2017:
"Jim Steinman is the greatest songwriter of our time," I'm saying. I am Sean Shaughnessy, and I know what I'm talking about.
"Was," my wise-ass kid brother Lucas says. "He's as dead as the rest, now."
"Is, was, whatever," I say. "The fact is that when you heard a Steinman tune, you knew it. The man defined rock. It was love and lust and music and teenage grab-life-by-the-balls passion. Epic tunes, man. Just epic."
Guillermo rolls his eyes. Lucas and I, we've been arguing music for awhile. None of us really wants to explore the barn we're standing and staring at.
Mercedes and Dante are back a ways, out guarding the bikes. Mercedes has a rape whistle to blow if there's trouble.
We edge into the open door and peek around. The barn is huge and open, but cluttered with junk. We walk cautiously with guns drawn, watching the dust motes dance in our flashlight beams. No sounds. No movement. Lucas finds a cowbell and he swings it. The noise is loud and obnoxious, just like him.
"Dinnertime, rotters," he yells. We wait. Nothing. He rings it again. Still nothing. He shrugs, swings his M16 around to rest on his shoulder, and starts poking through the clutter. Gutierrez, walking slowly forward, trips on something and stumbles. We laugh at him and he shoots us a dirty look.
"You're a bad dancer, Gigi," I say and he flips me off. He hates it when I call him Gigi.
"There's something there," he says. He kneels to brush away the dust and hay and dirt. There's a ring sticking out of the floor. More dusting reveals the outline of a door.
"How many barns do you know with cellars?" Lucas asks.
"What, now you're a barn afficianado?" I ask.
"I would call myself an amatuer barn enthusiast, sure," he says.
Gutierrez shushes us. "Guns ready," he says. "I'm opening her up."
He lifts the door and we aim into the void. He throws it back and we peer in. A wooden ladder goes straight down.
"Good trap," Lucas says.
"Way to volunteer to go first," I say.
He sputters at me, stops, sighs, rolls his eyes. "You know I was mom's favorite," he says.
"Well, she always did want a little girl," I say.
He throws a chunk of hay at my head, but it disinigrates before it gets to me. I'm still laughing at him when he begins the descent. Gutierrez and I wait up top for gunshots or the all-clear. We get the all clear. Gutierrez goes down first and I follow. I'm at the bottom step when Lucas slaps me on the shoulder. I panic and fall awkwardly down the last foot or so of ladder.
"Must be your stuff," he says. "It's all got your initials." I turn and discover that we are surrounded, as far as the flashlight will reach, by SS paraphenalia.
"Jesus Christ," I say. Sitting on a barrel directly in front of me is a framed photograph of Adolf Hitler. "What kind of sick f..."
But my thoughts are interrupted by the rape whistle. We scramble for the ladder. I reach the top first, and in my haste nearly impale myself on the business end of a pitchfork. I reach for my gun, nearly lose my grip on the ladder, and am hauled up by strong hairy arms. I'm held at the top by those arms and, including their owner, I count six guys. They all look like they could be brothers. Or close cousins. Or possibly both. The oldest, most beardy one is pointing a double-barrel over/under at me and chewing voracously. He smiles through thick brown liquid tobacco and I feel my lunch rolling around in my guts. Gutierrez is hauled up next and it takes three guys to drag him out. Gutierrez is one big Mexican.
"Where's the other one?" Shotgun McBeardy says. "I counted seating for five bikers out there."
I throw him a skeptical look. "Are you sure?" I ask. "Counting to five seems a little out of your range."
Someone gut punches me and I double over. I cough. Whoever's holding me, their grip loosens. Bent over, I run forward. McBeardy has a slow reaction time, thank god, and I tackle him right in the midsection. He hammers at me with the gunstock, but his angle is wonky and it doesn't do damage. Hurts like hell, I can't deny, but he doesn't cave my skull in. Lucky me. We wrestle around, and I get up first. My gun, Loki, stares down at him. I look back and see that Gutierrez has his own shotgun aimed at the others. Lucas' ginger head appears in the floor doorway.
"Nice of you to join us," I say.
"I was your ace in the hole," he says.
"You certainly are an ace-hole," I say.
Gutierrez tells us to shut up. "Where's Mercedes?" he asks us. "They wouldn't leave her unattended."
"So that leaves at least one more inbred Nazi on the outside," I say. I smile at McBeardy. "Toss those guys in the hole," I say, "and keep that shotgun aimed straight down. McBeardy and I are going to play a little show-and-tell."
Lucas rolls his eyes. "I know that when you say that shit, in your head you sound like an action hero or something. But to us you're just a corny douche."
"Well, it's time for this douche to do some cleaning up around here," I say. I grab McBeardy by his curly chin hairs and I spin him around.
I walk him forward with my gun at his temple. We blink our way into the sunlight. A pro would have taken advantage of the second it took for my eyes to adjust, but the lanky kid outside, whom I instantly dub "Goober", is far from a pro. Goober fumbles around for his gun before realizing that I’ve got my own gun pointed at his kin.
The guy that gets the drop on me from behind, who's gun is suddenly pressed deep into my side, him I'd call a pro. I turn my head and see Papa Incest, just a glimpse before he not-so-gently nudges my head in the opposite direction with the stock of his gun. And then I hear him sigh and I know that Lucas has his gun aimed at Papa Incest now. We’re a regular old daisy chain here. The gun leaves my side and we gather the whole damn family together in the barn’s cellar. Gutierrez drags some of the heavier stuff on top of the door.
Mercedes looks concerned.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “It’s just until we can get the house checked out. We’ll let them out before we leave.” She doesn’t look very relieved.
We pick our way through the openness between the barn and the house, on alert. Who knows how big this family actually is? We approach the front door like a SWAT team, Lucas and I on either side and Gutierrez ready in front. We knock first and are shocked that no one invites us in. Gutierrez kicks in the door and we rush inside. Eyes everywhere. So far we see no one. We clear the bottom floor and make our way upstairs. A hallway lined with doors. We kick the first one in and see a woman cowering on the floor. She is naked and dirty. She scrambles away from us as far as she can go, but I can see a chain that links her ankle to the bedpost; she doesn’t scramble far.
“Oh, God,” Mercedes says.
Every door we kick in has the same scene. Women, girls, all naked, all chained to the beds. The last door is the worst. A zombie, strapped tightly down at her head, chest, and hips by thick leather straps. She is gagged by a thick wad of socks held tight by a belt.
I go in, press my gun against the zombie’s temple, and put it out of its misery. I even feel a little sorry for it.
Gutierrez and Lucas volunteer to go back to the barn to find a bolt cutters or something to cut the women free, and I volunteer to search the house for anything useful. They’re not gone long and when they come back we set to work releasing the girls.
Mercedes asks what will happen to them. I shrug, tell her I don’t know. “We can’t take them with us,” I say. “We can get them set up here as best we can and just…I don’t know, hope.”
“And pray,” Gutierrez says.
“Yeah, knock yourself out,” I say. It’s then that I notice that Dante is kneeling beside the cluster of women. They’re all staring at him through tear-filled eyes. He reaches out to them with his bleeding-palmed hands and touches them each, one by one, on the cheek. They allow it. He stands and they stand with him. He turns to us and smiles. Mercedes smiles, too.
“They’re going to be alright,” Mercedes says.
I roll my eyes. “Of course they are,” I say. “Nothing to wipe away something that traumatic like an old man smearing his old-man blood on your face.” I ignore the dirty looks I get from damn near everyone and I head back toward the bikes. “Come on,” I say. “There’s still some daylight left to burn.”
The gaggle of ladies follows us to our motorcycles. I look at the barn. “Still want to let them out?”
Mercedes shakes her head. “Let them rot in there,” she says. I smile.
“You know,” I say, “a guy could fall in love with you.”
The wheels of our motorcycles kick up clouds of dirt but I can see in the rearview, getting smaller, a group of people that are much better off than they had been before we got there. I almost feel like a hero or something. Almost.
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