Authors: Francis Porretto
"Not so well myself, Helen. I...I want to apologize for not staying in touch."
Helen waved it aside. "Don't give it another thought, dear. It's always a pleasure to see you. Why not so well? You look well. Although I don't think I approve of that outfit, regardless of how well it fits."
Christine grinned despite herself. "Think of them as work clothes, Helen. I have some special things to do tonight, and a skirt suit just wouldn't be appropriate."
Helen's eyebrows went up. "And is that why you're not made up, too?"
Christine nodded.
"Well, I won't tell you what kind of work that outfit makes me think of, dear. Would you like some tea? Ione has introduced me to some lovely herbal teas recently. You might enjoy one."
"Thank you, Helen, but I'm afraid I haven't got the time. I have to admit I came to ask a favor. A fairly big one. It'll cost you some time tomorrow, and I know how closely scheduled your day usually is."
Helen canted her head. "Did you really think I might refuse you, dear?" There was a hint of reproach in the words. "Ask and it shall be given unto you."
Christine swallowed hard, fought back a rush of tears. "I, uh, need some wheels."
"Would the Acura suit you? You could borrow it, if you like. I don't use it much these days."
"No, Helen, thank you, but that wouldn't work." She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a wad of bills.
"I'd like you to go to a used car lot and buy me a small pickup truck, with a camper cap, if you can find one. Please have the license and registration made out to you. Park it right in front of your building tomorrow by noon, with the keys up the tailpipe. Here's five thousand dollars. Whatever this will buy will do fine."
Helen's eyes clouded as she accepted the money. "There's trouble again, isn't there?"
Christine nodded. "Of course there is. And I'm going to have to run for it, and I have to cover my tracks, and you're the only person I know who can help."
Ione's voice brayed from the dinette. "If you think I'm going to sit here while you drag Helen into some dangerous, illegal --"
Helen's eyes became sharp as a suggestion of her old vitality returned. "Enough, Ione."
Ione's strident voice cut off at once.
Christine didn't turn around, as much as she wanted to see the expression on Ione's face. "Thank you, Helen. I'm going to be out of the neighborhood for a while, maybe a long while. Do you want me to stay in touch? Or should I wait until I come home?"
Helen smiled wistfully. "You'll always be welcome under my roof, dear. Stay in touch as best you can, and come by any time." She leaned forward and dropped her voice an octave. "Ione's not so bad, once you get to know her. She just has a few pretensions I have to work on."
Ione's outraged squawk did not approximate any word in Christine's vocabulary.
Christine took Helen's hand between her own. "I'll never be able to thank you enough. For this and everything else."
Helen leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. "No need. Now get your trouble over with so you can get back into decent clothes. Whatever happened to all those lovely suits we picked out for you?"
***
Phil Peckwith liked to joke with new customers that he didn't so much run the Crazy Clown as flush it now and then.
The owner-bartender was a jovial man, easygoing and easy to talk to. You had to work hard to get him to take exception to your behavior. Part of the reason was the general difficulty of keeping the bar open in troubled economic times. He tended to downplay that, though; weren't times always hard in central New York? But it was true that, without the marginal characters he accommodated who'd be unwelcome in a more respectable saloon, he'd have a hard time making his nut, much less feeding himself.
Peckwith was a hard man himself, a former Special Forces member who'd served with distinction in Vietnam. Though he was past sixty and more than thirty years out of uniform, he had remained hard, and he preferred the company of other hard men. Gresham's Law of Public Accommodations had driven all but the roughest and rudest of his customers to other establishments. It simply didn't bother him. The genial, continually smiling bartender didn't need a bouncer, despite the savagery of his clientele. A demonstration of his own prowess once or twice a year was enough to keep the minimum of order he required.
He was alone at his bar as ten PM came and went. Weekdays were always slow, and mid-week was slowest. Still, this was a little unusual. There were usually one or two Butchers in by now, simply because their headquarters was so close by.
A substantial piece of his trade came from the biker gang. He'd heard and shrugged off a lot of lurid stories about them. They caused him no more trouble than his other patrons. Truth be told, he rather liked his Butcher customers. He saw a lot of his younger self in them.
It was a few minutes past eleven when he heard a car door slam in his parking lot. A tall, black-clad female figure slid silently through the front door, with the strap of a heavily loaded nylon satchel slung across one shoulder. The grip of a large knife protruded from the calf of one boot. There was something familiar about her, but he couldn't quite say what.
She scoped the room as she sauntered toward him. She moved like a cat, silent even in stiletto heeled boots. Peckwith's curiosity rose. If she was looking for someone, she'd struck out. Yet she examined every cubic inch of his taproom as if she expected the face of an enemy to materialize out of the floorboards.
Don't think I'd want to be whoever she's looking for.
"Evening." The young woman set her elbows on the bar. Peckwith noted the fine network of scars that crisscrossed her face.
Quite an eyeful, except for those.
"Good evening, Ma'am. What's your pleasure?"
The young woman jerked a thumb at the scrubby woodlot that stood between the Clown and Lumberjack Road. "Anyone ever park in there?"
Peckwith shook his head. "Too closely grown for that. Unless you mean teenagers looking for a place to neck?"
"Either."
"Not this time of year, Ma'am."
"Seen any Butchers in here tonight?"
"No, not yet. They're part of the late-night crowd, mostly."
She nodded, laid a ten-spot on his bar, and started for the door. "Thanks."
"Nothing to drink?"
She flashed him a dark smile. "Don't want to spoil my aim."
***
Christine slipped through the woodlot like a wraith, disturbing nothing. It wasn't all that closely grown, and the trees were still bare from the winter just past, but it was all the concealment she would get within striking distance.
She chose a spot about thirty feet in from Lumberjack Road and lay down on her stomach, facing toward the front doors of the Butcher barracks. The range to the doors was about fifty yards. She wouldn't be seen by whoever might be within until she stepped in front of those doors; the slit windows of the barracks didn't come down to eye level. If she had any luck at all, she'd be able to see what she needed to see from this vantage. She pulled the night binocs out of her satchel and counted the motorcycles that stood before the barracks.
The bikes were packed closely together in the little margin between the barracks and the road. She counted three times, and three times came up with sixteen. It was a very good fraction of the total Butcher strength, but it was one short of complete. Worse, the absent bike was Tiny's heavily customized SuperGlide.
I'm only going to get one chance, Nag. Do I take them now, or do I wait?
What would Louis have done, Christine?
He'd have hit them, cleaned them out, and waited for Tiny.
Can you do that?
She probed her resolve. The old fear, the reflexive fright that Tiny had nurtured in her for ten years, awakened and blossomed within her like a carnivorous flower, screaming at her core, demanding to be set free.
Yes.
She tossed the binoculars aside and pulled the guns from her satchel. She pocketed the Beretta, checked the seating of the clips in the Uzis, and crossed their straps over her head. She folded the satchel as small as she could, pressed it flat, and stuffed it into her back pocket. A bitter wind rose and sang through the trees around her. No one else was in sight.
She was about to hit the Butchers. She, who had been their plaything for ten endless years, was about to take on the entire pack. Alone.
The fear surged, sent its frigid tendrils questing for her heart. She clenched her jaws and fought it down one more time.
The earliest thing I remember is coming to in that building, with bruises and bite marks all over my breasts and blood running down my legs. The next ten years were something out of a horror movie. And here I am about to go in there again, under my own power. Tell me, Nag: am I insane? Are you happy about sharing my skull, just now?
The inner advisor was silent.
Walking the hundred fifty feet to the front door of the barracks was like crossing Antarctica.
***
She stopped before the double doors to the barracks, about thirty feet away. Through the frosted glass panels in the doors, she could make out the silhouettes of large human figures moving about in the room beyond. She drew a deep breath, as deep as her lungs could hold, and let it out slowly.
It's showtime, babe. No mistakes now.
She unsafed the guns and flipped the fire selectors to full automatic, sprinted forward and hit the doors where they met with a flying side kick.
The glass in both doors shattered and fell away as she arrowed through them. She swung the Uzis up from her sides as she came to a halt in the barracks main room. Sixteen amazed faces turned toward her.
Memories flooded back at extraordinary speed. Memories of rape, and humiliation, and suffering inflicted for its own sake. She stood scanning those hated faces for perhaps three seconds, while the shrieking terror in her gut welled up and tried to drown her rage.
The rage won.
"Howdy, boys," she said. "Remember me?"
Her lips pulled back from her teeth as she depressed the triggers.
The barracks filled with hoarse male screams, frenzied motion, and the smells of gunpowder and blood. Through it all blurred a madly whirling female figure that caromed about the room like an angry bullet, her hands spitting twin streams of death.
***
Hans Birkensohn lay still. He had no choice; one Uzi round had severed his spine just above his pelvis, and another had frayed it badly between the sixth and seventh vertebrae. He could hear the moans and screams of dying Butchers all around him, but he saw only the ugly, chipped white of the long-untended barracks ceiling.
The moans were rapidly growing fewer and fainter. They were dying, one by one. The hand of God had taken them by their necks at last.
To his shame, he had thought of nothing but flight. To his sorrow, he hadn't managed it. Christine had cut him down before he'd gone three strides. It was small consolation that no one else had done any better.
He didn't lie there contemplating his fate for long. When Christine's face swam into view, the barracks was silent, and his hold on consciousness had become tenuous indeed.
"Howdy, Hans. You don't look so hot."
She was holding a large fighting knife. It was red with blood. He would have whimpered in fear, had he been able.
"Say, Hans, it was you who thought up that game with the broom handle, wasn't it?"
He tried to speak, but he couldn't force enough air through his throat. He tried to form the word
please
on his lips, and hoped she would see it. She gave no indication.
"Your imagination failed before you thought to gag me. At least I was able to scream. I've always been grateful for that. But that was probably what you wanted, wasn't it? Well, one hand washes the other. Enjoy hell, Hans. You have an honor guard waiting for you there already."
The point of the knife came whistling down at his right eye.
***
Christine wiped the blade on Hans's motionless chest and returned it to her boot. She rose and surveyed the room carefully, reassuring herself that she had missed nothing.
Not one of them had raised a hand against her. All had tried to run.
Sixteen up, sixteen down. No more pain parties for the Butchers. This show has closed due to excessive vengeance on the part of a former guest star.
Louis would have been praying, about now. He would have done a thorough job, and then prayed for their forgiveness, and for his own. I wish I could pray.
If any part of him is left, he's probably praying for me. Praying that what I've done won't be held against me. Praying that it won't harden or corrupt me to have taken so many lives. Have no fear, Louis. This was only justice. I'm not going to make a regular thing of it.
Rolf wouldn't be praying. He'd be cheering, and laughing. Rolf might not have been strong, but he was awfully sharp. I'm sorry I wasn't just a little faster yesterday, Rolf.