Burn All The Bodies

The Legacy of the Monster Diego Tomas, Part 2

The Legacy of the Monster Diego Tomas, Part 2Ramon stood in the stairwell with his back to the wall. Around the corner sat the fifth-floor barrier. He could smell the blood, the death. Marijke’s people murmured to each other as they cleaned it off the tiles: two men and a woman. He had to plan this carefully, had to give Gazini enough time to gather his men and oil, set up the catapults. If he spun around the corner too fast, Marijke’s people would startle and jump on him. If he waited too long, she would see what the Barquemen were up to and fight back. Either way, Gazini’s attack would fail, and his wife and daughter would die.

Lamps smoked and sputtered in the stairwell, casting a brown light over everything. Ramon winced. Why was she wasting her oil here? Better to let the stains remain, a reminder for her people, something she could use when she needed them to fight again.

He took a deep breath. Counted back from five. Four. Three. Two.

“I am Ramon Cruz,” he called out. “I mean no harm. I want to talk to my sister.”

He waited a beat, then turned the corner, hands raised.

The soldiers had already drawn their long knives and crouched side by side, ready for a fight. The woman jumped up and grabbed a spinner leaning up against the wall. She hunched down behind the soldiers, who closed ranks to protect her.

Ramon eyed the spinner, four sharp blades bolted to the end of a long pole. The woman turned it slowly, deliberately, to show him she knew how to use it. He knew what she was thinking. One jab to keep him back, one to weaken him. If he somehow got under it, if he grabbed it, the men would slice him to bits, and as he stumbled back, the spinner would find his eyes, his throat. Excellent for one on one fights. Useless everywhere else. He kept a wise distance.

“I’m here to talk to Marijke,” he said. “I’m here to offer a truce. An alliance.”

The woman snorted.

“Bullshit. I’ve seen what your offers look like. Look around.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand fine, cabron. You came unarmed?” As a unit, they advanced two steps. “That was stupid.”

She spun the blades faster, trying to intimidate him. They weren’t close enough yet to hit him, and he could always run, but that wasn’t an option. He had to finish this, had to finish it tonight.

So he stood.

Stood with raised hands and a raised chin as the spinner cut the air in front of him. The trio inched forward as if he were a wild animal, expecting him to charge at any moment. The woman feinted once, twice. He closed his eyes. Gathered his strength. One more inch. One more inch.

“Xi! No!”

Ramon’s eyes flew open. The blades tickled his shirt, stopping a centimeter over his heart.

Marijke, his sister, was standing in front of the barrier. She was battered and bruised and bloody, her right arm held in a sling against her chest, her left eye filled with blood.

“Ree-ree,” Ramon said, smiling.

“Don’t call me that.”

“It’s what I’ve always called you.”

“My name,” she said. “is Marijke.” Ramon chuckled. She seethed. “What do you want, cabron?”

“Again with the cabron? You people need to read a dictionary. Get another insult.”

“I don’t have time for this.”

She turned around as if to crawl back through the tunnel, but Ramon said, “Marijke. Wait.”

“Why?”

“I want to talk.”

“Talk? Talk about what? The people you murdered?”

Ramon swallowed his protest, saying instead, “No. There’s something else. Something new. A new threat.”

A hint of a smile pulled on his sister’s upper lip. She squashed it.

“A threat? So soon?”

“Yes.”

She started to say something, something harsh and bitter, but then she stopped. She saw something, something she hadn’t seen in a long time, not since they were young. Not the anger and hardness that marked their adult life together, but heartache and desperation, swaddled in sadness. He needed her. It was strange to feel sorry for a man as brutal and cruel as him, a man who had slaughtered her people, most certainly doomed her to gangrene and amputation. She strived to hate him, to feel contempt. She wanted to harden, to spit in his face, to stomp on his false humility, but couldn’t. There was no point. She couldn’t back it up with anything anyway, so she swallowed the acid and forced a smile.

“Okay,” she said. “We’ll talk, Ramon.” She let out a small breath, nodded back at the barrier. “But in there. Where you can see what you’ve done.”

Ramon watched the blood blossom on his sister’s sling as they walked down the hall. They walked in a line: first Marijke, then him, then Xi, taking up the rear, staring daggers into his back. There were dark stains on the walls, spatters, and thick smells, too—the typical rot and mold that he was used to, but under that something rank, death or dying or something worse, something in between. He stepped in something soft and squishy and sucked in his breath. Marijke enjoyed every step.

“Don’t like it down here, do you big brother?”

“No.”

She gestured with her good arm.

“But this is all yours. You created this. You should take pride in your accomplishments. Isn’t that what Diego Tomas taught us?”

“Diego Tomas was a monster. I’m no Diego Tomas.”

Marijke stopped in the open door of an apartment where a woman and three children wept over the body of a man with a hole in his chest.

“You’re not?”

Ramon bit back his response. He wanted to remind his sister that it was her people who broke the truce, her people who pushed up to the seventh floor, but she’d just throw it in his face, show him more filth, more children weeping over fathers, brothers, as if he had anything to do with their bad choices. Did she think he was any better off? He stopped himself from letting the dark thoughts take over. He didn’t have enough time. He had to get her back to her apartment. They needed to be in there together. Gazini was counting on it.

“Fine, Marijke,” he said. “Fine. You win. This is all terrible. Can we just get moving?”

She paused a little longer, just to make him squirm.

Finally she said, “Okay.”

She led him to the end of the hall, to her apartment, and opened the door.

“Please, brother. Come inside. Let’s ‘talk’.”

It was no better lit than the hallway, and no better smelling, too. She left the windows open and uncovered, letting in the pale light of the moon and the warm yellow of the Barquemen’s fires. Xi went to the kitchen where she lit a lamp. Beneath the dirty face and torn clothes, she was actually quite beautiful. Wide set eyes and full lips. She caught him looking and glared as he took a seat at a battered old card table. The fake leather top frayed at the edges, and a tear ran the length of one side. The chairs were rusty metal fold-ups. Marijke sighed and adjusted her sling as she sat down.

“I’d offer you something to eat, but we don’t have any food.”

Ramon tried to ignore the barb. “We have water. Xi. Get my brother a glass.”

Xi ignored the order.

“f**k him,” she said.

Ramon pushed back from the table.

“Little girl, you don’t want to take me on. No spinner. No guards.” He stood to his full height. “Come on.”

She smiled and took a step forward, but Marijke pounded on the table.

“Godammit, Xi!”

The girl snapped out of her spell, and her eyes locked onto Marijke’s.

“A glass of water. For my brother.”

“I don’t know where—”

“Gabriella has some.”

Xi hesitated.

“Now!”

She nodded and turned and stalked out of the apartment. Ramon sat down, laughing.

“Really, Marijke. Where do you get these things?”

“Xi’s parents came all the way up from the gulf.”

“The gulf? Why didn’t they just head for Boulder?”

“Boulder’s not letting anymore people in.”

“Since when?”

Marijke shrugged.

“They posted guards, put up a fence. Xi’s parents were shot dead trying to climb it. She made it all the way here by herself. You wouldn’t believe what she had to do.”

Ramon pondered.

“She’s pretty.”

“Don’t let it fool you.”

“Oh I wouldn’t dare.”

Xi returned with a pitcher of water and two cloudy glasses. She plunked them down on the table and retreated to the kitchen to lean on the edge of the counter and cross her arms. Neither Ramon nor Marijke reached for the glasses.

“So Ramon,” she said. “Talk.”

Ramon had planned out what he would say as he stood on Gazini’s balcony, how he would make a long speech about their father, create some common ground, how he would plead for peace, for forgiveness, anything to buy more time. It would be hard playing that part, especially with that girl glaring at him. Before he could start, his sister said, “Did your wife send you down here? Did she make you come?”

Something must have shown in Ramon’s face, because Marijke laughed.

“The great Ramon Cruz, son of the monster Diego Tomas, tamed by a scold of a wife.”

“Don’t talk about Zory that way.”

“She must be quite a f**k, Ramon.”

“Marijke. Listen to me. Something’s happened with Michal.”

“Oh, really?”

She gestured for Xi, who sat down on her lap. She stroked her hair with her good hand.

“Yes,” Ramon said. “It’s serious.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Marijke pulled Xi’s face down toward her and planted a full kiss on her lips. Ramon watched for a moment, then, disgusted by the display, slouched in his seat, let his eyes wander over the torn surface of the table. They broke the kiss after a moment, and Marijke said, “I know all about my nephew, brother.” She reached for her glass, and Xi got off her lap and filled it with water from the pitcher. Then she filled Ramon’s glass. Ramon put his hand on it but didn’t pick it up. He wanted to. His mouth was dry, and after the day he’d had, the fight, the meeting with Gazini, he desperately wanted something nice, just a small drink, something to cool his throat, but he had to wait. He had to wait for his sister to drink first. Xi drifted over to the window.

“Did you contact him?”

“He contacted me, Ramon.”

Xi leaned on the sill.

“Marijke,” she said. “The Barquemen are—”

Ramon cut her off.

“What did he want?”

“He wanted a truce. To put a stop to the violence. Said he was sick of it, sick of everybody dying. He promised to give me the sixth and seventh floor if I agreed.”

“Michal said this?”

“Xi, give him the note.”

The girl tried to explain again, saying, “But Marijke, they’re moving the oil.”

“Xi! Go get the note.”

Xi pulled herself away from the window and went to the kitchen. She picked a scrap of paper off the counter and slapped it down on the table in front of Ramon. He glanced at it. It was written in Michal’s handwriting.

“Those floors were not his to give.”

Marijke sighed.

“That’s what I told him.”

“The roof is mine.”

“Just as I thought. Still, he is a Cruz. He is your son, your favorite. Just like you were father’s.”

“Marijke, with that again?”

She ignored him.

“I took him at his word. I told him if he could deliver me what he promised, no more fighting.”

Ramon thought of Gazini’s son. The butcher’s block.

“That’s not what he was doing, Marijke.”

“Of course it wasn’t. So I took out some insurance.”

She motioned to Xi, who produced a ripped plastic bag and put it on the table between them.

“What’s this?” Ramon asked.

“Take a look, brother.” A cry came up from the Barquemen outside.

“Fishing?” Marijke said. “This late?”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Xi said. “They’re out there, loading up their boats.”

“Who is?”

“The Barquemen.”

“Yes, but who? The fishermen? The gutters?”

“All of them.”

“What?”

Marijke jolted to her feet, wincing at the pain in her shoulder, and she and Xi ran to the windows.

Ramon knew what was coming. He’d given Gazini the time he needed. But the bag, it bothered him. What was his sister up to? He pulled it to him and let it sit there, unopened. Just looked at it. A thumb, maybe? An ear? The Barquemen let up another cry, deep and guttural. The room lit up with a great red light. Before he died, before the world erupted in flame, he had to see what it was. He opened the bag, carefully, as if it held a bomb. Peered inside. Then he gasped and leaped to his feet, knocking the metal chair to the floor.

“What have you done?” he said.

Marijke turned from the window.

“I should ask you the same thing.”

“Marijke! What did you do?”

“Nothing you wouldn’t do, brother.”

The building shook with the first explosion. Something crashed through the windows, striking Xi and sending her sprawling to the hardwood. She grabbed her neck, gasping, clawing at the shard of glass sticking out of it. A second explosion rocked the building, knocking the table and chairs over. The bag fell to the floor, spilling its contents at Ramon’s feet. People in the hall cried out.

“They’re coming! They’re coming!”

Ramon ignored everything. The crashing windows. The roaring fire. The screams, the battle cries. The floor buckled beneath him and he didn’t care.

The thing in the bag wasn’t a thumb. It wasn’t an ear. It wasn’t a head or an organ or any other body part. It was a shoe. A little shoe. White with a plastic yellow flower on the heel. And it was covered in blood.