Never get between Sam and food. You just don't do it. It's one of those unwritten laws your best friends tell you about. Don't look in Ms. Tate's car trunk. Never make sudden moves around Romy when she's drinking coffee. Duck whenever Vanessa is around just because it will likely save your life. And NEVER get between Sam and a good piece of fried chicken...
"I smell chicken."
"Focus, Sam," Aitch said quietly to the short blond next to him in the doorway of the back office.
"I am..." Sam continued sniffing the air, detecting the unmistakable aroma of warm, fried chickeny goodness filling the squarish office, her eyes seeking the source amid the cluttered room.
The back office was a small and windowless room behind the abandoned video rental storefront that faced a downtown side street and was just one of many vacant shops that lined the street.
"Not on the chicken, Sam."
Aitch began rifling through papers on the only desk in the office. There was a table near the door and the walls were covered by shelving full of cardboard boxes and empty VHS cases. On the desk was a partially eaten burger that led Aitch to believe it was recently occupied.
His eyes slowly drifted back to the burger. Double cheeseburger. Plain. No ketchup. No mustard. Nothing. Odd. That was a change in diet. Back in Iraq it was always heavy on the onions. Why would that have changed? Unless...
"It is chicken!" Sam exclaimed, discovering the source of the delicious smell coming from a takeout container on a shelf, her hands rooting around inside of it.
"Sam!" aitch admonished, turning his head to face the distracting blond and finally catching a scent of fried chicken. "...what kind?"
Sam looked away from the box at Aitch. "BF Wangs crispy and tangy..." she yanked out a drumstick and took a big chomp, ripping meat away from bone. "...mmmm..."
Aitch frowned.
What was a burger doing over here and a box of chicken doing over there? Both relatively fresh. If there was only one person using this office, which is what they were expecting to find, this information would not make any sense.
"Sam..." Aitch began. "Stop drooling and pay attention."
"Hey!" Sam exclaimed, pulling out another piece of chicken. "Thighs!"
"...?" Aitch stared at her. Blinked. "Oooh, dibs!" He snatched the thigh out of the air after Sam deftly tossed it to him from across the room and he was about to take a bite except that he was interrupted by the familiar pockmarked face of the figure in the doorway and he paused.
"I have a gun," the figure said in a Southern accent, a rather obvious statement considering that the pistol was plainly seen in his right fist and pointing directly at Aitch.
"Mumf ma muk...?" mumbled Sam around a drum stick she was tearing into. She swallowed. "...and I have a drum!"
Never taking his eyes from Aitch, the figure yelled: "Put my chicken down!"
"Bite me!" Sam yelled back.
"Sam!" Aitch admonished, looking her way. "Be quiet...wait! Is that sauce?"
Sam nodded vigorously. "Unhun..."
"BF Wangs Special Edition Spicy Toledo 9 Dipping Sauce?"
Sam continued to nod, biting into her drum that was laden with the rich reddish chicken sauce. She rummaged around the box, pulled out another sauce cup and showed it to Aitch. "Yah-ha!"
The figure frowned and growled. "I can shoot you!" He glared at Aitch as he took a step forward.
The tackle came so fast from the left, like the flash of a camera, that even the best quarterback would have been blindsided as Sam flew into the figure and sending them both crashing into a wall shelf.
The gun fired. Aitch dodged right on instinct. The slug missed him by inches that seemed as good as miles to him. Military war honed reflexes and a tub of luck had saved his life.
The shelf and its contents came raining down on the figure and the blond she devil as they were sprawled on the floor. Boxes and bits of paper, empty cases and debris semi buried them. Sam knocked most of them away as best she could and scrambled to her feet, the chicken drum stuck in her teeth like the death grip of a lioness on her prey.
That was when the easy part was over.
There was a second guy. There was always a second guy. The thug. The muscle. The guy that did the grunt work. The guy you had to go through to get to the brain of the operation.
In a sudden flash of logic, it all made sense. There had to have been a second guy.
As Aitch regained his feet and saw the second guy, the first thing he noticed was just how big he was. A towering seven footer, easy. Probably breaking the scales at over 300 pounds, not all of which he suspected was fat. A big, thick head attached directly to the shoulders with no visible neck. Angry dark eyes and a snarling twisted mouth. Hands stretched out like slabs of meat and sausages.
He was big.
The second thing that Aitch noticed was that he really only had time to notice the first thing. The man charged at him like a locomotive on a downward track. Aitch barely even had time to register the growl.
All Sam noticed was the wind and how fast the big man moved as he flew past her.
The stars and birdies began to fade as Aitch tried to suck back in the air that had been forcibly removed from his lungs and wondered how he came to be on the floor, on his back, staring at the ceiling with his spine screaming at him and what all the growling and crashing was about.
Aitch lifted his head off the floor and looked down the length of his body at the source of the noise. His brain immediately complained about this movement. He saw the big bull of a man being ridden by a blond demon a fraction of his size as if this was a rodeo. Sam was mounted on the man's shoulders and repeatedly punching him in the head and face as they spun about the room and her jaws clenched tightly to the drum stick she was currently eating.
Mental note to himself: Never get between Sam and food...
When Sam and the bull went smashing through the drywall and into the storefront, Aitch decided he had better get into the game before Sam did the bull a serious injury and he struggled to his feet, despite his body trying to convince him that this was a very bad idea.
Aitch charged through the doorway and leaped at the bull, impacting his shoulders against something solid enough to jar him right down his spine. His body began to argue against continuing this action. Or any action. And thought it was a good time to just sit down on the floor until this whole matter was over.
Sam was the first to go through the store window and into the street.
The bull threw Aitch next. He hit the pavement with a heavy grunt and rolled unsteadily to his feet. He stumbled over to Sam and helped her up as the bull came charging through the broken window frame and into the street to continue the rather one sided fight.
Joy.
Aitch threw a punch to his face. Like hitting granite. His hand felt numb and broken. It hurt.
The bull smacked Aitch upside the head so hard that his vision exploded with stars and flares as his body almost flipped over sideways. The familiar feel of the hard pavement was softer that them impact made by the bull's hand.
Sam was in the bull's face like a hissing alley cat, her legs wrapped around his ample mid section and her hands clawing at his face. Her growls muffled by the chicken leg in her mouth.
The bull grabbed Sam by her waist and pulled her off of him, easily lifting her up and looking like he was about to body slam her to the street.
Aitch hit him upside the head with a metal waste can that was sitting on the curb. Sam was dropped on her butt. The bull turned. Aitch hit him again in the face. The bull snarled and shrugged it off. Aitch hit him again - nope, he didn't.
The bull grabbed the can in mid swing and ripped it from Aitch's grip. Then, he began to systematically beat Aitch to the ground with the can.
Sam jumped on the bull's shoulders from behind again and hammered her tiny fists on his head like he was a bug she was trying to squash. The look in her eyes said that she believed that this was a distinct possibility. Until the bull stopped wailing on Aitch and dropped the can to reach behind his head at the annoying gnat on his back, grabbing at the blond annoyance.
Aitch was back up and in the bull's face, gripping the collar of his jacket and snapping the palm of his hand into the jaw and upper sinus area.
In a fast move, the bull caught Aitch's neck in his hand and began to choke the life out of him. Spots were creeping into Aitch's vision as he felt the vise grip close on his windpipe and his own two hands on the bull's single fist grip nowhere nearly strong enough to break it. He was struggling for air.
Sam dug fingers into eye sockets. The bull released Aitch. Aitch crumpled to the ground, coughing and holding his throat, trying to take in much needed air through his tortured airway. The bull grabbed Sam's wrists, holding her in place on his shoulders and ran backwards to slam her hard into a panel van. Hard.
The wind left Sam's mouth in a whoosh.
The impact with the van sent her splaying back against the cold metal and she slid down onto her ass, clutching her chest and sucking back air through the meat clenched in her jaw.
She leaned back against the side of the van and looked up at the helicopter hovering above the intersection. She thought that this was an odd sight. She read the identification on the side of the bird: NEWS 7. There was a camera in the doorway pointed down at her.
Sam made a face and hoped that Carly wasn't planning to watch the news tonight. Carly never watches the news. Right? She was safe. Right?
Grunts from Aitch brought Sam's attention back to the fight and she launched herself to her feet. She ran over to the bull as he was throwing Aitch over the hood of a parked car. There was a crunch of metal on metal somewhere near them. One car hitting another. A siren in the distance. A cop shouting that he was a cop.
A uniform, a beat officer, joined the fight, cutting between Sam and the bull. He was waving a stun gun. The bull batted the stun gun out of the cop's hand. It went sailing into the air. Two meaty fists came down hard on either shoulder of the cop and the sound of snapping bone was way too clearly heard.
The cop went down.
Sam stepped on the cop's hip and used him as a launch pad to jump at the bull, arms reaching out, fingers like claws.
The bull caught her in midair by her neck and belt. He was just that fast. Way too fast. He turned her and carried her a few feet to slam her down onto the hood of a car. He lifted her up and slammed her down harder. He lifted her again and for good measure slammed her a third time onto the hood.
Sam was dazed.
The bull grabbed her throat to break her neck. The grip was like iron. Her teeth bit down harder on the meat of the fowl in her mouth.
Sam's right hand flailed around while her left hand tried to break the grip on her small neck. She needed to find something, anything. Whatever she could use against this monster. Things were getting dim. She was fading. She could barely breath. Something. Anything. Wiper blade. Antenna. Or...
She jerked her head to see her right hand and make certain. Yeah. That'll work.
Sam pressed the trigger and pressed the prods of the stun gun to the bull's exposed meaty bit that might pass for some form of neck. She held it there as the crackle of the electric shock buzzed and she smelt the change in the air around them. She felt the current surge through the bull and into her own body. They were both frozen. It was like a billion ants were holding a family reunion on her skin, crawling over her body and laying eggs.
Her finger relaxed on the trigger. The stun gun stopped stunning. Sam stopped thinking. The world faded for a few moments, like a train vanishing down a tunnel.
The bull released her neck and slid off of her. She felt that even though her brain was still trying to restart her body. Slowly, Sam cleared her vision and rejoined the world. She struggled to bring the stun gun up to her lips and kiss it.
Aitch staggered over to the side of the car, leaning against the passanger side for support. He looked down at her. He looked like crap. His face was cut in a dozen places. his skin was bloody and bruised, starting to swell. A stream of red ran from his left nostril and a gash over his left eyebrow. His lip was badly split. And he was laughing.
"Okay. I get it. It's really good chicken..."
For the first time, Sam realized that she still had the drum stick firmly clenched in her mouth. She let the stun gun fall from her hand to clatter to the street and grabbed the chicken leg in her mouth, tearing off a chunk as she removed it. It hurt to chew, but the meat tasted so damn good.
Sam smiled.
"Told you I smelled chicken..."