"Enough," said Dex

TRIGGER WARNING: Gun violence, self-harm and suicide, kidnapping, discussions of violence.

“I have a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and I’m wearing sunglasses…Hehehe…plus, a bottle of Jager and a couple pre-rolls of Marley Natural.”

“Seat belt? Check. Peanut butter cheese crackers? Check.”

“Hit it,” said Dexter Nathan to himself as he settled behind the wheel of his beat- to-shit Jeep Cherokee and turned the key.

Nathan steered the Jeep out of the Kroger parking lot, headed east on Corunna Rd and shouted along with the CD:

Everybody know I'm a motherfucking monster

I'ma need to see your fucking hands at the concert

I'ma need to see your fucking hands at the concert

“I ain’t no monster,” he thought and turned off the music. The car stereo went dead silent. Dexter goosed the gas, beat the yellow light at Graham Rd, and slowed to catch the left turn arrow onto the expressway.

“Don’t get on the freeway,” came from the back seat.

“What the fuck?”

“Don’t get on the fucking freeway!”

Dexter’s tires squealed as his Jeep railed up on its two right-side tires. He gunned it to catch the arrow onto southbound I-75.

“I said don’t get on the fucking freeway.”

“Yeah, buddy. That ship just sailed. We. Are. Southbound.”

“I need your car. I need it now.”

“You can have it when I’m done with it. No need to get all pissy, pal.”

“I got a gun pointed right at your back back here. Pull the fuck over or you’re a dead man.”

“Pull the fuck over? I told you, you can have the Jeep when I’m done with it. It’s yours, I’ll sign over the pink slip, yours for a dollar.”

“I got a gun pointed right at you.”

“Sure you do…”

The glass exploded out the passenger side rear window.

“All right, I believe you. You got a gun. And I got some business to do, and then this Jeep is yours. Besides, you got a problem.”

“Bitch, I got the motherfucking gun. You got the motherfucking problem.”

“My friend, we’re headed south on the freeway. In a couple a minutes, we’re turning onto I-69 and we’ll be heading east. We’re goin’…”

“Don’t need no fucking tour guide.”

“We’re goin’ 90 miles an hour. You pop me, you’re crashing at 90 miles an hour. You wearing your seat belt back there? Might want to buckle up. Oh, FYI, the airbags don’t work. Want some Jagermeister? I got a bottle up here. Peanut butter crackers?”

“Slow the fuck down, don’t want no cops pulling us over.”

“Heh, that’s funny. Cops can’t pull you over if you don’t pull the fuck over, which I do not plan to do.

“Ah, fuck.”

“Looks like you picked the wrong week to start carjacking again. Listen, eh, it’s not as bad as all that.”

“Fuck it ain’t!”

“You think this is bad? Lemme tell you about fucking bad, there, what’s your name, carjacker guy? I’m Dexter. You can call me Dex. Or Nate. Or whatever, I don’t fucking care.”

“I’m, a, Jules.”

“Jules? Are you fucking kiddin’ me? Jules?”

“Yeah, Jules.”

“Okay, Jules. Here’s why you picked the wrong car to carjack. You might as well relax; you’re ridin’ with me for a while. We’re headin’ out to the Hadley Rec Area. Got some business out there. Don’ worry, I’m not crashing the Jeep.

“But keep that weapon handy, once we’re out there, you might wanna be able to return fire.

“Chill, I’m kiddin. Ain’t nobody gonna shoot at you.

“I don’t think.”

The Jeep pulled hard to the right as Dexter turned the wheel hard to the left. They merged onto eastbound I-69.

“Here’s the deal, Jules.

“Hey, Jules, do you know what they call a quarter pounder with cheese in Paris?”

“Jesus, leave that shit the fuck alone.”

“Okay, fair enough. Here’s the story; here’s why you’re stuck in a Jeep going 90 on a freeway at one o’clock in the fucking morning with a random guy who left his Jeep unlocked at a Kroger…”

“Pass that Jager on back, huh?” asked Jules.

“What’s the magic word?”

“Would you please pass me the motherfucking Jagermeister, with sugar on top?”

“There ya go, the magic word. All right, save me some Jager.

“I’m goin’ back a few years. You ever watch them Jason Bourne movies, Jules?”

“Oh, hell yes, Dude’s bad-ass.”

“That he is. And that shit is true. Not like Treadstone and Blackbriar are real, but there are groups like that. I know. I was in one. It was called Signature. We were to Special Forces what special forces were to a buncha kids in basic.

“Not that Special wasn’t pretty bad-ass, too. I mean, those dudes can fuck you up. But they had rules. Had to follow those rules. Signature was like the group above and in-between military Special Forces. If it was illegal for SEALS, we got the call. If the Green Berets weren’t allowed by rules of engagement, we got called in. Plus, we weren’t true military. Or CIA.

“Truth, I don’t know who the hell was in charge,” said Dex.

“What I know is that I killed a crap-ton of people.

“Wanna know how many, Jules?”

“I’m not sure, okay, yeah, how many?”

“137 people, Jules. I killed one hundred and thirty seven motherfucking people. Don’t know nothing about ‘em; did they have families? Were they guys like me? A couple of ‘em were chicks, them I know were spies. We were trained, ‘Ask no questions. Do whatever it takes to complete the mission.’

“137 dead people. I kept track, Jules, in a little brown leather notebook that I kept in my safe. I even made little sketches of them, best I could. All over the world. 137 humans, man. I was fighting for my country, makin’ things safer for our armed forces. Those 137 guys, they were doing the same as me.

“How many people you killed, Jules?”

“Um, well, none. A couple armed robberies, didn’t even have to shoot, bust into a little Chinese market, wave a gun, they put the cash in a bag, you back out fast, into the car.

“Truth is, I don’t know if I coulda pulled the trigger. I mean, these were families and shit, Dex, grannies and little kids back there. I don’t know, man.”

“Gun rule number one, Jules. Don’t pull it out if you’re not willing to use it.”

“Yeah, I hear that.”

“Killin’ people is weird, Jules. Sniper is, sniper is like Star Wars. Target’s walking along a wall, on a sidewalk, whatever, you do all your math, pull the trigger, a couple hundred yards away, they go down like God pulled all the bones out their body, all that’s left is a purple rain on the wall where the head was. You know, like when Obi-wan gives himself up, right?”

“Purple rain?”

“Yeah, we used military spec sniper. Chambered for a seven point six two. You hit a skull with one of those, the whole other side of the skull explodes like you dropped a dinner plate, the purple rain is the brain and blood. I mean, it’s like you set off a grenade inside their skull. No coming back from that. You never forget, the first time you see it. Fricking showers all over the damn place.”

“Holy fuck, Dex.”

“Holy fuck, indeed. Jules. Holy motherfucking fuck, indeed. It was my job. I wasn’t killin’ nice people. They were doin’ the same to our guys.”

“Still, man…,” said Jules.

“Killin up close is really weird. You can see it in their eyes, you can feel their breath, hell, you can feel your own breath bouncin’ off them and onta you. Your sweats mix. And they know it’s coming, just like I know it’s coming, I swear I could feel their heart beatin’ in my chest, and then, ploop, it’s done.

“They were living. Ploop, now they’re not.

“Fucking never got used to it. Didn’t bother me all that much, but then, I’m not well. We can argue the psychopath versus sociopath thing all the way out to the Rec Area, but it don’t matter. I’m damaged. 137 people, and never a tear. Never even looked back. That’s not regular human,” said Dex.

“How the hell did you…?

“End up in Signature? Yeah, funny story. I was an Army kid, Dad was in the Army, non-com, and I always wanted to be Airborne. Did a couple years, Army told me to take some tests so I took some tests, and the Army decided that I should be Green Beret. You don’t argue with the Army. So, Green Berets for a couple years.

“I was in Korea for a while. I liked Korea. Good food. Cool place. Learned the language. Next thing I know, a couple of us are shipped out. No fucking idea where we were. Military aircraft, no windows. We were in the air for a long time, flying from Korea, but that don’t mean shit. They could have put us in the air for four hours out over the Pacific and slow-arced us another four hours right back to Korea. Probably to a military base, it felt military, you know, but we never knew where since we off-loaded straight from the plane into a van with blacked out windows. Didn’t see a clock or calendar or the outside world for a long time. No phones, no watches, TV only played DVDs.

“Training was hard, fucking hard. Green Beret training’s tough, right? But this was next level. Not just all the grinder stuff, psych-ops hard. Saw guys being tortured. Bad shit. Really bad. Got tortured myself.

“Killed someone when I was there. Bam, right in the head. I mean, I probably killed someone. But they fucked with us so much, it might’ve been a test or some shit.

“Not fun. At all.

“Next thing I knew, I was in Signature. Somewhere, somehow, I’d learned 5 languages. Don’t remember a moment of that at all. Just like, one day I could speak Serbian, Russian, German. Arabic. Fuckin’ French. Bon soir, Jules, mon ami. Boom, and done. Five new languages,” said Dex.

“Sent all over the world, dressed like a civilian. Armed like a motherfucker. I killed about a person a week for the first 26 weeks, guess that was the real test, right? I didn’t mind. Didn’t like it, but it was okay. So, yeah, I’m a sociopath, no remorse. Maybe that story’s not so funny after all.

“I’m not supposed to tell any of this shit, but what the fuck, not gonna matter after tonight.

“Hey, look back there. We got company.”

Jules looked back. It was a dark blue Camaro, rolling along at a respectful distance, matching the Jeep’s speed.

“Um, well, Dex, we’re goin’ 90 mile an hour on an empty freeway. Your Jeep’s got blacked out windows. It’s like 1 a.m., kinda not surprising. They gotta figure you know something, you gotta radar detector, whatever. It’s gotta be nothing. Right?”

“Probably nothing, it’s cool. I’m not slowing down. And they’re just following us, right? Just stay low, especially if they pull up beside us. I got this.

“Besides, we’re almost there. And I’m almost done telling you my story why you are stuck in a Jeep, on the freeway, with a psychopathic sociopath. Someone needs to know, and that, my dude, is you. So Jules, don’t forget any of this shit.

“Anyways, I was in Serbia. Serbia, man, that’s the toughest place in world. In the motherfucking world, Jules. Can’t tell what’s mafia and what’s government, and both of them know how to fuck you up. You hear Ti si mrtav čovek, you better pray it’s a bullet, cos’ otherwise, you are gonna get peeled like an onion.”

“Ti si mrtav čovek?”

“’You’re a dead man’ in Serbian.”

“Anyway, I was on a job in Serbia, we was supposed to take out this middleman. See, their mafia sells drugs and girls. Lots of fucking drugs and girls. It’s like the world center for sellin’ pussy. Slaves. Get it? So, they kick back a ton of the drug and chick money to the government. But not direct, I mean, these guys are fucking sharp as knives. They know how to wash the money.

“We were supposed to take out the guy who knew both sides, worked out the deals. There were a couple of us sent in, the ones who spoke good Serbian. This anti-trafficking group, they figured if we could take this guy out, there’d be a week or two window where maybe they could get in, shut the damn thing down.

“These guys, they were brutal. They were stealing girls, some of ‘em little girls, from all over the world, and selling them. I wanted in on that. My sister got raped when we were kids, maybe I made this personal, so our team, we were ready.

“I was ready.

“I jumped the gun. It’s a rule; stick to the motherfucking plan, Jules. You don’t? People will die. I was supposed to be the back-up. We had a guy goin’ in first, he was supposed to have this talk, he was undercover, deep, right? And then the three of us back-up, once the deal was happening, we’d get inside and take them out.

“But I fucked up. I heard what was goin’ out, I got pissed, before it could happen, I busted in alone. Fucking stupid. Our lead got it right in the head. Right away, they got him. I got a load in the leg and torso from a sawed off 12 gauge.

“Don’t know what happened after that. I woke up in a bathtub in a hotel room, stitched up pretty badly, didn’t know where I was. Don’t know how I got there, there was some bread on a table and a bunch of water bottles on the floor beside me, but I was alive. I mostly slept for four, five days, can’t really remember, I woke every once in a while when the rats would climb over me, trying to get to the bread.

“I was fucked up bad. Couldn’t move, couldn’t shit, hurt bad. I was alive. That’s all. Once I was able to stand, I saw I lost a big-ass chunk of leg muscle, damn, it was fucking hard to balance. I looked in the mirror, didn’t barely recognize myself. Stumbled into the hall, fucking Walking Dead I was, wrapped in this old-ass stinky quilt from the bed. Asked this poor guy where I was.”

“Kosovo, why?” he says.

“Why not?” I said.

“I headed back into my room, fell into bed, didn’t get out for a couple of days. Bed bugs crawling all over me, sipping at my stitches, licking up blood, I didn’t care. Just drank water. Couldn’t hardly walk so I peed in the empty water bottles layin’ in bed. Hell, my guts were probably mostly on that Serbian mafia don’s tapestry. They love their tapestry, those guys.

“There was a phone in my room. Those phones never work. But holy hell, Jules, this one did. Lady at the desk answered,

“Zdravo, Mr. Dekter.”

“Zdravo, Gospodo, mogu, li dobiti sendvič, I said, ‘That’s ‘Hello, can I get a sandwich?’

They send up some food and a brown paper bag with some clothes in it. I mean, a 12 gauge point blank, you ain’t got no clothes left. There was something in the pants pocket.

“They’d left me a covert passport, a bunch of Serbian dinars and euros, a big wad of dollars, plus my 9 mm Boassen-Hagen. You know what that meant, Jules?”

“You were flying solo?”

“Yep, Jules. I was on my own.

“Jules, were getting off the freeway here, not far now. Stay low, stay cool, you’ll be fine. Hey, toss me that Jager. You left me some Jager?”

“Yes, Dexter. I left you some Jager.”

“Pass it on up, my friend. Anyway, Jules, long story short. I got back to the States. I was pretty fucked up. The pain was terrible. I been shot before but damn, this was every time I breathed-inhale, exhale, it’s still bad. And that leg, motherfucker, that leg hurt. I was the fucking Walking Dead. Still am.

“So, I started buying shit on the street. No insurance. Just a passport. Couldn’t go to a hospital. I was fucked. Well and truly fucked. So pills, mostly. But you know what’s the problem with narcotics?”

“Not really, no,” said Jules.

“You can’t fucking shit. They fucking plug your ass up like a factory sealed wine-cork.

“Here we are. Sorry about the dirt road. We’re in the park. Kinda bouncy, huh? You think it hurts you, Julesy, you oughta be my fucking kidney, yeah, the Serbs got one of them, left me the other. Thoughtful bastards, eh?

“So, yeah, I started shooting shit to kill the fucking pain from trying to take a goddamn shit with all them fucking opiates in my guts and now I have fucking Hep C and AIDS from the goddamn needles and I, I can’t go to the fucking hospital cause if I do, someone is gonna report my gunshot wounds cause I still got pellets in me and I still look like shit.

“No medical records anywhere, that shit all gets erased, so Signature will figure out where I am when the docs start digging for my records. Signature is good at tracking so they’ll send some punk-ass kid like I was to my room and he’ll blow a fucking hole in my head and I ain’t gonna let that happen so you know what I’m gonna do?”

“Yeah, I kinda do, Nate. Er, Dex.”

“Hey, you gotcher cell phone, my Jules? Can you call 9-1-1, tell ‘em to show up at the Hadley Rec picnic area? There’s gonna be a shooting. Not you, dumbass, you’re fine.

“You stay in the car. I’m going over to the picnic table and wait for the cops. Hand me your weapon. You’re fine. Just give me your goddamn weapon. I got my Boassen-Hagen up here in the glove box. I’m gonna wipe down your weapon … huh, look at that, a Charter Arms 32.

“A fricking pop-gun. Dude, you really need to up the firearms game if you gonna take up this carjacking life of crime thing full-time. Anyway, that 32 is mine. You never saw it, you never heard of it, you didn’t know it was there. Remember, I’m ex-military. I’m a nut job. You have no fucking responsibility here. You fucking got that?

“Okay, here’s the plan, and remember what I told you about the necessity of sticking to the fucking plan. I’m going to sit at the picnic table and smoke a blunt, the cops will show up in a second, I’m gonna talk with the cops for a few minutes, you pay some fucking attention to the conversation, and then, ploop, it’s over. You got that, right?

Silence.

“I ask you again, ‘you got that, right?’”

“Yes, sir. I got it.”

“Good, ‘cause I see some headlights and I need to be at the picnic table before they get here.”

Three police cruisers, beams on high, trained their spotlights at the picnic table. There sat Dexter Nathan, a smoldering joint in one hand, a Boassen-Hagen 9 mm in the other hand, pointed at his head.

“Hey, fellas. Glad you’re here.”

A window was rolled down.

“Put the gun down, sir. Slowly.”

“Nope, not gonna do that. Not at this juncture. Wouldn’t be prudent. Listen up, eh? There’s a guy in the backseat of my car, name’s Jules, seriously, that’s his name. I kidnapped him. He didn’t have shit to do with…”

“Put down the gun, sir.”

“No, for the last time, officer, I am not putting down the gun. I appreciate the pleasantries and all, but you’re not gonna get shot, you’re not gonna shoot me, neither. Jules ain’t gonna get shot.

“Now, fucking listen to me. This is important. Jules didn’t do shit. He heard some shit tonight, he’s gonna need some help, like genuine, professional help. I’m countin’ on you guys to make sure he gets it, okay?

“I don’t need no help. I’m beyond help. I did what I did, Jules’ll you about it, because it was the right thing to do at the time, and I did it because I wanted to, no whining here, but this fucking pain, this…goddamn…guilt, I just can’t do this another day, it’s so freakin hard, I see those faces every night, 137 faces parade through my head every goddamn night, I just can’t, 137 faces just like mine, No more …”

An officer exited one of the vehicles.

“Sir, my name is Sergeant Colby, Pamela Colby. Would you please put down the gun and we can talk? Call me Pam. Now, please put down the weapon?”

“I’m sorry, Pam, I’m afraid I can’t do that. I’m not putting down the gun, I mean, I will in a moment, but for right now, Pam, just promise me that you’ll make sure that Jules gets the help, okay? I just need to know that you’ll do that? Protect and serve, Pam, protect him, okay? And make sure he gets help. Jules is a good guy… He’s gotta be exhausted, we had a long night.

“Get some rest, Pam, you look tired.”

The echo from the 9 mm hung in the early morning air. The purple haze mixed with pine needles as it oozed across the picnic table in the wet.