Mojave Retribution

by Logan Cole

The crisp snapping of bone against the metal grill of the Ford Aerostar hung in the air like the heat mirages that danced across the barren horizon ahead. The collision sent the animal tumbling into the sand that creeped into the road, snout over paws. A single whimper spilled out of the animal’s jaws.

Mason James slammed on the brakes and his vintage vehicle squealed back in protest. If the heat of the asphalt alone wasn't enough to burn rubber, the force of the stop would have done it. Cheap Styrofoam cups and forgotten accessories fell to the front of the van as it came to a halt, leading Mason to pause. He looked up into the rearview mirror, eyeing an old refrigerator he was transporting. It was placed horizontally, wedged into the back of the caravan. Mason sighed as he ensured the appliance had only slightly shifted in the upheaval. His eyes moved from the fridge to his own face, studying his own sunken eyes and five o'clock shadow, collecting his wits before stepping into the sun.

The 120-degree real feel of the Mojave weighed down on Mason from the first step out onto the empty and cracked asphalt that parted the seemingly endless desert sea. Mason saw nothing but cacti and shrubbery for miles, just as he desired. He had taken an exit off I-15 several hours prior.

Mason stepped in front of his van, studying the dented metal. Blood dripped off the grill of the van, landing on the asphalt. His eyes crept towards the coyote lying still in the dirt a few feet behind his van.

"Fucking hell," said Mason as he wiped away sweat from his forehead, stooping down to look down at the animal.

The coyote’s skull had collapsed right above its left eye, causing the surrounding area to deflate into a gelatinous implosion. A chunk of skull bone subducted another, pinching brain matter between the two pieces. Blood seeped into its fur.

The coyote's skin was tight, its form apparent in emaciation. Its brittle form was dressed only in a sickly off-white coat of fur. The animal had already been through hell, Mason thought. Having its head caved in certainly didn’t help either.

“I’m sorry.” Mason shook his head. He couldn't understand how he hadn't seen the damn thing coming, even in the openness of the desert. Though his van was relatively undamaged, it was still a shame the poor thing had died.

He placed a hand on the coyote's skeletal ribcage, as if to offer some form of interspecies, post-mortem apology. The animal screamed to life at the touch, its legs flailing and clawing towards the kneeling Mason. A claw caught the skin the man’s shin and tore it open. Mason groaned in pain along with the animal.

The coyote whined and screamed. Its eyes climbed over themselves into the back of its skull, twitching in agony. Blood shot out of its nostrils before its head fell back into the dirt. The animal once again fell still.

Mason held his shin as he sat down in the dirt. Blood and sweat poured out of the cut, absorbing into his high-cut socks. He wiped the blood on his hands onto his shorts and stood up before hobbling back into his van.

A flask of alcohol had been thrown off the passenger seat and onto the floor in the collision just moments prior. Mason plucked the flask from the floor and a roll of well-used duct tape from inside the glovebox. He bared his teeth as he poured the whiskey onto his wound, his knuckles whitening their grip on the duct tape. Tearing off a strip of tape, Mason wrapped his leg before turning the key in the ignition and setting off once again.

Mason was far away from civilization, but nowhere near far enough. He had many miles ahead before he could even think about turning around.

Too far away to catch any radio signals, any clear ones at that, his brain turned instead to the world around him, and the imagining of the sweet scent of women’s lilac perfume from the night before.

His eyes began to study the curious growth at the edges of the road. Walls of shrubs and flora lined the edges of the road, walling in the desert pathway. The limbs and leaves of the plant life grew away from either side of the road, clawing to get away from the black.

Mason saw something else on the fringes of the road. A young woman stood up from within a shrub, her movement rustling the leaves in her wake. Her short strawberry-blonde hair was stagnant and hardened around the most beautiful face Mason had ever seen, and he had seen it before. Her sharpened face was accentuated by the blood that spilled down across it. Her blue eyes stared right into Mason’s. His eyes darted towards the refrigerator in the rearview mirror. The smell of lilac filled the cabin just moments before the minivan slammed into something in the road.

A throaty shriek vibrated through the vehicle as blood speckled the driver side window. Mason screamed, slamming onto the breaks. The wheel nearly locked as the Aerostar fishtailed. The van screeched another stop before hitting one of the escaping shrubs beside the road.

Mason put the van into park and fumbled for the flask of whiskey he had shoved into the glovebox. His shaking hands struggled to pour the hot liquid down his throat. The whiskey spilled across his chin. With a deep breath, Mason stepped back into the heat.

A tremendous dent in the front of the vehicle was decorated in blood splatter that ran across the driver side of the van. A chunk of off-white fur clung to the front tire like a tattered rag, its underside pink with a tongue wet with moisture and blood. A pitifully malnourished coyote lay strewn across the road behind the van, a pool of blood spilling out around its head.

“For god’s sake,” Mason wiped his forehead of sweat. He started towards the animal, lying still in the road.

The animal’s front leg was bent backwards in the wrong direction, shattered bone tearing out of the discolored pelt. The bottom of the coyote’s jaw had been torn off, revealing only the frame of the jawbone and a clear line of sight through to the canine’s upper gums. He knelt to get a closer look. The coyote’s fur was already dry with blood, with a cranial implosion mantling its left eye.

“What the fuck?” Mason said. He covered his mouth, recognizing the coyote as the one he had already killed. Mason stumbled backwards, clambering back to the van. He unlocked the caravan and lifted the back door.

The refrigerator still lay in the back of the van; the appliance’s door was turned toward the ceiling. Mason placed his hand on the refrigerator, reassuring his own wits. He turned his attention to the metal shovel placed beside the refrigerator.

Shovel in hand, Mason stammered back towards the coyote. He raised the shovel over his head and swung it down onto the animal. Blood sprayed into the air. Mason swung again. And again. And again. The coyote let out a wail. Mason screamed back. Blood sprayed. The scent of lilac of perfume filled his mind once again. Blood sprayed. Mason swung again.

Mason let the shovel rest at his side as he wiped away the blood, and the smile, off his lips. The coyote lay torn in half, jagged ends of flesh between its hind limbs and front limbs tethered only by a bundle of wet intestine. Organs and sacs slid out either half of the bare-boned body and onto the sizzling road.

Nodding to himself, Mason threw the gut-drenched shovel into the passenger seat.

The minivan quickly sped forward and towards the horizon. Mason’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror, ensuring that the roadkill he had just mutilated was still seeping out into the road. He then took to studying his own reflection. Specks of blood adorned his complexion for the second time in just as many days.

Mason sighed, wiping his clammy palms on his shorts as he tried to keep a grip on the steering wheel and on himself.

The sun crept towards the southwest horizon, the sky bruising into a tender purple. The shadows of the ferns running along the edge of the road too turned away from the asphalt, defying the golden sunlight on the edge of the world ahead.

The hair on Mason’s arms jolted upright, awakened by a rumbling from above. A single bolt of lightning struck the road ahead of the van. Mason’s world went white and he could feel the van rattle around him.

His vision, just returned, was captured by the smoke billowing out from the point of impact in the road ahead. Lilac perfume filled the car once more. The smoke disappeared, leaving only the girl behind, the girl with the strawberry-blonde hair and the blue eyes that matched her dress. Her eyes were nowhere to be found, though. Empty, raw eye-sockets sat within her face, pouring blood like tears. The woman opened her mouth and the scent of lilac perfume in the van’s cabin turned into the pervasive odor of rotten flesh. Beautiful, blooming lilacs spilled out of the woman’s mouth and her blue eyes along with them.

Mason slammed on the brakes once again, knowing the girl was much too close. He spun the wheel, the van sliding perpendicular to the road. The van flipped over itself and Mason grabbed on to his seat and closed his eyes. Bottles and Styrofoam cups spiraled around the cabin. The meat-covered shovel slammed into Mason’s head. The caravan swung open, and the metal refrigerator toppled over itself onto the road. The van landed upright in the sand. As the sound of metal dust hanging in the infernal air.

The van’s airbag began to deflate as Mason pried himself against the back of his seat. He held his head, his body numb with adrenaline, exasperated in the turmoil. Weight returned to his limbs, however, when Mason turned behind his seat and saw nothing but a clear view of the Mojave Desert, a wide-open caravan, and no refrigerator.

“No,” Mason said, pushing himself into the door. “No, no.”

Spilling out onto the ground, Mason picked himself out of the dirt and ran back towards the road. The refrigerator was halfway into the sand, its door ripped right open in the crash. The refrigerators contents had spilled out onto the road. The body of the girl Mason had seen in the road, Allison Argonia, lay face-up in the road. Her head, caved in above her left eye, was framed by her blood-dried, strawberry-blonde hair. Her torn dress matched her right eye, which gazed into the purple atmosphere with lifeless energy. The left was imploded into her blood-covered face. A bloody zipper storage bag containing a hammer, the prongs of which had torn through the bag, sat beside her.

Mason fell to his knees beside the deceased Allison. He ran a finger under her chin before holding it under his nose, inhaling. He could still smell the lilac perfume on her. She was the most beautiful woman Mason had ever seen, and that’s why he had to kill her.

“I’ll—I’ll just bury you right here,” Mason stammered to his victim, brushing her hair away from her mutilated face. “It’ll be okay. I’ll grab the shovel.”

Mason stood up and started towards his Ford Aerostar, hobbling in aches and pains. His sweat covered hand grabbed the handle of the driver side door before her turned back to the corpse in the middle of the road, smiling to himself. This wasn’t where he wanted her buried but it seemed as good a spot as any. Mason swung open the car door.

Sitting in the passenger seat was the dismembered coyote. The animal’s front half sat upright like a dog, calm and in attention. Its lower half lay horizontally in comfort. Intestines, coiled in the seat, connected the two halves. The coyote turned its head towards Mason, leaning on its broken front limb. The canine’s caved-in head was oozing with pus and black tar. The frame of its lower jaw swung open, spilling out the last bit of tongue from its throat. A growl rumbled from the animal’s throat as lilac petals flaked from its mouth. The coyote leaned forward.

Mason James looked at himself one last time in the rearview mirror, his face frozen in terror. Allison Argonia stood over his shoulder. Her blue eyes, now back in their sockets, met Mason’s in the mirror. He saw her smile at him the way he had smiled at her and he knew then exactly how she had felt as he stood above her, hammer in hand.

The coyote launched its front half forward, tearing into Mason’s throat. Blood gushed into the cabin of the van. Mason tried to scream, but he was muffled by the sound of his own blood gargling in his throat.

The killer fell into the dirt, his throat gushing with blood. The coyote fell still and draped itself across the driver’s seat, and three corpses were lain to rest in the Mojave.