“This, is gonna be good,” he said, and then squeezed the trigger, sending the rocket on a collision course with the headlights bearing down upon him, a trailing plume of smoke marking its path as the Caddy lifted sideways off the road, exploding in a ball of fire and smoke and twisted metal while the cherry-red Vette screeched to a fishtailing stop behind it.
Chapter Fifteen
It went better than Karen had anticipated. Given the circumstances, much better than she could have hoped. And now that it was over, she thanked God for all the long hours spent in that godforsaken trauma unit, tending to the crash victims, the stabbings and shootings—especially the shootings. For though she had never actually cut into a patient herself, never removed a fragmented bullet, she had been front-and-center plenty enough times to know what to do. But even with all of her experience, it was a harrowing ordeal knowing that if her patient died she would follow him to the grave in a most horrible fashion—nailed to a tree like Christ to his cross in the middle of the town square—left to slip slowly away. A spectacle, a warning to everyone else: ‘Don’t fuck with us’.
Jet, with his bloody face and smoldering brown eyes. He’d stood beside the two guys who had found the wounded biker while Karen gathered up her supplies. The guy hadn’t looked very well when they’d first shown up at the jailhouse, and now he seemed even worse. His flesh was ashen, his face a twisted mask of pain, a fact Jet seemed to take a great satisfaction in pointing out to Karen, who stood between Ben and Claude, leaning over the gurney and tipping another mouthful of Wild Turkey into the guy, frowning as he sputtered and coughed most of it back up.
“Nope, he don’t look good at all,” Jet said. “You don’t look so good, either.”
He was right about his wounded counterpart, and even though she had not seen herself in a mirror lately, she knew he was right about her, too.
Several stainless steel surgical implements were on a freestanding tray next to the gurney, alongside tweezers and forceps, alcohol, needle and thread. Amongst these items were a couple of scalpels she’d found while rummaging around the small clinic, a place suited for treating bumps and bruises and dispensing pills, but woefully inadequate as an operating theater.
Karen had looked high and low for something to dull the biker’s pain: morphine would have been nice, Dilauded or Demerol or Oxycontin. But the cupboards were bare. Of course they were—Dub and his boys had ransacked the place, carting off any and all narcotics they’d laid their hands on, leaving behind only the antibiotics and ointments, the rubbing alcohol and bandages. Now the only thing left to get this guy through was the Wild Turkey they’d taken on their way out of the lobby. ‘Should have everything you need’, he’d said. Yeah, if the guy had a fucking headache!
She’d cleaned the wound as best she could, poured as much whiskey down the guy’s throat as he was going to take. Not enough to kill the pain, but surely enough to deaden it somewhat.
Her hands shook as she reached for a scalpel, and somebody gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. It was Ben. Ben, the gruff looking biker who’d punched her in the gut, the same guy who’d promised Dub to nail her to a tree if she failed to keep her patient alive. “You’ll be okay,” he told her, and Karen was grateful for his encouraging words.
“Yeah,” Jet said. “You’ll be fine… soon as we nail your ass to that tree.”
Karen said nothing. She picked up the whiskey, took a stiff belt and sat the bottle on the floor. Then she grabbed the scalpel and went to work, spreading the wound as the guy howled with pain. “Hold him steady,” she said, and Ben sprang into action, grabbing the guy’s other shoulder and pinning him to the gurney while Claude put his full weight on his chest. The other two men followed suit, wrapping their arms around his legs, four men holding one screaming man steady while Karen pulled and probed and dug lead from his wound. Everyone pitching in, except Jet, who stood with his arms crossed, smiling grimly.
When it was done, the bullet removed, the wound cleansed, stitched and bandaged, Karen fashioned a sling from a torn-up bed sheet and applied it to her patient. Then the guy was wheeled into a room, where he was transferred to a bed with fresh, clean sheets. Karen told him to get some rest, that she would be back to check on him later. When she turned to go, he grabbed her by the wrist. “Thanks,” he muttered, and Karen put a gentle hand over his. “Anytime,” she told him. Then she crossed the room and flicked off the light, and she, Ben and Claude left him alone in the room.
When they returned to their makeshift operating room, Jet was coming out of the restroom wearing a fresh bandage over his damaged cheek, the defiant spark still in his eyes. He looked at Karen, who said, “I could’ve done that for you, you know.”
“I think you’ve done enough already.”
“Well, I think he’s going to be okay.” This she threw out to let him know that, yes, he was okay, therefore, she was okay, so stay the hell away from her and leave her alone.
“He’s alive, now. Who knows what he’ll be in the morning? Maybe I’ll see you on that tree after all.”
“Don’t count on it,” she said, then, “Oh, and by the way. If he’s not alive in the morning, it won’t be from anything I’ve done. He didn’t get shot in the head, for chrissakes—it’s a shoulder wound, and that wound’s been successfully treated. Do you wanta see me on that tree so bad you’d kill your own friend? Because believe me, the only way he’ll be dead is because somebody killed him, and one look will tell me how. Won’t tell me who, but as far as I can see, there’s only one person around here who seems to be wishing he would die.”
“Let me tell you some—”
“Give it up, Jet,” Ben said. “You know how it works. Dub makes a deal, he gives his word. His word’s law. She pulled him through, simple as that. Get over it.”
“Yeah,” Claude said. “I think you’d better. C’mon, let’s go grab a buzz, see what kinda shit we can get into. Tomorrow’s another day.”
Claude and Jet led the two Samaritans out of the clinic, leaving Karen alone with Ben. She was tired, her nerves frazzled, stressed out from working on her patient under the watchful eye of someone who so obviously wanted her dead. She’d been lucky. Keeping the guy alive had bought her some time. How much time she didn’t know, because in spite of what she had told Jet, she knew her gunshot victim was not out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot. Infection could set in, most probably would set in if they didn’t find some IV antibiotics and get them flowing directly into his bloodstream. Who knew what Dub would say or do if the guy expired a day or two from now?
Especially with Jet hanging over his shoulder.
She looked down at her hands, which were covered in blood, as were the clothes she wore. “Jesus,” she said.
“C’mon,” Ben said. “There’re some showers down the way. Let’s find you some clothes, get you cleaned up and get some food in you.”
“Showers? With running water? Are you kidding me?”
“Hot water.”
“Holy shit!” Karen was excited as she hurried to the nurses’ station, back to the drawers she’d rifled through on her quest for pain killers and antibiotics. She could hardly wait to feel that hot water raining down upon her. There were some powder-blue scrubs in one of the drawers. Karen pulled out a top and a pair of pants. She could tell the pants were too long, but she took them just the same. Because anything was better than the bloody rags she now had on.
She looked in on her patient one last time. It was funny, really, how his misfortune had turned out to be her good fortune. If he hadn’t taken a bullet in the shoulder, no telling where she’d be right now. More than likely fodder for Jet and Claude, both of whom seemed to have been chomping at the bit to do her in earlier in the day in front of the store. With one biker dead in the alley and another in a bloody heap in the middle of the street, gang-raped and left in a heap of her own seemed to be the order of the day.
Oh well, she thought. All’s well that ends well. She hoped it ended well, anyway. But for
now, all she could think about was that shower. She left her patient muttering in his drunken stupor and went back out to Ben, who was standing in the middle of the room with a couple of towels draping one of his broad shoulders.
“Found these,” he said, and the two of them left the clinic and headed down the hallway, to the booking room, where they followed much the same route Dub and his boys and the three party girls had taken earlier in the day. They passed a stairwell and Karen said, “Where does that go?”
“Up to the roof.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yep.”
Down the hallway, through a door and into another long corridor, Karen cringing at the rank smell wafting from the cells they passed and the rude comments called out to her.
“Hey, bitch!”
“Come suck my cock!”
“When’re we gettin’ outa here?” a tired sounding voice asked, and Karen felt so sorry for it.
From the dark corner of a cell came the sound of skin on skin, low moans and grunts, thighs slapping together. Karen kept her eyes straight ahead, safe and secure in the knowledge that she was on one side of those locked cages and they were on the other.
The sounds grew dim as they left the cells behind and entered a hall that led to the shower room. “You did good back there,” Ben said. “I’m glad. I really didn’t want to… you know.”
“Would you have?”
Ben looked down at Karen, smiling. “Let’s just say I’m glad I didn’t have to and leave it at that. I will say this, though: you’re home free as long as I’m around.”
“What about your friend, Jet? You know, the guy who wants to kill my ass?”
“What part of ‘as long as I’m around’ don’t you understand?”
Karen shrugged her shoulders, and Ben said, “Besides, a deal’s a deal. You kept your end of the bargain. You kept the guy breathing.”
“Well, our patient isn’t out of the woods yet. No matter what I told Jet, we still need to get some IV antibiotics into him ASAP, before an infection sets in. Some pain meds would be nice, too. I mean, he’s okay for now, but Jet’s right… he may not be okay tomorrow or the next day.”
“Pain medicine, huh?”
“Yeah, you know, morphine, Dilauded, something a little more powerful than Wild Turkey.”
“I should be able to round up something. If not morphine, some heroin, for sure.”
“Better than nothing, I guess.”
“Better than whiskey, right?”
“Oh yeah,” Karen said, giving her head a little nod.
“That brings us to your IV antibiotics, which I can guarantee you we don’t have any of around here.”
“Well, I know where we can get some. Maybe you could take me there in the morning?”
“Sure, I can do that… but this place we’re going to doesn’t have electricity, does it? Doesn’t that stuff go bad?”
“No, it doesn’t have electricity, and no, it doesn’t work that way.”
“Huh… well, you’re the doctor.”
“Actually, I’m a nurse.”
“You’re a doctor now, baby.”
Approaching the shower room, Karen said, “You punched me in the gut.”
“Yes, I did.”
“So why are you helping me now?”
“Because I like you, I respect what you’ve done. You should’ve been dead hours ago but you’re not. You used your head and did what you had to do to. You’re a strong woman, cool under fire. Those are traits I hold in high regard, qualities I respect.”
Karen hesitated when they entered the shower room, the thought that had been floating around the back of her mind now bubbling up to the surface. To shower, she’d have to take off her clothes. Where was Ben going to be while she stood under the water? Could she trust him to stand quietly by while she bathed? Trust him not to turn into an animal when she stood naked before him with her breasts lathered up?
They walked over to a series of benches that lay before the grey walls surrounding the showers. Bottles of shampoo lay overturned on the floor, alongside a couple of bars of soap. A shopping bag of some sort sat next to the bench Ben and Karen stood beside. Ben nodded at the showers and Karen looked over her shoulder. A moment later she turned and looked at Ben.
“Go ahead,” he told her, but she didn’t. She just stood there, staring up at him.
“What?”
“I don’t know. I… ”
“What?”
“You could… you know. Hell, you’re big enough to do whatever you want to me. Big enough to throw me down and—”
“I won’t.”
“I just... well…”
“I won’t… I wouldn’t.”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“I told you. I like you. I respect you.” Ben handed the towels to Karen, smiled and said, “Look, why don’t you go on over and shower. I’ll sit right here and keep an eye out. Get cleaned up and changed, we’ll go grab something to eat.”
Karen shrugged her shoulders, and then headed across the room. She dropped the towels and her newly acquired scrubs on a nearby bench, kicked off her shoes and stepped over to the showerheads. Twisting a handle sent a stream of water raining down in front of her. She turned the other, adjusting the flow until a steady spray of steaming hot water pitter-pattered against the cold cement floor. Then she turned her back to Ben and slipped out of her clothes, picked up a bottle of shampoo and stepped into Heaven.
The water soaking her head flowed warm over her skin. It felt great, wondrous.
It had been so long—too long.
She closed her eyes and everything she’d been through these last seven weeks rolled through her mind like the coming attractions from one of those gruesome horror movies her ex-boyfriend used to love watching. The dark clouds rolling across the sky and the fire raining down from them. The family and friends who had vanished into thin air, leaving her behind to fend off the ghouls and the freaks, the bandits and bikers who had taken over the city. Living minute by minute, hour by hour and day by day, wandering the grimy streets looking for food and water but never finding enough of either to sustain her for very long. Sleeping in abandoned houses and warehouses, where the spiders crawled and the rats skittered through the walls, and the nightmares chased her. The constant drudgery slowly draining her spirit as she pushed herself forward, that abysmally dark thought threading its way through her mind that tomorrow would be no better than today, that, in fact, it more than likely would be worse. And, of course, she was right. One dismal day led to another twice as bad as the one before, one harrowing experience after another until she found herself being chased down a dusty street by a bunch of bikers, through the store and out the back, where she found herself committing an act she never would have thought herself capable of. God, how she wished she could go back, how she wished the world could go back to the way it was when the biggest thing she had to worry about was keeping on the straight and narrow path of sobriety.
Not keeping herself from being nailed to a tree.
She stood beneath the shower, soaping her hands and scrubbing the blood from them, enjoying the warmth soaking into her weary bones while the water washed over her body. She looked over at Ben, surprised to see that he was not watching her. He was leaning over, staring at the floor as if she weren’t even there.
Ben.
Earlier in the day, he had seemed on the verge of doing her in, but something had changed. She’d seen it in his eyes, felt it when their bodies brushed against one another when she straddled his bike. Maybe it was the tone of his voice, the begrudging timbre of respect in it. Maybe because he had kept her alive long enough to luck into Dub’s whimsical proposition of ‘keep him alive and I’ll keep you alive’. Whatever it was, she’d felt oddly secure with him back on that dusty street, and she still felt it. She could trust him. He meant what he’d said about watching over her. She was lucky to have him by her side, and she knew it. Without him she’d be torn to shreds by the Dubs and t
he Jets of this bizarre world she found herself in.
She lathered up her hair, relishing the way her scalp felt as she scrubbed her fingers over it. Seven weeks it had been since she’d enjoyed this simple pleasure, so long ago it had been that she’d almost forgotten what it was like. But all those little comforts were gone now, all the things that had been so ingrained in her daily existence she’d taken them for granted. Warm beds and cool sheets, hot water and flushing toilets, clean clothes; televisions and telephones, cars and computers… the Internet and those silly little message boards. Who would’ve thought she’d miss the message boards, with their snarky and inane comments? But she did miss them, them and all their goofy, anonymous participants.
All the comforts of home: washers and dryers and showers and soap; hamburgers and fries and steaks on the grill, pizza and beer and milkshakes and...
Gone.
All gone, seven weeks and running.
She rinsed her hair and looked down at her hands, inspecting them, making sure all the blood was washed from her body before stepping away from the spraying water. And for the first time in seven weeks, she actually felt clean. She left the shower running and crossed the floor, picked up a towel and dried her face, tossed the towel back to the narrow wooden bench and walked over to Ben, who was now watching her every move, smiling, a glint in his eye as she approached him. She stood before him, her auburn hair slick against her scalp, tiny beads of water dappling her skin as she straddled his lap, draped her arms over his shoulders and looked deep into his eyes.
“What’re you doing?” he said.
“Giving you something to care about.”
Chapter Sixteen
It had been an adrenaline fueled evening for Dub and his boys, sitting around with old man Carlicci and his henchmen, all the while knowing if someone were to look inside those stylish tote bags they’d find enough C4 explosive to level the room. Carlicci and his men were gone; Trixie and Heather, too. Dub wondered if Mariah had survived long enough to have one last laugh on the old man, or if she too had been obliterated in a spray of dust and mortar and falling chunks of concrete. They left the Caddy burning in their rearview mirror as Dub slipped the SUV into gear and roared off down the dark, deserted road.
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