The Damned Summer (The Ruin Trilogy)

by Weaver, Scott

  Jake hopped up, helping his mom to her feet. She slowly rose from her chair, all of her arms and legs shaking from the effort.

  Linda moved forward to assist. "Want me to get a wheelchair, Margaret?

  "No," she wheezed. "Once I get all the way up, I'll be much steadier."

  Her words rang true, slightly. As soon as she straightened up, her legs quivered a little less and her hands got steady. Linda would have preferred a wheelchair, but she knew Margaret was still refusing the use of it, at least for now.

  "She'll change her mind eventually," Linda thought to herself. "A strong will only lasts so long against this monster."

  They walked Margaret back to the room where the poison called chemotherapy was administered. Sitting her down in the comfortable, black, death chair, Linda took the business end of the poison line and hooked it into Margaret's PICC line.

  "There you go, darlin'" Linda said as the caustic liquid started to move down the line and into Margaret's system. "You need anything?"

  "No, thank you. I'm going to try and get some shut eye."

  "Sure," Linda replied as Margaret's breathing almost immediately went in a slow deep rhythm, verifying that she was already asleep.

  Linda turned to Jake. "How about you, need anything?"

  "Water would be cool."

  She grabbed a bottle out of the nearby fridge and handed it over. "How are you holding up?" The bloodshot eyes as well as the stink of alcohol emanating from him already answered her question. She hoped the smell of booze was just residual from last night and not something he had drank on the way here.

  He nodded to his mother. "Better than her."

  She nodded her head slightly, not really knowing how to reply to that.

  "How much longer she got?" He took a drink, still looking at his mom.

  "Not sure," Linda shrugged. "Couple months most likely."

  He nodded, looking down at the floor. The sadness in his eyes proving to Linda he wasn't such a bad kid. Well, actually he was bad, but at least he had some kind of heart.

  "It's tough taking care of a cancer patient, but you're doing a great job. Bet you could use a break from it."

  Glancing at her, he gave a shake of his head. "Naw, I'm good." It was the first time he noticed how Sarah looked similar to her mom.

  Being their closest neighbor, Linda knew that Margaret was the only family Jake had. "Do you have anything set up for when she's gone?"

  Jake's eyes took a sharp tint as her words sank in. He had no plans and didn't want to think about it; not now, not ever. Instead of answering, he threw back his own barbed question. "How's Sarah nowadays?"

  "She's fine, getting ready for her senior year," she stammered, caught off guard. "Well your senior year too."

  "Yeah, our senior year," he let the comment just hang in the air for a moment, savoring how he had commented on his sharing something with Linda's daughter, even though it was pretty insignificant. It's the tone that matters, besides, he was thinking of something else entirely.

  Linda's eyes got a little chilly at that point. "I'll be back in a while to check on her."

  "Sure," Jake replied, taking a drink of water as Linda closed the door behind her.

  He felt slightly bad about getting rude with her about Sarah, but what did she expect? If someone asks difficult questions, they better be ready for tough questions to be aimed at them.

  Margaret's dreams mirrored Frank's from earlier that day, the only difference was it was when she had finally decided to run from The Dead Bikers. When she finally decided to try and escape Spider.

  Frank had been gone for almost three years and Spider and the boys had gone hardcore criminal. Drug dealing, murder for hire, prostituting minors, you name it, they had their fingers in it. The Feds were closing in like a dead-man's noose and everybody in the club knew it, but Spider kept saying everything was cool, and what Spider said, was the only real law in the club. If Spider said it, it was true, no questions, period.

  She had a train ticket to get her out of the city and straight back to Storm. She had no intention of trying to find Frank, that's not why she was going back. She was going back to Storm because it was the only other place she knew. The only place she had ever truly called home. The train was set to leave at four this afternoon, and it was ten till one right now, so she said she was going to go grab some smokes at the store with no intention of ever coming back.

  "I'll give you a ride," Spider had replied. "I wanna show you something anyway."

  Acid climbed up her throat as her fragile plan already started to fall apart. "I still got a hangover, baby," she said. "I just wanted to walk and get some air, your bike will just make my head hurt more."

  "Just a short ride, and I'll drive slow, promise."

  She looked down, pulling her hands through her long brown hair, stressing out.

  "It'll be over before you know it, and then I'll take you wherever you wanna go, no questions or anything."

  She looked at him now, starting to get scared. He never said shit like this.

  He chuckled, grabbing her hand. "C'mon, it'll be fun."

  He dragged her out to his bike like a frightened little girl, but he was true to his word. He stopped so she could grab a pack of smokes and then drove up a couple blocks, parking under a bridge. They could see the club house from where they sat, it was about three city blocks away and considerably downhill from the road they sat on.

  They sat on his bike, looking down at their hangout, smoking cigarettes and passing a flask of whiskey back and forth, saying nothing.

  A giant stop watch kept clicking in Margie's head as they sat there, burning time.

  "What are we doing?" she finally gathered up the courage to ask, finishing the third cigarette in a row.

  "Almost there, baby," he took another swig. "Just a couple more minutes.

  Ten minutes later, a SWAT team came out of nowhere, storming into the club house. Gunfire started going off like a combat zone.

  "Oh my God!" Margie whispered.

  "God ain't got nothin' to do with this baby. He don't get his hands this dirty anymore."

  "What are we going to do?"

  He turned back, looking her in the eye. "What are you going to do? Cause there is no we anymore, sweetheart."

  Her view suddenly changed to inside the clubhouse, as if she was watching a TV screen of the SWAT team as they busted through the door, swarming in like ants. The room was already starting to cloud up from the two tear gas grenades that had been thrown through each window on either side of the room.

  "Everybody on the floor, NOW!" The lead cop demanded, moving his M-16 slowly around the room, ready to kill scumbag bikers. Four more cops had already entered the room behind him, with more and more coming through the doorway.

  The clubhouse was pretty empty. A group of biker chicks sat at one table on the right side of the room and Pogo sitting all by his lonesome in the corner on the left side. A half empty bottle of Dead Ace Whiskey and a draft beer sat on his table. Two Props and one Berry stood at the bar, drinking.

  Fizz stood behind the bar, his hand already holding the sawed off double barrel shotgun in one hand, below the bar, out of sight for the moment. He had grabbed it as soon as the windows had been broken from the grenades. He was surprisingly fast for such a big guy, swinging the shotgun up, shooting both barrels into the lead cop, who flew back five feet, hitting the wall with a thump.

  The cop's bulletproof vest had taken most of the shotgun blast, put the top of the shot hit him in the throat, ripping through his gas mask and opening his carotid artery. He slowly slid to the floor as blood filled his lungs and covered his black uniform. Before he hit the ground, two of his fellow officers fired at Fizz's center mass, shredding his heart to ribbons with at least a dozen bullets.

  The three bikers on the other side of the bar were sprayed with Fizz's blood. The two closest to the kill were the Props, and they were covered with a significant amount of gore, while the farthest away was
the Berry, who barely got any of the mess on him.

  "Hands up!" yelled one of the officers, his rifle still smoking as he pointed it at the still living bikers. Two more officers just coming through the door moved up and trained their rifles on the the outlaws as well.

  The Berry's hands shot towards the sky like rockets. The Props' hands went towards the handguns under their vests as they started swearing at the officers. The four officers peppered the the bikers with bullets, making the bar look like a long term victim of termites as the bikers did a brief, macabre dance of death and then fell to the floor. Blood flowed across the floor like a maroon oil slick.

  Pogo, still hiding in the corner, pulled his brand new .44 magnum that he had just bought last week after seeing a movie where some Hollywood bad-ass was slinging it around like he actually knew how to kill people. Just as the cops turned his way he got the first shot off, hitting one of them right in the eye lens of his gas mask, going right through the lens, his eye, then his head, and continuing through the back of his helmet. Pogo would have been quite happy with the power of his new hand cannon, if one of the other officers wouldn't have quickly returned fire, putting a bullet from his M-16 into his right eye. That bullet also went right through Pogo's brain and out the back of his skull.

  Beans was also behind the bar. Luckily for him, he had been crouched down, looking in one of the lower compartments of the bar for a bottle of Dead Ace Whiskey that he swore he saw last week.

  As soon as the door was kicked open, Beans pulled his Walther PPK pistol from the holster under his arm with his right hand and his Ka-Bar knife from its sheath on his belt with his left hand. Both had been weapons he used in the tunnels, and he carried them at all times now, along with the pliers in his back pocket. Once Beans had weapons in both hands, Fizz had let loose with the shotgun, and then quickly dropped right after.

  "So much for standing up," Beans thought to himself as he saw the big man crumple to the floor. Crawling to the end of the bar, he slowly peeked around it, hearing two more shots go off, which would have made a normal man flinch, Beans didn't even blink. He could see a cop pointing his rifle at a biker chick who was on her knees, the rest of the women were already on their bellies. He was yelling that she get the rest of the way down. She replied by screeching something about Pogo and then spitting on his gas mask. He shot her straight between the eyes. Gray tear gas was making everything in front of the bar smoky and dim.

  Beans raised his PPK, aiming it at the cop's helmet, when another cop walked around the bar from the other side. Beans looked upward as the cop looked down, their eyes meet at the exact same time.

  As the cop started to lower his rifle towards Beans, the tunnel rat shot up like a rattlesnake, stabbing his Ka-Bar to the hilt in the cop's throat. As the cop dropped his M-16 and started gurgling, Beans leaned to the right, shooting the cop that just killed the chick twice in the chest. The cop's vest stopped the bullets, but they still hurt like hell, knocking him back against the wall and then dropping him to a knee as he clenched his chest.

  The knifed cop's knees started to buckle as Beans rotated around him, intending to use him as a bulletproof shield, but he was quickly discovering that was harder than he had anticipated. For starters the dead cop was about a foot taller than Beans and over one hundred pounds heavier, thus making it very hard to keep the large body up with one hand, while he tried to shoot at the cops with his other.

  Everything was moving at light speed during all this, so while Beans was coming to the conclusion he was going to have to let his shield fall, it started slumping downward regardless of his efforts. During this time Beans was also aiming at the next cop he saw, who was aiming at him as well.

  Having no choice, Beans let the body fall, but he fell with it, firing at the cop as he went down with the body shield. The cop Beans was aiming at returned fire, along with three of his fellow officers.

  Beans got three shots off, the first scraping the paint off the side of the cop's helmet as it buzzed by, the second hitting him on the right side of his jaw and the third went into the left cheek, right below his eye.

  The cop that Beans hit got two shots off with his M-16. The first shot hit Beans in the shoulder, the second buzzed by about an inch too high.

  The other three cops managed to hit Beans in the wrist, shattering the bone, two more bullets ripped through his forearm and one hit his bicep, clipping the bone as it raged past. The last bullet licked past his head, slicing off a large hunk of his ear.

  Of the three cops standing, one went to his wounded comrade, one moved towards the door leading into the back room and one moved up to Beans. Four more cops came through the front door and made their way to the next closed door behind the first cop.

  Beans' eyes burned with rage and pain as he glared back at the cop looking down at him, his rifle trained on his head. The cop looked him over, noticing the PPK had fallen well out of the bikers reach, even though he was in no shape to make a move for it even if it was. The cop saw what was left of the tattoo on Beans arm.

  "No wonder," the cop said with a smirk. "You tunnel rats always were shit-bird crazy." He put two rounds into Beans' head.

  Five more SWAT officers moved into the room from outside.

  "Blue team go to the closed door and prepare to hit it," said the cop that had just shot Beans. "Rudd and Pearcy," he pointed to two of the cops that had been first through the door. "Secure the women." He pointed to two others that had been some of the first to enter the bar. "Johnson and Blotzer, guard the door after we go through, in case any bikers manage to circle behind us." Walking up to the closed door he reloaded his rifle, as did all the others who had shot.

  Once Beans' killer's weapon was ready and he was close to the door, he gave the command to kick it and go.

  The eleven officers busted the door and moved into the large room, spreading out as they checked the corners and the insides of the vehicles not yet chopped. A lone biker was in the back corner of the room, using a loud sandblaster on something. His back was to them and he seemed oblivious to their presence.

  The lead cop pointed to five of his men and pointed them to the mezzanine, they quickly moved up the steps to check the small room. He pointed at the other three to follow him to the lone biker.

  Once they were within six feet of the biker they stopped, rifles aimed at his back. After yelling three times to get his attention, the lead cop gave up trying to be heard over the sandblaster the biker was using to get the paint off of a gas tank from a motorcycle. Grabbing a wrench off the nearby workbench, he chucked it at the biker, harder than what was necessary.

  The biker turned the blaster off. "What the fu---" Paint started to say as he turned and saw who had just hit him in the back. "Oh shit," he replied from behind the plastic face shield he was wearing. A M-16 was about two inches from the face shield, pointing directly at his nose.

  She was back on the hill, beside Spider, listening to the gunfire. Her voice was gone, all she could think of was the bullets flying down in the club. How everyone she knew down there was dying right now.

  "I told you I'd take you wherever you wanted to go, no questions, no hassles. Just name it."

  "You would let me go?"

  "Yeah, for now anyways," he nodded. "You pretty much served your usefulness for now. Franky was the one that I wanted to have stick around, you were just a tool in the plan."

  "What?" things just kept making less and less sense.

  Spider let out a sigh. "It's obvious he's not going to come back for you, so I got no reason to keep you around as bait." He shook his head. "It always amazes me, even the best laid plans can fall to pieces just because one dipshit mortal changes their mind about something. C'mon, let's get you on that train."

  He kicked the bike on and took off, taking her straight to the train station.

  She climbed off the bike, numb from head to toe, unable to truly believe she was escaping him. That he was just letting her leave.

  "Run on home Marg
ie," Spider smiled.

  She turned from him, walking away, afraid to look back, afraid he would be right behind her, about to grab her and drag her back to the massacre at the club house.

  "I'll be seeing you around honey!" He yelled out to her as she escaped down the stairways to the underground station.

  The dream jerked her awake. Looking over she could see Jake sleeping in a nearby death chair.

  She resisted the urge to slap him upside the head, telling him that healthy people had no business sitting in that chair, and to show some respect for the dying.

  "The stupidity of youth," she thought to herself, thinking not only of her son now, but herself at his age. A lone tear traveled down her face.

  It was a busy morning at Joe's Cup, so Drew didn't see much of Jenny, since she waited tables and he was stuck at the grill in the back. The passing of time slowly wore off the queasy stomach from the hangover, which was replaced with the oh so familiar Jenny butterflies.

  "Liked it better when I felt like hammered shit," he thought to himself as he cleaned the grill, trying to scrub away the memories of last night as he scrapped the old grease from the hot surface of the burner. "She wanted me to stop kicking him because she still likes him," he told himself throwing a brillo pad on the grill and then pressing down on it with a flat piece of metal that had a handle. Pressing hard, he started scrubbing away all the grease and fat from the slick metal surface of the grill. Hot grease spit up from the hot surface, burning his face and arms with tiny, sizzling drops. The pain didn't do anything but make him scrub harder, which in turn caused more burning grease rain.

  He let out a low, quiet, growl which Joe heard as he walked past.

  "Shift's over," Joe patted Drew on the shoulder. "Get outta here."

  Pulling the grill scrubber off the grill and throwing it onto the grease ledge, Drew walked back to the time clock without a word, punching out and walking out the back door.

  With the lunch hour rush over at two o'clock, Jenny came back to clock out as well.