Mer Rouge (Part 31)

His arms were outstretched like the crucified Christ. Wrists and ankles tied by leather straps. A single wash rag, dampened by torrents of water, was draped over his face. Sheriff Dirk reached for the faucet above the prison’s head and opened it wide. Water splashed onto the rag and the prisoner wiggled and gagged to no avail. Off to the brightened corner of this colorless and soiled cellar, Deputy Simpson protested. “Well shit Dirk! Is this the Spanish Inquisition?”

Dirk looked the deputy dead in the eyes and opened the faucet again. The prisoner resumed the squealing and gagging and Simpson shook his head and looked to the floor. The sheriff cut off the water and the prisoner cursed. “What would you know about that?” he asked his deputy.

“I just know in the year of our lord, 1983, this seems a little — I dunno —inhumane!”

“Some techniques stand the test of time,” the sheriff said. And then he removed the rag from the prisoner’s face and leaned forward. “Isn’t that right?” he asked the man.

“I told you! I don’t know shit about the priest!” Hutch screamed.

“Nothing huh?”

“All he said was he wasn’t Catholic!”

“Shit,” Dirk uttered. He draped the rag back over Hutch’s face and put his hand on the faucet. Before it could be turned, Deputy Simpson stepped in. “Why don’t we give it a break, yeah?” he suggested to Dirk.

“What would that do?”

“It might give the man some time to, ya know, think things over.”

Dirk chuckled at the suggestion and nodded. He approached the deputy in a somewhat minacious manner and rested his hand on his shoulder. “Take him back to his cell,” the sheriff ordered. Then he patted Simpson on the cheek. Once when his superior was out of earshot, he removed the wet rag from Hutch’s face, undid the straps, and helped the prisoner to his feet.

“Thank you for that,” Hutch said.

“Shut the fuck up and let’s go.”

The deputy took him by the elbow and marched him up the stairs to the main cell block. First they stopped by a linen closet. The deputy gave him a stack of dry clothes and they continued their march, which ended in front of Hutch’s cell. Moses was already in his bunk. Simpson unlocked the cell and nudged Hutch inside. When he closed it and locked it, he rested his elbows on the bars and gave Hutch a stern glare. “You better tell him what he wants to hear,” the deputy warned. “Cuz I can almost promise you that something worse is coming down the pike.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 30)

The smoldering remains of the roadside motel reflected in the silvery shades of Sheriff DuPont. Under the early morning hours, as the sun slowly crept towards its high zenith and the dew blanketed the greenery, the air reeked of putrified swamp and charred wood. The lawman stood with fists to his waist and slight gut poking over his trousers. He sniffled a bit. Then scratched his cheek. The fire department was wrapping up and was fixin to depart. The old man was milking the medical attention and police investigation for all it’s worth. “I’m tellin ya, the man was a monk! Or a ninja! I’ve seen this before! In Okinawa, ya see!” he explained to Deputy Chaz.

Chaz was understandably skeptical. “Uh huh. And what about those other two fellas?”

“Goddamn those two fellas. A couple of queers. Either that or brothers.”

“So you’re telling me a couple of queers checked in, got into a firefight with a ninja. Then a car exploded which is what caused the fire. And you managed to chase these fellas off by cutting loose your M16?”

“Yessir! That’s exactly what happened!”

“Now Earl, just how the hell did you get your hands on an M16?” The Sheriff butted in.

“By god, I’ve kept it since my fightin days!”

“This is an M16A2 model,” the sheriff continued. “The Marine Corps only started using it this year! You and I both know that when you was in Iwo Jima, you used an M1!”

“Hell!” the old man brushed off.

“Hellfire, Earl. The recoil on these things are really something. You need to be more careful in your advanced age!”

“Sheriff, I can still shoot the pecker off a buck from 500 yards!”

“Get your ass outta here!” DuPont shouted, handing him back his weapon.

The old man stumbled off and Chaz pulled a lighter and a cigarette from his shirt pocket and offered one to the sheriff. DuPont declined, opting for a wad of Copenhagen in his lower lip. They spat and smoked as they considered the blackened rubble laid before them. “That old man is full of shit,” Chaz said. “I personally think it’s a good thing this rat trap finally got burnt to hell.”

“Yup.”

“What have you found out?”

“Welp, they reckon it was two fires instead of one that caused this mess.”

“Two fires?”

“Yessir. One in the room on the far end and another from the car explosion.”

“The old man said nuthin about a room fire.”

“Yup. That one appeared to have been caused by gasoline. The other un, under that car, that was probably C4.”

“C4?! Jesus sheriff!”

DuPont nodded and spat. He gnawed a little on the tobacco and thought. “Say Chaz, do you remember those fires off in Moorhouse Parish in about ‘67 or ‘68? They all seemed to have been centered around the house of that judge they have out there in Mer Rouge.”

“Hell, I was still in grade school then.”

“Yeah. I seem to recall the old folks staying away from that town. They called it a lake of fire. Maybe they were kidding, but I always reckoned that’s why they called it Mer Rouge.”

The deputy shrugged. “Do you want me to contact the Moorhouse Sheriff? Tell em we might have some bad dudes on the loose?”

“No. Leave that to me.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 29)

He waltzed back into the empty parking lot and opened the rear window to the Gremlin. There wasn’t much inside. A few pornos and socks. The priest picked up a porno, the March issue of Penthouse, and thumbed through it. He nodded and rolled it up. After shutting the window, he eyeballed the poorly lit parking lot and saw an old Ford F-100 parked in the rear of the lobby. The priest presumed it was the old man’s. He walked up to it and dug through the rusted up bed and found a gas can and a garden hose. Then he took out a pocket knife, cut the hose, and stuck one end into the tank and the other in the gas can and siphoned the gas. When it was full, he capped the can and carried it to the other end of the motel directly to his room. The time was 11:37pm. The lights were out in the room next door.

The priest unlocked the door to his room and cut on the lights. The beds weren’t made and there were finger prints on the mirror and two mice were fighting on the bathroom sink. To the right was the adjoining door to the brothers’ room. He put his ear to the door and listened. Not a sound was heard. Were they sleeping? This was a little too easy, the priest thought. But not wasting the opportunity, he cut off the lights and began picking the lock with a hairpin. When the catch released, the knob turned smoothly and the priest readied the .38. Then he took the rolled up Penthouse and stuffed one end into the gas can. Cautiously, he peeked open the door. Through the dark, he squinted his eyes to see still lumps under the covers of each bed. Content, he lit the protruding end of the porno on fire and quickly rushed into the room and sat the gas can between the beds. Once back across the threshold, he lifted the .38 and shouted. “See you in hell!”. He fired the gun. The bullet pierced the gas can and the room erupted into an inferno.

But through the heat and deluge of fire, the priest realized he had been had by the oldest trick in the book. As the flames spread across the beds, no one was underneath the covers. It was only rolled up blankets and pillows. Recognizing the deception, the priest rushed back out to the Gremlin as fire overtook the motel. Once in the driver’s seat, his godly senses began tingling. Without a second to spare, he leapt out of the vehicle as his stolen death can exploded into a hellish mushroom. Laying face down on the pavement, half conscious and the Gremlin ablaze, the priest came to and climbed to his knees. Gunshots rang from the roof and ricochet around him. With the shotgun lassoed around his shoulder, he unloaded it in the direction of the gun blasts and hurried his way backward toward the treeline.

Interrupting this exchange, the old man busted out of the lobby with an automatic M16 and unleashed it. “Take that you cocksuckers!”

But both the brothers and the priest disappeared into the darkness.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 28)

His eyes grew heavy and his mind wandered. It was another lonely road to god knows where in a godforsaken land just south of the Arkansas border. The priest hadn’t felt the comfort of a warm bed in days and the gas gauge was still reading a quarter tank despite driving it over a hundred miles. It must’ve been broken, the priest thought. Or a 1970 AMC Gremlin simply had one hell of a gas mileage. He drove through Mer Rouge before turning down yet another lonesome highway. And eight miles outside of town, he made a right onto Kurtzy Road. There was no particular reason. He did it on a whim. And as the gravel kicked up beneath the Gremlin, leaving clouds of dust in its wake, the priest took out a cigarette and popped out the car’s cigarette lighter. As he tried to use it, the vehicle hit an unexpected pothole, causing him to drop it to the floorboards. “Goddamnit,” he said to himself. When he reached down to grab it, the road suddenly turned smooth, and when he popped back up to look out the windshield he saw nothing but new pavement in front of him. “Thank fucking Christ,” he uttered. He had completely missed the heavy road construction behind him.

But Kurtzy Road came to an end and the priest made a right turn. Again, on a whim. A few miles down the empty highway, where the pines grew tall, the priest couldn’t believe his eyes. It was a sign for St. John Chrysostom Greek Orthodox Church. He turned down the dirt road where, to his disappointment, he found the church abandoned and in disrepair. He contemplated telling himself ‘fuck it’ and lay down camp for the night, but that had been his plan the previous four nights. It was time for a real night’s sleep. He restarted the engine and resumed his southbound journey down whatever cursed highway this was and found a roadside motel just miles later. The parking lot was empty. He pulled up to the lobby and sauntered inside. No one was behind the reception desk.

“Hello?” he called out.

He approached the desk and dinged on the bell. When that didn’t work, he dinged on it harder. Seven minutes later, the old man with his WWII cap, now inexplicably turned backwards, and flannel red robe stumbled from the back and cursed at him. “Well shit, father, you should have hollered for me!”

“I did! Turn your hearing aids up, old man!”

“Well excuse the shit out of me for trying to squeeze in a nap! I rarely have more than one tenant a night!”

“But the parking lot’s empty.”

“Yeah, a couple of homos walked in off the street.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said A COUPLE OF HOMOS—“

“I heard that part! What did these fellas look like?”

“What do you care? Are you a queer too?”

“Shut the fuck up before I slap those dentures out your mouth! Tell me what these guys looked like!”

“Jesus, padre, alright! To be honest, I couldn’t tell! They were wearing shades, leather, a helmet, and were carrying two large duffle bags!”

“Shit,” the priest whispered beneath his breath. He stroked his beard and thought. “Alright,” he finally said, “gimme the room next to theirs.”

The old man shook his head and slapped the room key on the desk. “You people fuckin disgust me,” he said. The priest dropped a $50 bill and told the old man to stick it up his ass.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (part 27)

On the empty shores of the Boeuf River, with the calm moonlight above, the brothers dumped the half naked body of the police officer into the miry waters and then drifted on into West Carrol Parish where they concealed the abducted Oak Ridge cruiser under brush near an abandoned cotton field. Then they wandered three miles into town without bearing so much as a sweat while toting two large duffel bags. When they found a grimy roadside motel near Chickasaw, they strolled into the lobby and dinged on the call bell. They did this for about five minutes before an old haggard bastard sporting WWII cap and red flannel robe stumbled from the back and rubbed his eyes. When he saw the brothers, he began to bitch. “A little late ain’t it boys?”

The brothers, holding firm and still donning their reflective shades, looked daggers. “It’s 9:30 in the evening, sir,” one said.

The old man fumbled around the front desk before finding his dark rimmed glasses. And when he put them on, he narrowed his eyes to see the clock on the other side of the lobby. “I’ll be goddamned,” he said. “I must’ve dozed off early.”

He took the men’s money and handed them a room key. The brothers picked up the loaded duffle bags and carried them around the corner to the farthest street-facing room from the lobby. Once inside, they dropped the bags onto the bed and closed the shades. One brother removed his leather jacket and shirt while the other inspected his gunshot wound. As predicted, where a gash of torn flesh would have meant certain death for a mortal, this wound had already healed. But blood remained crusted around the now scarred gash and the other brother gently cleaned it away. Once finished, they unzipped the duffle bag and took out a large cat-sized statue of a golden eagle. After clearing off the central nightstand and moving the beds to the outer walls, they placed the eagle on the nightstand and reached into the same duffle bag. They pulled out two olden swords measuring nearly two feet in length. And they each took their gladius’ and they knelt before the golden idol, which underneath its talons read the ancient Roman initials SPQR.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 26)

It was sundown when the Priest rolled into Morehouse Parish. On the outskirts of Oak Ridge, he saw the abandoned Harley and sidecar off to the side of the lonesome highway. He pulled over and stepped out of the Gremlin with the Smith & Wesson ready. The engine ran with the front lights shining onto the bike. He walked around it. He checked the sidecar. Nothing. Then he looked up. Headed in his direction was a torrent of motorcycles roaring down the thoroughfare. The priest reholstered the .38 and calmly walked back to the vehicle. As the gaggle of motorbikes passed, a few of them stopped. There were maybe three dozen of them. One popped down the kickstand and dismounted. Sporting a half helmet and cutoff sleeves, the biker approached the abandoned Harley and looked it up and down. His compatriots all stopped. They had both the Harley and the Priest surrounded. Then the dismounted biker shook his head and spat. “Flat tire huh?” he said to the priest.

“It appears so.”

“Is it yours?”

“No sir.”

The biker stood with his hands on his hips. “Well shit,” he said. Then he whistled. “Hey Dirk! Get yur ass over here!”

A bike roared up from the rear and threw down the kickstand. Its rider stepped off and lowered the gaiter covering his face. The priest’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t recognize the name but the face triggered a faint memory. Dirk was huge. Maybe six foot four. He wore a denim vest with a bare chest underneath. The tattoo over his heart was hardly visible but it was clearly that of Aryan Nation. From underneath his smock, the Priest laid his hand on the butt of the .38. But the man, Dirk, approached the derelict Harley and nodded. “This is Oak Ridge’s problem,” he said. Then he turned to the priest who was seated on the hood of his stolen Gremlin. “Where are you off to, father?”

The priest shrugged and deflected. “Oh I was just wonderin up north.”

“Do you have any business in Morehouse Parish?”

“None that I’m aware of,” he lied.

Dirk glared at him something fierce which was followed by a long silence. “Well keep wonderin north. And stay the hell out of my parish,” he warned. Then he lifted the gaiter back over his face and climbed onto the bike. Dirk rode out in front of the herd and the army of hellraisers followed him northbound.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 25)

Sirens wailed. Smoke from the burning barbershop towered into the sky. The priest looked to the other side of the road and saw another column of black smolder rising above the buildings. He bolted in its direction. A block and a half away, he found his beige Chrysler set ablaze. With sirens ringing nearer, the priest re-concealed the shotgun under his smock and calmly sauntered away from the fire and towards a nearby neighborhood. Down the calmly streets, children waved to him as they played in the front yard. Grandmothers smiled at him as he passed by. From a speeding pickup, one redneck heaved a carton of eggs at his back. “Fuckin Catholics!” the redneck yelled. But the priest kept his head down as he wandered down a cul-de-sac where he noticed an old 1970 AMC Gremlin. He looked around for passersby. “No one will miss this piece of shit,” he said to himself. He took the butt of the Mossberg and smashed open the driver’s side window and opened the door. He knelt down and hotwired the vehicle like it wasn’t shit. Then he cleaned up the shattered glass in the driver’s seat and sat down. When he pulled down the sun visor, the keys fell into his lap. “I guess somebody wanted this car stolen,” he said aloud. With a quarter of a tank of gas, he started down the direction of interstate 20 towards Louisiana.

But the brothers were miles ahead of him. It took them less than an hour to reach Moorhouse Parish. By that late afternoon, they took the exit off I-20 and headed north towards Oak Ridge. Near the city limits, they pulled off the empty road and climbed off the bike. A brother unsheathed a switchblade and punctured a tire and then they waited on passing vehicles. Another hour later, near dusk, a squad car rolled up. It was Oak Ridge police. The officer climbed out and adjusted his pants. “Flat tire?” he asked

“Yessir,” one brother responded politely in a faux southern affect. “Perhaps you could give us a ride into town.”

The officer nodded. “Heh. I haven’t seen one of those sidecars since Saigon.”

“Yessir. They’re not that common.”

“Where can I find myself one of those? I have a Harley just like that and I’d like to get an attachment. You know, for the wife n all.”

The brother scrambled for words. “Uh, I’m sure you can find plenty of those down in New Orleans.”

“Nar’lens?”. The officer spat. “Is that where you boys are from? Yur tags say Tennessee.”

“Right. Well uh, our family lives down that way. My brother and I are headed back to Tennessee.”

“Jeez. Yur takin the long way. Yur almost to Arkansas!” But the officer agreed and he opened the back driver’s side door. He bent down to clear out shit in the backseat and tossed it to the front. “It might not be the most comfortable ride back here, but…”

Before he could finish, a brother pulled him up, held him, and poked the switchblade into his throat. The other brother took the officer’s service revolver and checked the cylinder. “We appreciate the ride, officer,” the brother said, “but we’re looking for Deputy Fornier of Morehouse Parish Sheriff’s Department.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 24)

The priest put his ear to the frail wood panel wall and focused. After one of the brothers spoke, a muffled voice responded. “Who the fuck are you guys?”. Given the clarity of the brother’s voice, it indicated that they were facing the back wall the priest hid behind. The exchange continued.

“We’re looking for the spring. Where is it?”

“What fucking spring?”

“We’re not stupid, Mr. Fornier.”

“I don’t know of any goddamn spring.”

“And the water you sell?”

“Look, if you want any of that snake oil piss, I’m a little busy right now…”

A gunshot rang out followed by the sound of a body collapsing to the floor and the Fornier man cried out. “You dun shot my knee!” he yelped. Shaken, the priest holstered the Smith & Wesson and readied the 12 gauge Mossberg hidden under his smock. By now, voices were so heightened that there was no need to put an ear to the wall. The priest quietly mumbled his prayers.

“Who provides you with the water?” he heard a brother ask.

“I…I…it’s my cousin!”

“Where is he?”

“He’s a deputy with the Morehouse Parish Sheriff’s Department!”

“In Louisiana?”

“Yes!”

Another shot was fired and Fornier’s whimpering stopped. The priest kicked open the back door with the shotgun ready. In the brief flash of time before shots were fired, the priest noticed Fornier’s body draped in a barber’s cape with his jaw half covered in shaving cream while the panic stricken barber stood off to the side with his hands in the air. Thankfully, the priest was correct in where the brothers were standing. Without a second to spare, he unloaded the shotgun towards the brother standing on the right and the glass shattered behind him. It was apparent he missed the kill shot, yet the brother stumbled backwards and the other began ripping bullets from what appeared to be a Tommy gun. The priest leapt back behind the wall and the bullets tore through the wood. When he attempted to return fire, the brothers were already outside of the barbershop and one dispatched a Molotov cocktail. The flames roared through the shop, across Fornier’s body, and cutting off the main entrance. While the barber himself was on the floor desperately trying to escape the smoke, the priest reached out a hand. “Here!” he shouted. Yet another gun shot rang out and struck the barber in the back. The priest, now laying low to the ground, crawled back towards the rear entrance. Once outside, as smoke billowed from the building, he ran down the back alley and towards the front. When he got there, the brothers and their bike were long gone.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 23)

On the city outskirts, where the cliffs drop sharply, the motorbike pulled off into a gravel pit where a shanty ice cream shack overlooked the mighty Mississippi. The brothers dismounted the bike and joined the gaggle of denizens standing in line for a tasty summer treat. When their turn arrived, the server sporting a white soda jerk hat, removed the pencil behind his ear and put it to paper. “What can I get you boys?” he asked them. But the brothers only glared at him from behind their reflective shades, their faces as unflappable as a clear midnight moon. The man nodded. “Oh okay. I’ll just get y’all a vanilla cone,” the server said. He brought them the cones, already dripping from the excessive heat, and the brothers wandered off to a lonely corner of the pit and gazed upon the wide river below with the green flats on Louisiana on the other side.

This puzzled the Priest. There was something hauntingly serene about these two men as they shared their moment of solitude. It didn’t appear that they exchanged a word. But the priest watched them from afar. He tailed them stealthily in a nondescript beige Chrysler that he stole in a parking lot in Memphis. He’d occasionally break visual contact down Highway 3 to avoid detection. Yet the priest was beside himself when he discovered the charred remains of Deputy Ricketts and his squad car. He had only been minutes behind. Now he laid low. He looked to the backseat to check on the 12 gauge Mossberg and then he reached into his cossack to check the chamber of a Smith & Wesson .38/44.

Meanwhile, the brothers took their sweet ass time munching down the cones. But when they finished, one climbed back on the bike and one into the sidecar and they roared their way on into Vicksburg. The priest trailed behind. A couple of miles later, the brothers entered the nearly deserted downtown area and the priest pulled off into an alleyway and readied his weapons. A block away, the brothers stopped by a lonely barbershop and dismounted. With a shotgun under his smock, the priest sauntered over to mainstreet and saw the deserted motorbike. Not wishing to attack them head on, he continued towards the alley behind the barbershop and picked its lock. Once inside, he held the Smith & Wesson and tiptoed his way through the back end of the shop. He could hear the brothers on the other side of the wall.

“Are you Fornier?” a voice asked.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 23)

The screeching cicadas pierced through the cold silence as the sweat built up on the deputy’s neck. Not a peep was uttered by the suspicious duo. Not even a slight movement. They sat there hard and still like marble statues. The deputy stepped toward the grass and spat out the last remaining hulls between his teeth. “Well boys, are you gonna show me some identification?”

Nothing changed. He looked them up and down but couldn’t make heads or tails on what they might be hiding. They didn’t seem nervous. Not even a bead of sweat was apparent under all that leather. The deputy nearly asked them to step off the bike but before he did, a rickety pickup rounded the corner and sounded the horn. “Evening deputy!” the driver shouted. It was Hopper returning to his farm. The deputy turned his back and waved before resuming his duties. And when he did, the duo was gone. Vanished. Only the bike and the puny sidecar remained.

Ricketts drew his service revolver and searched the treeline. When he came up with nothing, he charged across the road and looked there. Out of options, he returned to the squad car and radioed in. “This is Ricketts. I’m out here on Highway Three and I urgently need another deputy…”

Before he could finish the request, a gigantic fireball exploded underneath his vehicle, lifting it a foot or two in the air before crashing back down. Then, out of the shadows, the brothers reappeared and assessed the carnage. The flames flashed brilliantly through their reflective shades. Satisfied with the destruction, they boarded the bike and kickstarted the engine. But clinging on to dear life, Ricketts pushed the drivers side door off its hinges and fell face first onto the pavement with revolver still in hand. His legs were blown off below the knees, left arm mangled, and his hair and clothes were burning into black carbon. “I’ll kill you!” he screamed with his dying breath. And in his final act, he emptied the revolver in the duo’s direction. Befuddled, the brothers flattened themselves to the ground and drew their weapons. But they watched the deputy pitiably claw his way across the road before the patches of fire spread and consumed him whole in the middle of the asphalt.

The brothers stood up and straightened themselves out and they faced each other for a hot moment. One nodded and the other returned it. Then they climbed on the bike and roared on into Vicksburg.

TO BE CONTINUED…