I dove, headfirst and blind, to the side, listening to a string of automatic gunfire slap the wall just behind my feet as I did. Hitting the concrete floor, I swallowed the wave of pain and began a clumsy roll away from the wall until I’d planted myself against one of the few sections of once-wall that still remained. Though the Carrion Crew had obviously gone to great lengths to create a storage facility out of this place, the structure still demanded a series of supports to keep the roof as… well, a roof. I was certain that any number of the lesser-educated Crew had wanted nothing more than to take a bulldozer to the interior—the haphazard nature of some of the stacked crates told me that they were wrestling with what they had—but ceilings tended to enjoy things like load-bearing structures where idiots craved open space.
At that moment, ducking behind one of the few load-bearing structures left in this building, I was thankful that the Carrion Crew had at least one educated member who’d managed to keep them from all-out caving the roof in on themselves.
It was, after all, the only thing at that moment separating me from what sounded like a raging storm of lead.
“Ain’t lead,” I heard Danny correct me in my head.
“Shut up,” I said aloud.
Another Crow member who’d been forced to duck behind the same barricade as me looked up at me, questioning, and I shook my head at him. What the “no” in that was supposed to convey was beyond me, but it was enough to get him to look away from me and focus on the task at hand.
Namely the nearly one-dozen members of the Carrion Crew unloading their magazines on us.
After all, what sort of gang leader talks to himself in the middle of a shootout?
That’d just be crazy!
I rolled my eyes at myself as I began to fire out, focusing less on aiming—knowing I didn’t have the time to—and working to send as many bullets as I could in the general direction of the source of the bullets coming back towards us. I knew that, if I could force the Carrion Crew’s shooters to take cover and plant themselves, the other Crows stood a better chance of getting a bead on them.
I just hoped that not everyone of the other Crows was thinking the exact same thing.
Being a blind-shooter was a decent enough strategy so long as not everyone was taking the same initiative.
As if answering my momentary concern, I spotted Luka and Marcus slipping forward and then parting in a ‘Y’-formation. Taking a series of vantage points from their new posts, I saw the pair begin to train the barrels of their weapons, holding their fire and beginning to take stock of the whereabouts of our enemies. Daring a look around, I spotted the rest of our group as they also began to take cover in their own tactical positions—all but two avoiding the too-convenient crates while the other two actually started climbing the crooked stacks for a better vantage point at what would be considered an unlikely area. Watching them climb like hairless spider monkeys, I couldn’t help but be impressed by both their nimbleness as well as their guts. Then, just as I thought this, I watched in horror as one was shot down. With only a general idea of where the shot had come from, I swung my arm out and unloaded four shots back in their direction.
I startled myself when I saw one of the Carrion Crew roll off his own crate and slump to the floor.
“BE CAREFUL!” I called out at the rest of the gang before spotting the third ex-Marine starting for his own mad-dash towards the first two. “ERIK, WATCH YOUR NINE!”
I watched as Erik spun to his left, blindly taking my order to heart, and dropped to one knee. A series of shots sailed over his head as he dropped below them, his own gun-arm raising to take aim before his body had even come to rest on the floor, and before I could come to realize I was holding my breath I watched as he took out another two. He hit the ground, sent up a cloud of dust, and, after actually letting out a small cough that nearly had me toppling over myself, began to glance around the room for another target.
Part of me was tickled by the scene—a soon-to-be discarded thought to start illustrating a stick-figure comic called “The Asthmatic Assassin,” coming to mind—but most of me was too flooded with adrenaline to focus on anything else. Forgetting what I was thinking just as quickly as I’d started thinking it, I started a mental inventory of my own team and weigh it against a rough estimate of the Carrion Crew’s own, trying to remember just how many men I’d seen. I decided to just use twelve for now until I could get a better number. We had taken out three so far, which left another nine to get. I glanced around, seeing that the shootout had begun and keeping track was going to get a lot harder.
The familiar pattern of the ex-Marines shots began to chatter with ferocity, and I watched as several more Carrions caught their onslaught in the worst way possible.
Eight left… I began a silent countdown, then, spotting one of my own about to be blind-sided, pulled him out of range before a shot from a hand-cannon could turn his skull into jelly.
The Crow by my side was quick to dart out as the one I’d just saved took a moment to celebrate his extended life, and the sound of fresh gunfire echoed as he drew two more shots from the hand-cannon wielder before finally putting the Dirty Harry wannabe to the floor. I watched as one of the Carrion Crew stood from where he was hiding and aimed at another of ours. I took fire and cursed as the other also took fire. Both bullets nearly hit simultaneously and both men were taken out.
And then there were six.
I scowled, realizing there was only seven of our team left as well. Just as I thought this, I caught sight of Erik, Marcus, and Luka. The three were doing a good job of holding their ground—even seeming to gain a bit from time-to-time—and, even as I was assessing the situation, I watched as they took out another two of the Carrion Crew’s members.
And then, just like that, the Crow Gang outnumbered the Carrion Crew by two.
“Fuck yeah!” I said in a controlled cheer, grinning and even going so far as to thrust a fist into the air.
I immediately felt a wave of embarrassment at that, but, though I regretted the display, I was no less proud.
Fortunately, with the headshake-no Crow no longer sharing a barricade with me and the one whose life I’d just saved paying more attention to the scene facing away from me, I was confident that nobody had seen it.
Together, we took out the remainder of the crew workers and I frowned, looking around for the leader. I gestured for the others to follow me forward after making sure the Crew had been taken out.
“We’re still missing someone,” I said.
“What? Who?” one of the other Crows asked, looking around.
“Not one of ours,” Luka corrected him.
“The leader, right?” Erik asked.
I nodded at that and then took a cautious look around for the missing Carrion Crew member before daring a glance around the blood-soaked scene. The place was littered in rubble, splinters, and bodies. Though the Crew had undeniably lost more in this shootout, I couldn’t help but feel that there wasn’t much of an immediate difference between us and them. This thought, ongoing as it was, exhausted me and made me that much more eager to see an end to it all.
Still, it was a shit-ton of dead bodies.
I’d make sure to have Danny get in touch with his connections in police department to figure a way around this. The way I saw it, we were going to be using them a lot in the next couple of days. Though I hated to think of it this way, the two dead Crows offered enough leverage for a defense plea if we came to that point.
Assuming, of course, that the single Carrion Crew member still alive didn’t manage to waste all of us.
Their leader was around here somewhere and if we didn’t take him out, it wouldn’t be long before this place was back and running.
“Where could he be?” Marcus said, looking perplexed.
Then the sound of a bullet rang through the otherwise silent room. We took cover and I was glad to see the bullet had missed. I glanced over where it had hit and looked around, trying to find the source.
Up in the rafters, perched on one of the long columns at the roof was the leader. He looked shaken as he clutched at the rafter, holding his other arm out with the gun. I narrowed my eyes, lifting my own gun in his direction and he yelped, his own gun falling and hitting the floor beside us.
“You want us to shoot you up there or you wanna come down?” I said, deciding to give the man a choice.
“Fuck you!” he said, shouting down from the roof.
“Fuck me?” I furrowed my brow and glanced back at the others. “I’m sorry, boys, but did I hear that asshole correctly? I could be mistaken—him all the way up there and us way down here and all—but I’m relatively certain I heard him say ‘fuck me’ just now. That sound right to you?”
“Sounded that way to me, boss,” Marcus agreed.
“Can’t say I heard any different, Chase,” another called.
Erik was already tracing the ceiling with the barrel of his own gun, no doubt already getting a bead on our target. “Definitely heard ‘fuck you,’ boss; I think the bird needs his wings clipped.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said with a nod, sighing. “Fuck me, huh? Fuck me?” I sighed and shook my head. “No, motherfucker. No. FUCK YOU!”
I’d meant to start shooting at that—feeling a sense of pride and, by extension, a much grander sense of group pride from that little episode—but Erik, who most certainly had been getting a bead on the son-of-a-bitch, saw that as his cue to pull the trigger. Before I could have even thought to lift my gun, a single roar of gunfire sounded, followed immediately after by a startled grunt. Our collective gaze turned skyward then, and we watched as the man stared, stunned and frozen, back at us, a fresh blossom of gore beginning to bloom in the middle of his chest. The nearly perfect circle of red spread, reaching either shoulder and almost low enough to stain the area above his navel. At that moment, however, his balance left him and he staggered, caught himself momentarily, and finally fell forward. His body did a half-cartwheel in midair, his arms spiraling in either direction as his legs flopped useless as a ragdoll’s, and we followed the descent until his body fell limply to the ground in a sickening thud.
“Fuck,” one of the other Crow members said, whistling at the sight.
“Cops are gonna have fun with this one,” one of the others said, sighing softly.
“Mercury’s got a few buddies with the PD,” I said, running my hand through my hair. “He’s already given him the warning.”
“Pays to have friends in high places,” Erik said with a humorless laugh.
One of the other Crows scoffed at that. “Tell it to the piece of shit who just swan-dived off his own high place,” he cracked.
This earned a few halfhearted chuckles from the others, but it wasn’t enough to delay any of us in gathering our things and starting to head out.
I glanced around, hating how bloody Papa Raven was forcing this to become. Good men were dying now and all because Papa Raven didn’t want to do his own dirty work. This had to end and the sooner, the better. I didn’t want to lose any more of my own for this. One more look around was all I could deal with and I gestured for the men to head out.
“I need a shower,” Luka said, sneering.
The other two ex-Marines agreed with him.
“Says something that even someone with your kind of reputation feels dirty from something like this. Gotta mean something that even you guys are disgusted, right?” I asked, frowning at their reaction.
They had served in the military and this was bugging them even?
“When we served,” Marcus began. “There were a lot of deaths, but it feels different—feels wrong—when it’s on your on turf, I guess. For one, we never fought on American soil, but more than that even is the idea of how localized it is.”
Luka nodded at that. “It’s one thing when you’re taking orders in a war with another country. Feels sort of ‘out there,’ if you know what I mean. Part of you feels like you can leave it behind, like it was another world or another life, maybe—seems easier to do it that way, in fact. Does for me, at least,” he said with a shrug.
“I guess that makes sense,” I said, shaking my head.
“A lot of these men don’t have anywhere else to go, Papa Raven gives them safety and a job, and well, it’s work, right?” Erik said.
I frowned, realizing he was right. A lot of these men weren’t bad men, had their own lives outside of working for Papa Raven. I bit my lip, hating how sick I suddenly felt for taking out those men. While we were defending ourselves, it still felt wrong. There had to be more we could do, right?
With that thought, I decided to head back to the shop. I wanted to talk with Danny. To figure out if there was something we could do.
TEN
~MIA~
“We are NOT just sitting around for Jace and the others to get back,” Candy said, shaking her head.
“Well, what the fuck would ya suggest?” Danny asked back, glaring over at Candy. “I mean, other than suckin’ dick fer cash?”
Candy stuck out her tongue after muttering, “Like you’d really be against taking a huge, hard cock down your fat, faggy throat, you douchebag!”
We’d been sitting in the office for less than twenty minutes when Candy had suddenly stood up, pacing and complaining about sitting around. I agreed that I didn’t like not doing anything while Jace was away, but I wasn’t sure what there was we could do.
“Besides, didn’t you say there were four locations?” Candy asked. “As in ‘not one, not two, not even fucking three, but four’ locations?”
“Yeah, I did,” Danny said, shrugging his shoulders. “What of it?”
“What of it? What of it is this: let’s go take out one of the other ones!” Candy said matter-of-factly.
“Candy, I don’t know if that is a good idea,” I said, even though a part of me did want to do something, especially if that something was doing something destructive to the Carrion Crew.
“Oh, come off it, Mia! Like your puss ain’t getting juiced-up at just the idea of bringing the hammer down on those fucking assholes!”
I cringed at that, inwardly cursing her for knowing me so well. I felt my eyes shift away, too embarrassed to look her in the eye, and she saw this for what it was.
“AH-HA! I knew it! You wanna kick some ass, too, don’t’cha?” Candy said, grinning towards me.
“I… well, I guess,” I said.
“Then let’s go! Let’s do it!” Candy said, already jumping to her feet.
“Now, just wait a god-fuckin’-damn minute!” Danny said, standing up and blocking her path. “Jace is takin’ care of this. Him an’ the others. An’ we gotta—”
“Gotta—what?—wait for him!” Candy snarled. “No fuckin’ thanks, tons-o’-fun! You wanna sit here and play ‘Fairy Princess’ in need of rescue? Be my fucking guest! Figured you’d want to do the whole ‘white knight’-bit and, you know, protect us from certain harm, but—hey!—who am I to judge? Maybe while we’re gone a big, black dick will find its way in here and you can—”
“How’s this fer ‘Fairy-fuckin’-princess,’ slut-butt,” Danny growled, moving to grab her by the shoulder. “I ain’t lettin’ ya leave this—”
Candy spun back, knocking his hand away and wagging a finger in his face. “Nuh-uh! Mia and I are going, and your cute little faggot-ass ain’t stopping us!” Candy lectured him before once more turning towards the door. “You can either come along and do your job that way,” she explained, swinging her ass in that classic Candy “buy me” fashion (despite who she was talking to), “or you can stay the hell out of our way!”
“And do ya even know where ye’re goin’?” Danny called after with a challenging tone to his question.
Candy stopped abruptly, and I watched as she turned towards him. Her eyes, momentarily wide and pleading, narrowed into determined slits as she stepped over to him. I was surprised at the change and nearly burst out laughing as she stepped
over to Danny, putting her hands together in a pleading gesture.
“Come on, Mercury,” she cooed, pouting her lower lip and running a hand along his arm. To anyone else it might have seemed a flirty gesture, but I was amazed at how easily she turned it into a friendly, almost sympathetic one for the sake of present company. “Aren’t you bored too?”
A long, strained silence passed. During that time, I stared, awed and disbelieving, at the scene before me while Candy held her demeanor, which hung somewhere between pleading, needing, and just bridging the point of full-on meltdown. And Danny, surprisingly enough, seemed to actually be breaking from it. Like the wax of a burning candle, the solidarity of his conviction seemed to waver and soften until we could practically see it melt away.
“A’right, fine! Just quick yer pleading, that innocent routine ain’t foolin’ anyone by a slut like ya,” he said, rolling his eyes as he glanced over at me. “You sure about this?”
“Yeah, why not?” I said, shrugging my right shoulder. “Might as well do something while we wait.”
“Alright,” Danny agreed, grabbing one of the photos. “My sources say this location has had a pretty low amount of activity so we’ll go to this one.”
“Is that the old shoe factory downtown? That place is a dump now!” Candy said, scoffing at the sight.
“It might’ve been, but Papa Raven has been remodeling it for his new hideouts,” Danny said, pushing the paper in his pocket.
“Don’t bother,” Candy said. “I know the place. Had a few Johns who took me out there for some fun.”
“At an abandoned shoe factory?” I asked.
“They liked the danger, I guess,” Candy shrugged. “They paid, I ain’t bothered to ask them why.”
I nodded, following the others out. Since neither Candy nor I could drive a motorcycle, we decided to take my car. While I didn’t like the idea of driving in such a bad part of the neighborhood with the super expensive classic car Jace had just gifted me, there wasn’t much other option.
“Alright, let’s go!” Candy said, clapping excitedly.
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