by Nat Kozinn
“Yeah, you’d have to be crazy to blame anyone but Gorshev. I certainly don’t know anyone who’d be that nuts,” Alexis said.
“That’s all I’ve got,” David said flatly.
And Alexis couldn’t argue, so she put her pen down.
“You know, we never discussed how much I’d pay you for this.”
“I guess I just assumed it’d be the standard rate, but you’re right—you never agreed to anything,” David said. He waited for Alexis to break his heart.
“How much do you need?”
“It’s not for me. It’s for the church,” David said.
14
It was the dead of night and the street was empty and dark save for three figures illuminated by small WormLight lanterns. Mario and Linden pulled a large wagon loaded with four Pho-Plastic barrels of Manna down the street. David walked along with them, pushing with one hand. The dolly was homemade, pieced together from the scraps of other broken tools. The bed of the cart was assembled from reclaimed two-by-fours in various stages of rot. There were eight wheels, but none of them were the exact same size. The designer had tried to address this issue when creating this contraption by placing the axles at different depths, but his results were mixed at best. Adding to the difficulty was the street, which, like virtually all streets in the Metro Area, was littered with potholes, some of which looked to extend down the depths of hell—the results of thirty years with no repaving. The cart limped down the street like a wounded horse until it came to a halt over one of those aforementioned potholes. Mario and Linden pulled with all their might, but the cart would not move.
“We’re stuck again,” Mario said.
David got in position behind the cart and put his hands underneath the bed. He lifted, and slowly the cart rose up enough to roll over the impasse. It was not easy for David, which was saying something.
“There you go,” David said.
Linden got back to trying to pull the cart, but it would not move. Mario was not helping.
“This is stupid. It would go a lot faster if you just pulled this thing. My hands are killing me,” the boy said.
“What? And rob you of this important character-building opportunity? I wouldn’t dream of it,” David said.
“Yeah, but you said we trying to do this without anybody seeing us. It’d be a lot quicker and quieter if you just did it by yourself. Maybe if Scales had shown up to help like he was supposed to, we could do it, but who knows where he is. I know our man over here isn’t going to say nothing, but he agrees.”
Linden didn’t say anything. He never did, but he cocked his head to the side and looked at David—the body language sign for asking a question.
“Okay, smart asses, are you going to make me admit it? I don’t think you’ll be happy you did,” David said.
Linden and Mario both replied with blank stares. The explanation should have been obvious. After all, the two of them wouldn’t have a hope of pulling the cart by themselves. It weighed more than half a ton.
“Seriously? You don’t get it?” David asked, but they seriously did not. “I can’t do it by myself.”
“What do you mean?” Mario asked.
“From the mouth of babes,” David said with a sigh. “The whole cart has got to weigh, what, somewhere around a thousand pounds. Manna is heavy. If I really had to, I could probably manage it on my own. But we’re walking almost half a mile. It would take a hell of a lot out of me. You two have still got youth on your side. This will actually make you stronger. I mean, not tomorrow—tomorrow you’ll probably be too sore to walk—but in the long term.”
David’s attempt to lighten the mood fell flat; the tension remained as heavy as the cart. Mario took position in front of the handle and then they began pulling again. They worked in silence, which was unpleasant but did have the fortunate side effect of dampening the noise they were making. It sped the process up as well. Mario did not take any more breaks. In fact, he did not stop pulling until the cart arrived at the back door of Saint Mary’s church. Sister Berta was there waiting.
“Come on, come on. Hurry up before anybody sees you guys,” Sister Berta said as she tried to shoo them in through the large double doors.
“Too late for that!” a voice yelled from down the alley.
A group walked up, revealed by the WormLights from the church. It was Big H, and he was not alone. He had new friends David had never seen before. All five were very large, and each one was covered in various tattoos; some even had them on their faces—a sure sign that gainful employment was not one of their life goals. Two of the thugs were carrying baseball bats, and another had a two-by-four. The other two had large knives. Big H had a small handgun in his waistband. He swung his hips while he walked, drawing attention to the pistol.
“Hey there, Savior, Sister whatever, the retard, and the little bitch. What you guys got there?” Big H asked.
“Preparation H, seems you’ve made some new friends. They look like some fine, upstanding citizens,” David said.
“Them? They run with the 49ers. They for real. Just like me now. We joined up. Official now. Hood Clowns now under the 49ers. That means they rep us and we rep them,” Big H said.
“I understood about a quarter of what you said, but I think I get the gist of it. You’ve got a new boss now. The question is, what are you guys doing here? It’s awful early in the morning for a baseball game, and you don’t have any gloves or a ball,” David said.
“We here for what’s on that cart behind you. You let us take that, and we’ll be on our way and nothing bad needs to happen to nobody,” Big H answered.
“This is food for the kitchen. It’s going to feed the less fortunate, not some young punks who are too lazy to get a job,” Sister Berta said. She had spent a few years teaching Catholic school before the Plagues, and her tone showed her experience.
“Money is what it is. And no money should be coming into the hood without the 49ers getting a piece,” Big H said.
“Come on, H. It’s a church. You really got to be messing around with a church? That’s too much, man,” Mario said.
“What’s that? I must be hearing things,” Big H said and looked around like he couldn’t see Mario. “It sounded like a ghost or something. Like it came from some little bitch who wasn’t man enough to run with a real crew, so now he spends his nights with a has-been and a retard, moving barrels around so he can help feed the trash. It couldn’t have been that, though, ’cause anybody who was too big of a bitch to run with us would have to be too big of a bitch to step to us.”
Mario shut his mouth and looked at the same spot on the ground Linden had been staring at since the conflict started. David and Sister Berta were still not impressed. They met the gang’s stares head-on.
“As much as I’d like to give you what you deserve, I’m sure Sister Berta would want me to think of what Jesus would do, and that means letting you punks walk away. So go on. Get out of here,” David said and shooed them away. “And don’t think about coming back later on. You won’t be able to lift the barrels by yourselves, and even if you figure that out, that would be a bridge too far for Sister Berta. She’d let me come after you.”
“Damn straight. I think even Jesus would tell you to smack the other cheek, just like your mothers should have years ago,” Sister Berta said in a tone nastier than anyone thought she had in her.
“There you have it. So why don’t you spare Sister Berta any crisis of faith she might have and hit the road? Especially considering it doesn’t seem like it would be that big of a crisis,” David said and took a step toward the gang.
Big H took his own step forward. “You know, Savior of Seattle, it seems to me like you are puffing your chest and running your mouth because you don’t got the goods to back it up. Sure, you used to be strong enough to move buildings or whatever the hell you did, but now? You need a retard and a punk from the block to help you pull a freaking cart down the street. I think you’re hoping we walk away because you’re goi
ng to be in real trouble if we don’t.”
The group behind Big H started to fan out and move forward. David’s eyes darted around, taking stock of the men. He didn’t have to be Sun Tzu to know they were trying to surround him.
“Didn’t we do this a couple of weeks ago, Preparation H? You’re right. I’m not what I once was. Time does that to us all. You’ll get there eventually, assuming you smarten up enough to live that long. You saw what I did to that knife. You want that to be your face instead? You know what? If you really want the Manna, why don’t you take a barrel of it? Here, it only weighs about three hundred pounds.”
David reached over to one of the barrels on the cart, grabbed it with two hands, and then lifted it over his head. He turned toward the gang so they could see the massive barrel in place over his head like a dead lifter at the Olympics, but as he moved to place the barrel back down, he stumbled. The barrel fell out of his hands and landed on the ground with a thud. Everyone watched it roll for a few seconds.
“See that? It’s just like we heard. He’s fronting. We can hurt him, too, so now let’s beat his ass, and then ain’t nobody going to mess with the 49ers,” Big H said, and the gang advanced.
“Get inside,” David yelled to his companions.
Sister Berta and Linden did not need to be asked twice, and they went through the open door behind them. Mario lingered for a moment before David pointed to the door and Mario retreated inside. They closed the door behind them, but Mario stayed at the window.
David stepped forward to meet one of his attackers. The largest of the men stepped forward, holding his long piece of wood. He sported a big grin because, after all, he was about to be known as the man who beat the Savior of Seattle. He wound up and took a massive swing with his two-by-four. David raised his arm to protect himself from the blow. At the moment of impact, the wood cracked cleanly in half, leaving the thug holding the stubby remains. The thug’s smile bled from his face as quickly as the blood drained from his cheeks. He turned around to face his comrades and held his hand up as if to say, “what the hell?”
“Okay, boys, you done with your little tantrum? Ready to run home and take a nap?” David asked.
The thugs did not answer, but they did not move either. They stood frozen in place, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Only Big H was ready to seize the moment. He reached into his waistband, pulled the pistol out, and, in one motion, fired a shot. He clearly had no idea how to aim the gun, but his target was big and beginner’s luck was on his side. The bullet struck David in his right shoulder.
David took one small stumble backward from the force of the impact, but he stayed standing. The bullet did not bounce off as he had hoped, as they had always done before. But the last time he was shot was fifteen years ago. Now the bullet opened up a small hole in his shoulder. David looked down to inspect the wound—or whatever it would be called—but with his angle and the low light, it was hard to tell exactly what had happened.
“Yo, what happened? Did it hit him?” one of the thugs with a bat asked.
“It hit him,” the thug with the broken two-by-four said. “There’s no blood, though. Just a hole.”
“See,” Big H said. “He’s tough, but he ain’t bulletproof no more. Now let’s beat his ass, and everybody’s going to know it was the 49ers who did it.”
Big H stayed back despite his rousing speech. His troops took his words to heart. The four men with bats and knives yelled and charged at David. The thug with the broken piece of wood was a few seconds ahead of his backup and thus left in a precarious position. He took a half-hearted swing with his nub of a club, but before it could connect, David gave him a two-handed shove to the chest that sent the man flying a good twenty feet backward.
Strangely, the thugs were not deterred. It occurred to David that perhaps their bravery was chemically enhanced. Something was wrong with their eyes.
A knife-wielding 49er took a wild swing at David, catching the giant man across the thigh. The knife bent a little, but it also cut a groove in David’s solid skin. David wound up to respond with a punch, but before he could let fly, his was struck across the back by a blow from a bat-wielding thug. The bat was harder than the two-by-four, and the wood held. The blow landed with enough force to push David forward a couple steps.
One of the knife wielders met him with a full-force thrust of his blade. The tip penetrated through David’s skin briefly before it snapped, leaving the wielder holding nothing but a handle. David swiped with his arm. It was not a pretty blow, but he hit with enough force to knock the man five feet sideways.
But then the other bat hit David. This one got him in the side of the head, and although the upward angle of the swing took something away from its power, it was enough to make David’s head spin. He stumbled forward a few steps, and then the other thug with a bat took a swing at David’s legs, sweeping them out from under him. David landed on his back with a crash hard enough to rattle nearby windows.
The man with the still-functional knife then went to work swiping back and forth with his blade like he was a jungle explorer clearing brush. The knife lashed all over David’s chest, cutting more grooves, but there was no blood. David swiped at the knife and knocked the blade from the man’s hand, but not before suffering several deep gashes.
David rolled over onto all fours and started to stand up, but he was knocked back down by a blow from the bat. The two bat-wielding thugs then teed off, bashing David’s back like they were putting in fence posts. They bashed him in the head a few times, too, further muddling David’s senses to the point that he couldn’t even tell where the blows were coming from.
Eventually they stopped, and David just lay there, trying to gather himself. His hairpiece had been knocked off in the fray.
“Look at that! The freak is really bald,” one of the thugs said with a laugh.
“Yo, stand him up,” Big H said.
The two former knife wielders each grabbed one of David’s arms and pushed him to his feet. David was confused enough to think they were helping him up. Once he thought better, he tried to struggle free, but a blow from one of the bats stopped his resistance.
“See, just what I thought. You a has-been. A bald has-been,” Big H said, and he held out his gun.
“Yo, you not going to kill him, are you Big H?” a large thug asked. “We don’t need that kind of heat out here. That’s too far. The pigs will come out.”
Big H stretched to his fullest height to push the muzzle of the gun to David’s head. “I won’t kill him as long as he shows he learned some respect. Now repeat after me. I’m a punk bitch and I never should have stepped to the 49ers.”
David said nothing. Big H whipped him across the face with his pistol.
“What did I say?” Big H repeated.
Just then Mario came rushing out of the church.
“Get off of him!” Mario said, yelling as he barreled head-first toward Big H.
Big H caught a glimpse of Mario and turned and fired a single shot before the boy plowed into him, taking them both to the ground.
David was emboldened by the heroics. He shook his arms like a dog shaking off the rain, tossing the two men holding his arms to the side. One of the men with a bat took a swing and connected with David’s shoulder, but that was only because David had dropped it to swing his fist like a pendulum. It crashed into the thug’s leg, cracking the bone loudly enough for everyone to hear. The injured man let out a deafening scream. The other man with a bat stepped up to the plate with a wild swing, but David met the bat with a swing of his arm. The force of the collision combined with his dense body was enough to finally crack the bat in half. David finished the man off with a shove that sent him flying hard into the wall.
Big H had managed to pull himself free from Mario and get to his feet. The thug lifted up his pistol and took aim at David. David reached out with his right hand, covering and crushing the gun and Big H’s hand right at the moment the young man pulled the trigger
. The bullet could not properly exit the barrel of the gun, but physics demanded the force go somewhere. The force took the form of an explosion, which ripped the gun, and Big H’s hand, to shreds. David’s index and most of this middle finger were blown clean off. His hand did not bleed; it looked like an ancient statue that had surrendered to the ravages of time.
Big H’s hand, in comparison, had been reduced to a bloody stump. The man screamed out in pain and tried desperately to hold in the blood, but it was as if he was trying to dam a river with a single log. Crimson shot out like it came from a fire hydrant.
The two thugs who were still standing and remained relatively unharmed looked at each other. Without speaking a word, they simultaneously decided to get the hell out of there. One of them grabbed the thug with the shattered leg, and the other helped usher Big H away. They had no more witty replies and limped off in silence save for a few groans.
Linden and Sister Berta rushed out from the church.
“David, are you okay?” Sister Berta asked.
But David did not answer. He just stood, swaying slightly. The two then approached Mario, who was lying on the ground.
“Wow, kid. That took some courage. Good on you,” Sister Berta said.
But as she approached the boy, she noticed there was a pool of blood forming around his body.
“Oh no!” she said and rushed over and rolled him over.
