Jack threw my legs off the armrest and sat next to me on the edge of the sofa.
“It’s so nice to teach some jerk a lesson. Don’t you agree with me?” she asked.
“Yes, very nice. You know, I've never hit anyone in my life. Did you see how huge he was? I knocked him out with one single blow! I felt like a superhero!”
“Do you want to?” asked Jack in a serious voice.
“Do I want what? To become a superhero? Are you really asking me this? We are not superheroes!”
“Aren’t we? I don’t know about you, but I have a superpower, superspeed, and a cool ride. Why can’t we be superheroes?!”
“Well, come to think of it, we are kinda superheroes. But there’s another problem. Where will we find villains? Are we going to just patrol the streets at night? I don’t think it’ll work. Breeksby’s not Gotham City. You won’t meet Jokers and Two-Faces on every corner.”
“Don't bother yourself with such small details, just answer the question – do you want to become a superhero?”
“If you say it like this, then yes, I do.”
“Get ready then. I’ll show you my other way of making money that involves some heroic activity.”
Jack got up and went to her bedroom. I remained lying on the sofa, watching her go, in confusion.
“Come on! I’m not joking! Do you have something with a hood?”
I nodded still looking at Jack questioningly.
“Well, put it on.”
A minute later she came out dressed in a sweatshirt with a hood pulled over her eyes and a black bandana around her neck. There was another one – red, in her hand. I quickly put on my hoodie and pulled the hood over my eyes as well. Jack held out the red bandana to me, “Here, tie it around your neck like I did. This way you can pull it up over your nose like a mask.”
The expression of extreme surprise wasn’t leaving my face but I followed Jack’s advice. We left the house and this time went not to the right, where the garage with the Pontiac Firebird was, but to the left. On the other side of the entrance to our refuge, there was the exact same iron gate. During the whole week of my living in Breeksby, I never saw Jack open that gate.
I was very surprised to see another car behind the rusty metal door. It was the exact opposite of the Firebird – a shabby and dusty Ford at least twenty years old.
“And what about ‘a cool ride’?”
“Only in the movies, Batman drives a car that catches your eye from a mile away. For real heroes, the surprise effect plays a very important role. A Taurus is exactly what we need. This baby had been the top-selling car in the whole States for five years! There’s still a shit-ton of them on the streets, which means that no one will expect to find real superheroes inside this rust bucket.”
Jack grinned and threw me the key. I started the car and drove out of the garage. During my week in Breeksby, I became much more confident behind the wheel. All the racing we did at night combined with my fear of damaging a rare car could be called the best extreme driving school in the world.
We drove across town, to Sand Hills district, known for its bad reputation even in my school. I was quite worried by the view I saw through the car window. I used to think that one could find such scenery only on the outskirts of Los Angeles, in New York’s Harlem or in some other big city. But here it was, a mere hour’s drive away from my tiny native corner of the American dream with white picket fences and neat lawns.
“Slow down a little,” Jack said in some very concentrated tone of voice.
“Slow down? Are you sure? Admiring the landscape, are you?”
“Sammy, remember what we came here for. We are heroes, and not some frightened girl scouts who want to hide under their mommies’ skirts.”
“Heroes, yeah, right. I bet each of those guys over there surely has a gun and it seems to me that a dozen bullets to the head will kill even a vampire.”
Jack didn’t answer. She was peering intently somewhere deep into the dark streets.
“See that dude, standing on the corner? Drive toward him. And pull your hood down.”
I have never so much as smoked weed in my whole life nor have I ever bought drugs, but at that moment I immediately realized that the guy was a pusher. He was nervously jigging up and down on the spot, constantly looking about, obviously ready to take off running at the slightest sign of danger. I’m not racist, although TV might have made me think that only black guys sling dope in the streets, that’s why I was quite surprised to see the dealer’s face in the headlights. He was not just white but super white, with very fair eyebrows, pale-blue eyes, and disheveled Kurt Cobain blonde locks.
As soon as the car stopped, Jack rolled down the window. The fellow ran up to it in an instant.
“Two packs of white,” said my partner, not looking at the dealer.
“A yard.”
The guy’s voice was shivering as well as his whole body. Jack took the money out of her pocket, but instead of holding it out to the dealer right away she left her hand with a C-note to rest on her knee. The guy took out a small square piece of paper folded several times, threw it into the seat between Jack’s legs and stretched his hand out into the open window to take the money.
The moment his fingers touched the edge of the bill, Jack grabbed his wrist with her left hand and pressed the guy’s shoulder to the door with the right one. Without turning to me she yelled, “Go!”
I was shocked at what happened and pressed the gas more out of fright rather than complying with the order. The car shot forward and the poor dealer started screaming. I heard his feet hit against the asphalt but Jack was holding the guy tight despite all his attempts to break away from this death grip.
“Turn left, to the backstreet. Pull over there,” ordered Jack a quarter mile later.
When we stopped she freed the captive’s hand and his body collapsed to the ground like a bag of bones. Jack pulled her bandana over her nose and got out of the car. I followed her.
The dealer was lying stretched out on the ground. To my great relief, he was alive and even seemed relatively okay. He lost one shoe along the way and his bare foot was now bleeding, but the wounds seemed superficial. The guy was still screaming in fear but not as loud as before. Jack approached him and started speaking in a gruff metallic voice, very unusual to me.
“Where do you get dope? Speak, if you want to live!”
The dealer kept silent. Jack grabbed him by his clothes and put him on his feet with one jerk.
“I asked you, you piece of shit, where do you get dope?”
The shock had passed, and the guy restored some remains of his confidence, “Screw you! Do you even know who my boss is?”
Jack decided not to interrupt the dealer with another question, instead, she seized him by the neck, pulled him toward herself and then pushed him abruptly up into the air. The poor bastard rocketed up six feet high. No man on Earth would be able to do this trick. Jack caught his flimsy body with one hand and dropped him down just as abruptly, slamming him into the ground. All the air that was in the guy’s lungs flew out of his mouth at once.
“Answer me!” roared Jack, putting her foot on the dealer’s chest.
Panting for air, the guy babbled, “From Karim, in the block on the corner.”
Jack put the dealer back on his feet.
“Get in the car, you’ll show us where he lives,” she ordered.
The guy sat compliantly in the back seat. Jack took her seat and I returned behind the wheel. The apartment block on the corner was the only nine-story building in the whole district. It was surrounded by two- and three-story barracks which made this one-entrance building with red brick walls look like some sinister tower. This was exactly the place for mysterious Karim – the evil genius and the crime boss of the whole Sand Hills.
The dealer brought us to the top floor and pointed to the door leading to his boss’s apartment. Jack pressed him to the wall, “Get the hell out of this neighborhood. If I see you here again I’ll mop you up.”
Jack removed her hand from the frightened dealer’s shoulder and he darted off down the stairs.
“Well, Sammy, ready to have some fun?”
All this time, from the very moment we appeared in this bad area, I was as if hypnotized by Jack's confidence. She behaved like a real superhero. And I couldn't even tell her anything, ask what the hell she was doing and what she was going to do next. I just stood there and looked at her with my eyes widened in horror. Without waiting for my answer Jack kicked out the door of Karim’s apartment.
Jack dashed into the room and decked two men on the fly. Without understanding what I was doing, I hurried after her. There were three other men in the apartment. This time TV didn’t fail me. All of them were huge black guys with shaved heads and tattooed arms. While I was still looking around trying to size up the situation Jack had time to deal with all of them.
“Take their guns!” Jack shouted to me.
I did not move, and Jack had to repeat the order much louder and much more demanding. That helped. The moment I began to collect the guns scattered on the floor, I heard a rustle behind me and turned around. The door was slowly opening right behind my back and a barrel of a shotgun appeared in the doorway. I reacted immediately, kicking the door. The barrel twitched aside and a shot rang out. I turned back. A drywall partition that was on Jack’s left shattered to pieces, covering her in a cloud of white dust. If the door hadn’t deflected the gun, a charge would have flown right in her face.
“Great reaction,” Jack shook the dust off. “And now will you, please, take care of whoever is standing behind the door?”
I turned around. After the kick, my foot kept on going carried by inertia, ultimately coming to a halt on the floor and blocking the door. The barrel of a shotgun was still sticking out from the doorway, and a person behind the door was jerking it up and down trying to free the weapon. I assessed the situation and then a crazy idea ignited inside my head. It’s time to recall cool action movies!
I removed my leg, simultaneously blocking the door with my right hand, and threw a straight punch to the wall with my left one. The weak wood broke into pieces, and my fist holed through. I instantly groped for something on the other side, grabbed it and pulled it toward myself. A loud bang was heard and the thing I was holding now started pulling my hand down. I unclenched my fingers, took my hand out of the hole and opened the door. Behind it was another huge guardsman, pressing both his hands to his broken nose.
Seeing the defeated enemy, I realized that all the fears and doubts that fettered me before we broke into the drug den disappeared without a trace. I felt like a real superhero! Vampirism definitely gives you tons of confidence!
“Is he alive?” Jack asked.
“Oh, yeah, and he hasn’t even blacked out,” I replied smugly.
“Drag him over here. Let’s talk to him.”
I dragged the guard into the middle of the room. Jack stood over him.
“Which of you is Karim?”
The guard started shaking his head from side to side, still pressing his hand to his nose.
“Give me the shotgun,” Jack told me.
I did. She racked the slide and pointed the barrel at the guard’s face.
“Which of you is Karim?” she repeated.
The guard shook his head again. Jack put her finger on the trigger. I was just about to ask her whether she was really going to shoot this poor bastard in the head when a shot rang out. Stupefied, I looked at the guard. He was screaming his lungs out. At the last moment, Jack moved the barrel aside and riddled the carpet a few inches away from the big guy’s head.
“I know, I know, firing near the ear is very, very unpleasant. You can even damage your eardrum this way. Where’s Karim?”
The guard continued screaming. Jack looked at me, “I guess he doesn’t hear anything. Now there’s only nasty ultrasonic squeak in his head.”
Jack leaned closer to the guard, stopped his mouth with her hand in order to muffle his screams and yelled, “Tell me where Karim is or I’ll pop at another ear!”
The guard pointed to the door across the room. Jack smiled crookedly, “Ah, right, there’s another door there. For some reason, we didn’t consider looking around. But it’s kind of my thing. First, I ask people and if they keep silent or black out, then I think for myself.”
We left the guard and approached the door.
“Here, take the shotgun,” Jack said handing me the weapon. “Who knows, maybe this Karim is lying there in wait with a machine gun. Do you know how to use it?”
“Do I have to do something other than pull the trigger?” I dropped scornfully.
“Well, for starters you need to reload it before shooting.”
Ashamed, I racked the slide of the shotgun.
“Ready?”
I nodded and shouldered the shotgun, taking aim in front of me. What a badass I felt at that moment! Jack turned the doorknob simultaneously pushing the door with her foot. It opened and we stormed into the room. There was a spacious bed in it and a TV mounted on the wall opposite the door.
Some war battles seemingly from Call of Duty were breaking out on-screen, and a child was sitting on the bed with his back to us. He was wearing huge Beats headphones that covered practically half of his small head. Now it was clear why he hadn’t reacted anyhow to the gunshot sounds in the next room.
I lowered my weapon. Jack came closer to the kid and took the headphones off his head. He turned. He was not exactly a child – rather a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old youngster, only very small and puny.
“Are you Karim?” Jack asked.
“Yes. Why?” the kid answered calmly.
“Are you Muslim?”
“No. My dad liked basketball. So what do you want?”
“Are you Karim the local drug lord?”
The kid looked at the shotgun in my hands, noticed several bodies lying on the floor behind our backs and understood that there was no point in denying anything.
“Yes, I am. So? Did you come to interview me?”
Jack looked in my direction.
“Smart-ass. I like that,” she smiled and shifted her gaze to Karim again. “Are you a child prodigy or something? Or some Benjamin Button, and you are actually sixty now? How have you become a bigshot in such an age?”
“My dad called the shots. He is in jail now, that’s why I’m in charge. Wait, I got it, you might be Jehovah's Witnesses and you came here to offer me some books, right?”
“Very funny. Listen, Karim, you are a smart kid if you rule everything on behalf of your dad. And I guess you’ve already understood the situation – people in masks, a shotgun, your men on the floor and things like that. Let’s be business people and sort things out without unnecessary violence.”
“Go on,” the boy’s voice didn’t even falter.
“We need all your money and all your dope. If you give us everything voluntarily, we’ll leave and you’ll continue playing. By the way, sorry for interrupting.”
Karim shrugged, “Well, it’s fair. It's all under the bed. Get there yourself,” he said, standing up.
Jack smiled and lifted the bed with one hand. There were duffle bags under it.
“Check them,” Jack told me.
I looked into the first bag and saw bundles of banknotes of different value bound with rubber bands. Then, I looked into the other one. There were bindles of white powder and several packages with bright blue pills. I picked up the bags and nodded to Jack.
“It’s a pleasure dealing with you, Karim. But, you know, you’d better return to school. You are a smart guy. This life isn’t for you.”
“Well thank you but Dad told me not to listen to the advice of the robbers in masks.”
“All right then, have it your way, but if you don’t get out of this shit, sooner or later we’ll come back and our next encounter may end up not so pleasantly.”
“Fata viam invenient,” the kid said smugly.
Jack looked at me and said, “Fate will find a way.” Then she turned back to Karim and smirked. “Read it on a box of cereal, huh?”
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