AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 68

The chunky man wearing the blackest of aviator shades had that look about him.  The cop-cheap suit.  The bulge behind the right hip that said gun.  The lick-my-badge walk from his car to Reed’s car, full of slow menace.  Big bunch of keys, jingling on his belt.  His left hand already holding the wallet’s gold & silver shield, flipped open.  The stick-on red flasher, an inflamed zit back on his roof, rotating pushy inner-city undercover police force shitstorm.

I am the Law, dude.  And I am coming at you, dude.  Yes you, dude, in the Krautcar.

He stopped next to Reed’s open window.  In the backseat, Liz had down-buttoned her window too.

Reed wordlessly held his California Driver’s License out for the man, eyes forward.

The chunky man was non-conversational, and absolutely professional.  He observed Sharo Knepper, the whore who called herself Liz, lipsticking her lips and then reaching into her daybag for some more make-up.  He observed Byron Reed, the record producer, left hand harmlessly on his CDL, right hand harmlessly on the wheel.  He observed Larry Boyd, the left-handed mercenary, left hand dangerously hid, down under a lightweight jacket thrown over his legs, empty right hand visible.

The chunky man was rigorously professional.  His right hand flew back, FBI-fast, fanning the coatflap aside, pulling the piece, thumb cocking the hammer, and leveling the .38 service revolver on Boyd’s brain.  He was crouched down, knees slightly bent.  He fired his gun, blowing Larry Boyd’s brain all over the far window like vomit.  He recocked his gun and reaimed at Byron Reed’s head, the head that had jerked and blinked at the explosion, that was turning away to look at what was left of Boyd.  He fired his gun a second time, blowing out Byron Reed’s——

The chunky assassin received the surprise of his death, as Liz blew his brains skyward with her .357 make-up.

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The loudest sound of the city was outlaw bikers getting the hell outta Dodge.

“Reed!” Liz screamed, reaching between the frontseats, and pushing Reed’s back.  “Reed!”  Liz had warm wet bits of something on her face and shoulder.  The top half of Boyd’s head was splattered all over his window.  Reed was slumped over with his head in Boyd’s lap.

Liz’s heart was pounding hard enough to blast right out of her rib cage.  She pushed Reed!  “Wake up, you limp dick!” she screamed at him.  She grabbed his bloody head, yanked it around, dropped her gun, having to use both hands to turn his neck around to yell into his . . .

Tears showered out of her eyes.  She pushed his head away from her, and jumped back, sitting against the backseat, tears-tears everywhere!  She bent down and clutched her gun up off the floor.

Reed was dead: The lifeless unmoving bloody eye that had stared at her, but not stared at her.  And that horror-movie face!  Liz shivered as she cried, thinking of it, seeing the memory of it.  The drain of blood down across his face, from the awesome hole in the top of Reed’s head, oozing something that was not blood . . . and that hunk of scalp, torn off, hair and all, flapping down over the other dead bloody eye.

“You fucker!” Liz screamed.  “How dare you die on me?!”

Her mind was an empty rage of helpless disappointment.  How could she help Courty now??  She didn’t know what to do!

Liz looked around into the edge of night, everything flashing faint red.  The red flash of the warning flasher on the roof of the car behind her: She looked at it, and the sight of it jolted her like a rabid dog biting into her karma!  Her tears stopped like NOW.  Shadowy figures moved, slobfoot lowlifes, sneaking across the headlight glare of the traffic.

A BIG-guy and small-girl couple walked by, gaping, on the cracked and uneven sidewalk next to the BMW.  They slowed; Liz encouraged their exit: she pointed her automatic at them, through the right rear closed window, and both their sets of hands shot up in the air, and they started to walk faster, and faster, and Faster away.

Liz kicked open her left door, the gun in her hand.  She had a plan.  She stepped out and stood up.  Two Blacks were crossing the street, moving toward the BMW.  They streaked to a stop, caught in the dull glare of a one-eyed approaching car that honked and skidded to a stop.

The two of them were looking at Liz with hunger and hate.  “Sheeeuh,” the closest one of them said.

“Fuck off, nigger-dicks!” Liz yelled.  She closed her rear door, took a step, and opened the front driver’s door.  She looked in at Reed’s body for a second.

The one-eyed car’s driver LEANED on the horn; an ugly busted horn that sounded like a diesel-fart.  The Blacks in his way didn’t even look at the driver.  They were looking down at something else.

“Slide the wheels, Jimmy, glom the rod!”

“Sheeeuh.”  The guy wavered.

Liz could see where he was looking: the revolver laying on the pavement, beyond the guy Liz had killed.

“Yo, li’l paddy.  Yo, pink toes.  I ain’t nothin’, jus’ two steps now.”  The Black was pleading.  He was just two yards from the piece on the pavement.

The car farted again, and revved the nasty engine.

Liz shot the closest Black.  “Fuuuu!” he yelled, falling on his ass and then sitting there holding his arm, utterly astonished to discover that he was shot.  Liz shot him again, and he keeled over and his body started jerking spasmodically, grunting.  Liz was naturally an excellent shot.  Point and pull: easy.

The one-eyed car burned rubber in reverse, did a crazed U-turn, crashed into a parked car down the road, and burned more rubber.  This Is Not My Beautiful City!

The other Black man was already off and running.

Liz yelled after him, “Make like a vampire, you blackhead, an’ Suck Off!”  She waved her semi-automatic around.  A crowd of seven or eight VFWs were lookie-lou-ing at her over on the right, beside the busted and burnt-out building.

Liz fired a bullet into the crowd.  A woman screamed with pain.  “Make like diarrhea!” she yelled at them.  “RUN!”  The woman fell, and continued to moan and whimper; the crowd de-crowded.  Satisfied that no one was going to approach the BMW, her BMW, Liz grimly turned her attention to the body in the driver’s seat.

Liz stuffed the piece into the beltline of her faded jeans, and grabbed and pulled at Reed’s body.  Liz tried not to look at the disaster in the right front seat.  She got ahold of Reed’s body and yanked on it by the neck, pulling it out of the car.  Everything loose and dead, slack and lifeless, and ucky and slippery with blood.  It dumped out onto the Street, all awkward; she let go, and it slopped with two thuds to utter stillness, there at her feet.

God, she would sublet her soul, and lick every dick in Yankee Stadium for one hit of crack!

Hurriedly, Liz climbed into the bloody driver’s seat of the BMW; before she could swing her left foot inside, something closed like a vice around her ankle.

She SCREAMED with instant fright.

The Niggers Are Back!

Still screaming, instinctively she pulled out her semi-automatic pistol from her belt, and aimed it, the scream choking off in her throat.  She gaped down in horror.

Byron Reed was alive!  A monster from the grave.  He was a bloody ghoulish delight.  She almost shot him.

He had a hydraulic grip on her ankle, but he was woozy and swaying at a retarded angle, barely able to hold his head up to look up at her.

Liz had the gun pointed right in his face.

A second later, his left hand let go of her ankle and swiftly knocked the gun upward, grabbing it so hard that he yanked it right out of her hand.

They stared at each other for five seconds, silently: Reed sitting, swaying on the hard night pavement; Liz stunned, sitting half-in half-out of the car.

Liz was amazed that he could be alive with that fucking hole in his head, and brains dripping down his forehead!

Actually, brains weren’t dripping out of the hole in his head, but with the flap of scalp hanging down and the swollen pus-like goo seething there at his hairline . . .

Liz watched the little flap of hair and scalp fall off Reed’s face.  He didn’t notice.

Reed mumbled nonsense syllables, and then on the second try, the words came clear.  “Take his coat.”

Liz was an astonished: “What??”

One-handed, Reed held the semi-auto handgun against his stomach, and got a dangerous grip on it.  He pointed it up at her.  “You wanna live?  You’ll take his coat.”

She looked around wildly, didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.  Then she saw Boyd’s coat on the floorboard of his side.  “His coat?”

“Yes, take his coat.”

She reached and grabbed up the windbreaker.  She saw a gun under it, but decided not to try anything fancy.  It was very frightening having a man with a hole in his head holding a gun on her.

“Hang the coat over the front license plate,” Reed said.

“What??”

“Do it or die, lesbian.”

“OK, OK, I’ll do it!”  She scrambled out, and Reed leaned back out of her way.  She moved around front of the car with the coat, and shouted at him: “Faggot-breath!”

She hung the coat over the thing, and ran around like a quick bright thing, looking all over.  They were center attraction at the eyeball palace, but nobody was making any moves on them.  The traffic——just an occasional car——made excruciating Excuse-me S-curves to avoid the two prone dudes on the street.

With a Herculean effort, Reed pulled himself into the driver’s seat of his BMW.  He tossed the gun on the floorboard, and awkwardly climbed in.  His whole right side was numb and tingly, half his body moved like anesthetized nerve-dead meat.  His right leg was a waste of time.  His right arm wasn’t: It was like a hunk of useless, surgically attached at the shoulder.  Pushing the pedal with his foot was like, forget about it.  He had not closed the door yet.

Reed did not know what had happened, but assumed that the cop had shot Deacon and then hit Reed over the head with a sap.  Or a nightstick: Reed could feel the slick-wet sticky blood on the left of his face.  Reed did not know why the cop had shot Deacon, did not know why the cop was now dead on the asphalt.  Reed didn’t even know if the guy was a cop or not.  He did not know where Liz’s gun came from.  He did not know if it was hers or if she had somehow taken it from the cop, or the non-cop.  Reed had a complete lack of curiosity.  He just wanted to LEAVE.  Undiscovered.  Unidentified.  NOW!

Reed gunned the engine with his left foot.

Liz ran around, opened the left rear door.

Reed yelled at her: “U-turn, Leso!  Stop it right there.  Find something to hang over the rear plate.”

“What??”  Liz was scurrying like a rat away from a cat, one foot moving into the rear of the car, but she slammed to a stop at the sound of Reed’s words that slurred slightly, but growled lethally.  The emotion and inertia behind Reed’s words yanked her body to a stop like a leash on her neck.  “What??”

“Cover up the rear plates, lesbian!”

Liz gaped, shakin’ her face.  “Your brains are leakin’ out, you homo-ass!  People’a been lookin’ at our plates for three years!  All the time we’ve been here!”

“Do it!”

“No fucking way!  Let’s get outta here!”

“Do it, lesbian!”

“Fuck you up the ass and out the other end!  Everybody’s got the number by now!”

“Nobody is going to think to look at the license plate and memorize the number, until we drive away.  Do it, lesbian!”

“Screw you, butt-fucker!  Let’s get outta here!”  She started to get into the rear of the BMW.

Reed picked the handgun off the floorboard with his left hand (the hand that worked).  He turned his body around to the left as best he could and pointed the gun at her.  “Do it or die, lesbian.”

“What The Fuck Am I Supposed To Use?!” she shouted at him.  She did not like having a corpse with its brains blown out holding a gun on her.

“Use your trick-towel!” Reed yelled.

“What?  I ain’t got a trick-towel!  Jesus!”

“Then use your shirt, lesbian.  Hurry up!”

Liz squealed an animal noise of frustration, as she pulled her shirt over her head, and ran around back between the two cars to do as he said.  It left her mini-bosom uncovered.

Reed pulled the car into gear with his left hand.

The instant Liz got in the back, Reed stomped down with his left foot and turned sharp with his left hand, and they were out of there.  Both doors slammed partially shut, and Liz slammed back against her seat.

She looked back for a sec, and saw the street that had been deserted, repopulate with people like a football field at the end of the game.  Three shapes were fighting over the gun, a bunch of others were huddled over the fallen dead man, and a gang was all over the car with the red light on it.  The red light was still blipping away, until Reed turned a corner.

Liz looked around forward.  Her eyes glanced at the awful bloody mess on the right and quickly looked away.  She watched where Reed was going.  Again, he wasn’t fast.  Again, he did not stop for things.  Liz had an itch on her upper lip.  Without thinking, she licked it away; and a gooey, squiggly blob of yucky, chewy something smeared off onto her tongue and into her mouth.  Tasted sort of like . . . She looked in horror at the right front window, and instantly she vomited.

She bent over, spewing stomach fluids onto the floorboard on the right.

“Just what I need,” Reed said with disgust, “bulldyke barf all over the backseat.”

COURTNEY, Chapter 69
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47