“C’mon,” Dub said as they emerged onto the fourth floor. He pushed open a door and led them onto the roof, across the roof to the right front corner of the rectangular building, where two guards stood watching them approach. One gave Dub a curt nod, and then both turned back to face the street.
Dub removed his goggles and handed them to Teddy, hefted the rifle and peered through the scope. The edge of the concrete wall was level with his chest. He leaned against it, sweeping the barrel back and forth across the horizon. “That bitch, you like her, huh?”
“Pretty much.”
“She’s a looker, all right,” Bert said.
“What’s she see in this fucker?” said Teddy.
“Fuck you, moron,” Ben said amidst the laughter of his friends.
Dub said, “She fucked Jet’s face up.”
“He was tryin’ to run her ass down.”
“So were you.”
“Yep.”
“She owes Jet some payback.”
“For what, lettin’ a woman get the best of him?”
“Maybe she should fuck him,” Teddy said.
“Maybe I should fuck you instead,” Ben said. He stood strong and tall between Bert and Ernie, his fists clenched, the muscles in his powerful arms taut.
“She took out two of our brothers.”
Ben said nothing. He shrugged his shoulders and Dub lowered the rifle, looked down at the street and said, “Well, one, anyway. You took out the other… didn’t you?”
“He was fucked-up, his leg was—”
“Broke. His leg was broke and you shot him in the fucking head.”
“Twisted around that frame like a goddamn pretzel.”
“Jet said it wasn’t that bad.”
“He’s full’a shit!”
Teddy chuckled, Bert and Ernie bursting out laughing as Ben said, “Fuck you motherfuckers!” His face was red, his eyes wide and wild. The two guards turned and took a couple of steps toward them.
Dub said, “Your nurse could’ve put him back together but you didn’t want it.”
“Man, fuck you, you and your goddamn rule the world bullshit!” Ben’s hand snaked behind his back and Ernie grabbed it: he stomped Ernie’s foot and the massive biker howled with pain. Then his gun was out and a rifle stock slammed him square in the face; blood spurted from Ben’s pulverized nose as he sank stunned to his knees and his .9mm clattered to the asphalt. Bert delivered a savage kick to his ribs and his goggles flew from his face.
On his knees, his arms locked beneath him and his hands flat against the roof, he tried to get up, but he could barely draw a breath. Rough hands clasped his arms, and he knew that it was Bert and Ernie.
Dub said, “Up and over” and he was lifted gasping into the air.
The two bikers guarding the rear of the building ran toward their counterparts, who stood behind Dub, watching Bert and Ernie hold Ben high above their heads as if they were sacrificing him to some dark god.
“Dub,” Teddy said. “C’mon, man.”
“Remember what I told you this afternoon, all of you remember this: if you’re not with me you’re against me, and insubordination will not be tolerated.”
Ben choked out, “Du… Dub… ”
Teddy said, “We just wanted to fuck your old lady, man.”
“… please… ”
Dub jerked his head sideways and Ben went screaming into the pitch-black void below.
Chapter Eighteen
Tina and Karen left the lounge when the band retook the stage. They walked through the door and down to the empty reception area, to another hallway housing Ben’s suite. Karen felt a little better there, but not much. For all she knew that psychotic prick with the messed up face could be on his way to the room right now. What would stop him from busting down the door and doing whatever he wanted with her? Nothing, nothing at all, certainly nothing she or Tina could do. And she wouldn’t put it past him to show up, wouldn’t put anything past him. He hated her—like it was her fault he injured himself trying to run her down in the street. What was she supposed to do, just stand there and let it happen? Not in this lifetime.
And Ben. What she had done with him sickened her. He was a thug, a cocaine-snorting, dope-smoking cretin. No telling what manner of violence he had helped to inflict, the heartache the crimes he had involved himself in had caused. Robbery and rape… why not? Murder? He sure looked the type, sure as hell seemed ready to carry out Dub’s orders pertaining to her, probably would have if that wounded biker hadn’t shown up. She despised him, but she needed him… to keep her safe, to keep people like Jet and Claude away from her. Jet, who wanted her dead; Claude, who had watched his running mate drop gurgling to the ground while blood pumped from his impaled throat. Both men had seemed reluctant to challenge Ben.
Tina lit a cigarette, blew out the match and tossed it into an ashtray on the glass-topped coffee table. “I was in one of my boutiques when it happened. We had a plasma TV on the wall running a bunch of MTV-style video clips. All of a sudden that hermit-looking guy flashed onto the screen and started his crazy spiel. The black clouds rolled across the sky just like he said they would—you saw them, didn’t you?”
Karen nodded, and Tina continued: “My store manager and I ran outside. The guy was still ranting on the television behind us; there was a car at the curb and his voice came screeching from its open windows. And the lightning, just like he said; it filled the sky, great white tendrils of it spider-webbing across the horizon until the sky looked like a giant, smoky sheet of safety glass somebody had taken a hammer to. The clouds started boiling then, like a fire was burning behind them. They swelled and turned color, a deep, burnt orange laced with black. Janie fell to her knees and started praying, the voice stopped and rap music boomed from the car. I turned to Janie and she was gone. One minute she was behind me, and then, she was just… gone.
“A car rolled to a stop in front of me. There was a guy in the passenger’s seat but no one was driving. It rolled to a stop and fire started raining from the sky. I ran back inside. By then several more cars had stopped in the street, some empty, others still with a passenger or two in them. That Gretchen Wilson video was playing in the background as I stood at the window watching. It was horrible: the guy at the curb got out of his car and a soaring ball of fire swept over him, burnt him to a crisp right in front of me. A bolt of lightning wide as a telephone pole struck a man; he was running down the street beside another guy and wham, a molten pile of flesh. The other guy was knocked off his feet, but he scrambled up and ran screaming down the sidewalk.
“Other people were racing up and down the street. Every once in a while lightning would zap one, almost as if it was singling them out. It reminded me of that old Tom Cruise movie with the people running through the streets and the alien ships obliterating them with their white-hot death beams. Except these people didn’t disappear in a puff of dust, they just lay there; some with their legs melted together, others twisted into quivering lumps of flesh.”
Tina took a drag off her cigarette and grabbed a half full bottle of beer off the coffee table. Smoke flowed from her nostrils as she tipped the bottle back. “It didn’t last long, fifteen or twenty minutes. Hell, who knows how long it lasted, could’ve been an hour for all I know; more, maybe. I was… mesmerized. I can tell you this, though: it was long enough to wreck the city, the whole goddamn Earth, I guess. But I’m sure you saw that, too.”
“I’ve seen plenty, that’s for sure.” Karen had suffered through the entire ordeal just like everyone else, she had seen the clouds and the lightning, the fire falling from the sky, and enough atrocities to fill her nightmares for the rest of her days. Tina wasn’t telling Karen anything she didn’t already know. But she obviously wanted to tell her story, so Karen sat back and let it run its course.
“The fire stopped and the lightning went away, and the ashes fell like snowflakes. By then the rescue units and police were showing up. I eventually went outside and got in my car. I got ho
me to find my husband dead on the front lawn. Someone had rammed a pair of garden shears though his neck. I had two daughters, nine and eleven. I haven’t seen either of them since I got them off to school that morning—haven’t seen any children since.
“I can’t talk about what I went through that first week or two, running around looking for the children I wasn’t going to find. I’ll just tell you I finally ended up back at that same store. For some reason I felt drawn to the place, as if I needed to go back to where it all began. By then the power was gone, but you know that, you pretty much know everything from there on out. I’m sure you have a story of your own you could tell.”
Tina took another drink of beer, another puff off her cigarette. “Anyway, that’s where I ran into the bikers. They had a different leader back then, but he didn’t last long. One day Dub showed up and the next day the other guy was gone. I’ve always gotten along on my looks, on my killer bod—” Tina smiled as she said this, a sad twist of the lips that didn’t look much like a smile at all. “It was Teddy who kept them from hurting me, Teddy who took me in. It wasn’t that bad. I needed someone to protect me, just like I always have, a man to watch over me. It lasted about a week. One night he told me to go down to Jet’s room, but I didn’t care. By then I was deep into the smack and the coke, and I didn’t much care about anything. One day Dub asked me how I kept myself looking so good. He said I had style and grace, and he was right—I’ve always had that.” The sad smile came back for a brief moment, then it was gone.
“He wanted to know if I could make a few girls look like me. Said he was taking them to a party. I whipped ‘em into shape and I’ve been ‘in like Flynn’ ever since. Just like you. You dug the bullet out of that guy and now they know they need you. It’s not so bad, really.”
“Really? You really think that?”
Smoke flowed from Tina’s nostrils as she shrugged her shoulders. “Well, yeah,” she said. “I mean, hot food, cold beer, warm running water. A nice, secure wall between you and the crazies. You could do worse, you know. Out on those streets the way you were, you probably were doing a lot worse.”
“Before today, I hadn’t showered for seven long weeks. I’ve slept in warehouses, in ditches and dark alleys, hiding like a mouse every time I heard a noise—any noise. This afternoon I saw a dried out husk of a woman hanging from a rafter, and I’ve seen worse than that—much worse. I killed somebody, Tina. Yeah, it’s bad on those streets, but at least out there I wasn’t lying beneath a…” Karen shook her head. “Jesus,” she said.
“He’s not that bad.”
“He’s a creep, Tina. They’re all creeps.”
“Hey, at least you’re alive.”
“Until when, until that psycho leader of theirs decides today would be a good day to crucify me? Or maybe I’ll be lucky enough to go down with the ship when all hell breaks loose. And it’s coming. You know that, don’t you? Or do you believe that crazy fucker and his biker army are going to start their own government? You do see how utterly bat-shit-crazy that is, don’t you?”
Tina gave her shoulders a shrug, blew some smoke in the air and said, “Hey, why don’t we just take it one day at a time, see what tomorrow brings. You know, get a good night’s sleep and see how you feel in the morning. You heard them, they need you. Help ‘em out, patch a few of them up. You’ll be okay.”
Okay like you? thought Karen, but she didn’t say it. She looked around the room at the empty beer bottles, the dirty towels and clothes strewn about the place. “Sleep,” she said. “God, I’m so tired.” But she couldn’t imagine lying down in the bed and waiting for… for what, Ben to come home after a hard day’s night terrorizing the—what did they call them, the Q’s? Come home so he could loop his filthy arm around her waist, spread her legs and… “What time is it?”
Tina looked at the diamond watch decorating her thin wrist. Yawning, she said, “Jeez, It’s two-thirty in the morning.” She stood up, leaned over and crushed her cigarette into the ashtray. “I’m going down the hallway. You know where I am if you need me. She crossed the room and Karen followed… opened the door and turned to Karen. “Get some sleep, you’ll feel better in the morning.”
“The blonde,” Karen said. “The one we passed in the hallway.”
“What about her?”
“I don’t know. She looked so… vulnerable, all by herself.”
“Miss Cherry Vanilla with the red lips and the creamy white skin? Nobody’s going to bother her. She’s Dub’s woman—for now, anyway. Next week she might be pulling a train down at the jailhouse, but she’s good as gold now.”
“I’ve seen her somewhere before.”
“Oh yeah? Where?”
“I’m not sure… somewhere. A lifetime ago when I wasn’t afraid to walk down the street by myself.”
Tina chuckled. “Get some sleep,” she said. “And don’t worry so much. Nobody’s going to bother you; you’re Ben’s girl now. Jet knows it—he was just talking shit back there.” She smiled and brushed a soft palm across Karen’s face. Then she turned and walked away, and Karen closed the door behind her.
Karen went back to the couch and sat down. She put her feet on the coffee table, lay back and thought about Tina. Hers was a sad story, a well-respected member of the community reduced to a strung out moll, passed around the gang’s upper echelon until they grew tired of her. Sure, she was full of smiles and good cheer, but the smile was fake, the good cheer false. The dullness behind her eyes gave her away. She was a prisoner here and she knew it, an indentured servant to Dub and The Devil’s Own, too frightened of what might be waiting in the dull, grey world beyond the Ambassador to ever consider leaving the place. Her body had put her into the inner circle; her sense of style had kept her there when they were done with it. Now she was knee-deep in smack and coke, crack and crystal meth. Karen wondered if she even remembered what her daughters looked like. Or maybe she didn’t want to remember.
Karen looked around the room. A flat panel television sat on a stand in front of the wall, a DVD player beside it. Off to the right, floor-length Venetian blinds covered a window, probably a sliding glass door leading out to a balcony. Karen would never know because drawing those curtains back meant exposing herself to whatever might be lurking in that pitch-black night. She was tired but she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t imagine ever sleeping next to that Neanderthal. She had forced herself to make love to him, and now she felt dirty, stained by his touch. She didn’t think she could do it again.
‘It’s not that bad’, Tina had said.
But it was. Ben or no Ben, her life was in jeopardy. If not her life, then her sanity, because if she kept company with these men she’d wind up using again. If she stayed with Ben, she’d find herself on the same self destructive path as Tina, passed around from one scumbag to another until she was all used up and nobody wanted what was left. One of her wounded patients would die, and so would she. She couldn’t stay—she wouldn’t. Better on the street on her own than stuck here in this hell hole, waiting for the axe that surely would drop, sooner or later. She hadn’t done so badly for herself out there. She’d been able to latch onto a steady supply of food—it was there to be found if you looked hard enough, shelter too. You just had to avoid the crazies. She’d done a pretty good job of it until today. She’d miss the hot showers, but who knows, maybe a turn-around was on the horizon. The grey ash had stopped falling, maybe soon the rain would come out and wash it all away, the sun would shine and the power would return. The army would come and the world would go back to the way it used to be.
Where will you go?
“Anywhere but here.”
Feet on the floor now, she leaned forward and looked into her tote bag. There were clothes: a pair of pants and a pair of shorts, several matching tops. There were toiletries in there, too, a hair brush and a tooth brush, socks, her nurse’s scrubs and another pair of shoes. She stood up and carried her tote bag into the small kitchen area. Half full cases of various canned food prod
ucts were stacked up next to a miniature refrigerator; jugs of water, liquor and beer. Karen opened the fridge and found it to be loaded to the gills with Rolling Rock beer, a jar of mayonnaise, pickles and catsup and a case of plastic bottles of water. She grabbed four of the bottles and stuffed them into her knapsack, gathered up some canned goods and tossed them in as well. She paused for a moment, thinking. She’d need a towel, a few washcloths, something she could wipe herself down with besides her clothes—them, she wanted to keep as clean as possible for as long as possible. She walked down the hallway to the bathroom, flipped a switch and light flooded the room. Dirty towels and washcloths were strewn about the floor, an unsoiled stack of them were piled in a corner. Karen picked up a towel and two washcloths. She went back to the kitchen and stuffed them into her tote bag, picked up the bag and crossed over to the front door. Then she turned and looked back at the room. Tina had called it a safe haven but Karen saw it for what it really was: a cage, a prison from which she might never escape if she didn’t leave now. She opened the door and stepped over the threshold, closed the door behind her and took off down the hallway.
She breathed a great sigh of relief when she reached the deserted lobby and started toward the lounge. Each step she took brought her closer to freedom, or did it bring her closer to her death, or maybe something worse than death—and there were things worse than death; the bleached white bones in that carnage-laden pit had shown her that. Each step could be her last, each hallway she passed could be the one she was dragged screaming into. She was scared to death, and she hadn’t even reached the street yet. She kept her head down and kept her feet moving.
Loud, raucous laughter came from inside the lounge, the merry sound of drunken revelry. No one was standing at the entrance as she hurried past it and made her way quickly outside, onto the sidewalk. The curb, which earlier had been lined with motorcycles and trucks, now stood virtually deserted: an SUV, a couple of bikes, a pickup truck with someone passed out in the driver’s seat. Passed out or dead, she didn’t know which and she sure as hell wasn’t going over to find out.
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