2
TARIQ “REEK” HORTON
Ipulled up next to Big A and Saint’s rides. There wasn’t anything out there but trees, open land, and railroad tracks. Both of them were standing near the tracks looking down.
I killed the engine, stepped out, slammed the door, and joined them. Looking down as well, I saw Rome tied to the tracks. His wrists and ankles were bound behind him. There was a rope tied around his waist, securing him to the tracks. His face was wet with sweat and tears. Dirt streaked one side of his cheek. His bottom lip was trembling so much that he could barely get his words out.
The second he saw me, he began to beg, “Reek! Reek, come on, man! I wasn’t gon’ do nothin’ for real. I swear to God!Please! Please untie me.”
Big A had already laid it out on the ride over. Rome ran our trap on 79th. One of our block boys working out of that trap house got word that Rome was plotting with a small outside crew known for robberies, to hit it. Saint and Big A had Jamir pull Rome’s text messages, and, sure enough, Rome’s dumbass was trying to set up a robbery that would clear that trap out of every brick, dollar, and gun stashed in it.
Rome started bucking harder when he saw none of us looked moved by his pleas. His whole body jerked against the restraints, and his boots scraped uselessly against the wood beneath him.
“I got kids!” he cried. “Please, Big A.Please! I’m beggin’ y’all. Don’t do this. Don’t do this to me! Not like this man!”
Saint looked down at him with that same cool, deadly expression he wore when violence was about to scratch an itch in him.
“You should’ve begged us for a few extra dollars instead of trying to play us,” Big A roared.
Rome broke all the way then. He was sobbing, and his breathing turned ragged and wild.
Then we all heard the horn of a train in the distance. Rome’s eyes widened with terror.
“No!” he screamed, thrashing so hard the tracks rattled under him. “No! No! Please! Please! Please! Please! Not like this! Just shoot me! Just shoot me, man!” He started fighting harder against the ropes, hard enough to make the tracks tremble beneath him. Fear had given him extra strength, but not enough. Saint had secured him to those tracks with professional knots.
Saint stepped back first, telling me and Big A, “Come on.”
Big A and I followed him into the tree line and stood where the shadows swallowed us up, but still gave us a clear view of the tracks.
The train horn hit again, sounding much closer this time.
Rome started howling so loudly it bounced through the trees. He was begging God, us, and his mama. He began to promise anything, swearing he’d disappear, swearing he’d never even breathe wrong again if we just let him loose.
The train was coming. Its light cut through the dark and found him. The horn kept sounding, but we knew the train couldn’t stop. A train that big didn’t have brakes like a car. By thetime the engineer saw Rome stretched across those tracks, all he could do was lean on that horn.
Rome started bucking so hard I thought he would break a limb trying to get free. He kicked. His shoulders twisted. His neck strained. But the rope held.
Saint stood beside me with his hands in his pockets, staring coldly with this smirk of anticipation, the way I would catch him looking at Zahra when she was dancing on her own in a club.
The train’s massive steel wheels bore down on Rome like a mechanical beast. His screams were like guttural howls that twisted into wet gurgles as the train plowed into his torso first, crumpling his body like wet paper. His arms flailed wildly, and his fingers clawed at nothing before the impact sheared them clean off at the shoulders in a spray of blood and shredded muscle. His limbs tossed to the side like discarded rags.
The train's undercarriage hooked into his abdomen, ripping it open from sternum to groin in one savage yank. His intestines uncoiled in glistening loops, steaming in the cold air, tangled around axles as organs pulped and smeared beneath the wheels.
And then it was over. What was left of him was a headless torso that had been cut in half and flattened. His skull was shattered into fragments that were embedded in the rail ties. His brains were leaking out in grayish clumps mixed with hair and scalp, and it was scattered along the tracks in a trail of gore.
The train thundered past, dragging wind and flinging bits of Rome’s fingers, teeth, and chunks of his body into the weeds.
Big A spat into the dirt and began to walk toward our rides.
I looked once more at the tracks, seeing bits of Rome’s body glistening against the trees, then turned too.
Nobody got away with trying to come at the cartel. And every now and then, a nigga had to die in an ugly way for forgetting it. Once word got around about the condition Rome’s body wasfound in, the rest of the city would be reminded of that lesson too.
Saint was the last one to turn away, muttering, “Goof ass nigga.”
ICON CARTIER
Stepping into Saint’s house, I was ready to chill, and not hear anything but music, ice clinking in a glass, and one of my brothers talking shit. I’d been in the streets all day handling business, and I needed a minute to relax. Legend wasn’t an option because the last time I called him, all I heard in the background was kids, Aria fussing, and a baby hollering. My son was with Livia, Ava, and Zahra shopping for last minute baby things for Zahra, so I already knew I didn’t want my little bit of peace interrupted by crying, baby throw-up, or a shitty diaper.
