“He’s gonna step out, just like he would’ve done if he hadn’t of been so stupid as to wait for us to catch him,” he jerked and heaved, pulling the man back presumably for another try. “Come on, you dumb bastard,” he muttered.
“He’s dead, Ray,” I said gently. I was standing next to him, and thinking that he was going over the edge. Ray was losing it, even while I watched.
“I’m tired of lookin’ at him, and I don’t feel like digging a hole,” Ray explained.
“I’ve got a lighter,” said a voice. The voice chuckled when I jumped and then Steve stepped out of the shadows from behind the Beamer we had joy-rided to death earlier. He was wearing his crazy gold helmet as always, and seemed amused by the two of us.
“We could burn him. I’ve got a lighter and we can use the gas from the Beamer.”
Ray suddenly stood and got right up in my face. His arms were cocked back and he was ready to go for me right there, I could tell.
“You gonna stand there and watch, or are you gonna help?” he asked me.
I looked at him for a moment, then without even a glance at Steve I reached down and helped Ray with the body. We lifted him up Ray working his legs and me working his arms. The head lolled and flopped as we swung him to and fro. With a mighty heave we sent Kevin Simpson through the rip. The fields rippled and loomed a bit like a fire that is fed a dry stick of tinder. I wondered what the people on the other side, if there were any such people, would think of their latest immigrant.
“Oh man, you guys are dog meat,” laughed Steve, holding his rifle to his belly and bending over it a bit. “When Kyle finds out you tossed him through, you’re both friggin’ Alpo, man.”
“Why’s that, Steve?” I asked.
“Because you tossed old Senor Simpson through the rip.”
“So what?”
“So you were about to take the stuff out of the Beamer and step out with all of the loot,” he explained, as if we were simpletons. “You were stealing from Kyle, stealing from the gang. At least, that’s what I’m telling Kyle. You guys have been acting weird lately anyway, he’ll believe me.”
“Yeah, well-” began Ray, casually turning a bit and laying his big black hand on his shotgun, which protruded over his shoulder.
“Hold it right there, man,” said Steve, instantly grim. He held his rifle confidently, aiming it from his hip. It was pointed at Ray’s chest, and all of us knew that he wasn’t likely to miss. He was good with that rifle, he was forever stalking around in the fields and vacant lots, shooting at everything that moved like a ten-year-old with a BB gun.
Ray let his hand ease away from the shotgun, while I took a nonchalant step forward. “You too chick,” barked Steve, swinging the barrel to cover me. I froze. “You are two of the sorriest nuts I’ve ever caught out farting around in this parking lot,” he laughed, shaking his head. “Now both of you will drop your guns and kick them over here, nice and easy,” he said it just like a gangster in an old video, which is where he got most of his ideas.
“Hey now,” I said after we had kicked away our guns, forcing a jovial smile. “We’re all buds, Steve. Let’s go have a sixer in the store and talk it over.”
“Not anymore,” said Steve, shaking his head with grim finality. He was obviously more relaxed now that we were unarmed. He glanced to the One-Way sign we had knocked over while tossing Simpson through the rip. He frowned, walking over to it while keeping an eye on us. “You guys even kicked over our mascot here, just to prove you’re traitors.”
He looked down at the sign for a moment, a good long moment, but not quite long enough for us to get to him. He got his rifle up in time to check us, and the look of shock in his eyes was good to see. Ray had stepped quickly and silently up to within five feet of him, and I was right behind him. He could see the deadly intent in our eyes, and we could see a moment of fear waver through his. He and Ray were practically face to face, with Steve’s back up against the fields. We were all very aware of how close Steve was to going into the rip. One step back, maybe two, and he was stepping out for sure.
“I’ll blow your guts out, Ray. You back off now.”
“And I’ll jump you Steve, you skinny little psycho. I’ll rush you and we’ll both go steppin’ out together, just like we was dancin’,” Ray told him in a low, gutteral voice.
“I know what you need right now Steve. You need a little chemical courage, a little crank or smack or maybe a good dose of blur,” I said, baiting him. “You’re a scared weasel without a little bit of blur, aren’t you Steve?”
“You shut up, or I’ll blast off you-” I never heard what part of my anatomy Steve was going to blow off, because right then Ray hit him. He had swung his gun to the side to aim at me, and Ray took this opportunity to shove him into the fields. The rifle went off and missed me, although I suppose it was just luck that it did. We saw him fall back into the fields and try to catch himself on the edge of the transfer point, at the point where a man’s molecules are spread half-here and half-there. He fired his rifle again, and it made a distant popping sound, as if he had fired it into a king-sized foam mattress. The muzzle flashed, but we never felt or heard the bullet strike, I have no idea where it went.
We could see for a second that his vocal chords strained, his mouth gaped open and his hand stretched toward us, but it was all silent, his voice never reached us. Just before he disappeared, his helmet slipped back and I saw his pimply face one last time. In that moment he wasn’t a gang-member or a vicious bully, he was a sixteen- year old kid and he was scared out of his mind. Then the fields rippled and he was covered up, like a man drowning in a vat of swirling paints.
Then Kyle came out. He was very rational. He was almost always calm, even when he was tearing chunks out of your face with his visegrips. “So let me get this straight, team,” he told us in that fatherly voice I hated. “Mr. Simpson had wanted to get through our rip so badly that you felt sorry for his corpse and tossed it through. Then Steve came along and accidentally stumbled through after the body?”
“Nothing like that, Kyle,” I said, watching him slap his goddamn pliers into his palm like a school master’s paddle. Slap, slap.
“I pulled Steve out of his drug scene, you know,” Kyle said quietly. “I pulled Stevie up and out and then you guys tossed him into oblivion.”
Slap, slap.
“He might not be dead, Kyle,” I said, feeling a bit defensive. “He’s probably better off than we are. No one knows what’s on the other side.”
“I do!” shouted Kyle at me suddenly, glaring with those intense big yellow eyes of his. Then he looked down at his pliers again and I followed his gaze. The light from the fields shimmered and glinted on the shiny metal. Dark blood stained the jaws and ran down to smear the grips. I wondered briefly if Simpson’s blood still felt tacky in Kyle hands and cold fingers of nausea tickled my guts.
Kyle lowered his voice, all calm and reason again. “We all know why nobody comes back out of the rips. Because there’s nothing on the other side now, nothing but death.”
“He pulled his gun on us, Kyle,” I said.
“So you iced him, nice and neat. You guys are a pretty pair, alright. Couldn’t have just tripped him, could you Ray? Couldn’t just give him a nice judo throw, knocking the wind out of him and some sense in? No, you had to make an interstellar iceball out of him, you had to turn him into a sixteen year-old popsicle, zits and all.”
Ray stared glumly into the dancing colors, silently brooding. When he finally spoke he didn’t take his eyes away from the colors. “You know what I want to know, Kyle? I want to know what’s with you and those friggin’ pliers. Did your daddy beat your lil’ butt with his handtools, or somethin’?”
“No Ray,” said Kyle quietly, the snake tattoos jumping on his forearms the way they did when he was pissed. “No, but I bet your daddy beat your butt good, didn’t he? Too bad he never got a little carried away and tossed you over a cliff or out a window, like you did for poor old Stevie.”
Then Kyle stalked over to the Beamer, lifting the trunklid and dug out something that crackled like paper out of the darkness. He returned with a long paper sack in his hands, the type that liquor stores used to put booze bottles in so that drunks could pretend they weren’t booze bottles-back when there were liquor stores. He walked back to us and held it out a sack to Ray, grinning.
“Would you like a drink, Ray?” There was something funny about the way he held the bag. It was upside down, with the open end covering his hand. Ray’s eyes slid to Kyle’ side, to his holster. My eyes followed his, and widened. Kyle’s holster was empty.
