Green Ice: A Deadly High (5 page)

“What’s she talking about?”
Mancini asked Trey.

“I don’t know…she’s talking too fast…something about…err…a dead man, I think.”

“A dead man? Where, exactly?”

“
Donde
?” Trey repeatedly asked the woman.

She pointed towards a small shack like building, a few yards further down the road.
White paint flaked from the shack’s wooden boarded walls and a hand painted sign affixed to the roof read ‘
Bar
’ in red lettering.

The woman turned back to the Chevrolet beside her and furiously pulled on the door handle while still incessantly jabbering. The car door didn’t open and was obviously locked up.

“What the hell is the problem here?” Mancini moaned.

Trey
shook his head. “Err…I’m not really sure, man. She’s saying something about her and her boyfriend stopped at that bar up ahead and some guy or guys attacked them. But she’s also talking about some dead guy, it’s difficult to understand.”

“I thought you spoke fluent Spanish?” Mancini sighed.

“I wouldn’t say I was fluent but I can get by,” Trey snapped.

Mancini groaned and sunk further into his seat. “Tell her to just call the cops and let’s get the hell out of here.”

“
A la policia
,” Trey shouted above the woman’s chatter. “Err…
telefono
…
llame a la policia
.” He glanced at Mancini. “I think that means call the police.”

“Ah, shit,” Mancini sighed. “So you only speak
a limited amount of Spanish, is that right?”

Trey glared back at Mancini. “As I said, I get by, man. Now, what are we doing here?”

“We get the hell out of here,” Mancini snapped. “I already told you, we can’t afford to get involved with the cops or any domestic bust-ups, no matter how small. Come on, just drive.”

“But she looks like she’s in trouble, man.”

“Not our problem. Let’s go.” Mancini pointed towards the windshield. He noticed three figures approaching from the bar. The bright sun partially obscured his vision and he flipped his shades down from his forehead.

Trey followed Mancini’s gaze and saw the three guys drawing closer. The woman turned her head towards the bar shack and her babbling
elevated to hysterical screeching. The three figures fanned out across the highway and their pace quickened to a trot.

“What the fuck is going on, man?” Trey hissed.

The three men were of varying ages and appearances. The guy on the left was the youngest. His hair was closely cropped and he wore an orange t-shirt and blue shorts with no shoes on his feet. The middle guy was around fifty years old, stout in build, wearing a grubby white vest and black denims. The man to the right was tall and thin with long black hair and a bushy moustache, wearing a matching blue denim shirt and pants. All three of them had suffered injuries of some kind and their lower faces and clothing were spattered with blood. As the men drew closer, Mancini and Trey noticed all the trio’s eyes were black with orange pupils, similar to the guy further back down the highway.

The three guys emitted throaty growls and their lips curled back in snarls as they broke into a run towards the Thunderbird. The young guy in the orange t-shirt was the fastest of the three and soon circled around the car.
Mancini regretted not keeping a weapon of any kind close at hand.

The woman screeched and pointed at the enclosing young guy, calling out a name. “Javier…Javier,” she yelled in a pleading tone. Tears streamed down her face as she shook and trembled.

“Drive, Trey,” Mancini spat. “Get us out of here, now!”

Trey glanced around, first at Mancini, then at the screeching woman and finally at the approaching three guys. He pumped the gas pedal and the car pitched forward. The woman screamed something neither of them understood.

“Jump in the back if you want out of here, lady,” Trey yelled.

She seemed to understand and flung herself over the side of the car and sprawled along the back seat
with her legs flailing in the air. Trey steered away from the onrushing young guy but struggled to control the vehicle. He tried to weave between the remaining two men but the front fender clipped the stocky old guy in the center of the highway. The guy’s left kneecap caught the full impact of the collision and buckled so the leg crumpled at the joint, with an audible crack. He went down onto the blacktop, snapping his jaws at Trey as his head clattered against the top of the driver’s door.

“Fuck!”
Trey shouted, swerving the car to the right.

The Thunderbird’s front right wing slammed into the tall guy in the denims. He staggered backwards but didn’t go down.
Trey desperately tried to regain control of the vehicle, twisting the steering wheel left and right while the car’s rear end fishtailed across both the highway lanes.

The young guy sprinted after the Thunderbird and closed the distance between him and the slaloming, slow moving vehicle.
The tall guy batted the car’s side, searching for a firm handhold. His right hand swooped through the air and gripped hold of the woman’s flailing right ankle. She twisted and shrieked and tried to kick his hand away.

The younger man caught up with the Thunderbird’s tail end and he rounded the trunk on the passenger side.
Mancini twisted in his seat to see what was happening behind him. The tall guy ran beside the vehicle, still clutching hold of the woman’s ankle. The young guy sprung forward, grabbing the woman’s leg with both hands. He snarled and bit into the woman’s calf, shaking his head in frenzy and tearing at the flesh with his teeth. The woman screamed in agony and a plume of blood spurted across the exterior side of the Thunderbird.

“Ah, shit,” Mancini yelled. “Step on it, Trey.”

Trey struggled with the steering wheel but managed to regain control of the vehicle. He took a quick glance over his shoulder then turned back to face the road. The woman’s agonized screams reached a higher level as the young guy tore at her leg wound with his fingernails as well as his teeth. Trey hit the accelerator and the car sped up with the front wheels either side of the lane marker lines. Both the tall man and the younger guy couldn’t keep pace but they still hung on to the woman’s leg. She wailed as she started to slide backwards across the seat, her legs and pelvis dangled over the top edge of the car as the two guys tried to drag her clear.

Trey
knew they were going to lose her if he carried on accelerating so he stamped hard on the brake. The Thunderbird skidded to a halt within a couple of seconds and the tall guy was the first to release his grip as he tumbled headlong in a forward motion. His face smacked against the blacktop and he slid across the rough surface. The younger guy tried to hold on to the woman’s leg but the forward momentum caused him to spiral in the air, land hard on his back and roll across the highway. Trey didn’t think the two of them would rise to their feet anytime soon.

The woman howled in extreme pain while hauling herself back into the Thunderbird’s back seats.
Trey couldn’t believe it when he saw the two guys who’d just slammed onto the hard ground, spring upright as though nothing had happened. The young guy’s face looked as though all the skin tone had been sucked out, except for the woman’s blood coating his lower jaw and top lip. The tall guy’s face looked as though he’d stood too close to a giant cheese grater. His facial features had been filed away by the slide across the blacktop and his head was a bloody mess but still he lurched towards the Thunderbird, seemingly unaffected.

Trey
stared in disbelieving horror as the tall guy increased his speed. The guy’s nose was totally missing and his lips and cheeks were nothing but tatters of shredded flesh. The younger guy wreathed on the ground, trying to flip himself to his feet, a few yards from the passenger door.

“Come on, Trey, move it,” Mancini barked, shaking Trey from his sickened trance.

Trey came to his senses and released his foot off the brake and hit the gas. The tires screeched on the blacktop and the Thunderbird bolted forward. The tall guy and his younger counterpart swatted the air in an unsuccessful attempt to try and make one last grab at their prey as the car sped by.

The woman sobbed between long,
pain stricken wails as she clutched the back of her leg with both hands, trying to stem the flow of blood from the deep wound. Trey moved the vehicle over to the right lane and kept glancing in his rearview mirror as they sped along the highway. Mancini turned to see the three attackers in the distance, still trying to pursue the Thunderbird. He glanced at the woman lying on her stomach across the back seats and she looked in a bad way. He reached into his jacket for his pack of smokes and offered Trey one.

Mancini tried to stop his hand from trembling while he lit both their cigarettes. “Shit, we need to get ourselves some fucking heavy artillery.”

Chapter Six

Trey put a few miles distance between them and the three attackers before he made his suggestion.

“Do you think we should like, pull over and try and patch her up or something?” He glanced in his mirror at the woman on the back seat.

Mancini swiveled and studied the woman’s leg wound. Her right calf was a mangled, gory mess of torn flesh, sinew and muscle. Then he looked at her face. Sweat ran in rivulets over her forehead and across her cheeks, her breathing seemed wheezy and labored and she muttered as her eyes drooped closed. She seemed barely conscious and almost delirious.

“We’ll patch her up as best we can and dump her off
at the next town we come to,” Mancini said.

“Don’t you think we should, like take her to a hospital or something?”

“We don’t have the time,” Mancini huffed. “I’m sure she’ll be okay.”

Trey
shook his head. “What the hell was wrong with those guys back there? They seemed like wild animals or some shit. I mean, I hit that fat guy and broke his leg. Did you see his kneecap pop, man?”

Mancini nodded.

“And the dude just, like tried to get right back up. He didn’t look as though it had hurt him at all. Then those other two guys slam dunked onto the road, one of the guy’s faces was shaved right off and he got up like nothing had happened. Man, what the hell? Did you catch how those guys smelled? I caught a seriously strong stench like cat piss or something on those guys. Something ‘aint right here.”

Mancini
too had smelled a strong odor of ammonia when the crazy guys were attempting to attack them. He shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know what’s going on. I haven’t got any answers. We should just get on with the job we’ve been sent to do and get the hell out of
Dodge
.”      

“I’m with you on that,” Trey muttered.

The highway remained clear and Trey pulled the car over onto the shoulder overlooking the sea.

“I got a first aid kit in the trunk,” Trey said.
“You good to patch her up?”

Mancini nodded and climbed out of the car. He retrieved the first aid kit from the trunk and dabbed the woman’s wound with antiseptic on a cotton pad. The woman winced and moaned and tried to bat Mancini’s hand away from her leg. He coiled a bandage over the pad and around her calf then tied a knot at the base of the ankle. The woman shivered
, although she still sweated profusely and she was barely conscious.

“That should hold till we hit the next town,” he muttered.

“She looks like she has a fever or something,” Trey said. “Shit, there’s blood all over the back seats.”

“We’ll clean that off when we get to our next stop,” Mancini said. “Nothing attracts cops more than a car that looks like the floor of a slaughter house.”

Mancini replaced the first aid kit in the trunk and pulled out a gray blanket. He propped the woman upright in the center of the bench back seat and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. Trey pulled away from the shoulder after Mancini slumped back into the passenger seat.

A few cars and trucks flashed by, heading in the opposite direction. Trey wondered if those vehicles would encounter the crazy guys further back on the highway. Several one storey dwellings cropped up on either side of the road and the rugged countryside soon became a populated urban area. Mancini took out a map from his jacket pocket and studied the area, following the highway with his finger.

“Looks like we’re coming to a town called El Sauzal,” he said. “We’ll stop somewhere and dump her off and do a quick cleaning job. Don’t stop anyplace that’s too populated. We don’t want any witnesses.”

The traffic on the highway increased in number. Vehicles pulled out onto the main route from side roads and intersections. Mancini felt uncomfortable with the looks they received from the occupants of passing vehicles.
He glanced back to the map spread across his lap.