Dark Angel Before the Dawn da-1

by Max Allan Collins

… which was a mistake.

  The first thing he lost was the blonde. Slipping out from under his snake-embossed bicep, the prom queen said to him, “Screw you and the Harley you rode in on,” and stormed off toward the tent city, leaving the biker to stare at Original Cindy.

  “Hey, baby,” he said flashing that multicolored grin, his speech only a little slurred. “Three's a crowd, anyway.”

  Original Cindy put her hands on her hips and reared back her Afroed head. “You can't be serious, Haystack— you think I was smilin' at

  your

  punk ass?”

  His forehead clenched as he attempted thought.

  Original Cindy continued with his schooling: “I was

  smilin'

  at the sweet squeeze that went thatta way,” one long thin finger pointing in the direction the biker's chick had gone.

  His eyes widened and the grin turned upside down. “Jesus! A fuckin'

  dyke!

  ”

  He took another step toward her, a menacing one this time; but stopped when Original Cindy dropped into a combat stance.

  She asked, “You denigratin' my sexual preference aside… you

  sure

  you wanna go there?”

  Cindy had been making her way back to Seattle since she'd gotten out of the army, not so long ago. And a woman, veteran or not, didn't hitch her way from Fort Hood, Texas, unless she knew how to handle her ass.

  The drunk biker considered backing down for a moment, but his ego got the better of him and he pulled out his switchblade. The knife opened with a

  snick,

  long narrow blade finding light to wink off.

  But he might have taken out a kazoo and started playing “Yankee Doodle,” for all the reaction it got out of Original Cindy, who merely smirked a little.

  “Know what they say,” she said. “Longer the blade… ”

  The biker wiped several greasy locks of hair out of his eyes. “Y'gonna

  really

  apologize now, bitch.”

  She tilted her head and appraised him, as if the biker were fine print she was trying to make out.

  “You know,” she said, “you done nothin' but call Original Cindy names since we met… the ‘d' word, the ‘b' word… and you're just about a consonant away from getting my boot in the crack of your wide honky ass.”

  His eyes were white all the way around now, and he blurted another epithet— finally getting around to the “c” word— and charged her.

  “That's the one… ” she said, and as he neared, she sidestepped, cracking him along the ear with the back of a fist as he stumbled past her, and kicking him in the ass.

  That was the second thing the biker lost: his dignity… such as it was.

  “God

  damn it,

  ” he roared, one hand going to the reddening ear. “I'm gonna cut you to fuckin' ribbons, you black bitch!”

  Her response to this name-calling was nonverbal: with a martial-arts jump, she delivered a perfectly placed, spike-heeled kick to his foul mouth.

  The biker dropped like a bag of grain, his knife tumbling from his popped-open fingers and rolling under some bushes, as if trying to get the hell out of this. The big man tried to speak again, but the words came out a mushy mumble mixed with the teeth he was spitting up like undigested corn. Blood streaked down his chin onto his bare, hairy chest in colorful ribbons.

  “Ooooh,” Original Cindy said, hands on hips again, wincing in feigned disgust. “You do know how to gross a girl out… You wanna call me some more names? You ain't worked your way to ‘n' yet…'Course then I'd have to kill your ass.”

  Wobbling to his feet, his eyes narrowing with hate, the biker glanced toward the bush where his knife peeked out from under some leaves.

  “Now, you don't even wanna think about going for that, do you now? Your mama didn't raise a fool, did she— surely you know when you got your ass kicked?”

  The response to this diplomacy was, “Fuck you!”

  She waggled her head and waggled a finger, too. “No sir, nada chance, not on your

  best

  day… not even if I got some of that sweet thing you chased off afterward.”

  Hysterical with fury and embarrassment, the biker lunged for the bushes where his knife awaited. Original Cindy cut off his path and met him with a side kick to the head. Again the biker dropped… and this time he stayed down. Breathing— a bubbly saliva-and-blood broth boiling at his broken mouth.

  Turning casually toward the tents, Original Cindy thought,

  Now where did that fine slice of heaven get herself to?

  But the blonde was nowhere to be seen.

  “Damn,” Original Cindy said to nobody. “And just when I thought we had us a moment.”

  Turning back, she went through the open cage doors into the bar. Two things assaulted her immediately: the raucous roar of a bad rock band in the far end of the room— almost twenty years into the twenty-first century and ZZ Top covers still ruled— and the aroma of sandalwood incense laced with monkey shit. Original Cindy decided the smart money was on breathing through her mouth— which meant she would fit right in with this group.

  The joint was packed with the sort of lowlifes who made the road their home, and the combination of sweat, liquor, and bad breath was an invitation to be somewhere else.

  But Original Cindy ain't no quitter,

  she reminded herself, and besides… Cindy was parched. She'd been looking forward to a brew even before she worked up a thirst kicking biker ass. So she elbowed her way to the bar.

  The band continued to whack away at their instruments the singer caterwauling into a frequently feeding-back mike; but Cindy knew it would take someone with a Ph.D. in classic rock to figure out which ZZ Top song they were currently butchering.

  The bartender— a skinny pale pitiful-looking guy with more hair than his comb could handle and two puffy black eyes, courtesy of a dissatisfied customer no doubt— moved in front of her.

  “Beer!” she yelled, over the din of the band and the crowd.

  He nodded and walked away.

  She wheeled to have a look at the predominantly biker crowd. Last time Original Cindy had seen this much denim and leather in one place had been at a rodeo near Fort Hood. This was nothing like that… thank God; even the bikers were an improvement over the shit-kicker cowboys in Texas. Original Cindy was not prejudiced, but she had little patience for rednecks.

  Or for redneck bands like this one— two guitars, a bass, drums, and a druggie vocalist in search of the key; they sounded like marbles twirled in a garbage can with a couple of fornicating cats thrown in for good measure.

  Original Cindy was still shaking her head in disbelief at the sorry state of her cultural and social life at this particular moment, when the shiner-adorned bartender came back with a cold bottle of beer. She got a three-dollar bill out of her wallet— President James on it, appropriately— and the bartender snatched the bill from her fingers.

  “Damn!” she said. “Go on and help your damn self, why don't you?”

  The bartender walked away.

  “No wonder you a damn raccoon,” she mumbled, then: “Keep the change, Prince Charmin'!”… even though she knew he'd already assumed as much.

  She sipped at the beer, hoping to make it last. At these prices being sober was looking like a reasonable option. Besides, this joint with that band and these patrons wasn't worth more than one beer and fifteen minutes of her life. No one who shared her particular worldview seemed to frequent this establishment, and if she didn't want more biker run-ins, the best bet would be to drink up and get the hell out of this zoo.

  She swigged her suds and, considering this was Original Cindy anyway, kept a low profile. Nonetheless, the bikers stared at her, making her more uncomfortable than she would care to admit.

  She wasn't afraid— hell, nothing scared her, except maybe life itself; but thirty bikers to one black ex-soldier seemed like shitty odds. Killing
the beer, she turned toward the door just as the biker she'd pounded came staggering in, drunk (more from her beating than beer), his mouth twisted in an angry snarl, blood still trailing down his chin like a sloppy vampire.

  “

  Now

  you get yours, you black bitch,” he bellowed, though the words came out slurred and mushy because he was drunk and no longer had all his teeth.

  The band kept playing; but every eye in the bar had already turned to the door, and now swiveled to Original Cindy. After all, no one in here had missed her entrance…

  “Oh, maaaan… I thought I was done with your sorry ass,” she said, and looked around at the other patrons, to court their support. Once a fight was finished, the fight was finished, right? Get on with your damn lives!

  But the bikers were closing into a loose semicircle around her, putting the bar at her back, leaving a path for the drunk to get to her.

  Again the burly biker edged toward her, and he had that damn blade in his hand again. The circle began to close in, providing a compact stage for the coming action.

  So she struck first, picking up the beer bottle and smashing it over the head of the nearest biker, who collapsed in a heap. The band finally noticed that no one was listening to them and stopped playing, providing an awful, deathly silence.

  Original Cindy tore a hole in it:

  “You want some more of Original Cindy?”

  She gestured to herself with both hands, entering the center of the circle, oozing bravado, saying, “Then come on— plenty to go 'round!”

  Unfortunately for her, they took her invitation.

  There was little room to maneuver, this close to the bar, and although she got one biker across the bridge of the nose with a straight right, and another in the groin with a knee, it was only a matter of time before the bikers had swarmed her, pinning her on the floor like a dead butterfly in a collector's book. They held her down, tight, spread-eagled, and took turns copping obnoxious feels until the burly bastard she'd already defeated outside now fought his way through the crowd.

  “You ain't so cocky now, are ya, bitch?”

  She glared up at him, playing the only card she had. “You gutless pussy— afraid to take on a girl by your ownself? Gotta have your buddies hold her down?”

  He leaned over and slapped her and it sounded like a gunshot, ringing off the cement of the former monkey house, and her head exploded in pain accompanied by colorful starbursts.

  “I'm about to accept your

  apology,

  bitch… ”

  Spitting blood up into his face, Original Cindy said, “I

  told

  you to stop callin' me that!”

  He reared back a snake-draped arm to hit her again, but before he could strike, a small hand gripped the biker's thick wrist.

  The olive-skinned young woman in black leather jacket and pants was petite if shapely, and she had slipped through the circle of bikers without anyone thinking to stop her. Those who'd noticed merely admired her lithe yet voluptuous figure; a few others were amused to see such a little thing walk out into the center ring of this circus.

  But now they all froze, including Original Cindy's antagonist, whose nostrils flared and eyes widened, as he turned to see who dared interrupt him— and who it was that belonged to the viselike grip on his wrist.

  “Walk away,” the young woman advised him.

  “You… gotta… be…

  kiddin,

  ” the biker said, upper lip peeling back over a smile that now had a few holes in it.

  The young woman smiled back. From the floor where the other bikers still had her pinned, Original Cindy basked in the radiance of the stranger's smile, expecting the sweet thing to soon be joining her on the floor, where together they'd pull a horrible biker train…

  “Yeah,” the young woman said, little smile, little shrug. “I'm just kiddin' around.”

  Still holding on to his wrist, the black-clad girl thrust a sideways kick that caught the biker behind the knee, and sent him to the floor, kneeling hard. From her awkward vantage, Original Cindy couldn't focus on what happened next.

  The leather-clad woman became a dervish, striking, spinning, striking again, again, kicks knocking the bikers every which way. Suddenly finding herself free, Cindy jumped to her feet, catching only the blur as her unlikely rescuer threw dropkicks and fists into one biker after another, like a damn Bruce Lee movie; but that burly biker who'd started it all was getting onto his feet, that knife still in one hand.

  Original Cindy slammed a small hard fist into the side of his head and sent him down, even as the girl in leather threw a casual kick sideways, knocking the knife from the man's grasp. The biker was still on his feet, but groggy; Original Cindy doubled him over with a knee in the groin, and his mouth gaped in a silent scream until she closed it for him with a hard right.

  And for the second time tonight, the big biker with the tiny mind fell to the floor barely conscious, spitting teeth like seeds.

  In less than thirty seconds, the only people still standing in the bar were the band, the bartender, and the two women. The others were in various stages of semiconsciousness, moaning, rolling into fetal balls, a few crawling off, looking for a corner to bleed in.

  “I'm Max,” the young woman said.

  “Original Cindy.”

  Max raised a fist and Original Cindy touched it with a fist of her own; neither had even bloodied a knuckle in the brawl. The bartender was smiling— maybe whoever had given him his shiners had gone down in this melee; he handed the two victors cold-sweating beers and held his palms up: no charge.

  Toasting with the brew, Max said, “You can handle yourself, girl.”

  “Sister girl,” Original Cindy said as she surveyed the damage, “you got a move or two your ownself.”

  “Think maybe we should bounce?”

  “Yeah, things've kinda died down around the ol' Monkey House, don't you think?”

  “A little dull?”

  “I don't think these people wanna party no more.”

  Winding casually through the casualties, the two women walked out of the bar.

  “Those peckerwoods are lucky you come along,” Original Cindy said, hitching her shoulders.

  Max gave her an amused sideways glance. “They're lucky?”

  “Oh yeah— jus' 'fore you stuck your teeny nose in, I was about to bust loose on their asses, and cause some serious harm.”

  Max laughed lightly. “You shoulda said somethin'— I wouldn'ta spoiled your fun.”

  “How did you even know to come in?”

  “I don't know— I can sorta smell trouble.”

  “Original Cindy hears that—'specially when there's that much of it and it smells that rank.”

  The night seemed suddenly chilly to Original Cindy, and she hugged herself. Max slipped out of her jacket, revealing a baby blue, well-filled sleeveless T-shirt, and passed the leather garment to Cindy.

  Who said, “Thanks,” and pulled the coat on.

  “We probably shouldn't hang around here.”

  “All bullshit aside, girl, we best watch our asses in this Jamestown, else we get caps popped in 'em.”

  Max stopped in front of a sleek black motorcycle. “This is my ride— you got wheels?”

  “This is Original Cindy's wheels.” She held up a thumb. “My stuff is hidden in the woods.”

  “Stuff?”

  “You think these is the only clothes Original Cindy owns?” She grinned. “Got me some stylin' threads out there in them woods.”

  “Can you find your stash in the dark?”

  “Does the pope shit in the woods? Is a bear Catholic?”

  Max laughed and threw a leg over the bike. “Climb on, O. C.— we'll get your stash and put some distance between us and that biker brain trust.”

  “You don't have to tell Original Cindy twice.” She climbed on behind Max, her arms locking around the middle of the leather-clad rider.

  Max turned
the key, gunned the bike, and, kicking a dirt cloud, took off into the forest. They picked up Original Cindy's backpack from its hiding place and hit the road. Max kept the speedometer pegged at nearly one hundred, making conversation impossible until they stopped at a small, roadside coffee shop on the far side of Redwood National Park.

  Clean by post-Pulse standards, the place had six booths along one wall, a counter with a dozen or so stools, and behind the back counter a wall with a pass-through window to the tiny kitchen. At this hour, the cook and the waitress were the only people in the place; they sat next to each other at the counter, each reading a section of newspaper. Wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans, the cook rose when they came in. A paunchy man in his late forties, with bug eyes and greasy dark hair, he moved back toward the kitchen without a word. The waitress wore tan slacks and a brown smock. She had short dark hair, a birdlike body, and a drawn, cowhide-tough face. She stayed put until the women had chosen a booth.

  “Coffee, you two?” she asked as she rose.

  They both said, “Yes.”

  The waitress moved quickly for someone in the middle of a graveyard shift and gave them each a cup of coffee and a glass of water. “You ready to order?”

  “This is fine for now,” Max said.

  Original Cindy said, “Yeah, me too.”

  Nodding, the waitress returned to her seat and picked up the paper. “False alarm, Jack!”

  The guy in the kitchen came back out and picked up his paper, too; this time though, he stayed on his side of the counter.

  “Original Cindy just wanted to thank you for steppin' in tonight.” Sitting forward, she leaned across the booth and patted Max on the hand. “A sistah coulda looked at them odds and walked the hell right back out the door.”

  Shaking her head, Max said, “Wouldn't do for sistahs to be lettin' each other bump uglies with the likes of those dickweeds.”

  “They ain't Original Cindy's… type anyway.”

  “Low-life bikers.”

  “Dickweeds.”

  Max gave her a look.

  Original Cindy explained what had started the altercation with the biker— namely, the blonde. Watching Max carefully, she said, “You gotta do what floats your boat.”

  “None of my business,” Max said, “where people put their paddles.”