by Drew Stepek
He stood up and kicked some rocks. Not at Rodderick. At me.
“I certainly hope you’re not talking to me, Perry,” Rodderick shouted back.
“Of course I’m not talking to you,” Linnwood returned.
“What took you so goddamn long to get here?”
“I was at a titty club. I didn’t get your message because there was no signal until I went to take a piss.”
A hand wrapped around the front of my neck and brought me to my knees. “Get this piece of shit out of here.”
“I’m not taking him anywhere,” Linnwood said.
“My ass you aren’t, dickhead. I knocked him out over twenty minutes ago, so I want him out of here before he heals and decides to jump me again. Fucking psychotic junkie.”
Linnwood walked closer to us and slapped me on the back of the head. Rocks fell off of my face as he asked, “What the hell am I supposed to do with him? I thought we were gonna talk business.”
“There is no business between you and me. Put this piece of shit in your car and take him back to Los Angeles. Neither of you are welcome in Austin anymore.”
“Yo, dude,” Linnwood started to grovel. “What did I do?”
“You brought this scumbag to me. You told me he would be my ‘guy’. Trust me, this isn’t my guy. Not yesterday. Not today. And, not tomorrow.” He bent down to my ear. “You’re lucky I’m not going to kill you, RJ. I tried to thank you and give you the opportunity of your shitty life and you repay me by trashing my house.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Linnwood began as he got behind me to lift me up from under my arms. “This has to be a misunderstanding. Let’s all go inside and check out the damage. I can help RJ pay you back.”
Rodderick pushed Linnwood and I slipped out of his hands. “What are you going to pay me with? The coke that you stole from me?”
“Stephan. Brother. You know I was bringing that back to you. It’s all in the trunk.... At least what’s left of it.”
Rodderick walked toward the back of the car but not before spitting on me. “Open the trunk, pussy.”
My eyes started to creep open but I still couldn’t get to my feet.
Linnwood clicked the fob to the BMW and the trunk opened. “See. Right there in the bag.”
A flood light lit up the back of the car. Rodderick rested the duffle bag on the back of the car and zipped it open. He sifted through it, grunted a few times and then closed the it. “How much did you and your other dickless friends steal from me?”
Linnwood didn’t answer.
“That’s what I figured. Go back to L.A. and send me food stamps or however you dirty scumbags pay for things. I just want you the fuck out of here.” He heaved the bag onto the stoop by his backdoor. “And no, you won’t be getting any parting gifts.”
“Wait,” Linnwood said as he pointed at me. “This dude doesn’t speak for me.”
Rodderick walked back over to me. I cowered, expecting another blow to the head. “If he didn’t speak for you, then why did you send him here?” He picked me up by the back of the shirt. “Open the door.”
Linnwood, thinking that he still had an opportunity to salvage his position in Austin, did as he was told. “Can we talk about this?”
“Fuck you,” Rodderick said as he stuffed me head first into the car.
I rolled around and sat down in the passenger seat. They both slammed the door shut.
Perry’s voice became desperate and he started to beg. “Look, I’ll kill him for you. I’ll do whatever.”
I wobbled around in the passenger’s seat and pointed at my ear. Super hearing, I mouthed.
Neither of them were paying attention.
As Linnwood approached him to plead his case, Rodderick spun him around. He crowbarred his arm behind him and smacked his face onto the hood of the car. Then, after he elbowed him between the shoulder blades, he let him go and walked back to the door.
“Get out of here, trash,” he said as he picked up the case, entered the house and turned off the porch light.
There was no music on in Linnwood’s stolen car and all he did was grumble to himself. I would have said something sooner, but my face hadn’t fully healed yet and it hurt.
“I’m sorry,” I said after about ten minutes of no conversation.
“Oh, so you can talk. I was hoping that Rodderick pulled your fucking tongue out of your face.”
I licked my fingers and started wiping a crusty mass of blood off of my chin. The pus my on cheek was hardening over the cut from the table. “Hey, man,” I returned quietly.
He threw the car into gear and started accelerating. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed him staring at me. “Looks like that went well, dick,” he whispered.
I didn’t respond.
I could hear the car humming as he shifted gears and the brakes pumping every time he hit a stop sign. For the next twenty-five excruciating minutes, he didn’t say a word to me. Instead, he kept his eyes forward, adjusted his seat and grunted.
After one severely intense groan, he pushed a button under the stereo, causing the convertible top to retract. “It’s hot in here.”
I finally asked, “You okay?”
“No, I’m not okay. You’re a loser, RJ,” he said. “You just fucked up everything for me in Austin. You just fucked up everything for you in Austin.”
We passed a sign for the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. I knew we were getting close to The Golden Aces. “I didn’t want anything to do with Austin, Linn.”
He swung into the right lane. “I sure hope you enjoyed yourself. I hope that his heroin was the best thing you’ve ever put into that derelict body of yours.”
“I didn’t get high,” I finally said. “Rodderick is scumbag. I want nothing to do with him.”
“Your only mission in meeting with him was to get us in his group. Remember the money clip and the phone? Remember the generals? About an hour ago, that was us.”
“He fucks little kids and I think that he uses their blood to make his drugs.”
“So?” he said. ‘Who fucking cares? It’s us versus them, RJ. It’s vampires versus humans. I don’t care how old they are. We need to get high to stay alive.”
I didn’t tell him the truth about vampires like us. I probably should have.
A car honked and cut him off. “Jesus,” he shouted. “Learn how to drive, asshole.”
“You’re driving pretty slow,” I pointed out.
“Thanks,” he spat. “I didn’t know you were a fucking expert on driving. You’re definitely not an expert on business or survival.”
“Just sayin’.”
“Don’t say anything, junkie.” He hammered his fist on the center console. “What exactly was the point of all that?”
I reached for his Dunhills. “I told you that I didn’t want to smooth things out for you.”
He smacked my hand. “You haven’t earned cigarettes, asshole.”
“Fine.” I cracked my neck. It was still tingling from whatever object Rodderick hammered it with.
“That’s what happens when you send a vagrant to do your work for you,” he continued. “To think, I was trying to do you a favor. I actually thought you could see the big picture here. The big picture didn’t involve you getting into a fight with our ticket back to the game. The big picture didn’t involve you getting so wasted that you didn’t even know who you were talking to. Remember Cobra?”
I nodded.
“Good,” he huffed. “Too bad you didn’t remember him an hour ago. Rodderick is that piece of shit times a million. For fuck’s sake, RJ. I was so close. We were so close.”
“I already said that I’m sorry I fucked things up.”
He grabbed the Dunhills. “That’s all you ever are. Sorry. You’re just sorry.”
As I looked off to the side of the road, Linnwood crossed over into the left lane and passed some guy trying desperately to conceal his last road-Coke of the night.
“What happened, anyway?” he
mumbled.
I sighed and pried my eyes open with my fingers. “He took me into some gross romper room to get high. It’s where he brings kids to fuck them and kill them. I’m not cool with that.”
He bent forward toward the windshield so he could light his cigarette. “And you couldn’t just be cool?”
“He kept saying all this shit to me about how much better he was than me.” I pulled some of his smoke into my blood-crusted nostrils.
“Dear Lord. Suck it up. He is better than you.” Linn rubbed his hand down my cheek like he was wiping his ass. “He’s definitely stronger than you.”
“Can you let it go? I don’t want to do business with him.”
“I’m not ever going to let this go,” he insisted.
A pair of headlights blazed into my side mirror. I put up my hand to shield my eyes. “It’s done, Linn. You might as well go beg him to let you in yourself this time. I want nothing to do with this city. I want nothing to do with him.”
“Right. As if I’m going to go beg him to take me into his organization after you just took a dump on his life’s work. What? Am I going to bring him some gift? ‘Here, Mr. Movie Star. Here’s a gift for you. I know that you have all the drugs and fame you could possibly want, but here’s a quarter sack of weed.’ Fuck that. I’ve got nothing he could possibly want.”
“It’s your problem now,” I reminded him. “It was your problem to begin with. I didn’t tell you to try and kick your way into his gangs.”
“Go around, you little fucking girl!” he snapped at the headlights. Then, he whispered to himself. “Little girl.”
With those words, I remembered that he had said something about a little girl back at The Settler’s Inn. Jesus! As everything dropped into slow motion, I heard him roll his window down all the way. “Go around.”
“What did you say?” I looked at him. He was blocking his eyes from the driver’s side mirror.
“I told this fucking little girl behind me to go around!”
He waved his arm furiously outside the window.
“What did you just say about a girl?”
He dismissed the question. “I called this bitch a little girl.” He flicked his cigarette out the window. “Go the fuck around!”
I turned around. I couldn’t see a thing behind us beside two huge headlights. “What do you know about the girl?”
“What are you talking about?”
I forced his head out the car. “What do you know about the little girl, Linnwood?”
He struggled to pull himself back into the car and stay in his lane. “Relax,” he huffed and I pushed his lips up into his nose.
I saw the lights in his rearview mirror getting closer.
He took his hands off the steering wheel and shoved me into the door on my side of the car. “Get off me.”
“How do you know about the little girl with cancer?”
He massaged his face. “Fuck you, punkass.”
I turned around again to see the headlights closing in on us, and I saw the familiar chrome six on the front of the bus from earlier that night blast to the left and gun it. Everything became crystal clear.
I pried open the glove compartment and grabbed both of his guns. “Fuck us.”
He ignored what was happening behind him and slapped me in the face. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t touch my hardware, bitch.”
I slumped forward as the bus pulled up to Linnwood’s side of the car.
The Sixth Street Skulls.
In every window there was an eerie face, tattooed and painted like a sugar skull from Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. They all had weapons. One of them bounced a bat off his hand. Another pulled a chain tightly in his mouth and bit into it with his steel teeth. The third cut across his face with a machete and flicked at a pin connected to a grenade on his chest. Blood slid into his mouth and he spat at us.
“Jesus, Linn! Get us the fuck out of here.”
The next window caught up to us. The forth Skull smiled as he held up an Uzi and then tapped it on his half-open school bus window.
Linnwood turned around to see the Skull taking aim at his head. “Shit!” he cried as he used both his feet to stomp on the brakes. The bus flew by us but not before the gunman got off a few shots that ripped into the hood and my side of our car. We fishtailed around and the bus continued ahead of us.
I pointed to an off ramp. “Take that exit. Now.”
He downshifted and spun back toward the exit. “What the fuck was that?” he yelled. “What did you get us into?”
He was breathing uncontrollably so I tugged the wheel toward the ramp.
“That was the Sixth Street Skulls, dumbass,” I screamed at him. “That’s Rodderick’s gang.”
Smoke started to emerge from the hood. Apparently, a few of the bullets hit the engine.
He continued to scream. “We’re fucking dead!”
When we reached the bottom of the ramp, our car started to sputter. I looked behind us. There was long streak of fluid, making it all too easy to track us down.
Linnwood blew threw a stop sign and turned left to go under the freeway.
“You didn’t tell Rodderick where I was staying? Please tell me that you didn’t tell him where we were staying.”
“No. I didn’t say shit.”
“Get us to the hotel. Get us to the fucking hotel!”
I grabbed the phone that Cody gave me out of my pocket and tried to turn it on. No luck. It had been completely destroyed during the fight with Rodderick.
Linnwood took a right but didn’t respond. Near the gas gage, a red light flared on and started beeping.
“What’s the name of the hotel?” I yelled again as I tossed the phone out of the car.
“Golden Aces,” he finally shouted. “I know how to get there.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” He insisted as he pumped the brakes and flipped a bitch at a turnaround. “I’ve been there like three times now.”
“Are you sure you know where you’re going?”
“Yes!”
And then, as if things couldn’t possibly get any shittier, the BMW clunked and we slowed to a crawl under the freeway.
I slammed my fists onto the dashboard. “Fuck! Start the car.”
Linnwood pushed the start button. Nothing happened.
“Start the car, Linnwood,”
He pushed the button again with his thumb. “I’m trying. It won’t turnover.”
The sound of Reggaeton music being played over the bus’s antique speaker thundered in the distance.
“Do you have your foot on the brakes?”
“Fuck. My foot was on the gas,” he realized.
I gripped his knee. “Put it on the brakes!”
The music got louder.
“Hurry up, man.”
Linnwood repeatedly pushed the starter but it wouldn’t turn over.
The blaring, tinny music stabbed my brain through my ears. I turned around and saw the headlights of Skulls’s bus take a left two blocks away. It slowly rolled toward us.
“You gotta start the car,” I begged him. “They’re coming.”
He turned to see the bus. Piss filled his pants as he furiously drilled his foot onto the brake pedal.
I grabbed him by the back of the head. “Please, Linnwood. Slow down. Press your foot on the pedal and hold it down. Don’t bang on the button.”
A tear streamed down his cheek. “Do you want to do this, RJ?”
I turned to look back. The bus came to a stop about a block away. I could feel my heart pushing the blood around in my body as it tried to escape my skin.
I tried to calm him. “Slow down.”
He closed his eyes and dropped his foot onto the brakes. Then, he slowly pressed the button. The alternator turned over and the car purred. He pushed the gas a few times and wiped the long tear off of his face with the back of his hand.
Behind us, the Skulls poured out of the windows of the bus. In the darkn
ess, I could see nothing other than the shadows of the bodies and their brightly painted faces. A few of them took the lead and started walking towards our car.
“Let’s go!” I yelled.
Linnwood dropped the clutch in gear and punched it.
The car sputtered out.
“Fuck,” he shrieked.
Horror fell over his face and we both turned around again to see the Skulls start to pick up their pace as the music hit the fast-rapping chorus.
“RJ Reynolds,” one of them sang. “Queremos comer usted!”
“What does that mean?”
I released the magazine in the gun and checked it. It was loaded. “It means they’re coming to eat me.” I shoved it back in the gun spun around in my chair. I put my knees on the seat and started unloading the gun at them. They jumped around like skeleton marionettes, laughing when bullets made contact with their bodies.
Linnwood started to turn around in his seat as well. He fired off a couple of rounds.
I grabbed him by his hair and dragged him back so he was facing forward again. “What are you doing? Start the fucking car.”
The Skulls reached a spot on the road that was two streetlights away from us. I could see them. They were about thirty deep, a lot more than I thought. The leader put up his hands, holding back his gang. They stopped but continued to shake and rattle around with their assorted weapons.
The leader walked to the center of the pack and called out in a thick Spanglish accent. “I guess we’re playing with guns now, RJ Reynolds?” Without warning, he slung a machine gun from under his arm and then resumed his stalking, randomly firing in my direction to the beat of the Reggaeton song thumping behind him.
As I ducked down and slid knees first onto the floor, I felt the engine turn over.
I looked up and over to Linnwood, who was dropping in and out of shock. “Please drive,” I pled with him. “I don’t want to be eaten.”
Linn shoved the shifter into first gear and then sped away.
“Hopefully, we can make it more than ten feet,” he whimpered.
The rattling of several guns rang out as fire filled the Austin skyline with light behind us. Linnwood’s BMW puttered and grinded from gear to gear.
I stayed on the floor and tried to catch my breath, knowing the fight was far from over.