PANIC (3 page)

“I’ll just keep him inside some days, get him used to me not being here. What’s with them?”

He goes over to the fence as the dog busies himself, and he pats the pockets of his jumpsuit thoughtfully.

“Rabbits? The missus got a few as a favor. She knows how to keep ‘em and I know how to skin ‘em. She wants me to show her. Wait ‘til you try the stew.”

“Before I forget, got somethin’ for you too,” he says, and hands over a soft pack, about the size of his palm. The one armed man takes the pack, grinning, and dexterously fishes out one of the cigarettes. He puts it to his nose, smelling rich, pure marijuana buds, the grind so fine the tightly packed joint glints with moisture. “I haven’t even taken one for myself.”

“This is fine, damn fine stuff.”

“Guy at the plant gets in a few things like that. I just found out about it.”

He brings up a wooden match to the end of the cigarette, pinched by the older man’s thumb and forefinger. Times like this, the older man thinks of him like a son.

“Thanks, Luis,” he says, and takes a drag. They pass it back and forth like that a couple of times, filling their lungs with potent smoke. The old man busts into a deep, rattling cough.

“Anytime, pop.”

“God damn that’s good,” says the old man, laughing as he coughs.

The dog is lying down in the dust, enjoying his treat nearly as much as his master enjoys his. It feels like olden times, standing out in the lawn watching the sun go down as they shoot the breeze.

“They’re cheaper than goats and they breed like crazy, you see? This could be big for us.”

“So, what, you’re talking about getting rich?”

“If I wanted to be rich, I’d be ripping people off anyway I could. I’m talking about doing something for my community. We could expand our own market, like a private market, you know? Invite only.”

“I don’t know about that. It’s the most sensible thing for us to be doing but not right now. It’s still way too dangerous out there.”

“You’re tellin’ me,” said the man, his voice going up as he held in another puff. He let it out through his teeth like a tough guy; back in his day he probably ran with one of the gangs that broke up at the beginning of it all. If he had, he never let on. Luis didn’t even know how he’d lost his arm.

“This place used to have a name and now it’s just a reservation for wild people,” the old man mused, philosophically.

“You’re not like that and I’m not like that. I worry about you, soldier boy.”

“Don’t worry about me, Pops. I can look after myself.”

“That ain’t my point and you know it. Sooner we all stick together, sooner we can wall ourselves up just like they did downtown. We can have our own market, our own police, schools, for heaven’s sake. What’s the point of having these babies if they haven’t got schools?”

Even when he wasn’t getting high he had these flights of fancy.

“You know I’m with you. Just give me some more time. There’s still so much we need to do.”

“It’s getting down to the wire, kid.”

“If we keep our heads down—”

“That’s a good one; just being here attracts attention. We need you here, big man. We have a future if we can put up a fight. You can help with that. I got my woman here, I’m older than hell,” - here he lifted his stump, disconcerting no matter how many times you saw it - “one friggin arm, I’m useless.”

Luis pointed through the fence right at the man.

“But you’re a smart old bastard.”

“Hell, smart enough. I could be the mayor and you’d be my first appointee. How’s that sound? Chief of damn police.”

They both laughed, feeling the relaxation.

“I’m serious, man.”

“I know.”

“What the hell else are we gonna do? Kill ourselves?”

Luis stayed silent, not sure how to take it. The time would come when he’d willingly die protecting the old man and his wife and the people in the neighborhood gamely hanging on, clinging to each other for life. He’d welcome it. The older man handed him back the joint and smiled weakly. Maybe it wasn’t the most encouraging thing to say.

“You should stay over tonight. Missus is cooking, we’re gonna watch a movie. Nothing else to do when you’re locked down ‘til morning.”

“It’s not a big deal. Mischief Night’s just like any other night. Every night is Gang Night Out. It’ll pass.”

He stubbed the cigarette out and took the rest for himself.

“This shit makes you paranoid, Pops.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

21:01

HE LOCKED THE front door first and crossed over to the back door to throw the bolt there, too, still rolling the potent, ashed cigarette around in his mouth by the filter. Except for his first-floor office with the couch he used for a bed, he kept the house dark as a tomb regardless of whether he was there or not. All of the shutters were down on the first floor, with blinds of dark cloth pulled down over them. From the outside it looked forbidding, like a decrepit funeral home.

Aside from the dog roaming the yard, it seemed to be just another condemned, abandoned home, fenced off by its owner years ago to keep squatters from taking up residence there. Luis never reflected on its morbidity because it was no-one’s business but his own. He lived there like he was crashing, only out of his one room; watching TV and eating simple meals when there was nothing better to occupy his time.

He went into the basement to make sure the storm door bolted, too, just precautions, really. On a night like tonight, it was more about feeling safe than being safe. He paused here, as he always did when he went down to the basement, running his hand over the niche he’d dug in the wall for the stone jug where her ashes were kept.

Looking over his pantry in the cool, dark basement, he grabbed a few things to make sure he didn’t need to get up later except to take a piss. Tonight, he’d fry up some beans and have them over rice, finish off the whisky mixed with a little water.

The whisky jug hung in a sack from the crossbeam to keep it warmer than the dry food on the shelves and the floor, which was quite cold.

21:14

HE FLICKED THE TV on and could hear it throughout the house, he never kept it on the news but a couple times every day the news would just impose itself, the little pop-up in the corner expanding to fill the screen and the voice amplified to match. He came up through the basement and saw it through the open door of his office.

“-violence tonight on the streets of our fair city,” said the blonde on the screen, wearing some semblance of a blazer. The blouse underneath was cut to her navel, he could tell because she wore the blazer open like a kid trying on their parents formalwear. “However, those inside the perimeter are gauging up for Halloween festivities, kids and adults alike. Here’s hoping for a good winter, huh?

“You bet, Christie,” said her co-anchor, a bland young guy in an ill-fitting suit. “Social media sites are ablaze with the rumors about tonight, if the gang chiefs are just taking advantage of the so-called ‘Mischief Night’ to circumvent-”

He clicked the TV over to the next channel where they were running a marathon of that show, Redemption, where guys who’d served their time doing hard labor competed for a spot in one of the pro fight camps. The season they were on currently was pretty good, though no one had died.

He skipped over his room and walked along the hallway to the bathroom. He didn’t really have to go, and paused at the bedroom, deciding whether he would open the door.

He didn’t like being in that room for too long, so much so that he let a perfectly good queen sized bed go to waste while he ruined his back night in night out sleeping on a beat up sofa.

Outside the window, he watched the dozen rabbits quiver under the hutch in his neighbors, their furry bodies tucked under themselves on a pile of fresh straw, picking over wild alfalfa. They were the only animal he had ever seen who were prone to just keeling over from fright, their haunches pawing the air as their hearts gave.

He smooths out the bedspread and sits down on it, just briefly, thinking of the remains of her, interred in that very house. When he’d returned from Pakistan, there were still a few good years in their home, though there was no money. In the same month they were just starting to put checkpoints around the edge of town, they’d got mail that said she’d been selected for a clinical trial.

She could never accept that she couldn’t have a child of her own.

She was so excited that she’d already picked out a girl’s name; she just knew they would have a girl. He didn’t like the name - Lorelei - but he did like the idea of a future together, a family and a home.

Almost thirty days later, she died. She and fifty five hundred other women did too in that city alone, of various complications. He read the brief they sent him and couldn’t comprehend it, he just knew whatever they did to her ate her body up. He paid off the house with the class action settlement.

That girl on the bus looked like a Lorelei, or a Palomita or an Agnes, one of those old-style names his wife loved so much. That girl with her raven-black braid and her creamy complexion came to him like he hadn’t thought about anyone in a long time; it frightened him to feel so full of something like love, especially for someone he didn’t know at all. He didn’t know what to do with it. He wanted to take her hand in his so she could feel his love.

He stood again with his heart heavy, his eyes sticking together as they blinked. He remembered why he didn’t like being in there and backed out, feeling overwhelmed by the sanctity of it. He shut the door as if not to wake someone sleeping.

21:16

THE SIMPLE MEAL made him quite drowsy and he lay supine, drifting off with women on his mind.

He nodded off gently in front of the TV, watching some kid talk about what it meant to have his freedom again, to be outdoors instead of solitary confinement twenty two hours a day, that he realized he had a debt to society he still had to repay. When he won the competition, his spot on the team would pay for a future for his son and the mother of his son.

23:16

HE WOKE UP with a start, hearing something upstairs clattering in the gutter. To his irritation, squirrels did this often, skittering across the roof, making a sound with their gripping claws that rattled in the eaves of the house. It paid to be a light sleeper.

Luis stopped on the step; sure he had only heard the rocking, creaking sound of the stairs in the settling house. He tested the step with his foot to be sure, and the creak was distinct, not at all what he heard.

A high pitched whine followed two choked barks and his heart slammed in his chest.

The dog. He hadn’t brought the fucking dog in.

He bound down the stairs in a panic and stopped himself just at the front window. There was a girl standing in his front yard, baiting the dog with something in her hand.

Obie
, he thought, his heart beating so furiously he could hardly hear himself think. The dog wasn’t stupid, holding himself back from attacking the girl because he could see she was quick.

Obie jumped where he thought she was going to be and she snatched his collar with her hand, jerking him out of the air like a thrashing bull.

“Oh, no,” he muttered under his breath. “Oh fuck.”

Over the top of his gate, resting on top of the barbed wire was a heavy rug, nothing more sophisticated than that. He saw the big kid, the same one who held the fugitive in a choke hold on the bus, the same one who threw him to the pavement outside and started with the kidneys when he brought his boot down on him. He struggled to clamber over, eager to avoid snagging himself and cutting open a vein on the cyclone fencing.

Obie whined again desperately, leaping in the air, twisting his body side to side, trying to maneuver his squat face to clamp down on the girl’s wrist so she’d release him. His short legs kicked up dust frantically and she laughed at the dog, laughed like they were playing fetch.

“No, no, no,” said Luis, his voice growing shakier behind the door. The thing in her hand twinkled like firelight, a long, thin stiletto. She punched it down into the dog’s head with a surprising amount of force and Obie let out a startled yelp, silenced when the blade pierced through his tongue.

The heavy, dead weight dragged her down a bit and she dropped the collar. The body slumped like a sack of cement and Luis watched through the slit in the door, covering his mouth with his hand to keep from screaming out.

She stood there, yanking and tugging on the knife handle, sticking out of the limp dog’s squat head.

Another one came down, then another, over the fence. He saw the kid hop down with ease, vaulting himself over and landing in the front yard with a casual athleticism. The girl was with them, too, being helped over by the last of their cohort. Six in all stood in the front yard, looking around, searching around for the easiest way to get in.

The girl needed some help getting her knife out so the big kid put his foot on the dog’s head and plucked it away like a hatpin and a geyser of blood painted the white shirt on his chest.

23:23

HE WAS BACK.

Down in the bare yard, he strutted like a peacock, pointing to various spots so his team could mount their assault. They fanned out obediently, well disciplined in their movements.

He watched the boy’s arm make a flinging motion, hard and precise. Upstairs he heard something clatter against the front-facing attic wall.

“Knock knock,” he bellowed. “Open the fuck up.”

23:24

THE HARD, HOLLOW sound of the stones beating the exterior walls of the house paused for a few brief moments, only to be replaced by the sound of clambering hands and feet. The sounds of different hands gripping the bevels and awnings surrounded him; he could hear at least three. He knew the leader hadn’t been one of them; he knew that the little bastard was just standing there waiting for him to be dragged out, beaten into submission.

He bit back the emotion welling inside of him, cursing himself for being so stupid and careless. It was his fault; he’d gotten the dog murdered from foolish neglect.

He scooped up the heavy length of pipe he kept leaning in the umbrella stand and crept back upstairs, slowly as he could, and waited in the hall, listening to where they might finally breach. He wrenched it in his hands, listening to the pleasant friction of calloused skin on metal, awaiting revenge.