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Chapter 11, dead man burning: Second Saturday Stories

My hand is on my Webley as soon as my heel touches gravel. Cocking the hammer sounds like a tidal wave to me and I feel a tremor as I draw a bead on the tallest of the three men. There’s no mistaking him in that stupid fur coat. I grab my wrist with my left hand. As soon as I let the shot off I know I’ve pulled instead of squeezed.
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I hear another crack of pistol fire as I drag the Doc through shrubbery. raspberry bushes tear at my skin, saplings smack my cheeks, but I keep running with him until both of us wheeze like perforated tires. We collapse in a heap and I check to see if the Doc looks as bad as I feel. His cheeks are blazing and the rain stuck his bangs to his forehead, but he’s looking around the greenery  like it’s the first time he’s seen anything beyond that cell he was locked in. 

“You back to the land of the living?” I asked. He eyes me up, familiarity a dull shine in the back of his eye. 

“You’re Roger’s friend?” I see alarm start to creep in so I talk fast: 

“My name is Percy Slate. I’m a private eye hired by your wife to find you. She’s worried, Doc.” I watch the panic recede, but only a little bit. 

“My wife? Veronica put you up to this?” I hear the love in his voice and it just about breaks my heart. 

“That’s right John, your wife’s looking for you. She got worried when you didn’t come home. How’s be we get outta here and I take you to her? you can be sleeping in your own bed by tonight.'' When my world turned to a soggy mess overseas the one thought that kept me going was crawling back into my own bed one night, and being alive enough to do it under my own steam. I hoped now I could inspire the Doc with the idea. Shouts materialize through the rain and I hear another pistol blast. A birch tree behind us shatters to splinters. 

“Shit! we gotta move Doc.” I exclaim. The look on his face tells me he’s locking in the facts I told him, I see the will to live etch his mouth into a tight line underneath the pencil line moustache. Relief seeps through me and I let myself believe we’re getting out alive. Like we weren’t running on dumb luck to begin with. 

A grey outbuilding looms through the fog ahead. I see corrugated metal sides and a roof that looks like it’s got one more good snow left before it gives up the ghost completely. I drag Carruthers half way there but he gets his feet underneath him and starts to move when he sees what I see. 

There’s no lock on the door so I drag a steel drum against it as something sloshes against the sides. Carruthers has taken up residence in a corner and I can see the fresh air is doing wonders. The light has returned to his eyes and I see something else, he’s angry. That's a good sign, let him get raging mad and maybe we’ll have a fighting chance. I take stock on the paltry weapons at our disposal: A few hand tools rusted with age, an old length of hose caked in cobwebs. A cedar chest on the other side of the room fills the small space with a spicy scent that reminds me of my mother's blanket box. 

There's a small window set in one wall and beyond it I can see a pathway leading to a gravel packed road. I think maybe it’s a trick of the fog but I swear I can see a glint of metal peeking in. 

“How did you get here? did you-” the words die in my mouth as I turn to the doctor and instead see Joey’s rat face rising from the cedar box like a snake rising from a charmer’s basket. I think for a second I'm losing my mind, that it’s some trick from Roger’s brainwashing, but he’s there all right. I almost miss the blade he’s holding. 

I move too slow, like running in a dream. It feels like it takes an hour to reach the other side of the shed and I watch as he uncoils his legs from his hiding spot. I’ve got just enough time to register the small ladder leading to a trench system running beneath the shed before Joey’s all the way out of the box and the lid slams shut. 

I put all my weight into my balled right fist, sending waves of pain to my elbow. Joey’s head clangs off the steel wall, his eyes roll. I sneak a glance at the doc and find him parylised in the corner watching the horror play out. He’s not used to seeing this side of his practice. 

Joey brings the blade in a slicing arc that catches my suit jacket and cuts the lapel into two flaps. I fake to the left and then pivot right. The first thing I can lay my hands on is an old axe handle, the head broken off and cast away in a forgotten shadow somewhere. I still swing it like Babe Ruth. I connect and watch the light leak from Joey’s eyes, see him stagger  against the workbench. The knife clatters to the floor. His hands open and close but grasp nothing. 

The axe handle has one more good swing left in it before it shatters in two. My breath is coming in ragged gasps and I feel more than a few splinters worm their way into the meat of my palms like a thousand tiny cuts. I’ve opened up a gash on Joey’s right cheek and he’s leaking all over the pulp of the work bench. My eyes fall on the length of hose and I grab it, grinding my teeth against the biting pain in my hands. 

I swore when I came home I would never level any kind of weapon at another man again. It’s what’s kept me from stepping out with my Webley and walking straight up to Salvatore Colisetta and ending him, then turning the gun on his boss and ending him too. I know what happens when men communicate in slaughter, and I’d have no part in continuing that cycle. But standing in that shed I knew if I fought any other way but for my life, I would lose, and I would die. 

My stomach knots as I wrap the hose around Joey’s neck and pull. I take no pleasure in it. 

When that hose goes around his neck he starts bucking like a pissed off steer and it’s all I have to keep hold. His arms flail, his legs kick, spittle flies from his mouth as he tries to speak through a restricted windpipe. The metal of the ends slice into my hands and I scream through the exertion and pain. 

Joey takes me for a ride and we collide with the steel drum, he knocks the work bench clear of tools. He slams me from one wall to the next as the garden tools rain down on us. All while wheezing the same two words over and over again. He's not begging, he’s not cursing me out, but he’s repeating the same thing all the while trying to work his fingers underneath the rubber. 

My arms start to scream and my back joins the cacophony. I feel my strength bleeding out and he finally gets the words out. 

“Red dragon.” he gasps. I think maybe the lack of oxygen is making him hallucinate even as a thought in the back of my brain rings the alarm bell. He says it one more time before I remember it’s what the Doc had written in his day planner. My eyes search the shed trying to get a bead on the Doc. Out the window I can see it is the front fender of a vehicle glinting in the dull light. All of this registers in the blink of an eye before a flash of movement in my vision draws me back to see the Doc. His eyes have glazed over again and he’s got a rusted garden hoe in his hands. He swings it hard and connects with the side of my head. Everything goes fuzzy and I think maybe he gets one more good swing in. I feel the hose slide from my hands and I hear the unmistakable gasp of Joey getting his wind back. I hear him mutter something but by then the darkness has taken me fully.  

I see the pinprick of light and my heart starts to hammer. I know she’s going to be there and I can’t bear to see her. She’s going to be looking at me and I don’t know if she’s going to be dead or alive. Either way I can’t live with the shame that I've screwed the case up this bad. I don’t want to see her, but I can’t stop her from coming. 

She sits across from me, laying down tarot. She tries to speak but all I can make out is guttural syllables through a decaying voice box. I smell the funeral pyre mixed with cemetery dirt. It clings to her in clumps against the brown dress she was buried in. The brim of her hat hides the worst of the wound but I know it’s there, grown into rot through the decay of her crypt. I want to reach for her hands but they are little more than talons with leather like skin stretched tight across the bones. They move the cards with deft ease, slapping them against the tabletop. The devil reversed. normally I’d be drawing a blank but I feel the meaning embed itself in my head, an itch between my eyes: control. She slaps another one down and I see a pastel caricature of myself staring back. The trapped man. My head aches as I feel the meaning of the card. Futility. My stomach drops. “Am-” I start. The words catch in my throat. All this time thinking I didn’t care about dying, that I'd welcome it if it woke me up after a night of drinking her away, and now I can’t even ask the simple question. I swallow. “Am I dying?” Her silent head shake does nothing to dispel my fear. The smell of smoke intensifies. She flips another card. It’s my Webley. Order. She stops and fixes her hollowed out sockets on me. My breath catches. I can’t look at her so instead I look closer at the line of glossy black cards. I Study the pastel coloured pictures on them. When I look up she’s gone, leaving me in the smell of smoke with heat radiating from where she sat. The office begins to fade and I feel like I'm falling. I open my mouth to ask her for guidance, to scream for it actually. I open my mouth but nothing comes out except a hacking cough. My office vanishes and for a split second I worry it’s gone up in flames. I gasp for air and it feels like an elephant sits on my chest. I let out another barrage of hacks and roll onto my side, falling out of my chair and smelling a mixture of mildew and gasoline. 

I open my eyes and feel the sting of smoke as thick grey coils of it roll under the crack of a nearby door. My head swims and when I blink I see reflections of Louise and her cards. I try to blink them away but the pallid face of the devil won’t budge. I see him grinning from the throne and for one panic stricken second I think I’ve crossed over into hell. My heart hammers in my temples and I see a bloodstain on my right breast pocket. The white handkerchief is crusty and maroon. So much for my new suit. Suddenly it feels like someone twists my throat closed and I start coughing until strings of clear saliva hang from my chin. My vision starts to blur and I can hear the unmistakable roar of fire coming from somewhere close by. My mind reels as I try to get my bearings. I stick low to the ground and look through the smoke to a nearby window. I can see the curve of grass sloping away from me and realise I'm below ground level. The door has the same white peeling paint of the basement of the Palace Arms so I figure I’ve been moved back and left to fry, a poor charred wino hiding from the cold left for the fire brigade to find and bury in a potter's field. I’m not bound, which means maybe I looked deader than I actually was. I think of the grinning skull wearing Louise’s clothes and wonder if I didn’t cross over after all. I crawl to the door and tap the knob tentatively. It’s warm but I can still open it. Beyond the door the smoke is thicker, the roar of the fire louder, and I can feel a thick heat that makes sweat roll down my back. A shelving unit has been thrown across the doorway to the cellar. Fire eats the doorway at the top of the stars. I have no choice but to try the door across from me. I throw my shoulder into it and a low wail escapes me when I see what’s beyond it. 

dead end. 

The room holds the cells from before. My mind reels against my vision of the horrors committed by Roger and his mute soldier. Panic rolls up my legs and camps out in my stomach. I’m going to die here. I’m going to die and an innocent man is going to be killed as a pawn in Roger’s twisted vendetta. Another person I'm charged with keeping safe is going to end up in a grave. I think of the Doc haunting me the way Louise is and feel the panic tighten around my heart. I search for anything I can use to break the windows and climb up. The room is bare. a few overturned chairs, old jumper cables, and a record player with the record slowly curling at the sides. Everything else is barren, taken as Roger cleaned the place up and burned his way out. I take off the suit jacket and drop it. At the same time my eyes find the cedar chest tucked against the back corner. I move toward it like a marooned man swimming towards an ocean liner. I pray it’s not empty. 

I feel a blast of cold air as I open the lid. I gulp it in gratefully as the fire rages behind me. I hear the stairs collapse and the fire roar with greed. I think of the two little kids I saw, how that feels like it happened in another life. The blonde girl filling liquor bottles with gasoline flashes across my minds eye and I remember the fear I saw in her face. I look behind me at the wrought iron cell before sliding awkwardly into the box. 

It's slow going. My body feels like I've been through the wringer. My thighs are screaming with dull ache and my arms feel like cement filling my sleeves. 

I try to stop the memories, but you never get over the smell. Earth so dark and rich mixing with the iron sting of blood. The smell of rot isn’t as bad but then again I'm not overseas. I’m back home where atrocities like this weren’t supposed to follow. I feel betrayed, like fate welshed on a bet.  

A passageway suddenly opens above me and I can see an outline of daylight seeping down. I surface in the garden shed and see the discarded axe handle broken useless, the length of hose laying on the workbench with bits of my flesh still embedded in the ends, blood darkens the centre of it. I see the garden hoe that the Doc used to debilitate me and I feel the sting of urgency pinch the back of my neck. The door stands open and I relish the rain as drizzle cascades over my hot and aching body. 

I move to the clearing where I’d seen the glint of metal earlier and find an auto graveyard. There are half a dozen vehicles left forgotten. I gaze over the cars slowly being overtaken by the forest and wonder how long Roger’s been running his operation. I wrack my brain trying to think of other explosions or violence in the clubs, but it feels like the warring factions of criminals have been at each other's throats for years. How much of that has been spurred by Roger’s hidden hand? It makes my head spin. I pick a Buick close by and slide behind the wheel. I fumble at first with the clutch and starter and the engine dies. I take a few breaths and get the timing right. The engine sputters to life. It isn’t until I'm moving that I feel how heavy my eyes are. Between the smoke and lack of sleep, I'm running on empty. My head feels like a butcher block on chop day and I struggle to out think Roger and his crew.

The only thing I really remember is the train yard they stopped off at after the Chicago Club. It wasn’t much of a bet, but it was my only one. I listen out the open window until I hear the sound of heavy machinery getting closer. The forest in front of me opens up and I see I'm running parallel to the tracks. Boxcars dwarf my car and the sound of a locomotive shunting coal cars jars through the cabin until I feel my teeth chatter. 

In the distance I see men loading boxcars in the grey light. Between two box cars I suddenly catch a glint of white as three men are getting into an old bread truck. My gut twists and I slam on the brakes, spitting gravel and killing the engine. 

My hand is on my Webley as soon as my heel touches gravel. Cocking the hammer sounds like a tidal wave to me and I feel a tremor as I draw a bead on the tallest of the three men. There’s no mistaking him in that stupid fur coat. I grab my wrist with my left hand. As soon as I let the shot off I know I’ve pulled instead of squeezed. I’m out of practice. The shot goes wide but by dumb luck I see the truck shudder as one of the tires starts bleeding air. Five shots left Slate. 

Gunfire explodes as two out of three return fire. I duck behind the navy blue fender as bullets ping off the radiator. My driver’s side mirror explodes into shards and one of my own tires gets caught in the crossfire. I try counting shots but everything is a mix of bullets and screaming. There’s a break in the fire and I hear bootfalls on gravel and peek around the fender to see all three taking off towards a line of boxcars. I’m slower to my feet and when one of them, Joey’s unmistakable rat face, turns and sees me giving chase he fires three shots blindly. I drop to the gravel and watch him, Roger, and Doctor Carruthers hang a sharp right and disappear into the labyrinth of locomotives.