“You’re playing with fire, kitten. You’re telling them things just to rile ’em all up. I don’t know if you have this all figured out as neat and nice as you want. There’s gonna be blowback. I don’t think you get that.”

Everything’s unstable, now. Things were supposed to go differently but they didn’t and now here she is. Making up the story as it goes along.

“I get it!” Nora barks. “Jesus. What are you, my mother?” Calm down, you need these girls. “Listen. I know it’s like I… threw a lit M-80 into a crowd. And maybe I did. But it’ll clear a space. A space for me. For you. For the gang. I’ll bring you guys with me. The Boss is sick. His grandson is…” Here she hesitates. Deep breath. “Dead.”

Skelly walks up. Gets nose-to-nose with Nora.

Nora smells bubblegum and cigarettes.

“You better be right,” Skelly says. “Because, baby girl, if you fuck us over or fuck us up, I’ll crawl out of the corpse-pile dead or alive and skin you with Santa Muerte here–” The woman taps the hilt of the sheathed Bowie. “We square?”

“We’re–”

Above their heads, above the floor, they hear a sound: Whump whump whump.

“Someone’s here,” Lulu says. Breathless with anticipation. Lulu seems to get off on this kind of thing. Fear. Danger. Like she’s French-kissing Death in the broom closet.

Skelly shoots her a look. “Yeah, we got that, Lou.” She turns to Nora. “They’re here. Already. Let’s hit the tunnels and–”

“No,” Nora says. “If this was a hit squad they wouldn’t be knocking. Listen to that sound.” How loud it is. Him with those big stupid fists. Sometimes she thinks that’s where the old man keeps his brains. “I know who it is. It’s my father.”

“See? Blowback’s already started.”

Another three knocks. Whump whump whump. Louder now.

Skelly hisses, “What do we do?”

Nora jerks a thumb toward one of the posters. Zardoz. “I’m gonna hit the bricks. I’ve got to find some leverage. You stay behind. Talk to him. Throw him off my trail. Stay with him if you can. Last thing I need is that big dumb monkey messing up my plans.”

“You really don’t like him, do you?”

Nora doesn’t answer. Instead she just walks over to the poster. Already two of the Get-Em-Girls are ahead of her – one in a pair of oil-stained denim overalls, the other in a black cardigan with a coffin stitched on the back, and in the front, cleavage so deep you could lose your car keys and money-clip down there. Maybe the whole purse.

The girls unpin the Zardoz poster at the bottom, then roll it up.

A tunnel is revealed.

Nora grabs one of the lanterns as Mookie knocks again.