by Brian Hodge
Her name was Arianne, and there was blood in her mouth. She remembered hearing music coming her way before she or either of her friends could actually see the car that the lunatics with the firearms had called Death Caddy.
That chance encounter had happened about an hour ago.
It's not Nadia's boyfriend, Willy, but Nadia herself, Miz Cautious, who insists on flagging the first car to pass. "This is an emergency, right?"
"Goddamn alternator," Willy grumbles. He slams the hood of the old Impala. "I can smell oil burning. We might have fried a gasket, too." Willy hates the idea of soliciting aid from passing motorists in the middle of the desert. His mohawk, his garb was not popular in this neighborhood … as they'd all discovered when they'd gassed up at that convenience mart, two hours back.
The beer cans blurred out of focus as Dicky lifted her head by the hair. "Comfy?"
She had ceased making protest sounds. For what?
"I'll be gentle," Dicky cooed. He licked the free sweat from her forehead. "Is your name really Arianne? Sounds like one of those piss-ant yuppie names ex-hippies give to their litters. It sucks. From now on, your name is Bitch. Like it? Can you say Bitch? I knew you could."
Toots drew another beer. One more can down.
"Snatch is dead. She didn't last very long. No legs. City chick; you could tell."
Tears filled Arianne's eyes. Tears for Nadia.
"Keep it warm." Dicky slapped her naked rump. "Eight cans to go."
Her sinuses were packed, and she could barely breathe through her nose. Maybe if she held her breath, she could ace herself. Cheat them.
By noon it's too hot for Willy to wear his jacket, the fabulous patchwork fatigue that he climbs into like a new identity. He is down to jeans, safety pins, canvas combats and tong shades. His BAD RELIGION shirt now has smears of grime, from the engine.
All he says is, "Just try to get a look at them before you flag 'em down." Then: "I'll do it."
So saying, he sealed their fates.
The music was right. The attitude was right. Their ages were right. None of them could see the bad guy hats.
Arianne can recall saying, "Hey–that guy looks like he has blood on him."
Toots and Zippo took up the back seat of Death Caddy. No one had hurried to claim K-Bar's spot, up front. It was K-Bar's blood, on Zippo, that Arianne had glimpsed.
The pilot of the Cadillac ragtop scabs the road with rubber as he stands on the brakes, slams into reverse, and backs up to rendezvous. Willy steps forward; their rep. Their de facto protector.
The guy in the Wild West shirt–the one with the blood on him–stands with some kind of machine gun and puts nine into Willy, pirouetting him. Arianne freezes, mouth on the hang, eyes large like a shined deer.
Nadia runs.
The handsome one with the long black hair runs after her. He is wearing gray nightfighting pants with an enormous knife sheathed to one thigh. He tackles Nadia, knocks her into a cactus, and breaks her arm taking her down.
Arianne begins to back-pace in welling panic. The driver, wearing a HONKIF YOUR HORNY cap, vaults from behind the wheel, and before she can beg, or promise she'll do anything, he smashes her in the face with a long-barreled revolver
She wakes up in the trunk of the Cadillac. Among her friends, one of whom has shit themselves in the process of roundup. She smells lubed auto tools, spare tire rubber, and is afraid the moisture speckling her face is her own blood. She wonders if she'll be alive in an hour.
Heat and, stink and concussion knock her down until she comes to again, on the table.
The power station stood a good five miles back from the highway, accessed by a dirt track of single-vehicle width. Hotwire towers squared their steel shoulders, a row of gigantic Japanese super heroes, their rows diminishing over the mountains in both directions, properly awesome–the new gods of power, forged in metal, bolted and riveted. On chain link and razor wire, signs bespoke DANGER and HIGH VOLTAGE and OFF LIMITS.
The shack was about ten-by-ten, and Arianne was the most interesting thing inside.
"If one kills, we all kill." Dicky felt the need to remind Zippo and Toots of their blood oath. It was the same thrill as forming a monster club, when you were a kid. "The cowboy shot first, so we're all in the clear. We did what we had to do."
For Dicky, so the story ended.
Toots indicated their current harvest. "Three of them. Three of us, now."
"Bitch is mine," said Dicky. "Zippo took the punk ninety percent of the way; he owns him. You nailed Snatch, so she's yours." He fixed Zippo with his Dicky-glare. "We do this for K-Bar, our bro, whom we love. Right?"
"Ain't got nothing else, you don't have your bros." Toots swigged and tried to nod solemnly; he had already drunk too much to nod without bobbing his head.
The bullet-riddled Willy was tied upright to a saguaro outside the station fence. His pupils still reacted to light; some of him was still living. Sprawled in the dirt at his feet, Nadia–Snatch–was still naked, still dead. As Dicky had predicted, she had not lasted very long.
Willy had witnessed just how long.
"Lemme tell you something about blood, and natural selection." Dicky was pacing, drinking, working up fire. "We are the survivors. We are the hunters. Can't you guys feel it? It's almost like … when I terminated that geezer back at the store, I could, like, feel the charge. Like a battery, powering up." He indicated the power station. "Like this, crackling the ozone, all around the place."
"Death rush," said Toots, bobbing.
"No, listen–it's more. It's like angel dust. Like nitrous oxide for a car engine. Almost like you can feel their life, adding to yours as you take it. Man, I don't need to eat, I don't need to sleep–"
"Count fucking Dracula," said Zippo.
"I feel it," said Toots, with numb lips. Then he averted his head to liberate a quart of acrid beer vomit. Zippo had to laugh.
"You fucks don't understand," said Dicky. "But you will. You'll see." His gaze flickered outside, toward Willy–sunburnt, shot, impaled on cactus spines from his heels to the nape of his neck. "Zippo–we'll do the punk last, as we leave. Right now it's time to do Bitch."
"Do her to death," said Zippo.
"We haven't finished the case yet," protested Toots.
Dicky thought of Arianne, staring down at the beer cans, counting them, keeping track as they dwindled.
"I know," he said.
Conor sniffed the blood on his fingertips. "Couple of hours. They moved inland. No bodies."
They had found the Impala parked on the shoulder, windows up, doors locked. Grace finessed the driver's side door in seconds. "They cleaned out all the documentation."
"They're learning." This was getting good.
Conor spat out his used Black Jack and peeled a new stick. By his reckoning, the sun hung at about four o'clock. As Grace backed out of the car, he circled, less mindful of all the footprints, now that she'd had a shot at reading them. Nine-millimeter shell casings on the road. Blood smear on the flank of the Chevy. The cowboy at the Jump Mart had been killed by the same slugs.
Grace popped the hood. "Vapor lock," she said, after a peek. "Needs oil. Alternator's about to go."
Conor leaned in for a peek at the V8 powerhouse.
Grace wiped her hands. "Now, there's a position I wish I could catch you in more often."
"Never," he joked. She was eating him with her eyes.
"It's never too hot." She caught him and turned him, hands snugging his butt close and tight, the merciless desert heat that had pounded into her clothing now penetrating his own. They kissed like they really meant it. Their lips knew where to go, and did their devilish best.
"You taste like gum."
"You taste like salt."
"Come sundown, your ass is mine."
His hand caressed her neck–perfect–then tracked the zipper of her jumper all the way down, for a gentle squeeze. "You know where I'll be," he said.
Grace gazed past his shoulder. Sh
e was getting a mild recharge from holding him so close. She was only an inch or so shorter than Conor, who topped six feet without his boots.
"What are you grinning at?" he said.
"Those power towers."
He craned around and saw them, too, marching from the highway into the heart of the scrub and cacti, leading the way like a column of Spartans.
Grace got another kiss for that one.
"Check it out," said Toots.
"Hippie mobile." Zippo buttoned his fly as he walked. Together he and Toots observed the slow, bumpy approach of the VW bus along the dirt path. "God, I hope none of 'em are wearing patchouli oil; I hate that shit!"
Toots had been coring Willy with a Randall survival knife that had, until this morning, belonged to the original owner of Death Caddy.
The four of them have just ditched yesterday's hot truck and purloined virgin plates when Dicky spies the Cadillac in the lot of a highway roadhouse, hogging two parking spaces. It has Confederate tags and one hellacious burglar alarm, not to mention the modest arsenal Dicky discovers upon punching the trunk lock. Dicky falls in love as the owner of the Caddy barrels out of the bar, gun-first, in answer to the call of his inadequate alarm system. A heavyset guy, like a used-car huckster or politician. It's a total bushwack. The guy skids headlong into a cartoon-character halt, eyes bulging to meet the bores of his own upraised hardware. He elects not to discharge the nickel-plated whore's pistol that has been drawn from his ample waistband.
Dicky and the boys have what they call fun. When the owner's buddies look out from the bar and see what is going on, they stay inside. Dicky bashes out the guy's front teeth with his own Saturday Night Special; this was what you called irony.
The guy is alive when Dicky and the boys drive off. He dies. This is already eons ago, way back before they had actually murdered anybody.
"How's your clip?"
"Got it." Zippo jacked. the primer round on the Uzi.
The VW microbus puttered to a stop, bringing a thunderhead of dust with it. Glare blanked the windshield. Dead bugs, grit and mileage. The doors opened simultaneously like the pathetically flapping wings of some obese insect.
"Tell Dicky."
Zippo double-timed away while Toots sheathed the Randall on his thigh. There was no way to conceal poor old Willy, staked to his cactus, leaking the rest of his life out.
The shotgun was leaning against Willy's cactus, out of sight. The Pit Bull was snugged down in the small of Toots' back, ditto. He let his hand ride the hilt of the Randall. He saw a rangy man and a tall blonde in a jumper. They didn't look armed.
"Sure hope you fellas ain't planning on using any of that firepower on us," said the man. He smiled. Friendly.
Toots felt Zippo return. He knew he was covered.
"You lost?"
The man spat out a black wad of gum and replaced it with a toothpick. Toots watched it travel from one side of the man's mouth to the other.
Zippo was close enough to play Grim Reaper.
"Where's Dicky?" Toots kept his eyes on the pair.
"He told me to tell you that you and me should take care of it."
Shit, thought Toots. Dicky thinks we'll cluck without him. He's probably watching us. To see if we buy all his mung about nitrous and angel dust and death.
The blonde had her hands on her hips. Toots saw her lick her lower lip. Hot out today. He could see himself and Zippo reflected in her pilot shades.
"Mini-Uzi," she said. "That's a nice little piece."
Zippo actually looked at his own gun. He had just gotten to the stage where he was fantasizing about what he'd do to this babe once he sliced off her jumper.
Toots moved forward, drawing the Randall.
When Zippo looked back, the woman had already whip-drawn a Colt Trooper from behind her. She fired once from a distance of about ten feet. Her lead semi-wad hollow point hit Toots in the cheek below his right eye, expanding to .69 caliber on impact and kicking a five-inch entryway.
There was no need for a second shot.
Little moist hunks of Toots' face and red strands of his hair spattered Zippo, who squeezed convulsively and fired into the sky over Conor's head. Conor was in his face before Toots could fall all the way to the ground. He flat-handed the Uzi back into Zippo's face, shattering teeth.
Then he jerked him forward on the gun strap, right into his fist. Zippo's lips halved. His nose pancaked in a splurt of blood. His left eye was welded shut; the sclera crimsoned as it filled.
Conor let Zippo drop as Dicky's face appeared in the transmission shack doorway. It ducked instantly as Conor brought up the Uzi and emptied the magazine, peppering the doorway.
Grace was on her knees, cradling Toots, getting the last out of him. "You want that 12-gauge?" Grace nodded toward the cactus.
"What for?" Conor dropped the exhausted Uzi and pointed at the doorway. "Just keep him in there for me, baby."
Conor hared over while Grace spaced out her remaining rounds from the Trooper. By five, Conor was past the gate and hugging cover against, the shack.
His back to the corrugated steel, he called toward the doorway. "Hey! Why don't you and I chat a bit, first?"
Inside, Dicky still had his pants off, and had thumbed back the hammer on his Combat Magnum. He held it near his face, as if it could give him wisdom.
"Yeah, so?"
"Take a look," said Conor. "Isn't she great?"
Anything past the gate was too dicey to hit with accuracy from the shack, no, not with a bad guy crouching mere feet from the door. Dicky saw Toots, crumpled unmoving in his own mud puddle of red. He saw the woman, who did not appear to have any trouble dragging Zippo by the scruff even though he was the biggest of them. He saw Zippo paw at her grip, once or twice. She dumped him upright behind the wheel of Death Caddy.
"Zippo!"
No response. Dicky saw her pop the trunk. Faster than he had, this morning. She took out a jerry can and funnel.
"Zippo! Goddammit!"
"Kinda elegant, ain't it?" said Conor, from somewhere down and to the right, outside, out of view.
"Zippo!" Dicky hazarded shots, one-two-three, but it was pretty hopeless.
Grace liberally doused Zippo and the front seat of the Caddy with five gallons of Super Unleaded.
"Zippo? That's real cute. You're the forgotten Marx Brother, hon." His good eye followed her. He got a hand on the door, weakly. She broke his thumb with the butt of the Trooper.
Zippo curled and convulsed. The pain had deadened his senses to animal, reactive instinct. He could not make his body comply with the urge to escape. He could not even smell the gas drenching him.
"Please…" he croaked.
"What's that?" She seemed genuinely sympathetic.
From the shack, Dicky hollered uselessly and snapped off another round. Zippo heard his own name and did not comprehend. The shot struck sparks off the chrome near the wipers.
"I'll do anything … you want …"
Grace frowned. "Somehow, I knew you were going to say that." Now she looked disappointed, almost sad. "I thought you had the stuff, baby. I guess not. Happy cooking."
Zippo tried. He could not prevent her from reaching into Death Caddy and pressing the cigarette lighter inward, clink.
Zippo tried. He heard her steps as she walked away, calm, measured paces.
He heard the lighter pop out, clink. His eye widened. He tried.
He heard his own hair frying and felt his ears fuse to his scalp one heartbeat before Death Caddy blew up, scattering jumbo car-part shrapnel and impromptu napalm. Grace hugged the saguaro for cover on the Willy side. The ammo in the car discharged uselessly and the air filled up with the stink of smoking oil and barbecued Zippo.
Conor called toward the door. "You want to know something really funny? You've been blockaded in there, and you just let your pal up and die, because you're afraid that if you poke your nose out, I might shoot you … and you know what? I don't even have a gun!"
The ve
ins in Dicky's temples banged feverishly as he watched Zippo burn. Toots had not moved. This was all bullshit. This was wrong. They wore the bad guy hats around here.
He slapped his empty pants pockets. His extra speedloaders had gone to hell with Death Caddy. Think fast, move fast…but to do what? "I have a hostage in here."
"So what? I don't give a shit. Hey, Grace!"
Grace had reloaded her Trooper just as fast as Dicky. She waved A-OK.
"Is Mister Mohawk still kicking on the cactus, there?"
She gave the high sign. Willy was, believe it or don't, still among the living. Flies were lunching on him, afloat on updrafts of excrement and clotting blood and the last dregs of dehydrated sweat.
"Grace, show our buddy here how much we care about hostages."
Grace shot Willy in the temple. He stiffened. She enjoyed a tiny internal twinge as he was finally released. Willy was no predator, however–he had been into punk fashion, not punk thought.
"Okey-doke, chief." Conor was savoring this. It was what he had come for. "No hostages. You don't win a helicopter. No barter. Now what are you gonna do?"
Dicky could hear his own breathing too much. Too defensive. Two shots left. Why hadn't he followed K-Bar's advice and stolen an automatic?
"Hey, you listening? You asleep? Have you got a name? What do we call you?"
The stranger's civil tone made Dicky want to kill everybody. He itched to murder the world and feel the empowerment. Zippo and Toots had been so close to seeing, to feeling as he felt.
"Fuck you!"
Conor chewed on that one. "Okay, Fuck You. From the hole I saw in the old man's head back at the Jump Mart, I figure you're clutching a .45 revolver like your dick and wondering where to get more ammo, am I right?"
Two shots. Dicky edged nearer the door, pacing his heart, his racing pulse a metronome.
"Getting adrenalated? I can smell you getting ready to blow, man."
Hammer back. Dicky thought about blasting through the corrugated wall … but the interloper's invisible position was not guaranteed, and there were no bonus shots to squander. His lady partner stayed behind the cactus, behind Willy's cloud of insect vermin.
Behind him, Bitch groaned against the tape sealing her mouth. Nobody home there, not anymore.