Giving Him Hell_A Saturn's Daughter Novel Read online

  A vaguely carnival atmosphere had developed back here. It was December, but nuts were creating palm tree oases around steaming baths and heated tents. So that’s who Tim had sold the palm trees to.

  People in down jackets lined up to enter the tents. Others jostled about trying to peer inside, curious. There were probably carny barkers out on Edgewater extolling the virtues of miracle healing, but I wasn’t interested in showing myself on the main drag just yet.

  Even demented frogs wouldn’t expect that pipe bomb to hit a moving target like me—they had been deliberately drawing me out. Which meant they were lurking, waiting for me to hunt them down.

  If there were actually four of them, I was outnumbered. Even if Kaminski was in the hospital, three was too many when they had guns and size and I didn’t. Without my visualization powers, I was at a severe disadvantage. But this Saturn justice kink in my head wouldn’t let me risk any more of my friends.

  My tire iron had been confiscated the last time I had taken out a menace to society. I needed a new weapon to focus my fury. Except the Zone didn’t have guns and swords lying about for me to harvest. I found a splintered two by four in the trash beside one of the Dumpsters. It would have to do.

  As I studied the harbor and the various crews of hard hats, another geyser spouted high above the buildings. How much water was down there? This couldn’t all be from the mains. Was the harbor seeping under the town? I’d ponder the sinister implications after I took me down a few mean frogs.

  I slipped through the alley shadows. The saunas had started down by Bill’s, on the north end of the street near Acme. They were gradually working their way south, nearer our homes. Cradling my lumber, I focused on a group of hard hats working to channel the new geyser with pipes.

  Two more utility vans raced toward the geyser from either end of the alley. I raised my eyebrows as the vans played chicken and nearly met in the middle. At the last second, one veered over the broken fence and into the harbor grounds.

  Both trucks advertised saunas and spilled men in khaki overalls, one set with blue lettering, the other with red. As both teams raced for the gushing geyser, a brawl broke out between the blue and red. Guys in khaki swung fists and rolled through the trash and dirt, beating the crap out of each other.

  I swear, it was a scene straight out of Dante’s Inferno, not that I’d ever read it, but I’d seen pictures of paintings. Men writhing in the mud, fighting each other for no good reason, looked like a circle of hell to me. Too bad they weren’t naked like in the painting.

  The hard hats around the geyser merely continued working, siphoning heat from hell into pipes.

  It sure looked as if our conclusions had been verified and that the portal to hell had opened in the Zone. If I were superstitious, I’d believe that the sins of avarice and wrath were escalating. Interesting twist of the devil’s, using healing water to promote evil.

  “The devil doesn’t exist,” I growled at invisible gods, counteracting my ever-vivid imagination. “And I don’t believe in Hades either.”

  I was hoping Saturn was a good god, and this violence was a result of chemical pollution.

  I was past Chesty’s now. I could hear the grunts and blows as the two crews flailed at each other. These weren’t professional fighters. They looked like ordinary working men smacking and kicking and having temper tantrums. I could buy them all a beer and they’d sit down and exchange jokes. But the Zone had affected them.

  One of the hard hats working with the pipes glanced in my direction, as if he knew I was near. Or had been keeping watch, awaiting my arrival. I plastered my leather jacket against a Dumpster. Walls that glow blue aren’t good hiding places, but there was nothing else back here.

  He sidled away from the group in my direction. Well, setting myself as bait was one way of hunting murderous frogs. I hefted my lumber mace, getting a feel for its weight.

  Maybe it was my imagination, but I could swear Hard Hat’s eyes glowed red.

  I needed to know for certain that he meant me harm before I could return the favor. I could only hope damning him would work. If so, I had my wish reward ready.

  Testing my theory, I burst from my hiding place, running into the open harbor ground where bulldozers loaded dirt into dump trucks. Like zombies, the drivers kept on trucking even though I was zig-zagging across their turf like a demento.

  My boots skidded in the sticky mud. Landing face-first in this crap could be a death sentence in itself. I slowed down. The dozers kept rolling. I ran toward the water and away from the sauna where Hard Hat had been glaring at me.

  I heard the thud of heavy boots on my heels. Guess that answered one question—he was after me. Even though Saturn Daddy had heeled my bad leg, I wasn’t the runner I’d been in school. And muscle man had a longer stride.

  To verify that he wasn’t simply chasing me off the grounds, I changed direction and raced for the nearest spa. The footsteps got closer. I shouted as I ran, but the tourists apparently thought a giant worker chasing a small, charred-hair woman was part of the entertainment. They watched, but no one interfered as Hard Hat bore down on me. I had no illusion that me and my wood weapon could bring down two hundred pounds of crazy unless I could turn him into a crab and crush him.

  I checked over my shoulder and shuddered. His eyes really were red. Running faster, I visualized Hard Hat morphing into a scuttling crab.

  His loud boot thumps continued, pounding closer. Shoot, darn.

  The pop, pop, pop of an automatic weapon changed the game. My lumber sword couldn’t fight bullets. I had been trying hard to play fair, and what did I get?

  I almost welcomed the familiar red rage. I’d learned to wish for what I wanted before I sent a soul to perdition—Saturn Daddy liked to reward us for removing evil—but it’s hard to think sensibly when my head is full of fury.

  With all the creepy newcomers just standing around gaping as I was about to be massacred, I recalled the basic intent of my planned reward. I wished them back home where they belonged.

  Then I veered toward an oncoming bulldozer. Hard Hat, as expected, still hadn’t turned into a crab. I heard him smacking another cartridge into the automatic. I grabbed the handle outside the bulldozer cab and swung in.

  As I did so, I caught a glimpse of the gunman in the side mirror, raising his arm to fire again. With an apology, I shoved the driver out of his seat and grabbed the controls.

  It had been a long time since I’d driven a tractor and bushhog, but I figured the basics hadn’t changed. I grabbed the motion control joystick and the blade joystick and swung my weapon straight at Hard Hat.

  Now who was running from whom?

  Bulldozers only have three speeds: slow, slower, and stop. But they’re big. And I wasn’t feeling the guy’s pain.

  If he’d had a brain in his head, he would have veered off at an angle where I couldn’t reach him. But apparently the devil’s minions didn’t have brains. Maybe zombies ate them. I pressed the blade down, let the engine out, and scooped him up.

  He fired through the windshield at me and sealed his fate.

  “Damn you to hell!” I screamed as the bullet winged my temple. Now I had two bullet wounds in me, bruises all over, and scorched hair. I could feel a warm trickle of blood down my cheek that fueled my rage. That shot had been too damned close for comfort.

  Frigginfuckit—the guy didn’t disappear but kept shooting. So much for Saturn’s wrathful justice. For all I knew, Saturn had gone away after I’d cursed him over Tim’s disappearance, and now I was really on my own.

  Fear only escalated my fury. I ducked and drove straight for the harbor, not caring who got in my way—not that I could see anything while cowering behind the dashboard. Hard Hat kept shooting, apparently operating on the same red rage as I was. Zone madness had us both in its grips.

  The treads sucked mud as I hit the water. I kept on trucking.

  Hard Hat screamed in terror as I tipped the blade joystick. If he couldn’t swim, all the bett
er.

  I couldn’t hear the plop of his six feet of evil in the water over the roar of the engine, but I saw the splash. I ran the dozer treads out a little farther, just for fun, then put the machine in reverse and returned to shore.

  My temple throbbed from the bullet crease. Suddenly shaking from the adrenaline crash, I wiped my head with the back of my hand and smeared blood on my fingers. I gasped for air and choked on pure terror. Murdering people wasn’t exactly my way of life. I was trying very hard not to look behind me—mostly for fear the thug would rise up and walk on water, still shooting.

  The dozer lumbered back to land. I expected an hysterical crowd and a line of police cars, at the very least. Or maybe the rest of the hard hats bearing down on me with AK47s. There had been a time in their former occupations when they’d done that.

  Instead, as I parked the dozer and jumped down, I encountered weary men shutting down their machinery and packing up their lunchboxes and heading for their vehicles.

  I stared in disbelief as the sauna guys folded their tents and loaded them into their vans. Tourists, looking puzzled, began wandering away.

  I’d just murdered a man, but no one paid me the slightest attention.

  Too wiped to care, I snatched a towel from one of the tents to staunch the bullet wound. Then I tramped back across the mud to Chesty’s rear door. Behind me, I could hear the bulldozer driver rolling his machine away as if I hadn’t just hijacked it and killed someone. Maybe I had turned as invisible as Tim.

  I was pretty sure I’d just damned a man and sent him to hell. He’d been shooting at me, so I couldn’t feel real guilty about what I’d done.

  Standing beside Chesty’s smelly Dumpster, I watched as the sauna vans began driving away.

  I’d wished for the creepy newcomers to go back where they belonged. And from the looks of it, they were. Saturn Daddy—or Satan—had rewarded me for sending another demon to hell.

  I gave up looking for logic and entered Chesty’s in search of a bowl of soup and a biscuit.

  Apparently, I didn’t mind killing the devil’s minions. Now, if only I could identify them before they hurt people, I might be useful.

  Twenty-three

  I washed up in Chesty’s restroom, using paper towels to staunch the graze on my temple and hiding it with my messy hair. I took a seat at the bar and pondered becoming an alcoholic. Would that numb me from my red ragey need to murder people? Well, at least, so far, I’d only gone after ones who threatened me or people I cared about. I still preferred law books.

  A college kid on a stool beside me was tapping away on his phone, obviously intending to text someone—without much success. I sipped my beer and considered warning him that his text would likely end up in China even if it went through. But reading his message, I sighed at his bad spelling of haullicongenic experence and refrained.

  The Zone was a hallucinogenic experience all right. Tweeting about it to the world would make us a real tourist attraction guaranteed to get us shut down.

  Maybe they’d even find the body in the harbor and think it was part of an amusement-park game. I got sent to jail for egging a provost’s office, but I could murder a utility worker and no one cared? How did I work my head around that?

  I watched a tourist video our dancing mural and another bash his beer bottle over a friend’s head. I hadn’t been specific enough in my red ragey wish. I’d only sent the newcomers on the harbor away.

  Andre came up from behind me, slapped my shoulder in a seemingly genial gesture, and hauled me off the bar stool by my collar. “The place is quiet tonight. Why do I assume it’s because of you?”

  Quiet! I snorted at the sarcasm. The violence factor had grown exponentially since our gas attack a few weeks back.

  He dragged me to our favorite booth in the corner. With Andre, it’s difficult to tell hostility from friendliness, so I just took a seat across from him, sipped my beer, and continued pondering life’s little mysteries.

  “Katerina says according to Roman mythology, Saturn ripped the Furies out of his father’s head. That doesn’t exactly make them his daughters,” Andre informed me.

  He studied the way my hair flopped in my eyes but didn’t look to see what I hid.

  “Uranus’s eye, to be perfectly correct.” I studied a group of DGs in the corner getting royally drunk. I doubted that they’d ever touched a beer before entering the Zone. “Or his drops of blood, depending on the version you prefer. You don’t think I’ve read Wikipedia too?”

  “But the Furies are sent to punish sinners. Sound like anyone we know?” Andre signaled for his usual.

  “I’m a lawyer, not a product of mythology,” I replied stonily. “The planet Saturn has seven rings, nine unofficial moons, and fifty-three official moons. It takes twenty-seven years to orbit the sun. It’s the lightest planet in the solar system consisting mostly of helium and hydrogen. And it’s lopsided. Maybe I’m an unofficial moon.”

  He almost laughed. “The Furies are depicted with bat wings and snakes around their waists. That works better than a moon.”

  “Bats.” I rolled my eyes in disgust. “There are only three Furies and there are a lot more Saturn’s Daughters. Maybe even fifty-three. I just dumped a demon in the harbor with a bulldozer. Do not give me bats.”

  He whistled and glanced around. “You scared off all the customers in the process?”

  “I wished all the creeps away.” I was in a rage at the time. I didn’t know precisely what I’d wished. I just knew everyone packed up and left, and that’s what I’d wanted.

  He nodded as if that made sense. “Sarah’s still here. And Ernesto. You didn’t wish hard enough.”

  This time, I laughed. Diane brought me another beer along with Andre’s. “Jimmy made gumbo. Want some?” she asked.

  “Not if the fish comes from the harbor,” I said ungratefully, imagining dead bodies bobbing with scallops.

  “He won’t use anything that isn’t trucked in. I’ll bring you some rolls too. You might want to talk to Sarah. She’s found a gun somewhere and has taken to threatening customers with it.”

  I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. It didn’t ease the ache in my head. “I want a vacation,” I said as Diane walked away. “How’s Tim?”

  “Shaken and bruised but fine,” Andre said. “The DGs who aren’t down here drinking are up there rebuilding Mrs. B’s porch. It’s the Zone, Clancy, not you. We’re polluted, and it makes people crazy.”

  “If you tell me you’re accepting MSI’s offer, I’ll reach across the table and punch you in your pretty face,” I threatened, giving him the evil eye so he’d know I meant it.

  “I’ll buy a warehouse in Fell’s Point, we can all live in it, and call it the Yellow Submarine,” he suggested.

  “NO! We are not going down without a fight.” I shoved my beer across the table at him. “We do not let the bad guys win. Remember what Acme did to your mother.”

  “They cured her of cancer,” he pointed out.

  “And took away ten years of her life, turned Julius into a recluse, and you into a maniac. Maybe Katerina was meant to go to heaven, except chemicals changed Fate and allowed more demons in instead. I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, but Acme is evil. Or the new element is. And until scientists recognize the danger, they shouldn’t be using it for medical research.”

  He knew all that, but Andre was nothing if not pragmatic. “They gave me until Friday to sell out. After that, they sue and try to take the lawyer fees out of the proceeds. And the longer the fight takes, the less they offer.”

  This was Wednesday night. So much for talking reason to the EPA.

  One of the DGs began shouting. A couple more stood up to assist him outside. The loud one swung a beer bottle that flew wildly out of his hand, nearly missing Sarah who had just emerged from Ernesto’s office. The bottle smacked a mural and splattered beer remains on Sarah’s new fake fur and Godiva hair.

  She pulled a gun, and I screamed a warning. Ever
yone ducked, a waiter tackled Sarah, and the bullet hit an overhead light, knocking it out.

  Shades of the wild west. And I didn’t want to be the sheriff.

  Justice was becoming a fuzzy gray spot in my eye. I got up and walked out and left others to deal with it. I didn’t even get my gumbo.

  I thought I heard nuns singing Christmas carols as I strode up the hill, huddled inside my jacket. My breath smoked in the chill night air. The real wreaths on the street lamps smelled of pine, reminding me of my desire for a normal holiday with pretty lights and presents. My laugh emerged as a sarcastic bark.

  I’d just killed a man and didn’t deserve a normal Christmas, but there you have it. We can’t always get what we want, but sometimes we get what we need. Obviously, I needed justice.

  I dodged a purple bat swirling up from an open manhole. A tourist snapped a picture with his cell phone. Was he telling the world about his hallucinogenic experience in the Zone?

  Andre’s proclamation about selling by Friday had doomed what was left of my day. I trudged up the hill, admiring the spotlight on Mrs. B’s front porch.

  The DGs were finishing painting the once-blackened exterior in a bright blue with green trim to match the rest of the house. A bowl of punch and cookies had been set up on a folding table on the new porch, along with one of Tim’s dilapidated Christmas trees.

  There was still some good in the world, I had to remember, watching Cora scarf a cookie and genially elbow one of the painter boys.

  “Can anyone join the party?” I asked as I reached the steps. I hadn’t had any supper, and those cookies looked good.

  Hanks handed me a paint brush and pointed at an unfinished corner. “Everyone’s welcome as long as they work!”

  Maybe the Zone needed more innocent idiots. I painted and I ate cookies but I couldn’t forget that by Saturday, we might all be out on the street—and Andre would be moving on.

  ***

  Thursday morning I woke up realizing that If I wanted to save the Zone, I couldn’t do everything myself. I needed my own posse, by own Do-Good Inc. It’s not that I hadn’t been aware that I could do more with a little help from my friends. It was more that I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone’s actions but my own. But our problems were community wide, so the solution had to be also. Big duh, Tina.