Green Ice: A Deadly High (6 page)

“Ah, shit, we’ve got a toll gate coming up ahead,” he groaned.

“You got any Mexican coin?” Trey asked.

“Yeah,” Mancini said, reaching into his pants pocket. “I made sure I had some before we left LA. Don’t hang around if they ask any questions. Just be vague if they ask about the girl.”

“
Vague
? What’s fucking
vague
, man?”

“Mancini sighed. “Just don’t go into too much detail, if they ask. I hope
there are no cops hanging around the toll.”

The Thunderbird rumbled forward for another mile before Mancini and Trey spotted the toll gate’s white, flat roofed canopy, straddling across the highway.  

“What do I say?” Trey asked. “What if they want to know what happened to the girl?”

Mancini detected an element of panic in Trey’s tone. “Try and keep calm and don’t tell them too much. Say we’re taking her to the hospital if you have to. Just get us through the toll as quickly as possible.”

The traffic slowed in front of the Thunderbird and Mancini sighed as they joined the line of waiting vehicles. A middle aged woman in a blue VW stopped next to the T-Bird in the adjacent lane. She glanced at Trey and Mancini then into the backseat at the injured girl. Mancini knew there was going to be some sort of interaction. The woman in VW wound down her window and called out to Trey and started conversing, nodding to the girl in the back of the Thunderbird.

Trey flashed Mancini a worried glance then turned back to the VW. “
El hospital
,” he called.

Mancini wiped a coating of sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. The heat increased due to their temporary stand-still and the tension progressively grew. The line of cars nosed
onward and Trey rolled the car forward. The woman in the VW’s line stayed stationary and her vehicle fell behind the Thunderbird. The toll booth loomed closer and Mancini handed Trey a few notes and some coins.

“Just pay them and get out of here, real quick.”

Trey stopped at the toll booth and a woman, smartly dressed in a blue uniform took the money without batting an eyelid. She didn’t give the injured girl a second glance. Mancini and Trey breathed a sigh of relief when the barrier across the lane lifted.

They drove through the toll and Mancini baulked when he saw
cameras on top of yellow poles, lined up with each lane. The Thunderbird was no doubt on some computer hard drive somewhere now and Mancini hoped the streaks of blood across the side of the car wouldn’t start alarm bells ringing in an official government office someplace.

A few yards further on, they drove beneath a green sign above the highway.
Printed white lettering on the sign welcomed drivers to Ensenada in both Spanish and English. Mancini presumed El Sauzal was a province of the larger city. They saw a sign that pointed the way ahead to Ensenada or a right turn beside a small minimarket, indicating the route to San Miguel. Mancini quickly glanced over the map.

“Turn right in here,” he instructed Trey. “We’ll leave the girl by the store and give the car a once over.”

“We’re just going to leave her here?” Trey asked, quickly turning onto the minimart’s parking lot.

“Yeah,” Mancini grunted. “Somebody will find her and call an ambulance or take her to the hospital. We don’t have the time to fuck around here, Trey.”

“Yeah, right,” Trey muttered, obviously not happy with the situation.

“Pull up along the side of the building.”

“Got it.”

Trey brought the Thunderbird to a halt under the shade of a tree alongside the minimart.

“I’ll go get some cleaning wipes or something,” Mancini said. He climbed out of the car and headed for the store.

Trey turned off the ignition and sat for a while, mulling over the past events in his mind. He couldn’t get the image of those attacking guy’s eyes out of his head and wondered if they were perhaps possessed by demons or something supernatural.

“Shit, what am I doing here?” he muttered to himself. “I could be hanging on Venice Beach, right now, checking out the chicks and the surf.”

He glanced in the rear view mirror at the girl in the backseat. She sat bolt upright, her skin was pale and sallow and her lips were slightly parted but her eyes were closed.

“You feeling any better, lady?” Trey called out.

The girl didn’t answer or show any sign of response.
Trey hauled himself out of the driver’s seat and made his way around the side of the car. He touched her forehead and the skin felt icy cold.

“Ah, shit,” he hissed.

Trey turned when he heard footfalls and saw Mancini approaching, carrying a bottle of cleaning spray and a pack of antiseptic wipes. Mancini noticed the worried expression on Trey’s face as he drew near the car.

“You better take a look at her, man,” Trey stammered. “I think she’s dead.”

Chapter Seven

“What do you mean,
dead
?” Mancini snapped.

“Like, as in not living. Her head feels real cold and her lips are blue and her skin is all pale and shit.”

“Okay, okay, I get the picture,” Mancini groaned, studying the girl. He placed the spray bottle and wipes in the trunk and leaned into the interior. He checked her pulse on her neck and on her wrist then felt her chest for a heartbeat. The girl remained ramrod still and Mancini couldn’t find either a pulse or a heartbeat. She wasn’t breathing and the skin on face seemed to be drying out very quickly.

“Well?” Trey asked.

“Yup, she’s dead all right.”

“How can she just die like that? I know the injury was gruesome but it was only a leg wound
, for Christ’s sake,” Trey groaned.

“Maybe she died of shock, hell I don’t know,” Mancini sighed. “Come on, we better get going. We can’t dump her here. We need to find a place a little more secluded. Shit, I didn’t think I was going to have to start dumping bodies before we even got to Ensenada.”

“Ah, man, I feel kind of awkward about this,” Trey sighed.

“Awkward about what?”

“Driving along with a dead body in the back, man. It’s not cool. It’s like that movie,
Weekend At Bernie’s
or something but not as funny. Ah, this situation really sucks.”

“Get it together, Trey,” Mancini growled. “We can’t leave her here now. The store clerk has seen me and the camera may or may not be working in the store and you can guarantee as sure as shit those cameras at the toll gate were working. It won’t take long for the authorities to trawl through the film and see that girl in the back of our car and come looking for us. That’s what’ll happen if we dump her body right here, Trey.”

“Whatever, man,” Trey muttered, shuffling uncomfortably towards the driver’s door.

Mancini tossed the cleaning products into the foot space and slumped back into the passenger seat and studied the map.
He saw that the side road running alongside the minimart led down to the coastline.

“Take that side road,” he instructed Trey. “We’ll see if we can dump the body down there someplace.”

“I don’t feel great about this,” Trey sighed, gunning the Thunderbird’s engine.

“Nor do I,” Mancini huffed. “But we don’t have a whole lot of options here.”

The side road merged into a downward sloping dirt track, surrounded by tall overhanging trees. The Thunderbird bounced and rocked from side to side as the wheels rolled across the pot holes on the dirt track’s surface. Trey slowed the car to little more than walking pace.

“These damn craters aren’t doing my ride any favors,” he moaned. “I just hope we don’t get a flat.”

“Not much further now,” Mancini said. “We’re nearly at the shoreline.”

“What are we going to do with her body, man? Just dump her in the sea?”

“We’ll place her where somebody will find her,” Mancini said. “I know it’s a shitty thing to do but we can’t allow ourselves to get tangled up with the authorities.”

Trey sighed and shook his head.
He glanced in the rear view mirror and watched the girl’s head flop from side to side as the car juddered over the dirt track.

The narrow track came to a dead end a few yards from a secluded, pebble covered beach.
A spot for vehicle turning circled around to their right and a clump of low hanging trees stood to the left of the beach. Trey brought the car to a stop a few feet from the surface of pebbles.

“We’ll put her amongst those trees,” Mancini said, pointing to their left. “Then we’ll give the interior a wipe down and get rid of all that blood.”

Trey cut the engine and applied the park brake so the Thunderbird wouldn’t roll forward onto the beach. He stared forward through the windshield and watched the low waves break onto the pebbles. He wished he’d stayed in California and hadn’t been so eager to become involved in this particular assignment. Mancini seemed a callous kind of guy and nothing seemed to matter to him but carrying out his damn mission.

“Come on, let’s get this done,” Mancini barked
, as he jumped out of the car. “Time is against us.”

Trey glanced back into his rear view mirror and his skin went cold. The girl’s eyes snapped open
and she glared straight at him with those frighteningly familiar jet black eyes and piercing orange pupils. He whimpered and felt his heart hammering in his chest as his breathing rapidly increased. Trey’s eyes flicked to Mancini who stood beside the passenger door facing the sea. He slowly moved his right hand and unbuckled his seat belt. The girl opened her mouth and emitted a low groan. She wriggled inside the blanket, trying to throw it off her shoulders.

Mancini spun around when he heard the girl growling and Trey quickly flung open the car door. He hauled himself sideways to get out of the vehicle but the girl flung the blanket off her and launched herself forward, leaning into the front seats. Her hands clasped around the back of Trey’s neck and her head jerked towards his exposed flesh.

“Shit,” Mancini hissed and leaned into the car. He grabbed the girl’s head with both hands. His right hand clasped around her lower jaw and he gripped her hair with his left, rocking her head backwards. The girl’s hands still gripped Trey’s neck and her fingers pulled at his skin. She hissed and gurgled in a deep throaty groan.

“Get her off! Get her off me, man,” Trey wailed, grabbing the steering wheel and attempting to pull himself free from the girl’s clutches.

“I’m trying to keep her teeth away from you,” Mancini grunted, thrusting the woman’s head back as hard as he could push.

The girl violently shook her head, in an attempt to throw off Mancini’s grip. He hung onto her frizzy hair and her lower jaw, leaned further forward then twisted her sideways and shoved her backwards so she thumped against the backseat, releasing her grip on Trey in the process. Trey dived out of the open driver’s door and sprawled frontwards onto the dirt track beside the car.

Mancini wrestled with the thrashing girl, struggling to keep her pinned down in the backseat. The woman’s fingers curled around his wrists and she panted and snarled like a wild dog on the attack.

“Shit, she’s got the strength of five guys,” Mancini groaned, gritting his teeth. “Find some kind of weapon, Trey. I can’t hold onto her for much longer.” He wished he’d been carrying a firearm.
Pop, pop
and her struggle would have been all over in a second.

“Like what?” Trey stammered, hauling himself to his feet. “What kind of weapon, man?”

Mancini’s shades fell off his face and tumbled into the car interior as he wrestled with the writhing girl. “I don’t know, use your imagination but make it real fucking quick.”

Trey glanced around the beach and saw a fallen tree branch a few feet away. He rushed across the dirt track and picked up the three foot long stick. The wood was wet and rotted and crumbled in his hands.

“Shit,” he squawked and studied the ground around him. He saw a large, flat stone with a tapered end and picked it up. The rock was heavy enough to inflict some serious damage and he hurried back to the side of the Thunderbird. Mancini twisted the woman’s hair in winding knots as though he was trying to rein her in on a shorter leash. He glanced up and saw Trey approach, holding the rock.

“Smash
that thing on her head,” he rumbled. “Make sure you do it hard.” Mancini tried to hold her head still and twist her face towards Trey on the opposite side of the car.

Trey nodded but hesitated. He’d never killed anybody before and it still felt wrong to bash a woman over the head with a big rock.

“Do it!” Mancini bellowed.

Trey
took a few deep breaths and gritted his teeth. He raised the rock above his head, gripping it with both hands and aiming the tapered end at the woman’s forehead. She stared at him with those weird colored eyes and snarled and grunted like a restrained animal.