Dead4u

by H E Johnson

  I watched the others stomp him to a bloody pulp. Two down. Eighteen left.

  Six of them came for me. Two scaled the tree I was on. They squatted on a wide branch, poised to grab me if I tried to shinny down. The other four established positions on limbs above and beside me. When those in higher spots swung over to my tree, they’d drop on me. Their combined mass and velocity would send me hurtling to the ground.

  My mouth felt dry. Being trampled and kicked to death by a mob wasn’t a pleasant prospect. But my options were limited. I was surrounded and outnumbered in all directions.

  “Nikita!” It was Griffin. His voice was urgent. “Your real name is Crystal McCord. When I count to three, you will wake up angry. You will kill everyone who stands in your way. One, two, three.”

  ◆◆◆

  I woke to find myself out on a limb. For real. Two assholes in boxer shorts prepared to fall on me from above. I jumped up, grabbed ankles and yanked hard. Both screamed, tumbling past me into a couple more assholes below. All four plunged into a mob on the ground. This mob started kicking shit out of them.

  Assholes came at me from both sides now. I jumped down and landed on two shit-kickers. Breaking my fall with elbows to exposed necks, I dropped low and tunnelled my way out of the scrum.

  Then I ran. Full tilt. In the distance was a tall metal fence. Looked like an easy climb so I headed for it. Then, in my head, came a voice.

  “This is Control. You’re fighting in a battle royal. Twelve hostiles on your tail. And that fence you’re headed to is electrified. Do NOT touch it.”

  Shit. I’d fought in cage matches before. But nothing like this. Where the fuck was I? And how did I get here?

  “I know you have questions,” the voice continued smoothly. “I’ll explain later. Just run. We’re working to get you out of there.”

  Talking to a voice in my head seemed like a waste of time and breath. So I didn’t. Maybe I’d taken one too many shots to the head. Sweet had promised I could retire in a year. Which looked like a year too long.

  Sweet. Where the fuck was he? And why had he stuck me in a cage wired to current? This was fucking insane.

  “Turn left,” said the voice. “Ten o’clock. The fence will be down when you get there.”

  I veered left. The fence was twenty-five metres away. Feet thudded into the grass behind me. I couldn’t risk turning to look. I heard the rasp of ragged breathing. Had to be close.

  The voice yelled, “Duck!”

  I ducked. Something grazed my back. Rising, I grabbed a woman’s ankles and threw her in front of me. She landed on her back so I trampled the bitch. Stomping hard on face and crotch.

  It felt good.

  Fifteen metres. I heard the wail of cop sirens. A raid. I forced my legs to pump harder.

  Ten. Lungs burning . . .

  “Drop at the count of three,” said the voice. “One. Two.”

  Five metres.

  “Three.”

  I hit the deck.

  BAM!

  A large whoosh of hot air singed my back. Behind me someone screamed. I got up and ran through a gaping hole in the fence. Metal posts had spread and bent wider than a whore’s legs.

  My ears rang.

  Ahead was brush and trees. I waded into it, shutting my mind to the pain of branches slicing my skin. With a howling mob of assholes sniffing up my crack. I could handle a few cuts and bruises.

  For the first time I took note of what I was wearing. Some kind of latex getup with these weird lace gloves with no fingers. On my feet were what looked like ballet slippers. This wasn’t my usual Madam Crunch costume.

  The voice spoke again.

  “Wolseley’s hurt. We’ve lost cover fire.” The voice paused. “But your ride’s just the other side of those woods.”

  Wolseley? Name didn’t ring a bell but the message came across loud and clear. Extraction ahead with no chaperone to the prom. Go it alone or go straight to hell.

  The voice said, “You’ve got company. Closing from the right at four o’clock. It’s Feliks. You’ll have to take him out.”

  Kill Feliks?

  “They want you dead, Crystal,” the voice explained. “Sweet, Big Boy, Darlene. Uh, scratch Mr. Tilo—he’s gone. Copy?”

  “And who . . . the fuck . . . are you?”

  “I’m the friendly voice in your head. Warning you that Feliks has orders from Sweet to kill you.”

  What? Last thing I remembered was stabbing that stupid cop in a motel room. Then Jackie and her goon buddy showed up. Said Zeke asked for help disposing of a body. We celebrated with a few drinks . . . and then . . . nothing . . .

  Till now.

  Mentally I kicked myself. Jackie had slipped something into my drink back at the Starlite Motel. That much was clear. How I’d gone from there to waking up in a tree was beyond me. But there was no time to think about it now.

  I was here. Running. For my life.

  Stopped to squat behind a thick bit of brush. The crash and crackle of footsteps on branches sounded to my right. I looked for a weapon. There was a fallen branch nearby. It looked a tad light for a club but the end seemed sharp enough.

  I removed the ballet slippers and hung them on a tree. Then I crept through the woods on bare feet. Waiting for my chance.

  Feliks didn’t hear me circling. His eyes were fixed on the ground. When he found the slippers, I was waiting behind him. He turned and I plunged the stick into his carotid artery. Blood spurted as I chopped the Glock from his hand. Feliks tried applying pressure to the wound. So I kicked him in the nuts. He fell to his knees. Eyes bulged. Pleading? I picked up the fallen Glock. Feliks had stopped moving. I aimed and blew a hole in his skull. Adding a second for luck. Overkill? Yeah but it felt good.

  ◆◆◆

  I emerged from the woods to find a motorcycle idling on a narrow dirt road. A helmeted rider in brown leather jacket and jeans waved a spare helmet at me. Being short on options, I took the helmet and stepped onto the left rear foot peg. Swinging my right leg over, I plopped my ass on the pillion and grabbed the rider’s hips.

  The bike zipped down the trail, spewing mud in its wake. Riding a street bike on dirt struck me as dangerously stupid. But it beat going to jail. So I wasn’t complaining.

  The rider’s hips were hard but wider than a man’s. Not wide enough to be Darlene, who was the only woman in the crew other than me. This one had to be a private contractor. Someone hired for emergencies like this cluster fuck.

  When we stopped, I could kill her and take the bike. Sweet wouldn’t like it, of course. Still, when you’re hearing voices, you do what the voices say, right? I knew that sounded crazy but it felt perfectly natural.

  We drove through cornfield after cornfield. Then we hit a highway and turned left. A large green sign said we were 210 kilometres out of the city. Doing the speed limit, we’d be there in a couple hours or so. But the woman in front of me seemed to be in a hurry. Not hard to guess why. Judging from the sirens I’d heard, half the police force had dropped in on our little game.

  DEAD4U was done like dinner.

  Making me wonder who’d cooked the game. Whoever they were, they were good as dead. In fact they’d better be dead before Sweet caught up to them. Coz that wouldn’t be quick and it sure wouldn’t be pretty.

  Maybe he’d let me help.

  We’d covered fifty klicks beelining to the city before I realized nobody was chasing us. The gears in my head spun. We hadn’t switched vehicles, taken a single side road or gone to ground nearby. It struck me as weird. Those are standard evasion tactics. Instead, here we were running straight line to the city in broad daylight. Fine for innocent civilian types which I wasn’t.

  So why no fuzz up our collective behinds?

  “Crystal.” The voice in my head was back. He sounded worried. “We need to find Sweet. Did you guys have a meetup spot in case things went south?”

  “Who the fuck are you?” I asked. “And how the hell are you talking to me? Am I wired or wha
t?”

  “You’re not wearing a wire, Crystal. Not exactly. But there are wires inside your brain. And no, you’re not crazy. You’re a confidential informant. You get blanket immunity for all crimes committed in the past or while working for us.”

  I was a rat now? Better and better.

  I said, “Just to be clear: who the hell is ‘us’ exactly?”

  “City Police, Special Operations Branch.”

  SpecOps. I’d heard about these dickheads. Sweet’s pet cop had warned him they were sniffing around him. And I was supposed to be working for them? Bullshit! The only cop I’d talked to was dead now, courtesy of me.

  “Fuck off and die,” I told him. “Oh. And get the fuck outta my head, asswipe.”

  A sharp needle of searing pain whizzed down my spine. Butthole clenched and unclenched faster than a strobe light at a disco.

  “Let’s not fight,” said the voice calmly. “Think about it, Crystal. Your old pals want you gone. But we’re on your side. We’re going to help you and you’re going to help us.”

  A second jolt burned to the tips of both nipples. Third felt like the worst menstrual cramps ever.

  “Sweet will kill me!” I screamed.

  The voice promised witness protection and a new life. Which sounded better than getting zapped again. So I told him what I knew.

  Clean up

  We headed to the marina. Darlene lived on a houseboat there, a floating piece of shit that never went anywhere. Typically Darlene. Back when she and Sweet were an item, he’d lived with her and a parrot named Blackbeard. That ended, of course, after Sweet and I hooked up. Then it was my place or his dinky apartment over the club. Aside from my occasional binge, we became inseparable. I figured he was cheating with Darlene but so was I—not with Darlene, though.

  Which made me think of Zeke.

  He drove Sebastian everywhere. If I was going into witness protection, then I wanted Zeke there with me.

  “Hey you!” I shouted. “Can I get immunity for a friend?”

  “You mean Epstein?” The voice sighed. “I’m sorry, Crystal, but he’s dead.”

  “What?” My brain refused to process this. “How?”

  “Sweet killed him. He walked in on you fucking Zeke and forced you to pull the trigger. Sorry.”

  My guts twisted.

  “And why don’t I remember doing this?”

  “Same reason you have no memory of working for us. We had to put you in under deep cover. You had to believe you were someone else or they’d have made you.”

  Okay. This sounded nuts. Time to call bullshit.

  “I thought I was somebody else, huh. And who exactly did I think I was?”

  “You know that cop you killed?” The voice was calm. “Detective Nikita Chen? Well, we fed her memories into your brain. Just an overlay really. Like a temporary tattoo. And we let her run the op like she was undercover. When things got hairy, we shut her down and put you back in the driver’s seat.”

  That explained why I couldn’t remember shit. But if this voice was telling the truth, then I’d killed Zeke.

  The voice must’ve read my mind.

  “You can’t blame yourself for what happened to Zeke. Sweet left you no choice. If you hadn’t shot him, they’d have killed you.”

  So I’d been running around with a dead cop’s memories in my head. And now I was back to being me again. If there was such a thing as “me”.

  It was mid-afternoon when we got to the marina. I pointed out Darlene’s houseboat as we rode past. We stopped down the road at a seafood joint that looked. closed and parked in the rear lot. A couple of guys in cooking whites stood outside sharing a joint. They watched us get off the bike. Casually interested but not too much. I took off my helmet. Then I stood and stretched. I’d forgotten that I was still wearing the latex costume. Watching their eyes pop was kind of fun. Stamping on the joint, they scurried inside the way cockroaches do when the lights come on.

  I turned to the rider. She’d removed her helmet and hung it on the handlebars. Tall bitch with a slit for a mouth and hair cropped tight around the ears. Late forties to early fifties. Mean eyes.

  Holy shit.

  It was Jackie Jo: DEAD4U’s costume designer and stylist. Good with pins and scissors but a real cunt. Same JJ who’d drugged me and left my ass hanging off a branch in the middle of a fight.

  “Good to have you back, Crystal,” she said.

  “You’re a cop? For real?”

  I adjusted my grip on the helmet. Jackie kept a Glock in a holster behind her back. If her right hand went there, she’d get a faceful of helmet. Then a righteous stomping.

  Jackie rolled her eyes. “I got a badge, if that’s what you mean.”

  So JJ was a cop. I tossed my helmet to her. Catching it one-handed, she strung it next to hers.

  “Aren’t you worried those guys might rip you off?” I asked.

  She raised an eyebrow. “They won’t come near this bike,” she said. “Not after seeing you.”

  I thought about it for a second or two. She was probably right. Being large and scary had its upside. No one fucked with you. Which was also the downside of looking like I did. Men with the nerve to hit on me weren’t afraid of anything. Including and especially the law.

  Jackie held out her hand. “We good?” she asked.

  “I doubt that.”

  That slit in her mouth tried to smile and failed. She nodded in the direction of the houseboat. “Let’s hurry,” she said. “Job’s not over till the fat bitch bleeds out.”

  ◆◆◆

  “You sure they’re in there?” Jackie asked.

  We sat crouched behind a dumpster across from Darlene’s houseboat. It was close to the middle of a long row of houseboats that were almost identical. Like the others, it was really just a house on pontoons. There were doors fore and aft. A ladder on the right side led to a covered rooftop deck. The drapes were drawn across the front windows and the upper deck was empty except for some crappy patio furniture.

  “Can’t be sure,” I said. “But if Sweet’s feeling heat, he’s not going to fly. Not with all those guards and scanners. He’ll wait till dark and take a boat out. Not this thing, of course. He’ll have someone with a speedboat pick him up and get him on a commercial vessel. He can go pretty much anywhere after that.”

  Jackie snorted. “I bet. With the kind of money that game raked in, he could buy a small country.” She slapped at a mosquito that landed on her arm. “If he doesn’t surface soon, we’ll go in and look around.”

  We’d been staring at the houseboat for an hour and a half. No one had gone in or out. There was no music, no loud voices and no sign of Sweet’s Mercedes. My hips were starting to cramp from hunching behind the dumpster and I needed to piss.

  I told Jackie I had to take a leak. She shrugged and said fine, she wouldn’t look. So I went to the far end of the dumpster, squatted and let loose. I was in the middle of this when she hissed:

  “I see something!”

  I stopped and scuttled back for a peek. Nada.

  “Where?” I asked.

  Jackie pointed at the upper deck. “A woman came to the front door and let a cat out. She looked like a bit like Darlene.” She pursed her mouth. “But older. And her hair was up in a bun.”

  I nodded. “They’re wearing disguises. Getting ready to run.”

  Jackie looked at me. “Look. Federov and Tilo are dead. Other than Darlene, you’re the only one who could testify against Sweet. And his lawyers are good, better than any we can throw at him. We have no physical evidence linking him to DEAD4U. It would be your word against his and—frankly—your lifestyle wouldn’t look good to a jury. They’d hear about the drinking and the drugs and the people you’ve killed. In the end, Sweet would walk. Then he’d come for you. And his kind of money can buy anything or anyone.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  Reaching into her jacket, she pulled out a knife in a leather sheath and gave it to me. It was my Ka
Bar knife.

  Seeing my favourite weapon in Jackie’s filthy paw made me want to cut her open and decorate the dumpster with her ugly guts.

  “Do what you do,” she said.

  ◆◆◆

  I waited till dark. Crossed the road about fifty metres to the left of Darlene’s floating shitbox. The houseboat next to hers had a big “For Sale” sign hanging in the front window. I followed a wooden walkway running along its side to the water.

  I peeked over at Darlene’s place. Drapes were closed on the door. I couldn’t see the back of the boat though. That’s where they might get careless.

  I removed the ballet shoes first. Then I shucked off the latex shirt-dress or whatever it was. Although I wasn’t a big fan of pubic nudity, it would make swimming a lot easier.

  Putting the sheathed knife in my mouth, I eased into the water, careful to avoid splashing noises. It was cold but far from freezing. Taking a deep breath, I let myself drop and swam next to the houseboat’s side. When I reached the corner, I stopped and peered up at the back of Darlene’s houseboat. The rear window was a slider. And it was wide open to catch the sea breeze.

  Somebody was home all right.

  Jackie had made my role clear. I could return to her and she’d go in the front door and arrest Sweet. Or I could handle things.

  I took a long, deep breath. Then ducked under the filthy water. Swimming wasn’t my favourite activity. But the cold water felt like heaven after running in the sticky heat.

  My hands touched a pontoon. The open window I’d seen was half a metre from the end. Holding onto the pontoon, I slid forward and pushed my face out of the water. I forced myself to breathe slowly. Silence was essential.

  Putting my feet on the pontoon, I stood and peeked through the window screen. It was a bathroom. Shower stall to the left, toilet on the right. Below the window stood a small vanity. Hopefully stable. I reached for the floor of the open upper deck. Steadying myself with the left hand, my right slid knife from scabbard and cut a wide U shape into the screen. Now I had my own personal doggy door. Returning knife to sheath, I used both hands to lever myself into a chin-up. Then, raising knees high, I pushed gently with feet first through the hole in the window screen. Toes found ceramic. It felt slick.