PISS AND VINEGAR

Matthew R. Davis

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The streets of Palmervale are deserted at this time of the afternoon, so the green van rumbling down Third Avenue would be conspicuous even without the gold pentagrams sprayed on its rims and the mural of a pig-tailed, slobbering jackal in roller derby gear painted on its sides. This ride is calculated to be the vehicular equivalent of a raised middle finger, from the punk rock that pounds from its speakers to the legend MURDERTOWN JACKALS emblazoned proudly on its hide, but its occupants would be disappointed by the local response if they bothered to look for one. No-one walks the footpaths in Palmervale, and any eyes watching this oddity’s arrival do so from behind plucked curtains, glazed over and disinterested.

The only sign of life on Third Avenue is an ash-blonde man sprawled against a derelict feed store, bottle of spirits clutched between splayed legs. Insensate, he doesn’t look up when the van growls to a halt across the road, nor when its side door slides open. Out hops a tattooed and pierced woman dressed in a safety-pinned pencil skirt and an orange and black derby guernsey, cracking her knuckles as she strides across the street. Only when her shadow falls over the drunk does he wince and peer up at her.

“Shout a girl a drink?” Kate wrinkles her nose at the stench and plucks the bottle from his limp fingers. “Oh, you’re too kind.”

“No,” he says, “gimme, you don’t understand –”

“Shut up, rummy,” Kate sneers, “I’m doing you a favour,” and she amuses herself by slapping his questing hands away. She returns to the van, and the Murder Machine prowls on down the street.

“What’s the score?” asks Michelle from her seat in the back. She’s a tank of a woman with fire-engine red cropped hair, and like the rest of her colleagues, she wears her team guernsey. “Some cheap rotgut that tastes like cat’s piss? Give us a swig.”

“I think it’s whisky,” Kate says, turning the third-full bottle in her hands. The label is black with an elaborate golden P at its centre. “Never seen it before. Palmer’s Pride?”

“Must be distilled here,” suggests Darla from the passenger seat, running a hand through her purple punk cut and tapping her switchblade against one slender knee.

“This place is a shithole, so it’s probably one step up from moonshine.” Burly Japanese-Australian Nikki runs her tongue over her teeth, lingering on the gap where she lost one back in Staceyville. “Still, people who rob beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Let me see,” comes the demand from the driver’s seat, and Kate passes the bottle over to their jammer and leader.

Steph considers the bottle of Palmer’s Pride as she drives, her eyes sharp behind red-framed spectacles. A French slogan is written on a banner that curves beneath the P logo like a smug smile. Palmer’s Pride in Palmervale – she’s sensing a theme here. She passes the bottle over her shoulder.

“Let me know if it’s any good.”

Nikki screws off the lid, tips the bottle to her mouth. “Ugh! Calling it cat’s piss would be a kindness.”

They all try a swig, and the unanimous consensus is that Palmer’s Pride is possibly the worst spirit they’ve ever imbibed.

“Nevertheless, I fancy getting fucked up,” Steph declares. “Let’s find the pub and reload.”

“We’re still broke,” Kate points out.

“Then we’ll negotiate a trade. We keep their booze, they keep their teeth.”

Third Avenue leads straight to the heart of Palmervale, and there, rising among the dingy shops like a new cathedral, is the town pub – the Palmer’s Rest. It’s devoid of any advertising other than the golden P logo.

“Interesting,” Steph muses as she parks the van. “The town looks like it’s been rotting for years, but the pub is immaculate.”

The Jackals finish the bottle between them before exiting the van, and it’s been so long since they ate a decent meal that the booze has them ticking over nicely. Steph, towering over her girls in leather pants with her black hair done up in a red bandanna, gestures to Kate for a cigarette and lights up before leading the team to the pub’s door.

“There’s that slogan again,” she says, because it’s painted over the mantel – the same banner from the bottle’s label, only now reversed into a warning frown. “Darla, what’s it say?”

“Droit de seigneur. It means ‘right of the lord’. Oh, boy.”

“That a religious thing?”

“Mediaeval thing, more like. It means the lord of the land has the right to any woman he wants, whenever he wants.”

Nikki spits on the footpath.

“Looks fresh,” Michelle points out. “Maybe that’s still how they roll around here.”

Steph curls her lip. “Well, we roll our own way. Let’s say hi.”

She pushes the door open and her team swaggers into the Rest like rogue gunslingers in a spaghetti western. The interior is expensive but tacky, and few people patronise it this afternoon. A handful of men slouch behind tables, staring blankly at their glasses of whisky; a publican watches with stony eyes from his office door, snapping a towel like an irritated horse flicks its tail; an ash-blonde barmaid clutches at the edge of a beer mat, gazing at the new arrivals with something like panic.

Steph is used to such reactions. It’s not every day folks see a bunch of roller derby punk chicks strutting through their little hamlet, radiating intimidation from every angle down to the names on their guernseys: STEPH COMES RIPPING, DIE, DIE MY DARLA, MICHELLOWEEN, NIKKI A GO GO, SOME KINDA KATE.

“Excuse me,” calls the barmaid. She’s barely legal, a cute little mouse in a burgundy vest. “You can’t smoke in here. I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“You don’t have to do any such thing, sweetheart.” Steph sidles up closer to the bar and notes the girl is trembling, but the plea in her eyes implies it’s not the Jackals who scare her. “We’re just passing through, got a taste for your local blend. Actually, it’s shit, but we want some shots anyway. Hook a sister up?”

“Give the bitches what they want.” The publican eyes her team, not salacious but speculative, a butcher sizing up slabs of meat. Steph watches as he drifts down the bar, lifts a landline handset, speaks quietly into its plastic ear. Cops? Security? Who gives a fuck anyway?

“Five shots of cat’s piss,” she declares while her girls line up, and as the barmaid grabs some glasses, she notices the girl’s nametag doesn’t bear a name, just a number: 88. “And what’s with all this Palmer stuff, anyway? He the local bigwig?”

“Lord Palmer is our mayor and benefactor,” the barmaid recites by rote as she pours the shots. “His family has owned our town for generations. Palmer’s Pride is their own creation. Are you paying by card or –”

“By violence, if we’re lucky. You can tell your mate Palmer he has shit taste in booze.”

88 shakes in her shoes. “He, he’s a connoisseur.”

Darla leans in, grinning. “Did you say droit de seigneur?”

The girl glances over to make sure her boss’s back is turned. “Please, you have to go. It’s not safe here.”

“You’re so right about that,” Steph announces. “It’s not safe for any fuckwit who thinks he can lord it over everyone because he’s got money and a dick. Where is this mayor of yours?”

The publican replaces the phone in its cradle and turns back to his guests. “Lord Palmer will be here shortly.”

“Ah, good.” Steph ignores the barmaid’s look of terror and lifts her shot glass. “Ladies, to us. Trouble every day!”

The Jackals toast in return and chant their motto. “Trouble every day!”

Five shots go down. Five glasses slam on the bar.

“Disgusting,” Kate cries. “Five more, please. And leave the bottle out.”

88 pours another round, her hand trembling, and Steph feels a familiar tension in her gut. She senses a shit/fan interface in their immediate future and grins. The men spotted around the Rest don’t seem to have noticed the Jackals at all, so the drama’s coming from another direction. She’s sure it will make a suitably grandiose entry when it arrives.

And she’s not wrong. 88’s pouring a third round when the front doors are shunted open to admit the local authorities.

Lord Palmer stands out like the balls on a tall dog, partly because he reeks of unearned privilege but mostly because he’s wearing a gold lamé cape. He bears the smug smile of a young man unacquainted with the word no but his carriage and demeanour suggest an internet troll with delusions of grandeur – a turd rolled in glitter, Steph thinks. His five flunkies are dressed in black paramilitary gear accented with gold thread and that P logo, each wielding a different polearm like mediaeval warriors: bardiche, glaive, halberd, voulge, pike.

“Howdy,” Steph says.

“Ugh. Who let the dogs out?” Palmer sighs and checks his gold-plated phone, speaks without looking up. “Do you know who I am?”

“You’re the lord with the rights,” Darla replies, palming her switchblade. “Mr Droit de Seigneur.”

“That’s me. Okay, let’s skip the usual boring exposition speech and tick off the bullet points. I own this town and everyone inside its limits, like my father and his father before. Our own special spirit sedates men and keeps them placid, pliant, and impotent. And you bitches are coming with us.”

Steph finishes her cigarette, flicks it in his direction. “And why would we bitches do such a thing?”

“In Palmervale, the rule is this: if it’s got a cunt, it’s mine.”

Steph raises one hand to keep her girls from charging like wounded bulls, arches an eyebrow at Lord Palmer.

“I count only one cunt around here.”

Palmer bristles at this. “I won’t tell you again, slut.”

“Oh, you really won’t. I don’t know how you and your father and his father before got away with this little fascist regime, and I don’t care. Smart thing would be to lead your bullyboys back out that door before you really piss us off. You’re interrupting cocktail hour.”

Steph flicks a glance at Nikki, who nods and turns back to the bar.

“You come in peace,” Palmer declares, puffing up his chest, “or you come in pieces.”

Kate snorts in amusement. Michelle’s smile is so bleak and deadly it would discourage a hungry lion.

“Hear that, girls?” Darla says. “He wants to make us come.”

Kate laughs. “Him and what dick?”

“No dice, sunshine,” says Steph. “We’re the Murdertown Jackals, and we don’t take orders. Especially not from some watery-spermed Pepe-the-Frog-wrapped-in-a-shower-curtain-looking motherfucker like you.”

Palmer’s face is an apoplectic shade of red. He stamps his foot.

“Kill them all. Kill them now!”

His henchmen lower their polearms and take a step forward. That’s when the publican cries out a warning, and that’s when Nikki turns with the bottle of Palmer’s Pride in one hand and a lighter in the other, the cleaning rag stuffed in the bottle’s neck already flaming as she hurls this Molotov cocktail across the room.

The bottle bursts at the men’s feet, shooting a sheet of flame across the wooden floor. Palmer leaps back, shrieking and slapping at the smouldering fringe of his cape, and his henchmen scatter. The Jackals race to meet them, grim grins fixed to their faces.

Palmer’s guardsmen are distracted by the flames and aren’t expecting such fierce resistance. Die, Die My Darla dashes at the nearest, Pike, who swings the butt of his staff at her head. She ducks the blow and slides between his legs, her switchblade punching into his groin. He screams and drops his weapon, and Darla stabs her way up his body until freshets of blood jet from his torn carotid.

Nikki A Go Go gestures to 88 to pass another bottle, and the publican charges down the bar at them. His eyes are blazing bright hatred at Nikki as he grabs a spiked cricket bat to beat her head in, so he doesn’t see his employee grab a bottle and swing. The Palmer’s Pride smashes across his face and sends him crashing to the floor, his face a mess of broken bone and shattered teeth. Nikki clicks her fingers to snap the barmaid out of her trance and commandeers the broken bottle. She whistles to get Kate’s attention and tosses it her way.

Some Kinda Kate is driven back by Halberd’s sweeping blows and can’t get within arms’ reach. Nikki’s whistle alerts her and she barely manages to catch the incoming bottle by the neck. Halberd sees her distraction and lunges forward to impale her. Kate spins around the blow and shoves the broken bottle into his face, tearing open a cheek and gouging out an eye. She rides his screaming body to the floor, where she stabs again and again until he stops twitching.

Michelloween charges her chosen target like a speeding truck. Glaive plants the butt of his polearm against his foot and braces the shaft, waiting for her to impale herself. Michelle swerves to avoid the weapon’s tip but it gouges the flesh beneath her armpit until she traps the shaft between her arm and body. She rams the guard hard, sends him flying back against the pub wall, and he has no time to recover before she reverses the glaive and drives it through his heart into the panelling behind, leaving him pinned like a bug in a lepidopterist’s display.

Steph Comes Ripping is front and centre, and Palmer backs off to allow his two closest henchmen to confront her. Voulge and Bardiche come at her from opposing angles, jabbing their blades in overlapping blows to keep her off-guard. She grabs the head of the voulge with her left hand and, as the bardiche stabs at her, spins backwards to thump the first man in the face with her right. He grunts and drops, letting go of the shaft, and Steph has the polearm – but Bardiche swipes his wicked blade across her shoulder, laying open the tattooed skin there. Steph backs off, hissing at the pain as she grips the voulge, and then the two of them clash together, wood clacking as they strive to land body blows, the quarters too close to allow the steel heads room. Steph pushes their locked staves up and kicks him in the groin once, twice, thrice, freeing her polearm and smashing his teeth in with its tip. As he stumbles away, she swings the voulge in a deadly arc that slices his throat to the bone, and his half-severed head flaps back on a gout of arterial gore.

Too late, she realises that Voulge is up again and coming at her with a dagger. Steph has no time to manoeuvre out of his way, and just enough to wonder if her pride has finally caught up with her.

And then a flung bottle bounces off his head, sending him staggering, and Nikki races in with another glass club to knock him down and beat his face into a featureless crimson pulp.

Steph takes stock. All five guardsmen are dead or dying, and Palmer is outside, fleeing toward a nearby black SUV. Eyeing her wound with disgust – her tattoos will need to be redone around the inevitable scar – she stalks after him, and the Jackals follow her out onto the footpath.

Palmer reaches into the open SUV and comes out laughing, an assault rifle cradled in his arms.

“Oh, I’m really going to fuck you now!”

Steph spits a savage curse. No time to reach him, and scattering is certain doom – back inside is the only option, if they’re fast enough. The women turn and see 88 standing in the bar behind them, a flaming bottle in her hand.

“Bitches!” she cries, and then she tosses the Molotov their way.

The Jackals curse and scatter, trapped between two kinds of fire – but Steph stands firm, realising in this slowed-down second that the barmaid is not insulting and attacking them, she’s alerting and arming them. She catches the flaming bottle by the base, hoping the rag wick doesn’t burn down in her hands, and spins on her heel to make the pitch of her life.

Palmer is bringing the assault rifle up to aim, and the Molotov hits his weapon dead on. The bottle shatters against steel, and flame engulfs the man in a heartbeat. He sucks in a breath to scream and the fire flash-cooks his lungs, sets his ash-blonde hair alight, sends his eyes dribbling down his cheeks. He collapses, writhing in agony, and burns like a heap of trash as the Jackals cheer their victory.

“Finally, he gets to be hot shit,” quips Michelle.

Darla goes her one better. “Ooh, feel the burn!”

Steph leads her triumphant pack back into the pub. The few drinkers haven’t budged throughout the melee, pacified by Palmer’s Pride. The barmaid is pouring six shots, shaking now in exhilaration rather than fear.

“More men will come.”

“By the time we’re done here,” Steph says, “no man will come unless he’s given permission. Thanks for the helping hand, honey. You got an actual name?”

“Just 88,” she replies. “Bitches don’t get names.”

“Well, pick yourself one. And give this dump a new name while you’re at it.”

“First things first,” Darla says. “Boss, you want to do the honours?”

“My pleasure and my pride.” Steph raises her shot in a toast. “Trouble every day!”

“Trouble every day!”

Steph tosses her shot glass and leads her pack out of the pub, back to the Murder Machine. A black SUV is crawling down Third Avenue, another rolling down Second. The Jackals are howling. They’re drunk, pumped, and ready to go to war.

“Get your skates on, girls.” Steph dabs at her wound and licks the blood from her fingers. Next time, it won’t be her own. “Time to paint this town red.”

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Matthew R. Davis is a Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author and musician from Adelaide, South Australia, with around one hundred short stories and six books published to date. He’s won two Australasian Shadows Awards and has been shortlisted for many more. His latest book is The Cure On Track: Every Album, Every Song (Sonicbond Publishing), with a collection of horror stories, Songs of Shadow, Words of Woe, and an Australian indie film tie-in, Ribspreader: The Novelisation and the Screenplay (with Dick Dale) due later in 2025. He shares his life with the award-winning artist Meg Wright, aka Red Wallflower. Find out more at matthewrdavisfiction.wordpress.com.

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