California Demon

by Debra Dunbar

  The Gray Dogs had repurposed a country club for their headquarters, but accounting day was always at a location more convenient to the freeway.

  I parked my bike a few blocks away from where I thought today’s activities might be going down. As I walked down the street, a guy delivering produce offered me a ride as well as a quickie in the bed with the crates of romaine and swiss chard. I declined, instead walking the five blocks and trying to look inconspicuous while observing both foot and vehicular traffic.

  Even in the few remaining good neighborhoods, my rule was to stay on the other side of the street, to assume any passing stranger was going to knife you and rob you of everything you had—including your shoes. Trust no one, and always carry a gun.

  Which mean I got some hard looks from the men and women emerging from their houses and heading to whatever job they’d managed to hold on to. I watched them as well, not so much because I was afraid a waitress or cleaning guy was going to stick me, but because I was looking for patterns.

  Who was heading where? People would be coming in from all over the Valley for accounting day. Bags’s intel was usually right, but on occasion even he was wrong. Sitting outside a shuttered grocery store or an old school all day only to find out the action had been six blocks away would totally suck. If I could make a few of the people heading in to drop their cash or pick up their wages, I could discreetly tail them to where today’s activities would be going down. Then I could sit and wait for the fallout like the Vulture I was.

  I let my intuition lead the way, watching and thinking I was headed in the right direction as I saw a group of three motorcycles with burly men pass me by. Four blocks in I noticed a tall, thin woman with a short crop of dark hair in twists come around a corner. She had a long angular face and a sharp square chin. A line of small earrings worked their way up her ear in silver, turquoise, and coral.

  She grinned when she saw me and jogged over. “Eden! Here for the pickings, I see.”

  “Hopefully. What are you doing in the Valley?” We Vultures didn’t have assigned territories, but people did tend to get growly when others encroached on their neighborhoods. Telaney used to work the Valley, but she’d grabbed a house in Silver Lake a few months back and had eventually started scoping out salvage opportunities closer to home.

  “I miss my old stomping grounds. Besides, I heard there might be a shoot-out. You know I can’t resist a good shoot-out.”

  I rolled my eyes. Telaney Miller was my age. She was honest, loyal, and wouldn’t hesitate to shoot if someone looked like they were going to draw on her. She was someone you wanted at your back in a fight, so I had no problem sharing any salvage with her.

  “They working out of the old Goodwill today, or the Jiffy Lube?” I asked.

  Telaney shrugged. “I heard either the Goodwill or that ratty gas station on Corbin.”

  I recognized another Vulture coming toward us. “Isn’t that Poodle?”

  Telaney squinted. “Looks like her.”

  The woman nodded our way and we nodded back—acknowledgement and wordless agreement that we’d stay out of each other’s way and not pull any shit. Poodle turned down a side road. She seemed to know where she was going, so we followed, keeping her in sight.

  Another four blocks and we were there. I knew we were there because of the cars and trucks lined up and down the street as well as the three motorcycles I’d seen parked in front of an old gas station across the street. Armed guards stood outside the gas station service bays, smoking and laughing, with semi-automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. A few of those rifles had white muzzles. The Gray Dogs were prepared for trouble—even trouble of the magical kind.

  I counted eight Vultures milling about the perimeter, and assumed that more would be coming once they figured out the location. The guards eyed us, not particularly alarmed. We were here to scavenge, not attack, and our presence here wasn’t any sort of portent. Gatherings like this always had the potential for a fight, and if there was potential, we Vultures would gather. Just in case.

  Telaney elbowed me. “Told ya.”

  Gas station. She’d been right. I was glad I hadn’t wasted time hanging around the Goodwill or the Jiffy Lube.

  “I’m heading down behind that Tahoe.” Telaney pointed at the SUV.

  It was a good spot. Lots of cover in case bullets started to fly, and with some shade.

  “I’ll be across the street in front of the Panda Express.” I could always dive behind a parked car if the shooting turned that direction, and it was closer to the entrance where gang members were already beginning to go in and out. The sun would be beating down on me, and unfortunately the Panda Express was no longer in business, but I’d be ideally positioned to swoop in and claim any fallen once the shooting stopped.

  Telaney gave me a fist bump and headed to her spot while I headed across the street and leaned against a signpost.

  Two hours later a few more Vultures had arrived; a few others had given up and left. I wasn’t giving up. I’d seen the Gray Dog members wander in to make their weekly reckoning then leave. The Southside Militia wasn’t stupid. They’d wait until most, if not all, of the money was in and the accounting was finished before striking. This wasn’t about licensed vigilante law enforcement for the militia, it was about licensed theft. This risk in taking on a big gang like the Gray Dogs was huge, so they’d wait to strike until the payoff was equally huge.

  The gang members continued to trickle in and out after the sun reached its zenith and began to descend. I ate my cheese and my orange and drank most of my water. A few hours later, I was eyeing he boarded up Panda Express, thinking that I’d give my right arm for some Beijing Beef right now. By five o’clock, there were only four of us left watching—two guys I recognized from larger scavenger jobs in the Valley, Telaney, and me. Others had headed off to try their luck somewhere else rather than wait on a big payoff that might not even occur.

  It was six thirty when I noticed three repurposed SWAT trucks tear down the street and squeal into the gas station parking lot, knocking over two motorcycles as they came to a halt. The guards snapped up their rifles and opened fire, but so did the Southside Militia from behind the heavily armored doors of their vehicles.

  My muscles had started to cramp from the lack of activity, but they quickly loosened with the adrenaline that poured through me. I jumped up and to the side behind a parked car, hoping I didn’t catch a stray bullet as I waited the whole thing out.

  The militia quickly took out the four guards and poured from their vehicles just as the Gray Dogs began to shoot from the gas station. Windows shattered, and bits of concrete sprayed from the building in the firefight. I noticed the militia were quickly surrounding the structure and felt a bit sorry for the Gray Dogs. They were outnumbered and trapped—which sucked. If the militia won this fight, they wouldn’t leave much for us to pick over.

  A few pipe bombs thrown through the windows would have taken the gang out, but I knew the militia didn’t want to destroy all the cash and other goodies they were hoping to grab. The Gray Dogs didn’t have any such qualms. Incendiary devices flew from the windows, setting vehicles and a good number of the militia themselves on fire. In the resulting chaos, gang members fled out the back door under a cover of gunfire. Those who weren’t shooting were carrying bulky duffle bags and shouting, “Go, go!” I expected the militia to spray them down in a hail of bullets, and was momentarily perplexed to see them running—some for the armored vehicles, and others taking off down the street at top speed.

  Fuck. The gas tanks.

  I scrambled to my feet and hauled ass, barely making it a block before the whole thing blew. Dropping to the ground, I rolled under a nearby box truck and watched debris bounce along the road. My ears were ringing too much to hear the concrete and rebar raining down on the truck I’d taken shelter under, but I could see and feel it bounce from the impact.

  Once things stopped flying past me, I counted to one hundred before I peeked out fro
m under the truck. Flaming shit and bits of building and vehicles were all over the place, some of them still on fire. I scooted out from under the truck and made my way back, just in case something worth scavenging had survived the blast.

  The gas station was a blackened hole in the ground with bits of steel jutting upward. Mangled vehicles were scattered around the streets. One of the SWAT vehicles was leaning sideways against an abandoned dry-cleaning shop with a scorched front and blasted out windows.

  There were bodies less than half a block out—some wearing Gray Dog colors and others with Southside Militia jackets. I was a Vulture, so I held my breath against the stench of burning flesh, turned them over, and searched them for anything worth selling. As I worked, a few other salvagers came out of the woodwork, giving me a nod as they did the same. I grabbed a couple pistols with some spare, fully loaded magazines, although I wasn’t sure if any damage they’d suffered would be repairable. Bags might give me a couple bucks for them, and right now every dollar counted.

  I saw Telaney eyeing up the SWAT van leaning against the old dry cleaner and made my way over to her.

  “Give me a lift,” she said.

  I hoisted her up through where the door had been blown off the vehicle, hearing her curse as she cut her hand on a jagged piece of metal. A few seconds later she was handing out two long guns, and something that looked like a radio transmitter. I grabbed them, set them on the ground, then gave her a hand as she climbed back out.

  “Fucker bit me.” She examined the cut on her hand. “Now I’ll have to waste money on antibiotics and bandages.”

  I grunted in agreement, then eyed the stash at our feet. “How about I grab this Browning, and the rest is yours.”

  It was a generous offer. I knew she’d crammed some stuff into her pockets while she’d been in the van. She knew that I could have taken off with both guns and the electronics unit while she’d been struggling to climb out.

  “Deal.” She grabbed the second gun and the box. “Think this is all I can carry anyway. You might want to check around back where the junked cars are. I don’t think anyone’s gone through that yet.”

  I thanked her, grabbed the rifle and heading around the hole where the gas station had been. One of the male salvagers was ripping some copper off some twisted heap that might have been a water tank, and the one with the red bandana on his head was digging through a dead guy’s pocket. I checked the junked cars, but didn’t find any other guns, bodies, or duffle bags of cash. It was starting to head toward dusk, so I decided to call it a day and see what all this crap I’d scraped up off the streets was worth.

  What a disappointment! I’d spent the entire day waiting here in hopes of some good pickings, and would be lucky if what I’d found would get me ten bucks. Heading back toward my bike, I fumed. Ten bucks was better than nothing, but it wasn’t worth sitting outside an old gas station all day long. We should have just left this morning. I could have scavenged along the way to the border. I could have stolen some stuff if we needed more money. A whole day and this was all I’d gotten?

  I was grumpy. I was tired. I was filthy. And I flooded my bike trying to start it and had to wait twenty more minutes before I could get it going.

  It was a long drive to Bags’s. It would be a longer drive to the border, though. As tired as I was, I’d need to just deal with it, because as soon as I made it home, we were leaving.

  And we weren’t coming back.

  Chapter 5

  I knew something was wrong before I reached the pawnshop door. Something just felt off, and reached over to touch my gun, flipping the snap that held it in the shoulder harness. Opening the door, I saw shelves knocked over, merchandise strewn across the floor, the row of bikes tangled and in a heap to the side. The shop had always been a jumble of assorted items, but there had been a strange order and neatness to their seemingly haphazard arrangement. No more.

  I eased my pistol from the harness, but before I could call for Bags, I heard someone sweeping.

  I never knew there could be sadness in the noise of a broom swishing across a concrete floor, but something in that sound broke my heart.

  “Bags?” I kept my voice soft and put my pistol back in the harness.

  The sweeping stopped. “Back here, Eden.”

  His voice was garbled, as if it pained him to talk. I wove my way around the scattered tools, broken televisions, and the smashed jewelry counters to where Bags stood, sweeping up the glass. The side of his face was so swollen that I couldn’t see his left eye. His nose was crooked and dried blood splattered along his mouth, chin, and bare chest. A huge red welt ran diagonally across his ribs and round belly, and the hand that held the broom had two fingers in makeshift splints.

  Bags was a business associate. Before today, I wouldn’t have called him a friend. I certainly wouldn’t have called him family. I was wrong. As I took in his injuries, something hot and angry filled me.

  Over the last two years, Bags had become more than a business associate. He’d become more. All my life people had accused me of being cold, of being unfeeling, of lacking empathy. I’d been called amoral and hauled to psychologists and priests. It had taken Bea to show me that I did care, that I could love. But only a few—only those who I could trust to love me back.

  Somehow Bags had become one of those few, and I’d only just now realized it.

  “What happened?” My mind filled with visions of a gang robbery, of a demon on a spree—anything but what he next told me.

  “Tax collectors.”

  Why the hell had the tax collectors come for Bags like this? Yeah, he skimmed just as much as any other pawnbroker, but this seemed completely overkill for such a minor fudging of the books. I thought back on yesterday, on the deal I’d closed under the table.

  It couldn’t be. Even if the cop had checked last night and notified the tax collectors about my infraction, they wouldn’t have acted this quickly, or this violently—not over what to them would have been a minor amount.

  “They came asking for you, wanting to know if you’d sold anything in the last twenty-four hours.”

  I felt guilty. I shouldn’t have felt guilty because Bags was a grown man and he’d been more than willing to keep the sale off the books, but I did. “They did this over a few boxes of bullets and three guns?”

  “They think you salvaged more than a few boxes of bullets and two guns yesterday.” Bags leaned on the broom and shifted his weight off one leg. “They think you took seventeen cases of bullets and over a dozen guns.”

  That motherfucking cop. She and her partner had taken all the rest of the salvage from that hit gone wrong, then typed up the report to say I’d scooped it up. No wonder the tax collectors had come down fast and hard.

  “I only took what I sold you. I swear to you, Bags, I didn’t take the rest—I couldn’t. That cop who caught me and got my salvage number? She wouldn’t let me take any more than I could carry. She even made me leave my backpack behind, the bitch.”

  Bags sighed. “I’m sorry, Eden. She hosed you good on this one. You need to lay low for now. They’ll tag your salvage license, and they’ll be looking out for you. Until you find this cop and retrieve the stash or the cash to turn in, you’ve got a target on your back.”

  With a quick electronic report, this cop had signed my death warrant. It was a good thing we were leaving town tonight.

  Bags set the broom aside. “What have you got for me?”

  I shook my head. “You can’t. They tagged my license. I can’t fence anything anymore.”

  He snorted. “Fuck that. Those bastards come in here, trash my store, and beat on me? Now, what have you got for me?”

  I handed him the rifle, the two damaged guns, and emptied my pockets and backpack of the miscellaneous stuff I’d managed to pick out of the gas station rubble and off the dead. The rifle was in decent shape, but the money he gave me for the battered pistols was far more than they were worth.

  “This is too much, Bags,” I prot
ested.

  “No, this is just enough.” His voice was soft, but stern—the type of voice you didn’t argue with. “You need a place to stay? I got a mattress in the back. They’ll be looking for you. Probably already trashed your house searching for the bullets or the cash. It’d be safer for you to hole up here for a bit.”

  My entire body went cold. Trashed my house. I’d used Bea’s address on my license. At the time it made sense. None of my little hidey-holes were a valid address for the form, and I didn’t have an apartment of my own or anything. Bea’s house was my home. Of course, I’d put that address in the application.

  Trashed my house.

  Bea and the girls were there. Oh God, Bea and the girls.

  I slapped some of the cash Bags had just given me on the counter. “I need extra magazines for my two Glocks.”

  With a quick motion, he put four loaded magazines on the counter and shoved them toward me along with the cash. “Just take them. Is everything okay? Eden, what’s wrong?”

  I crammed the magazines and cash into the pockets of my cargo pants, and spun around. “My family,” I said as I ran for the door. “My family lives there.”

  I drove as fast as I could to my home, forcing myself to slow down when I saw the front door was off its hinges and laying in a splintered mess in the front yard. Fear threatened to take me apart, but now wasn’t the time to let emotion overcome cold, hard, thinking.

  Parking my bike where I could get out fast if I needed to, I pulled the pistol from my pocket, walked to the side of the entrance and listened. Hearing nothing, I carefully made my way into the living room.