The Midnight Stand (The Elysia Saga Book 1) (10 page)

The truck slowed to a stop in front of Harley’s
house, its siren still blaring. He shielded his eyes from the high beams and
stood on the end of the porch, shotgun in hand. 
         

Now that the hour was upon him he felt a certain
sense of calmness. He felt as if he was outside his body and he was just moving
on instinct. Harley realized he had been preparing for this moment his entire
life. Everything his grandfather taught him, everything he drilled into him was
for this.

Five men dressed in white gear from head to toe
climbed down out of the truck. They looked like space travelers who had just
landed their ship on an alien terrain. They moved cautiously forward, like they
were approaching an unknown entity whose power was completely unknown to them.

The man in the middle of the crew led them. He
pulled what looked to be a walkie talkie from his shoulder and spoke into it. It
seemed to magnify his voice from unseen speakers. “Mr. Jacobs, you have been
informed of this house’s schedule to be upgraded. You have had several weeks to
vacate the premises. It is now midnight of the last day as noted from your
final notice. We will have to commence wrecking. You are to move away from the
house and into the truck where you will be taken to City Centre for relocation
procedure. Is this clear?”

Harley didn’t answer or move. He stood still
with the shotgun poised in both hands. The metal was hot against his skin. He
could feel the oil and smell the gun powder. The scent reminded him of the
first time his grandfather took him shooting with it. They were out in the sand
flats shooting at targets. When Harley pulled the trigger for the first time
the recoil was so strong it threw him to the ground. He lay there crying until
Ancil told him to get up and do it again. He showed him the proper way to hold
the weapon, into the hollow of his shoulder. Harley hit his first target that
day.      

“Do you understand what I am telling you?” the
man in the middle called out. Harley still didn’t move. “If you do not comply
we will be forced to-“

“What’s your name?” Harley called out, cutting
the man off. The question seemed to catch the man off guard as he turned to his
crew. Another wrecker whispered something in his ear that Harley couldn’t
catch.

“Mr. Jacob’s I will ask you one more time to
comply with our orders. If you do not comply we will be forced to engage you as
a violent aggressor and take you out of the dwelling.”

Dwelling? Harley sneered at the word.
Dwelling.
These people could and would never understand. They were incapable. It didn’t
matter what anyone told or showed them. The world had moved too far away from
what Harley had ever known. He was the alien. The only one left of his kind.
The last hold out on a distant planet that had just been discovered and now
they were going to bring him in for observation.

“Don’t you people have names?” Harley asked.

The man stood looking at Harley, pondering
whether to answer or not. Harley could barely make out the man’s features from
where he stood, but he was shorter than the person standing next to him and
didn’t appear a leader at all.

“My name’s Max,” he said after some time, “and
this is Bruce, my second in command and right now you are in official
obstruction of a scheduled wreck.”

“Let me propose something to you, Max,” Harley
said as he stepped down off the porch and moved towards them. The crew instinctively
went for their side arms, but Maxon put his hand out to stop them. “You and
your crew go back into that truck and drive on outta here and maybe, perhaps,
you all can go home safe tonight to your families, if you have any that is.
Otherwise, if you decide to stay here and continue this fight, I assure you
there will be bloodshed.”  

“What are we waiting for? Let’s just grab him
and throw him in the truck,” Bruce said.

“Stay out of this Bruce,” Maxon shot back. He
turned back to Harley. “What you just said can be deemed a direct threat. We’d
be within our rights to proceed with force. That doesn’t need to happen, but
that rests entirely on you, Mr. Jacobs. For the sake of your well-being, your
family’s well-being, we urge you to stand down and step aside. This isn’t a
battle you can win.”

Harley scanned the rest of the crew and saw
nothing but young boys unprepared for this turn of events. He saw the fear on
their faces, the shaking in their hands. A couple looked like kids right out of
schooling. When they signed up to become members of this crew, probably
suggested to them by the same computer that decided the futures of everyone in
this place, they never imagined that this would actually be part of the job.

Harley cocked his gun. “The only way you’re
getting me off my property is by killing me. Less than that, I’m not leaving
this spot for you or anyone else you bring in.”

“What are you going to do?” Bruce asked. “Shoot
us all one by one with your shotgun. Do you know what kind of fire power we
have with us? Our suits alone will eat up those shotgun blasts of yours. Face
it old man, you don’t stand a chance against us.”

“That’s enough,” Maxon interjected. “Mr. Jacobs,
we will give you one more chance to lay down your weapon and stand down. It
would be the best outcome for you. It’s true, your shotgun will have no effect
on us and we will proceed with the wreck as originally scheduled. Your efforts
will serve no purpose other than your own harm. There doesn’t need to be any
bloodshed tonight, I assure you of that. Just lay down your weapon and step
aside.”

Harley wasn’t one to take assurances easily,
especially from the man standing in front of him. To Harley he was as
trustworthy as a rattlesnake promising not to bite you.

Everyone stood nervously waiting for his
response. From this distance, Harley could make out the look in Maxon’s eyes.
It was one of fear. Harley could almost feel the pleading in them. Maxon didn’t
want this to go down. Here was a man with probably a decade worth of experience
doing this and he wasn’t prepared at all for it either.

“The way I see it Max,” Harley said, “if you
want to avoid bloodshed, you and your men have only one option. Turn around and
leave. That’s the best I can do.”

“Enough of this bullshit,” Bruce fired back, “let’s
just grab him.”

“You don’t want to do that.” Harley said.

“Why?”

“Because if you take one more step closer this
whole street will turn into a flaming bon fire.”

“And how do you expect to do that, with two
shots from that toy pistol of yours?”

Harley put his hand on his shirt and ripped it
open. Taped to his chest was the detonator.

Bruce took a step back, along with the rest of
the crew. Maxon tried to hold his ground, signaling to the crew to stay calm,
but the danger had already been planted.

Harley ran his hand down the trip wire,
revealing it to them. Maxon followed the wire around the yard, his eyes growing
wide.   

“We don’t need to go down this road, Mr.
Jacobs,” Maxon tried to negotiate. “We are not throwing you out of your
residence. We are providing you with a more advanced and better suited model
for your needs.”

“My needs? You have no idea what anybody needs.”

“People need fully automated housing. The
statistics prove it. They want the freedom to be able to do what they desire
and not what they have to do. We’re giving you freedom from menial tasks that
don’t contribute to a greater fulfillment of life.”

“You’re doing nothing but providing shackles,
creating generation after generation of lazy and ineffectual people until all
they’d know how to do is breathe on their own and maybe even that you’d take away
some day. What use is the body if you can’t work it? What good is the mind if
you can’t challenge it?”

“Do we have to stand here and listen to a sermon
now?” Bruce piped in. “Your body won’t be doing much of anything when it’s
lying on the ground. One shot and I’ll have him out.”

“No,” Maxon ordered, “I won’t allow this to
degrade into violence.” Bruce sneered at him as he said it. Maxon turned back
to Harley and regarded him with an expression that exhibited both understanding
and vulnerability.  

Here comes the negotiation phase
,
Harley thought.
He’ll try and persuade me with the pre-packaged rhetoric.

“We understand your position, Mr. Jacobs,” he
began, “we know it must be frightening to have the feeling of being forced out
of a place you’ve been in for most of your life, but change is what pushes all
of us to become better. We evolve for a reason. Don’t think of this as a loss,
but a gain for you and your family. Wouldn’t you want your young son to have
every opportunity to grow into a complete human being?”

“My son already has every opportunity to succeed
in whatever he wants to do, and do you know why?” Harley’s hand was on the
detonator, shaking with emotion that rushed out of his body. His jaw was set
firm and the muscles on his face jutted out. “It’s because I will teach him.
Not some computer or screen or talking robot, me. I will pass everything I know
on to him and he will do the same for his child, and he will do the same for
his and so on, generation after generation. That’s how you raise a society, by
putting in the hard work. Not by taking shortcuts and spoon feeding information
into them like a bunch of soulless machines that you can program, leaving
nothing but empty shells giving birth to empty shells. That’s no world I want
to live in.”      
 
        

Maxon didn’t respond. He only continued to regard
Harley cautiously, like a man who watches a rabid dog from a distance. No words
were passed between them for what seemed minutes. The only sound was the
singing of crickets as they went about their nocturnal forays, oblivious to the
battle of wills that played out directly above them. Harley envied them.

  Once again Bruce broke the tension. “Then you
should have left a long time ago cause this is the way things work now.”

“This is my land. I was born here and I’ll die
here and no paper council is going to tell me otherwise. That’s what my
grandfather fought for years ago when he faced people just like you. They could
have been your fathers.” Harley was addressing each crew member know, speaking
to them as individuals. Everything rushed out of him now. “We eliminate money
so there’s no crime, we eliminate weapons so there’s no war, we eliminate classes
so there’s no inequality, but all that means is that there’s nothing left to
fight for anymore. Nothing worth dying for.” He scanned across them until he
was looking at Maxon. “What is it that you have worth fighting for? You must
have something, we all do. We’re human. It’s in our nature. What if someone
tried to take it away from you? What would you do then? Would you let them come
in and take it from you, or would you make a stand?”

“All right, I’ve had enough. I’m taking him
out.” Bruce said as he raised his weapon at Harley. There was a collective
panic amongst the crew as they thought for sure they were going to be blown to
bits. Maxon quickly grabbed the muzzle of Bruce’s weapon and brought it down. 

“What are you doing?”

“I’m stopping you from turning this into another
disaster.”

“A disaster? I’m trying to salvage this
operation. The only disaster is you’re ineptitude. Step aside and let the men
take over.”

“Lennox, I’m ordering you to stand down. That’s
a direct order.”

“Your orders mean nothing. I should have been
lead on this thing. He would have never made it off the porch. That’s the
problem with you, always too scared to get your hands dirty. Well my hands are
already in the mud.”

Harley was breathing heavy and beginning to get
flushed in the face. The heat was getting to him and their voices began to sway
in and out, like an undulating wave. He was afraid he was going to faint. He
was more afraid they were going to call his bluff and grab him anyway. Then
what would he do? How would he fight back then? He still had the shotgun, but
he didn’t think two rounds were going to get him very far. A part of him wished
that they would just shoot him and be done with it, that way this would all be
over.

The argument between Maxon and Bruce brought him
out of his haze. “I’m giving you till the count of three, Lennox,” Maxon said.
“Otherwise I’m directing the crew to subdue you and you will be brought up on
sanctions.”

Bruce laughed, “You think they want anything to
do with that? Look at them. They don’t know what to do on their own. They need
a leader, a strong one. Someone who isn’t going to stand by and watch while an
entire operation is jeopardized by one guy and a shotgun. Face it Wheeler, your
times up.”

“I knew you’d do nothing but cause problems this
whole night. That’s why I requested you be taken off this wreck. You’re nothing
but a selfish, loud mouthed, ignorant excuse for a human being and the only
reason you got to where you are in the department is because of your last
name.”

As this power struggle was unfolding, Harley saw
a set of car head lights come around the corner in the distance to his left.
They were approaching fast. Too fast for this time of night.