Off the Wagon (Users #2) (6 page)

“He’s going home with me today, so if you want to help, talk to him now. Otherwise get out of my way or not even Evan will be able to hold me back this time,” Carter said with a fire burning in his belly that was ready to explode.

Walt let out a heavy sigh.

“This is exactly what I’m talking about. The second something doesn’t go your way, your adrenaline starts pumping and your fight or flight responses start to kick in. Except you don’t seem to have the flight part quite down, so it’s always a fight,” He explained. ”How are you supposed to show Barber to live what you call a regular life, if you can’t even handle a grown-up discussion without it coming to fisticuffs? How will you teach him to cope and deal with life and the real world as a normal teen, nonetheless a User teen, without turning to drugs, when you can’t keep him clean for even a week?”

Carter knew Walt meant no insult by his line of questioning and dropped his defenses.

“Walt, I know I fucked up. I didn’t exactly have what you would call the most exemplary parental role model,” Carter said. “I didn’t get it, but I do now. I’ll pay better attention. I really believe I can do this. I understand him, and I know what he needs. I will make the effort, I will be more conscious of him, and really be there for him this time.”

Walt eyed him skeptically for a moment.

“If anyone deserves a second chance, it’s you. You can take him, but if something else bad happens to him, if he so much as gets a hangnail, you’ll have to answer to me,” Walt said.

“Agreed. Now will you just go talk to him.”

“Talk to who?” Barber asked.

The two of them had been so deep in conversation, they hadn’t noticed as Barber walked right up behind them.

“You,” Walt said. “Take a seat.”

Walt motioned to the wooden patio furniture across the table from him. Barber slowly ambled his way over to the chair and sat down.

“What’s up?” Barber asked. His eyes shifted from Walt to Carter and back to Walt nervously.

“I’m just going to ask you flat out, because there’s no reason to beat around the bush here,” Walt said. “Have you relapsed?”

“Y-Yes,” Barber said hesitantly.

“When?”

“The other day.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“School.”

Carter sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You’re supposed to be going their to learn, not get high.”

“Please don’t interrupt,” Walt said to Carter. “Are you using Pow?”

“Yes.”

“Were you high when you popped your spikes on that drug dealer?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to go back and stay with Carter and continue to go to school?”

Barber took a deep breath before he answered. “Yes.”

“Then you need to stay off the junk, get back on track, and get on with your life.” He paused and looked directly into Barber’s eyes. “Just so you know, I don’t think going back to live with Carter is the best thing for you right now, but I’m going to allow it despite my inclination toward the contrary.”

A toothy grin spread across Barber’s face.

“But you gotta promise me no more drugs.”

“Deal,” Barber said.

*****

The beat up pickup truck rumbled to a stop in front of their apartment just after dusk.

“Looks like a nice building,” Walt said.

“You wanna come up and check the place out?” Barber asked.

“No, I gotta get back to the compound.” The usually straight forward talking man seemed hesitant to answer. Walt looked ahead at the road like he had somewhere else to be.

“Well, thanks for the ride,” Carter said getting out of the truck followed closely by Barber.

“Yeah, no problem.”

“See ya,” Barber called as he made his way to the building’s front door.

“Bye, kid,” Walt hollered after him and Carter was about to say goodbye when Walt motioned for him to come over to the rolled down truck window. “You remember what I said about taking care of that young man.”

“I do.” Carter assured him.

“Good.” And without another word, Walt rolled up the window and was gone, barreling down the street in his old pickup.

“What an asshole,” Carter said to himself as he shook his head, but honestly he was going to miss the guy.

Carter turned and entered the building to find Barber holding the elevator up for him, much to the annoyance of another one of the apartment’s patrons.

“About time,” Barber said as Carter stepped into the elevator.

“Indeed,” the man who had been waiting with Barber said.

Carter and Barber exchanged a knowing glance. This overstuffed pompous old man didn’t know who he was dealing with. The building was nearly thirty stories tall and when the bell dinged on floor five, their floor, Carter stepped out, but Barber waited back a second. He then ran both hands over the buttons for every floor, lighting the elevator buttons up like a Christmas tree.

“Indeed,” Carter said doing his best impersonation of a pompous ass and Barber about died laughing as he stepped into the hall.

The old man just stared speechless, his mouth agape, as the doors shut in front of him.

“What a dick move,” Carter said.

“Right?” Barber agreed and they both laughed again as they sauntered over to the door to their apartment, mighty pleased with themselves.

“Everything is exactly the way we left it,” Barber said as they entered the apartment.

“Yeah, that’s the plus of living in a swanky building. You’re not getting robbed every time you leave the house.”

“So, whatcha wanna do now?” Barber flopped down on the couch.

“I…gotta go,” Carter said hesitantly. “I’ve got work to do.” He grabbed the duffel bag from the corner he had shoved it in the other day.

“What do you mean you’ve gotta go? We just got here,” Barber said.

“I’ve gotta stop whoever is supplying the Pow to this city,” Carter said, and more importantly he needed the distraction.

He needed something to remind him that was he still alive, something to fill the time and keep him from facing himself. The day had gone well. Barber admitted to having used and with some help from Walt, he was committed to staying clean again. They had shared some laughs, and spent the day relaxing at the compound.

Carter was sure that something bad was going to happen.

Chapter 7

Carter spent every night for the next week knocking down doors, chasing down drug dealers, and punching out teeth. He was working his way up the food chain and was getting close to the top. He had hit the docks, night after night, following the lead he had gotten from the drug dealer who had shot Barber. From there he had gone to the Sodo district, Downtown, and finally a rundown apartment building up on Pill Hill. Each drug dealer leading him to another location and another dealer higher up the totem pole. Now he found himself watching and waiting outside an apartment building with boarded up windows, and a jagged crack running through the masonry from the bottom floor all the way to the top.

He knew what he was looking for, a man named Jeb. A man, he was told after some brutal convincing, who had all the right connections. He had only a brief description of the man, crooked nose, black hair, and a pock marked face, but Carter figured that the combination was unique enough that he would spot this drug dealer relatively easy once presented with the man.

Carter waited for hours, almost completely through the night and he was about to give up, when a man fitting the description finally emerged from within the crap-tacular fortress. A burning cigarette hung loosely from the man’s lips, a wisp of smoke rising from the hot end. The man strolled to a nearby parking garage and Carter crept as quiet as a ghost behind him. A long ramp led down into the underground parking structure. Inside, rows of cars lined both sides with a lane down the middle. The drug dealer was headed toward a cherry red Porsche. Of course, he was. Carter couldn’t help but take pleasure at just the thought of what this douche bag had coming.

Carter ducked behind an SUV just as the man reached his car and looked around as if to check that he were alone. He then jumped into the driver seat. To the drug dealer, Carter must have come out of nowhere. One minute he was sitting alone in his car, the next the passenger door swung open and in hopped Carter, but the man with the pockmarked face didn’t have the look of surprise he should have. Instead he wore wiry grin.

“What the fuck you smiling at?” Carter asked.

The man merely looked down, drawing Carter’s eyes down to his. A gun, loaded and cocked, was aimed right at Carter’s gut.

“So you’re the dead man who’s been hitting all my dealers,” he stated more than asked.

“I’m not dead yet,” Carter said.

“No, not yet, but soon.” The drug dealer put the gun to Carter’s forehead. “But first tell me something. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m keeping scum like you from doing business,” Carter said. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Yeah, but why?”

“You answer a question for me first,” Carter said.

“You’re not in any position to negotiate, but since you’re about to be dead anyway, sure go ahead.”

“Who’s behind all these drugs? No one seems to know.”

“The big man? He’s a User like you, operates out of an abandoned warehouse downtown,” the man said. “Oh yeah, I know you’re a Scorcher. Word on the street is you’re a nasty one too. Now tell me why you’re doing this.”

“I could tell you its because I’ve got a teenage kid at home who broke a year long streak of sobriety by using your drugs, or I could tell you I’ve got some higher sense of morality or some hero like code that I follow, but the truth is…I’ve got demons, and demons need to be fed. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings, and all that jazz. The truth is, I just don’t like you fucks and what you stand for.”

Now it was Carter’s turn to smile as the look on the man’s face went blank, empty, and expressionless.

“There’s something seriously wrong with you,” the drug dealer said.

“No shit.”

Carter burst into flames, igniting the inside of the car in an inferno of hellfire. The drug dealer pulled the trigger, but he was so blinded by fire and pain that the bullet went wide past Carter’s head, shattering the passenger side window. The gun fired so close to Carter’s face that he would have received powder burns had he not been immune to that kind of thing.

Carter slipped through the now open window, running back up the ramp to exit the garage, and out onto the street; leaving behind the emblazoned car to devour its soon to be deceased occupant in peace.

*****

At the same time across town a secret meeting was being held. A long rectangular table, as black as tar, sat in the center of the large room. Round lamps hung from the ceiling, just bright enough to illuminate the table’s occupants and cast their shadows on the floor behind them. Sitting across from each other, along either side of the table, was a rogues’ gallery of drug dealers. It was a veritable who’s who of the Seattle underworld’s most notorious smugglers, pushers, and dealers.

They sat waiting impatiently for his entrance.

“What’s all this about anyways?” A large man with tattoos that wrapped around his neck and up onto his face asked.

“I’ll tell you what this is about,” Frank said coming down the steps and into the subterranean level where his associates waited.

They were gathered in the basement of one of the many establishments Frank owned. This one, a nightclub, had ample room for their meeting and was appropriately hidden away from prying eyes. Not that Frank worried about those types of things. He had ways of concealing his more unsavory business from the general public that not even those in attendance had knowledge of.

The room was dimly lit and there was a faint bumping of the techno music coming from the floor upstairs. A room full of twenty-somethings drank and danced above the drug dealers with no inkling to the type of unscrupulous behavior taking place just under their feet.

“I’ve gathered you here tonight for one reason and one reason only,” Frank said. “There was a shooting in downtown last week.” Frank paused for dramatic effect. “Some of you may have heard rumor of this.”

“So what? There are plenty of shootings in downtown,” the man with the tattoos said.

“The man doing the shooting was a Pow pusher!” Frank slammed a fist down on the table. “And even worse, the man he shot was a User!”

But the big man with the tattoos wouldn’t back down, despite Frank’s obvious rage. “What’s one more dead User?”

“I haven’t even told you the best part yet,” Frank said seeming to calm considerably, but he had sinister intentions. “This pusher with the gun…worked for you,” he finished, making a Vanna White motion towards his inquisitor.

“Me?” the tattooed man motioned to himself with both hands, insulted.

“Yes you,” Frank said. “He was one of your ignorant cohorts.”

Frank walked around the head of the table toward the much larger man.