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In the hospital hallway a light sizzled and buzzed,
then went out, leaving the nurses muttering.
The harvester, Jason, glanced back. In the
night-vision goggles he saw a flicker of purple light. Three flashes and a long.
He signaled in return before slipping the goggles into a jacket pocket and
flipping the badge over the breast pocket. Jason scowled. It was supposed to be
hanging from the front of the belt, but there was new brass in the upper
offices.
Janissary Project, whatever the freek that was.
“Christ, new name for the chop-shop.”
A flea-sized hearing aide planted in the nerves of his
inner ear muttered, “Lady says gotta take the kid alive . . . like this, why?
Spare parts is spare parts, hain’a?”
“Cool it, ass. They can hear us.”
Jason didn’t know, nor did he gave a damn. The money
said take the kid, then the kid disappeared, snap and presto.
“Everybody in position?”
“But –“
“But what, malaca?
The boss says we gotta, else there’s ram-a-fuk-eh-shuns. Political nasty
crap.”
“I'd like to ram something up –“
“Positions?”
Voices whispered in his mind. Jason counted off, then
advanced down the hall dodging black figures of nurses and aides and a few
elderly repair staff. Most all of them were volunteers, not paid. He sneered.
This job was crappy, but it paid well enough for an
armored apartment in South Side. It paid for real meat, not dog, for a lot of
things the man dreamed of while growing up.
But, for the most part, it was fun. Crappy, but fun.
The looks he got while in uniform, even from cops, that was the best. The
respect, the fear. The sex . . . Like that bimbo neighbor, sixteen, pleading
with him not to take her little brother, a kid brain dead, his body wasting away
in a bedroom.
Lots of sex. Fun sex.
Better a live dog than a dead wolf, his Grampy Marks
used to say.
He moved between his men now, entering the room to
view his next back of meat.
The kid lay under a single sheet, the monitors working
like gangbusters as the kid moved from one dream to the next. He pulled down the
sheet and smiled.
Too damned bad this one had to go so soon. Nice bod,
tight. Mean-ass face, though, but maybe fun to tame.
“What the hell gives?”
Startled, Jason glanced up to see a real linebacker of
a nurse glaring down at him. The broad had to be almost two meters tall and was
ugly as sin to boot.
“Rules,” Jason said, his voice soothing and calm
despite a trickle of ice now wandering down his spine. Geez, but she was creepy
looking. Even in the free eye he could see her eyes were tinged with red.
“Boy, this is mine." A sausage of a finger
thumped down on the meat-sack’s heavy chest and the kid gave a small grunt.
“You got that? I catch you ghouls in here again, you’ll be decorating your
own meat-hooks in the chop shop.”
“Hey, I got orders.” Teeth bared, Jason reached
into a pocket.
“Take that paper out and you could lose that friggin
hand,” the linebacker said, her voice sweeter than honey, as sharp as razors.
Jason shivered and let the paper stay. He touched the
throat mike, muttering, “Net her.”
Phil jerked up the net gun and the thick muzzle
hissed, blew away and a mono-filament plastic-steel net ripped from it to tangle
the nurse. The lady never budged and the men scowled.
Jason pulled the paper, dropping it on the bed, then
jerked a thumb at the kid and the nurse.
“Her, too.”
“But –“
“Damn it, you freekin malaca, Abu. The law says we
got to, to keep the meat sacks in line.”
“I ain’t touching her. She’s, like, weird.”
“Assholes. Get the kid. He’s the money, anyway.”
The two snatched at Benny. A tinny-piano wire sound
sang in the tight confines of the room. Then a wire snapped. And then the rest.
They stared at the nurse and Abu shivered, whimpering as the towering woman
reached for Jason.
“Done told you, baby,” she whispered, soft, honey
scented breath caressing Jason’s face. “Leave what’s mine alone, or
else.” She held the hand and sighed, a tear coursing down one cheek. “I am
sorry ‘bout this.”
There was a shriek.
Sue ran down one street and up another. A pair of men
chased. Their breath came heavy and gasped, but they kept coming. A third joined
them. He was younger, fresher, and wild-eyed with a methamphetamine grin that
told of what he wanted more than life itself.
A day of freedom, ya.
It was early. Morning. The nightcrawlers should be in bed, but the creep on met
probably didn’t sleep anymore. The stuff did that, and right now a few grains
of it would do her a lot of good.
A cramp hit hard in her side, and she stumbled. The
met-freak hooted a laugh, and she could hear his feet pounding the sidewalk. One
of the men screamed, and there was a crash, and now two still raced after her.
Sue jumped pile of bricks and glass and stumbled. A
hand cut the air over her head. She rolled, dodged, and bounced up with her legs
churning. The met-freak slapped into the wall of a building and bounced off with
Frenchy plowing into him. She streaked away with only Frenchy after her now.
A stray dog with raw patches showing in his coat
snapped at her legs and ran. He was smart, that dog, to escape the meat hunters
for so long. She flew down the street, but a car roared out to block her way. She
gathered herself and jumped. A hand shot out the window, and she dropped, tearing
free, but Frenchy was there to slap her down.
“Bitch,” he said, gasping and wheezing. He sagged,
hands on his knees and grinned. Sue tried to crawl away, but a kid crawled out of
the car. The tiny gangster winked at Sue but turned a cold eye on Frenchy.
“Gimme,” the TG said.
“Get lost.”
“You says you gimme a fifty, I helps.”
“Screw off, I said,” Frenchy snapped.
He swung the gun at the kid, but the boy whistled hard
and shrill. Twenty more faces showed in gaps in the rubble. Shuddering, Frenchy
straightened. He planted a boot on Sue’s back and pulled his wallet.
“Hundred,” the kid said.
“Hey, fuc-”
“Hundred or you no gonna fuck nothin’ no more. Hundred.”
Scowling and muttering to himself, Frenchy handed over
a red and a blue bill. The kid snatched them from him and raced away to the
group of TG, tiny gangsters. Kicked out of their homes by parents that could not
afford to keep them, the children formed their own tribe.
They melted away as Frenchy wrapped a hand in Sue’s
hair.
“Mon Dieu,
yeah, now I gots you. Bones-man, him says you come nice and sweet, an’ all be
cool. If no, then we to convince you. Hear? Convince any damn way we pleases.”
“Up your ass,” she snarled and kicked him in the
knee.
The knee snapped and Frenchy howled, throwing himself
from another kick. Sue darted away but the met-freak plowed into her, ramming
her against the building. A wet, drooling mouth slobbered over her and the
met-freak grunted, his hips slamming at her bottom.
Sue twisted in his arm to ram a knee in his groin. He
ignored it. She rammed again and again but he was too fried to feel it. She
shoved her hands up, her thumbs shoving at his eyes but he turned his head.
Shrieking curses, Frenchy unloaded the pistol at her.
The met-freak howled, breaking away clutching the bleeding holes in his back.
She ran, twisting away, and Frenchy screamed, throwing the pistol.
Sue spun around a corner and into the group of TGs.
They all froze, then scowled.
“Here, now. You all behave or I’ll turn you over
my knee!”
They glanced at each other and laughed.
“Might be,” she said, "You all are too big
for me. But are you too big for the ghost?”
Frowning now, they glanced at each other and the dark
winter shadows.
“What ghost?”
“Why, the one Angelo told Miz Anton was trailing me.
Ugly feller. Mean and got him a black eye patch.” Sue shuddered. “He’s
some filled with hate and murder. Bet he would make the president seem a sweet
sugar daddy.”
Benny scowled and glanced in a window but there was no
reflection in the dark, smoke marred glass.
Frowning and glancing around the TGs backed away.
Then an older one snapped, “Hey, she shittin’
us.”
“Man, are you a pinhead?” Sue gave them a cool
look. “You gonna buck a ougan-man like Miz Delores’ own brother? He’s dark
magic, that man. And Miz Delores, don’t she go to Pop’s and love Jesus, and
Jesus tells her to feed you-all when times is hard? Hain’a?” Her voice
slowly lowered to a whisper. “I got a little of the magic, too, and if you
look close, you’ll see the rings in my eyes that bind me to the power.”
One finger pointed at her right eye and a child
whispered, drawing back.
“Here, I’m doing my best to be good -”
“Still shit,” the old one muttered, but he edged
from her. “You Sue Hannah, ain’t you?”
"M-hm.”
“The Judge, he says you be his. The Judge, he loves
little kids.”
Another whispered, “Into tiny corpses.”
Shaking his head, the leader choked. “That un,
he’s a meaner demon than Carlton.”
“And we all o’ us know it.”
On impulse, Sue hugged him. “You stay safe. Stay out
of court till you’re eighteen. All they can do after that is draft you in the
military. You get in trouble before that and they’ll sterilize you the hard
way and put you in the kiddie boot camp, too. Then all you got is a big nothin’.”
Sue gave each a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“You-all . . . be careful. You see me and you got a
need, I’ll try to help, but I got a devil on my shoulder.”
Mobbing her, they kissed her and ran away. Sue
straightened. She slid away, through the ruins. The third man stepped out with
two backing him. He grinned and slapped her to the ground.
“Boss said, grow up, kid.”
“Never –”
The toe of his shoe caught her under the chin. She was
thrown back and the three dragged her into a house to pull down her jeans. The
first man grabbed her breasts, twisting with cruel, damp hands.
Benny screamed long and loud, and shrieks wailed from
the many uneasy dead buried in the rubble.
A half-dozen of the kids heard his scream and the
sound of fists hitting flesh. They called out, whispering and scowling. Peering
in the building they saw the men slapping and punching Sue. One had his pants
down around his ankles.
A girl of no more than six moved in.
“Gee, mister, why not you come try a real gal?"
She winked and the men froze.
“Get the hell out.”
The girl muttered a laugh that would have sounded
normal coming from a prostitute of thirty.
She pulled a knife and flipped it in the air. A shower
of broken bricks and glass ripped through the windows over the men.
Howling in pain, one lunged for her but she slipped
away, twisting and dodging as he chased her.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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