Misfits, page 24
The walk to the center of town took twenty minutes. Mick forced them all to eat again, stressing how they needed to keep up their strength for just this last day. Succeed or fail, it was all going to be over by this time tomorrow. They found a McDonald’s and Chuck crammed an Egg McMuffin down his throat, each bite devoid of flavor. When Mick handed him a second one, he ate it mechanically, washing it down with big gulps of orange juice. Looking at the faces of his friends, he figured their senses were as dead as his.
A woman passed by their table with a little girl holding her hand. The girl looked at them and said, “Mommy, they smell.” Her mother ushered her over to the counter, casting a look of disgust their way.
“You guys stay here,” Mick said, gathering their empty wrappers and cups on a tray. “I’ll be back in a half hour, tops.”
“Where are you going?” Chuck said.
“To get us a ride.”
“I’m coming with you.”
Mick shook his head. “You’ll stand out, Baby Huey. I need to keep as low a profile as possible.”
Chuck pushed his chair away from the table and took the tray from Mick. “Let’s go.”
Mick peered into his eyes for a moment and said, “Fine. But you have to keep your distance.”
They left Marnie and Vent in McDonald’s, Marnie picking at the Styrofoam rim of her coffee cup, Vent tearing napkins into small pieces.
Chuck walked alongside Mick, wanting to talk to him, to apologize, to find out the architecture of his grand plan to kill the Melon Heads. Instead, he’d gone mute, every word he wanted to say getting caught in his throat. When they got to the 7-Eleven across the street, Mick pointed to a glass-enclosed bus stop. “Wait there.”
Chuck obeyed like a well-trained dog. Or a zombie under the spell of a plantation owner in one of those old movies. He practically fell onto the bench, watching Mick head to the 7-Eleven.
Is he really making a stop for Slim Jims?
It was the time of the morning when people made a quick stop for coffee. Mick made sure to keep his face pointed away from people coming and going through the front door, his eyes zeroed in on the cars. Chuck saw a man in a business suit pull up in a powder-blue Buick Skylark and jump out, leaving the car running. He’d probably done it every day as he dashed for his morning coffee, thinking nothing of it. As soon as he was inside the store, Mick sprinted for the car and took off. As he passed by Chuck he shouted, “Leepee!” That was their shorthand for Lee Park, a small playground two blocks up. Chuck got there as fast as he could, which wasn’t fast at all. No sooner had he walked to the main gate, huffing and puffing, than Mick pulled up with the passenger door already open. “Jump in.”
Chuck kept waiting for the wail of sirens as they headed back to McDonald’s. He threw worried glances out the rear window.
“No one’s coming for us,” Mick said, carefully obeying the speed limit.
“How can you be so sure?”
“I heard two guys talking when they were going into the 7-Eleven. One of them said, ‘Did you hear about the new one?’ The other guy said no, and his buddy said, ‘Second house in two days. The cops better catch whoever’s doing it before this whole town explodes.’ I don’t think it’s a stretch to say the Melon Heads struck again.”
Chuck’s stomach fell somewhere around his ankles. “Did they say where?”
Mick gave him a stony look. “I think we both know where.”
Marnie and Vent piled into the car when Mick idled by the window. Neither asked whose car it was or how Mick had come by it. What was car theft compared to being, in Chuck’s mind, accessories to murder?
Vent asked, “Where we going?”
“Want to check on something,” Mick said.
A few minutes later, they spotted Heidi’s house. It was swarming with cops and reporters and fire trucks. The top floor was puffing gray smoke, the windows bashed in. Water dropped down the side of the house. The front door was wide open with lots of people streaming in and out, all looking as if they’d seen a ghost.
That left just Vent and Marnie with parents. Chuck turned in his seat to check on them. Both had glassy expressions, their eyes looking straight ahead but actually seeing a host of horror playing in their minds.
“Check their houses,” Chuck said to Mick, leaning close to him so they couldn’t hear.
“Why? They got their pound of fucking flesh already.”
“Because they need to know for sure. Without that, I don’t think they’re going to be much good.”
Mick swung onto Maple and made a right onto Balfour. Vent’s house was fine. Nothing was out of order, at least on the outside. Chuck heard Vent exhale. They then made their way to Marnie’s.
“Damn,” Mick muttered.
The police, fire department and several ambulances were parked askew in the street. A policeman waved at Mick to turn around.
Marnie didn’t react. Maybe she couldn’t. All she did was say, “Mom.” That was it. She took in the devastation of her family as stoically as any person could. Vent reached over to take her hand, but she kept it on her lap.
Chuck heard Mick say under his breath, “There goes that.” He didn’t know what it meant and didn’t want to ask, at least in front of Marnie.
The next stop was Mick’s Airstream. The front door was wide open. It looked like animals had been inside after the Melon Heads, searching for food. It smelled like it, too. Leaves and pine needles were strewn about the floor. Marnie and Vent stayed outside, sharing a smoke, not speaking.
“I hope they didn’t fuck with it,” Mick said, kicking debris aside.
“With what?”
“Dwight’s little side business. Or what was left of it.”
They went into the bedroom at the back of the trailer. Mick dropped to his hands and knees and crawled under the bed. Chuck stared at the shredded sheets and exploded pillows. The Melon Heads were more a force of nature than human beings. They came through houses like tornadoes with teeth.
When Mick backed out, he was clutching a cardboard box. He opened the lid and grinned at the contents. Chuck angled forward so he could see as well.
“Fireworks?”
“Everything Dwight couldn’t unload by Fourth of July,” Mick said.
“What are we going to do with fireworks? Give the Melon Heads a light show?”
Mick closed the lid and put the box on the shredded mattress. “It’s easy to sell the little stuff like firecrackers and Roman candles and spinning stars. Everybody wants ’em. What’s left is the powerful stuff. It’s all mortars, M80s and quarter sticks in here.”
Chuck knew all about quarter sticks, which was short for a quarter stick of dynamite or an M100. His uncle’s friend had blown his entire hand off with one several years back during a drunken Independence Day party in his yard. Ever since then, there hadn’t been any fireworks allowed in his family. Not that it stopped Chuck from firing off bottle rockets, though always in secret and far from the house.
“Quarter sticks,” Chuck said, impressed. “How many you got?”
“A dozen. And it looks like more than that in mortars, along with some smaller stuff that still goes bang real hard and real loud.” He hurried out of the bedroom, grabbed his BB gun, and handed it to Chuck. “Take this while I carry the box.”
“All those explosives and you think this little gun is going to do anything?”
“Beggars can’t be choosers.”
They went outside, Mick not bothering to close the door. He popped the trunk and put the box and BB gun inside.
“What’s in the box?” Marnie asked, exhaling a dragon’s breath of smoke.
“Fireworks, but only the dangerous kind.”
She just nodded, as if it were normal to return to the scene of a massacre for a box of firecrackers on steroids.
Mick slammed the trunk closed and said to Vent, “You think we can get your father’s guns?”
“No.”
“It’s actually not a question. We need them. We need the ones at Marnie’s place, but it’s crawling with cops.”
Vent folded his arms across his chest. “I’ve been gone for days. I doubt my parents are even leaving the house to go to work. How am I supposed to sneak by them?”
Mick pulled his hair back and tied it up with a rubber band from his pocket. “If you want to save them, you’ll find a way. Besides, I think you overestimate how much they care.”
“That was a shitty thing to say,” Marnie snapped. “Take it back.”
“Look, Chuck and Heidi, they had real families. The three of us, just different levels of dysfunction. If the cops are looking for the five of us, we all know who they’re looking harder for.”
The five of us. Chuck’s chest instantly grew heavy.
When Vent didn’t have anything to say, Mick got back in the car and cranked the engine.
“What the hell are we doing?” Marnie asked Chuck.
“Whatever we have to, I guess. At this point, what do we have to lose? We’ll make him spill his plan right after we go to Vent’s.”
“We better. I’m not just walking into Melon Head territory with some fireworks. If I’m going to die fighting, I want to be able to take some of them out.”
Chuck wrapped his arm around her. “You and me both.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
There was one good thing about fear. While it had your full attention, you couldn’t fixate on the pain in your body. Marnie was thankful for small favors.
She wanted Mick to drive into town so she could pick up a newspaper and see what everyone was saying. Did they still suspect that it was wild teens who had murdered Chuck’s, Heidi’s and her families and destroyed their homes? Were the police looking for them, or had they assumed they were dead in a ditch somewhere? Or worse, did they suspect them of turning on their parents?
She doubted anyone would care about Mick’s place. Shit, she doubted many people even knew where the Airstream was located.
Mick said it was too dangerous to take the stolen car anywhere close to Main Street.
All of this was after they had gone to Vent’s house and found it empty. Marnie’s heart broke for him. He’d looked crestfallen. He walked through the house, touching everything as if trying to absorb every fiber into memory. He got a rifle and a handgun and boxes of ammunition. His eyes were glassy with tears as they left.
Now they were pulling up a block from Dredd’s childhood home.
“You think he’s still there?” she asked Mick. “Those pipes didn’t seem very solid.”
“I locked him up on a good one. He hasn’t gone anywhere.”
They went to the back of the house and through the window with the loose board, Mick leading the way just as he had all day and yesterday. So far, it had resulted in Heidi’s death, her parents’, and the death of Marnie’s mother and stepfather. Why were they still in line with the most unstable of their group?
Because we’re in chaos, and Mick thrives in chaos, she thought.
“Whoa, this place smells like mouse shit,” Vent said.
Marnie hadn’t noticed it before, but now that Vent had mentioned it, the smell was nearly overpowering. She hated mice – was scared to death of them. She couldn’t take her eyes off the floor, searching for the nasty critters.
Mick had a flashlight in his pocket that he turned on to chase away a very small portion of the gloom.
“Where’s Dredd?” Chuck said.
“In the basement,” Mick said, going for the basement door.
“Hold on a second,” Vent said. “If I don’t take the edge off, I’m going to lose my freaking mind.” He pulled two fat joints from his pocket. “I grabbed what I had left in my stash. And don’t give me any shit about keeping a clear head,” he said to Chuck.
“As much as I hate to admit when you’re right, you’re right,” Mick said, flashing a look at Chuck.
“Hey, who’s up there?” Dredd shouted.
Mick stomped on the floor several times. “Make him nervous.”
Marnie said, “That’s not cool. You know, we’re the ones that messed up his life. He did what you asked him because he thought it was the right thing to do after what happened to me. There’s no reason to treat him that way.”
“I was just messing around.”
“I’m not. Give me the keys.” She stuck her hand out and waggled her fingers.
“No way. I’ll take off the handcuffs when I think it’s safe.”
“This isn’t your call. I started all this, and I’m going down to uncuff him.”
She and Mick locked eyes, neither blinking.
“Dude, just give her the keys,” Chuck said. “If anything, he’ll be less angry if she’s the one to do it.”
Vent added, “The sooner you do it, the sooner I can light these bad boys up.”
Mick slapped the key into Marnie’s palm. “At least let me come with you.”
“No.”
“Then take Vent or the one-armed bandit here.”
“You guys stay here,” she said with a tone that she knew would have been her mommy voice when her kids acted up. Except she would never have children of her own, even if she somehow survived this day.
Dredd was sitting in a puddle of his own piss. The stench of ammonia assaulted her nose. He looked none too happy. The jarred candle they’d lit before they left was almost burned all the way down.
“Where did you assholes go? You could have at least left me a piss bucket!”
Marnie approached him slowly, as if he were a chained animal, which is exactly how he looked at the moment.
“I’m sorry. We had to do some things. My best friend was murdered by the Melon Heads. So was my family.” When she said it, it sounded as if it were coming from someone else. Being a step removed was the only way to stay sane…for now.
Dredd’s features softened. “Christ. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, so you don’t need to be sorry. I’m going to take your cuffs off. All I ask is that you stay chill. My friends upstairs have guns and they’ll use them.”
Dredd nodded.
It took Marnie a few tries to get the cuffs to unsnap. When they finally did, Dredd threw them across the room and rubbed his wrists. Marnie backed away quickly. “Fucking things hurt.”
“We’re going to attack the Melon Heads today,” she said.
“Hey, it’s your suicide.”
She swallowed hard. “You still might be able to help us.”
“After what you did to me? Are you crazy?”
Marnie thought it over for a moment, and then said, “Yes, I think we are. I think we have to be. Besides, if you help us, you help yourself. I don’t think you can hide down here forever, and from what I can tell, you don’t have the kind of cash you need to pick up and start over someplace else.”
“How the fuck do you know how much dough I have?” he said with a scowl.
“Because if you had more than twenty bucks to your name, you wouldn’t be down here. You’d be in Florida or New Mexico by now.”
That made Dredd grin. “You’re smarter than you look.”
“That’s because people usually don’t look north of my chest. Come on if you want to work with us and get high.”
He followed her up the stairs, complaining about cramps in his arms and legs and that he was starving and thirsty as a dry well. The boys were passing the first joint around, the enclosed room filling with smoke. When Dredd put his hand out to take a hit, Mick pulled it away and said, “Who said you could smoke with us?”
“I did,” Marnie said, making it clear that she was not to be questioned. It was a hard front to put up when she felt as awful, physically and mentally, as she did.
Mick huffed and reluctantly handed it over. Dredd took a drag. “Probably my stuff anyway. You got anything to drink?”
“We forgot to order takeout,” Mick said.
Chuck eyed Dredd’s cuff marks on his wrist. They were raw as chopped meat and raised. “Lucky for you the Melon Heads didn’t come here.”
“Yeah, I feel nothing but lucky,” Dredd said, giving Chuck a major case of side-eye.
“At least you feel something,” Vent said. “That’s more than a lot of people we know can say. If you’re mixed up with these freaks and alive, you’re lucky as hell.”
They finished the first joint and made quick work of the second. Marnie’s head was nice and fuzzy, her body relaxed and free of pain. She thought if she put her head down on the filthy floor, she’d fall asleep like a baby after a bottle and be quite happy.
“Margie says you guys are planning to take the Melon Heads on in their literal neck of the woods,” Dredd said, slapping his thighs to get their attention. Everyone’s eyes looked like red-rimmed mirrors.
“You have to be doing this just to screw with me,” Marnie said. Dredd looked at her as if she were speaking another language.
“So, how do you plan to do it? You got a tank stashed someplace?”
“How many of them are there?” Chuck asked, preempting Mick.
“How the fuck should I know? It’s not like I ever took a census.”
“You’ve been dealing with them for years. You have to have a rough estimate.”
“More than you can handle, I’ll tell you that much. I’ve never seen them all in one place, and it’s kinda hard to tell one from the other. They all look like goddamn mutants.”
“Take a guess.”
Dredd swished his finger in his ear, pulled it out and examined it for a bit. “How does a hundred sound?”
“Fucking terrible,” Vent said.
Mick punched a cabinet door, knocking it off the hinges.
“Sounds like too many,” Chuck said. “You can’t stay hidden that long with that many people. Plus, food would be a problem. When it gets cold, they’d need to light fires. Too many fires equal too much smoke, equals being discovered.”
