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Pulling A Train

Page 5

by Harlan Ellison


  His face came around on the pillow, his ear turned toward the door, and his mouth grew tight. It wasn’t likely anyone would be walking the hall of the building at this hour, unless it was someone who didn’t belong there. All the stiffs and old ladies were off and about their business at this hour.

  He started to sit up in the bed, when the knock came, twice, rapidly. Deek slid his legs off the bed, and stared at the closed door.

  Whoever was on the other side, it wasn’t someone he wanted to see. He had been away, and now he was back, and already someone was knocking. Which meant either the knockers had been coming at regular intervals to check him—which was bad—or the knocker had known he was back in the turf—which was worse.

  Should he answer?

  His tongue balled up in his mouth, and he decided to keep quiet, let the knocker decide no one was home, and go away. He laid back down on the bed, keeping the knife very close.

  Outside, he heard the rustling of feet. More of them. He heard a soft whisper of undertalk, and as he began to rise on one elbow, to consider the problem again. A blow struck the door that made it cave like a bow inward, sending splinters ricocheting across the room.

  “Hey!” he yelped, thinking only of the cost of the door when the landlord saw it.

  Another, fiercer, smash was leveled against the flimsy partition, and the door shattered off its ancient lock and flew inward, crashing against the wall.

  Deek leaped from the bed, the knife away from his side, his body coiled for the strike.

  When he saw the ugly muzzle of the zip gun, he stopped. He stepped back again, and finally hit the wall. The blood drained from his face as though he had been told he was dead.

  He was hung up but good this time. There was no fire escape from the room, the one window hung three stories above the sidewalk, and the door was blocked off. There was nothing to hide behind, nothing to throw, and the knife would certainly be useless against that zip, held so professionally in the hands of the girl in the doorway.

  She had a band-aid under her eye.

  It was the girl Deek had attacked and beaten in the alley. And she wasn’t alone. She had friends. Three of them.

  The first girl was a beast. Perhaps one hundred and eighty pounds, swathed in a grey sweat shirt and jeans, on her feet a pair of stomping brogans. The knocker who had smashed open the door.

  The second was a weasel. She was five feet tall at the outside, more likely four foot eleven, and looked like the classic study of rickets in youth. Her eyes were small and red and watery, and her nose was the same. She looked furtive, and her lank blond hair hung to her shoulders with a sickly resignation, as though it had no place else to go.

  The third one was unbelievable. She had hair as black as a pound of coal dust. Her eyes were black, too, and strange with olive and gold glints. Her skin was very pale, and her breasts were the most magnificent things Deek had ever seen. They were high and large, and strained against the front of the sweater the black-haired girl wore.

  But it was the girl in the front, holding the zip gun, that Deek stared at. He stared because the gun stared back at him.

  “C’mon,” the beautiful one with the ebony hair commanded. “We’re goin’ to meet some people.”

  Deek brought the switch blade into sight.

  “Drop it or Pootzie blows a hole in you,” the girl said. “Drop it and let’s go.”

  Deek stared tightly for a moment, then dropped the knife. They moved aside to let him pass out of the room.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Gang Bang

  THEY HAD THEIR CLUB ROOM in the basement of an abandoned factory. It was set back from the street behind a cadaverous grey fence, and the property was neither condemned, nor up for sale, nor even of interest to a buyer. It was dead-hold property the owners might have liked to completely forget, using it as a tax dodge.

  The girls had made a base there, and they led Deek through a rent in the fence; he could see that there was a very definite organization here. The leader was obviously the girl with the cruel black eyes, and the other three her side girls. The one with the zip, Pootzie, kept staring at Deek the way she had stared that night in the alley…almost hungrily. It made Deek feel dirty, exposed.

  There was a sloping door, set into a ground dormer, and the six foot fullback with the sweatshirt and jeans lifted it with no difficulty. Her face was a poor sculpture cut from the fleshy equivalent of granite. She was the ugliest girl Deek had ever seen; as ugly as the girl with the black eyes was gorgeous.

  “Inside,” the black-eyed one said, shoving Deek.

  He stepped down into the ground dormer, and there was a stairwell. It was dark below, and he gripped the rough stones of the wall with his fingertips. Behind him the four girls followed, and the fullback, last, closed the dormer door down atop them once more.

  Deek downstepped till he felt a concrete floor. Then he stepped aside quickly, in the darkness, and felt the passage of Pootzie beside him. He reached out, twined his hand in her hair, dragging her toward him, and slammed her as hard as he could across the breasts.

  She dropped the zip gun, and Deek went scrabbling for it, his ears filled with the sound of Pootzie crying from the pain. He felt the wooden stock of the home-made weapon, and was about to lift it when the fullback came down on him like a Panzer unit.

  Her fists locked together, she raised her arms and brought them down into Deek’s face like a jackhammer; Deek tumbled forward, the pain all-consuming.

  When light filtered back into his world, he was stretched out on a rug that smelled from cat urine and potato chips. He looked up, and saw more than the girl’s legs. Her skirted body hung nearly directly over him, and he had an unobstructed clear view of full, white thighs, perfectly curved legs and pink pants.

  He didn’t move, and after a moment the girl stepped back. It was the one with the black eyes. “You think you got away with it, din’tcha, guy?” the girl said. There was a hardness even in her voice that surprised Deek. So beautiful, and yet with an inherent cruelty to the form of her full lips, the color of her eyes, the way she inclined her head to speak.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Somebody messes around with a Cat, he’s lookin’ for trouble, and when somebody beats up a Cat, he better hide! You didn’t hide so good, buster. So now we get our rocks by evening the score.”

  Deek watched as the girl went to a cabinet in the wall. It was made of old orange crates, and—he suddenly realized—seeing the room in one flash of observation—most of the furniture was the same.

  The girl took down a belt, a thick garrison belt, and Deek could tell from the way the edges of the buckle shone in the light of a beaded floor lamp that had been turned on, that the buckle was honed razor-sharp.

  “Terri, take off his shirt,” the black-eyed girl commanded. The fullback moved away from the wall and bent over Deek. She lifted him under the arm with one hand, getting him into a sitting position, and wound a meaty hand in the fabric of his T-shirt. Then she ripped. It came away in two big strips, across the front and back, leaving the sleeves still clinging ridiculously to his biceps.

  Pootzie moaned at the sight of Deek’s bare chest.

  He glanced at her, and it drew an accompanying glance from the black-eyed girl. “Yeah, that’s our problem with Pootzie,” the girl with the belt interjected. “She’s always got a hot rash. Can’t stay away from the guys. You picked a good one to try and mug. You’re lucky she didn’t tear you apart with that hot squat of hers!”

  Deek stared at the hungry eyes of Pootzie. The girl still held the Italian attractiveness of the night in the alley, but now that he knew she was a nymphomaniac, he could detect the harsh lines of unnatural thirsts around her mouth and eyes.

  “I didn’t jump her,” Deek said defensively, “she jumped me!”

  The girl smiled nastily. “You know me?” she asked. Deek shook his head. He had never seen the girl before. “My name’s Fabia. Fabia DeLuca. That mean anything to you?”
r />   Suddenly, it did. It was a name he had heard around the turf lately. The girl who had the new club. The Cats, yeah that was them. A bunch of real stud chicks, who didn’t give a damn, and weren’t attached as Deb auxiliary to any male gang. They were just out on their own hook, run by this Fabia DeLuca swinger.

  There had been plenty of rumble all through the turf about them. Swiping hub caps, robbing candy stores, and doing it better than the guys who’d been at it for years. But even more, they were making the big sounds all around the territory because of the way they mugged lushes, picked up sailors and hoisted their kicks, managed to avoid the nabs, and in general had a ball, without any guys around.

  Deek Cullen looked at the dark-eyed girl with more respect. And more fear.

  “What’d’ya want with me?” he asked. “Why’d ya try to run me down in your car the other day?” He knew the answers, but it kept her from using the honed buckle on his face.

  “Wasn’t my car,” she said. “We heisted that short to get you. And don’t play stupe. You better know right now, stud man, we don’t take to any man mussing up one of our girls…even Pootzie. Cause once it happens, we become bait, and I’ve got too much business to worry about my girls getting involved fighting off men.”

  Deek grinned up at her.

  “What the hell’s so friggin’ funny,” she demanded, coming at him with the belt.

  “You. The way you look at me and hand me that crap about men. You’re just a lousy lay is all, or you got something screwed up in your plumbing. That’s the only reason you’re such a mean bitch.” There was a laugh from the direction of the little weasely-looking girl. Fabia DeLuca turned on the smaller girl.

  Hatred blazed nakedly in her face. “Listen, Thumb, shut your friggin’ mouth or I’ll cut you to pieces!” The little girl, now identified as Thumb, said nothing, but there was a sly sparkle in her beady eyes.

  Fabia turned back to Deek. “So that’s your big analysis for today, is it? Well, we’re gonna have a little demonstration, tiger, just to see how good you are. Pootzie!”

  Pootzie came to Fabia’s side, and the naked lust in her face was difficult for Deek to take. “You ever been in a gang bang on some chick?” Fabia asked Deek.

  It was rhetorical. He wasn’t expected to answer.

  “Well, you’re gonna see a gang bang on a guy this time…and guess who the guest of honor’s gonna be?”

  She nudged Pootzie. “Strip,” she commanded her.

  Pootzie began to strip off her sweater. She stood there for a moment in bra and skirt, then bent over to unhook the bra. Her breasts hung only slightly, and she seemed almost bathed in sweat as she stared at Deek’s naked chest. “Hey, listen, what’re ya, out of your mind?” he objected. Terri, the fullback, lifted him under the arms, and without seeming effort threw him onto a dirty sofa against one wall of the club room.

  “Take off your pants,” Fabia said sharply. He sat there, numbly, half intrigued by the idea, and half repulsed. A female monster, a sick-looking sneaky little broad, a nympho and a chick so good looking it hurt in his groin…what a menagerie. “Go on, take ’em off, or I’ll have Terri pull ’em off you.”

  He unzipped his fly and tried to slide the pants down off his legs. They caught on his shoes and he had to remove them first. Pootzie stood swaying, her hands going involuntarily to her breasts, crushing them, twisting the nipples, in a frenzy of mounting passion. “Come on, come on, come on,” she kept murmuring, her lower body within the skirt swaying so nervously the fabric billowed out like a parasol.

  Deek lay on the sofa, clad only in underpants.

  “Okay, Pootzie,” Fabia tagged it, “he’s yours.”

  It was as if a signal had been given.

  Pootzie ripped at the zipper at the side of her skirt, and when it stuck from her ferocity, she ripped at the material, peeling the rags down off her hips. She kicked the skirt away and Deek saw she was wearing a two-way stretch. For a moment. Then it, too, was in a corner. She wore no underpants. The girl stared hungrily at Deek’s nearly naked body, and her hands came out like twin grippers.

  She took a stumbling step, almost feeble with anxiety, and fell atop him. Deek tried to ward her off, but in a moment she had ripped the underwear from him, and was gazing hungrily at his body.

  He felt like something about to be devoured.

  Her hands were hot as they touched him, and a stream of fire shot up his legs. She lay down on him and ground her body closer, closer, till he thought he would lose his senses.

  The other three girls watched, their faces weird mixtures of pleasure, lust and hatred.

  Pootzie’s hands kneaded and probed, and when she thrust her face down at Deek’s, his hand came up to grab her neck. He kissed her furiously, then, not caring that the others were watching, not caring that they might kill him, not caring about anything but this girl and the fire that burned between them. He slipped his body tighter to hers, and she opened her legs slightly.

  Her breasts flattened out against his chest and he could feel the hard, sharp, hot points of the nipples pressed into his flesh like heated raisins into dough.

  The girl was gibbering mournfully in some animal-born tongue, pleading for pain, pleading for penetration and the final joy.

  But Deek was relishing this. He had an audience, and the conception of heating four birds with one stone, so to speak, amused him.

  She was thrashing now, demanding him with her hands and with her body. But he wasn’t ready. He rolled her against the sofa, and laid atop her, placing his face into the valley between her large breasts. He took one hard, fiery nipple into his mouth and she shrieked with intermingled pain and pleasure. Then…then…he took her…

  It was wild and untutored, and at the moment of ecstasy she slammed both hands against his back so hard the breath left him and he collapsed on top of her, not having been satisfied.

  She rolled out from under him, and Deek lay there gasping, still sweating, and wondering if he was going mad. This was something from de Sade, not a modern city.

  “My turn,” said Terri.

  He looked up, ashen. The huge girl was standing in nothing but her gym shoes, her great, pendulous breasts trembling like suet. Her face seemed to be a Rushmore carving, hanging there in limbo above him. He felt a constriction in his belly as the huge girl settled down beside him on the sofa. Her breasts were as large as his head, and he could see even the fine blue veins at the areolas.

  “C’mon, hot shot,” she said, bending down to him with her dark brown hair falling over in great waves, “let’s see how you do with me.”

  Then her mouth was crushed to his, and she met the barrier of his lips and parted it as though it had never been present. Her tongue snapped against his teeth and involuntarily he opened his mouth to receive the hot dart of moistness. She kissed him with all the power and ferocity of a great animal, and Deek felt himself rising once more to the female invitation. He reached up with his free hand—one was imprisoned by the heavy mass of her breasts—and dragged her head back by the hair. He rolled out from under and in a moment was astride the great bulk of the girl.

  Her body was already lathered, and waiting to receive him. There was an instant of sharp report, when he took her brutally, and a spasm of her mewling, “Oh oh uh, yes, that’s it, that’s it, oh you, oh youuu, YES!” and she lay like a spent balloon of gas. Large and wasted and satiated.

  Deek climbed off the sofa, his legs almost giving way. Terri lay puffing and flushed on her back, her hands thrust down into the cavern between her legs, raised like church steeples against further violation. On the rug Pootzie still panted at the memory of her passion, and wetted her lips constantly with her tongue tip.

  Deek’s head was feverish, and he saw things inside his eyes that made no sense. Yet he managed to challenge, “Okay, there’s still two of you. Which one now… huh, which one?”

  He was praying neither would say anything, appalled at the erotic spectacle, but the little one, Thumb, made a sou
nd from her corner and said, “My turn, now it’s me. He’s got to take me…”

  He saw her out of the corner of his eye as she came toward him. A small girl, almost pathetically bony, and he was repulsed. She was not ugly, though there was such an air of weasely conniving about her that it distorted what might otherwise have been attractive features.

  The girl lifted her skirt and showed her thin legs.

  “I can’t do it the way Terri does it,” she said, “but I know tricks.” She came on, the skirt gripped firmly in her hands, her pathetic chest urged forward.

  “No, not you,” Deek said.

  Fabia DeLuca answered from behind him, “I’ve got the zip, stud. You’ll play our little Thumb’s games, or I’ll pop a hole in you they’ll be able to march the Chicago Rams through.”

  He turned and saw she meant it, holding the firing pin of the zip gun back, ready to drive the .32 slug through the car radio antenna barrel. “Okay,” he agreed. He moved to the sofa.

  Terri still lay with her eyes shut, and he grabbed her by one arm, yanking her completely off the sofa as he would haul a bag of meal.

  Thumb lay down without removing her clothes, but with her skirt bunched up around her hips. Deek lay down beside her on the big sofa, and her eyes seemed to glaze over with a milky white film. She began to writhe against him, her hands going to him. At first he lay flaccid in her attentions, but soon his fever began once more to rise and he took her.

  Then, abruptly, Deek floundered and fired and it was over for him, though she continued, till it hurt him. “Stop it, stop it, damn you!” he ordered her, trying to drag her mouth off himself. But she was like a turtle that will not let free till thunder crashes.

  Deek lifted a fist and smashed it against the side of her head, sending her tumbling from the sofa. She lay on the floor, and cried at him, “Hit me! Hit me again! Please, beat the hell out of me!”

  Though so weary he felt he must drop in a moment, Deek Cullen arched back his foot and kicked Thumb in the mouth. Full on the lips he caught her, sending her spinning, her face bloody. She cried with unrestrained joy. It was passion for her, more than anything else. He straddled her body and lifted her from the floor by her hair.

 

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