Chapter Twenty-Nine - Tyler
I don’t know why I don’t just throw fuckin’ Carlos to the ground. Some sort of impulse, I guess. Maybe I’m remembering Nadir again? I wouldn’t let him just crash down, so I don’t let Carlos either.
Fuckin’ feelings.
It ain’t easy. Logan’s really going all in on this bat thing. Maybe he’s working out unfulfilled dreams of being a major leaguer. Who knows? All I know is that the shit hurts, and I’m not sure how much more I can take.
I get Carlos on the blacktop, and I do the only thing I can do… I try to wait it out. One of two things will happen. Either Logan’ll get tired and quit, or he’ll break my back and kill me. There is a third thing, I guess. He could just get bored and shoot me in the head. But my gut tells me at this point, homeboy’s way more interested in making me suffer for a while than he is in just killing me.
“Fuck!” I find myself yelling. And not in a nice way.
And that’s when I glance over and catch a glimpse of Maddie. I see her poking her head from by the tire where Ricky has stashed her and for which I am grateful. I think I may have been wrong to mistrust the guy so much. Maybe he’s not a bad dude after all.
“Fuck!” And there’s that bat again.
Shit. I don’t think I’m gonna make it. I kind of laugh at that, in between getting hit and listening to the hellfire of bullets and whatever shit Logan’s screaming at me in Spanglish. Of all the shit I’ve ever been through, I never thought this would be the way I would die.
In love, I mean.
Because I never thought I would ever be in love. Just didn’t seem like it was in the cards for me. But. Here I am. In love and in big fucking trouble.
It’s OK. I don’t mind. I’m not scared or anything. I’m just… sad. Because I think I might actually have liked being happy. It didn’t seem so bad. Some people change when they fall in love. I’ve seen it. Sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. But when it’s right, when it works, when it’s good, it doesn’t change you. It makes you more… you. It’s like that with Evan now that he’s with Robert. He’s always been the best guy, but there’s a… light that shines off him now.
I wonder if it was like that with me these last few weeks. Was I lighter? Was I a better version of myself? I think I was.
I think I was.
Yep. I can feel it coming. My old, battered, beaten, scarred, mangled body has served me well, but I don’t think it’s got a whole lot left to give here. I’ve always thought that the body was just a tool, and that if the mind was willing, the body would find a way to push through whatever pain it was feeling and move on. But that’s simply not true.
If that was true, Scotty would be alive today. He had more will and strength of character than anybody I’ve ever known. His body just couldn’t respond. And he had to let go. There’s no shame in it. It’s OK. I don’t want to leave Maddie, especially since I just found her, but it’s starting to look like I may not have a choice.
All this whips through my mind in less than a fraction of a second, and as Maddie disappears behind the tire for safety, I decide that the only thing for me to do now is to try and transport my mind out of here so that my body can let it all happen and not feel guilty about it. And while I’m letting myself drift off, I will think of Maddie. I will think of her safety. And her protection. And her happiness. And her joy. I remember us as kids. Birthday parties, and holidays, and Christmases. Way better ones than this one.
And I think again about seeing her at Pete’s for the first time. An angel, fallen from wherever. Because she is. She is to me.
And I try to imagine her old, and happy, and over me. Maybe moved on with a new guy who can give her what she deserves. Someone who’ll love her the way I wanted to. And I’ll just become a footnote. A long-forgotten someone that she knew for a little while and thought was kind of OK. Someone she saved. Someone she healed. Someone to whom she brought peace.
And I can see that life for her. I see it in my mind as clearly as I see the blood I’m starting to cough up. And I know it’s real. I know she’s going to be all right. She’ll be safe. She’ll be saved. And if my life is the cost for that, so be it. I’m so, so, so very honored to be able to pay it.
Thank you, angel. Thank you for everything. I’m sorry it all worked out this way. But it’s OK. I love you.
I’ll see you again.
And that’s when the explosion happens.
It’s like a fireball exploding from somewhere deep inside the suddenly molten earth. It puts a hard stop to everything else happening right now. It blows both me and Logan back about ten feet. The shooters too. It roils up and swoops over us like the devil himself is spitting at us in anger and frustration. Like he’s pissed that we’re disturbing his rest.
Maybe he’s just trying to wait for Santa too.
The flames are all around us in both great, sweeping waves, and in tiny, standalone puddles.
What. The. Fuck. Just. Happened?
Doesn’t really matter, as two of the shooters have turned and started to run back into the house/mansion/hotel/whatever-the-hell but are confronted by billowing smoke. Huh. I guess Maddie’s little decoy fire must have gotten out of control in there. Shooter one and shooter two break left and take off around the side of the property and go running for the beach.
The other shooters are burning alive.
The flames catch them, either by the rapid way it’s creasing a path along the gas-soaked concrete or in tiny fireballs that continue to spark and shower down all around us. I can’t see through the fire in front of me. I can’t tell if Maddie is OK. I can’t tell if Ricky is either, but I care a fuckton less about that.
I can see that Carlos is still unconscious, lying right in the pathway of the spreading inferno. Logan is lying next to me where we were blown back and it looks like he’s trying to stand up. I am too. The difference is that his bat is resting next to me now, and I can take it up and use it as a staff to help me get to my feet. So I do.
And, look, it’s not cool, and it’s not classy, and I’m not super proud of it, but I bring it down hard one time on Logan’s stomach and he whines like the little twat-blossom he is. And again, not proud or dignified, but it feels fucking good.
What does not feel fucking good is everything inside my own body right now. But. Carlos is still there. And… goddamn it. I gotta fucking get him up before he’s caught by this still-baffling eruption that keeps growing in our direction.
I race over to get hands on him, but as I do, another eruption of fire sends me back. Where the fuck is this coming from? I go in again and manage to get my hands on his wrists. The screaming of the other guys who are being burned up is super distracting. I know it’ll stop in a second, but for now it’s making it hard to focus.
I turn my head for the briefest of seconds and see Logan, now unconscious, and realize that I’m probably not going to be able to get them both. It’s wild. The fire has spread in almost like a semi-circle around us. A literal ring of fire. Like the Johnny Cash song. I fell in to a burning ring of fire. I went down, down, down, and the flames went higher. Only less fun and without Johnny’s sonorous baritone to bring it along.
Nobody could get to us if they tried, and I don’t see any way out of this except back towards the ocean, where I know for a fact guys with guns have just skedaddled, or through the burnin’ fuckin’ ring of fire.
And then I realize...
This is like my DREAM. THE DREAM.
In that dream, I had to run through fire and burning flesh to reach my angel. But also, of course, in that dream, she blamed me for everything bad that had happened. Are Maddie and I through that yet? If I run through this, are we through with that? The suffering and the pain? Could this be the last trial for us?
Shit, man. Let’s fuckin’ find out.
I eeny-meeny-miny-moe it to decide if I’m gonna try and drag Carlos or Logan out with me. Ultimately Carlos wins. Which is fair. Carlos is who Ricky wants to take down. Logan is just a dipshit I want to punch in the dick over and over. So I go in one last time and reach for Carlos. I get him, drag him up, and—with an unreal amount of physical discomfort—I sling him over my shoulders and see if I can find even a sliver of something that looks like a way of egress through the flames.
And I really wish I hadn’t taken that extra second to try and figure it out, because in that moment of hesitation… Another explosion. I have no idea where this one emanates from, but it’s a fucking doozy. It sends me back on my ass and causes me to drop the shit out of Carlos.
I look up at the clear, starlit sky and begin howling with laughter. Yeah. It’s weird. I know. But it’s what I do. And then I look over and see that Carlos is now engulfed in fire. He’s still out cold, so he doesn’t know it, and I’m glad of that. Getting burned alive is… Well, there’s no one on the planet who doesn’t have an idea of how horrifying that is. Until you’ve seen it, there’s no way to even begin to really understand, but it’s… it’s bad.
Am I sad that Carlos is leaving this mortal coil right now? Nah. Not really. Just being real with myself. He was a bad dude and the world will be a better place without him. Plus, he repeatedly terrified and hurt the woman I love. So yeah. Fuck him.
But am I glad he’s being spared a painful death? Yeah. I suppose I am. Because… Shit. I guess because there’s enough suffering in the world. I dunno. I ain’t no philosopher. I’m just me. But these are the thoughts I’m thinking as I watch him turn to ash.
Logan on the other hand… Yeah, I wouldn’t mind sticking around and watching that cocksucker get barbecued. But I have to see if Maddie is still whole on the other side of this… flame tsunami. Or whatever the fuck it is. I’m not thinking right and out of words.
Oh. And also I just realized that my shirt is on fire. So I need to get the fuck out of here.
There is no way around it I can see except to just go straight through. I don’t know how deep the wall is because I can’t see past it, and I don’t know if by running straight ahead, I’m just guaranteeing myself a grisly fucking end. But if Maddie is there, on the other side, then it’ll be worth it. Because I don’t know what waits for us down the line either, but I know the only way to find out about that is also by just running headlong into it. Shit. That worldview got me this far.
Whatever, motherfucker! You’re on fire! Make moves!
OK. On three. One. Two. Oh, fuck it. Go!
And forward into an unknown fate, I flamingly charge.
“... Here.” That’s Ricky. He’s holding a bottle of water and a Vicodin. I take the water. I wave off the Vicodin. “You’re gonna want something for the pain.”
“You work for the DEA and you’re giving me a Vicodin?”
“It’s not illegal.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you guys should take a look at that. And anyway, I’m gonna try and lay off the scripts for a while and see how I do.”
“OK,” he says. “But you should probably get x-rays when you get home.”
“X-rays, sex-rays,” I say. Which doesn’t make sense but makes Maddie smile.
“We’ll be at McCarran pretty soon. If you guys wanna try and sleep…”
I wave that off too. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” There are so many different ways everybody could respond to that that nobody says anything. “How much trouble are you in?” I ask him.
Ricky shakes his head, takes a sip of his own water. “Dunno. Brought in an untrained civilian to a deep-cover op, burned down the estate of our target while simultaneously allowing him to suffer a fatal injury, thereby totally sandbagging years of work and millions and millions of taxpayer dollars? If I was a Congressman, I’d say I’d get off scot-free, but I’m just the guy putting his life on the line every day, so… probably pretty fucked. We’ll find out.” He smiles. He should smile more. It’s nice.
“Well. Sorry,” I say.
“It’s all good,” he says back. He’s wrong. It’s nowhere near all good. But I get it.
Emily, Ricky’s little sorority cohort, comes walking down the aisle of the Cessna. “Agent Martinez, the assistant director is on the phone for you.”
Ricky raises his eyebrows at me. “Yep. Guess we’ll find out,” he sort of sings, and then heads to the front of the plane to take his call. As he passes by Emily, their fingers touch. I think. Pretty sure. Not a hundred percent, but. Whatever. That’s them.
“You doing OK?” That’s Emily asking Maddie.
Maddie nods. Emily gives her a small grin, gives me one, and heads toward the cockpit herself. Maddie and I are facing each other. I’ve taken a few chartered flights. The facing each other thing is like my favorite part. I dunno why. Feels old-timey. Like you’re on the Orient Express or something. Except you’re in the sky. And usually there isn’t some mysterious murder to solve. Usually.
Maddie’s sitting back, looking out the window. It’s still dark out. It won’t be light for a couple more hours, so she’s basically only seeing her reflection. I can’t blame her. If I saw that in the mirror, looking back at me, I’d look at it all the time.
“Whatcha thinking about?” I ask.
She turns her head to me. Leans in. Takes my hand in hers. Looks at our intertwined fingers. Smiles. “Nothin’.” she says.
She’s still wearing my watch. Nadir’s watch. “What time is it?” I ask.
She glances at it. “I dunno,” she says. “It stopped.”
“Really?” I look at it. She’s right. It did. It seems like it stopped almost exactly three hours ago. Would have been right around the time I was trying to save Carlos. I think.
Honestly, I’m not sure. I decide not to think about it too much.
Instead, I just hold her hand in mine and decide that the only thing I’m going to think about is this moment. This one.
Right here.
Right now.
In the present.