This Rotten World: Rally and Rot, page 5
"Holy fuck," he heard Tim mumble at his side.
As Connor approached the twisted man, the dude on the ground with the chunk of flesh missing from his arm said, "I wouldn't do that if I was you."
"What're you talking about?" Connor asked, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. He tried to fill in the blanks. Maybe the bleeding man and his gang were threatening him, didn't want him helping their friend. But when he looked in the man's eyes, he saw fear, not territoriality. "Something's wrong with Jimmy."
"Is that his name?"
The man nodded as his friends pulled him to his feet.
Connor wanted to take the man's advice, but the dude on the ground had to be in ridiculous amounts of pain, and to just let him drag himself along like that—well, it was a miracle he was still alive. And if he was still alive, that meant there was a chance he could be saved. Plus, what would it look like in the report if he didn't at least try to render some form of first aid? The mangled man was most likely a lost cause, but he had to try, and Tim wasn't going to fucking do it.
Even as he had the thought, he heard Tim retching off to the side. It was up to him. In as calm a voice as he could manage, he approached the injured man. "Jimmy? Is that your name?" No response.
"That's his fucking name," one of the skull bikers said, ornery and rude, and for a second, everything felt like it was going to be alright.
"Jimmy, I need you to lie still." He reached for the twisted man, put his hands out to stop him from injuring himself any further, though he didn't know how that would be possible. For a second, Jimmy's eyes locked with Connor's, and the emptiness he saw shot straight to his soul. This man is dead. Not like "on-borrowed-time" dead, actually dead. He shook the thought from his head and placed his hands on Jimmy's body. Dead men don't crawl across the ground. Jimmy's teeth clacked together as he tried to take a bite out of Connor's forearm. The startled police officer hopped back, and he now understood what had happened to the other man's arm.
"What's he on?" he heard Tim asking the bikers.
"Wadn't on nothin'," the man with the bitten arm said. "Had himself a cold, took some cough medicine, a bunch of it, and we left him back at the Air B and B."
"Cough medicine?" Connor asked.
"You ever seen a robo trip like that?" Tim whispered.
Connor shook his head. They'd encountered plenty of cheap-thrill seekers in their day, plenty of people tossing back cough syrup until they were almost comatose. Hell, in Wyoming it was a solid pastime for people with no jobs or prospects. Grocery stores had to keep the stuff under lock and key in Casper. "How long on that ambulance?" he asked Tim, stalling for time.
"'Bout twenty. They're coming from Casper."
"Alright, we gotta hold this guy down until the medics get here."
The man with the bite in his arm said, "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Connor nodded and then stood helplessly as the wrecked man crawled in their direction. "Tim, you wanna check on the driver over there?"
Tim nodded and Connor stood studying the mangled old man while his biker friends looked on, horror reflected in their eyes.
****
This all felt wrong. Really wrong. Something was off, and Officer Tim Griffin couldn't quite figure out why. That guy was wrecked beyond ruin, should be giving up the ghost right now, but he kept on crawling. Some people just don't wanna die.
"Make way," Tim called as he pushed through the crowd of Latino gangsters. He would bet every dollar in his bank account, which wasn't all that much after he'd bought himself a brand-new Ford F-150, but he'd bet it all that if he searched each one of those gang members, he could take every last one of them in, either on warrants or drug charges. Shoot. Half of 'em are probably illegals anyway. But, right now, with their friend lying on the ground, the skin of his leg peeled off, he didn't much feel like messing with them.
As he pushed through the men, their jackets embroidered with a twisted looking joker, the word "Chistadores" emblazoned on the black leather in green, red, and white letters, he noted the concern on their faces. When he broke through their line, he could see why they were so concerned. On the ground, a man with tattoos covering his face lay trapped under his bike. Blood welled where the pavement had scraped away the top layer of skin. The skin on his cheek had been ground down to the bone. Tattoos weren't going to cover that scar. Tim tried to summon some sort of sympathy for the man, but based on those tattoos, he knew the man had lived a life of poor decisions, and this was one he was going to have to pay for.
After assessing the situation, he said, "Let's get this bike off him," and the bikers didn't hesitate. Together, they lifted the heavy motorcycle off the man's leg while he groaned in pain. One look told Tim the leg underneath was fucked. This man needed the hospital, fast. "It's alright, man. Ambulance is on the way."
"Oh, fuck, oh fuck," the injured man moaned over and over.
Tim reached up to the radio on his shoulder, depressed the button, and called in another ambulance. Panic began to well up in Tim, the type of helpless panic one feels while watching something bad go down and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. All he could do was allay everyone's fears while denying his own. He didn't like these leather freaks, but he didn’t want to see anyone die.
"When's that ambulance gonna get here?" a beefy man with braids asked, one of the tattooed man's friends.
"It'll be here soon."
"It hurts," the man on the ground whined.
I bet it does. "Lie still, man. It's gonna be a minute."
"He doesn't got time," the man with the braids said.
"What do you want me to do? I can't make the ambulance go any faster."
The man with the braids grew more and more obstinate. Tim could smell the alcohol on his breath, the reek of tequila. He could take him in right now for public drunkenness. Of course, the same could be said for the dozens of other onlookers.
From the crowd on the side, someone yelled, "Get that bike out of the road. We wanna ride!"
Tim let the words go ignored, but the man with the braids did not. "Hey, shut the fuck up!"
"You wanna make me?" the first man said, and Tim groaned inside.
"Hey, hey, knock it off!" he called, summoning every ounce of authority he could muster.
He was standing with his back to Los Chistadores, between the crowd and the angry bikers on the sideline, when a man in a bandana, the deep-set eyes of a troublemaker, yelled, "Get those spics out of here!"
From behind, someone rushed forward, knocking Tim to the ground. As he tumbled to the ground, he caught sight of braids as they flashed by, and then it happened, an all-out gang war. With the injured biker behind him, and the fighting in front of him, there wasn't much he could do. So he pulled his sidearm, aimed it in the air, and fired it.
"Stop!" he called. "Or I'm gonna—"
There was a pop, the brief report of a handgun firing. Officer Tim Griffin tried to call for help, but his throat didn’t work. Then he tasted the blood, looked down at his chest, and saw a river of salty red running down his shirt. He placed his hand to the hotness in his throat, his dying brain trying to solve the mystery of the blood, and then he fell to his knees. More gunshots rang out, but none were aimed at him. His knees thumped on the pavement, his gun clattering to the ground.
Chapter 11: A Tough Guy
Ernie Windham heard the crash, heard the scrape of metal on pavement, and then, just as he had predicted, he saw the flashing lights of the police. One car for a thousand drunken apes.
On the second floor of his house, Ernie did what he always did when he suspected there was going to be trouble. He entered the code on his gun locker, pulled the door open, and yanked his Remington R4 Operator free. There were other weapons in there, handguns, shotguns, and one big boy that would land him in hot water if he was ever forced to use it, but the R4 would be good for now.
Ernie didn't think anything was actually going to happen, but it was better to be prepared than sorry. He pulled the magazine free, thumbed thirty 5.56 mm rounds into the mag, and then slammed the mag home. With the rifle in his hand, the rich smell of gun oil tickling his nose, he hustled around the second-floor of his house, turning off all the lights upstairs while ignoring the ones below. He wanted to be able to see if anyone came into his yard, but he didn't want anyone to see him.
The roar of the bikes had died down, and now, all that was left was the buzz of bikers as they milled around, drinking and laughing. Down the street, he could still make out the twirling lights of the cop car. Any second now, he expected to hear the wail of ambulance sirens.
The old man didn’t enjoy this part. He wasn't thrilled to be up on the second floor, his eye peering through the scope of his rifle. His heart did not hammer in his chest. He was just being expedient. He hadn't made it this far in life without being prepared. If this all amounted to nothing, he would be happy about it, pop the top on a Tecate and call it a night.
But if the apes escaped their cages, he would be ready to put them down. Any one of those motherfuckers set foot upon his lawn, and he would drop their dicks in the dirt.
Scanning the bikers across the street, many of them stood in pockets, talking to each other as they craned their heads down the road. What did they see? What was going on?
In another room of his house, he had a police scanner. He left his perch and ran, his boots clomping on the hardwood floors. He would have preferred carpet. It was easier to move quietly in a carpeted house, but his wife had always preferred hardwood floors. He could still hear her shuffling through the house in her slippers, classical music playing somewhere in the house.
Memories of Olivia threatened to overcome him, but he pushed those thoughts off to the side. Now was not the time to take a stroll down memory lane.
In his study, sitting on top of an old, olive-green file cabinet, he found his scanner, clicked it on, and turned it up to full volume.
With the squelchy buzz of police chatter in full effect, he scuttled back to his perch. The bikers stood out front. Their long hair and stupid tattoos made them look comical in his opinion. Probably think they look real tough. A real tough guy doesn't show you he's tough. He doesn't care what you think. A man who needs to show the world he's badass is already admitting weakness. A real hardass hides it, because when you walk around like you're the baddest fucker on the block, sooner or later someone's going to come along and test you. And what was the point of that? This country wasn’t made for the tough anymore. Tough guys wound up behind bars. No, it was better to be tough and smart.
These guys weren't even tough, let alone smart, and Ernie didn't want anything to do with them. He understood what they really were, as opposed to what they tried to convince everyone else they were. Lost souls, looking for families, places to belong. Though they had each been born into their own family, they had probably fucked that up with their poor decisions, burned bridges the way they burned through cigarettes, compromising their lungs and their bodies at every turn with alcohol and drugs. Hell, half of them probably had v.d. festering under their jeans.
These fucks weren't tough. They just thought they were. Oh, they probably got into some schoolyard scraps every now and then, just enough to let them know they could generally beat the shit out of the common man, but when it came down to it, and they came up against a true tough guy, they would lose. Sure as shit.
Ernie Windham didn’t even flinch when the first shot came; he was ready for it. It was that type of night, cool, but still, the Rocky Mountain winds hiding as if they knew blood was about to anoint the pavement.
When the first shots came, he leaned back into his rifle, peering through the scope.
"Look at 'em scatter," Ernie laughed. "Like a heard of gazelle when a lion makes its move. Fucking cowards."
Below him, bikers, their hair long and greasy, bandanas wound around their heads, more leather than a tannery, ran this way and that, fleeing into the buildings around them.
One biker, his eyes wide and his mouth pulled back in a fearful grin broke across the street toward Ernie's house. He put a round six inches in front of his boot tips, and the man skidded to a stop, his arms twirling in the air as he tried to maintain his balance. The man looked up, saw the rifle peeking out the open window on the second floor and turned right back around.
Ernie didn't even have to say anything.
More shots came, and the small town of Monktree, Wyoming became a shooting gallery for a couple of minutes. That's all it took for civility to vanish. A couple rounds on a cold night, and everyone was transformed from civil human beings, relatively speaking, to frightened mice looking for any hole to crawl into.
"Fucking pussies," Ernie muttered, a small smile creasing the deep laugh lines on his face.
The smile faded as he listened to the chatter of the police scanner, actually tried to piece together what he was hearing. Monktree wasn't even on the radar in that chatter. All state troopers were being rerouted to Wyoming's two biggest towns, Casper and Cheyenne.
Ernie couldn't puzzle out the reason why, but the voice of the dispatcher, normally cool, calm, and collected, sounded confused, frazzled for lack of a better word. Without a second thought, Ernie hustled to his gun cabinet and began yanking out his arsenal, locking and loading everything. It was better to be safe than sorry. When he was done, he pulled everything to his perch. After that, he dragged his food up, dumping out the gallon jug of milk and filling it with water. Satisfied with his preparation, he sat with a beer in his hand, titling it up to his lips periodically. His hand shook, but Ernie wasn't embarrassed by it. Even tough guys felt fear, and as he listened to the parade of police chatter on his scanner, the fear became real.
Chapter 12: Bring Out Your Dead
Harold Cashman didn't know what to think about the radio. He and his partner Sketchy Jeff were halfway between Casper and Monktree when the call came over the radio to abandon the people in Monktree and turn back.
"What the fuck do they mean abandon?" Harold asked.
Sketchy Jeff, who really wasn't all that sketchy, shrugged his shoulders before asking, "Should we go on to Monktree?"
"Your call. But if we don't turn around, Phillips is gonna have our ass." Sterling Phillips was their ballbuster of a boss. What could you expect from a motherfucker named Sterling? He would routinely assign overtime to the people he didn't like. If you had a penis, that meant you. You could refuse the overtime, but then Phillips would just fire your ass, and Harold had too much debt to ever be without a job. Thanks to student loans, he was going to be driving this ambulance for the rest of his life, unless he won the lottery.
He had been out of school for five years and still had yet to make a dent in those fund-sucking loans. Sketchy Jeff was in the same boat, both locked into a life of toil that had grown old of late. Harold knew he made a difference, that his job was important, but sometimes it didn't feel that way. When you pulled up to a flophouse and spiked an overdosing junkie with naloxone, only to return the next week and do the same thing… well, it just got to you after a while.
There were few people in the world who could hate humanity the way an emergency paramedic could. Harold had seen it all, the greed, avarice, lust… whatever the others ones were, the deadliest sins of man, like in that one movie with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. He bore witness to the sins every night. After you did that for a few years, you realized just how much of an animal a human was. Oh, sure, at the grocery store you'd stand in line pretending like you were better than an animal, but in reality, humans were all revolting, selfish creatures. For every good human being out there, he seemed to encounter five who were total pieces of shit. Before he had become a paramedic, Harold would have told you every life was sacred. Now, not so much.
"We better turn around," Sketchy Jeff sighed. "Sounds like something weird is going on back at Casper."
Harold banged on the steering wheel. Jeff was right. Though Harold wanted to stick it out and see what was going down in Monktree, the last thing he needed was to be chewed out by his boss. The highway here was too narrow for a simple U-turn, so he pulled off onto the emergency lane, peppered with the corpses of smashed bunnies and other rodents. Every summer, the side of the highway filled with more and more of the things. The ambulance rocked back and forth as the shoulder of the road tilted slightly.
"Fucking, Phillips, man. I'd like to see him in the back of the ambulance one day. He might have himself an accident, if you knows what I mean."
Harold smiled. Sketchy Jeff didn't mean anything by it. It's one of the reasons why people called him Sketchy Jeff. He frequently said things that crossed the line, and most of his partners had eventually tired of it. But he never did anything wrong, and he was the best partner Harold had ever had. "Oh, I knows what you mean," Harold parroted.
"I'd take my fucking thumb and jab it right in his eye, just press it on down until I hit brain. And I'd say—Jesus! Watch out!"
Harold was too busy listening to the wind-up from another one of Sketchy Jeff's insane rants. When he got going, you never knew where he was going to end up. Sometimes he wondered if Jeff was even aware of half the shit he said. At that moment, with the ambulance turning and his mind focused on the pending, volcanic diatribe erupting from Jeff's mouth, he didn't notice the man dressed in black in the middle of the road. "Watch out!" Jeff yelled and Harold instantly slammed on his breaks—but not fast enough. A man's forehead smacked off the lower part of the ambulance's windshield, the body flying off into the night as they skidded to a stop.
Harold glanced at the clock on the dashboard, looked at the time, locked the hour and the minute in his mind. 10:37. "And that was when my life ended," he would be able to tell people when he was bagging groceries, living paycheck to paycheck while his debt accumulated interest. "Yep, 10:37. That's when everything went to shit."
