The Holocaust Engine, page 16
“I’ll try to control myself.”
“He knows better,” Sandy called out as the two groups separated.
“What would I do? What does he do?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“I mean, he can’t be on top because that’s oppression, and he can’t be on bottom because then he’s making you do all of the work.”
Papp shook his head while trying to suppress a pained laugh. “Oh, Reagan.”
“I mean they have to be side to side, don’t they? But I’m thinking he’s still doing all the pushing and she calls that equality.”
“You’re having the time of your life, aren’t you?” Sandy sneered.
“Well, that’s not saying much, but yeah, kinda.”
The four in scrubs, cowls, and surgical masks on their heads, approached from the street directly in front of the Home Depot’s loading bay. A third of the way through a parking lot cluttered with cars, someone shouted at them from the roof. Dr. White stepped forward and held up his hands. Then they kept walking.
Bikers filed out of both front doors carrying tools for weapons. Six of them approached Dr. White and the others.
“I’m Dr. Dave White,” he called out, and sidestepped a Silverado so that he was clearly visible to the advancing group. “We’re from the hospital.”
The bikers didn’t look happy. Many of them wore their vests. A few, in spite of the heat, were wearing their jackets. Several of them covered their mouths with painter’s masks or tied rags.
One of them lifted a full breathing apparatus onto his forehead, turned, and chuckled to the others. “Did one of you guys call 911?” He was of average size, in his later forties, his black hair draped over the shoulders of his white button-up shirt with sweat stains under each arm. Clearly in charge, he wore black boots, blue jeans, an oversized belt buckle with the words ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ etched in gold, a ring on every finger, earrings in both ears, and a necklace of black and white beads with a large black cross that danced below his beard. His eyes sparkled as they gazed upward at the drone. “They with you?” he asked like a gypsy king whose voice radiated a playful menace.
“Since we left the hospital.”
The biker laughed. “Yeah, I bet they’re real curious what’s happening inside there right now.” He fixed the doctor with a hard stare. “Kind of curious myself. People outside say they can hear screams from inside at all hours.”
“We have 13 showing signs of the infection right now. We keep them in restraints.”
“Any getting better?”
“Not so far.”
“Well ain’t that a bitch. And I was supposed to get a mani-pedi up in Big Pine on Thursday. I’d hoped this’d all be cinched up by then.” He looked each of them in turn, gently batting at a fly that had taken an interest in his beard. “So to what do I owe the honor of this little visit?”
“We heard you make trades.”
The biker spoke through his teeth. “You heard wrong. We got everything we need right now.” Then, while he looked Sandy up and down, he added, “Unless you mean to trade in... uh... female companionship, and I’m guessing that you don’t. Or unless you fellas have a gun you don’t mind parting with.”
Dr. White held his hands up, palms out. “We don’t have any guns.”
“Then I’m just not sure what we have to discuss, Doc. You see, me and the boys have a nice little setup here. Got just about everything we need except for enough ladies and... uh... entertainment.”
“Entertainment?”
The biker nodded over a shoulder to the circle of eight-foot-high hurricane fencing, set with poles propped up in masonry blocks, which occupied most of the space under the roof of the loading bay. “We made ourselves a little ring of champions. Some folks trade a shot at the title for whatever tools they think will save their asses.” The biker lifted up straight when the four in scrubs began looking at one another. “No. C’mon, Doc, be serious.” He gestured to Reagan and Papp. “Which one of these two tomato-cans are you gonna turn into a cripple? What could you possibly need that badly? Hell, we respect the job you guys are doing. What is it? Nails? Heck, we’ll give you some nails for free.”
“Or some screws,” another of the other bikers gently chided.
“Chris?”
Papp took off his glasses. “I’ll do it.”
“No!” Reagan stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. He shook his head, and with a whisper filled with emotion, said, “No.”
“Oh my God,” the biker said. “This is adorable. Now, I’m really curious. Listen, fairy,” he said to Reagan, “if you guys need something this bad, then why don’t you just go the companionship route. Your ass will hurt after, but you’ll still have your looks.” Again, he laughed. “I bet some of the guys would go for you.” Then, over his shoulder, he said, “What do you think, Blitz.”
“Hell yeah, I’ll fuck him, Marcus.” The other bikers laughed at Blitz’s enthusiasm.
“Three minutes,” managed a trembling Reagan.
Papp’s eyes started to tear up.
“What?”
Reagan took a deep breath, and said with a martyr’s softness, “If I can... stay standing with your man for three minutes... then you give us what we need.”
“And what might that be?”
“Activated charcoal,” said Dr. White slowly. “We can’t find it anywhere. We heard you men took a bunch of stuff from the pharmacy section of the Publix before you wound up here. Do you have it?”
The one called Marcus considered. “Not us, but maybe the rest of our crew, putting up a fence around the old farts back in the neighborhood. Go talk to them.”
“We did. The one called Chief told us to come and talk to you. He told us to tell you that he would consider it a personal favor if you helped.”
A bitter bouncing of the chin ensued. “Well, Chief isn’t really in a position to ask favors of us right now. Besides, that shopping run was costly.”
“We need it.”
“Badly enough to take a beating for three God-damned minutes?”
Reagan nodded solemnly.
Marcus looked back at the other bikers, then shook his head at Dr. White. “Okay.”
Two of them roughly patted him down for weapons before leading Reagan into an opening in the wire fence. They had set up a few chairs, but the bulk of the area between the fence and the building’s entry doors were now taken up by makeshift bleachers, consisting of tiers of plywood on top of flats of roofing shingles.
There were almost thirty of them, nearly all men. Reagan counted only four women. Most of them wore t-shirts and filthy jeans, and had long, dingy hair and beards. Most were white, with a few Hispanics—like a group of roadies at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. The smell of their accumulated body odors was intense. Most of them brought tools with them—hammers, hatchets, a bat with nails hammered through it. Two that Reagan could see held nail guns. None had firearms.
The one inside the cage with Reagan was a little shorter than him, maybe six feet. He took off his shirt, and was muscled, but not like a weightlifter. Barefoot, his body was covered with a pair of black jeans, and tattoos that took up almost every inch of skin, from his neck down to his waist, and down both arms to his wrists. Printed on his knuckles were the letters F-E-A-R on one hand, and P-A-I-N on the other. He had old bruising under his left eye, yellow and deep purple.
“We’re not bad people,” said Marcus as he and another came out of the front entry carrying a collection of pouches. “Listen, I found eight of your little packets. Like I said...” He motioned to the others. “...We all respect what you guys are doing. Trying to get stuff like this to lance boils or do brain surgeries or whatever the hell you’re going to use it for.”
He set the pouches down on the ground outside the cage, and entered through the overlapping section that another biker pulled back for him. “We came here for justice.”
Several of the seated bikers nodded their approval.
“Them!” he shouted, pointing to the compound where the last of the police and officials had taken refuge. “They’re the criminals. You want to know how many of us they’ve killed since the bridge blew? They were killing us before this even started!” he railed to Dr. White, as he paced the inside of the cage to the place where Reagan stood, one arm holding another. “You want to know how much blood is on their hands? Huh?”
Dr. Dave White did not reply.
Papp gently pleaded with the bikers closest to him, while Sandy stood near with her arm around him.
Marcus came up to Reagan and stopped shouting. “All right, kid, you ever box before?” All the passion suddenly gone, his voice again sounded dark and playful.
Reagan shook his head.
“Keep your hands up.” Marcus brought his hands up comically tight against the sides of his head. “And move. We all want to see a little blood, but you keep moving and maybe lover boy gets you back in one piece. Okay?”
Reagan nodded.
“Whose gonna keep time?”
A fat one with enormous sideburns held up a wristwatch.
“All right! On my mark!”
The shirtless biker sniffed and got into a fighter’s stance.
Reagan brought his hands up in a clumsy imitation.
Marcus lifted a finger, readying to drop it like a racing flag. Then he glanced to where Dr. White had reached into his scrubs and pulled out a notepad and opened it with an exaggerated flip. “Now what the fuck is that?”
The doctor looked up casually. “It’s a list of all the other things you’re about to give us.”
For a moment, the other fighter had taken his eyes off Reagan. When he turned back, Reagan now stood directly in front of him, a surgical mask covering his mouth, his arms back at his sides, peering downward, a look of pleasure no doubt warming his visible features.
Reagan’s entire body turned with a sudden spasm that caused the scrubs to make a snapping noise. His left leg whipped out. The fighter had no time to grunt. No sooner had the leg retracted from where it had slammed into the side of his thigh, then it shot out again, the shinbone detonating against the side of the biker’s head.
“Mother fu—”
Then Reagan pivoted again. Before the fighter’s swaying body could fall, Reagan launched himself. His right knee exploded into the man’s face as it dropped, catching him flush on the nose. Blood sprayed, and the biker’s head pitched violently backwards, lifting the body with it and carrying it crashing back into the fence with such force, two of the masonry blocks scraped against pavement.
Bikers shouted.
Reagan looked down at his upraised palms. Specks of blood had splattered from his mask all the way down to his knees. He laughed. “Well, you said you wanted blood.” He smeared it away from his exposed cheek with a shoulder of blue cloth.
The bikers jumped to their feet.
Marcus pulled a black handle out of a pocket and flicked open a switchblade.
Reagan looked down at the little blade, and laughed again.
Dr. White was shouting for attention. “Look! Look at the owl!” He signaled Calhoun.
In front of the Home Depot, between the two entrances, the face of a sentry owl placed on top of a wooden shed burst into a spray of splinters.
Several bikers recoiled from the sound of the gunshot.
At the same time the wooden owl was destroyed, Reagan drove into Marcus with a wrestler’s double-leg takedown, which drove the older man’s back down onto the pavement. The breathing mask slid off his head and bounced away. Reagan levered the switchblade out of his hands with an arm bar and, before Marcus could even breathe, Reagan had the switchblade at the man’s skull.
“The last time someone pulled a knife on me, it wound up in his eye socket!” He spun his body into side control, looked up at the bikers on the other side of the fence, and shouted, “Now, everybody listen to the doctor.”
Buehl jogged up from the side. With the shotgun leveled in one hand, he handed the M1 off to Dr. White with the other.
For a minute, all was tension—hatchets held ready to throw, nail guns poised like pistols.
Then Reagan leaned onto Marcus’s chest. “Say something, genius.”
Marcus pursed his lips. He would not look Reagan in the eyes. “You better hope you got some spiffy defenses at that hospital of yours.”
Reagan grabbed his chin and forced him into eye contact, letting Marcus feel his true strength. “What do you think?”
Marcus arched his back slightly, as if he were about to try and resist, then stopped. His face slowly changed to neutral. “All right boys,” he called from the ground. “Let’s hear the good doctor out.”
Dr. White, rifle held in his right hand, lifted the notebook with his left. “This is how it works. We charge by the patient and by the trauma. Your champ down there—” He nodded to the ground, where the biker lay unmoving against the fence as if he’d been blown there by a hurricane. “—looks like he has a concussion and a nose that’s going to take the rest of the afternoon to straighten. At least.”
He swung the M1 up to his shoulder, and several of the bikers flinched. “That’s going to cost you. If my man inside the cage goes to work on the other guy, we charge for every body part he cuts. If the sniper on top of the truck gets busy....” He pointed to the edge of the visible parking lot. “Well, you don’t even want to know what we charge to dress a bullet wound.”
The One Hundred Foreskins
Key West, Old Town
One night, Vera Krasinski stayed up past 3 AM telling Lindsey MC her feelings for Hunter Grant. Lindsey listened with a grin, then got up, went to the kitchen, and came back with a ketchup bottle. She then proceeded to show her friend what she assured her was the proper way to pleasure a man. This accomplished, she lifted her friend off the floor with a giggle and pushed her bodily out into the hallway, then into the living room where Hunter Grant was asleep on the sofa.
She did not do this because she cared about her friend. Lindsey MC did it because she was Lindsey MC, and because she was the only one of them who knew Hunter Grant when he was a boy, and the only who one that knew that Hunter Grant was not what he appeared to be.
Not even close.
Lindsey MC never met her father. He died while her mother was still pregnant, when the two of them had tried to sell a stolen rental car to a petty drug dealer who shot her father and shot at her mother. She didn’t know much about this event, or anything else from her mother’s youth, only that the dealer should have gone to prison for a fucking long time, but didn’t, and this fact was just another in a sea of examples of how the world was fundamentally wrong—like one of those drawings where the people walk on the stairs upside down.
Lindsey MC got her name—the last two letters of it—in the second grade when her teacher starting calling her Lindsey MC to distinguish her from Lindsey Tucker, who sat one row over. The other children took to it immediately, and Lindsey MC didn’t mind since it sounded so much nicer to her ear than Lindsey McElhaney.
The teacher who named her was Hunter Grant’s mother.
To Lindsey MC, the fact that none of the others seemed to have any recollection of Hunter Grant as a little boy, or his mother who taught at the elementary school, was just more evidence that her mother had been right—the world was a disjointed mass of nonsensical bullshit. Lindsey MC remembered. She even met his father once, when her mother tried religion at the Baptist church up in Sugarloaf.
Lindsey MC was a fourth grader when they’d joined the church. She remembered two things clearly from the Sunday School—the taller girl with the long braids who made fun of her clothes, and Hunter Grant, who tried to pray with her once and sat next to her every Sunday morning so that she could look over at his Bible.
Hunter Grant—little Hunter Grant—had no friends at the church. He was a friend of Jesus, and even at the church, that made him different. The others could say words like salvation and repentance, but Hunter Grant could not only say all of the words, he knew where all the passages were and found them before any of the others. He never answered the teacher’s questions right away. He always looked around, waiting for any of the others to say something—waited until it became uncomfortable—and then he answered.
He started sitting next to her when the girl with the braids, and the girl’s friends, laughed at her one morning before the teacher had entered the room. Hunter sat down beside Lindsey MC and stared at the other girls with those eyes—those eyes that stared out into eternity. Jesus eyes. The girls turned back around in their seats.
“I wore the same thing last week,” she told him when he asked her what was wrong. “And before that.”
“So what?” he said. “I heard Pastor say once that people in Jesus’s time only had one or two things to wear. Like ever. They didn’t have money for more.”
“I wish we had money, so I could buy another dress.”
“God is in control. It’s like with the lilies of the field. We just have to trust Him.”
“Lilies?”
“Flowers. He takes care of them, so he’ll take care of us.”
“People step on flowers.”
The next week, he was waiting when she sat down wearing the same clothes as before. He handed her a pile of crinkled up ones with both hands—thirteen dollars in all.
Lindsey MC and her mother stopped attending the church a few months later. After that, she never spoke to Hunter Grant, and looked away if she ever saw him smiling in her direction. If the others made fun of the little Jesus freak, she laughed with them. She didn’t want to pray with him, and didn’t want any more of his money. Not his. She didn’t know what strings might be attached to it, but she was sure it would just be more bullshit. As they got older and all the others seemed to forget about him, she was happy not to think of him again.
Lindsey MC first tried drugs at 13, when Cade Hargrove gave her Xanax and clumsily took her virginity. It was then that she saw the world for what it really was.
It was like two images being superimposed, one on top of the other, and suddenly the dope pulled them apart. Her mother was right: the world was fundamentally wrong. Now she could see it—not just the evidence of how things didn’t quite fit, but physically see it.
