My Angels Have Demons (Users #1) (2 page)

"Pills, more pills," he said.

Always more pills. Bottles of all sizes lined the shelf, antidepressants, benzos, stimulants, and even a medication for nerve pain. He popped them open one by one, spun the handle on the faucet, and cupped his hand to scoop the pills and water into his mouth.

He swallowed hard.

Taking a deep breath, he swung the cabinet to a close, and from the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He turned to face it fully, his face was flush, his veins showing red hot. Fire danced in the pupils of his eyes.

"Agghhh!" he shouted, and as he punched the mirror his fist burst into flames.

The glass shattered and melted under the immense heat. Molten liquid fell into the sink and caught fire.

"God damn it!" His energy spent, his fist returned to normal.

The closet door swung open and without looking, he reached in and grabbed the first thing that ran across his skin, pulled it forth, and stomped back into the bathroom. Carter tugged out the pin, pressed down the lever, and aimed the nozzle into the sink. White clouds of smoke sprayed from the fire extinguisher, quickly dousing out the flames. Confident the fire was out, he let the red canister hang limply at his side as the smoke cleared.

He made the few short steps it took to get from his crummy bathroom to his dilapidated kitchen and, leaning against the wall, slumped down until the seat of his pants hit the faded laminate floor. He let out a great sigh as he slid the fire extinguisher across the floor. It hit a crack in the cheap linoleum, and clanged loudly as it crashed into the pile of empties.

Carter sat there, the pills taking effect, his emotions as hollow as the dozens of drained red cannisters strewn across his kitchen floor.

#

Chapter 2

The rain pounded the city streets, giving it a thorough beating the way only Seattle rain could. The awnings and overhangs that protected him in the nicer upper part of town quickly turned to the crummy uncovered entries of the lower less desirable part of the city. He hardly registered passing the ball fields as he entered the Sodo district. Tromping through puddles of the uneven sidewalks of South Seattle, he found himself in his old stomping grounds.

Letting his subconscious do the walking for him had lead him to this place. A dark, warehouse filled, rundown business park on the edge of town just west of the shipping yard. The kind of place that was ideal for the seedy underbelly of society to congregate. Carter hadn't stepped foot in this part of town in ages, but it hadn't changed a bit. A lady of the night passed by on her way to her corner. A cop car rolled by, but with the rain as it was they weren't getting out for anything less than a felony. The buildings loomed overhead like dilapidated concrete monsters, and no one was coming to save you, not in this part of town.

Right on cue, a lanky silhouette approached from underneath an overpass. Nope, the place hadn't changed one bit. His internal thermometer began to rise again at the sight of what could be danger. The mild discomfort he was so used to feeling quickly turned to a burning sensation. It felt akin to the worst sunburn a normal person could get.

"You lookin'?" A street light illuminated the lanky silhouette to reveal a sickly white man, covered in scraggly facial hair, bits of sweat dotted on his brow, and with dirt or possibly ash from smoking too much dope, smudged on his fingers and cheeks.

Carter froze, unsure of how to answer. He wanted the pain to go away, but he had five years under his belt. The excitement at the possibility of using only made his heart pump all the faster, which in turn only made his discomfort all the worse.

She did this too him anyways. She left him alone in that crummy apartment. No job, no car, and no life. Fuck it.

"You holding?" Carter did his best impression of the shady scumbag he remembered being at multiple times in the past.

He was rusty, but he had plenty of past experience in dealing with the dredges of society. The junkie's hood was low, exposing only the lower half of his face. The business end with the blackened gums and rotted teeth.

"I'm not, but I know a guy who is...if you're willing to pass on a bump," the lanky man with the rank teeth said.

A bump, that was something Carter hadn't heard in awhile. Not unless referring to an actual bump at least. There were all kinds of bumps in druggie slang, but this particular bump was for a junkie, which meant enough dope to bump a damn needle into his arm, or between his toes, or wherever he could find a vein that wasn't clogged and dead already.

"I can do that," he answered, and the junkie's face lit up like Christmas.

The way he smiled, Carter was surprised the junkie didn't hop into the air and click his god-damned heels together.

"Follow me," the junkie said, hurrying Carter along.

Carter followed him down an alleyway between two warehouses. The building's windows were covered from the inside with cardboard or boarded up with sheets of plywood where the glass was completely missing. Both buildings were brick and only two or three stories. There were almost no buildings south of Sodo over three stories, but there was a few and Carter was being lead right for the tallest of them. A nine story apartment building with no lights in the windows, that looked like it had been abandoned for quite sometime.

"We've gotta go around to the back," said the junkie.

The pair slipped under a loosened flap of the metal meshed fence surrounding the building, through a yard with waist tall grass, and in through the back door, which was little more than a sheet of plywood on hinges. The smell was horrendous. It was something between bad body odor and burnt chemicals, probably more sweaty junkies and their heroin roasting over a dirty spoon somewhere nearby. A light, the only light in the stairwell, flickered overhead.

"Do you even know where you're going?" Carter asked not sure if he was being lead to robbery or to actually buy some drugs.

Damned junkies, you never can really tell with them. There's no trusting a dope fiend in need of a fix, and judging by the fidgeting and the sweat, this particular addict needed one bad.

"Yeah man, it's just up these stairs." The lanky man pointed straight up as if that should explain it all.

Carter didn't care anymore. If he was being lead into a jack move, he'd lose what little money he had, but if he didn't follow the man, he'd have to start all over again with a different junkie, and one was about as trustworthy as the next; meaning not at all.

"Lead the way," he said with a motioning gesture of his hand like a maitre d'.

The junkie took the steps in stride like an Olympic athlete. It never ceased to amaze Carter how, when drugs were on the line, a man who was most likely rolling around the floor in agony a few minutes earlier, was suddenly Usain fucking Bolt. Carter peered down the hallway into the darkness as they passed each floor. He caught glimpses he couldn't quite make out by candlelight on some of the floors, but the sounds were all the same. Each floor echoed with the flick of lighters, coughing, the cries of babies forgotten, and moans of half conscious men and women deep in their zombie like high.

They reached the ninth floor finally, and the junkie lead him down a long hallway filled with rooms on both sides. Carter sneaked a peak into one of the rooms as they passed and found a woman lying on her side, foaming at the mouth, a needle still hanging from her arm. He was repulsed and intrigued all at the same time. Carter had always felt he was half angel, half demon. A saint when he was sober, and a sinner when he was using.

Before he could linger too long with his thoughts, they reached the hallway's end.

Bang, bang, bang. His guide pounded on a metal door with the bottom of his fist. A moment of silence passed before a slot at eye level slid open and a pair of dark eyes peered out at them. The shifty orbs darted from the junkie to Carter and back to the junkie.

"What'd you want?" came a muffled question from behind the door.

"I'm here to see Big?" the junkie responded.

The eyes darted again, back and forth between the two men waiting in the hall, then the slot quickly slammed to a close.

"That didn't go so wel-," Carter started to say, but a series of clanks rapped behind the door as the locks were turned.

Slowly, the door swung open. They stepped inside, the junkies worn shoes echoed with the sound of sandpaper as he shuffled across the dilapidated wood floor, practically dragging his feet. The room was almost entirely empty, except for a ragtag group of thugs, and a long desk with a giant of a man sitting behind it. Carter took a quick survey of the room, counting five thugs in all. None of them were holding weapons, but they were showing them off, tucked into their waist.

The smoky air was heavy with the stench of cigarettes and open bottles of booze. His palms got sweaty and his skin prickled against the cold night air. His sense memory told his body that this was the place, it was about to get the fix it so desperately needed, and his heart rate quickened ever so slightly.

"You must be Big." Carter stated more than asked.

"And who the fuck are you?" Big rose, put both palms on the desk, and leaned forward menacingly.

"He's cool man. He's with me," the junkie said putting a scrawny hand out to calm the huge man.

Big was fat in the waist, but Carter could clearly see his arms were well muscled, despite the smoke filled haze in the room. Big wore a food stained wife beater, showing off the tattoos that covered his immense arms, chest, and even ran up his neck onto his cleanly shaved head.

"Look Big, I didn't mean any offense. I'm just looking to score man. Can we do that?" Carter asked. He imagined he must have looked like a little girl looking for her lost puppy right about then, but he didn't want the giant man to swipe his head off.

Big turned his penetrating gaze on Carter and eyed him up and down.

"You sure this guy's cool?" Big asked the junkie, without ever taking his eyes off of Carter.

The junkie nodded his head desperately, his head flopping up and down like a rag doll.

"Then it's cool." Big said affirmatively, and reached into a drawer on the side of the desk.

He pulled out a large freezer bag full of drugs. It was more heroin than Carter had ever seen. He gulped past the lump in his throat, unsure of what he was getting himself into.

"How much do you need?" Big flashed a wry grin.

Before Carter could answer there was a knock at the door. Everyone in the room froze.

"Well?...See who it is," Big motioned to the door.

The thug closest to the door strode over and slid the peep hole open the same way he had with Carter and the junkie.

Boom!

The door was blown clean off its hinges; sending him, the metal door, and chunks of metal stud framework and drywall flying across the room. Carter lifted an arm and turned away to shield his face from the raining debris. His jacket absorbed most of the blast. The already hazy room was an absolute cloud of smoke after the explosive had gone off. Carter couldn't see a thing, except for the junkie huddling in fear on the floor next to him. The chaos sent Carter's blood pressure skyrocketing.

Then small red beams, highlighted by the smoke, zigzagged and crossed one another all over the room. The thugs must have recognized the laser scopes, because they immediately pulled their gats from their belts and started firing on the hole that used to be the door.

"Get down you idiot," the junkie squealed.

"Huh," Carter asked in a daze.

He couldn't believe his luck. His day had gone from bad to much, much worse. Bullets whizzed past his head and Carter dove to the floor. Somehow, the junkie had more common sense than he had, or maybe he was just more used to this sort of thing. Carter was out of practice after all, and the adrenaline rush from the explosion had sent his internal temperature through the roof. His stomach churned with the heat of boiling water as the fluid in his gut burned his insides.

One of the thugs rushed the door, firing a fully automatic machine gun at whoever was trying to get in. Red dots lit the thug up like a Christmas tree, and he was quickly cut down in a hail of bullets.

"Police! Everybody get on your knees and put your hands behind your head!"

Oh shit, it was the cops. At least that's what Carter thought, but Big didn't seem so convinced. Maybe this had happened before; some gang bangers trying to move in on his turf, dress up as cops, and rob the shit out of him, or maybe Big was just high out of his gourd and didn't give a shit.

"Fuck you!" Big yelled and popped up from behind the desk with a pistol in each hand. "Die you mother fuckers!"

Big fired round after round at the opening. Another one of his thugs, having no cover to hide behind, unloaded a pump shotgun on the cops, but he too was quickly cut down in a barrage of semi-automatic gun fire. The thug's chest exploded in five places as each bullet hit home. Gripping his chest, the man was dead before he even dropped to the floor.

The cops or whoever they were, were well equipped, and greatly out numbered Big and his thugs.

"Drop your weapons!" A voice from the doorway called after a moment of silence. The smoke began to clear and Big's eyes darted from Carter, the junkie, and the thug that had been blown back with the door, all lying on the floor, to the one thug he still had standing, and finally back to the hole in the wall.

"Okay! We're dropping our weapons. Just don't shoot no more," Big said.

A quick nod from Big and the other thug dropped his piece to the floor and put his hands over his head.

"Down on your knees," the first cop through the door said.

They entered in a systematic and well trained fashion, approaching one after the next, then breaking off to take each individual in the room into custody. Carter quickly realized this was more than just some flophouse raid.

Dressed in all black from head to toe, the cops turned out to be more than just cops. The traditionally uniformed officers were supplemented with S.W.A.T. and Drug Enforcement Agents. S.W.A.T. and DEA was plastered in bright white and yellow letters across the bulletproof vests and back of their jackets, as well as the hats, for those that wore them.