Everyone Dies in the End #68

Susan

This didn’t look good. Not that she really gave a damn anymore. A swarm of tires, dotted with a pair of rusting refrigerators, blocked the turnpike. Behind it sat a truck and a pair of non-descript family sedans. Susan could see heads with rifles on the sedans; trouble. She could feel more trouble to her right, on the low hill. She didn’t look, no point in giving away what she knew. Hell, she didn’t see much point in anything anymore. She was going to Philly or she was going to die trying. She didn’t know what these men wanted (she could guess), but they could get out of her way, kill her, or die. She didn’t care which, caring had pretty much died on a blood-soaked dinner table in Henry, Virginia.

A chunky, blonde-haired dude with a military buzz gone shaggy stepped out from the cars. Turning, he handed his assault rifle to a spindly, dark-haired man next to him. Susan would have taken the handing as a good sign if Mr. Chunky Dude wasn’t also sporting a pair of pistols on his hip, and a pair of grenades clipped to the canvas web gear that he wore.

Jack

“Give ‘em the signal when I’m a few feet away from her,” Jack said as Spider took his rifle. “I want his one in good shape,” he added with a lavicious grin.

Susan

She was no action hero. Nothing like Todd, not even like Arty (that thought made her heart briefly seize), but she did have one massive advantage over action heroes. She just didn’t give a damn. Well, she snorted, guess I have two advantages.

I am a witch.  

Jack

“What’s so funny, young lady?” Jack smiled. Behind him Spider gave the sign. On the hill two lassoes snaked toward Cindy as the last edge of the red sun dipped below the horizon.

Susan

She was fast, faster than she ever knew she could be. The .38 felt good in her hand, and her heart felt disgusted in her body. Harm none. Her creed mocked her.

Jack

Just like a Polaroid picture, the world stood still. The girl—petite, black spikey shag, pretty, strange tattoo under her eye. The ropes, hanging in the air, the fraying threads clearly visible, the purple-pink sky the palette on which it was all painted—beautiful, but not quite so; that big gun spoiled the picture. She hadn’t talked. Jesus, they all talk, he thought, even the most foolhardy try to talk their way out of a meeting with Jack and his penners, but not this pixie. She pulled on him, and now in this Polaroid of an Eastern Pennsylvania sunset, the dominate feature was the gapping maw at the end of the big gun in girl’s hand.

Susan

The gun boomed, opening a large, red hole in the chunky man’s chest. He was a big man, big enough to stay on his feet, at least for an instant. Then he sank to his knees, opened his mouth as if to speak, and collapsed on his side. Susan didn’t know if he was dead or alive, and didn’t take the time to find out. She leveled the gun at the spindly guy behind the car, supported her aim with her other hand, and fired. Once, twice, three times. Two of the rounds thwacked into the side of the car, the third sparked off the hood. None of the bullets hit her target, and none of the heads with rifles fired back. Strange, she thought, but she thought that for a only second, because in the next instant the two ropes dropped over her shoulders, their owners yanked them tight, and Susan slumped to the pavement. The big .38 fell from her hand and clattered to the asphalt beside her, just out of reach, not that it mattered. The rifle barrel that punched into her cheek seemed to indicate that her reaching days were over.

A boot kicked, knocking the air from her lungs, throwing her on her back. The spindly dude knelt beside her, his dark eyes glittering against his dark skin, several other circled above.

“He’s dead,” someone called from the direction of the chunky guy with the red hole in his chest.

“It happens,” replied the glittering eyes. “Bad for Jack, but” the man traced the outline of her chin with a finger, “real good for me.” The onlookers hooted.

“To hell with you,” Susan whispered. Low, real low, low enough that Spider leaned closer.

He grinned “What did you say, baby?”

“I said you got something on your face,” and she spit into his eye. He slapped her, and she tasted blood. Should have known better, inside she shrugged. Who cares?

“Let’s have some fun, shall we?” He slipped the top lasso off, grabbed the edges of her shirt, and ripped.

Susan twisted hard, flexing her hips, attempting to throw him off, but the man was stronger than he looked. Her shirt was in tatters, her chest exposed to the rapist creep, but in removing the lasso he had also freed her arms. She used the freedom to punch him wherever she could reach, mostly ineffectual blows against his arms and chest, but one connected with his cheek and he gasped in pain.

Again he slapped her, harder, and she felt blood trickle from her nose.

“Rock, Cat Man, get her arms,” the spindly man shouted, and then they were on her. One on each leg, one on each arm, and she couldn’t move.

Spindly stood up, his eyes never leaving hers. His hands dropped to his belt and he began to unbuckle it.

“No one wants to see that.”

It was a new voice.

The hands froze, buckle in one, belt tongue in the other. The eyes left her face, glowering at what could only be the owner of the new voice.

“Who, the fuck, are you?” Susan could see fear in those glowering eyes now. Fear the spindly kid—because for the first time she could see that he was just a kid, maybe eighteen, no more than twenty—fear that this kid tried to dress in a bad man’s clothes.

The voice laughed. “I am your nightmare.”

Whoever this voice was, it had the bad men’s attention. The hands released her, and their owners stood. Guns clicked and clacked as rounds slid into firing chambers, well-oiled death waiting to be unleashed.

Susan sat, pulling the shredded to shirt to cover her as well as she could. The spindly man’s eyes flicked to her. In them she saw a I’ll-deal-with-you-later look that was meant to chill. It was wasted on her.  

“Get in your trucks and leave,” the self-proclaimed nightmare spoke the words slowly, softly, calmly. Susan craned her neck to bring him into focus in the dying light. An everyday kind of man. Nothing special. Blue jeans, white-tee, brown leather jacket, black hair pulled into a short ponytail. Sort of looks like Bono. No weapon. Strange stuff.

“Well,” spat spindly kid, “you’re a dead nightmare now mother f…”

The nightmare moved fast. Faster than Susan could have imagined possible, and Susan, being a witch, had imagined quite a bit. In a blur he was by her, then she came a soft ripping sound, a gurgling scream that ended as abruptly as it began, and a body fell over her, pumping blood from the cavity where once it s head had rested. She kicked the body away. Fighting the urge to scream.

The body wasn’t spindly kid, it was the one called Rock. No, spindly kid was still alive, but maybe—Susan guessed by the look on his face—he wished that wasn’t. The nightmare had him, Spindly’s neck tight in the crook of his arm, a black 9mm (Where had that come from, she wondered?) against his temple. The nightmare faced the kid’s body toward Cat Man and the others. Cat Man and the others pointed their weapons at him.

“Last chance,” the Nightmare spoke. “Get in your trucks and leave.”

On the rise the two ropers stood, rifles in their hands. Susan could see they had clear shots. This man, this thing, might be fast, but she doubted that it was faster than a bullet.

“Let him go,” one of the ropers shouted.

“I bet you weren’t expecting that,” the kid chuckled, visibly buoyed by the turn of events.

The words still hung in the air, when out of that air materialized a blond woman, sawed off shotgun in hand, it’s barrel firm against a roper’s neck.

“Matter of fact, I was,” deadpanned the Nightmare.