Broken Highway: A Thomas Highway Story

BROKEN HIGHWAY:

A THOMAS HIGHWAY SHORT STORY

By Brian Springer

Copyright 2011 Brian Springer

Smashwords
Edition

Smashwords Edition,
License Notes

This ebook is
licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be
re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share
this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy
for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not
purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please
return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for
respecting the hard work of this author.

This one is for Husker, who left us way too
soon.

ALSO BY BRIAN SPRINGER

Highway to Vengeance: A Thomas Highway
Novel

Blood Money

Black Days (forthcoming
)

Author’s note:

This story takes place before the events of
Highway To Vengeance. For those of you who have already read HTV,
hopefully this story will fill in a few blanks. For those of you
who haven’t, hopefully you’ll enjoy this story enough to check it
out. But if not, that’s okay too. Either way I’d like to hear what
you think about it. Feel free to drop me a line at
www.brianspringer.com
or
come find me on Facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002203162372

1

I sat at the counter in the pathetic excuse
for a bar, threw down a double shot of Jack Daniels, chased it with
a long pull of Killian’s, and motioned to the bartender to pour me
another shot.

“I think you’ve had enough, buddy,” the
bartender said in a voice that utterly lacked conviction. He was a
wrinkled old geezer with gray hair and bloodshot eyes. Undoubtedly
took the job for the fringe benefits, which almost certainly
consisted of slipping himself a taste once every hour. Or every ten
minutes more like it.

I just stared at him with dead eyes and
motioned again. I knew he didn’t have the balls to cut me off.

“All right,” he said after a moment of
hesitation to save face. “But no more after this one.”

“That’s what you told me last time,” I
said.

“Yeah, well this time I mean it,” he said as
he filled my shot glass for what had to be the tenth time that
night.

“Sure you do,” I said dismissively before
shooting the Jack.

I paid for the latest round, finished off
the rest of the Killians and turned to survey the room. The place
was an out-and-out shithole; dark and old and reeking of mildew and
spilled beer. A ratty old pool table with only 13 balls sat in the
far corner, unused. A 50’s style jukebox was parked next to it,
lights on but no sound coming from it. Formica tables and plastic
chairs. Concrete floors stained with beer and blood. Not that I
cared. In fact, the condition of the place was the reason I’d
chosen it as my drinking spot for the night. It was a bar that
attracted exactly the kind of people I was looking for. People who
hated their life. People who wanted to be left alone. People who
wanted to drink themselves into oblivion. In other words, people
like me.

The place was mostly empty. What few
customers there were sat quietly at their tables, scattered about
the room so as to bother each other as little as possible. There
was a wide variety of individuals but all were the same in one
fundamental way. All were broken down, with no fight left in them
at all.

I turned back towards the bar and motioned
for another round from the bartender. This time he didn’t even
bother putting up a fight. He just shook his head and poured
another shot and got me another glass of beer. Probably just hoping
I’d drink myself unconscious so he could call a cab and get me out
of here. Which, given enough time, would have undoubtedly
happened.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, trouble
walked in the door just a few minutes later.

There were three of them, two guys and an
angry-looking girl. Each was dressed similarly; faded jeans, a
dirty T-shirt, and cowboy boots. Each looked like they were itching
for a confrontation. And the way they were acting, it was only a
matter of time until they found one.

They ordered a couple rounds of beers and
set up shop in the middle of the bar. Within minutes they were
whooping up a storm, laughing and yelling and dropping F-bombs.
Having themselves a good old time. Acting belligerent and daring
someone to call them on it. Which I was about to do.

It’s not like I came into the bar looking
for a confrontation—far from it, in fact—but now that circumstance
had brought one to my doorstep, I realized I’d been itching for one
for some time now. And this was the perfect situation.

So I just sat there, staring at them,
waiting for one of them to notice me. Eventually one did. The
chick. She saw me looking at her and stared right back at me.

I smiled and blew her a kiss.

Her eyes narrowed and she elbowed one of the
guys to get his attention.

“What the fuck?” he said, spinning towards
her.

She leaned in and whispered something in his
ear. His eyes widened.

“Who?” he insisted.

She pointed at me. The guy followed her
finger until he locked onto my eyes. He took a good look, and when
I didn’t look away, he stood up and started striding purposefully
in my direction. Chest out, arms back, a sneer on his face, putting
on a show. The other two were right behind him.

Although it was possible that things
wouldn’t get physical—doubtful, but still possible—I had to act as
though it would. So in the few seconds it took for the group to
reach me, I sized them up.

The dude in front wore a Raiders hat with
the bill bent in an inverted V, white-trash style. He was tall and
thick but with eyes as dim-witted as a cow’s. Which was probably
his equal in intelligence. Even though he was obviously the leader
of this rag-tag group, he wouldn’t be a problem when push came to
shove.

His partner was tall for a chick—5’10’’—but
thin as a rail. Flat face, like someone took a shovel to it when
she was a kid. She walked as though controlled by a puppeteer with
muscular dystrophy, her arms and legs moving out of time with each
other. A tweaker, no doubt, probably flying high on meth right this
moment. She also posed no threat.

Contestant number 3 wore a shit-eating grin
on his chubby face. A thin line of tobacco juice ran down his
double chin, unnoticed. He was shaped like the Pillsbury Dough Boy,
nearly as round as he was tall. Someone you wouldn’t want sitting
on you, but other than that, I wasn’t concerned with him in the
least.

Raider-Hat, Tweaker, and Dough Boy were
looking for trouble, that much was obvious. How much they would
find was up to them.

From the corner of my eye I saw the
bartender sigh and reached under the bar for something. A weapon,
no doubt. He knew exactly where this was going. The rest of the
customers probably did too, but they just sat there and watched
silently.

Raider-Hat stopped at the edge of my table.
He had a nasty grin on his face. The other two spread out alongside
him. Tweaker was twitching like she was hooked up to a car battery.
Dough-Boy was smiling stupidly.

“What the fuck’s your problem?” Raider-Hat
said.

Instead of answering him I tilted my head
back and finished off my glass of beer, knowing it was most likely
the last one I was going to get that night. In that particular bar,
at least.

I set the beer down and sat there staring at
him but didn’t answer. Raider-Hat slammed his hand on the table. It
produced a loud bang but I didn’t so much as flinch.

“I asked you a question, asshole.”

“You mind repeating it?” I said. “I wasn’t
paying attention.”

Dough Boy chimed in from the cheap seats.
“He asked you what the fuck your problem is.”

“I don’t have one,” I replied, my eyes still
on Raider-Hat. He was the only semi-dangerous one, the one I’d have
to deal with first if things went bad.

“Well, you’re about to,” Raider-Hat
said.

“Is that right?”

Raider-Hat nodded. “You’re damn right. My
woman here says you blew her a kiss.”

“And what if I did?”

“Then we’re gonna to have to fuck you up,”
Raider-Hat said.

“And if I didn’t?”

“We’re still gonna fuck you up,” Dough Boy
said, smiling stupidly.

“And how do you plan on doing that?” I said,
still seated, not sweating them in the least. “After all, there’s
only three of you.”

“But only one of you,” Tweaker said.

I looked at her. “And you think that gives
you an advantage?”

“You’re damn right it does,” Raider-Hat
said.

“How so?” I said. “I mean, you don’t know
the first thing about me. I could be an MMA fighter, or a hardcore
martial artist, or even an ex-Navy SEAL for all you know.”

“You ain’t none of those things,” Raider-Hat
said.

“Oh yeah? What makes you so sure?”

“Cuz you’re too damn scruffy. With that
long-hair and scraggly beard. You look like some kind of bum.”

“You ever heard of not judging a book by its
cover?” I said.

“We ain’t talking about no book,” Dough Boy
said, completely missing the point. Which came as no surprise.
“We’re talking about you.”

“Besides,” Raider-Hat said. “If you were one
of those things you wouldn’t be drinking in this shithole.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said.
“Maybe I picked this shithole for a reason. I mean, imagine just
for a moment that I was an ex-SEAL. Say, for example, that while
training for an operation, I contracted a flesh-eating virus that
didn’t quite succeed at killing me but did do enough damage to run
me out of the SEALS. You think I might be just a little pissed off
about that? Just maybe?”

Raider-Hat just stared at me. It was
impossible to tell if I was getting through to him at all.

“Suffice it to say I would be more than a
little pissed,” I continued. “So now, with all this anger built up
inside me, all I want to do is drink in peace and try to get
through another day without taking my rage out on someone else,” I
said. “If that was the case, then this would be the exact kind of
place I would pick. Someplace to drink in peace without any damn
frat boys or yuppies or loud-mouthed rednecks around to bother
me.”

Raider-Hat’s nostrils flared and his eyes
narrowed but he remained silent.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking,” I said.
“If I came here just to drink myself into oblivion, why did I blow
your girl over there a kiss, right?”

Raider-Hat didn’t answer. Nor did any of the
others. I think their confusion had paralyzed them, at least
temporarily.

“Well, let me answer that in a way I think
you’ll understand,” I said. “I wasn’t looking for any kind of a
confrontation, at least not earlier, but once you boys came in and
started making all that noise, I knew it was just a matter of time
until I got fed up and came over there and shut you up without
giving you a chance to pipe down. So I figured, why not nip things
in the bud? Get them over here to try and talk a little sense into
them before things get out of control. And the only way I could
think of doing that was by blowing your girl a kiss there. So
that’s what I did. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the smartest
thing to do, but there it is. It’s over and done with, and now here
you are. With a decision to make. So what do you think?”

Raider-Hat looked at me for a moment, then
said, “I think you’re full of shit.”

Dough Boy and Tweaker started laughing.

“You want to know what I think?” Raider-Hat
continued, fueled on by his cronies. “I think you did something
stupid and now you’re trying to talk your way out of it.”

“If that’s what you think than you’re even
dumber than you look,” I said. “Which is pretty much
impossible.”

His mouth turned up in a predatory grin and
it was obvious my little plan had failed. Not that it ever had much
of a chance to succeed. But at least I could say I’d tried. And now
there was only one direction for things to go. So it was just a
matter of looking for the right opportunity to take control of the
situation.

And then Raider-Hat was setting his hand
down on the table to hold his weight as he leaned in over the table
towards me, providing me with just the opportunity I was looking
for. “And you know what else I think—”

I never found out what else he thought, as I
lifted the table from the bottom, and wrenched it aside, spilling
Raider-Hat off-balance. As he fell I grabbed his wrist, put my hand
on the outside of his elbow, held his arm taut and turned it so his
palm was facing towards the ceiling. He doubled over and went to
one knee, giving me even more leverage. I lifted his arm further,
putting more pressure on his elbow joint. He hissed in pain.