by Russ Linton
Winston backhanded Reggie's arm. "The bags, how many left?"
Reggie gave him a slow one count with his middle finger. "I'm not dying in the jungle for a bunch of blow. I can do that shit back home!"
Broad mirror glasses reflecting the finger, Winston jumped up and slung his headphones over the back of the seat. Outside the cockpit window, the truck was nearing the edge of the runway. In the hold, Winston had disappeared through the blinding gap of the cargo door. Reggie cursed and raced after him.
"Are you crazy?" he yelled, making the short hop to the ground.
Ahead of him, Winston was grabbing two of the large canvas bags, one in each hand and waddling toward the plane like a duck in traffic. Following Winston's lead he hefted two of the bags off the ground.
The tightness in his gut moved to his chest.
A round sparked off the fuselage. Through the dicing propeller blades he could see the truck racing up the runway. A gunner stood in the bed trying to steady his rifle on the roof. It all seemed like a dumb exercise they'd have done in Basic and later, at the farm. Live fire, carrying weight no human being should carry; execute the mission, screw personal safety.
Reggie had never been all about that. It only got worse after the Augmentation. Now, when his body told him to run, he fucking ran. Fighting the ache in his shoulders, he reached the door as Winston got ready to swing down for more. With a grunt, he tossed a bag in front of Winston, nearly knocking him off his feet.
"Stow that one!" he shouted. His senses flared and dust kicked only a few feet away, the roar of the engines drowning the shot and the impact. He tossed the other bag in and rolled into the cargo area. Winston tried to step around him to the open door.
"Hell, no! You really need me to say?" Reggie held up all ten fingers.
Goddamnit. He could read Winston's lips above the engines. He turned to secure the cargo door as Winston raced to the cockpit.
Full throttle, and Reggie stumbled drunkenly into the copilot's seat. They raced toward the pickup. Winston sat back, tight-lipped, lost in the trance of instruments and the feel of the plane through the yoke. Another sudden pull in his gut, closer this time. Reggie ducked in his seat, his hands in front of him. Muzzles flashed from the oncoming truck and the cockpit window spider-webbed.
"Short flight to the Caribbean, we'll touch down at fifteen hundred," Winston spoke with all the concern of a commercial pilot over an intercom. Reggie closed his eyes and sank back into the cold dampness of his shirt—the humidity no longer to blame.
***
Reggie stepped into his house and let his bug-out bag hit the tile with a satisfying crack. He closed the door on the white middle-class fakery behind him. Picket fences and station wagons dressed up to make people appear more civilized.
Only reason he didn't mind living here was because the nice white folk usually perpetrated their crazy shit behind closed doors. Once you closed your door, you became part of that illusion.
That wasn't so where he grew up. You lived there. The people, the streets, they demanded it and there was no avoiding it. After the Augmentation, he couldn't go back.
Fear ruled him. Controlled his every thought. Those streets would drive him crazy.
Reggie had known plenty of fear before. Growing up in North Lawndale, that was a daily medicine. You never showed it to nobody because fear was weakness and the gangs there weeded that shit out like a pack of dogs. Guns, drugs. He had left all that behind.
Or so he'd thought.
He slid the top bolt on the door into the harness. Routine cargo flight, my ass. He fumbled the chain into the slot and levered the deadbolt. Finally, he flicked the latch closed and thumbed the lock on the doorknob.
That was the last damn time he was answering that fucking pager.
He sighed and shuffled to the refrigerator. Door open, he stared at the white takeout boxes piled on the shelves. When his eyes fell on the Kung Pao, third from the left, he felt that feeling. He groped toward the back and slid the box out, tossing it in the trash.
"No Chinese tonight." He pried open a box of pizza and dragged out a slice.
A week in the fridge had left it dense and spongy, but he ate it anyway. He slipped a coke out of the door and let it close.
Years ago, Reggie's father had talked him into volunteering for the service. There had been tests to develop the next generation of Augment long before Force Zero. Those tests had paid his grandfather well, and his dad, trying to find steady work before he gave up, remembered. "Get some honest work," his dad had said. "Keep off the streets."
"Too bad you couldn't take your own damn advice" Reggie mumbled.
He stood in the darkness, washing down the pizza with his coke. He relished every syrupy, rich mouthful. A week on MREs, waiting for orders in a burned out warehouse, would do that to you. He got another slice.
He wondered what would happen if he didn't go. Forget wondering. Next time they called, he'd refuse to answer. Or he'd answer and tell them to find another nigger to save their sorry asses.
He ate while watching the front door in the wedge of light offered by the fridge. When he was done, he slammed the rest of his coke and crossed the room. They'd call again. And he didn't care.
***
Reggie woke up staring into the pitch black of his bedroom. That feeling was building in his stomach and prodding at his chest. He held his breath and waited for the sensation to solidify. Outside the house? Front door? Hall? Maybe someone had seen him out on his run and called the cops. A lump of coal in their snowflakes.
As the sensation danced in his gut, he found himself focused on a familiar point on his nightstand.
He'd learned to sleep through most things. He'd grown up downtown with a siren lullaby and the shouts of neighbors with nowhere to be in the mornings. Even here in the deathly quiet of suburbia, the neighbor's dog often felt the urge to yap incessantly at all hours. He wondered what the mutt felt was so damn important. "I'm shittin'! I'm shittin' in the yard!"
Still, he could tune out all that noise and get his sleep, no problem.
But nothing could tune out the danger sense.
His pager danced across the nightstand. As always, impending doom had woken him long before the call. He kept the pager on vibrate because the terror burst like a bubble if the ringer sounded.
Naw, he was done with that mess. For good. He rolled over on his side. The pager rumbled a few more angry bursts then fell silent.
His bed was warm. Outside, winter was clinging to the spring nights, and regardless how safe and boring his neighborhood was, there wasn't any good that would come from him wandering around out there after dark.
The pager rattled again. He spun and swiped it from the nightstand. A new number, always a new number. He picked up the phone and dialed.
"What?"
"We have to talk."
This time though, he had a reply other than his scripted answer. "So let's talk, then. I'm not coming in. I quit."
"We'll have brunch." Winston's voice sounded mildly irritated as he continued with the usual script.
"Brunch" was his whiter-than-white code for "You must leave your house and visit the dead drop site under the bridge in the park."
"Have your brunch with your damn self." Reggie said. "I'm not going."
Silence and the scripted conversation was gone. "Reggie, don't do this. You've got to go."
"Hell to the motherfucking no. You deaf? I'm done. I want out."
"It doesn't work that way."
"Then tell me how it works. You snap your fingers and I come? I ain't your dog."
"You don't understand. They need you to come in or—"
"Or what?"
"I'll have to file a report."
"File it."
He slammed the phone onto the cradle and tossed the pager across the room to shatter in the darkness. He jerked the covers back over himself. Bullshit. No way he was getting out of bed this time. They'd just need to mix up a new danger detector.
<
br /> He lay there staring into the dark searching for a feeling of satisfaction that never came. Scenes of those bags full of coke haunted him. Kids unloading a damn arsenal from the plane. Not kids, they were all at least teenagers—"old enough to ride" his friends back in the day would say. Or maybe dumb enough to. His dad had made him promise to keep away from drugs, but he owed it to his mom to follow through.
It swelled in his chest again.
He thought of the pager. It had to be in pieces on the floor. No more requests for him to throw himself into war zones, or in front of assassin's bullets, or check a damn drug plane for bombs before takeoff.
He'd gotten used to the freelancing life, as much of a lie as that was. He could shut out the crazy world, order decent food over the phone, and collect his pay in non-sequential hundred dollar bills. Only worry about going active a few times a month. Clench his cheeks and ride it out. He couldn't do that anymore after the last mission.
The tension in his chest continued to rise.
At first it was a steady tug, not more than a two—shopping under the scrutinizing eyes of the pasty dude at the record store. The tug became a pull. A visit to the old neighborhood, where he didn't know the signs or the right colors to wear. Danger on the cusp of violence. Next, his heart skipped like scratched vinyl and began pounding a ferocious beat. His breaths came quick and shallow.
He needed air.
Ten. Eleven. Worse than any mission he'd ever been asked to go on. Reggie felt like the world was closing in around him. He couldn't trace the fear to any particular point in space. It was big. Everywhere.
He needed air.
Half-dressed, he stumbled down the hall to the entryway. He pressed damp palms on the door and checked the bottled view of his porch through the peephole. Dark and empty, he tried to see the sky. A plane on a collision course? A damn meteor come to wipe out him and all the quiet, crazy white folks in the neighborhood? He couldn't see.
He tore open the locks and latches and burst into the night. Cold air seared his lungs and he drank it in with deep mouthfuls. The sky was empty and while the danger sense still squeezed at his core, he was no longer suffocating under the weight.
He rushed inside, leaving the door wide open. Tearing through his nightstand, he threw on a pair of sweats and a hooded pullover. He jammed his bare feet into his sneakers and raced outside, slamming the door behind him.
By the time he reached the dead drop, the place where he'd find the coded instructions for his next mission, the crushing fear had all but faded. When the container with the message touched his hand, the fear was gone.
Sunlight splashed the sky, making a thin line beneath the stars. Other people were out now, getting in their morning run, and he cinched his hood tight around his face so only the white fog of his breath stuck out. He fell in with the foot traffic and began to jog.
He took a different route back home, like they'd taught him. He was supposed to be looking for surveillance, making sure he hadn't been followed by reporters, spies, or enemy Augments. Normally he didn't bother, because he'd know if he'd been followed, but he needed the time to clear his head.
The street he turned onto was starting to wake with the rest of the city. More commuters began to fill the sidewalks and roadways, all trying to get a jump on a day spent behind desks or crowding around conference tables. He couldn't do that shit. Dad was right, the Army had been his only way off the streets.
Once the Army figured out who his grandfather was, they were after him to sign up for the program.
It wasn't like Gramps ever got powers from all the time he spent with the Army, not that Reggie knew of anyway. The cancer took him early, and he'd always thought it was because of the process. Is that what the overwhelming fear was about? Would the program kill him just as fast as the streets he'd left behind?
Reggie headed back home to decode the message. A flight out in the early morning. He had time. He left for the bus station to catch the line uptown.
***
The charged sensation under his skin started the minute he stepped off the L. A steady two, maybe a three. He'd transferred from the bus to the train and watched the old neighborhood crawl by his window. Not much had changed. Empty lots littered with trash. Warehouses, factories, businesses from a forgotten other age sat derelict and hollow against the sky, their walls painted with scrawled letters and signs to mark territory or declare a freedom offered in name alone.
He recognized a few of the signs. Most were new. He tried mapping the boundaries as the train pulled into the station and panic set in. The borders made no sense. Everything must be worse than when he left, so when his senses took hold, told him to get back on the train, he nearly did.
Knowing the only thing he had to go back to was a job that wasn't really far from these streets was what got him off to leave the platform.. Besides, he only needed to go a few blocks.
He kept his hood up and his eyes on his feet when he left the platform. Being a stranger or being recognized could be bad. Residents were suspicious of strangers and, in the other case, he was his father's son.
Curious stares fell on him from passing cars and people out on their stoops. The neighborhood around his suburban house became a ghost town from nine to five. Here, there was nowhere to work, but these guys weren't unemployed. With every passing look, his danger sense grew.
A block in and it spiked. The driver of a passing car stared hard. Reggie kept walking with his head up now to find alleys or doorways where he could duck and hide. He couldn't run yet. You'd trigger instincts much older than the cracked graystone buildings that lined the streets.
Brakes squeaked and he heard the car whine into reverse. His senses stayed steady, maybe a four, so he kept his cool. No bullets from this car. Not yet.
"Soldier boy."
Reggie thought he recognized the voice. Richer and heavier than when he'd last heard it, he wanted to turn his head but resisted.
"Don't know what you talking about." Reggie let the drawl of the street creep into his words. It came back like a reflex.
"You Reggie, Playboy's kid."
He didn't let his feet shuffle like they might when a person was caught off-guard but kept smooth steps, eyes straight ahead. Still no imminent danger, just the building feeling. This guy wouldn't do the damage but he might report it to someone who would. He kept trying to match that grown-up voice to a name, and the past finally answered.
"Easy P."
"The one and only."
Easy was slung out the open window with one hand on the wheel. Tongue dragging, he craned his neck to the rear as he wove his way down the street. Reggie stopped and Easy overshot him. He disappeared through the window to slip the car in drive and pull up to the curb.
"I hear you was in the Army or some shit."
"Been outta that for a while."
"Long time for you to be coming back. Why you here? Family reunion?"
Reggie knew he was digging for information, stuff he'd report back to whoever ran his gang, and didn't see a reason not to tell him the truth. Only family he had here was his mom. They all knew where she lived. "Just visiting."
"Yeah, I bet."
Reggie shrugged. Easy was looking everywhere but him. Dark skin and glassy eyes, the kid he remembered looked worn and ragged. Easy'd been an athletic teenager with a smile the ladies loved. None of that was left.
He was afraid, Reggie could see that much. Nice day, windows down on the beat-up Olds, and he was sweating through his T-shirt. His hands gripped the wheel, tight. He'd guess a four or a five, even, but if Easy was really in mortal danger, Reggie was close enough that he'd be in the line of fire. He would've sensed it too.
He'd forgotten what that was like. To be ruled by a fear you couldn't sense.
"How long you gonna be around?" asked Easy.
"Don't know."
"We always looking for soldiers."
"Who's we?" Reggie's question finally got Easy to fix on him.
"Vice L
ords." His eyes returned to roving the streets. "Don't listen to any of that other shit. Place be crawling with wannabe thugs and gang bangers. You only bang with us, you hear? Tell your family you with us."
Reggie nodded and tried to hide the confusion. Tell his mom? Everyone knew she had no love for the gangs.
A three-fingered sign and Easy sped away. Reggie's skin maintained that constant hum. If he was swimming in fear, Easy was drowning.
***
Dark water stains streaked the graystone house and cracks fissured the porch. It could've been one of the derelict structures he'd seen from the train, not the house where he grew up. Instead of boards, iron bars covered the windows.
Reggie raised a hand to rap on the screen door but stopped. He wasn't sure the best way to go about this. How he could keep from telling her, well, anything. He wasn't supposed to mention the program, but she'd drag it out of him like she always did. You didn't say no to Momma, you said yes, ma'am.
Curtains shifted in the house across the street. Everyone always in everyone else's business. He couldn't stand out here any longer. The screen door rattled as he knocked. "Momma, it's me."
A few moments passed, long and silent, and the floor creaked inside. The peephole shadowed and he heard the lock slide. When the door opened, it caught on the chain.
"Reggie?" his Momma called through the crack.
The door slammed again and he heard the chain fumble and click before swinging open.
She stared for a moment. Reggie smiled, a slow crawl he didn't mean to appear pained. At first, she didn't return the smile. Her dark eyes held a suspicion, an odd expression he couldn't read. Her hair, always curled nice and tight to her scalp, had grayed at the temples and grew in an uneven frizz. She looked tired. Her thoughts far away. He'd been wrong to come here after so long.
In the next instant, a grin split her face and her eyes lit. "Reggie!" she said again, this time in a voice he recognized. He sighed as she flung herself toward him and he stumbled under her embrace.
