Blake Crouch: Birds of Prey

And the shame.

This is the last time. She keeps telling herself over and over and over, and she’s told herself this before, but it feels different this time.

One more high. One more fix.

And then she’s done.

She sees the fire in the oil drum up ahead, and her pulse accelerates.

Always a nervous proposition meeting a new dealer for the first time. And she certainly wouldn’t have chosen to come way out here into this veritable urban ghost town, but people don’t sell drugs in front of Gucci stores. A whore she’d shared needles with had recommended this place, saying it was the best.

Moni has her doubts. This town, like many others in Michigan, died years ago with the demise of the auto factories. The homes are all abandoned. The businesses all closed. The cops don’t bother patrolling, because there is nothing to protect and no one to serve.

Passing between the empty buildings, she slows her approach, wondering if she should make herself known.

“Hey!” she calls out to a black man leaning against the brick wall behind the oil drum.

He looks up from the cell phone in his hand and squints at her through the firelight, and the rising smoke between them.

“Hi, baby, you need something?”

“Yeah, looking for H. Can you help me?”

“Yeah, I got you. Come on. It’s aiight.”

Thank God.

Moni continues toward him, moving finally into the welcome heat of the fire.

The man is young, maybe nineteen, twenty tops, and he’s swallowed by a black down jacket.

“I need works too,” Moni says. In exchange for this address, she gave that whore her last syringe.

“Got all kinds of works for you, baby.” The man smiles, showing a gold tooth, but the smile isn’t for Moni. It’s for someone behind Moni.

She turns, senses suddenly on high alert, and sees two other guys strutting toward her. Black faces, black jackets, mean black eyes.

She’s seen eyes like this many times before. Knows with a sick, sinking feeling what’s happening.

“Look, uh, Jasmine sent me.” Moni hopes the girl’s name was Jasmine, but it dawns on her that it doesn’t matter. Jasmine didn’t send Moni here to score. She sent Moni here to get japped.

What is the world coming to when you can’t trust a whore strung out on smack?

“I’ll do whatever you want,” Moni says. “Don’t hurt me.” She knows they’ll run a train on her, but maybe they won’t be rough. Maybe she’ll even end up with the H when it’s over.

“Check this bitch with the don’t hurt me.” The man behind the oil drum laughs. “Whacha gonna do for us, baby? Huh?” He steps out from behind the fire and moves toward her. “You gamed a bit, din’ you? You gonna show us how skinny white bitches suck black cock?”

“Whatever you guys want,” Moni says, knees trembling. “Just don’t—”

The slap rocks her head backward, and Moni falls onto her ass.

“Don’t hurt me,” one of the men behind her mimes, and the trio busts out laughing again.

Moni covers up as best she can when the kicking starts.

A two hundred dollar gym shoe catches her face, frees a tooth.

She spits blood, starts to cry.

“Dude, don’t fuck her mouth up…how she gon’ suck?”

Moni begins to crawl back toward the mouth of the alley, but it’s too far away. Sick as it is, she wonders if she’ll still be able to get a fix when they’re done with her.

A kick to the belly. She kisses the filthy asphalt. Unbidden, the memory of the freak comes back, smiling down at her, ready with his blow torch and his video camera.

That time, she fought back. Fought for her worthless, miserable life, because she didn’t want to die.

Now?

Now dying doesn’t seem so bad.

And then the kicking stops and she readies herself for what’s coming next, trying to land upon some memory—so few worth a damn—to latch onto and take herself out of this moment.

“Walk the fuck back out this alley, cracker!”

What? They can’t be talking to her.

Moni looks up, sees a tall figure standing at the opening to the alley, ten feet away.

“I was wondering if I could buy some drugs from you guys.”

“Please,” Moni moans. “Help me.”

But the man doesn’t acknowledge her.

“He ain’t for real,” says one of the men behind her.

“Boy, it look like we open for business? Get the fuck—”

“Your door was open. So how about you stop fucking around and sell me something?”

In the moment of heavy silence that follows, Moni glances back over her shoulder at her attackers, who are staring at one another in complete bewilderment. The closest gangbanger puffs out his chest, taking two strides up to the white guy.

“Muthafucka, you just walked into the wrong fuckin—”

The blades seem to materialize in the white man’s hands, glinting in the fire from the oil drum.

Slash-slash and the black kid is on his knees, trying to put his face back on.

“Oh hell no.”

The two remaining men step over Moni, the one in front reaching into his pocket.

She keeps expecting the tall man to retreat, or at least step back, make some effort to protect himself, but he just stands there, letting them come.

The next swipe happens so fast, she only sees the blade for a fleeting second.

Then a wet, gurgling sound, the dealer staggering back and grasping his neck as blood gushes out of a gaping tear.

As he falls back into the brick wall and sinks down onto the concrete to die, Moni looks back at the tall man and sees that he’s already brought the third man to his knees, in the process of carving a canyon through his chest, feathers from the down jacket billowing around them in a cloud that quickly turns from white to red.

When he hits the ground, Moni pounces upon the dealer, snaking a hand into his baggy jeans. Her fingers grasp what feel like warm grapes, and she makes a fist and pulls them out, her heart jumping, her eyes widening, an incredulous smile exploding across her face.

Balloons. Six of them. Each filled with H.

Moni glances up as the tall man walks toward her. She thinks about offering him half the drugs. He saved her life, after all. It’s the motherload of scores, and more than enough to share.

He squats down in front of her, and she notices for the first time in the firelight that he has one of the palest faces she’s ever seen.

And long black hair.

“Oh, God, thank you,” she says. “Thank you so, so much.”

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“Moni.”

The man smiles a mouthful of awful, rotting teeth and spits a white piece of candy onto the ground—smells like…lemons.

Then Moni notices his eyes.

Black as tar.

Unfeeling.

Freak eyes.

“Hi, Moni, I’m Luther,” he says. “Do you know what an artificial leech is?”

A Schizophrenia of Hawks

The Plains of Central Illinois, 2008

The road to the Heathrow Facility for the Criminally Insane is a two-lane blacktop that cuts a straight line through the prairie west of Peoria. On a clear day, you can see the stone quadrangle and its various spurs from four miles away, like some prehistoric monument abandoned to erode upon the plain.

Only it isn’t abandoned. Heathrow is home to four hundred thirteen of the most violent and mentally damaged human beings in the tri-state area.

And this wasn’t a clear day.

Lightning slashed across the night sky as Doctor Carmichael drove down the narrow road to the asylum.

Rain drumming hard against the windshield.

Wipers barely keeping up.

Another explosion of lightning revealed the facade of Heathrow in the distance—four stories of crumbling granite masonry, the glass behind the barred windows reflecting the electricity.