The Last Play of the Game
Riley took a slow puff of his Yakima and leaned against the door of the borrowed ’45 Sil-Vera to wait. A hundred and fifty miles was a long way to drive this time of night, and the broken front seat had done nothing but aggravate his knee even more. He reached down to gently probe the swelling under his pant leg.
An abandoned warehouse in the middle of fucksville wasn’t his first choice of a swap location, but Jimmy had insisted. And, in the end, Jimmy was the one willing to walk away from the deal. Riley took another puff and went over the plan for the hundredth time. Apologize for the wait. Make the trade. Get home in one piece. It had all seemed easy enough on the drive over. Now, staring out at the blank darkness of the Bluehorn desert surrounding him, his life savings in an orange duffel bag at his feet, he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d made a mistake.
A short man in a ground length duster jacket stepped out of the warehouse. The truck headlights painted him in sharp relief against the faded rust covered walls. He moved quickly towards Riley, making a cutting motion with his hand across his throat and pointing at the truck. Riley got the hint and killed the headlights.
The goateed thug took a quick lap around the truck, checking inside the cab and bed to make sure there weren’t any surprises. Up close he smelled like bleach and teriyaki sauce. A gust of ocean wind blew the man’s jacket open and Riley pretended not to notice the pistol strapped to his waist. Of course they’d be armed. The venn diagram of people trading vials of nano-cells and people who carried small arms had to be a circle. Riley picked the duffel bag up and clutched it tight across his chest. Stupid. This whole plan was stupid. That didn’t stop him from limping behind the thug to the warehouse.
An overhead door lurched upwards with a rattle of chains to reveal Jimmy Clamps seated in an office chair. The harsh overhead lighting angled over his shoulders combined with his ubiquitous fur-lined cape drenched him in shadow. Billy, his second favorite reptile, dug his claws into his shoulder and let out a silent hiss. Two goons, both nearly the size of the steel shelves behind them, flanked him on either side. One of them tugged a faded ball cap down tighter in an attempt to obscure his face.
“I got the money,” Riley called out. What a stupid thing to say. Of course he had the money. He held his canvas shield away from his chest in an attempt to block out the blinding light.
“Toss it up here. Slow,” Jimmy Clamps said. “Billy don’t like sudden movements too much, you understand?” One of his hands reached up to tenderly stroke the reptile’s blue spiked chin.
The bag landed halfway between them in a heap. The cheap zipper broke with the impact, spilling tight wads of cash onto the concrete. Jimmy gave a quick nod and the goon wearing a hoodie rushed forward to scoop the bag up. He slipped the strap of the bag over his head before starting to paw through it.
“It’s all there,” Riley said. “You got the meds?”
The goon with the bag paused his search to hold up a clear vial filled with an amber liquid. Riley’s knee throbbed in pain at the sight. Four years of fighting his tightwad insurance would be fixed in ten minutes by the free-market. A strange sensation built in his chest, a lightness that bubbled out to encompass his body in a glowing warmth. Now he just had to get home.
A rumble of metal against concrete sounded the far corner of the warehouse, deep inside the pool of shadows created by the angled lighting. Both goons exchanged a quick glance. The one with the ball cap reached down to loosen his underarm holster with studied casualness. Riley reached for his necklace, slowly, and gave Sister Maria’s hair a quick tussle. Hail Mary, full of… the words slipped off the tip of his tongue. Goddamn it. Mary better be full of luck tonight.
Jimmy boomed with laughter at the noise, kicking his feet out in front of him and leaning back with the gusto of a man half his weight and twice as wealthy. Billy let out a chorus of annoyed clicks at the sudden change in position. “Retro, find out who just tripped back there. If it’s your friend you begged me to hire…” The threat died in mid-air. “And stand up straight! We talked about this, remember?”
The thug who’d checked out the truck puffed his chest out like a balloon animal as he pulled the pistol from his belt. “Sure thing, boss.”
“Ten thousand plus an extra two for taking so long,” Riley said, while the toe of his sneaker tried to dig clear down to China. “Can we hurry it up? My old lady gave me a curfew and I’m not tryna to catch a charge,”
“You’re a week late,”
“And I’m giving you an extra two grand to make up for it. Don’t tell me Billy’s running out of treats at home,”
A man screamed from inside the warehouse. The voice, hoarse and raw with pain, cut off abruptly under a screech of metal. The overhead lights blew out with an arc of blue electricity. Darkness settled over the warehouse like a blanket. Both remaining goons spun on their heels, compact sub-machine guns swinging up in a synchronous motion. Targeting lasers flickered out in a staccato pattern as they searched for the source of the noise.
“Time to go, boss,” The goon holding the bag said after a single heartbeat. He scooped up Billy and tucked him into the front pocket of his hoodie. “Victor’s pulling the van up,”
A sudden thrum and soft red lights signaled the emergency backup generators turning on. The goon with the ball cap looked like a rotating Christmas tree as he tried to cover every angle all at once. “I told you we shouldn’t have come,” he whimpered. “They say he always hunts at the south shore this time of year— “
Jimmy stood and slapped the ball-cap off of the goon’s head. “Shut. The fuck. Up. You think I bought you all that gear because you were a good boy this year?”
The pulsing red lights illuminated a symmetrical lined tattoo that covered the back of the goon’s skull. Cords of muscle flexed under the black t-shirt he wore. He didn’t say anything, just jammed his hat back on his head and turned towards the parking lot where Riley waited.
Riley took a shuffling step backwards as the goon approached. The warmth from before blossomed into flames that spread like wildfire. This hadn’t been part of the plan at all. “Hey man, stop. Stop! I sold my car for this. You can’t just leave!”
The goon holding the bag let out a piercing scream. His gun clattered to the ground in slow motion, his hands reaching up to keep the rest of his teeth inside his mouth. He shouldn’t have bothered. A whip cracked out from the darkness like a rifle shot and the goon crumpled to the ground.
Riley didn’t wait to see if he was still alive. He hobbled behind the tail lights of his truck and did his best to crawl inside the tail pipe. Whatever he’d walked into the middle of clearly wasn’t his business. The thought of going back home to an empty apartment and shoving yet another round of pain killers into his knee forced him to peek around the truck. He couldn’t leave without the meds.
A heavy thunder of gunfire sent a shower of shell casings across the floor. The goon with the tattoo sprayed wildly in the general direction of anything that moved. Billy squealed in pain, his stubby legs flailing as his mouth chomped down on the orange strap pinning him under the fallen goon. He broke free with a snap of his teeth and high-tailed it for the closest set of shelves. Jimmy sprinted after him, his cape billowing behind him.
The collapsed goon reached out a hand and grabbed hold of Jimmy’s cape as he ran past. “Help me,” he wheezed as sparks ricocheted over his head.
Jimmy stumbled to his knees, but ripped his cape out of the dying man’s grip and kept crawling. “Don’t run from me, you ungrateful insect!”
A dark blur swooped from the top floor of the warehouse. Only at the last second could Riley make out the feet that crashed through the tattooed goon’s chest. The gunfire cut out abruptly as they fell in a heap, replaced by the sound of punches and curses as they rolled end over end.
Riley fought to control his breathing as he stared at the bloody orange bag caught under the goon. Behind the tangy electric fear drying his mouth, he felt his heart kick over the same way it had when he’d still been able to compete. If he closed his eyes he could smell the paint on the artificial turf, could taste the sweat on his face and hear the crowd chanting his name as he took the snap. Down by five points with seconds on the clock had been his Shangri-La. Just don’t think about how that game ended.
He took off like a limping rocket, his eyes filled with the orange bag covered in blood. The fear from before faded behind the wild adrenaline pushing him onwards. Thirty steps. Twenty steps. He shot a frantic glance towards where the sounds of fighting had stopped. The tattooed goon lay on the ground, a sticky pool of blood practically glowing in the red light. No time to stop. He stumbled the last two steps and slipped into a skidding u-turn. Blood specks soaked into his shirt as he tucked the duffel bag against his chest with one hand. The other hand dug through the goon’s hoodie in search of the vial. The glass bottle was barely in his hands before he’d started running again.
A black bola whizzed around his feet and Riley skidded like a meat crayon across concrete. The stiff canvas bag nearly broke a rib as he fell on top of it. He rolled to sit up, slipping a finger under the wires wrapped around his feet. Sharp pain cut through the thin skin on his fingers. Instead, he grabbed for the heavy ends of the bola and started unwrapping them as fast as he could.
He froze as he heard the sound of boots scraping across concrete behind him. Riley slowly looked up to see neon green eyes staring at him from behind a gray camouflaged mask. A matching grey patterned cloak billowed behind him with the sheen of precision machined armor. The attacker pointed one gleaming claw at Riley. A warning to stay down.
“I’m not with these guys,” Riley said, the words spilling out of him like vomit. “They were the only ones who had the medicine! I didn’t see your face. I can’t go to the cops. Please, please!”
The attacker seemed to pause, their head cocking to the side as if considering what he had said. The moment of confusion was all Jimmy needed. He stalked around the corner of the shelving with Billy on his shoulder and a pistol held outstretched in both hands. “Can’t hide from this,” he said, and fired point blank into the attacker’s helmet from less than two feet away.
Ping! The Sil-Vera’s windshield shattered from the ricochet. Jimmy’s mouth dropped, his face frozen in disbelief as the attacker rounded on him with an outstretched fist. The crack of armor against bone threw Jimmy through a nearby shelf and out into the next aisle. The shadowy figure stalked off into the darkness after him.
The final wire from the bola came free. Riley lurched to his feet and stumbled towards the truck. One hand dug in his jeans pocket for the keys while the other held the bag over his back as a mostly useless shield. He hadn’t run this fast in years, but with this much adrenaline he could have made the run on bloody stumps.
The front seat of his truck was covered in glass, but Riley dove in anyway. “C’mon, c’mon,” he muttered as the ancient engine sputtered before roaring to life. He threw the truck into reverse and stepped on the accelerator as hard as his knee would allow. A curb appeared out of the darkness and smacked into the truck with a loud bang. He narrowly dodged a no-parking sign as he tried to get to the highway. With a final spray of loose gravel under the tires he made it.
In the rear-view mirror he watched as the attacker dragged Jimmy out of the warehouse by his cape and threw him into the parking lot like a beached whale. Jimmy stayed where he fell.
Riley howled as he pushed the truck faster and faster down I-45 towards freedom. Exit signs for suburbs no one lived in flashed past him in a blur of green and white. One hand crept down to the seat, searching through shards of glass until he found the vial. Under the streetlights he saw blood dripping down the curved glass and onto his pants. Was it worth it? All he wanted was to walk without pain. It hadn’t been his fault Jimmy had been attacked.
He tried to remember what the goon’s face had looked like before it had been turned to strawberry jelly. By the time he reached the city he realized he no longer cared.
The Last Play of the Game was originally published in Sixty Minute Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.