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Back Roads Unwinding

by Egbert Wikitiki

January 2011

As he had done every Tuesday evening for the past two months, Darrel Abernathy parked in a reasonably isolated area and waited. He rarely had to wait for more than fifteen or twenty minutes; the longest he’d had to sit idly had been an hour, just last week.

Normally he spent this quiet time far from his home—where the guys waited for him even now—but tonight he was running late, so he decided to park behind the catholic high school only a quarter mile from his house.

Having grown up only a block from the North Runway of Los Angeles International Airport, Darrel was capable of speaking effectively over most crowds, though he usually tended to talk in a soft voice. Like most of the residents of southwestern Rindgedale, his hearing had suffered for his proximity to the airport, but he doubted that he would ever move. His was one of the few houses in the area devoid of neighbors, and Darrel liked his privacy.

After almost twenty minutes, his bladder started protesting over the two beers he had consumed during the wait.

The driver’s door creaked and moaned loudly as Darrel climbed out of the 1964 Dodge Dart. He slammed the door—which was the only way to get it to close completely—and more paint chipped off the decaying finish, exposing more rust.

He could afford better wheels; in fact, he owned three other cars, all new, expensive and eye-catching. He only used the Dart on Tuesday evenings.

Bordering the fence surrounding this side of the school was an eight-foot thick hedge of oleander bushes in full bloom. Darrel knew that the red, white and pink blooms were deadly poisonous, as was every other part of the plants, but he had no plans on snacking. He pushed through two of the shrubs and toxic powder adhered to his cashmere sweater. After making a mental note not to lick the sweater before it could be dry-cleaned, he unzipped and did his business.

An unmodified 737—possibly the last of its kind and certainly the noisiest subsonic passenger plane ever created—screamed down the North Runway, rose over the dunes separating the airport from the beach and raged out over the Pacific, looking strangely like a flying humpback whale with rigid, hypertrophied pectoral fins and racing stripes. It took nearly a minute for the residual roar of its cigar-shaped engines to fade away.

Only then did Darrel hear laughter issuing from the school grounds. The sounds were muffled, possibly coming from one of the rooms facing the parking lot, or perhaps one of the partially sunken rooms beside the gymnasium, only about thirty feet from the fence.

Darrel had a couple friends who had attended this school and he’d joined them on a few nocturnal sojourns onto the campus in his high school days. He knew that those low rooms nearer the street were the maintenance department of the facility.

Three or maybe four male voices full of youthful joviality rang out again.

Curiosity filled Darrel. Who—besides the custodial staff—would be in the high school after dark on a Tuesday? And if the janitors were laughing, what was so damn funny?

The voices sounded far too young to be those of janitors. Even if they were janitors, they sounded as if they were up to something that the school’s administration would find objectionable.

As one who appreciated privacy, Darrel did not want to interrupt the men’s frivolity. Then again, as a curious person he was drawn by the mischievous laughter.

Zipping up as he exited the bushes, he walked up the sidewalk toward the parking lot, where he would have a better view of the school.

The gate for the parking lot stood partially open, which was unusual as the gate was normally locked after the last of the faculty left for the night.

Moving cautiously and staying close to the wall of bushes lining the fence, Darrel crept up to the gate. Still hidden to anyone within the school by the shrubbery, he looked closely at the chain that should have secured the gate and saw that it had been cut through. On the ground beside the heavy steel posts lay both halves of a severed chain link.

Something’s going down here, Darrel thought as he stood snugly against the hedge. Maybe a burglary was in progress. But would burglars be laughing without any concern? More likely, it was a group of kids performing some prank.

Darrel smiled at the thought. He had executed a fair amount of monkey business in his youth, concentrating most efforts on the tried and true classics: puking fake vomit (usually a combination of split pea and chicken with rice soups) then picking at the pieces as onlookers gasped and swooned; stacking the lunch tables—on top of the auditorium no less (that prank took five hours to execute, all in the wee hours of a Monday morning)—inverting classroom furniture, replacing the treasured basketball trophy with a naked G. I. Joe Action Figure clutching an apparently used condom….

A sense of nostalgia swept through Darrel as he thought back on his high school days and carefree times, back before the weight of the world began slowly to settle on his weary shoulders. Recently, he had begun to relive that old thrill. Maybe these kids had some ideas that had not occurred to Darrel and his friends.

Peering around the bushes, he saw a dim, steady light coming from the windows of one of the maintenance rooms. He looked left and right, then he sighed with frustration. Four floodlights bathed the parking lot in a brilliant bluish-white light. Furthermore, the maintenance rooms overlooked the lot. If even one of the raucous boys in the dimly lit room happened to look out the window while Darrel crossed the asphalt, they would spot him, blowing not only their fun, but his as well.

Retreating behind the oleanders, he walked briskly down the sidewalk in the direction of his car, and then continued past to a point about eighty feet from the gate. He found one of the gaps he had previously noted and squeezed between the bushes.

Youth and a fine physique from working on his feet all day made little challenge of the fence for Darrel. He was over it in relative silence in seconds.

A thirty-foot wide service road separated the fence from the maintenance building. Though no windows lined this side of the building, Darrel still hurried across the gap and tiptoed down the short flight of stairs.

He crept up to the corner of the building and peered around the edge to confirm that no one had exited the building as he made his way into the school. Seeing no one, he began to ease his way around the corner, then stopped cold, frozen in place by a short yet blood-curdling scream. The shriek—issued from either the mouth of a woman or an out of place castrato—lasted only a few seconds and cut off sharply.

The wail had come from the maintenance room, only sixty feet away.

Holding his position, Darrel considered the possible sources of the sound. He immediately dismissed the notion of an over-excited castrato, simply for how unlikely it seemed.

Perhaps a girl or two had accompanied the prankster boys and had been shocked or surprised by the actions of one of her cohorts. The scream might have been cut short by the hand of one of the boys, slapped over her mouth to stifle the shriek before it could draw attention.

This seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation.

Darrel didn’t buy it for a second.

No, the squeal had sounded more frightened than one of surprise or even shock. Furthermore, the screamer sounded overcome with sudden, excruciating pain.

Although a cell phone was clipped to his belt, Darrel never even considered calling the police, for several reasons. Instead, he weighed his options.

The first of these was to leave as quickly and as quietly as possible and try to forget when he had seen and heard this night. The alternative was to investigate further.

Darrel had never considered himself the heroic type, yet he only briefly contemplated leaving. Less worried over the safety of the girl than curious about what had happened to her, he started to plan for a hasty retreat before exploring further.

Of course, he would have had no need to make such plans if the kids had chosen virtually any other building on the campus. He would simply have crept around to the rear window and peered inside. However, the maintenance building had no rear windows; the only windows in this sunken building were between the two doors that served each room. To get a peek inside, he would have to situate himself directly between these doors, leaving him vulnerable to ambush from both directions.

In addition, if the kids—burglars, terrorists, whatever—decided to leave before Darrel could take up a position to look in through one of these windows he would be caught red-handed. With the building to his left and a five-foot retaining wall to his right, the passageway was little more than a canal. This might not be such a big problem if confronted by mischievous kids, but burglars and terrorists were another story.

More laughter spilled from the room.

That doesn’t sound like terrorists or burglars to me, Darrel thought as he listened to the gales. Burglars tend toward quietude; terrorists are not renowned for their humor.

That settled the matter for him. Few things scared Darrel, and kids did not even make it onto his list.

Besides, he was dying to know what they were up to in there. Furthermore, he had to do something, and sooner than later; they guys were waiting for him, and the last thing he needed was to make them impatient.

He ducked low and tiptoed down the steps into the walkway. The five-foot wall to his right (which was actually the surface of the parking lot) concealed him from the street and he moved low enough to stay below the building’s windows. As he inched his way forward, his heart began to beat harder and faster, charged with adrenaline: not due to fear as much as to anticipation and sheer excitement. While he crept up to the target window, he ran over his emergency escape plan repeatedly: Kick the first one out the door in the chest, dive onto the retaining wall, then roll under the railing… get to my feet and run—not toward the gate; they’ll expect that. No, cut to the right, go back over the fence, near the car… they’ll never keep up; no one climbs fences like I do.

Then something else occurred to him and he paused long enough to let a grin flash across his face. Depending on the circumstances, these kids might be just who Darrel was waiting for. Maybe… he thought, wiping sweat from his brow despite the cool night air. Maybe it won’t be a wash after all. For the past hour, the lack of joggers and dog-walkers had disappointed Darrel. Now he felt completely in touch with every inch of his body as he crept forward.

He felt powerful.

When he made his way to the target window, he rose slowly, only enough to be able to peek through the window.

Darrel had thought that nothing could repulse him, but what he saw in the room made him instantly nauseous. The thought of averting his eyes never crossed Darrel’s mind, however. As part of his new faith, he knew of the importance of experience. Life’s entire purpose revolved around attaining experience; whether society deems the experience good or bad doesn’t matter. All experience is educational, and he could draw upon such experience for future matters that he couldn’t even imagine.

Despite Darrel’s desire to soak in all experiences—even this one—his first thought was, Jesus Christ…. These are some sick fucks.

Three young men stood in the room, revealed in the gloom by the light of a single flashlight resting on a counter and pointed at the wall. Lying supine on the central worktable was the naked body of a pretty young woman. At least she had been pretty before one or more of the men cut her belly open.

One of the men was naked, with his pants bunched up at his knees and engaged in the act of intercourse with the corpse. As he repeatedly thrust against the cooling body, he used one free hand to drape the woman’s bloody intestines over his neck and shoulders.

Another was pulling up his pants and the third was unbuckling his belt in anticipation of his upcoming turn.

Darrel could do nothing for the girl, and he wasn’t about to go to the police. But the sudden rage he felt dampened his disgust a bit and forced him to do the one thing he could do.

Standing fully, Darrel stepped directly in front of the window, knocked hard on the glass and pointed at the men. “I know your faces!” he yelled, then hopped up the retaining wall and raced across the asphalt.

A moment later, the door to the maintenance room was yanked open and all three men jumped onto the retaining wall and ran after Darrel. The last to leave the room hastily pulled up his pants and had a little trouble scaling the short wall, but quickly caught up with the others.

Throwing himself halfway up the fence, Darrel climbed over it in two seconds flat, crashed through the oleander bushes and raced toward his ugly old car. He kept expecting to hear the three men rattle and clang their way over the fence as well, and was surprised when it didn’t happen. But he never slowed down and sprinted toward his decrepit sedan.

This can work, Darrel thought as he ran. I can make this work.

But then he heard something unsettling when he was still twenty feet away from his car that made him reconsider—and increase his pace: an engine roared to life inside the schoolyard. A moment later, tires squealed as a car turned sharply and accelerated for the gate.

Darrel thanked the Lord that he’d carelessly left his keys in the ignition. He leapt into the car, cranked the key and the engine revved. The battered car may have looked like hell, but it ran perfectly. He threw the gearshift into drive and stomped on the accelerator.

As he quickly neared the gate for the high school parking lot, he saw the approaching headlights of an old Chevy Vega ahead and to the left, racing on an intercept course. For a moment, he was afraid the driver would sail into the street and ram Darrel’s car, but the Vega braked at the ramp, allowing Darrel to pass.

Darrel’s car had more power, but the Chevy handled better on curves and windy roads and had no difficulty keeping up. Darrel led them on a circuitous, serpentine course of less than a mile that culminated on his own street. His yard butted up against the airport property; the garage stood beside a vacant field that extended all the way to LAX’s north runway, interrupted periodically by an occasional nearly overgrown street or one of the many barbwire-topped chain link fences protecting the airport from terrorists and children. He passed three cars parked on the street, stopped sharply in front of his driveway and leapt out of the sedan just as the Vega came to a tire-screeching halt.

The three men were only twenty-five feet behind Darrel as he crashed through his backyard gate. He veered sharply to the right, grabbed the knob to the garage side door and hurried inside. He didn’t bother trying to lock—or even shut—the door behind him.

Without considering why their prey would lead them into a dead-end with no escape, all three men raced into the garage only a few hasty steps behind Darrel and came to a sudden halt when they discovered that the room was unlit. They froze in the inky stillness of the garage and searched for their prey with not only their eyes, but with their ears as well.

Then they heard something that made all three of them gasp in unison. It was a distinctive sound, one they all apparently knew very well.

Several shotguns pumped rounds into their barrels.

The lights suddenly came on and the three men saw Darrel standing at the far side of the room, beside a light switch. Standing in a semicircle around the intruders were five men, all armed with sawed-off shotguns. All five barrels were pointed at the three men.

“Oh, shit,” mumbled the tallest of the three.

Darrel smiled at him and said, “We aren’t cops, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He walked over to the men, frisked them and found two pistols and a long switchblade; very likely the weapon with which they had murdered the lovely young lady. He tossed the items into a counter drawer and slid it shut. He never lost his smile as he opened a cabinet and removed a long nylon rope.

The three men exchanged looks of deep worry but kept silent. They were at least smart enough to remain perfectly still. The shotguns might have had something to do with that.

Darrel took three of the six chairs ringing a card table and slid them over to the men. “Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the chairs.

The three men seriously seemed to consider trying to fight their way out of there. Two of them looked to their tallest member, searching his face for a plan of action.

Assuming that the tallest one was their leader, Darrel faced the man, then turned slightly to the armed man to his right and said, “Start with this one Dave. If they don’t sit in three seconds, waste him.”

Without hesitation, the man settled into one of the chairs. The other two quickly followed his example. He glared up at Darrel with unmasked hatred, but kept his opinions to himself.

Darrel immediately set about tying the men up. Using a wickedly long, curved knife that he held with a distinct air of reverence, he cut the rope into several lengths. The blade cut through the nylon fibers as if they were boiled noodles. Once all three men were bound with knots Darrel was sure would thwart James Bond, he resumed talking to the men in a calm, humorous and sharply jovial voice: “We’ve never done three before; just one at a time. But hell, there’s a first time for anything, isn’t there?”

Now that the three men were tied up securely, Darrel’s five friends put their guns aside. Two of them went to a cabinet standing in front of the bay door, opened it and began removing things from the shelves. They brought the items over to the card table and began arranging them in a specific, meaningful order. The three bound men only recognized a few of the items: six tall, thick candles the color of fresh blood, incense sticks and holders and a cross, hung upside down in a small frame that looked like a tiny gallows.

Ignoring the activity of his friends, Darrel said, “Our Lord is very demanding, you know. And he doesn’t want virgins or God-fearing folk, like most people think. He’s not particular about one’s background. So we try to find those who are most deserving when possible. And let’s face it, gentlemen, kidnapping, murder and necrophilia makes you guys very deserving.”

The three men must have suspected all along that they were in mortal jeopardy, but now there was no question of it. Suddenly, all three of them started struggling furiously against their restrains. But it was no use, Darrel knew. Unless one of them happened to have a laser built into his watch.

Once the candles were lit, Darrel turned the overhead lights off. The six friends formed a tight circle around the three terrified men tied to the chairs and began to chant incomprehensible things in Latin.

Darrel never stopped smiling as he and his five friends gazed at the knife with something akin to love.