By Chris McCarthy

Leo finds himself at gunpoint in the back of a Suburban heading for the airport with more than one surprise ahead…

The sound of the Suburban doors shutting reverberates off the concrete walls and floor, accentuating the emptiness of the large parking structure-like space.

Leaning against the concrete in an alcove created where the wall and the ramp support pillar meet, Leo is suddenly hyper-aware of the intensity of his breath in his chest and the pounding of his heart in his ears. He looks down at his phone on the ground by his feet but is too terrified to pick it up. 

He’s not that concerned about the absence of the gun in his waistband. It’s not like he knows how to properly use the weapon and he’s not about to have a stand-off with someone who is clearly a professional. Making a run for it isn’t an option either. The two dead men whose bodies lay on the concrete between Leo and the opening in the wall where the baggage cart exited make this point exceedingly clear. The terrifying rat-at-tat-tat of the submachine gun wielded by whoever the hell these guys are has created the desired effect, the decision to not fight back and the idea that wholly submitting is the best and, indeed, only option. 

Leo steps out quickly, his hands up in the air, fingers spread wide. The headlights on the vehicle blind him as he ambles forward. The two men walk toward him, already much closer to him than he had estimated. One of the men oddly wears a dark mask covering half of his face. Or maybe the mask he’s seeing is a relic from staring into the huge piercingly bright late-model LED headlights. The man holding the machine gun yells at him to get on his knees and points his gun from Leo’s face to the ground to accentuate his command. He has an American accent with a hint of a hispanic, possibly Mexican, lilt. 

Leo falls to his knees immediately while keeping his hands up. “OK. OK. I’m not armed. Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.” 

The man walks up to him and places the muzzle of the gun right at his forehead. Unlike the other time a gun had been placed half an inch from his frontal lobe just a few hours earlier while he was deep in an anaphylactic fit, this time he feels the slightly warm steel against his skin rather than just the pressure. The lights on the Suburban go out and Leo’s eyes quickly adjust. Leo looks up at the other man and realizes he’s not actually wearing a mask. There is just something dark covering the side of his face—a liquid of some sort or a deformity perhaps. There’s something familiar to the face too. The man grabs Leo by the neck of his sweatshirt and yanks him up viciously, toward him so they are face to face. 

Leo now sees the huge scar starting at the man’s right temple and curving cruelly down to the right side of his mouth. It’s a wound created out of spiteful hatred. A prison souvenir perhaps. The man turns his face to the right to show the left side and Leo sees that it’s a mess. The ear is cauliflowered to three times its normal size and the jaw looks distended, not to mention blue-black bruising surrounding the eye and a wicked gash on the cheekbone. The nose is clearly broken and pushed to the right. The entire left side of the man’s face is covered in layers of dark blood as if it’s bled and caked over several times. A strange realization creeps in. 

“You did this to me, kid.” The man says. 

“Wait…Oh my…they told me I…” Leo stammers.

“Well, you fucked me up bad. But not as bad as I’m going to fuck you up.” The man says. 

It’s the man Leo assaulted earlier outside of the coffee shop. 

He throws Leo down onto the concrete floor, ripping his right elbow to shreds and probably hairline-fracturing his right hip bone. Leo’s getting used to being thrown to the ground. It feels like more of the same on this crazy day.

The man looks at his associate with the gun. “Grab him,” he says and walks briskly to the car. The other man swings his gun over his shoulder and pulls Leo off the ground. 

“Get the fuck up. Let’s go!” The man with the gun says. 

They throw Leo into the backseat of the suburban. The machine gun man drives the car fast through the exit on the left side of the concrete space, running over the dark congealing pool of blood Mike left behind, his head face-down on the concrete. Leo tries not to look and cringes, hoping they don’t drive over a limb. He imagines the red tire tracks. 

Through a sterile well-lit concrete tunnel, they drive down what feels like two stories at least, although it’s hard for Leo to tell with any certainty. Then suddenly, they level out. The whole time, the man with the messed up face holds a small gun in his right hand just at his left shoulder, in Leo’s general direction. He tells Leo his name is Roderick. 

“Roderick?” Leo says, to make sure he got it right, his mind instantly trying to figure out if he can use the new information to get out of his predicament. But, looking around the car and out at the sterile tunnel, the lights passing by overhead at a fixed interval, just off beat to the steady rhythm of the tires crossing over the expansion joints between sections of ramp pavement every four seconds—the mundanity, the mathematical everyday-ness of it all make him realize he has no recourse. 

There’s an inevitability to him being right here where he is in the backseat of this vehicle with two armed men who want to kill him. Even as he observes his mind trying to blame someone or something of this, Leo realizes he’s never made one real decision in his life. For the first time, he learns what it means to be entirely alone. 

There’s no way out. 

Then his thinking starts to get fuzzy and his tongue feels dry. Is a hint of the anaphylaxis coming back? Or is it anxiety? Leo feels he can stave it off, whatever it is. 

“I’m Leo.”

“No shit,” says the driver.

Roderick laughs and says, “This is Manny.” 

“You fucked up big time, Leo.” Roderick says. “What the hell were you doing there today? Why didn’t you just mind your own business like I told you to. You could have avoided all this.”

Leo oddly enough feels comfortable talking to the man he viciously hit with a brick earlier in the day and who now holds a gun on him. Leo’s action was instinctive but vicious and violent nonetheless. It’s hard for him to find a place for it in his mind since he considers himself a nice guy who tries to do the right thing. Just as this self-comforting thought forms itself, in one swift movement Roderick cold cocks Leo straight on the nose and mouth with the gun. Leo yelps and immediately tastes the acidic sweet blood in his mouth. Tears stream and Leo tries desperately not to whimper as he holds both hands to his damaged nose. 

“There. Now we’re even. Sort of.” Says Roderick. 

Manny stifles a laugh. 

On either side of Leo’s hands blood streams down his face. He pulls his hands off his face, “Fuck…Why the hell…”

Then he feels something thrown against his face. He looks down in his lap and picks up a wad of napkins and puts them to his face.

“I was talking to you, fuck face. Don’t space out. Why did you intervene earlier? Are you some kind of hero?” Roderick asks again and sets the gun down in his lap, his finger still on the trigger, but more relaxed now, seeing Leo’s lost confidence. He’s in complete control now. 

“I just saw you and the girl…in the car. And she jumped out to escape… and I… I just reacted. That’s it…” Leo says. 

“That’s it?” Roderick looks over to the man in the front seat, whose machine gun sits in the footwell by his right leg. “You hear that, Manny? That’s it. Just another day. Attacking a man with a brick when you have no fucking business being there at all.” 

“Are you… Are you gonna kill me?” Leo asks.

“No. Not right now. Not in my car. That would be a fucking mess.” 

Roderick lets loose a laugh that shakes the car. Manny joins him in laughter, his laughter a bit higher pitched. 

“They told me I… killed you.” Leo says. 

“Yeah, well, they would. You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.” Roderick says. 

Manny slows the car down as he turns up a ramp and into daylight. Leo suddenly realizes that the car has started ascending after what seemed like a long initial descent. It takes Leo a moment to realize it’s not daylight. They’re driving on a strip of tarmac lit up with runway lights. Leo looks up higher and sees a sliver of dark gray blue, the true color of the night sky.

The man speeds up the Suburban and veers left past a high fence that seems like it’s separating a private non-public area. To his right, Leo sees a line of twenty or so Federal Express planes. He thinks back to when he and Celia flew to Hawaii and how nervous he was packing the ring in his carry-on bag. Would it fall out when he went through TSA? Would Celia catch a glimpse of it before they got to Poipu beach where he would slip it out at the opportune moment just before sunset? 

As they drive past the runway with the cargo planes, Leo realizes he knows right where they are. The FedEx shipping center on the south side of the airport is clearly visible from the elevated section of the 105 freeway. It’s an area of the airport far from any passenger airline activity. Manny makes a few more turns around the commercial shipping building and they enter a new area. Leo’s instincts tell him this section of LAX doesn’t abide by the same rules as the rest of the airport. It feels hidden, exclusive. Small unmarked private jets line a small runway. In the distance, Leo sees people moving quickly up the aircraft stairs of one such jet. Then, several flashes of light. 

And a popping sound. POP, POP, POP.

Then, the faint TING of windshield glass being penetrated in a very precise way. Before Leo can square away what is happening, Manny makes a choking noise then slumps over to the right side of the seat, blood dripping fast out of the side of his face. The car veers right as Manny’s driving hand pulls the steering wheel toward his falling body.

Leo is thrown into the window to the left of the car. Instead of blurring his thoughts, the cold hard contact wakes him up.  

“Shit!” Roderick yells. “Manny!”

He grabs the wheel and rights it with his left hand, pushing the car back into a straight line toward the jet and the men shooting at them from halfway up the extended ramp. Roderick fires his pistol through the windshield with his right hand as he tries to steady the driver’s wheel with his other hand. Leo feels tiny shards of glass shaving against his right cheek before he has a chance to duck his head. 

“Turn around! What are you doing?!” Leo asks.

“Hah, no fucking way. They’re not getting away with this.” 

Roderick speeds the car up and through a sliver of spidered windshield, he sees a man scramble up the ramp. But a woman stands right in the middle of it. If he’s not mistaken, it’s Emily, the mother hen of the group of girls, the one who spoke for them. The one who seemed older than her years, a maturity borne from a hard life that Leo could only try to imagine. She was the girl’s protector. Then the shock of red hair comes into focus. It’s definitely her. 

“Hey, you’re gonna…” Leo says, just before he instinctively buries his face in his hands.

The Suburban rips through the bottom potion of the steel aircraft stairs. A foot-wide shard of steel, one of the steps no doubt, thrusts into the front of the car, decimating what’s left of the windshield and piercing Roderick clean through at the left clavicle and exploding the leather and stuffing of the passenger seat. Instantaneously, Leo is covered in blood, glass shards, strips of leather, and dark grey foam. 

Leo looks behind him at the destroyed stairs and the two bodies now laying on the tarmac just outside the jet—the gunman and Emily. 

——

Copyright Chris McCarthy and MDA Press, 2024, Graphics by Chris McCarthy with Imagen3.

By Chris McCarthy

Leo is in anaphylactic shock. The cop recovers and the girls escape. The chase is on…

Leo feels the cold of the kitchen down in his bones as he looks up at the large Russian man standing above him. Despite his fear, he looks directly down the barrel of the gun then down at the floor. It doesn’t feel how he thought it would feel. It doesn’t feel like anything. In that moment, Leo realizes that his emotions aren’t him. He’s something else. He’s the thing observing the emotions. The emotions are warnings, indicators that he can observe and decide how to respond to with the part of himself that watches from behind. The part that’s actually him. The irony that these thoughts appear as his body succumbs to acute anaphylactic shock and he’s losing control of his motor functions, shaking uncontrollably, and his tongue is rolling back into his mouth down his throat is not lost on him. 

The things you learn at gunpoint. 

The Russian takes another step forward and presses the gun into the center of Leo’s forehead. But he can’t feel the cold of the metal. He only feels the pressure because his forehead feels thick as if there are layers of cotton between his skin and the barrel of the gun. Then Leo sees the grotesque image of a large knife blade exiting through the front of the Russian’s stomach on the right side. The Russian turns around, but the cop, with a surprising burst of energy pulls the knife out of the man’s back and slides it across his neck, in a soft supple motion. It seems to be done with such light pressure that surely it hasn’t done any harm. But then the black red hairline of the cut appears and a curtain of blood cascades down the man’s neck, his shirt almost immediately soaked with blood. Just as the man’s eyes register what’s happening, he expires, leaving behind an odd look of surprise on his face after it follows his body and slams to the floor. The cop drops the knife to the floor with a clang. He hobbles over and leans on the counter, breathing heavily, blood around his mouth. 

That’s when the girl runs into the room and says, “Help me untie the rest of the girls. We need to get out of here. The mean one will be back any minute now.” 

The cop looks at Leo. “What’s wrong with you?”

Leo hears himself trying to say… something.

The cop takes another two breaths, gathering himself, then pulls Leo’s shoulder forward, trying to get his arm around his neck. Then Leo’s feet feel like bricks dangling on lengths of rope and it’s all black again. 

——Minutes Later

Leo’s vision comes and goes. He sees something bright—perhaps the moon. Does he see clouds? He thinks he’s outside, and he’s moving. It’s so cold. There’s a high-pitched worried girl’s voice somewhere on the periphery of his awareness. The edges of his vision cloud and uncloud. 

Then Leo feels something pushing on his back and head. It’s the hard leather of the backseat of the police car. Then, a sharp jolt in his thigh. Leo is now cognizant that his hands are at his throat, desperate to somehow coax a breath through. But he can feel them again. And just like that he breathes in, the cool air going down his throat. His chest and neck muscles relax as his stomach now contracts pulling the cool, life-giving air inside. The whispered voices now become clear as he snaps back. 

The car starts. He sits himself up, leaning his shoulder against the door, and sees three girls around twelve or thirteen years old scrunched together into the seat next to him.  He looks forward and sees another two girls in the front passenger seat. 

He hears something but it’s unclear. Then he realizes the cop is talking to him. “We thought we lost you.” 

To Leo’s left, the three girls sitting there are entangled, holding each other close, one of them, who seems to be a year or two older, comforts the other two, one of whom balls silently. Leo thinks they look like tears of relief. Not that much relief. Just some relief. Leo feels a low beating thud in the back of his head. It’s been a long day.

As he looks down at his hands, which feel less puffy and heavy, he notices the cop’s darting looks into the rear view mirror. Leo sees the backs of the two girls heads in the passenger seat and counts five girls total.

That’s when he hears the sirens.

“Who’s after us?” Leo asks.

“It’s the police,” the cop answers. Leo detects no irony and no emotion in the response but he can tell the cop is concerned with this development.  

“What? The po— but aren’t you the police?” Leo asks, his mind racing now.

“Yeah. A different kind.” The cop says. 

“What do you mean a different kind?” Leo asks, swinging his head back to the front after looking out the back window. 

The cop is determined, now, as he reaches over to check the seatbelt of the girls in the front seat. “Let’s make sure this is tight,” the cop says with a warm smile.

The cop speaks quietly into his radio. Leo hears disconnected phrases—“a body” and “cleaned up”—and he connects the comment to Cam, instantly remembering the dead body lying in the cold dark kitchen. He’s about to ask about Cam, whom he knew for about thirty seconds, not even enough time to recognize his face if he saw him again. He recognized his body on the kitchen floor from his paunch…

“Hang on.” Says the cop. 

He jerks the wheel and Leo is pulled to the right of the car, pushing his forearm out against the window instinctively.

The cop drives the cruiser with no lights on and crosses over two lanes on the street in a downtrodden area of the city. He shoots down an alleyway between an abandoned old brick building that could be thirty or a hundred years old and a small commercial complex, one of those nondescript complexes filled with mom and pop mechanic or specialty car repair shops covering for who knows what. But even these seem like they haven’t seen much business in years. Leo instinctively looks for street signs to try to find some sense of location. But the area is so poorly lit that the one small sign he sees for the alleyway they travel down isn’t legible.

The cruiser rips down the alley. The cop makes a left turn at the end of the alley turning onto another dark street. 

Leo looks behind him. He still sees the blue and red lights. The car is still pursuing them. It’s then that he feels his phone vibrating in his pocket. He pulls it out.

Fifteen missed called. Thirty seven text messages. All from Celia. 

He quickly glides through the text messages. One of the earlier ones says, “What the hell is going on? Are you ok?”

Then another one catches his attention: “I saw everything!”

——

Leo is still looking at his phone screen reading Celia’s text message when he hears the cop speak low into his radio. The cop speeds up if that’s even possible, takes another quick left down an alley way, comes out on Main Street, hits a right, and Leo looks behind him realizing the police cruiser is no longer behind them. Then the cop takes another left and pulls into a parking lot between a small mechanic shop and a dirt hill. Leo still hears the siren but it’s becoming more distant. 

A chainlink fence covers three sides of the parking lot and as the cop drives into it and stops the car, Leo can hear a steady rush of traffic coming from somewhere. He looks up the hill and can just see the steel guardrails of the 405 freeway. 

He slides his phone back into his pocket, but not before the cop notices.  

“What the—?” The cop coughs blood and struggles to get the words out. “Did you call someone?” 

“No—I just have some messages from my girlfriend…” Leo says. 

The cop doesn’t respond because he’s distracted looking at a white, early 2010’s minivan parked in the darkness. A man steps out of the driver’s seat and shuts the door behind him. He walks around the side of the car and opens the sliding door in the side of the van. 

The cop undoes the seatbelt for the two girls in the passenger seat. 

“OK, everyone get in the van.” He looks at the girls to his right with a tight smile. “It’ll be ok. You’re safe now.” Then he looks over to the girls in the back seat and gives them the same tight smile. Leo notices just behind the smile is a pained grimace. 

The girls all hop out and make their way to the van. The driver of the van helps them in and shuts the door behind them.

“Who is that?” Leo asks, sticking his head through the opening in the plastic divide between the front and back seats. 

“You go too,” the cops says. “I’m staying behind.” Leo, for the first time sees that cop has a wound in his lower let stomach right about his hip bone. Dark blood oozes out.

“Shit. I didn’t know you were hurt that bad.” Leo says. 

“Get in the fucking van.” 

Leo watches as the van driver runs up the short hill to the freeway. He catches the glint of a mirror of a car parked right above them on the side of the freeway. The man is leaving. 

“Look, you can get in the car or you can wait here with me. That officer is only a few minutes away form finding us. They’ll have a bird in the sky looking for us in another minute…” 

Leo feels his face flush. “Wait, you’re a cop right?”

“I used to be.” 

“What does that mean? You’re wearing a uniform.” 

“None of that matters right now. The people chasing us—those officers, if you can call them that—they work for the same people as the guy you took care of earlier.” The cop says. 

“So…what…I’m fucked? Is that what you’re saying?” Leo asks, feeling his face flush.  

The cop pulls a device out of the center console and hands it to Leo, wincing as he does it. 

“It’s an encrypted GPS device,” the cop says. “Just follow the directions on the screen.” 

Leo turns the cellphone-sized device over in his hands. 

“What? I’m—I’m supposed to drive?! You’re leaving me and I’m driving those girls…? Where the fuck am I going?!” Leo asks. 

The cop gestures to the girls in the back seat of the van, all of whom are looking out the back window at the two men talking. 

“You need to go now.” The cop says.  

“Why do you need to leave?” Leo asks.

“I’m not leaving.” 

“What are you going to do then?” 

“I’m gonna delay them for as long as I can.” 

Leo looks around the parking lot. He thinks about running down the driveway and into the shadows of the alley. He looks up at the freeway. 

“You can’t run now. Only way out is to follow the plan. They’re coming for us.” The cop says. 

“What’s the plan? I don’t know what the plan is.” Leo says, getting increasingly anxious. 

“Just get those kids to the location on that device. There are people there who will take care of you. Leo, you can do this. You have to do this.” The cop says.

The cop swings his door open and steps out. He opens the drivers side back door. “Come on. Get out.” He says.

Leo shakes his head wondering how many days it’s been before remembering it’s only been a few hours. He steps out of the car. 

“I just realized I don’t even know your name,” Leo says. 

The cop walks to the trunk and pops it open. “Call me Jack.” 

He reaches in and pulls out a pistol and hands it to Leo. “Go. NOW!” 

Leo slips the GPS device into his pocket then reaches out and grabs the gun by the cold heavy barrel. Now that he knows him as Jack, Leo wonders if he has a family, friends, children. 

Jack nods and Leo walks to the van. 

“Be quick but try not to speed.” Jack says.

Leo opens the driver’s side door of the van and puts a foot up into the footwell, turning to Jack. “What the fuck does that mean?” 

Jack chuckles then winces and leans back into the trunk. As the trunk swings shut, Leo sees the shotgun in Jack’s hand. 

Leo starts the van’s engine. “Put your seatbelts on.” For some reason he’s uncomfortable making eye contact with the girls who sit quietly in their seats in the back of the three-rowed van. One of the girls helps another put her seatbelt on. Leo takes a deep breath and puts the van in drive. 

——

Copyright Chris McCarthy and MDA Press, 2024, Graphics by Chris McCarthy with Imagen3.