Free The Passenger by Jack Ketchum Page B

the two men
away across the bloody floor a skinhead with tattoos of a swastika and a bolt
of lightning on his arm prodded the shaved naked woman
    hard in the ribs with his rifle as though
it were her fault all this had happened so that she jerked away in pain, more
pain, and Marion finished her beer and set it on the bar and turned toward
where she hung and started forward.
     
    * * *
     
    Janet watched her move through the crowd.
The others didn’t seem to notice she was gone.
    “You want this?” Emil said.
    He pointed to her beer on the bar. She
shook her head. The last thing she wanted was a beer. He upended it and she
watched his throat move. The man is nervous, she thought. Fine.
    “Just four this time,” he said to the
bartender. The bartender set them on the bar. He passed one to Ray and one to
Billy and only then did he realize they were missing somebody.
    “Where’s Whatsername?”
    He sounded more annoyed than she’d have
expected and there was something else there too. Fear? From Emil? If so, fine
again. The only question was as to why.
    “Let’s go,” a voice behind them said.
    The
black man in the suit. The first guard’s twin.
    “Where to?” said Emil.
    “We got to go deal for your
transportation, my man.”
    Not quite so well-spoken, she thought.
    “Wait a minute. I can’t... listen ...
just hold on a second, okay? Have a beer.”
    He handed the man his beer and started
pushing his way through the crowd.
    “Hey! What
the fuck? Fuck you, asshole ! ” The man slammed the beer down on the bar and
moved after him. Ray took her by the arm and
then they were moving through the crowd too with Billy trailing behind. They
heard somebody scream ahead, throaty and then shrill. Marion ?
    I should be so lucky, she thought.
    She spotted Emil and the guard at the
edge of the crowd and then saw Marion standing beneath the woman, staring up. A
thin line of blood ran from the woman’s rib cage to her navel. The neo-Nazi
skinhead had his arm around Marion’s waist boyfriend-and-girlfriend-style and
was gesturing toward the woman with a broad, sharp-looking knife like an
instructor working a blackboard with his pointer. Like the woman was some sort
of math problem.
    “See?” the Nazi said. “You cut her here
and it don’t hardly hurt.”
    He sliced the top of her foot just above
the second toe.
    “You cut her here though .. .”
    He moved the knife across the sole of her
foot and the woman screamed again. Emil grabbed Marion’s arm.
    “What the hell you doing?”
    She didn’t answer. Just stood there
watching the blood drip off the woman’s foot along either side.
    “Hey, Maria. We got to go.”
    “Damn right,” said the guard.
    “Fuck off,” said the Nazi. He pointed the
knife at Emil. Emil let go of Marion’s arm and backed off, hands in the air.
    Now
this was interesting.
    “Got nothing to do with you, friend,” he
said. “We got business, that’s all.”
    “I told you, fuck off !"
    He jabbed with the knife and as Emil
darted back and away the black guard stepped forward easy as you please. He
placed the tip of his index finger against the lip of the blade and smiled.
    “ Play
nice , ” he said.
    The Nazi didn’t seem to know what to make
of that.
    “Like the gentleman says, it’s business. This what you came for?” he asked Emil.
    He nodded. The guard looked at Marion.
    “Come on, sweetcakes ,”
he said. “She gonna be hanging around awhile.”
    “Not yet.”
    She turned to the Nazi and put her hand
out, palm- up. The Nazi didn’t seem to understand at first and then he did. He
handed her the knife. Marion looked at the guard.
    “Is this okay?” she said. “I can do
anything I want, tight? I mean, that’s true, isn’t it? Hell, I can kill her if
I want, right?”
    “ Excuse me, lady?”
    “Suppose I killed her, is anybody going
to mind or what?”
    “Jesus, Marion!”
    “Oh, shut up, Emil.”
    She turned back to the guard. He smiled
again and hook his head.
    “Nah,