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Benny slammed into the trees and screamed. Flames ate
at his skin and clothes. Benny rolled off a trunk, dropping to the swampy
ground.
Curling into a ball, he felt the heat of the car and
the shrieks of a man burning alive. Not shrieks of pain, but of joy as drugs
seethed along dying nerves.
A dark shadow showed briefly, moving through the
flames and smoke. An owl called and Benny whimpered. Owl was coming. Death
stalked the copse of black willows and was closing in.
The hell with it. He had to stand, to go down
fighting. And was numb and frozen by a pinched nerve and a splinter of bone
against his spine.
A leering skull drifted from the flames. The doper’s
screams turned to pain, now, and tormenters whispered among the flames seeking
his soul.
Maggots dripped from the skull only to burst into dots
of fire. Plastic body parts of the car melted and ran over the ground, burning
everything they touched. Blackened and burning, the driver screamed. He crawled
from the car with hands raised to stagger towards Benny.
“Help me, help me.”
Unable to help himself, Benny lay staring as it loomed
over him then staggered by with pieces of burning flesh flaking away to finally
drop and crumble as the burning plastic finally ate through the chest to the
heart and lungs.
A giant of a biker shot through the flames on a Gold
Sun Uohali. The tail of the motorcycle spun, ramming the skull and shattering
it. Rats screamed. They fled only to burst into flames.
A thin runnel of plastic raced to touch Benny. Fire
licked along it to bless his boots, then to make them smolder.
Shuddering at the heat, Benny glanced at the giant.
Two Swords scowled a happy grin and Benny snarled.
“You! You’re the creep that saved my ass on the
mountain.”
“Yeah. My mistake, I guess. Hey, pretend you’re
asleep, OK? The Boss Lady don’t like us being seen. You ain’t mature enough
to handle it.”
“I’ll give you mature. I’ll tear off your head
and crap in the hole.”
Chuckling, Two Swords reached out and rapped Benny on
the head. Mouth open in the midst of a good cussing, Benny slumped. The
helicopters roared overhead spraying foam on the flames. Two Swords directed a
small breeze to lay some on Benny and the flames eating at the illegal leather
boots hissed, dying.
Motioning for a few sprite-like guardians to mind the
kid, he stepped away for a moment. The guardian smiled. The choppers were
landing, disgorging people to fight the flames spreading into the trees. Others
were trying to get close enough to the car to see if anything remained.
A car slid from the sky. Black, it carried two men. On
the side was OFFICIAL GOV VEHICLE. Under that, the word Harvester. He flicked a
finger at one stubby wind and the car rocked, dropping from the air to bounce
hard.
An ambulance attendant ran up. Two Swords tripped him
and gave him a boot in Benny’s direction, then followed close to make certain
the man saw the kid.
The man yelped and his guardian snarled. Two Swords
ignored it. On occasion Ma allowed Her warrior guardians a few un-angelic
actions. Two Swords guarded a Wolf, not some whining poodle.
The man crawled to his feet. Seeing A body, he
shouted, “Got a fry-baby in the trees. Stretcher! Somebody help here.” He
darted to the body and pulled a pen from his pocket. Scanning the body, he
smiled, shouting, “A live one.”
The team from Harvester slowed, drifting away to their
car scowling.
Benny awoke with a start and killed a yawn. Somebody
was pounding on the door. He was in a cheap room with scabby walls and cracked
windows. The room seethed with moist heat. Snagging his pants from the floor, he
checked the wallet. Flat, the hooker rolled him.
Staggering from the room, he scowled at the manager.
Benny squinted at the sun and shuddered in the pain of
a hangover fit to kill. He closed his eyes, dressed, and dragged out from under
the porch roof squinting at the Red Sun. for a moment he was lost, seeing Carl
as the man burned to death. Carl was a rider worth knowing, and his Red Sun was
one of the best.
Touching the bars, he whispered, “’Bye, Papa
Bear.”
An MP bellowed at him. Jerked from his pain, Benny
glanced up. He dragged a leg over the saddle and kicked the starter. The MP
waved a club and Benny roared away. The last thing the MP saw was Benny’s
middle finger, and then everything dissolved into nothing.
And then he was stumbling along behind a very sweet
bottom. The woman went through a sagging, cracked door. Benny slowed, then
drifted after her. The door ripped through him to slam shut. He blinked and
shivered. It was a crock, being dead. He still had all these feeling and needs
and could do nada but want.
Sue crumpled a C-note in one hand, tossing it at a
snoring JJ. The man’s face lay on the table, a cockroach crawling through his
hair and he never moved.
She stalked out with something akin to relief in her
heart. Rail thin, light copper skin, large eyes and high cheekbones brought the
johns out of the woodwork. Two men came out of a doorway, saw her, and started
walking along the street behind her. It also attracted other kinds, non-paying
sorts like Lord Penn’s boys. Twice, last week, she had been forced.
It wasn’t diets that kept Sue trim, it was sheer
nerves and a terror of being stolen.
“Hey, redskin,” a man whispered. “Gimme
light.”
Not even bothering to look back, she sprinted down the
street kicking off the shoes and praying there were no needles to step on. A
jake was coming through the steel door at Anton’s and she dived through under
his arm. Outside, the pair slid to a halt and then Anton was there, the shotgun
cradled in his arms.
“This ain’t no fairy stun gun,” he told them,
his voice deepening, a cold smile on his face. “Ain’t no friggin play
toy.”
“Fuck you. I tell th’ boos.”
“Nah, now that’s bad language, Frenchy.” Anton
pumped the shotgun and fired in the air. Both men froze.
“Beat it,” Anton said, his voice dropping to a
mere whisper. “Now.”
The men darted away and he turned, coming back in the
bar. Sue was huddled in a booth. Anton’s wife Dolores was with her.
“Baby,” Anton said, “Get your brother on the
horn and tell him to take this cild home.”
“I can’t.” Sue pulled out of the warm comfort of
Dolores’ arms. “Ama got no medicine. JJ done used it all and left her
flat.”
“Cabron,”
Dolores muttered. “I’d like to stick them horns up his anal.”
Scowling, Anton pulled a roll from his pocket, peeling
off a red fifty with the new president’s picture on it.
“This should get her through the night.”
“I can’t –”
“Take it,” he barked. Anton wadded up the money
and threw it on the table. He stalked to the bar and stepped behind it to use
the phone.
A few moments later a tall man threw open the heavy
door and stepped in.
“Angelo,” Dolores called. She stood up. “Take
her home. Them creeps is after the kid again.”
The Caribe Indian shrugged. In silence he took Sue out
the door and down the street.
She glanced up at him. He towered over her, his steps
quiet, cat-like. Even the necklace of tiny monkey skulls with snake vertebrae
spacers was cushioned with black velvet. Dead center in the necklace was a heavy
gold crucifix. In each ear dangled a silver cross on a thin chain. Nothing made
noise.
Angelo glanced behind them at a shadow. Benny scowled.
The man turned away.
He stopped long enough for her to get Ama’s
‘medicine’ from Tony Redd. Eyes growing big and round as Angelo stared at
him Tony took the note without looking at it. Sue stepped away and they moved
down the street.
She spotted her stiletto heels and grabbed them but
didn’t dare put them on.
A few doors from her house the men stepped out. The
Haitian, Frenchy, pulled a knife.
“Boos-man, he wantin’ sees the girl,” he told
Angelo.
Angelo’s dark face glanced down at Sue, then back to
the men. The second one had a small gun and was grinning.
Angelo reached slowly into his pocket. The men
scowled. He pulled out a thin bone.
Holding it out, he let them get a look, then snapped
it. Frenchy choked. He gasped for breath and wailed in terror as he tore off
down the street.
The second man’s scowl turned to one of puzzlement.
He glanced over one shoulder but Frenchy was already gone, the sound of his
heels pounding the street fading. When he looked back, Angelo dropped the
pieces. They hit the pavement, bounced, and were whole again.
Angelo raised his foot and his heel came down on the
bone. Small grinding noises came from it.
The gunman faltered and clutched his chest.
Angelo strode by him without a glance and Sue ran to
keep up. She came to her door fumbling with the card key. Angelo took the
rusting knob on his hand.
“Wait, it’s locked –”
He turned the knob and the lock snapped open.
The door creaked. Angelo gave a small bow. Eyes wide
and frightened, Sue stumbled in. He closed it gently behind her and she was
alone in the kitchen.
Glaring at the big man, Benny walked into the door and
was thrown back. Angelo made a second bow. Something picked up Benny and threw
him through the wall and into the kitchen. Sue turned, looked, and scowled. It
was that naked kid again, the redskin and she shivered, praying he was something
left over from some drug.
A soft, deep whisper came from the street.
“The dead, amigo,
they must be polite in the world of the living.”
A soft moan came from the back.
“Ama!” Angelo forgotten, Sue ran into the back
room and saw her stepmother sprawled on the floor, a string of drool and blood
seeped from a slack, gray mouth.
“Ama, I’m sorry.” She tugged and pulled until
she had the woman back in bed and a quilt on her. She ran to the dresser and
took from it a candle, a needle, and a silver spoon to boil the tar.
As the needle slid in Ama’s arm, the woman sighed.
“Thank you, baby,” she whispered and slid into
sleep.
Sitting on the bed, Sue stroked the wrinkled face. She
gave a sad smile, kissed Ama on the head and went to her room to undress. Benny
followed and stared even as his body in the hospital blushed.
A night-duty nurse saw the monitors go crazy. Worried,
she ran to the room and saw the sheet covering the lower half of his body
tented. With a relieved grin, she backed out of the door. Then looked again and,
after making certain no one was in the hall, stole in for a little peek under
the sheet.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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