm and cool, completely in contrast to the violence he described.

  “Why don’t we just shoot them without talking to them?” I asked.

  “Because,” John said. “That’s just a move of anger. We have to try to talk first, to give them a chance to do the right thing. And I really think they’ll do it. Nobody likes prison.”

  I said, “You know, if they take your offer and just leave, we don't really have their license number, and they will get away with everything they’ve done.”

  John shrugged. “Macy’s got insurance. I’ll heal. It’s not worth doing the wrong thing, shooting them, over that.”

  I’d been thinking about Erica. “John—” I almost told him what had happened to Erica and why they were attacking us in the first place, but I stopped myself short. Something told me that it would have broken his heart, but not gotten him to change his plan. His plan was crazy, but it just might work. It would be foolish to start a gunfight if we didn’t have to.

  But what about Erica? Would they never pay?

  “Still,” I said, “if they attack you then we’ll have to take them out, right?”

  “We’ll have no choice,” John said. “Survival is an
obligation, not an alternative. If they attack, Macy will shoot them.”

  Macy gulped. “I don’t think I can do that,” he said.

  I didn’t think he could, either.

  “You can and you must,” John said. “You must shoot them, without anger, for survival.”

  “Without anger?” Macy asked.

  “Without anger,” John said.

  “Wait!” I said, my mind overflowing with thoughts of Erica and what they’d done. “Kill them without anger? This is too much, John. We should just shoot them and put an end to this.”

  “You’re letting your anger get the best of you,” John said.

  “And you've gone completely insane!” I walked away furiously, headed down to the river.

  Erica and Sharon were just getting back. They’d heard our voices and now they saw me stomping away. Naturally they were a bit curious.

  “What did John say?” Sharon asked as I passed her.

  “He said we’re all going to die!”

  ***

  I stopped by the river and stared at the bluff and the moon. I felt very angry.

  If John’s plan worked, then those assholes would get away with raping Erica. Of course we’d get away, too, but I wanted to make them pay.

  I thought maybe I should tell John what they’d done to Erica. Maybe he’d decide to use his right to make a mistake of his own. Maybe he’d get a new plan and we’d lay waste to them.

  No. It wasn’t my place to tell him, for one thing. And for another, John wasn’t the vengeful type. He was trying to keep a healthy soul.

  It seemed that I almost had to hope that they would attack John, so that Macy would shoot them. If he had the guts. I knew the sixth commandment of the Decalogue had to be going on and on in his mind.

  Double damn again.

  I stared up at the full moon. The moon of anger and insanity. The moon of Christians and souls and perpetual life. This same, cold, emotionless moon had witnessed countless crimes over the centuries and had steadfastly minded its own business.

  One step at a time.

  I turned back to the clearing.

  I’d think of something. If worse came to worst, I still knew where they lived—or drank, anyway. One way or another, they would pay. One way or another.