The Windowlicker Maker Read online

  ‘It’ll be the sunshine coach for you from now on you slag.’

  With that I raised my arm and with all the beautiful hatred in my heart brung my elbow crashing down between his eyes.

  In those wonderful days of old, those bygone days when kids could play in the street and you’d help an old lady across the road in those days of proper summers, and you knew your neighbour and said hello as you walked by strangers, and looked after your own, when you knew what you were about and not just playing at it and you had time to live not just exist, we used to call that move the windowlicker maker.

  17

  Of course I got nicked and was hauled down to Brighton & Hove Police Station and after eight hours in a cell I was lumped into Formica clad interview room with a little CCTV camera perched in the corner. I could swear that camera was trying to wind me up.

  I was sat at a cheap table opposite a grinning – or grimacing – David Mack and his dim looking partner. Mack was making much theatre out of looking at some documents before he finally utters, ‘Well Spindle Johnson is alive, so we have that to be thankful for I suppose. But he ain’t going to be able to play the piano again, or fuck all else.’ He looks at me as if he’s trying to remind himself he’s at work and is supposed to be in a professional capacity. ‘But the same can’t be said for the two bouncers you croaked, that’s two murders Mr Tatum. Not to mention the three gentlemen out for a drive on St George’s Road, the manager of the Burlington Pub, and the fruit and veg market you made out of two groups of men in West Street. You’re clearly a very sick man Mr. Tatum. A danger to society.’

  He definitely smiled. He thought he had me banged to rights. But it was me who had him. He was as much behind this mess that had got my wife killed for no good reason, as much as any of the mugs I had done in the last two days. And truth be told I don’t care if he was a major player or just turning a blind eye. A grown man is responsible for his actions and needs to pay the price of any infractions.

  He was part of something that destroyed people lives for no reason at all, other than sheer entertainment and just because they could. I thought about Spindle’s future and wondered if he was going to enjoy looking out towards Brittany, along the rolling waves, with ice cream drooling down his face, unable to control his own limbs.

  Yeah, as a legacy of this swine’s own wretchedness which Mack was a clear part of the CCTV of this’ll probably end up on Youtube.

  Mack prattled away and my mind went back to those good old bygone days, and then I decided listening time was over.

  The End

  Jezebel St. Etienne in

  A Gun Called Comeuppance

  A post apocalyptic chestnut

  By Danny Hogan

  I don’t expect you to be on my side from the get go. But, give it some time and you just may be. I’m round the back of the titty bar by Friendship Station buying a bunch of weeping kids from some traffickers. Ain’t on my side yet are you?

  ‘You see they’re all in prime condition. Ain’t been broken in yet,’ says Choctaw McGraw, my primary contact. He’s a bearded bastard with a growing out Mohawk, who looks like the kind of fuck who wouldn’t think anything of stealing pennies from a vagrants arse. He can’t take his eyes off me, but that’s the point. His gaze never goes above my neck. I’m wearing my battered old trench coat open just enough to show off my nastily short mini-skirt and a tank top that’s way too small and threatening to lose the fight to keep my tits from busting free.

  ‘Just pay us bitch, so we can get out of here.’ This from Shady Jane, a skinny mare with a fat girl’s attitude. My outfit ain’t working on her. For some reason I didn’t figure on her being here. She only turns up at the really big deals.

  One of the kids, there are three in all, two boys and a girl, looks at me hopefully. Her mouth contorts and she begs, ‘please miss’.

  Shady Jane smacks the kid hard around the back of the head and tells her to shut up.

  I think about a deep blue ocean for a second and then say, ‘I ain’t taking no damaged merch.’

  ‘You can shut up, too. Ain’t you done this before? These shits are gonna need more than that if you want ’em to work for you,’ replies the delightful Jane.

  There are two others with Choctaw and Jane but they don’t say nothing. They just stand there looking menacing. Who they are, I don’t know and I don’t give a fuck. I suppose they’re there to make sure I ain’t gonna pull a fast one. Yeah. They’re boys so they’re just gawping at me like Choctaw. I’m small but my chest didn’t seem to take any notice of that when it was growing.

  ‘Got my pay?’ Choctaw asks my tits.

  ‘Yeah, I got your pay all right,’ I say reaching into my trench coat.

  People tend to laugh when they see me wield my 44. True it looks way too big for me. I suppose they imagine that the recoil will blast me back quicker than the slug goes in the opposite direction. To some people the whole scene in front of them may seem strange. A 19 year-old girl, 5’3” (well 5’10” if you count the twin Mohawks that run parallel on my head) pointing a Ruger Super Blackhawk .44 Magnum with a 7-and-a half inch barrel at ’em. It always begins the same way; they laugh. It always ends the same way too. I pull the trigger, they stop laughing.

  With all this and the way I’m dressed none of these bastards pull their pieces, not even that bitch Jane. They’re stunned for a second or so. The kids stop weeping. Then Choctaw begins the smirking. What do you know? The others follow suite and then the full on laughing starts.

  ‘What the hell’s that, penis envy?’ asks Jane.

  ‘You ain’t got the guts, kid,’ says Choctaw wiping tears from his piggy eyes. ‘I can see you shaking from here. Besides,’ he struggles to get a grip, ‘you won’t hit us with that cannon unless you’re point blank,’ and to illustrate his point he stands with his hands wide apart, offering up an open target.

  True I was shaking. But not with fear. I’m young OK, and I’m still learning to compensate for the adrenalin.

  He, like the others, is still laughing; confident in their knowledge of my abilities and what I’m capable of. Overconfidence is a killer. I pull the trigger. Boom. Choctaw’s head comes apart like a Christmas bauble full of hot sauce. Beautiful. See, I learnt to compensate for recoil a while ago.

  Now they’re stunned again, dumb bastards. Which gives me time. This god damned gun I love so much is only single action, see. The kids are squealing and its putting me off somewhat.

  Jane draws first, which pisses me off because I wanted to save her until last. She’s the one they use to lure these kids, see, plus she’s a cunt. Oh well, can’t always have what you want. She’s there, weapon half drawn, glaring and threatening all kinds of shit. You know how legend says that a .44 can take someone’s head clean off? And then some ballistic experts say, well, no it can’t? What I’ve found is, if you aim for the throat, just under the chin, you can make a person’s head flip right back like it’s on a hinge or something. The boom, smack and crack sound it makes is cool as fuck. OK, so it’s not clean off, but it sure as Hell shut Jane up.

  I was expecting this to be an uphill struggle but the two so-called muscle only go and down tools, the bitches.

  They whimper shit about not being anything to do with this, about how they were just told to turn up for a job. How, when they discovered what it was all about, they were going to pull out, but then I showed up and they were taken in by my looks. Bastards were trying to blame me now.

  I could go into all sorts of crap about how they are as guilty as Choctaw and Jane, so on and so forth. But I really can’t be fucked. I decide to let Comeuppance, my .44, do the talking. She tells them to fuck off, permanently.

  Yeah, I’d like to say Vengeance is my middle name, but it ain’t. It’s Misery. Jezebel Misery St. Etienne, that’s me, and I’m here to level some shit up.

  You’re probably expecting me to save these damn kids now ain’t you? What do I look like, a nanny? I’m just here to bring the pain to bastards and
greedheads like Choctaw and Jane. Leave them there too fend for themselves, it didn’t do me no harm.

  I look around and behold the image of sorrow in these three urchins, snivelling and generally making a god-awful noise. Oh Hell. If I didn’t have a conscience I wouldn’t do what I do I suppose.

  I know a safe haven on the other side of town. That, by the way, is a sure path to suicide. Thugs, thieves, mercs, fascists, bounty hunters and raiders are all waiting for me down that road. Speaking of roads, most of them are impassable too. This was a city once. Before the bombs dropped, that is. And, with three kids too small to fight in tow, it’s going to be a long old trip through Hell. Bring it on.

  ‘Come on, I’ll take you somewhere safe,’ I mutter.

  I begin to walk but the kids just stand there. I turn around to see what the fuck is going on and two of the kids are just trying to stop their snivelling while the bigger one of the boys glares at me purposefully.

  ‘Miss, you’re mean. We know you was trying to buy us. Maybe you never had no money and you was trying to get us for free? Why the Hell should we go with you?’

  ‘Fine,’ I say, ‘stay here and become entertainment for whichever lowlife comes wondering by. If you’re lucky, you’ll starve to death before then.’ I take a hit of rum from my flask and begin walking. I decide to head to the other side of town anyway. I’m still up for a fight and in the mood for some sex, too.

  I wish there’d been someone around to place a wager with. I’ll be damned if I don’t hear the patter of small footsteps behind me. I admit it OK, I’m glad. I ain’t a complete cunt.

  It’s not that I hate kids, I don’t. They just can’t drink or fight worth shit or anything else that interests me. They also don’t shut-up. Even when they’re not yapping away they make noises like slapped dogs.

  Pre-war, so I’ve been told, the journey across town would take around 40 minutes. Now it takes the best part of a day and, when I say day, I mean 24-hours if you got a good pace on. Well, I’m encumbered and these kids look hungry. Hungry kids make more noise, it turns out, be damned. Mercifully my city safe house is on the way. This’ll serve three functions. Feed myself and the brats, get ’em some rest because they’re gonna need it and pick up equipment. On such a voyage you need a whole range of gear and I only came out expecting to do this one job and then maybe hit a bar and get fucked up in more ways than one.

  My abode’s a dank utility basement at the bottom of an abandoned building that has been left half demolished. The room itself is lovely. It has fixtures that I scavenged from a hotel that was left to rot. I even got some plastic plants, fairy lights and all sorts of fancy bric-a-brac I picked up along the way. My single bed is in one corner and opposite the main door is my desk. Next to the desk is my rack of guns.

  I take a slug of whiskey, some cheap shit I pilfered, and get to the task of lovingly cleaning my 44. I look over at the brats who’re commandeered my god damned bed straight away, and are now fast asleep. I hate feeling, I don’t know… responsible for people.

  Yeah, I’ve been in love, once. He was famous, too. A legend to peaceful folks. A scourge and no-good to the shit, filth, scum and traffickers.

  I used to be a raider myself you see. Going around as high as fuck, robbing stealing, murdering, you name it. Then one day I was out with my crew and he came along. We knew who he was. He’d been around for decades, before most of us were born even, bringing justice to this justice-less world. I tell ya, I was even more full of myself then than I am now but, on seeing him, my heart started beating so hard I thought it was going to break free of my chest and make a run for it. It wasn’t fear this time either. Four quick shots from his repeater and my crew belonged to yesterday. I had never seen such shooting.

  Oh man, when I think of that moment. Him standing there in his duster and wide awake, pointing that thing at me with the new day’s sun coming up behind him. His looks were so rugged. A real, true man, not like the others. The admiration and lust I felt then, well, I ain’t never felt anything like that before or since.

  They say being out there reverts you back to your animal side. Well, I guess it does because he must have smelled me or something as he lowered his weapon. He had probably put paid to hundreds of girls like me in the past. Out there in wastes we were ten-a-penny. But, lucky for me, the attraction was mutual. Well, we did it there and then in the dirt and dust.

  He taught me about the importance of compassion and understanding. That normal folks, who were just trying to cut a life out for themselves from nothing, needed protection. About how damned wrong the whole slavery business was.

  He talked a lot about this guy Gilberto, his nemesis or something.

  About a year ago, he was cleaning his guns at this very table with me kneeling under it sucking him off. Just at the moment the floodgates opened, some of Gilberto’s boys burst in and blew his head to pieces, leaving me on my knees with a mouthful of dead man’s cum.

  Dunno how they found us but it was news to them that we were an item. One of the bastards reckoned he had a sense of humour and put a gun to my head and forced me to swallow. Yeah, then they raped me to hell, beat the shit out of me and left me for dead. I still get the ringing in my ears and them awful gut cramps. They should have shot me there and then, but hate and the need for retribution is one hell of a healer. All I know is, one day I’ll get that dirty bastard Gilberto and his boys.

  I kick the kids awake and feed them some of my precious rations, goddamnit. Then I equip. OK, I’m gonna need my man’s old repeater, for range work; four grenades for laughs and of course Comeuppance for the hurt. You may think that there’s no way the repeater, one of them old Henry rifles, would have survived and be serviceable after all these years, and you’d be right. It’s a real Washington’s hatchet effort with all of the parts having been duplicated and replaced over the centuries. I don’t give a fuck. It shoots strait and brings the pain.

  We set off at a good pace but it doesn’t take long for this, escorting kids to safety routine, to get old. Stupid little varmints’ legs are too short for most of the terrain. Clambering over ruins is all part of the game, see. Add their constant grumbling and bleating and you’ve got some idea of what level of Hell I’m in. One thing about out here that’s hard to get used to is the smell. Like death farted or something. Some say that it’s caused by a million wasteful things rotting over the years.

  After many uneventful, prattleful hours the safe haven is in sight now, but this here is no man’s land. Anything could happen between here and there. We are making our way through some craggy rocks, heading down this ridge on a hill towards a monstrous concrete affair surrounded by corrugated iron fences that is the safe house, when I discover how right I am not to let my guard down.

  I hear the laughing first; I recognise it from a year ago. It makes my skin crawl and the adrenaline pump. Appearing from behind some burnt out vehicles are the three bastards who killed my man and raped me. With them is that fat, evil bastard Gilberto.

  Those fucks must have tracked us.

  I have never known him to walk around with such a small contingent of muscle to protect his overstuffed, used up couch of a backside. This is too perfect but, then again, it isn’t. Sometimes I hate the way things turn out. This could be the best opportunity for me to get revenge that I will ever have, if it wasn’t for these damned weak little kids cowering behind me. They make far too good a target for that evil dick Gilberto to pass up on, knowing full well that a dying, squealing kid’ll distract the Hell out of me. But it is a stupid, stupid move to ponder all this for too long. With my attention on Gilberto, I don’t notice that one of his boys must have levelled a gun at me until I hear a bullet crack though the air.

  OK, so my coat’s bullet proof, but it don’t do nothing to stop the impact. I feel at least two of my ribs get pulverised. And I do mean pulverised and not broken. I double over and try to bawl at the kids to take cover, but I can’t get no breath and what comes out is a strangled rasp. I fever
ishly point at the crags. Either by instinct or because of me the kids finally flee and take cover among the rocks. I drop, crawl on my hands and knees and hunker down with them, just escaping a couple of shots that would have finished me.

  ‘Jezebel, Jezebel. You just ain’t got the class or brains of your predecessor. You know, the one that bought it with his shrivelled old cock in your mouth, you skanky, corpse fucking bitch.’ I hear Gilberto shouting.

  I look at the kids. The kids look at me, all wide eyed and open mouthed like I’m about to fucking explain it or something.

  Breathing is the most unnatural thing at the moment, and I feel like I’m dying.

  ‘Jezzy Bell, I’ll distract’em and you can shoot at’em from another place to trick’em,’ says the female one Sarah, all of a sudden jumping up like she knows shit. She’s gone and grown some balls at exactly the wrong fucking moment. Am I role model now? Am I fuck.

  Yeah. The girl’s called Sarah like I said, the other two are boys. James who appears full of himself and Adam who look like the runt of litter. Their names don’t matter that much to me though, as I don’t intend knowing them that long.

  I shout and try to grab her but the little nightmare is too fast. She’s standing there in plain view doing a stupid little dance. I feel sick to my stomach.

  It’s a gift to those fucking scum and there is no way in Hell they could stop themselves. The shot rings out and the little’un is stronger than I thought. She doesn’t budge or even make a sound as the bullet passes right through her.

  OK, so it isn’t the squealing that distracts me in the end because there is none. But it works none the less. Even better I’d say. I slump back and can’t even look at her. The colour goes out of everything and the world doesn’t even stink anymore. There is just a kind of nothingness. I can’t hear, I can’t taste the bile in my mouth. Nothing. It may seem strange but I feel really tired, like super lazy even. I just can’t be fucked no more.