I-876 (199 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 2 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Stagger Lee (View user info) at 2006-10-20 03:27:36 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
I'd screwed it; waited too long again. With these god-awful diner eggs, you gotta wait a few minutes once they land, soaking in grease and bouncing like jelly, on your table. If you pick up your fork and dive right in, perhaps being repelled the first couple of times by the rubber consistency, when your teeth sink deep into the core you'll taste nothing but salt and the ubiquitous grease, burning your mouth. And face it; nothing ruins your morning quite like burning your mouth.
I was sitting in the I-876 diner, and I'd spoilt my own breakfast. See, when you wait too long, the eggs congeal, the grease hardens. The colder they get, the more you have to actually taste them, instead of just recognising that you're eating something hot. Once these sort of eggs get cold, you'll wish your mouth was burnt.
The various drugs I'd taken that morning weren't helping; really, they were just making me feel nauseous and a little sleepy. It's a sad, sorry day when even being ripped off your face can't make you enjoy your breakfast.
I-876, named after the immigration form. Some Texan's idea of a joke. I pictured him as a big-bellied, jocular fellow, laughing in his jolly way with his trucker friends, regaling them with tales of how he curb stomped some homeless "beaner". In fact, last night...but I don't want to think about that. I don't know if it was any of these guys, anyway. I should've just left, but then I loaded up this morning to calm my nerves and I was just straight enough to realise that if I went shooting down the highway in my current condition I'd end up burying my car in a truck or something.
I grabbed the waitress and ordered some more coffee. I tried to, anyway, I'm not sure I was even speaking English at that point, but I think she got the message. I was attempting to remember which direction the sun sets in. I though it was west or east, but how could I be sure? This high was no good; in fact, it was just playing tricks on my mind, leading my thoughts in recursive and fruitless circles. Like, what if I'd been heading south, and then the sunset was on my right, so it was in the west...but what if I hadn't been driving south...how could I be sure? You get the idea.
It was while I was trying to solve the conundrum of the sunset when a quarter landed on the table. In my addled state, the first place I looked was out the window, to my right. The vast, clear blue sky, overarching the desert and scrub, neatly framed by the edges of the sheet of glass. Positively postcard material.
"Put that quarter towards a haircut," a voice spoke to my left.
"Yeah," someone else interjected, "A man's haircut."
I looked over to the source of these voices. A bunch of guys sitting at the counter. These guys had to be truckers or bikers, man; they were huge and tattooed everywhere. At that moment I felt suddenly, irrevocably alone, not even really scared; just alone.
I muttered something and dropped my gaze. A thought occurred to me. When do you ever see a small trucker or biker? I pictured a wiry, leathery little man, hopped up to the eyeballs, St Christopher round his neck, wearing one of those denim jackets with the sleeves cut off. Although not that funny, at the time it seemed hilarious. I stifled a laugh.
The sound of stools scraping back seemed loud and terrifyingly oppressive in the quiet diner, and I realised what a stupid thing I had just done. The men from the counter advanced across the room and formed a semicircle around my table. They were practically a wall, and look at those matching jackets, they were bikers for sure.
"Something funny?" one of them asked. He's not laughing any more. None of them are. They're just standing there, grim-faced and deadly serious.
I couldn't find the words to tell them. I couldn't even begin to articulate anything. The one who spoke leaned in over the table, looming over me, a mountain with a face and a leather jacket.
The memories of last night return, sharp and inescapable. In the parking lot of the motel next door, where I was staying, there had been a group of men and a woman with her child. Mexicans, border jumpers. The men had beaten them bloody and senseless, breaking limbs and teeth, driving their faces into the hard concrete. I cowered in my room, just a cowardly junkie kid on a disorganised road trip heading (south? I'm still not sure).
And I didn't call the police. I told myself this was because it was the middle of nowhere, that I didn't have a cell phone and the room phone was broken. All bullshit, cowardly excuses, and I knew it. I knew it, but I still didn't do anything.
The blood was still there in the morning. I think the men killed them.
My thought circled and drifted between these memories, coughing up extra details with each repetition. The sound of the woman's face slamming into the ground, like a butcher pounding a steak with a tenderising hammer. The way the child had screamed at first, shrill and aching, wailing into the night with fervour and frenzy. They did nothing to shut him up, at least not directly. After awhile he simply became unable to scream any more. The way the yellow lights illuminated the scene in depressing artificial colour.
It was at this point that I reached below the level of the table and pulled back my battered suit jacket, revealing the handle of my revolver sticking out of my belt. He didn't quaver, or looked particularly alarmed. He looked at the gun for a few moments, and then looked me in the eyes.
The tableau was interrupted by the return of the waitress with my coffee. The bikers turned and left my table, returning to their seats without a word. I let my jacket fall back over the gun. I don't know if she saw it or not, and she didn't comment. I was past caring, in any case. My head was a whirling mess of drug-addled paranoia and real, justified fear. I didn't touch the fresh coffee. I stood, hurriedly, and tripped, almost taking the waitress down. I muttered an apology and dumped a twenty on the table. Far too much, but I wasn't hanging around to get change.
I left the diner in a hurry. The air was just beginning to heat up towards another scorcher of a day. The asphalt underfoot was warm and slightly soft. I fumbled with the keys and staggered into my room, seizing my few belongings and stuffing them haphazardly into my backpack. I became distracted by the notion that I had forgotten something. I whirled around the room. Nothing sprang out at me; there was only the dusty wallpaper, the strange-smelling bed, the stained curtains. Fuck it. Whatever it was, it was gonna have to stay here.
I flung the door open and stepped into the morning sunshine. A sharp pain cut through the back of my knee and I collapsed to the warm ground. The bikers from the diner stood above me, brandishing various chains and other metallic implements. I thought I caught a glimpse of the sunlight flashing off a blade.
For the life of me, I couldn't calculate how long I'd been in the room. How long had they had to catch up to me? In any case, I had been too slow. I went for the revolver, managed to pull it from my belt. It was unloaded; hell, I don't even own bullets. A heavy boot crashed into my wrist, sending my empty, useless gun crashing away along the asphalt.
Another boot thumped into my ribs, sending a wave of nausea and pain jolting into my already spinning head. I wondered if I deserved this for my inaction yesterday. Who can tell? It could just be sheer bad luck.
At that point, with my body poised to take the biggest and last thrashing of my life, I heard something that seemed slightly out of place. Approaching footsteps, and a metallic clicking sound that I couldn't put my finger on.
And then there came a roar, cutting across the distant sound of a car passing on the highway. I looked up and saw one of the bikers, his face frozen in an expression of utter astonishment, dropping to his knees, one hand clutched over an open, terrible wound in his stomach. I looked beyond the group of bikers and saw a small man, a Mexican, holding a double barrelled shotgun and surveying them calmly.
"Fuck." One of the bikers said.
"Is that...can't be..."
"There's no way he could've walked that far," the biker who had spoken to me inside the diner said.
It came to me; I understood. Here was the husband of the woman who was beaten to death last night. That had been his child. They had stolen them from him and left him in the desert, stranding him somehow. But they hadn't reckoned on his force of will, or ability to track them.
They also hadn't reckoned on his shotgun.
While they stood, impotent and aghast, he aimed casually and blew the face off the one who had spoken to me. Gore and fragments of skull exploded across the asphalt, some of it splattering on my shirt where I lay.
The Mexican cracked his shotgun open and plucked out the spent shells. The bikers sprang into action in the face of his unloaded weapon, charging across the parking lot. He stood there, one eyebrow raised, holding his ground and reloading, as cool as you like.
I decided that the time was ripe for my exit. With nobody in the parking lot paying me even the slightest bit of attention, I got to my feet carefully, mindful of my knee. It was already beginning to swell. I limped as quickly as I could, one eye on the scene in front of me.
The little man had almost enough time, but he fell short by seconds. He snapped the shotgun closed and began to bring it back to bear on the charging men, but then one of them slammed a pipe of some sort into his shin. The Mexican let out one strangled yelp and fell.
I fumbled my keys into the lock and wrenched open the door. I hurled my backpack into the passenger seat and started the car. I was going to have to take my chances on the road, whether the drugs had kicked in properly yet or not.
The Mexican was completely surrounded now. His shotgun was lying mere feet from him, but it may as well have been in Kansas. I don't think he made any more noise, but I don't think I could've heard him from the car anyway. I drove slowly past the melee, and turned right onto the highway, leaving I-876 and all my moral choices behind me.
User Reviews
Submitted by Genko (user info) at 2007-06-04 23:45:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I really did have a good idea for a story, but I just didn't have the time to get it written.
This was really good though, you deserved to go as far as you did.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2007-06-04 22:56:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
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