Between the Cracks and Burning Doors: Book 2 of The Extraction List Series (8 page)

After inhaling my food as fast as I could, I wanted out. I wanted to go back to the church and do something normal, like clean a bathroom. Anything that wasn’t life and death, something unimportant. Maybe I would play a board game with the kids, and try not to think about the fact that Dom’s money wasn’t going to last very long. I pushed the thought out of my mind, not wanting to picture his face after he came back from jail and saw that not only was the church covered in dust and the paint flaking off but there was a slumber party going on in his apartment.

As I was heading for the door, I heard the voice of the beautiful blonde woman from the TV come on the radio. The sound was so soft when it echoed from the living room that if I didn’t know her, if she hadn’t been with me all those nights at my parents, comforting me with her words, I wouldn’t have heard it.

Maureen had walked me to the door but I pushed past her. When I found the radio, I crouched next to it and listened. “We’re getting close, getting close to a solution. You know the situation that has rotted through the nation better than anyone. Our town is crawling with gangs, like an infestation of cockroaches. But they will not survive this. We will save the children from their clutches, from the streets, and from a life of crime. All you have to do is vote yes.”

They better hurry.

That night, as much as I wanted us to have a feast, I made sure we each had an apple, a bowl of cereal, and some milk. What I wouldn’t have given to have the juices of a medium rare New York steak drip down my chin. Just about the only good thing about living with my parents was that we always ate well. Dad did know how to appreciate a great chunk of meat.

I hoped that was the only thing he passed on to me.

But for Nick, Alexis, and Felix, I pretended that bowl of Cheerios and that apple was the best thing I’d ever had. The three of them smiled back at me as we ate. Maybe they were just doing it to humor me, but their big smiles made me forget for just a minute that when you got right down to it, all four of us were criminals.

When I heard a loud banging on the front door, I almost spit out my cereal. Nick ran to the window and peered out. “Looks like the top of Maureen’s head.”

I resolved to remember to tell her to come through the back.

She didn’t smile at me when I opened the door. “Get in the car.”

“What, no hello?”

“There’s something you need to see. So you don’t do anything stupid.”

We drove down to the opposite end of town from where she lived and parked in the shadow of a giant tree, across the street from a small white building. I then saw why she lived where she did. She wanted to be as far from the police station as possible.

“We’re gonna sit here till every one of those jerk-offs comes out. So you can see what they look like. And know who to shut up to.”

Her car was stuffy, and I felt like I was cooking even though the weather outside wasn’t even warm. “What if one of them goes out the back and we don’t see?”

“There’s only one door. I checked.”

“Oh. Seems weird for a police station to only have one door.”

She scolded me through clenched teeth. “Here they come. Pay attention.”

From the shadows, we watched each of them come out. In our town there was always someone doing something illegal, somewhere. The real shock was how slow they were getting there. A few smoked cigarettes before getting in their squad car; if you could even call it a squad car. It was so old and worn with rust I couldn’t even tell what model it was. The only thing distinguishing it as a police car was the siren on the roof.

After seeing each of the men, I understood why Maureen had wanted to make sure I knew who they were. As seemingly civil as Officer Keegan had been, the first thing I saw him do when he stepped out was throw a soda can at a stray dog.

We stayed there until Maureen had pointed out every one of them. The last piece of trash who called himself a police officer started whistling at a girl walking by. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen. When she didn’t look up, he called her a cunt and spit in her general direction.

I had a drug deal to do that night, so I asked Maureen to drop me off where I was supposed to meet the customer. She just rolled her eyes. “Cain, I can’t be seen with you. If I wanted the strung-out freaks to know who I was, why would I need you?”

She did have a point.

I shut the car door hard behind me and watched as she drove off back to her house. Once she was out of sight, I started walking in the opposite direction of the police station. I was supposed to meet my customer in the back storage room of a warehouse.

When I slid silently through the back door, I was surrounded by tall wooden crates stacked to the ceiling. A bulb burned dimly overhead. I smelled old paper and fresh paint, and I had to fight off the lightheadedness that came with it.

The woman emerged from behind the crates; long green dress, shiny fabric, something Maureen would wear. I had no idea why she’d wanted to meet in a warehouse; she couldn’t have worked there in that outfit. Then I saw her bodyguards.

Three men with muscles barely contained by their shirts emerged from the same dark corner. My guess was they were the ones who worked at the warehouse. She was just there so they could keep an eye on her.

I’d met her before, but never at that place. She’d been very easy to deal with the last couple times I was around her. I had no idea why she would think she would need bodyguards, until I counted the cash she gave me. “This is only half. Where’s the rest?”

One of the men spoke. “She doesn’t have it. You’re gonna have to give her a discount today.”

Maybe it was stupid. Maureen probably would have told me it was stupid. But drug deal or not, fair is fair. And I needed that money. When I pictured Nick, Felix, and Alexis’s smiling happy faces, cheery in spite of cereal and apples for dinner, I knew what I had to do. And I was not in the mood to negotiate. “Sorry, fresh out of discounts. No money, no heroin.”

The men tightened around me, and the woman stepped away. The second man spoke. “You sure about that?”

The third man: “Look kid, just give her the drugs.”

My grip tightened around my switchblades. “No.”

As they stepped toward me from all sides, my knives seemed to fly out toward them on their own, as if they knew their job was to save my life. The first man, bigger than the other two, didn’t pay them any attention until I slashed through the skin on his forearm.

It didn’t slow him down.

His heavy body pounded toward me. I kicked my leg forward and made contact with his groin. He clutched himself as he fell.

I felt the whisper of the second man’s hands moving swiftly threw the air toward my neck. Before they could get there, I thrust the knife backward and into his right thigh. The tight, thick muscle seemed to swallow the blade whole.

As the third man charged toward me, I gripped my other knife and held it in front of me. The woman was screaming behind us, but it sounded distant, as if from another place entirely. I shouted to him, told him not to come closer, but he had already reached my side. He grabbed my knife arm with his paw, squeezing so hard the tendons felt as if they would rip apart. He threw me toward the ground and my blade went skittering across the floor.

Suddenly I was back in the basement, my father hovering over me, grinning, taking pleasure as he broke my bones and tore my flesh. The man’s face leaned toward me, whispered something to me, but it was my father’s face, my father’s voice.

With my one free hand, I grabbed his nose and twisted it as hard as I could. The sound of it snapping hit me between the noises of the warehouse and the other wounded men.

I heard the clacking of the woman’s stilettos as she ran. The man released me and his hands fell across his own eyes. Blood slid down the sides of his hands.

Despite his deep wound, the second man was still breathing. He sat there, bleeding to death, using his last breaths to beg for his life. “Please, please I don’t even know these guys. I don’t even know her. I just needed money. That’s all.”

He looked at me. The bags under his eyes told a story of a guy just trying to survive. If the world weren’t so fucked up, he probably would have had a desk job somewhere, delightfully nine to five, with plenty of time to make his kids mac and cheese for dinner. I went over to the first man and pulled off the shirt he was wearing; it had blood all over it but the sleeves would still work as a tourniquet. The wounded man jumped as I lunged toward him. “I need to tighten this.”

I looped the shirt around his leg above the wound and tied it as firmly as I could. “This will slow down the bleeding.” Or at least that was how it worked on TV.

The one thing you could still count on in our town was the fire department. Fires burn whether the economy died or not, so as I pulled the fire alarm at the warehouse, the man smiled a week, blood-loss induced smile.

I nodded and disappeared.

As I ran from the warehouse, the lightheadedness returned with a vengeance. My heart pounded its hateful, powerful rhythm in my ears as I fought the urge to wretch. I ran away from the image of my father’s lifeless body, ducked through side streets to escape the man with bloody holes where his eyes used to be. In my visions, he stared at me with his deep gaping sockets while the hot red liquid seeped from his skull. I tried to wipe the sweat from my brow but the sweat from my palm just replaced it.

I couldn’t remember where Maureen’s house was. Every street looked the same. I heard sirens in the distance. Or maybe it was just an echo in my head. Either way, every time I thought I was close I hit another alley with a brick wall closing me in.

I knew I had to get to her. She was the only one who would understand. Even with all of her beautiful damage, her heart had beaten once. She had felt the crack of dried blood on her silky white skin.

Somehow, I found my way to her porch. The wind had picked up and my sweat-drenched clothes made me shiver. When she opened the door, we didn’t speak. I just looked at her, and she put her arm around me and guided me upstairs to her bedroom.

As soon as her door shut, I kissed her. I grabbed her face in my blood-soaked hands and pulled it toward me. She ignored the stickiness of her cheeks and leaned close to me, wrapping her arms around me tight.

We fell on top of her red satin comforter. A wave of pillows exploded onto the floor with the impact.

I was mad with fear and lust. Every brush against her flesh set my skin on fire, like needles breaking through me that I never wanted to stop.

I had to have all of her, all at once. I wanted my mouth on her everywhere at the same time. I didn’t want to feel anything but her; I needed to forget about the blood and the children and the lies. She held me so close that I wanted to melt into her body; and when she pulled me inside her, it felt like I had.

She became gentle, slow. I rested my hands just above the small of her back as I let her take control.

I came hard, with the unrestrained explosiveness that accompanies a young man’s first time. My body convulsed with spasms but her eyes never left mine. When I was done, she leaned under my arm and rested her head on my chest. “You killed again, didn’t you?”

I turned to look at her. “No, but I could have.”

The sun came up faster than I wanted it to. For a moment, I wished I hadn’t taken in those children. I could have stayed there, between Maureen and her satin sheets, far away from everything but her perfume.

She got up before me. I just watched her dress. Even right out of bed she was elegant, quickly pinning her hair into a bun and slipping on a lace bra and panties. No cotton underwear and sports bra for her. As expected, she slipped something satin over the rest of her. The dress reminded me of the warehouse woman’s from the night before but I didn’t say anything. Maureen made it new again.

“Hey, if you’re not busy, or not doing anything, why don’t you come to the church and hang out with us today. I mean, if you want to.” My words came out in sharp chunks, sectioned off with brief pauses in between.

“Naw, I have…I have a lot to get done today. New girl starting and all.”

I turned my face away, trying to hide my disappointment. “It’s cool, no big deal.”
No big deal? Don’t make her feel like shit or anything.
“I mean, it would have been cool but I understand.”

She gave me a weak smile. “Yeah. Well, you better get back to them; you’ve been gone all night. Feel free to grab some food on the way out.”

And with that, she closed the door behind her.

As I walked home, I thought about the night before. Images flashed through my mind. Without Maureen’s arms around me, visions of the broken men ripped through my head.

My father’s face snuck in there too.

In my trance, I almost ran right into him. Luckily, I glanced up fast enough to see Officer Keegan before he saw me. He was standing in front of the store where I had stolen the knives. The shopkeeper was there too, next to him. There were several people around me so I was able to slip behind the building and flatten myself against the back wall. Somehow, I was able to separate their voices from the noises of the street surrounding me. Officer Keegan was showing the shopkeeper something.

“…both of them…”

“…found them in a car in the lake…”

“…sad, sad thing…”

I heard the crack of photo paper being bent open.

“You seen him?”

I held my breath. “This guy did it?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Why, you seen him?”

Goosebumps burst through my flesh. The shopkeeper paused for just long enough that I thought for sure it was over. “Nope, haven’t seen him.”

I exhaled, hard and quick. The shopkeeper saved me one more time.

I shut the door of the church and leaned against it, sliding down onto the floor. I’d hoped to have a moment to myself, but I heard the pattering of three sets of feet scurrying down the hallway upstairs and down toward me. “Hi, guys, sorry I was out so late. Not expected.”