PANIC (2 page)

“I’m sorry,” he says to the guy trying to squeeze with the crush of new passengers at the front. He moves closer to the back, closer to the boy and his gang; trying not to get too close but forced bodily by the passengers at the front of the bus.

He avoids this whenever possible, always ignoring youth in packs. He minded his business and nobody messed with him and after a while, he believed it to be immutable law.

Mind your business and nobody messes with you. They can have the rest of it.

Mind your—

“Watch it, motherfucker.”

The kid was too close to him now, with the girl and his other companions; so close he stepped on the kid’s new sneakers.

His heavy boots made a deep scuff on the kicks but he hadn’t noticed, so sure the girl had fingered him for looking.

It was thoughtless of him and he backed up, unable to say anything in his own defense. The kid glared and him and he refused to look away; refused to even acknowledge the girl’s presence. He knew why the kid got in his face.

He could smell her artificial fruit lip gloss.

“I, I—”

The kid’s face twisted into a snarl, the one he’s been working on ever since he’s been picking pockets.

“You best watch yourself, motherfucker. I don’t appreciate being disrespected.”

He couldn’t explain himself; there was no excuse, nothing else interesting to look at behind her. He couldn’t help it. This kid would never understand how another human being could make you feel alive, even if he had her all to himself there was no way he appreciated her. To try and explain it to him would be degrading.

Only a few of the heads turned to watch for what he’d do next and he stood there and allowed himself to be chided. There was one of him and more than a few of them, a whole city full.

“I’m talking to you, bitch.”

His face was stern, watching the kid to see how he wanted to play it. On a crowded bus, full of people? They were stupid and crazy but neither that stupid nor that crazy.

He unzipped his jumpsuit and hunched up his holster and let the kid take it in. Hopefully, he’d get the message and back off.

“That supposed to scare me?”

The clip packed in the gun is empty so it had better.

“See that,” he said. “That means I don’t want any trouble.”

An older man sitting down takes his arm.

“Don’t, son. Don’t do that.”

He’d killed people both bigger and younger than this kid in the service. If it was going to come down to this, he’d tell the girl sorry for looking, he’d tell her her beauty was rare. If they got in your face, you couldn’t show you were scared. That’s what they like.

“It’s been a long day and I’m just trying to get home. It’s crowded and I’m tired.”

“Save that sh—,” he started, and one of his boys yelped excitedly.

“Folk! This motherfucker’s Folk!” said a bigger kid, clearly not smart enough or tough enough to run the pack. He’d ripped the shirt of the guy behind him and there was a commotion as the two struggled.

The guy was twice their age but still wasn’t shit, dirty and disheveled; still had the tear tattoo in the corner of the eye and child’s scrawl prison tat pitchfork on his chest where the shirt had been ripped.

He’d seen them in the service, Folk Nation, hardest of the hard. They would enlist just to get the skills they needed to wage war in their neighborhoods. They’d do a tour, get a discharge then go to work - setting ambushes; planning assassinations and orchestrating battles that would make a hajji piss his pants.

When he returned home from his second tour, they were running scared from all the new gangs that prowled the city endlessly. Even the tabloids reported it front and center, the Tarascans all had a kill order on the old-timers, the Folk Nation, the Crips, La Eme and all the rest.

They were taking over and they meant business.

The kid didn’t break eye contact for a second and hollered out. “Stop the fuckin’ bus.”

All turned at the sound of his just-broken voice, barking the command like a squaddie, but none spoke up. The big guy held his prisoner with his throat garotted by the torn shirt, a sweating, resigned fugitive. Nobody was going to stick up for him; nobody would stick up for anybody in the gangs because they deserved whatever they got. He was probably a badass when he was a kid but now he just looked like he hadn’t slept in years.

In his cage, the driver did what he was told, not wanting to risk his life over some banger and the bus jerked to a halt again.

The kid didn’t get excited, he was cool, he relished his power, he massaged it. The little fucker had ideas; unlike the rest who just wanted to get high and smash things.

The kid had his gun out, waving it loosely like his own finger and the girl hanging off his neck bit her lip, thrilled by his taking charge.

“Get him the fuck off the bus.”

He turned to the man in front of him and gave him narrow eyes again. The man watched the boy and tensed up waiting for the shot, but the kid backed away slowly toward the back while his boys pried the side doors open and pushed their captive down to the street, where he’d have to push himself up from bottle shards and the pitted sidewalk.

The kid watched him and the girl hopped up onto his waist so he could carry her.

He was tucking the gun back into his pants, sideways so that it snagged on his belt. He pointed with his finger.

“You fucked up. Don’t let me see you again, motherfucker.”

Then he hopped off with her on his back, and the six of them stood around the fugitive, right on the curb. Instinctively, the man was already covering his face.

He could see the hair of the other girl flip up excitedly as she cheered them on. The bus pulled away as fast as it could and he winced. He could feel the crunch of their boots, stomping the man to paste.

One had a heavy chain and he lashed with it and blood flailed up with it when he yanked his arm back.

“Bunch of friggin’ chimpanzees,” says the older man, sitting, gripping his cane so hard his knuckles go white.

His adrenaline high settled and he had to steady himself on the hanging strap. Still, he felt like he stood his ground.

“All they ever do is kill each other,” he said, shakily. “We’re citizens, they know better.”

The woman who took his seat took her hands away from the girl’s eyes and ears and she sat up again with that curiously glum expression on that face.

“Are you okay?” the woman asked.

“He’s a kid,” he said, feeling more in control. “Just a kid. Let’s just try to get through this bus ride in peace.”

The old man laughed aloud, a sick, unhinged cackle that let you know that the constant stress had broken him. Poor, trapped and abandoned, it was all you could do.

Even two blocks away now, he was sure that man was dead in the street where he’d lay for a while as a message to anyone who had a reason to take notice.

“I hate this fucking place,” said the old man, snarling the swear.

The little girl finally reacted.

20:22

HE GETS OFF the bus as close to where the driver will stop near his home.

Someone’s got a scarecrow planted in the greenery crowding the front of their house, up to the street. What used to be a lawn is trellised with chicken wire and covered over with dark, fibrous cloth to protect the delicate plants from the beating sun.

Most of the other houses on the street are so run down he can’t tell if they’re abandoned or not but there’s a good chance they aren’t, either inhabited by squatters or homesteaders brave enough to try to make a go of living on private property. His own house, well, it didn’t matter anymore, but it was his.

The ubiquitous cabbage weed is still giving its bounty late in the year, bulbous, fronded plants dark green with nutrients in the sandy soil. He walked by, thinking of clear jars full of the stuff, pickled and fermented. They can last forever, just like the rest of the food he’s socked away downstairs and it’s just as well. She prepared the vegetables and packed them tight and showed him where it would always be too cold for the pickle to go bad.

In their dark basement, he remembered, she would giggle as he worked her up to make another go at having a baby. There weren’t many things that didn’t remind him of her.

He passed by the grimacing scarecrow; it wore a harmless, mischievous face from the time when children would go door to door with masks and homemade costumes. It heartened him to see people trying to keep it alive, but there was no more Halloween, really, except for on TV. Candy was something you snorted and scary masks were for bank robbers.

20:25

THE DAYLIGHT WAS finally fading to night. This night was the one the kids all liked now: Mischief Night, the day before the day before All Saint’s Day. It would be headline news in the morning.

At his twelve is a group of them moving together on the pitted pavement like a mirage, their rippling shadows as threatening at the angry red letters that mark off the free fire zone. He makes sure he’s out of the way and out of their notice.

He’s surprised to see them out so early, stalking up the street with purpose, right in the middle of the road. He makes himself scarce as they pass by him, just close enough to see but not close enough to get their attention. They’re all decked out in black and white, some wearing work gloves and kneepads for their serious business. Some carry hatchets and cleavers, with their hair braided close.

Streaked on all of their faces is greasepaint, two-tone, demonic jester chiaroscuro. The Faces, they call themselves. White Boys, the other gangs call them, whether dismissively or out of fear. Those are the ones that sing hymns when they chop people to death, teenage boys that get off on butchering their enemies up close and personal.

They form an irregular wing formation, ten in all. The one out front is hidden under a sack with holes dug out for the eyes; a hangman’s hood. He’s hunched over and dragging an aluminum bat on the ground, trying to psych himself up.

Who will it be tonight?
, he thinks.

Some shopkeeper that didn’t give him a free meal when he demanded it? Some blogger who didn’t think before he hit ‘publish’? Some rival lieutenant, taking some girl he claimed first?

Doesn’t really matter in the long run.

He’s glad to be past them now, ducking between the narrow alley to cross over to the block he calls home, right on the edge of the cluster of miraculously standing buildings he calls a neighborhood. The alley sometimes has a couple shooting up in it, emaciated, ruined bodies that the roving packs never pay any mind.

More importantly, the alley has no tag on it, no set or gang has seen fit to claim it as territory yet - save for a crude, positively ancient Crip rune that hasn’t totally faded with the years. Assuming the buildings don’t just collapse, some future anthropologist might find the symbol, sprayed over a painted advertisement for a body shop so worn it’s become a part of the complexion of the brick.

Coming through the pass, his world brightens again; seeing the two story kit home he’d owned ever since he was discharged from service, a tall, imposing fort with a high fence ringed with cyclone wire. All about the narrow, bare property, there was the distinct track of a dog run.

Further beyond was downtown and the wall marking it off, so forbidden it had practically become invisible to the people on the outside.

The snarling boy and his cohort were miles away now, ages away, no longer on his mind. It pained him to think of the girl still, her soft features and moon face still distinctly etched on his memory. He’d fall asleep that night meditating on her purity.

His own home would form another wall from the wasteland the city had become. He still had the nerve to kill; although it scared his wife, he hadn’t come back home to just lay down for a bunch of worthless punks.

He refused to flee when they started arming, first the bike gangs when gas was getting scarce, then street gangs when the gas went. The city was awash with guns when they walled it off but even now the billions of bullets had been nearly spent settling scores and carving up the abandoned city amongst its new powers now that the people in the skyscrapers organized to cut themselves off. After a while, things calmed down a bit when the gangs called the open season off. Life needed to start flowing again, cash, goods, food - not just for them but for the citizens who still paid rent and had plumbing and could hold those square jobs to pay for a hit or smuggled liquor or a clean girl.

It all started back up again, overnight, people taking up wherever they could inside city limits, squatting in abandoned places and trading themselves for favors just to live in the apartment blocks, where there was power and light and water and gang leaders to protect them.

He stayed right where he was, though, fortunate enough to be close to the wall where they’d just cut you in half with an anti-tank gun if you got too close to threaten them. He felt as safe as he could be; making the most out of circumstances so dire it hurt to think too much about. It made him sick to think that she died in the middle of it, that she hadn’t lived to see the work they were doing to get the city back together.

20:41

HE UNLOCKS THE heavy bolt on his gate and Obie comes charging up to greet him, already smelling it through the package.

“Hey, boy,” he says, amused by the dog sniffing around his midsection.

“Can’t fool you, huh?”

The squat, muscular mutt goes back down to the ground on all fours, no longer begging but waiting patiently. His tail whips like a cord, back and forth like a metronome. He unwraps the butcher’s paper and holds up a bone, scraped nearly clean by a thin, whizzing blade and the dog takes it, hungrily, cracking through the cartilage to get at the marrow.

He leans down to scruff behind the dog’s ear.

“You’re such a good guy,” he says as the dog laps its tongue across the length of the bone. Obie whines with pleasure.

20:44

“HE’S BEEN BARKING all damn day,” says the man next door, grabbing the chain link fence with his good arm. The other is a nub, a hard stump protruding just past the shoulder joint. He stands from his crouch to face his neighbor. “At the rabbits. I’m thinking about throwing up a cloth but he can smell ‘em, too.”