by Gary Denne
After Sean browsed faces in the crowd, as slow as it was to, he began to inch his way through the club, moving deeper towards the back. The rich smell of tobacco filled the air and formed a plume of smoke above. Several large ceiling fans were spinning so fast to suck it away, the roof looked as though it could take off at any moment. At ground level, however, the fans were next to useless and didn’t seem to have any effect on bodies from the hot summer night. The dance floor of the Red Planet may well have been a sauna it was so damn hot, but that certainly didn’t stop the countless partygoers from getting down and shaking their ass—older, wealthy Manhattan residents included.
Sean reached the bar at the back of the club and anchored himself to a tiny inch of space, holding on tight in between others lining up for drinks. He watched one of the men at the bar, smartly dressed in a vintage tux from the 70s. He had mutton-chop sideburns and hair damp from beads of sweat on his forehead. The man was pouring drinks for all the people around him. As the crowd cheered, he took a chrome-plated lighter from his pocket and ran it across a row of shot glasses on the bar. A blue-tinged flame burned on the drinks surface as all around him reached for a glass, blew out the flame, and drank up—the man included. Suddenly, the crowds erupted into cheer as a band appeared from the back of the stage. The rock music from the speakers above quickly faded. The lights of the Red Planet went down. Showtime. The burly man in the vintage suit quickly made a move out from the bar and headed for the stage as a large chunk of the crowd made their way over, positioning themselves for the best spots. The band of rough-looking, aging rockers casually adjusted their instruments as the man struggled to climb the few steps up onto the stage. Moving to each of the band members to shake hands, the burly man then joined the band’s singer at the front of the stage. Looking out over the packed but intimate venue, the burly man knew all eyes were on him, the crowd cheering like he was their man of the moment. Sean, like most everyone else in the club, watched the stage. The burly man waved his hands in the air, hoping for everyone to quiet down a little. He stood closer to the microphone stand, ready to address everyone. As he began, the crowd listened.
“Everybody … yo, everybody, listen up…” he shouted into the vintage vocal microphone, amplifying his loud and raspy voice to all corners as he caught his breath from the few steps to the stage. The crowd interrupted with howling and cheering like mad, stopping him for a second as the words registered with the PA. A few small doses of feedback and crackle ran through the speakers before he could continue. This was certainly not state-of-the-art sound.
“I just want to say thanks for comin’ along tonight … and thanks for givin’ me the chance to host y’all. Yunno, I’m lookin’ at alotta new faces out here tonight, so for those of you who don’t know who the hell I am, well, the name’s Benny and I own this here joint. Let me tell ya’, if you haven’t seen these guys behind me then you’re in for one helluva’ show. Right guys?”
Benny turned to the band members with a smile, as the crowd repeated the cheers, so ecstatic and pumped up that they would’ve cheered, no matter what was said in the moment.
“If you guys and gals stay for the long haul tonight, I promise to do the rounds later on and sink back a few brewskis with y’all before the night’s over,” screamed Benny into the microphone, his words ringing throughout to wild approval of the audience. “So kickback, put ya’ feet up, grab ya’selves a drink from the bar, and give it up for the one … the only … Grrrrr-aaaa-nd Centraaaa-l!”
Immediately behind him, the longhaired, tattoo-covered drummer counted in, and the band’s rock came to life. The two guitarists each played chunky and distorted riffs, and along with the pounding drums the intro made the place shake. Below the stage, people instantly lost control as they shook their bodies to the music, creating an insane mosh pit. As the sea of bodies melded together, some climbed the stage and dived off into the many waiting arms below, surfing the crowd. Every one of the audience looked to be having the time of their life, communicating with their smiles alone that the band knew how to rock, even if only seconds into their set. Benny stepped off the stage, just as the band’s front-man rocker took to the mic and began to sing.
Sean leaned up against the bar and soaked up the ambiance. Even among a sea of what seemed very friendly and approachable people, he looked lost and alone … unsure of himself. The man had won the lottery, he had received the chance to live a life that millions would kill another for, but somehow, despite all this, Sean looked like he was a tourist to this place, an outsider, visiting for a while, but not wanting to ever live in a place like this. In his faded denim jeans, t-shirt and runners, he wasn’t out of place, but somehow, he did not quite fit in. Sean turned to see Benny Cousins Jr. shouting in his direction from a corner booth of the club. He glanced over to see what the fuss was and wondered if he had been confused with another guest, but as Benny got up from the booth and began to walk towards him, it became clear that the large bar owner was headed straight for him, casually raising his bulky arm with a wave. Sean noticed tattoos, running their way around Benny’s biceps. As he got closer towards him, singling him out from the sea of people at the bar, Benny stretched out his hand.
“It’s Sean, right? Glad you could make it, man. McKinley told me all about ya’, he’s a good friend of mine. Said you might be here tonight.”
Sean watched as Benny wedged his flabby body into a tiny space at the bar next to him. He tried his best not to stare, but it was hard not to. Benny was a big man.
“My friends call me Benny. What can I get ya’? Can I get ya’ a drink? You wanna drink, right? What’ll ya’ have?” Benny said, shaking his hand up and down like a human jackhammer.
“Beer’s fine,” Sean replied, cautiously curious of how Benny had picked him out.
“Shelly, sweetie-doll, could we get a coupla’ beers when ya’ got a second?” Benny asked one of the girls behind the bar.
“So, tell me kid,” Benny asked, “how does it feel to win the lottery?”
Sean thought for a moment, as the friendly Shelly placed two beers down in front of them. She smiled at Sean. A very friendly smile, he noted. He took the first sip of his beer, before looking back at Benny.
“Good, I guess … but I’m still taking it all in to be honest,” he said. “It’s a bit ... surreal. Hasn’t sunken in yet that I’m actually here. That I’m in Manhattan. It’s not what I expected. I mean, you have these ideas, right? You know ... what you think the city’ll be like and everything, but until you see this place with your own eyes, you just have no idea. And then once you’re actually here, it’s like ... well, it’s pretty crazy.”
“Ah, don’t worry, kid. You’ll get used to it,” Benny said, smiling, as though he’d heard the same words over and over from newcomers. “It’s tough for anyone at first. Once you get settled in, you’ll never want to leave this place, trust me.”
Thanks to the stifling heat, Sean’s beer had lost its chill, but it didn’t matter; it was the best damn drink he’d had in years.
“You mean the bar or the city?” Sean asked, jokingly.
Sweat poured down Benny’s face, uninterrupted. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead before he answered Sean. He had obviously enjoyed many a hotdog to reach his current size.
“Well, you can call this place home anytime you want,” Benny offered. “A friend of McKinley’s is a friend ‘o mine. And this place ... well, this here bar’s seen alotta crazy shit, let me tell ya’. I’ve had it for years now. It’s my entire life, and I’ve never been happier. Look at me, I used to be a lawyer from Madison, Wisconsin. A lawyer of all things ... can you believe that? God, how things have changed,” Benny said, reminiscing.
“They sure did,” Sean replied.
“You know sometimes,” Benny said, “I feel as though I kinda died when I won the lottery, and somehow this was a completely new life … like I was reincarnated or something. Hell, I don’t know. It’s just so damn foreign from the old, huh?
”
“I know what you mean,” Sean said.
“The Underworld can be pretty crazy. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories. The secret,” Benny said, leaning in close to Sean to impart some wisdom, “is to stay away from all the homemade stuff they sell on the street. The powders, the acids, the cocktails ... it might seem harmless, but it catches up with ya’, believe me.”
“Got it,” Sean said. “Beer and women are good enough for me, anyway.”
“Well you sure ain’t gonna be disappointed in this place,” Benny said, smiling knowingly as he glanced around at some of the luscious blondes, brunettes and redheads socializing with friends at the bar.
“I noticed that,” Sean said.
“Listen, I’m gonna continue to mingle, okay? Nice to meet ya’, kid, and I hope to be seein’ a lot more of you around. Make yourself feel at home, okay? What’s mine is yours,” Benny said, as he discreetly glanced past Sean to a girl in a green dress, smiling at them both from afar. Sean casually looked behind him, making immediate eye contact with the girl, who flirted with her eyes for a brief moment before looking away.
“And, errrr, go make friends with the locals,” Benny told him with a sly smile. And with that, Benny launched himself from the bar and was absorbed by the crowds, as Sean finished up what was the first of several Red Planet homemade beers.
The Hunter
D.T. Roberts stood as still as a statue on the sidewalk. His head slowly turned like a surveillance camera, carefully watching groups of people make their way in the city. As dusk turned to night, crowds began to blend with the darkness as they talked among friends, anticipating the night before them. The old man slowly took a swig from a hipflask before placing it back in his coat pocket. He took long, slow breaths. While he appeared calm on the surface, there was a glimpse of a more sinister emotion bubbling away on the inside from the heavy creases and lines on his face. He was feeling the effects of a drug for the first time, and as many would acknowledge, the first time was always the highest high. The synthesized stimulant, designed in part to fire nerve endings in the brain for maximum awareness and enhanced physical ability, was at that present moment flowing freely throughout his body, giving him a calm but menacing appearance to anyone taking notice. Certainly not the type of person one would want to meet on a dark and stormy night.
Roberts leaned up against the wall and reached into one of his pockets, pulling out a syringe of Pump. He looked at it for a moment, reading the small printed label on the side of the tube. Suddenly, he swung his arm down and planted the needle straight into his leg, right through his pants, pumping the syringe into his system. He took a huge breath of air and held it in his lungs until all the ink blue liquid emptied into him. A few passersby looked his way for a brief moment, but in the darkness, they could only see shadows. Roberts dropped the syringe and it cracked as it hit the pavement. The remaining few drops of Pump seeped out onto the sidewalk, leaving a stain that would not fully reveal itself until the morning light.
As the drug’s intense surge washed over him for the second time in as many hours, he pulled the Quartz tablet device from his coat and tapped erratically on the screen. He studied a map of Manhattan’s city streets for a moment, and then looked up at the skyscrapers all around him. He knew he was being watched. Tracking was one of Maddox’s specialties. Looking down to his coat, it was as if he suddenly remembered the tiny camera pinned there was recording his every move. Without a second thought, he ripped it off his coat in an angry tug. The miniature camera came off into his hand and he tossed it on the ground like a used tissue. Robert’s breathing returned to a calm eagerness. He looked satisfied. He did not care for Maddox’s big brother surveillance of the city and its residents, but he was not ready to continue his journey just yet.
For the last few hours, storm clouds above were covering the whole of the city and had brought a darkening sky with them. Finally, the rain started to fall, quickly increasing until it got to a consistent strength. Out of nowhere, thunder roared overhead, as cracks in the pavement began to fill with rainwater, washing any traces of Pump away.
Heavy rain fell on his rugged clothes, but Roberts didn’t flinch a bit and paid zero attention to the cracks of thunder above. Droplets of water began to circle around the rim of his hat, reaching the back and then succumbing to gravity, trickling all the way down to the bottom of his coat before falling to the ground. Reaching into his coat yet again, he pulled out a tube of lotion. Carefully, he squeezed off a handful of clear gel from the tube and casually squatted down to the sidewalk, lifting his pant leg up and exposing his calf. He proceeded to thoroughly rub the gel into his calf muscle for several moments. Perhaps he was limbering up for the long road ahead, perhaps for something else. Lifting himself back up, he wiped the excess gel from his hand onto the wall and then collected himself.
Dripping wet like he was standing underneath a showerhead, he looked around him slowly one last time, before he pushed himself away from the wall and took off down the sidewalk, towards the Underworld, following the crowds of people on their way to enjoy the night’s offerings.
The occasional Maddox supply van cruised down the narrow streets, making deliveries whether rain or shine, snow or sleet, ensuring all residents received ordered goods and services around the clock. A group of wealthy residents strolled leisurely out onto the streets after having dined at one of the trendier restaurants, where a fancy meal would often exceed a thousand dollars since hyperinflation had become the norm. They raised umbrellas in the rain and waited patiently for their horse and carriage to arrive. Brushing past them, a lone man travelled down the sidewalk and turned the corner, headed south. As storefront lighting from supply stores and open-kitchen diners lit his wrinkled face, one could see this man was in an intense, stone cold stare to the horizon ahead. He had a destination … a purpose. And he looked determined as hell.
Around him, dozens of surrounding bars, clubs and rock venues filled the night air with their distant sounds of music, blending in with soft rainfall still drenching the city streets. Roberts stopped for a moment, gaining sense of all the distractions around him. Lifting the brim of his hat just enough for his face to stay hidden away, the wrinkled old man glanced around the street. This was the Underworld. He was in the heart of it now.
Up ahead, the Red Planet was a hive of activity. Crowds buzzed around the club’s entrance like bees to their queen. A horse and carriage trotted by Roberts, as he stood motionless on the sidewalk. It splashed up a good amount of filthy rainwater onto his legs, but he didn’t flinch. He simply stared at the Red Planet. It appeared he had reached his destination. Suddenly, he started moving towards the club’s entrance in slow long footsteps, his boots clunking on the sidewalk with a thud. Residents and entrants alike were laughing and talking as they strolled past him, eager to party their asses off in the premier entertainment district of the city. Roberts watched them pass by. If he had so chosen, he could’ve ended their lives in a heartbeat. The personal firepower and trained combat skills meant he was a hunter in the truest sense of the word. But all anyone saw looking at him was a slow, aging old man. A man past his prime. A man whose time had come and gone.
Reaching the thick line of souls waiting patiently to get inside from the warm light rain, Roberts received stares from the crowds, but remained emotionless and unresponsive. While Manhattan was a city for all living behind its seawall and had a population of diverse cultures and race, a silver-haired, eye-patched cowboy was one of the more unusual sights on city streets, even for a district that was as colorful and wild as the Underworld. Granted, the Red Planet was one of the more mainstream venues of the area and did not attract the stranger souls of the city. For a real wild ride through the Underworld, one knew to seek the district within a district known as Inferno.
From the pocket of his long overcoat, Roberts pulled out a silver hipflask and took a generous swig. Sweet bourbon. It would always be his friend. He stepped towards aged and weathered red carpet c
overing the sidewalk outside of the Red Planet entrance. Similarly-aged velvet ropes contained a good-looking crowd of patient patrons, as two heavyset, statuesque men stood guard at the front of the queue, responsible for the venue’s crowd control.
Roberts casually strolled by, looking through to the entrance of the club. Rock music belted out the speakers inside and spilled onto the street. The heavies at the door immediately noticed the drenched old man and kept their eyes on him, curious of his intentions. Some of the more aging of the resident population would sometimes find themselves lost in the Underworld, unsure of how they got there, wandering aimlessly around the streets under the influence of homemade drugs or simply the onset of dementia. Roberts could’ve easily been mistaken for an eccentric old resident who was reminiscing the good old days of the Wild West. The sheer wealth of some of the city’s residents would often have them searching out such fantasies in the Underworld.
The old man walked down the line-up of people and then double backed, heading for the door. The heavies prepared to greet him. When Roberts tried to walk past them without a word, their bulky arms stopped him like an old-fashioned subway turnstile that had just jammed.
“Whoa-whoa-whoa, hold it, Pops. We get a little lost did we?” one of them said, turning to his colleague with a small snicker.
“Broadway’s that way, buddy. Hell, you might even be able to get in the show with that getup,” the other one added, chuckling as he looked Roberts up and down.
Without warning, Roberts came to life and torpedo-punched the first bouncer right in his throat, severely damaging his windpipe and forcing him to the ground as he spluttered and gurgled, finding it almost impossible to breathe. With a quick a reaction to trouble, the other heavy grabbed Roberts in a hold, stopping him only for a few seconds before the sheer strength and power of Roberts overcame him. Roberts landed his fists straight into the man’s gut, one after the other. The heavyset doorman bent down in pain, moaning out, before Roberts kneed him in the jaw, knocking him out cold, onto the wet ground. And that was that.