The Misbegotten

By the next evening, we were wired so tight we were fighting over the stupidest shit. We argued over the most ridiculous points, getting on each other’s nerves at every single, fucking turn.

After the second hour of this bullshit, I’d had enough. I marched over to my dresser and yanked open the top drawer. I shoved in my hand and pulled forth the rolled joints and weed Jacob had put there earlier that month.

I didn’t wait for anyone. I didn’t talk to anyone. I strode over to the window. I climbed through it and made my way to the top of the house – the roof over the Loft. I sat down, peering about the darkened city and gazed at the stars. I put a fat joint to my mouth and lit the butane lighter.

My cousin had left it within the plastic bag with the rest of my “goodies”.

The roofing shingles were still warm from the midday-sun, soothing to sit upon. They were a good balance between their warmth and the cool breeze blowing inland from the ocean.

I took one long puff, held it and watched them come up like a procession. They trickled upward with careful steps - Katie, Sandy, Ramona, Leda, Tirza, Jolene and finally Flavia.

Only Johan had stayed behind, because he, by some amazing ability only he possessed, had fallen asleep. How he did so amongst the cacophony of bickering and bitching was beyond me. We’d left him spread-eagled upon my bed with the TV on low, a note scrawled upon my desk. It said to meet us on the roof. We were having a much needed “time-out”.

When I finally released the smoke from my lungs, Katie put out her hand, a knowing sneer on her visage. “I thought this was breaking the rules about being ready in a moments’ notice and all that weak shit. I mean, isn’t it?” She took the joint and pulled hard on it. She was, after all, the biggest pothead among us, excepting Jacob maybe.

“I don’t give a shit,” I replied. “After all the crap going on down there, all I could think of was to find something that’ll make me relax.

“We’re all too keyed up. We need to chill. There’s no way we can possibly hope to focus when we’re acting like a bunch of assholes.”

“I’m with you there, cuz,” she said as she sat down beside me, her leg rubbing against mine.

Leda reached around my cousin and took the next plug of the drug into her body. She stood there holding her breath. Her neck she canted upward, holding the naughty sig’ between her fore- and middle-fingers. Her hand flared out so the smoldering end was away from her body. She was in profile relative to me. She looked so much like a movie star – sexy, young, and beautiful silhouetted against a canopy of stars.

I realized then, I’d been mooning over how hot Leda was for some time now. I couldn’t even remember the first time I’d admitted it to myself. I felt attracted to her. It could’ve been for quite some time ago. As I stared at her that night, I couldn’t help but feel something deep for her. Just the sight of her stirred me.

“Cat got your tongue?” asked Sandy, coming to sit on the other side of me just as close as Katie.

I sniggered. “Naw, Leda does,” I offered, free of guile. I could only manage honesty with Sandy. There are no secrets between us. We have always told one another exactly what was on our minds’.

Her gaze followed mine and, for a few heartbeats, she got to see Leda exactly as I had. Right before the petite teen moved to face us more direct. She handed the joint over to Ramona.

My girlfriend took it and sat down in front of me, though close enough, her butt was partially on my right foot.

“Yeah, she sure is a pretty one, isn’t she?” responded Sandy with a rhetorical question that needed no answer.

“Yes, she is,” I retorted still.

“Who is what?” asked my girlfriend with the strained tones of someone holding their breath while trying to talk.

“Leda,” said Sandy, quick to speak. “We were saying Leda is pretty.”

Ramona nodded, emphatic as she exhaled. She passed the rolled cigarette Jolene.

The girl did not waste time took a nice hit.

My step-sister stared at her with wide-eyes the entire time.

I guess there were a few things Flavia didn’t know about her best friend.

“Leda is gorgeous. What are you guys talking about?” Ramona’s eyes were already glassy and her grin was too wide.

Fucking Ramona was one of the few people I knew who got buzzed off the first drag. There was no waiting with her. One moment, she was sober, the next she was fucking stoned. It’s always bewildered me.

“Who’s gorgeous?” interrupted Leda.

“You are babydoll, you are,” was my girlfriend’s uneven reply.

Leda stepped closer, a serious cast about her. “Hell ya, bitches, and don’t you forget it either.”

We all chuckled, the mood lightened. The interplay was more like the norm, especially when compared to the childish way we had been acting down in the Loft.

It made me feel better and some of the tightness in my shoulders and neck evaporated.

Jolene had just passed the joint to Flavia, who looked down at it as if it were a rattlesnake or something. She held it between the tiniest tips of her fingers.

To my surprise, Tirza crept up to her and plucked it from her before she dropped it. My ex-girlfriend, without pause, brought it to her lips and sucked in, then held it. “That’s how you do it, girl,” she said in a similar voice to the one Ramona has used. Tirza held her breath for a few more seconds.

I shook my head, thinking. Since when did this god-fearing, bible-thumping, little imp of a girl become an expert at smoking dope? Where in the fuck had I been to have missed such a drastic change?

The answer came without recourse. Up Ramona’s pussy, you dumb ass!

Tirza handed it back to Flavia, talking her through the process.

My step-sister began to followed suit.

The scene had fixated me when Sandy’s cell phone rang.

She squawked with shock. “Oh crap, it’s my mom.” Her voice seemed strangled as she scrambled to her feet. She moved away so she could hear what her mother had to say.

I gazed after her, more than a little worried, but was side-tracked.

My step-sister let out a series of harsh, hacking coughs. Marijuana smoke belched from her lungs in mini explosions. Every third cough, she gaged and retched as though she was about to up-chuck right there on the roof. But, to her credit, she held it in with a chorus of long, deep breaths.

No one laughed or made fun of Flavia. We were too loose to be mean at that point.

“You broke your cherry, girl, congrats,” announced Ramona with a flourish and a few us did laugh then.

Katie saluted her. “Welcome to the club, Cuz!” she said.

Tirza just patted her on the back, tapping light.

Flavia peered through watery eyes like we were crazy.

I couldn’t blame her though, everyone coughed and spewed and choked the first time they tried smoking weed. It was like a fucking rite of passage or some shit like it. Well, it sure felt as if it was, at least in my book.

Sandy came back then, her face a twist of confusion.

“What happened?” I asked the first to notice the change in her mood.

Sandy grimaced, the lack of understanding making her sweet face look unattractive for the moment. “I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?”

“My mom, she told me not to go home. She said to stay away at Leda’s or wherever the two of us were staying,” she tried for a second time, sounding more or less coherent.

“Really?” I asked, unbelieving.

She bobbed her head up and down, absent-minded. “Yeah, she said some guy in a suit had come over asking all sorts of questions about me and my friends – you guys too, I assume.”

Those last five words drew my full attention in the blink of an eye. “Us, why would you think us?” I asked, trying to make the same deduction she had.

“I’m not sure, Estefan. I guess you had to hear the way she said it. It was like she was saying something to me, but wanted me to understand she was implying much more.” She shook her head in confusion. “She never talks that way. I think it was more than a warning, and yet, I’m not one hundred percent sure.” She was about to cry, the bewilderment was overwhelming.

“Don’t worry too much, Sandy. Don’t forget your mother doesn’t know how prepared we are should anything come our way. She’s thinking you and Leda, and maybe one or two others, are kicking back someplace acting foolish. She doesn’t know you’re here, with us, armed, ready and with a game plan.” I motioned for her to sit back down next to me. “I doubt she would’ve called, if she knew what we’ve set up here. Why take the risk, right?”

She nodded like a toddler trying to be brave of the dark or the boogeyman.

“At least she gives a crap,” chimed in Ramona, having retrieved the half-smoked joint. She blew off some of the ash, quick hitting the soon-to-be roach.

“Why do you say it like that?” wondered Katie. She took the mini-doob and repeated what my girlfriend had done.

Ramona blurted a chuckle. “Because my bitch-ass mom reported me as a runaway this evening, that’s why.”

“Wait, what? When?” I asked.

“A few hours ago, the fucking bitch.” Hooded now, Ramona's eyes kept sliding away from whatever she was trying to look at. For some reason, they were unable to stay in one place.

She’s fucking high!

“Hey, won’t that pose a problem for us? I mean won’t the police be out looking for her now?” wondered Leda. No sigh of a buzz on her. “Her mom has gotta know she spends a lot of time over here, right?”

I sighed and massaged my scalp. “Yeah, I guess that’s a possibility, but if she knew for sure, why report her as a runaway? Why not just come over and get her?”

“Because she’s a lazy, fat-assed cow who’d rather get fucked up the culo, then lift a finger for me,” rasped my girlfriend. She wiped at the dribble of spittle leaking from her mouth. “She’ll let the cops sort it out.” It was an afterthought, directed at no one.

“It still has to be ‘back-burner’ stuff for the cops. They're too busy with the NIA invading their backyards every night, killing people indiscriminately. I doubt they’d waste their time looking for some teenage girl who’s run away from home. They’ll just think she’s snuck out to have sex with her boyfriend or some lame grown-up shit like that,” countered Tirza. The Mota was giving her the exact kind of clarity we needed at the moment. Then she erupted with the giggles, gurgling, “Even though that’s not far from the truth!”

There were a few muted laughs.

“Tirza’s right,” began Katie. “They won’t bother.” She wore a grin that was too big for her face.

“I’ll have my uncle’s look into it. Maybe they can squash the whole, stupid thing.” It was worth a shot.

Sandy jumped of a sudden, which startled me in turn.

I twisted toward her, unsure if I should shield my face against some unseen attack. I felt like a dweeb when she pulled her cell phone from a fold in her pajama bottoms.

“Mom, what’s wrong now?!” she said into the tiny mic, so worried it was dripping to the rooftop.

All meaningless banter between us stopped.

“Yeah, yeah sure, mom… you now, I do. Yes, I do, I love you very much. I have -.” Sandy pulled the device from her ear, and then placed it back. Her face mangled with anxiety. “Mom are you there? Mom, can you hear me? Mom. Mom? Mom!” She stared at the face of the headset, disconnecting the call with a thumb-swipe across it. “The line went dead,” she explained, peering from one of us to the next. Her face drained of blood. “She told me she loved me and the line went dead.” Then her eyes seemed to pop free of their sockets. “You don’t think anything had hap-,” was all she got to say.

Overhead, a pair of helicopters screamed from behind, so low hurricane force winds flattened us to the top of the house. The roar was deafening. None of us could hear the others as we screamed.

They streaked toward a lower section of the neighborhood, blacked out. They had no lights we could see. They were huge winged, ebon vipers, swooping down to fifty feet above the street, about half a mile away. Seconds later, they began to disgorge large, dark lumps at varying intervals.

My mind shrieked two words – Shock-troopers! Even as the sound diminished and the violent air currents vanished, my mind howled, my stomach heaved. I knew I was going to witness something horrible.

All at once, light was everywhere.

Both Urban Assault Black Hawks drenched the entire area with 300 million candlepower. We went blind and we were several blocks away.

As a group, we stood in a broad arch. We stared down the declining stretch of the land. We could see above the fences, over the tops of the trees, seeing over a kaleidoscope of roofing. We could hear rumble of heavy engines, the squeal of over-sized brakes and the squawk of large radios. Next came the pounding of booted feet, followed by the clicks and claps of guns locked and loaded.

Then there was nothing, except the constant whoosh of the massive rotors from above.

We edged closer toward the vista, a tight-packed unit.

I heard the wail sometime later, a high-pitched ululation, freakish, straight from hell itself. It didn’t sound human at all. I think I breathed maybe, or I shifted my weight upon my feet. I did something, though I cannot tell you with any specificity what it was. I don’t remember.

What I do remember was the gunfire, hundreds – no, thousands of rounds! The Black Hawks were firing as well. The inhuman screech went silent in seconds.

I leaned into Sandy, a little woozy. “Please tell me that is not your house,” I murmured, through the haze of marijuana and the horror unfolding below.

“It’s not,” was all she said, her eyes engrossed in the carnage before us.

I could smell burning wood, cordite and something else I couldn’t identify back then. Now I know it for the smell of crisped human flesh. It’s a smell you never forget, a smell that sticks in your nostrils for days, wakes you up at night from a nightmare. It can drive you insane because it is inescapable. It gets in your clothes. It sticks to your hair. It saturates your pores, so when you sweat, you smell it all over again, even after you’ve showered. You can taste it for weeks.

“You did park a block away like we planned, correct?” I queried, touching Sandy lightly on the back of her hand.

She nodded.

“Good. We have to make sure we can get out of the house on a moments’ notice. We have to stick to what we planned,” I stressed, retching.

She nodded again.

I couldn’t tell you if the others were listening.

“Okay, I gotta go inside.” I was choking now. “I think I’m going to throw-up.”

I stumbled onto the roof of the second floor and made my way to the window.

Everyone else was right behind me – zombiefied – walking corpses in a world of murder.