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It's Dolly's Birthday
Chapter 16.
A hassle of mendicants...
The hassle of mendicants danced along the sidewalks through the sparsely-populated business district. Starting where the C&O railroad bridge crossed Eastern Avenue, they went door-to-door soliciting funds for Krishna.
From the offices of the bookstore chain to the trucking company, from the electrical supply contractor to the cheap gas station, from the bell foundry to the abandoned church in rehab, they made their way, selling paper flowers for spare change, tapping on tambourines, chanting mantras, shaking their begging bowls, and smiling like robotic idiots.
Along their path, they were met with frank amazement. Krishna freaks were not a common sight in this most conservative city in the old Midwest. Nor did this particular group look anything like the usual mobs of skinny losers usually portrayed in movies and on television.
For starters, they were tall. Only one of them was of anything approaching a normal height. The rest were between 6'6" and 7' tall, men and women both. For another thing, they looked to be in excellent physical shape. Their bare arms showed solid, well-toned muscles and the tension in the fluorescent orange fabric across their chests was... well, tight.
It was both their size and evident strength and the cult's reputation for crazy, unpredictable behavior -- earned or not -- silenced all comment. While they didn't collect much money in their progress, neither were they hassled by anyone as they made their way from door to door along the gritty sidewalk.
#
At the church, they did not find an open door as they had at the businesses along Eastern Avenue. Indeed, it appeared that there was nobody home. After dealing the plywood door several no-nonsense blows with the meat of his fist, Drummond looked at Pete and shrugged. Pete nodded and turned to the line of Trolls behind her. She nodded and gestured around the sides of the church with sweeping motions of her arms. All of them reached under their robes and brought out Heckler and Koch submachine pistols. The Trolls split into two teams, each taking a different route around the building.
#
Dolly slumped against the wall, letting the Meq's grip on her hair turn her face away from him and toward the other. She pretended to close her eyes and let her shoulders slump in false dejection, but watched the second Meq closely from under her lashes.
The speed of his reaction would be crucial. If he was fully alert, she would not be able to kill both of the Meqs before the second one got a clear shot at her.
He looked alert enough. He had his M16 at the ready, a firm grip on the stock and the barrel shroud. It was pointed away from her -- evidence of good muzzle discipline -- but in a direction from which it could be quickly brought to bear on her should she try to break away into the room. He would be hesitant about swinging the muzzle in the other direction, lest he might accidentally shoot his partner.
No danger of that, he must have thought. His partner held the TAT agent at arm's length with a firm grip on her hair and had her covered with his own M16. The second fellow knew that he was backup, probably not needed. He relaxed a little.
Dolly, watching him closely, was waiting for just that subtle sign of relaxation... for just that slight, almost imperceptible loosening of tension in his body that signified his comfort with the situation.
Don't get too comfortable, she thought as she exploded into action.
The first Meq thought he had her pinned against the wall and held, and that she could not move toward the other Meq, being covered by the first, and that she could not move out into the room, being covered by the second Meq. So there was really only one direction for her to go. She had to get into the one place in the room where neither of the aliens would shoot. She had to...
She had come to rest with her left leg bent and the foot flat against the wall behind her. Her arms were spread at shoulder level, the palms of her hands pressed against the wall. Any second now the first Meq was going to demand that she turn around and lean against the wall and assume a spread-legged stance -- the classic position of enforced surrender. Before he had time to think of it, Dolly kicked off with her left foot, swinging toward him, ignoring the sudden pain in her scalp from the sharp tug on her ponytail.
The Meq reacted instinctively. He had his hand on a handle attached to something that was threatening to get away from him. He did the one thing that his fright instinct told him to do... the one wrong thing that he could do. He tightened his grip on the ponytail and he pulled.
This enhanced Dolly's impetus toward him. At the same time as she kicked off, she pressed backward against the wall with her hands, further accelerating her. She arched her back, using the spring-steel strength of her spine to add even further momentum to her movement. It looked as though she was making an enticing pose for purposes of distraction, and, truth be told, she welcomed the effect the sight of her full breasts under the flimsy, straining fabric of her workout top had on the alien males, but it wasn't her primary purpose. Rather, she intended to gather as much force and speed as she could and deliver that force to as small and as vulnerable a point on the pectoral surface of the alien holding her hair as presented itself to her.
She moved past the end of the muzzle of his M16, deflecting it up and into the room before he even felt the impulse to fire. She flapped an elbow upward, making a sharp connection with his wrist, breaking his hold on her hair. A sharp blow with bladed knuckles to the solar plexus, a hearty knee to the gonads and she stood behind a bent-over, groaning Mequilla.
She jumped and hauled down the muzzle of his M16. Wrapping her diminutive hand around his on the stock, she forced him to squeeze the trigger. She was only able to get a short burst off before he was able to fight off the pressure of her forefinger on his, but it was enough. Three shots ripped through the chest of the second Meq, who dropped like a stone.
Then Dolly jumped up on the other Meq's back, riding bareback. She pounded her fists into his temples, she boxed his ears, she head-butted his skull, she groped for the knife she was sure he carried on his belt and that she remembered being pressed against he soft tender skin of her delicate throat.
She wanted revenge for his maltreatment of her. She rained so much punishment down on him in such a short period of time that he buckled and fell to his knees. Dolly felt him going and used his momentum to push him over forward and smash his face into the floor. She flipped off his back and, planting one foot, came around on him with a final roundhouse kick that flipped him over backward to crash into the wall, where he collapsed and slid to the floor, unconscious.
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