raised by wolves

There is a sickly sweet smell in the air, like garbage in the heat of July. Everything about this place makes me want to vomit. The man pointing a gun at my head is not helping. His face looks like rotten meat. You can see his teeth, or what’s left of his teeth, sticking out of a hole in his cheek. One of his eyes is ruptured and leaking an unwholesome sort of goo down what’s left of his face. His tongue, slit and black, flicks out through the hole in his cheek and laps up some of the eyeball goo. I have never wanted to puke more desperately in my life. I think back to the eggs I had this morning, and man, it only gets worse. I just want to shoot this fucker so I can go home. I’ve had him locked dead between the eyes since the draw, but being a cop isn’t what it used to be. I remember the old days when wasting bad guys was just a matter of firing first. Now there’s so much paperwork and red tape and liability forms and lawsuits and just-cause and warrants. I became a cop because I wanted to waste the bad guys. And man, this guy is bad.

This guy’s name is Harlan Dorsey. He was a pimp and a pusher and a gun runner before one of his girls threw a batch of nasty chemicals in his face and left him for dead, sucking air through a trache-ring in the ICU for a couple months. He woke up and went berserk, killed some young nurses and a few med-school interns. Then he escaped. He was after the girl who disfigured him, and he went with a force like a tidal wave, only stopping on the way to slaughter every cop and call girl on the way. I’ve been following him for weeks now, and finally, here we are.

Harlan Dorsey. 35 years old. Caucasian. No family. No one to miss him. Pointing a shotgun at my head. Just killed my partner, and he’ll kill the girl next.

The girl’s name is Naomi Glass. Her story is a typical sad one, as most stories that end in prostitution are. Broken home, abusive parents, no friends. Probably was a bright girl, before drugs and the life took their toll. She worked for Dorsey, and one night she was pushed too far. Everyone has a limit, and Dorsey found hers. She told me that she could feel the pressure of everything building up inside her before she did what she did. She said it felt like drowning, like being under water and not knowing which way was up. She said she felt the need to do something extreme to change her circumstances.

And so, she killed her pimp. Dorsey was in a rage. A deal in Mexico fell through, and he thought he would take it out on one of his girls. It was Naomi’s night as punching bag. She was in a warehouse where Dorsey’s outfit cut and cooked their assorted products. A real professional setup, with bunsen burners and graduated cylinders. If you didn’t know better, you might guess it was the set of an old B-horror movie, and the mad scientist was right off screen.

Dorsey came in and started slapping poor young Naomi around. It was bad. He broke glass and threw her over tables, split her lips and gave her a black eye. Somewhere between the first and second split lip, something snapped in Naomi, and she decided to kill Dorsey. When he didn’t expect it, Naomi picked up one of the burners, turned the gas up all the way and began bludgeoning Dorsey in the face with it. Once he was unconscious, Naomi dumped a mess of the nasty shit they were cutting the drugs with on his face and waited for him to stop breathing. She cut off one of his feet for good measure, ran his pockets, and absconded into the murky September evening.

Naomi Glass. Mid-twenties. African American. No family. Killed ten men between here and Seattle. The men she killed were scum, near as I can tell. I don’t know what they’ll do with her if we get out of here.

The rotten feeling in the pit of my stomach is getting worse the longer I think about it.

Dorsey is still standing there, pointing the gun at me. It’s a shotgun, and it’s big and nasty enough to take a solid chunk right out of me. From behind a pile of debris, I hear a low, throaty gurgle. It’s my partner, breathing his last through lungs full of blood and buckshot. I want to turn and tell him everything’s going to be fine, but the girl is there next to him, and I know she isn’t saying anything, but talking won’t do any of us any good at this point. If I move or look away from this rotten fucker, he’ll put a hole in me the way he put a hole in my partner, and all of it will be for nothing.