Taking a deep breath, I winked at the mutant in the mirror, and went to work. Literally. I headed down the street to Ivan’s Lair. Gangs of mutant teens and plague-riddled mutant-rock addicts hung out on the street corners while chicken-hawks scouted the younger girls for future night-trolling activities.
As I passed, a chicken-hawk, his feathery face bobbing to a beat inside his pointed head, said, “Hey mama, I got what you need.” He grabbed his crotch, in case I missed his point.
The street corner teens laughed. I paused, my eyes boring into he chicken-hawk’s until the humor disappeared from his face, and the teens scattered. “Sorry ma’am.” The mutant bowed his beak-like head and scurried away, his tiny claw-like legs clinking against the pavement.
Ma’am.
Damn.
I picked up my pace, making it to Ivan’s in less than ten minutes, but I didn’t go inside. Instead I waited for a sign. A beer sign to be precise. A few minutes after five Ivan flicked on a glowing green St. Mutant Girl beer sign in the window, a clear indication Ivan’s Lair was open for business.
Good. Ivan was there and would be there for at least a six-pack, maybe a fifth of whiskey if I was lucky. Now, I needed to find Ivan’s son. Not Quinn, but Mikey.
My plan was simple really.
To force Ivan’s hand and send him scurrying to the Resistance I needed him scared. Unfortunately, the only way to scare Ivan was to threaten someone he loved. That’s where Mikey came in. If Ivan believed the HOA had kidnapped Mikey he’d run to the Resistance, and it would only be a matter of me following his lead into the rabbit hole. Simple, right? That and a wee bit unethical, but my motives were pure, or so I told myself, about a hundred times.
My quest for Mikey Daniels took a couple of hours. I went from bar to bar, and strip club to strip club, finally locating him at Dapper Dane’s: Live Totally Nude Mutants, Mutants, Mutants. Dane’s wasn’t a dive. Oh no, it was a really big dive, open seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. Which wasn’t bad unless you wandered in around six in the morning. The morning strippers were a different sort complete with extra nipples, twelve-inch labias, and fur.
After five seconds inside Dane’s I longed for a shower. A really hot one. The building itself wasn’t bad, a little run down, maybe, but not a surprise in this section of town. But the smell wafting through the club knocked me back a step. It resembled something like week old fish, year old beer, and forty years of desperate stripper sweat.
An assembly line of nightcrawlers sat at the bar, their lips frozen in an eternal O. I closed my own mouth and scanned the club for Mikey. A few prominent members of the Mutant City council huddled around a small stage, drinking martinis, and plotting ways to screw us.
A loud laugh caught my attention. Mikey sat, or rather slumped on a wooden chair, his pudgy body jiggling to the pounding beat echoing from the speakers. A stripper with exceedingly big ears shook her naughty parts above him.
Lovely.
I walked over to them, waving to Mikey’s circle of associates. All of them beautiful mutants in their twenties with sizable trust funds and breast implants.
“Indy,” Mikey said when his lap dance ended. “What are you doing here? Let me buy you a drink.” He waved to a nude girl holding a drink tray, and she rushed over. Before I could respond, Mikey ordered me a shot of vodka and motioned for his groupies to make room. I sat, taking a second to wipe the leather seat.
“Hey Mikey.” I smiled at him, letting years of memories wash over me. Memories of Quinn and better days. We’d spent much of our teen years together, the three of us, Quinn with his sparkling blue eyes and sexy grin in stark contrast to Mikey’s eagerness, and loyalty.
I loved them both, but in much different ways. Now, I hated one, and was about to use the other. What a difference a couple of years and three bullets to the chest made.
“I need a favor,” I said to Mikey as the waitress placed a shot glass of clear liquid in front of me. She added a bowl of peanuts, but I steered clear. After all, eating any food served by a naked mutant in a strip club equated to passive suicide and I wasn’t the passive sort.
Mikey shoved his hand into the bowl, scooped up some nuts, and raised an eyebrow. “Whatever you need.”
And he meant it. The stupid mutant. I swallowed, releasing the guilty lump in my throat and looked into his innocent grey eyes. “I need your cell phone, and for you to stay underground for a couple of hours.”
He reached into his pocket and handed me a slightly sweaty mobile phone with all the latest gadgets. It beeped as my fingers brushed against it. The caller ID read: Melissa. I raised an eyebrow, and Mikey grinned. “She’ll call back.”
I didn’t doubt it.
Mikey’s way with women was legendary, and Mikey swore it was all thanks to me. At thirteen, he resembled the hunchback but without the charm, and smelled even worse. With an older brother like Quinn, Mikey had faded into the woodwork when it came to girls. I helped him overcome that. My method might have been a bit unorthodox, but a month later, Mikey had two girlfriends, a haircut, and a knack for tying any kind of fruit stem into a knot with his tongue.
While most of Mikey’s body dwelling relatives had spent countless hours trying to ‘find themselves’ in a different body Mikey had found peace in his on less attractive form. How? Quinn had questioned. Instead of answering, I shrugged my shoulders, picked up a cherry-berry from the bar, and winked.
Swallowing back the memory, I shoved Mikey’s cell phone in my pocket and withdrew a couple of twenties from my pants. I pressed the money into his palm. “Stay here and off the streets until 10. I’ll bring your phone back then.”
He nodded, took the money, and motioned to the waitress for another round. I stood, brushed my pants off, and swallowed the rest of my vodka, my first step in plan A complete.
“Hey,” Mikey called. I didn’t turn around, but let his next words drift around me. Words he’d said a thousand times. “Be careful, Indy. Things ain’t always what they seem.”
And sometimes they are, I thought with a glance at Mikey’s milky white face. I nodded to him, and walked out the door.
Chapter 17
Once again, I found myself outside Ivan’s Lair, lying in wait for Ivan. Okay, not really lying, more like crouched behind a smelly dumpster, my knees bent into my chest.
The sky had darkened. Changing day to dusk, and soon the night would swallow us until only the light left were the beams of searchlights reflecting off the wall. Across the street, a mutant with twin heads, one slightly smaller than the other, spoke into Mikey’s cell phone. The mutant read from my painstakingly drafted script, his hands gesturing for emphasis. With each stab of his boney fingers my heart beat just a bit faster. What if Ivan didn’t fall for it?
The mutant closed the phone and jogged across the street. “I did it like you said,” said the head on the right in a surprisingly raspy and high-pitched tone. Shaking his other head, he handed me the phone. “He sounded mad.”
I nodded, expecting no less. When, not if, Ivan found out the call was a scam I was in deep elf shit. But I had a higher purpose, or at least a purpose. Besides, Ivan would eventually forgive me. After I mucked out every fairy cage, twice.
The door of the Lair opened a minute later. Ivan jogged out, and up the street without a backward glance, his borrowed face white with fear.
Make that three times.
Shoving aside my guilt and leaping to my half-asleep feet, I winced as a billion tiny pins stabbed at my nerve endings. Probably well deserved too. I followed Ivan, tracking his every step while sticking to the shadows.
About three blocks up, he stopped, his grey eyes scanning the darkness around him. I dove behind a pile of trash bags. Bags filled with, my best guess, rotting reptoe parts. I held my breath, more to avoid the stench than fear of capture.
Peeking around the dripping plastic bag, I watched as Ivan knocked on the wall of an abandoned warehouse, its windows blackened with years of pollution, and front entranc
e door boarded with wooden planks. Plastered above the door, in cemented glory, stood a white mutant kitty-rat with pink bows. A sign below the statue read: HELLO MUTANT KITTY FACTORY.
I remembered those cheap plastic toys from my childhood. Toys filled with lead and beads big enough to choke the average mutant kid. The factory closed years ago, right around the time Resden built the wall.
Interesting.
Ivan paused, and then knocked again, in some sort of secret Mutant Kitty Morse Code. With a loud groan, the door opened and Ivan disappeared inside. But before the door closed completely, I managed to wiggle my fingers into the crack, but at a cost. Four of my knuckles snapped, sending a burst of pain shotgunning into my brain. I stifled a scream and shoved the door wide.
Inside the factory, a deep darkness, much like images from space, surrounded me. I listened, straining my ears for the telltale tap of Ivan’s boots on the concrete, but I heard nothing.
Taking a breath, I stepped into the blackness running my hand along the corridor. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, the squeal of gears in motion echoed on my right. Elevator? Was the Resistance housed underground?
Inside my pants pocket, my cell phone vibrated causing me to jump. Stupid technology. It would be the death of me one day. But not today, I thought as I quickly silenced the phone and crept toward the sound of churning gears.
Peering around a corner, I caught sight of Ivan and another man standing in front of a rickety elevator. The man was dressed in military fatigues, his baldhead and AK-47 gleaming like a beacon in the darkness. He looked like a typical mutant warrior with bulging muscles and an extra set of eyes.
I’d found the Resistance.
Now I only had to stay alive long enough to convince them to help me. The buzz of my phone vibrated against my thigh once again. Damn.
The man stopped talking, and pointed his weapon into the shadows where I hid. “Who’s there?” he yelled, tucking his body into a shooter’s stance, legs braced apart, hands at ready on the cold metal of the trigger, all four eyes leery.
I had two choices: Fight or flee.
Neither appealed to me at the moment. My fingers brushed the gun strapped to my side, but I quickly discarded the impulse. Killing a member of the Resistance probably wasn’t the best way to gain their trust.
My pants vibrated again.
Screw it. I pulled my skullcap off, letting curls explode around my face, and slowly moved from the shadows and into the light. My hands held high above my head.
The gunman’s arm relaxed slightly. Big mistake. I smiled, and gave Ivan a wave. He winced before tapping the mutant’s gun arm. “Don’t make assumptions, boy. She could kill you without batting an eye.”
“You know me so well.” I nodded to the gun. “But I come in peace.”
Ivan snorted at my comment. “You shouldn’t have followed me, Indeara. This ain’t no place for you.” His wrinkled face grew more wrinkled. “Besides, I’ve got more important things to deal with. The HOA has Mikey.”
Now it was my turn to wince. “Yeah, about that—”
My phone bleeped again. For a girl who’s monthly mobile bill reflected a sad social life someone sure as hell wanted to talk to me. I glanced at the gunman, and then at Ivan. Apologies and explanations would have to come later.
“Don’t shoot me. I’m just grabbing my phone,” I said, slowly pulling the phone from my pocket. The caller ID lit up, flashing Nobody’s cell number across the screen. Fear tickled at the back of my neck. I didn’t wait for the gunman’s okay, but instead flipped the phone open. “Speak.”
“Indeara?” A voice crackled sounding tinny and far away, like someone calling from the inside of a icebox. “Come quick.”
My heart sped up. “Caren? Honey, is that you? What’s wrong? What happened?”
“A man came. Nobody told me to hide, but I saw them.” Her small voice broke. “He…hurt…him.”
The phone disconnected.
I glanced up at Ivan and shook the sense of dread from my head. “Nobody’s in trouble,” I said, and ran from the warehouse, the Resistance be damned.
Chapter 18
When I arrived at Nobody’s childhood house I noticed two things. One was the fact the front door stood open, inviting any mutant with a desire for ugly clown figurines inside, and secondly, Nobody hadn’t gone down without a fight.
Broken furniture and smashed jester effigies littered the room. A trail of blood led from the living room, out the door, and into the driveway. Not enough blood loss to cause death, but enough that my stomach rolled in fear.
“Caren?” I pushed my way through the debris, careful to avoid the broken glass and bodily waste. A business card on the floor next to a pool of blood caught my attention. I bent down to pick it up.
Jake McClain. Hunter.
What the fuck? Where had that come from? Did McClain have something to do with Nobody’s disappearance? If he was involved I’d make the bastard bleed.
The kitchen door opened. I twisted toward the noise, my weapon at ready. Caren stood frozen in the doorway, tears streaming down her face. Her tiny body shook with sobs. Reaching down, I scooped her into my arms and held her against my chest. “It’s okay, baby. Nothing’s gonna hurt you,” I spoke the words as a vow.
The front door swung open, and I spun toward the new threat, doing my best to juggle Caren and my gun. I aimed my shaking weapon, but lucky for us, only Ivan stood in the doorway, his face wrinkled with concern.
“What the hell happened?” He motioned to the mess.
“I was just about to find out.” I lifted up Caren’s chin, so her eyes met mine. The fear in them stole my breath. “Can you tell us what happened?”
She sniffled and ran the back of her finger across her leaking nose. A trail of slimy snot ran up her arm. “Me and Nobody was making popcorn. His mum said we shouldn’t, but she wasn’t home so Nobody said we could.”
I nodded, hopefully in an encouraging manner, when what I really wanted to do was scream in frustration. Each second that passed put Nobody in more danger. I pictured my friend, his face bloody, as the HOA shot him full of mutant vaccine.
“The door bell ringed and Nobody peeked frough the window.” She motioned to the busted glass pane next to the door. It looked like someone’s fist had punctured it. “Nobody pushed me into the cupboard. It smelt like oranges.”
“Did he say anything?”
She nodded and started to cry in earnest. “He told me to stay inside. Not to look. But I did,” she whispered the last like a confession. “It’s my fault the man hit him. I shouldda listened.”
“No baby,” I said, stroking her hair. If the blame lied with anyone it was me. I’d known the danger both Caren and Nobody were in, and I’d done nothing to protect them. I hoped like hell that Nobody wouldn’t pay the price for my mistake.
“So Nobody just opened the door? That doesn’t make any sense.” Ivan paced back and forth in front of the door. “He’s not stupid.”
“Maybe he knew the man at the door. Trusted him?” But that didn’t make sense either. Nobody didn’t trust anyone, well except me, and I sure as hell didn’t kidnap him. A sneaking suspicion formed inside my brain. “The man who hit Nobody, what did he look like?”
“Like a picture,” she answered.
My eyes narrowed as did Ivan’s. A picture? Did she mean he resembled someone in a magazine or a face on a billboard? I rubbed my chin for inspiration, which only worked in detective movies. “What kind of picture, honey? Like a Cyborg 8 kind of picture?”
“No.” She shook her head, the ends of her hair brushing across my cheeks. “He looked like the picture in your room. The one you put in the drawer, under your undies.”
Quinn. That son-of-a-bitch. I’d kill him. Rage blinded me for a minute. If anything happened to Nobody… I couldn’t finish that thought. My mind swirled with betrayal, violence, and fear.
“Will Nobody be okay?” Caren pressed her face into the curve of my neck. “You’ll find him,
and me mum, and bring them home.”
I said nothing. In a perfect world, I’d promise to fix everything. But this world was far from perfect. Or it hadn’t been until Resden started vaccinating us into Stepford Mutants. I gave a bitter laugh, and turned to Ivan.
“I’m sorry, Ivan.”
He cocked his head to the side. “For what, girl? You didn’t kidnap Nobody, or snatch Mikey.”
“No, I didn’t.” I shot him a small smile. I’d explain about Mikey later. Right now, I had mutants that are more important on my mind. “But I am going to kill Quinn.”
Chapter 19
I fingered the card in my hand and contemplated the stupidity of dialing the number. The last thing I needed was Jake McClain distracting me from my mission. On the other hand the fastest way to find Nobody was to use the arrogant hunter. Kind of a damned if I do, rock, and an end of the line situation.
Screw it.
I dialed the number on the card and waited while it connected, my heart beating faster in my chest.
“I’ve been waiting for your call,” he answered, his voice sending shivers of awareness down my spine.
“I need your help.” I licked my dry lips and waited for his refusal. After all, he had no reason to assist me in finding my vanishing best friend.
“Meet me at the wall.” His voice lowered. “Wear something short and slutty.”
Before I could respond, he hung up, leaving me staring at the now silent phone. Short and slutty. Damn, I should went with my gut and never have called him.
Glancing down at my attire, I shrugged. This would have to do. I turned to Ivan, who was still recovering from my revelation about Mikey’s ‘kidnapping’. In a sick kind of way, it was funny to watch Ivan’s face go from stark, to disbelief, and finally, total and complete rage. It reminded me of the old days. Days when Quinn and I would pull some stupid prank and Ivan would be there with bail money.
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