Stormbreak (The Serenity Strain Book 1) Page 14

  “I’m not sure if this place is safe enough. I have no idea the strength of this … whatever it is.”

  Lauryn studied him closely in the near-dark. He was scared. This wasn’t his thing. He was used to directing traffic from TV monitors. Hell, it wasn’t her thing either, but at least she was trained to handle crises like this. It wasn’t that she was any less fearful; it was just that she knew how to control it better.

  “First things first,” she said. “Let’s get to Megan and—”

  “Duck and cover?”

  Lauryn’s lips curled up. “This place weathered the other storms. Who knows? Maybe it’ll hold up now.”

  Mark glanced at the windows, now sheathed in the glow of yellow light pulsing inside orange fog. “Stranger things have happened,” he said.

  * * *

  The bar was supposed to be closed. Texas blue laws restricted the sale of beer and wine before noon on Sunday and liquor at all on that day. So most bars elected not to pay their employees to stand around only to draw the occasional afternoon tap. But this was a very different kind of Sunday.

  The first thing Marsten and the others noticed was a line of motorcycles parked in front of the Hog Trough like they sat on a showroom floor. This will be easy, thought the Maestro. But first, a team-building exercise.

  They walked in to find a carnival with a hangover. Those not already drunk at the noon hour looked to be recovering from one bender and ready to start another. Mostly men, some women. Mostly white-bread, one brother. But not what Marsten was expecting. None of them looked like bikers did in his day. As they stood just inside the front door of the Hog, he asked Franklin what, exactly, he was looking at.

  “Bikes are a thing now, Maestro. Haven’t you ever heard of clubs?”

  Marsten assessed the patrons, most with their heads down on tables, some slumped in chairs. All looked about one changing room away from being doctors, lawyers, and accountants with goatees they thought made them look less boring.

  “That’s a thing now?”

  Franklin nodded. “Some well-to-do plunks down fifty grand on a Harley and rides around on the weekend in a denim vest.”

  “They just installed backyard swimming pools in my day,” said Smack.

  Juggs laughed out loud as she surveyed the crop. “I want one,” she said finally.

  “Caporegime, you just take your pick,” said the Maestro.

  She cocked her head at Maggie who smiled, two sisters conspiring. But then Maggie turned her eye to Marsten, checking in. He just looked at her and waited.

  “Maestro … may I?”

  He winked at her. “Maggie, we ain’t married. Y’all have yourself a good time, now.”

  While Juggs with Maggie in tow scoped out the potentials more closely, Marsten whispered something to Smack and Simpson. They spread out, both angling for the bar but taking opposite routes on the right and left.

  “Guard the door,” Marsten told Franklin before sliding the foot and ceiling bolts in place. “No one in or out.”

  Franklin nodded.

  “Hey! Hey, don’t do that! This is my best business in ages! Hurricane party and all that!”

  Marsten turned his attention to the bartender, who seemed to be one of the few people in the place with his head vertical. He smiled broadly as he made his way over. “You own this establishment?” he asked admiringly.

  “Sure do. Fifteen years now. Name’s Flann. Kinda like the pastry but with one more N. What can I get you?”

  The Maestro leaned against the center of the bar. “Now that’s the question of the hour, Flann.” Seriously? Flann? “See, it’s been a while.”

  From the corner of his eye, Marsten saw Juggs sit down next to a rider that looked to be in his mid-30s. The man had “Black Ravens” stitched across the back of the denim jacket he was wearing. The logo was a raven, wings holding the handlebars, skinny legs wrapped around the silhouette of a Harley’s engine. You’ve got to be shittin’ me, he thought as he looked at the bike-riding bird. He called the guy Edgar in his head. Maggie straddled a chair on the other side of Edgar as Juggs struck up a conversation about the weather.

  “So, what’ll it be?” repeated Flann, grabbing a shot glass in anticipation.

  “Sex on the beach!” Juggs yelled from across the room.

  The Maestro giggled a little at Flann. “Don’t mind her. Been a while for her, too. If you know what I mean.” He gave Flann a wicked wink.

  “Heh. Seems like. So, about that drink?”

  Marsten could tell the bartender was tired and a little nervous. That he wanted to get back to familiar territory, like what kind of drink the big, bald man in front of him might enjoy.

  “How about that bottle there?”

  “Which one? The Black Label or the Red?”

  Marsten smiled. “I’m in the mood for Red.”

  “Good choice!” Flann perked up quite a bit. “One finger or two?”

  The Maestro took a moment, as if he were deciding. Down at the end of the bar on the left, Smack slowly raised the board that sectioned off the bar’s patrons from the proprietor. Marsten shifted his peripheral vision and found Simpson leaning casually on the bar at the far right.

  Flann only had eyes for Marsten, who turned his head to Juggs. She was running her fingers along the blue-jean shirt of her mark.

  “Oh, why not the whole bottle? Those storms were fierce, and I’m just lately able to get out and about, you see. Been penned up too long,” he smiled.

  Flann looked wary but shrugged. “Sure thing. Tab or cash? The machine ain’t working for credit cards. And it’ll be neat, I’m afraid. No ice for almost two days now.”

  “Oh, I like it neat,” said Marsten, extending his hand. Flann handed him the bottle out of reflex before thinking better of it and getting his cash first.

  Too late.

  The Maestro grabbed the neck with his right hand, flipped the bottle smoothly and cracked it across Flann’s gawping face. Smack and Simpson moved in from the sides as Johnnie Walker Red poured over the bar.

  “Is it there?” Marsten asked.

  Simpson stood over the moaning bartender as Smack searched the shelf below the register. He grinned and pulled the Barman’s Buddy out and laid it in front of the Maestro, careful to avoid the spilt liquor. Marsten picked up the shotgun, an old-fashioned, sawed-off side-by-side. Old school. Just like him.

  Now you’re talkin’.

  When he turned around, Edgar was looking at him, the whites of his eyes so huge, they looked like eggs, sunny-side up. The Maestro leveled the shotgun at him and thumbed back both hammers. “Take off your clothes, friend.”

  Juggs giggled, still stroking her fingers along Edgar’s arm. Maggie rooooowwwed like a cat in heat.

  “What? Me?”

  Marsten moved the gun thirty degrees to the left, aimed at the logo on the back of a still-sleeping Black Raven, and pulled the first trigger. The shotgun roared in the tiny bar, flame erupting three feet from the short barrel. The sleeper’s chair splintered, the buckshot kicking him forward across the table, his already-dead legs collapsing under him.

  “Jesus Christ!” Edgar’s voice blasphemed his shock.

  The man on the floor didn’t know he was dead yet. He woke up screaming, trying vainly to move as his brain registered a severed spinal cord. Marsten walked over to the part-time biker, casually dropped the second barrel six inches from the man’s face, and pulled the second trigger. The buckshot obliterated his head like a small red planet exploding. The air now smelled of gunpowder and brains.

  The noise shook several of the other patrons from their stupor. Some of them stood up. To fight or run? wondered Marsten as he watched them. Not that the question mattered. These were sheep. And sheep froze. He could smell the color of their fear already running down their pant legs.

  “Sit down,” he said. The Maestro turned to Smack, who lobbed him two more shells from below the bar. He caught them casually, shucked the spent shells from the sawed-off, and r
eloaded.

  “Now, Edgar, I’ve told you once. And lately, I find I have less and less patience for repeating myself.”

  “Wh-what?”

  “Your damned clothes, son.” He gave Juggs a look like, You sure can pick ’em dumb.

  “What? Why?”

  Marsten aimed the shotgun at him.

  “Maestro, no, I want him!” pleaded Juggs, who nevertheless backed away from the imminent blast. Strangely, Maggie didn’t move. She knew.

  After lingering on Edgar, Marsten tracked the gun right this time, pointed it at a woman who hadn’t moved one inch except to open her mouth and stare after he’d blasted his first two shots. Marsten pulled one of the triggers, blowing her backward to crash into the jukebox. Their ears rang with the lingering concussion of the blast. The woman slumped slowly, bloodily to the floor. Her chest was a gaping wound, her mouth still open, her blank eyes staring. James Brown’s “Sex Machine” kicked into high gear on the jukebox.

  “Do I need to get more shells?”

  Shaking like a pimp in church, Edgar shed his clothes in no time flat. He stood naked, trembling, his hands shyly covering his genitals.

  “No, no, honey,” said Juggs, batting his hands away. “I want to see the merchandise.”

  Both women shared a look that was less than impressed.

  “A bit lacking, isn’t he?” Maggie teased.

  Juggs shrugged. “He’s scared. I hear junk draws up and hides when you’re scared. Like a turtle. And it’s kinda chilly in here to boot.”

  Maggie nodded sympathetically.

  “Back room,” said the Maestro. “Fifteen minutes. Then we head south.”

  Juggs grabbed Edgar by the arm. “Come on, now, we ain’t got much time, lover.” Maggie glanced back once at the Maestro and winked, licking her lips.

  “And Edgar!” called Marsten after them. “Best please my girls! I got plenty more shells!”

  The women giggled as they led their unwilling sex machine into the back room. The Maestro stared south for a moment, as if he could see his goddess through the old tobacco signs and deer heads on the wall. We are coming to you, Lady, he projected in his mind.

  Marsten heard her reply in his head. She was singing, answering his fealty with the quiet buzz that had kept him company since he’d first dreamt of her. Was it louder, more intense following the shotgun blasts? Or was that his imagination? Only one way to find out.

  Marsten turned the sawed-off on the nearest Black Raven, who stared back frozen in fear, and pulled the other trigger.

  Part 3

  Feral State

  Chapter 15. Sunday, afternoon.

  They rode into Conroe, the grating rumble of their motorcycles claiming the town like medieval invaders banging swords on shields as they strolled into a village, fearless and triumphant. Marsten led them, with Maggie riding behind him, legs spread and arms wrapped tighter around his waist than they needed to be. She could’ve ridden a bike of her own but claimed not to know how. This way, sitting in the same thrumming seat of power with him, Maggie felt closer to Marsten as they prepared to meet his dream-goddess. She pressed her cheek into his back and smiled the entire ride south from Huntsville. She wanted the deck stacked as high as she could get it when they met her competition.

  With both speed and maneuverability, the bikes were the perfect solution to getting around, and the Maestro led them straight downtown. The floodwaters rushed below the streets, and some roads were still submerged. But most had been drying in the sun for nearly a day now. Abandoned automobiles, dead cats, broken glass, and the corpses of idiots too stupid to come in out of the rain littered the landscape. All easily avoided with a slight turn of the handlebars. As they passed through town, the Maestro and his musicians merely nodded to the few survivors they passed like weekend warriors out for a Sunday ride.

  Time enough for more fun later, thought Marsten.

  They approached the Montgomery County Courthouse from West Davis Street, then cut across on Main and rode the wrong way up one-way Simonton Street. They parked their bikes on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse. More residents of the throbbing metropolis of Conroe were wandering downtown, still dazed, and perhaps hoping to be heartened by the presence of the nearby police station or courthouse.

  “Y’all sure came to the wrong place today,” said Marsten as he beamed a friendly smile at whoever happened to meet his eyes from a distance. After feeling his steely gaze, they always scuttled quickly away. One citizen walking toward them actually crossed the street and disappeared around the side of the courthouse.

  “What?”

  The Maestro turned to Juggs. “Nothing. Private little Idaho of a joke,” he said, dismounting the Harley. He took off his fingerless street gloves, which were too small for him, and briefly regarded the others. They’d traded their Huntsville yokel outfits for the more refined leather and denim of the seventeen or eighteen patrons of the Hog Trough. Those folks hadn’t really needed them anymore. Marsten’s new boots were tight on him too, but he figured the leather would stretch eventually. He still couldn’t believe a whole industry existed to outfit the rich to look like bikers they’d walk across the street to avoid in real life, just like that yahoo had a minute ago. “Kinda like these clothes,” he said to Juggs.

  She continued staring at him, clueless to his humor. He waved her away. “Come on. We need to prepare for her arrival.”

  They walked up the steps and found the courthouse shut up tight. The county folks in Conroe must’ve been more diligent about locking up before the storm, thought Marsten. He pulled out the Barman’s Buddy and told the others to stand back.

  “Wait!” said Simpson. “You’ll bring the cops running with that.”

  The Maestro regarded him coolly. “You see any cops? They’re still picking limbs off their own roofs. Maybe in a few hours, if ever.”

  “But—”

  Marsten fired, the first blast breaking glass and pocking metal but doing little damage otherwise. Unloading the second barrel did the trick.

  The Maestro led the way. They reconnoitered as they went. Security desk, walk-through scanner, impressive ceilings supported by Greek columns, and a staircase that swept upward to the second floor. Sights he’d loathed in his past life. Now he ate them up like apple pie.

  “What is it about courthouses you like so much?” asked Simpson. “They give me the willies.”

  Maggie snorted. “Plastic badges in the toy aisle give you the willies.”

  Simpson gave her a look, but then remembered she was Marsten’s squeeze. “Nothing wrong with being cautious,” he said without inflection.

  “To answer your question,” began the Maestro, “I like the idea of taking back territory. And symbols are important.” He gestured at the empty grandeur around them.

  “I don’t get it,” said Smack.

  The Maestro simplified it for him. “We’re in charge.”

  Maggie giggled. “We’re the law now,” she said. Her tone reminded Marsten of every lickspittle toady he’d seen in every movie about an evil European monarch. The guy who rubberstamped his leader no matter what he said. It frankly turned his stomach a little to think of Maggie that way.

  “Wrong,” he said, leading the way up the winding staircase. “As of right now, there is no law.”

  * * *

  The monkeys were outside the madhouse. That was the thought that kept repeating in Stavros’ mind while he watched from the shadows inside a bar in Huntsville’s town square.

  Hundreds of inmates in their prison whites had spread across the town. A few of them simply ran to hide out in the hills of East Texas or the sheltering woods off I-45. But others seemed unable to control themselves given their unexpected freedom. They destroyed storefronts for the pure pleasure of shattering the glass. Of seeing wares destroyed. Of breaking the order they saw before them into tiny pieces.

  Store alarms clanged. Car alarms whooped. The air sounded like the prisoners had convinced it to join them in tearing
down sanity itself.

  Stavros pulled the 9-mm pistol from its holster. He looked at it like a scientist, mixing little-boy fascination with a calm appreciation for how each part of the weapon functioned. He found the safety and switched it from the white dot to the red dot. The reason for that was obvious enough. He found the release and dropped the magazine out of the grip. The bullets were stacked and spring fed. All he could see was the top bullet, but there was a curious, notched hole at its tip.

  “Hollow points,” he muttered. “They explode inside the body, right? Max damage.”

  Stavros half-smiled as he thought of himself as an action hero, gun blazing fire. Just for a moment. Then he shook off the ridiculous image and returned to his empirical appraisal of the pistol. He replaced the magazine and tried to pull back the slide to chamber a round. It was harder than it looked in the movies. Took more strength. A fact worth knowing.

  His mind returned to its prime directive. He needed to find Marsten and the others. Worrying about his endowed chair or tenure or his status in the field of genetics research had faded. Even concern for his own safety was secondary. Now, he simply needed to know for himself what went wrong. To understand what he’d done wrong. He thought about Heisenberg and his principle that any experiment was automatically tainted by the bias of the person performing it. He wondered what bias he’d brought to Serenity.

  But how to find his monster? He had no idea where Marsten might’ve gone. Run to ground somewhere, maybe, to hide out from the authorities. But that didn’t sound like Marsten, especially not lately. More likely, he wanted to make a big splash somewhere. Hack a long, bloody gash across society’s throat. Make Marsten’s mark and watch it bleed.

  But where?

  The word gets passed in the joint, Doc.

  As the prisoners broke into stores, he watched from his hiding place and remembered the craziness when he and the others were trying to sedate Marsten on the gurney. Marsten’s ranting, Bradford struggling to hold his head down, the primitive fear on the faces of everyone in the room. Everyone but Marsten.