Err on the Side of Violence: Terribly Acronymed Detective Club Series (Book 3)

Chapter Fifty-One: Joe, Fall, 2011

"Joe!"

He thought he could hear his name through the roaring in his ears. It was hard to pinpoint where it was coming from, though, because it was dark where he was, and his world was spinning.

"Joe! Oh my God, Joe!"

Who was that calling him? He thought he recognized the voice. The name was on the tip of his tongue... did he still have a tongue? Something moved in his mouth, and he thought that was his tongue. He poked it between his lips and discovered his lips were swollen like two water balloons, and he could taste his blood on them.

"Joe! Oh Jesus, are you okay?"

He felt a light touch on his arm, and a bolt of searing pain made him emit a sound he'd never heard come out of his mouth. It was something an animal made when it was gutted.

"Oh, shit! Sorry! Oh, Joe, I'm so sorry! Your arm..."

The pain clarified his thinking, to his surprise. He thought he knew now who was talking to him.

"Rachel?"

"Oh, thank God, you're conscious."

It hurt to talk, but that was really just his cut and swollen lips, and his face, which felt as if he'd run it into a wall. His jaw seemed to work, and he didn't think any teeth were missing. That was fortunate. "Rachel? Why can't I see you?"

"Probably because you have two black eyes that are nearly swollen shut. Can I touch them?"

He didn't answer, and he felt her feather-light fingertips gently tug up an eyelid. Something blurry entered his vision. "Do you see anything?" she asked.

"Not much. It's so dark."

"There are hardly any streetlights here, and it's still a few hours until dawn."

"Here? Where are we?"

"We're literally lying on a stretch of road in the middle of nowhere. Don't you remember what happened?"

Something came back to him. The chase, the blockade. The fight. Hardly a fight. A curb stomping. "They hit me with bats," he said.

"Yes. It was horrible. I'm so sorry, I wish I could have helped. There were too many of them!"

"Nothing you could have done," he said, suddenly feeling dizzy. "Oh, fuck, Rachel, back away, I think I'm going to be sick..."

A second later, he was. Everything he ate and drank that night, erupting in a stream that lasted longer than it should have. It was cartoonish, how much vomit came out of him.

"Oh, shit, you probably have a concussion," Rachel moaned. "Don't go to sleep, Joe, stay awake!"

"Those fuckers fought dirty," he said, wiping his mouth.

"That's it, use your anger, focus on your anger!"

He certainly did earlier, when he saw them climb out of their pickups with baseball bats. He was enraged at the injustice of being surrounded by superior numbers, at being tricked into coming out here. They didn't have the dog. It was never about the dog. All they wanted to do, it seemed, was lay a beating on him. He unsheathed Lauren's sword and pictured himself as one of those samurai in the old movies, about to begin a flurry of moves that would impress his attackers with their ferocity. He was prepared to cut, even to kill. 

Unfortunately, reality was not like the movies. They didn't come one at a time. As soon as he made his first swing, one of them parried with his bat, and another went in at his back, and he thought he felt something pop. A rib, probably. He made another desperate swing as another bat clipped his hip, and then another smashed his forearm (broke it, he would later discover) and made him drop the sword, and then the smashed arm wouldn't work anymore and he swung his other fist in both fury and panic, knowing this could be it, he could die out here. All of them, men wearing balaclavas, patiently hopped aside and then feinted in with their bats, and it was like they were playing with him. He tried kicking at them whenever one came in, and a couple of times it worked, but he didn't do much damage, and there were still too many of them.