Taming Cross

I roll over, push up on my elbow, and look around the junk-strewn, dirt lawn, but I don’t see her. “Merri!” I’m on my feet fast enough to make my head spin, striding toward the house. There’s not a light inside it anywhere; everything is quiet. Where the hell is she?

“Merri!”

She hits me from behind. Hits me so hard she knocks me down, and I realize as we land in a heap of tangled limbs that the buzzing sound I thought was ringing in my ears is really the cartel catching up to us.

I see their headlights and Meredith jerks me toward the back porch.

“Come on,” she hisses. “Hurry!”

I glance at the Mach, dusty and scuffed-up, lying on its side beside the porch stairs, and I wish I could run and grab it, push it up the stairs and out of sight—but I can’t. Not with one hand.

Merri jerks me along behind her, leading me through a sea of broken children’s toys and rusted car parts, and I wonder what the odds are that she knows the people who live here. I’ve got my mouth open to ask her what the plan is when she drops to her knees on the wooden porch. As the motors roar closer to us, she lifts a hatch door. I’m thinking it’s not even big enough for a dog to climb inside when she jabs me in the abs with her elbow.

“Get in there!”

“You first.”

I watch her ass disappear into the darkness and see her hand jut out. “Come on!” she hisses.

I’m not sure I can fit, but I’m leaner than I used to be, and anyway, it sounds like our pursuers are in the driveway now, so I don’t have much choice. I go in feet first, giving Merri a front-seat view of my ass. When I’m in up to my armpits, I feel her arms yank around my waist and I topple back against her. She mutters something.

“Sorry,” I hiss.

I’m clawing at the boards that make up part of the porch and also our little shelter’s walls, trying to take some of my weight off her, when I hear a car’s motor yards away.

Motherfuck. I pull the gun out of my pants with my right hand. I feel Merri move behind me and I want to tell her I’ve got this, but I’m too afraid to break the silence.

The motor dies. It sounds like just one car. The rest of the cartel has driven on; once their noise fades, a deathly quiet settles. Then I hear a man’s voice. He sounds winded. I figure he’s excited about spotting my bike, but instead I realize he’s talking into a phone.

“Yes, he is really dead. Yes.” There’s a brief pause, during which I hear the click of a cigarette lighter. With the gun still in my hand, I train my eyes on the boards to my right, the part of the porch that separates us from our pursuer, but I can’t see him. Can only hear him. “Yes, we are hunting them like dogs.” Another pause. The man laughs. I smell cigarette smoke. “I don’t know about the clinic. It’s supposed to be the Virgin’s place.”

I’m going cross-eyed trying to look through the boards when all of a sudden, I feel Meredith’s body shaking against mine. I wish so badly that I could reach my arm back and hold her hand—or something—but it would be stupid to let go of the gun. I turn my body slightly sideways, trying to lean into her, but it doesn’t work. We’re too cramped. I can’t move.

Damnit, she’s starting to cry. I can hear her small, wet breaths.

“I got to do a walk around this house,” the guy is saying. Pause. “Oh, you want to blow me instead? How about I come over as soon as I’m done here and bring some of my tar?” Another pause. Merri’s body is shaking so much now I decide to tuck the gun into my boot. “Then we plot how we will get the power.” The man laughs as I turn, with effort, to face Meredith.

“From my cock,” I hear the guy say with a chuckle.

With a final glance above me, at the hatch door, and just a breath of nervous hesitation, I wrap my right arm around the woman crouching behind me and bring her head to my shoulder.

She’s still shaking. I lean against her, just a little, and she wraps an arm around my waist and buries her face in my throat.

It’s okay, Merri. It’s okay.

Beneath my concern for the woman I’m supposed to be saving, I’m tense with wondering if the dude will come and find us, but then I hear him say “fuck it,” and I hear a stomp that I assume is hombre putting out his cigarette.

Hail Mary, that would be some f-ing awesome luck.

And then his car door slams, the engine purrs, and he drives off.

I’m still shaking minutes after Tito drives away, and my savior’s arm is still around my back. I squeeze my eyes shut and take a big, deep breath, grateful that I’m not alone in this. I’m grateful for all of half a minute, and then I shove the stranger away.

I reach around him to throw the trap door open, and as soon as the moonlight beams down on us, my terror and fear bubble up, and all of a sudden I’m furious.

“Do you know what you did tonight? You killed Jesus!”

The guy frowns, looking pensive as he holds onto the walls to keep his balance in the cramped space. “It’s been mentioned.”

“Do you know what this means for me? It means I’ll never, ever, ever get out of this country in one piece! Neither will you! We’re f**ked! I’m sorry I don’t curse usually, but when there’s only one word that works you have to use that word and we are f**ked! Royally f**ked!” I storm up through the trap door and fall onto the porch, belatedly realizing that I’m crying again.

The guy is right behind me. His hand is on my back. I swat it off and stumble to my feet.

“What’s your big plan? I hope it involves a helicopter or a tank because otherwise we’re going in an unmarked grave!” I cover my face, crying again, almost hysterical. “And the clinic…”

It’s my fault. It’s all my stupid, selfish fault.

I shove him in the chest. “What’s your plan?” Before he can answer, I throw up my hands. “What’s your fracking name?”

“You said fracking.” His eyebrow arches.

“Yes, I did. So the frack what?”

“I love Battlestar.”

“I don’t see how that matters.”

I turn away from him, because all I can think about in this second is that if I’d just gone with Jesus, probably no one would be dead. There’s a chance he might have killed me just to make a point, but there’s a chance he might not have. Jesus liked me. He might have forgiven me, and there would have been no blood shed. No dead kids. No one in danger.

“It doesn’t matter,” the guy says with a shrug of his shoulder. “But it’s cool.”

“Who are you?” I put my hand on my hip. “I want to know, for real this time.”

He reaches down into his boot to get the gun, pointing it at the ground as he raises up to face me again. “Evan. Does that help?”