Strange Robby (10 page)

"Answer me!" Robby screamed. He took his hand and ripped the dew rag from his brother's head.

"No!" Evan cried as he wet himself.

"You think you want to be a part of this gang. They aren't nothing but crap. I have given up any life of my own to make sure that you guys get the breaks I never had. Do you really think that I would let anyone do this . . . " he shook the rag in Evan's face, "to my family? Do you really think that I would let you ruin everything that I have worked for? How
dare
you bring the drugs and the darkness into my home with these babies! I'll kill you myself before I let you destroy my family. Take me to them, Evan.
Show them to me.
"

"Robby!" Evan cried louder. "I'll quit the gang. I won't smoke pot no more. I'll go back to school. I'll . . . "

"You don't understand what you've done. You can't just walk away. They won't let you walk away. Do you think people stay in gangs because they like it? No. They stay because once they're in, they're afraid. Afraid that their so-called friends will kill them if they try to leave, and if they don't some other gang will. And it's not just you Evan, you've put us all in danger, that's how it works. You try to walk out of the gang, they kill one of the kids. You've created a situation that can only be cured one way. Take me to them . . . NOW!"

Evan didn't want to, but he led his brother to his friends. The party he had left earlier still raged. It was in an old abandoned shack at the end of a slum street. There was so much pot and crack being smoked in there that it was coming out the windows. The bitter cold had driven everyone inside.

Robby got out of the truck and donned his "costume". He turned to Evan and snarled at him. "You stay here, don't you dare move. And always remember that everything that happens tonight is your fault."

Evan nodded silently. As Robby walked away Evan sank down into the floorboards, where he covered his ears and tried to block out the screams. Several minutes passed and then Robby opened the door and got in. He started the car and headed home. He looked at Evan quaking in the floor. "You can only belong to one gang, Evan, and that's us. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Robby."

 
"A good name is better than precious ointment;
and the day of death than the day of one's birth.
It is better to go to the house of mourning, than
to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end
of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart.
Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness
of the countenance the heart is made glad."
Ecclesiastes 7:1-3

 

This time it was bad. These bodies weren't neatly brain-fried; they were blown up. At least fifteen prominent members of the Skulls, a local street gang, had died in the carnage last night. Five people had lived through it, and the stories they told were . . . well, ludicrous.

"I'm telling you . . . a purple ski mask and a red cape," the punk said for the fourteenth time.

Tommy shook his head. "Humor me, and tell me again."

"This dude came through the door wearing a purple ski mask and a red cape. Big Jerry yelled
Who the fuck do you think you are, weenie boy?
He yelled back
The Angel of Death!
and
BOOM!
Jerry blew up, and then the dude just went around the room blowing people up."

"What did the weapon look like?"

"Man, for the thousandth time. There weren't no fucking weapon, at least nothing you could see. When he had finished he looked at us'ns and said,
This is the only chance I'm giving you. Turn back from the course you are following or fry like the others.
"

The kid was scared—terrified and shaking. No doubt coming down off some drug, but he told the same story that the other four had. To the letter.

Tommy watched as Spider drove up. She got out looking more than a little perturbed. "What took you so long?" Tommy asked with a smile.

Spider looked back at him and snarled. At two o'clock in the morning she didn't feel like joking. Mostly she felt like sleeping. Carrie was trying to kill her; not that it wasn't how she'd always dreamt of going.

"What we got?" Spider asked.

Tommy pointed at the door. "You tell me."

Spider walked over and looked in. She took one look around and almost chucked. The smell, the look, the dark.

"Incoming! Oh God! It's gonna hit us!" she yelled as she ran. The others ran, too, but most of them weren't fast enough. The blast knocked her to the ground and sent her flying into the wall of the trench. Something soft and wet and sticky hit her in the side of the head. There was a glimmer of realization as the smoke and flames filled the air. That something that hit her was part of Becky. The rest of Becky was lying at her feet. She didn't have time for it to sink in; didn't have time to deal with it because then the bastards were in the trench with them . . . and it was shooting and stabbing and blood, so much blood—her blood, Becky's blood, the rag heads' blood. James came up beside her, trying to hold the bastards off. A bullet hit him, two, three. She hit the ground and rolled, finding a safe place behind a piece of a car.

"Spider, help!" He held a hand out to her. She reached for him, and something hard and hot hit her shoulder, throwing her back. She tore a piece of her shirt off and packed her own wound as she watched a bullet splinter James' skull. She grabbed her gun, got up and ran towards the enemy. It wasn't courage; it was rage that empowered her. Rage, and fear. Sarge screamed, "No Webb!" But she ran in, firing, and now he was dead and she was still alive. Another bomb hit. This time it hit behind the Iraqis line. The cavalry had come. Seven of her unit joined her, only four lived to see morning. Only the five of them waded through the blood and carnage and survived. It was idiotic. They gave them a medal for living, but then they gave everyone else a medal for dying, and how much more stupid was that?

"Spider!" Tommy screamed again. "Spider!"

She turned away from the scene towards Tommy. She must have looked as shaken as she felt.

"You OK, Spider? You're looking a little green."

"I'm . . . OK."

"You hear my question?"

She shook her head no.

"I asked if you thought it was the Fry Guy."

She didn't have to think about that one. It was a no-brainer. "Yes."

"Why so sloppy? Why such a mess?"

Spider thought about the mess he was talking about. Thought about what had happened to her in Baghdad.

"Killing Rage. This time he was mad. He didn't really think; he just struck out. Apparently—at least in his mind—they did something personal to him."

"He left five witnesses," Tommy told her.

She looked at him in disbelief.

"And this is what they all said." He punched up the data and showed it to her. She watched all five interviews, and then Tommy repeated the description. "A man of unknown ethnic origin wearing a purple ski hat, a red cape and leather work gloves."

"He knew there was a chance that not everyone here would be truly bad, evil if you will. The five he left alive he must consider redeemable. See if they had any previous records."

Spider seemed disconnected. Maybe she was just tired, but somehow Tommy didn't think so; there was something wrong. It was cold and she was sweating. He looked for the files anyway.

"You're right. None of those five have a record that includes anything harsher than shoplifting. Three of them have no record at all."

"And what do you want to bet that all those corpses do. Or if they don't, that they were deeply into the gang—totally corrupted. We should interview some of the families of both the victims and the survivors see if there are any similarities . . . "

Bodies, so many bodies, and somebody had to move them. No one ever thought about that.

The flies. That's what she remembered—the flies. Like black air they were so thick, and the smell—sweetly putrid. They sent them in on what was supposed to be a routine relief. They were to go in and take over the post; that was what they were told. Their sergeant never told them that everyone there had been killed by some biological or chemical weapon that they weren't at all sure had dissipated. Life was cheap to the boys at the top; that was a fact that never changed. Some dick way up the food chain was always willing to put someone else's life on the line to prove some stupid point.

She didn't sleep the first three days they were there, and any food she ate came right up. By the fourth day they had most of the corpses cleaned up and she had become desensitized, or at least that was what the military fucks like to call it. It was a nice clean way to explain that they had killed part of your brain. That they had stolen away part of your humanity.

Becky never did "desensitize," and it made things that much harder for her. Spider tried to make things easier for her and in doing so wound up making things harder for herself.

Who cleaned up Becky's body? Who cleaned up James's? What good was life when, in the end, you were reduced to nothing more than a mess someone had to clean up?

Body after body, day after day, the heat and the sand and the damned flies . . .

"Goddamn it, Spider!" Tommy all but screamed.

She looked at him, took a deep breath, and rubbed a sweaty hand down her ashen face.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

She checked first to make sure her comlink was off, and then took a quick look at Tommy's. He had apparently severed the link before he screamed at her.

She laughed nervously and started to lie, but she was shaking and felt sick to her stomach. She looked at Tommy, her teeth chattering, suddenly cold.

"Sometimes when you see things, Tommy . . . Things people shouldn't have to see . . . It changes you, and you're never quite the same again. You have to bury those things real deep or you can't even think to lead anything close to a normal life. But they're never gone, and when you least expect it, they'll jump right back up in your face."

She looked into Tommy's eyes. "You can see too much, Tommy." She wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. "Things that will keep you up at night, things that won't let you sleep. I'm having a PTS episode. I'm going home, Tommy."

"You OK to drive?"

"Yeah, I'll be all right as soon as I put some distance between me and . . .
that
. You got things here?"

"Yeah. Sure, pard." Tommy watched her go. He saw her bend over to pick something up; he couldn't see what. Then she got in her car and drove off. He knew he shouldn't have let her leave alone, but he turned around and went back to work.

"You did what!" Laura screamed at him.

Tommy didn't want to do this. If he went back to bed right now he could get an hour's sleep before he had to get up and go back to work again. "She wanted to go home. I let her."

"Damn it, Tommy, she's your partner. It's not like this is the first time she's had one of these PTS episodes. You know she's not safe to drive."

"She's a grown woman. She's never had trouble driving before, she said she just needed to get away," Tommy defended.

Laura picked up the phone and dialed Spider's apartment. Carrie's sleepy voice answered.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Carrie, it's Laura. I'm sorry to call so late. Is Spider home?"

Carrie looked around. Spider wasn't in bed, and as far as she could see, not in the apartment. "No, why?"

Laura took a deep breath. "Ah . . . Tommy wanted to ask her something about the case, that's all."

"Is everything all right?" Carrie asked. "Is Spider all right?"

"Yeah, she should be home soon. Sorry I woke you. Good night." She hung up the phone and glared at Tommy.

Tommy dialed up Spider's private comlink number. He sighed a sigh of relief when she answered, then frowned when he realized she was in her car. "Spider, what the hell are you doing?"

"It's OK, I'm going home now. I just had to calm down, that's all."

"All right. Go straight home and call me when you get there."

"Will do."

Carrie gave the phone a weird look and hung it up. She looked at the clock, frowned when she saw the time, and rolled over to try and go back to sleep. It wasn't happening. About fifteen minutes later Spider came in. She looked up at Spider and patted the bed beside her. Spider shucked her clothes and crawled under the covers. Carrie snuggled around her.

"My God, Honey! You're so cold and sweaty. Do you have a cold?"