Fiend (20 page)

Our heads bounce with each collision.

KK turns on the windshield wipers.

I’m thinking about Frogger and Mario Kart.

Some cunt woman flies up over the hood and crashes in through the windshield, headfirst. She’s stuck and her neck is a postcoital dick, slow in its oozing of liquid.

Get her off, get her off, KK screams.

I’m frozen. I’m staring into this woman’s eyes and they’re black like the hallway to your parents’ room after a childhood nightmare. She’s still alive or dead or whatever the hell. She’s chomping half a foot away from my crotch.

I can’t fucking see, KK yells.

The thuds pick up in intensity. Glass trickles down on us. I’m thinking about the Whac-a-Mole game at arcades. The Chuck just keeps staring at my dick. KK starts swerving and she keeps yelling about not being able to see and our world is shards of glass and brown blood and violent collisions, each one like hitting Bambi.

Finally, I act. I lean back and kick the hell out of this Chuck’s face. It makes a squishing sound.

Harder, Typewriter yells.

There’s a wicked crash, this one metal on metal. KK’s crashed into a parked car. The truck pulls to the right and
we’ve lost air in at least two tires. I kick the face again. This finally does the trick, her dark eyes closing, her body rolling over the top of the Tacoma.

Typewriter yells to go faster and KK screams that she’s got it floored and then I realize we’re slowing, maybe down to fifteen miles per hour. But we’re close. We’re almost to Kellogg. County’s a few hundred yards ahead. Ten miles per hour. KK tries to make the right turn, but the wheel won’t react, probably because of the flats, and we spin out, slamming into a yellow traffic light. My head hits the dash, the fucking Rockwell I scratched out.

There’s blood. I don’t know whose it is.

Typewriter opens the door and I grab KK’s wrist and drag her out my side and we have a few feet of clear and there’s a guardrail leading down a grass hill. It’s the wrong way, but we have no fucking choice. Type hurdles it. I try, but catch my foot on the railing. I roll head over heels for what seems like hours. This is going to be my death. Then the world stops spinning. I’m on the pavement and I can feel blood coming down my forehead and the first thing I do is check my pocket for my shit. I think it’s a little light. Chucks come from around the parking lot on Seventh and from over the guardrail. Typewriter and KK scream for me to hurry. I’m on my hands and knees searching the pavement, picking up pebbles, throwing them, looking for a lost shard. Type grabs me by the back of the neck and shoves me and I stumble and regain my balance and then KK’s pulling me by my hand and we’re sprinting again.

We head under a bridge. I remember being down here in the back of a squad car. Me at sixteen, me a trust-fund hippie, arrested in front of SuperAmerica with a pocket full of Percs and a bag of mushrooms. I remember the cops apologizing that they didn’t have any Grateful Dead to play, them thinking this was so fucking funny, the cuffs digging into my wrists, my pinky going numb. They drove me down here, under the bridge, and pulled into a garage just below where we are now, marched me up three sets of stairs into the juvenile detention center of Ramsey County, telling me not to trip, laughing at the play on words, telling me the walls aren’t really melting, but you are really being arrested.

Straight ahead there’s a tsunami of naked walking dead. Another group is gathering behind us.

Fuck.

I run with no thought but the need to find that garage. Then I see it—a shiny sheet of red metal that spans a story. I pound on the door. It wobbles. I pound and kick and KK and Typewriter are doing the same. The clanging sound of metal is almost loud enough to drown out the surrounding laughter.

I’m screaming to the metal garage door to open up and save us. I’m screaming to anyone behind it. I’m screaming to God.

KK fires into the door. It dents, rips a little. She does it again.

The Chucks come at us from both sides of the street. The closest one’s a stone’s throw away.

I’m pounding. I’m begging to be let in. I’m praying foxhole
pleas about righting wrongs, getting sober, being a good person, giving money to the poor, never jerking off again, curing cancer.

KK unloads the rest of her gun and the hole grows to the size of a fist.

Typewriter faces the wave of demented motherfuckers. He hollers and shoots into the encroaching crowd. KK has both hands inside of the hole she’s created. She tries to pry it open. It’s futile. I pound with my fist and my head and scream.

And I start reciting the Serenity Prayer. I’m not sure where it comes from but I’m saying
God, grant me the serenity
as Typewriter fires and pumps and KK presses her bloodied hands in the hole; I’m chanting
to accept the things I cannot change
, and I quit slamming the wall and turn to aim my gun and it shakes like a motherfucker as I fire into the crowd screaming
the courage to change the things I can
and I put the barrel in my mouth and the final verse is inside my head—
and the wisdom to know the difference
.

I’m about to pull the trigger when I hear KK holler.

She’s running toward an open door, yelling for us to come.

Some teenager with the worst meth-picked face I’ve ever seen holds the door.

Typewriter!

He turns, sees the door, and starts sprinting.

I aim over his shoulder and drop two Chucks a foot behind him. I run backward, firing into open mouths. Somebody grabs me and shoves me inside. Then the metal door slams shut and it’s pitch black.

The kid stands over me. He’s skinny as fuck. His face is the unfortunate combination of severe acne and busy fingers. He points a snub-nosed revolver at me. Tells me to strip.

What the fuck? Typewriter says.

You too, he says. The gun swings in the other direction. All of you.

Dude …

Need to see if you’re bit. If you’re infected.

His hand trembles. I wonder if he’s ever held a gun before last week. I tell him we’re fine.

We’ve got rules here, he says.

We?

Yeah, we.

How many—

Stop. You need to strip.

You said
we
, how many?

Chase, KK says. She’s taken off her shirt. Her nipples are Jolly Ranchers. She kicks off her shorts and I tell her she doesn’t need to do this. The kid points the gun at me and it’s shaking even more.

Jesus, Chase, just take off your fucking clothes, KK says.

She’s naked. The kid stares at her, motions for her to spin around. She does. He seems to have a hard time studying her, glancing down at the cement, then at her, like he’s embarrassed.

Okay, he says.

I strip. He asks what’s on my stomach and I tell him cuts from glass and he seems satisfied with this answer.

Typewriter’s next. His pasty body is blotched with cuts, scabs. The kid doesn’t notice the healed scoop missing from the back of his leg.

The kid lowers his gun.

The Chucks howl from behind the metal garage door. A few hands poke through the hole KK made. He says, Sorry about the search, gotta, you know?

I have my pants back on and I stick out my hand and tell him Chase and he tells me Maddie. KK and Typewriter introduce themselves. I tell him thanks for saving us and he nods like it was nothing and motions for us to follow him up the stairs. It’s weird being here. I’m remembering being sixteen, fuck, probably Maddie’s age, handcuffed, arrested, being brought up this very staircase.

How many of you are there?

Three, including me.

How?

Maddie laughs. He says, I was here, locked up on some Mickey Mouse shit. Had court Monday. The others showed up together the next day.

How are you … I mean, for dope?

Cooking in here, he says.

Typewriter gives a
hell yeah
and I smile and so does KK and Maddie laughs and we walk up another flight. He says, Don’t get too excited. It’s pretty ratty crank. Plus, only one shot a day.

That’s cool, that’s totally cool, Typewriter says.

For sure, I say.

Maddie presses against a red door. It’s the booking station—a small room with a few desks, some computers, interrogation rooms off to one side.

Still have power? I ask.

Yup.

I’m remembering pressing my fingers into ink, then sitting in the room and some detective in a short-sleeve button-down asking where I got the pills and mushrooms. Asking if I grew them, Got an operation in your basement, don’t ya? Don’t ya? I’d watched his mustache. It seemed to grow in audible slithers.

I hear laughter. My testicles shrink into my hip flexors.

The fuck? I say.

Maddie shakes his head, staring at a detention room. He’s like, It’s fine man, just a kid who turned, was handcuffed to the table in there.

Fuck that, KK says.

I’ll kill the motherfucker right now, Type says.

I put my arm out and Type tells me to get the fuck off him and Maddie looks uncomfortable. I’m not trying to have our entrance be Type blasting Chucks, Maddie thinking we’re psycho. Just let it be, I say.

KK gives me a look and I’m not sure if it’s
fuck this
or
fuck you
. I interpret it as her saying she’s not trying to be around a single laugh, so I ask Maddie if we’re sleeping somewhere else.

He picks at his face and says, Yeah, yeah, for sure. Down the hall.

KK lets me take her hand.

Maddie leads us to a control room of sorts. It’s nothing but monitors, all of them security-camera footage. Some artsy-type guy with thick black-rimmed glasses, probably late thirties, sits at a swiveling chair. When he turns to shake our hands, I notice he’s missing his right ear, just a small river valley of scar tissue surrounding a tiny cavern.

He introduces himself as Randy. He speaks in a British accent. You were mighty lucky. Mighty lucky, he says.

I just keep telling them thanks. I figure this is all I’m good for. I look at one of the screens. It’s a feed from just outside the garage. Hundreds of walking dead smash the door. I ask if he can rewind it, just to see how close we were to …

Stop, KK says.

Randy stands. The inside of his left arm’s beat to shit, bruised to the point of black. I think one of his veins is abscessed. He says, Sorry, bud, no rewinding function, that must have happened somewhere else. Just live feeds.

I nod.

He slaps my back and says, Mighty lucky.

I smile. KK tries to. Typewriter holds his gun.

Shall we? Randy says.

They lead us back into the hallway. Things smell like industrial cleaner, something lemony, and ammonia. I’m dying to see the operation. I’m hoping it’s big and sheets of crystal are being broken up right this second.

Can’t believe anyone could make it this long out there, Randy says.

Can’t either, KK responds.

We all laugh because we’re nervous and relieved.

My prayers have been answered. Life inside secure walls. A controlled intake of dope. Electricity. Us being safe. Then I’m wondering about the third person—maybe it’s Cheng’s friend, the guy who said this was where he was headed. I realize when I showed up, Cheng got killed, just like the Albino, and everywhere I go, people die. I decide to keep this thought tabled.

We walk into a cafeteria. I smell shit being cooked. Rectangular tables with attached round seats span the large room. Metal mesh covers the line of windows separating wall and ceiling.

Maddie calls into the kitchen—Derrick.

I can hear the banging of pots.

Hey, mate, come out here for a second, Randy says.

I glance between KK and Typewriter and Maddie. A big motherfucker steps into view. He’s got to be over six five and has a shaved head. It’s obvious he’s one of those speed freaks who shoots shit only to lift more weight. He’s wearing a white apron over a bare chest and his arms are bigger than my thighs. He stares at us. There’s some sort of tattoo on his neck, a set of praying hands maybe. The tension is palpable.

Chase, I say, and this is KK, this is Typewriter.

He crosses his arms over his impressive man tits. It’s some Shark-Jet standoff and we’re all waiting for an introduction, which I realize isn’t coming.

Maddie looks at the floor.

Mr. Clean shakes his head and walks back into the kitchen.

That went well, Randy says.

Again, we give some uncomfortable laughs.

We leave the kitchen. Randy’s telling us Derrick is the alpha type, survival of the fittest, paranoid about diminishing supplies, but a good guy once you get to know him.

Yeah, yeah, for sure, I say.

We head farther down the hall. A set of heavy-duty doors is propped open under a green painted C.

Welcome home, Maddie says.

It’s a common room with round tables and a hanging TV and white linoleum. There’re probably eight rooms—cells, I guess—built into the walls. It’s juvie, the exact same setup I’d been in, only I was in block A. We’re saying how nice it is, how perfect. We walk around like it’s an open house. I peek into a cell and see a single thin mattress and an aluminum toilet. I ask if the water works and Maddie says, Thank fucking God.

KK studies a bookshelf. I join her. It’s nothing but Bibles and AA Big Books. There’s a stack of board games. KK turns to me. Her dimples show. She grabs my pinky and squeezes and I want it to be more.

Pick a room, Randy says.

Typewriter says, That far one taken?

Maddie shakes his head. Go ahead and shotgun that shit, he says.

I’m wondering where that big motherfucker Derrick sleeps. I’m not trying to be his neighbor. KK walks to the room next to Typewriter’s and I follow. I’m not sure if we’re sharing a room or where we actually stand. She pokes her head inside and says, Guess this one’s me, and that answers
that. I go into the cell next to her. I’m thinking about my cell as a teenager, how I was tripping and so scared, more of my parents than anything. My black roommate was in for stealing cars and complained how it wasn’t fair because rich honkies were ignorant to park in his neighborhood—
fucking stupid, thinking their shit’s safe
—and I’d agreed, embarrassed because he was describing me.