Broken Highway: A Thomas Highway Story Read online

  BROKEN HIGHWAY:

  A THOMAS HIGHWAY SHORT STORY

  By Brian Springer

  Copyright 2011 Brian Springer

  Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This one is for Husker, who left us way too soon.

  ALSO BY BRIAN SPRINGER

  Highway to Vengeance: A Thomas Highway Novel

  Blood Money

  Black Days (forthcoming)

  Author’s note:

  This story takes place before the events of Highway To Vengeance. For those of you who have already read HTV, hopefully this story will fill in a few blanks. For those of you who haven’t, hopefully you’ll enjoy this story enough to check it out. But if not, that’s okay too. Either way I’d like to hear what you think about it. Feel free to drop me a line at www.brianspringer.com or come find me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002203162372

  1

  I sat at the counter in the pathetic excuse for a bar, threw down a double shot of Jack Daniels, chased it with a long pull of Killian’s, and motioned to the bartender to pour me another shot.

  “I think you’ve had enough, buddy,” the bartender said in a voice that utterly lacked conviction. He was a wrinkled old geezer with gray hair and bloodshot eyes. Undoubtedly took the job for the fringe benefits, which almost certainly consisted of slipping himself a taste once every hour. Or every ten minutes more like it.

  I just stared at him with dead eyes and motioned again. I knew he didn’t have the balls to cut me off.

  “All right,” he said after a moment of hesitation to save face. “But no more after this one.”

  “That’s what you told me last time,” I said.

  “Yeah, well this time I mean it,” he said as he filled my shot glass for what had to be the tenth time that night.

  “Sure you do,” I said dismissively before shooting the Jack.

  I paid for the latest round, finished off the rest of the Killians and turned to survey the room. The place was an out-and-out shithole; dark and old and reeking of mildew and spilled beer. A ratty old pool table with only 13 balls sat in the far corner, unused. A 50’s style jukebox was parked next to it, lights on but no sound coming from it. Formica tables and plastic chairs. Concrete floors stained with beer and blood. Not that I cared. In fact, the condition of the place was the reason I’d chosen it as my drinking spot for the night. It was a bar that attracted exactly the kind of people I was looking for. People who hated their life. People who wanted to be left alone. People who wanted to drink themselves into oblivion. In other words, people like me.

  The place was mostly empty. What few customers there were sat quietly at their tables, scattered about the room so as to bother each other as little as possible. There was a wide variety of individuals but all were the same in one fundamental way. All were broken down, with no fight left in them at all.

  I turned back towards the bar and motioned for another round from the bartender. This time he didn’t even bother putting up a fight. He just shook his head and poured another shot and got me another glass of beer. Probably just hoping I’d drink myself unconscious so he could call a cab and get me out of here. Which, given enough time, would have undoubtedly happened.

  Unfortunately for everyone involved, trouble walked in the door just a few minutes later.

  There were three of them, two guys and an angry-looking girl. Each was dressed similarly; faded jeans, a dirty T-shirt, and cowboy boots. Each looked like they were itching for a confrontation. And the way they were acting, it was only a matter of time until they found one.

  They ordered a couple rounds of beers and set up shop in the middle of the bar. Within minutes they were whooping up a storm, laughing and yelling and dropping F-bombs. Having themselves a good old time. Acting belligerent and daring someone to call them on it. Which I was about to do.

  It’s not like I came into the bar looking for a confrontation—far from it, in fact—but now that circumstance had brought one to my doorstep, I realized I’d been itching for one for some time now. And this was the perfect situation.

  So I just sat there, staring at them, waiting for one of them to notice me. Eventually one did. The chick. She saw me looking at her and stared right back at me.

  I smiled and blew her a kiss.

  Her eyes narrowed and she elbowed one of the guys to get his attention.

  “What the fuck?” he said, spinning towards her.

  She leaned in and whispered something in his ear. His eyes widened.

  “Who?” he insisted.

  She pointed at me. The guy followed her finger until he locked onto my eyes. He took a good look, and when I didn’t look away, he stood up and started striding purposefully in my direction. Chest out, arms back, a sneer on his face, putting on a show. The other two were right behind him.

  Although it was possible that things wouldn’t get physical—doubtful, but still possible—I had to act as though it would. So in the few seconds it took for the group to reach me, I sized them up.

  The dude in front wore a Raiders hat with the bill bent in an inverted V, white-trash style. He was tall and thick but with eyes as dim-witted as a cow’s. Which was probably his equal in intelligence. Even though he was obviously the leader of this rag-tag group, he wouldn’t be a problem when push came to shove.

  His partner was tall for a chick—5’10’’—but thin as a rail. Flat face, like someone took a shovel to it when she was a kid. She walked as though controlled by a puppeteer with muscular dystrophy, her arms and legs moving out of time with each other. A tweaker, no doubt, probably flying high on meth right this moment. She also posed no threat.

  Contestant number 3 wore a shit-eating grin on his chubby face. A thin line of tobacco juice ran down his double chin, unnoticed. He was shaped like the Pillsbury Dough Boy, nearly as round as he was tall. Someone you wouldn’t want sitting on you, but other than that, I wasn’t concerned with him in the least.

  Raider-Hat, Tweaker, and Dough Boy were looking for trouble, that much was obvious. How much they would find was up to them.

  From the corner of my eye I saw the bartender sigh and reached under the bar for something. A weapon, no doubt. He knew exactly where this was going. The rest of the customers probably did too, but they just sat there and watched silently.

  Raider-Hat stopped at the edge of my table. He had a nasty grin on his face. The other two spread out alongside him. Tweaker was twitching like she was hooked up to a car battery. Dough-Boy was smiling stupidly.

  “What the fuck’s your problem?” Raider-Hat said.

  Instead of answering him I tilted my head back and finished off my glass of beer, knowing it was most likely the last one I was going to get that night. In that particular bar, at least.

  I set the beer down and sat there staring at him but didn’t answer. Raider-Hat slammed his hand on the table. It produced a loud bang but I didn’t so much as flinch.

  “I asked you a question, asshole.”

  “You mind repeating it?” I said. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  Dough Boy chimed in from the cheap seats. “He asked you what the fuck your problem is.”

  “I don’t have one,” I replied, my eyes still on Raid
er-Hat. He was the only semi-dangerous one, the one I’d have to deal with first if things went bad.

  “Well, you’re about to,” Raider-Hat said.

  “Is that right?”

  Raider-Hat nodded. “You’re damn right. My woman here says you blew her a kiss.”

  “And what if I did?”

  “Then we’re gonna to have to fuck you up,” Raider-Hat said.

  “And if I didn’t?”

  “We’re still gonna fuck you up,” Dough Boy said, smiling stupidly.

  “And how do you plan on doing that?” I said, still seated, not sweating them in the least. “After all, there’s only three of you.”

  “But only one of you,” Tweaker said.

  I looked at her. “And you think that gives you an advantage?”

  “You’re damn right it does,” Raider-Hat said.

  “How so?” I said. “I mean, you don’t know the first thing about me. I could be an MMA fighter, or a hardcore martial artist, or even an ex-Navy SEAL for all you know.”

  “You ain’t none of those things,” Raider-Hat said.

  “Oh yeah? What makes you so sure?”

  “Cuz you’re too damn scruffy. With that long-hair and scraggly beard. You look like some kind of bum.”

  “You ever heard of not judging a book by its cover?” I said.

  “We ain’t talking about no book,” Dough Boy said, completely missing the point. Which came as no surprise. “We’re talking about you.”

  “Besides,” Raider-Hat said. “If you were one of those things you wouldn’t be drinking in this shithole.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said. “Maybe I picked this shithole for a reason. I mean, imagine just for a moment that I was an ex-SEAL. Say, for example, that while training for an operation, I contracted a flesh-eating virus that didn’t quite succeed at killing me but did do enough damage to run me out of the SEALS. You think I might be just a little pissed off about that? Just maybe?”

  Raider-Hat just stared at me. It was impossible to tell if I was getting through to him at all.

  “Suffice it to say I would be more than a little pissed,” I continued. “So now, with all this anger built up inside me, all I want to do is drink in peace and try to get through another day without taking my rage out on someone else,” I said. “If that was the case, then this would be the exact kind of place I would pick. Someplace to drink in peace without any damn frat boys or yuppies or loud-mouthed rednecks around to bother me.”

  Raider-Hat’s nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed but he remained silent.

  “Now, I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “If I came here just to drink myself into oblivion, why did I blow your girl over there a kiss, right?”

  Raider-Hat didn’t answer. Nor did any of the others. I think their confusion had paralyzed them, at least temporarily.

  “Well, let me answer that in a way I think you’ll understand,” I said. “I wasn’t looking for any kind of a confrontation, at least not earlier, but once you boys came in and started making all that noise, I knew it was just a matter of time until I got fed up and came over there and shut you up without giving you a chance to pipe down. So I figured, why not nip things in the bud? Get them over here to try and talk a little sense into them before things get out of control. And the only way I could think of doing that was by blowing your girl a kiss there. So that’s what I did. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but there it is. It’s over and done with, and now here you are. With a decision to make. So what do you think?”

  Raider-Hat looked at me for a moment, then said, “I think you’re full of shit.”

  Dough Boy and Tweaker started laughing.

  “You want to know what I think?” Raider-Hat continued, fueled on by his cronies. “I think you did something stupid and now you’re trying to talk your way out of it.”

  “If that’s what you think than you’re even dumber than you look,” I said. “Which is pretty much impossible.”

  His mouth turned up in a predatory grin and it was obvious my little plan had failed. Not that it ever had much of a chance to succeed. But at least I could say I’d tried. And now there was only one direction for things to go. So it was just a matter of looking for the right opportunity to take control of the situation.

  And then Raider-Hat was setting his hand down on the table to hold his weight as he leaned in over the table towards me, providing me with just the opportunity I was looking for. “And you know what else I think—”

  I never found out what else he thought, as I lifted the table from the bottom, and wrenched it aside, spilling Raider-Hat off-balance. As he fell I grabbed his wrist, put my hand on the outside of his elbow, held his arm taut and turned it so his palm was facing towards the ceiling. He doubled over and went to one knee, giving me even more leverage. I lifted his arm further, putting more pressure on his elbow joint. He hissed in pain.

  Dough Boy had taken a couple of surprised steps back and was just looking on with wide eyes and an open mouth, his tobacco half in, half out. But Tweaker looked like she was about to charge me.

  “If you move I break his arm,” I said.

  Tweaker looked at me, then to Raider-Hat, then back at me. I could see her brain working, trying to figure her odds. They were non-existent.

  Dough Boy shook his head and mumbled “fuck this” and hightailed it towards the front door.

  “Where are you going you fat fuck?” Tweaker yelled after him.

  Perhaps hoping my attention had waned a bit, Raider-Hat tried to shift his weight to escape but I moved along with him. Then I put more pressure on his arm to get him to stop. He yelped in pain.

  “Don’t be stupid,” I said. “Either of you.”

  Tweaker took a deep breath and thought about things for a moment. Then she visibly relaxed. Unlike her boyfriend, she wasn’t as stupid as she looked.

  “What happens now?” she said.

  “Now you walk towards the door and I follow along with your friend here. After we’re on the street I let him go and you two take off. That’s it.”

  “And if we don’t take off?”

  “Then I’ll fuck you up and leave you on the street to rot,” I said casually, as though reading the weather.

  Tweaker glared at me for another few seconds to save some face then nodded. “Okay. I’m going.” She turned and headed towards the front door.

  I followed with her boyfriend in front of me. I relaxed the pressure a little but kept his arm in a controlled position. We marched towards the door like some broken procession. Tweaker walked outside and I released Raider-Hat and shoved him away from me. Together they walked away, arm-in-arm, neither one even bothering to look back. They knew when they were beat. I turned around and headed back into the bar. It was back to being a quiet, peaceful drinking place. Perfect.

  I ordered up another shot of Jack and a glass of Killian’s. The bartender got them for me without comment and I proceeded to drink them. But I didn’t get any enjoyment out of them. The confrontation had left me tired and annoyed. Mostly at myself for becoming such a loser in the six months since I’d sustained my injury.

  I dropped a couple twenty-dollar bills on the bar and walked out. I was done for the night. Time to get some sleep and prepare for the many long days of drinking ahead.

  2

  Sometime later I woke up feeling like an ice-pick had been stuck into my eye; after-effects of my binge from the night before. I rubbed my temples for a few seconds then sat up and felt around for the bottle of water I’d brought to bed with me. It was empty. I tossed it aside and stood up. I was still wearing my clothes from the night before, all the way down to my shoes.

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been asleep and I didn’t particularly care. The cycle of the sun was of no concern to me. I lived by my own set of rules and didn’t give two shits about the whims of the world around me, natural or otherwise. The area was completely dark but that didn’t mean anything. I lived in
what used to be a storage basement beneath a 24-hour Vietnamese restaurant. The only door led up to the kitchen. No skylights, no windows, no doors connected me to the outside world. It could be a high-cloudless sky at noon and inside my cave it would still seem like midnight.

  I pulled a lighter from my pocket, flicked it on and proceeded to light each of the 3-foot high candles that illuminated the basement, one in each corner. The meager light revealed the extent of my possessions—a mattress, a wooden chair nestled up to a small desk along one side of the wall, a couple of plastic 3-drawer sets to hold my clothes, a banquet table with some canned food and bottles of water, and a single bookshelf filled with old paperbacks.

  Nothing else.

  The basement wasn’t set up as a living space so it had no electricity. Which meant no modern amenities; no television, no stereo system, no computer, no stove, no refrigerator, no washing machine. It didn’t even have a bathroom. If I needed to crap or piss I had to hike up to the restaurant. Which was just fine with me. I didn’t need any of that bullshit. Distractions, all of them. None of it mattered. Not in the least. Not anymore. Nothing did.

  I pulled one of the paperbacks down from the top shelf—Lee Child’s ONE SHOT—sat down at my desk and picked up where I’d left off, about halfway through the book.

  A few hours later my stomach started to rumble. I’d eaten a can of pears already but my body needed something more substantial. I folded the corner of the page I was on and set the book down. Then I slipped a black sweatshirt over my head and headed up the stairs and into the great wide open.

  The stairwell emerged near the back of the kitchen. I nodded to the cook and walked through the kitchen and came out near the front counter. The owner, an older man named Dat Tran, was working the front, as always. I clapped him on the shoulder and came around to the other side like a normal customer.

  “What you want today?” Dat said, speaking in his patented rapid-fire. “Sweet and Sour pork? Bejing Beef? Lemon Pepper Duck?”