Love and Death on I-80 West by Connor Mays
32 - THE END OF INNOCENCE This is how I die. Not in battle with a bad guy who sells coke or meth or hurts little boys. Not buried under a pile of professional and naked hookers hungry for my meat. Not from old age, wondering where the years went and why I took no time for love. I will die buttnaked, tied to a government surplus chair in the middle of an empty warehouse. Since the subject’s come up, I never thought much about the dying thing. I knew it was going to happen, and I caused enough of it on my own, but I never feared death. The process of dying...a whole different matter. Cancer scares me, like most people. The long, slow drip of chemo as it eats away at my flesh, “curing” me. I decided long ago to off myself before making a bunch of doctors rich and happy with my last heartbeats. If the look in Walter’s eyes means anything, cancer is the least of my worries. My death is going to be a different kind of slow process. When the condo door came crashing down, I did two things in quick succession, starting with pitching my cell phone as far as I could into the darkness. I didn’t want Walter to see someone was on the line for twenty minutes before our visitors showed up. My hope was the phone would land hard and disintegrate somewhere or, best scenario, at the bottom of a pool or bucket of water. I put Sandra on her feet and pushed her flat to the ground, certain gunplay was going to end me right there and then. I’d been on the other side plenty back when Walter’s panic team took no prisoners in extreme situations. Big surprise: they took us alive. The four of them wore black and Kevlar, with masks over their faces, and they
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Love and Death on I-80 West by Connor Mays
moved as a coordinated team, keeping their Glocks pointed at my forehead without getting in each other’s way. I did as they said: hands behind my back, knees on the ground, eyes looking down. They handcuffed and hooded me and marched the two of us down the hall to the elevator and downstairs into a van. I didn’t get clothes, and from the speed of our exit, I doubt they put anything on Sandra, either, not even the robe from the balcony. The ride in their van was confusing. I tried to count lefts and rights, plus listen for noise, but the driver knew what he was doing. I couldn’t backtrack if I tried, not that I thought there was a chance it would help. I was paying attention because it was more interesting than crying and begging for my life like Sandra was doing. They didn’t bother to shut her up. We stopped, a door opened, and we were dragged out and thrown in chairs and duct-taped in place. When our captor was sure we were secure, my hood came off, and I got my first look. Walter was in his wheelchair, my four playmates were stationed around us at various intervals, and Sandra was in the chair behind mine. We’re back to back, and she’s shivering something bad from fear. One of my victims did the same, and he pissed on himself before he died. From what I can smell, Sandra isn’t there, yet, but she’s close. She’s begging and whining in one long sentence. “Walter, he tortured me and threatened Jenna, and I would never tell…” She goes on, and the guys in black and I’ve been listening to this spiel all night. Walter is tired of her after a few words. He levers himself out of his chair, walks around to her out of my line of sight, and slaps her hard. The back of her head bounces off my
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Love and Death on I-80 West by Connor Mays
head. My thick skull doesn’t care, but she’s wounded twice by one blow. The upside is she dials it down to a soft whimper, like a poodle in distress. “Sandra, don’t lie,” he wheezes. “I heard everything. It’s on tape. You told him everything, and he works for the FBI. The fucking Federal fucking Bureau of fucking Investigation!” He slaps her again, and this time I lean my head forward in time so she doesn’t hit my head. Maybe he knocked her unconscious, or maybe it’s worse, but for the first time tonight, she’s quiet. He walks around to my front as he’s digging something out of the pocket of his massive windbreaker. “Tucci.” “Walter.” “Why did you fuck with me, Tucci? Why?” Because you’re an asshole, Walter. Because I didn’t think you were smart enough to catch me, Walter. Because the FBI approached me when I was at my absolute lowest emotional minute, with Janey out the door, and they threatened to send me to jail forever, Walter. I say none of these things because the truth won’t save me. I shrug. Walter finds what he’s looking for, and he slips them on his fingers: the nastiest set of brass knuckles on the planet, with spikes, no less. “Tucci, you’re going to talk. You’re going to tell me everything. You are going to beg me to cut your throat.” “Well, hell, what do you want to know, Walter?” I hold nothing back. He hears of the bed and breakfast and the diner in Utah where I was “persuaded” to join the war against the international trafficking of minors for the purposes of prostitution and extortion. I tell him as much as I can about Special Agent in Charge Abraham Lincoln Johnson and his merry band of federal agents. His eyes widen as I explain my online
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Love and Death on I-80 West by Connor Mays
journal full of names, dates, and places, for the law enforcement community to read at their leisure. I take special pride in relating how the FBI will track down the bad guys inside and outside the warehouse, and how they were approaching the front door as I told my tale. I say that if he were smart, Walter and his friends would drop their weapons and give up. Walter’s playmates are smiling as their boss laughs. “Tucci, you’re a fucking idiot. You don’t think I got people on the inside? The FBI fucking took off in the opposite direction from here. They’re not gonna save you. They’re not gonna save anyone. Everyone you love is as good as dead.” He backhands me with his bare hand, the ones without the knuckles. “You ain’t gonna live to see it.” A noise behind me, and Sandra picks the worst possible time to start whimpering again. Walter snaps his fingers, and the guy to my left pulls out a dagger. Before I can say anything, there’s the sound of cut meat, and Sandra goes quiet forever. “We’ll dump her naked body on the FBI’s front lawn,” Walter says. “You, I think, we’ll mail to them.” He drives the spikes into the top of my knee, and I don’t hold back. Nope. I split everyone’s eardrums with a scream as I feel my tendons and shit split open. He rocks his hand back and forth to make his point before pulling out, making a gusher of blood that hits my bare chest. He works the rest of me, using his bare hand most of the time and his spikes for those very special moments. He shreds an ear, punches a hole in my side, and breaks a few ribs on the other side. He minces some knuckles on each hand and crushes my toes under his boot.
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Love and Death on I-80 West by Connor Mays
He leaves my jaw and face intact so I can scream. He gets off from the pain. I’ve seen his bruises on Sandra. It comes in waves, the torture and the agony, and I start to lose consciousness. One of his buddies throws sewer water on me every so often, and Walter picks a new part of my body to break or bloody. When he enlarges the hole in my side, I feel like the oxygen has disappeared from the room. “Possible collapsed lung,” says a part of my brain. How long has he punished me? An hour? Two hours? I’ve lost track. He’s working hard, maybe harder than he has in years, and he has to take hits from his inhaler. His wheezing gets louder as his excitement grows from this act of murder. The room takes a haze of bright red, the same color as the blood from my body on the floor. The uniforms of Walter’s playmates are red, the single lightbulb above our heads is red, the bugs flying in front of this dickwad’s face is red… Bugs? He grabs my hair and pulls my face up to his. There are red bugs on his forehead. Fucking A. I spit blood to the side, feeling teeth pass my lips. “Hey, Walter.” “Yeah, Tucci?” He wheezes for the last time. “Good-bye, asshole.” His end is swift: a high-powered sniper shot, and his head explodes, with most of him on me. I feel the bullet exiting the remains of his head whiz by my ear. His playmates are rolling around on the ground and behind me, which gains them a few
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Love and Death on I-80 West by Connor Mays
seconds of life, but they die like pussies, screaming, picked off one by one. The echoes of their last words go quiet as Special Agent Abraham Lincoln Johnson in a ninja suit steps out of the red darkness, hefting a long rifle with a big scope, along with six of his best friends. They’re dressed and armed like he is, these Bad Ass Mother Fuckers. “Took you long enough, Agent Johnson.” “Sorry, Tucci. Had to take the long way.” “As long as you’re here.” All hell breaks loose as the warehouse doors open to reveal a hundred rotating lights. The Law has arrived, hundreds of them. They’re too late. Cops are never around when you need them. The paramedics are as gentle as they can be, but I am messed up from ears to toes. They get my breathing under control and are ready to load me onto a gurney, when I push them away. Agent Johnson waves them back. I can’t move fast. Hell, I’m almost crawling on my elbows and one knee, but I get around the chairs to say good-bye to Sandra. My ex-wife is naked except for the cascade of blood from the wide gap in her neck. It covers her perfect body with a winered sheen bright in the rotating lights. Her eyes are open, and they see nothing. She was scared when she died. Her hand is cold in mine. I do something I have never done before. Not when my mother died, not when I killed assholes in Houston and Detroit, and not even when I tried to save Private Avery back in Missouri. I cry over a murder.
Copyright © 2016 Connor Mays. Please note further copyright information on the last page.
Love and Death on I-80 West by Connor Mays
This serial and book are solely owned by its creator, Connor Mays (a pseudonym). Copyright © 2016. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. This creation of literary art was drafted and edited via public wi-fi networks. The owners, operators, and employees of these networks have no ownership claim in any form of this work or the residuals, if any. For more information and permission requests, the author may be contacted via email only: connormaysbooks at gmail dot com. Website: http://www.connormaysbooks.com
Copyright © 2016 Connor Mays. Please note further copyright information on the last page.
