Max Collins - Before the Dawn

“Know what they say,” she said. “Longer the blade...”

The biker wiped several greasy locks of hair out of his eyes. “Y’gonna really apologize now, bitch.”

She tilted her head and appraised him, as if the biker were fine print she was trying to make out.

“You know,” she said, “you done nothin’ but call Original Cindy names since we met... the ‘d’ word, the ‘b’ word... and you’re just about a consonant away from getting my boot in the crack of your wide honky ass.”

His eyes were white all the way around now, and he blurted another epithet — finally getting around to the “c” word — and charged her.

“That’s the one...” she said, and as he neared, she sidestepped, cracking him along the ear with the back of a fist as he stumbled past her, and kicking him in the ass.

That was the second thing the biker lost: his dignity... such as it was.

“God damn it, ” he roared, one hand going to the reddening ear. “I’m gonna cut you to fuckin’ ribbons, you black bitch!”

Her response to this name-calling was nonverbal: with a martial-arts jump, she delivered a perfectly placed, spike-heeled kick to his foul mouth.

The biker dropped like a bag of grain, his knife tumbling from his popped-open fingers and rolling under some bushes, as if trying to get the hell out of this. The big man tried to speak again, but the words came out a mushy mumble mixed with the teeth he was spitting up like undigested corn. Blood streaked down his chin onto his bare, hairy chest in colorful ribbons.

“Ooooh,” Original Cindy said, hands on hips again, wincing in feigned disgust. “You do know how to gross a girl out... You wanna call me some more names? You ain’t worked your way to ‘n’ yet... ’Course then I’d have to kill your ass.”

Wobbling to his feet, his eyes narrowing with hate, the biker glanced toward the bush where his knife peeked out from under some leaves.

“Now, you don’t even wanna think about going for that, do you now? Your mama didn’t raise a fool, did she — surely you know when you got your ass kicked?”

The response to this diplomacy was, “Fuck you!”

She waggled her head and waggled a finger, too. “No sir, nada chance, not on your best day... not even if I got some of that sweet thing you chased off afterward.”

Hysterical with fury and embarrassment, the biker lunged for the bushes where his knife awaited. Original Cindy cut off his path and met him with a side kick to the head. Again the biker dropped... and this time he stayed down. Breathing — a bubbly saliva-and-blood broth boiling at his broken mouth.

Turning casually toward the tents, Original Cindy thought, Now where did that fine slice of heaven get herself to?

But the blonde was nowhere to be seen.

“Damn,” Original Cindy said to nobody. “And just when I thought we had us a moment.”

Turning back, she went through the open cage doors into the bar. Two things assaulted her immediately: the raucous roar of a bad rock band in the far end of the room — almost twenty years into the twenty-first century and ZZ Top covers still ruled — and the aroma of sandalwood incense laced with monkey shit. Original Cindy decided the smart money was on breathing through her mouth — which meant she would fit right in with this group.

The joint was packed with the sort of lowlifes who made the road their home, and the combination of sweat, liquor, and bad breath was an invitation to be somewhere else. But Original Cindy ain’t no quitter, she reminded herself, and besides... Cindy was parched. She’d been looking forward to a brew even before she worked up a thirst kicking biker ass. So she elbowed her way to the bar.

The band continued to whack away at their instruments the singer caterwauling into a frequently feeding-back mike; but Cindy knew it would take someone with a Ph.D. in classic rock to figure out which ZZ Top song they were currently butchering.

The bartender — a skinny pale pitiful-looking guy with more hair than his comb could handle and two puffy black eyes, courtesy of a dissatisfied customer no doubt — moved in front of her.

“Beer!” she yelled, over the din of the band and the crowd.

He nodded and walked away.

She wheeled to have a look at the predominantly biker crowd. Last time Original Cindy had seen this much denim and leather in one place had been at a rodeo near Fort Hood. This was nothing like that... thank God; even the bikers were an improvement over the shit-kicker cowboys in Texas. Original Cindy was not prejudiced, but she had little patience for rednecks.

Or for redneck bands like this one — two guitars, a bass, drums, and a druggie vocalist in search of the key; they sounded like marbles twirled in a garbage can with a couple of fornicating cats thrown in for good measure.

Original Cindy was still shaking her head in disbelief at the sorry state of her cultural and social life at this particular moment, when the shiner-adorned bartender came back with a cold bottle of beer. She got a three-dollar bill out of her wallet — President James on it, appropriately — and the bartender snatched the bill from her fingers.

“Damn!” she said. “Go on and help your damn self, why don’t you?”

The bartender walked away.

“No wonder you a damn raccoon,” she mumbled, then: “Keep the change, Prince Charmin’!”... even though she knew he’d already assumed as much.

She sipped at the beer, hoping to make it last. At these prices being sober was looking like a reasonable option. Besides, this joint with that band and these patrons wasn’t worth more than one beer and fifteen minutes of her life. No one who shared her particular worldview seemed to frequent this establishment, and if she didn’t want more biker run-ins, the best bet would be to drink up and get the hell out of this zoo.

She swigged her suds and, considering this was Original Cindy anyway, kept a low profile. Nonetheless, the bikers stared at her, making her more uncomfortable than she would care to admit.

She wasn’t afraid — hell, nothing scared her, except maybe life itself; but thirty bikers to one black ex-soldier seemed like shitty odds. Killing the beer, she turned toward the door just as the biker she’d pounded came staggering in, drunk (more from her beating than beer), his mouth twisted in an angry snarl, blood still trailing down his chin like a sloppy vampire.

“ Now you get yours, you black bitch,” he bellowed, though the words came out slurred and mushy because he was drunk and no longer had all his teeth.

The band kept playing; but every eye in the bar had already turned to the door, and now swiveled to Original Cindy. After all, no one in here had missed her entrance...

“Oh, maaaan... I thought I was done with your sorry ass,” she said, and looked around at the other patrons, to court their support. Once a fight was finished, the fight was finished, right? Get on with your damn lives!

But the bikers were closing into a loose semicircle around her, putting the bar at her back, leaving a path for the drunk to get to her.

Again the burly biker edged toward her, and he had that damn blade in his hand again. The circle began to close in, providing a compact stage for the coming action.

So she struck first, picking up the beer bottle and smashing it over the head of the nearest biker, who collapsed in a heap. The band finally noticed that no one was listening to them and stopped playing, providing an awful, deathly silence.

Original Cindy tore a hole in it: “You want some more of Original Cindy?” She gestured to herself with both hands, entering the center of the circle, oozing bravado, saying, “Then come on — plenty to go ’round!”