Alice & Dorothy (31 page)

“
BOOOOM!
” Rabbit yelled, raising his fists like a champ. “Told you!
I told you!
”

The sight of Dorothy bleeding and crying and being smothered by that big black bastard was more than Alice could bear. It was just the opening the Hater needed.

Let go, darling
, the Hater said, his voice like a snake and dripping venom.

“Just a second,” Alice said. Her eyes had taken on a spacey, faraway look. “
Just a second.
”

There you go again. Time wastes, for no ham
.

And then Alice was far away, sitting in a waiting room with melting plaster walls and burnt roses. There was blood in the room, and squeals, and when Dorothy looked down at the floor she saw rabbits fucking and cannibalizing one another. But she was far away from the Emerald City now. So very far away…

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Alice growled. “Dear, sweet thing, oh dear, oh dear
.
”

She knelt slightly, just enough to bring Eazy forward over her. He still had the gun to her temple, so he wasn’t being especially careful with how tight she was being held. When she knelt just a little bit, his first response was to lean forward.

Exactly what she was hoping for.

She flexed her thighs and sprang up like a bullfrog, and the back of her head caught Eazy square in the face. She felt the crunch of his teeth and his nose against her flax golden hair and against her skull. He let out a garbled squawk and stepped backward. The gun went off in his hands, but by this time Alice was already moving away from him, arms outstretched, claws reaching for Rabbit with a banshee’s howl on her lips. The sound of the gun in the motel room bounced off the walls and stunned them with the level of noise, but not Alice. She was making an unholy
CHEE CHEE CHEE
sound and gnashing her teeth as she flew across the room toward Rabbit.

He was so shocked by her speed he tripped over his own feet trying to get out of the way.

And then she was on top of him, raking his face, biting the flesh on his arms and chest, beating his face with her fists and screaming the entire time.

“
Mahfucker!
” Eazy shouted, bending over at the waste and bracing himself on his thighs. Blood poured freely from his mouth and nose. “
Fuggin bitch broke it!
”

“
GET HER THE FUCK OFF ME!
” Rabbit screeched, his face raked and bleeding. Alice’s gun disappeared from his hands. He closed his fist on her hair and punched her in the jaw, but that was all he had time for before Alice let out another banshee-like howl and unleashed a barrage of fists and raking fingers upon him.

Eazy had cupped his hand over his face to stem the blood, with little effect. It had splashed down his shirt and was running like hot red milk down his arms. He pointed the gun toward the violent ball of flesh on the floor that was Alice and Rabbit.

“
Git the fugg ub!
” he yelled. “
You lookin’ ta git shot!
”

Alice definitely wasn’t lookin’ ta git shot. The problem was Alice was more like a bulldozer of hate and rage now, and she wasn’t driving. She was sitting in the passenger seat watching while the Hater worked his magic. He’d kicked the machine into high gear and set cruise control somewhere past the redline. There weren’t even any numbers to mark the speed.

At the moment he had Alice’s hands tied into Rabbit’s hair, and was smashing his head onto the floor. At some point in the chaos she glanced over and saw Rabbit’s gun
(my gun, it’s mine I own it, you asked me where it was in the bathroom and I can tell you now!)
lying on its side under the bed, and that’s when the engine throttled back a bit. Maybe there was a way out of this, after all.

Her hand shot out and closed around the steel (
GET THE FUCK OFF ME! I’m suh-horry...
) and the nameless man she’d killed in the car came to her mind, that look of guilt and fear and ecstasy as she pushed the gun into his face and forced him into an orgasm. It was a million years ago now, another lifetime. Another Alice. She shook his face away and his head fractured with a gout of blood from his nose and eyes, like when she’d opened a hole in his face and a much bigger, sloppier one in the back of his head, and all those arteries had begun pouring blood into the burnt hole left by a little rounded piece of lead travelling at twice the speed of sound.

As though filling the space with blood would help fix the problem. The human body was a marvel of nature, for sure, but it was scary how quickly it could go from a living, breathing organism to a pulsing, bloody piece of meat.

Alice looked down into Rabbit’s face. His mouth was a bloody mess. She’d scratched through fragments of broken enamel and ripped into nerve endings with her fingernails. The pain must have been unimaginable, because he’d shut down after that. His mouth was hanging open, and he was listing badly, like a ship taking on water. His eyes were rolling in their sockets, trying to find a reset button so he could get his shit back in order. But he was there, like Alice was there, kind of off to the side and no longer driving.

The Hater was there, too, and now he had the gun in Alice’s hands and as she stood up she pushed the gun into the lengths of sweaty blond hair on the back of her head. Then she turned and faced Eazy, standing over Rabbit like a lion gloating over a fallen Gazelle.

“
Git the fug away from him!
” Eazy barked, his voice teetering on the edge of screams. He looked like a shaken bottle of beer barely able to contain the energy he was holding in.

Alice kept her eyes on Eazy. Her hands were buried in her hair. Her breath was heaving in her chest. Behind her, Dorothy was crying and blowing the blood from her nose off her lips. Devon was holding her tight to his chest, and when Alice’s hand move his eyes bulged.

“
Look out!
” Was all he had time for.

Dorothy shrieked.

Alice brought her hands out from the back of her head. The guns flashed at each other, like they were speaking to one another, barking concussive blasts through the room. Alice tripped over Rabbit’s body and sprawled out over top of him.

Eazy staggered back against the bathroom door and slid to the ground, leaving a long red snail’s trail behind him. He coughed and a vomitous mass of blood dropped from his lips.

Alice looked down the length of her body and didn’t see any blood. She spun around on top of Rabbit and came up with the gun pointed at Devon’s face. Rabbit was moaning softly and trying to roll over on his side.

“Get off her,” Alice growled. “Now. Or I’ll kill you.”

Devon let go of Dorothy and stepped back, his hands up over his head.

“
I got nuthin
,” he said. “
I won’t do nuthin’ neither.
”

Dorothy stepped forward and fell into Alice’s arms, sobbing and clutching at her like a lost child. Alice switched her over to one side so she had a clear line of sight on Devon with her gun.

“
Grab our fucking shit!
” Alice’s nostrils flared, her cheeks red. Her eyes were glossed, but there was no mistaking the intent of her words.

Dorothy stopped crying instantly. She looked at Alice as though she’d just been slapped, then wordlessly turned and started grabbing up their bags. Alice knelt down and placed her knee on Rabbits chest, then stuck the barrel of the gun under his eye.

“You try to follow us, you so much as raise your head until we’re gone, I’ll kill you. If I
see
you, you’re dead. Got it?”

Rabbit stared up at her, his mouth shut. He was bleeding from both eyes and his nose. The lower half of his face was a giant bruise.

“Yeah, I got it,” he garbled.

“Good,” Alice said, standing up. She waved at Dorothy. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Dorothy pressed her body against Alice’s side and grabbed her around the waste. They stepped over Rabbit and walked out the door of the motel. Outside, on their right, Devon was standing about ten feet back from the entryway. Alice pointed her gun at him, and he put his hands up.

“No problems,” he said. “
Jes
be cool.”

Dorothy walked Alice to the yellow car, and Alice climbed behind the wheel. Moments later the girls were peeling out of the parking lot. There were people milling around watching the action.

Devon poked his head back into the room. Rabbit was sitting on the bed holding his face in his hands.

“You
aiight
, boss?” Devon said. “Best get goin’. Cops
goan
be here soon.”

“
Fuck!
” Rabbit shouted. He stood up and walked over to where Eazy lay. “Fuckin stupid bitches.” He reached down and grabbed Eazy’s gun. He kicked Eazy’s foot, checking for a response, but all he got were milk bubbles of blood bubbling up out of the wound in his chest. “Let’s go. I’m driving.”

“Yeah,” Devon said. “Where we goin’?”

Rabbit scowled at him. “What are you, fuckin’ retarded? We’re going to get my shit back. Then we’re gonna kill those bitches. Hurry up, we still got time to catch them on the road.”

“Bitches,” Devon said, staring down at Eazy. He wiped his face with his hands and they came away wet, which surprised him. He wiped his tears on his pants and turned away from Rabbit, sniffling.

Rabbit wasn’t sure if it was a good plan or not. Right now it was the
only
plan though. They had to get away from the crime scene as fast as possible. Devon was a retard but he was right; the cops would be there soon. And they’d have a lot of questions for Rabbit and Devon. Like why Eazy was lying dead in a pool of blood and why they’d come to the motel to get the girls in the first place.

There was so much shit to do now, so many complications. He’d have to disappear for a little while after this probably, maybe take his junk and go down to Florida and visit his Aunt Carroll for a while. Let shit blow over. Maybe stay for good.
One thing at a time,
he thought as they got behind the wheel of the car.

First, catch Alice.

Alice watched the rear view mirror as she drove, checking for any sign that they were being followed. She had no doubt Rabbit and the other guy would be looking for them, but she had no idea what they were driving. Watching for them while as she was driving gave her something to focus on other than the sickening, pitiful mewling Dorothy was making.
Yeah, everything has gone to shit, but there’s no reason to be such a pussy about it.

To top it all off, Rabbit had slammed the door in Dorothy’s face when he booted the door open, and she’d finally gotten a good look at it. “I’m fuggin’
roont
.” She was inspecting her face in the passenger side mirror under the sunshade, and the sight of her lumpy nose and puffy, raccoon eyes brought a fresh bout of tears.

“Why!” Dorothy wailed. “I don’t want to leave town! I want to stay in a motel and sleep in a real bed! And I want to get my face fixed before it stays like this forever!”

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” Alice was shouting now.
She’s making me do it, Goddamn it.
“Did you not just see me kill that asshole back there?” She grabbed Dorothy’s arm but the girl pulled away. “I fucking killed someone,
okay?
Does that register at all in your head? We can’t go to a motel because the cops are gonna be looking for us. We need to get out of here and lay low.”

Dorothy didn’t say anything. She hugged Toto and buried her face in him.

Dorothy may have been weak, as Alice had discovered, but Alice was on the frayed edge of things herself. They were both looking at long jail sentences if the cops caught up to them now. Even if they could prove she’d shot her rapist in self defense, what were the odds she’d had to shoot
two
guys in self defense? There was nothing defensive about a brick of heroin in your possession. That alone could get ten years.

You’re not going to jail
, the Hater muttered.
We’re going to go down in a hail of bullets before that happens, right darling?

Right.