Rough Men (19 page)

“Sure. What’s wrong?”

Jason collapsed in his arms then, blood gurgling from his mouth, more body heat rolling off his torso than Will could believe. He set his friend down onto the ground and saw for the
first time that somehow Jason had taken Chris’s backpack from the burning building. Will took and shouldered the backpack, then ran back toward the building, back to where they’d left the chunk of aluminum from the wall that he’d shoved Jason through. He dragged it back to Jason, rolled his friend onto the metal, and slapped him, the man’s eyes coming alive with rage. Will lay his stolen AR-15 on Jason’s chest.

“You’ve got to stay awake,” said Will. “You hold this while I pull you out of here, you got that?”

Jason grunted something indistinguishable, and Will slapped him again. Jason’s eyes came back iron, flecked with green and gold. “You hit me again,” he said, “and I’ll kill you.”

“You fall asleep again, I’ll leave you for dead.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you right back,” said Will, pulling the makeshift sled through the snow. “Fuck you very much. Keep that gun ready, you fucker.”

“Fuck you,” said Jason as Will moved them up the driveway. “This is all your fault.”

“You’re the one that knocked her up,” said Will, “I guarantee it. Now stop telling me to fuck off, and make sure that Caddy doesn’t come back. Bitch.”

“Fuck you,” said Jason, lucid now, or at least somewhat. “Damn my head hurts, Will.”

“I know, mine too. What the fuck was in that place?” He shook his head, loosing a fresh wave of pain. “Doesn’t matter. I’m getting us back to Isaac.”

“I’ve got your back.”

W
ill’s arms were freezing.
Everything else was too, but the cold was the worst in his arms. Jason was having an on-again, off-again battle with lucidity, and Will was no longer just scared that the tattooed ex-con might shoot him in the back, he was expecting it. If anything, he was shocked it had taken so long to happen.

Every slogging step through the slush and snow was hell, every gust of wind a knee-buckling hurricane, every noise terrifying. Will had no idea what time it was, no idea how much farther the gas station was, or if there was even any point to dragging Jason there. If his wounds were too bad, there was nothing he was going to be able to do about them, not on his own and certainly not with the supplies he’d be limited to in the battered Sunoco. Still, Will continued dragging the alternately babbling and snoring Jason behind him and just tried to worry about the step he was taking, not the one after it.

When the gas station finally came into sight, Will was sure he was just imagining things, but he pushed on.

It was the real deal. And Will smelled smoke. Christ, had he made it all the way there only to watch the fucker burn?

As he dragged Jason into the gas station’s fueling area, he saw that his nose hadn’t betrayed him: smoke was billowing from the gas station. Forgetting Jason, Will ran to the building and to his brother.

“Isaac!” Will screamed as he crunched over the broken glass, then slowed, then stopped. The smoke was coming from a fire set
in the middle of the service area’s floor. The office door opened, and Isaac was walking toward him.

“Will, holy shit. Thank God. Where’s Jason? And what the fuck happened to you?”

“He’s outside. Can you help me get him?”

“I can use my left arm,” said Isaac, pointing with his left arm to his right, which was tied up in a homemade sling, “but I’m pretty sure this one’s broken.”

“That’s fine. Just help me bring him in.”

Will left the gas station with his brother in tow and found Jason lying flat on his back in the snow atop the makeshift sled. Ignoring his brother’s questioning look, Will grabbed a piece of the sled and began pulling, while Isaac attempted to do the same on his side. After just a few moments, Jason had been moved to the doorway, and Will slipped the gun from his fingers, then slung it over his shoulders.

“Let’s pick him up,” Will said. “You get on his right side; I’ll be on the left.” Will moved into position, his right arm under Jason’s left, and wrapped around his upper back. Will felt Isaac doing similar maneuvering, and then his brother grabbed his forearm. “You ready?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“All right, three, two, one.”

The brothers stood with Jason between them and slowly entered the gas station, trying to keep Jason’s face away from the smoke, as well as their own. They knelt with him a few feet from the fire, and Will took off what was left of his coat to give Jason a place to lay his head.

“Goddamn, that fire feels nice,” Will said. “Where’d you get all the wood?”

“There was a bunch out back,” said Isaac, grinning. “All split, packaged, and ready for sale. I figured that stealing it was a minor party foul, considering all of the other insurance work these poor bastards are going to see.”

Will walked to the back of the store and helped himself to a bottle of water from one of the broken coolers. He unscrewed the lid and took a drink, then spit onto the floor. The fluid that came from his mouth was black, with chunks in it. He repeated the act three more times, then blew his nose, farmer style, onto the floor, pinching off one nostril and blowing, then doing the other side.

“Make yourself at home,” said Isaac, “but if you could avoid shitting on the floor, that would be great.”

Perusing an aisle of snacks that had been blown on the floor, Will said, “No promises.” He left the snacks, figuring the water was good enough for a start, and walked back to Jason. He was in rough shape, Will could tell that by just looking at him. He knelt next to the prone body, unslinging his AR-15 and laying it on the floor. He slid Jason’s left arm from his jacket, and then the right. Will rolled his friend’s shirt up, cringing at what he saw.

Jason’s left side was black with bruising, and his ribs rose and fell in weirdly disordered hills and valleys that brought the words
multiple fracture
to Will’s mind. His breathing was hitched, normal enough on the right side, but labored on his savaged left side.

“Christ,” Isaac said. “Looks like your buddy punctured his lung. That’s not good.”

“No, it isn’t. When was the last time you checked the land line in the office?”

“Only about every ten minutes since I woke up. Fill me in. The last thing I remember, we got tricked somehow and were getting into a van with a bunch of bastards. Did they have tattooed faces, or was that just a bad dream?”

“No,” said Will, taking a drink of water and keeping it down this time, “not a dream. Bunch of gangbangers from something called MS-Thirteen kidnapped us and were bringing us out here to die. The storm got to be too much for the driver, and Jason got to be too much for just about everybody. When I woke up, he was killing people left and right, and I dragged you out of the wreck.”

“Nice of you.”

“No problem. Hell, Jason did most of the work. He got rid of the rest of the bastards, got us both guns, and then carried you here. The note was my idea.”

“Nice touch.”

“Thanks. Anyways, after that, we went to go see where that bastard Chris had gone off to—he wasn’t in the van when I woke up. We followed his blood trail—really, Jason followed it, and I followed him—and then we got the drop on them. We were just about to finish it, kill the bad guys, get the gold, and get out of there, when two more of them came in the room, the leader of the tattoo faces and some suit—I didn’t get a good look at him. Everybody started shooting everybody else, and then the whole place just blew apart.”

“Meth lab,” said Jason from the floor, making both brothers jump. His voice was raspy, like his throat was full of glass, but he seemed much more lucid than he had while Will was dragging him to the Sunoco.

“What do you mean, meth lab?” Will asked.

Jason said, “Water.”

Will knelt, unscrewed the lid from the bottle, and poured some water into Jason’s mouth. Jason promptly turned his head and spit on the floor—black chunks, just like when Will had done the same thing. Jason nodded, and Will repeated the act, four more times in total.

Jason took the bottle from Will then and splashed some water in his face, then eyed Will. “Christ, you look about like I feel. Might be best to avoid mirrors and the public for a few months.”

“What were you saying about a meth lab?” Isaac asked, and Jason nodded.

“The place we got in the gunfight in was set on top of a meth lab. My guess would be that lightning hit the generator, and they were cooking down there. Place went up like a fucking fireball.
I bet it’s still burning. Probably the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. How’d we get back here?”

“I dragged you on a piece of the building.”

“Bullshit. You?”

“It’s true,” said Isaac. “I saw him do it.”

“I’d say thanks, but I imagine you still owe me for a couple, minimum.”

“I’m not going to dispute that.”

“So what’s the plan now?” Jason asked. “We gonna call somebody for help? I imagine our bad-guy-wrangling days are over.”

“No phones,” said Will. “They took ours, remember? Plus the land line here is still dead, might be that way for days.”

“How about one of them?”

“What?”

“One of those ones,” said Jason, struggling to point to a display behind the register. “Get one a them burners, turn one on, register it, and call home. You can call my girl at the tattoo shop if you want; she’ll haul us home on her back if I tell her there’s some blow in it for her.”

“Nice girl,” Will agreed, “but I think I’ll try my wife first, assuming that’s OK with you.”

It took Will more than a few minutes of fumbling to get the phone out of the package, registered, and dialing home, but when Alison answered, it was all worth it.

“Hello?” she answered, her voice drawn tight as wire. Even though it was not quite morning yet, Will could tell she hadn’t been sleeping.

“It’s Will, hon. Are you doing OK? I’m sorry it took so long for me to call.”

“Goddamn you, Will Daniels! Goddamn you. I’m so glad you’re OK, but last night was the worst, the absolute worst. Is everything OK?”

Will caught himself appraising Jason and then Isaac before answering. “Things have been better, how’s that for a start?”

“It’ll do, I guess. Did you...do what you set out to do?”

“Yes and no. It’s a long story. It’s been pretty terrible out, and I hate to ask, but if you could try to come get us, we’d love to tell it to you.”

“Of course I’ll come get you. Wait, where are you?”

“Right now, we’re hiding out in a gas station off of the Fruitridge exit on the—”

“Jesus Christ! Are you serious? Do you have any idea how bad the storm was out there last night? Whole buildings were ruined. The pictures make it look like spring in tornado alley.”

“Were there tornados?”

“No, the weather has been calling it ‘straight-line winds,’ whatever that means. I’m going to fetch my keys and get out there. I’ll call if I get lost.”

“Don’t you have to get dressed?”

“I’ve been waiting for the call that you’d been arrested or killed. I still have my shoes on. I love you. I’ll be there soon.”

The receiver went dead, and out of habit, Will stuck the phone in his pocket. “She’s coming to get us, leaving right now.”

“Great,” said Jason. “I can’t wait to not explain what happened to me tonight in the prison wing of the hospital.” He stopped then and gave them a confused look. “Hey, what was in that goddamn bag, after all?”

Will looked at the forgotten pack on the floor near the counter, then walked over and grabbed it and brought it back to Jason. Isaac chose to sit next to them as well, as Will unzipped the bag, feeling like a poisonous snake or some other awful demon was going to leap out of it.

When he finally stuck his hand inside, all there was to pull out was a thin manila envelope with a sealed top.

“Open the fucker,” said Jason, and that’s what Will did.