Back To The Future, Part II
RESORT
CASINO
GIRLS
And that wasn’t all! Right in the middle of the sign was a huge portrait of Biff, lighting a cigar with a hundred dollar bill.
It was bright! It was garish! It had absolutely no taste! It had to be the same Biff Tannen!
Marty was overwhelmed. It was the middle of the night, and the place was doing a fantastic business! People streamed in and out of the door marked CASINO - most of them fat, middle-aged men in business suits, each one with a much younger woman -sometimes two - on one or both of his arms, and all of them talking and laughing.
Whatever they were saying, though, was completely lost in the roar of motorcycles. The grass and hedges of the square were gone, paved over with asphalt, and filled now with a hundred bikers, drag racing and revving their engines.
As Marty looked around, he realised the whole square was different. The aerobics place and family stores had disappeared, replaced by adult book stores, bars, pawn shops, bail bondsmen, and porno theatres - and all of those were open for business, too. The whole town seemed to be open all night!
And behind it all, on every side of the square, even towering over the Pleasure Palace, were row after row of tall industrial smokestacks, all spewing thick smoke into the darkness.
Hill Valley certainly had changed.
The front door of the Biff Tannen Pleasure Palace slammed open, and three men emerged, half-dragging, half-carrying a fourth. It looked like three bouncers getting rid of a drunk. At least, Marty reflected, that sort of thing hadn’t changed.
Marty could have sworn he knew those bouncers.
They were older than the last time he had seen them, but those three bouncers looked an awful lot like those guys that used to hang around with Biff back in the fifties - Match, Skinhead and 3-D. All of them wore suits now. Match now wore a cowboy hat, while Skinhead’s crewcut was a lot greyer than before. And 3-D's glasses were a lot fancier. The way they gleamed under the neon, they almost looked like they had jewels embedded in the rims. But all three were the same bullies they’d been back in 1955.
‘And don’t ever come beggin’ for drinks in here again!’ 3-D yelled. ‘Friggin’ lush!’
The drunk picked himself up off the pavement.
‘Hey,’ he called after the bouncers, his voice slightly slurred, ‘can’t you guys take a joke?’
The drunk reached into the pocket of his ragged coat, and fished out a pint bottle, which he drained in a single gulp. He threw the empty bottle in the general direction of the hotel, then started to stagger down the street.
There was something disturbingly familiar about that drunk - the curly hair and crooked smile, the way he laughed, even the way he staggered. In fact, the drunk looked just like Marty’s older brother!
Marty walked quickly - but very cautiously -through the bikers who filled the asphalt-covererd Courthouse Square, past roaring fires in oil drums and seven-foot-tall guys swinging chains, toward the Pleasure Palace.
‘Dave!’ Marty called.
The drunk turned unsteadily to look at him.
‘Marty!’ he called, his unfocused face breaking into a broad grin. He gave his brother an exaggerated wave. ‘Hey, bro, what’s happening!’ He frowned as Marty got closer. ‘Hey, you’re looking kind of ragge
d there - what did you sleep in your clothes again last night?'
His brother should talk, Marty thought. He had hardly ever seen anyone look so down and out. But now, maybe, he could get some answers.
‘Dave, my God, what’s happened to you? What’s happened to the town? What’s going on around here?’
‘Oh, all this?’ Dave waved generously at the drag racers on the street. ‘It’s the biker’s convention!’
Dave turned slowly back to his brother. It seemed to take his eyes a moment to focus.
‘So, Marty,’ he said at last, ‘when’d you get back?’
Marty had no idea what Dave was talking about.
‘Back?’ he asked. ‘Back from where?’