“See the good doctor back to Shreveport, ladies. If Harrison makes it out of New Orleans, then I’ve already got a good idea of where he’ll go. There’s a certain nurse in Caddo Vitality Care’s CCU that he really took a shine too.” Leona’s eyes sparkled with jealousy and mischief.
Kingsley knew immediately who it was. Only Jane Lewis could have turned the head of the infamously hard-headed billionaire.
*****
Chapter 6
It was immediate sobriety. Kingsley walked into his apartment and spun in circles, not even daring to stop for a drink or even take a few minutes’ nap. His options were very few. Now he risked losing so much more than his license. It was his life. What kind of sadistic ending had she prepared for him? He was incapable of imagining that level of horror. For all the gore he’d seen as a doctor, he could imagine no precedent, and that was the thing that terrified him most of all.
He strode to the garage, keys in his hand, suddenly remembering that he’d left the Maserati in Caddo Vitality’s parking garage. He switched on the light anyway. There was an old .45 in his garage arsenal that he was thinking about ending his life with. He’d take the route of cowardice without any shame. Anything to keep from falling into her hands again.
The lights flickered on. Kingsley clenched his fist to his teeth to keep from throwing up. The Maserati was parked there regardless. A woman in a cocktail uniform leaned against it like a centerfold.
“Hiya, I’m Jen. Nice ride. Boss-Lady had me deliver it. She says she wants you to swing by Jane Lewis’ place first. Don’t know what that means. I’m just the delivery girl.”
Jen tossed Kingsley an exact copy of his keys. She rolled her eyes at him, loudly popping her gum. The rhythm of her chewing made his anxiety prick higher yet.
“See ya around, Trooper.” She waved her fingers at him.
Kingsley hopped in his car peeled out of the garage the moment the gum-smacker was gone. He was heading the opposite direction of Jane’s apartment. In terror, he had always opted for suicidal moves.
He was going to turn himself in. He’d bought friends at the Shreveport police department. His friends would lock him up. Call in the Feds, the National Guard, anybody it took to save him. Death row, lethal injection, even the electric chair would be so much better than the ending Leona Kelley had fabricated for him.
The police station was 20 minutes from Kingsley’s house. He would never reach it. About 15 minutes into his trip, on what had one moment been a mostly empty highway, he was suddenly surrounded by a circle of blood-red Porsche 550 Spyders. They revved their engines ominously, casting up clouds of exhaust into the air.
They were like an omen of scarlet death. The eerie whirring of their engines drilled into his bones, echoing his fear. Even though their appearance in the middle of the street was so out of place, no one slowed down to gawk. There wasn’t a soul who even seemed to notice. Shreveport went on at its lazy bee-droning pace. Was he hallucinating? Maybe only he could see the swarm of red bikes…
Kingsley’s fate was sealed in the rouge-stained kiss of who her goons called the “Boss-Lady.” He could see now to his further terror that all of the drivers were young women. They were dressed as ballerinas in black tutus and their hair was stacked high on their heads, crowned with white and yellow diamonds.
Panic-stricken, Kingsley punched the gas and swerved off the road over a sidewalk. The people of Shreveport didn’t even look up as he burned rubber with wraith-shrieking volume.
The Spyders were in hot pursuit. They wove in and out of the street corners, around light poles and street signage, as though this was a daily routine. Kingsley realized that he had left Leona’s company around 6 hours ago. She’d have had plenty of time to organize what appeared to be a very elaborate hit on himself, should he leave the path she had ordained.
Like an army of nimble, mechanical insects they wove the streets around him into a spider’s web of exhaust. Had he lived here a thousand years and carved a map of the streets into his bones not one of his detours could shake them. This was their haunt. Here they were the spiders and he was the fly.
He punched it manically running straight through red lights and down main thoroughfares. He thought that if he drug them into the open, it would draw the police to him. They’d all be arrested and no one would fall into Leona’s hands.
This, of course, was cowboy strategy. The regular rule of thumb when it came to the street. It was all or nothing. Take everything you can get your hands on and never give out. Leona Kelley didn’t play that way. For her, crime was one of the Fine Arts, something to lavishly spend her husband’s money on the way other trophy wives spent it on abstract-expressionist paintings and avant-garde sculptures.
Suddenly he came upon an intersection where the streets were filled with a parade the envy of Mardi Gras. Rows of vintage cars poured down the King’s Highway. What the hell holiday was this? The doctor didn’t care. Kingsley kicked the gas until the back of his car was fishtailing. He wove between the streams of cars and came shrieking into the parking lot of the hotel on Sanford Avenue.
Kingsley did donut spins to avoid colliding with a family of travelers that were unloading their luggage. When the spiraling stopped, he was face-to-face with a deep purple and white pin-striped Shelby 427 Cobra.
Libby stood up in the driver’s seat. Her face was wreathed with smoke from a massive Churchill she had pinched between her teeth. In her hands, she held an unlit Molotov cocktail.
“You should have known better than to Tango with the Boss-Lady, doctor! You can’t outrun the wind. You could drive that little hot rod to the ends of the earth, but you will never be free. She is the goddess that bleeds the Calypso of her honor with jealous possession. It’s really sad for me personally. A fine gentleman such as yourself caught in her trap. I’m afraid this lecture has come too late, Little Doc.”
Libby pulled a can of lighter fluid out of the passenger seat and dribbled it all over the rag. She plucked the cigar out of her teeth with her free hand and lit said rag. Kingsley flinched as she hurled the fire bomb into the parking lot. The flames licked up in a circle around him.
He realized that the circular flames were strategic. A Latino cola delivery truck came sidling down the side of the hotel. The doors opened on it and a delivery crew of girls dressed as French mimes appeared. They’d dumped all the soda product from the glass bottles and had converted the containers into firebombs. Now they hurled them at the Maserati like they were in a schoolyard water balloon fight.
Kingsley drifted. He heard his tires screaming and began to choke on smoke. People on the streets and sidewalks screamed, some from terror and some from rage, leaping out of sight and cowering to protect themselves.
“You brought this Hell to Earth, Little Doc! Now all of Lucifer’s angels are singing your praises!” Libby’s voice howled above the screeching of metal and the crackling of flames.
But the doctor wasn’t dead yet. It was a stroke of Divine favor. There could be no other explanation. Somehow Kingsley slid past the shooting fangs of fire that engulfed his path.
“If I can’t get to the one station, then I can still get to the other.” He shook his head talking to himself in his panic. He was heading away from the police station on this end of town.
There was a subtle rattling in the ground like he was driving on gravel. He looked up into his rearview mirror just in time to see a mushroom of black smoke appear over the skyline behind him. It was just then that his phone rang.
He answered it, breathless now.
“Shh, don’t say a word, doll face. It’s Annie. You know, like the Lady Devil’s Chauffeur? Yeah, this is your last word of warning. That’s one police station down and still one to go. Don’t play the Queen of Diamonds, kiddo. She will always win.”
Kingsley’s terror still didn’t outweigh his pride or his desire to avoid being flayed alive or worse by Mrs. Kelley. He hurled the phone into the floorboards and kept driving, heading for the police station
on the other side of town.
This, as it turned out, was a grievous mistake.
*****
Chapter 7
The doctor came shrieking up on two wheels. The cars were in hot pursuit yet, zeroing in on him in tight formations like the 101st Airborne come to light on the ground.
Kingsley’s heart drilled into the front plate of his skull. He was pinned with a ’69 Cadillac Eldorado on his tail and a brand-new Bugatti Veyron running alongside. He noticed that Jen from his garage just happened to be driving the Bugatti, and without breaking a sweat. They scraped him along the sidewalk like coyotes hunting a rabbit. Even if he made it to the station, there was no way he was going to be able to get out, go in, and hand himself over. He was already in custody, in a manner of speaking.
Still, Kingsley was still a bull-headed man. If he could try it, then he would. He would never take no for an answer, even if his idea was utterly ridiculous. This had gotten him many of the things he’d wanted in life, but it was also his greatest vice. Today he’d pay the piper for it.
As he peeled his tires across the chalkboard-shade blacktop outside Shreveport’s central police station, Kingsley coursed with manic laughter. This was a photocopy of one of his wildest dreams suddenly turned into an inconceivable nightmare. How did this dream end? It didn’t look like there was any escape.
Volcanically, as if someone had shot a muzzle-loader straight through the roof, fire shot out of the roof of the station from the inside. The windows blew out of the front doors. The front walls blew and sent the Maserati reeling in a wave of heat.
Spun like a top, Kingsley looked up to see that the Eldorado was on fire. The Bugatti had driven straight through the place and had blown up on the other side of the building. It was probably a delayed auditory sensation, but Kingsley could swear he heard Jen shrieking as she died. Above the tinge of roasting rubber, he could also smell her burning hair.
Kingsley’s tires were caught in so much debris that his brakes locked. He was finally stopped and forced to stare in horror into the midst of the blaze.
Leona Kelley stood there, partially turned away from him in the midst of the incineration. She was wearing a short yellow-and-black polka dot dress with a blue jean vest over it, a red bandana tied around her hair and a pair of tall red pumps. If she’d walked by you on the street, you’d think she was auditioning for an I Love Lucy remake. She even had a Virginia Slim tucked into the corner of her cherry-red lips. A lady of vintage class. This was the one thing that chilled Kingsley to the cerebral fluid. How American-Dreamy, Stay-at-Home Mommy she could look on the outside.
Then she turned and revealed that the other side of her face was covered with an opera mask that she’d worn to deflect the blaze. It roasted and fell off of her like a scab. She had a shoulder-mounted cannon raised chest-high. In an odd way, Leona clutching military-grade weaponry wasn’t all that strange compared to the absurd chase Kingsley had just endured. The weapons laws in Louisiana were a bit lax, even for folks who weren’t criminal masterminds.
In her free hand, Leona held a straight razor. She spun it around in her fingers in an expert nun-chuck sweep before closing it in her palm. Three distinctive drops of purple-red blood dripped from it landing in the embers.
“Doctor Kingsley… I am highly disappointed in you.” Her voice was as clear as an opera’s prima donna in the burning air.
“That you would put the gentlemen of the Shreveport police force at risk before you would follow simple instructions. Don’t you have any moral decency?” She clicked her tongue and tossed her head.
“Honestly, I can’t begin to tell you the kind of grief you have put me through in this situation. I really did think you had what it takes to be my partner. I mean, you have the medical skills and the Devil-May-Care lifestyle. You were so eager for blood that you agreed to regular cloak-and-dagger murder at the drop of a few dollars! A drink bought your soul, Lucien Kingsley!” She looked down her nose at him like a mother scolding a willful child.
“I didn’t want to play this game. You must understand. Partly because I really don’t need to. See, the world is like the ocean. I’m the only fish in it. Trying to cross me is encroaching on my terrain, understand? Never mind. Since you are so obviously inadequate, I will deal with little Ms. Jane myself. Go find Mr. Kelley, if you can manage it, please sir? Hurry on now, before the Feds get involved.” A girl with long rainbow-streaked blonde hair hopped out of a nearby Hummer.
“Adeline, pull the good doctor out of the dust if you’ll be so kind, dearie,” Leona said to her. “I’m going to need one of you to go pick up a few drums of kerosene or whatever from the first filling station that you run across. It’s time to give the blue-collar boys of Shreveport’s police department a Viking send-off. Quickly, ladies, before the Feds get involved.”
Adeline hooked a few log chains to the back of the Maserati and began the work of pulling Kingsley out of the dust. He barely even noticed what she was doing. He could only stare slack-jawed into what was left of the police station. Only then did the doctor see that Leona was standing on the hemorrhaging throat of the police chief. A man who had been Kingsley’s weekly drinking partner for 10 years. He’d taught him the how-to, do’s and do not’s of Poker and lady-killing.
Sorry about that, old friend, thought the doctor.
A quick survey of the rest of the floor told him Leona Kelley had come in brandishing nothing other than an antique barber’s straight razor and had slit the throats of everybody inside. The chief, a few local Sheriffs, a deputy, the secretary. They all lay there dead and burning. She’d managed to do that to trained officers, all without getting a scratch on her. They hadn’t stood a chance against her.
“Janis! I’ve ruined my shoes!” Leona lamented to one of the girls that rushed to her side, wincing and tripping over the melting linoleum of what remained of the floor.
“Okay, dude, I’ve pulled you loose. Now I’d make tracks if I were you before you really learn the meaning of love from this chick.” Adeline leaned over the dash, eyes full of terror. Something told Kingsley then that a lot of these girls hadn’t chosen this life. That she’d chosen it for them.
Kingsley fled the scene. The drive was totally out of him. He drove for about 10 more minutes before he began to crack. He whipped the Maserati behind the donut shop on Hearne Avenue and hung his head, bursting into anxious tears. What now? Was he really going to try and find Harrison Kelley, after all that?
There was a loud thud as if something had landed on the Maserati’s hood. Kingsley jumped into action, screaming and swinging his fists. His jaw dropped when he saw who it was with one foot raised on the hood of the car.
Harrison Kelley had found him instead.
*****
Chapter 8
A dead man’s rages can be as instinctual— and as unpredictable— as any live animal’s, it would seem. Harrison had sprung from the couch and escaped before they could even begin to figure out what to do to save him.
Jane and all her friends were crowded hopelessly into Dexter’s ’72 VW van.
“Okay, so the cops are out of the question, right? We make for the armory?” Dexter called from the driver’s seat. Their apartment was about 4 blocks down from the station on Texas Avenue. Jane stood up in her seat, jaw dropped to her collar bone.
“Looks like the cops aren’t an option even if we wanted them to be.” She pointed a shaking finger.
“Oh God!” Dexter locked up the brakes as pieces of burning tires and rubble bounced down the street. The police station had been obliterated.
“Everything’s on fire.” Lindsey leaned dangerously out the window. She stated the obvious, transfixed in a stupor by her surroundings.
“Jane… Your phone is ringing and it’s… umm… a blocked number.” Ivy spoke from the back seat. Up until this point, they’d just been ignoring her. Mostly because she was popping gum annoyingly loud to calm herself and was playing with Jane’s fancy new iPhone as a distraction. Now even
this hauled her back into the moment’s terror.
Jane plucked it from Ivy’s hands face a mask of rage.
“Whoever this is better have a very convincing explanation for how they got this number!” She shouted into the receiver to the horror of all her companions.
“Attitude, young lady. Don’t you know how to talk to your elders?” Leona Kelley’s voice purred into the receiver.
Jane laughed into the phone. Now her friends were close to being sick. Leona was silent, actually surprised.
“Got a reason for calling me, you raving bitch?”
Leona was speechless now. Which did not bode well for Jane Lewis.
“My husband, Harrison Kelley. You know where he is. You’re the first person that he’d run to. He trusted you when you cared for him at Caddo. Think he maybe even developed some kind of ridiculous crush on you. He wasn’t quite capable of love, but...”
Jane realized then that she had a choice. She could buy Harrison and her friends just a little bit of time.
“Okay, so yeah, maybe I do. You want me to tell you where he is? You’ll have to catch me first.”
Jane jumped from the back of the van and hit the ground running.
“Jane!” Her friends all shrieked at the same time. They were terrified for her. She was headed for certain death. There was no question of that. Leona would kill her. That wasn’t even the thing that scared them the most— it was how Leona would kill Jane.
But their friend was already gone. The smoke hid her from their sight.
“She’s saving our lives. It might cost hers, so we’ve got to make this count!” Dexter shouted. He punched the gas, headed for the Shreveport armory.
*****
Chapter 9
Kingsley scraped over the streets like a razor on a chalkboard. The car moved like a snake over Hell’s hot ovens and still Harrison couldn’t be shaken. The zombified tycoon hung onto the grill with the strength of King Kong.
The Good Death Box Set: A Hard SciFi Science Fiction Series Page 4
