The Damned Summer (The Ruin Trilogy) (13 page)

"You got
it," Paint said with a nod.

"Alright
then," Spider said. "Let's go get shit-faced."

From there
the expansion began. Over the next few weeks the other five found a couple
dozen candidates and sent them on to Spider. Their leader took each of them up
to the Bizz Mezz room for solo interviews. Only a handful of them made it to
the next step but several others were given a small piece of hope.

"You're
not ready to wear the colors yet," Spider would tell them. "But there
is a chance you might be someday, so if you stick around and help out, maybe
you can come back up here someday and we can talk about this again," he'd
say with a friendly smile, which you would think would crack his face. His
smile was a lot of things, but usually not friendly.

So,
The
Dead Bikers Motorcycle Club
ended up with five new members, which were
referred to as Props, because until they proved themselves, that's all they
were: DBMC props, not the real thing.

The larger
group that was given the 'maybe next time," line had an even lesser title.
They were officially known as The Buried, cause they were still corpses in the
ground. They had yet to raise from the grave to become true Dead Bikers, at
least that was the bullshit mythology they had come up with. Since The Buried
sounded as if they were respected they were given the nickname of Berry or
Deadberry, after all, it had to sound worse than Prop.

The
Deadberries were given the true shit jobs: cleaning up the clubhouse and the
shop, acting as lookouts for the cops or other rivals, going and getting
whatever the club members needed them to get. Only two of them got to see any
of the more serious illegal activity, and that was because both of them were
very good at selling drugs on the streets, which is what allowed them to be
Deadberries in the first place. When it came to anything other than selling,
both were as useless as can be.

There was one
constant when it came to the solo interviews with Spider, they all looked the
same coming down the stairs, whether they were a Prop, a Deadberry or were told
to get the fuck out and never come back. They all looked like their nuts had
been twisted with a pair of pliers. The ones that were told to get out,
stumbled down the stairs and did what they were told, saying a word to no one
as they scurried out like a wounded mouse. The Props and Deadberries did the
same stair stumble, but once they got on solid ground they would tell the other
five what their new title was in either a whisper or a stutter.

The others
would cheer and give the new guy a beer and a joint, after an hour of drinking
and smoking weed they would start to relax and get back to being themselves
again.

"What
the hell does Spider say to those guys?" Pogo asked Paint and Frank one
night.

"We
don't wanna know, bro," Paint replied, taking a long drink of beer.

There were a
few that stumbled down, saying that Spider said they weren't a good fit for the
club, but they were still welcomed to come around and party whenever they
wanted to, so long as they understood, they would never be a member. Of those
few, only one shambled back to the clubhouse, the others took the exit, never
to be seen again at the Zombie House.

Things went
pretty well from there for the next two years. The club slowly expanded to the
point where there was always around a dozen Props as well as Berries and the
full fledge member quota was at twenty.

Things were
going real good for Frank. So far he hadn't been asked to kill anyone, and with
his mechanic skills, his work was one of the few things the club could do
legally as well as wash the dirty money through. It was almost like he had an
honest job but still got all the perks of being in the club. The only bad thing
to happen was Margie slowly but surely went from being his old lady to being
Spider's. He was still pissed about that, and there was now distance between
him and Spider and everybody knew it. Frank kept his cool though, the situation
he was in was too sweet to let some woman fuck it up.

Things
started to change when the heroin came in. The money from selling it was
unbelievable, but everything else about it was bad, like hell on earth bad.

Things with
the club and the heroin selling was getting shaky so quickly that a meeting was
called just three weeks after the pushing of the brown horse began.

"I don't
see any problems," Spider started the meeting. "We're making more in
one day selling H than we ever did selling weed in a week!"

"The
clubhouse is full of fucking junkies now!" Fizz replied, almost directing
his anger at Spider, but not quite "It's fucking disgusting!"

"Christ,
Fizz," Pogo said. "When did you get all judgmental about how other
people look?"

"Gimme a
fucking break, Pog," Frank replied. "It looks like we have real
zombies in there, those people look so damn bad!"  

"Those
are our customers, boys," Spider said, causing Frank and Fizz to both
curse. "But I agree, we do need to clean the clientele base up some, we
don't want to scare off new buyers with a freak show. Besides, it will get the
cops attention quicker if the clubhouse looks like a needle zone. So from here
on out, nobody shoots up at the Zombie House," he then looked over at
Paint and Pogo. "And nobody sells there either."

"Shit,
Spider," Paint replied. "If we have to go out and find buyers instead
of them coming to us, then we won't sell as much smack. We'll spend half our
time trying to find the junkies to sell the brown horse to."

"Bullshit,"
Spider said. "We'll just tell them what street corner to go to as we're
walking them out the door or not letting them in. You just don't want to stand
out in the rain when you're selling."

"Damn
right."

"We'll
then get some more of the Props to push the H instead of you. You shouldn't be
selling it anyway, you're too high up the ladder for that menial shit. On top
of that, you could get arrested or the cops could get familiar with your face.
That's the last thing we need since you're half of the connection we've got
with the suppliers of the H."

"I
know," Paint agreed. "I just like pushing."

"What
you like," Pogo said. "Is getting blow jobs from the chicks that
don't have the money for the brown horse.

Spider looked
at Paint with raised eyebrows.

"I don't
give it away," Paint quickly explained. "I give them a discount, and
whatever the difference is comes out of my own pocket. I'm not ripping the club
off one damn cent."

"Not an
issue since you're not selling anymore," Spider waved the problem away.

Paint looked
at Pogo. "Fucking big mouth," causing everyone to laugh.

"Speaking
of brown horse," Pogo said. "Some of our long term customers are
looking for stronger stuff. I was wanting to talk to my supplier about buying some
white horse from him for high tolerance junkies, but I thought I should bring
it up here first."

Brown horse
was a term used for a more diluted, more common form of heroin, while white
horse was the stronger, more expensive form. It was also much more likely to
kill someone from an overdose if they didn't know what they were doing or
didn't have a high tolerance for brown horse.

"I dunno
know, man," Spider replied. "Our pushers start selling it to the
wrong junkies and we start killing our customer base."

"We've
got a specific list of who's looking for the potent shit," Pogo explained.
"We would give the white H to a specific pusher and tell the hardcore
junkies that they would have to go to him for the strong shit. The pusher would
have a list of names and know who to sell it to."

"We got
a dealer that has enough brains to follow this list?" Spider asked.

"I know
exactly who to give it to." Pogo answered. "I've got prices for the
product and gave all the info to Beans so he could crunch the numbers."

Spider looked
at Beans. "What kind of increase in revenue are we looking at?

"Potential
to make a couple thousand more a week," Beans answered.

"Well,"
Spider smiled. "That's all I need to know to give it the green light.
Anybody got anything else they need to talk about?"

The others
shook their heads.

"Good,"
Spider said. "One last thing an then we are outta here. The H is making us
so much money now, my head is still spinning, which is why we need to implement
a new rule." He took a moment to look each member in the eye. "The
money we're making has allowed us to expand, which is great, but the bigger we
are the harder it is to have complete control over everything. Which is why, as
of right now I'm making the new rule that nobody associated with the club, which
includes full members, the chicks, Props and Berries, shoots H, ever."

Both Paint
and Pogo shifted in their chairs.

"That's
going to be a little hard to enforce," Paint replied.

"I don't
care," Spider said. He looked at both of his H contacts. "I know you
two aren't hooked, but that you do shoot occasionally. That stops now."

He stared at
both of them until they nodded in agreement.

"If
somebody is playing with the needle, their name gets brought to me, and then I
decide what their punishment will be." He leaned back in his chair, taking
a drink of beer. "The punishment will be one of two things, either they're
kicked out of the club, or they die. Make sure everybody understands
that."

Spider looked
around the silent room. "Any questions?"

No one said anything.

"Good,"
Spider said with a dark smile. "Class dismissed."

As they
started getting up Spider added:" By the way, the new patches for the
original six are cool as hell, Paint," he pointed to the patch on the
front right side of his jacket right above the chest pocket. The top of the
patch said:
The Sleazy
, and then below that was the number
666
in
larger lettering. The writing was blood red on a black background.

Everybody
agreed, patting Paint on the back.

"Thanks,"
he replied to everyone.

The other
five left the room, leaving Spider sitting in the Bizz Mezz room all by his
lonesome.

The following
week was quite tense as the new rules started to kick in. Several Berries
disappeared along with a few Props and one full fledge member who had just
recently been patched in. The official rumor was that they all split before
having to go in front of Spider. Even though Frank was part of the inner circle
of the DBMC, that was all he had heard as well. If anyone had been killed,
either Beans or Fizz would have taken care of it, and neither of them were
saying anything. So the days and nights floated along in a dead silence, until
the night they brought Ann into the back room.

Ann had came
up to Chicago with the original six. She was one of the girls that had left the
Chevy factory job to come party. She was one of Margie's close friends and she
was Bean's woman.

Spider had
gathered all of the six but Beans into the back room where they did the auto
work. "Just be quiet and hang tight," he had told them, staring at
the inner back door that joined
The Zombie House
to the back room.

After a few
moments, Beans brought a giggling Ann through the door, closing the door behind
them as Ann made eye contact with Spider.

"Hey,
needles," Spider smiled. "Ready to party?"

"I
haven't shot up since the new rules were announced---" she began, already
crossing her arms and shaking her head.

"Shut
up," Spider commanded. Even the music from the clubhouse seemed to fade.
"This is my time to talk. You'll get your chance when I'm done."

The closest
she could do to answer was to take a big, dry swallow.

"Earlier
this week, Tut got picked up by the cops, you hear about that?" They
called him Tut because he braided his go-tee that weird way the Egyptian
Pharaohs use to.

She started
to shake her head but changed it half way to vigorous nodding. "Yeah, I
think I did hear that," she said, wiping her nose with the back of her
hand.

"You
think you did?" Spider asked, nodding his head with raised eyebrows.

"Yeah, I
think it wa---" she started to reply.

"Damn
shame," he cut her off. "Tut was a hell of a pusher, it's almost like
he could smell when the cops were coming around. It was like he had this dealer
sixth sense that is so rare and unbelievably valuable to a business like ours,
you know?"

She nodded
her head vigorously again.

"That's
why we patched him in so quickly," Spider explained. "Cause not only
was he good at pushing, he was smart. He knew his customers. He knew who could
handle white horse, and who couldn't. That's why he was the only dealer that
carried any white H, and that's why he is in such deep shit with the
pigs."

He had slowly
approached Ann as he spoke, until he was standing right in front of her,
looking down at her as she started to shake like a scared rabbit. "They
are telling him since he has a more potent variety of H, that he is going to
get a much longer sentence." He drifted down closer to her, nose to nose.
"Twenty to life with no possibility of parole. Wouldn't that suck?" It
looked like he had bitten the tip of her nose for a moment, his teeth were so
close. "If you were in his shoes, wouldn't that just suck ass?"