The Sisters were awakened by the loud commotion being raised by nurse Grendel. Grendel had formed the other nurses into a search party and the big women were fanning into the woods that surrounded the estate.
Sister Ingrid was the first to come from her cottage as lanterns went up in the others and the other nuns came quickly at the sound of Grendel's barking orders. Some of the sisters carried kerosene lamps while others held aloft candlesticks aflame. The night air was frigid and the women shivered in their bleach white starched nightgowns.
They gathered around the husky nurse who waved a flashlight at the lush greenery and dark woods. She told them that Po had run off and commanded the slipper-footed nuns to follow the nurses into the woods. The white gown billowed as the women stepped off the stone path hurriedly and disappeared into the dense brush.
Ikuku watched from the window of her office as the strange sail-like creatures vanished from sight leaving the path and surrounding cottages empty and quiet once again as the black night resettled. Yuno didn't know what she would tell the Schwartz's if Soyoung were not found, or worse was found injured.
The girl had no protection against predator's lurking hungrily on the estate's grounds. She also could not be certain what would happen if the sadistic Grendel got to the girl first, what kind of punishment the angry warder would exact on the girl's frail naked body.
Pickup trucks and vans pulled up at the site of the tumbledown shack in the woods. Men grumbled as they hopped from the vehicles, shotguns, and high-powered rifles and big bore pistols in hand. Bolton's face widened and brightened with menace at the sight of the makeshift posse.
The doors of the van slid open snarling and barking dogs leaping forward, hitting the ground sniffing the dirt, detecting the smell of fresh wet blood and raising their baying heads into the air pulling ferociously at the long taut leashes some of the men held. Double barrel shotgun in his hands, Sergeant Dell approached Chief Bolton, sweat heavy on his brow, exasperation on his face. Bolton's uniform was caked with blood that had dried and crusted over, turning a brownish black against the torn beige material.
"Damn, Chief. You look like you been through hell," was Dell's response to seeing his obese boss in the light of the flood of bright high beams.
"Hell ain't seen nothin' like what I'm gonna do to that retard! Damn fool took off an' left me for dead."
Bolton broke the cylinder and checked his big revolver's load. He’d checked it several times before the posse's arrival. He'd killed one hillbilly and didn't see why the other shouldn't be finished off as well. They'd shared in the crime of the attempted murder of a Police officer, himself that is, and he fully intended on carrying out the death penalty.
Doc Coleman went to the shack and lifted the sheet of tin from atop the bullet lacerated body, shook his gray head woefully and said a quiet prayer. He walked to the Chief, black bag at his side, still shaking his head.
"Zeb don't need no doc, Ray. You ventilated his ass but good. Now, let's have a look at you."
Coleman aided the Chief, walking unsteadily onto the running panel of one of the customized vans. Coleman tore the messy shirt off Bolton's back and prodded the bullet wounds scarring the fat flesh in a cursory examination.
"Zeb always was a lousy shot," Bolton jeered, the doctor finding nothing amusing in the remark.
"It's a good thing you got so much extra skin on ya, otherwise lousy or not, you'da leaked like a busted pipe."
Bolton bridled with indignation, "You sayin' I'm fat?"
"I'm sayin' all this blubber saved your ass. The slugs sank like hot rocks into cheese. You melted some, but you didn't bleed to death 'cause yer arteries are already so damned crushed!"
"Hmph!" Bolton grumbled, reaching into his hanging pocket for a cigar and finding the tobacco soggy with blood. Coleman handed a cigar of his own into Bolton's fat hand and the Chief tore off its tip with jagged teeth and jammed the cheroot into his jowl, sneering: "Light me."
I was sitting in a dingy bar where nobody seemed to mind that I was packing hardware. From the looks of the scraggly beards, tattoos and beer guts hanging out from studded black leather jackets, everybody in the place was packing too.
It was a biker bar that lay on a dark side street just outside of rice town. It was a place where cops were unwelcome. I swilled from the bottle of bootleg stout savoring the taste while being watched warily from around the room, the only guy in the joint wearing a tie. The music coming from the old Wurlitzer was a skipping vinyl ode to lost love and hittin' the road sung with a grinding country twang over jarring heavy metal.
My eyes floated from face to face sizing up the dirty road warriors sitting with their dumpy mama's while some anorexic babe lap danced them with her road dusty naked white tail for beer.
Most of the women looked like granny's about to keel over from solidified livers, while the one shaking her bare bones looked about ready to fall into shallow graves, track marks like a rail road roundhouse crisscrossing the pasty skin.
The discolored scabs showed through the severe tattoo markings like a string of Christmas lights. The green spike haired waitress who'd served me the beer returned, tattered T-shirt revealing more than I wanted to see; her skinny arms blistered with colorful etchings of devils and skulls, sinking ships and black panthers leaping from jungle bushes.
The sickly distorted drawings ran from her fingertips all the way to her shoulder blades and down into the sweaty cotton T-shirt where I could see her flaccid mounds perk up under my scrutiny. She leaned over the table, the small bulbous teats about to make a leap for it. I raised my head swilling at the bottle and gazed into her bloodshot eyes.
"How 'bout somethin' a li'l stronger? What'll put hair on yer chest—," she grinned, fanning open a mouth full of green teeth that matched her hair, licking her lips with a spongy red tongue.
"You mean like what you're drinkin'? No thanks. I'll stick to Guinness."
She straightened and stare down at me wetly, her face hardening into its creases, chest rising on a wave of excited breath.
"You're okay," she said, winking. "I'll get ya fresh one—don' go nowhere, y'hear?" She turned and sauntered away, flaunting the flat backside that had seen too many banana seats.
I watched it switch from side to side as vigorously as the bony hips could throw it. When she had gone behind the bar and bent down out of sight, my vision was blocked by the shadow of belly the size of a medicine ball. He pulled up a chair and sat down at the table without my asking, flopped finlike forearms in front of him and leaned forward, staring into me through black ray-bands. "You must know that everybody in here knows who you are."
"Uh-huh," I said, nodding. "That's why I came in here. I figure you boys have got as many problems with the law as I do."
Fat boy pushed his shades away from his pinched little eyes, taking a better look.
"Not as many," he said, then, smiling: "You tore a new hole in the NYPD's ass. Their funeral calendar is booked for a year."
"Uh-huh. Problem with that is—I didn't kill any cops."
He pounded a five-pound fist onto the table, grinning wickedly, mirthlessly.
"Well, they sure is dead!"
"Yeh, but I didn't kill 'em."
He jumped to his feet, the big belly jiggling loose out of its tight black T-shirt.
"The hell you didn't!"
His fat fingers curled into fists and I didn't budge, staying seated, waiting. The ugly waitress with the full body tattoos came back and lifting the bottle from the tray onto the rickety table, stares at the bearded red faced biker as if he were a caged animal.
"Here ya` go—," she said, not taking her eyes off fat boy.
"Thanks," I replied, lifting the bottle, but not drinking.
"It's on me," she added quietly.
When the guy bothered to look around he saw that the whole bar had their eyes on his fat ass. He turned back to me, his arms sticking out at his sides like two fat slabs of ham.
"If you didn't kill those cops, I guess your guns just went and did it themselves," he laughed, loud and hollow.
I put my lips close to the waitress's ear. She had so many studs and chains dangling from her earlobe, I wanted to make sure she heard me, so I practically yelled: "This guy's a cop!" Everybody else in the place heard me too and the fat undercover man froze.
I snatched her malnourished waist in my arm and pinned the Glock 10 to her ear beside all the other jewelry.
"Okay, copper, you got me, but you won't keep me. I'm getting' outa here right now, see?"
Lifting the high-heeled boots she wore clear off the floor, I backed up carrying her towards the door.
She waved off anybody who might attempt a rescue, but nobody was moving, as the fat guy blubbered stupidly: "I—I—I ain't no—c-c-copper!"
"The hell you ain't. Which one's your bike?"
"I know—," she gasped, snuggling her face hot breath into my neck.
"Toss me the key, fat boy or I'll blow her head off," I snarled, punching her in the face with the Glock's muzzle.
His fat bearded hole opened and groaned, as he unfastened the key chain from his dirty jeans' belt loop and deliberately tossed short so the ring of keys and silver chain landed at my feet and rattled like a cobra. I let her go so she could stoop to pick them up and once she was bent over, fat boy's paw went behind his back and swinging my arm fired directly into his brain. His skull burst like an overripe pumpkin splattering the bikers behind him waiting in the dark, their own pieces ready to open up on him.
The .38 in his greasy fingers never made it far enough to do him any good. It fired once and tore into his own foot through his boot. His belly wobbled furiously as he staggered backwards headless and collapsed onto his back. His MC's lapel flipped open to reveal the glinting gold star. Fat boy was an undercover all right, and once he was belly up, the whole bar stood and cheered.
I blew the smoke off the hot pistol and jammed into my jacket pocket. Eyes wet with lust, the waitress handed me the keys and I dashed out with her right on my heels. Once on the dark street, she pointed out the cop's chopper; a souped up red Harley parallel parked beside the other custom jobs on the pavement in front of the graffiti covered storefront.
I threw my legs over the shining hog, rammed the ignition key into place and revved the four-cylinder engine. I was backing the bike onto the street when she jumped on board.
The chopper's pipes belched black smoke and snorted flames as she threw her arms around my neck and raised herself, craning her head to plant a wet sucking kiss on my mouth. Her studded tongue slipped past my lips and fed me a shot of saliva that tasted like cheap Tequila. Her hot breath stank but it was a good stink, a woman's stink.
I let go of one handlebar and seized her by the spiky hair yanking her by the head over my shoulder. Her sagging breasts rode up the ridge of my back as her body stretched and the pink nipples poked through the raggedy T-shirt like a pair of cigarette burns.
She landed upside down between the chopper's long curving handlebars, the illustrated legs thrown to either side, skinny and bent at the knees looking like handlebars themselves. I had to swing my head to avoid having my eyes poked out by her spiked heeled go-go boots.
I kept the bike moving while she squirmed until she was right side up and sitting with her legs stretched painfully over my outspread haunches.
"Take me with you, Barry! They'll catch up with you for sure! You won't make it back to Jersey alone!"
"No," I sneered, stamping hard on the accelerator. "You don't wanna come with me. My life's murder."
The Harley's engine brayed and the noise filled the street as the wind kicked up and swept past us as I rode off.
As the engine heated beneath her scrawny tail she pulled herself up by my shoulders and pushed her face into mine, the drooling studded tongue slithering past my lips again.
I clenched my teeth this time, jerked my head quickly and tore the damn thing out and spit into the gutter. The blood sprayed from her face and splashed into mine, running like a raging red river down the front of her dingy T-shirt and soaking my dirty white panel, soaking us both as she held tight and screamed with sudden searing pain.
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