4

McGuillian Diner

Lawrence bent down, awkwardly grasping the young waitress around the waist and placing her arm around his neck. With his free arm, he reached for the knife Ricker had dropped, pulling it toward him with his fingertips until he could get a good grip. His shoes slipped in the bloody mess as he struggled to stand, his eyes meeting those of the two remaining Upperclassmen. He was resolutely determined, his mind intently focused on a single objective, with no thought beyond it: He would keep this girl alive. He dragged her limp body toward the door.

“Will someone please help?” he said, desperately scanning the crowd. Jack and Li’l Ed looked away. The other workers in the diner busied themselves fetching mops and picking up scattered silverware. “Look, nobody’s going to take her in an ambulance. But the Zone’s close to here. Maybe we can find one of those witch doctors these people use.” He dragged her another few steps.

The strange, dirty drunk the bullies had harassed came up, wrapping the girl’s other arm around his shoulder. Together they made it to the door. The two Upperclassmen blocked it.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Firstyear?” the one from Cyprus Garden said. Both Upperclassmen leaned toward him.

Lawrence raised the knife, looking at it. It was heavy but balanced, its silvery blade smeared with the girl’s blood. “There are two of you,” he said. “You could beat me up, maybe even kill me. But I’m gonna cut the first one who tries.”

Nobody said anything as Lawrence and the strange man helped her out the door.

Celarwil-Dain central corporate offices, Central Business District

“Yeah, this is niiiice,” the young hoodlum said, looking around him as Mr. Roan escorted him through the hallway. “Carpet. It’s all quiet an’ shit, an’ it feels springy when I walk on it. Smells clean in here, too, like chemicals an’ shit.” He pointed at the green floor and the matching walls. “An’ it’s all green. I heard everything inside these bug buildings was green.”

“Corporate Green,” Mr. Roan said. “Decades ago a paint company proved scientifically that this shade improved productivity by half a percent. They patented it and have profited from its ubiquitous use in corporate life ever since. In fact—”

“No stains or writin’ or nothin.’” Kel interrupted, running his fingers along a wall. “I always wondered what it would be like, bein’ some old fart in one a these bug buildings.”

A woman passed them in the hallway, clearing a wide space for Mr. Roan and his guest as her EI notified her that he was of superior rank.

“Well, this is my building,” Mr. Roan said, glancing nervously after her. “But not my floor.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t want anyone to see me since I haven’t reported to work yet. I’m sure we can find you a bathroom, though. Ah! Right there.”

“Perfect.” His dirty hands pressed on the door but it was locked.

Mr. Roan mentally reached out and entered his code through the EI, and the door unbolted. “It should be open, now,” he said. “By the way, I don’t believe I know your name.”

“Kel.”

Kel pushed open the door, heading straight for a urinal. Despite the disdain for EIs he had shown earlier, he seemed completely unfazed by the door having been unlocked without a key or PINpad. Mr. Roan stepped up to another urinal, unzipping. “Well, Kel, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Nathaniel W. Roan, Manager of Office Furnishings for Celarwil-Dain, Inc.”

“Mmm,” Kel said, removing a small transparent green plastic box from one of his pockets. Grasping a small protrusion from one corner, he pulled, producing a whip-like flexible tube. This he plunged into the drain of the urinal and pushed a button. A small metal handle popped out of the box and he cranked it in a circle, watching something inside the plastic.

Mr. Roan flushed and zipped, then washed his hands. Kel moved from one urinal to another and then to the toilets, repeating the procedure each time. He came last to the urinal Mr. Roan had used.

The door opened. A security guard entered, his eyes widening.

“Hey, you! Kid! Stop that right now.”

Kel ignored him, cranking the handle on the box.

“I said stop it. That sewer gas is the property of the building management.” He grabbed Kel’s shoulder roughly. “I’m confiscating the lighter, and—”

Kel grabbed and twisted the guard’s hand as he turned around, sweeping the man’s feet out from under him. The green box dangled from its flexible tube. Now behind the guard, Kel shoved a palm into the back of his head and lowered him, unconscious, to the floor. “Ain’t confiscatin’ shit.”

Kel bent over the man, searching pockets, removing a pair of sunglasses and trying them on.

Mr. Roan stared.

Kel pocketed some metal keys that had fallen on the floor.

“Gotta love ol’ fashioned metal keys,” he said. “Them punch pads’re too easy to fool anymore, with computers so smart. Metal keys are comin’ back, an’ the metal’s worth a lot.” He pushed the guard’s limp body into a stall, hoisted him onto the toilet and closed the door. Surveying the stall from the outside, he nodded to himself, satisfied, and then nodded at Mr. Roan.

“Thanks a lot, man. Yer all right,” he said, snatching the green box and winding the tube back inside it. He crossed the room and grabbed for the door handle. “Gotta go. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“Wait!” Mr. Roan’s voice strained as he looked from Kel to the closed stall door. “You can’t just leave me here like this!”

Kel was already moving down the hall. “Said I gotta go, man!”

Mr. Roan took several quick steps, trying to catch up, but Kel walked faster. “Kel, what am I supposed to do? I let you into the building, and you knocked out a security guard!”

“Look, man. Sorry ’bout any problem I caused you, all right? But you can say I kidnapped you or some shit. I got to get out of the CBD before the other security pigs come find me, see? An’ if I’m lucky, there’ll be another big wave of people leavin’ now, so I can slip through the gate with ’em.” He hopped into an elevator. Mr. Roan slipped in as the doors started to close.

“I’ve never been in trouble before, Kel. I don’t know what to tell them … I might say the wrong thing. Please stop a minute and help me figure out what to do.” He cleared his throat. “You’re young and strong. You could always climb the fence if they come for you, couldn’t you?”

“Fence is ’lectric, asshole. Like, kill you kinda ’lectric. So’s to keep out young, strong thugs like me. Shit.”

“Then I’ll come with you. I’ll call in sick.”

“What? Fuck off.” The elevator opened in the main entry area, with its escalators stretching down to the ground. “You got no problems, man. Jus’ tell ’em yer my victim, like. But if they get me on theft in the Central Business District, I get five months! That’s five months on a slab, with my brain storing government stats an’ shit, goin’ fuckin’ nuts. Then I get out, all weak, an’ back home I’m fuckin’ dead.”

“I’ve got money. Or, that is, I can get money for us to spend. Please, Kel.” His face flushed hot. “I don’t know what else to do.”

Kel stopped. He faced Mr. Roan, tilting his tall column of hair to one side. “How much money?”

Mr. Roan shrugged. “I don’t know. Enough for a few drinks—real drinks in a bar, not just sodje.”

Kel shook his head. “So you wanna come with me to the Zone, and I’m gonna be, like, your tour guide or some shit?”

Mr. Roan shrugged sheepishly. “Yes. I guess it’s something like that.” A few businesspeople passed by, raising eyebrows at the sight of the mid-aged man pleading with the young thug. Mr. Roan lowered his voice, but his words came out faster than ever. “Look, Kel, my wife is divorcing me and marrying a guy who runs a whole division in my company.” He shut his eyes tightly, rubbing them with his fingertips. “I’m … I’m really under a lot of stress, and I can’t—” Tension was building up from his midsection, tightening his muscles, corseting his lungs and turning his guts to mud. “Auggh!” Mr. Roan’s whole body shook. He looked around. “I can’t take it! I want to break something, smash something to bits! But there’s nothing around here.”

He took a deep breath. “I can’t go back to work now, Kel. I just can’t. I helped you get into the building like you asked. Now I’m in trouble—they’ll see from the video that I let you in. So will you please, please let me come with you? For a little while? I’ll pay for everything.”

Kel started walking again, heading for the trains. Mr. Roan followed. Kel pointed an accusing thumb at him, sideways. “Gotta be more than drinks. Everything, right? First class, an’ I pick the place. An’ some cash, too—casino chips to spend.”

Mr. Roan nodded several times.

Kel laughed to himself. “So maybe I’ll write that on the back of my jacket: ‘Tour Guide for Old Farts from the CBD.’ Ha.”

“So I can come?”

Kel shrugged but his feet kept moving. “Sure. But get the money first.” Kel’s shoulder slammed into a skinny man in an ill-fitting corporate uniform. “Sorry there, fella,” Kel said. “Didn’ see you.”

The man scurried away like an insect. Kel walked faster. Mr. Roan jogged to keep up.

“You almost knocked that guy down, Kel,” Mr. Roan said. “You could’ve hurt him.”

“He’ll be all right,” Kel said. “‘Cept he’s gonna be missin’ this!” He turned his palm over, revealing a small, old-fashioned spiral notebook. It was palm-sized but thick, with maybe a hundred and fifty pages in it, and a small, old-fashioned ballpoint pen clipped into the wire spiral.

“This is turnin’ out to be one fuckin’ awesome day,” Kel said. “Now you get some money: Casino chips, understand? None of that traceable shit. Then I’ll show you what’s up in the Zone. What was your long-assed name again?”

Mr. Roan laughed. “It doesn’t matter. ‘Old Fart’ will do.”

Dok’s place

“You’ve got broken knuckles on both hands, Brian,” Dok said, gingerly lowering the hand he had splinted. Dok started manipulating the fingers of Brian’s other hand. Brian clenched his teeth. There were three other patients in the crowded little room; one moaned, rolling over, and the one in the corner coughed every few minutes behind the mask Dok had tied on him. “I’ll get this other hand taken care of, but you can’t go off by yourself again.”

“I’ll take the stuff you gave me,” Brian said. “Regularly. Right now, if that’s what you want. Let’s just fix the hands, give me some stuff to straighten me out, and I’ll be on my way. I’ll be asleep for about two weeks, anyway—can’t get into any trouble like that.” He glanced around the dingy room, sizing up its other current occupants. Usually there were many more than this in Dok’s place. “Besides, you know me. I’m not much for crowds.”

Someone pounded frantically on the door. “It’s open!” Dok yelled.

A college student and a bum dragged in a bleeding young girl in a waitress uniform. Brian looked intently at the girl, sensing something unusual about her. Something that made it difficult for him to avert his gaze. Some cheap pink-gold makeup was still visible around the edges of her face, but around the cut her flesh was pulsing purple and black. The girl wore that cheap makeup not to pretend she was Golden, but to hide the fact that she truly was Golden.

“Up here,” Dok said, gesturing at the table where Brian was sitting. Brian hopped down from the table, keeping his broken hands up to avoid banging them on its edge. The college student froze, staring at Dok with a stunned and fearful expression. People who had never seen a black man always reacted the same way. Dok was used to it.

The student came to his senses, working with the other man to hoist the bloody girl and ease her gently onto the table. Dok gingerly took her chin, turning her face to see the gash under her eye. “Oh, I know you,” Dok said. “It’s Eadie, right?”

Eadie muttered something. Her bottom lip quivered.

Did Brian know her, too? Impossible. He rarely met anyone outside of the drug world. But she seemed so familiar … and somehow magnetic, like she was pulling everyone closer to her.

Is she the waitress from the diner the other night?

“Shhh,” Dok said. “It’s going to be all right.” He reached above him to the lamp that hung from a chain there, adjusting the wick to give as much light as possible. “Maybe one of your friends here can tell me what happened to you.”

“She was in a fight with these Upperclassmen from my school.” The student’s voice trembled as he spoke. “She got hit in the face a lot, and then he cut her, he just cut her, right there, just zip and he cut her face, like that. And then we took her out, and this guy,” he indicated the strange, weather-beaten man with him—“led the way here.”

Dok took another look at the skinny man and his tattered clothes.

He now sat in the corner of the room, eerily still and silent, his attention fixed entirely on Eadie.

“She’s really hurt,” The student said. “He beat her up badly before he cut her. She’s been bleeding a lot.”

“Yes, I see that.” Dok exhaled through his nose. “And what about the guy from your school that she fought with? I’ll bet he wound up with barely a scratch and still went to a hospital in an ambulance. Am I right?”

“Uh, no. He’s dead.”

Dok turned, facing the student. “She killed him?”

“Uh-huh.”

Dok shook his head. “Eadie? I’m going to spray something on the wound to keep it from hurting, okay?” He took an old plastic spray bottle from the countertop behind him, pumping the trigger that sent a fine mist over her face. “Medical nicotine to address the pain, and it kills germs, too. It’s not toxic like regular nicotine—a few gene splices in the bacteria producing it took care of that, I’d guess. Are you feeling it now?”

She made some sort of sound which to Brian sounded like an affirmative reply. From a shelf behind him, Dok took down a small packet of worn-out aluminum foil, bringing it back over to the work table where Eadie lay. Opening the packet as carefully as if it had been alive, he took out some gauze, a thin, curved needle, and thread.

Except for the masked patient coughing in the corner, everyone stayed silent as he sewed. “I sterilized this packet in the pressure cooker, okay? No germs. We’ll get you fixed up, Eadie,” Dok murmured. He lowered his voice to a whisper but the room was small and Brian was used to listening for whispers. “It really is a good thing you’re Golden. You’ll heal much faster.” He blotted the cut. The needle was already threaded.

Brian watched the needle go into and out of the girl’s flesh, now a blend of dark colors. Dok tied a knot and stabbed it through again, pulling the wound closed a little more.

Dok turned his head toward Brian. There was a haze between them now.

“Brian? Are you all right?” Dok asked. “I think you’d better …”

The haze deepened and thickened, blocking Brian’s sight. Dok’s voice sounded farther and farther away as he spoke, eventually going silent.

McGuillian Diner

Federal Agent Hawkins turned in a circle to capture the entire diner in the file he was creating through his EI. “Map this area,” he told it. “Letters vertical, numbers horizontal. Store, label as ‘Ricker homicide, McGuillian diner, Fisher campus, map.’”

The old man wrung his hands, looking Hawkins up and down. Hawkins scrolled through some text and found the name again: Stuckey. Another gee-whiz dimwit citizen, eager to please. Stuckey’s eyes went back up, from Hawkins’ acid-resistant all-traction black shoes, to his flexible, abrasion-proof gray uniform—cut in the old-fashioned suit style with lapels—to his perfectly Gold complexion and closely-trimmed brown hair.

“Never had a Federal Angel in my place before,” Stuckey said, though Hawkins barely heard him. The Agent was closely observing the movements of a young, redheaded waitress setting plates on a table. As she leaned over, the girl kept her knees pressed tightly together, as her panties were clearly exposed with every bend of her waist. “I wish I could help you more; dropped that danged computer in a pot of soup when it was all going on—corporate’ll be furious, of course, but you’ve gotta tell ’em so you can get the information you need. I hope my blunder doesn’t slow down your case, though. God’s will, right? God to the President to you, the Federal Angels. Geez. I never thought I’d actually meet one of you.”

Hawkins turned to face the man. “Your computer situation is inconvenient. But your corporate data banks will have everything I need.” He glanced toward the corner where a few McGuillian corporate security officers were huddled. “But you should have called me first; those corporate security clowns almost messed up the scene.”

The man nodded deeply. “Yes, sir, mister Angel. I know that now, sir, but at the time I called I didn’t know it was the Ricker boy. Thought corporate could handle it.”

Hawkins shook his head. “Is there anything else you can tell me about this girl, Eadie, or the bum witnesses described?”

“Nope. No, sir. I’ll call if I think of anything, though.”

“You do that. At least one of the citizens who helped the killer away from the scene of the crime will be easy to find.” His EI had Federal clearance. “Access records of Fisher University. Find home address: Lawrence Williams the Seventh.”

The squalid dwelling with the purple man

Sato glared at the filthy little man seated next to him on the floor, bristling as the beady little eyes studied him. The man gave a slight bow.

“Why do you stare at me, peasant?” Sato asked. The purple man he had seen earlier was saying something but Sato kept his eyes on the dirty one, who bowed again.

“I mean no offense, sir. I simply had not noticed you before. It seems you have just arrived.”

“I have. And one such as you should bow deeper. I am samurai.”

The man repeated his same nodding bow. Sato considered punching him in the throat. “Samurai, are you?” the peasant asked. “You are then quite different than you appear. But in this world things are not always as they appear. Samurai were warriors, yes? Served lords, had missions, dealt with matters of state. Whom do you serve now, samurai? What is your mission?”

Sato squinted at the man. “It is true I no longer look like I am from the samurai class. You imply that you also are not what you seem. And I will allow you to speak to me this way for now because it is clear that there is something different about you, an energy I have felt only in the presence of great Zen masters. And nobles would certainly have sliced you to strips by now for speaking this way if there were not more to you than is apparent.”

The man stared back. Sato raised his hands from his lap but suppressed the urge to grab the peasant’s head and slam it repeatedly into the floor. Focusing, he lowered his hands again.

Sato’s new body relaxed for no reason at all as his words spilled forth on their own in this vulgar, unfamiliar language. “I was rejected by the Life Force, the great collection of energy that binds all living things together. I must be here for a reason, a mission, but as yet I do not know what it will be.”

The man nodded, or bowed, again. “I am certain it will be a noble cause, samurai. And you the perfect warrior. Time is nature’s weapon, after all. Whom do you follow?”

“I serve no human master.”

“I am with the general, there,” the peasant said, nodding at the girl on the table. “Hers is the battle to overthrow the most oppressive regime in history. Her struggles will truly end war.”

Sato grimaced. “No legitimate soldier would ever endure the humiliation of serving under a woman.”

The man said nothing. Sato looked again at the general, with her yellow hair and the gash on her face. “Her eyes are different from most people I have seen here. They look partially Japanese, and I thought perhaps even our royal blood might flow within her …”

He focused his narrowed eyes at the dirty man again. “But now I see that is not what makes her different. The boy, there, has the same look, as do you. Blood is not what makes her different. It is something else. There seems to be … a purpose to her. Is this why you speak of her the way you do?”

The little man leaned closer, lowering his voice to something almost like a whisper. “Her purpose and your mission are the same, samurai,” he said.

A train platform in the Zone

Kel sat on the train platform steps, grinning up at the rainclouds through the security guard’s stolen sunglasses. Mr. Roan—newly rechristened Old Fart—wondered if perhaps these were the first pair he’d ever worn. Kel slid his stolen keys onto a ring with a few others, attached to a wire as long as his arm. The other end was a handle; together the keys and wire formed some sort of weapon. It disappeared into one of Kel’s pockets.

“Can we get away from here now?” Old Fart asked. He looked over one shoulder and then the other, then all around, then back over the first shoulder again. “I feel like we’re waiting to be attacked.”

Old Fart had decided to shut down his EI. If anyone back at work noticed his absence, it could be used to track his whereabouts. Considering where he was and with whom, it was probably better if nobody knew. But the EI was his constant source of information, his connection with every aspect of his world, and knowing he must carry on without it made him terribly anxious. He was feeling more isolated and exposed than he had ever felt before.

Kel ripped a long strip from a page of the notebook he had stolen and rolled the strip into a ball. Next to Kel on the bench were his green plastic box, a small vial of liquid, and an old metal bottle cap with a thin copper tube driven into one side. The notebook disappeared into one of the pockets he had sewn on his pants.

Old Fart opened his umbrella, guarding against the few droplets of rain.

“Kel, what are you doing?” he asked. “I don’t think this is a good place to sit. I’m pretty sure I saw Chinatown near here from the train.” He gestured. “Right over there. Chinatown, with the most dangerous gangs of all.”

Kel straightened out the ball of paper, smoothed it out against his thigh, and then crumpled it into a ball again. “Chinatown hoods don’t come here, Old Fart. An’ even if we was to go there, you’d be welcome. Golds can spend money anywhere they want. Probably kill me, though.” He shrugged, flattening out the paper and rolling it back up again. “But don’ worry. We got a deal. I’ll look out for you.”

“And the Horde of the Departed are supposed to be around here, too, Kel,” Old Fart said. He stood up on his toes to peer over the railing some distance away.

Kel nodded. “We’re gonna pass kinda near ’em, but not too close. I don’t wanna get any closer to them than we have to. Smells like puke, over there.” His metallic tattoos seemed to glow in the rain-filtered light as he smoothed the paper and then rolled it up again, tighter this time. Old Fart noticed Kel had another tattoo rising up the right side of his neck from a starting point below his shirt: a jagged pattern that looked like an old-fashioned saw blade, mostly bronze, with silver along the teeth. Tattooed blood droplets accented some of the teeth where they appeared to be cutting into Kel’s flesh. The ink glistened as if it really was fresh blood.

Old Fart exhaled shakily. “What is all that stuff, anyway? The drizzle coming down is starting to freeze. Why are we just sitting here?”

“It’s teen-HC, man. Homemade nicotine an’ pot. Jus’ like the real stuff, but cheaper.”

“Why would you do something like that? Don’t you know how dangerous nicotine is?”

“Fuck you, man.” Kel examined the ball he had made, then smoothed it against is thigh yet again. “What else I got to do?” He dropped the ball into the bottle cap, carefully meted a few drops of the liquid onto it, and picked up the green plastic box, flicking a lever as he held the tube to his lips. A small flame appeared and Kel puffed on the pipe, igniting the paper. “Why you care so much, anyways?” he asked, exhaling a noxious cloud. “Lookit you, Old Fart. Gotta job, but you wanna stand here in the Zone, watchin’ me smoke. I worked all day for this shit, man. All day. Don’t fuck it up.” He lit the paper again, taking a deep drag.

“‘Sides, you think I’m gonna be like you if I live longer? What kinda shape I’m gonna be in after movin’ concrete an’ digging holes an’ livin’ in shit alla’ time? Sometimes I see these guys in the neighborhood, old as shit, fifty or whatever, like you. Been workin’ all their lives. An’ some worked real hard, got places with glass windows an’ maybe a heater for a while. Now they can’t do shit. Now they beg for money, an’ they live here—” He gestured around them, at the decaying buildings, the dirt, the gaping windows. “What you see here is me tryin’ to not be fifty, okay?” He flicked his lighter again and took a long, defiant drag.

 

Amelix Integrations

Corporate Regulations Division

G.W. Kessler, DCR, Director

 

Internal Memo Re: Eric Basali

Attached is the document found next to Eric Basali when he was discovered unconscious and slumped over his desk. The document is undated, written in pencil on the back of last year’s Amelix Integrations gift wrap. Employee is being transferred to Amelix Retreat pursuant to contract.

G.W. Kessler, DCR

Gone.

I ran all over outside but it’s nowhere. I looked under my desk, in the stairwell, in the bathroom. The notebook is just gone. Sucked into a vacuum.

We define a vacuum by what it is not. “It is empty,” we say. “There is nothing inside.”

At the subatomic level we’re all mostly empty space, anyway. Just vacuum … empty space.

Perhaps we can define life as we define vacuum: by what it is not. An animal that can’t make its own choices does not experience life. It is just a piece of meat. To be truly alive, every creature has to define its own destiny. I am not here to have my spirit crushed back into the void from which it sprang. I do not exist to contribute to the endless spiral of abuse and humiliation in this artificial system that replaces meaningful life in our modern society.

I had imagined that maybe my foolish little notebook was what I was here for. I pretended that my purpose was to write, to chronicle how the system truly functions, and to what end. Now even that distraction is gone, and the only tangible product of all my miserable years here has disappeared forever.

So when you find this note, you will also find me dead.

Federal truck en route to Williams household, traveling along General Electric Highway

The EI signaled a call. Federal Agent Hawkins pulled the truck over to the side of the crumbling asphalt road. “Proceed.” An image appeared, imprinted over the truck’s interior and all other parts of the tangible world. It was a Statused man with a wide, unrelenting smile that showed his upper and lower teeth, like every other Accepted, though he wasn’t like any other at all. This was Clayton Ricker, CEO of the world’s most profitable private corporation, staring silently at Hawkins.

“Hello, sir,” Hawkins said. “May I offer my sympathy for your loss, sir? It is most regrettable.”

The eyes glared but the rest of the face remained frozen in its smile as the voice trickled into Hawkins’ skull like rivulets of ice water. “Yes. That’s what your captain said to me when he informed me that my son had been killed. Yet he chooses to insult me by assigning some low-rank lackey to be my point of contact on the case. Surely someone of my status is entitled to greater consideration.”

“Well, sir, I apologize on behalf of my superiors—”

“Why would I value an apology from you? You’re an inconsequential peon, even lower than your sorry captain. Now, I’m sure you are aware that I have many friends in your organization. Not down at the shit-shoveling level where you work, of course, but people who actually make a difference. You know that I will get whatever information I want. The only question is whether you make it relatively easy, or relatively difficult, for me to get it.”

“I understand, sir. And I have already been instructed to provide you with whatever you might need, sir.”

“Of course you have. But you will not do it through pre-scripted messages. I want you personally accountable and available to answer questions. You will be giving me reports in person, do you understand?”

“Yes, sir. Would you like to schedule our first meeting now, sir, or—”

The image shook its bald head. “I’ll have you summoned when I want you. Keep good records and be prepared to report at any time. Call me immediately when you find her.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are driving, I see. Where are you going?”

“To the home of a student who was at the scene. Lawrence Williams the Seventh, sir.”

“Yes. I saw him on the video—the one who attacked my son and then threatened my son’s friends with a knife. It’s the same with him, of course. Find him, call me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Somewhere in the Zone

“Wow,” Old Fart said. He blinked at the sky, which caused him to stumble and belch a little. Being drunk had never been so exhilarating. “It’s really dark here. I haven’t ever been behind the lighted entertainment areas in the Zone before.” He belched again but it came out as a laugh.

Kel’s elbow jabbed into Old Fart’s ribs. “Shut up,” Kel whispered.

Old Fart shuffled along next to his new friend. He had to be quiet. That was funny. He had to be quiet because he was in the Zone and tough guys would come and kill them if they found them. He giggled.

A hand slapped him. Kel’s hand. “Whew,” Old Fart said, relieved. “I thought you were a bad guy.” He giggled again.

Kel slapped him three more times. “I am a bad guy, motherfucker! Shut the fuck up now!”

Those slaps really stung. It was funny. But not funny enough to make him laugh again.

Kel’s shoes crunched through the gravel beside Old Fart, finally stopping in front of a dilapidated building. “This is it, man,” Kel whispered. “Home. My neighbor Brian an’ me, we call this place ‘Shitbox Manor.’” The silhouette of a sloping roofline against the Zone sky’s electric glow showed that one part of the place had already collapsed. “But you gotta be quiet here. Like serious, okay?”

Kel pushed open the creaking door, flicking his lighter to reveal an entryway with a sagging ceiling, a partially-collapsed floor, and the remnants of what could no longer be called a staircase. Happy to see Kel’s face again in the light, Old Fart smiled. Kel nodded and started climbing.

Old Fart could not see where Kel had put his hands and feet. He felt for steps and handholds but it was a slow process. Kel turned back, shining the light on the area.

Old Fart gaped upward. Behind Kel’s head, three shapes appeared: men whose dark clothing made their white faces and hands seem ghostly.

Kel read Old Fart’s shocked expression, but before he could react a thick wooden club smashed down on him. Kel fell hard to the floorboards and the light went out.