Crab Town

by Carlton Mellick III

  Sailboat realizes that they’ve got an extra gun man working with them. He thought it was just the four of them and the teenaged girl outside. He isn’t sure if the balloon man waving a .32 revolver at the bank teller is with them, or just some other guy robbing the bank at the same time. It’s possible that he is with them. Sailboat never listens to Jack when he’s given the game plan.

  “Who the hell is that guy?” Sailboat asks Doomsday.

  She looks over at Johnny Balloon.

  “No idea.”

  “Is he with us?” Sailboat asks.

  “No.”

  Since the security officer he should be guarding is out cold, or maybe dead, Sailboat leaves his position and goes to Jack.

  “Put your hands on the back of your neck,” Jack yells at the people on the floor. “With your face pointed at the ground.”

  Sailboat goes back-to-back with Jack and whispers behind his shoulder. “Who the hell is the balloon guy?”

  Johnny Balloon hears and looks over at them. He locks eyes with Jack.

  “You cool?” Jack asks the balloon.

  Johnny nods. “I just want the money they owe me.”

  Jack looks over at Nine, then back at Johnny.

  “Okay then,” Jack says. “Get it and go.”

  Sailboat shoves his leader with his right shoulder. “You can’t be serious.”

  “He’s one of us,” Jack says. “He’s a crab.”

  “But we don’t know him. And he’s a fucking balloon.”

  “Yeah, he’s a balloon. That’s all I need to know about him to know he deserves a piece of this bank. He drew a worse lot in life than either you or I.”

  “He’s going to get us killed.”

  “Let me worry about him. You worry about the third security officer. He’s got to be here somewhere.”

  Sailboat grunts, then scans the quivering faces, looking for someone who doesn’t belong.

  “Are you guys looking for the undercover guard?” Johnny says.

  The robbers all look at him.

  “Try the guy with the yellow hat,” Johnny says.

  Jack nods to Sailboat, and the large man goes to the other side of the room. The man with the yellow hat grumbles to himself as Sailboat points his shotgun down at him.

  “My right pocket,” Yellow Hat says.

  Sailboat pats him down and finds the handgun.

  “It’s him,” Sailboat tells the others.

  Jack smiles at Johnny Balloon.

  “I told you,” Jack says. “He’s one of us.”

  Nine brings the bank manager and his wife into the front room and tosses them on the floor.

  “Now that you’re all here,” Jack tells his captive audience, “I’d like to finally make an introduction.” He raises his arms in the air and says, “We are the House of Cards.” He presses his hands together and paces in front of the crowd. “Or at least four of the fifty-two members of the House of Cards. Maybe you’ve heard of us. I’m called Jack of Spades, one of the proud Lieutenants of our brave little army. The sexy lady next to me is the Nine of Hearts. She’ll steal your soul given the chance. Over there we’ve got the Four of Clubs, or Sailboat, as we like to call him. And the girl with the big ass Tommy Gun is the lovely Miss Doomsday. Whatever you do, don’t piss her off. She’s one fine weapon of mass destruction.”

  He looks over at Johnny, “And who are you again?”

  “They call me Johnny Balloon,” Johnny replies.

  “Ah, yes,” Jack says, smiling behind his mask. “And joining us for the afternoon is our provisional wild card, my main man, Johnny Balloon.”

  The balloon man gives the hostages a squeaky bow.

  “We’re all from Crab Town,” Jack continues. “That’s right, the place a lot of you try to pretend doesn’t exist. I can tell that some of you are residents of Crab Town, or on the verge of becoming residents of the shit hole. For the lot of you, I apologize for this inconvenience. Rest assured, your patience will be rewarded. As most of you know, the House of Cards doesn’t commit crimes for our own financial gain. No, we do this for you, the little crabbies. All the money we make goes toward helping you crabs build a better life. We put money toward water filtration systems, so that we don’t have to drink that toxic sludge that comes out of the sinks. We put money toward books to educate Crab Town children. We buy medicine. We buy food. We repair buildings. We are your friends. We do this for you.”

  The guard in the yellow hat chuckles. “Yeah, you’re a regular Robin Hood.”

  Sailboat stomps on his back for interrupting.

  “Unfortunately, for the rest of you,” Jack of Spades says to the guard, “you are not friends of the House of Cards. You have used us and thrown us away like garbage. Crab Town citizens aren’t even allowed to get jobs because of you, because we disgust you. You don’t want us working in your restaurants or factories. You won’t even let us wash your floors. Are you afraid living out there in the impact zone has made us radioactive? Are you afraid we’re going to track radiation onto your side of town? Are we biohazards? Or are we just too ugly and dirty for you to look at?”

  He looks down at the bank manager’s wife, who is lying on the ground with one arm around her little boy. She stares at Jack’s boots as he peers down on her.

  “The sad thing is,” Jack continues, “we’re not even asking you to care about us. You don’t have to help us. You can be as self-absorbed as you want to be. We’re just sick and tired of you doing everything you possibly can to keep us down, making absolutely sure we can never get back up again. You made us into bottom feeders, and you want us to stay bottom feeders. Until you give us a chance to work, give us a chance to pay back our debts without garnishing the majority of our wages, the House of Cards will continue to rob your banks and steal your wallets.”

  He nods at Doomsday. She steps away from the front door.

  He continues, “Now, if you’re a resident of Crab Town, you are free to leave. We don’t want you mixed up in any of this.”

  The Crab Town citizens look around, then slowly begin to stand up.

  Jack points his shotgun at a blonde woman as she gets to her feet. With her clean shirt and designer perfume, she’s obviously not a Crab Town citizen.

  “Crab Town citizens only,” he tells her. “I’ve lived there long enough to know the smell of a crabby. If you don’t smell like one you don’t get to leave.”

  About nine people get up and go for the door. Miss Doomsday escorts them out. One of them smiles at her as she leaves, and mouths a thank you.

  Jack looks down at the bank manager and tosses him an empty duffel bag.

  “Now if you can fill this for me we’ll be on our way.”

  The bank manager looks up at him. Jack smiles behind his mask.

  Jack once had a wife and daughter. They led honest lives in a lower middleclass neighborhood. When the government proposed the idea of CRABs, Jack thought it was a great opportunity. He was a brilliant handyman, who could fix just about anything from plumbing to electrics to generators. His plan was to single-handedly renovate an apartment building in Crab Town, so that he could own the property and make a better living by renting apartments out to decent people. Then he would move on to another building and renovate that one, then another, and so on. He saw it as a way to get out of his dead end job and give his family a better life.

  But things didn’t work out the way he had intended. The buildings in Crab Town couldn’t be renovated. It would be easier to tear them down and build new buildings from the ground up. But Jack tried to fix them. He tried to get at least one side of his building up to code enough to rent the apartments as low income housing. The city wouldn’t approve, no matter how much money he sank into it. He could point out that some apartments on the more respectable side of town were in just as bad shape as this one, but the council wouldn’t listen to him.

  Later, he learned that the council had no intention of approving any of the buildings in Crab Town. The bill was passed just
so they could get rid of the vagrants and lowlifes that infested the city streets, who no longer could contribute to society after the war. They just wanted to hide these people away so that they wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore.

  Jack lost his day job, but at the time he didn’t realize it was due to the fact that he was a Crab Town resident. A few months later, he heard stories from everyone in his neighborhood that they too had lost their jobs for no explainable reason. It was as if the government wanted to purposely keep them there, with the rest of the refuse. He believes that they don’t call them Crab Towns for nothing. They call them that because it is where all the bottom feeders are sent. The people here are just radioactive scavengers, who eat everyone else’s shit, just like the black crabs that come out of the sewers.

  “Daddy, read me a story,” his daughter asked him, lying in bed.

  Jack smiled at her. “Of course, sweety. Which one?”

  “The one about the prince and the garden.”

  “That’s the one mommy has been teaching you to read, isn’t it?”

  She nodded.

  “Then why don’t you read it to me.”

  She shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “I only know a few words. Mommy said she can’t teach me anymore until she can see again.”

  Jack looked at the scar on his ring finger. The ring was stolen a long time ago, so the scar he received when it was ripped off is all that he has left to symbolize his love for her.

  “What’s wrong with her eyes, Daddy?”

  Jack shook his head. “Don’t worry about it, honey. She just needs glasses is all.”

  “She doesn’t play with me much anymore either.”

  Jack brought the book to his daughter and sat next to her on the bed he had constructed out of particleboard and other scavenged wood. He pulled his feet out of the water puddle that covered most of his daughter’s floor and lay down next to her. No matter how well he patched up the walls and ceilings, the water still managed to find its way in.

  “Why don’t we try to read it together,” Jack said.

  She nodded and laid her head on his shoulder. He kissed her on the bald spot in her hair.

  “One day things will get better,” he said. “Then you’ll be able to go to a school. Eventually you’ll be able to read stories to yourself.”

  She smiled up at him. “If I knew how to read I’d read every single day.”

  “Someday you will, honey. I promise someday you will.”

  Before the end of the year, both Jack’s wife and daughter died of radiation poisoning. He isn’t sure how they got it. When he still had an income, he paid inspectors who told him the water in the building was drinkable. He never fed them sewer crabs or any food that might have been contaminated. But they both died nonetheless, leaving him all alone.

  When he learned about a group of people trying to get organized in Crab Town, he signed up right away. At first, they were just trying to help out their fellow citizens. They fixed up buildings, organized gardening projects, set up a clinic, tried to convince companies to give their people work. Their deeds were somewhat successful, but it was never enough. That’s when the organization took things in a more aggressive direction. They decided to become the House of Cards.

  His real name was Oliver, but once in the House of Cards he became the Jack of Spades. Each Jack in the organization is responsible for a squad of soldiers, one from each suit. The suits are divided up by specialty: spades are for those with book smarts, hearts are for those with street smarts and people skills, clubs are the muscle of the organization, and the diamonds are for the cunning and agile.

  Jack immediately added the Six of Spades, aka Miss Doomsday, to his team. Her deceased husband, the King of Spades, was a close friend of his, so he knew she was the perfect choice for his team. But he had to recruit new people outside of the organization to fill his other three positions. Members of the House of Cards often get themselves killed, put in prison, disappear, or just plain quit, so there’s always openings. There actually has never been a total of 52 members at one time since the organization began.

  Sailboat was the second member he added to his team. Of all places, he found him out in the melt zone, where no one ever goes. The melt zone is where the bomb hit, leveling the entire area. Not a single structure was left standing. It’s just a mile-wide crater of hot concrete slabs baking in the sun. It’s the most radioactive area in town, so nobody steps foot there. The only thing you can find out there is an army of black crabs.

  Some people say the melt zone is where all the sewer crabs come from. There are hundreds of them out there, crawling across the concrete, eating the red slime that grows in the acid rain puddles. Some of the crabs are enormous out there, the size of dogs or even bigger. They’re vicious, too. You get too close to one of them and they’ll take a chunk out of your thigh for breakfast.

  Jack was out in the melt zone that day to drop off some money. He didn’t trust banks and couldn’t keep the money in his apartment or on his person. Muggings and break-ins are a weekly or daily occurrence in Crab Town. Even someone as tough as Jack could not protect his food and money. So he hid it out in the melt zone, where he knew nobody would ever go looking. It might eventually give him radiation sickness, but he didn’t really care about that anymore. If death meant that he could be with his wife and little girl again he would welcome it.

  After pocketing twenty dollars and returning his chest to its hiding spot beneath a flattened school bus, Jack heard someone shouting. He went deeper into the melt zone until he saw a muscular white guy running through the crater with a baseball bat, chasing after crabs. Jack assumed he was some crazed shitter.

  A shitter is someone who gets high off of the drug called crab shit. It’s not actually crab shit, but it is a mossy green substance that grows on the bellies of black sewer crabs. If you smoke it or consume it you’re going to go on one hell of a trip. You’ll go from euphoric to cosmic to violent to bat shit crazy all within the course of an hour. Then you’ll need to do more. The stuff is radioactive and deadly as all hell, but most kids in Crab Town don’t really give a fuck anymore. To them, just a tiny taste of happiness, even chemically-induced happiness, is worth dying for.

  “Die bitches!” Sailboat yelled as he chased down a big black dog-sized crab.

  Some of those bigger crabs aren’t just the size of dogs, they can also run as fast as dogs. But they run sideways. Sailboat chased after it across slabs of sun-burnt asphalt. When he caught up to it, he broke two of its legs first, crippling it. Then he smashed down on its black shell until its sludgy guts were covering him.

  There were hundreds of crabs crawling through the debris, all sizes. Most of them were deformed; some had extra pinchers, others had extra long legs, some shells were lumpy or lopsided, some were conjoined together into a black spidery mass. Sailboat went from crab to crab, stomping on the small ones, cracking open the big ones. If he slipped and fell, the crabs would turn on him, ganging up on him to get him while he’s down. Crabs usually only go after the wounded or the dead, so whenever Sailboat’s leg fell through a hole in the rubble they thought he was injured and no longer able to walk. Some of them would get him, claw slices into his arms and back. But once his leg was free, he would continue smashing them to a soupy pulp.

  Then Jack realized Sailboat wasn’t after crab shit. You only have to kill one crab to get enough crab shit to last several days. Sailboat was in the melt zone just so he could kill crabs. Jack smiled at the strange young man, fascinated by him. He just sat there and watched, to see how long the kid could keep it up.

  But when Sailboat ran across a black plate the size of a basketball court, Jack realized he had to intervene.

  “Get out of there!” Jack called.

  Sailboat turned and looked up at him.

  “Under your feet!” Jack pointed at the black ground beneath Sailboat. “Get off of there!”

  But it was too late. The ground rumb
led, knocking Sailboat on his ass. He found himself being lifted two stories out of the rubble. When he rolled off of the black shell and slammed down on a bed of concrete, he found himself looking up at a monster. It was one of the giant mutant crabs that are usually only found deep in the bay.

  Jack pulled a repeater out of his coat and ran down into the crater, shooting at the massive crustacean to draw its attention. But Sailboat didn’t use the opportunity to get away. Once the crab turned toward Jack, Sailboat attacked the thing with his bat. He swung at one of its legs as hard as he could, but the bat just bounced off. It was like trying to chop down an olive tree with a two-by-four.

  The crab roared like an angry elephant as it went for Sailboat. A crane-like pincher came down on him, crashing through a brick wall above his head. The other pincher cut a charred Buick in half as Sailboat ran between its legs.

  Jack aimed for its head and fired a few rounds, planting one of them in the soft spot above its mouth. The crab roared again, turning to Jack. It scuttled like a threshing machine up the hill, pulverizing the asphalt beneath its feet. Jack fired as it came closer, several hitting right in the thing’s face, but it didn’t slow it down. Then his gun clicked empty, just as it hovered over him with a claw snapping in his direction.

  Jack turned to run, but his foot broke through a rusted sheet of metal, pinning him to the ground. As he tried to free himself, he could hear the pinchers thundering behind him, exploding against the earth below as the creature attacked.

  By the time his foot was liberated, the crab was shrieking ferociously. Jack couldn’t tell why the creature was thrashing and roaring, until he saw Sailboat standing on top of the crab’s shell. The large man had climbed the crab’s back and was now hacking at its head, using a jagged old stop sign like an axe. Green sludge sprayed from its face, its eyes mutilated on the stalks. When Sailboat used the pointed edge at the bottom of the sign’s pole like a spear, piercing through its face deep into its brain matter, the crab dropped to the ground.