Chapter 13 "Seeing Blind"
SEATTLE
6: 35 AM
THE NEXT MORNING
A black and lime green Yamaha sports bike slowed down at the end of the long line at the sector stop at South Market. The officers stationed at the check point were waving people in as fast as they could, but the line still ran twenty feet down the road, and was filled with the sounds of upset patrons trying to get to their respective places. The sun was just beginning to come up over the condemned buildings of Sector seven; its rays not yet reaching the contemporary glass sky scrapers in Sector Eight, the beginning of the high end district of Seattle.
"Lets keep the line moving," A Sector cop dressed in black riot gear waved the crowd through. On the other side of him his partner was checking the authenticity of sector passes that were being waved in his face, pulling aside those individuals whose passes he found a problem with. Those that didn't make the cut waited in another newly created line to have their possessions searched without the cops giving any regards to whether or not consent was given. Martial Law new no such thing as decent protocol towards its citizens.
"Helmet off buddy," The first sector cop ordered to the rider on the motorcycle. "I need to see your mug."
Two leather-gloved hands moved up to remove the helmet. A second later the rider's blonde hair and brown eyes appeared in front of the cop's line of sight. A few teenage girls who were hanging out ten feet away from the checkpoint roamed their eyes all over the bike rider. They were part of a group of partiers from the previous night who had decided to finally go home at five a.m. and sleep off some of the shit they had gotten into. The looks on the girls faces suggested that they were most likely thinking dirty filthy thoughts that could qualify for triple X porn.
"Is that better GI Joe?" Zack glowered at the man. The face may be GQ in looks, but the tone and attitude was all hard ass X5.
The cop ignored Zack's macho visage, and held out his hand. "Need to see your sector pass."
"'Fraid I don't live here," Zack informed dryly. "So I'm not qualified for a referenced blip on your radar."
"Sir, anyone who doesn't have a sector pass is not allowed access into the city." The cop's tone raised slightly, a warning that he was getting pissed off. "Which begs the question of how the hell you got here in the first place." He now stared Zack up and down like he was street trash. He removed the M16 strapped diagonally in a holder around his chest and back, and aimed it at Zack. "I'm going to have to ask you to step off the bike and come with me."
Zack jumped from his bike, positioning his arms at the edges of the seat to act as leverage for his legs that reversed jack knifed and nailed the cop in the face. The man fell to the ground on his back. His partner removed his weapon. "Hands in the air!"
Zack grabbed his gun from him, unloading the magazine from the bottom, and slammed the body of the automatic rifle across the man's chest, landing him flat on his back.
"Hey!" The first cop scrambled to his feet just as Zack revved up the motorcycle and peeled out of the Sector stop, only a few centimeters away from running over the cop's foot. They watched Zack drove down the road; but they couldn't go after him due to congestion of people around the checkpoint. Some of the people at the Sector stop even went so far as to deliberately box the cops in two a tiny three-foot radius around their sector stop. The Sector Police was a corrupt institution in Seattle, and people did whatever they could if they felt they were harassing someone.
"You go sexy boy!" one of the teenagers, a thin pale white girl with dyed black hair and green eyes shouted at Zack, chanting at him like she was a spectator up in the stands at a high school football game.
Zack slowed the bike down, stopping it right in front of the two girls.
"Hey baby, what can we do for you?" The black haired girl's friend asked in a sultry voice. She was an equally white skinned girl with dyed purple hair among a scattering of black chunked layers and cropped to just under her chin. She was dressed in black cargo pants and army green singlet. Her pink tongue darted out of her mouth to seductively lick the tiny silver ring that had been pierced on the pink flesh of her lip.
= = = =
"Yo only take 'em thugged out
Slightly bugged out, fuck with his tongue out
Know the job ain't getting done, until the body getting drugged out
Hot boy, keep me right
Play your part and I'll keep it tight
Where else you gonna be in the middle of the night
But up in the sheets with me aiight"
= = = =
Zack pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of the inner pocket of his black leather jacket.
"You don't know me." He handed the money to the girl. "You don't know what I look like."
"It's gonna be hard to forget a body like yours." The girl reminded, stuffing the bill into her bra hidden under her shirt. She held out her hand a second later with black nail polish on the fingernails and a crimson red wristband with the words: 'Suck Me' printed in a white jagged script across it's woven surface. "Maybe anotha twenty for my girl will better erase my memory."
Zack didn't question, or say anything to that. He simply pulled out another twenty-dollar bill and handed it off to the other girl.
= = = =
Gangsta, true to your gang, street master
You the one I need when there's beef, street blaster
Ain't afraid to stop a cat, plus pop a cat, huh
Soldier, cash money, rule your world
What's topping that?
= = =
The girl in the cargo pants smiled at his action. "You got a deal baby." She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned forward, intending to kiss him.
= = = =
Hot boyz
Baby you got what I want
Won't you really come and satisfy me
I be lovin' you like endlessly
= = = =
Zack snatched her wrists from behind his neck and pulled her off of him. "Didn't your mom ever teach you not to kiss strangers little girl?" He shoved her back from his bike and revved up the engine.
The girl held onto one of her wrist; his action had caused it to sting. But what hurt the most was her ego at being called a little girl. She hadn't been aware that it was never Zack's intentions to pick her up.
Zack raised the kickstand, but before he could take off someone shouted at him:
"Yo asshole!" A blurry haze ran into him and knocked him off the bike. "What's the deal with you tailin' me?" Jondy reached out one hand and turned off the engine of the motorcycle and removed the key from the ignition. She pocketed the key inside her dark denim low riders. She felt the stares of the two teenagers on her and she turned to them, saying: "Recess is over girls." Jondy held out her hand in a hitchhikers formation, pointing behind her. "Get lost."
The two girls glared at Jondy. She was only a few years older then them, and they actually considered getting into a cat fight brawl with her, but there was a fierceness in her eyes that told them if they tried anything she'd lay all their shit bare. So they moved on, but not before they whispered the ever-popular vulgar slam of: "bitch" at her before they left.
Zack jumped to his feet and stared Jondy down. "What the hell are you doing?" He wiped grains of sand off of his left cheek with his hand.
"I think the question is what the hell are you doin' followin' me into Seattle Zack?" Jondy spat back, her eyes shooting daggers at him. "The incestial humping action wasn't enough so you had to to tail my ass too?"
"It was better then you trying to make it with some anonymous guy who would sell you out for cash money the second he found out you had more to offer then just your pussy." Zack had made a loop around Jondy and now stood in a position that was in a location exactly ninety degrees away from the location he had been before. Military interrogators made this same move in order to trick their victims minds into believing they were surrounding them on all sides.
"Just what the fuck do you think I was gonna do?" Jondy growled at him. She took three steps closer to him. "Hook up with some sexy stranger and go Praying Mantis on his ass after we hit it? Or did you just think all your sisters are equipped with pussy's that start talking to people about how their momma's are genetically engineered?" She was not right up in his face, as close to him as he was before when he got up on her in San Francisco. "If you ever try to do that shit to me again, the next piece of ass you grab is gonna be your own after I rearrange your balls." She backed away from his personal space and started to walk off.
"I know you came here to find Maxie." Zack said this in a completely casual tone. He had the kind of voice that could command and threaten without the pitch every rising above normal range.
"You're putting yourself in danger by being here."
Jondy whirled back around to face him and said: "She's my sister Zack. I care about her." She was now just one foot shy of the position in front of him that she had just vacated. "I thought you did too."
"She's too reckless for her own good." Zack returned, his eyes taking on a familiar look that always came over them when ever he talked about Max. "Living out here has corrupted her, she could bring us all down."
"After we escaped from Manticore I was under the impression that we'd die for each other if we had too." Jondy hissed at him in a voice that just went one level above 'pissed off'. "It was you who came up with this ideology about keeping away from each other to so we wouldn't breach safety regulations. It's bogus propagandist crap Zack, the same thing they taught us back there. Why'd you run if you're still going to live by their rules?"
"All it takes is the shit hitting the fan just one time Jondy." Zack reminded. His voice was at a dangerously low level. "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If Max slips up because of this fuckin' casual lifestyle she leads and gets herself captured, all of us are at risk for exposure."
"Not to mention the fact that Maxie could be killed in the process, or did you just forget to mention that?" Jondy snapped. She could never understand the way Zack was about Max. He cared for all his sisters, but out of the lot of them, he loved Maxie first, then her. "We're all at risk for exposure everyday we walk out on the street. But I'm sure as hell not gonna live like a hermit for the rest of my life just cause some boys in black helicopters have a bug up their ass. And if Manticore's whole plan for haulin' us back there was to exploit the weakest link Zack, they'd a been all over you by now."
"Did you tell Max I was here?" Zack asked, changing the subject because he wasn't about to admit that he had nothing else noteworthy to say on the subject.
"I'm not your errand girl Zack." Jondy spat out a quick return. "You want Max to get the hook up on you bein' in Seattle, you drop the word on her yourself." She headed back over to her own motorcycle, a silver Kawasaki Ninja 350 that was parked by the chain-linked fence beside the sector stop. She had been out cruising and had seen Zack at the sector stop, and it took her all of three seconds to decide to jump him. She pulled out the ignition keys from her pocket. "You seriously need to find a strip club and get some Zack, cause if you try to put the moves on me again I'm gonna beat on your ass." She climbed on her bike and cranked on the engine, revving up the DOHC motor so that is sounded like lion roaring before she pulled away from the fence and took off down the road.
*****
FOGGLE TOWERS
Logan's normally empty living room was now filled with people. The Hispanic woman had fallen asleep in one of his two overstuffed leather chairs, her body curled around a black cotton woven cushion she clutched possessively to her chest.
Cree had been too exhausted to go back to her hotel so Logan offered her his guest room, but Cree declined. The Hispanic girl had made a sort of sanctuary for herself on the couch and Cree decided to stay with her so Cree wouldn't be alone in a strange place. She wound up sacking out on the leather couch, stretched out like a cat on her side. She had pulled her hair back in one long single braid and it rested like a sleeping black garden snake between her tanned shoulders. Her head did not rest on the couch cushions, but rather was pillowed on the blue cotton T-shirt that covered Ty's chest. She had not asked him to stay the night with her. He had simply been there incredibly late - even after Max had decided to turn in for the night - and had wound up falling asleep on the couch. One of Ty's arms was draped across Cree's abdomen, with the hand attached to it resting on her hipbone covered by her jeans.
It was this scene that Max came into when she walked out barefoot from Logan's bedroom. Max normally didn't sleep at all, but had managed to doze off in Logan's bed, mostly because Logan was IN his bed, spooning her to him. But even with that kind of tempting comfort she didn't sleep more then a few hours. She had woken up at six and wanted to get a good ride in on her Ninja before she left for work. Her boots clunked on the hardwood floor to the kitchen where a hot pot of coffee had already been brewed. Logan had become accustom to Max staying over and rising at the crack of dawn so he always programmed his coffee pot for five in the morning.
She poured herself a cup of liquid chivalry, and took a sip from its hearty blackness. A slight rustling noise caught her attention from the living room. She turned around to look at the people occupying the room, but none of them had moved from their positions. She thought at first she was just imagining things, but then reminded herself that that was absurd. She was Manticore, and Manticore soldiers didn't just IMAGINE they heard a noise. She set her coffee cup down and padded stealthy out of the kitchen and into the living room.
She scanned the entire length of the living room, careful not to wake up the group that was crashed there. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, the windows were still locked, nothing out of place. She heard the noise again, and this time she realized it wasn't coming from the living room, but from the computer room.
She made her way across the floor and into the office-like space. Logan always left his computer system on in case informants tried to send him anything. And that was how she found it when she stepped inside the room to examine it. His marquee screen saver - a quote from Aristotle: 'absolute power corrupts absolutely' - moved across the black background screen on the monitor.
Max stepped inside, carefully avoiding the legs of Logan's computer chair to check the windows that were recessed in the wall beside his Hewlet Packard CPU. She listened for the noise again, but this time there was only silence. As a solider though, she knew that total silence was the worst sound to hear when casing out a location; it didn't mean you're enemy wasn't out there, it meant that they were silently lying in wait. She took another step deeper inside the space, examining the fifty square foot room from all angles.
She felt something come up behind her, and for a moment she suspected it to be Cree, but the hand that covered her mouth and drew her back shot that theory to hell.
She grabbed at the arm and spun the nameless person around so that their back slammed into the wall. She kicked her leg out up high and aimed it at the throat of her attacker. Her face contoured when the features of the man came into view. "Zack?"
Zack stared down at her foot at his throat. "Still wanna do that?" He pushed against her boot with his right hand, causing her to loose her balance and fall back against the computer desk. He stepped over to her. "Impressive form though," he said holding out his right hand for her to take.
Logan appeared seconds later in his office, surprised as hell to see Zack, of all people in his apartment.
"Max," Cree stood beside Logan in the door less entry of the computer room, her switchblade poised for an attack in her right hand. "Are you okay?" Her clothes were rumpled from sleeping in them but her hair was still as smooth as if she had just braided it, a flawless feature of oriental genes.
"Yeah," Max stared up at Zack. "I just felt like going for a ride." She ignored Zack's gesture, shoving past him like he had just put the moves on her for unsolicited sex.
"Looks like that was someone else's game plan too." Cree hissed this under her breath. She glowered at Zack so fiercely that if a glare alone determined someone's ass kicking capabilities - Zack would have been a vivisected sack of guts in front of her. She closed the switchblade in her hand in one hard motion, letting this man know that she had destructive designs on him.
"What do you want?" Max crossed her arms over her chest and faced Zack in a stand-off position. "'Cause I'll find it hard to believe that you just stopped by out of brotherly love."
Cree was a little stunned by Max's remark. "He's your brother?" She found it hard to understand how any family was so comfortable with each other that breaking into apartments to meet up was just an average event.
"He's something." Max stated, turning her eyes back up to Zack. "But we're not gonna get into what my description of 'something' is at the moment."
Ty suddenly appeared in the doorway, slightly out of breath from having made a mad dash to the computer room when he realized that there was one person in there he didn't recognize. "You guys okay?" His hair was pushed to one side from where he slept and his eyes were still heavy from not having adequate time to wake up completely.
"I see you keep a posse now Maxie." Zack said, observing Ty. The other man was a good one-inch shorter then Zack, and Zack used this difference to his advantage. He looked Ty up and down like a Marine drill sergeant would to a recruit who had just gotten off the bus. "Though I'm not impressed with the selection."
"Well we can't all be an arrogant prick like you Zack." Max returned harshly. She loved her brother, but right now Zack was being a shit, and she hated shits. "To add on to which is my previous remark: 'What the hell do you want? And you've only got around three seconds before I stop caring about what the answer is."
"I came here to stop Jondy," Zack snapped at her in a response.
Max screwed her face up at the extreme dramatic statement he had just made. She said: "Stop her from what?"
"From seeing you." Zack cut in immediately after she had gotten through talking, making the two remarks almost sound like they were spoken from the same person who had merely changed the tone in their voice.
Max glared at him for that remark, masking the hurt in her eyes behind the pissed off tone she replied with: "Is that because I wasn't a good docile little follower to her big brother?"
"You're too reckless for your own good Max," Zack came back.
Max cocked her head at him in disbelief. "Am I? Cause I thought us getting out on our own was a step towards actually having a real life. Or was I just not present for that pep talk before you made us split up?"
"I wanted to protect you!" Zack hissed. "If I let you all stay together Lydeck-" Zack halted in his speech, glancing at the two strangers in the room that he did NOT want to be let in on their past. "They would've been able to track you down easily and dragged you back."
"So you just abandoned eleven of your brothers and sisters in some snowy woods to fend for themselves?" Logan asked . In actuality it was more of an enraged demand then a casual question.
"They were soldiers," Zack said, stepping right in front of Logan's face. "Would you rather I hunkered them all down into a single unit so armed snipers could locate them?" Zack was so close that Logan could make out the tiny bits of fuzz on his chin. "Could you live with that choice if I had gone your pussy foot conservative way?" His remark was directed at Logan's relationship with Max.
(In Spanish:)
"It's you!" The Hispanic girl had woken up and was standing a few inches away from Zack, taking in his features as if she had just located a lost soul mate that had gone M.I.A. She closed the gap between her and Zack fairly quickly. "I can't believe it". Her hands reached out to touch the sides of Zack's face, griping his head in them.
Zack was confused about whom she was, actually confused as hell was a more accurate description. But then-like the clarity that came to someone when they had just figured out the answer to a complex mathematical equation-it came to him. "Maria?"
/FLASH: (Mexico City)
Zack stood in front of a fruit stand in an open village square market. He picked up a single brown pear, examining it in his leather-gloved hand.
(In Spanish)
"That's a good one Sir." A portly Hispanic man behind the stand praised Zack's selection. "I can see you are a man of very good taste."
"How much do you want for it?" Zack asked back in Spanish. Manticore trained all of them in knowing the languages of all major countries. It wouldn't do to have technologically advanced killing machines that couldn't find their own way down a street in another country.
The man was impressed at a blonde haired-obviously American boy-that knew how to speak Spanish so flawlessly. (In Spanish): "For you Sir, five pesos." He chuckled from deep in his belly, a noise full of gusto and warmth from a man who would turn no one away that stopped at his house for food. He turned to the wooden lean-to built in the back of the vegetable stand where he and his family lived. "Maria!"
A young twenty-year-old woman with long think black-brown hair emerged from behind a raggedy woven blanket that served as the lean-to's front door. She wore a dark maroon sleeveless sundress scattered with patterns of white Lilies with a deep cut U neckline. A silver cross was suspended from a matching chain around her neck, just an inch the tiny dip in her throat between her aorta and jugular veins.
"My daughter." The shop owner spoke again, introducing the woman to Zack.
The woman turned her attention to Zack.(In Spanish): "Would you like that in a bag Sir?"
"No senorita." (No Miss) "Zack returned polietly, finding his attention constantly wandering back to her deep chocolate brown eyes. He took the pear from her outstretched hands. (In Spanish:) "Inner mystery shouldn't be ruined by bagging a piece of fruit for a stranger." He handed her the coin amount for the price of the pear.
Her eyes blinked up to his, and her hand ever so slightly brushed against his forearm when she went to take the money. "Gracias Senior." (Thank you Sir.")/
= = = =
Maria Maria
She reminds me of a West Side Story
Growing up in Spanish Harlem
She's living the life just like a movie star
= = = =
/FLASH AGAIN: Five days have gone by. Scene cuts to a dingy puke green painted hotel room with a single rusted wrought iron bed with a filthy worn mattress and a crudely put together nightstand where a single candlesticks rests, lighting the tiny room with it's flame. A large colored print of the Lady of Guadeloupe in a gilt frame hangs on the wall above the bed where Zack and Maria are tangled under the dirty sheets, moving in sensual slow, powerful movements./
= = = =
She fell in love in East L.A.
To the sounds of the guitar, yeah, yeah
Played by Carlos Santana
= = = =
/FLASH FORWARD:
Zack mounts his motorcycle that was parked on the dusty deep hued red of the clay road. He raises the silver kickstand as a black jeep goes by. Maria is sitting up front, and her eyes immediately spot him on the road. She orders her brother- who is driving-to slow down and stands up in the jeep intending to wave at him. None of this would have been suspicious to her brothers who didn't know she was involved with Zack. Often time's girls would take favors in catching the eye of American men. It was due in part to a bloated view they had of the 'effects' Western Men carried around in their pockets.
As soon as they slowed down three armed guerrilla soldiers swarmed on the Jeep, shooting off rounds from their AK-47's. Maria's brothers were both hit, and fell back against the windshield, their blood, and the brain matter of one splattering against the glass.
= = = =
Stop the looting, stop the shooting
Pick pocking on the corner
See as the rich is getting richer
The poor is getting poorer
= = = =
Maria and her younger sister screamed as the men forced their way into the Jeep aiming their guns at them, hissing at them in poor grammatical Spanish: "Shut up you bitch!" One of them slammed the butt of his gun across Maria's face. The blow stunned her, but she didn't pass out. Blood trickled down her forehead as she fought her way to one of the Jeep's windows, calling out: "Zack!" /
= = = =
Se mira Maria on the corner
Thinking of ways to make it better
In my mailbox there's an eviction letter
Somebody just said see you later
= = = =
(In Spanish:)
"Yes! It's Maria". The woman's agreed, putting a hand to chest to identify the name to her body, one that had resembled a young teenager's features the night before. But now a much more different figure emerged, high cheek bones, soft curves, long shapely legs, all the characteristics of a woman in her early twenties. The tight mini dress she had been forced to wear, along with the clown like amounts of make-up made her look much younger, like a thirteen-year-old who had overdone it to impress an older boy. But now, standing in an old gray tank top and track pants - the same ones Max had leant to Cree after she had been attacked at Crash - Maria's full age and maturity began to emerge like the petals of a Chinese Moon Flower in the nighttime air. "I can't believe it's you!" Maria's faced contoured in a mixture of the extreme sadness and relief the spouse of a soldier would use when greeting their loved one back from a war. She started to throw her arms around Zack but he halted her.
Zack once again took in her chocolate brown eyes, remembering the look of pure terror in them at the guerilla soldiers forced their way into the driver's seat and speed down the dusty road with her at gunpoint. She had cried out his name, a summons that he didn't respond too. He wasn't a heroic lover; he was a super soldier who had been taught that all civilian life was expendable to avoid unnecessary exposure.
(In Spanish:)
"What are you doing here?" Zack asked the same question of Maria that Max had just did of him, effectively changing the subject.
Maria glanced behind her at Cree who was standing next to Ty. "I have guardian angel." A grateful smile came across her face to the woman she considered her savior. Her expression changed a second later however when her eyes shifted back over to Zack. "Why didn't you come for me?" In her head she still saw him standing on the road watching the jeep drive away. She was certain that he had loved her, but he had betrayed her. "Why didn't you help me?" She hated him with every fiber of her being, hated him for not rescuing her from those horrible men who sold her off into a foreign country, only being an observer to a horrific scene. But there was always a part deep inside of her that remembered the man who would make love to her for three nights in a row. Who never looked down on her because she was poor and lived in the back of a fruit stand. And that part still craved the feeling she had when she was with him, and that was why his betrayal hurt so bad. "Why didn't you come?" she repeated again, agony in her voice.
Zack didn't respond with words, and instead placed one hand under Maria's chin to raise her head to meet his eyes.
Maria abruptly ended his movements with a hard slap across his face. (In Spanish): "You let them take me away and turn me out like a dog!" she screamed. Her eyes were icy on his and cut through him like a frigid wind. "What kind of man are you?
"What the hell kind of a woman are you if you gave it up to a man you're not even sure of?" Zack growled in return.
Maria slapped him again: "Go to hell Zack!" She was close to spitting in his face. "Go to hell and take your lies with you!"
Zack forcefully yanked her by the arm.
"Let her go!" Cree pulled Zack off of Maria with one movement, but Zack was quick to react to Cree's maneuver and threw her back into the wall. Zack stared her down after she slid to the floor.
Cree picked herself up off the ground slowly, brushing dust off of her body. "Coming from one prick to another I consider that a compliment." She spoke of Zac's move of throwing her against the wall.
Zack glared at her, unimpressed by her burn. "You think you got balls little girl?" His voice had a 'bring it on' quality.
"That's enough!" Max stepped between Cree and her brother, one hand on his chest to keep him
"Get out of my way Maxie." Zack hissed at her.
"Cut the crap Zack." Max's voice was dangerously low.
Zack grabbed her by the arm the same way he had done Maria. "You can't take me on Maxie." He goaded her, locking a hand around her chest. "You'll loose."
"Sit down," Max grabbed a hold of his hand. She flipped over him and wrenched his arm behind his back and threw him into Logan's computer chair. "And shut up." She stepped over to him before he got the chance to move. "Now you're gonna tell me the real story of what the hell your doing here, and if I detect any lyin' you're in a world of hurt cause I'm a lie detector."
Instead of answering her Zack whirled around and smashed a three-inch hole into the wall above Logan's computer. Small bits of jagged concrete fell like sand from the point of impact onto the floor.
"Detect that." Zack growled, ignoring Cree's stunned look on him having just punched through solid concrete. The tiny fragments crunched under his boots as stepped over them, heading out of the room.
Maria's eyes were large at what she had just witnessed, and one hand reached out to grab his arm. "Zack?"
Zack pulled free from her grip. "You figured out what kind of man I am so back the hell off!" he stormed out of the room with Maria watching him the entire time.
*****
SEATTLE POLICE DEPARTMENT
35TH PRECINCT
7: 35 AM
"You gotta be fuckin' kidding me," Captain Rodgers-the head of the thirty-fifth precinct- spoke in a surprised tone as he leaned against the front of his black painted desk amidst the sea of others just like it. He stared at the barrage of women-dressed down to the nines in streetwalker attire- all huddled together in front of his office furniture. Rodgers was a middle aged white man, with an army style crew and a pinched bull dog face that always turned pink when he was mad, which was what it was doing at the moment. He was wearing a white dress shirt with black pinstripes with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, red tie and black suspenders. His issued Sig Sauer handgun rested in a leather holster strapped to the waistline of his black trousers.This wardrobe made him look more like he belonged in the Mafia then on a police force.
"Officer Amston," Ruiz began speaking again to Ming, who was positioned in front of all the girls, like the leader of an all female gang. "The kind of lax protocol you just asked me to engage in might be allowed at the LAPD by it doesn't swing here."
"Since when is offering shelter to a group of battered women considered a form of 'lax protocol' Detective Ruiz?" Ming shot back, glowering at the man, not appreciating his insinuation about what cops in Los Angeles were like. She had roused all of the girls at six that morning, moving them out of the bakery and onto the street, where for a while she didn't know where the hell she would take them. They couldn't be put up in a hotel, and if they stayed on the street any longer people would start looking for them. She finally landed on the steps of the Seattle Police Department, and after flashing her badge and shouting a few choice words at the lowly desk cop who didn't want to let her in, she had gotten inside to see Detective Ruiz.
Ruiz shifted his attention back to the women again. Almost all of them were dressed in micro minis with sky high heals and make up that would put any drag queen to shame. "They don't look battered to me, okay? The girl I busted doing exotic dances at the back room crapes game in Chinatown looks more battered then them." Most of the police in the city kept a code of silence about the illegal sex industry. Many of the sex trade's prime customers were high-ranking military officials, and those in that position of government threatened to shut down the entire police department if any precinct tried to close down the sex rings or revealed anything about their existence.
Ming's eyes became enraged. "What the hell do you want detective? Explicit proof for you to put a orderly little tag on?" She turned her attention over to the woman she had spoken to last night, speaking once again to her in her native Chinese: "The cop; he thinks you're all lying street trash."
The young Chinese woman's expression shifted from being fearful to pissed off. Shooting an icy look at the Detective she stuck one hand down the front of her tube dress - right in the valley created by her breasts - pulling it out a second later, turning her hand to face Ruiz. Her voice was an angry rush of loud Chinese as she showed the man the smudge of fresh blood that was now streaked across her palm.
"She said it's from one of her bosses at a local bar who allowed to be raped by ten men." Ming translated the woman's words to Ruiz. "The rest is a mixture of Taiwanese, which I don't speak very well, but it roughly translates to: 'Fuck you WASP bitch."
Ruiz went silent for a moment, absorbing in the sting of being cursed at in Chinese. Finally - after enough time had elapsed for him to peel his manhood off the wall - he spoke again: "I have procedures I have to follow all right?" His face had turned from pink to a bright red, making him look like a beet with eyes. "I can't just offer official police protection to every bleeding heart case that walks in here."
"So you're just going to throw them out as tagged meat for anyone to hock, or do you prefer a cash money bribe?" Ming snapped back.
"Look," Ruiz said in more of a sigh then a voice. "I don't have the kind of resources or manpower to service a bunch of terrified hookers with round the clock body guards."
"Let's get one thing straight Detective-" Ming cut in. "Hookers are girls who VOLUNTARILY enter their line of work; not get dragged into it by a bunch of pricks who laughed one time to many at that fuckin' Uranus joke and decided to find someone else to go be thugs with."
"So what do you suggest Amston?" Ruiz asked, crossing his arms over his stout chest. "That I lock these girls up in holding cells with a bunch of lowlifes and drug dealers who would fantasize all night about what to do with them?"
"They have no where else to go." Ming returned, looking at all the scared women standing there, trying to mask their emotions by playing with their hair, looking at the floor, closing their eyes. "Someone's probably already advertised a cash reward for them and in the next few days I guarantee you every pimp and bounty hunter in this city will be out en mass on the streets just waiting for the opportunity to get their cut. So I suggest comb every inch of this damn precinct and fine space for my girls detective, 'cause I'm not about to let them become another gang raped statistic."
Ruiz sighed, trying to figure out something else to say, but there was no way he could compete with this woman's hell fire attitude. "I'll get some guys to see if they can find some clear space. I'm not making any promises, but I'll see what I can do."
"No, you'll see what you WILL do Detective." Ming corrected. She checked her wrist watch quickly "I'm gonna grab some coffee and call my husband, and when I get back I sure as hell better see some officers in this place doin' a VERY efficient job at finding some space for these women."
"Break room's down the hall." Detective Ruiz informed her.
"Appreciate it." Ming returned walking towards the wooden door that exited the room she was in. She placed one hand on the brass knob and glanced back over to Ruiz. "Find them someplace to sit." She opened the door and stepped out, letting it slam behind her.
"Damn," Officer Peterson, a six-foot tall African-American male cop remarked as Ming left through the door.
Ruiz turned to Peterson. "Shut up."
*****
BANGKOK, THAILAND
Mei-Mei walked down the long line of wooden food stalls and children playing with dogs in the muddy road. She was jammed to one side of the street by cars, motorcycle taxis and one lone rice farmer walking alongside his gray mule that was pulling a wooden cart. The Mule grunted hot air in her face as she passed, and her open toed sandal slipped on the turd he just dropped on the ground. She ignored the noxious smell that rose up from it, not even bothering to scrape it off her shoe.
She crossed in front of the farmer a second later, making a diagonal line towards a rotted wooden building, resembling an old barn. The building looked like it has stood there through ancient times. The only proof of its place in the modern world was a suspended neon sign that hung from the side of the building with huge pink Ty characters proclaiming: 'Dance and Sex' A group of teenage boys stood there smoking next to their Honda Motorcycles so interchanged with different parts that many had huge gaps on their engine blocks where the old motors had been taken out and replaced with one with more torque, but not big enough to fill the metal frame. The motors were crudely fused to the body of the bike with a blowtorch, but still there were holes big enough to stick your hand through in all of them.
These boys were rejects from the local gangs. Every summer all of the Thailand street gangs would scout out for new members. Hundreds of skinny, pimply faced teenage wanna be bad asses would line the streets of Bangkok at night to face the initiation tests. Those that made it would be seen screaming down the streets at midnight on their motorcycles, high as a kite on "ya ba" -Thai "mad medicine", what's known as speed in the U.S - cruising along side their gang brothers. The ones that didn't make it spent there days smoking - either ya ba or cigarettes - outside of Go-Go clubs and strip bars, howling at the women as they got off work.
One of these boys - a sixteen year old with dyed red hair, shaved into a crew cut as part of one gang's initiation test - stared at Mei-Mei as she passed by him. (In Thai:) "Hey baby baby, let me have a free night." He undressed her completely with his eyes, and fucked her with his mind. His companions joined in by whistling at her as she passed them.
Mei-Mei ignored them, hoping that they were too stoned to try anything with her. Though they were only teenagers, if they were smoking yaa ba, they could easily take her down because of the rush from the amphetamine. She pushed open the wooden door and entered the wooden building.
No one would have ever guessed it from the outside, but the interior of the dance club was very posh, complete with a long red velvet couch, red velvet carpet, a fountain made out of gray marble and black onyx that squirted water from the mouth of a Buddha. A twenty-inch plasma television hung from black cables off the wall, and was airing a commercial about hair wax removal. A circular reception desk stood in the center of the carpet where an ancient looking woman sat playing dominos and smoking a Virginia Slim cigarette in a long black, lady-like holder.
The woman's head turned up when she heard Mei-Mei approach. She examined Mei-Mei's figure, especially her breast. "You want job you use back door." Her voice was raspy from years of smoking that had also stained her fingertips a sickish yellow hue, which is why she started using the holder. Her long gray hair was pulled into a tight bun on the back of her head and she wore a blue silk kimono with the sash tied into a high bow around her sagging breasts. She took a hit from her cigarette, as she examined Mei-Mei's features. "You bring good money here." When she talked, Mei-Mei could see five black holes where rotted teeth had fallen out of her mouth. "Come back tomorrow and I give you job."
A young woman in a yellow plastic tube dress approached the old lady, bowing to her once. "Mamasan, may I leave early tomorrow? American man promises me a date."
The old woman reached around and smacked the girl in the face with a skinny cracked hand. "Farang (slang for 'American') not gonna take you out on a real date stupid girl. He only want you for your pussy." The decrepit old woman turned her attention back to Mei-Mei "Why I decide to hire stupid fifteen year old child to work I never know. You come here, I don't have to take in any more brats." She turned back to the other girl. "Get out of my face little girl, go watch the Plasma."
The girl bowed again hastily and ran off like she had been sent to her room.
"Please-" Mei-Mei began. "I'm looking for my son. One of your girl told me a man might have brought him here."
The old lady took another drag from her cigarette, blowing the smoke across Mei-Mei's face. A waddle of wrinkled flesh that hung from her neck jiggled as she hacked on phlegm that would never come up. She swallowed painfully before speaking: "Some man bring in little boy. He give me twenty yen so I give him room, but I not running a babysitting service." More smoke from her cigarette. "He was a sickly kid, skinny, no meat. Man shoot him." She spit out the truth so fast that Mei-Mei took a second to react. "He better off." More smoke again. "Too puny to be real man."
Mei-Mei slapped the old woman, tears leaking out of her eyes. "You wouldn't know a real man if you saw it old bitch!"
The woman retaliated and slapped her right back across the face. "You watch the way you speak to elders girly." She sat back down in her chair. "Your little brat should've been here in the first place." Her hands picked up her dominos and she started playing again. "Job is still yours. You better to me, girls with kids never as good as others."
= = = =
He was always such a nice boy
The quiet one
With good intentions
He was down for his brother
Respectful to his mother
A good boy
But good don't get attention
= = = =
Mei-Mei's eyes watered, and tears began to leak out of them. She turned and ran out of the massage parlor, by passing the horny boys. She wound up in an alleyway, and squatted down beside old metal trashcans, throwing one out of the way. It crashed into the brick wall of a nearby building, spilling out trash and two rats that had lived inside.
= = = =
Greg was always getting net from 20 feet away (20 feet away)
He had a try out with the Sixers
Couldn't wait for Saturday (Saturday)
Now we're never gonna see him slam
Flying high as Kobe can
His life was stole (Stole)
Oh now we'll never know
= = = =
The thought of Maria and Zack came to me as I remembered that song from Santana, which I used in here. It was so haunting, and that's how Zack is to me. A haunted person who sleeps with girls, cares about them, but can't admit it. I stopped the chapter here because while I have TONS of ideas for the story, I didn't want to cram them all into just one chapter.
Songs used are:
Girls hitting on Zack: "Hot Boyz Remix" (Missy Elliot, featuring Eve, Nas-T, and Q-Tip)
Flashbacks of Zack and Maria: "Maria Maria" (Santana)
Ending scene- "Stole" (Kelly Roland)
R/R please
SEATTLE
6: 35 AM
THE NEXT MORNING
A black and lime green Yamaha sports bike slowed down at the end of the long line at the sector stop at South Market. The officers stationed at the check point were waving people in as fast as they could, but the line still ran twenty feet down the road, and was filled with the sounds of upset patrons trying to get to their respective places. The sun was just beginning to come up over the condemned buildings of Sector seven; its rays not yet reaching the contemporary glass sky scrapers in Sector Eight, the beginning of the high end district of Seattle.
"Lets keep the line moving," A Sector cop dressed in black riot gear waved the crowd through. On the other side of him his partner was checking the authenticity of sector passes that were being waved in his face, pulling aside those individuals whose passes he found a problem with. Those that didn't make the cut waited in another newly created line to have their possessions searched without the cops giving any regards to whether or not consent was given. Martial Law new no such thing as decent protocol towards its citizens.
"Helmet off buddy," The first sector cop ordered to the rider on the motorcycle. "I need to see your mug."
Two leather-gloved hands moved up to remove the helmet. A second later the rider's blonde hair and brown eyes appeared in front of the cop's line of sight. A few teenage girls who were hanging out ten feet away from the checkpoint roamed their eyes all over the bike rider. They were part of a group of partiers from the previous night who had decided to finally go home at five a.m. and sleep off some of the shit they had gotten into. The looks on the girls faces suggested that they were most likely thinking dirty filthy thoughts that could qualify for triple X porn.
"Is that better GI Joe?" Zack glowered at the man. The face may be GQ in looks, but the tone and attitude was all hard ass X5.
The cop ignored Zack's macho visage, and held out his hand. "Need to see your sector pass."
"'Fraid I don't live here," Zack informed dryly. "So I'm not qualified for a referenced blip on your radar."
"Sir, anyone who doesn't have a sector pass is not allowed access into the city." The cop's tone raised slightly, a warning that he was getting pissed off. "Which begs the question of how the hell you got here in the first place." He now stared Zack up and down like he was street trash. He removed the M16 strapped diagonally in a holder around his chest and back, and aimed it at Zack. "I'm going to have to ask you to step off the bike and come with me."
Zack jumped from his bike, positioning his arms at the edges of the seat to act as leverage for his legs that reversed jack knifed and nailed the cop in the face. The man fell to the ground on his back. His partner removed his weapon. "Hands in the air!"
Zack grabbed his gun from him, unloading the magazine from the bottom, and slammed the body of the automatic rifle across the man's chest, landing him flat on his back.
"Hey!" The first cop scrambled to his feet just as Zack revved up the motorcycle and peeled out of the Sector stop, only a few centimeters away from running over the cop's foot. They watched Zack drove down the road; but they couldn't go after him due to congestion of people around the checkpoint. Some of the people at the Sector stop even went so far as to deliberately box the cops in two a tiny three-foot radius around their sector stop. The Sector Police was a corrupt institution in Seattle, and people did whatever they could if they felt they were harassing someone.
"You go sexy boy!" one of the teenagers, a thin pale white girl with dyed black hair and green eyes shouted at Zack, chanting at him like she was a spectator up in the stands at a high school football game.
Zack slowed the bike down, stopping it right in front of the two girls.
"Hey baby, what can we do for you?" The black haired girl's friend asked in a sultry voice. She was an equally white skinned girl with dyed purple hair among a scattering of black chunked layers and cropped to just under her chin. She was dressed in black cargo pants and army green singlet. Her pink tongue darted out of her mouth to seductively lick the tiny silver ring that had been pierced on the pink flesh of her lip.
= = = =
"Yo only take 'em thugged out
Slightly bugged out, fuck with his tongue out
Know the job ain't getting done, until the body getting drugged out
Hot boy, keep me right
Play your part and I'll keep it tight
Where else you gonna be in the middle of the night
But up in the sheets with me aiight"
= = = =
Zack pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of the inner pocket of his black leather jacket.
"You don't know me." He handed the money to the girl. "You don't know what I look like."
"It's gonna be hard to forget a body like yours." The girl reminded, stuffing the bill into her bra hidden under her shirt. She held out her hand a second later with black nail polish on the fingernails and a crimson red wristband with the words: 'Suck Me' printed in a white jagged script across it's woven surface. "Maybe anotha twenty for my girl will better erase my memory."
Zack didn't question, or say anything to that. He simply pulled out another twenty-dollar bill and handed it off to the other girl.
= = = =
Gangsta, true to your gang, street master
You the one I need when there's beef, street blaster
Ain't afraid to stop a cat, plus pop a cat, huh
Soldier, cash money, rule your world
What's topping that?
= = =
The girl in the cargo pants smiled at his action. "You got a deal baby." She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned forward, intending to kiss him.
= = = =
Hot boyz
Baby you got what I want
Won't you really come and satisfy me
I be lovin' you like endlessly
= = = =
Zack snatched her wrists from behind his neck and pulled her off of him. "Didn't your mom ever teach you not to kiss strangers little girl?" He shoved her back from his bike and revved up the engine.
The girl held onto one of her wrist; his action had caused it to sting. But what hurt the most was her ego at being called a little girl. She hadn't been aware that it was never Zack's intentions to pick her up.
Zack raised the kickstand, but before he could take off someone shouted at him:
"Yo asshole!" A blurry haze ran into him and knocked him off the bike. "What's the deal with you tailin' me?" Jondy reached out one hand and turned off the engine of the motorcycle and removed the key from the ignition. She pocketed the key inside her dark denim low riders. She felt the stares of the two teenagers on her and she turned to them, saying: "Recess is over girls." Jondy held out her hand in a hitchhikers formation, pointing behind her. "Get lost."
The two girls glared at Jondy. She was only a few years older then them, and they actually considered getting into a cat fight brawl with her, but there was a fierceness in her eyes that told them if they tried anything she'd lay all their shit bare. So they moved on, but not before they whispered the ever-popular vulgar slam of: "bitch" at her before they left.
Zack jumped to his feet and stared Jondy down. "What the hell are you doing?" He wiped grains of sand off of his left cheek with his hand.
"I think the question is what the hell are you doin' followin' me into Seattle Zack?" Jondy spat back, her eyes shooting daggers at him. "The incestial humping action wasn't enough so you had to to tail my ass too?"
"It was better then you trying to make it with some anonymous guy who would sell you out for cash money the second he found out you had more to offer then just your pussy." Zack had made a loop around Jondy and now stood in a position that was in a location exactly ninety degrees away from the location he had been before. Military interrogators made this same move in order to trick their victims minds into believing they were surrounding them on all sides.
"Just what the fuck do you think I was gonna do?" Jondy growled at him. She took three steps closer to him. "Hook up with some sexy stranger and go Praying Mantis on his ass after we hit it? Or did you just think all your sisters are equipped with pussy's that start talking to people about how their momma's are genetically engineered?" She was not right up in his face, as close to him as he was before when he got up on her in San Francisco. "If you ever try to do that shit to me again, the next piece of ass you grab is gonna be your own after I rearrange your balls." She backed away from his personal space and started to walk off.
"I know you came here to find Maxie." Zack said this in a completely casual tone. He had the kind of voice that could command and threaten without the pitch every rising above normal range.
"You're putting yourself in danger by being here."
Jondy whirled back around to face him and said: "She's my sister Zack. I care about her." She was now just one foot shy of the position in front of him that she had just vacated. "I thought you did too."
"She's too reckless for her own good." Zack returned, his eyes taking on a familiar look that always came over them when ever he talked about Max. "Living out here has corrupted her, she could bring us all down."
"After we escaped from Manticore I was under the impression that we'd die for each other if we had too." Jondy hissed at him in a voice that just went one level above 'pissed off'. "It was you who came up with this ideology about keeping away from each other to so we wouldn't breach safety regulations. It's bogus propagandist crap Zack, the same thing they taught us back there. Why'd you run if you're still going to live by their rules?"
"All it takes is the shit hitting the fan just one time Jondy." Zack reminded. His voice was at a dangerously low level. "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If Max slips up because of this fuckin' casual lifestyle she leads and gets herself captured, all of us are at risk for exposure."
"Not to mention the fact that Maxie could be killed in the process, or did you just forget to mention that?" Jondy snapped. She could never understand the way Zack was about Max. He cared for all his sisters, but out of the lot of them, he loved Maxie first, then her. "We're all at risk for exposure everyday we walk out on the street. But I'm sure as hell not gonna live like a hermit for the rest of my life just cause some boys in black helicopters have a bug up their ass. And if Manticore's whole plan for haulin' us back there was to exploit the weakest link Zack, they'd a been all over you by now."
"Did you tell Max I was here?" Zack asked, changing the subject because he wasn't about to admit that he had nothing else noteworthy to say on the subject.
"I'm not your errand girl Zack." Jondy spat out a quick return. "You want Max to get the hook up on you bein' in Seattle, you drop the word on her yourself." She headed back over to her own motorcycle, a silver Kawasaki Ninja 350 that was parked by the chain-linked fence beside the sector stop. She had been out cruising and had seen Zack at the sector stop, and it took her all of three seconds to decide to jump him. She pulled out the ignition keys from her pocket. "You seriously need to find a strip club and get some Zack, cause if you try to put the moves on me again I'm gonna beat on your ass." She climbed on her bike and cranked on the engine, revving up the DOHC motor so that is sounded like lion roaring before she pulled away from the fence and took off down the road.
*****
FOGGLE TOWERS
Logan's normally empty living room was now filled with people. The Hispanic woman had fallen asleep in one of his two overstuffed leather chairs, her body curled around a black cotton woven cushion she clutched possessively to her chest.
Cree had been too exhausted to go back to her hotel so Logan offered her his guest room, but Cree declined. The Hispanic girl had made a sort of sanctuary for herself on the couch and Cree decided to stay with her so Cree wouldn't be alone in a strange place. She wound up sacking out on the leather couch, stretched out like a cat on her side. She had pulled her hair back in one long single braid and it rested like a sleeping black garden snake between her tanned shoulders. Her head did not rest on the couch cushions, but rather was pillowed on the blue cotton T-shirt that covered Ty's chest. She had not asked him to stay the night with her. He had simply been there incredibly late - even after Max had decided to turn in for the night - and had wound up falling asleep on the couch. One of Ty's arms was draped across Cree's abdomen, with the hand attached to it resting on her hipbone covered by her jeans.
It was this scene that Max came into when she walked out barefoot from Logan's bedroom. Max normally didn't sleep at all, but had managed to doze off in Logan's bed, mostly because Logan was IN his bed, spooning her to him. But even with that kind of tempting comfort she didn't sleep more then a few hours. She had woken up at six and wanted to get a good ride in on her Ninja before she left for work. Her boots clunked on the hardwood floor to the kitchen where a hot pot of coffee had already been brewed. Logan had become accustom to Max staying over and rising at the crack of dawn so he always programmed his coffee pot for five in the morning.
She poured herself a cup of liquid chivalry, and took a sip from its hearty blackness. A slight rustling noise caught her attention from the living room. She turned around to look at the people occupying the room, but none of them had moved from their positions. She thought at first she was just imagining things, but then reminded herself that that was absurd. She was Manticore, and Manticore soldiers didn't just IMAGINE they heard a noise. She set her coffee cup down and padded stealthy out of the kitchen and into the living room.
She scanned the entire length of the living room, careful not to wake up the group that was crashed there. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, the windows were still locked, nothing out of place. She heard the noise again, and this time she realized it wasn't coming from the living room, but from the computer room.
She made her way across the floor and into the office-like space. Logan always left his computer system on in case informants tried to send him anything. And that was how she found it when she stepped inside the room to examine it. His marquee screen saver - a quote from Aristotle: 'absolute power corrupts absolutely' - moved across the black background screen on the monitor.
Max stepped inside, carefully avoiding the legs of Logan's computer chair to check the windows that were recessed in the wall beside his Hewlet Packard CPU. She listened for the noise again, but this time there was only silence. As a solider though, she knew that total silence was the worst sound to hear when casing out a location; it didn't mean you're enemy wasn't out there, it meant that they were silently lying in wait. She took another step deeper inside the space, examining the fifty square foot room from all angles.
She felt something come up behind her, and for a moment she suspected it to be Cree, but the hand that covered her mouth and drew her back shot that theory to hell.
She grabbed at the arm and spun the nameless person around so that their back slammed into the wall. She kicked her leg out up high and aimed it at the throat of her attacker. Her face contoured when the features of the man came into view. "Zack?"
Zack stared down at her foot at his throat. "Still wanna do that?" He pushed against her boot with his right hand, causing her to loose her balance and fall back against the computer desk. He stepped over to her. "Impressive form though," he said holding out his right hand for her to take.
Logan appeared seconds later in his office, surprised as hell to see Zack, of all people in his apartment.
"Max," Cree stood beside Logan in the door less entry of the computer room, her switchblade poised for an attack in her right hand. "Are you okay?" Her clothes were rumpled from sleeping in them but her hair was still as smooth as if she had just braided it, a flawless feature of oriental genes.
"Yeah," Max stared up at Zack. "I just felt like going for a ride." She ignored Zack's gesture, shoving past him like he had just put the moves on her for unsolicited sex.
"Looks like that was someone else's game plan too." Cree hissed this under her breath. She glowered at Zack so fiercely that if a glare alone determined someone's ass kicking capabilities - Zack would have been a vivisected sack of guts in front of her. She closed the switchblade in her hand in one hard motion, letting this man know that she had destructive designs on him.
"What do you want?" Max crossed her arms over her chest and faced Zack in a stand-off position. "'Cause I'll find it hard to believe that you just stopped by out of brotherly love."
Cree was a little stunned by Max's remark. "He's your brother?" She found it hard to understand how any family was so comfortable with each other that breaking into apartments to meet up was just an average event.
"He's something." Max stated, turning her eyes back up to Zack. "But we're not gonna get into what my description of 'something' is at the moment."
Ty suddenly appeared in the doorway, slightly out of breath from having made a mad dash to the computer room when he realized that there was one person in there he didn't recognize. "You guys okay?" His hair was pushed to one side from where he slept and his eyes were still heavy from not having adequate time to wake up completely.
"I see you keep a posse now Maxie." Zack said, observing Ty. The other man was a good one-inch shorter then Zack, and Zack used this difference to his advantage. He looked Ty up and down like a Marine drill sergeant would to a recruit who had just gotten off the bus. "Though I'm not impressed with the selection."
"Well we can't all be an arrogant prick like you Zack." Max returned harshly. She loved her brother, but right now Zack was being a shit, and she hated shits. "To add on to which is my previous remark: 'What the hell do you want? And you've only got around three seconds before I stop caring about what the answer is."
"I came here to stop Jondy," Zack snapped at her in a response.
Max screwed her face up at the extreme dramatic statement he had just made. She said: "Stop her from what?"
"From seeing you." Zack cut in immediately after she had gotten through talking, making the two remarks almost sound like they were spoken from the same person who had merely changed the tone in their voice.
Max glared at him for that remark, masking the hurt in her eyes behind the pissed off tone she replied with: "Is that because I wasn't a good docile little follower to her big brother?"
"You're too reckless for your own good Max," Zack came back.
Max cocked her head at him in disbelief. "Am I? Cause I thought us getting out on our own was a step towards actually having a real life. Or was I just not present for that pep talk before you made us split up?"
"I wanted to protect you!" Zack hissed. "If I let you all stay together Lydeck-" Zack halted in his speech, glancing at the two strangers in the room that he did NOT want to be let in on their past. "They would've been able to track you down easily and dragged you back."
"So you just abandoned eleven of your brothers and sisters in some snowy woods to fend for themselves?" Logan asked . In actuality it was more of an enraged demand then a casual question.
"They were soldiers," Zack said, stepping right in front of Logan's face. "Would you rather I hunkered them all down into a single unit so armed snipers could locate them?" Zack was so close that Logan could make out the tiny bits of fuzz on his chin. "Could you live with that choice if I had gone your pussy foot conservative way?" His remark was directed at Logan's relationship with Max.
(In Spanish:)
"It's you!" The Hispanic girl had woken up and was standing a few inches away from Zack, taking in his features as if she had just located a lost soul mate that had gone M.I.A. She closed the gap between her and Zack fairly quickly. "I can't believe it". Her hands reached out to touch the sides of Zack's face, griping his head in them.
Zack was confused about whom she was, actually confused as hell was a more accurate description. But then-like the clarity that came to someone when they had just figured out the answer to a complex mathematical equation-it came to him. "Maria?"
/FLASH: (Mexico City)
Zack stood in front of a fruit stand in an open village square market. He picked up a single brown pear, examining it in his leather-gloved hand.
(In Spanish)
"That's a good one Sir." A portly Hispanic man behind the stand praised Zack's selection. "I can see you are a man of very good taste."
"How much do you want for it?" Zack asked back in Spanish. Manticore trained all of them in knowing the languages of all major countries. It wouldn't do to have technologically advanced killing machines that couldn't find their own way down a street in another country.
The man was impressed at a blonde haired-obviously American boy-that knew how to speak Spanish so flawlessly. (In Spanish): "For you Sir, five pesos." He chuckled from deep in his belly, a noise full of gusto and warmth from a man who would turn no one away that stopped at his house for food. He turned to the wooden lean-to built in the back of the vegetable stand where he and his family lived. "Maria!"
A young twenty-year-old woman with long think black-brown hair emerged from behind a raggedy woven blanket that served as the lean-to's front door. She wore a dark maroon sleeveless sundress scattered with patterns of white Lilies with a deep cut U neckline. A silver cross was suspended from a matching chain around her neck, just an inch the tiny dip in her throat between her aorta and jugular veins.
"My daughter." The shop owner spoke again, introducing the woman to Zack.
The woman turned her attention to Zack.(In Spanish): "Would you like that in a bag Sir?"
"No senorita." (No Miss) "Zack returned polietly, finding his attention constantly wandering back to her deep chocolate brown eyes. He took the pear from her outstretched hands. (In Spanish:) "Inner mystery shouldn't be ruined by bagging a piece of fruit for a stranger." He handed her the coin amount for the price of the pear.
Her eyes blinked up to his, and her hand ever so slightly brushed against his forearm when she went to take the money. "Gracias Senior." (Thank you Sir.")/
= = = =
Maria Maria
She reminds me of a West Side Story
Growing up in Spanish Harlem
She's living the life just like a movie star
= = = =
/FLASH AGAIN: Five days have gone by. Scene cuts to a dingy puke green painted hotel room with a single rusted wrought iron bed with a filthy worn mattress and a crudely put together nightstand where a single candlesticks rests, lighting the tiny room with it's flame. A large colored print of the Lady of Guadeloupe in a gilt frame hangs on the wall above the bed where Zack and Maria are tangled under the dirty sheets, moving in sensual slow, powerful movements./
= = = =
She fell in love in East L.A.
To the sounds of the guitar, yeah, yeah
Played by Carlos Santana
= = = =
/FLASH FORWARD:
Zack mounts his motorcycle that was parked on the dusty deep hued red of the clay road. He raises the silver kickstand as a black jeep goes by. Maria is sitting up front, and her eyes immediately spot him on the road. She orders her brother- who is driving-to slow down and stands up in the jeep intending to wave at him. None of this would have been suspicious to her brothers who didn't know she was involved with Zack. Often time's girls would take favors in catching the eye of American men. It was due in part to a bloated view they had of the 'effects' Western Men carried around in their pockets.
As soon as they slowed down three armed guerrilla soldiers swarmed on the Jeep, shooting off rounds from their AK-47's. Maria's brothers were both hit, and fell back against the windshield, their blood, and the brain matter of one splattering against the glass.
= = = =
Stop the looting, stop the shooting
Pick pocking on the corner
See as the rich is getting richer
The poor is getting poorer
= = = =
Maria and her younger sister screamed as the men forced their way into the Jeep aiming their guns at them, hissing at them in poor grammatical Spanish: "Shut up you bitch!" One of them slammed the butt of his gun across Maria's face. The blow stunned her, but she didn't pass out. Blood trickled down her forehead as she fought her way to one of the Jeep's windows, calling out: "Zack!" /
= = = =
Se mira Maria on the corner
Thinking of ways to make it better
In my mailbox there's an eviction letter
Somebody just said see you later
= = = =
(In Spanish:)
"Yes! It's Maria". The woman's agreed, putting a hand to chest to identify the name to her body, one that had resembled a young teenager's features the night before. But now a much more different figure emerged, high cheek bones, soft curves, long shapely legs, all the characteristics of a woman in her early twenties. The tight mini dress she had been forced to wear, along with the clown like amounts of make-up made her look much younger, like a thirteen-year-old who had overdone it to impress an older boy. But now, standing in an old gray tank top and track pants - the same ones Max had leant to Cree after she had been attacked at Crash - Maria's full age and maturity began to emerge like the petals of a Chinese Moon Flower in the nighttime air. "I can't believe it's you!" Maria's faced contoured in a mixture of the extreme sadness and relief the spouse of a soldier would use when greeting their loved one back from a war. She started to throw her arms around Zack but he halted her.
Zack once again took in her chocolate brown eyes, remembering the look of pure terror in them at the guerilla soldiers forced their way into the driver's seat and speed down the dusty road with her at gunpoint. She had cried out his name, a summons that he didn't respond too. He wasn't a heroic lover; he was a super soldier who had been taught that all civilian life was expendable to avoid unnecessary exposure.
(In Spanish:)
"What are you doing here?" Zack asked the same question of Maria that Max had just did of him, effectively changing the subject.
Maria glanced behind her at Cree who was standing next to Ty. "I have guardian angel." A grateful smile came across her face to the woman she considered her savior. Her expression changed a second later however when her eyes shifted back over to Zack. "Why didn't you come for me?" In her head she still saw him standing on the road watching the jeep drive away. She was certain that he had loved her, but he had betrayed her. "Why didn't you help me?" She hated him with every fiber of her being, hated him for not rescuing her from those horrible men who sold her off into a foreign country, only being an observer to a horrific scene. But there was always a part deep inside of her that remembered the man who would make love to her for three nights in a row. Who never looked down on her because she was poor and lived in the back of a fruit stand. And that part still craved the feeling she had when she was with him, and that was why his betrayal hurt so bad. "Why didn't you come?" she repeated again, agony in her voice.
Zack didn't respond with words, and instead placed one hand under Maria's chin to raise her head to meet his eyes.
Maria abruptly ended his movements with a hard slap across his face. (In Spanish): "You let them take me away and turn me out like a dog!" she screamed. Her eyes were icy on his and cut through him like a frigid wind. "What kind of man are you?
"What the hell kind of a woman are you if you gave it up to a man you're not even sure of?" Zack growled in return.
Maria slapped him again: "Go to hell Zack!" She was close to spitting in his face. "Go to hell and take your lies with you!"
Zack forcefully yanked her by the arm.
"Let her go!" Cree pulled Zack off of Maria with one movement, but Zack was quick to react to Cree's maneuver and threw her back into the wall. Zack stared her down after she slid to the floor.
Cree picked herself up off the ground slowly, brushing dust off of her body. "Coming from one prick to another I consider that a compliment." She spoke of Zac's move of throwing her against the wall.
Zack glared at her, unimpressed by her burn. "You think you got balls little girl?" His voice had a 'bring it on' quality.
"That's enough!" Max stepped between Cree and her brother, one hand on his chest to keep him
"Get out of my way Maxie." Zack hissed at her.
"Cut the crap Zack." Max's voice was dangerously low.
Zack grabbed her by the arm the same way he had done Maria. "You can't take me on Maxie." He goaded her, locking a hand around her chest. "You'll loose."
"Sit down," Max grabbed a hold of his hand. She flipped over him and wrenched his arm behind his back and threw him into Logan's computer chair. "And shut up." She stepped over to him before he got the chance to move. "Now you're gonna tell me the real story of what the hell your doing here, and if I detect any lyin' you're in a world of hurt cause I'm a lie detector."
Instead of answering her Zack whirled around and smashed a three-inch hole into the wall above Logan's computer. Small bits of jagged concrete fell like sand from the point of impact onto the floor.
"Detect that." Zack growled, ignoring Cree's stunned look on him having just punched through solid concrete. The tiny fragments crunched under his boots as stepped over them, heading out of the room.
Maria's eyes were large at what she had just witnessed, and one hand reached out to grab his arm. "Zack?"
Zack pulled free from her grip. "You figured out what kind of man I am so back the hell off!" he stormed out of the room with Maria watching him the entire time.
*****
SEATTLE POLICE DEPARTMENT
35TH PRECINCT
7: 35 AM
"You gotta be fuckin' kidding me," Captain Rodgers-the head of the thirty-fifth precinct- spoke in a surprised tone as he leaned against the front of his black painted desk amidst the sea of others just like it. He stared at the barrage of women-dressed down to the nines in streetwalker attire- all huddled together in front of his office furniture. Rodgers was a middle aged white man, with an army style crew and a pinched bull dog face that always turned pink when he was mad, which was what it was doing at the moment. He was wearing a white dress shirt with black pinstripes with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, red tie and black suspenders. His issued Sig Sauer handgun rested in a leather holster strapped to the waistline of his black trousers.This wardrobe made him look more like he belonged in the Mafia then on a police force.
"Officer Amston," Ruiz began speaking again to Ming, who was positioned in front of all the girls, like the leader of an all female gang. "The kind of lax protocol you just asked me to engage in might be allowed at the LAPD by it doesn't swing here."
"Since when is offering shelter to a group of battered women considered a form of 'lax protocol' Detective Ruiz?" Ming shot back, glowering at the man, not appreciating his insinuation about what cops in Los Angeles were like. She had roused all of the girls at six that morning, moving them out of the bakery and onto the street, where for a while she didn't know where the hell she would take them. They couldn't be put up in a hotel, and if they stayed on the street any longer people would start looking for them. She finally landed on the steps of the Seattle Police Department, and after flashing her badge and shouting a few choice words at the lowly desk cop who didn't want to let her in, she had gotten inside to see Detective Ruiz.
Ruiz shifted his attention back to the women again. Almost all of them were dressed in micro minis with sky high heals and make up that would put any drag queen to shame. "They don't look battered to me, okay? The girl I busted doing exotic dances at the back room crapes game in Chinatown looks more battered then them." Most of the police in the city kept a code of silence about the illegal sex industry. Many of the sex trade's prime customers were high-ranking military officials, and those in that position of government threatened to shut down the entire police department if any precinct tried to close down the sex rings or revealed anything about their existence.
Ming's eyes became enraged. "What the hell do you want detective? Explicit proof for you to put a orderly little tag on?" She turned her attention over to the woman she had spoken to last night, speaking once again to her in her native Chinese: "The cop; he thinks you're all lying street trash."
The young Chinese woman's expression shifted from being fearful to pissed off. Shooting an icy look at the Detective she stuck one hand down the front of her tube dress - right in the valley created by her breasts - pulling it out a second later, turning her hand to face Ruiz. Her voice was an angry rush of loud Chinese as she showed the man the smudge of fresh blood that was now streaked across her palm.
"She said it's from one of her bosses at a local bar who allowed to be raped by ten men." Ming translated the woman's words to Ruiz. "The rest is a mixture of Taiwanese, which I don't speak very well, but it roughly translates to: 'Fuck you WASP bitch."
Ruiz went silent for a moment, absorbing in the sting of being cursed at in Chinese. Finally - after enough time had elapsed for him to peel his manhood off the wall - he spoke again: "I have procedures I have to follow all right?" His face had turned from pink to a bright red, making him look like a beet with eyes. "I can't just offer official police protection to every bleeding heart case that walks in here."
"So you're just going to throw them out as tagged meat for anyone to hock, or do you prefer a cash money bribe?" Ming snapped back.
"Look," Ruiz said in more of a sigh then a voice. "I don't have the kind of resources or manpower to service a bunch of terrified hookers with round the clock body guards."
"Let's get one thing straight Detective-" Ming cut in. "Hookers are girls who VOLUNTARILY enter their line of work; not get dragged into it by a bunch of pricks who laughed one time to many at that fuckin' Uranus joke and decided to find someone else to go be thugs with."
"So what do you suggest Amston?" Ruiz asked, crossing his arms over his stout chest. "That I lock these girls up in holding cells with a bunch of lowlifes and drug dealers who would fantasize all night about what to do with them?"
"They have no where else to go." Ming returned, looking at all the scared women standing there, trying to mask their emotions by playing with their hair, looking at the floor, closing their eyes. "Someone's probably already advertised a cash reward for them and in the next few days I guarantee you every pimp and bounty hunter in this city will be out en mass on the streets just waiting for the opportunity to get their cut. So I suggest comb every inch of this damn precinct and fine space for my girls detective, 'cause I'm not about to let them become another gang raped statistic."
Ruiz sighed, trying to figure out something else to say, but there was no way he could compete with this woman's hell fire attitude. "I'll get some guys to see if they can find some clear space. I'm not making any promises, but I'll see what I can do."
"No, you'll see what you WILL do Detective." Ming corrected. She checked her wrist watch quickly "I'm gonna grab some coffee and call my husband, and when I get back I sure as hell better see some officers in this place doin' a VERY efficient job at finding some space for these women."
"Break room's down the hall." Detective Ruiz informed her.
"Appreciate it." Ming returned walking towards the wooden door that exited the room she was in. She placed one hand on the brass knob and glanced back over to Ruiz. "Find them someplace to sit." She opened the door and stepped out, letting it slam behind her.
"Damn," Officer Peterson, a six-foot tall African-American male cop remarked as Ming left through the door.
Ruiz turned to Peterson. "Shut up."
*****
BANGKOK, THAILAND
Mei-Mei walked down the long line of wooden food stalls and children playing with dogs in the muddy road. She was jammed to one side of the street by cars, motorcycle taxis and one lone rice farmer walking alongside his gray mule that was pulling a wooden cart. The Mule grunted hot air in her face as she passed, and her open toed sandal slipped on the turd he just dropped on the ground. She ignored the noxious smell that rose up from it, not even bothering to scrape it off her shoe.
She crossed in front of the farmer a second later, making a diagonal line towards a rotted wooden building, resembling an old barn. The building looked like it has stood there through ancient times. The only proof of its place in the modern world was a suspended neon sign that hung from the side of the building with huge pink Ty characters proclaiming: 'Dance and Sex' A group of teenage boys stood there smoking next to their Honda Motorcycles so interchanged with different parts that many had huge gaps on their engine blocks where the old motors had been taken out and replaced with one with more torque, but not big enough to fill the metal frame. The motors were crudely fused to the body of the bike with a blowtorch, but still there were holes big enough to stick your hand through in all of them.
These boys were rejects from the local gangs. Every summer all of the Thailand street gangs would scout out for new members. Hundreds of skinny, pimply faced teenage wanna be bad asses would line the streets of Bangkok at night to face the initiation tests. Those that made it would be seen screaming down the streets at midnight on their motorcycles, high as a kite on "ya ba" -Thai "mad medicine", what's known as speed in the U.S - cruising along side their gang brothers. The ones that didn't make it spent there days smoking - either ya ba or cigarettes - outside of Go-Go clubs and strip bars, howling at the women as they got off work.
One of these boys - a sixteen year old with dyed red hair, shaved into a crew cut as part of one gang's initiation test - stared at Mei-Mei as she passed by him. (In Thai:) "Hey baby baby, let me have a free night." He undressed her completely with his eyes, and fucked her with his mind. His companions joined in by whistling at her as she passed them.
Mei-Mei ignored them, hoping that they were too stoned to try anything with her. Though they were only teenagers, if they were smoking yaa ba, they could easily take her down because of the rush from the amphetamine. She pushed open the wooden door and entered the wooden building.
No one would have ever guessed it from the outside, but the interior of the dance club was very posh, complete with a long red velvet couch, red velvet carpet, a fountain made out of gray marble and black onyx that squirted water from the mouth of a Buddha. A twenty-inch plasma television hung from black cables off the wall, and was airing a commercial about hair wax removal. A circular reception desk stood in the center of the carpet where an ancient looking woman sat playing dominos and smoking a Virginia Slim cigarette in a long black, lady-like holder.
The woman's head turned up when she heard Mei-Mei approach. She examined Mei-Mei's figure, especially her breast. "You want job you use back door." Her voice was raspy from years of smoking that had also stained her fingertips a sickish yellow hue, which is why she started using the holder. Her long gray hair was pulled into a tight bun on the back of her head and she wore a blue silk kimono with the sash tied into a high bow around her sagging breasts. She took a hit from her cigarette, as she examined Mei-Mei's features. "You bring good money here." When she talked, Mei-Mei could see five black holes where rotted teeth had fallen out of her mouth. "Come back tomorrow and I give you job."
A young woman in a yellow plastic tube dress approached the old lady, bowing to her once. "Mamasan, may I leave early tomorrow? American man promises me a date."
The old woman reached around and smacked the girl in the face with a skinny cracked hand. "Farang (slang for 'American') not gonna take you out on a real date stupid girl. He only want you for your pussy." The decrepit old woman turned her attention back to Mei-Mei "Why I decide to hire stupid fifteen year old child to work I never know. You come here, I don't have to take in any more brats." She turned back to the other girl. "Get out of my face little girl, go watch the Plasma."
The girl bowed again hastily and ran off like she had been sent to her room.
"Please-" Mei-Mei began. "I'm looking for my son. One of your girl told me a man might have brought him here."
The old lady took another drag from her cigarette, blowing the smoke across Mei-Mei's face. A waddle of wrinkled flesh that hung from her neck jiggled as she hacked on phlegm that would never come up. She swallowed painfully before speaking: "Some man bring in little boy. He give me twenty yen so I give him room, but I not running a babysitting service." More smoke from her cigarette. "He was a sickly kid, skinny, no meat. Man shoot him." She spit out the truth so fast that Mei-Mei took a second to react. "He better off." More smoke again. "Too puny to be real man."
Mei-Mei slapped the old woman, tears leaking out of her eyes. "You wouldn't know a real man if you saw it old bitch!"
The woman retaliated and slapped her right back across the face. "You watch the way you speak to elders girly." She sat back down in her chair. "Your little brat should've been here in the first place." Her hands picked up her dominos and she started playing again. "Job is still yours. You better to me, girls with kids never as good as others."
= = = =
He was always such a nice boy
The quiet one
With good intentions
He was down for his brother
Respectful to his mother
A good boy
But good don't get attention
= = = =
Mei-Mei's eyes watered, and tears began to leak out of them. She turned and ran out of the massage parlor, by passing the horny boys. She wound up in an alleyway, and squatted down beside old metal trashcans, throwing one out of the way. It crashed into the brick wall of a nearby building, spilling out trash and two rats that had lived inside.
= = = =
Greg was always getting net from 20 feet away (20 feet away)
He had a try out with the Sixers
Couldn't wait for Saturday (Saturday)
Now we're never gonna see him slam
Flying high as Kobe can
His life was stole (Stole)
Oh now we'll never know
= = = =
The thought of Maria and Zack came to me as I remembered that song from Santana, which I used in here. It was so haunting, and that's how Zack is to me. A haunted person who sleeps with girls, cares about them, but can't admit it. I stopped the chapter here because while I have TONS of ideas for the story, I didn't want to cram them all into just one chapter.
Songs used are:
Girls hitting on Zack: "Hot Boyz Remix" (Missy Elliot, featuring Eve, Nas-T, and Q-Tip)
Flashbacks of Zack and Maria: "Maria Maria" (Santana)
Ending scene- "Stole" (Kelly Roland)
R/R please