Slow Burn, Chapter 10/21

CHAPTER TEN

Marigold had never woken up to the sound of hysterics before, but she knew it couldn’t be a good sign.

It sounded very far off, at first, like the remnant of a dream.  Within Mare’s mental haze, she thought she recalled a dream deserving of hysterics – a nightmare, really.  A nightmare about intruders or a home invasion – like a particularly exploitative and unoriginal TV film run across during late-night channel surfing.  The young woman idly wondered where her subconscious had cooked it up.

The sound of the sobbing and pleading only got stronger as Mare’s thoughts gradually became more coherent.  It gave her a profound sense of unease.  That nearly metamorphosed into full-blown panic when she remembered the reality she was waking up to.

She administered a mental slap in the face.  Come on, Mare.  You were never one for that sort of thing.  This is no time to start.  She took a deep breath, then set about lifting eyelids which seemed to weight about five tons apiece.  Eventually she succeeded.

The first thing she saw was the source of the hysterics – evidently Candy Carmichael was one for that sort of thing.  The dispatcher stood on the other side of the kitchenette, arms raised due to a restraint around her wrists.  She sagged against her bonds forlornly.  She voiced a combination of sobs, pleas for mercy, and protestations that she was too young for all of this.  Two of their captors – the tall one and the short one – looked on, askance.

Mare wished she could rub the sleep from her eyes, but she perceived that she was bound even more securely than Candy.  She could even tell, as she tested the ropes, that she was tied to someone else in the chair behind her.  She could also see Augusta bound opposite her – silent but telegraphing glares of murderous rage at the intruders.  Mare called the roster in her head, and deduced that her bound partner was either Antonia or Virginia.  But that still didn’t account for nearly everyone who’d been in the building.  Had they escaped?  The intruders certainly seemed to be at their ease, so that seemed unlikely.  Captive elsewhere?  Possible.  Or something worse?  Mare shuddered.

The goons finally seemed to have gotten tired of Candy’s cries.  They both stood and walked over to her, dark annoyance on their faces.  She quailed, sobbing.  They jeered.  Slapped.  Prodded.

Mare tested her bonds again, and cursed inwardly.  It was a solid job.  Escape, for the moment, was out.  Her anger at these invaders was boiling over, and she burned to get back at them – to do something.  But she forced herself to settle into an analytical frame of mind.  Just like the Captain said – though she’d first heard it from her when they’d been Lieutenant Hawkins and Fire Sergeant Thompson.  “You can’t just charge straight into a blaze, or any other emergency.  Especially when you’ve got other people who are your responsibility.  It’s a good way to get them hurt or killed.  You have to take the time to read the situation.  Even if it kills you to do so.”

It was certainly killing Mare to see them treating her dispatcher this way.  But since she could do nothing else, she forced herself to watch and study the girl’s tormentors, hoping to gather intelligence.  True, the men’s faces were covered.  But the lieutenant had done enough people-watching in her time to glean much from subtleties – the way they moved, the way they talked, voice inflections, etc.  One – the short one – was definitely Hispanic, though not Mexican; Mare guessed he was Central American.  The tall one seemed like an Anglo Los Angelino.

The tall one she pegged as more salacious than malicious – he held back some.  The other seemed a pure sadist, who thoroughly enjoyed dispensing pain and suffering.  Overall, though, both seemed to exude a sort of fatalistic abandon – they carried themselves as men who have lost so much that they had little fear for losing much else.  Mare had known enough men like that in her life – heck, Dad was one of them – to know they could be extremely dangerous in the wrong circumstances.

For their part, the two men seemed to have finally tired of making Candy a target for their sport.  The Hispanic one removed a dishrag from a nearby drawer and tied it into a rudimentary gag.  The dispatch girl, more or less silenced now, whimpered piteously.

If the goons were looking forward to restored peace and quiet, however, they had not reckoned on Augusta.  The Polish student had been watching what was happening right next to her – but unlike Marigold, Augusta’s emotions showed on her sleeve.  She looked like she was about to blow a gasket when she finally spoke up.

“Real tough guys, eh?  Skurwysyns.  Hitting girls, who are tied up and can’t even fight back.  What kind of men are you?”  She spat in their direction, though her missile fell far short of target.

Her barb stopped the men in their tracks; they turned around.  The Hispanic one stepped forward.  “The kind that are in charge, gatita.”  He looked her up and down.  “Don’t forget that.”

“Untie me and fight me fair, and we’ll see about that!” Augusta shouted hotly.  Mare blanched, and tried to catch Augusta’s eye.  Succeeding, she shook her head and tried to silently dissuade the fuming girl.  But the Pole angrily rolled her eyes and looked away.

The short man laughed heartily.  “La gatita wants a piece of el gato, eh?”  He grinned darkly.  “Why not?  We’ve got shit else to do.”  His partner shifted his weight, uncertain, as the speaker began to undo Augusta’s bonds.

“When I beat you, you’ll be letting us go,” Augusta said fervently as she stood from the chair.  “And you can slither back to whatever snakehole you came from.”

“Sure, sure,” the Hispanic one said, divesting himself of his accoutrements.  Mare discerned something alarming in his undertone; again she tried to signal Augusta, and again the Polish girl purposefully ignored her.  “And if I win?  What do I get?”

The girl looked down the length of her body, as if becoming acutely aware of its fragility for the first time.  “Nothing you didn’t have at your mercy already,” she said grimly.  Then she dropped into a muay thai fighting stance.

Mare didn’t trust the fairness of this fight in the slightest, but there was nothing she could do to stop it.  She’d heard that the Polish girl took mixed martial arts lessons, but had no idea of the quality of the girl’s training.  As far as she could see, Augusta’s best hope was that her opponent didn’t seem to take her very seriously – his stance was stiff and rigid.  The lieutenant watched anxiously.

Without warning, Augusta launched a roundhouse kick that caught the short man square in the stomach.  He cried out in pain and surprise, staggering.  The girl advanced, putting up her guard; she parried his wild counterpunch and bloodied his nose with one of her own.  Then he angrily swung a leg out wide, intending to trip her; she nimbly sidestepped, then caught his leg and drove him back.  He hopped awkwardly for a couple of steps, then twisted and fell on the heap of his gear.

She followed close on him, wearing an invigorated smile.  It was only at the last second, as he rolled over, that she saw the taser in his hand.

The electrodes fired.  The prongs sank in.  And Augusta fell to the ground, writhing in pain.

The intruder rose, groaning due to his own injuries.  Between the groans he uttered a stream of unintelligible curses.  Then he viciously kicked Augusta a couple of times in the stomach.  She tried to curl up and avoid the blows, but had little muscle control.  Mare cried out in protest, but it had no effect.

The tall one put a hand on the other’s shoulder and pulled him away.  “That’s enough, Ybarra!  You agreed to it.  Now don’t cause us any more trouble than you already have.”  Ybarra seemed about to protest, but then grudgingly relented.  They picked up Augusta and began to confine her to the chair once more; she sagged weakly.

Evidently the taser had not been at full charge; the girl was incapacitated, but not unconscious. “Oszust…cheater…” she said shakily.  “You fucked me.”

Ybarra pulled her drooping face upward, inches from his own.  “You’d know it if I fucked you, puta!”  Then he motioned a halt to his accomplice, who had been about to bind Augusta’s arms.  Ybarra reached down and grabbed the bottom of Augusta’s blue LAFD T-shirt, yanking it roughly upward.  The girl was unable to do anything about it as he pulled it off, leaving her completely bare from the waist up.  Mare cringed; she saw that Candy did likewise.  The tall man stared, awestruck.

Ybarra stopped to fondle her, then rolled the shirt into a coil and gagged her with it.  “Suck on that.”  He turned to step away while the tall man finished tying her hands.

Mare saw bitter tears on Augusta’s cheeks, but no defeat in her eyes.  The Pole feebly kicked out one leg that was not yet restrained and managed to trip Ybarra, sending him face-first into the countertop.

He came up with fresh blood streaming from his nose, cursing.  “Hija de las cien mil putas!”  He grabbed the taser, switched out a fresh cartridge, then jabbed her in the stomach with it, not even bothering to launch the prongs.

Volts cascaded through Augusta’s body.  She moaned in pain once, trying to lift her head, then fell into merciful unconsciousness.  Mare’s eyes couldn’t leave the poor young firewoman’s face as her frozen expression of pain slackened into one of weary release.

The eyes of the two men were fixated on the independent bouncing motions of the girl’s chest as she writhed and shuddered reflexively.  Finally Ybarra released the taser trigger and stepped back.

His partner looked over at him with an expression of guilty pleasure.  “What’d you stop it for?” he asked.  Ybarra leered and switched in a fresh cartridge.

Augusta’s tears shook free and scattered across the floor of the kitchenette.