The Girls Club (28 page)

Er, scuse me?

The ground was quite cool.  It was soothing against her hot and tired skin.

Just one sec, please?

Maybe a little power nap wouldn’t hurt.  Her arm however, hurt like a raw and bleeding cut that had been filled with salt.  Yeah.  Little sleep.

SARAH’S GONNA KILL ROCHELLE IF YOU DON’T GET YOUR ARSE OFF THE GROUND NOW!  WHAT ABOUT THE PROMISE YOU MADE YOURSELF?

Hell.  Rochelle had the gun now.  She could just pop a cap in her arse.

Karen was still having her interior debate when she was hoisted off the ground by two sets of meaty arms.  She was forced to stand, she looked up to see Rochelle clinging onto the front of Sarah’s car, one hand on the gun and the other on the top of the hood trying to keep a grip.  Karen made a half hearted attempt to break loose of the two women, one of them socked her in the gut for her trouble.  Winded she bent over, completely missing the second car that was hurtling down the road towards them, in her mixed up and confused mind she wouldn’t have recognised it anyway.

People had scattered like quail, the alarm from the fire system still singing its tonal song.  The parking lot belonged to the Chain now almost entirely. 

Sarah had bumped the car over the kerb round the edge of the lot trying to shake Rochelle loose, she had every intention of running her under the hood and feeling her bones crush through the shock absorbers.  The Chain guardians had picked up their fallen colleagues and taken them to their cars.  Out of the three that remained Casey was poised to make sure Sarah Steiger emerged victorious, had the other Chain guardians believed in the cavalry ever arriving they may have waited a moment longer.  Casey looked round and saw the second car bounce over the first kerb, barrelling towards Sarah’s car that was circling crazily with the girl still hung on the hood. 

“Hey!” she waved at the girls getting into the cars across the lot, “THERE!” she pointed as the second car, Sky’s car, became airborne and then clumped down to continue its unerring course towards the madly circling car.  The two girls who weren’t severely damaged or bleeding internally reached into their jackets and came out with guns.  They opened fire on the car, Karen looked at the floor, gunshots sounded to Karen like maybe Rochelle was getting some much needed revenge on her sister.  Still oblivious she was dropped as the two that were holding her off the ground, let go.

There were four of them now with guns drawn.  The girls in the car were down below the dashboard and when they hit Sarah’s car broadside each got a good rap to the head.  The car took the hit from the smaller car in its stride but it did the one thing Sarah herself hadn’t managed to do, Rochelle was flung off at last, was in fact rolling over and over on the ground.  Seeing her chance, Sarah backed up and gunned her engine, then floored it.

Rochelle got up on her elbows and fired the gun once, and hit nothing.  The car hit her head on, collapsing her arms and smashing her skull.  Sarah was reversing when Karen screamed, she had been forgotten down there on the pavement but she had felt it when Rochelle had been struck.  She ran at the car and grabbed through the window at Sarah.  Sky and Heidi had crawled out of their car, perhaps fearing an explosion, fucking cars always blew up in the movies.  Sky went over to Rochelle and shielded her with her body.  Heidi found a gun at her feet, it was next a splash of blood. 

“Neato” she picked it up, wobbling a little from the bash she’d taken she checked to see if there was a safety catch on it, she couldn’t see one, she levelled it at Casey.

“DON’T YOU FUCKING MOVE!”

Casey looked at her from across the car where Karen was hauling Sarah out through the window and then turned to run, no one told her today she had to eat a bullet.

A shot pinged the floor at Heidi’s feet and she saw two women behind a car near the reception of the lodge.

“Fuck this!” she fired one shot back, it took the windscreen of the car out and hurt her arm more than she’d manage to hurt anything else.

“HEIDI!” Sky screamed.

Was this day ever going to end?  As she got nearer to Sky she found she couldn’t look.  The girl in her arms was bloodied and her head had an oddly sunken look. 

“Fuck” grabbing her cell from her pocket she wondered where the fuck the cops and ambulances were, if they hadn’t have wanted company they’d have been up their ass like cheap underwear.

Sky held Rochelle and sobbed over her.  She could feel her breathing but it was shallow, she hadn’t made a sound at all.  Karen had Sarah on the floor of the lot now, her shot and wounded arm forgotten, all she could do was make wounded yelping noises.  Tears and blood mixed and ran down her neck.  This had been more to Sarah’s taste all along it seemed.  She let Karen expend her fury with a flurry of punches, feeling them no more than an elephant feels a bird sat on its back.  Whatever fury Karen was feeling Sarah was more than prepared to match it.

“Ambulance please, Holiday Inn, and step on it yeah, we got a dying girl here” she tossed her cell on the floor.  She didn’t think she’d ever touch one again the amount of shit she’d had with hers today.

She looked over and saw Sarah tackle Karen to the ground.  She raised the gun and prepared to shout at the girls to pack it the fuck in when she was relieved of her gun by one of the goons she had forgotten to take care of.

“Lets just let them work it out themselves shall we?”

Sarah began beating Karen with gusto.  After doubling her up with a gut punch she brought her knee up into her face and put her on her back.  Karen lay gasping, crying, garbled noises that could have been grief issuing forth from her mangled mouth.

Sarah wasn’t much better.  She had taken more than a few punches, the wounds on her chest were open and bleeding freely now, her red shirt darkened, the waistband of her pants burgundy with it.

Heidi thought she had a good idea why that was.  They had often called her ‘vinegar tits’ behind her back.  Maybe someone had tired of the name and decided to correct her tit owning status.

“Do you think she’s hot?” she asked of the shadow behind her.

“What the fuck? Fucking shut the fuck UP!”

“Tut-tut-tut. You kiss your mom with that mouth?” 

Sky cried.  Sarah laughed.  Heidi sighed. 

Rochelle had stopped her laboured breathing.  Sarah felt her victory now in hand.  Heidi made a life or death decision.

Heidi turned and put her hands round the head of the girl who had been looking over her and planted a kiss, a warm and lingering kiss, right on her mouth.  She lowered the gun, Heidi could see the other car had gone over her shoulder.  The other goon must have taken her fallen comrades away then, it was now or might as well be fucking never.  She grabbed at the gun, the goon stepped back and raised it.

“No wait, LOOK OUT!” Heidi screamed whilst looking directly behind the guardian in the best theatrical manner she could muster.  Maybe it had been the arrival of strange parties previously, or Heidi’s convincing scream but the goon
turned. 
Heidi reached out and took the gun.

“HA! Stupid fucking bitch” and shot her in the knee from behind.

“Won’t be sneaking back up on me again any time soon will ya?”

“Heidi!” Sky’s shoulders were shaking, “She’s stopped breathing!”

Yeah, which fucking one of them?

Sarah was stomping on Karen at will, Sky was laying Rochelle flat on the ground, who said there was a fucking plan?  Half of the fucking Chain would be dead by the time the reprisals finished reverberating.

“SARAH!” Heidi walked to where she had been about to kick Karen in the head again.

“It’s over”

Sarah kicked Karen again.

“I said its OVER!”

“Ha, fuck you its over, fuck you, I’ll say when its over, fuck you, fucking fuck you” and she kicked Karen again.

“Rochelle’s dead Sarah. After everything you ever said about her. How much you said you loved her, go look, she’s dead Sarah.
AND YOU KILLED HER!
”

Sarah’s face contorted.  The victory she was supposed to be feeling being replaced with doubt.

“Dead?” she face twitched.

“Dead”

Karen opened her eyes and saw Sarah was facing Heidi, w
hat the fuck she doin’ here?

Where’s Rosh?

WHERE‘S ROSH?

She started to bring her good arm up to get up off the floor and Sarah went on making her weird facial gestures.  Heidi kept her gaze on Sarah, Karen knew this was it, for Rochelle, Denise and Demi.  She got off the ground and threw her good arm around Sarah’s neck.  She jumped up, Sarah toppled and fell but Karen stayed on.  Using her body as leverage she gripped the other side of her arm with her bad hand and wept at the pain it caused.  Frustrated howls accompanied each movement she made to pull her grip tighter.

The first of the emergency services began to arrive, two ambulances screamed into the now near empty lot and Sky jumped up, “Here, quick, HERE!”

“Heidi…gun” Karen gasped.

Heidi was stood over the pair, Sarah strangely listless now, Karen grunting and pulling her arm tighter.

“Heidi, GUN!”

“No Karen, what good would it do?”

“Gimme the fucking gun!” she sobbed.

“No. You’re better than that”

“BUT SHE KILLED ROSH!”

Heidi bent down, “And her knowing that will feel far worse than you killing her ever will”

Karen relaxed her grip.  Sky had come trotting over, “Fuck Karen! OH FUCK, come on”

Sky put her arm under Karen and helped her up, “They brought her back, she’s breathing, barely, they’re taking her, COME ON!”

Karen headed for the ambulance, Sarah Steiger whose weeping breasts had burned the whole time she had been down there, wound herself up for the final attack. 

BANG!

Karen blearily turned round, “Wha?”

Heidi dropped the gun, smoke coming from the muzzle.

“She was fakin’ it, saved time just to fucking shoot her.”

Heidi burst into tears.  Karen waved her arm. 

“Come ’ere” the three of them went over to find the ambulance with Rochelle in it had sped off.  Three police cruisers pulled into the lot in a spume of unnecessary dust.  The second ambulance took Karen and Heidi.  Sky said she’d talk to the cops and meet them there.

There would be some tall explaining to do before the day was out.  Karen knew she would have to do some.  Heidi knew she’d also have her share of tall taleing to tell. 

As Karen was wheeled off down one corridor, she lent up on her elbow and pulled the air mask down, “Oy, Heidi!”

“What now limey bitch?”

“Find Rochelle, find out if she’s alright”

Heidi waved her arm in a,
yeah sure
, gesture.

At the desk she asked about Rochelle Kobolowski and was told only that she was there and stable and that as she wasn’t next of kin they couldn’t advise on where she was in the building.  Heidi wasn’t unfamiliar with reconnaissance, so many shopping expeditions started out the same way.  She wandered the floors.  Opening doors here and there at random.  Always striving to look like she knew just where she was going and belonged there all the while. 

In the end she gave up and went back to the reception desk.

She couldn’t imagine why she was still there in all honesty.  Then she had passed out.

When she woke up the light coming through the windows was very dim.  She must have been out for hours.  Sky had her head on the bed and was sleeping deeply from the look.

Awww. 

She was in danger of getting sappy if she let things continue with this girl.

Looking over the other side she saw Karen was in the next bed.

Nicely corralled in the same room eh?

She could see the shadow of a person right outside the door. 

“Fuckin’ pig cop” she laughed.

There’d been so much trouble with cops just lately she wasn’t even bothered any more by the prospect of being arrested.

Sky rolled her head up, “Hmm, H?”

“In the flesh”

“How’s your head?”

“It’s alright, I guess they give good drugs in here, whose the guy outside”

“Police protection”

“Owww, after all these years of struggling to make a name for myself all I had to do was kill a fucking high tits lez to get a body guard” she slumped back into her pillows.

“What’s her story?” she nodded in Karen’s direction.

“They did some surgery on her arm and collarbone. Her heads bashed up. Cuts and bruises mainly. She’ll be OK though they think.”

“And her girl, Rochelle?”

“Stable, but they have her in ICU. Not out of the wood yet”

Heidi sighed, “Thank the Lord for small favours, that lovely pink shirt got ruined I take it?”

Sky smiled, “Yeah, you bled all over it”

“Steiger?” a chill sprang up at the mention of her name.

“DOA, the cops are really going to want your side of it you know.” Sky took her hand, Heidi let her.