Dedicated to Joey Ramone - 1951-2001
The Outcast - Act 1
Niki Valtaine’s heart pounded with the music. All Told drove through the club like a live wire. Berlin had managed to book The Effigies and the club was packed. Somewhere in the moving mass of people were Logan and Pearce, but Niki wasn’t interested in finding them. The music was her consciousness right now. In the darkness of the club, the smell of the people, the sound of the punk, she was alive again; human.
Her eyes were closed for most of the song as she moved to the beat, along with the ocean of others, but for one fleeting moment, her eyes opened and she caught sight... of him. With a growing sense of urgency, she let her feet tear her from the beat and her elbows move her through the dense crowd. Joey Ramone was here. Niki held her jacket tight around her, hugging the black leather as though it were all that kept her from spilling out like fog. Her head pounded with the drums. Echoes of Toe Tag City danced behind her eyes as she shoved her way towards her idol.
When she got to the bar, however, he had vanished. Sitting under the dim hanging lights instead was Logan Kilpatrick. He seemed so foreign to this place. Fortunately for him he had neglected to comb his hair and hadn’t worn that god awful brown suit coat, but a lawyer was a lawyer and he was wordlessly exiled to the bar.
“Hey,” he nearly shouted over the music as the song drew to an end. “This is what you do for fun?”
Niki looked around, still trying to catch a glimpse of the ghost she could have sworn she had seen. “This is what fun does for me,” she answered as he handed her a drink.
“Careful,” he warned as the roar of applause and cheers rose up like a storm. “There’s some heavy shit in there.”
Niki pulled her searching gaze from the room and looked down into the glass. It was an amber liquid with one ice cube in it. That and the promise of a special additive, no matter how heavy, was all she needed. The drink hit her like a sledge hammer. The drink and the stuff mixed into it. She stumbled away from the bar and nearly lost her balance completely when a man with long, dark hair caught her by the elbows.
“Whoa there,” he steadied her and pushed his dark glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. “You’d look good on a chair.” He pulled her down onto the nearest barstool and stood, admiring her jacket. “Bad getup,” he nodded. When she said nothing, swaying obliviously, he shrugged and glanced at Logan who was watching her with concern. Looking back, the punk leaned in close to whisper in her ear. “Tell your yuppie brother to keep—” and she slumped into his arms, unconscious.
As Joey Ramone was arranging Niki on the bar for a nice nap, Logan sighed and turned back to his drink. She wouldn’t appreciate this in the morning. He glanced at his watch. In the afternoon, rather.
With a deep breath he prepared for another musical assault. Blue Funk was the next to submit to the pounding of the feet and the headaches. Frowning, he looked over to the only other ‘yuppie’ in the entire club. The man smiled back, raising his beer to salute it off his dark brow. His grin was a little too wide, Logan thought, considering how terribly sad he seemed at a glance.
“Sup, dog,” the man grinned. He shuffled over to sit next to Logan, wearing not scrap of leather or metal. His navy blue vest on his carmine shirt gave him the look of a standup comedian who had wandered into the wrong joint. He attracted the attention of the barkeep and indicated the glass Logan was drinking from. Instead of ordering the same, he spaced his fingers to indicate a larger portion.
Logan raised an eyebrow and shrugged. This odd man was in for a surprise if the bartender remembered to mix in all the shit that Logan had on his tongue. A cough and a sputter a moment later made him smile. Yup.
“Shit, man, what the hell is this? Gasoline?”
Without looking back to his new drinking buddy, Logan kept his grin and sipped his custom mixer. “Fuckin’ A,” he agreed.
The man shook his head and held his burning throat. “Shite, you got some balls for a white boy.”
Logan shrugged. “Hope so, otherwise I’ve wasted a fortune on condoms.” He continued to sip his drink, hoping eventually this conversation would end. Now that Niki was down for the count, all he had to do was find Pearce and they could leave. Once he had finished his drink, of course.
“The name’s Birk,” the man didn’t offer a hand, nor expect a response. “You got some funk on you yet.”
Logan downed the last of his drink a bit more hastily than he had intended. “Yeah, well I think they have a spray for that now.” He stood and threw his cash onto the bar. Grabbing Niki by the shoulders and slinging her arm around his neck, he began walking her nearly coherent form from the bar.
“Hold up,” Birk took Logan’s arm, very gently, but intentionally nonetheless. “I’m new to the Big Apple, maybe you could give a brother some advice?”
Logan turned around, weighed down by Niki’s slumping form. “Listen,” he said with very little amusement, “it’s four a.m. I’m wasted and I’m tired.” He jostled Niki who stirred. “She’s wasted and tired. I’d very much like to go home and pretend this night never happened, but since I have this annoying condition where I never forget what I did when I was drunk, that’s likely not going to happen. If you were looking for a nice happy place to settle down, then you’ve come to the wrong plane of existence. As for advice,” he swayed slightly as he thought of something very profound to impart, “‘Never sweat the petty stuff... and never pet the sweaty stuff.’”
Pearce met Logan at the door, eager to get away from this massive throbbing temptation and back to his luxury suite as soon as possible. “Have a good time?” Pearce asked, taking one of Niki’s arms over his own shoulder.
“More fun than falling asleep in a trash compactor,” Logan flashed a fake grin. “Let’s just get as far away from Blue Funk as humanly... or inhumanly possible.”
Pearce shrugged. “You’re the boss.”
Pearce, who never drank at public events, for fear of embarrassing himself, held the wheel of Logan’s little brown Chevette. It handled like a bicycle and smelled like two drunk people. Logan sat in the front seat with Niki asleep on his lap. He held her head as the car eased to a stop at the red universe of the intersection.
Pearce was drumming his fingers absently on the steering wheel when the windshield shattered into a spider web of broken pieces. The baseball bat took another swing, hitting the driver’s window and showering Pearce with glass.
“What the bloody hell?” Logan demanded, sitting up straighter as his car was battered senseless.
Pearce threw the driver’s door open and made a grab for the bat. Logan, laying Niki under the dash, quickly exited form his own side and leapt across the hood to tackle the lone vamp at chest level.
It didn’t take long for Logan to be thrown clear of the battle, now between Pearce and the attacker.
“Worthless traitor!” the vamp snarled, taking another swing with his bat. Pearce ducked and stepped to the side. He knew without laughing gas, and as angry as this vamp seemed to be, he wasn’t likely going to get a punch past the bat. “I’ll pound your ass to Baltimore, bitch!” the bat soared past Pearce’s stomach as he jumped back just in time.
“Do I know you?” he asked wandering back and forth, just out of range of the enraged thug.
“You fucking sellout,” the vamp spat. “You’d have us all turned into bitches for The–” he landed hard against the side of the car as Logan slammed into him. The human’s hand took the vamp’s greasy hair and pounded his head around the inside of the broken car’s window.
By the time Logan was thrown off again, the vampire’s face was covered in small cuts from the edges of broken glass. He hissed and lunged at Pearce, dropping the bat. Pearce was too slow and the vamp caught him by the front of his KISS shirt, lifting his significantly smaller frame into the air.
“It’s hygiene time,” he said evilly, picking up the bat and cracking it across his own knee. Now a sharpened splinter, the vampire raised it menacingly and drew it back before Pearce’s chest. Pearce’s eyes searched the darkness for Logan who was just lifting himself from the concrete, several paces away. Too far away.
“Look, an epicene!” Pearce pointed vaguely, his eyes wide and fearful.
The vamp paused and frowned. “A what?” Then he screamed and exploded into dust, letting Pearce fall gratefully to the pavement. He looked up from the ground to see a pair of polished black shoes. Above them were a pair of black trousers and on top of them sat a carmine shirt nestled in a blue vest.
“Uh... you’re not Logan,” he said matter of factly. Regardless, he took the man’s hand and got to his feet.
Birk raised a sardonic eyebrow. “It’s the hair, right?” he ran his hand through his short curly black hair.
As Logan approached, brushing himself off, Pearce shook his head. “No, you smell better.” To this, Logan frowned, unsure of the context of the comment. “Anyway, I think I owe you a thank you, and maybe a drink.”
Birk turned to Logan who took his place beside the vampire. “As long as it’s not what this guy drinks,” he laughed, slapping the lawyer on the shoulder.
Logan frowned with the beginnings of an embarrassed smile on his face. “Do I know you?”
Birk’s jovial expression melted in seconds. It reappeared just as quickly. “Yeah– the club... like twenty minutes ago...?” His smile flickered. “You don’t remember?”
Logan kept his awkward expression and shared it with Pearce who shrugged. “Uh, I don’t think so.” He glanced at Birk’s attire. “Twenty minutes ago we were in the Berlin, listening to the Effigies, not D.J. Cool.”
Birk glanced to Pearce for help but got nothing. He shrugged, helplessly. “I sat beside you at the bar– drank what you drank. ‘Fuckin’ A, it’s gasoline,’ you said.”
Logan was shaking his head. “Sorry. You’ve got me confused with someone else.” He turned and walked unsteadily around the car to the passenger side. Niki was still asleep on the floor.
Pearce watched him get in before turning back to Birk. “You’ll have to excuse him, he’s plastered.” He stretched his hand out and pumped Birk’s graciously. “Thank you very much. You’re very good with... wood.” And he got back into the car and pulled through the red light.
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