The Yellowstone Conundrum (56 page)

 
Here, the combat became hand-to-hand; with the thugs up against the
Desperate Office Workers from Redmond
, eight screaming ladies who hurled anything they could get their hands on at the assailants. Twenty feet down the escalator John and Ray were subduing the first four. Asshole number six, on his knees, being pummeled unmercifully, managed to find his gun, turn and fire three shots blindly, which was followed by high-pitched screams, and angry shouting;

  “Diane! Get down!
Diane!” Ray shouted the safety off of Dude 1s handgun. Ray aimed and fired.

             
Woof woof woof woof WOOF WOOF!
  Marmaduke was agitated, first at the commotion, then at his inability to help Ray; who had strung Ethernet cables at three points on the elevator; up at the third floor entrance, half-way down, roughly at the second floor level and again a third of the way up. Marmaduke was not happy with the Ethernet cables, so he turned his attention back to the gang breaking into the Fourth Avenue entrance.

 
There was gunfire, angry shouting and a hell of a commotion going on up the long escalator to the third floor. Looking up from the bottom, it was impossible to tell what the hell was happening.

 
What was possible to see was that Hard-on and his group of slimebags were making progress on getting in through the 4
th
Avenue entrance. Half of the remaining people on the first floor had already scrambled for the interior stairwells; scared to death. 

 
“Go—go—go—go!” Molly shouted to the others. She saw, and then felt the tall young man’s laser eyes from outside the aluminum and glass shell; she stopped and turned—and he saw her.  His eyes widened and his face exploded in anger; he threw himself against the entrance doors, blocked as best as possible from the inside. But they were no match for an angry Hard-On and his followers. The Fourth Avenue center doors opened into the library’s silent security scanners; in walked ten members of the West Side Street Mobb (with two “b”s), a Blood gang that controlled the 3
rd
and Pine area of downtown Seattle.  

 
The
Fourth Avenue Crew Defense Crew
had been very busy, putting up a decent façade at the security gate; but with the remaining twelve men and women heading up the dark stairwell to the library’s second floor; with the building’s loading dock on the Madison Street side, the automated and semi-automated book sorting area, staff offices—including the I/T “pit” which had two desks and the typical piles of miscellaneous keyboards, mice, monitors, tower PCs, and boxes (and boxes) of cables and cable parts.  Along the inboard wall was a relatively small cabinet with the network wiring box, routers, and modems; compact for controlling 400+ workstations.

 
On the Spring Street side of the floor was the entrance to the underground parking level under Level 1.  Fortunately, the secure metal gates were still closed and locked; the library didn’t open until 10:00 a.m. and the guard didn’t report until 9:00.  Lucky bastard was probably home in his jammies, if his home was still standing.

 
In the center of the 2
nd
Floor was the continuation of the third floor auditorium; to get from the Spring Street garage entrance to the Madison Street loading dock, one had to walk around the third floor auditorium; the floor of the auditorium continued all the way down to the first floor; so to get from the first floor’s ESL area to the Children’s Center, again one had to walk around the third floor auditorium.  

 
Because the library structure was so unusual, the center of balance for the building, the building’s core was offset from a normal building; which meant finding the elevators and either of the two stairwells was a detour in logic.  The first one was easy to find; the elevator bank and stairwell was right inside the Fourth Avenue entrance.

 
This was the stairwell that pretty, curly-haired 22-year old Molly Abrams found herself running for.  She was the last one not in a “safe” position.

 
From the bottom of the escalator Marmaduke bound across the floor toward the thugs that had just broken inside. 
I can smell him.   I can smell him.   He smells bad.
 

 
It was triple dark inside the Library, only just single dark outside, but it was enough to see that Molly was running for the stairwell—that and the fact that she was screaming bloody murder. What she didn’t figure on was not getting to the door in time; the crash bar would push the door into the stairwell, but she never made it. In virtually a windmill-fashion, the tall thug’s right arm came down on her right shoulder and dropped her smack to the ground.  

 
Molly screamed.

 
Dude’s posse was scattered in the entrance area; not having clue one what the hell was going on, screaming and gunfire in the distance above, bloody murder screams in front.
ESL?  What the hell’s that?

  “Where is she?” shouted a disheveled, heavy-set soccer Mom named Susan Drummond, 35—her thick blonde hair looking like a makeover that had collided with a blender. Dressed in big-girl’s sweats as local color from Lynnwood, a northern suburb of Seattle (go Royals!), Susan had decided that day to get into Seattle early in order to go to the Social Security Administration, which opened at 7:30 a.m., in order to replace her SSA card which she’d stupidly lost nearly a month ago; in order to apply for a job you had to have your Social Security card, driver’s license and birth certificate. Well, guess what? Someplace along the way she’d also lost her birth certificate.

 
Running late as usual, about to be drummed out of Soccer Moms of Lynnwood, she’d been heading for the SSA building at the corner of 2
nd
Avenue and Madison Street when everything had turned to shit. Stranded on I-5, she abandoned her car and started walking. Worst decision of the day; she was there as she saw the tsunami recede, somewhere between Third and Fourth Avenues. If she had been there in line waiting for the doors to open at the SSA, she would have been consumed in the tons of crap (including the WSDOT Wenatchee) flowing eastward uphill.

 
Now she stood at the top of the landing between the first and second floors of the Seattle Public Library and heard her friend of two hours plead for help. The heavy stairwell doors did little to mask what was happening on the other side.

 
Inside the stairwell, booby-trapped as best they could, Molly’s screams of pain could be easily heard.

 
Susan turned to her new friends; who like her, had been working hard for the last hour to pile up sufficient crap into the stairwells and/or make ready for what they knew would be an attack up the stairwells. All Susan could see were the whites of several sets of eyes, dimly illuminated from the open door leading into the second floor. They also heard the frantic barking of the big dog, who in eye’s image was trying to protect the diminutive young woman.

 
“We aren’t going to let this happen? Right?”  The way Susan phrased the situation, her statement was a rhetorical question. She turned and slowly headed down the littered steps toward the emergency door. Molly was going to be the one to block the door from the inside using a portable book rack that they’d found in the sorting area, rolled over to the stairwell and tumbled down to the first floor. “Get out!  Get out of our building!” Susan was angry. “Grab something! They can’t get away with this shit!”

 
On the other side of the door it wasn’t going well with young Molly. Two other thugs were there helping Third Dude finish the task from earlier in the afternoon. He’d been able to rip her shirt off and had her pants down before Marmaduke, racing across the slick floor, skidded to a stop and jumped on him. 

 
Marmaduke was doing his best, his huge mouth chomped firmly on Dude’s right arm, angrily shaking it like a chew toy. But this time, Dude had a beatin’ stick of his own and was able to start hitting ‘Duke across his legs; at first merely annoying the big dog, but with repetition began to inflict pain; Marmaduke’s barks more high-pitched. Molly screamed as loud as she could, hoping Ray could hear her; but knowing that he had his hands full. The worst seemed inevitable.  

 
I’m going to stop wearing underwear
.

 
One of the differences between man and beast is that the objective stays clearly in the beast’s mind, never wavers
.  Bad man
is
bad man
is
bad man
, and ne’er the twain shall meet. While Third Dude was the one wanting the tasty poon, he found himself occupied to distraction yet again. While one of his fellow scumsquats was scared out of his bean by the huge dog; the other, Mycah Jarimyah Jackson, who at age 14 started pimping his eleven-year old sister in order to build up a “lifestyle” within the gang; the more money you had, the more bad your ass.

 
His eyes got a bit wide as the nice white meat was exposed.  He was quite willing to hold down the squirming young woman and grope her up and down, but the Big Fucking Dog three feet away with the big teeth shaking his buddy’s arm around, managed to sever the erection signal coming from his brain. The little shaved pink tush would bring some long green; pump her with drugs, then beat her, then pump her, then beat her; four or five times in a row and she’d do anything you wanted her to, just to stop the pain. Dress her up in a schoolgirl skirt and blouse, she could keep the orange thong, after all it was a surprise; and she’d make the hotel circuit, big time.

 
The Fourth Avenue stairwell door opened.

  Meanwhile, the remaining four thugs, led by James “The Bone” Foster headed as straight as they could for the other stairwell on the opposite side of the first floor; passing by the long escalator leading to the third floor, they couldn’t help but hear the confusion, gunfire and yelling at the top of the stairs.

 
Bone Foster was a Mandingo of sorts, a tall massive man with 10” flopper. Refusing to butt (so to speak) into Third Dude’s territory, actually named Wayne Clark, Bone had started his reputation as a 13-year old by waving his thing at adult parties where he was the only teen; well, he and the ten- and eleven-year old girls he boned for exhibition while the others egged him on to the heavy beat; bringing fame and attention to himself, shame, humiliation and servitude to the pre-teen girls. Both men, now in their late 20s, were The Intimidators.

 
“There,” he shouted, pointing toward the opposite side of the huge room, on the other side of the extended third floor auditorium; in absolutely the darkest part of the first floor, with no view of the Fourth Avenue entrance; Bone slowly led his men toward the stairwell, finding the auditorium walls, then across the hall to the opposite wall to a push door. Bone didn’t know diddley-squat about lumens; but, he’d been around his share of empty, dark buildings before. 

 
Cachunk, the door opened inward.

 
The stairwell lobby was filled with crap; at least that’s what his feet told him as he brushed aside little shit, stepped on broken glass. His hand waved in front of him, then realized he had a Bic in his pocket.
Duh.
Bics were universal weapons of last resort. Fire a Bic up a dude’s nose in a fight and you were on top, not on bottom; or, as it’s referred to “Bics da shit.”

 
Bics, however, don’t send out much illumination (it’s a lumen thing, surf the web). You could light a Bic at the landing of a stairwell and not make out anything at the half-way point to the next landing, but you can sure as shit can see your feet.

 
A twenty-five pound PC monitor landed next to Bone’s feet and shattered, followed by
“GET OUT OF OUR BUILDING!”
from a female voice.

 
Some ho is up there tossin’ computers at me
.

 
Bone Foster started up the stairs. “Baby, baby,” he started in a deep voice which became lost in the dark. “I have a ten-inch dick ready for your pussy; except baby, you’re treating me bad; so after I finish fuckin’ you ‘til you puke, I’m goin’ stick my pole up your white ass ‘til it comes out your fuckin’ nose.”

 
Not exactly the conversation the Second Floor Crew; all female, all white, all suburban wanted to hear.

  Ray fired two shots in the darkness up the escalator where he knew Diane had been leading the Fifth Avenue Defense crew. The three shots from Dickhead #5 had fortunately been wild; but Dickhead was dead before he hit the escalator again; the two shots ripped through his torso south to north, exiting and hitting the back of the cube section that currently blocked the top of the escalator. 

 
“Is everybody OK?” Ray shouted, no negatives replied.  Ray began to move up the escalator from his position twenty feet on the downside. “You OK, John?” he asked his volunteer in the other escalator.

 
“Yeah, but I think I’m going to have to talk to Hyatt about these reward points,” the Sacramento native replied, smiling in the dark.

 
“Count ‘em off as we go up, OK? We have work to do,” Ray instructed quietly. “Get their weapons.”