Helmet Head (12 page)
CHAPTER 26
Grandpa
Doc grabbed the hot pads, slammed the lid on Larry’s cooked head and shoved it to the back of the stove. He turned the oven off. The worst part was his stomach. It overruled his head. He salivated like a dog staring at a string of sausages. All their stomachs rumbled. They were almost ready to eat that head.
“Yeah,” Curtis drawled. “I’m hungry, too.”
“Jesus Chris,” Bill said turning away.
“There’s shit in the living room,” Doc said. “Dude’s a kendo expert.”
Curtis shook his head sadly as if he’d known it all along. “Well fuck.”
“Show me,” Bill grunted.
Doc led them back into the living room, showed them the trophies and the photograph. Bill stared at the stuffed boar.
“What’s a fucking Kraut swordsman doing here?”
“That clipping in the kitchen,” Doc said. “He was on vacation.”
“Y’know,” Curtis said, “seems to me they left something out. Guy like this, he doesn’t suddenly lose control of his car. He was German! They take pride in their driving. They got the Autobahn and shit like that. Not like the drunk hillbillies around here. What if something forced him off the road?”
“Like what?” Wild Bill said. “A deer?”
“Like a bunch o’ bikers,” Curtis said.
Wild Bill and Curtis stared at one another.
“What club?” Wild Bill said.
“You know damned well what club.”
Doc said, “What are you talking about, Curtis? When did the Dogs ever run anyone off the road?”
“When we was in Baja.”
Doc and Curtis had been going to Baja since the eighties. It was a private thing, not for the others. Ed had been president then.
Curtis turned on a table lamp next to an old sprung sofa. The lamp cast a sickly yellow glow through the dust-covered shade illuminating a thrift store coffee table holding an empty bottle of peppermint schnapps and an inlaid wooden presentation box. There was no television, but an old upright Sylvania radio stood in one corner.
Doc hesitantly turned it on. He saw ancient vacuum bulbs glow to life behind the threadbare speaker screen, followed by white noise. Twisting the station dial only altered the pattern of noise. He switched it off. Where did it draw power? Had the power been restored? Doc doubted it. The storm wasn’t over. No one was climbing power lines in this weather.
Yet the lamp lit. The house had power.
Doc sat on the sofa and reached for the presentation box. He opened it. Six silver commemorative coins nestled in red velvet. He picked one up.
Fassnacht Pharmaceutical, Collector’s Club Commemorative Coin, 1980
. The design showed a scientist in a lab coat holding a beaker to the sun. The other coins were similar, going through 1986. Doc turned the coin over. “
Herrschaft der Natur durch Wissenschaft”
in Gothic script over a gleaming factory set amid a cornfield.
They tried that, Doc thought. Doc’s old man had fought in the Battle of the Bulge and died a few years ago aged 94. Doc slowly scanned the room with fresh eyes. The boar’s head, the bones in the fireplace. An old black and white photograph in an elaborate gilt frame all but hidden in an unlit corner of the shabby room.
With a growing sense of trepidation and unreality he heaved himself out of the low sofa, banging his knee on the coffee table and crying out.
“Y’all right?” Curtis said.
“Just clumsy.” Doc straightened up and walked over to the dingy corner, feeling every one of his sixty-plus years. Damn he needed some ibuprofen. He plucked the old photo from the wall. It was about four by six and showed a ramrod straight German soldier posing proudly, one hand on his dagger. In the background was a high brick wall topped with barely visible concertina wire. Judging by the size of the gate and the two soldiers in the background, it was about fifty feet behind the subject.
He wore the black uniform of the Waffen SS. Although it was too small to see, Doc was certain he wore the Death’s Head symbol on his black officer’s cap.
They heard the unearthly wail from the barn followed by six pops and the sound of a chainsaw.
***
CHAPTER 27
Chainsaw
Chainsaw pulled the trigger when Mad Dog’s head hit the floor and didn’t stop until the long gun lay smoking and inert in his hands. Each percussion snapped a jolt up both arms but Saw was a trained shooter and automatically adjusted. He placed each shot in a cluster no larger than a dinner plate in the center of Helmet Head’s chest, noting the tiny eruptions of black leather. He placed the sixth shot dead center on HH’s visor. It kerranged off without leaving a mark.
Helmet Head stood immobile on the other side of the bike, sword at his side. He reminded Chainsaw of the robot in
The Day the Earth Stood Still
. For five seconds they stared at one another.
It was the longest five seconds of Chainsaw’s life.
Casually, Helmet Head walked around the bike toward him. He was about twenty feet away. Chainsaw unlimbered his chainsaw unconsciously aping Helmet Head’s
iaido
, the art of drawing the sword, striking the target, and returning the sword to its sheath in one smooth motion.
Chainsaw held the chainsaw down and yanked on the cord. It was wet from the rain. It sputtered. He yanked again, looking up like a trapped fox. Helmet Head paused, obviously waiting for Chainsaw to start the engine.
Gentlemen start your engines.
Chainsaw yanked three, four, five times and on the sixth the chainsaw sputtered into life. Saw gripped it ferociously in both hands circling away from the wall to give himself room. He’d been in knife fights. He expected to get cut. Helmet Head whipped his katana to a near vertical position over his head and lowered into a samurai stance. They danced the dance of death circling each other clockwise. Saw goosed the chainsaw, loving the surging revs, needing that shrieky highway sound to amp up.
Body armor Saw’s ass. He’d see how that worked when Saw laid his Stihl against the freak’s ankle or wrist. Only a crazy person engaged in knife fights. Saw was crazy. His arms and torso were covered with scars. He’d once taken out two Iraqi insurgents in the dark with his Sykes-Fairbairn. He’d lost it in a firefight in Mosul. He still missed that knife, more than most of the people he’d known.
Helmet Head darted forward, faking low and whipping the sword up and around in a downward parabola. Saw dipped and dodged right, meeting the sword with his spinning chain, eliciting a massive spark as the sword leapt back in the kendo master’s hands.
Saw had expected the steel to shatter. It did not appear to even be marked, although it was difficult to tell in the gloom. Saw knew a Japanese American in the Marines who regaled him with tales of the samurai and their awesome hand-forged swords. Miyamoto Musashi, Zatoichi, Togishi. How Toshiro Mifune had trained for years to authentically represent samurai on film. How the steel was made, folded over and over back in on itself, often containing the blood of its future master, often tested by beheading.
The sword caught the light and for an instant Saw saw the elegant
hitatsura
temper line like oceanic waves. And suddenly, the Dogs were there, Wild Bill, Doc and Curtis rushed in the door guns drawn and blammo—froze as if they’d hit a force field, mesmerized by the incredible sight.
“Don’t shoot!” Saw yelled.
Wild Bill brought his double-barreled .45 up and squeezed off four rounds with two pulls of his trigger. The air violently expanded and contracted. “Fuck that shit,” he said.
The four slugs struck Helmet Head dead center and he staggered back, recovering his balance and turning his attention to Wild Bill. Although no face was visible there was no question at whom he was looking. His gaze hit you like a fire hose.
Chainsaw charged aiming low. Without looking Helmet Head struck sideways and down splanging the spinning blade away and sparking like a tiny falling star. Wild Bill found the can of gas at his feet, jammed his pistol in his belt, picked up the can and sloshed gas toward the monster. It fell short but soaked a broad stripe of sawdust.
Doc saw it all happen. “Curtis!” he yelled. “Let’s get the fuck out!”
Wild Bill wheeled on him with pinpoint pupils. “You stand your ground, motherfucker!”
Saw saw his opportunity and charged screaming. Sword kissed saw. Sparks flashed to the ground. The sawdust ignited.
“Fuck!” Wild Bill bellowed and booked. Doc was right behind him. They paused panting some twenty feet from the entrance and looked back. The flames grew rapidly. The barn would be a conflagration within seconds. A series of muffled explosions from discarded bikes split the air. They froze with indecision.
Doc reacted first. “Come on! We’ve got to get Curtis!”
“Fuck Curtis!” Wild Bill roared. “He can take care of himself!”
An unearthly wail rose from the flames, from the earth itself. Doc barely had time to stagger backward out of its path before a blazing comet burst from the barn with the grotesque figure of a headless corpse pinned to the fork spikes. Doc fell to his knees. Every part of the bike including the rider and wheels was ablaze. The thing roared into the middle of the yard and braked severely on the drive spewing gravel and tossing Chainsaw’s headless blazing corpse like a bag of trash. It catapulted into a tree and bounced off.
Putting one foot down Helmet Head executed an impossible tire-shredding U-turn and turned the spiked death machine toward Wild Bill. Bill ran for the house as fast as his fat ass could go.
Doc turned and headed back toward the blazing barn.
***
CHAPTER 28
Bad Decisions
Fagan was conked out on the sofa when she returned. Asleep he looked even younger with his close-cropped curly hair ending in a widow’s peak. The emerging purple goose egg and some scrapes failed to conceal his chiseled good looks. The way he talked and carried himself said big time, not Podunk. Not for the first time she wondered what his story was. She had ways of making men talk.
He was a dash of Big City. He was her wake-up call. She had a window of opportunity to reclaim her life. She didn’t need to hurt anyone to do it. Except for Bill. But Bill had burned through all his chances and his nine lives.
I’m not gonna take it—never have and never will.
Lightning flashed through the high side window and minutes later the rumble of thunder. The storm was hanging around. Carefully so as not to wake the cop she sat next to him and gazed down. Didn’t work. His eyes opened and fixed on hers. They were hazel.
She placed the ice pad on his forehead as he reached for her, seizing her by the waist and drawing her down to him. The ice pad fell to the floor. One big spark. They climbed in around and over one another like wrestling mink and the clothes hit the floor. Fagan on top, Macy with her legs wrapped around his waist and just before he was about to come she whispered, “Go for it!”
The comment infuriated him. Why couldn’t she just keep her mouth shut?
He pumped harder and harder in a frenzy as the thunder rolled slowly over them. He came with such a fury of anxiety and satisfaction he sobbed.
Afterwards they lay under an old Army blanket on the sofa snuggling to the thunder. Macy giggled with a mixture of self-satisfaction and embarrassment.
“Who are you, Pete? Where do you come from? Got any family?”
“Grew up in Fairchild, Oklahoma. My old man is a Rabbi. I was adopted. He and my mother still live in the same house. I did two years in the Army, one tour of duty in Iraq and when I got out I took the fed civil service exam. That didn’t go anywhere, so I went back to Olathe Community College and majored in criminology. I applied for a job in Duke County, Nebraska and that’s how I got started.”
“How’d your parents feel about you going in the Army?”
“They thought I was nuts. I told them it was just something I felt I had to do. My dad is fairly religious—I attended Sunday school every week and I was confirmed. It’s like bar-mitzvah lite. I got a set of golf clubs. I don’t know why. I hate golf.”
“How did your parents feel about the Army?”
“The Rabbi hated it. ‘Jews aren’t soldiers!’ He had this thing about Jews being conscripted into the Czar’s Army. I mean let it go already. That was over a hundred years ago. You’d think he’d been drafted himself!”
“Were you adopted from Jewish parents?”
“No way of telling unless you want to pay for a DNA test. Why?”
“‘Cause you look Jewish.”
“What, the hair and the nose, right?”
Macy giggled.
“Well listen—the Jews, God bless ’em. They’re good people. But they’re not soldiers, police or firemen.”
“What about the Israelis? They seem pretty tough to me.”
“Okay—fine. My point is, I don’t feel like I have Jewish blood.
“I despise that image of Orthodox Jews with the curls, prophylactics and heavy wool coats. It just seems unmanly. I now know it isn’t but when you’re a kid image is everything. Didn’t matter that I was adopted. My so-called peers picked on me all through school. Not complaining—it is what it is. I guess I’ve been unconsciously rebelling against my parents’ expectations. What a shocker, huh?”
Macy ran her fingers through Fagan’s curly chest hair. He wore a gold Star of David on a thin gold chain. She wondered if he’d start balding in a few years like most of the hairy guys she knew. Unlike Wild Bill, Fagan’s stomach was as flat as Kansas.
“I guess I should have used a rubber, huh?”
“Don’t worry. Ain’t gonna happen. So tell the truth, officer. What are you doing down here? Burn some bridges did we?”
Fagan was silent for several seconds parsing his words. “I got my partner killed.”
***