The Damned (8 page)

“Grab her, Claude,” the biker said, and a hand clamped around Karen’s forearm. Seconds later she was being hauled through the doorway, back into the bodega. The motorcycle roared to life, and the rumble of the engine moved off in the direction it had been coming from when Karen had first seen the guy moving up the alley.

She struggled to resist and the biker laughed; let herself go limp and he dropped her to the floor. Then he grabbed a fistful of hair, dragging her like a sack of potatoes kicking and screaming through the stockroom and into the store, all the way to the front of the place, where he pulled her to her feet and marched her out onto the sidewalk.

The biker from the back alley pulled up in front of her, killed the engine, slammed down the kickstand and leaned back in his seat. Beside him was the guy Karen had walloped with her knapsack, one eye puffy and swollen, the right side of his face a torn and shredded mess—behind
him,
entwined in the twisted wreckage of the two Harley’s, was the guy he’d collided with. He was shaking his head and mumbling, talking to himself and looking down at his leg. Karen could see that it was bad, the leg twisted at an awkward angle, the blood-soaked pants ripped open, exposing a pointed shard of bone that rose through the torn skin just below his knee.

“You all right, dude?” Claude called out to him.

“No, I’m not all right! My FUCKING LEG IS BROKE!”

“Man,” Claude said. “That’s fucked-up.”

“Maybe I should take a look at him,” Karen said, yelping when Claude, still gripping a handful of hair, yanked her head sideways.

“
What?
” he said. “What the fuck did you say?”

“I should take a look at him,” she said, wincing against the pain. “Take a look at his leg.”

“I think you’ve done quite enough, already.”

“Seriously, I’m a nurse, or used to be.”

“Well, you know what,” Claude said. “I think you just violated your Hippocratic Oath there, sweetheart. Didn’t she, Ben?”

The guy on the bike chuckled. “No shit,” he said.

“I’m just saying: maybe I should look at him. Maybe I—ow!”

Ben said, “Oh, don’t you worry; we got something for you to look at, all right—up close and personal. Something that ain’t legs. And you’re gonna do a damn site more than look at ‘em. And when you’re done lookin’ at ‘em, we’re gonna shove ‘em right up that pretty little cunt of yours.”

He got off his bike and stepped forward, closer, until he was an arm’s reach away. “And when you’re done lickin’ our chops, you’re gonna give that poor bastard the ride of his life.”

He took another menacing step forward. He was huge, thick shouldered and well-muscled. He wore a sleeveless Devil’s Own jacket, but no shirt beneath it. Curly black hair sprouted wildly from his head; his chest was covered with it. He was smiling like it was all a big joke, but his eyes were hard, mean-looking. Smiling like it was joke, but Karen knew it wasn’t a joke.

He said, “What’dya think about that?”

Behind him, the guy with the bleeding face had walked over to Karen’s knapsack and dumped its contents onto the asphalt. He snatched up a white blouse and pressed it to his cheek.

“Go ahead if you want to. I’ve got AIDS. I’m dying anyway. You want a good dose, have at it. You
and
your boys.”

“You lying, god—”

“Go ahead. Find out for yourself—up close and personal.”

Ben punched her in the gut; her legs gave out and she hung there, suspended from Claude’s hand like a broken marionette, her face twisted into a frozen mask of pain and frustration. Claude let go and she dropped to her knees, wheezing and gasping as he drew a hunting knife from behind his back. “You’re right about one thing,” he said. He grabbed another handful of hair, yanked her head back and showed her the knife. “You
are
dying
.”

She had survived the fire and brimstone raining down from the heavens, scratching and clawing, ducking and diving and starving nearly to death, hiding out like a rat in a hole—and for what? So she could wind up cut to ribbons by these two? She closed her eyes and the blade came down; it touched her throat and she began to shake.

“Huh-uh,” Ben said.

“My ass!” said Claude.

“Let’s take her back to Dub, see what he wants to do with her.”

“Gut her ass,” the third biker said, still pressing the bloody blouse to his face.

“Nah, let’s take her back to Dub.”

In the middle of the street, their injured counterpart cried out, “MY GODDAMN LEG!”

“I’ll take a look at him, if you want.”

“Yeah,” Claude said. “Maybe you should.” Still with a handful of hair, he relaxed his grip and let go, and he and Ben marched Karen across the asphalt, behind their friend, who was still pressing the blouse to his face as he leaned over the injured gang member.

“Jesus, man,” he said. “Some spill we took, huh?” Maybe he was trying to cheer the guy up, take his mind off his problems with a little casual conversation. Whatever he was doing wasn’t working. The guy glared up at him, his jaw clenched, his face wracked with pain.

“What’dya think?” Claude said when they were standing over the bikes.

“Give me your knife,” said Karen.

“What are you,” Ben said, “a
comedian?
”

“I need to cut his pants leg so I can get good a look at him.”

“Yeah, right,” Claude said, chuckling and kneeling beside the injured biker, probably picturing his dead friend with the spikes sticking out the back of his neck. “I’ll do it for you.” He pulled his knife, grabbing a piece of the bloody pants leg and working the blade inside it, the guy howling as he drew the blade down, shearing the fabric away from his ruined leg so Karen could get a clear enough view. And there it was, ruined, just like Karen had known it would be from the moment she spied the piece of bone from her vantage point on the sidewalk. There wasn’t much she could do—she’d known that, too. She’d just been trying to get on their good side. If they had a good side, which, of course, they didn’t. Not these guys, with their cruel smiles and their cavalier attitude toward their injured friend. An attitude punctuated when Ben pulled a .45 caliber pistol from behind his back, put it to the howling biker’s head and blew it apart.

“The fuck, man!” Claude said, jumping to his feet, the gun’s loud report echoing down the street as the other biker pulled a pistol of his own.

“What?” Ben said. “We got no doctor out here, no way to mend that busted leg. I ain’t no genius, but even I know he was beyond help, unless we had a hospital to cart him off to. And I don’t see a working hospital around here. How ‘bout you, sweetie—you got an emergency room in that backpack of yours?”

Karen, who had turned her head a split second after the shot rang out, said nothing. She’d heard the world had gone mad; people were turning on one another, savaging each other, and people had died. But up to now she had witnessed no such event. Sure, she’d been a trauma nurse, and had been elbow-deep in much worse than this. But it had always been the aftermath. She’d never seen a face contort, the jaws puff out, the head rock sideways as blood and bone and pulped pieces of brain blew out the back of it.

“Hey,
you.
I’m talking to you.”

“No,” Karen said. “No hosp—”

Ben’s arm flashed up, leveling the .45’s barrel directly at his puffy-eyed comrade, who stood holding his gun by his side. “
You!
Holster that weapon or try to use it—makes no difference to me!”

The guy’s hand went behind him, and came back empty. “Jesus, did you have to kill him?”

“What’d you wanta do, leave him out here to rot? We couldn’t even get him back home, the way he was. And what if we did manage to haul his ass back to camp? Then what, watch him suffer ‘til his leg rotted off? And that’s what we were looking forward to, wasn’t it, Dr. Nurse?”

Karen, still looking away from the corpse, slowly nodded her head.

“You see that, don’t you, Jet?” Claude said, and Karen finally had a name to put that torn and bleeding face to—Jet, the guy who had just told Ben to ‘gut the bitch’.

“I guess… But, man, it just doesn’t seem right.”

“I know, but, well, hell; we did him a favor.”

Ben said, “Damn right we did him a favor. I ever get fucked-up like that, end it quick. I sure as hell don’t wanta spend my last days suffering like he was gonna.”

They stood for a moment, Ben, Jet and Claude, looking down at their fallen brother in arms, at the wreckage he was entangled in, then back to Karen, who had been dreading the moment when their thoughts turned to the business at hand: what to do with their captive, who had done much more damage than her slight build would ever have indicated.

It was Claude who finally spoke up. Claude, with the big bushy beard and the straight black hair, with a tattoo of Jesus on his left shoulder and the Devil on his right. “I’ve heard of big things coming in small packages,” he said, “but this is ridiculous.”

Ben chuckled, and Jet said, “We should just kill her, gut her ass and leave her in the street. I sure as hell don’t wanta be the one tellin’ Dub this little girl wiped out two of his men, not to mention what she did to them bikes.”

“What, you wanta get caught up in a lie, instead? Hey, we didn’t do anything wrong, but you go making up some bullshit story and Dub sniffs it out, well, I wouldn’t wanta be in your shoes if he does. I mean, what’re you gonna tell him—they run off? They lit out? How ‘bout you, Claude? You gonna back that action?”

“Not me.”

“We should still kill her—tell Dub we got jumped by a gang of Q’s or something.”

Karen stepped back and looked off to her right, at the wide-open door of the store she’d just been walked out of—she wouldn’t make it, of course, but better a bullet or two in the back than Claude’s hunting knife carving up her belly.

“Don’t even think about it,” Claude said, alerted by the sudden movement.

“Yeah,” Ben said. “Don’t make us take up his suggestion. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t dig it.” To Jet, he said, “What is it, dude, you embarrassed half-pint here got the best of us?”

“Well, yeah, that’s part of it, sure. I mean,
look
at her.”

“Oh, I’ve been looking at her, all right. Don’t you worry about that.”

Karen, who had been on the verge of making a mad dash to what most certainly would have been her death, detected a begrudged tone of respect in the timbre of Ben’s voice, and for the first time since Claude had dragged her kicking and screaming through the store, thought that she just might live long enough to make it off this dusty city street—in spite of what she’d done, the trouble she’d caused them.

Jet pulled the blood-soaked blouse away from his face, wincing when fabric and flesh parted. “There’s also
this
. She’s gotta pay for this.”

“I could take a look at that, if you want. You know, clean it up some, put some—”

“Oh, fuck you,” Jet said, drawing a smile from Claude and a muffled burst of laughter from Ben.

“Well,” Ben said. “Looks like we’re gonna have to piggy-back it back to camp.” To Karen, he said, “C’mon, half-pint.”

He led her back to his bike—after mounting, he nodded to the space in front of him, and she swung her leg over, straddling the gas tank as Claude and Jet made their way back to the store, to the Harley Claude had brought to a screeching stop in front of the place. She could feel Ben’s thighs rubbing against her, an act that felt revolting, yet oddly secure.

Ben started his engine and so did Claude, and the four of them roared off down the street, leaving the dead biker in a bloody heap behind them.

The bars clanged open and Dub stepped into the cell. “You,” he said, pointing at one of four women housed within its confines. She had auburn hair and dark, almond-shaped eyes, and even though it had been more than seven weeks since she would have last seen sunlight, her skin was not pale. Dub figured she came from a mixed family. Maybe the mother was Irish, the father Puerto Rican, or of Arabic descent. The upshot was: she had retained a certain amount of beauty that others had lost, something Carlicci and his boys would appreciate.

“Where are you taking her?” The woman who said this was short and stocky, flat-chested with streaks of grey running through her brittle-looking brown hair. Obviously indignant about being held against her will, she stood at the back of the cell, fists clenched against her hips. She had shot her mouth off to the wrong person; maybe she’d insulted one of the crew to the point of anger. She posed about as much danger to Dub as a mosquito—less, in fact, because a mosquito could bite him; she could do nothing more than glower from within her cage.

“To a party,” he said.

“Party, huh? Good eats, good drinks, something better than the canned shit you’ve been feeding us?”

“You don’t have it so bad,” Dub said. “Food to eat, water to drink, a place to put your head at night. Safe and sound—nobody bothers you in here, do they?”

“A bird’s safe and sound in his cage. Doesn’t mean he likes being there.”

Dub shrugged his shoulders. “Good point,” he said. “What’s your name—Sadie, isn’t it?” He motioned the dark-skinned woman forward, and she walked hesitantly past her older counterpart, through the cell and into the corridor, beside two shapely blondes Dub and his men had already gathered up.

“Shirley.”

“Hang in there, Shirley. All of you may be leaving soon.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah. No shit. If you can follow the rules.”

Another woman, a red-head who’d been lying silently on her bunk, said, “What does that mean?”

“Just what I said. We’re gonna get everything back on-line. After that, we’ll establish a little law and order around here, some bylaws to go along with it. Long as folks toe the line, chip in and do what they’re told, they can go about their business as they please. Buck the system, you’ll end up in here—or worse.”

Dub backed out of the cell, grabbed the bars and slammed them shut. Beside him in the dimly lit corridor was Steady Teddy, flanked by Bert and Ernie, who kept a watchful eye on the three women. Teddy held a large shopping bag by its looped-string handles, its contents puffing the beige paper outward, as if it were stuffed with pillows.

Dub turned to leave, and Shirley said, “If you’re going to set us free, why not go ahead and do it?”

“All in due time, Sadie,” Dub said. Then he turned and ushered his companions down the corridor. On the way to their destination, they passed cell after cell, most empty, but not all of them, several housing what amounted to political prisoners. Dub figured there were twenty or so men and women locked up in here. People who had refused to go along, had balked at an order, fought back when attacked and ended up locked away with the shit kicked out of them; women, some of them unlucky enough to possess a pretty face, sharp features and a pleasing figure, a marketable commodity for The Devil’s Own, who bandied them about like used poker chips, making them available for gang members, the John Q’s who worked for them, and a variety of others who might find themselves in the position to do a favor for the gang: the truckers who, once cornered, joined up and turned Dub onto the tanker trucks; the electricians who wired up those emergency generators, providing a modicum of comfort for Dub and The Devil’s Own.

Down the hallway they went, through a doorway that led to another long corridor. At the end of that corridor lay the washroom facilities with its cold grey walls and communal showers, a dreary place Dub was quite sure had witnessed its own fair share of atrocities, a few of which he’d been a party to himself. They didn’t say much of anything on their way to the showers, to each other or to the women, or to the occasional prisoner calling out from the cells.

When they came to the shower room, Dub had the women strip. He knew they wouldn’t mind. After all, it had been a long time since they’d bathed—they had to be looking forward to it. He would have been, had he been in their situation. But he wouldn’t have been in their situation, not him. Had he been a good looking woman, he would’ve gotten away from the city, kept the hell out of sight. If he’d been a Q, he would have kept his mouth shut and gone along with whatever he was told, kept his eyes peeled for a way out, and when his chance came, he’d have been dust in the wind. Most of them had gone about as if it were business as usual, roaming packs of men and women looking high and low for food and shelter, comfort and companionship. They had quite the organization going when Dub and The Devil’s Own stepped up and put a collective foot squarely on their throats. Some fought back—many died. Most scattered beneath the swirling smoke and ash that fell relentlessly from the sky; rats running from a ship already sunk, chased away by Dub, leader of The Devil’s Own.

The women laid their clothing on one of a series of benches scattered about the cement floor, each one stepping beneath a shower head jutting from the institutional-green ceramic tiled shower enclosure. Handles turned and water gushed forward, bringing forth a series of laughter and moans. Girlish giggles and pleasurable sighs echoed through the room as they stood beneath the hissing water with their soap and shampoo, the two blondes, and the dark-skinned woman, who now looked more like a sultry young goddess than a tired and weary captive plucked from her cage on the way to an uncertain future. Her hands flowed across her breasts, over her erect nipples. Her lips parted, her eyes closed, and the three of them lingered beneath the gentle spray of water, as if each were alone in their own private world, far away from bikers and biblical events—if this was a biblical event. Dub still wasn’t sure that it was.

Dub had thought Bert and Ernie would step forward for a little play time, Steady Teddy for sure, and he wouldn’t have stopped them if they had. But they didn’t. They stood quietly, Teddy setting down his shopping bag as the women lathered up their bodies.

It was Bert who finally spoke up, “We really gonna turn these people loose?”

“Yeah,” Dub said. “I think we are.”

“But, why?” Ernie said, as if it was a concept he truly did not understand, and he didn’t—Dub could see it in his eyes. He understood the way of violence, stealing, robbing and looting and kicking the shit out of people, dragging some poor bastard begging and pleading up the courthouse steps, slamming them against a wall, then into a dimly lit cell. He understood power, having it and wielding it, using it to get his way, to get what he wanted. Relinquishing that death grip, removing the boot from his adversary’s throat was a concept foreign to the massive biker.

“We need to take over, to rule the city.”

“I thought that’s what we were doing,” Bert said.

“No, we’re kicking the shit outa people, hanging out and catching a buzz—fun shit, to be sure, but we need to start thinking about what’s coming down the line. Sooner or later somebody’s gonna take over. We need that somebody to be us. We’ve got drugs and gas, and everybody’s scared shitless of us, but we need more. We need to govern.”

“
Govern?
What the fuck?”

“You just don’t get it, do you, Bert? We’ve got what, fifty or so hard core bikers and a hundred or so stragglers? We need four times that many, and that’s just for starters. Sooner or later, somebody’s gonna breeze into town—a gang, some half-assed, rag-tag army, or maybe the Q’s’ll band together and bushwhack our asses. We need to get busy, get organized and grow the gang. We need an army of our own.”

“I don’t know, Dub. I was in the army one time already. Didn’t like that too much.”

Teddy laughed, and so did Dub. He laid a hand on Bert’s shoulder. Smiling up at him, he said, “What were you in the army, a private, people always telling you where to go, what to do, what to eat? Some high-handed prick of a general handing out orders, rolling the shit downhill ‘til you were standing knee-deep in it?”

Bert gave his shoulders a shrug. “Like I said: I didn’t much like it.”

“Hell no you didn’t. ‘Cause you were
taking
orders. You’ll be giving them, this time around. You’ll be the generals, you and Ernie, Teddy and Claude and Ben, and the rest of them fuckers.”

“If we’re all generals, who’s the soldiers? Who’re we gonna…”

Dub smiled as Bert paused, a small glimmer of awareness sparking behind his eyes. “The Q’s.”

“Right. We get ‘em organized, get ‘em on our side. One big happy family, baby. Give ‘em property, jobs to do, functions to perform. Let ‘em do whatever the hell they want, free to come and go as they please, long as they’re with us when we need ‘em.”

“Man,” Ernie said, “we let ‘em do whatever they want, they’ll bolt the hell outa here.”

“Sure, they’ll think about it,” Teddy said. “Some might try it, some will even get away. But the ones that don’t we’ll make a hell of an example of, string them up from light posts, nail them to crosses in the middle of the square and parade their fellow Q’s past them. They’ll get the message. They’ll fall in line.”

“Hell,” Ernie said. “They’re already scared of us, just like Dub said.”

“That’s right,” Dub said. “They’ll do whatever we want. They do it now because they’re scared silly. We throw a little benevolence their way—”

“
Benevolence?
”

“Kindness, Bert—throw ‘em a bone.
Bonehead.
”

Teddy laughed. So did Ernie, an uncomfortable look spreading across his face as his partner’s face turned red.

“We ease up a hair, send our generals on a little recruiting mission, ten or so to a group to start with. Start ‘em off slow, put a team or two out gathering up food, others’ll bring back clothing. Send a few teams out scouting the Burbs, see what we can find out there: cash, jewelry, weapons, more recruits. Show them a little kindness, that’s all; make them a part of the team. What’s good for the team is good for them, they’ll see that. Long as they do what we tell them, we’ll do ‘em right, let ‘em move about as they please. They’ll feel secure under our protection. Word gets out how we’re treating them, we’ll have people
asking
to join up. Next thing you know it’ll be just like I said: one big happy family. Pass out the weapons and start training the fuckers.”

“What if some happy family member turns his weapon on us?”

“Won’t happen, because way before we hand out the guns, we’ll show them: any act of insubordination will be dealt with, swiftly and violently.”

Across the way, the women remained under their shower nozzles, soaping up and letting the falling water rinse the suds away, one of the blondes washing her hair for what must have been the fifth time. Dub knew what they were doing; delaying what was coming next, as if by staying under the shower they could prevent Dub and his boys from dragging them off to whatever unknown destination lay before them.

“All right, ladies!” Dub called out. “Time to wrap it up.” He picked up the shopping bag and led Teddy, Bert and Ernie across the room.

Once again, handles were turned, this time cutting off the flow of water. The women walked naked across the floor. Gone were the smiles and laughter, replaced by solemn looks of nervous apprehension. They stood in front of Dub, beads of water dappling their glistening flesh as he tossed each of them a towel, and he and his mates watched them dry themselves. One of the blondes tossed her towel on the bench, and the others followed suit. She started to retrieve her clothing, but Dub said, “Leave it.” Inside the bag were white terrycloth robes and open-toed, leather sandals. Dub gave each woman a set of these items.

“What’re your names?” he said.

“Trixie,” said one of the blondes.

“Heather,” said the other.

“Figures,” Dub said, Teddy snickering as the women draped the robes around them.

“Mariah,” the last of them said, her dark, wet curls hanging in stark contrast against the white terrycloth robe as she stepped into her sandals.

Dub turned to face her. “You look like a Mariah, like a goddamn golden goddess. How’d you end up here?”

She shrugged. “The world went crazy,” she said. “I went looking for food and wound up here.”

“Sucks, doesn’t it?”

“I’ll say.”

“Well, you’re on your way to a better life, now.”

“Where are we going?”

“To a party.”

“So you said.”

“Yes, I certainly did.” Dub extracted a can of spray deodorant from the bag and handed it to Trixie, who used it and gave it to Heather; she used it, as did Mariah when it was passed over to her, spraying it on and slipping the container into the pocket of her robe. A wooden-handled hairbrush was pulled from the bag and given to Mariah. The same was done for the other two.

“Let’s go,” Dub said, and then he and his pals led the women back down the hallway, the women brushing their wet hair as the leather soles of their sandals slapped against the concrete walkway.

Down the corridor they went, retracing their footsteps, Dub and Teddy in front, Bert and Ernie bringing up the rear, none of them saying much of anything on their way back. Dub didn’t see any reason to lay it out for Mariah and her companions, only that they were going to a party, one he was quite sure none of them would ever forget. Back to the doorway they had passed through on their way to the showers, they went down the dimly lit hallway, all of them ignoring the prisoners calling out from their cells, especially Mariah, Heather, and Trixie, who kept their eyes straight ahead, glued to Dub’s back, as if by acknowledging those they had once kept company with they might find themselves cast back into the cold, dank cells from which they had finally gained their release.