The Shack: An Angry Man

He staggered back and fell to his knees, so I hammered another one in on the same point and rammed my knee into his face as he sagged loosely to the ground. God, that felt good.

A trickle of blood dripped out of his mouth. I guess he was old enough.

I walked over to the door he'd looked at. There was a hasp with a screwdriver through it, locking the door shut. I pulled the screwdriver out and yanked the door open.

She was sitting, obviously terrified, on the edge of a ratty mattress that had been dragged into the room. She blinked as the extra light poured in. The windows to the room had been mostly painted over on the outside. At least she was still wearing clothes; that was a damn good sign.

"Let's go. I'm here to take you home."

She didn't say anything, just jumped to her feet and scrambled for the door. She stopped and looked at the guy on the ground and paused long enough to kick him in the face as hard as she could.

I heard something moving upstairs. Lots of somethings. "Keep moving." I grabbed her arm and dragged her towards Sally.

"That? Seriously?" Even as scared as she was, she was obviously appalled by the car.

"Keep moving, Pumpkin. The limo is in the shop." I shoved her into the passenger seat.

"What are these things?" She fumbled with the five-point.

"Jesus. It's a safety harness. Like a seat belt." I leaned over and began pulling the straps into place. She froze when I yanked the crotch strap into place.

"Easy there. Just getting you strapped in." I snapped the belts shut and pulled the release rotator off, ran around the car, keeping one eye on the door and slid into my seat.

She fumbled with the center of the harness. "It's broken. I can't get out"

"I'll fix it later."

"But I can't get out."

"Yeah, well that's sort of the point, Powder Puff. Why the hell are you trying to get out of the seat in the first place..." I stopped, figures were pouring out of the front door of the house. I reflexively counted eight of them. Shit. "Time to go. Your boyfriend's asshat friends are on the way." I tried to pull away slowly and quietly, but a few of them looked in my direction.

"He isn't my boyfriend. He's just a friend of Brandon's. Brandon couldn't make it, so that guy picked me up."

"Let me guess, you met Brandon on the internet? Un-fucking-believable. Hard to believe anybody still falls for that shit. You actually still believe he's real?"

"Fuck you." She did have the grace to look a little sheepish.

"My, my, my. Would you look at her, using bad words like she's all growed-up. You shouldn't fucking curse, it's not ladylike."

"Fuck you!" She glared hatefully this time.

"You already said that, Tinkerbell. Not very creative, are you?" In the rearview mirror I could see them piling into the SUV and G8. I held my breath hoping they'd run for it, afraid, maybe that somebody'd called the cops.

"Fuck you!" She yanked at the webbing of the harness furiously.

"You really are going to have to work on that vocabulary." Shit. They were turning in my direction. Sally could outrun that SUV, but the G8 was going to be a problem, no matter what.

Clueless, she apparently thought one unconscious thug had ended the danger. "What are you some kind of pervert, kidnapping little girls?"

"Nah. Doesn't sound very challenging. Apparently, all you have to do is pretend to be a guy named Brandon on the internet and they come running." I needed to do this without involving the police; the last thing I needed was Charlotte to drop my grandfather's gun into the ocean. I headed back for the route I'd come in on. Familiar ground.

"Asshole."

"That's better, at least now you're showing a little creativity." The SUV had pulled out in front of the G8; not a great plan, the G8 could have maybe outpaced me and boxed me in, but I could outmaneuver and outrun the SUV If I needed to. I didn't need them to know that, though. Not yet. I accelerated away as smoothly as possible.

"I didn't need your fucking help."

"I could see that. You had them right where you wanted them. Very clever."

"Fuck you. Why'd you even get involved?"

"Your mother railroaded me into it."

"She's a fucking bitch."

"Well, we agree on that. Charlotte's a grade-A, fucking cold-blooded, heartless, soulless bitch."

"Oh God, you do know her."

"No shit. Score one for Nancy Drew, Girl Detective." I kept Sally a quarter mile ahead of the SUV, pacing as if I wasn't aware of them. Push them too early and they'd act on it before I was ready.

I was pretty sure they were looking for the same thing I was: a quiet place with no witnesses. I had just the place for all of us, if only they were patient enough to wait fifteen minutes or so.

"We need to go back. That guy took my back pack with my clothes. He also took my phone. He said it needed to be charged."

I looked over her and rolled my eyes, but didn't say a word.

She slumped back in her seat a bit. "You must think I'm an idiot."

"Not really. You'll need to try harder to work your way up to idiot. Do you still not have a fucking clue what was happening?"

She stared down at her feet silently.

I rolled on. "You were about to become goddamned party favor. There were at least eight guys there, and probably more on the way. You know what they would have done to you. Use your fucking head."

She shrunk in on herself, breathing in spasms. I could tell she was crying but she didn't want me to know. She didn't want me to think she was weak. She caught her breath and gritted her teeth. "Asshole."

I laughed. "Good. If you can't be smart, learn to be tough. Because you're gonna fucking need it if you don't wise up." We were getting close. I turned down a broad gravel road. I'd been through here dozens of times and I knew the roads here; I just hoped I had enough luck to pull this off.

She turned her head to wipe the tears from her eyes so I wouldn't see them. "You don't have to be a dick all the time. I've had a really awful day."

"You want sympathy, it's in the dictionary between shit and syphilis. Learn from this, and don't do stupid shit." The SUV moved aside and the G8 started to move up fast; I stepped on the gas and the engine snarled in exhilaration, the acceleration punching a wide-eyed Delaney back into her chair.

"Holy shit!"

"Hang on. Your friends have decided that they don't want witnesses."

She looked back around the edge of her seat and saw the blue car gaining. "Oh God! Do something!"

"I am. This is going to get a little rough." As we bolted ahead, the SUV fell back in the distance. The Cobra was kicking up a dust cloud damn near a city block long and I could see the G8 gaining.

"They're going to catch us!"

"I need them to almost catch up. Just hang the fuck on." The narrow rock road I was looking for was coming up fast on the left side. I downshifted, spilling some speed.

She caught the sudden deceleration. "Don't stop! They'll..."

Whatever she was going to say was lost to me as I mashed the clutch and pulled handbrake.

Steer right, Steer left.

For a second, as we drifted into the turn, I thought there was something wrong with the engine, but the high-pitched screaming was Delaney, trying to curl up into a ball with her harness fully locked up.

Tap the foot brake to reduce speed just a bit more. Once the nose aligned, I floored the gas and as the revs jumped into the red, I dumped the clutch and dropped the handbrake.

We rocketed down the narrow rock road with scrub trees, ditches and fields flashing past on either side, throwing an even bigger cloud of dust. The G8 driver didn't even try the turn; he flew past, just a blue blur. He'd have to look for a place to turn once he could slow down, which was likely to take him a quarter mile.

The SUV, coming up slower, easily made the turn.

I slowed a bit to let him try to catch up a bit, I needed him closer to pull this off. The dust was incredibly thick on the red rock road; a fine powder that would hang in the air forever and thickly coated the scrub trees and grass next to the road.

The SUV driver was focused on me and forgot the most important thing about driving. The most dangerous thing on the road isn't the other driver.

It's the road.

Windshield coated in dust, focused on Sally's cute little ass, he missed the fact that we were coming up on a T intersection.

I dropped Sally into second gear, flicked the wheel right, then left, spinning her into a bootlegger turn right at the hammerhead where the road widened at the cross, tucking her neatly at dead stop along the side of the road.

By the time the SUV driver realized what was happening, it was too late. He was still accelerating when he crossed into the intersection, and his desperate attempt to turn was probably one of the worst choices he could make. Not that he had any good choices at that point.

A controlled spinout, like a bootlegger turn, is best accomplished by a low-center-of-gravity, rear-wheel-drive car with a manual transmission. Preferably one with excellent sway bars.

It is nearly impossible in a high-center-of-gravity SUV with an automatic transmission at 70 miles per hour.

For a fraction of a second, the SUV was upright, skidding exactly sideways, then the tires caught, the balance shifted and it began an incredibly high-speed rollover. It still might have been survivable, except for the reason for the T intersection: a 30-foot-tall rock face that had proven easier to go around than cut through. Even as I shifted up and began to accelerate back through the dust cloud down the red rock road, pieces of the SUV flew past us. Nobody was going to live through that.

Delaney stared back down the road at the carnage, gulping air. "What... what..."

"Get a grip, this isn't over yet." I slammed through the gears as fast as I could, pouring on the gas, the engine howling with demonic glee.

Ahead of us, I could see the G8 bearing down on us. I bared my teeth. "Okay, Motherfucker. You wanna play chicken? C'mon!"

I could see somebody hanging out the rear passenger widow. Tiny flashes against his silhouette told me what he was doing. Surprisingly Delaney had enough presence of mind to figure it out.

"They're shooting!" She looked at me, pale and terrified.

"Fuck'em if they can't take a joke, Kitten."

The driver of the G8 was the only other player on the field; hitting a moving target from an accelerating car is hard as hell at the best of times. I was more likely to lose control than I was to get hit by a bullet.

It took too long for him to get it. Never, ever, play chicken with someone who isn't playing by the same rules you are. Don't ever play chicken with someone who isn't afraid of getting killed.

Once he realized I wasn't planning on turning, he tried to move aside, but the road was too narrow, and the G8 cartwheeled as the front left wheel, then the nose dug into the soft dirt of the ditch. As we flashed past, I saw the terrified face of the gunman as he was ejected from the window. The car turned into a short-lived four-thousand-pound projectile, spinning through the air and slamming though scrub trees until it met the trunk of a massive live oak.

I braked slowly, no point in losing control now. Delaney was huddled into herself, half curled up, ghost-white, teeth chattering. She was in shock. She might be getting ready to pass out.

Maybe that was for the best; it'd make the next part a lot easier on her if she did.

I shifted into reverse until I was 30 meters from the twisted wreck of the G8, then stopped; I could see flames back at the wreck of the SUV. That's rare and it meant that the SUV had hit incredibly hard. I got out, pulling the .45 from my waistband. Delaney was fixated on the floor, not even looking up when I shut the door.

I'd seen enough to know there was no way anyone was coming out of the G8 alive, but the gunman on the side of the road was still twitching.

I walked over and looked down at him. His back was obviously broken, and his eyes weren't seeing anything, but he was still alive. He probably wouldn't even survive if he were in a hospital, but that didn't matter, I couldn't take the chance.

I fired once into his forehead and headed back towards the Cobra. Delaney's face was blank white sheet with dark hollow eyes as she watched me.

We pulled away towards the main road.

"Why... Why did you...?"

"They knew your name. They knew where you lived. What do you think they were going to do if they didn't catch up to us now?"

She shuddered, lower lip quivering spastically. "They were going to kill me, right?"

"You'd have been begging them to kill you."

She leaned forward heaving for as second, but nothing came out. "Fuck them." Fragments of tears squeezed out of her lashes. "Fuck them."

"Hold on to that anger, Baby. Sometimes that's all you have."

She straightened up and took three deep breaths, each one longer and deeper, forcing herself to calm down. "Fuck them."

We drove for almost an hour without speaking at all before I noticed something.

I sniffed. "What the fuck is that smell?"

Delaney gestured to her lap. "I peed myself, Okay?! You're fucking crazy!"

I shrugged. "Good thing I have vinyl seats in this thing. Roll your window down, Sunshine. We still have a couple hours to go to get you home and I don't want to smell that the whole way."

"You're fucking crazy!"

"You already said that."

"You could have gotten me killed. What if we'd have rammed each other? In case you forgot, my seatbelt won't open."

"Like I give a shit." I chuckled. "Some math for you. We were doing 70 miles an hour, they were going at least as fast. This car weighs just about three thousand pounds, theirs weighed about four thousand pounds. If we'd have hit head on, you wouldn't have felt a goddamn thing."

"Who are you?" Her voice was a little quieter.

"Nobody important. I'm just here to take you home."

She was quiet for a little while. "Are you some kind of cop?"

"No."

"But that stuff you did with the car and the way you took out... everyone..."

I should have let it go and let her stew in silence, but I answered instead. "I spent two decades in the Army, Buttercup. Seventeen fucking years in Special Forces."

"Really?" She screwed her face up. "You don't look like..."

"Well excuse the fuck outta me, Princess Glittersparkle. Liam Neeson and Brad-Fucking-Pitt were unavailable today, so you're stuck with my ugly ass. I'm goddamn sorry I don't live up to your expectations."

She stared at me for a minute. "God, you're Mom's ex-husband, aren't you? She said he was a tough guy in the Army."

I glared at her and looked back out the windshield at the road.

"She said you hated her more than anything in the world. Why would you help her?"

"The same reason anyone helps anybody. She has something I want."

"Tiffany and Tara."

I shook my head. "Hardly. Even if the bitch told them the truth now, it's too fucking late to make a difference."

"The truth?"

"She told everyone I was abusing her, beating her up. I never once touched her cheating, lying ass."

"Oh."

She sat quietly for a while, and I eventually punched the CD player on, bringing up Santana.

"Why do you listen to this stuff?"

"It helps me calm down, keeps me from being so angry."

"Maybe you should try something different, I don't think it's working."

"Ha Ha, Cupcake, very funny."

She shifted, crossing her arms. "I want to change clothes and get cleaned up."

"Keep wanting. See where that gets you."

"Jesus. No wonder she divorced you."

"Shut up."

She sat for a bit. "You could do me a favor and take Tara and Tiffany anyway."

"They're adults. Hell, she said Tiffany is a doctor."

"Yeah, and Tara is a lawyer. They're perfect for Dad and Mom."

I glanced at her. "You're not exactly living up to the standard, are you?"

"Fuck you. I hate them."

I could hear bitterness in her voice. "Good for you, Sugarpie."

"I mean it."

"Drive on with that. A rebellious teen-age girl who hates her family, how fucking original."

She wrapped her arms around herself. "They're so fucking perfect. All I ever hear is how they had straight A's and were in National Honor Society. All that shit."

"So? Work harder."

"I can't work harder, I have dyslexia. Asshole. If I concentrate really hard, I can read for about 20 minutes and then it all goes to shit. I'm one of the stupid kids."

"A short bus rider? I'll bet that burns Chucky's ass." I snickered.

"He's embarrassed by me. Really embarrassed." She had tears in her eyes.

"And you're working hard to keep him that way."

"Fuck you. You don't know what it's like."

"Said every teenage girl ever born."

"I have real problems."

"Surprise. Surprise. We all have real problems. I have a salvage yard to run, but I can't because my crazy-bitch ex-fucking-wife is making me jump through fucking hoops, finding her psycho daughter, for something I have every fucking right to. Everybody has real problems. You want to solve your problems, find something you're good at and work at it."

"What does she have that you want?"

"My grandfather's gun. He carried it in World War Two, my Dad carried it in 'Nam, and I carried the damn thing in Somalia. The bitch said she'll give it back to me if I bring you to her."

She sat silent for a long moment. "You really have a salvage yard? Like old cars and stuff?"

"Yes, like old cars and stuff. A junk yard."

She stared out the window. "That's kind of neat. Probably all kinds of cool stuff to do."

"It's a lot of hard work."

"It'd still be neat. You could make stuff. I bet you made this car there."

"More or less. I started with just a frame."

"What is it?"

"A '79 Ford Cobra."

"I made a sword in metal shop at school. It was cool, but I got suspended."

"I guess you probably should have checked with the teacher to see if you were allowed to make a sword."

"They were more upset that I broke in to use the equipment in the metal shop."

"Why didn't you just take metal shop?"

"They wouldn't let me; the classes were at the same time as remedial English and remedial math. They weren't going to let a retard take metal class anyway."

"I don't think you're supposed to use the word 'retard' anymore."

"I can use it all I want, I am one." She crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth.

I couldn't help myself, I snickered. Then she giggled. Pretty soon we were both laughing until tears were coming out of our eyes.

I finally stopped laughing. "It's been a long fucking day, I needed a laugh."

She giggled a tiny bit more. "Mine hasn't exactly been sunshine and roses, Peaches."

I chuckled. At least she was game. "Jesus. You reek. You still want to clean up, we're close enough that maybe Sheree could let you use the shower in the office at the Quickmart."

"I don't have any clothes. Asshole."

"There's a dollar store a block from the Quickmart. It's open pretty late, I'll run in and get you some clothes. What size are you?"

"Size 12, in Girls. But nothing with fucking flowers on it."

I wasn't worried about her running for it, if she hadn't gotten out of the harness when I was dealing with the shitheads, she wasn't getting out now.

When I came back to the car I tossed the bag in her lap.

"Seriously? The jeans are okay, but a unicorn shirt and Disney panties?"

"It's what they had; it's a dollar store, not Macy's."

"Jesus. I'm going to die of embarrassment."

"That's what they had, unless you would rather keep smelling like a urinal. The paper towels and cleaner are for your seat, you pissed it, you get to clean it."

She grumbled but nodded.

I pulled up in front of the Quickmart, then went around to get her out of the harness.

"Behave. Sheree's my friend and she doesn't need any of your shit."