A few of the patrollers came out of hiding and gasped at the carnage.
“Could have used your help,” Cricket said to residents coming out of the shadows, guns drawn. Cricket was close to the leader, who had rolled on his side before struggling to get up and then sinking again to the ground.
The door of the house opened and Cricket yelled at them to stay inside and get to the back of the house. In the distance she heard the sound of motorcycles.
“Give me that bat,” Cricket said to a tall redhead who was shaking. She handed Cricket the bat and Cricket hesitated. The downed leader blinked incredulously at something above in the trees. She dropped the bat on the ground and pulled her gun from the holster and shot the severely wounded man. Ron had to hush the group, who rose in communal hysteria as they witnessed the biker’s head wound water a nearby bush with his blood. The rest were dead.
The next batch of bikers was a street over. The man of the house poked his head out.
“Get out of your house,” Cricket said.
“Where do we go?”
“Anywhere. Look at your front lawn”—which the man was doing, mouth open, no sound.
One of the armed residents came forward and apologized for hiding during the shooting. “No time for that,” Ron said, and a single shot made everyone flinch. Cricket gripped her gun with both hands and swung and aimed at the darkness all around. Stunned, she watched Ron fall to his knees holding his chest. She screamed his name and saw good-time Dorothy still pointing the gun, but lacking the strength to pull the trigger a second time. Again, Cricket grabbed the bat. Dorothy was fading, hate the only remaining light in her eyes at the moment her skull was shattered.
Cricket ran to Ron, who was sitting on the backs of his legs. His head on his chest. His hands had slipped to his lap.
“Oh, Ron, please, no, no, we need you more than ever. You’re the best philosopher, the best history teacher … and Tony needs you—oil and water never looked so good … oh God, no … Grace…” Cricket’s hands covered her mouth…. Grace had told Ron she’d look after his properties while he was on “vacation” and she’d do it for free. And she would make sure that the silver dog he picked would never be lonely. The dog was a few spaces from one of the railroads. Ron didn’t have a lot of cash, but told Grace he felt good about his prospects.
Cricket stood and the sound of motorcycles grew louder.
“We need to get moving,” one man said. “There’s not enough of us.”
“You go. I’m staying.”
“You can’t even the score.”
“Sure I can.”
“You’ll just die.”
Cricket didn’t answer. She bent down and kissed the top of Ron’s head and gently took the .45 lying next to him. She made sure the others gathered the guns off the dead bikers.
She almost laid him down on his side but resisted doing so.
In the next life you’ll be closer to getting back on your feet.
To die now would put the world of her friends, the man she loved, Sister Marie, and young Grace in even greater danger. She wasn’t special, but she was loved deeply and there was a responsibility in being loved. They needed her as much as she needed them. A voice whispered that people crippled by a terrible loss don’t long survive. Maybe she heard Ron say that.
She ran to the back of the house following the others.
41
Sucker Punch
Screams and gunfire were coming from houses up and down the streets they passed. Cricket spotted two young black guys busting down the door to a home and drew her automatic when a shotgun blast sent both of them flying down the porch steps.
Cricket’s group started to scatter and only one man remained at her side.
“I need to check on my house,” she told the man. “A lot of precious cargo. And I have to let them know about Ron.”
“Sure,” the man said, tight-lipped and grim.
They had to be careful of the few proactive neighbors who might mistake them for the attackers. Before charging through a backyard they watched for movement in the house, or someone in the shadows or alongside the house. Cricket prayed for Fritz’s safety. They both had planned on circling back to his parents’ home throughout their four-hour duty, which had become all night.
“I won’t be sleeping much tonight,” she said under her breath.
Every time her thoughts returned to Ron, she grew more hateful. Now the hunt was on.
They weren’t far from the Holadays’ when a woman emerged from the shadows of a back deck with a rifle pointed at them.
“Neighbors!” was all Cricket managed. Her companion yelled, “No—stop!”
The woman said, “Husband’s inside guarding the front. We have our two girls in the basement. You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you.” She lowered the gun. “Are we gonna win this?”
“You bet.”
“I’ll protect my family at all costs.”
“How about your husband when we cross the front yard?”
“I’ll go first and signal him.”
“We’re cutting through the neighbors’ across the street—”
“You’ll be fine. They left town. Headed for the Ledges.”
Cricket and her companion moved quickly when they got the thumbs-up and continued zigzagging across backyards. Popping onto Lover’s Lane she spotted Tony on the tree lawn in front of the Holadays’, and he immediately recognized her. She ran to him and hugged him tightly and wouldn’t let go. Tony knew.
Still catching her breath, she said, “I had to leave him … there on the lawn … two streets south of here. I’m so sorry.”
“What could you do, hang around and get shot at?” Tony looked to the sky, which was filling in with dark clouds; weak moonlight revealed the gathering. “Dammit, Ron, what a shitty thing to go and do. The rest of us have to get through this night protecting these folks without your sorry ass.” He looked to the house. “He was a good man no matter how much I busted his balls. You know … I’m gonna rustle up some neighbors … get him in the jeep and take him to a funeral home in town. Mrs. Holaday says they can still cremate a body there.”
Tony spun away from Cricket and punched the air. “How many people can you bust their balls all day long and still make dinner together that night without killing each other?”
“Are you sure he wanted to be cremated?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Scattered?”
“No. He thought the scatter-ashes business was silly. Me too. Whatever was left of himself, he wanted it all in one place.”
“I thought he’d have a more specific plan—”
“I thought so too.” He looked around the neighborhood, conscious of his duty. “Right after the ‘end of the world,’ we were having a few beers, and talked about our last-wishes thing. We covered a lot that night—history, interplanetary travel, and came back to the topic of death. That night I pressed him further on the dying thing, and he just said, ‘Surprise me.’”
Both Cricket and Tony got a quick laugh from Ron’s late-night quip. Then Tony said:
“Probably a bachelor thing. No wife to insist on this or that or what would so-and-so think. But you know something, the big goof could still fall in love. We talked about that, too. Of course the women were always too young or married, so he loved from afar. Shit, me, I gave up on women a long time ago.”
Cricket hugged Tony again, and this time, his body shook hard with convulsions.
Past Tony, Cricket could see heads bobbing in the living room, in the soft glow of a lantern, playing Monopoly. Tony pulled away.
“Okay, that’s enough. Back to work.” He looked at the house, too. “You going in?”
Cricket’s moment of debate ended when an explosion of gunfire came from the street she had just left.
“I got to go.”
“Enough ammo for that pistol?”
“Yeah.”
Her partner, who had been respectful and quiet, standing in th
e shadows a few feet away, said, “Me, too,” and started toward the mayhem.
Cricket started to leave and over her shoulder asked, “Has Fritz been back?”
“No.”
She needed to jog to catch up to the man. At the empty house, they again scouted the backyard for any wandering thugs and took up position along a tall wooden fence that went nearly to the sidewalk. To her right she saw all the gunfire directed at the house of the parents with the two small girls.
She counted seven bikers. A moment later only five after gunfire from the house slammed two of them into eternity.
“Let’s do this,” Cricket’s companion said. “I got the two on right.”
“Two on the left, and we both get the clown in the middle.” Cricket held the Glock out in front, muzzle lowered. She took a slow breath to steady her hands.
Each biker hid behind a tree or the single parked car on the street where they had laid down their bikes to protect them from the bullets. Cricket and her partner moved past the sidewalk onto the tree lawn. The middle guy came out of hiding and strutted toward the front of the house, shooting at the door and adjacent windows. Cricket shot him twice in the back and shifted to the two others, who looked around briefly before Cricket and her sidekick drilled a total of three. The remaining long-haired biker with the warmest IQ scrambled away on his belly, crawling under the parked car.
The couple inside the house walloped the car with shotgun blasts. Cricket wanted to cheer but refrained. She caught sight of the biker’s boot, aimed and fired. The howl that went up into the night was satisfying.
The deafening sound from a powerful handgun made her stiffen. Blood and a streak of matter sprayed the grass in front of her. Her companion was dead.
“Cricket, drop the gun,” the Brazilian said, “or I’ll fertilize the lawn with your brains, next.”
Cricket watched another person obey the commands. She just followed the events—her capture and the final rubbing out of the biker under the car.
“Can we go after the house now?” asked a large black man in a torn sports jacket, bandolier underneath with military rounds that glistened in the moonlight. He carried an M16 on his shoulder and ignored Cricket.
“No, put it on our things-to-do list.”
“How?” Cricket’s voice shook.
“You’re the hottest commodity in town. I watched you on Elm Street and now here. You rock.”
The black guy sniffed his disapproval, shrugged like she was of no concern to him, only something to swat away.
The Brazilian said, “You’ve made a ton of enemies, and I’m the only one that keeps them from skinning you alive. Don’t think James here doesn’t have scores to settle with you? Your first bull’s-eye was his older brother.”
“I guess I should be pleased to have friends in high places. But I’m not.”
“How Cricktonian of you. You give me goosebumps and that’s rare these days. Haven’t felt this way—”
“Since you watched your girlfriend get eaten by a bear.”
“A very sweet story.” The Brazilian stayed to her left and James fell behind, making a lot of noise as he moved through the yard. “It’s a shame we’re not in the Barracuda tonight; it’s so romantic. My rocket car’s strictly light comedy.”
She was led to the front of the house, where the driver jumped up and opened the car door directly behind his seat. He held the door open, waiting for her, and tipped his hat. The sleek vehicle magnified the moonlight, and it looked like it would once again fly.
The Brazilian started to ramble and Cricket replied, a few feet from the aluminum ship, “You’re awfully talkative.”
“Just an exercise to keep me from strangling you.”
The sucker punch sent Cricket to a much darker place.
42
On Vitamins and Murder
Cricket awoke with a sore jaw that she worked with both hands. She was lying atop the covers of a huge bed at the center of a large loft, rustic, wealthy-looking, heavy wood furniture, Mission style, and enormous beams spanning the cathedral ceiling. She was in the master bedroom of the Brazilian’s sprawling ranch home.
“Sorry about the sucker punch,” the Brazilian said from the side of the bed, surprising Cricket, who continued to massage her jaw while staring at the ceiling. She turned to see her captor in a very short white dress and stared at legs that went on forever.
“Ah, thank you. You noticed my little white dress.”
A murderess with the most sculpted, muscled, yet feminine legs Cricket had ever seen.
“Of course you deserved it; some justice had to be meted out. You slaughtered a number of my staff and they have lots of friends. But it’s been an excellent field test for the drugs I feed them.”
“Rapists, looters, and killers?”
“Who’s perfect these days anyway? Remember, I ran a health food store—The Promise—for 17 years. I promised a lot to my customers, but supplements can really only take you so far. They can’t make us saints.”
Cricket sat up in bed. “So you went from vitamins to murder?”
“Not a straight line. I had been going to Burning Man for a few years when my new life came to me right on the first day after a lot of sex and drugs. I knew with certainty how fake it all was. But like everybody else there, I had such a blast I overlooked its limitations—its phoniness.”
“Phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock-and-roll—”
“Boy, did I hit you hard.”
“It’s not the punch. That’s Rush Limbaugh’s description of everything you believe, everything you are, and ever will be.”
“It’s a good thing I find you attractive to the nth degree, or I’d shoot you right now and put you out of your misery for even bringing him up—a second time!”
“But he’s just a harmless, lovable little fuzzball—”
The Brazilian leaned close to Cricket: “That’s not funny.” She tapped her foot, arms folded, chest out, more mom the psychopath than a disturbed, drop-dead gorgeous sun goddess tearing out human hearts and feeding them to her dogs.
Her captor took a deep breath. “Without a real sacrifice it’s only masturbation. The night of the burn I was angry as hell. All that these brats were doing for a week was thumbing their noses at society and then going back to that same society. They were kiddies acting out.” She walked to the foot of the bed.
“At the end of the festivities, my plan came together quickly. I left with a couple of studs and drove for several hours and then had them take me under the stars in the desert. They were drinking, so when I tied them up they went right along—more cheap thrills. I laid them upon a large flat rock and siphoned gas from the car—of course we had filled up only an hour earlier; a girl’s got to be prepared. I burned them alive. I knew the sounds of their lovemaking were present in their agony, only at a much higher register. The one even suffered more because he had loved with more passion. Interesting the way that works. And, I never took another drug again after that night. But I continued murdering. And yet I knew there was something grander awaiting me. I was connected to the sun—the sun goddess of the Japanese: Amaterasu!
Cricket lost her desire to spar with the Brazilian. She wanted her dead. She looked about the room for a weapon, wondered where the guards were, and scouted for a route of escape. The jaw pain subsided and gave way to the pain of separation from everyone she loved and the loss of Ron by some biker meth chick.
“I read everything about the sun from Western science’s empirical findings to the sacrifices of the Aztecs. Then I knew what was coming—”
“Yeah, sure,” Cricket said.
“The sun’s solar disturbance of 1859 cued me in to this coming natural disaster—and I formulated that some wonderful opportunist, like the Iranians, would show up to take the next step and knock North America back centuries. Mommy’s little helper. I was ready for the big burn on all levels—ready for the new cycle—the end of Christianity, the end of the West—the rise of the God
dess.”
“You enjoy murdering people like any psychopath.”
“Sure, just like you do. Murder sobers us, brings us to new heights, and we get stronger, braver in other areas, like getting hot and heavy into the drug trade. Ten years ago I started supplying my wealthy clients with the supplements that really mattered: cocaine, OxyContin, some heroin, and some really potent marijuana. My deals were with the biggest pushers, suppliers, and distributors. Most of my deals involved sex. I required it; not many resisted. Of course you need more than sex, and I worked with several chemists and came up with a lovely trinity: Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. You’ve seen mostly Heaven around town. It’s a refinement of DMT, less hallucinations and more of an inner vision, touching God and, very soon, touching the Goddess.
“James didn’t tear you apart because he’s in ‘Heaven,’ well, James’ heaven. His size and attitude temper everything, so I just hit him with horse dosages and permit him to have sex with just about anything he wants to climb atop of. He’s successfully led the food raids and comes down from Heaven—don’t you just love the allusions—with scotch and marijuana. Lately, I notice he stops more often for a beautiful sunset or a classical painting—to gaze and ponder. Quite a remarkable leader.
“My Hell drug is divided in two: OxyContin for my captains; amphetamines for the soldiers. They can run, fight, and kill for days at a time. The Oxy needs to be replenished in six months.” She shrugged no worries, as if the “prescription” would be filled in time.
“Anton is the only constant taker of Purgatory in my inner circle. It’s another speed variant tweaked for smoothness. Gives the user the ability to concentrate for hours without getting the heebie-jeebies. Perfect for Anton, who’s a typical leftie artist, which means he’s got the soul of a bureaucrat. This guy could measure micro-aggressions on the subatomic level and write poems about it all day long. Except for a suicide mission, meth is verboten. Anyone caught taking it is erased.”
Pulse of the Goddess: American Blackout Book One Page 21
