CHAPTER ONE Night comes slowly to the desert and even where there is a sure sign of Man the forces of nature are not to be halted in their endless and cyclical march. The sparkling clubs and hotels, puncturing the darkness all around, displayed an insignificant sliver of jewellery that Mother Nature wore whilst it still pleasured her. It is all too consuming to realise that the desert could swallow a million of these chinks of nightlife without a flicker of discomfort. It would not even scratch her throat on the way down. The dull, lifeless boom-boom of the clubs swelled helplessly into that clear and subduing silence, drifted in dying eddies above the silent wildlife; flowed out to a sea of sand and dissolved into nothing.
In the sharpened mountain tops a skittering of claws on cold stone betrayed the position of a skink as it moved out of the way of the rumbling wheels of a red Camero; it watched as the car swept passed and then proceeded back on the journey to his mate. From a distance the peaks stood out in elegant relief against the blackest of night skies, etched with thin, almost imperceptible scars of tarmac. They form signature streaks of humanity, bitten into the hard rock, mankind’s attempt to control the natural world. A cold and nonchalant moon rose high above and glanced a reflected and sombre smile of light over the dark half of the world. The car moved on
Drifting past sixty miles an hour, a softly golden haired, handsome man sat bronzed from too many sun-filled days at a beach somewhere. Thick set shoulders twisted muscle beneath thin, white cotton and his head bobbed slowly to the softened tones of Bob Dylan. He smiled as the town came into sight over a low ridge and steadily pressed the accelerator until he hits seventy. Why not? He is on straight, empty road, it was already eleven at night and he was mostly sober.
Vulcanised rubber kissed hurriedly against tarmac and he felt the vibration of the car in motion, enjoyed the steady rock of each bump as he pushed on harder, enjoyed the speed welling up in the centre of his belly. He presses a little further, a little further still and he was grazing eighty miles an hour. The smile widened and he licked his lips. Amazingly white, strong teeth glinted in the moonlight, smoother than the peaks he was heading away from.
That was from the south.
North but coming south was a bright red, Jaguar, bobbing along at a generous ninety and simply cruising, while the driver was wailing loudly to the manipulated voice of Mariah Carey. Each tumble of her octaves took the car to newer speeds, if she keeps this up he would be air borne soon. Fortunately, the song ends abruptly as the tape jumped to silence and he slowed back to a gentle eighty. He passes a diner; ‘Three miles out and you wont find no cleaner food for the next hunnerd miles!’ and pushed on, the grin on his face widening by the hundred yards.
That is from the North.
From the West a veritable wagon train of different vehicles. Five in all, moving at various speeds, of various expense and style and definitely with a variety of characters behind the wheel; all handsome in their own way. All smiling and all ready for the Dance. Tracing them from the hindmost two, souped-up, flat-bed trucks with wheels the size of generously fed, baby elephants could be seen, one of which had the trade mark flame curling along both sides, racing to their big night on the town. Another of these vehicles was a tiny, excuse for a car, a Datsun Cherry, sad and lonely and struggling to grind out the seventy it was currently breaking the law with. Driving it was a slender man with a jaw that could draw straight lines of its own and those pearly whites that shone so well in the black and white land in which we find ourselves. There was a Lotus Esprite but it is too far in the distance for any of us to see yet. The last of the cars in the chasing group was a Midnight Blue Porsche. Wildly blowing a gasket trying to reach the Esprite and the driver flooring all the way, agitated and angry with himself for being destroyed for speed. Pumping the gas and grinding fresh, white teeth; cold blue eyes, shot through with hatred for himself and the world but with a smile dragged across that muscular visage. He was gearing up for a good night despite his jealous, engine envy.
That is from the West.
There is no traffic route into Enderville from the East. A thin mountain pass curls around the peaks and struggles valiantly to be called a road. Gently traversing this was one lone figure with a white cotton shirt flapping coolly in the breeze and his white smile shining out for the desert to growl at. His smooth flow draws him closer to the town and the throbbing beat of the music. He would land first at their evening rendezvous, they had set a time to meet and greet and then dance and Dance. It was a night to smile and radiate generous fury. They were in the Zone.
That is from all points of the compass and converging all too quickly.
It was a throbbing night in the town. Enderville was a place like no other in the Mid West and it was proud to be so. Way out here in the desert most things were acceptable and the law in the town was a generous grouping of hired hands bought and brought for the benefit of the club owners alone. A plethora of businesses grouped together as if there had been an economic, competition disaster. The money men had kept their heads in the marketing melting pot for a long time and with no other centre for music and alcohol (amongst many other passions and past times) within five hundred miles in any direction, it was a sound business move. There would be twenty thousand people aged 17 to 70 there every weekend and about half that on weekdays, the freedom was magnetic for the spirited at heart and the “anything goes” attitude was the tonic that cured a thousand ailments. Hedonism was certainly the name of this game.
There was a main street and two streets off that one and all three measured a quarter of a mile long each at their longest. Populating these avenues were no less than thirty-three clubs/bars, twenty-two cafes (built on, around and within each other) and restaurants and a health centre that was only there at the auspice of compulsory state law. The casualties rarely came from within the clubbing fraternity alone but were most often available as a result of the bouncers coming across a newly formed group of drug dealing teenagers. Many a college big shot had been down traded at the feet of the Enderville Entrance Examiners (as they had humorously deemed themselves in an unusually quiet and enlightened moment).
For the wildlife that had adapted to the bulge of humanity in this, otherwise nowhere, night never truly came any more. When the natural darkness descended, the bright and colourful boxes would shine an artificial glow across the land and shoo away the curling fingers of night, defending against cosmic enclosure.
Copses of cars formed that would be there until morning, designated drivers would mourn their willingness to be the drudge and shake their heads at the drunken noise and views. Tight dresses, mini skirts and silk were the order of the evening and the men were obscured by the preening gaudiness of the fairer sex.
Entering the wide, clean main street ushered forward small bars and engine-starters. A place to begin what inevitably became the best night, like, everrrr!. It was always a dream beginning which tended to lead to an exciting climax but ultimately would be regretted by some, remembered accurately by less and regurgitated in many different hues by the many. It was THE night, the one you wish your best friends were there for and your worst friends were missing but would hear about for years to come. Jenna’s Place was a good starter, it sounded out the middle road throb and the drink was simple, shots and lots of ‘em!
Jenna, herself long since departed this disco world of hedonism, had been one of the first to encourage the bopping world to try this club land island in the middle of nowhere. She had made little money out of the venture even though she could have been attributed the lion’s share of the credit for the boom but she had died a happy woman. At forty two she would still have had THE night each week and would wear out the scamps of students on the pull, with ease. The night she passed on to that black lit venue in the sky was one of her best. She bopped, she dropped and she never got up again, massive coronary brought on by genetic malformation of the valves around her heart. Not exactly the exciting end to and exciting life she had prayed for but she was dead as she hit the flashing floor and for all the surrounding dancers knew she had twirled into oblivion in the heat of clubber’s paradise. It would do.
Still, it was a good place to start the night and it was popular with the in crowd who would sling back the shots in an effort to rev their engines and tonight (every night) was a night for letting it all go. Revellers from as far as two hundred miles away were thronging the bar and screaming their orders at staff who would over charge them or simply disappear without handing back the change for that fifty dollar bill that had been tendered for ten shots of one dollar liquor. The brightly coloured flashing lights were sprayed around the huge dance floor and sliced bars of red, blue and green across the writhing bodies and faces, the bouncing beat bulged ear drums and ensured a pulsing buzz for the next two days and the conversation circled;
‘Hey, you been up this way before?; Wanna come to Bradys with me and my friends?; You got any friends for my guys over there?; Wanna drink?’; ‘I gotta car outside’; ‘So, you been coming here a long time?’ It never really got off the ground as conversation but it was never meant to. The drink flowed and the engines revved. Tight assed girls in mini skirts thrived on the attention and tight crotched boys with too much adrenalin and testosterone brought themselves to bursting point. It was crazy time, Baby!
Outside, the midnight blue Porsche rolled to a halt at the outer edge of the main car park. It fit snugly in, next to the Esprite which had been vacated ten minutes earlier. Muscles with white teeth climbed from the leather, bucket seats and grew to a size that could never have fit inside that car. He stretched, smiled and mingled into the crowds, heading for a large drink and a date with his future. At various car parks around the tiny town, the convoy of cars peppered the area and drivers escaped into the cool night air, slipping into the partying crowds.
The walking wanderer was smiling at the long legs and the swaying hips, his tanned skin stood out against the soft white material of his loose clothing and he was attracting a lot of glances from the hot-n-horny females around him. His gaze was always just beyond them and they were disappointed but moved on, he was in a space inside his own head and they could see that it would only lead to rejection if they followed their sex drive down that alley way.
By midnight they were all here.
Bars around the town were spilling out onto the streets now and there was only one true destination for them all, a giant of a club, capacity of seven thousand, spread out through nine, enormous rooms, all playing music from different decades. The building was simple. One floor with a central hub, each room was a satellite from the centre with a long tunnel leading through heavy glass doors at each end to another music dance floor, also circular. All rooms were circular. At the centre of each was a DJ box in which there were varying amounts of people, a control centre for the pounding tunes which poured out atmosphere for the sweating clubbers to soak up. Around the entire perimeter of each room was a bar which lined the outer circle, at no time ever was this bar (in every room) lacking in customers or staff and the passage of money and liquor was a mind blowing exercise for accountants each evening. From above, the building looked like a radiating space station and each glass-roofed room resembled a wheel with twisting bodies clouding the area where the spokes would have been. There were entrances into each satellite room and the only access to the central hub was through one of these. Large accumulations of the biggest bouncers in Enderville would vet, annoy and control the party-goers at these entrances and eventually let every one in, regardless of age, because money was money no matter whose pocket it came out of.
Muscles-With-White-Teeth had sampled the dark brown shots in Jenna’s bar and was feeling warm inside. His mind trundled around the hours to come but he remained outwardly untroubled. After his fourth drink he pushed away from the darkened bar top and turned to leave.
‘Watch where you’re putting those big feet there feller!’ it was a lump of a man with the widened pupils of the truly inebriated. His friends bridled and straightened a little, forging forward to impress upon our man that their presence ensured the safety of the loud mouth. When Muscles-With-White Teeth simply stood and stared darkly the Lump felt his pride was being dented and stepped up his advances. ‘Wanna make something of it?’ a cautious glance over his shoulder reassured him that his guys had his back. Something primal stirred in the lone figure and he rustled a sleeve as his arm flashed above shoulder height and gripped the fat swaddled throat. Panic spread into those swollen eyes and they bulged a little. As quickly as he had risen he deflated and Muscles pulled away, offered an insanely broad smile.
‘I am sorry friend. Would you like me to buy you and your pals a drink?’ Fat-and-stupid wrestled with fear, a bruised ego, the still gripped feeling at his throat and a deep and certain knowledge that he had one chance to save face.
‘Ok. We’ll all have double Jack Ds, and there are ten of us’ a snigger from behind, ‘five of us are in the toilet. That ok with you?’ Muscles only reacted by drawing a wad of notes from somewhere, dropping a few on the bar and walking through them.
‘Yeah. See ya.’ Muscles smiled his insane smile and strolled confidently away. As he began to dissolve in amongst the crowd the gathering of victors patted themselves on the back for being so brave and standing up for themselves. Fat with attitude rubbed the two painful nodules on his throat and turned to the bar. He could still feel the finger and thumb with an inexorable impression against the two sides of his windpipe, a trickle of sweat curled around the first and highest of his chins.
The evening roamed through the desert in a rumble of music and the drinking welled up to a furore of alcoholic infusion. Cool air swirled around the crouching night life as they shuffled soundlessly, easily over the miniature dunes that had formed crescents around the town, drawing untamed border lines between the natural and the synthetic worlds. It was one o’clock, the time they had agreed entry and at each of the eight satellite rooms, one of our travelling band stood waiting amiably to smooth into the central hub.
In the first, a six foot, slightly built individual reached into his white cotton shirt and scrabbled a roll of notes; he palmed three into the doorman’s hand and grinned. His way in was easy and the pat down search was missed. Inside, a circular bar stretched away into the semi gloom and was populated by the colours and styles of a thousand designers, they swayed, tapped, jigged and shucked their time away waiting to be served. He ignored the bar and steadily cut through the massed ranks of the revellers. Eighties music pulled at the senses and set the teeth on edge as tinny guitar strands plucked away.
‘…I gotta git some color tv ees’ thrummed into his brain and he could feel the blood race passed his ear drums. Slowly he edged towards the thick glassed, double doors but even a foot away he could not hear the music from the tunnel that ranged out from the central hub.
In another room, the Beatles hawked out ‘Hard Days Night’ whilst a thousand karaoke kings and queens whipped along the chorus and made a bad noise even worse. A real-rock-n-roll-feel was coursing around a dance floor filled with people too young to be the grandchildren of those who had first heard it but who seemed to know every bar of music, every word of verse and every step of the set dances. A fourth room played the painful screeching of Punk and the party goers where pushed together in a seemingly endless rhythmical wave of connected bodies. Our Walking Dude had entered through the chill out room which was not the most favoured of ways to begin the night out; clubbers loved it on the way out but tended to be brought down off whatever particular high they had achieved when they were still trying to get way up there. It did not seem to bother Walking Dude though. He moved smoothly, silkily and with an aura of serenity. His smile never moved beyond amused and never dipped beneath content as the corners flickered only when his eyes lit on the different faces that mooned passed. Walking Dude passed by.
His ease of gait gave him the overt confidence that attracted the attention of many women and he appreciated it, he did not ignore it but acknowledged every glance. Returned a few and even curtained his mouth a little wider on occasion but he kept on walking. He flowed through the room as if the music was part of him and he had picked out the rhythm to colour his wake. In what appeared to be seconds he negotiated a room that it usually took a line of bouncers two minutes to chug through and he stood, swaying slightly to the sounds waiting beyond the heavy double, glass doors.
Beyond eight windows were eight faces and each face was one of calm concentration. Standing in the corridors and looking back through to the satellites rooms saw these faces framed against the dancing and gyrating, frozen against a moving swell of bodies. Fifteen minutes passed and the doors would swing open, allow people through and then slowly close once more. Each time the men remained static and stolid, they did not move, could not move and would not be moved. Eight solitary figures, in a crowd of almost ten thousand, punctuating the outer limits of the central hub with their presence.
Muscles-With-Teeth was waiting for the time. Walking Dude prepared but never moved. Slim But Calm drew breath slowly and carefully as he waited. Twin brothers held sway at the doors to two adjacent rooms. A slick, dark haired man of six foot three was a presence in the doorway of the Sixties revival room and a skin-headed shorter man nodded that headed gently to the rhythm of the Beach Boys’ California Girls. Finally, broad shoulders with a tanned face swam beyond the glass window into the R&B circle. He waited. The watches all ticked into 1.20am at the exact same moment, synchronised to deadly accuracy. They moved.
Inside the central hub a slow beat was throbbing low and steady. Around the walls, eight doors opened and eight men entered and began a slow dance to the Djs box. The music was heavy and full and pulled the club into a synchronised euphoria, they moved gently and were twisting, turning, swaying and dancing to the beat. A pulse scoured the air above all the heads and was followed by a series of smaller rattles, the music picked up momentum but only slightly.
Slick and Dark Haired wiggled between two mini skirted friends who had spent the last twenty minutes fruitfully avoiding the advances of four rather drunken men from a long way away. He wavered and spent a second or two finding their movements, falling into time with their hips and joining the roll. They raised their arms above their heads and sandwiched him between them. The four spurned advances growled their displeasure and turned their attentions to a group of hen-nighters in nurse uniforms.
Skinhead bopped with a quickening bounce in between the bodies. He found himself further on than he had wanted and stalled for time a little with a pretty girl from an office way up north. The music added a beat and then another. The tempo shifted into gear and it became a recognisable tune. The crowd screamed their delight. Office Girl wore a tighter than tight half top and a skirt which looked like it had been cut from that top and sent south of the body. One for the tits and one for the ass. She tottered on heeled shoes that gave her a height advantage of six inches at least but she was tottering well, the arms were in classic over-the-head position and she appeared to swirl her body in three directions at once, performing incredible feats of twist to bamboozle the voyeur. Skinhead closed in. His hands reached gently out and rested at the meeting of skirt and skin and he allowed his palms to brush, feather like, against the soft flesh. His fingers walked their tiny walk slowly around her waist towards the groin-pull-grip that men seem to have learned at birth and he smiled a healthy white smile, staring soulfully into her eyes. The music tripled its speed and they began to jar against each other in a rhythmic and primal composition of dance.
They seemed lost in each others’ eyes, his mouth parted slightly, as did hers, and they moved closer together. Her heart beat in her chest, her eyes glistened with excitement and the music swamped them. Hands slid in different directions on both hardened bodies. Skinhead felt the soft grip on his shoulder grow tighter. The beat pounded through them. The hand on his shoulder gripped fingers into his muscle. The churn of the record was hitting a climax and the dancers around screamed ever louder. Pressure built on his shoulder sharply.
Skinhead was whirled around.
‘What the fuck?’ was all he heard as the fist landed squarely on his nose and his head snapped back, he righted his stance, threw out his arms in stiff protectiveness and dropped limberly into his natural stance. He faced a man, at least a foot taller and probably half his weight again. The smile had dropped from his face as a thin trickle of blood traced the lines of his cheek and curled into his mouth.
‘I’m gonna rip your fuckin’ head off ya liddle runt!’ Skinhead assessed the potential opponent, recognised weaknesses in the knees and waist line. The man’s neck was exposed with raised fists so far apart Skinhead could have fit his whole body behind such a loose defence. Assessment made, this was a fight that would last about ten seconds and would result in a big, dead guy, of this he was confident. Skinhead straightened up, brought back the smile, wiped the blood from his nose and raised his own hands in an expression of innocence. He turned to the girl, who was open mouthed with fear, winked a round, blue eye and disappeared back on his way. Behind him a scuffle of bouncers was cleaning up the mess and wondering where the rest of the fight was. The girl held a hand to her freshly slapped face and stormed off to the toilet.
Tightening in a hoop around the DJ booth, the eight came closer together. The music track was ending and morphing into a new song. A song they knew.
Synchronised, they lifted feet and raised hands. Bounced heads forward and back and shuffled in a routine that was drawing attention. Words reamed into the air above their heads, effervescent beats drowned out the screams of delight and joy and the DJ rocked the ground they danced on. As the tempo increased, so too the movements of our little Band of Men and they were wowing the crowds who slowly edged away so as not to interfere and also so they were not compared to a group who simply looked better than they did. The Men in White were winding it in and they were smiling, whiter than white smiles, of perfect teeth. Rhythm took control and they moved as one. Abruptly the music stopped. Silence made the greater impression and the rustling screams of a huge crowd quickly became anticipation. What next? The DJ knew what next.
I AM THE GOD OF HELL FIRE AND I GIVE YOU…
The dance shivered into a new phase and the men dressed in white; all of the travellers in rhythm; began their final act. As if they were one and the same they reached, with swift and accurate movements, beneath the stage that was a rostrum for the DJ. Quickly they straightened up from their prone stance and continued with their dance
I AM THE GOD OF HELL FIRE AND I GIVE YOU…
As each one drew themselves to their full heights the strobe lighting hid what they were carrying. Clubbers all around them simply continued to gyrate to the music, oblivious of what was about to happen.
I AM THE GOD OF HELL FIRE AND I GIVE YOU…
They raised their automatic weapons
FIRE
and they did.
The bullets sprayed around the shrunken circle and soon bodies began to amass on the dance floor. Blood burst from faces as the hot metal streaked through their skulls, lumps of flesh slapped the still throbbing speakers set into the DJ booth and cracking bone could faintly be heard by nearby dancing people. As the small party widened their range more and more ranks of revellers dropped to their knees, flat on their faces or were sent hurling into the crowds. Slowly the knowledge of the carnage was becoming wide spread and the screaming began with the hurdling running.
FIRE
and they did again….and again….and again.
Hundreds dropped before they reloaded, almost as one man. The second and third and fourth cartridges were slotted in and still the firing continued. By this stage, with music blaring out across the devastated club room, there were still hundreds of party people scrabbling to find a way out in the wall of backs of people doing exactly the same thing. Muscles With White Teeth raised his gun and began to pot the spot lights recessed into the ceiling bringing the emergency lighting on to flood the huge room. With hundreds of dead and dying littering, carpeting the floor they walked into and then onto the mass destruction and continued to shoot.
Walls ripped with bullet holes leaked plaster and fixtures fell from the walls and ceilings. The music pounded ever harder whilst the DJ was crouched down in the booth, hoping that they would forget about him. Skinhead pulled a hand gun from beneath the stage, reached over whilst continuing to plough the field of vision with hot fire and shot seven ringing reports into the DJ. They had not forgotten. His legs twitched as the light flickered from his soul.
Ten minutes saw only death and fading life, nobody stood of their own volition but some were partly erect with the swell of bodies around holding them up. The Men in White stalked the room and plucked them, one by one. Soon after, the room, still whipped with the dying embers of the song, life had been forced from almost a thousand people with the remainder sharing the same fate sooner than any of them wished. Doors hung from their hinges. Wiring was torn from mooring in the curving wall. Lights, mostly shattered but with a small retinue of whole bulbs flickered sympathetically as the shadows twisted across dead eyes. A girl stepped through a shattered door with her hands pressed hard to the side of her face. She had a red, jersey top and micro skirt and six inch heels. The shock that should have been read on her face was tempered only by the disgust at the ruptured bodies stretching away before her. Her mouth was open but she was unable to scream but she did cough at the smoke and peered across the room. Walking Dude raised his gun and pointed it at her, almost carelessly.
‘No!’ Skinhead interjected and held out a hand to stay the execution. He stepped forwards and squashed eyeballs and crushed faces as he struggled across to her.
‘It’s ok. It’s ok.’ Skinhead held up his hands, palm faced out.
‘W….W…..Wha..?’ was all she could manage.
‘Here.’ Skinhead stepped close and his hands slipped around her waist as she sagged against him, face buried into his chest and he held her tightly, whispering in a comforting tone.
‘It will be ok. There’s no need for you to worry.’ Skinhead plucked at her chin and coaxed her face up so he could look into her sparkling blue eyes. ‘There. You can calm down. Ok?’ Her head, almost imperceptibly, shook up and down once. Skinhead slid a bowie knife between her eleventh and twelfth rib and held her as she drooped, gasping for air like a landed fish. He let her drop onto her colleagues.
They looked at each other. They looked at Walking Dude. He pulled a mobile phone from his pocket and dialled. ‘It’s done.’
A Lotus Esprite headed South at seventy. Five cars in convoy pulled an Eastern curve. The Porsche pushed North. To the West, a sole figure strode confidently, calmly up the gently rising slope of a rock strewn mountain and hummed to himself as he went.  |
