Bowie V. Ibarra (3 page)

“Me either,” George replied. He faced forward again and sighed. He had some cash, more along the lines of pocket money, but he certainly wasn’t going to give it to those thugs.

The cops were about four cars down now.

“I’m George Zaragosa.”

“Steve Whitten. Nice to meet you, man.”

“Likewise.”

Steve slapped at his steering wheel in frustration as his machine burned more fuel. “I’m all for following the law, but this is different. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

The cops moved to about three cars down from George and began taking down information. The line of cars were moving slowly. On the highway, it was the same story. Everyone was trying to work their way into the one open lane to get around the rig.

“Where’d you come from?” asked George.

“Man, I went into the H.E.B. to get some water. Got the last of it. I paid for mine, but a lot of people were just walking out. No security, and a lot of the employees were getting roughed up. They’re kind of letting people get away with it. I’m surprised anyone is working to begin with. It’s crazy over there, but this ticket thing right now is crazier. What’s the purpose of this? Like any of these people even care anymore…”

A thought came to George’s head, fueled by the current actions of the police that were aggravating him beyond belief. He ranted, “Man, we can’t let these people take advantage of us anymore. This is fucking bullshit! They’re still in their revenue-generation mindset! Hell, it’s an outright mugging if you ask me!”

“I hear you, man,” agreed Steve, sulking.

“Hey, you need to get to your family, right?”

“Well, yeah.”

“And you know heading for the hills will make you a criminal, right?”

The guy thought for a minute, then replied, “Well, they say they’re going to fine us.”

“Fine you? Hell, if they find you out there, who knows what they’d do to you and your family.”

“You might be right.”

George knew he was. The way the local police had already been SWAT-teaming the city and neutralizing some of the zombies, but -curiously enough -securing whole neighborhoods and turning them into veritable prison camps, he knew when they went hunting for people staying in their own homes it wasn’t going to be so nice.

George took a long, hard moment before stating with finality, “Listen man, I need to get home to my family, too. We don’t have time for this.” Butterflies were swarming in his stomach. It was making him sick to suggest what he was suggesting. He said in a hush, “We need to make a break for it.”

“Uh, what the hell do you mean?” Steve asked, obviously not wanting to say out loud what he knew George was suggesting.

“There’s just two of them,” George said, very anxious now. Adrenaline began coursing through his veins. His body was hot. His vision was narrow. “I can hit them both if we take off now. It’s a clearer shot down this road once we pass them since they’ve slowed things down. If we go now, we can get onto the interstate when we pass the rig on the highway.”

“I don’t know, man,” Steve said. Doubt echoed in his voice, but George’s matter-of-fact logic was somehow making a lot of sense. “What about the cops?”

“Fuck the cops, man,” said George, “They’re not going to give a shit when they find you in the hills!” George’s anger was showing on his face. He had already convinced himself, and was determined now to follow through. “Look, you need to get to your family and so do I… But we’ve got to go now!”

Several seconds passed, during which George saw Steve’s lips stuttering as they tried to give voice to his reply.

He’s not going to do it, George thought.

Suddenly, Steve put his truck in gear and backed up, eyes wide and engine roaring. His solid iron bumper pushed the Dodge Neon behind it backward, screwing up its front end quite badly. The driver of the Neon honked several times in quick, angry succession.

“Let’s do this,” Steve growled, his face carved out of stone.

George nodded and switched his car in gear and gunned it, got out of line, and aimed right at both officers who were now standing by two separate cars, one in front of the other in a perfect line. Steve took out the back end of the car in front of George, then waited for George to go ahead and followed right behind his black Cavalier.

The first cop didn’t know what hit him as the front of the low-set Cavalier took his legs out from under him. Both his knees were blown out, tendons and ligaments snapping as one part of his body went under the vehicle, bending in ways it was never meant to bend. A loud scream emanated from the policeman’s throat, but was cut short as the vehicle advanced. His spine snapped at the waist and his upper body slammed against the black Cavalier, face first, leaving a large dent and a small patch of blood on the hood. His body was then immediately swallowed under the car. For a few feet, the body became stuck under the vehicle, dragging it across the pavement. The car and road both chewed at the body. Flesh and clothes began to tear against the gravel, his right arm snapped off at the shoulder, allowing the body to free itself from the pseudo-grinder and exit out behind the vehicle. Steve’s truck finished the job, crushing the cop’s legs under its massive right wheels.

The second cop turned and watched his partner get creamed by the black Cavalier. His eyes opened wide and his mouth was agape under his dark, full moustache. For a moment he was frozen as the black death-dealer wheeled his way toward him. It was seconds away before his instincts took over. Bending at the knees, he quickly sprang into the air. The Cavalier clipped his ankles, causing him to spin like a fan as he flew over the hood of the vehicle he was ticketing. George briefly scraped the other vehicle, a forest-green Nissan Maxima, and advanced down the road. The cop hit the ground on the other side of the vehicle, his ankles bent backwards as Steve’s large truck sped past. The passenger in the Maxima, a middle-aged blond woman, rolled down her window. She yelled, “Asshole!” The cop slowly got to his knees, pulled out his pistol, and tried to get a clear shot at the renegade vehicles.

However, before he could get a clear shot, all the vehicles behind him -seeing the action in front of them and realizing the opportunity -began a vehicular bum rush of the guards of the makeshift checkpoint. Even the middle-aged blond woman seized the moment and joined the pack. The cop got a futile shot off before he had to flee to the relative safety of the freeway and back to his vehicle, limping and hobbling. It seemed like the checkered flag had unleashed a group of race cars as the access road became a speedway. Cars bumped into each other and tempers flared as the once stalled line of cars were in motion, going their own ways down the road. The dam had broken, and George’s fellow Austinites were on their way.

The road past the ticket trap was clear, and once George passed the overturned rig on the highway via the access road, he found a level section of the grassy median and crossed over onto the relatively uncongested highway. Steve was right behind. The others were right behind Steve.

George and Steve bounded onto the road. Adrenaline still coursed through George’s veins. There was a bit of fear and anticipation working its way through his mind, but he ignored it. He knew, somehow, this was only the beginning.

Steve pulled up beside George as they sped down the road. With a rebel yell, Steve told him, “You’re a bad man, George! But you ‘da man! You got us out of there!”

“No problem!” George yelled back. “I’ll follow you to Buda.”

“If you want -but it’s crazy there! Lots of those monsters around!”

George knew the story. “I got you, man! I’m ready!”

George slowed down a bit to get behind the maroon juggernaut, a defiant convoy of two.

He was quiet, for the most part, as he listened to his classical music.

He didn’t want to think too much about what he’d just done, about the faces of the two policemen, both young-looking, both run down for following orders given by authority figures who had probably long deserted their posts. He didn’t want to think about any wives or children the officers might have had at home or in the FEMA centers, or of the family they wouldn’t see again.

After all, George had a family too.

He had to make priorities.

He turned the music up louder, and continued down the road.

They were making pretty good time as Steve’s big maroon truck blazed a trail down IH-35. It would only be about fifteen minutes before George arrived back at his school when it hit him:

“Aw, shit!” he exclaimed, punching the steering wheel with his fists. He had forgotten the keys to the building back at his apartment. “Goddammit! How the hell am I going to get in?!”

He’d have to break in now, he knew. But how?

At this point, it didn’t matter.

It was her gift to him. He had to get it back.

He didn’t know why he absolutely needed to return to work to get it. It certainly wasn’t safe there, not now, and not with the time it might take to get home. But he knew he had to retrieve it. It was all he had left of her.

George had taken the small gift, a gold crucifix necklace, to school for a show-and-tell project for his theatre class. The idea was to show how bringing something to a scene can make the scene much more meaningful and powerful. He acted out the monologue from a noir-style detective play about a pink gun, using the necklace as a prop. It was a monologue about how the character, Dwayne Stark, had lost his wife to a murderer. When he first performed the monologue, it had some meaning to it. But when he used the crucifix, it brought a lot more.

There was a reason for that.

George had lost his fiancée six months earlier.

SIX MONTHS AGO, Esparanza Garcia, his fiancée, was found dead in a back alley. Blunt head trauma and two gunshot wounds to the back. Her murder was labeled as a “drug deal gone bad” by authorities, but George knew there had to be more to it.

Esparanza was -by no means -into drugs at all. She did enjoy a White Russian or a Tanqueray and soda every once in a while, but she never did drugs.

And that’s what she told that man. His name was Alphonso Gonzalez. Alphonso was hiring guards from a security agency that Esparanza was working for. He was a smart and handsome man from Mexico. He had all the qualities a young woman like Esparanza should have loved. When Alphonso would visit, he would promise her the world, playfully, but with meaning. Esparanza would always graciously, perhaps coquettishly, refuse. George learned about this later, but never gave it much mind. Esparanza was denying the man, so there was no harm in a little flirting. She was beautiful, after all, and a little simple flirting could probably defuse an otherwise volatile situation.

She had long black hair and a soft, shapely body. She had the kind of strength gained from hours at the gym and the conditioning of a dancer. Her round face and pretty smile complemented her big brown eyes. She had a charm to her -a charm she had learned to use to her advantage.

Alphonso could get anything for Esparanza, and Esparanza wanted a lot of stuff -land, a good car, a baby. However, she would have to pay a price if she wanted it, and it was a price she had no idea she would have to pay.

One day Alphonso repeated one of his many offers to hire Esparanza to work for him. She gave in this time, deciding to give it a chance. Anything would be better than the pay she was receiving, and Alphonso promised it would be much more.

Esparanza walked into Alphonso’s office later that afternoon. She was wearing her black work pants and shoes with a comfortable white blouse. Alphonso looked suave, wearing his trademark gray suit with a black shirt underneath.

Conversation up to that point had been amicable and pleasant. Esparanza even told a blond joke she had read from an e-mail she received earlier that afternoon.

But things quickly turned dangerously aggressive as Alphonso began to insinuate she was a narc.

“Why do you think that?” Esparanza asked, a confused and frightened look on her face. “I thought you were offering me a job?”

“You can’t be that good,” replied Alphonso as he reached into a filing cabinet near his desk.

“What are you talking about? Why are you being mean to me?”

“Do you know why you’re here?”

Esparanza shook her head no.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Alphonso offered her a chair near the middle of the long executive business table. She took a seat, fear and uncertainty beginning to overwhelm her.

“If you want to be set for life, just say yes to me. Join me, my dear,” Alphonso suavely stated, standing directly behind her.

“I don’t love you, though,” she said defiantly, a clear scoff in her voice. She didn’t even bother to turn around and face him. “I love George and you know that. We’re engaged.”

“What can he get for you? Nothing and you know it! A school teacher? He’s a slave just like everyone else. An indentured servant to a bankrupt system. Maybe his retirement will actually be worth something in thirty years. Hell, the superintendent of the district helps me with my business ventures. I could put in a good word.”

“I don’t love you,” she said again. Tears began forming on her lower eyelids. She blinked them away.

“You really are an innocent bitch, aren’t you? I don’t believe it.”

Alphonso pulled out a manila folder and threw the contents onto the table. On top was a picture of Esparanza’s mother exiting a local convenience store. Next to it was a picture of her little brother, Elias, swinging on the monkey bars at school. Yet another was a picture of George’s mother exiting her house in San Uvalde, a town miles away from Austin. Another was a picture of George at work.

“What is this?” asked Esparanza, completely taken off guard by the photos.

“These are examples of how you can never get away from me if you’re lying.” He put his finger down on a tape recorder and played back a conversation between herself and George.