Deep Inside (10 page)

“Bring in backup,” he gasps. Then he slowly straightens. “Rachel, you're under arrest. You know the routine. Give me the badge. Then the revolver. Then the Exploder. And do it slowly.”

I've got mere seconds to act.

“Fuck you,” I say, pulling my guns out, training them on him.

Armed and uniformed men and women burst into the room. I collar Fuller and wrap a strong arm around his neck, and level the Exploder at the uniforms in the doorway.

“Don't do it, Rachel,” Fuller says. “You're washed up already. Do this, and you'll never get out alive. Cooperate, I'll see to it that you're treated nicely in jail.”

Jail? That means life without Serzan. I apply pressure to his windpipe and squeeze a trigger. I don't care which trigger. A bullet grazes Fuller's leg. “Any more of that and you're a dead man. Who needs a career? Who needs you?”

The uniforms in the doorway part, their guns trained on me, as I drag Fuller into the corridor. People emerge from offices, but I back out quickly enough to the stairwell, then throw Fuller down and spring out of the building.

I hear a fast, pounding clatter behind me.

 

I burst
onto the street in front of headquarters. It's hot and humid even for Miami. There are dozens of cops only seconds behind me.

I spot a man getting into his car. I run over, yank him out, get in, and pull the door shut behind me. The engine roars as I kick it into gear. There's a plinking sound as the first of the cops' bullets hits metal, but then I'm on two wheels going around the corner, and out of sight.

I hear sirens warm up and motors fire up. I spin the wheel and head down a side road. I run a red light, make a bus plow into a fruit stand. Behind me, two cop cars smash sideways into each other. One of them flips through the air and lands on its roof. The other cop cars slam into it from behind, clogging the road. They can't get by.

I head down another alleyway. No one knows this area like I do. I park the car I'm in, hot-wire another, and I'm off at legal speed.

This used to be my beat: hookers and drugs, baby. People I knew and sometimes even cared about, but I came down hard on them. I had to. Now it's where people come to get a fix of Serzan.

I motor past the pink house where I got turned out. I give it a look and feel like I'm passing the graveyard where my former self now dwells. I'm also feeling the need for a fix. My pussy is doing a slow, achy dance.

I spot my chance another block down the road.

The tip of a tentacle waves from behind a Dumpster. I roar over to the trash bin, hop out, and investigate what's going on.

There in the shadows, a man and a woman are at it with two Serzan. The man's dick is out. The alien sucks it as the woman lies on the ground bathed in shimmering slime.

I shine my flashlight, but it doesn't matter to them. It wouldn't matter to me either. I level my gun to their heads.

“Get up,” I say.

But they're too far gone. The woman's eyes roll back as tentacles plunge in and out of her. Too fast for my taste, but the alien is clearly reading her mind just right. She's making growling, panting sounds, and barely manages to get out the words,

“Please just let us be.”

She's tanned and highlighted, a trophy wife with a silver-haired older husband.

I smack both of them around with the butt end of my gun.

“Please don't hurt us!” the man says. “I swear we've never done this before.”

The Serzan wave their tentacles. I am starting to tremble with need.

“Okay,” he says. “You're right. We're addicts. But we need our fix! Only don't arrest us. I can pay you off—”

“I don't want money,” I scream. “I want you out of here!”

“But our SUV's parked a good two blocks away—”

They see I mean business. They grab their sticky clothes and run naked down the alley, jumping over broken bottles and streams of urine.

“Go back to Palm Beach, losers!” I scream. I fire a shot into the air. The man knocks over a garbage can.

As soon as they disappear around the alley corner, I'm out of my suit and in the arms of the pleasure beasts. Without being told, they know I need a quickie, they know I need it good and hard. And they don't disappoint me. Unfortunately, they're also all fucked out and that's it from these aliens.

 

I steer
the car I hot-wired over to Zac's place. I hear sirens. I'm in a post-Serzan haze, but I still know that I.A.'s got to have staked the place out. Where else would I go for help?

I park in a dark alley three blocks away, then make my way past Dumpsters and dart into the club through the freight entry.

The sight of the bustle, the smell of the food, the clanking of the glasses—it all comes back to me.

Zac.

At one time you and I were the subjects of a feature story in
Miami Life
magazine. It wasn't so long ago, really. There we were, bronze, fit…impossibly young. You ran Miami Beach's latest happening nightclub. I was the cop who was fighting the good fight against the terrifying new alien epidemic.

Readers probably thought we were a wholesome couple. Readers don't need to know the truth. Civilians don't understand that the war on evil is fought best by those who aren't pure and virtuous.

If girls threw themselves at Zac, why worry? I had my pick of men. At the end of the day, we reviewed our conquests in our hot tub, and got each other aroused all over again. And if Zac skimmed a bit off the bar, and I let a few citizens show their appreciation with cash, who was harmed?

I hurry unnoticed through the kitchen and enter the club. It's a squalid crowd watching women pole-dancing. Upscale no more. Gone are the flashily dressed VIPs of Miami and in their place are potbellied guys drunkenly sprawled out on chairs. Did I do this to Zac? Did I bring us down?

Bad memories flood my splintered brain. Zac accusing me for the first time of being with Serzan. Me trying to hide the alien sex I'd just had…the slime still glistening on my thighs…Zac storming away from our bedroom. Trying to make a go of human sex…finding I just couldn't get aroused by Zac…our life going into a downhill spin.

Then Zac discovering me and a Serzan in our hot tub. Zac furiously striding into our bedroom and getting my Exploder. Me begging him not to destroy the beast. Zac screaming at me to get out, or he'll take me down, too. I barely manage to jump out of the water when Zac shoots the alien. Zac throwing clothes into his suitcase, leaving me to clean up the mess.

“What are you doing here, Rachel?” It's Ned, the six-five bouncer who's always worked for Zac. “You know he doesn't want your alien-fucker ass anywhere near here.”

I give Ned a shove.

“Where is he?” I say. “Where's my fiancé?”

Ned makes the mistake of trying to stop me from going backstage. I point my gun at him.

“I'm only doing what Zac's told me,” Ned says, his hands in the air.

I head towards the strippers' dressing room.

“You don't want to find him,” Ned says.

I go into the dressing room anyway. And there he is.

Zac's known as a hottie. Dark-haired, more than six feet tall. No trouble with women.

Right now he's got two dancers on their knees in front of him. His eyes are rolled back in his head as they pass his dick back and forth between their mouths. G-strings cut up their butts, and their heels don't seem comfortable. But the women certainly look into what they're doing.

“Zac,” I say softly. “I need your help.”

His eyes open. They are without surprise. “Time was when you woulda joined in,” he says.

“Times change,” I say.

“You gotta give me a minute here,” he says. He puts his hands, one on each girl's head. His lips purse and he licks them. I can see his abdomen getting tense, and then he's coming. One of the girls is tugging at his balls, just the way I used to. I guess he's taught her well.

The girls pass his come back and forth between their mouths, then let it dribble onto their silicone-inflated breasts, rubbing it in like skin cream.

“Oh, that's nice,” says Zac appreciatively. “That's very, very nice. I see two girls with long futures before them at my club.”

He snaps his fingers at them. I move aside and they totter past me.

“C'mon, baby,” I plead. “Time is of the essence. Internal Affairs is after me. You gotta help me get out of town.”

“I don't help alien-fuckers,” he says.

His voice is mild, almost pitying, and it shocks me more than it would if he were angry. It's like he's…moved on.

“I could have done Serzan myself,” he says. “I coulda fucked you over like you fucked me over. I coulda thrown money away, I coulda screwed up our future. But I never did. Even here at the club I've run a clean scene. Sure, I've had to pander to the LCD to keep business alive after you blew our savings. But the one thing I never did was let Serzan in.”

“Once upon a time you told me I was the best,” I protest.

“Once upon a time we were in love.”

I try to kiss him, but he won't have it.

“I can smell the Serzan on you,” he sneers.

“That's just the scent of me wanting you,” I wheedle.

“Yeah?” he says. “So let's see how wet you are!”

I'm desperate to win him over. I kiss and rub against him. It doesn't do anything for me, of course. So I think instead about the Serzan to arouse my alien-addicted body.

He's got his hands in my panties.

But I'm not feeling it for Zac. I wish I could still get turned on by humans, but I can't.

Zac can sense it, and withdraws his hand.

“How do you think it makes a man feel to know his girl prefers aliens to him?” he says. “You don't even have enough respect for me to clean the alien slime off your face. You're on your own now, sweetie. I wish you the best. Watch out: the I.A. guys are all over the place. Use the freight entry again.”

 

I don't
have many options left.

Down through the city to where Marni lives. It's the dinner hour and I can see generations of Cubans in the windows, crowded around tables, sharing their lives.

Small houses, good families. Tears are in my eyes as I see the life she leads. Or am I stressing from my need to have a Serzan fix?

I stumble up her steps, smashing the head of a child's doll, and ring Marni's doorbell.

She opens the door, but it's still chained.

“Rachel,” she says, “You're not comin' in.”

“It could have been you that night—”

Her face softens. She knows what I'm saying is true.

“Okay,” she says. “I'll come outside with you. But I'm not letting a Serzan addict inside my house.”

I hear her husband's voice. “Who is it?” he asks.

“Nobody,” Marni responds.

She shuts the door behind us.

“How's your kids?” I ask.

“Good. Amy's twelve, Jessica's seven,” Marni says, then adds, “I'm gonna wipe out the Serzan before they can get them.”

“That's good,” I say.

“Look,” Marni says, “I got a few bucks I can give you.”

“I need your help,” I say.

“I have two beautiful children…I can't risk getting involved with you,” Marni says, seeing the doll's head I've crushed, picking it up, waving it in my face. “You don't have any sense these days—they say even the dealers are fed up with you.”

“Time was I looked the other way when you were playing both sides of the street,” I say.

She glares at me, and whispers, “You and I both know that we have to do our job. We don't have any time for the guys upstairs who sit in their offices and dictate what we do. So you and I made it with a few criminals to get information—”

“Don't make your love of fucking criminals out to be altruistic,” I say. “How about the time I watched you get serviced by one of Kyle's dealers? You tied him up in a chair and made him eat you out. He did a real fine job of it, judging from the way you came.”

She pushes me away from her door, grabs my hair, and puts her face in mine.

“Listen to me with what's left of your Serzan-addled brain. We kept Miami clean together, and that's all that counts.”

“I don't think you were just doing your job. I think you liked the feeling of a criminal's tongue on your cunt, and I think you liked him knowing that you could blow him away at any moment.”

She yanks my hair.

“I don't do it with Serzan,” she says.

“Not yet,” I say, fighting her off. “But you will. You'll taste them eventually.”

“Go to alien Hell!” she says, letting go of me. She steps back inside her little stucco house.

I pound on her front door and yell, “You won't be able to resist! And it will be the best sex you'll ever have! I know you haven't come with your husband for years—”

 

I drive
towards the edge of the cordon, but stop a block away from the security post. I see the protestors and religious zealots crowded outside the gates holding placards that say: “Stop the Serzan Sex Slave Trafficking” and “Miami Is the Devil's Disneyland.”

Even if I can get through security, what's the use? How am I going to exist in the Serzan-free world?

 

Midnight.

My body aches with raw desire. It's blinding my thought processes.

“Escape, Rachel,” I mutter, trying to remind myself of my first priority.

Kyle. Yeah, that's it. Gotta get to him.

I see cop cars racing down a street. Are they looking for me? I head towards the beach where Kyle's mansion is. I know it's my last chance.

The number-one Serzan dealer in Miami lives on the water behind top security. His guards stop me at his gates. They buzz him.