Dues of Mortality (4 page)

“
Habit?”

“
Yeah,
or tradition...whatever you want to call it. My family has a thing
for acquiring careers in positions of life-threatening authority. My
great-great-grandfather worked for the OSS during World War Two. My
grandfather, on my mother’s side, did thirty-six years in the
NYPD. My dad is in his fifth year of heading up the Wade County
Sheriff ’s Department. My cousin, Nate, he wants to be in the
NSA, CIA, or some shit like that. My cousin, Cosmo, is a bailiff in
Detroit, and my second cousin, Tandy, she’s an amateur
kickboxer working as a bouncer in Las Vegas.”

“
And
all this time I thought it was because your initials were MP.”

Max
chuckled in his drink and his left ear wiggled in unison. Xavier
nearly spit his beer at the sight. Three years of high school
wrestling, had left Max with a pair of orbicular cauliflower ears so
preeminent that they'd taken on a life of their own. Max was just
this side of five-foot-seven and Xavier thought they made him look
like some warped version of Princess Leia. However, to be fair, only
the terminally brainless would let this disarmingly comical
appearance fool them. Max was scrappy, agile and talented—everything
the army was known for exploiting in a person. He had been signed on
to a four-year hitch—two as an MP and another two as a trained
sniper. There was never a guy whose future of being all he could be
was more certain.

“
Hell,
what was I going to do, you know?” Max said. “I’ve
never really been good at anything else. Lot of my family served,
said it could put me on a good career path. And I’ve seen too
many people just drifting through life, jumping from job to job as if
they’re looking for something that’s forever running away
from them; looking for their big break. Fuck that. I figure as long
as I stick to what I’m good at, and what I know,” he took
a sip of his ginger ale as if it were a whiskey shot then gaveled his
glass on the bar, “happiness and contentment will follow.
Right?”

Xavier
chugged his last drop of beer in agreement. As he brought the bottle
from his lips, he narrowly missed the bar itself and the bottle
tipped off its rail. With a whip-snap of his uniform’s sleeve,
Max snagged the bottle by its neck, firmly gripping it in all five
fingers and then returned it to the bar. He'd caught it just a hair
from the floor.

“
Speaking
of happiness,” Max said. “I saw you last night, getting
all smoochy with Elana Hatten, outside the colonel’s house.”

“
Stop
it. I know where you’re going. It’s like I said
before—the safety may be off but I'm keeping it holstered. We
just like talking to each other. She’s really smart, man. She
knows all about politics and spirituality and all that deep shit.
She’s really opened my eyes about a lot of things.”
Xavier paused, looking spacey. “Things I thought I’d
never get over.”

Max
shook his head.
“
You
are so full of it, man. There isn’t a guy on this base who
hasn’t tented his bunk-sheets dreaming about that girl. Out of
all of us,
you’re
the one within striking distance
and you’re telling me you haven’t touched her?”

“
Damn
right. Col. Hatten-the-Patton would chop off my head...then he'd
decapitate me.”

“
Ha.”

“
Besides,
she’s been messing with Derrick Moses, but don’t let it
leave here.”

“
Moses?
That dick from supply? Oh, thank you very much. Why the hell didn’t
you just tell me a bomb went off at the Playboy mansion? Crush all my
dreams?”

“
She’s
one of those girls with a thing for wounded souls. I know the type.
Sooner or later she’ll realize she can’t save him or
he’ll dump her and that’ll be the end of it. She doesn’t
want her father finding out. So keep a lid on it.”

Yeah,
keep a lid on it
,
Xavier thought now.
If
only we'd done that when it counted
.
And it must have been what, a half hour later that they received
orders for the pickup?
No.
It was longer than that. It had to be. We reported on time. I wasn't
drunk!

“
Here,”
the officer said and he shoved Moses’s dead weight at the MP's
like an overloaded rucksack. When Max and Xavier walked into the
Alexandria station house the officer was already carting him out of
the cell. “He’s pretty well fried. He wouldn’t shut
up before you guys got here, but he shouldn’t be much of a
problem now. H-ball makes you crash pretty hard.”

“
You
sure that’s what it is?” Max asked.

“
We
had to put him in isolation because he thought the occupied cells
were filled with man-eating sea turtles. That’s the kind of
shit the stuff makes you see. The skin on his face is spotting up
from the broken capillaries. Now he can barely walk. Yeah, I’m
sure.”

The
officer removed Moses’s cuffs and Moses hit the floor with a
thunderous slap.

“
Aw,
shit,” Max said reaching for his own cuffs.

“
Hold
on,” Xavier said. “Let’s each take an arm. It’ll
be easier to drag him out.”

“
Okay.”

Outside,
the two MPs looked like they were hauling a fresh corpse to a mass
grave, with Moses’s toes scraping the ground the whole way.

“
God,
I'm glad we're not doing this in armor,” Max said. “In
this heat we'd be popping our turkey timers by now. I can’t
believe Elana Hatten’s taste could be this bad. I bet she eats
black jelly beans, too.”

“
Elanaaaaa,”
Moses droned.

“
Careful,
huh,” Xavier said, glancing at their baggage.

“
What?”
Max said. “He’s not gonna remember anything tomorrow
morning. Fucking loser.”

“
It’s
her life, man. Like I said, she’ll wise up. She’s a lot
like my momma, now that I think about it. She likes to give others
the benefit of the doubt, but she’s not stupid. My guess is
after this she won't want to see him anytime soon.”

Max
smiled. “Aha, already planning your opening salvo of
studliness, huh? Or maybe you did that last night when you kissed
her?”

Moses’s
eyes suddenly flared red as he stared at the ground.

Xavier
unlooped Moses' saggy arm from around his neck so he could retrieve
the keys to the transport’s doors. “Ay, I didn’t
kiss her. She kissed me and...”

Before
he knew it, a small serrated knife capable of gutting a shark was
buried into Xavier’s chest. Moses had moved like lightning. He
had fashioned a sheath and sewn the knife to the inside of his
belt—easy for the local boys to miss, especially if they didn’t
think him much of a threat. Xavier dropped the keys where he stood.
Moses then spun and caught Max Porter with a kick that cracked a rib.
He filched Xavier’s gun from its holster and laughed at the
blatant confoundedness that had appeared to overtake the MP. Xavier
had heard of the phenomena before: fight, flight or freeze, analysis
paralysis; it could happen even to the most hardened of military
vets. In this case, the four inch handle sticking out of his chest
had sent Xavier into temporary brain-lock.

Max
reached for his own sidearm, but was too late to keep Moses from
firing a shot into his knee. Moses then snatched up the keys to the
transport, jumped into the driver's seat and burned out with the
tires’ squeal ripping the night air.

Elana
Hatten had never quite known what hit her. One moment, she was having
a drink with friends at her apartment and the next she was laying in
a pool of her own blood, her head barely attached to her body by
shreds of skin and sinew. The bastard had shot her at close range
with nary a word. She just opened the door and...

Xavier
felt the trigger give a bit against his finger. He raised the
revolver, and placed it against his lips. The smell of gun oil seeped
into in his nostrils. His eyes puddled with tears. He closed them and
drew the gun under his chin. He planted the barrel at the spot where
the lump in his throat was tightest. He then placed his thumb over
the trigger. He started to shiver and beads of sweat bubbled down his
face, stinging his lip with the salty taste of regret. He gripped the
handle with both hands and used a forefinger to push back the hammer.
Then taking a deep and quite literally
last
breath...pulled the trigger.

If
this was Hell
, Xavier thought, after opening his eyes,
then it needs a maid
.
He glanced from left to right and it took him a moment before he
remembered hearing a “clack” instead of “bang”.
He thumbed the gun's catch and the cylinder fell open, revealing the
single hollow chamber in the twelve o'clock position.
What
a shock
, he thought. Something else he couldn’t do
right. “Well, if at first you don’t succeed,” he
said and stuck the barrel in his mouth.

Again,
nothing happened. But this time it was definitely his fault.
Apparently, attempting to fire a bullet into your head leaves you
kind of drained after the first try. Now, he could more easily push
an elephant uphill than pull the trigger. He needed a drink, he
thought...or a nap; something,
anything
that rendered him as close to dead as possible. He gazed over,
once more, to the glassless window. The rain had stopped and a
brusque wind had cleansed some of the house of its foulness, stirring
up a hunger for fresh air. He shoved the gun back into his pocket,
coerced himself to his feet, and trudged out of the house, patting at
the hard metal bulge.
Don’t
worry. Next time, we’ll get it right
.

Glenda
Jameson had been up since 6:30 a.m. pounding the pastel pavement.
She’d filled out four applications, roamed through a half-dozen
office buildings and left her references at the regional employment
agency, before ending her morning with a resentful trip through a
pricey downtown grocer.
Stupid-ass
,
she thought, cursing herself. A painful heel spur had instigated the
most exceptional course of self-invectives this morning. As did the
calls to her parents to borrow money and the unpaid bill that got her
comwatch cut off. But most of all, she cursed the sex!
Stupid
!
Stupid!
Stupid
! From
the very night she lost her virginity to Gunner, the golden-blonde
dishwasher with the ass of an Olympic swimmer, Glenda promised
herself never to regret giving her body to a man. And never to fall
into the trappings of making her virtue a puritanical treasure hunt.
Gunner had been the one who ingeniously brought Glenda to her first
orgasm resulting from a
team
effort, revealing sex as something to be cherished and appreciated as
a human being, not feared and repudiated as a woman. Now, for the
first time, she wished she could trade in her vagina for a newer
model, or at least for one that hadn’t been with
that
man
!

If
it weren't for the weekend birthday getaways in the Poconos and the
trips to the Caribbean that were so...“Oh, just forget about
it, girl,” Glenda thought out loud. “They’re a dime
a dozen.” Besides, she couldn’t have stayed at her old
job. SiPlus was really circling the drain thanks to Peter, or
“Simple” Simonton as he was referred to in the lines at
the unemployment office. Or was it just Peter “Simpleton?”
Either would do, given that so many people were going to have
problems putting food on the table because of one man’s
obsession with having it all. What was he thinking? There were
thirty-year veterans at that plant. The union was never going to
stand for the ax being taken to their benefits like that; naturally,
they were going to strike.

Glenda
picked up her pace as the groans and growls of an empty stomach
deafened her to the bustle of street and pedestrian traffic alike.
She couldn't wait to strip off her high collared blouse and
conservative business skirt and slip into her tank top and jeans.
No
more buses
, she thought joyfully. She’d get her
Civic out of the shop at four and be on her well-deserved, lone
girl’s night out by 4:15. She waded through the harried clumps
of downtowners and the annoying holographic salespeople floating in
storefronts offering her perfume samples and free makeovers. Rounding
the corner of another building, she collided with an adolescent
powerboarder blatantly ignoring the powerboard prohibition signs
posted every other block. The boy glided off and left her with no
more of an acknowledgment than a heartfelt “whoops” and a
squished loaf of raisin bread. As she picked herself up, she glimpsed
an apartment window across from her, its curtain seeming to whip
closed almost defensively. Not that she could be certain of what she
was seeing from that distance without her glasses. They had been
foolishly left in the overhead visor of her car, which was sitting in
a repair shop in Ohio City. She only wore the damn things when she
drove anyway. Or wanted to impress a man with a vocabulary longer
than the ingredients on a milk jug.

Her
apartment building in sight, Glenda blindly crossed a narrow divide
between structures and a rancorous chainsaw of a voice crackled from
the darkened space. “Hey, ma’am, spur some chain a day?”