Off the Wagon (Users #2) (9 page)

Walt’s cheeks turned red with rage.

“What do you mean he’s missing?” Walt asked through gritted teeth.

Walt’s hands clenched into fists and Carter expected and fully accepted the fact that Walt was well within his rights to clock him a good one.

“I think he just ran away, but that’s why I came to you. I need you to sniff again.” Carter pulled one of Barber’s old shirts from his duffel bag. The shirt was wrinkled from having been balled up and shoved into the bag.

“You know I don’t do that anymore,” Walt answered.

“I know. I could easily get someone else, but no one knows Barber as well as you,” Carter pleaded. He held the shirt out at arms length waiting for Walt to take it. “Look, Barber and I had a fight, and I’m sure it’s nothing, but just in case. Please, sniff the shirt.”

Walt let out a long sigh then snatched the shirt from Carter’s waiting grasp. The older man put the shirt up to his face and took a deep whiff.

Walt’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he began to shake visibly.

“What? What’s wrong?” Carter asked, but there was no one home and Carter knew that Walt was being transported to another time and place.

After a few moments Walt broke the silence. “I see him. He’s locked in a room with his arms chained behind his back,” Walt said still in his trance-like state of sniffing. “He’s got blood on his face and arms and one of his eyes is swollen shut. He looks like he’s taken one hell of a beating. He looks…scared.”

“Where is he?” Carter asked desperately.

“It’s a…a warehouse. All white…it looks abandoned,” Walt said.

“Oh god. I know where he is…,” Carter said. “And it’s not good.”

Chapter 10

It rained like a bitch. Carter was soaked to the bone, but he didn’t care. His clothes clung to his muscular frame like soggy form fitted armor. He had his hood up and pulled down low over his forehead, but it did little to keep his bald head dry.

He knelt next to a chimney on the roof of a four story building, and stared into the supposedly abandoned building next door. Carter peered through the windows one by one, searching for any sign of Barber, but he found nothing. Every window was as empty as the one before it.

“Damn it,” he said under his breath.

He just had to be at the right building. He felt like he had turned the city upside down looking for Barber, had searched every corner of every shady, seemingly abandoned, warehouse in the city. Maybe Walt’s nose had gotten rusty from so many years of not sniffing. Maybe Barber had gone on a bender and was actually out having the time of his life. That’s what normal kids his age did right? But Barber wasn’t a normal kid. He was a User and a drug abuser, a lethal combination.

No, there was something off with the abandoned building that Carter couldn’t quite put his finger on. But what was it? He hadn’t seen any vans coming or going. He hadn’t seen any activity of any kind, despite his watching in the rain for many hours.

“Get up. Slowly,” a voice said from over his shoulder. “And don’t try any of that fire shit.”

“What the fuck is this?” Carter asked as he rose slowly to his feet and turned to face the mysterious voice.

A man dressed in all black with a semi-automatic rifle stood with the gun pointed at Carter’s chest.

“Put your hands down,” the man said. “I know what you’re capable of. Get them down quick before I shoot them off.”

“You really think that you can take me?” Carter asked smugly. “Whoever sent you made a big mistake if they think one man with a gun can take me out.”

“Boys!” the man called, and suddenly men in all black and wearing night vision goggles started coming out of the woodwork. All of them were armed with the same semi-automatic rifles, and all of them were aimed on Carter.

“Holy shit. Nice work, you came prepared.” Carter congratulated.

“Put your hands together, palm to palm.” And Carter did as he was told, placing both hands together, palms first. “Now cuff him.”

One of the other men lowered his rifle and pulled a pair of specialized handcuffs from a pouch on his belt. The man slapped them on Carter’s wrists. The handcuffs were so tight, Carter couldn’t turn his wrists an inch in either direction. His hands were clapped together and any fire he unleashed from them would only burn his other hand.

“That’s it. Let’s go,” the man said.

They marched down the fire escape with Carter surrounded in the front and back. Carter considered hitting the jets in his feet and flying away, but without his hands to steer, he’d probably end up going head first into the side of a concrete wall.

“Over here.” They stopped him in front of a blank wall. “We’ve got him. Open the door.”

“What door?” Carter asked. “There’s no door here.” But suddenly the wall slid aside.

What looked like a solid concrete wall was actually a thin panel that only looked like concrete.

“You clever fucks,” Carter mumbled to himself.

“Move it.” One of the men behind him prodded Carter forward with the barrel of his gun.

The moment Carter stepped through the door he passed through some invisible barrier. Once inside, what had appeared to be an empty building, suddenly came alive with action. The bright flood lights blinded him temporarily, but they quickly adjusted to reveal a warehouse full of people hard at work. The layout of the interior was much like any other warehouse, complete with forklifts moving pallets, an assembly line, and an office overlooking the floor, but instead of your typical goods these guys were moving drugs.

Also, the workers were all women, naked women. Carter had heard of such facilities before, not on this scale, but the women who cooked and packaged the drugs were naked to keep them from pocketing any of the product. Of course, if they were extra courageous and a tad bit fool hardy they could find other, more creative ways of sneaking out the drugs.

The floor was busy. A forklift’s warning beeped as it backed up with its arms full of a pallet covered in suitcases, the same suitcases that had been loaded into the van the other night. The assembly line had rows of women on each side of the conveyor belt. Some were dispensing liquid into tiny clear vials, while the others tightened caps on the bottles, and yet others loaded the vials into the cases. It was a full on industrial revolution for manufacturing and distributing drugs; an intricate system that maximized production, and maximized profits.

Profits that Carter had been digging into as of late. Every dealer he knocked off, and every bag of drugs he burnt, bit into their bottom line, and he was sure they were none to excited about it. A picture of why Barber was here, in this place, started to become clear to Carter. They had nabbed his little buddy in the hopes of drawing him in.

“Keep it moving,” the man behind him said, pulling Carter from his thoughts, and back into the fucked up situation he was currently caught up in.

They marched along past the assembly line, between two large vats that were almost a full story tall, mixing what he assumed was more Pow, and into a room below the office that overlooked the warehouse floor.

“Back off!” Carter shouted as one of the guards grabbed him roughly by the wrists.

“Calm yourself,” a voice called from above. “There is no need for those anymore.”

And much to Carter’s surprise the handcuffs were removed from his wrists.

“Who are you?” Carter asked as a neatly dressed man in a suit stepped down the stairs.

His jet black hair was slicked back, and his smooth face was cleanly shaved. Not a single blemish was to be found on the man’s flawless skin. The man flashed a wicked grin revealing perfectly squared teeth.

“I’m Frank,” the man said. “The proprietor of this establishment.”

The hard soles of Frank’s shiny leather shoes clapped rhythmically as he strolled across the concrete floor to stand before Carter, as though they were cheering him on.

“You’ve caused me quite the headache as of late.” Frank looked Carter up and down as if examining a racehorse before the Kentucky Derby.

“Yeah, well you’ve been quite the hemorrhoid yourself,” Carter said.

Frank snickered.

“There is no one to blame but you for the city’s current situation,” Frank retorted. “You are the one who killed The Fox, are you not?” Frank raised one eyebrow questioningly at Carter.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Carter asked.

“The death of Fox left the city wide open,” Frank answered. “Someone had to take her place. Her death left a hole in the cities demand for drugs big enough to drive a dump truck through, and I think I’ve filled it rather nicely.”

“Pow is killing people,” Carter said as if that should be the nail in the coffin.

“And the cocaine and heroin your ex-girlfriend was selling wasn’t?” Frank asked. “There is little difference from one drug to the next.”

“Well we finally found something we can agree on,” Carter said. “I don’t care what kind of drugs your pushing. It’s all the same too me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Frank said. “It’s not all the same. I’m doing it much better. Just take a look around you.” Frank made a grand sweeping motion to the window that looked out on the warehouse floor. “I’ve taken the business of pushing drugs to the next level. You see, I’ve capitalized on the disenfranchised Users in the community. The unwanted, the feared, and I’ve given them a purpose.”

“You’ve got Users working for you?” Carter asked.

“I’ve got hundreds,” Frank answered. “I’ve got blinders keeping my warehouse hidden from prying eyes. Why do you think this place looks abandoned from the outside? I’ve got viewers looking to the future. How do you think I knew you’d be sitting on the rooftop next door?”

“You’re a scumbag, preying on the weak willed,” Carter said.

“It’s true that most of the Users I employ are themselves addicts, but they do get their fix when they need it, and that keeps them happy.”

“It keeps them submissive and compliant, not happy,” Carter snarled.

“I’ve got teams of changers, enforcers, and sniffers. They’re not prisoners. They come and go as they please, and if they don’t like it, they are free to leave anytime they want,” Frank said getting right in Carter’s face.

Frank spread his arms out wide. “Just take a look around you.”

The room was brimming with Users, but no one he recognized. Frank had assembled a small army of Users, nearly fifty total, dressed in all black and holding semi-automatic weapons.

“Make no mistake, they’re prisoners to your drugs,” Carter said not backing down an inch. “Now are you going to kill me already, or are you going to stand there yammering all night.”

“Oh, I’m going to kill you, but first I’ve got a surprise,” Frank said with a smile. “Bring him in.”

Frank motioned to one of the guards next to the stairs leading up to the office overlooking the warehouse floor. The guard opened the door, and out stepped Barber, seemingly unharmed. Carter could find no sign of the beatings, blood, of black eyes that Walt had mentioned when he sniffed Barber’s dirty old shirt, but he didn’t care. He was just happy to see the boy alive and well.

“Barber,” Carter said, but Barber wouldn’t even look at him.

There was no sign of recognition in the boy’s eyes, just a glazed over look of complacency.

“What have you done too him?” Carter asked immediately upon recognizing that glassy shine in Barber’s eyes.

It was the look of a young man who had been pushed.

“Who pushed him?” Carter asked referring to when a Pusher used his powers to invade the mind and memories of another being.

“I did,” Frank said, and Carter’s eyes shot to the floor on instinct.

He had to know a Pusher extremely well before he would trust looking one in the eyes, and Frank was far from being on his list of Pushers he would ever trust.

“Barber please, please snap out of it. You’ve got to try,” Carter begged the boy, but Barber just looked right through him as though he had never even seen Carter before.

“He is not going to answer you,” Frank said. “He doesn’t even know you; I’ve taken care of that. I have replaced all of his bad memories, all of the pain and suffering, all the horror of growing up with no parents; it is no longer his anguish to bear. I have replaced them with only one thing, a hatred for you.”

“What? Why would you do something like that?” Carter asked.

“Barber,” Frank said and Barber turned and looked Frank right in the eyes.

The white around Frank’s dark brown irides flashed as he pushed Barber with his mind. Frank was digging into Barber’s brain, sending thoughts of his choosing into the boy’s mind, and Carter knew they weren’t going to be good.

“Now,” Frank instructed most coolly “Kill Carter.”

Chapter 11

Barber turned on Carter with a guttural snarl as if he had killed everyone Barber had ever loved. The skin on the back of Barber’s wrists ripped aside as the bony spikes erupted to full length. Each spike was almost as long as Carter’s forearm, giving Barber a significant reach advantage in hand to hand combat. But Carter wasn’t interested in fighting the young man he had just been raising less than a week ago.