Crab Town (10 page)

When the bank manager originally opened the vault for Nine, she couldn’t believe it either. The vault was practically empty.

“This is it?” she asked him.

The bank manager nodded. “You’re disappointed. I completely understand.”

“You completely understand!”

“Trust me, I’m even more unhappy to see it empty than you are. Filling a couple bags full of money for you wouldn’t have been a setback at all for this bank, had you come just a few days ago.”

“What happened?”

“The owners of Liberty Bank came yesterday and cleaned out the vault. The bank hasn’t been doing very well this past year, so I guess the owners decided to take the money and run.”

“The fat cats knocked off their own bank?”

The bank manager frowned. “Regrettably, that’s exactly what they did. They stole everyone’s money and took off, leaving only enough to keep the bank going for a few more days while they made their getaway.”

Nine sighed and started packing up the measly leftovers. “Desperate times…”

“Desperate, indeed.”

When Sailboat returns from the vault with the bank manager, he has an irritated look on his face but he’s not accusing the scrawny guy of lying anymore.

“Help Nine up,” Doomsday tells him. “Those escaped hostages surely called the cops now. They’ll be arriving any minute.” Sailboat nods and goes to the wounded girl.

Doomsday looks over at Johnny Balloon, who is cuffing the unconscious security officer behind the counter. “You should go. You don’t want to be here when the cops show up.”

Johnny gives her a thumbs up.

When Sailboat tries to pick up Nine, she mumbles, “We’ve got to carry out Jack’s plan.”

“He didn’t tell us his plan.” Sailboat says as he lifts her. The wounded woman has lost a lot of blood and can’t stand on her own feet without assistance.

“We have to figure out what he wanted us to do,” Nine says, her eyes rolling back and forward. “He said that Doomsday is the key.”

Sailboat shakes his head. “Forget about it.”

Doomsday looks over at them as she takes the bags of money from Sailboat and tosses them onto her shoulder. “No, maybe she’s right. Maybe we can figure it out. He also said that he wouldn’t tell us the plan because if we knew we would never want to go through with it. What could he possibly have in mind that we would never want to go through with?”

Sailboat assists Nine to the exit as she sways and staggers. “I have no idea. It could be anything.”

“…that also requires me…” Doomsday mumbles, running it over in her head. Then she stops in her tracks. “No, it couldn’t be that…”

“What?”

“The bomb. There’s no way he wanted me to detonate the bomb…”

Sailboat isn’t listening anymore.

She contemplates out loud, “How would a plan involving the bomb fit in with the plan of robbing the bank… There’s no way.”

They can hear the sound of police whistles coming from the distance.

Her eyes light up. “Unless…”

“Let’s move!” Sailboat yells, as he pulls Nine through the door.

Miss Doomsday follows, her Tommy Gun leading the way.

Outside the bank, Little Sister was acting as the lookout. This was the usual job for her. Being only fifteen years old, Jack didn’t want her getting involved if shooting broke out. She wasn’t even allowed to carry a gun.

Jack had told her that this time he was going to take longer than usual, so besides lookout Little Sister had to prevent people from entering the bank. She dressed in a police uniform, her blue dreadlocks hidden under a hat. After the others went into the bank, she set up a barricade and directed cyclists and pedestrians around the block.

It wasn’t uncommon for teenagers to work for the police department. Instead of going to school, many children had to get jobs by the time they turned ten years old. Children under the age of eighteen would work just as many hours as adults, but they would get only a third of the pay (or sometimes even less). And they would usually be assigned the most tedious jobs available. A lot of traffic cops were teenagers, as well as factory workers, janitors, dishwashers, even construction workers. Once child laborers turn eighteen they might be considered for fulltime positions, but more often than not their employers just fire them and hire a younger kid so that they don’t have to pay them adult wages.

Little Sister was born and raised in Crab Town, so she has never had to work as a child laborer. But she can pull off posing as a child police officer well enough. As she directs cyclists away from the bank, nobody thinks twice about it. They see this kind of thing everyday. Even another police officer walking by her barricade didn’t suspect a thing.

“Damn road work again?” the cop asked Little Sister.

She just shrugged at him and waved him on.

“Why do they even bother?”

When the cop saw a blue dreadlock pop out of her police hat, the man gave her a disapproving glance but didn’t think anything of it.

Little Sister has always been smooth and confident. She knows how to act natural in any circumstance. Her motto is:
just act like you own the place and nobody will question you
. Even as a punk kid with dreadlocks, none of the passersby ever questioned her legitimacy.

The only time Little Sister lost her poise was when she heard the gun shots coming from inside the bank. It happened while an old woman was bugging her to let her through the barricade, unwilling to take the detour.

“Just let me through,” said the lady, holding two brown grocery bags full of meats and cereals. “I just need to go two blocks down.”

“There’s been a radiation spill in the area, ma’am,” said Little Sister. “It’s for your own safety.”

“I’m old. Walking the long way around would be more damaging than a little radiation. I made it through two nuclear blasts, so I think I can make it through a little spill.”

“I can’t make an exception, not for anyone,” said Little Sister. “If I let you through I could lose my job.”

“You could lose your job if you
don’t
let me through,” said the old lady. “I’ll let the police department know that you mistreated an old lady. I have friends in high places around here. You’ll be out of the job.”

“Make a complaint if you must, but you are not getting through. Please move along.”

The old lady pulled out a pen and ripped off a piece of a grocery bag to write on. “What is your name?”

“Junior Officer Samantha Kensington.”

“What is your boss’s name?”

“John…”

Then the gun shots rang out in the bank. Little Sister was taken aback. She looked around, she didn’t know what to do.

“What was that?” the old lady asked.

“It… It was nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

But the old lady wasn’t talking about the gun shots.

“I asked you your boss’s name, missy!”

“Oh… Captain John Dearmother.”

She could hear the Tommy Gun roaring through the bank. It seemed the old lady was too hard of hearing to notice. Or perhaps she just didn’t care.

“Dearmother?” asked the old lady.

Little Sister realized the name was a little too fake, but she was caught off guard and that was what spilled out.

“I’ll make sure you are fired by the end of the week,” said the old woman, finally moving on her way. “That will teach you for not helping an old woman in need.”

Soon after that, people were running out of the bank, spilling into the street toward her. Even these people didn’t catch on she wasn’t a real cop.

“They’re robbing the bank!” one of them said. “Call for backup. Two cops were already shot.”

One man was even ready to give a full report to her. he said, “The robbers were two women, two men, and a balloon. They called themselves the House of Cards and wore gas masks. I can’t tell what they looked like beneath the masks, but I can give you their builds and hair color.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Little Sister told him. “Just go home, get out of the street. You’re not safe here.”

The man agreed and took off running.

Little Sister tossed her police hat and went for the bikes in the alley. She raised their sails and pointed them into the wind. When she heard the police whistles, she wasn’t sure what to do. Jack had told her not to enter the bank if she heard gun shots. She was instructed to wait three minutes and if they didn’t come out, she was supposed to get out of there on her own.

She waited three minutes, then got on her bike. The police whistles were getting closer. She couldn’t be seen in her fake uniform.

When her colleagues left the bank, she could tell the job went wrong. Horribly wrong. Two of them were wounded and Jack was nowhere to be seen.