Razor Burnby O. J. Anderson |
Table of Contents Chapter 7, part 1 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 appear in this issue. |
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Chapter 7 part 2 of 2 |
* * *
Dr. Jenkins almost comes flying across the truck’s cab when Razor jerks the wheel to the right and drives up onto the sidewalk, where he parks, approximately two hundred meters from the GP7 Club’s doors. After the engine shuts down the distant staccato beats of hyper-groove waft through the truck.
“There. See that faint blue light coming from those doors over there? That’s the entrance.”
Black silhouettes drift and sway about the entrance like ghosts feeding on a new soul.
“What does GP7 stand for?”
“Probably nothing. These clubs move around all the time changing names. The kids will tire of this place soon enough and they’ll start looking for another place to go. The owner will close it down one day and move to another location under a new name. Same music, same lights, same drinks, same goons working the door, but different building.”
“You call that music?”
“That’s Paco’s ‘Express’ cut from the Delicious album. He’s part of the Hyper-Groove movement. It’s a solid but fairly esoteric album filled with minimalist slag beats and atonal vibrattos.” Razor looks at Dr. Jenkins to make sure she’s paying attention. “As soon as we step out of the truck and start walking towards the club you’ll hear the music change. It’ll be “D-Klips” from Aeschylus, the founder of Hyper-Groove. That’s the signal to crash, police are coming.”
“So why don’t we run this guy Aeschylus in as an accessory?” she asks.
He assumes she is trying to be funny. Doesn’t laugh.
“Nobody knows who he is. It used to be that he was a group of people, now the rumor is that’s he’s a computer program, which makes more sense, really. His compositions are much too complex for the majority of these dopeheads.
“Typically, an Aeschylus cut will take you on a long tour of a virtual surreality playground doing laps from terror to euphoria in some demented funhouse. They’re relentless in their probing depths of emotional states. That’s why they use ‘D-Klips’ for the signal; it’s a stampede for the mind, causes instant panic. If you were to walk up to someone whacked on maggots and tell him the cops were coming he’d probably just laugh.”
They get out of the truck and walk towards the club.
Razor says, “Expect everyone in here to be spracked out on rice and highly unpredictable. Stay close and don’t go wandering off.”
“D-Klips” begins midway through their approach.
“That’s it,” he says.
“So what happens now, they all go scurrying off like mice?”
“No. They’re stashing all the junk. Either consuming it or hiding it away.”
The line extending from the entrance is thirty deep, with two chimps controlling the rope. One has a headset transmitter wrapped around his melon, the other — goatee, butterfly collar, gold chain — confers with his clipboard. Razor reaches down to unfasten the rope himself, but they both step in front to block his way.
The one with the headset says, “I don’t think you’re on the list, mate.”
Razor steps closer and says, “Better check again, Nancy.”
The monkey kind of laughs for a second. Looks away smiling. Slides a finger across his chin. Big gold pinkie ring like a chicken nugget. Too cool. He says, “Look, super size, I’m sure you’re very fly in your own special way, but I don’t think you’ll fit in here.”
“You won’t live long enough to regret those words if you don’t get the hell out of my way.”
“Sorry, mate. You’re not on the list.” He smirks at his partner like a puppy who just took a dump on the new carpet.
The other one flips up a sheet of paper on the clipboard and says, “Nope, not on the list.” Then a stupid grin at Dr. Jenkins. “But you might be. Let me check one more time.”
Razor swipes the clipboard from his hands and — whack! whack! whack! — smashes it over the chimp’s head three times like his skull is a wad of shortbread dough and Razor’s making a batch of cookies. Tossing the clipboard over his shoulder, Razor pushes both their faces to the side.
They enter the club as a few girls standing in line giggle.
Inside, beams of light cut through the darkness like scalpels and the music is so loud that everything happens as though in a vacuum; gyrating bodies, fights, glasses knocking together, and screams all muted flat by the tonnage of Aeschylus’s buzz beat. Colored flashes of light come sporadically from all directions, shooting through the club like the last brief shimmers of bottles, watches, keys, sinking to the bottom of a dark lake.
As Razor pushes and shoves bodies making his way toward the blue-glowing bar, he feels Dr. Jenkins take hold of the back of his T-shirt. This, he thinks, is a world that she doesn’t belong in.
The music gets louder. It’s like being inside a booster rocket and the club’s about to take off. Glowing skeletons are lowered from the ceiling. Paranoia dance grooves. Some of these kids will end up in the insane asylum before sunrise.
Drinks are ordered by the number here, using fingers. Some clown is flashing a peace sign at one of the bartenders. Razor pushes him out of the way and holds up a C. The bartender shakes his head like he doesn’t understand, so Razor stabs a finger into his mouth and fishhooks his cheek, then pulls him across the bar so he can read Razor’s lips up close.
Slowly Razor mouths the word: C-y-b-o-r-g.
The bartender points toward the rear of the club.
Razor drops him.
Dr. Jenkins’ human rights protests are curiously absent.
They move through the club to a door. Razor traces the perimeter of the door with his hand, looking for a knob or handle, but can’t find one. Probably locked anyway. So he kicks it in.
The door comes completely off its hinges and slams onto a set of steps in a dimly lit hallway spray painted by a hundred different people with bad penmanship. They take the stairs to the second floor where they find an office. This time Razor uses the doorknob.
The club owner, Tork, spins around and shouts, “What the...? Hey! You can’t come in here.” Typical club skunk, this one: ponytail, leather jacket, slimy. Rumor has it that Tork is one of the original hot chocolate boys. Nickname used to be “Bisquik.”
“Where’s Cyborg?” demands Razor, crossing the office with nothing else to do but kick some ass. The music is distant and faded here, like someone threw a blanket over it.
“What? Who? Who the hell are you?” Tork backs into a small wooden table covered with bottles, drugs, cash, and an ashtray. Grabbing hold of it and whirling it around, Tork tries to use it as a barrier between himself and Razor. “How’d you get in here?”
“You tell me where Cyborg is or I’ll shove that table so far up your ass people will be setting their drinks down on your face.”
“You can’t do that. I’m...”
Razor flings the table across the room. It crashes into a wall. A sharp little hook to Tork’s ribs, breaking several of them with ease. The owner buckles to the floor. Razor picks him up by the throat and slams him up against the wall, choking him. A few seconds later and he’s ready to cooperate, Razor can tell: his head is jerking up and down in a spasmodic nod. But Razor doesn’t let him go. Not yet.
Even during strangulation Tork is able to manage a few quick facial expressions showing surprise and worry; his eyebrows furrow a bit, wondering why this giant hasn’t let go of him. One doesn’t normally kill someone you’re trying to get information from.
“Razor! Razor! Put him down.”
Tork’s eyes skip down to Dr. Jenkins, then back up to Razor. Hopeful, like maybe he has an ally. But this dirtbag needs a couple more seconds. He needs to visit the scary edge of life and take a good whiff of his decayed soul that’s been rotting there since he pawned if off for a cheap buzz so many years ago.
When his eyes begin to blink rapidly and he makes that ghaat... ghaat! sound, Razor knows this punk’s ready to do whatever he’s told.
Razor drops him and Tork gasps out all at once, “Cyborg hasn’t been around for a while I don’t know what he’s up to his guys are downstairs selling CDs they’re the ones with the bandannas tied around their heads got nothing to do with me I heard he has a place over on Snow....”
* * *
Outside, Dr. Jenkins, scurrying alongside Razor trying to keep up, says, “You can’t keep on choking people like that.”
“This isn’t Walldalla,” he tells her. And to help drive that point home are the six punks gathered around the truck. Nailed bats, chains, pipes, mohawks, pieced noses, scarey tats, et cetera.
Dr. Jenkins notices them. She stops and says, “Oh, crap.”
Still moving, Razor says, “Call an ambulance. I’ll be back in a few minutes. And I promise I won’t choke anyone.”
One of the pigs is sitting on the hood with his fingers digging into Razor’s baggie of lightly toasted almonds. He sees another drinking from his bottle of purified water with hint of lemon. The punk holding the chain — their leader, Razor assumes, since he steps out first to greet him — spits something out and complains, “Damn these’re hot.”
Razor picks him to go down first, and hard, to set the tone for this rumble. Bearing down on the punk, Razor says, “That’s my spicy turkey jerky.”
The punk doesn’t get a chance to reply with some smart-ass remark. A straight front kick to his sternum sends him bouncing off the driver’s side door, his future as a Garden City goon bellowing out of him like a sick bag pipe. Then Razor delivers his Signature Punch, sending the punk spinning and twisting, ass-over-soul patch, onto the truck’s hood.
There is a bat coming at Razor’s ten o’clock.
He steps back and watches it hit the door.
With his left hand Razor reaches out and snaps the kid’s wrist while taking the bat away with his right hand. The punk is bent over now screaming and clutching onto Razor’s right front twenty-four inch Assault wheel/tire combo, made by Falcon Tire especially for him. It’s a low-profile, high performance setup with a hard rubber compound combining a super-long tread life with great high-speed road handling capabilities.
With the bat Razor beats the kid over the head a few times like he’s chopping wood for a cozy fire.
There’s another one with two knives coming from above now, off the roof of the truck. He’s yelling, “Hiy-yiy-yiy-yiy-yiy!”
Razor swings the bat like he’s serving the final point at Wimbledon and catches the goon square in the crotch, which changes his intended trajectory significantly thus causing him to crash onto the pavement head first.
Back by the custom Biggers & Nash high-flow four-inch stainless steel exhaust is the kid with the pipe, swinging it over his head as though tuning his mind’s antennae to a channel only he can receive.
He finally comes in with it after a total failure of common sense.
Razor pummels him with punches. Upper cuts, hooks, straights, from all angles, all full power. The punk falls back against the truck. A couple more stiff jabs make him spit out a baker’s dozen of rotten teeth. He slumps down. Finished for the night.
On to the next. He’s got a pipe too, but this one’s hesitant to use it, having just witnessed Razor’s version of dental care.
“Razor!”
One of them is making a move for Dr. Jenkins.
He doesn’t get too far.
From the side it looks like the goon ran into an imaginary clothesline, but it’s only Razor fisting a tuft of hair on the back of this punk’s greasy head. His legs flip out in front of him and he falls to his back. And since Razor has already got him by the hair, he picks him up and flips him onto his front side like a sausage patty. Razor grinds the punk’s face into the pavement with his boot.
The scared goon with the pipe crosses behind the truck and looks at Razor from across the hood, under which is the still warm, highly modified V-10 Annihilator class. It’s been blueprinted and bored with titanium rods and pistons, custom Rock manifold, Biggers & Nash headers, a one-of-a-kind beryllium ultra-high performance camshaft and a Hinze supercharger — all sending power down to the specially made Birko transmission with locking dif.
The kid looks both ways. Drops the pipe. Takes off running.
Razor picks up the bat and chucks it. It spins like a boomerang down the street after him.
Copyright © 2006 by O. J. Anderson
