Crab Town (4 page)

The doors of the bank break open and four people enter wearing gasmasks and holding shotguns.

“Everyone down on the ground,” one of them yells, while two others stab the barrels of their weapons into the backs of the security officers.

The four armed robbers wear matching gray latex body suits. One is a woman wearing a suit with red hearts printed onto the chest and shoulders. One man of average build has black spades on his suit. A very large muscular man has a suit patterned with black clovers. And the tall, curvy woman has a biohazard symbol printed across the skin-tight latex.

“Get down!” the robbers cry, pushing the customers to the ground.

The people in line behind Johnny slowly fall to their knees around him. They cower beneath his weapon as he points it around the room, trying to figure out what’s going on.

Some people near Johnny—like the bank teller and the black lady—do not go down. They are still in shock that Johnny is pointing a gun at the boy. Sure it was okay for the kid to murder a few balloon people, but now that the tides are turned they start to show some concern. A kid popping balloon people is kind of cute to them, but a balloon man threatening a boy with a gun, that’s appalling!

“You heard them,” Johnny shouts at the people around him. “On the floor. Now.”

Then everyone around the balloon man crouches down, lying flat on the floor. All of them except the teller. Johnny turns to her.

“Now… where were we?” He points the gun at the woman. “Oh, that’s right. We were talking about
my
money.”

The teller’s white glasses slip down her nose, but she’s too nervous to push them back up.

In the alley around the corner from Liberty Bank, Sailboat was struggling to pull on his latex outfit. It was a bit too small for the big oaf. The zipper wouldn’t go up in the back. It was tight in the crotch. The clovers on his pectoral muscles made it look like he was wearing a black bra over his man-breasts.

“Are you paying attention, Sailboat?” the bald black man said to him. “I don’t want any fuck ups.”

“Yeah, I hear you.”

The bald man pointed at Sailboat and the voluptuous Italian girl standing next to him. “You and Doomsday go for the two guards.” He looks over at the thin woman with short red hair and glasses. “Nine and I will go for money. Remember, there will be an undercover guard in the bank somewhere. Keep an eye out for him.”

“Got you,” Sailboat said.

“Little Sister,” the bald man said to the teenaged girl standing behind them. “The bags.”

The girl brushed her blue dreadlocks out of her eyes and tossed him two duffel bags. The bald guy opened them and passed out the shotguns.

“I get the Tommy Gun,” said Miss Doomsday, the Italian girl wearing the latex suit patterned with biohazard symbols. “You know I always get the
big
gun.”

The leader handed her the Tommy Gun, then looked at his team. “Ready?”

They all nodded.

“Jack,” Nine asked the bald guy. “You forgot one thing.”

“What?” Jack asked.

She grabbed him around the neck and kissed him.

“For luck,” she said, then sucked his tongue into her mouth.

His smile curled around her lips. She smiled back when she pulled away.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

They put the gas masks over their faces and held up their weapons.

As they headed out of the alley, Jack looked over to the teenager, “Keep your eyes peeled, Little Sister. We’re counting on you.”

She gave him the devil sign as she went toward her bike. “Good luck.”

Just outside of the bank, they pumped their shotguns and gave each other a nod. Then they broke through the entrance and stormed the bank.

“Everyone down on the ground,” Jack yelled, while Sailboat and Doomsday stabbed the barrels of their weapons into the backs of the security officers.

Taking out the guards was even easier than expected. They were standing right in front of the entrance, with their backs turned. It was going to be their lucky day.

Sailboat is a resident of Crab Town. He’s lived there for quite a while now, in a charred cavern beneath a collapsed office building. Sailboat believes it is called Crab Town because of all the black sewer crabs that crawl through the streets. A lot of Crab Town residents catch these crabs in the bay or in the sewer, because they have nothing else to eat. But the crustaceans are poisonous and incredibly radioactive. You can live on them for a while, but eventually they’re going to kill you.

Sailboat didn’t always live in Crab Town. He had a pretty decent life growing up. But he’s come across some hard times, like pretty much everyone since the United States became a third world country.

The reason why Sailboat moved to Crab Town was because he could no longer pay his debts. He had a steady job but his wages were garnished so much he couldn’t afford his rent. He was forced to move to Crab Town and once he did that his employer fired him. Companies don’t like to keep residents of Crab Town on their staff. They assume only deadbeats and druggies live on that part of town, even though over 70% of the citizens of Freedom City live in the Crab Town.

All of his bad luck has made Sailboat a very angry individual.

When Sailboat sees the guard going for his weapon, he clobbers him in the back of the head with the butt of his shotgun.

“Do you want me to hurt you, pig?” Sailboat screams down at him. “Is that what you want?”

He pulls the guard’s gun out of the holster and tosses it away. Then he kicks him in the face and slams the butt of his gun down on the back of his head.

“Are you trying to kill him?” Doomsday screams over at him.

A pool of blood forms on the floor below the guard’s face. He isn’t moving anymore.

“Did you kill him?” Doomsday asks.

“I hope so,” Sailboat says.

Sailboat is an asshole for good reason. His parents made him the way he is.

These days, parents don’t take care of their children for free anymore. Kids are expensive. Parents can’t just raise them and get nothing in return. So nowadays, parents charge their children for ever dollar they spend on them. Food, clothes, toys, rent, all of it gets added to their bill. And once a child turns eighteen, parents expect them to start paying off their debt, with interest.

Unfortunately, the economy is a lot worse now than it was when Sailboat was a kid. Employers pay a lot less now than they did back then, and the cost of living has gone up. It’s almost impossible for a kid to pay off the debt they owe to their family. Most of the time parents will let their kids slide, sometimes only asking they pay 5% of their earnings toward the debt. But not Sailboat’s parents. They wanted their money. They didn’t give a crap how bad the economy was. Sailboat’s little brother already screwed them over by dying of a drug overdose at the age of nineteen, and they were going to be damned if their other son cheated them out of what they were owed.

And Sailboat owed them a lot, because they spoiled him as a kid. His parents had a rather large income. They had a large house, only ate the finest food, would only clothe their children with the finest designer wear, and always gave them tons of presents at birthdays and Christmas. But everything Sailboat got as a kid wasn’t what
he
wanted, his parents gave him what
they
wanted. He couldn’t pick out what food he ate or what he was allowed to wear. He might have been a little more thrifty if he’d understood how money worked when he was young.

His parents sent him to a very expensive art school that didn’t really teach him anything useful. When he graduated, he didn’t really have many skills to get a good job. He could hardly do basic math. His skills in painting and sculpture were pretty useless during these times.

He eventually got a job as a drywaller, but it was hardly enough to pay rent, let alone pay off his parents’ debts. After he refused to pay their invoices, his parents got their lawyers involved. They managed to get his boss to garnish his wages, to give them half of his earnings. Sailboat begged his parents to take it easy on him, but they told him that
was
them being easy on him. They said they spent five times that amount on him per month, and that was just on his quarter of the house payments alone. Sailboat said he shouldn’t have to pay a quarter of their mortgage if he wasn’t a co-owner of the house, but they didn’t care. Parents can charge their children whatever rent they want, even if they decide to rip them off. Kids are gullible and can easily be taken advantage of by parents who think ahead.

A part of Sailboat was actually happy that he was kicked out of his apartment and had to move to the Crab Town. He was happy because he was screwing over his parents and would no longer have to pay a single penny to those bastards. But he also knew that moving to Crab Town was the beginning of the end for him. He would never be able to get back on his feet for as long as he lives. If only his parents would have taken just 15% he would have been able to keep his job and pay rent. But they had to go and get greedy, even though they were still doing pretty well financially on their own. He will never forgive them screwing him like that.