Anger consumed Junie. To compare his anger to cancer did a disservice to the disease. His anger filled his every waking moment, defined his very core, and seeped into every pore of his body. He wore his anger like a life-preserver, clinging to it because not only was it all he knew, but he was desperately afraid to let it go. It was so much a part of him, he didn't know how to function without it. So Junie had no choice. He had to do what men did. Parker was gone, but he didn't know what to do with the anger. He didn't know who to blame. He couldn't blame God because God had long turned his back on the shit stain he called a life. He couldn't blame Parker because sometimes you got got. They all knew how the game would end for them. He couldn't blame himself for contenting, no, consigning both he and Parker to a life without vision or purpose. But he knew in the shriveled remains of the thing he called a heart that this whole mess had to be someone's fault. He wasn't a particularly contemplative man. He felt. He acted. Had he been of the more reflective type, he would have realized that he raged at the futility of his world. A world he accepted and was complicit with. Anger and blame was all he knew and it twisted him up inside. Burning up all that was good and decent in him until there was nothing left but the rage. A rage occasionally assuaged by drugs.
But Parker was still dead. That boy had potential. Potential Junie knew he didn't know how to encourage. All he knew was this life. He didn't know from books or college or a straight life. He didn't have the tools to get him out. He thought by teaching him the game, by being there, he could protect him. Be like a father to him. He failed at both. Damn it all. Men like Junie didn't love. Love fucked with him or he'd fuck it up. Either way, he didn't truck with no love. He did know about respect. And consequences. Rage was the all-consuming consequence. Once men like him figured out this was all there was to their lives, this was all they'd ever be, a calm would overtake them. An existential peace that came with figuring out something most folks hadn't. And was freeing. Junie was ready to die, a samurai ready to fall in honor to his master. For Junie, the master of his life was the game. His hoodie drawn up, a burial shroud, and the gun heavier than usual in his hand. He recalled the first lesson Baylon taught him: "Don't be caught half-stepping with your gun on safety."
Green stumbled up the embankment, each step a struggle. His clothes ripped to tatters, the man appeared to have been used as a retrieval stick for a rabid dog. He lumbered toward Junie, eyes unfocused, as if unaware of Junie's presence. That was how it had been for Junie his entire life. Even when he was present in the classroom, in the meetings, he wasn't there. No one saw him. No one took him seriously.
He squeezed the trigger and didn't quit pulling it.
• • •
Green was officially pissed off.
Green grabbed a stone from the broken concrete of the bridge and charged toward Junie. His muscles flexed like a bound cord of twigs. His flesh threatened to be rent from him with each step. The eldritch fires seethed in spurts, he barely contained them now. The assault by the troll brothers took their toll on him, causing him to expend more power than he expected. Drawing on the green, the force of life, the elder magicks that held even his current form together, taxed him on many levels. He was tired. This age exhausted him. The effrontery of this mortal intruding on the soliloquy of his thoughts, however, elicited a more than commensurate response.
Junie fired wildly, the courage of the gun waning as his target didn't shrivel and cower but rather ran toward him. He all but dropped the gun to turn tail himself, but Green was upon him before he could move.
"Now we play the most ancient of games," Green said, his voice a fatigued whisper, the sound of dead leaves scurrying across cracked pavement. "Only one has ever bested me in it. You and the trolls have tried your best to behead me, but I still stand. Now, we see how well you do."
Green shoved Junie, face down against the sidewalk, pinning his head with his left hand as he straddled the man's body. Junie feared Green was about to rape him, to punk him out in front of his entire crew. Entreating words pleaded for Green to not do what he thought about doing, to leave him with some measure of dignity. Hot tears scalded Junie's cheeks, ashamed at himself for begging, much less being in this position again. The life had its costs and Junie had already paid dearly during his last bid in prison. Memories he thought he had dealt with, blocked out, and moved on from. Yet they haunted part of his soul and further stoked the flames of anger.
Green raised the rock above his head then brought the edge of it down on Junie's neck. The first blow nearly severed his head clean off, silencing Junie's merlings with a single wet thud. The next three were pure rage. Junie's blood splattered on Green. Heedless of the sanguine shower, Green went about his task with grim determination. His fury nearly spent, he roared with the righteous indignation of spring interrupted by a last blast of winter. The wails of sirens quickly drowned out his cry as Five-O screeched to a halt along either side of the bridge.
A dull roar filled Lee's ears. His mind couldn't quite digest the chaos going on around him, not fully process what he was seeing. Through the cacophony of white noise, he heard his partner yell at the man, if indeed he was a man. A disfigured creature, branches protruding from his face like a man who ran his car into a tree with such force he'd become one with it. Not much of his skin or clothes remained. Octavia ordered him to drop whatever it was he had in his hand and lace his fingers behind his head. All Lee could do without having to think about the sight in front of him was parrot his partner, repeating the command of "on your knees, get on your knees" like a mantra hoping its familiarity would somehow center him. The man, locked in his weary stride, carried himself with a laid-back yet incontrol aspect, an ambulatory bush attempting a pimp stroll. Under the mucous, the blood, and torn clothes, he had to be Green. What was wrong with his skin? Lee kept asking himself, his brain not leaping to believe what his eyes took in.
The rest of Green's boys scattered without command. The radio car pulling up from the west side of Breton Drive boxed them in. The nervous officers drew their weapons, the scene uncertain, radioing for more back-up. They shot panicked, disbelieving glares at one another before settling on focusing on the straggling — and equally confused — soldiers. The equation of portending violence amounted to four officers (and thus four guns) against two street soldiers and Green, in-between them.
Green stood tall.
One of his soldiers ducked behind the row of cars along the front parking lot. The other ran back and forth between the sheltering presence of Green and the presumed safety of being taken into police custody. His body, if not quite his conscious mind deciding between having Green's back by facing down the officers (he had skidded to a halt mid-jetting out as they slammed their brakes) and darting between the rowhouses in the better course of valor, or turning himself in to be hauled far away from the entire scene. Such decisions were better made without having a gun drawn.
As he doubled back toward the cars, the first soldier popped his head up, gun clearly visible through the car's windshield. Lee fired the first shot. Dropping his gun in reflex, the second soldier hit the ground, spread-eagled before the officers nearest him could fire. He held his hands up, deliberately and quite visibly away from the gun, but kept his head ducked. The former soldier opened fire, heedless to Green being in the way. One of Lee's rounds hit Green in the shoulder. Green staggered backward, wavered for a moment, then toppled over the bridge railing. A heavy splash soon followed.
Lee eyed the side of the bridge, preparing for Green to sneak up the embankment. The ambling mass never arrived. Distracted by the thought of being taken unawares — from all that he'd learned, Green never backed down from anything, no matter the odds against him — Lee stepped out from the shield of his car door. Due to more luck than skill, the shooter caught him in his leg. Collapsing in a hail of profanities, Lee's world had been reduced to pain. He didn't know from where, couldn't even tell which leg though his body knew, and he clutched the wound. He only knew pain.
> Octavia darted out from behind her door, presenting herself as a more immediate threat. The soldier turned to draw a bead on her. Too nervous and untrained, his aim faltered. Hers did not. She hit him twice in the arm and shoulder. The gun fell from his hand.
"Lee, you all right?" she yelled in his direction but didn't take her eyes from the perp. She eased over to him and kicked the gun away. With a nod, she had the uniform officers secure him.
"I'm all right. You get him?"
"He's down. Don't you move, motherfucker." As one of the officers pulled the first soldier's arms behind him, locking him down in cuffs, she began stomping him in his side with a flurry of kicks. "What. The fuck. Were you thinking? Shooting at police?"
The flashing lights of the radio cars tinted their faces red. The blood on the pavement looked like spilt red Kool Aid. Plastic number placards dotted the scene like a game of connect the shell casings. Whispers coalesced into a dull susurrus of background chatter: "… could he have been set up?" "… came out blasting… " "… don't know what to think…" "… Glock 17…"
"Losing blood here," Lee whined. "I think I'm gonna pass out."
"How is he?" Octavia asked to the ambulance driver.
"I've seen worse paper cuts," the attending paramedic joked. The bullet had passed through the fleshy part of Lee's spindly leg, missing any vital arteries.
"Any sign of Green?" Lee asked, struggling to sit up in the gurney even as the paramedic tried to load him into their wagon.
"Nothing. He went over the side and then vanished," Octavia said.
"He looked bad. Not quite…" he wanted to say "human" but his mind still wouldn't let his thoughts go there.
"Like Death eating a soda cracker."
"What?"
"Something my grandmother used to say."
"We've got to go," the paramedic said.
"I'm B+, if anyone needs to know," Lee started up again. "Get me to Community North. Don't try and drop me off at Wishard. Wishard's for homeless people and welfare cheats."
"Get him out of here," Octavia said, her smile a matter of relief that her partner would be OK more than any actual affection for him. It would be a long day and she feared they hadn't seen the last of it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The sun bled on the horizon with night quickly stanching the wound. Tavon anxiously rubbed his hands together, blowing into them only to see his breath pour though his fingers before shoving his hands deep into his pockets. He needed a new jacket. Eyeing the house from down the block, it drew him in, a black hole of guilt. The hunger brought him home, he'd abandoned his friends. His hands trembled. His skin itched as if centipedes scurried beneath it. The desire threatened to consume him and he needed to get well. Soon.
Li'l Nam was jumping tonight.
The occasional scream distracted him, but as soon as he turned to find the source's direction, gunfire erupted. Deciding to mind his own business, he lowered his head and marched to his spot. No, the ambulances or police had shown up. Wherever they were, they weren't in Li'l Nam. He could almost hear Knowledge Allah go on about no one caring about the plight of the black man, and it exhausted him.
More automatic gun bursts.
Leaning against a tree, its bare branches stretching toward the night sky, Tavon wondered if it was worth going in. Nausea snaked through his system. His palms itched. He felt fingernails scrape along the back of his skull. Only when the wave of sickness ebbed did he notice the door ajar. He cautiously lumbered up the steps, pebbles scattering with each footfall. The slow creak of the heavy door shattered the still of the house. The street light filled more of the room — boards had been ripped from the windows — though the night still left deep pockets of shadow. The room smelled of stale sweat, piss, and unwiped ass. And spoiled meat.
He vomited, wiping the vestiges with his cuff. From what he could make out, the house appeared as if a frenzied work crew had gutted it. Holes dotted the wood slats that lined the walls, like a fist punched through a rib cage. Creeping through the debris, he noticed that many of the walls thrown up to divide the house had been torn down, leaving only exposed wiring (much of it cloth wiring patched into newer) and plumbing (smashed PVC). A staircase, much of the original woodwork intact, stood revealed like a body in mid-autopsy. He feared what the basement might look like.
Tavon staggered back out of the mess. A hand landed on his shoulder. He whirled only to be greeted by Dollar.
"Damn, you trying to give a nigga a heart attack?"
"Could say the same about you," Dollar said, his heavy-lidded eyes studying the scene. He pulled in more in a couple of months than a cop in a year. Only spending money on clothes, he wasn't too flashy, not like his boys. For a young lieutenant, he primped worse than a woman, taking a razor to his head every morning.
"I know I don't look well. I'm sick. Could you hook me up with a blast, just to get right?" Tavon asked.
"How sick are you?"
"How sick I need to be?"
"I mean… have you seen any of your crew lately?" Dollar asked him.
"Naw. I got watered out of those testers you gave us. Then they got to feelin' bad. Real bad. I thought they was OD-ing or something, so I took off. For help. I had just come back to check on them when you showed."
If Dollar spotted all the holes in his tapestry of near-truths, he was too polite or too preoccupied to say anything about it.
"It was a bad package," Dollar said.
"Bad like Widowmaker?"
"No, not quite like that. Night got up with a new supplier and then got word that the re-up was tainted," Dollar said evenly. He rarely got to meet with Night or any of the higher-ups. Being dispatched to the corner left him feeling like an errand boy. "That's when we decided that I needed to come down here and check things out for ourselves."
Tavon followed Dollar out the door. His boys stood on post on either side of the porch. A few gunshots echoed in the night. Like an approaching storm, more thunderclaps erupted a lot closer. Not sure if he bought his earlier story, and rather than regale Dollar with tales of his guilt and cowardice, Tavon spun an account of going out to visit his sister before scraping together a couple of dollars to try and get a taste. The hunger wrapped its tendrils around his mind, needle pricks in his eyes. Seizing Dollar up, he wondered if he carried any vials on him and if he could snatch them and get past the rent-a-thugs.
"You holdin'?" Tavon asked, praying that his voice didn't waver suspiciously.
"Damn, fiend. Ain't you been listening? The package was bad. And it did something to anyone who rode it. Have you seen any of your fellow fiends?"
Tavon never expected to see any of them upright again. Once he thought about it, Dollar never held. His boys might've, though. "Told you, I ain't been around."
"They dead."
The statement snapped Tavon out of his hunger lust, if only temporarily. "Dead? But I ain't seen no ambos."
"Ain't gonna be none. Even death can't keep a good fiend down."
"What you mean?"
"They tearing up shit. Attacking folks. Breaking into houses. What you think all that ammo's been about? Niggas got guns. They ain't putting up with the foolishness of some fiend that don't know when to quit."
"D?" one of his men said, street-sharpened instinct on high alert. He gestured for silence.
Everyone made their way to his end of the porch. They heard it, too. Something stirred, like the rustling of dead leaves across a floorboard. Both the guards drew their guns. The boards of the house next door shattered, baseheads poured out of the window frames or ran out the front door. Dollar and Tavon ducked behind the guards, landing hard on the concrete. That white burnout leapt onto the porch, a feral gleam in his eyes, slashing at the throat of one of the guards. He took three bullets to his chest before another shot sprayed the back of his head along the porch stones. The fiends fell on the guard, tearing at his clothes, shredding his pockets. Not satisfied, one held him by the back of his head, his fingers digging into the
sockets of his eyes, then bit into his skull. His body danced, as if caught on a live wire, then slumped. The other guard never even got off a shot. Overwhelmed by the scene, he just stood rooted with both guns drawn. The fiends dragged him down, without a cry, knocked a gun from his hands, tore out his pockets, then took turns scooping out bits of gray matter with their fingers.
Dollar scrambled for the loose gun.
"Come on," he said, waving him inside. Tavon spied a couple more fiends coming from the other end of the porch. Whatever fiends that remained converged on the house.
Dollar and Tavon rushed into the house and lifted the plank into place. The plank normally served to stop any impromptu police raids. The scale of the problem dawned on Tavon. The house had over twenty windows, plus four doors, not including the basement entrance. He heard a crash from the back of the house — the kitchen — then a thudding from behind him. Fists pounded against the basement door as if the house itself had found its heartbeat. They pushed against the door. A creaking shudder came from the great room. Tavon chanced a peek around the corner. The already-weakened floor gave way. Miss Jane pulled herself from the hole, paying no mind to the jagged floorboards tearing a bloodless track through her thigh. A bone protruded through her flesh, yet she tried to walk like she still had wares to sell. There was no residual spark, no light of recognition in her eyes.
"Shit, they ain't even bleedin'. Don't look like they even feel pain," Tavon squealed.
"We gonna have to go upstairs. Get them when they come up one at a time."
As soon as their weight left the door, hands — craggy masses of picked flesh — wrangled through, desperately grasping after them. Tavon scrambled up the stairs first, followed by Dollar who took each step one at a time, aiming his gun at any movement. When the crush of bodies started shambling up the stairs, he let them step near enough to pop them in the center of their foreheads. Couldn't have been more than a few dozen fiends taken out by the package, Tavon hoped. Judging from the daylong gunfire, there were maybe a dozen of them laying siege to the house.
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