Floodgate

by Johnny Shaw

  “We have to go,” I screamed. The roof beginning its slow collapse.

  She opened the last stall. No horse exited. She stared into the space. Pulled the pistol. Fired. Twice. Walked past me to the street. Eyes red, watering. Smoke and pain.

  “Broke its leg. Panicked. Fell on its foal,” she said. “Mother and child.”

  “You saved most of them.”

  “I doubt it.”

  One horse remained in the street. Confused. Trapped or resigned to death. Grazed on asphalt. Another orphan trying to survive.

  The girl approached. Spoke softly. Cooed. The horse bucked, front legs kicking. Reflex. She stood her ground. Unflinching. The beast’s heart wasn’t in it. She stroked its side.

  Behind us, the roof of the stable gave. Sparks and flames billowed from the door. The horse jumped. Retreated. The girl started over.

  Soaking horse blankets in a trough, I watched. Admired her patience. With chaos all around, she gave the animal her calm. Won its trust.

  The crow’s flight to the Turkish baths was a street on fire. A frightened boy and a frightened girl on a frightened horse. Our destination four blocks away. Buildings burning on both sides. Windows exploded. Flames danced. Tires of cars melted to asphalt. Waves of heat.

  My first time on a horse. A city kid. As scared of the ride as the fire. A regular Tom Mix. I grabbed the girl’s waist. She gave the horse a smack on the ass. We flew into the inferno.

  Wrapped in the wet blankets. Scarves at our noses and mouths. We rode through the corridor of fire. Full gallop. Heat singed the hair off the backs of my exposed hands. Skin bubbled. Only four blocks. Might as well have been four miles. One minute of torture. I never felt pain like that pain.

  Foam flew from the crazed horse’s mouth. Running true, straight. For us. For her.

  Past the fires. A street at peace. Slowing. Turning the corner.

  Greeted by an army. Twenty men stood ready. Rifle barrels behind beer barrels. Angry eyes behind stacked debris. Overturned carts. Burnt-out shells of cars. The horse stopped too quick. Both thrown. Over the top. I sprawled on the stones. Lips, nose, face torn. The girl on top of me. The horse fled. Its duty done. Deserved a reward. Roses or a quick death.

  The girl was quick to rise. Reached for the gun. In a daze, but I knew it wasn’t the play. I put a hand on hers. Shook my head. She got the message.

  The girl helped me up. One hand in hers, I held up the other to the militia. “It’s Rocky. Rocky Colombo.”

  A long silence. A muffled discussion. Then a laugh.

  “Nobody shoot. I know that kid.” Sal walked from behind the barricade.

  The girl and I held hands. Facing an army.

  “The stones on this one,” Sal said. “The kid brought a goddamn date to Armageddon.”

  1986

  CHAPTER 13

  Stack Hamilton: “Stick with me, doll. Sometimes the turns are sharp, but I always stay on the road.”

  Maxine Killian: “What if it’s a dead end, Stack?”

  Stack Hamilton: “Then we won’t have to worry about any surprises, baby. We’ll know how it all ends.”

  —From the movie Auction City Rumble, written and directed by Dmitri Horst for Highline Films (1957)

  Andy had no idea how long he had slept, but he hadn’t felt that well rested in months. For one thing, the bed in the holding cell was a thousand times more comfortable than his sleeping bag. Also, they shot him up with that same magic formula that made everything slippery, then brightly colored, then gone. He would have to get the recipe. Being sedated twice in one day couldn’t be good for his body, but counting sheep had nothing on quality narcotics.

  Back at Gray’s mansion, the standoff hadn’t lasted long. Andy’s arm grew tired from holding the gun, a symbol of impotence he didn’t want to dwell on.

  The old pickpocket’s claim to be his father confused a confusing situation. With everything else going on—the whole murdering-the-deputy-police-commissioner thing—he chose to let that little piece of bullshit hang in the air.

  With his gun dipping from strain, he stopped listening to whatever nonsense the old man and Kate Girard were saying. He couldn’t care. He had more pressing matters, like choosing between Mexico and Canada for his lam years. Was Spanish or French easier to learn?

  Andy stood at the murder scene in the house that he had broken into and held the murder weapon covered with fingerprints that came from his fingers. A first-year law student could get the death penalty. On top of the overwhelming physical evidence, he had motive and a history of strange behavior. And let’s not forget, the cops hated him. He was guilty, friendless, and completely screwed.

  The thought of the electric chair entered his brain. An execution was wishful thinking, though. He wouldn’t live to see a trial. You don’t kill a cop in Auction City and not get suicided in your jail cell. If he made it into custody, he’d be hanging from a knotted sheet by day’s end. But not before he was beaten mercilessly.

  Andy reacted to the situation with dignity and poise. He swore all the swears he knew, fired three shots in the air, and made a run for it. He didn’t make it far. Into the next room and down a hall. Maybe thirty yards. The bald woman chucked something heavy at his legs. It turned out to be a big Bible that she’d picked up. Tripping on the word of God was an ignoble way to be stopped. And a painful one. Literally falling from grace.

  The bald woman and the one-armed woman took his gun and dragged him back into the library by his feet. He struggled ineffectively, a fish by its tail. With little effort, they bound his hands and blindfolded him. It was easy to make out the voices, each accent and tone distinct.

  “What happens now? Do we keep him tied up forever?” Kate Girard asked. “Mac’s going to be livid. What do we do with him?”

  “Dump him in the river?” the Japanese kid said.

  “Handing him over to the cops would be the smartest thing,” Kate Girard said. “Salvage our deal.”

  “I won’t let that happen,” the old man said. “Take him to the factory. I’ll talk to Mac. We’ll figure it out.”

  With one firm hand on each elbow, they guided Andy through the house and outside. He was loaded into a van or truck or some other big, open vehicle. It was cold and smelled like artificial strawberry.

  It occurred to Andy that he hadn’t been gagged. He considered screaming, but his throat was scratchy and the manses in Gallows Terrace were too far apart to make it productive. The rich liked their privacy. He worked instead on loosening his restraints.

  “That ain’t a granny knot, boss,” the Japanese kid said. “You try too hard, you’ll mess up your wrists.”

  Andy stopped fiddling with the knot. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Why do people always ask that? Like you expect me to answer, ‘We’re driving you to the abandoned candy factory at 1487 Riverfront Drive. And if you require any other details about your abduction, please don’t hesitate to ask.’”

  “More like 6243 Holt.”

  “That was good work.” Kate Girard’s voice from somewhere behind him. “Most people don’t see an omission as a clue, follow a trail that’s not there.”

  “But I don’t know what I found. I have no idea who you people are.”

  “You don’t know anything about Floodgate? Never asked anyone about it?” Kate Girard asked.

  “Never heard that name before,” Andy said. “What’s a Floodgate?”

  “You’re an awful liar,” she said. “You asked me about it.”

  “A word I heard. That’s it.”

  “You don’t know how lucky you are to have Rocco as a father,” Kate Girard said.

  “Are you crazy people? Is that it? Are you escaped lunatics?”

  “Aren’t we all a little bit crazy?” The Japanese kid again.

  “Was that a joke? You’re making goddamn jokes?” Andy said, furious. “The list of shit that I’ve gone through tonight. I got punched, drugged, had my shoes stolen—my shoes!—Champ disappeared—now
apparently you have her, which doesn’t calm me—a sniper held me at gunpoint, I killed a guy, all my stuff was robbed, I hid in a pigeon coop for hours.”

  “You’re going to be pissed off about this,” the Japanese kid said, “but if you’re talking about the sniper at your apartment, that was a RadioShack laser pointer. No gun.”

  The van started, and they were on the move. Andy couldn’t gauge any sense of direction or speed. He was on a flat surface, sliding around a little, often caught by a hand on the arm or just allowed to smack into the side.

  “We’re not the bad guys,” Kate Girard said.

  “I have to assume you said that with a straight face. I don’t know because I’m blindfolded and bound in a van.”

  “I didn’t say we were the good guys either,” she said. “Gray was a homicidal sociopath. Leader of the most bloodthirsty gang in the city. The ACPD are vicious and dangerous. Vicious and dangerous people need to be neutralized.”

  “Was that supposed to sound ominous?” Andy asked. “Because it did.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Again, and I can’t stress this enough, I’m tied up in the back of a van. Pretty much anything you say is scary. If you said, ‘Do you like cotton candy?’ I might shit myself.”

  “Do you like cotton candy?” the Japanese kid asked.

  “The police are even worse than you imagine,” Kate Girard said, “but even a corrupt organization can get more corrupted. Hell, look at Congress.”

  The van took a few more sharp turns. Andy slid against the side.

  “You really have to stop believing what you think you know and start seeing what you don’t know but think you might,” she said.

  And on that bullshit line of reasoning, their conversation was over.

  Andy didn’t think he’d been out more than a few hours, but that was only a best guess considering how foggy the world remained. For all he knew, it could be the distant future. If it was 1999 or some other strange, futuristic time, he would have thought that the toilets would look different. More streamlined. Sleeker. Made of advanced alloys. Radio controlled. Something.

  Toilets were on his mind because that’s the first thing he saw. Prone on a cot, he had opened his eyes to a spotless metal commode. The only other piece of furniture in the room. The dent on the seat rim was disconcerting. There was a story behind that dent, one that Andy hoped he never heard.

  He turned his head to find the door. A dull throb pounded behind his eyes. The door wasn’t futuristic either—a regular door with a small, wire-meshed window. The face peering in disappeared when Andy turned. He sat up and gave himself a visual tour of the eight-foot-square room.

  The only way in or out was the door. The vents were too small for any duct shenanigans. He could maybe fit one leg up to the thigh but didn’t really see where that got him. He scraped at the wall with his fingernail, but it was solid something. He was trapped. No material to construct a weapon. A metal toilet made for an awkward bludgeon even if he figured out how to detach it. A thin blanket on the bed. A roll of toilet paper on the ground. No pillow, toothbrush, mirror, or sink. They could have at least left him a magazine. Even his barber, Walker Deloach, who was kind of a jerk, had the courtesy to leave a stack of Easyriders to thumb through while waiting for his crew cut and shave.

  He allowed himself a brief moment to be frightened. He felt his heart race, his legs tingle, and an intense fatalism rise. He acknowledged it and then pushed it down. The fear was real, but he could control it. He didn’t want to have a heart attack and die before they had a chance to kill him.

  When the door opened, it was the one-armed woman. She wore a fresh tank top, Dickies, and combat boots. Her tattoos erupted from under her shirt, hints to more beneath. Butterflies, birds, vines. A bandana rested low on her forehead, just above her penciled-on eyebrows. She wore no prosthetic on the stump.

  “Your acting sucks,” she said. “Your eyes are open and you’re looking right at me.”

  Andy felt awful attacking a woman. And an amputee on top of it. A new low. But illegal abduction and imprisonment brought out the gender equality in a person’s violent limits. He sat up quickly, tried to toss the blanket over her head and lunge forward.

  The blanket fell short, drifted to the ground between them. He made it to his feet but never got to the lunge part. The woman gave Andy a straight jab to the nose. It sunk his battleship. He tasted blood and breathed pain as he lost his footing and landed on his butt.

  “Easy,” she said, incredibly calm. A woman who didn’t get mad when attacked was a woman to fear. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Andy gave a snort of a laugh, some blood bubbling in his right nostril. “Of course you don’t.”

  “If you can’t take a punch, don’t start fights,” she said. “No more stupid.”

  Andy nodded, grabbed some toilet paper from the roll, and shoved wads in each nostril.

  “You know why I hit you?” she asked.

  Andy nodded.

  “And it’s not going to happen again?”

  Andy shook his head.

  “Then we’re good. I’m Pilar,” she said. “Follow me.”

  Pilar turned her back to him and walked out the room, leaving the door open. He followed, entering a long hallway that led past a series of doors. Looking into the small windows, Andy saw more small rooms. In the only other occupied room, a bloodied man sat on a cot with the back of his head against the wall and his eyes closed. Despite the discoloration of his face from bruising, he recognized the man right away.

  “That’s the guy that tried to kill me,” Andy said, stopping at the door.

  “Yeah.”

  “What is this place?”

  Pilar didn’t answer, holding open a door at the end of the hall. He gave the man in the cell one last look. He opened his eyes and turned just as Andy ducked out of view.

  He walked past Pilar into a conference room, a long table in the center. A half-dozen chairs. She pointed to one end of the table. Andy sat. A sixteen-millimeter projector sat behind him.

  “Should I list my questions alphabetically or by order of importance?” Andy said. “I don’t know where to start. Maybe with, where am I? Who are you people? Is there coffee? Why am I here? What was that Empire Strikes Back ‘I am your father’ bullshit? Where is Champ? We can start with those, but I have more.”

  “You’re going to watch a movie.” She walked to the opposite end of the room. “I’ll get you some water. Coffee if it’s already made, but I ain’t brewing no fresh pot.”

  “That answers one of my questions. The least important one.”

  “That’s what the movie is for.”

  “Is this for real? You’re going to show me a movie?”

  The woman pulled down a screen. “Only a few people have seen this. Consider yourself special. Shut up and watch.”

  She walked behind him, turned on the projector, and cut the lights. The SMPTE leader counted down. Five. Four. Three. Two. Pop.

  FLOODGATE: THE LAST LINE OF DEFENSE

  EXT. AUCTION CITY SKYLINE - NIGHT

  The lights of the city shine over the Thief River. The King Olaf Bridge glows. The title (no production credits) appears over the image. Followed by the Floodgate symbol and the following message:

  PENALTIES FOR UNAUTHORIZED VIEWING WILL BE SEVERE. VERY SEVERE. IF YOU ARE UNSURE WHETHER YOU ARE AUTHORIZED OR NOT, YOU ARE NOT. STOP WATCHING IMMEDIATELY. YOU HAVE TWENTY SECONDS.

  BLACK SCREEN

  Twenty seconds of black leader. Accompanied by pleasant music, possibly Monteverdi.

  EXT. UNDER A BRIDGE - NIGHT

  A HOBO (46) roasts a hot dog over an open campfire, his bindle on the ground next to him. He takes a pull from a jug marked XXX. He looks up, double-taking as if seeing the camera for the first time.

  HOBO

  Oh, hey there, young pup. If you’re watching this, then you’re who and where you’re supposed to be. If not, may God have mercy on your soul. Well, get yourself warm by
the fire. This railrider has a tale to tell. And from the look on your face, you’re a-searchin’ for answers. It’s a winding story, so get cozy and I’ll cover the whats, hows, wheres, and whys. Oh, and the whens. It all starts in nineteen and twenty-nine, a year filled with turmoil and strife.

  EXT. CITY STREET 1929 - DAY (SEPIA)

  Cars and carriages compete for space on the busy street. The sidewalks are filled with people. Businesses bustle with activity. A streetcar crawls past. A beat cop twirls his baton.

  HOBO (V.O.)

  For most citizens of Auction City, life was simple. Work and family. Industry and trade thrived, and whether you made your buck honestly or otherwise, there was a place at the table. The Great Gateway, America’s Gibraltar, Auction City welcomed all. Enough for everybody. Until the world changed. And not for the better.

  A series of SPINNING NEWSPAPERS reveal the headlines: WALL ST. PANIC AS STOCKS CRASH; BILLIONS LOST; UNEMPLOYMENT TRIPLES; STREET VIOLENCE ON THE RISE.

  HOBO (V.O.)

  It didn’t take long for the muckety-mucks and waistcoats to screw it up for everyone. Greed hit like a grenade. Started big and got bigger. Those who once shared a dollar now fought over a dime.

  The NEWSPAPER headlines read: GANG WAR ERUPTS; AUCTION CITY BURNS; THOUSANDS DEAD; POLICE HAVE LOST CONTROL; US ARMY REFUSES TO ENTER CITY.

  HOBO (V.O.)

  Everyone in Auction City knows about the riots and the fires. Thousands died. The city burned. The Great Gang War. What came to be known as the Flood. When it was over, the city had changed. The aftermath still felt today.

  The NEWSPAPER catches on fire, flames filling the screen.

  CHAPTER 14

  Criminality is the best and often only way for the powerless to experience power. Sometimes the only way to be heard is to shout.