Crab Town (5 page)

Sailboat realizes that they’ve got an extra gun man working with them. He thought it was just the four of them and the teenaged girl outside. He isn’t sure if the balloon man waving a .32 revolver at the bank teller is with them, or just some other guy robbing the bank at the same time. It’s possible that he is with them. Sailboat never listens to Jack when he’s given the game plan.

“Who the hell is that guy?” Sailboat asks Doomsday.

She looks over at Johnny Balloon.

“No idea.”

“Is he with us?” Sailboat asks.

“No.”

Since the security officer he should be guarding is out cold, or maybe dead, Sailboat leaves his position and goes to Jack.

“Put your hands on the back of your neck,” Jack yells at the people on the floor. “With your face pointed at the ground.”

Sailboat goes back-to-back with Jack and whispers behind his shoulder. “Who the hell is the balloon guy?”

Johnny Balloon hears and looks over at them. He locks eyes with Jack.

“You cool?” Jack asks the balloon.

Johnny nods. “I just want the money they owe me.”

Jack looks over at Nine, then back at Johnny.

“Okay then,” Jack says. “Get it and go.”

Sailboat shoves his leader with his right shoulder. “You can’t be serious.”

“He’s one of us,” Jack says. “He’s a crab.”

“But we don’t know him. And he’s a fucking balloon.”

“Yeah, he’s a balloon. That’s all I need to know about him to know he deserves a piece of this bank. He drew a worse lot in life than either you or I.”

“He’s going to get us killed.”

“Let me worry about him. You worry about the third security officer. He’s got to be here somewhere.”

Sailboat grunts, then scans the quivering faces, looking for someone who doesn’t belong.

“Are you guys looking for the undercover guard?” Johnny says.

The robbers all look at him.

“Try the guy with the yellow hat,” Johnny says.

Jack nods to Sailboat, and the large man goes to the other side of the room. The man with the yellow hat grumbles to himself as Sailboat points his shotgun down at him.

“My right pocket,” Yellow Hat says.

Sailboat pats him down and finds the handgun.

“It’s him,” Sailboat tells the others.

Jack smiles at Johnny Balloon.

“I told you,” Jack says. “He’s one of us.”

Nine brings the bank manager and his wife into the front room and tosses them on the floor.

“Now that you’re all here,” Jack tells his captive audience, “I’d like to finally make an introduction.” He raises his arms in the air and says, “We are the House of Cards.” He presses his hands together and paces in front of the crowd. “Or at least four of the fifty-two members of the House of Cards. Maybe you’ve heard of us. I’m called Jack of Spades, one of the proud Lieutenants of our brave little army. The sexy lady next to me is the Nine of Hearts. She’ll steal your soul given the chance. Over there we’ve got the Four of Clubs, or Sailboat, as we like to call him. And the girl with the big ass Tommy Gun is the lovely Miss Doomsday. Whatever you do, don’t piss her off. She’s one fine weapon of mass destruction.”

He looks over at Johnny, “And who are you again?”

“They call me Johnny Balloon,” Johnny replies.

“Ah, yes,” Jack says, smiling behind his mask. “And joining us for the afternoon is our provisional wild card, my main man, Johnny Balloon.”

The balloon man gives the hostages a squeaky bow.

“We’re all from Crab Town,” Jack continues. “That’s right, the place a lot of you try to pretend doesn’t exist. I can tell that some of you are residents of Crab Town, or on the verge of becoming residents of the shit hole. For the lot of you, I apologize for this inconvenience. Rest assured, your patience will be rewarded. As most of you know, the House of Cards doesn’t commit crimes for our own financial gain. No, we do this for you, the little crabbies. All the money we make goes toward helping you crabs build a better life. We put money toward water filtration systems, so that we don’t have to drink that toxic sludge that comes out of the sinks. We put money toward books to educate Crab Town children. We buy medicine. We buy food. We repair buildings. We are your friends. We do this for you.”

The guard in the yellow hat chuckles. “Yeah, you’re a regular Robin Hood.”

Sailboat stomps on his back for interrupting.

“Unfortunately, for the rest of you,” Jack of Spades says to the guard, “you are not friends of the House of Cards. You have used us and thrown us away like garbage. Crab Town citizens aren’t even allowed to get jobs because of you, because we disgust you. You don’t want us working in your restaurants or factories. You won’t even let us wash your floors. Are you afraid living out there in the impact zone has made us radioactive? Are you afraid we’re going to track radiation onto your side of town? Are we biohazards? Or are we just too ugly and dirty for you to look at?”

He looks down at the bank manager’s wife, who is lying on the ground with one arm around her little boy. She stares at Jack’s boots as he peers down on her.

“The sad thing is,” Jack continues, “we’re not even asking you to care about us. You don’t have to help us. You can be as self-absorbed as you want to be. We’re just sick and tired of you doing everything you possibly can to keep us down, making absolutely sure we can never get back up again. You made us into bottom feeders, and you want us to stay bottom feeders. Until you give us a chance to work, give us a chance to pay back our debts without garnishing the majority of our wages, the House of Cards will continue to rob your banks and steal your wallets.”

He nods at Doomsday. She steps away from the front door.

He continues, “Now, if you’re a resident of Crab Town, you are free to leave. We don’t want you mixed up in any of this.”

The Crab Town citizens look around, then slowly begin to stand up.

Jack points his shotgun at a blonde woman as she gets to her feet. With her clean shirt and designer perfume, she’s obviously not a Crab Town citizen.

“Crab Town citizens only,” he tells her. “I’ve lived there long enough to know the smell of a crabby. If you don’t smell like one you don’t get to leave.”

About nine people get up and go for the door. Miss Doomsday escorts them out. One of them smiles at her as she leaves, and mouths a
thank you
.

Jack looks down at the bank manager and tosses him an empty duffel bag.

“Now if you can fill this for me we’ll be on our way.”

The bank manager looks up at him. Jack smiles behind his mask.

Jack once had a wife and daughter. They led honest lives in a lower middleclass neighborhood. When the government proposed the idea of CRABs, Jack thought it was a great opportunity. He was a brilliant handyman, who could fix just about anything from plumbing to electrics to generators. His plan was to single-handedly renovate an apartment building in Crab Town, so that he could own the property and make a better living by renting apartments out to decent people. Then he would move on to another building and renovate that one, then another, and so on. He saw it as a way to get out of his dead end job and give his family a better life.

But things didn’t work out the way he had intended. The buildings in Crab Town couldn’t be renovated. It would be easier to tear them down and build new buildings from the ground up. But Jack tried to fix them. He tried to get at least one side of his building up to code enough to rent the apartments as low income housing. The city wouldn’t approve, no matter how much money he sank into it. He could point out that some apartments on the more respectable side of town were in just as bad shape as this one, but the council wouldn’t listen to him.

Later, he learned that the council had no intention of approving any of the buildings in Crab Town. The bill was passed just so they could get rid of the vagrants and lowlifes that infested the city streets, who no longer could contribute to society after the war. They just wanted to hide these people away so that they wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore.

Jack lost his day job, but at the time he didn’t realize it was due to the fact that he was a Crab Town resident. A few months later, he heard stories from everyone in his neighborhood that they too had lost their jobs for no explainable reason. It was as if the government wanted to purposely keep them there, with the rest of the refuse. He believes that they don’t call them Crab Towns for nothing. They call them that because it is where all the bottom feeders are sent. The people here are just radioactive scavengers, who eat everyone else’s shit, just like the black crabs that come out of the sewers.