The Extinct Read online

  Dak pulled up in a red Subaru, the door handle on the driver’s side missing. There was a purse on the passenger seat and Ray grabbed it and dumped the contents onto the sidewalk. There were twenty baht inside and he kept ten for himself and gave five to Dak and Eric.

  Eric sat in the backseat, staring out the windows at the rainbow of lights from the restaurants and bars that were just getting into full swing for the night. The air stunk of exhaust and even at night he could see the black clouds of pollution hanging over the city like pus over a wound.

  “Do you have a gun?” Ray said, not turning around as the car pulled onto a highway.

  “No,” Eric said.

  Ray pulled one out from a holster on his leg and handed it behind him. Eric hesitated, and then took it. It was greasy in his palm and heavy, bits of dried black residue falling out of it.

  “You sure this works?” Eric asked.

  “It’ll work.”

  “What about you two?”

  “Don’t worry about us. You just keep an eye out. Me and Dak’ll grab the money. If anyone makes a move on us you shoot.” He looked back, his eyes cold. “You ever shot anyone before?”

  Eric glanced up at him, and then back down at the gun. “Yeah.”

  “Good,” he said, turning back around and throwing his cigarette butt out the window.

  The bank was a small brick and glass building in between a restaurant and a mechanic’s shop. They pulled the car in front and looked in through the large windows. There were three tellers; two women and a young boy. A security guard sat at a desk, reading a magazine and sipping cola.

  “You get the guard,” Ray said to Eric, “we’ll handle the tellers.” He looked to Dak and then back to Eric. “Ready?”

  Dak nodded and pulled a sawed-off shotgun out from underneath the seat. Ray reached into his waistband and came out with a .45.

  “Let’s go,” Ray said.

  They left the car engine running and the doors open while they rushed into the bank, Ray leading the way with Dak behind him and Eric in the rear. Eric ran to the guard as the tellers started screaming and Dak began yelling instructions in his gruff voice.

  Eric pointed the gun at the guard’s head and the guard raised both his hands. He started trembling and speaking in Thai. Eric couldn’t understand him, but knew he was begging from the sorrowful tone of his voice.

  “Don’t worry,” Eric said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Eric looked over and saw Dak forcing a teller to stuff money into a plastic bag and Ray had his gun to the back of the head of the young boy and was yelling something at him. The entire space seemed to be filled with nothing but screaming, bouncing off the walls and floors, heavy in the air like a weight.

  The guard said something and went to stand.

  “Don’t move!” Eric shouted. The guard held his hands higher and started mumbling, tears starting to form in his eyes. “Sit down! Sit the fuck down!” He grabbed the guard by the shoulder and forced him back down into his chair.

  “Let’s go!” Ray shouted, bolting for the door.

  Dak struck the male teller in the face with his elbow, knocking him cold, and ran out. Eric reached for the guard’s gun, ripped it out of its holster, and followed them out.

  They dove into the car and the tires screeched as Dak tore away from the curb and onto the busy street. He turned a corner on a red light and started driving on the opposite side of the road into oncoming traffic, the cars honking and swerving to avoid him. Eric held tightly to the seat, his knuckles turning white. But Ray was hollering with excitement and banging his fist against the roof of the car in celebration.

  They heard sirens but were far enough away that it didn’t matter and Ray started laughing uncontrollably. Even stoic Dak cracked a smile and chuckled. Nothing in what they’d done struck Eric as funny.

  They eventually merged with traffic, disappearing into the crowds. They drove for about an hour before stopping at an upscale hotel on the west side near the river. The lobby was all Persian rugs and marble busts. There was a huge abstract painting on the wall, red and black paint spattered randomly across a canvas. It appealed to Eric. Ray paid cash and flirted with the desk staff and they got a room on the fifteenth floor with a balcony overlooking the churning water.

  They ordered hamburgers and fries from room service, Dak ordering Thai pasta with spices so hot they made Eric’s eyes water even though he was sitting across from him. They finished their meal and started on beer and champagne as they sat around the dining table and counted the money.

  “How much?” Eric said.

  “Works out to about sixty thousand dollars,” Ray said, impressed. “So, that’s like what, twenty grand each?”

  They divided up the money to the last and then proceeded to get drunk. They turned on music and the television and Ray called an escort service and had three hookers sent over. They were younger girls, in their early twenties, and Ray had them strip as the three men sat on the couch and watched. Ray, unable to control himself, tore at his clothes and jumped on the girls, slobbering kisses over them. Eric didn’t move, he just watched and drank, the alcohol dulling his senses and repressing his libido. Dak rose and walked out on the balcony to smoke.

  “He’s a fag,” Ray said, caressing one of the girls as she kissed another. “I wouldn’t call him one to his face though. I’ve seen him put people in the hospital for that.”

  Eric reached into Ray’s jacket and pulled out a small bag of H. One of the girls, the youngest one with alabaster skin and a blond wig, grabbed his leg and scurried next to him. She placed her mouth over his pants and bit down gently, tugging slightly to arouse him. He pushed her away softly and went into the bathroom.

  There was no syringe so he snorted the H. His nose tingled and bled a little, but he felt fine.

  CHAPTER

  23

  The room was a disaster when Eric woke up; bottles all over the floor and the only table cluttered with plates that had crusted food caked to them. His head throbbed and his nose was itchy and dry. The room smelled like vomit and sex. It sickened him as he rose and looked for Ray’s jacket.

  Ray was passed out in the bedroom. Eric found his jacket next to the dresser and searched it but didn’t find anything but half a vile of coke. He walked out onto the balcony, the air hot from the noonday sun, and snorted it there as he watched the glistening waters of the river below. It made a whooshing sound, like ocean waves softly breaking on a beach. He heard someone stumble and looked back to see Ray walk out and sit on a balcony chair next to him.

  Ray lit a cigarette and put his feet up on the metal railing of the balcony. A breeze was blowing and the salty air felt cool against his skin. “So where you from?”

  “Miami,” Eric said, finishing a line and handing the remaining coke back to Ray.

  “I’m from LA.” He snorted a small mound of coke from the back of his hand. “You like Miami?”

  “It’s all right.”

  “Why’d you leave?”

  “Trouble.”

  Ray nodded, flicking ashes onto the bare stone of the balcony. “Me too. I was in college; I was gonna be a business major like my dad.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. I only went a couple semesters though. Moved out here instead of finishing.”

  Eric leaned back in his chair and put his feet up as well, the railing warm against his soles. “I fucking hate it here.”

  “It’s not so bad. I been to worse places.”

  “Like where?”

  “I stayed in Mexico for a couple months. Over here, the criminals are the criminals, you know? We’re the fucking criminals and the cops are the cops. In Mexico, the fucking government’s the criminals. They’ll fuck you up for nothin’. There was this ditch by this guy’s house I was stayin’ at. This rotten smell always came from it, like burning garbage or some shit. I went and looked at it one day and it was a bunch of dead bodies. Kids, women . . . the guy I was stayin’ with told me that�
�s where the cops dump bodies of people. Some of ‘em are hits, but some of ‘em are just for fun. Like girls they rape and kill, shit like that. Crazy shit.”

  “Jesus,” Eric said, itching at his arms.

  “Yeah.”

  They stayed silent and then Eric said, “So what now?”

  “You mean the money? I say we take half of it and buy the biggest baddest guns we can and some fuckin’ ski masks and go out again. I mean, that was the easiest fuckin’ money I ever made.”

  “You’ve never done that before?”

  “No. I mean, I robbed people and shit, but never a bank. Dak just knew a girl that worked there and she told him when they was gonna start closin’ up and what day they make their deposits.” He put his cigarette out on the chair. “You in?”

  Eric watched the sunlight reflect off the water below, fragments of white light on a moving current. “Yeah.”

  *****

  The next bank was going to be in what looked like a strip mall, five or six other stores sharing the same building. It only had two tellers and a few desks for managers and staff. There was one security guard that watched the whole strip mall as far as they could tell and he just wandered around, seemingly not paying attention to anything.

  They slept most of the day and waited for nightfall, Ray providing a mountain of coke for them before they went out. Dak showed up in another car, a gray Honda, with three shotguns and ski masks in the backseat. They drove in silence, smoking and drinking beer out of a large bottle.

  Eric was starting to get itchy and restless; he hadn’t shot up all day. The coke helped but it didn’t take away his craving. He felt it deep in his gut, like a hunger that he couldn’t fill not matter how much he ate.

  They pulled into the strip mall and stopped the car in front of the bank, leaving it running. This time, there was no rush or panic; they casually stepped out of the car, put on their ski masks, and walked into the bank as if they owned it. One petite teller in a white blouse was counting money and she looked up, her expression frozen in confusion before she screamed. The other tellers stopped what they were doing and looked over to see Dak and Ray running over and yelling at them, shotguns pointed from their shoulders. Eric stayed by the door and kept a watch for the security guard patrolling the area.

  Dak grabbed one of the girls and slammed her against the counter. He started yelling louder and the tellers started crying. Eric saw that there was some sort of problem, the teller shaking her head and Dak yelling at her.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” Eric yelled.

  “Bitch might’ve pushed the alarm,” Ray said.

  “Fuck, let’s get outta here.”

  “Fuck that.” Ray pointed the gun at the teller’s head and said something in Thai, and then pulled the trigger.

  The shot was like a falling shelf hitting a bare floor, deep and resonating off the walls. Eric lost his breath when he saw the black blood cover the other tellers and the walls behind them. They stopped screaming. Their eyes went wide as they were sprayed with sticky droplets and went into shock.

  Eric didn’t even notice the gun drop out of his hands. Even Dak stared at Ray as if he were from another planet. Ray motioned for him to get the money and they shoved what they could in plastic bags. Eric stood still and watched them. It felt like he couldn’t move, like every muscle had frozen with the girl’s death. She was young and pretty. She wasn’t a criminal; she hadn’t done anything to them. She was just young and pretty.

  Dak and Ray ran out of the bank but Eric still couldn’t move. The other tellers were crying and watching him with primitive eyes, their minds not regarding him with the normal recognition of another human being. He realized he was not a human being; he was pure horror to them. A monster from the darkest corners of their minds. To them, he was what his stepfather had been to him.

  Ray called out Eric’s name, but he still couldn’t move. All he could do was stand; his mind blank. He didn’t hear the sirens pull up and into the strip mall. He didn’t hear the officer’s shouts and the eventual gunfire; the deep bass of shotgun blasts mingled with the higher sounding pistols. All he saw was the look on the teller’s faces, as if they were magnified and in slow motion.

  By the time his senses returned to him and he realized where he was and what he was doing, the gunfight had ended and Dak and Ray had been cornered behind their car. The teller had pressed the silent alarm right when they had entered the building and a patrol car was only one and half blocks away, another one four blocks away. They delayed the men long enough for an army of officers to get there, swarming over the parking lot as they opened fire without demanding surrender once they saw the sleek shotguns in the men’s hands.

  Eric watched outside. Ray and Dak were ducking next to the car; easily a dozen officers beginning to position themselves in the parking lot. Eric looked again at the body of the young girl. He picked up the shotgun and stepped outside.

  “Hey Ray!”

  Ray turned around just as the shotgun blast tore through his stomach. He slammed against the car, his weapon flying out of his hands, and then collapsed on the warm concrete.

  Eric threw his weapon down and ran back inside.

  He sprinted in the direction of the tellers, their screams growing frantic and tapering off as he ran past them. There was a short hallway with doors on either side. He opened one; just an office. Another one was a storage area. Another was safety deposit boxes and a safe. At the back of the building was a bathroom and next to that an emergency exit. He slammed through the door, an alarm ringing in his ears as he found himself in the back of the building next to a dumpster and a stack of empty cardboard boxes.

  Eric ran from the building and hopped a chain-link fence that led onto a barren dirt field. There was drilling equipment and a few tractors left on the field, a small trailer with a giant lock on the door. He ran on the dirt until his legs ached and he couldn’t breathe. There were shouts behind him but he didn’t look back. He hopped another fence and was in a residential neighborhood, small one story houses with tiny lawns.

  His run slowed to a walk and he noticed he was still wearing his ski mask. Throwing it into some bushes, he made his way onto a main road and headed back downtown toward the hotel. He thought about Ray but didn’t feel remorse. In fact, he didn’t really feel anything. The only thought in his mind was where he was going to get his next score of H. Ray was the only dealer he knew.

  As he saw the warm neon lights of downtown Bangkok, and the dark corners where silent men with wild eyes stood, he knew finding what he wanted wouldn’t be a problem.

  CHAPTER

  24

  The nights in Andhra Pradesh were warm and dry as the child walked home to his village. He’d spent the day in Hyderabad hawking wooden key rings his family had been making from the sycamore trees near their huts. It’d been a long day and he’d had little to eat, but he’d made more than ten dollars. Enough to feed his entire family for days.

  Sometimes, when they went into the cities to buy supplies, he saw things on the television at the hotel near the store that made him wonder why some people had so much and some had so little. But mostly it was fun to see all the different shows. He would sit on the couch in the lobby and watch until the staff caught on that he wasn’t with a guest and they would chase him out. But it was fun to watch people with so much food and nice clothes and cars. He wondered if everyone in America was always happy. Were there any sad people there?

  The dirt road was narrow and encased in waist-high grass. The moon was only a slit in the darkness but was still enough for him to make his way without much trouble. He stopped on the side of the road to urinate. The crickets near him were chirping loudly and he giggled as he listened to their silly calls that filled the night.

  Suddenly the crickets stopped.

  The boy glanced around. It wasn’t unusual for crickets to stop when people were near them, but this was different. Usually crickets in a certain area would stop and those farther away
would not. Right now, he couldn’t hear anything but his own breath.

  A cold chill ran down his back as he stepped away from the side of the road. He could hear the breeze rustling through the grass, but there was something else as well. A muffled crunching of vegetation. The sound was soft, but it was loud enough for him to hear. He looked down the road and saw the outline of the first hut of his village.

  He began walking quickly, telling himself it was only the sounds of the earth. He’d walked this same route hundreds of times and nothing had happened. The larger predators liked to stay away from people and farther into the plains. He had nothing to be afraid of. His father had walked this route and his father before him. This was their road.

  There was another sound behind him. The boy couldn’t tell where it came from. It seemed to come from the wind and swirl around in the grass before going to the sky. His heart was beating faster now. He looked once toward his village and then behind him. Making his decision, he sprinted for his hut.

  There was a ruckus behind him, grass and weeds being torn from their roots as something crashed through the brush in pursuit.

  He was now dashing with all his might, his legs burning and his breath hot like the air around him. The sounds had grown louder, it was right behind him.

  The boy was close now to the first hut. It was two stories and made of wood and straw. He burst through the wooden door and saw a man and woman sitting by a small fire. He’d seen them before, they were friends of his mother.

  Before he could say anything, a roar rattled the hut. Shaking the beams and causing bits of dirt and dust to fly off the roof. The boy looked to the man whose eyes were wide. He grabbed his wife and took the boy’s arm and ran to the back of the hut where a small ladder led to the second floor. He took his wife by the hips and helped her up as she climbed and disappeared into the darkness. The man then helped the boy up. The wife held him in her arms as the man yelled not to come down.