by Paul Kenyon
They were fanning out over the roof. Penelope gathered the powerful muscles in her thighs and calves and sprinted for a chimney.
"There she is!"
Bullets kicked up gravel around her, stinging her legs. She made it to the shelter of the chimney.
"Fred, Vito, circle around back. You boys spread out and follow me." Footsteps crunched on the gravel.
"Aaah, you guys are a bunch of old ladies. She's naked as a jaybird. She can't do no damage."
"Al, come back here!"
But Al continued toward the chimney, his feet slapping on the rooftop. The Baroness looked at the chimney top. It was a double chimney, with the shaft facing Al about three feet higher than the far side.
Without hesitating, she jumped and caught the lip of the lower stack. She pulled herself up, the rough brick scraping her knees and elbows. At the top, crouching to keep from showing herself, she lowered herself into the stack. It was a tight fit. The narrow space flattened her breasts, squeezed her hips. She braced herself, just a couple of inches from the top.
"Hey!" Al's voice was full of consternation. "She ain't here."
She heard footsteps circling the chimney. When they returned to the far side, she popped up like a jack-in-the box.
"Surprise, Al!"
Al was still staring, pop-eyed, at the incredible vision of the naked woman, her breasts smeared with blood and soot, when she did a quick handstand and flip and came down on him, feet first. The gun went flying. When he reached for it, he found the long, luscious legs entwined around his waist. He staggered a step while the Baroness rode him, then pitched forward. The hands he threw forward to save himself were suddenly imprisoned. He landed on his face with the combined weight of his own body and the girl who was astraddle him. His shattered skull began to ooze brain tissue like toothpaste.
She had Al's gun now. It was a Colt Super .38 automatic, similar to the Government Model .45 she was familiar with. It fired nine rounds. She checked the clip. Al had been nervous, firing at her when she sprinted for the chimney. There were only four rounds left.
And five armed men coming after her.
"Al, whaddaya mean, she ain't there?"
Penelope leaned out from the chimney, gripping the Colt in both hands, aiming at the man who had spoken. The heavy gun kicked in her hands. To her horror she saw the bullet send brick fragments flying on the cornice behind him. The slug had missed its target by six inches. That dolt, Al! The gun was improperly sighted!
"Hey, she's got Al's gun!"
"You okay, Vito?"
"Yeah, a broad'll never hit you when she's aiming. It's when they don't mean it that you hafta watch out."
They both laughed coarsely. Penelope gauged the direction of the laughter, did a quick calculation in her head to compensate for the six-inch throw to the left, leaned out again and fired.
Vito was still laughing when the .38 slug caught him right in the middle of his forehead.
Two rounds left. Four targets.
"Hey, watch it, you guys! Take cover!"
"The broad's dangerous. Fred, go back down and get reinforcements."
She couldn't allow that. She took a quick peek. There were four shots immediately, whistling past the chimney or thudding into it. Another person would have waited, tried again. Penelope's thinking was quicker. She appeared at the other side of the chimney. But they'd been watching. A bullet nicked the brick near her face.
In that split second she'd seen Fred, halfway to the roof door.
She put the gun in her mouth, her strong white teeth clenched on the trigger guard. She bent and grasped the seat of Al's pants with one hand, his shirt collar with the other. His body was heavy — at least one hundred and eighty pounds. She gathered strength and heaved. It came up off the floor. She swung the body back and forth like a pendulum, once, twice, three times. When it had enough momentum, she let go. The corpse did a swan dive four feet from the chimney. There was a flurry of shots. The body jerked and twitched from the slugs crashing into it.
But Penelope was already on top of the chimney again, the Colt automatic in her teeth. While her body was still scrambling over the top of the stack, she caught the butt and fired a snap shot at Fred. He pitched forward, his spine severed. There was a clear shot at another target. She squeezed the trigger and grip safety even as she was swinging the big gun around. It went off in her hand at the end of the swing. The bullet caught her target square in his beer belly. He floundered, squawking, his life running away through his fingers. Penelope dropped lightly to the roof before the next bullets whistled overhead.
The gun was empty. But the two remaining goons didn't know that. And they'd be scared now.
"All right, boys," she called sweetly. "Throw down your pieces and put your hands on top of your heads, and maybe you'll stay alive."
An obscene word answered her. There was the sharp click of a safety catch, and a burst of .45-caliber machine gun fire sprayed the chimney.
It was the mandolin player.
Stalemate. Until they realized why she wasn't firing back.
There was nothing to be gained by waiting where she was except death. But she'd die if she left the shelter of the chimney.
There was only one thing left to do.
She jumped off the roof.
They didn't see her fall. The edge was just a few feet behind her, and the bulk of the chimney shielded her. The empty gun in her teeth, she backed to the parapet relaxed all her muscles and tumbled over.
The street was six floors below.
But there was an ornamental frieze running the whole length of the building, just below the top floor windows. All these old loft buildings had them. She'd made a note of it when she arrived earlier.
It was a comfortable three inches wide, curlicues of decorative concrete. She grabbed with both hands as she fell past. There was a jolt that almost tore her arms from their sockets. Her fingers were scraped raw. She hung by both hands, dangling fifty feet above the cement sidewalk.
She glanced downward. The trucks and the moving men were still there. A couple of hoods had come out to talk to them. They seemed excited about something. No one looked up.
Hanging by one hand now, she transferred the gun from her teeth. Holding it by the barrel like a hammer, she smashed the fifth story window in front of her and dived through.
Inside, a gaunt unshaven man looked up in astonishment at the fantastic apparition that had crashed through his window in a shower of broken glass. He was on his knees in front of an open copy of Playboy, propped up on a stand with a candle and bouquet of wilted flowers next to it. The harsh smell of burning hemp was in the air.
"Every night!" he said. "Every night I pray for the Playmate in the centerfold to come to life! You're real! You've come to me!"
Penelope ignored him. She stepped to one side of the window frame and peered down. The moving men were looking up, attracted by the sound of breaking glass. Their heads jerked farther back as they talked to someone on the roof. In a few moments, they'd begin to realize what had happened.
"Miss September! Speak to me!" the kneeling man cried.
Penelope wiped her forehead with a forearm. It came away streaked with chimney soot and blood. "Do you have a raincoat?" she said.
"Raincoat?" he said vaguely. He tried to stand up, but he was too stoned to rise.
She went to his closet and found a grimy raincoat. There was a hat to go with it and a pair of sandals. Wincing with distaste, she put them on, tucking her long black hair into the hat.
"Come back, come back!" the gaunt man called, but she was already out the door.
It was another staircase, another street door than the one she'd used entering the loft. She passed nobody on the way down. She emerged into the street, head down, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched to conceal the swellings of her breasts.
The moving men and the hoods on the roof were shouting back and forth. "He's dead, I tell you. Don Anthony's dead. He broke his neck when that woman p
ushed him down the stairs."
Penelope felt a grim glow of satisfaction. At least she'd managed to kill Cremona. It was partial justice for the seven tons of corpses lying in the loft upstairs. Revenge for poor, harmless Ralphie Pardon and Bunny and Nina and Infra Red.
"She must still be in the building," the mandolin player was shouting. "Get in there, all of you. We're going to tear the place apart, room by room."
Nobody looked at Penelope as she walked by, hunch-shouldered, taking long strides like a man. She passed the little knot of men and was abreast of the lead moving van when its driver stepped into her path.
"Hey," he yelled.
Without breaking stride she sprang forward, three fingers extended toward his solar plexus. They sank into beer-bloated flesh up to the knuckles. His entire body seemed to deflate like a balloon, stunned by the massive shock to heart, liver, and lungs. Penelope didn't wait to see if she'd killed him. She sprang into the open cab door of the giant moving van. The engine was running. She engaged the clutch and put it through each of its eleven gears. By the time she reached the end of the block, the big van was doing eighty. She glanced in the rear view mirror. They were still too disorganized to have started pursuit. By the time they did, she'd be several blocks away.
The big moving van roared through the nighttime streets, running red lights and scaring the hell out of cabdrivers. Penelope's hat had fallen off in the fight. Passers-by looked up in amazement as the van swerved dangerously around corners, scraping parked cars, with a beautiful, soot-smeared woman with long black hair wrestling the big wheel.
She ditched the truck two miles away and hailed a cab. The driver didn't even blink at the sight of the beautiful brunette with the dirty, blood-streaked face who climbed into the rear seat. You see all kinds in New York.
7
Skytop hunched over the handlebars of the big Harley-Davidson, doing ninety. He could feel Angie's breasts, like two plump squabs, pressing against his back. He squinted through his goggles while the wind clawed like a banshee at his hair and face. Ahead the highway stretched to infinity through a barren desert landscape.
"How much farther?" he shouted above the roar of the bike.
"What?"
"How much farther?"
She put her mouth against his ear, her arms wrapped around his massive chest. "Just over the Colorado border. There's a side road. Grease said he'd meet us there."
Skytop grunted and gunned the motor. The needle crept upward toward one hundred. Angie screamed with delight.
She'd finally loosened up after a dozen beers and a couple of joints in a succession of grimy roadhouses. She'd made the telephone call that set them up with Grease just fifteen minutes ago. He hadn't had to screw her yet. He suspected she was waiting until she saw what kind of a score he'd make. If it was good stuff, she expected to share it with him.
One of her hands crept downward to his crotch. Her fingers grew busy.
"Cut it out!" he yelled. "Save it for later!" He tilted the big motorcycle for emphasis, and her hand scrabbled at his chest, trying to hang on.
"There!" she said. "Ahead!"
A mile ahead there was a cluster of black dots in the road casting long shadows thrown by the setting sun behind them. Skytop reached them in forty-five seconds. The shadows were like the fingers of a hand reaching toward him as he hit the brake. He skidded to a stop, foot dragging in the road for balance, right in front of them.
There were five of them, wearing black leather jackets that were painted with grinning skulls and the words "Charon's Cherubs." They had chains for belts, and they wore spurs on their heavy boots as if their mounts were horses instead of motorcycles. The jackets and motorcycles were liberally decorated with swastikas, military insignia, and pawnshop medals.
"Hi, Angie," one of them said. "This the dude?" He was a blond boy with a small mouth and expressionless eyes.
"Know them pretty well, do you, Angie?" Skytop said.
"Know us?" The blond boy laughed unpleasantly. "She's pulled the train for us. All of us."
"Hush now," Angie said. "No need to talk like that."
"You Grease?" Skytop said.
It broke them up. The five bikers made a great show of yucking it up, slapping their thighs and punching one another's biceps.
"Let me in on it," Skytop said.
"Grease don't come to you, dude. You go to him." He jabbed a dirty thumb at the narrow track that ran into the desert. You could barely see it in the fading light.
Skytop kicked the Harley-Davidson into life and set off, bumping and bouncing down the trail. The five bikers clustered around him like an honor guard, one leading the way, one on either side, two behind him. He was boxed in, unable to break away even if he'd wanted to.
"Relax, lover," Angie whispered in his ear.
They left the trail about five miles down and set off across the desert itself. There was a red glow ahead. As they approached, it resolved itself into a bonfire.
It was a rough camp. Someone had once dumped a rusty trailer here; its door hung ajar, and a dull Coleman light in the windows showed it was in use. Sleeping rolls and cooking utensils were scattered on the desert floor around it.
There were about twenty bikers and a half-dozen messy-looking chicks. Something made Skytop's hackles rise. There was something wrong with the scene. It was like a tableau that someone had set up. He noticed that none of the bikers was very far from a motorcycle.
"Far enough, dude," the blond Cherub said. Skytop stopped his bike and got off, kicking the stand out to hold it. Angie slid to the ground and started edging away from him.
"Wait here," his escort said. He swaggered off, wheeling his bike.
Skytop waited. In a few moments the Cherub came back with someone. Skytop strained to see in the firelight. The newcomer was big — as big as Skytop himself. As he came closer Skytop could see a huge bent hook of a nose, swarthy face with a three-day beard, long greasy ringlets hanging to the shoulders. One shoulder of the leather jacket was decorated with a fancy gold-braid epaulet. There was more gold braid, looped around one shoulder like a Sam Browne belt, and the usual quota of Swastikas and medals. He jingled as he approached.
"You the gater who's looking for a buy?" Grease said.
"That's right," Skytop said levelly.
"Hey, pack!" the giant yelled. "We got ourselves an injun!"
There were hoots and whoops from the darkness.
"Move away from your bike," Grease ordered. Skytop moved.
Suddenly there was a circle of light around him. Skytop threw up a hand, blinded. He was in the middle of a ring of motorcycles with their lights turned on. Motors coughed into life.
"Hey, what is this?" he said.
Grease stayed just outside the circle of light. "We like to get a good look at who we're dealing with," he said.
"I'm just trying to make a score," Skytop said.
"What made you think you could score here?"
"Angie said so."
"Angie says you're a friend of the soldier boy."
"That's right. Billy and I used to shoot up together."
A motor backfired. A voice yelled, "He don't look like no meth freak to me!"
"Neither did Billy," Skytop said. "He had the U. S. army fooled for two years."
"Angie says you're loaded."
"Look, Grease, I didn't come here to get ripped off. I didn't bring my whole roll with me, just enough for a buy. You can take a few bucks from me. Or you can give me my money's worth and have me come back and spend the rest of my roll. I'm going to be in town for a while."
"Whoo-hoo! Listen to the man!" a voice said to his right. "Rip-off, he says! Since when have the Cherubs ripped anybody off?" There were laughs from the darkness.
"Look, man," Skytop whined, "I'm strung out!"
"What kind of a score are you after?" Grease said. "Acid? Speed?"
"I heard Billy scored something better than acid."
"What are you talking about? STP? Hawaiian
pods?"
"No, man. Like nothing on this earth."
A voice called out, "Hey, how'd he hear about the Big E?"
"Shut up, Scrambler!" Grease spat. "I can't help you, injun. I can sell you some acid, that's about all."
Skytop said, "Let's talk about it." He squinted. "Can't you get these lights off me?"
"Cool it," the giant said. Some of the lights switched off. The rest aimed at the sky or ground. Skytop found he could see. Grease ambled over. Seen close up, he looked even more powerful. His face was dark, pockmarked. His hair was stringy. Even from a couple of feet away, it smelled rancid.
"The Big E's what I'm after," Skytop said.
"There's no more Big E. It was going good for a while, but somebody put the word out. My connection's gone sour."
"What do you mean, sour? Man, my tongue's hanging out!"
Grease grimaced. "The seaman who used to run it in from Hong Kong. He can't get it no more. His end dried up."
Skytop registered disappointment. Inwardly he was elated. Something called the Big E. And it came from Hong Kong. He'd have something to report to the Baroness!
"Man, that's a downer," he said. "Billy told me it was the greatest."
The giant biker looked him over. "You just made a mistake, injun. Billy didn't tell anybody nothing. The dose that killed him was the first and only dose he ever got. Angie was right. She told me she thought you were fuzz."
"I'm no fuzz."
"That chopper you're riding. It's a rental. I know every bike in the area."
"Look…"
Skytop got no further. The chain that had been around Grease's waist had appeared as if by magic in his hand. It was whistling upward toward Skytop's face.
Skytop ducked with contemptuous ease. The chain missed. Skytop caught its end. Grease made the mistake of trying to hold onto it. Skytop jerked the big man toward him and aimed a karate kick just below the knee. Grease pitched forward on his face. Skytop had him by the wrist. He pushed and twisted, letting his opponent's momentum and weight do most of the work. There was a snapping sound and a scream as Grease's arm broke.
Skytop leaped back, the chain in his hand. Grease was on his knees, moaning.