Grady watched as two of the gangbangers disappeared through a door. “Where are my guns?” he asked.
“Put away so the children don’t hurt themselves.”
“How’d you knock me out?”
“One of the boys must have hit you or something,” Scorpion said. “They found you on the ground, out cold.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re not one of them, like, what’s it called? When you fall asleep all the time in the middle of the day and shit?”
“Narcolepsy,” Grady offered.
“Yeah, you’re not a narcolepsy are you?”
Grady suppressed a grin at the idiot’s misuse of the term. “No. I’m not. I think I remember somebody hitting me on the back of the head.”
In truth, Grady had no fucking clue what had happened. He remembered killing the first two gang members as they hung around outside of a brick building, but that was it. His mind was a blank after that. He’d gone on a killing spree, allowing the rage to take him, and he didn’t even remember doing it. Had he simply passed out in the middle of the firefight or did one of them hit him? That seemed unlikely. Again, he wondered what those fucks had done to him in Brazil.
“Good,” Scorpion said. “I can’t have a narcolepsy working for me. It would make me look stupid.”
“Wouldn’t wanna do that, boss.”
“So, you gonna do it?” the gang’s leader asked. “You gonna…” Two thin, scared-looking women, one white and one black, came into the room, interrupting him. “Take his pants off and suck his dick,” he ordered.
“I’m okay. I’m fine right now.”
“You sure. This one here,” Scorpion gripped the petite black girl’s arm and pulled her down to Grady’s eye level. “She can suck the chrome off a Harley’s muffler, man.”
“I gotta piss first,” Grady replied, deflecting the statement.
“Have it your way. You ain’t a faggot are you?”
“No. I’ll fuck both of these bitches once you set me free.”
“I’ll give you an hour with them, then you gotta come see me for your first assignment, understand?”
“Yeah,” Grady replied, adjusting his position against the wall.
“What’s your name, killer?” Scorpion asked.
An idea popped into his head from the pre-infection days, from his former employer. “I go by the name Havoc.”
“That’s cool, bro,” the gang leader said. “I like it. Dangerous and shit.”
“You have no idea,” Grady stated. “You gonna have your guys untie me so I can piss and fuck some bitches?”
Scorpion pulled the knife he’d stuck in the wall beside Grady and pushed him forward roughly, forcing him to bend at the waist. He slid the blade through whatever material had been used to restrain him. “There you go, Havoc. Don’t leave this house until I can introduce you to the boys. Otherwise, they might try to get even for what you did.”
“Got it,” he said, pushing himself to his feet with a wince. He had at least a couple of broken ribs. That’d slow him down a bit.
“Mandy, Carla, take care of our newest King. Remember what happens if you get yourself pregnant though.” He gripped the brunette’s chin roughly in his hand. “Don’t do it.”
Grady watched the gangbangers file out of the room warily. Were they really so stupid as to let him run around free in the house? Or was Scorpion just that desperate for an enforcer? Either way, the gang lord had fucked up.
“One hour, Havoc,” Scorpion said, holding up his index finger. “One hour and then come find me at the house next door.”
The door shut and he heard Scorpion telling somebody to guard the door. The two women began to take off their clothes. They were just shells of the people they’d probably been before all this went down. They were simply going through the motions of day-to-day survival. It was sad.
“Keep your clothes on,” he grumbled. “I’m not going to have sex with you poor girls. Where’s the bathroom?”
He really did need to piss some more. After he took care of that, he’d figure out what to do next. He either had to try to break out now, or he would have to go along with the gang for a while until an opportunity presented itself to get away.
As he unzipped his pants and began to piss into the toilet, he whistled the old Price is Right tune. “I’ll take door number one, Bob,” Grady mumbled aloud.
There wasn’t a chance in fuck he was gonna stick around here longer than he needed to. Scorpion believed that his offer of safety, women, and power was enough to make Grady join the gang. Wrong. Then, they made the mistake of untying him. Why were people so dumb?
When he came out of the room, the girls were sitting on the bed, staring blankly at him. “How many guards are outside the door?”
“What?” the white girl asked.
“Guards.” He pointed toward the bedroom door. “I heard Scorpion talking to somebody. How many of them are out there?”
“Um… I don’t know, man,” she replied. “You gonna have sex with us or what? If you don’t, Scorpion might get mad at us.”
“Don’t worry about him anymore.” Grady’s eyes searched the room for some type of weapon. He needed something. Something—There! His eyes came to rest on the closet. It was a terrible weapon choice, but it was all he could come up with on short notice. Like his old pal, Pete “Skipper” Thompson, used to say, “If it works, it ain’t stupid.”
Pete had been his team leader at The Havoc Group for years until his body betrayed him and he had to move into the business management side of the house. Grady felt a momentary pang of loss for his friend, who was likely long dead
