Out Through the Attic (28 page)

I couldn’t help but wonder if I was already dead, or perhaps insane.

Does it matter?

Brushing those possibilities aside, I raised my shields with a thought. Another thought ignited an energy blade that coalesced out beyond my left, armored fist. I reached behind my back and pulled forth a squat energy blaster the size of a refrigerator.

The machine and I were one.

It was all just as I had dreamed, and impossibly far from where I’d started.

O O O

There is a clarity of purpose in war unlike anything else.

Two tours in the Middle East, and I suppose that’s the one thing I brought home that had any truth or meaning. The politics of those wars, the money, the ethics and morals … it was as if both sides were heroes and villains … or neither was. None of it mattered for a soldier facing death in the next ninety seconds … every moment, every day. I’d signed up for duty and honor, things I’d dreamed about since I was a kid. The reality, though, was more like a betrayal. The combat had clarity, to be sure, but the conflict itself had little meaning. And when they sent me home, my nights full of fiery dreams and sweaty sheets, I did what most of us did.

I got a desk job … became a cog turning day after day, grinding someone else’s wheat. No wife. No kids. Not even a dog. Just a punch-in-punch-out-read-before-bed existence, but I was simply living. It made me die just a little bit every day. The books weren’t real, and I couldn’t see the point of climbing another man’s ladder only to find another man’s ladder. That job—that existence—had no more meaning than a bug fart in a hurricane.

I have one memory of my time in the cubefarm—only one—and it was the real nightmare.

My so-called supervisor stands over me. He drones on and on about sales pipelines and what some anonymous Exec wants for an anonymous Board that answers to anonymous Shareholders. He’s convinced all that shit is the most important thing in the world, and he has this saccharine-sweet voice that makes me want to stuff him into a filing cabinet. The only thing that stays my hand is the thought of police … and handcuffs … and a cell. I sit there, nodding my head, grinning as if I actually care and share his enthusiasm for what those Shareholders want.

My dreams—the ones full of war and death night after night—they weren’t nightmares anymore. It was that supervisor’s face—in the real world—that same conversation, over and over again… year after year,
that
was the nightmare.

So, one day, something inside me simply said, “
Enough.
”

I felt like life had betrayed me. Was this all it had to offer? Every moment of my adulthood had been a meaningless joke … a farce invented by others who expected me to be a slave.
Enough.

As he turned away from me for the last time, contemplating all those happy shareholders, I looked around that hive of a cubefarm—at the tops of heads bent over pointless bits and bytes of someone else’s data—and realized I couldn’t do it anymore …
wouldn’t
do it anymore. I stood up from my desk, left half a cup of bad coffee in my wake, and walked out the door. My wallet went into a bus stop trashcan two blocks down the street.

The nightmare stopped, and so did the dreams.

I told myself I was free. I didn’t understand how free until that first mouthful of garbage. It’s a sobering moment—the realization that
anything
is better than starving to death. I remember it perfectly. The discarded quarter of someone’s sandwich kept hunger at bay … for a while, anyway. It only took a few days for the shame to stop tainting my meals.

I walked the streets and learned to forage, mostly at night, gathering what I needed to stay alive. I found dry, secluded places to sleep, and drank water in some of the damnedest places. I felt alive again … in part because I found a clarity of purpose once again … and from time to time, fought what I learned to call
hyenas
.

Out beyond the houses, apartments, and sky rises, beyond what people call civilized society, there’s predation that most Americans couldn’t imagine if it bit them on the ass. Cogs only see it on the news. Their eyes glaze over as another HOMELESS CORPSE headline passes before their eyes, accompanied by the picture of a shaggy, disheveled stranger beaten or burned. They sip another cup of designer coffee, eat low fat microwave popcorn, and get on with their grinding. They know nothing of the predators among them.

It’s mostly drunks and druggies who make headlines by way of the morgue. Some of them are schizophrenic. Others are beaten down and out of luck. They’re too weak to defend themselves and too broken to care. They are eternal.

And the hyenas who prey on them? Teenagers and young men, mostly, little more than wannabe bad-asses looking for a way to feel alive in a world that has few left. There’s a fair amount of malice in them, a low-rent kind of evil spawned from bad parenting, a screwed up society … and not a little self-loathing, I suppose.

At first I hated them.

But when I stepped back from it all, I realized those malicious teenagers are just predators—
hyenas—
culling a herd … taking the weak and diseased before the elements get them. It’s a strange dichotomy. What they’re doing is immoral … evil. It’s evil because they
know
it is. But what they are is just part of an ecosystem that goes back a billion years.

Most people on the streets hate hyenas … and hide. But some of us—bears—are more dangerous … not because we’re any tougher, but because we’re not in it for sport, and we don’t have the same self-loathing. We’re here because we want to be, and we mean to survive. We, the bears, have skin in the game. And after we’ve killed a hyena or two, word gets out. They learn to leave us alone, preferring easier meat.

O O O

A tattered but serviceable backpack pulled at my shoulders. Unlaced boots
thump-scraped
across time-shattered concrete veined by tufts of crabgrass and hearty weeds. I was scouting for a new den—a place where I could hide from the sun, stay out of the rain, and keep a wall to my back when hyenas were about.

My spot under the 17
th
Street Bridge had grown crowded with junkies in recent weeks. I’d overheard them talking about someone getting beaten to death on the west side. I wanted to stay out of the way of whatever might decide to feed on them next. So, one night I packed up what little I called my own and moved on in search of a new home.

A sliver of moon—little more than garnish on a dark sky tinted orange by the city—left me in endless shadow. I ended up in a dying part of the city where functioning streetlights were rare. The last lay four blocks behind me; the next glowed faintly two blocks ahead. I was crossing a dead zone where long-forgotten developers had built cheap houses up against industrial storefronts and warehouses. It was one of those places where the money ran out, then most of the people—all but the dregs, folks too poor or stupid to find greener pastures.

The place was all exposed concrete, graffiti, and the occasional abandoned car. Few buildings had intact windows, with most looking like the empty eye sockets of dirty skulls. I paused at another dead intersection where empty buildings stared down into an empty street. A steady clicking caught my attention. Like any wild animal, I froze and waited to see what came out of the darkness. Seconds later a man with a walking stick strolled into the pool of weak lamplight ahead. He was small and thin, wearing a tan suit. He stopped and turned an ear toward where he had come.

He looked over his shoulder, pausing for a few seconds before turning back. As he did, he spotted me and waved, as if we were old friends. I had no idea how he picked me out of the darkness, and I think he smiled. It was the wave that caught my attention. Cogs don’t wave at the homeless. They turn their heads or look at their watches or dial their cell phones … anything but acknowledge that people like me exist.

I waved back … albeit a bit awkwardly.

I couldn’t remember the last time someone waved at me. All I could think was that the guy’s car must have stalled somewhere, that he was as lost as a lamb in the woods. He stepped through the pool of lamplight, and the clicking started again. He walked past a boarded up storefront and turned down an alley that swallowed what little light there was.

“Probably looking for a payphone or something,” I mumbled.

I shook my head, hoping there weren’t hyenas in the area. I started moving again just as a pack of six young men passed through the very same lamplight. Whispers slid between them as they lingered in front of the storefront. I heard one of them laugh, a short bark full of malice and contempt, and then they disappeared down the alley.

“Well,
shit
,” I said and let out a long sigh.

Conscience wrestled with self-preservation. I can’t call it a
crisis
. I knew what the right thing to do was. I also knew that dregs like me don’t involve themselves in other people’s troubles. We live with the certainty that nobody will get involved in ours. It comes with the territory. But something inside snapped.

I strode across the street, slipped my arms out of my backpack, and pulled out a weathered axe handle I kept wedged between the fabric and frame.

Leaving the backpack next to some garbage cans, I kicked off my tattered boots and stepped barefoot around the corner into the darkness of the alley. It’s amazing how four years of dark places—of avoiding cops, and hyenas, and Bible-thumping do-gooders—had made me a creature of the night. I could see them all perfectly, despite a weak haze of light spilling from a second-story window.

The hyenas had spread out in a half-circle, boxing the old man in at the end of the alley. I finally got a good look at him. He wore a tweed suit that seemed out of place, or rather, out of time. I remembered seeing old pictures of men wearing suits like that. He’d pulled his silver hair back tight and the thick braid draped down across his chest.

Two of the hyenas were close, standing a few yards away on either side. He was trapped. I could see him, though, between the shoulders of two hyenas. In the weak light, his wrinkles cut black lines across a shadowy face. But his eyes were bright … and
fearless
as he gripped the handle of his cane in one hand, its shaft in the other.

If there’s one thing you learn to do living in the wilds, it’s how to move silently. Breath held, bare feet placed toe-heel, axe handle raised and ready, I moved in.

The old man tilted his head slightly when he spotted me. The trace of a smile flickered across his face, mostly in his eyes, but there nonetheless.

“Gimmie your wallet and watch … and that fancy cane, asshole,” one of the hyenas growled—undoubtedly the alpha. “You might just make it out of here alive.”

He was big—his voice low and on the north side of teenager. He was thick across the chest and wore a pristine leather racing jacket, expensive sneakers, and faded brand-name jeans. He reached into his pocket, pulled a lock blade, and flicked his wrist. The blade swung out with a
SNICK,
gleaming faintly in the weak light.

“Yeah!” one of the others barked. The two nearest the old man stepped in, and he raised the cane defensively.

“Bad idea,” I said from behind the alpha … and let the bear loose.

The alpha turned his face straight into my axe handle. A wet
THWACK!
filled the alley as his nose exploded. His head shot back, pulling his shoulders with it. He dropped with the sound of leather slapping against pavement.

“Holy shit!” several shouted in unison as the two nearest me turned and charged.

I stepped to the side, spun as one passed by, and swung the handle. It cracked against the back of his head, sending him careening into the other. They collapsed in a tangle of limbs. From the corner of my eye, I saw the glow of flame brightening the end of the alley, but my back was turned as another stepped up to me and swung. I ducked, hooked the handle behind his knee and lifted. He tumbled backwards, his head cracking against the pavement. A kick between his legs curled him up into a ball, squealing.

I heard screams behind me and turned to see the two tangled hyenas scrambling along the wall, keeping out of my reach, hell-bent on getting out of the alley. And then I saw something I couldn’t believe.

The old man stood ready, the shaft of the cane in one hand and a slim blade in in the other. Orange flames flickered and danced across the bright steel. It was
impossible
, but there it was, an actual flame brand just like out of some fantasy novel. One of the hyenas lay on the ground, clutching a scorched belly wound and moaning. The other ran past me in terror. His retreating steps disappeared into the night.

The alpha lay on the ground between us, unconscious and breathing shallowly.

The old man nodded to me, and it was almost a bow. With a quick motion, he sheathed the blade. The alley went dark once again, and I heard him walk up to me as my eyes adjusted to the dim light.

“Thank you for your help,” he said casually as he approached. He stepped past me and, to my disbelief, helped the one with the crushed balls get to his feet. “Go on home,” the old man said. He even patted the hyena on the back.

All I could do was stare as he calmly turned and smiled at me.

“Are you alright?” he asked. He might as well have been asking about the weather.

“I’m—”

Leather scraped on pavement behind me. A hammer clicked as it was pulled back. The old man’s eyes went wide. He grabbed me by the shoulders and spun us just as a gunshot filled the alley.

He shuddered and grimaced, squeezing my shoulders tightly. Then he opened his eyes, his jaw clenched, and slid down my body to collapse at my feet.

I locked eyes with the alpha as he furiously jerked on the trigger of a small semi-auto pistol. He lay on the ground, blood pouring from his ruined nose and down over his mouth, chin, and neck. His eyes flicked to the weapon. Realization struck that a casing jammed breech. His fury turned to fear … and then terror as I moved toward him.

It was his cowardice that unhinged me. Travelling in a pack, having others do his dirty work, and then to shoot someone in the back. My sense of reason and fair play shattered like glass.