Free Crab Town by Iii Carlton Mellick Page A

was surprised to see Jack standing above her. For a second, she had forgot what had happened. But once she tried to stand up and cringed at the wound, she remembered.
    “You’re going to be alright,” Jack said.
    She wouldn’t look him in the eyes. After a long silence, Little Sister said, “You made a mistake.”
    “What mistake?”
    “You should have let me die.”
    “You would prefer to be dead?”
    Little Sister squeezed her fist open and closed. “I might as well be dead. By asking for your help, the King Crabs will never take me back. They’ll think I’m too weak.”
    “Weren’t you their leader? Don’t you tell them what is weak and what isn’t? Maybe all of you should change the way you think.”
    She shook her head. “They surely already chose a new leader. If I went back to them, the new leader would treat me as an enemy and a traitor.” She was almost crying with her words. She had to pause for a moment in order to compose herself. “Without the King Crabs, I’m not going to last long. I’ll be dead by the end of the month.”
    Jack handed her a card, the two of diamonds. “Not necessarily.”
    She took the two of diamonds.
    “Join the House of Cards,” he said. “You’ll get a new lease on life. And maybe, one day, we’ll create a better life for the people of Crab Town.”
    Little Sister joined. At first, she did because she didn’t have anywhere else to go, but she quickly grew to love the job. She hated being treated like a kid by the rest of the Cards, but she had a lot of fun robbing banks and breaking into the homes of the rich.
    Because she was the expert on building/repairing sail-bikes, the King Crabs eventually lost their advantage over other gangs. When they found out Little Sister was still alive, they tried to get her back. They didn’t care that she had betrayed their rules. But she refused them. She had a better life with the House of Cards. Once her old gang threatened to kill her if she didn’t go back to them, she had the King of Clubs and his thug-like army take them all out. Now the only people using sail-bikes in Crab Town are the House of Cards.

    Little Sister is a master of the sail-bike. As the police charge after them on their tandem bikes, they have no way of catching up to her. She peddles fast and can take turns even faster. There are four tandem bikes coming after Doomsday and Little Sister. Each of them have a driver at the front of the bike, with a shooter in the back of the bike firing over their partner’s head.
    Miss Doomsday pedals up to Johnny Balloon as he runs through the street.
    “Break off,” she tells him. “We’ll lead them away from you.”
    Johnny nods his head, but before he can turn into an alleyway, his knapsack breaks. The pieces of concrete weighing him down spill out into the street and Johnny loses his gravity. He floats up into the air, thrashing his limbs, crying for help.
    Miss Doomsday goes for his string, but it slips through her fingers. The wind blows him up the street, completely out of her reach.
    “Help!” Johnny screams as he goes tumbling through the air, but there’s nothing Doomsday can do to catch him.
    Johnny points his revolver in the sky above him and fires, sending him back toward the ground. Doomsday tries to speed up to catch his string, but before she can reach he floats back up into the air. He fires again.
    The cops assume that Johnny is aiming at them, and focus their gunfire at him instead of the robbers on the bikes. Instead of going for his string, Doomsday has to return fire with her Tommy Gun. She shreds the tires of one of the tandem bikes, sending the cops into the sidewalk. By the time Doomsday turns around, a gust of wind sends Johnny further up the road.
    “I’ll get him!” says Little Sister, blowing past Doomsday at top speed.
    Miss Doomsday lays down some cover fire, as Little Sister sails through the street toward Johnny. Citizens try to run out of the way, getting caught up in the gun