Free Drifters by J. A. Santos Page A

don’t I will not keep hol ding back?”
    “Pfft, what can you do? You are tied with those useless arms inside the handcuffs.”
    “Don’t, just don’t. I am pleading you to let me go so you won’t get hurt.”
    He laughs hard and assured he would be safe. Wrong answer, came the words to my mind. I clenched my fist and pulled the handcuffs away, breaking the chain in the middle as if they were nothing but made of plastic. He moves back as I glared at him, moving forward. He did as the cop did, moved his body backwards for every step I took and rustling the leaves on the floor. He stops at a tree trunk barely covering his body and I threw a punch that tore half the bark away.
    “Now sit!” I snarled and the fear in his face was real, the wide eyes, the quivering of his lower lip, the slow decent to the ground as my last word hit his ears.
    “But, how?” he asked
    “You know nothing of me.”
    As I rose from my dire state, a hostage to now an intimidator and a snarling beast that was only looking for her interest. I knew Max did not have a chance he is disturbed, crazy even. He sat quivering on the floor.
    “What happened in Canyon Diablo was nothing compare to what I would do to you or Alex, if what I am thinking is what you are trying to do.”
    I grabbed the collar of his shirt and drew him near me, his face a mere scared version of the one before, of what it once was a happy, smiling kid now but a reflection of the monster he really is.
    “You don’t know a thing.” I said to him now wondering what their plan really was, I might have an idea. I open my mouth and was ready to consume his sorry ass when from the back strobes of blue and red filled the area in the distance and I could see the lights of flashlights moving about and I knew it was time to go. I looked back at Max still scared.
    “Time to go and if you dare anything I will end your supposed immortal life. Understand?” He just nodded rapidly like a bubblehead figure on a bumpy road. I ran to the backpack and picked it up and ran out the clearing pushing Max as I speed of. At the edge I looked back and saw the corpse of the cop that Max had consumed and I had to turn around. Kneeling at his corpse I looked into his eyes still closed and around its sockets were the same black the others had, only not so profoundly viewable. I put my hands inside his mouth and pull them on opposite direction, ripping his head from the jaw up and afterwards putting my hand inside and squashing what was left of its brain. He was not coming back. I stood as soon as the first member of the backup showed and before the lights could hit me I ran, I ran to where I had left Max thinking he had run away, but he was still at the edge waiting in the floor rocking back and forth like a scared boy. He looked up at me and said no words he just stood and ran by my side. We ran for a while with no actual end line, we ran south deeper in the forest then west towards the fertilizer plant we left a couple of hours back. Then I decided to return and moved south again. We ran till we did not see the lights no more. Only the black night was behind us and the only lights the small twinkling of the stars in the sky, and the silvery reflection of the moon. We stopped panting. I was grabbing a tree Max was bending from his knees.
    “I think we are safe for now.”
    “Miss Sara listen you cannot expect me to help you not after what I did.”
    “Shut up.”
    “That wasn’t me, I should explain…”
    “Explain later you shit.”
    I did not wanted him to talk to me I told him to sit and made him change his cloths while I grabbed a pair of jeans and broke a leg off twisting it and ripping threads of its hard fabric and making a small rope.
    “Turn around put your hands behind your back” I said as he finished dressing and cleaning the blood from his face and he did as told and I bound his hands so he could not do anything. I did not know if he had my strength and could easily break them