The Genesis Group

by Mike Dagons

  “Here’s your package,” LaRue said, and his men dropped Roc on the floor like a sack of potatoes.

  They were set up on the second floor in an area that had once been a shop floor. There were several office doors in plain sight lining two of the four walls. Two men were standing in the doorway of one looking out at them.

  “Who’s the girl?” Snoop asked.

  “His girlfriend, she was with him when we took him. Consider her a bonus. Mr. Battle asks that you not hurt her unless you can’t break him. Money on delivery,” he reminded them when they just stood around looking at him.

  Snoop motioned to a tall woman standing in the corner, and she walked over and put the briefcase on one of the two heavy workbenches in the room. She opened the case revealing rows of neatly stacked hundred dollar bundles.

  LaRue motioned for Rabbit to count it, and while he did, two men put Roc in a chair, and tied him securely to it. They dragged Severe over to one of the support beams. Her arms were pulled around it, and then her wrists were cuffed together.

  A man came out one of the office doors with a bucket of water, and he doused it on Roc. The cold water shocked him into consciousness. Roc gasped, and shook his head from side to side trying to shrug off the lingering drowsiness.

  When he was able to focus, he saw LaRue standing near one of the workbenches. Rabbit was standing at the other inspecting money straps.

  “Fucking Viper!” he hissed, and Snoop punched him in his face.

  Roc’s voice penetrated the darkness, and Severe’s eyes fluttered open. She tried moving her arms and learned that she couldn’t release the pole. She tested the bracelets by yanking them against the metal beam. When she couldn’t break them, she pulled her legs back underneath her and stood up.

  “What the fuck is this, LaRue? Why you bring us here?” she asked, drawing everybody’s attention to the fact that she was now awake.

  “She’s cute,” said the tall woman.

  She looked like a badly groomed drag queen. She pressed her body to Severe’s back, making her hug the pole tighter, while she rubbed a hand over Severe’s hair, petting and pawing her affectionately. Severe shut her eyes and shivered in disgust when she lifted her hair up off the back of her neck and planted a soft kiss on her nape.

  “Bitch, get your ugly ass away from her!” Roc shouted in typical Roc fashion, pissing her off.

  She shoved Severe’s head, lightly banging it into the pole. “Stand down, Miss,” LaRue ordered.

  “So Viper is into kidnapping now?” Roc questioned.

  Severe didn’t want to believe it, because Ceylon worked for them, but it looked like Roc had been right about them.

  “What you want with us?” she asked.

  “It’s all here,” Rabbit announced, and then closed the case with the money.

  “I don’t know the particulars. We were only hired to deliver you. Since we’ve done that, I believe that concludes our business,” LaRue said, and started walking towards the exit.

  “Hold it!” Snoop said. “My boss wants to speak with you.”

  LaRue glanced back over his shoulder, and saw a big black man coming out an office door. He was carrying a machete in his hand, and instinctively, he knew there was going to be trouble.

  “How do we know this is Rottweiler?” he asked.

  “Run his fucking prints,” Rabbit barked, and got a stand down signal from LaRue. He had been told not to get involved in this dispute. All he wanted to do was get paid and get out, so he was going to try the diplomatic approach first.

  “I wouldn’t have brought him to you if it wasn’t him. Proving his identity was not part of our bargain, son,” LaRue answered.

  “I believe that it is,” he grinned, and then swung the blade and separated LaRue’s head from his shoulders.

  Severe screamed inadvertently, and turned her face to the pole. The girl who had given him the briefcase pushed a knife in Rabbit’s back before he could react. He dropped to his knees, and the big dark skinned brotha wield the machete in a two handed grip over his head. He swung it like a bat, and Rabbit’s head rolled off his shoulders and across the floor.

  “Hey, man, keep the money,” Jonsey threw his hands up in surrender.

  “Thank you, we intend to,” Snoop said, and then shot him.

  He picked the briefcase up off the floor and put it back on the table.

  “My name is Bombay,” the big dude stood in front of Roc, and spoke directly to him. “You are going to tell me what I want to know, or it is going to become very unpleasant for you,” he pointed the machete at Roc, its blade still dripping with blood. “How do I find your friend Ice?”

  Roc looked up at him and grinned cockily. “Let’s get this muthafuckin’ party started, ‘cause I ain’t tellin’ you shit!” he snarled.

  Chapter 26

  The bucket of cold water doused in his face slapped Roc into consciousness for a second time. He had been pounded on until he had blacked out. He lifted his head and looked at Bombay through badly swollen eyelids. “You still here?” he grinned.

  “He doesn’t know where Ice is,” Severe screamed at them.

  The big man was shirtless, now, and wearing only knee short pants and tribal beads. Bombay and Snoop, who had biceps like boulders, had been taking turns using Roc like a punching bag. It was Snoop’s turn to work him over, so Bombay stood back and watched.

  Roc glanced down at LaRue’s head on the floor, not far from his feet, with his eyes fixed in a dead man stare. They had Rabbit’s head sitting on the workbench like a grotesque trophy.

  Roc knew that he had been wrong about his captors being Vipers, but it was them muthafuckas that brought him there, so he was glad they were dead.

  “I don’t know where Ice is, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you muthafuckas.”

  The one two punch to his midsection was hard enough to make his abs cramp up. Severe screamed, and Roc panted through the pain like a woman in labor.

  Bombay fisted Roc’s hair and snatched his head back. “My name is Bombay. I am looking for Ice, and you’re going to tell me where to find him,” he repeated the same words he had been repeating for the last ten minutes.

  “Man, is that the only thing you know how to say in English? I don’t know where he is. Want me to say it in Spanish?” he asked, and then he did.

  Roc cut his eyes to Snoop expectantly, and saw his shoulder muscles bunch before he hit him with another combination to his kidneys.

  “Stop it! He doesn’t know where he is,” Severe shouted.

  The woman walked over to her and slapped her across her face. “Shut up, bitch! I’m going to make you eat my pussy before I kill you.”

  “Remove the cuffs, and let me do it now!”

  Roc was more worried about Severe than he was about himself. He could take them hurting him, but if they started on Severe, he’d do or say whatever it took to make them stop.

  “Man, I’m telling you that I don’t know where Ice is. He doesn’t report to me.”

  “You are his protégé. He trained you to think like him. Think like him and tell me where he has gone.”

  “I don’t know,” he insisted.

  “Perhaps you think that your comrades are going to rescue you if you hold out long enough. Let me assure you that they will not.”

  One of the men turned on the TV news. They were still reporting on the bombings, and had confirmed ten dead. “Oh God,” Severe gasped before she could stop herself.

  Roc stared up at Bombay defiantly. He had an idea that Ice might be in Japan, but the pictures of his dead friends made him more determined not to talk to the asshole.

  “You know that everybody talks in the end. It would be wise to spare yourself the pain, and just tell me what I want to know now.”

  “Fuck you, bitch ass, nigga!” he answered in typical bad tempered Roc fashion.

  “Okay, then we’ll do it the hard way.”

  The woman brought a metal pail out that looked like an old fashioned w
ashtub. She sat it down, and then took Roc’s socks and shoes off. “You have nice feet,” she patted the inside of his thigh affectionately.

  “Stop playing around, Joni,” Snoop commanded.

  She lifted Roc’s feet, put them in the pail, and then she sat on his knees with her back to him.

  A man came from out of one of the office doors with a black cast iron stew pot. It looked like the pots wicked witches used to brew their potions, and even if he hadn’t been wearing an oven mitt, Severe would have known it was hot by the way it was steaming.

  “PLEASE DON’T!” she screamed, realizing what he was about to do. “Roc doesn’t know where to find Ice!” she screamed. “Only Ryan knows where to find him.”

  Roc couldn’t see around the drag queen on his lap, but he could tell by Severe’s reaction that whatever was coming his way was nothing nice.

  The scalding water hit his feet, and made him buck involuntarily. A gut wrenching scream clawed its way up out of his belly and ripped out of his throat. The pain was unlike anything he’d ever felt. It torched his soul, and melted his sanity. It felt like his skin was boiling, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  Perspiration drenched his body, and Roc bit down on his own tongue until it bled to keep from begging for mercy. “Where is he, Rottweiler?” he shouted over Severe’s screams. “Shut her up!” he ordered the man standing closest to her.

  He grabbed Severe’s head and slammed it into the pillar, and a knot rose instantly on her forehead. He pushed a gun into her ear and dared her to breathe.

  “If you don’t tell me where I can find Ice, I am going to boil your feet until the flesh falls from the bone,” he promised.

  Roc didn’t reply. He didn’t know where Ice was, and he was glad that he didn’t because he would have definitely told him.

  “Bring me another pot of water!” Bombay ordered.

  He thought about just telling him a lie so he’d kill him and get it over with, but he was sure that when they found out he was lying, they would start torturing Severe. The thought of her suffering in his place gave him courage, and he prepared himself for the pain.

  He heard the shuffling feet of the man carrying the boiling water moving closer, and Severe whimpering pitifully.

  “Pour it in,” he ordered.

  Roc’s body started shivering in anticipation. “He’s going to shit himself,” the woman in his lap laughed, and then her head popped like an overfilled water balloon.

  She pitched backwards knocking Roc’s chair over backwards, and pulling his feet up out the tub.

  The next shot hit the man holding the gun to Severe’s head, and then a bullet ripped through Bombay’s arm, making him drop the machete.

  While they were clamoring and falling over each other looking for the shooter, Ceylon came out of the darkness with the speed of a predatory cat, and was upon them before anyone saw him.

  He clamped a hand on the back of a man’s neck, and pulled him close as he shoved the Glock into his sternum. Pulling the trigger three times, he whirled around with the body in a gothic dance, and shot the man approaching him from behind.

  He dropped the body and stopped spinning with his gun aimed at Bombay’s head. “Untie her,” he said to Snoop, who was standing with his arms out to his sides like he was posing for a snapshot.

  He lowered his hands cautiously, and keeping his eyes on Ceylon, he walked backwards over to where Severe was chained to the pillar. He unfastened one of her wrist, freeing her from the pole, and she leaped on him like a woman possessed by the devil. She hooked the opened end of the cuff into his neck, and blood sprayed covering her and the wall when she yanked it out. His eyes bugged out in shock, and he clutched his throat with both hands as Severe rode him to the floor, hitting him again and again until his face and neck was full of ugly holes, and he no longer looked human.

  When he was way past feeling pain, she picked up the machete off the floor, and pointed it at Bombay. Her eyes were wild and dancing in her head, and she was huffing and puffing every breath. “Throw it on him!” she screamed at the man who had been holding the hot water.

  When he didn’t move right away, she slashed the blade across the back of this thigh. He screamed in pain, and fell to his knees.

  “Throw it, gotdammit!” she rose up on her toes and held the blade high over her head, and his.

  Dragging his bad leg, he put his hand with the mitt on the pot handle, but he was too slow for her. Severe brought the blade down on top of his head splitting it open. His skull trapped the blade, and she didn’t bother with trying to pull it out.

  She snatched the mitt off the dead man’s hand and folded it over the pot handle.

  “No, please!” Bombay cried.

  She didn’t have to tell Ceylon to move back out the way. He moved instinctively, and she pitched the water out the pot into Bombay’s face. He stumbled backwards over the bench onto the floor, and his screams sounded like Roc’s, until she walloped him with the iron pot like it was a club.

  Severe was moving like a windup doll in a screaming rage. She dropped a knee in his chest, up close to his throat, and then grabbed his mop of hair with both hands. Using his hair, she banged his head on the floor to get his attention, and then yanked it back up. “Who in the fuck are you?” she growled.

  The burns on his face were already starting to blister, and she raked her nails down his face, making him scream in pain.

  “Who are you people, and why y’all looking for Ice?!”

  “He killed my boss,” he stammered.

  “Who the fuck is that?!”

  “Lincoln Scott,” he said.

  “We need to get Roc medical attention before he goes into shock,” Ceylon spoke to her quietly.

  “Your name is Bombay, and you die!” she yanked his head forward with a vicious twist, and broke his neck. She crawled off him, and over to Roc on her hands and knees. His feet looked like blistered honey dew melons, and the ties binding his ankles together were getting tighter from the swelling. “He can’t walk,” she observed. “I need something to cut the ties.”

  Ceylon went into his pant pocket, and tossed her a folding knife. Severe slipped the blade between his ankles, and cut the ties. Then she pulled his head up and hugged it to her chest, and cried. “I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you,” she cried.

  Ceylon thought she might be in shock herself, and he was worried about her. “Get his socks and shoes, and I’ll carry him.”

  Roc wasn’t going to be able to wear shoes anytime soon, but he didn’t need to explain to her why they shouldn’t leave them.

  Severe pulled herself together, and got up and wiped her prints off the machete. She gathered up the socks and shoes, and then walked over to the table and picked up the case of money.

  “This is yours,” she held it out to Ceylon.

  He pushed her hand aside, holstered his gun, and then hoisted Roc up over his shoulder, and headed for the exit.

  Severe took an extra moment to take the Beretta Rabbit’s headless body was still wearing holstered. She checked the load, and then kept it in her hand.

  Ceylon was already out the door, and she ran to catch up with him.

  “You angry with me, I know, but this wasn’t me.”

  “It was Viper,” she snapped, following behind him. “LaRue worked for Viper.”

  Ceylon didn’t stop walking. He walked down the stairs in the dimly lit stairwell that he came up in, and Severe followed.

  “This is not a Viper operation. My father contracted with these people to snatch Roc, and I didn’t know about it. LaRue, Rabbit, and Jonsey were mine, but I know nothing about the other men, and I didn’t know Viper was going to snatch Roc.”

  Severe looked at him skeptically, and he understood why she was scared to trust him. He’d heard the reports on the bombings, and knew they had lost a lot of people. It would make anyone paranoid.

  When they got to his truck, Ceylon put Roc in the back seat, and Severe climbed in with hi
m and put his head on her lap.

  Ceylon got in behind the wheel, and started to drive.

  “He needs a doctor. Genesis is under attack so we can’t go to our regulars.”

  “I’ll take him to one of mine,” he glanced at her through the rearview, and saw her worried expression.

  Roc grabbed hold of her wrist, and made her look down at him. “Even if it was Viper, it wasn’t him. He knew that I was with you, and he knew that taking me would put you in danger. He wouldn’t have authorized the snatch and then take down his own operation to rescue you. In our business, backing out of a contract once can ruin you. I believe him when he says he knew nothing about it.”

  “So you trust him now?”

  “I trust that he really loves you. You give her a ring yet?”

  “Yes, but we’re waiting on you to approve me before she puts it on.”

  “Put it on,” he squeezed her hand.

  “It’s in the apartment.”

  “No, I have it,” he held it back over his shoulder.

  Severe took the ring from his hand and slipped it on her finger. “I’m sorry I doubted you. I love you,” she said to Ceylon.

  “I understand, and I love you, too,” he replied.

  “Congratulations,” Roc tried to smile at her, but he was in too much pain.

  “He’s really hurting. How much further we got to go?”

  “We’re almost there. We’ll have the doctor fix him up, and then we’ll go someplace else. It’s a Viper resource, and the less my father knows about what we’re doing, the better.”

  They rode in silence for about five minutes, and then Ceylon pulled the truck over to the curb, and stopped.

  “What’s the matter?” Severe asked.

  “Flashing lights,” he said. “He’s been following me since we left the warehouse.”

  Ceylon looked in his side view mirror and watched the woman dressed in a CPD uniform get out the Ford Taurus, and start walking towards his truck. Her partner was coming up on the passenger side, and he already had his weapon drawn.