“You have to let go of my arm, Laneesha.”
“I’m afraid you go over there, he gonna jump up and grab you.”
“That isn’t going to happen.”
“I seen the movies. He gonna jump up.”
Sara tugged her arm away, a move both sudden and angry. “He’s not going to jump up! He’s not going to do anything ever again except rot! I killed him, Laneesha!”
Then the trembling started, and the tears came. Sara stood there for a moment, feeling alone and impotent and dangerous, and then she felt Laneesha hugging her, giving her comfort, and Sara regained control.
“There…” Sara cleared her throat, “there may be more of them, out there. Let me check the body and then we’ll get back to Martin, and the camp. Cell phones don’t work out here, but we have that radio the captain gave us. We can call for help.”
Laneesha released her. Sara approached the body reverently, kneeling next to it and placing two fingers on its neck to feel for a pulse she knew wouldn’t be there. She jerked her hand back when she felt the broken windpipe beneath the skin.
Stay focused, get this over with.
Sara crinkled her nose against his odor and began to pat him down. His pockets were empty except for a rusty fork and a length of balled up twine.
The poor bastard.
She was putting the twine into her pocket when the man jerked up into a sitting position and lunged at her.
Tyrone wasn’t sure how they’d gone from being friends to holding hands, but he didn’t mind. He’d been with girls before, but never anything more than a quick lay at the club house. To bangers, girls were like liquor and drugs; a way to have some fun and kill some time. While Tyrone indulged, he was never really okay with the whole hooking-up thing. Not just because of diseases and babies and stuff like that, but because two of the people he respected most in the world were his moms and grams, and if they deserved respect then other women did too.
So Tyrone never actually had what he could call a girlfriend. For him, joining a gang was a financial opportunity, a better way to make some cash than some dead-end fast food job. His family needed money, and Tyrone took on that responsibility. He lived the thug life, but didn’t breathe it like some of the other dogs in the club, and certainly wasn’t going to do it forever. Getting arrested for hitting a liquor store was probably the best thing that could have happened to him. It gave him a chance to reevaluate things.
Holding Cindy’s hand, simple act that it was, felt better and more real than anything he’d done while rolling with the People’s Nation. It didn’t matter that Cindy was white, or a drug addict. She radiated an inner strength, and had plans for what she’d do when she was released. Cindy was going to get a job waiting tables and save up money to go back to school. A simple ambition, but Tyrone had been without ambition for so long it made him realize the simple things in life were the ones worth doing. He’d always been good at math. Maybe he should try to do something with it. Become an accountant, or some shit like that.
“We should check on Tom,” Cindy glanced at the tent. “He shouldn’t be in there.”
“I think he’s lookin’ for his meds. Sara didn’t give him none tonight.”
“Still, he could be messing things up. Or stealing stuff.”
“True that, but we know what Tommy Boy is like when he’s off his pills. You wanna have to deal with him running around, trippin’ out on everything, ‘specially when things are falling apart?”
Cindy shook her head. Tyrone gently rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. Too many people would rather fight to the death to defend their bullheaded positions. Tyrone was impressed whenever someone changed their mind. It meant acting on reason, and with reason came self-improvement, as Sara often said.
“Where do you think everyone else is?” Cindy asked.
“Dunno.”
“What happened to Meadow?”
“Dunno. Sounded like someone dragged him off.”
“How about Sara and Laneesha? And Georgia? And what about Martin?”
“Don’t do no good to speculate on what we don’t know. They either all okay, or they ain’t. We find out when we find out.”
“Wassup, bitches?”
Tyrone turned toward Sara’s tent, and saw Tom posing there. What Tom was holding made Tyrone’s neck muscles bunch up.
Where did he get a gun?
The first time Tyrone ever held a piece was at age thirteen. An old Saturday night special, thirty-eight caliber, with a history going back dozens of crimes. It was put in his hands by Stony, a cold-as-ice muthafucker who ran the local club like it was the Marines. To Stony, guns weren’t toys to play with or bling to flash. They were tools. Like any tool, it was only as good as the person who held it.
Tyrone learned to shoot in a slumhouse basement, plinking empty soda cans propped onto a stacked pile of dead sod from fifty feet away. There wasn’t no gangsta-style double gun shooting, and certainly no holding a weapon sideways, like Tom was doing now.
Aiming right at Tyrone.
“You never point a weapon at somethin’ you don’ intend to kill,” Tyrone said, keeping his voice even.
Tom laughed. “What’s wrong, brutha? Making you nervous?”
“Tom! Put that down!”
“You gonna make me, skank?”
Tyrone gave Cindy’s hand a tight squeeze, told her under his breath to be cool, then gave her a little shove to the side and took a step toward Tom. Tom switched his aim to Cindy, which wasn’t Tyrone’s intent. He wanted Cindy out of the line of fire.
“Tommy boy, put that shit down before you hurt yourself.”
Tom swung back to Tyrone. “You think you’re so badass, Tyrone. You and Meadow. Bangin’ and jackin’ and doin’ drive-bys and shit. Don’t look so tough now.”
Tyrone took another step forward. Tom’s aim was twitching back and forth. That sideways grip looked cool in the movies, but unless you were point blank it was real tough to hit anything. It was tough enough to hit anything with both hands on the weapon and a steady target. Aiming a gun was a lot harder than it looked. Tyrone had been in one firefight, him and a brother named Maurice against two boppers from a rival outfit. It went down in an alley, and they were twenty yards away from each other with no cover. Sixteen shots fired, no one hitting anything except for bricks and asphalt before both cliques ran off.
Still, Tyrone didn’t want to get ventilated by a lucky shot, and having a gun pointed anywhere close to him was a sobering situation. Time was moving so slow that Tyrone felt like he could sense each blood cell inchworming through his veins. He desperately wanted to get his life back on track, to live up to his potential, to make his mama and grandmamma proud. Dying out in the woods because some loony kid was off his meds was not the way he wanted to go out.
“You ever shot a gun before, Tom?”
Tom sneered. “Plenty of times.”
He was lying. Tyrone was good at spotting lies, but with Tom it was easy. Every third thing out of that kid’s mouth was BS.
“I bet you a ten-spot you can’t hit that log Martin been sittin’ on.”
Tom glanced sideways. “I can hit that, no problem.”
Tyrone put his hands in his pockets, all cool and casual, and walked two steps closer. He was fifteen feet away from Tom. As soon as the boy gave him a chance, he was going to bum rush the fool. No use trying to talk down a head case.
“I give you three tries to nail it.”
“You really don’t think I can hit that log?”
Tyrone took another step. “I’m puttin’ my money on it.”
“Log’s too easy.” Tom grinned, his eyes glinting in the firelight, and then he switched his aim. “How about I try for Cindy instead?”