The Ghost Ships of Arizona

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

Amidst the great storm, Alicia shrieked, a sound most unbefitting of her. Drake held her tightly as they tumbled, refusing to let go and quite possibly lose her forever. End over end, side over side they fell, sand erupting from their every revolution. His embrace was unbreakable and he could feel her cheek pressed tightly to his own. Just as he imagined they might roll that way for eternity they struck bottom and rolled level for a few more revolutions. The world still spun, rotating around and around inside his head. Alicia panted against his cheek. Down here, the fury of the storm had abated somewhat.

Drake rose to his knees, still holding Alicia, and opened his eyes. They had stumbled down the side of a valley, now completely cut off from the fight and faced with a hard slog back to the top. Luckily, he couldn’t feel any breakages or even bruising. Some people would pay good money for a trip like that.

The thought reminded him of Alicia. It wasn’t like the blond woman to just lie in his arms. Gently, he cupped her face and pushed her head back until he could focus. Alicia’s eyes were closed.

“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

He wiped a smudge from her forehead. Alicia’s eyes fluttered open. “Matt?”

“Aye love. It’s me.”

“Are we… alive?”

“I bloody hope so. I’d hate for this to be the afterlife.”

She pulled away and checked her body. Drake remembered two bullets striking her almost simultaneously and felt his heart suddenly take a great lurch. Oh no…

Two tattered holes gaped in Alicia’s clothing over her new body armor. The blonde grimaced at the sight and then stared at Drake.

“I should be dead.”

“I guess we all should be. Ten times over. Maybe someone somewhere just likes us.”

“Matt.” Alicia again used his first name, something unheard of, and more than unnerving. “I should be dead. Long before now. I shouldn’t be here.”

Drake began to worry that she might have banged her head. “Lean over,” he said, struggling to his knees. “Let’s take a look.”

“What?”

“At your head. I’m not sure your brain’s intact.”

“All my life I’ve been running. All my life I’ve been barely surviving.”

Drake met those blinding blue eyes and felt a deep shiver of fear. This wasn’t at all right. Ghosts, he thought. Ghosts do exist out here in the desert and they’ve made her… take stock. Pause.

The world was about to explode.

Alicia struck at him, the punch glancing off his chin. Drake saw stars. “I shouldn’t be alive!” she cried. “Don’t you see? I don’t want to be alive!”

Drake threw himself into the very core of it. “Of course you do. You’re a good person. You save lives and deserve to live yours. Properly!”

“Fuck you!” Alicia swung at him, two blows, the first a diversion and the second feeling like it took a chunk from his ribs. Drake gasped for air and folded. “No…”

Alicia leapt on top of him, her hands around his throat. Instantly she began to squeeze. “You think it’s fun being me? Do you? Every decision a bad one. Every new move questionable and tainted.”

Drake knew she would kill him. Alicia was imploding and exploding at the same time, running on destructive auto-pilot, and facing the crisis of her life. This was all-out war, the fury of the storm above reflected in the storm exploding within Alicia Myles.

“Move on. Move ahead. Never stop… never stop running. That’s my creed. That’s my motto.”

“No,” Drake managed to gasp. “Alicia Myles is ‘One Life, Live It’. That’s you.”

“What I pretend it to be! You think I’m living my life or running from it? Don’t be a fucking bell end.”

Alicia bore down on his throat and Drake saw a deeper, more alarming blackness. His only thought was that she would not stop. She would kick and pound his dead corpse if it came to that until something got worked out. Slamming his hands up he connected with her face and managed to loosen the grip, then inserted a hand beneath hers. He rolled, pressing hard on her body, then rolled back. He squirmed, bent her fingers as hard as he could. Alicia yelped and jumped back. Drake hung his head, panting, barely surviving.

“None of this is your fault, Alicia. Don’t you remember? Your dad was a drunk, a fucking weakling who shrank rather than stepping up and taking responsibility for his kids. Your mother didn’t fight him. They both failed you. The Army took you away but then it failed you too. Made you keep on running. It’s been coming a long time — this reckoning.”

“But the memories.” For a moment Alicia crouched there like a starving predator, eyes wild. “Nothing calms them, soothes them except the next experience. Nothing keeps them at bay. Moving on is all I have.”

“But then they return even worse. You must face them and fight them and then kill them. Like you would any adversary.”

Drake threw his body to the side as Alicia pounced again. His right hand jabbed at her ribs to give her something to think about, maybe to take some of the violent ardor out of her. She sucked it up and gave only a feral grin in return.

“Give me some more of that.”

He should have known better.

Alicia kicked sand at him, then flung herself into a flying head-butt straight at his solar-plexus. Drake collapsed again, feeling the energy drain away. Next, a punch drew blood from his gums and snapped his head sideways.

“Stop. Not like this,” he gasped.

“What? You want me on top?”

Alicia jumped onto his lap, grabbed both his ears and wrenched them hard. Drake squealed and then threw both of them to the side; the battling duo tumbled together along the bottom of the narrow valley, spitting curses into each other’s faces.

Drake couldn’t help but think: It was always going to come to this.

Alicia halted their tumble, dragged him up by the vest, and threw him past her. Drake yelled in alarm as he smashed into what felt like a solid brick wall.

“Moving on is what it is,” Alicia shouted in his face. “But I never move on. Not in here.” She jabbed at his forehead. “In here I’m still fifteen and having the shit scared out of me every day. In here I’m always facing a drunk with quick fists and trying to prove that I’m not scared. That’s how I am. That’s me. How do I get past that?”

She threw a clenched fist at him. Drake dodged and her knuckles struck brick.

“Ow!”

Drake ducked around her, gaining a little space. As he moved he took stock of their surroundings. Above, a small V of sunlight revealed how far away the top of this narrow valley was, before it vanished in the face of the ongoing storm. Sand rained down onto his face, hair and shoulders in a constant shower. All around stood what remained of a small, tumbledown structure, an old gray, brick-built shelter, its walls short and stubby and its roof all but caved in. Drake darted into the ruins, happy to have a wall at his back.

Alicia stalked him, her face twisted with memories, her eyes wild and crazy. Drake was under no illusions that survival meant weathering this particular personal storm.

“Come home, Alicia.” He simply spoke the words in his heart. “Stop running.”

His words stopped her, brought a smoothness to her features. But terrible memories are like deep wounds, deep loss, they never truly repair, and they struck back now, sending Alicia into even deeper despair. She punched and kicked Drake, exploring his defenses and then getting around them, injuring his knee and smashing a tooth so hard that it fell to the sand — more blood staining the ground. Alicia stared at it as though she were staring her dead father right in the eyes once more — something she had never managed to do.

“This is all we should be,” she said in a damaged voice. “Blood and bone, teeth and flesh. Not memory and feeling and opinion. I don’t want that.”

“Then accept it,” Drake said harshly. “You lived it. You lived through it. Accept that one of the worst enemies you have ever discovered was your own father. It’s better to mold that memory into fire and grist and desire and purpose than to try to ignore it. Better to accept and live. Every day.”

Alicia looked spent, consumed, but that didn’t stop her unleashing a violent attack. She slammed his shoulder against the brick wall at his back. The wall wavered and then collapsed, sending up a plume of mortar. Alicia was on him, bearing down hard amidst the tumbling bricks. They rolled, striking another wall, which also crumpled under their combined weight. They bowled through the rubble. Drake regained his footing, grabbed Alicia and threw her against an outer wall. The entire structure wobbled. Drake then tried to pull her to safety, but she pushed him away.

“C’mon, tough guy,” she said harshly. “Fight me if you can.”

And then he saw it. Finally, he saw it. Crap, he was slow but she was projecting the memory of her father onto him for the duration of this fight, this explosion, and he was fighting back. Not good. Against all of his instincts he realized he had to let her win.

“You think you’re good enough,” he said. “Prove it.”

She came like a devil, a whirlwind. Fists struck him left and right and on top of the head, jarring his skull bones and bruising his cheeks no end. A knee caught him in the stomach and he was down on his knees. Gripping his shoulders she threw him against the outer wall and it disintegrated all around him, bricks and mortar raining down and bouncing off his shoulders. Still, he knelt there, moaning. Alicia boxed the side of his head, and he collapsed. She stomped at his ribs, making him wheeze. A hand was the only thing holding him up and then she stepped hard on the fingers.

Drake was down among the sand and rubble of the collapsed shelter. Alicia grasped the edges of the last remaining wall, heaved, and pulled it so that it fell on top of him. Blood splashed across his vision. Stars shone like a frenetic Milky Way. Blackness enshrouded all that he knew and saw.

“Die.” He heard the familiar voice only a millimeter from his face. “I never got to see you die and I’ve been running ever since. Are you still in there?”

Drake remained silent and swam with the darkness. Then he felt Alicia pulling him out from under the wreckage.

“You don’t die that easily, bastard.”

A boot to the groin sent him backward against the sharp slope of the valley where he stayed, barely able to stand.

“Open your eyes.”

He felt no surprise to see the pistol leveled at his throat.

“Say your last prayer.”

“In the end…” he managed to croak. “I want you to take your future by the fucking balls and live it, Alicia. Live it while you still have time.”

Her eyes widened, the tangle of lines across her forehead eased. He knew that he had gotten through, but only as the figure of her nightmare vision. He also knew that it wouldn’t save his life.

The gunshot filled his brain.