Strike (16 page)

I look up and have to smile. As broken-down as the house is, the porch ceiling is freshly painted and swept free of cobwebs. “It's called haint blue. My mom says it's a traditional thing, that it keeps spirits and spiders away.”

“That's stupid. You can't keep ghosts away,” Chance says.

“You can try.”

The boys don't have anything to say to that, so they each go for more pizza. I pick up another slice and try to chew. We all look up as two cars rumble down the drive. Gabriela is in the passenger seat of the first one, but the second one just has a driver. No passenger. Beside me, Chance exhales and stands. But I can't swallow, and I stay seated, too tense to move.

Why is no one in that car?

They park, and Chance grabs my shoulder and shoots Rex a glare. “Come on. Better to know than not.”

I let the boys pull me up, and we head for the line of parked cars. Gabriela gets out and stalks toward us with bags up and down her arms. Her driver is young and skinny and skulks behind her.

“This is bullshit,” she says, handing some of her bags off to Chance.

The other driver gets out of the empty car with a black backpack over his shoulder. He looks pissed.

“Hey, man. What happened?” Rex asks, walking in time with him.

“Kid messed up. Got shot. That's all you need to know.”

“Which kid?”

The driver spits in the dust. “Tall one. Blond.”

My heart falls, and I hurry to keep up. “What was his name? Was it Wyatt? I mean, Hank?”

He glances back at me like I'm an annoying bug. “I don't know. Jesus.”

I hurry behind him, not sure what else to ask, but he darts up the stairs. Tuck stops me by letting his gun fall across my chest.

“You know the rules.”

I try to peer past him, but the dude's a megalith. “Leon said we could go upstairs and see Kevin if we did a good job. And where's my dog?”

He grins, showing a silver tooth. “Hartness took her for a walk. That's a damn good dog. But you can't go upstairs until Leon says so.”

I can't see up the narrow stairs, but a door opens and slams closed, and raised voices explode. There's a heavy
thump
, and Leon's voice yells, “Goddammit, Steve!”

I strain to hear words, names. The room goes silent, as if they know I'm listening and are trying to piss me off even more.

Tuck puts a heavy, gentle hand on my shoulder. “Just go eat dinner, okay? You don't want to mess with the big guys when they're angry.”

I nod, a huge lump in my throat, and go back out to sit on the
front porch steps, where Rex, Chance, and Gabriela are eating pizza and watching the driveway. A car door slams, and I look across the field to where the kid in camo is getting out of a jacked-up pickup. Bea is walking across the field with her hands in her pockets as her driver trails in her wake, carrying her bags like a butler. We're still missing another girl, Wyatt, the prep kids, and the other kids that I never bothered to notice. Somebody in the tent city is playing a guitar, and I want to smash it to pieces.

Boots land beside me on the porch, and I turn. Leon Crane crouches, staring at me with fury in his dark, deep-set eyes.

“I've got some bad news about your boy,” he says. “Come with me. Now.”

I stand up and drop the piece of pizza I was holding and not eating. Chance, Gabriela, and Rex stand up too.

“We're coming with her,” Chance says.

Leon chuckles. “Like hell you are, son.” He inclines his head toward Gabriela. “She can, though. You boys stay out here and eat. We'll be down soon, unless something else goes wrong tonight.”

“I'm not letting you take two girls upstairs alone.” Chance moves his shirt aside, revealing his gun.

Leon moves his jacket aside to show a larger gun. “Don't try me. Do you even know how many Cranes would put holes in you before you could draw? I don't have lascivious intentions, and if I did, I wouldn't be bird-dogging for underage sniff on my
own front porch with my aunt Kitty watching out the kitchen window.”

“It's fine,” Gabriela says.

Leon bows with a smirk. “After you, then, ladies.”

Gabriela hurries to the steps, and I follow her. Tuck moves aside to let us pass.

“Take a right at the top of the stairs. The door is open. Don't do anything stupid.”

I'm surprised as hell when we end up in a bedroom with only one person in it: Kevin. He's propped up on flowered pillows in a twin bed, looking pathetic and pale. There are three more twin beds in here, and the dresser is covered in medical stuff—boxes of bandages and gauze, tubes of ointment, a big brown bottle of peroxide. This must be the clinic.

“Where's Wyatt?” I blurt.

Kevin shakes his head. “I don't know. Did you bring me any pizza? I can smell it, but they won't give me any.”

Kevin is great, and I'm glad he's okay, if a little pale, but I'd rather be outside watching for Wyatt. Gabriela moves to his side and fusses with his pillow.

“Hot, ain't he?” I turn around to leave and find Leon Crane leaning in the doorway. “Your boy here's going septic. Needs antibiotics. Which we don't have.”

“So this isn't about Wy—Hank?”

Leon shakes his head, walks to Kevin's bed, and pulls back the covers to show us that Kevin's skinny leg is going red and veiny. “This is about how the boy you shot is going to die unless you go buy him some medicine.”

“Fine. Whatever. I've got, like, ten bucks left. Where do I go?”

“Well, it's not that simple, is it? You can't buy antibiotics without a doctor's prescription, and it so happens that while we have many capable nurses, our prescription pad just ran out. So unless you've got a better idea, I recommend you go to a pet store and buy as many bottles of fish antibiotics as you can carry.”

“Fish antibiotics,” I say. “You're serious?”

Leon nods slowly, but Gabriela grabs my arm. “No, it's legit. I read about it in a comic book. It's the same stuff as human antibiotics, but you don't need a prescription. And I've still got plenty of money on my card.”

Headlights flash against the window glass, and I feel a painful pull to return to the front porch. But Gabriela's still got my arm, and Kevin groans and shifts against the bed, and I'm just so very sick of feeling guilty and persecuted.

“Fine. When Hank gets back, we'll go. He has his keys. The kid can live another hour, right?”

Kevin clears his throat as if he finally understands what we're talking about and is now terrified. “Uh, what?”

Gabriela smiles and puts a hand to his forehead. The smile dies.
“We're going to get you some medicine. Don't worry about it.”

“I like the pink kind that goes in the fridge.” He shakes her hand off and reaches for a stack of old magazines, but he seems listless and unfocused, and the magazine just flops on his belly.

“I think you should go now. And you'll need these.” Leon tosses something at me, and I catch a key ring, my hands stinging. There's a Lexus key, a few house keys, and a Nirvana key chain. Goddammit.

“Where'd you get these keys?” I say, cold and hard. “Where's Hank? Was he the one who got shot tonight?”

“We don't have a full count yet.” Leon puts his hands in his pockets and shrugs. “But we'll be down one more if you don't hurry. Gangrene sets in pretty fast, and the kid's burning up.”

And he's gone.

“We'll be back soon,” Gabriela says, but Kevin is half asleep and sweating, his head turning back and forth like he's having a nightmare.

I'm pretty sure I've been having the same nightmare for a week now. It's not going to end anytime soon.

“Everything okay?” Tuck asks as we tromp down the stairs and past him. In just a few short days, I've grown entirely accustomed to dangerous men carrying machine guns in their arms, cradled like babies.

“Not really,” I say, and then we're back outside.

The crew on the porch steps has swelled: Rex and Chance, the kid in camo, a girl in a hat, Bea, although she's sitting by herself, over to the side, eating a Granny Smith apple.

No Wyatt.

“Has anybody seen Hank?”

Chance shakes his head.

“Have they said anything else about . . . um, more kids who failed?”

Another head shake.

“Crap.”

“That's my new motto,” Chance says. He's got another beer sweating in his hand, and his voice is slurred. Where the hell is he getting beer? “How's the kid?”

“Septic,” Gabriela says, flat and tight. “So we're going to get meds. Come on.”

She starts walking for the cars, and I drag Chance up by the arm. He wobbles and yanks away from me but follows her.

“Should I come?” Rex asks.

I shake my head. “Probably not. But will you watch out for my dog?”

“No problem.”

“Thanks.”

I hurry after Gabriela and Chance, because that's my whole life now. Hurrying after people, hurrying toward things.

As we get close to Wyatt's Lexus, I reach into my pocket, pull out what's left of my cash and shove it all into Gabriela's hands, along with Wyatt's keys. “Here. You guys go. I'm staying.”

“But Leon told you to go. You and me.”

“Screw Leon. I'm not going anywhere until I see Wyatt. It's not like you need me to buy fish medicine. And you know more about it than me anyway.”

Chance finishes his beer and tosses the bottle deep into the woods. I don't even hear it land. “So what are you going to do?” he says, putting an elbow on the roof of the faded gold sedan that I used to think was fancy and now just looks sad.

“Wait for Wyatt,” I say.

Chance presses a button on the key fob, but he's either drunk or can't see well in the dark, as the trunk pops open instead of the doors unlocking.

I go to close it, and that's when I notice there's a body inside.

“What the hell is that?” I whisper.

“Holy shit,” Chance says.

“Looks like a Crane goon.” Gabriela nudges the guy's foot. “He's breathing, at least.”

“Uh, guys?”

The voice comes from the woods, and I nearly pee myself with joy.

“Wyatt? What the hell? What happened?”

There's a weird pause from the brush. “Is anybody watching?”

I look toward the house and the tents but don't see signs of anyone caring.

“Doesn't look like it.”

He edges out into the light, and he's covered in blood.

“Oh my God!” I rush to him, running hands up and down his sides, looking for bullet wounds.

“It's my nose,” he says, all sheepish. “I'm not shot or anything.” He shuts the trunk with a frown.

“Care to explain why there's a dude in your trunk, then, bro?” Chance burps and leans against the Lexus's hood.

Wyatt steps back into the shadows of the trees and beckons for us to follow. “So my deal went totally shitty, and I ended up getting in a fight with my driver, and when I took it to the ground, he busted his head. He's not dead, but . . . well, I'm pretty sure he's got a concussion.”

“You're not supposed to go to sleep with a concussion,” Gabriela says, glancing back at the car.

Wyatt waves a hand. “Little shit deserves it. Just a complete tool. Wouldn't shut up about how Kurt Cobain was a fag.”

“So you've just been sitting in the woods for an hour while I freaked out?” I squeak.

Wyatt tries to draw me into a hug, but I push back right before one of my only shirts is pressed up against the still-wet blood. “I didn't know what to do. I show up at the house covered in blood and
having mostly killed one of their guys, I figure it's not going to go so well for me. I was waiting for you guys to come outside, toward the tent or here. I guess I was going to creep up after dark.”

“I didn't know if you made it. I was worried as hell!”

“Me too. I didn't know if you'd made it, either. If maybe these Crane guys were attacking their passengers all over the place. It's so messed up. Did yours go okay?”

I peck him on the cheek and step back. The smell of blood turns my stomach now. “My guy was a dick and I almost got caught. They said one kid messed up and got shot, and I was so scared it was you.”

“Me? Did they say it was me?”

“They said it was a blond kid.”

Chance looks away, always toward the house. “I hope it's that prep kid, then. He's blond. And a douche.”

“We have to go,” Gabriela says. “For Kevin, remember?”

“What about Kevin?” Wyatt asks.

“His leg's going bad. We have to go get fish antibiotics. Long story. We're supposed to take your car.” She snatches the keys from Chance.

“So maybe you can just toss the guy into the parking lot while you're out?” Wyatt says, a hand on the trunk. “Leon doesn't know I have a spare key. And if they ask me, I'll just say that I don't know where their guy is. The car he drove is here, at least, without any blood on the seats. My shirt's ruined, though.”