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09 October, 2021 /// 10:15 AM MDT
Out in the west Texas town of El Paso, straddling the Rio Grande across which sat Ciudad Juárez, and tucked away in an arid, scorched alcove of desert pockmarked with dried flora the sun broke its cover and rose over distant mountains situated on the edge of an endless expanse of bleached sand and thorny shrubbery that crumbled at the touch. It was only a quarter past ten, but the blanket of heat was already thick, suffocating, and radiated from the cracked asphalt over which a quaternion of rubber halos rolled and bounced. The clatter of six air-cooled horizontally-opposed pistons only added to the mechanical din of the creaking suspension, rattling plastic and metal fasteners supporting various interior furnishings, and the rumbling tires hopping over roads that felt like they were last paved decades ago when they were first laid down. Despite having nearly every geographical odd stacked against it, it was as if this lonely settlement continued to exist purely out of spite.
Nearly thirty Californian summers did not treat the dark blue paint kindly. In addition to the scratches, dents and gallery of other scuffs that adorned the fenders, doors, and bumpers, the hood and roof were covered in splotches of sun-damaged fading paint, the erosion of pigments only accelerated by the even more unforgiving climate of the lone star state. The 1985 Dauer 632 S’s weary journey finally reached its conclusion in the mostly-empty parking lot of a commercial vehicle repair shop situated on the outskirts of El Paso, the hum of its all-aluminum boxer-6 engine quickly subsiding into the white noise of distant traffic and a stagnant wind of boiling heat that blew across acres of concrete and tar.
The driver’s door flung open with an agonizing creak, creating an opening from which the dry heat poured inwards and a pair of white sneakers emerged, touching on the ground. “Christ! Thirty degrees centigrade… Adelaide doesn’t get anywhere near this hot this time of the year,” Mel sighed as she slowly rose to full height, leaning back and stretching her sore back muscles. The seats wrapped in cracked brown-orange leather were heavily worn and had lost most of their bolstering, which only made the already-rough ride nearly unbearable. It seemed as if just about every single piece of the car was on its last legs. “I’ve arrived at the site."
“Die of heatstroke one day, then of frostbite the next. That’s Texas for you. Bet you’re really missing LA now,” cackled a male voice over the radio. It belonged to Alex, one of the members of Mel’s (at times such as this one, the only) operation and intelligence support group. “How’s the ride holding up?”
“Suspension bushings are starting to go, along with nearly every damn thing in this car. The motor’s been doing fine at least. Dauer boxer sixes really live up to their reputation,” Mel remarked as she closed the door behind her with a rattling thud and leaned against the front left fender, looking at the massive warehouse before her. It stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, dotted in regular intervals with rusty service doors that numbered one and nineteen more. Numerous trucks in various states of disrepair were lined along the entire width of the facility not dissimilar to an aircraft boneyard. “So how exactly did they plan to let me in? Grab the key under the doormat? Knock thrice and say please?”
“They should’ve left the first loading bay door unlocked. And don’t worry about setting off any alarms, they turned off the security system beforehand. I know it’s a little weird since they don’t have anyone onsite, since it’s… you know, a Saturday… but hey, that’s just one less thing in your way. You’ve read the brief, right?”
“Full sweep of the first and second floors, find whatever the hell is causing the ruckus.” Unholstering her Glock 17 Gen4, Mel pressed the release button and caught the magazine as it fell out, checking the cutout slot near the bottom that was obscured by a brass object. Seventeen rounds and counting, but hopefully they wouldn’t be the first she would have to discharge outside of a shooting range. “Something seems… off, though.”
“Yeah? What about it?”
“I find it odd that they were perfectly willing to let us snoop around inside without having one of their staff present to escort us. Especially in Texas of all places, yeah, nah… they don’t just call it ‘the Lone Star’ state for nothing.” Her footsteps echoed through the desolate valley of concrete and rotten pallets as she made her way towards the first door on the left. She scanned her surroundings one last time, only to find that her presence remained unacknowledged. Mel was no stranger to solitude, for she frequently found comfort in the outback and its separation from civilization. It was an escape, a form of meditation for her. This time around, however, she didn’t share the same sentiment.
“Maybe they’ve just got nothing to hide?” Alex let out a stiff sigh as the Mexican desert let out a shallow gasp of its own, blowing a tickling gust of arid wind that tossed Mel’s platinum blonde hair about her face. “You’ll be alright, Mel. I’m sure it’s just a couple of squatters staying the night, or worst case scenario, maybe a ragtag team of cat swipers who just hit the jackpot. It’s nothing you can’t handle. Besides, local PD should be freed up within the hour after the attempted robbery this morning, so if anything seems fishy get the hell out of Dodge and call for backup.”
“Yea, totally… for sure…” Mel mumbled, her words trailing off as she stood before the door that stood at nearly 2 stories high. “Erm… how exactly do I open this?”
“What, never worked in a warehouse before? If it’s unlocked you should be able to push it up, but it’s gonna be hard if you don’t have any leverage. There’s usually a pulley on the inside that you’re supposed to use, but you can’t even get in there-”
Alex was rudely interrupted by a harsh, rapid clattering of loose metal bearings crashing against each other and the rattle of dusty metal sheets being flung up a pair of rails in desperate need of WD-40. The sound continued once or twice more very briefly after a short pause before subsiding entirely. After some amount of time, Mel sharply exhaled, breaking the silence.
“Huh, just like my father’s garage. Anyways, I’m in,” Mel announced nonchalantly, shaking the dust off her hands. “Can’t see much, but it looks pretty bloody packed in here, though. Might take some time.”
“Well, you know where to find me,” said Alex’s garbled voice. “Hey, what do you say we head downtown later tonight? Last day of your Texas assignment, might as well make the most out of it while you’re here, right? Besides, who knows when you’re coming back here, if ever?”
The thought alone of returning to Texas sent cold shivers creeping across Mel’s back, raising goosebumps on her skin and making hairs stand on edge as they passed. “Yeah, nah, you’re never making me come here on my own will unless you drug me, tie me up in a sack, and dump me out in the heart of Corpus Christi,” she shrugged off with a giggle. “This damn hellhole makes the outback look like Fiji. Every day here is a roll of the dice… and I think my luck’s running out. By the way Alex, I have a favor to ask of you.”
“What’s up?”
“Find a nice pub in town, will you?”
Mel could hear Alex audibly grin from ear to ear through her shitty handheld radio. “That’s my girl! Heh… pub. Hey, drinks are on me tonight, okay? I’ll see you later. Out.” With that final transmission, Alex’s perpetually-tired voice faded into static. Mel dropped her radio into its respective pouch and stepped inside the warehouse. She located the light switches, dimly lit by the sunlight that streamed in from outside, and flipped on all five in one motion. The buzzing of electricity was instantly heard, growing louder in regular intervals as the fluorescent lights overhead flickered to life sequentially.
Bright white luminescence fell from above in a blinding downpour and illuminated dozens upon dozens of full size tractor units, bunched together with inches of space between to squeeze through, complete with unmarked shipping containers on trailers and all. What kind of truck service shop IS this? Mel said to nobody in particular, her thoughts remaining a sound unheard. Rows up on rows and columns upon columns of semis were herded together like livestock, and there wasn’t a single lift, engine hoist, or even a toolbox in sight. Mel was skeptical before, but this slight distrust was aroused into a full-fledged state of suspicion. All of the warning signs were there, but instead of pushing Mel away, it only drew her in further; to her, this wasn’t a prompt of flight or flight, but a mystery begging to be unearthed, or even a puzzle that beckoned to be a solution, although she had a profound distaste for such a trivializing analogy.
There was no way Mel was going to check every single trailer, which must have numbered in the dozens if not close to one hundred. Nevertheless, she started her search with a perimeter sweep of the warehouse’s first floor, occasionally peering between columns of eighteen wheelers or even under, checking for unwanted visitors. The whole time, her presence was marked only with loud, paced steps against the cold floor that echoed through the entire building, the only other audible signature being the monotonous buzzing of the lights and occasional creak of the metal walkways overhead.
After completing an entire uneventful lap, she gave up and decided to call for backup. “Mel here. I don’t recall damn near a hundred or so trucks being a part of the brief. There’s no way I’m searching every single one of these trailers by myself. Could you send a patrol unit or two down here? Maybe five?”
Accompanied by nothing else but the hum of electricity and the faint signature of the industrial fans, Alex’s voice finally came through. “Hold up Mel… taking a bit longer than expected. I’ll send a couple… soon as someone’s free.” His words were heavily punctuated with periodic swaths of static and white noise, which Mel responded to with a healthy dosage of percussive maintenance to the back of her handheld. Grumbling, she folded her arms and stared at the array of trucks that lay before her, but she could feel their many pairs of fogged headlights staring right back at her, mocking her. Their strange incandescent glares proved to be too much, and Mel submitted, cursing to herself and grumbling as she made her way towards the closest trailer unit.
The pair of rusted latches on the back were heavily rusted and offered a considerable amount of resistance. Using a combination of her bodyweight as leverage and the entirety of her lower body muscles to overcome the oxidation-induced friction, Mel finally managed to twist one of the latches free and slid it out of the way, swinging the massive half-door of corrugated brick red sheet metal as far back as she could without hitting the truck behind. Instantly showered with a suffocating blanket of dust and an overpowering, incredible stench of mothballs, Mel let an audible, ugly retch escape from her throat before she covered her mouth and steeled her nerves, climbing inside the container bathed in darkness.
Producing a flashlight from her belt, a blunt cone of light sliced through the darkness, its traced path visible from the sheer amount of stagnant particulate that had been stirred by Mel’s incursion. It was filled from one end to the other with plywood crates, the one closest to her having a misplaced lid that left the crate ajar. But even through this slight gap, the flashlight could illuminate the contents within, and the dull albedo of a black polymer finish was one that Mel was all too familiar with, even with her relatively fresh tenure as an intelligence officer. Casting the lid aside realized her most inane, unfounded speculations. Six AK-pattern rifles in black furniture, standing upright in a styrofoam rack propped against multiple cans of 7.62mm ball ammunition. The next crate she opened yielded identical contents.
In a fervent panic that was starting to burst through the seams of her faltering composure, Mel stumbled back, nearly falling out of the trailer if it wasn’t for the other truck to break her descent. Supporting itself against its chrome bumper, catching her breath, Mel looked around and ran over to the next trailer. This time, fueled by adrenaline, she undid the latch with ease and crawled inside. More crates, just like the last trailer. This time, however, she quickly found that this truck carried not rifles or any other firearm for that matter, but instead rocket propelled grenades and even anti-tank weaponry.
A sick knot formed in her stomach, a pit of steel that made her heart drop and her breath elude itself. A creeping feeling of dread imbued her gut and immobilized her as pins and needles peppered the length of her back and upper neck, stretching all the way to her scalp. Mel had already seen her fair share of drug busts and even numerous search operations against organized crime, and at this point she was no stranger to directly confronting danger. But no two ops were ever the same, and this time it was much worse; caught right in the middle of what appeared to be an illegal arms shipment in transit with zero backup in sight, with the closest possible patrol car being at least 30 minutes away as she was in a relatively secluded area.
“Alex? That backup you were talking about?” Mel spoke, nearly shouted, into her radio. With her radio in her left hand, her right rested on her holster, and she scanned the seemingly vacant walkways above. “We’re gonna need the whole bloody PD.”
Alex’s response came through the radio as bursts of static, much to Mel’s dread. Thinking the terrible reception might be the culprit of this interference, she leapt down from the trailer and headed directly for the loading bay she entered through. Right at the cusp of freedom, however, the unintelligible noise from her radio disappeared, and Alex’s unmistakable voice immediately followed. Nothing else could have brought Mel the same amount of peace as Alex’s panicked calls, his characteristic low energy voice gone, in its place a tone of voice she seldom heard from him. Panic. “Mel! What the fuck are you doing? I’ve been trying to reach you for the last few minutes!”
“Alex! I-”
“This little piggy went to the market…”
A harsh pop of fatiguing, or snapping, metal tore through Mel’s ears. Before she could discern if it was a gunshot, a snapping chain, or perhaps both, the titanic loading bay door quickly unfolded itself with a deafening rattle and slammed shut into the ground, inches away from her face. She instinctively flinched and stumbled backwards, bringing her hands outstretched in front of her face as a cloud of dust was kicked up and expelled violently as the door slammed shut. As soon as she recovered her bearings, Mel immediately drew her handgun and started scanning for anything she could conceal herself behind, anywhere she could take cover and call for backup from, or any way she could get the hell out of there. The barrel of the 17 followed her line of sight, from the walkways above to the gaps between the trucks and to the dark windows of the seemingly empty offices. After a few seconds, her radio set came to life once again, only this time she could properly pay attention to the voice she first heard just moments ago before the door suddenly closed. It was much clearer, but clearly did not belong to Alex.
“This little piggy stayed home… not!”
After a tense silence that strangled Mel, she was suddenly submerged in darkness. The incessant hum of electricity and the loud flickers of the fluorescent lights were absent as well, drowning her in a silence so severe that even her own breaths and the faint ringing in her ears were deafening. Taking out her flashlight, she realized how turning it on would only betray her position in a wide open area and she decided against doing so, instead deciding to hug the walls to get some reference on her position within the building.
Feeling her way along the walls, the only source of illumination being dim cracks of light that leaked through paper-thin openings between the roll-up loading doors and the ground, Mel finally reached the same light switches she used when she first entered just half an hour ago. Flicking them down and back up yielded no change at all.
After a few minutes of clawing through the dark like a dumbass, Mel’s eyes finally adjusted to her pitch black surroundings and could start seeing silhouettes of the trucks lined up bumper to bumper, mirror to mirror, as well as the offices in the corner that were a lot closer than she originally anticipated. Shuffling further along the cool walls in utmost silence, her free hand that was feeling around made contact with an unlocked door handle. Twisting it as slowly as she could, Mel carefully nudged the door open, praying that its door hinges wouldn’t betray her position. Once the gap was large enough, she slipped through and gently closed the door. She grabbed her flashlight and held it in an underhand grip with her left hand, using it to support the firearm in her other hand. Turning it on revealed her surroundings, a damp hallway with a stale smell and dense cobwebs that clung to the ceiling. She entered the first door on her right and closed it behind her.
The office was pitifully small, furnished conservatively. A single 90-degree desk, one file cabinet, and two chairs were covered in a thick layer of dust that had remained undisturbed for an untold passage of time. Mel twisted the window blinds shut and took out her smartphone, turning it on. Only one bar of reception, 13 missed calls, and 107 and counting unread messages. She crawled under the desk and turned off her flashlight, frantically texting Alex with one hand while her other hand clutched her 17 with a shaky, clammy grip. Her breaths were shuddering and only amplified by the acoustics of the wooden desk she hid under, betraying what little composure she had left.
As she hit send, one final crystal clear transmission crackled through her radio’s speaker.
“Should’ve stayed home. Fucking pig!”
The window shattered as a cylindrical metal object was hurled through with great violence, knocking the blinds out of the way. Mel dropped her phone and gun, instantly curling into a fetal position and bracing for impact. Even though she wasn’t directly looking at the flashbang or directly exposed to it, the light of the glowing magnesium that reflected off the peeling walls was still bright enough to leak through her tightly shut eyelids. The clap of thunder was head-splitting and rung through her entire body; it felt as if someone had driven a railroad spike through her ears, and for the longest time she could hear nothing but an incessant, deafening ringing that made her head throb in pain.
A solid boot connected to Mel’s stomach and knocked the wind out of her. She flew out from under the desk, smashing its thick wooden backing. When the bright blurry shapes that obscured her vision faded away, she could just barely make out a humanoid figure standing on top of the desk, and above it was a rectangular hole in the ceiling where a panel used to be. It raised a long, blunt object over its head and jumped, swinging downwards as it fell. The carpet sped away under Mel as she rolled out of harm’s way, the figure landing where she previously lied and smashing the patch of ground next to Mel’s head with the bludgeon.
Mel swung her legs around and into the assailant’s legs, instantly knocking them flat on their ass. Her ears still ringing violently, her eyes burning, and now her abdomen pulverized from a boot-shaped welt that rearranged her intestines, she slowly got up on all fours but was quickly tossed to the ground again. This time, she was pinned down by her assailant’s knees and arms, who was also forcing the blunt object against Mel’s neck like a guillotine.
Mel tried to lift the bar off herself, but a pair of knees were digging into her upper stomach and chest area and her biceps were pinched against the ground. Through gritted teeth, she strained and arched her back, kicked her legs out, and pushed upwards with every ounce of strength she still had before it was lost. Her breaths grew lighter and raspier, her toes curling under her socks, and her eyes meeting those of her attacker’s.
She let out one final airy gasp, and her arched back fell limp, her grip loosened, and her vision grew darker. The last thing Mel saw was her attacker staring right back at her with a sinister gaze illuminated by the faint light from Mel’s smartphone, a light that grew dimmer and dimmer before fading into darkness.
(formerly)
