Transformation (4 page)

It was a hard climb but had so much promise. Best of all these were mostly second homes and vacant most of the year.

“Oh my god! The water’s running and it’s hot. Oh my god! There’s hot water!” Rachael was yelling. She checked the bathrooms first. Everet popped his head in. He was drinking a Diet Coke. “They have power too. The fridge is cold and . . . I’m going to fix dinner while you clean up.”

Later Everet chopped most of the length of the goatee off with a pair of scissors he found in the kitchen. He had Rachael trim the remaining hair to neaten it up. He wanted to keep some of it to fill in his chin.

That night they slept deep. They loathed the thought of ever leaving the place, but they had to help the others and with Ben out there they couldn’t rest too easy for long. They planned to return to the glade when the sun came up but had no idea what they would do when they found it.

§

Ben stood over his naked flock.
Old Zamfir chose them well,
he thought as he admired some of the female bodies laying prone on the ground. There were only a few males but it wasn’t Zamfir who chose the members, it was Rachael. She chose who to let in and the girls never caused nearly the problems the guys did.

The nine nude bodies were in a line, their robes wrapped around their heads and gathered up underneath like a pillow. They were all shivering violently. The combination of the evening cold and the intense fear was almost too much to bare. Most of the girls were sobbing and several had wet themselves.

Ben paced back and forth trying to decide which of the followers to make an example of. He stopped at a male body. This one wasn’t shivering. He apparently wasn’t scared enough and the cold didn’t bother him as much. This made him a potential problem that needed to be removed.
Him it is
, Ben thought. He was going to kill two birds with one stone.

It would all be good fun for now. Soon he’d move on. It pissed him off he had to choose between keeping the coven for fun and taking Zamfir and Rachael as captives. Ever since that Cooper guy beat him to shit and escaped, he’d been seeing red. It made him even more pissed off he’d never see that guy again and couldn’t dish out some punishment on him.

3.

“He looks harmless.” Ron mumbled and shrugged as he looked down from the second level of the parking structure at a well-dressed Asian man. He was very leery of strangers now, but this guy didn’t look like a threat. Nothing jumped out that looked iffy to him. But still . . . he doubted his own judgment. The fact that the man spoke perfect English made him more comfortable, he had to admit, knowing that it was an unfair judgement.

Dale, now clean shaven and hair buzzed short, stood next to Ron and looked down on the man a little more skeptically with the eye of a trained detective. He sensed something wasn’t quite right. He spoke loud and clear, “Hey Alvin. You say you’re alone?”

“Just me.” The shrug and open hands facing out a gesture of openness.

But Dale had questions.
Why no weapon? Where are your belongings? Why do you look like you just stepped out of a clothing store?

Dale debated and decided they couldn’t shut people out of the community. He’d have to trust this newcomer, Alvin, to some degree but would keep a close eye on him. He wanted another opinion, not for its value but for the chance to further interact with the cagey old man.

“Hey Francis, what’d you think?” Dale raised his voice as he addressed the elderly man working under the hood of a nearby car.

Francis Burwell, AKA Weed, grimaced at his birth name. He always grimaced when they spoke his name but especially hated it when the pig addressed him.
Don’t you worry,
he told himself,
this can’t last too long, not with your ornery nature and proclivity for violence. One way or another this is going to end soon
. As usual it was easy for him to hide his true feelings when dealing with the group.

Weed, for he still thought of himself as such, stopped working on the car and straightened up. He admonished himself,
Don’t stand too tall Francis. You’re supposed to be a decrepit old bastard, not a spry-as-fuck old bastard. You gotta’ keep up appearances.

Weed wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve. He played the part of old grandfatherly Francis well. He moved slowly, stooped, pretended to forget shit that he didn’t care enough about to remember. He didn’t appear to be a threat and no one ever asked him to do any heavy lifting. The brainy weird kid asked him to take the batteries out of all the cars on the second level. He walked over still holding the large wrench he was using and locked eyes with Dale. Man he wished that pig would just leave him be. He was here just like everyone else trying to survive, not that it started that way.

Dale gave him that look again, that fucking cop look, that “guilty until proven innocent” look. The asshole had been an undercover before the fall of mankind and Weed could see that the pig suspected he was more then he appeared to be. And he was, far more, or used to be. Old Francis had been trying his best to wait out the pig, see him calmed down so he could live in peace, but things only got more tense as time wore on. His primary concern was to not be a suspect in whatever might happen.

“It’s kind of hot Gramps don’t you want to take off that shirt? Or at least roll up those sleeves.” Dale said, trying to draw attention to the old man’s behavior. But they all naively accepted him as a harmless old guy.

“Lay off Dale.” Ron muttered absentmindedly.

Dale couldn’t believe that even though Ron was super paranoid about letting people into the community, he still didn’t seem to know a threat when he saw one. He was almost murdered by bikers at least twice that Dale knew of. He was especially incredulous that Ron didn’t give his opinion more weight as a former undercover cop with experience dealing with outlaw biker gangs. And Sal would always go along with Ron.

Ron and Sal both insisted he give the man a chance.
Chance to kill us all,
he thought. Dale caught a bad vibe from the guy immediately just based on his overall demeanor. Things like his stance, speech, and vocabulary placed him somewhere in the criminal underworld. He also noticed details such as white skin on several fingers where rather large rings used to be. He had multiple piercings in his ears that didn’t look old and closed up. That was in the first five minutes of meeting him. Of course, there was the long sleeve flannel shirt he hadn’t taken off for the week or so he’d been with them. Dale suspected that the shirt hid a body covered in a lifetime of tattoos that told Old Francis’ story. And there was that large bandage on his neck, probably another tattoo that he couldn’t cover with the shirt. He was most likely a biker but could just be an associate. He wondered if he were connected to the bikers they just finished dealing with. He worried that there may be more of them out there.

Dale smiled and nodded. “Just messing with you. Just wanted you to meet Alvin.”

“Yup.” Francis tried to smile at him but failed.
Fuck you Francis smiling at cops ain’t natural,
he thought
. Best stand next to the coon for appearances.
He stood next to Ron to demonstrate his comfort and as a show of camaraderie. He’d learned over the years that people are easily manipulated with a hundred little tricks like this. It was actually part of his fighting style. Since he was a dirty fighter—a tricky, mean, and downright cruel son of a bitch—he had no qualms about smiling at someone, pointing at the sky, then kicking them in the nuts as hard as possible. He’d kick them when they were down and keep on kicking until he was tired. And when he grew tired of kicking, he’d start stomping.

Weed put his hands on his hips, feet slightly apart, and looked down at the newcomer. The man could have familial roots going back to a dozen different countries but to Weed he was just the china man.
Shit, are his eyes open or closed?
He asked himself and that made him smile. Damn he’d have to remember to think about some funny shit like that next time he needed to muster up a smile. He looked at the china man and started thinking of some of the jokes he’s heard over the years pertaining to yellow skin and slanted eyes. This made his smile even bigger.

“He looks like a solid fellow.” Francis said, smiling. While his words expressed one sentiment and he smiled for another, much darker, reason the combination of the two made him look like a downright nice fellow, accepting of his fellow man no matter what his differences may be.

“OK.” Ron spoke down to the man who gave his name as Alvin. “You can come up if you agree to the terms?”

“Of course.” Alvin smiled and gave a thumbs up.

“I’m gonna get back to these cages,” Francis turned away and scowled.
Terms! Ha. Bitches patted me down and took my knife. But I got some news for you assholes, I got myself a gun.

The second level was where a majority of the cars were that had been in the structure. All the cars on the first level had been moved outside to the parking lot for added security. There were not many cars as most of the spaces on the first level were for busses and shuttles and those were all in their barns by the airport over a mile away. Having searched only one row of cars on the second level, about 45 of them, Weed found a handgun with a box of shells. He even found a few ounces of weed to add to his ever shrinking stash. He’d run out soon and was wracking his brain for places to search. What he really wanted was to find some plants and start growing his own.

Dale smirked,
yep a biker.
Bikers called cars cages. He’d let other slang terms slip, or wasn’t aware the terms were so unique to the biker world. Dale considered that maybe the old guy really was just trying to survive and didn’t want to scare the civilians. He’d been keeping a close eye on him in any case.

Dale and Ron went to lower the elevator. Weed continued to remove batteries and stack them on a rolling cart. As he opened each car and popped the hood release, he also searched them. Not much in most but he continued to find interesting and useful things but other than the gun and the small amounts of Mary Jane there wasn’t much worthwhile. And as usual, he went back to rolling that damn puzzle over and over in his head; how’s the problem betwixt he and the pig going to resolve itself? He didn’t feel justified in outright killing the fellow, but he was seriously pissing him off.

Weed had infiltrated the parking structure with the sole intention of slaughtering the entire bunch, except maybe a bitch or two for fun. At first he blamed the group for the deaths of his brothers and fellow bikers because they did in fact kill the men. But he soon discovered that there was more to the story. Weed was rescued by a former rival biker named Banjo and had heard all about what the coon did to their bikes. But what he didn’t hear was how Banjo started the whole mess by trying to lynch the spade. That put a damper on Weed’s bloodlust as he stewed over old Banjo’s deception. Had he known Banjo had his own agenda when he arrived at the clubhouse things would have turned out very different.

Figures
, he thought,
Banjo was a fucking Satan’s Angel. I should have listened to my brother Muscle and told him to fuck right off. If I had all my brothers would be alive today.

The way Weed understood it no one knew he existed since the fat fucker, a Satan’s Angel aptly named Fats, pushed him in that hole early on. There was no mention of an unaccounted for biker in their discussions. It seems that the fat ass picked up his buddy and prez Jeeter and carried him into the dead heads, thus killing them both. Now Weed would have never believed that shit had he not been personally pushed to his apparent death by the fat fuck himself.

Weed wanted to be mad at someone other than a fellow outlaw, but he kicked it around and it always rolled back to Banjo.
It’s all on Banjo
, he thought,
the entire fucking mess. Muss was right not to trust him. If he hadn’t tried to lynch the negra ain’t none of this would’ve happened. He had no call to do that shit.

And the more Weed got acquainted with the fellow the more he realized just how unprovoked his attack was. Ron was unlike any black fellow he’d ever met, he and his woman. Weed was of the mind that if you pick a fight you can’t be sore when the other guy kicks your fucking teeth in. Shit, if someone tried to lynch old Francis he’d fucking slay them all. Trashed bikes was getting off easy.

Weed was an old school biker and operated on the live and let live philosophy. He was content to leave folks alone unless provoked. He would’ve steered clear of Banjo’s revenge quest if he hadn’t been led to believe that the attack was unprovoked.

In addition, and to be honest, after a hot shower, a decent meal, and his first good night’s sleep in ages, he hesitated. There were many perks to being in this community. As an old bastard he was looked at as harmless and treated like a grandfather. What else would he be doing anyway, scavenging for scraps and looking over his shoulder all the time? He was glad he hesitated. Was it maturity and wisdom or just really good weed and too much liquor? Whatever the reason he’d realized quickly that he was very comfortable in the structure and the folks weren’t that bad. All except that cop, that pig. He was intolerable and something was about to snap.

Dale watched from the ledge of the former ramp hole, now elevator shaft, as Alvin stepped onto the elevator platform. Looking down he couldn’t see the man’s face but both hands were in his pockets and Dale became more and more on edge. He nodded at Ron who turned on the bumper mounted electric winch. The elevator rose slowly with a whir. As Ron greeted Alvin and Dale searched him, Weed rolled his eyes and kept his head under the hood of a car. He was torn between a deep and lifelong hatred of cops, coons, and cunts and the niceties of having a safe harbor with food and other amenities.

A rice eater! How many more mongrels will they let in?
Weed wondered. But Francis wasn’t dumb, not completely. He knew his choices in the world were very limited and he was lucky to have the Casa de Coon at his disposal. It wasn’t unlike the deals he did back in the day with black, brown, and even yellow to move drugs and guns or stay alive in prison.

But he was allowed to pick a place to live and he chose the empty third level on the opposite side of the structure from the others on the fourth. He could snore, drink, smoke, and jerk off all he wanted. They’d built him a nice 10x10 room with a cot and a trunk away from the edge of the structure and painted the outside flat black. There was a curtained doorway and no one ever went to that side of the structure on any level for any reason. In fact old Weed setup some alarms, wires with noisemakers on them, so he could hear if anyone or anything tried to enter the structure from that end on the first level. No one ever felt the need to stroll down there and check things out. He had the place to himself.

He kept at his task, much preferring to work on an engine then to have to play host. After all the folks walked up the ramps and the sound of their bullshit receded, Weed pulled the flannel shirt off over his head. It was hot as hell with that thing on. He wiped his body down with it. He resumed his work and was deep in thought when he felt the presence of someone behind him and spun around.

“Finally got too hot for you?” Dale was smiling, arms folded and watching Weed closely. He was surprised at the old man’s physique. He wasn’t nearly as feeble as he pretended to be.

Dale eyed the older man, scanned every piece of ink and scar that cover his body. He raised his eyebrow.
Well, well, you’ve done significant jail time, killed at least three men with official club sanction, the club being the Wild Savages MC. Wow Francis you’ve lived the life. Stabbed a dozen times and took a couple of bullets.
He grinned.
And you took quite a lashing too. Piss off your brothers maybe?
The puckered flesh looked old and healed up and the tattoo across his back declaring him a Wild Savage had obviously been there before the lashing