Gasping for air with bulging eyes, Alita managed to squeeze out, “Oh, Essa. So good to see you. I guess you haven’t forgiven me,” as I choked her with my one good arm.
“Keep talking,” I said to her with a smile welded on my face, “I want to hear what your voice sounds like as your life slips away.”
Before I knew it I had a tug-a-war going on with a group of five strong security guards using all their strength to reel Alita back—- unsuccessfully I might add. Alita’s body was perfectly horizontal as her face turned red, purple then blue. ‘Just like a rainbow’, I thought to myself. I began to wonder if I kept it up, if Alita’s head would pop off her shoulders like a cork out of a Champaign bottle. Due to lack of oxygen, Alita’s body went limp as she passed out. With her not awake to witness my torture, I lost interest and let go of her. The group of men toppled over one another as Alita’s body flew on top of them.
I walked up, sliced the chain with my knife and dragged her away as the security guards stood up and chased after me.
“Don’t get too close fella’s, she’s underage.” I yelled back at them.
***
On the train ride back Alita stared out the window, locked in her seat with a new set of handcuffs.
“But what if I have to pee?” she asked.
“Don’t worry,” I replied, “I wont stop you.”
Chapter Thirteen: Glue Sniffer
After the train ride back into town, all I wanted to do was sleep. I descended towards my bed and landed on what can only be described as the world’s softest pillows. It felt good to be home. Our money was back in my pocket and to top it off Atticus and I let Kial babysit Alita so we could have a well-deserved break.
Surprisingly, Kial managed to finish a project while we were gone. Above his office he took all the computers and connected them into a pair of old aviator goggles at his desk. Hundreds of tiny wires ran down the ceiling from some special computer mainframe he’d custom built. After he dragged us over to his place to see the end result, I had to admit I was anything but impressed. What did I care if a bunch of color-coded spaghetti wires that were super glued to some old wanna be pair of sunglasses? Once Kial turned on the glasses they glowed an eerie blue as a rush of information flooded into them. I swear the whole place got instantly ten degree’s hotter. The hum of his computers above the ceiling sounded like a muffled jet engine about to take off, not to mention I’m ninety-nine percent sure he’s got large doses of radiation from those goggles. He claimed the goggles helped take off the strain of looking at a computer monitor all day, but I knew he was just trying to impress Alita, whom he’d also given a pair of wireless aviator goggles to. Her pair was constantly fed terrain data from satellites so that wherever we were and whatever jam we were in, she could help guide us to a clear escape route-- yeah, let’s rely on her to lead us to safety.
Alita loved the aviator goggles; I know because she couldn’t stop talking about them-- all day long. Each verbose word out of her hideous mouth was like a stab in the face. Was there no filter between her brain and her mouth? And for some reason she was clueless to the fact that we could care less.
“Kial even gave us each our own little avatars for the GPS! They’re soooo cute. Atticus, you HAVE to come check this out!” she exclaimed.
“SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!!!” I screamed. I couldn’t take it anymore. Atticus and Alita froze in their tracks.
“Oh yeah?” Alita said. “Why don’t YOU shut up!?!”
She pulled off the goggles and whipped out her pistol at me—- you know, the one Atticus had stupidly given her as a present before we left. I looked at her with mild amusement.
“Go ahead, shoot me.” I said as I walked closer to her. “You know me. You know what I’ll do to you if you do.”
Alita looked to Atticus for some sort of reassurance only to be denied and that’s when I kicked Alita’s gun out of her hand like a soccer ball and watched as it disappeared into the sun. Alita retracted her hand.
“Ouch! That hurt! You could’ve broken my fingers!”
“You’re right, let’s try again. Better yet, why don’t you walk behind us for a bit-- like FAR behind.”
***
Now it was true, I’d been known for getting us into a pinch now and again, so you can imagine how after a little misunderstanding and a lot of yelling on my end, Atticus and I were stuck behind a boulder pinned by some guy yelling something about how I owed him money for some job—- I don’t know, blah, blah, blah. It’s all the same to me. Just another lonely soul on death row.
So the guys yelling something about how I did him wrong while I loaded my gun I tried to remember if I ever met the guy. Since Alita had straggled far enough behind, she achieved the luxury of avoiding this little predicament and snuck behind the guy in attempt to take him down. However, also thanks to yours truly, Alita was forced to smack a rock against the guys’ head rather than use her gun cause I had just happened to kick it out of her hand previously. He took a few good hits before the rock did its job all the while Alita screamed, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” at the poor sucker while tears ran down her snot-nosed face.
By the time Atticus and I could take the rock away from Alita, the guy had stopped twitching and was totally unconscious. I rolled him over on his back and gave his face a good hard stare. Nope, didn’t personally know the guy but from the awful tattoo on his shoulder, rancid smell of jasmine and that slight smirk on his unconscious face I knew it had to be one of Jophies’ goons. So, as a parting gift, we buried him neck high in sand and left him to deal with the vultures-- not before waking him up of course and threatening to have Atticus pee on his head for trying to kill us-- as if.
The thing about angry strangers is they always remember the gas mask and after our small job was complete, we decided to return to our newly acquired friend only to find his body missing and two additional holes dug around his hole. It didn’t take a genius to figure out those holes were for us. But it did take a genius to turn around to see the five or six gypsy caravans parked behind the rocks.
Mr. Sunburn was red all right, but not from U.V. rays-- my guess is when a man cursed as much he did, the lack of oxygen helped influence the color of the face. Did I mention that each caravan could easy hold up to eight men? Not as if it mattered because when I’d get done with them they’ll all fit in the three graves they, so thoughtfully, dug for themselves. One of the patrol men spotted us on his way back to his caravan and blew into a high pitched whistle.
I put my hand behind my back towards Atticus and Alita and held up three fingers. We were in the beginning stages of working on some coded hand signals. Only problem, I never learned them, so I just held up random numbers and improvised off whatever they decided to do.
Our trailer trash friends climbed out of their mobile garbage cans itching with vengeance. It only took four smoke canisters to cover the area leaving them in a cloud of unforeseen confusion. When the smoke cleared we were nowhere in sight. One man walked over to where he last saw us and scratched the back of his head. As he turned around to yell back to his playmates, my right hand popped out of the ground like a zombie. I grabbed a hold of his ankle giving Atticus, who was off in the distance, a clear and steady target.
Atticus held his breath, took the shot and the guy went down clasping his right shoulder while he oozed blood. My other hand popped out of the ground with a canister clenched inside it. The canister was all black with little yellow dots. I called it “Fireflies”. I pulled the pin off and chucked it high into the air. The canister exploded and flaming pieces of ash rained down onto everything in a one hundred foot radius. The caravans caught on fire which freaked out the horses. They ran away along with some of the men still inside the caravans—- who’d blame them?
As the gents ran around like lit candles, I ungracefully dug myself out of my dirt tomb and proceeded to even out the numbers. Flaming men made it easier for Atticus to pi
ck them off from long range with his rifle perched up on a bolder. Alita was off in her own world freaked out between what was happening in front of her and what she was seeing in the goggles. She ripped the goggles off her face and allowed them to hang around her neck as she picked up a handgun from a dead man and began opening fire like a straight up gangster. Not like she actually ended up hitting anyone, but it’s the thought that counts-- or so I’m told.
As the last splat of blood fell to the ground, Jophie and Micah showed up and crashed my party, bringing reinforcements along with them. Atticus used the break to reload his rifle and I wiped the blood off my blade with some dead guys shirt.
Muffled through the closed door of his caravan, Jophie asked, “Causing trouble again, Essa?”
“Nothing more than usual.” I replied.
He cracked open his door.
“I’m not here to fight.”
“I wouldn’t call what you do ‘fighting’ Jophie.”
“Step inside for a second. There’s something we need to discuss.”
And without even waiting for me to deny him, out walked Micah. As soon as he saw me, Micah stared me down like some sort of creepy perv.
“What do you want, Scarface?” I asked.
He shot me a look that ran a chill down my back but I played it off. I signaled for Atticus and Alita to come back me up. I waited sas they took their sweet time strolling up.
“Keep an extra eye out for me. Apparently my secretary scheduled me in for a board meeting. And here I am without my pie charts.”
Atticus nodded and sat outside across from Micah.
I took my last long breath of fresh air and walked in. Even though I’d seen his caravan from the outside a hundred times too many, I’d never actually stepped inside before and I wish I never had cause it was UGLY. Avocado greens and puke yellows lined the walls. Red curtains draped down to Astroturf feeling brown carpet. The stench of stale air mingled with garbage-- I would’ve gave anything to trade my gas mask in for an oxygen mask right about now. Jophie sat down across from me in an armchair. Sitting beside him was some suit with a briefcase that probably cost more than my yearly salary. Behind them both hung some wet laundry.
“You have about thirty seconds to say your peace Jophie before the smell in here makes me puke all over your caravan.”
“It’s going to take us longer than that to explain your brother’s still alive.” He replied.
There were a few things wrong this situation already. First was, in all my years alive, I never told anyone that I had a brother. Second, Jophie looked more on edge than usual and third, for the life of me, I couldn’t understand why no one hadn’t cracked a window!
***
By the time I walked out of his caravan Atticus and Alita were sitting in front of a fire with Micah and a few goons. They heard the door open and stood up.
“What’s going on?” Alita asked as I jetted past her.
“We need to go.” I replied as I started gathering our things.
I paused feeling their eyes piercing through me. I turned around and locked eyes with Atticus.
“It’s my brother. He’s alive. That is, until I get my hands on him.”
“BROTHER!?!?” they both screamed back at me.
Chapter Fourteen: Oh Brother
Let me get one thing straight; my older brother Eden was an evil little shit. I’d go as far as saying he’d make Hitler look like the Pope if it wasn’t for his slight, minuscule lisp. Even when he’d rip the heads off grasshoppers and watch their torsos hop along the ground, no one could take him seriously as he explained with a Daffy Duck accent.
Growing up as his younger sister was torture all on its own. The only nice memory I can recall was when my drunken father tried to take a swing at me and ended up hitting Eden instead. My brother was gifted when it came to inflicting pain and in the household not even our own parents were safe. I remembered watching my brother pound our fathers face til my mother complained how the hell she’d get the bloodstains out of the carpet. Even though at times he’d freak me out, I still loved my brother Eden.
We grew apart as we grew older. Eden spent most of his time outside torturing god knows who—- my guess were girls. My parents loved it. Let someone else feed him for a change is what they’d say between arguments. When he was home I remembered my mother caught him with a wad of cash in his pants pocket, which she’d stolen with her slimy coke covered fingers. Funny thing was Eden didn’t get the money from selling drugs or pimping prostitutes; he got the money from Dad’s alcohol stash hidden under the sink in a glass jar-- chip off the old block, right?
The day our city crumbled to ruins Eden was taking a shower—- something he rarely did, at least at our place. He was enjoying a quick forty-five minute rinse when the apartment began to shake like a midget having a seizure. It didn’t take him long to lose footing and eat a face full of dirty clogged up shower water. While stuff was falling off the counter Eden regained his balance and gripped the tub while the building floor disintegrated beneath him. Eden, like the cowboy he was, rode the bathtub butt ass naked all the way down to the ruins waiting below. Those ten seconds must of felt like ten hours as he crashed floor through floor, privates waving in the wind like the flag on the Fourth of July-- a sight I was glad to have missed. Tumbling aimlessly in the air, he hit the ground hard with the bathtub landing on top of him and just in time before loads of dirt and debris crashed on top of him. While under that bathtub, buried alive for two days, something in Eden changed for the worse—- as if that was possible. Maybe it was his mild case of claustrophobia or the fact that he had no food and water but whatever it was altered his state of mind like a hippie on a bad acid trip.
At the end of his second day of entrapment, faint voices broke through the rubble and it didn’t take long for military personnel to uncover my brother in his birthday suit covered in dried mud and smelling like a cow farm. That day Eden shielded his sensitive eyes from the setting sun as he crawled out of the wreckage. While medics ran to his aid they claimed he was the only survivor and with that, a sinister smile stuck to Eden’s face for he now knew exactly what to do with the rest of his miserable life.
***
It took little to no effort for Eden to be accepted into the military academy and even less effort for him to rise to the top of his class. Our family had a long rich history when it came to competition-- we get first place no matter what. Eden had dedicated his life to the military, studying it relentlessly. Shaking hands with the best and brightest while learning from the worst. After only two short years Eden had been in over ninety-seven battles, winning all of them with zero causalities. After his hundredth battle, Eden returned home with a limp as he had been wounded in the leg rescuing a member of his platoon from five enemy soldiers. For his outstanding bravery and impressive track record, Eden was awarded the highest rank the military had to offer. This stunt was pulled because recruitment ratings were low and the military needed a poster boy to help inspire new blood.
He was not only the youngest to achieve the highest rank but also the only person to never accept it. The day he was to be awarded the new rank, Eden vanished off the face of the earth along with nine other soldiers all of whom were specially selected by Eden himself from different branches of the military. At first the Military thought it was some sort of bizarre kidnapping but after Intel came back with photos of my brother in various parts of the world and promoting himself as still working for the government, well, lets just say uncle Sam wasn’t too happy.
Outraged at the fact the one of their best and brightest had gone AWOL they put out a warrant for Eden’s capture. They were going to make an example out of the ungrateful bastard, only problem was no one could find his sorry ass-- if it were me, I’d check under every overturned bathtub I could find.
Even though Eden was playing hide and go fuck yourself with his NRA buddies it didn’t take long before the Military began to feel t
he sting from Eden’s venomous bite. News spread of a Special Forces team that got flanked by Eden and his men. Out of the fifteen men in the Special Forces group, only one man came back alive. After relaying the story to his superiors, the man went home and committed suicide.
Soon after classified secret documents were leaked to the public and the top heads of every branch of the military were slowly being slaughtered one by one. Didn’t matter where they hid. A house, office or bunker hundreds of feet under the ground, Eden got them.
Soon rewards started popping up, big ones. Enough money to make the average man crap his pants, quit his day job and begin his life as some two bit wannabe bounty hunter. Even though everyone and their mom started a amateur hour bounty hunting service it ended up accomplishing nothing except accelerating my reputation for being the best—- thanks suckers.
Then things just kind of got quiet. Rumors started that one of the bounty hunters had killed Eden, but everyone was baffled when the reward money was claimed but no body was turned in. New bounties kept getting posted in its place and I soon figured out Eden was collecting the money for himself.
You had to hand it to the guy, he was now the puppet master and the Military had no one to blame but themselves for creating such an unstoppable monster.
As time lagged on, people’s interest veered and Eden was slowly forgotten about. The paper salesmen turned in his bounty hunting equipment and went begging back for his job, Military officials had new wars to start and everyone was back to normal until that night with Jophie.
***
I sat there speechless smelling the stench of rotting garbage as two idiots tell me a fairytale story about how my long lost brother, who should’ve died in a catastrophic event, killed hundreds of thousands of people and was now a living and breathing pain in my butt.
I sat there patiently as Jophie’s mouth went off on other details about my brother but all my mind could think about was who the fuck the man in the suit sitting next to him was. Mr. No Name had a briefcase full of stalker pictures, all of which were blurry images of what I assume was suppose to be my brother dating all the way back to a few months ago. After Jophie was done talking, I held for dramatic effect, looked him in his ugly Gypsy eyes and muttered, “So what?”