Killer Be Killed

by Travis E. Hughes

  “I know someone who needs a number two,” she said.

  “Yeah?” Drago’s lips spread into a handsome grin.

  “We’ll need to swing by my tent first,” she said. “Better hope Bill or Hattie don’t kill you.”

  “Maybe you could warn them?” he suggested.

  When they reached the tent, Roslyn said, “Hello the tent.”

  “Hello the street,” Hattie said from within. It was a new thing Roslyn had suggested. She wasn’t sure why. It sounded like a thing to her.

  “I have a prisoner,” Roslyn said, getting close to the canvas.

  “What? Who?” Hattie asked.

  “I have the situation under control,” Roslyn said. “It’s Drago, from Phoenix.”

  The zipper opened and out stepped Hattie.

  “Where’s Bill?” asked Roslyn.

  “He’s doing pushups,” Hattie said with a straight face.

  “What?” Roslyn asked tilting her head.

  “That’s what he does now when he needs a drink,” Hattie said. “Pushups. Lots and lots of pushups. He started going into the woods to do pushups. Says it’s a spiritual thing. Who knew Bill was spiritual?”

  “Not me.” Roslyn told Hattie to watch him outside, while she went in to the tent alone.

  She took the smallest diamond she had and buried the rest under her cot. Feeling it jiggle around her pocket and bounce against her leg made her increasingly nervous as they headed up the muddy thoroughfare. She took the most direct path toward the Belle Star Casino.

  They passed gawking heads and veiled whispers. Turned out, a few people recognized her from last night’s fight and trial. And now, here she was involved in more violence, and before breakfast of all things.

  She made a spectacle of herself. But worse, she’d drawn attention to the team. They can all go fuck themselves; she heard her mind tell the mole. Whatever the reason, she felt a change. The world had a sharpness to it now. She’d conquered something. She could handle herself out there. More than handle herself. Bring it! Now more than ever she wanted those pearl handled pistols.

  “Star Belly,” Roslyn said. “This is Drago.”

  “Just Drago?” Star asked. She looked fantastic in high boots, riding pants and a long slick coat. Roslyn couldn’t decide which one was more perfect, her hair or her makeup.

  “I, like so many out here, have left behind another life and another name. I’m just Drago now. Former underboss to a Jules Divine of Phoenix City. Maybe you’ve heard of him?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Sorry. Doesn’t ring any bells. Underboss, huh? Is that to mean that you weren’t exactly running a legal operation there in… Phoenix did you say?”

  “That’s right,” Drago said. “I was Mr. Divine’s right hand man. I oversaw most of the operation. He owned almost all of downtown Phoenix City, including seventy-five percent of the casinos in the entire town.”

  “That’s a big town from what I hear about it?” she said. She manipulated a hologram on a table. Moving something into a box.

  “All due respect, Star, every number one needs a good solid number two. I can vouch for him. He ran a tight ship over there. People fell in line under Drago here,” Roslyn said. The look on his face almost brought her out of things, drifting toward some pool of warm happiness or relief, or gratification, she couldn’t say. It was confusing. He looked so touched by her words that it threatened to break her heart.

  “Unless you want him to start right now, I’m suggesting he find a room to stay for the night and start tomorrow? Maybe at your hotel? It’s on me. Charge me double if it’ll alleviate any concerns over the ethics of evicting someone, you might have.”

  Drago turned to her looking startled but pleased.

  Star motioned for one of her underlings to take Drago to the hotel.

  “I’ll be seeing you around, Ros,” Drago said as he left the tent for a room at the hotel. “How about you let me show you how to evict somebody. Who’s been the biggest pain in the ass in these rooms?”

  “Uh, Room 107,” Star said, suppressing a chuckle. “They have complained about everything. It’s ridiculous. The wife wanted a discount because the curtains smelled like haoma smoke. Those are brand new curtains. SPF 500 curtains. Expensive curtains. You aren’t on Earth any more, bitch!”

  “Okay,” Drago said. Five minutes later, the family carried their own luggage along the muddy thoroughfare, loudly chastising Drago, but obliging him at the same time. The big man marched them out of town. Luckily for them a transport shuttle pulled up as they made it to the edge of the camp.

  Drago moved his few belongings into the newly vacated room, while Roslyn conducted further business.

  As suspected, Star Belly had brought along a diamond specialist, Dr. Van Loudigan. He was summoned from the hot, mineral bath he discovered just up the hill from the camp. He wore a fluffy robe and rubber croc slippers when he strolled into the tent. There wasn’t much activity in the camp yet, being early morning.

  “This is something,” said the doctor, looking through smart goggles. He glanced at Star, and briefly there was a silent exchange. A look that said something. Roslyn wasn’t certain what it meant, but she didn’t like it. He read from the display. “Cut’s signature ideal. Damn, son. Color, D. Clarity, IF. Okay. Two point five carats. Factoring in current market rate and transportation costs, security costs, we’re looking at forty-three grand in bytes, plus some change.”

  Roslyn wanted to whistle but changed her mind just as her lips puckered.

  “Can that change be paid in way of a hover truck?” asked Roslyn instead.

  Star Belly motioned for another, dapperly dressed gentleman to join them. Star led them both out of the tent, toward the hotel. Bat Matters met them there.

  Bat stood with his riding cloak’s hood up, smart goggles on, by the door of Star’s second floor office. This was her main headquarters, Roslyn realized.

  The dapper man, Dr. Van Loudigan, in white gloves opened a safe with his retina and pulled out forty-three red chips and three blue ones. He slid the plastic chips across the desk to her. Star stood by the window, looking out at the busy boardwalk. She captivated Roslyn. How did she wield such power? It was the same as on Earth. Roslyn knew powerful people. There was one thing they all had in common; money, a whopping sense of entitlement, and an utter lack of remorse or better conscious.

  “Where’d you find these?” Star asked as they left the office.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Roslyn said. “All due respect, you really think I’m going to advertise my find?”

  “No.” Star said. “But there are other ways of finding out.”

  The hairs on Roslyn’s arms and neck prickled. Was she threatening her? Was she going to break her legs? Roslyn had seen this tactic performed. It was not a pretty sight. It was one of the reasons she’d changed her career path and went to college to study Criminal Justice. The thrill of criminal life, the life of wild parties and drugs and running nightclubs, was in her past. Here it was all over again. Only this time, there was no law to curb it.

  She didn’t pursue it further.

  The hover truck was waiting for her when she exited the hotel. She waved her thanks up to the window. Star smiled and waved back. Funny how Roslyn’s first impression of the Inn Keeper had pegged her for soft. Funny also that she’d felt sorry for the woman. Ignorance had once been her major weakness.

  Backing the truck up to their tent they loaded the bodies of the three punk road agents into it. They covered them with a tarp Hattie had purchased while Roslyn was cashing in the diamond. Talbert had returned from his push-ups.

  Once they were around a bend from the camp, they dumped the bodies into a river and rode on into the hills, toward the second volcano. Puff guided them up into the mountains and to the cave.

  To Roslyn’s horror there was a sniper perched on the ridge above the entrance of the cave. A sign read: Private Property.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

 
; “That was fast,” Roslyn whispered. They had moved back and into the cover of the forest. “Was it really that simple? Put up a sign and it becomes yours?” Now they tell me.

  Talbert’s pistol was in his hand before she could turn around. It had been so fast she hadn’t had time to react. When she finally did turn to see that it was only a small walking tree slithering toward a fresh puddle, he’d already holstered his pistol.

  “I think I can get the drop on the guard,” said Talbert, looking past a tree to see the ridge. “Stun him, tie him up, cover his mouth, then we go in and take what we can fill the truck with and go.”

  “No,” Roslyn said. “That’s not what we do. It’s not ours to keep. We can’t steal it.”

  “Why do they get to have it?” he grumbled. “You found it first. Just cause they put a sign and hired some guy with a gun to protect it, doesn’t make it there’s.”

  “What do you think, Hattie?” Roslyn purposely put her old pal on the shitter. Between love and religion, to which are you most devout?

  “We can’t do it, Bill,” Hattie said. Roslyn was surprised, but sort of proud of her. That was the old Hattie. “It’s stealing.”

  “Yes we can,” Talbert demanded, trying to keep his voice down. “We have just as much right to those diamonds as anybody.”

  “But…” Roslyn started and stopped a few more times. She shook her head. Fuck it! He was right.

  “You can prove the diamonds we already have were taken from this cave. You know that right?” Talbert cocked an eyebrow and shone those steely blues and Roslyn sighed. Nudge and tumble.

  “Let’s do it right, then,” Roslyn said. They agreed unanimously that Dogg Holly had to be involved in the plan. It would solidify their cover and not only that, but solidify success. This was just his game. She hesitated on the idea of him killing more people, but her theory of hell justified it. That or something else. She wouldn’t allow herself to voice it. But it had something to do with loose ends. Dogg didn’t play by the same rules as they had to. He would do the dirty work. But was that entrapment? She stopped her thought process at that.

  Talbert agreed to stake out the cave, while Hattie and Roslyn hurried back to camp to find Dogg and propose he join them for a percentage.

  “I found it first,” Roslyn explained as they walked up the boardwalk. “You know they have ways to prove where diamonds came from, right? Mine came from that cave.”

  “Darling, you don’t need to sell me on this. I bit at cave full of diamonds,” Dogg said. It had taken them all day and well into the night to find him. He went up to his room and packed a bag of essentials, like whiskey and weapons. While he was occupied, Roslyn found herself curious about how Drago was progressing. She fought the urge to investigate.

  Dogg returned before she could decide and then it was too late. She’d see him when she got back. There was plenty of time. He wasn’t going to run into some other girl and suddenly fall in love with her on the spot. That’s not how things worked, right? What was she even thinking about? She shook her head, hoping to clear it. It was time to refocus. She had a mission to complete.

  Dogg mounted the hover bike Roslyn had rented for him. With a wink, he nodded to her before following the ladies out of the camp. Grace was sleeping off a nasty drunk, he told them when they inquired. “Besides, she prefers the comforts of the hotel to the out doors, I’m afraid.”

  At the base of the second volcano, they hid the bikes under a camouflage net and followed Puff to Talbert and the hover truck. He’d converted it into a temporary shelter by turning off the anti-gravity, magnetic field generator and flipping it over. He used three steady broccoli stems to hold it up at an angle. A small fire burned at the base.

  “Did you get your push-ups in?” Roslyn asked, trying not to giggle. Hattie covered her mouth.

  “There’s an electric fence up now,” Talbert told them, ignoring her jab as they settled in. He stood and shook Dogg’s hand. Talbert had that look again, of a boy meeting his futbolito idol.

  They spent the next hour planning, and then deciding they’d need to be fresh, they rotated watch while the others slept. Before dawn would have been the ideal time to strike, but it was nearly that when they went to bed. They’d need to wait until the next night.

  Roslyn woke to the smell of coffee and cigarette smoke. This all lingered with the burning broccoli, that smelled nothing like actual broccoli, but it burned sweet and crisp. They watched the changing of the guard at noon.

  “There are three different guards, so far,” Talbert whispered as they made their way back down the hill to their site. “A few people have come with carts to load up good hauls.”

  “Well, then, that’s the solution, right there,” Dogg explained. “You don’t need to rob the cave itself. You are after a truck full, correct?”

  “Yeah?” Roslyn was seeing where he was going but in case she was wrong she heard him out.

  “Why bust our backs hauling and filling a truck ourselves, when someone has already done it for us?” Dogg asked, puffing his thin cigarette and staring out of dark, bloodshot eyes.

  “How often do they come?” Roslyn asked.

  “I haven’t figured a schedule for those yet. There’s been two so far.” Talbert looked up the volcano. Roslyn followed his gaze. Was he searching for higher ground?

  “I’m thinking someone followed me,” Roslyn said, eating breakfast by the fire. The sun peeked on the cusp of the horizon. Tiny, furry insects bit her neck and ankles. She swatted one and looked at it. It seemed to her like a tiny mammal. The best she could describe it would be to call it a miniature flying squirrel or bat of a sort with enormous fly-like eyes. It was the size of a horse fly. It appeared to be covered in brown fuzz.

  “Was it the same driver and crew?” Dogg asked.

  “I couldn’t see the crew too clearly. I saw them pass, each way in and out. Just down over there.” He pointed to a path through the trees just down the next slope.

  Puff swooped down upon her shoulder. Dogg laughed at being startled. This lead to coughing, sounding like wind through wet caverns.

  The sky faded from black to dark blue, gradually inching towards pure blue.

  Puff clicked and pointed his head toward the path in question. The group vanished in the trees and underbrush just as the next hover truck hurried along the path toward the cave.

  “Good save, Puffy,” Roslyn said, fishing a seed out of her pocket.

  “Two trips per day is do-able,” Talbert calculated. “One in the evening and one in the morning so far.”

  Two hours later, the hover truck hurried down the volcano, shimmering in the sun from all those diamonds. It lit up the entire forest until it fell completely beneath the canopy. The driver and his shotgun rider sat in a small cabin. The truck was larger than the truck Star had given Roslyn, but the same company made them both. They were both O’Hare carts, a company out of Montgomery City, she thought she remembered reading on the small plate on the side of her truck.

  Roslyn, wearing a scarf for a mask parked her hover bike in the middle of the path. They lit a small fire just beyond the bike, to make the bike appear to be smoking from a distance.

  The hover truck slowed and finally stopped roughly ten feet from Roslyn.

  The glass obscured the driver and his shotgun rider.

  “Ros?” came a voice from the passenger’s side window. Drago stuck his head out.

  “Drago?” asked Roslyn, confused. She was wearing a mask. “How’d you know it was me?”

  “By the way you’re standing there. The way your hip is jutting to the side like that,” he said. He then turned to the driver and said something inaudible. Before the driver or Drago could react, Talbert had his gun to the driver’s head.

  Dogg and Hattie approached from either side, riding their hover bikes. But Roslyn stood there, thinking, frozen.

  Drago was unsure whom he should aim at, but Dogg strolled up to him aiming two nickel-plated pistols at him. That was all the answer
he’d need.

  “You realize who you’re robbing, right?” Drago asked, dropping his gun and holding up his hands.

  “We found the cave first,” Roslyn said, coming out of it. She walked up to the passenger’s side door and opened it. “Get out.”

  “Don’t do this, Ros,” he whispered, stepping down from the cabin. “They’ll kill you.”

  “Who will?” she asked. “You?”

  “Not me… Them,” he motioned to the trees. Five armed men and women, wearing helmets with black eye visors hovered out of the tree line on sleek bikes.

  “Well, now, things just got interesting,” Dogg smiled and turned to the nearest two helmets. Without hesitation he shot them off their bikes at a good distance.

  Roslyn leapt in her skin. It was on. Before she realized she’d done it, Roslyn grabbed Drago and put her gun to his head.

  “Everybody freeze!” she shouted.

  Now driver and his shotgun rider were held at gunpoint.

  “The new guy? You really think we give a shit if you kill the new guy?” asked one of the helmets.

  “Their drone saw you guys last night,” Drago said to Roslyn. “They knew you were coming for the truck. I didn’t realize it was you, but…”

  “How’d they find my cave?” asked Roslyn.

  “Someone saw you leaving it and investigated,” he explained. “When they cashed in a similar diamond as yours a few hours after you, Star persuaded the man to show her the cave. Star makes Jules Divine look like a low level street thug, Ros. You guys need to back the fuck down and let us on our way.”

  “Well, folks, I hate to break up a swell gathering of the minds, here, but it is time we take what is rightfully ours and be on our merry way. Thank you very much.” Dogg turned to the remaining three. He shot one before the other two fired back. Dogg took cover behind a rock.

  Talbert used the driver as a human shield and marched toward the remaining two helmets. He shot them both. The lack of blood told Roslyn that he’d been a good boy and used his stun gun. But this would prove to be a problem. They’d be able to recognize them and point them out to Star. Roslyn hadn’t had time to process it yet, but her instincts were crying out. Drago was right. The logistics were all wrong.