The Damned (24 page)

“Dub, please.”

“Like I said,
I
run things up in
this
motherfucker.” Then, smiling and leering at Scott, “Go on, baby. I’m sure Scotty can keep you safe out there.”

She looked up at Scott, the brilliant emerald eyes he had once adored dull beneath the heroin coursing through her nervous system. He knew it was over before she opened her mouth and said it: “Why didn’t you just stay dead?”

“Sandi.”

She leaned into Dub, closed her eyes and buried her face in his chest.

“So it is written, so shall it be,” Dub said, then, “Off to the dungeons with him.”

Bert said, “
The
dungeons?
”

“The jailhouse, you stupid fuck.” Dub stepped forward and put a hand on Scott’s shoulder. “I really would’ve let you go. What can I say; they’re all a buncha cunts, eh?” He drove a knee into Scott’s stomach; another to his face sent him reeling to the floor, where he lay gasping for breath in the fetal position, squirming while Dub said, “I’m gonna fuck your wife all night long, and when the rooster crows, your ass is going up on a cross out in the town square,
nailed
to the son of a bitch.

“Now, you two. Take his ass to the jailhouse, and lock him the fuck up.”

Karen spent most of the day with one of the guys who had found her patient staggering out of the alley yesterday afternoon. His name was Jimmy Jay, and he was a friendly, likeable sort of guy. He wasn’t a gang member, just a struggling member of a displaced society who figured it would be easier to join up with his oppressors than fight them. Before the big event, he had worked in a convenience store. Now he worked for Dub and The Devil’s Own. ‘No big deal’, he’d told her while rummaging through her old workplace. ‘Just another job’. The only difference was, while fucking up at the Jiffy Mart might get him fired; fucking up here would get him much worse. So he stayed on his P’s and his Q’s, and did what he was told, and this morning when Steady Teddy told him to stick with little Miss Doctor Nurse, he was happy to oblige. They took an SUV over to the westside, to the clinic Karen had been toiling in the day the big event came rushing across the horizon. Two hours later they had stripped the place clean, coming away with most everything Karen had tallied onto her laundry list of medical supplies. Once these items were offloaded into the jailhouse clinic, Karen and Jimmy Jay parted company, and Karen set to work on improving the quality of her patient’s healthcare. A bag of IV antibiotics was hung on a stand, the needle inserted and the drip, drip, drip begun. Pain medicines were administered and the bottle of whiskey removed, the wound cleaned and fresh bandages applied.

Karen left her grateful patient better off than she had found him, and under the circumstances, it was the most either of them could have hoped for. She was tired and hungry. She’d been up all night worrying about what might happen when Ben got back to his luxury suite. Now she had a different set of circumstances to worry over, like which one of those Neanderthal scumbags would lay claim to her after Jet failed to show himself. How many grubby hands she would be passed through, the indignities forced upon her until she had finally been deemed unworthy, and a fresh female had taken her place. And what then, end up like Tina, a woman who had traded her soul for a warm bed, clean sheets and as many drugs as she could suck out of her lowlife friends? Or maybe she’d end up worse than that. They actually needed Tina. Any day now they could run across another nurse, a doctor or a surgeon, and then Karen would be nothing but a piece of tail to be passed down through the ranks until she was used up and no one wanted her anymore. And what then? The possibilities were endless, and try as she might, she could not keep them from turning her weary mind to mush as they barreled their way through it. She was tired and hungry, exhausted. She sat down in a chair at the nurse’s station, crossed her arms and cradled her head upon them, closed her eyes and drifted away. By the time sleep found her, it was late in the afternoon.

The roar of the crowd woke her. At first she thought she was
back
home in her apartment on
First Avenue
. Her boyfriend was watching a football game, a touchdown had just been scored and the crowd had erupted. She opened her eyes, yawned and stretched and looked around her. She stood up and went to check on her patient, and found him sleeping. She checked his vital signs, left the clinic and went down the hallway, through a doorway to find a huge party going on in the jailhouse lobby. The smell of grilled meat wafted through the air as she made her way out to the jailhouse steps. It was dark outside and she wondered how long she’d slept—judging by the way she felt, not long enough.

Jimmy Jay was standing by the entryway. “Hey,” he said to her. “Still here, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Ya hungry? Somebody dropped a truckload of beef by this afternoon. They’re grilling the stuff down there on the stairs.”

“God, yes, I’m hungry.”

“Hold on and I’ll get you a plateful.”

He took off down the concrete steps. Minutes later he returned, carrying a plate filled with freshly grilled meat. The smell of it put a smile on Karen’s face, and an almost agonizing knot of hunger in her gut. She took the plate and went back inside. On her way through the lobby, she grabbed a bottle of Rolling Rock beer from one of the refrigerators. On a table, next to the rows of canned goods that up until now had been keeping Dub and his crew alive, was a pile of forks and knives. Karen grabbed one of each and negotiated her way through the crowd. On her way back to the safety of the clinic, she decided to go to the booking room instead. She had wandered into the place earlier today. There were tables and chairs, and she thought she would be more comfortable there. She sat plate and beer on the table, sawed off a hunk of beef and crammed it into her mouth. The succulent taste of prime rib had her giddy as she twisted the top off her beer and dropped it onto the table. She swallowed, forked another piece into her mouth and picked up her beer. The door flew open and Bert and Ernie barged into the room, dragging a much smaller man behind them.

Karen was stunned, frightened. She knew who they were, Dub’s gigantic sidekicks. She remembered them from the Ambassador. She didn’t know what to say or do, so she said, “Hi, what’s going on?”

“Dub wants him locked up.” It was Bert who said this, while his partner gripped a handful of the guy’s shirt. “We’re crucifying him in the morning. Gotta pay him back for what he did. Stupid fucker walked right into the Ambassador.”

He was talking to her like she was part of the gang. Maybe he thought she was. After all, here she was sitting alone in one of the rooms they conducted their business in, sitting here like she actually belonged. Last night she’d heard them called idiots and morons. Maybe they were stupid enough to think she
was
just another member of the group, a fact borne out when Bert said, “He’s the one blew Big E’s head off this morning.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Same one killed them boys at the pit yesterday.”

“No kidding,” she said, because she didn’t know what else
to
say. At least they weren’t snatching her up and raping her, which, under the circumstances, seemed like a definite plus.

“Says he used to be married to Cherry Vanilla—still is, I guess.”

“Cherry Vanilla?” said Karen.

“Dub’s woman,” the other giant said, then, “What?”

“Nothing,” Karen told him, and took a drink of beer.

There was a set of keys on the table—Karen hadn’t noticed them until Bert scooped them up, and he and his gigantic counterpart ushered their prisoner out into the hallway.

She sat for a while, staring at the door. Then she went back to her meal, sawing off bits of meat, savoring every piece she forked into her mouth, tipping up the beer and enjoying it as well. She had just pushed her plate to the middle of the table when the door opened and Bert and Ernie stepped through it. Bert tossed the keys onto the table, and said, “We’re gonna catch a beer out in the lobby, then head on back to the hotel. Hell of a party going on over there.”

“Okay,” Karen said. “Maybe I’ll see you there.”

“See ya,” Bert said, and then he and Ernie walked out into the hallway, leaving a slightly bemused Karen alone with her beer.

He’d lasted more than three seconds, but not much more. And now here he was in a dimly lit cell with two other guys who had done absolutely nothing to warrant their being there. His heart was broken, his spirit nonexistent. He had nothing to live for, nothing left but the look on his wife’s face as she leaned into that prick. It wasn’t her fault a bunch of assholes snatched her from the safety of their home, wasn’t her fault they had turned her into a drug addict. He knew that, but knowing it did nothing to ease his pain. He had driven off to work one August morning, knowing his beautiful wife would be waiting when he got back home. But the world had gone crazy, and so had he, and now here he was.

His cellmates introduced themselves the moment those two troglodytes disappeared down the corridor. Paul, a truck driver who had tossed his keys down a sewer grating rather than turn them over to The Devil’s Own. He had been passing through town three weeks after the big event, and he’d been sitting in this cell ever since. Then there was Richard, a fifty-something businessman, who two weeks ago had looked at someone ‘the wrong way’. He was bald and thin. His clothes hung loose on his six-foot frame. They were forthcoming with Scott, but he barely acknowledged their presence. He would die at dawn in a horribly gruesome manner, nailed to a cross in the middle of the square, laughed at while he squirmed like a worm on a hook. His situation was hopeless and bleak, and he was too depressed to discuss it with them.

He sat on his cot, staring down at the floor. A woman’s voice floated down the hallway and he looked up. “Scott!” she called out. “Scott Freeman!”

He sprang across the cell and grabbed the bars. “Sandi!” he shouted. “Sandi, down here!” He could hear her feet padding down the corridor.

Richard said, “What’s going on?”

She came into view, and Scott said, “Who are you?”

She was short, with auburn hair and soft brown eyes. She said, “My name is Karen Turner. I was one of your nurses over at Park West. I cared for you as long as I could, ‘til things got too bad to stick around. Even then, I snuck back a couple of times to check on you. You were still alive a couple of days ago, barely alive, but…look at you—I gave you up for dead, and here you are barely showing any of the aftereffects of what you’ve been through. I can’t believe you made it this far.”

“Well, I won’t be making it much further.”

“Maybe a little further,” Karen said, and then held the keys out in front of her.

It was close to
noon
by the time Teddy finally made it to bed. He could dope with the best of them, but binging on booze, coke and crystal meth around the clock had taken a definite toll on him. He’d been up all night and he was bone tired, and just when he thought the night was over and he was heading for bed, Dub shoved another pile of coke up his nose and off they went searching the dawn for a way to ease the crazy fucker’s frustration. Thank God the midget popped up when he did or they’d still be out looking for someone to scourge. And Teddy would still be without sleep.

He dropped off little Miss Doctor Nurse and headed out to the north side to check on the meth lab. By the time he was done there, he was too tired to return to his suite at the Ambassador. He needed a few hours sleep, so he found a bed and crawled into it. When he awoke it was dark outside. He showered and dressed, and then left the room to find the rest of the place nearly deserted. Two truckloads of meat had been delivered, one to the jailhouse and one to the hotel. Parties were being thrown at both locations and most everyone had flocked there, leaving a bare minimum of cranked-up zombies to man the meth labs. He climbed onto his bike and rode over to the jailhouse, which had been his routine these last seven weeks. Roll out of bed and head over to the jailhouse; hang around until Dub showed up—usually by the middle of the day. Except today, Teddy had slept right through ‘til night.

He arrived to find smoke rising from a block of grills setup on the jailhouse steps, spreading the tantalizing scent of prime rib through the air. Damn near everybody he knew was either gathered outside or partying inside, many holding hunks of beef in their bare hands, tearing into them like savages who had neither seen nor heard of cutlery and dinner plates. It was quite a scene; one he figured was going on at the Ambassador, too. There was a refrigerated trailer parked at the curb, a gift from Carlicci’s son, no doubt. Teddy had thought carrying a load of C4 up to the old man’s place to be a foolhardy notion, but maybe it wasn’t. They had erased the old man and his cronies, paving the way for junior to take over. And he
had
taken over; the proof was swirling through the air around him. Tony Carlicci had come down from the hills just like Dub said he would, bringing his refrigerated trucks with him. Maybe Dub was right about something else, too. The old man said he had enough shit to feed an army, that soon enough he would have one big enough to take over the entire city. Now Tony was in charge of those men, and Dub and Tony were tight. Deals had been struck, forces combined. Maybe some of Dub’s crazy rule-the-world-shit would work out after all.

Teddy had two objectives: check the lobby and booking room to see if Dub was around. Check in on the patient Doctor Nurse was supposed to be tending to. Doctor Nurse. She said she needed additional supplies, antibiotics and IVs, that she knew where she could lay her hands on the stuff, so he left her with one of the guys who had found her patient staggering out of the alley. Teddy wondered how she’d made out with Jet, who must surely have laid claim to her by now.

He moved through the crowd, up the jailhouse steps to the front entrance. A thumping bass loud enough to shake the walls echoed down the crowded hallway as he made his way to the lobby, then came a driving guitar. It was a Red Hot Chili Peppers tune, but he couldn’t place the name. He stepped through the entryway to find the lobby packed with bikers and Q’s, truckers and the various workmen they had allowed into their circle. People were dancing and people were drinking. Several couples were fucking right out in the open. The wall-sized screen was showing a series of Tyson’s classic knockouts, a fun filled array of clips from Iron Mike’s glory days, before his slide into mediocrity sent him spiraling down the tubes in a haze of drugs and despair and photographer’s flashbulbs.

Teddy saw right away that Dub wasn’t there—he would’ve been the center of attention if he was around, and no telltale crowd had gathered at any certain spot in the room. He grabbed a beer, twisted off its cap and tossed the cap to the ground. On his way across the floor he saw Bert and Ernie headed for the exit.

“Hey Bert!” he called out. “BERT!”

They turned and Teddy raised his hand. “Wait up!” he said, and then hurried over to them. And when he got there: “’Sup?”

Ernie said, “We just locked up the guy that blew Big E’s head off this morning.”

“No shit.”

“Yep, tossed his skinny ass right in a cage.”

Bert said, “He’s a tough little fucker. Skinny as a rail, a bullet lodged in his head and he still wiped out five of our men.”

“Five that we know about,” said Ernie.

“Bullet in his head, huh?”

“Just like the midget said.”

“He’s gonna end up like the midget come dawn,” Ernie again. “Nailed to a cross.”

Teddy took a drink of beer, nodding at a table piled high with thick cuts of grilled meat. “I guess Carlicci junior came down after all, huh?”

“He came down, all right,” Bert said.

“His head, anyway,” said Ernie, and the two of them laughed. Bert took a swig of beer, and Teddy said, “And that would mean?”

“Some guy showed up with a buncha Carlicci’s men, showed up with Tony’s head stuffed in a bowling ball bag. Said
he
was in charge now—Carlo, cool dude. Him and Dub and a buncha his men busted into the First National, made off with over a million bucks. And that’s just for starters. We’re gonna do one a day until we run out of ‘em, and then move on to the next town. They’re supposed to come back and party with us tonight. That’s where we’re goin’, back to the Ambassador.”

“Hell of a party goin’ over there,” said Bert.

“Hell of a party here,” Teddy told him.

“Well, Dub’s over there, and we like to stick close to Dub.” Ernie took a long drink of beer, took another, and said, “Probably get cranked up and go back out tonight, maybe you should go with us.”

“Maybe,” Teddy said, smiling as he thought,
definitely not.

“Well, we’re headin’ on out.”

“See ya in a little while. I’m gonna grab some of that beef, see how that dude’s doin’. Dub’ll wanta know about him.”

“What dude?”

“The patient.
You know,
the guy who got shot yesterday.”

“Oh, yeah.”