Charges (33 page)

“Oh, my babies,” the man said in a mournful, blood-choked whisper. The light went out in his eyes. There was no death rattle, nothing as dramatic as that. He was just gone, like a lamp that had been switched off. And even though he’d just met a horrible end, his last thoughts had been about his kids.

“Daddy.” The voice was soft and barely audible above the girl’s cries. The boy knelt beside Vincenzo and reached out with one grubby hand. He touched the man’s blood-flecked lips gently, his fingertips barely making contact. “Daddy.”

Vincenzo got to his feet, and the boy moved closer to the man, kneeling in the blood without a care as he continued stroking the dead man’s lips.

“Daddy,” he said again.

The girl shook as she sobbed, her face buried in the man’s neck.

“I’m sorry, kids,” Vincenzo said, bending over to close the father’s eyes.

“Man... you’re so fuckin’ dead.”

Vincenzo whirled around. The would-be child-rapist lay on his stomach, his pale buttocks pointing toward the sky. The guy looked at Vincenzo with glazed eyes.

“You think you’re going to kill me, fucker?” Vincenzo walked over, a fiery rage building up deep inside him. “You think you’re going to even be an inconvenience to me?” He unslung the M1A and put the tip of the barrel within an inch of the man’s right eye.

“Roth’s gonna chase you,” the man muttered. “Chase you down. Take a long time...
 
killing you. You’re gonna fucking scream... like a little girl. You’re... fucking history, dude.”

With a choked cry, Vincenzo straightened and kicked the man in the face with his heavy boot, putting as much strength into the strike as he could. He was certain the kick had shattered the man’s jaw, but the guy didn’t make a sound. Vincenzo kicked him again and again, releasing days of pent-up frustration and fear by slamming his boot into the limp body. When he finally finished, the child-rapist was dead, and the acrid stink of urine filled the air.

“Well, I finally kicked the piss out of someone,” Vincenzo said with a nervous laugh.

He heard revving engines and spun to face toward the trees on the other side of the field. There was a trail out there somewhere. There had to be. Otherwise, the old guy couldn’t have gotten a Harley Davidson all the way up the hillside. And from the sound of it, friends of the trio of butchers he’d just gunned down were probably looking for them. It was time to go.

Vincenzo turned back to the two grieving kids. The boy was still touching his father’s lips, and the girl was still sobbing hysterically. For a moment, he considered running back to the Blazer and leaving them. They weren’t his responsibility. He had people of his own to get to, and his family needed him just as much as those kids needed someone. He had days and days of traveling ahead of him, and he had to get back on the road.

Sure, just abandon two little kids
.
No problem, right,
paisan
? They’d just be an inconvenience, like your little girl was before she finally gave up the ghost in the hospital.

The thought shocked him to the core. Next, an acute sense of self-loathing overcame him. That he’d even
thought
of abandoning two helpless kids was detestable. The characters in the bullshit TV shows he produced had more empathy, and they weren’t even flesh and blood, just figments of some creative committee’s imagination, designed to manipulate viewers into feeling something.

He slung the rifle and walked back over to the children. “Kids, I’m sorry, but we have to go.” He rolled their father over so he could pull off his backpack.

“Leave him alone!” the girl screamed. “He’s our daddy.
Leave him alone
!”

Vincenzo reached out and caught her face between his hands. “Sweetie, listen to me. Your father is dead. I have to take you with me now, before more bad men show up.”

“We can’t leave Daddy! He has to come with us!”

“He’s dead, sweetie. He’s not going anywhere, and we have to leave. Right now.”

The boy got up and ran away, flapping his arms.

“Hey, come back!” Vincenzo yelled.

The boy stopped a short distance away. He stood there for a moment then knelt in the grass. When he stood up, he had the dirty plastic hanger in his hand. He focused on it, slinging it around in his hand. If he was even aware of his blood-covered knees, he gave no indication.

Vincenzo got the dad’s bag over his shoulder then grabbed the little girl’s hand. Her sunglasses were nearby, and he picked them up and handed them to her. Tugging her back to the tree line, he called for the boy to follow them, but the kid remained fixated on the spinning hanger.

“What’s his name?” Vincenzo asked the girl as she tried to pull away from him. “That boy, what’s his name?”

“Daniel!” the girl shouted. “Daniel!”

“Daniel! Come here!” Vincenzo barked.

The boy looked up and regarded Vincenzo with emotionless eyes. After a few seconds, he took a few steps toward them, so Vincenzo continued hurrying into the woods. The boy followed him to the trail, and Vincenzo called the kid’s name again when he hesitated.

“Daddy... don’t leave my daddy,” the little girl wailed. Her cries were softer, and Vincenzo figured the gravity of the situation was finally becoming plain to her. He pulled her into his arms and carried her to the Blazer.

“It’s going to be all right,” Vincenzo told her. “I’m one of the good guys. I’m going to get you and your brother out of here, all right? Just stay calm.”

“Daddy...”

“Later, honey. Later.” Vincenzo opened the passenger door and pushed her into the backseat. “Stay right there. Don’t touch anything, I’ll be right back. I have to go get your brother.”

He tossed the man’s backpack onto the floor behind the driver’s seat then sprinted back up the trail. He found the boy standing there, his face contorted into an odd expression as he gave the hanger his full attention. Vincenzo scooped him up. Daniel stiffened and let out one plaintive yell, but he didn’t resist. Carrying the kid was like toting a big piece of firewood: hard, unmoving, but portable. On the way back, he stopped long enough to grab the boy’s cap. Back at the Blazer, he tucked the boy in beside his sister then hurried around the vehicle and slid in behind the steering wheel.

“Okay, we’re going to leave now. I’m Tony. I’m going to help you guys. I need you to put on your seat belts, okay?”

“Daddy,” Daniel said, his voice soft and beautiful. He looked up from the hanger and met Vincenzo’s eyes. An instant later, the hanger seemed to call to him again, and he gave it his full attention.

“Guys, put on your seat belts,” Vincenzo repeated.

The girl was still blubbering, but she grabbed the seat belt. She struggled to fasten it, so Vincenzo reached back and did it for her, then he did the same for Daniel. Once they were both secure, he buckled his own belt then cranked up the Blazer.

“I want my Daddy,” the girl said, but with more pain than panic in her voice.

“Later, honey,” Vincenzo said. “Hang on, now. This might be rough.”

He pulled out of the trees, hearing bits and pieces of debris sliding off the fiberglass top as the tires bit into the trail. The Blazer swayed as it rolled down the rough track. As he neared the trail’s exit, he saw something metallic gleaming in the sunlight down on the road. It was an ATV, and the man sitting astride it looked up as the Blazer rolled down. He reached for his hip, where a pistol was holstered.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Vincenzo shouted, nailing the accelerator.

The Blazer’s engine roared as the black beast surged out into the street. Its heavy bumper rammed into the ATV. The rider flew in one direction while the off-road vehicle went in another. The ATV slammed into a yellow classic pickup truck parked on the other side of the road. It hit with enough force to rip the clip off the truck’s front, demolishing the radiator and tearing the plastic windshield wash reservoir off its bracket. The white plastic tub tumbled through the air, leaking blue fluid. The men who had been standing beside the truck leaped out of the way, but one of them was taken out by the ATV as it ricocheted off the front of the truck.

Vincenzo cranked the wheel hard to the right and stomped on the accelerator again. The Blazer’s big wheels chirped on the pavement as he worked the three-speed shifter, speeding away from the obliterated truck and the confused men around it. By the time he made it to US 40, he was going far too fast to make the turn, so he just drove across the intersection, surging up the road on the other side. He heard gunfire, but nothing hit the Blazer. He weaved from side to side to make a tougher target. Stuff rocked from side to side in the Blazer’s cargo area behind the backseat. The girl started crying again.

“Are you guys hurt?” Vincenzo shouted. He checked the rearview mirror, but he couldn’t see out the back since some of the gear had shifted. The side mirror on the passenger side had been knocked askew. He saw no signs of pursuit in the driver’s side mirror, but he didn’t slow down. Houses were on either side of the street, a collection of motley capes and country-style houses with peeling paint and cars in the front yard that left Vincenzo wondering if he was already in West Virginia.

The road forked, and he tacked to the left, catching the name of the street as he whipped past the sign: Constitution Boulevard. Two men sat in plastic lawn chairs near the corner across from a white brick American Legion post. One held up his hands as if asking Vincenzo to slow down. He did but only slightly. A glance at the speedometer told him he was doing fifty-three miles per hour. He looked into the side-view mirror and still saw no signs of pursuit.

“Guys, answer me. Are you all right?” Vincenzo asked again.

“Puzzle,” Daniel said softly.

“What?”

“Puzzle, please,” the boy responded.

“Little girl, what’s your name?” Vincenzo asked.

“Gabby,” the girl said.

“Gabby, I’m Tony.”

“You told me that already. Will Daddy be okay?”

“Sure,” Vincenzo said.

“Puzzle!” Daniel repeated.

“Will Daddy meet us somewhere?” Gabby asked.

“You know it. He just needed me to take you guys with me, since I have the truck. He was going to talk to the rest of the men that were following you.” Vincenzo thought that was quite the ad lib. “Gabby, why is Daniel saying ‘puzzle’?”

“He dropped his hanger,” she said. “Everything’s a puzzle to him.”

Vincenzo grunted. “I think it’s like that for everyone these days.”

“He’s oddistic,” Gabby said.

“‘Oddistic’? What’s that?”

“Mommy and Daddy say he’s special.”

Autistic. The kid’s fucking Rain Man at the end of the world, and everything’s a puzzle to him. Outstanding. I don’t have time for this shit.

“Those men are bad,” Gabby said. “They hurt everyone. Will they hurt Daddy?”

“No, they’ll leave him alone. Gabby, are you and Daniel all right? Are you hurt?”

“No. We’re okay.”

“All right. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

“
Puzzle
!” Daniel shouted.

Vincenzo jumped so badly that the Blazer swerved toward the left shoulder. If there had been oncoming traffic, that would have been a tough spot to be in. But traffic of the moving variety was becoming harder to find lately.
Unless it’s the bad guys, of course.

The road meandered into a curve to the left, leading to a narrow bridge over a creek. On the other side was a small town… and several armed men. One of them waved for him to stop, and Vincenzo braked to a halt well before he reached them. The man shot him a thumbs-up then had a quick discussion with the others. No one was pointing any weapons at the Blazer, and that suited Vincenzo just fine. He put the vehicle in reverse and started to back up, but the first man started waving again and shaking his head. After moving his hands in a “stay put” gesture, the man pointed at himself then at Vincenzo. He was coming over the bridge.