He leaned forward, his rump on the floor and his bound legs stretched out before him, sliding the knife between his ankles, beneath the rope, where he sawed upward until the rope came free, sighing as his legs spread apart and the blood began circulating more freely. Then he had to work on the difficult task of setting his hands free. He knew Davey had taken a lit candle with him earlier in the evening, but no dim flicker of light shone in the hallway when he looked toward the kitchen, and he didn’t want to go wandering around in the dark—he didn’t want to leave Davey unattended. For all he knew, the boy would become reanimated and stalk him to his grave. An unlikely event, but who could know what might happen in this nightmare world of deranged midgets, flesh-eating brutes and fourteen-year-old serial killers?
On hands and knees, Scott crawled back to the couch, still clutching the knife. He felt up and down the sofa’s arm, touching flesh that seemed to him as cold as a cemetery stone. He thought of Lila sitting there in the dark, this brave woman who had kept him from harm, only to wind up horribly violated as he lay sleeping beside her. Sleeping beside her while Davey…
Scott drove the thought from his mind, because dwelling on this, or on any other event since he’d exited that freeway ramp so long ago, would drive him insane. He plunged the knife into the edge of the sofa, and then slowly went to work dragging the woven-plastic rope up and down the sharp, serrated edge. When his hands were free he fell back onto the floor, staring listlessly up at the dark ceiling. Somewhere, scattered around the table or on the carpet surrounding it, was a candle and a box of matches, but Scott had no intention of seeking those items out. The last thing he wanted was to look upon the gaping hole Davey had ripped from Lila’s neck—Lila, the cover girl model with the brilliant blue eyes, whose striking visage had graced magazines throughout the world—or what he himself had done to the evil child, who moments ago had lain gurgling beneath him.
Finally, he lay down on the comfortable shag carpet, closed his eyes, and drifted off into a deep, exhausted sleep, far, far away, where no dreams could find him.
Chapter Twelve
Lights were on in the Ambassador Hotel when Dub and Teddy pulled up to the curb. A group of people milled about the front of the place, men and women looking for a little relief from their daily grinds. Intermingled with the bikers and their mates were a smattering of Q’s, who by hook-or-crook had managed to attain favored status with their oppressors, and were therefore allowed to join in the fun and festivities, the women, the booze and the drugs, the nightly parties thrown by The Devil’s Own, all in an effort to maintain some semblance of the life they’d been forced to leave behind.
Forced to leave behind.
Not for long, if Dub had his way. And he would have things his way, eventually. With the jailhouse, two motels and the Ambassador, all kept functional by the gang’s rolling fuel depots—not to mention the grocery warehouse they’d commandeered—Dub felt they were already well on their way to getting things back to normal. When his army was amassed, his generals at their posts, when he had sniffed out someone with expertise enough to get the power plants back online, everything would fall into place. But for now, these half measures would have to do.
They got out of the car and walked to the black Escalade that had followed them from the jailhouse parking lot. The front doors opened and Bert and Ernie stepped from the vehicle. They retrieved the women from their places in the back, and then slammed the doors shut. While the women—still in their terrycloth robes—looked up at the building, the gang members exchanged greetings. Then they all walked across the sidewalk, to the hotel, Dub nodding acknowledgements to a group of people standing in a semicircle outside the entrance—something he had become accustomed to after taking over from Charlie K, and the back-patting and glad-handing began.
Loud, raucous music echoed from the place when the front door was opened—Fast Freddie and his boys, pressed into service when Claude and Jet found them holed up in a motel, after their tour bus—which was nothing more than a broken down yellow school bus—had run aground on the outskirts of town. ‘Give us a reason not to gut your asses’, they’d said, and Freddie and his friends, a trio of down on their luck musicians, soon found themselves court jesters to the reigning monarchy of the town’s preeminent motorcycle gang. Now appearing nightly—or any other time their presence was demanded—at the Ambassador Hotel.
They walked down the hallway, pausing at the lounge where Fast Freddie and his boys were busy kicking out the tunes. All wound up on crank, Dub figured. All wound up and no place to go, except the mean streets of the city, and they damn sure didn’t want to be out there. Not these boys, unless they had a small army of bikers behind them. They’d be out there then, all right, raising hell with the best of them.
People began to gather when Dub led his group inside. Hungry-eyed men scrutinized the scantily-clad women, side by side with biker-babes and Q’s, eager to see what game was afoot. Who could know, with Dub and his crew? They could be anything from prisoners of war to spoils from a recent battle. For all they knew, these women were about to be strung up by their heels, hung from the ceiling with their throats slit, or just as easily could be guests of honor, fresh meat for Dub, Steady Teddy and their sidekicks to haul back to their rooms—party girls. Whatever they were, with their bathrobes and sandals and their hair still damp from the shower, they looked severely out of place.
Someone handed Dub a beer. “Thanks,” he said. He took a drink and began to look around the dimly lit barroom, where several groups of people were drinking beer, smoking and downing shots, some passing joints amongst themselves, others just passed out. One guy was sprawled across a table, eyes shut, mouth open, a hypodermic needle hanging off the inside of his forearm. On the raised-platform stage at the rear of the lounge was Fast Freddie, wailing out a guitar solo. Next to him stood the bass player, his face full of metal, his arms and naked upper torso a rich tapestry of colorful tattoos, as if he’d just stepped out of some cheesy Asian gangster flick. Behind them was the drummer, eyes closed as he pounded his drums, as if banging out the same beat over and over was boring him half to death. Dub wondered if this was his own little version of Hell, he and his band playing the same shit day in and day out in the same crappy little bar for a bunch of people who barely knew they existed. Playing for board and keep, keeping himself alive by keeping a bunch of illiterates entertained. Budding rock ‘n rollers stuck in a hotel lounge, their very existence dependent upon the goodwill of a man who scarcely knew the meaning of the word. But he did know good music when he heard it, so he would keep Fast Freddie and his crew around, even if their drummer was as lifeless as a dime-store mannequin.
“Hey, Tina!” Dub called out, and a short red-head stepped out of the crowd and sauntered his way. Once, she had been the proud owner of a chain of fashion boutiques spread throughout the county. Now she did what she had to do to stay alive, and keep on the good side of Dub and The Devil’s Own. Even though she had been passed around the upper echelons of the gang like a bottle of cheap whiskey, she had maintained that touch of graceful style that had made her business a success. Dub liked her, and had given her a room of her own at the Ambassador. It was Tina he turned to when Carlicci called. It was Tina who turned undernourished women into drop-dead gorgeous pieces of tail.
She had on a black miniskirt and a black silk blouse. She looked up and said, “What’s up?”
“I need you to hook these ladies up. Hair, makeup, clothes, throw some bling on ‘em. We’re going to a party and I need ‘em to shine. You can do that for me?”
Tina said what Dub knew she would say, the only thing she could have said, “Sure, just turn them over to me. I’ll get some clothes, spruce them up a little. An hour oughta do it—a little more, a little less.”
“Teddy,” Dub said. “Go with her. You know, take care of that thing.”
Tina cut her eyes at Steady Teddy, an obvious reaction to Dub’s instruction. Teddy winked at her. Shaking his head, as if to say �
��Don’t worry about it’, he put an arm around her narrow shoulders. “Ladies,” he said, and then he and Tina turned and led Mariah and her two companions across the lounge.
“All right,” Dub said. “You two go find Spud. I’m heading back to my room for a while. Come get me when we’re ready to roll.”
Bert and Ernie made their way through the crowd, across the room until they disappeared through the entranceway. The music stopped and Dub turned to the stage. The band started up with the old Van Halen song, Running With The Devil, which also happened to be the anthem for Dub and The Devil’s Own, a tune Freddie and his boys cranked out on a nightly basis—twice a night if Freddie spotted Dub in the place.
Dub showed his pleasure by tipping his bottle toward the stage. Then he took a drink, set the bottle on a table and walked out of the bar, down the corridor to the lobby, which sat like the hub of a wagon wheel in the middle of the first floor. At the core of this room was the long abandoned check-in counter, disused since the lights went out and the power shut down, and anyone with half a brain fled the city. Beyond the checkout counter, a series of hallways led to rooms occupied by Dub and his gang. Here too were housed the electricians. Although Dub had lost patience with their inability to get the power plants up and running, he still gave them the royal treatment: women and drugs, food and drink to suit their needs, free to come and go as they pleased, and a comfortable place to hang their hats. They couldn’t get the power grid back up and running, but they were still invaluable members of Dub’s community, and would become even more of an asset in the coming weeks.
He walked past the counter, into the western-most hallway. At the end of this corridor were two interconnected suites the gang leader called Home. Inside those rooms was Cherry Vanilla, the closest thing Dub had to a mate, a young, athletic-looking woman he’d spirited away from the suburbs. She had long blonde hair and a fair complexion, a body to die for. Or in Dub’s case, to kill for. Before everything changed, she wouldn’t have given him the time of day, but she was his now and would stay his (like it or not) until he grew tired and passed her on down the line. Much the way Tina had been passed around the gang. But unlike Tina, Cherry had no marketable skill, no reason to be kept around, other than her kickass body, which, by the time Dub and his boys were through with it, wouldn’t be much of a body at all.
All thoughts of sharing Cherry with Teddy and the boys disappeared when he opened the door and found her standing by the window in her black silk halter top and skintight beige shorts. The way her long blonde hair fell across those narrow shoulders, framing her firm breasts, those freshly-glossed ruby red lips and that seductive pout of hers, her perfectly applied makeup and eye shadow; she could have been a high profile actress waiting for an Oscar-date to escort her to the limo, or a high fashion model fresh off the runway. What she was, Dub realized—and not for the first time—was a gorgeous woman who, despite his best efforts, had captured a small piece of his heart. Sooner or later she would be tossed onto the rubbish heap, but it damn sure wouldn’t be today or tomorrow, next week or even next month. Unless she pissed him off.
“Come here,” he said, and she walked over to him, pressed her body against his and looked up. Beneath the heavy mascara and sparkling blush, her eyes were dull, the pupils dilated, high on the smack he’d started her off with the day he’d brought her home, sky high on the drug that made her forget who she was, the life she’d left behind to end up queen of the moment to the king of the bikers. His right arm swept her up. They kissed and he grew hard. He unsnapped the single button holding her top in place and the blouse slid away, pressed her full breasts against him as she unbuttoned his black leather pants. Cherry took a backwards step, slipped out of her shorts and dropped them to the floor. She backed up to the sofa, lay down on her back and spread her legs. By then Dub was out of his pants, coming across the floor in nothing but his Devil’s Own jacket, fully erect as she took him into her arms. She looked up at him, and then she closed her eyes and did what everyone from Dub on down to the lowest creature left crawling through the dust and ash in the nightmare landscape that lay outside the hotel did—whatever she had to do to survive.
Chapter Thirteen
Dub was fresh out of the shower when the knock came. Fresh out of the shower and into his clothes, his long black hair slicked back, the black leather Devil’s Own jacket hanging over his bare chest. He opened the door to find Teddy standing in the hallway, looking refreshed, as if he too had taken care of some personal grooming. Dub was pretty sure he’d taken care of a little more than that. And why not—they had a big night ahead of them. He led him through the suite, into the inner sanctum, where Cherry Vanilla was seated on the couch, her hair perfect, her makeup impeccably applied, just as it had been before their lengthy round of sweat-inducing sex had smeared it.
They sat on the couch beside Cherry, Dub in the middle and Teddy beside him. Dub pulled out his canister of cocaine and dumped a large pile on the glass-topped coffee table. There was a syringe and a half full glass of water on the table, along with a razor blade, a two-inch-long piece of plastic straw, two bottles of Rolling Rock beer and a bulging plastic Ziploc bag of marijuana. Dub grabbed the razor and Cherry grabbed a bottle of beer. She took a drink and returned the bottle to the table, reached between the couch cushions and pulled out a narrow piece of rubber hose. She wrapped the three-foot length around her left arm and tied it off, Dub and Teddy watching as she looked down at the syringe. She could have been a child staring longingly at a piece of chocolate birthday cake, a teenager admiring a brand new bike or a young girl gazing upon the faded photograph of a long lost love. But she wasn’t any of those things. She was a junky hungering for her next fix, that next jolting shot to take her far away from Dub and Teddy and The Devil’s Own, back to whatever happy world she’d inhabited before Dub came along to pluck her off the street like a discarded coin. She picked up the syringe, pumping her arm a couple of times while Teddy leaned forward. Then the needle was in and the plunger depressed, Cherry sighing as she drew blood back into the tube, and then flushed it clean. She pulled the needle from her arm, tossed it back onto the table and slumped into the couch. Slack jawed, her eyes drifted shut, the rubber hose still tight around her arm as her lips slightly parted and her head lolled sideways.
Teddy said, “She really took to that stuff, huh?”
“Yep. Started her off the day I found her. Three days later, she’s cookin’ up her own shit. Been doing it ever since.” Dub picked up the short piece of straw. “Look at her, in her own little world.”
Cherry’s eyes were closed; she was smiling.
“What’s she so happy about?”
“Not us.”
“No shit,” Teddy said as Dub dipped down toward two fat lines of coke. He snorted them up and handed the straw to Teddy, who did the same, tossing the straw on the table as Dub capped his canister and stood. His gun was on the counter of a bar separating a small kitchen area from the living room—there was a miniature refrigerator and a microwave in the tightly-spaced enclosure, but no stove to cook on. He crossed the room, picked up the gun and shoved it into his waistband. Then he felt the two front pockets of his sleeveless jacket for the .9mm ammo clips he kept there, an absentminded, reflexive action he always performed directly before heading out onto the city streets.
Teddy stood up as Dub came back to the couch, grabbed his beer, and said, “Want one?”
“I’m good.”
“How ya feel?”
“Like I could knock out Tyson.”
“My man!” Dub said, and the two friends slapped palms. Dub finished off his beer and returned the bottle to the table. Then the two of them crossed the suite, Dub shutting the door behind them as they stepped into the hallway and started on their way, up the hallway and into the lobby, past the empty registration counter, back to the lounge—which now held twice as many people as before: raucous bikers and their mates, hoisting beers and shots of liquor, some passing joints back and forth w
ith the Q’s.
At a table in a corner of the room, Bert and Ernie book-ended their three guests, who had gone through Tina’s fashion machine and come out looking like a trio of movie stars. Fast Freddie and his band mates were standing in front of the table, ogling the women when Dub and Teddy showed up. Dub put an arm around Freddie’s shoulder. The other, he looped around the bass player’s, who was making some kind of half-assed small talk with Mariah. She had completed the transformation from stringy-haired jailbird to an authentic golden-skinned goddess. Her long hair hung across her shoulders in dark curls, framing her breasts, which peeked out from the low-cut red silk blouse she wore. She was smiling up at the bass player, with his tattooed arms and face full of metal. Probably thought this was the party Dub had been talking about earlier in the evening, which, of course, it wasn’t.
Pulling the two men close, he said, “You like?”
“Oh yeah,” Freddie said, smiling down at the women as his partner said, “Man, do I!”
“You got a pound of high grade blow to trade for her?”
“Huh?” Freddie said, his smile evaporating as Dub said, “Beat it”, and Freddie and his boys immediately scattered across the floor.
THE DAMNED Page 11
