Crisis Event: Jagged White Line (11 page)

Finally the man gave up on spitting. He growled something incoherent and stepped over the white jagged line. Everyone stopped laughing. All was silent except for the hum of voices behind them in the market zone. The men next to the line shifted back from the line and began to glance back and forth between the drunken man and the black lawn mower shed.

“You bitch!” the drunken spitter yelled. He was about to take another step when someone reached out and grabbed his arms and jerked him back behind the jagged line. The man wobbled on his legs.

Callie said nothing, but didn’t look down or away from him.

“I’ll fix you, cunt!” the man said and tried to step forward again. This time two men pulled him away. Another man spun him around.

“Come on, Arch,” he said, and glanced at the shed. “You know not to cross the line.”

The man he’d called “Arch” glanced at the shed and nodded, suddenly realizing he’d gone too far.

“Let’s get a beer,” Arch said. “Then we’ll see who buys that bitch.”

Callie looked at Sadie. She gave a small smile and shook her head.

“Don’t try anything,” she said, “He’ll kill you.”

Sadie felt a shiver run through her, and knew she couldn’t abandon her.

“Where’s your stuff?” Sadie asked, her voice low but loud enough to carry to Callie.

Callie looked at the lawn mower shed.

“Geiger counter?”

Callie nodded.

Sadie smiled at Callie. She had an idea forming in her head, based on her grandfather’s opinion of most men, and Callie having said “he” instead of “they.” Though she wasn’t sure the idea would work, she didn’t want to give herself time to think about it. She shrugged her pack off and set it on the ground. Then she dug deep, her fingers snaking through the jumbled items inside until she found a small white plastic canister with a label that read “Calcium Oxide.”

Sadie loosened the canister cap three quarters of a turn and tucked it into her parka’s right pocket. Then she zipped her pack and put it on her shoulders. She looked at Callie, but she was looking at the boy in the black hoodie.

“It’s okay,” she softly. “Not your fault. Go on.”

The boy in the black hoodie shook his head and remained where he was while Sadie moved down the jagged white line, avoiding the jeering, leering men and teenagers still eyeing the chained women. When she came even with the shed she stepped over the line and moved to stand a few feet away from the lawn mower shed doors.

Sadie peered through the gap between the shed doors, moving left and right to see deeper inside. She didn’t see much. Not until the shed doors slid open and a man in dirty, dust-caked jeans and a gray wife beater t-shirt stepped out. He shrugged his muscular shoulders like a boxer ready to fight, and said, “Hello there.”

The man was ten inches taller than Sadie. He had a bent nose and his right cheek showed the scarred jagged pucker of an old, badly stitched gunshot wound. Like so many of the people she saw, he had a holstered pistol on his right hip.

“You a free girl?” the man asked. “Been a long time since I seen a free girl hot as you. That tramp you was talking to was free this morning, but she ain’t now.”

Sadie stared blankly at the man and he reached for her breasts. With both hands. It was as if any sense of restraint he might have felt before the Crisis had been removed now that the official law and order were gone, now that most people were only concerned with keeping themselves alive.

“You like them?” Sadie asked as he brushed his thumbs over her chest.

“A little small,” he said. “But they’ll do.”

“Let me show you what my mouth can do,” she said.

“Damn you’re eager,” the man said. Then he laughed. “Whatchew you want in return? You want me to let blondie go if you fuck me? Some dumb shit like that?”

“Nah,” Sadie said. “I only want her pack and everything that was in it.”

“Well, it just so happens I got that pack right inside,” the man said. He smiled, but his eyes shifted left, then right, then came back to her breasts. “You want to come on in and talk about what exactly it’s going to cost you?”

“Let’s get to it,” Sadie said, giving the man the best sexy leer she could manage, though she had her doubts about how sexy it actually was since she’d never given a sexy leer before in her life.

Sadie glanced at Callie and saw her shake her head. She wailed, “Don’t go in there!”

“You shut up!” the man yelled, and the crowd in front of the naked women laughed.

Sadie clamped her jaws closed and stepped inside the lawnmower shed, followed by the man, who stopped long enough to turn and pull the two sliding doors closed behind him.

Chapter 12

The shed doors had two eye bolts screwed through them, one higher than the other, and they allowed the man to drop a screw driver down through them at a steep angle and “lock” the door.

“Lose the pack,” the man said when he turned around. He pointed. “Over there. I don’t like guns in reach unless they’re mine.”

Sadie shrugged the pack and rifle off her back and looked around as she put them down where he’d pointed. The shed was an 10 X 10 square, low-ceilinged, and cramped. A lantern hung from a hook that had been screwed through the aluminum roof at the top of the ridgeline. A wooden chair sat in one corner, next to a fold-up card table, and a mound of pillows and blankets piled atop a dirty mattress made a sort of bed in another corner. Across from the mattress and chair lay several backpacks whose contents had been spilled out onto the floor. Sadie saw the sawed-off shotgun instantly. It lay among the debris of Callie’s belongings, next to the Geiger counter box and the belongings of whoever else had lost their backpack to this man.

Sadie’s eyes lit up when she saw boxes of ammunition stacked up against the wall.

“How do you keep people away from the women without watching?” Sadie asked.

The man laughed.

“Last time someone stepped over the line I chopped his foot off with that machete,” he said. He pointed to the wall next to the door. A machete with a black, crusty blade hung from a leather strip tied around the base of the handle. Beneath it lay a long gray metal rod connected to a cable with a ring on it—the same kind of ring Callie’s chain was attached to. She knew instantly getting Callie free might be a big problem. The ring Callie was chained to was connected to a trap anchor, and it wouldn’t be easy to pull out of the ground.

“What you want that pack for anyway? Ain’t nothing in there worth a damn.”

“What about the methamphetamine?”

“Oh, you know about that?” the man asked. “That’s long gone. It’s what cost her.”

“Is it illegal?”

“Ain’t nothing illegal,” the man said. “‘less someone can keep you from getting away with it. Naw...some biker dude took it off her and rolled across the bridge. She shot at him and hit a guard. Didn’t kill him or she’d be dead already. But people around here don’t take kindly to women shooting people. They get sold to compensate the victim.”

The man paused long enough to open the canteen on the card table and take a long drink.

“Now that’s enough talking. Let’s see what that mouth of yours can do.”

“Yes sir,” Sadie said. She dropped to her knees in front of his crotch. “And the truth is there’s only one thing I want of hers.”

“What’s that?” he asked as she leaned toward him.

“That Geiger counter.”

She reached out and took the man’s gun hand into her own. Gently and slowly she folded down all his fingers except for his trigger finger. Then, while grinning up at him from beneath her half-closed eyelids, she slid his finger between her lips, sucking softly as she drew him into her mouth all the way to the second knuckle.

The man grinned.

“I think that’s a fair trade,” the man said.

Sadie fought to keep from gagging as she wondered when the man had last washed his hands. His finger tasted like copper and salt and fireplace ash, but the thought of what would happen to Callie if she didn’t do what needed doing kept her focused.

“Is this a dream?” the man asked as Sadie sucked harder. She made an O of her mouth and slowly slid the man’s finger back out of her mouth.

“A dream come true,” Sadie said as his finger popped out of her mouth with an audible “smack,” and hung suspended in front of her lips. She reached for his pants, tracing her fingers across the bulge forming inside them, then rubbing her whole hand back and forth across him to see if he had a set of keys in his pocket. Without them, she doubted she could get Callie free.

“Ohhh,” the man said. “Get your clothes off.

Sadie nodded as she felt the small metal knot in his pocket, then unsnapped his jeans. She unzipped them and spread them open to reveal the stained white briefs beneath. Then she slid the man’s finger back into her mouth again and swirled her tongue in a spiral around the digit, making sure to coat it with plenty of saliva.

Instead of sucking on his finger this time, however, she slipped her right hand into her parka pocket, unscrewed the canister lid, and dug out a handful of white powder. After a lick across the tip of the man’s finger, Sadie pulled her head back, closed her eyes, and turned her face away. Then she slapped the powder over the man’s finger.

“What the—?” the man asked, but then the pain hit him and he snatched his hand away and clutched his middle finger with his other hand. This was a mistake, since the Calcium Oxide and saliva was transferred to his palm, where it began to burn into the flesh of both his hands at several hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

Sadie jerked the plastic canister free of her pocket and snatched the man’s underwear waistband so that she could dump the white powder inside. As she’d expected, the Calcium Oxide reacted quickly with the man’s sweat. His mouth opened and his eyes rolled back in the second before he screamed.

“Ahhhhhhhh!” he bellowed, forgetting the gun on his hip and jumping toward the canteen sitting on the card table. Sadie went for Callie’s pack, snatching up the Geiger counter and shoving it into her pocket just as the man got the canteen lid off and poured water over his finger, palm, and crotch.

The man’s shrieks were like nothing Sadie had ever heard, not even when she had sprayed sulfuric acid into the cop’s eyes. The man dropped to his knees and fell sideways, clutching at his crotch while rolling from side to side on the floor.

“You should’ve gone for vinegar,” Sadie said, and packed Callie’s belongings into the abandoned backpack. She broke open the shotgun, saw it was empty, and dug through Callie’s belongings, looking for shells. She found only two, and they weren’t paraffin loads. She slid the shells into the barrel anyway, and stuffed it into Callie’s pack. Then she picked up her rifle and stepped over to the man. She lifted the rifle butt and slammed it down against the man’s jaw as hard as she could. Then she slammed it into his belly. “But really, you should have just left my friend alone.”

“Uhhh!” he grunted as someone banged on the shed doors.

“Frank!” someone yelled. “Frank!”

Sadie ignored the yells and slammed the rifle down again, this time against the man’s forehead. He went silent and still, and the only remaining sound was the man banging on the shed doors.

Sadie dug into the man’s pocket and pulled out his keys. She also pulled his pistol free of its holster. For a second Sadie remembered how she felt when she’d shot the cop—the sorrow and regret and guilt that had nearly incapacitated her.

She didn’t feel that now. The possibility that Frank wouldn’t wake up didn’t bother Sadie one bit.

Funny how quickly habituation occurs.

Sadie quickly rummaged through the boxes of ammunition and took a box of .30-06s, a box of 9mms, and a box of 12 gauge shells. Then she stood up and shrugged her pack on, tucking the pistol into her empty pocket. As the man outside continued to bang on the door and call for Frank, Sadie pulled out the Geiger counter, dumped it out of its box, pulled the protective cover off, and used her multitool to pray at the back of the plastic case.

The case cracked and a four-inch long wedge snapped out of the back, right down the center. The plastic wedge fell to the floor and Sadie used her pliers to snap away the rest of the back. What was left was a thin, plastic rectangle the size of a credit card.

“Why does Titman want a credit card?” Sadie asked.

She pulled the card out of the Geiger counter and turned it over.

“Oh no…” she moaned as a chill zinged down her back to her buttocks then turned and raced back up to stand her hair on end.

Printed on the top of the card was the U.S. presidential seal. Beneath the seal was a column of numbers.

“No way,” she said, and noticed for the first time how hot and cramped the inside of the shed was. She looked down at the man she’d knocked out. It took her only seconds to calculate what to do next. She didn’t even have to ask her grandfather’s memory for help.

She tucked the card into her pants pocket, pulled out her multitool, and cut away the strap holding the ankle monitor to her leg. She tucked monitor into Frank’s pocket where her keys had been. Next, she jumped up and ran to the shed doors. With a quick flip of her wrist she pulled the screwdriver out of the eye bolts and stepped back to wait. Sure enough, whoever had been calling Frank’s name jerked the doors apart.