Bowie V. Ibarra (4 page)

“What is this?” she asked again, coming to terms with a startling realization. “What is it exactly that you do?”

Alphonso chuckled a bit before replying, “Let’s just say I help members of our community escape the daily grind.”

Esparanza fought to hold back her tears. She knew she should have seen this coming.

“I want to leave now,” she said.

“There’s no one that can help you now. Only me. Allow me to help you.”

“Please, just let me go.”

Alphonso simply chuckled.

“I’ll call the police,” Esparanza declared, quite boldly.

“Please, allow me,” Alphonso replied. He pulled out a flip cell phone. He spoke into the phone in a monotone voice, “Dial. Police.” After a moment, someone answered.

“Richardson, I need you and Frasier to provide some assistance, please,” said Alphonso.

Within minutes, an APD police car pulled up, and Officer Steve Richardson and Sam Frasier joined Alphonso and Esparanza in the office. Alphonso continued to harass Esparanza, trying to force her to admit her alleged police ties.

“I’m not a narc!” she screamed. “Stop this!”

Officer Richardson pulled out a bag of cocaine and wasn’t shy in the least about doing so. Alphonso took some from the bag, placed some on a mirror, cut it into four lines, and snorted one whole line.

“Nice job, boss,” said Richardson. Alphonso smiled and the officers laughed. “I bet she can take a line just as good as you, eh, boss?”

“Let’s see,” said Alphonso. He slid the mirror with the lines of cocaine toward Esparanza, and stated in a tone of voice that obviously wasn’t going to be negotiable, “Do one for me.”

“No,” said Esparanza.

Alphonso pulled out a gun from under his coat and put it to Esparanza’s head. “You do one of those lines now, or I blow your fucking head off. How’s that?”

It was obvious to Esparanza now that Alphonso wasn’t ‘right.’ He had to have been high to start with, long before she had ventured into his office. And she knew there would be no reasoning with him.

He had snapped.

Looking down at the table, Esparanza took the hard plastic straw and clumsily snorted a line. The men laughed as Richardson snapped a photo of her taking it in, another piece of blackmail to add to the stack.

Esparanza reeled back in her chair. Her eyes began to water. Her nose became very sore. Her mind began to spin. She closed her eyes to the maniacal laughter, anger and rage growing within her. Her heart began to race.

She thought of George and the happiness he brought her. She thought of their wedding plans and how beautiful it would be. She thought of last night and how disappointing the sex was. Normally it was mind blowing, yet last night it was uninspired. It was really sad at this point as she thought that might have been the last moment of passion in this life.

She hoped it wasn’t so.

The laughter and cruel banter continued as Esparanza thought of her family: her mother, her father, so far away, so far away. The smiles her little brother gave her, the laughs she shared with her sister, the hope she had for her older brother. Her mind began to focus, focus on the laughter, the derision, the debasement of her standards initiated by the forced drug use. The peace her loved ones gave to her racing heart began to be replaced by the rage in her soul that was growing as the chatter and giggles continued.

It had reached a boiling point.

She picked one of her many choices. Perhaps there were better options, perhaps not, but this was her first time being bullied.

And she didn’t like it.

Richardson brought his face down toward the cocaine-lined mirror, the mirror that was within Esparanza’s reach. Frasier had just withdrawn his nose and, sitting next to Esparanza, closed his eyes and allowed the drug to consume his mind. Alphonso’s back was turned. He had put the gun away and was standing by a small bar at the far end of the table preparing a cocktail.

A gin and Sprite.

Richardson put the small plastic pipe to his nose and snorted a line. As the first grains of powder flew into his body, Esparanza brought her right hand down hard against the back of Richardson’s head, like a hammer striking a nail. With the rage she initiated the strike with, it was more like Thor smiting a mythical foe with his sacred hammer. The pipe, congested with powder, lodged itself into Richardson’s nasal cavity, cracking bones and tearing cartilage. His face smashed through the mirror, breaking the reflective plate, splitting shards of glass into Richardson’s face and eyes. He clasped his hands over his nose, blood spitting from between his fingers, as he ran around the room screaming, “Crazy bitch! Crazy bitch!”

Frasier, surprised at the screaming, woke up from his stupor and saw Richardson’s bloody face print on the table. Before he could react, Frasier’s eyes caught sight of the back of a chair swinging towards his face. It landed square on his nose and jaw, crushing his nose and shoving his jawbone towards his spine, hitting the nerves and dislocating the jaw in the process. The concussive force put Frasier out.

As Esparanza threw the chair down, a solid blow to the back of her head brought her to her knees. Her hands moved toward the open wound on the back of her head as another blow sent her to the floor, her mind in a daze.

Coming back to the world after a second of darkness, Esparanza looked up and saw Alphonso standing over her, gun pointed at her face.

“All you had to do was take it. All you had to do was be cool. But you fucking bitch, I knew you were a cop.”

Alphonso pulled the trigger just as Esparanza began to cry.

But there was a moment of hesitation. No fire. No bullet.

Alphonso had forgotten to take the safety off. Realizing this, Esparanza jumped to her feet, tears flying from her face, her mind still dizzy. As Alphonso released the safety, Esparanza knocked his gun away with one hand and gouged his right eye with the other. There was a wetplop sound as she pulled her thumb out, gross white fluid bursting from the socket and dripping from her finger. Alphonso screamed and covered his eye. Esparanza rushed to the door, stumbling once or twice from dizziness. She desperately reached out for the doorknob.

Surprisingly, she felt the sharp painfirst.

Then she heard the blast.

As she lay there dying, she wondered why it wasn’t the other way around.

George never knew the real story -never knew her suffering and pain in her final moments. He only knew she was gone and he didn’t know why. She remained a ghostly phantasm that visited his memories daily.

- A memory locked forever in that gold crucifix necklace.

It was her gift.

It was her memory.

He had to get it back.

THE ROAD TO Branton Junior High was not as serene as George remembered it being just days before. He passed two cars that had collided and caught on fire in the middle of the road. Their remains were two hulking shells of the vehicles they used to be, silent sentries on the road to Branton.

Further past the wreck another car stood silent, stuck face-first in a ditch on the right side of the road. The back window was smashed and bloody. The carcass of what seemed to be a human hung out the back. Seemed to be, that is, as most of the flesh and limbs had been torn and mutilated some time before.

“Holy shit,” George uttered. “Holy shit.”

A wave of uneasiness washed over George as he gazed at the carcass. This was real, this was very real. George stopped the Cavalier in the middle of the road and put the parking brake on. He looked ahead and in the rearview mirror. Ahead he could see the silhouette of the school on the horizon. Several clouds of smoke rose from fires in the far distance. Behind him, the two black sentinels stood where he had passed them, never to be driven again.

George realized he was all alone. No students driving from school. No cop waiting in a speed trap at the top of the hill; Just George and his vehicle in the middle of a fire-scorched and blood-stained stretch of road.

Leaving the vehicle running, George pulled his gun from his backpack and walked toward the vehicle in the ditch. The wind blew a bit and the aroma of rot caught his nose. He stopped in his tracks, gagging, and covered his nose with his shirt. Buzzards circled above.

George moved closer.

Approaching the drivers-side door, he noticed all the windows were smashed and bloody. He wondered, What the fuck? Looking into the back seat, George noticed the bottom portion of the rotting carrion had also been ripped apart. The shoes of what appeared to be a male were almost immaculate, the legs tangled in a buckled back seat belt.

Strange sights for strange times, he thought.

Peering through the broken driver seat window, George saw blood still dripping from the shattered passenger window. The smell was now penetrating his shirt and straight into his nose. A buzzard landed on the ground on the passenger side, just out of George’s view.

George looked into the front seat area. Here was the usual. Old cups from a cheap corporate taco joint in the cup holders. They still had the plastic lid and straw in them. A dashboard Jesus covered in blood. The CD’s were also speckled with the same genetic material that was caked on the dashboard Jesus.

Near the passenger seat on the floorboard, George noticed a plastic bag that seemed to be filled with stuff. Opening the door, he eased into the seat, taking care to avoid the blood, and reached for the bag. He grabbed it and stepped out of the vehicle.

Inside the bag were five bottles of water and five energy bars. All were untainted by the blood splattered in the car. The bag wasn’t so lucky, though. Figuring the trip to investigate at least provided some free nourishment, George complimented himself.

“Good call, man, good call.”

The wind shifted again and a new smell of rotted flesh crept into George’s nose. He pulled himself away from the vehicle as another buzzard descended near the ground by the passenger side door. George began to walk back toward the Cavalier, but angled his walk to see what was attracting the buzzards.

Though he had an idea what it was, it still scared him when the body came into view. Just like the one coming out the back of the vehicle: torn, bloody, and lost forever. Buzzards were picking away at what was left. The remnants of long hair provided a clue that it must have been female.

The cold chill of viewing the body made George stride a little faster back to the Cavalier. The moans heard nearby also made the short trip a little more urgent.

George got in his car and locked the doors. He switched the air conditioner to high. He gazed past the ditched car and into the brush behind it, waiting to see if the moans had a face. As he waited, George looked at the wrecked and bloody car again and tried to make sense as to what happened.

Ran off the road… by zombies? Surrounded and scared… passenger hurt? Stayed in car because they were scared… Creatures smash windows, pull out passenger from window… Driver tries to escape out the back… gets stuck in the seat belt… mauled… I guess staying in a parked car was not such a good idea…

Concentrating on the field by the crash, George never expected the rotten hands and tattered face of a zombie to slam against his driver side window like it did. A loud yelp flew from George’s mouth as he took the parking brake off and shifted to first gear. The creature struck at the window with its fists, creating an urgency that caused George to pull off the clutch a moment too soon.

He missed the gear.

The car stalled as the monster tried to open the door by yanking at the handle. Taking a breath, George turned the key in the ignition again, firing the engine, and efficiently shifted to first. The creature ambled along the side of the Cavalier, striking at the window as the car picked up speed. Two creatures finally emerged from the brush by the wreck, too late to cause George any harm.

Shifting to second, the back wheel of the car clipped the ankle of the zombie in pursuit, tearing the monster’s Achilles heel, forcing its leg to become parallel with its foot as the wheel continued the forward motion. George was bumped in his seat a bit, as if he had hit a speed bump too fast. The force of the crushing movement caused the monster to fall forward, twisting its free leg awkwardly under its torso, which was falling forward, tearing the hamstring away from the bone, its face smacking against the pavement. Like rubbing salt in the wound, the same back wheel that crushed its foot proceeded to smash its hand as the Cavalier and George moved forward towards Branton Junior High.

George made several passes by the school along the street in front. There were quite a number of zombies wandering around the school, but none in a concentrated group. Some noticed his vehicle and some made an attempt to chase it from a distance. But they were no immediate threat, and most stopped their pursuit as the car moved further away.

George decided it might be best to park behind a community real estate sign and dash over to the school, taking cover when needed. His plan, since he forgot the keys, was to find a way onto the roof to keep the journey relatively safe. He figured he could then break one of the many skylights, jump down, and walk to the classroom. Driving up to the school would attract too much attention and -recalling the car in the ditch -it might be a bit of a struggle to get out alive if a large group decided to bum rush the Cavalier. The window was obviously able to withstand one pile of deadshit banging away at it, but three or four doing the same would probably result in something similar to the ditch situation.

The group around the school wasn’t all that large, at least by the naked eye. Most were scattered around the sides. And right now, there weren’t so many in the front.

The time to make the run was now.

George turned off the ignition, put the parking brake on, and bowed his head in prayer. The Lord’s Prayer. A Hail Mary. A personal request that he be safe and swift. A silent tribute to Esparanza, a quiet wish for his family’s safety -The same family he started this journey down the road for.