Just then a massive Ugly bumped into Virgil. He was shirtless, with scars and tattoos swirling about his muscular torso. His hands were behind his back and two Lawmen jerked him away from Virgil. One of the Lawmen nodded to Virgil and said, “My apologies, sir.”
The Ugly’s mohawk flopped loosely as he glared at Virgil, then said, “Defective Virgil, the original stick-up-his-ass motherfucker! You know the other boys in denim around here can’t wait ’til the sticks up their asses are as big as yours?” He smiled via a hateful snarl.
Virgil stared at the youth. He recognized him as a long-time Body Ugly, a recruiter who had led countless confused kids into joining the Ugly. Virgil stayed cool; his face was square; flecks of gray in his mustache and crow’s feet at his eyes told of long experience in the field. His direct gaze and gray eyes were simple and honest, and even among Lawmen these were rare virtues to be found in Pontius.
“Jon Klebold,” said Virgil. “When are you going to start wiping your own ass so we don’t have to keep doing it for you?”
“Screw off, Virgin, I shouldn’t even be in this fuck-bucket. They brought me in on rape but I’ve got a hundred witnesses who knows your moms was totally willing.”
Virgil turned to go, ignoring the Ugly as he laughed at his own joke. Behind him, the youth called out, “And the next time I’m in here it’ll be for murdering a Lawman. Hope you got a will all written out, cunt-butt!”
Virgil whirled around, said, “What’s he in here for?”
One of the Lawmen said, “He and some other kids trashed a store. Most of the others got away.”
The Ugly laughed, shaking his head at the pettiness of the crime.
“Put him down for threatening a detective of the Law, too.”
The Lawmen glanced at one another slowly, uneasy at the thought of added paperwork.
“Do it!” said Virgil. One of the Lawmen nodded and returned to the processing desks.
Virgil stalked away from them, then heard the Ugly say, “Y’mean I’m gonna be in here a few extra days? Shit! I got shit t’do, man!”
Virgil walked the dull gray and yellow halls of Precinct Zero, then dragged himself up a set of stairs. He felt old. The raucous noise dimmed as he rose, but he knew it would be there, always, the endless processing. Not the justice he had believed in so long ago. He unconsciously ran a thumb along his handgun nestled at his chest, sleeping inside his suit like a baby at his breast.
He entered the large open space where the other detectives milled about, talking and typing out reports on brittle pages and wiping sleep from eyes and leaning back in chairs, hands on heads, holding in the constant sense of being behind - behind the gangs, behind the chaos, behind the demands of their superiors. And far, far behind any sort of real justice.
Virgil saw Lieutenant Rancis at his desk, sipping coffee with practiced ease but gripping the mug like he was trying to break it apart. He was younger than Virgil, dark-haired and sharp-faced. He did not wear a full Lawman’s mustache but, instead, kept a thin mustache that gave him a roguish air. Totally disrespectable, thought Virgil. He knew Rancis played both sides of the game - and yet he still had to cater to this man, his technical superior who paid lip-service to the Law but had so many side deals going that he may as well have been a Coilman himself. As Virgil caught his eye Rancis glanced away, making a petty show of the importance of his daydreaming.
Virgil saw his friend “Gramps” DeSark, a Senior Detective, passing by. The aged Lawman was wiry and short and had a fat, respectable gray mustache that covered his mouth. Virgil caught his eye and nodded. DeSark stopped, said, “Director wants to see you.”
“Hello to you, too,” said Virgil.
“Well, he wants to see you yesterday,” said DeSark, laughing. He slapped Virgil on the shoulder, said, “You been on vacation?”
Virgil laughed harshly, said, “Might as well have been. That speakeasy I was tracking...”
“Coil, right?”
“Yeah, it was. I finally got it out of a Smith who got roughed up there. So I went there tonight, and I’ll be damned if they didn’t-”
“Up an’ move,” said DeSark, nodding. “Hell, man. That stuffs for beat cops anyway. Send the kids after the kids, that’s how you keep up with ’em!”
Virgil knew he was right. There was a time when he was younger, when he didn’t even have to ask where the speakeasies were, and where the drugs were being peddled. He was on fire and he just knew – he knew by the looks he saw given, the passing of code words and youth party-lingo. That, combined with the practical know-how DeSark had taught him... he disappeared into himself, remembering. He remembered kicking in doors, backup was blocks away, worlds away. Taking in the scene in a moment. Rushing the biggest bouncer and beating his ass, blasting the ceiling, scattering clientele, chasing the pushers out the back, running so fast no one could stop him from catching his man...
“Wake up, young buck!” said DeSark.
Virgil blinked as he returned to the gray halls of Precinct Zero. He nodded to his friend and mentor, then made his way to the Director’s office.
Director Janice was an imposing man. He had shoulders that threatened to burst from his suit, and a wide mustache traveled down and hung from the sides of his beefy jaws. His bald head shone bright yellow and he turned on Virgil like a wild animal as he entered. The mad look remained even as he motioned for Virgil to sit and extended a can of chewing tobacco to him. Virgil stuffed the chaw into his mouth and spit onto the floor at his left side, the polite side.
“Virgil I’m not even gonna ask what you’ve been dickin’ around with ’cause that’s yesterday’s news.”
Virgil didn’t know if he was supposed to laugh or make excuses. He nodded once, curtly.
“Barkus Right-Arm is back in town and the Smith are plenty pissed at him. I’ve got reports of Ugly playing around with some new gadgets they got from some crazy war. I reckon they didn’t share it to Smith liking. Not only that, but did you know both the Ugly Arms got hacked right off?”
“I... heard some talk... nothing quite so direct.”
“Well, they did, and now the Ugly look weak. Probably the Coil don’t give a shit. Probably. But maybe they do. It’s hard to tell with them.”
“What are you saying, sir?”
“I’m saying chances are small - chances are small – but it doesn’t take a big asshole to drop a big shit, you hear me? This whole town could go to war with itself. Smith hitting Ugly, Ugly youth going crazy, Coil taking out Ugly leaders, power vacuums and internal Ugly power struggles - and then us with our thumbs up our asses wondering what went wrong. You get me?” Janice rose and leaned over his desk, staring at Virgil.
“You want me to find out what’s going on?”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself, Virgil. That’s why you’re the detective and I’m just the goddamn Director.” He crashed into his chair and Virgil swore he thought it was going to blast into pieces.
“Where do you want me to start?”
Janice shrugged and raised a brow as if he were dealing with a child.
“I just thought there was some area you might prefer that I...”
“No, Virgil, I’ve already got Rancis and his boys doing that heavy-duty shit. I just want you to sniff out the little cracks he might not notice.”
Virgil rankled at the mention of Rancis and the insinuation that he was more adept at getting things done. Janice waved him away.
“I understand, sir,” said Virgil, rising and turning to go.
“Oh, hell, one more thing before I forget,” said Janice. “Now, the king-piece in this little game is Barkus. If you happen to find him... and bring him back alive - alive, son, alive - we’d have all three gangs eating out of our hand.”
Virgil stopped and thought, Isn’t this the kind of specific focus I was asking about earlier?
“Just you remember, Virg, this city is more stable with the gangs than without.”
That’s the kind of nonsense I’ve n
ever understood, thought Virgil.
“That’s the kind of common sense you’ve never understood,” said Janice. “Just don’t go off half-cocked and try to take on the whole world. You figure out what’s going on in this goddamned city and let me and Rancis take it from there.”
Virgil nodded and left. He noted that he had not said he understood, at the end, and so it would not technically be a lie when, later, he found out what was going on and killed as many evil men as he possibly could. He stroked the gun at his chest once more, because he knew the world would be a better place if he unloaded the weapon into Barkus’s face.
Chapter Seven
One Year in Pontius
All night long Wodan trekked across arid, dusty farmland toward a bright spot on the horizon that was surely Pontius. Lonely, dark houses dotted the landscape, and he often crossed muddy irrigation ditches. The crops looked withered and pathetic. He saw no walls around any property, and he knew that the farmers must live awful lives, constantly wary of demons as they endured backbreaking labor so that the people of Pontius could eat and live behind the relative safety of their high wall. The thought of sleeping in the dark wilderness seemed unwise, so he continued on for many hours.
At sunrise he came to the high walls of the city and a few denim-clad Lawmen let him in through a small gate without question. He had suspected that the farmers were forced to live outside of the city walls, but since the guards paid him no mind, he wondered if perhaps the farmers chose to live in the wasteland because they judged the gangs of Pontius to be more dangerous than flesh demons. Church bells tolled as he entered the city.
Wodan saw people making their way to work, their eyes downcast, their shoulders hunched. He was surprised to see blocky automobiles roll down a few avenues, their engines absurdly loud as they echoed off stone buildings and occasionally vomiting black smoke. Every automobile bore an emblem of the golden gear of the Smiths.
He passed by several businesses and saw young men with horrible, self-inflicted scars loitering outside and scaring away potential customers. Wodan knew that he could do nothing against the armed Ugly youth, so he kept his head down and continued on his way. He often saw business owners peering out their windows, depressed and impotent to change anything.
He walked through a decent neighborhood and saw a group of bearded men with black aprons and red skullcaps carrying a bulky air conditioning unit into an apartment building. He guessed that they must be Smiths, for they were praying and carrying the machine as if it were a saint’s casket.
Wodan made his way to a marketplace and exchanged some of his jewels for Pontius paper currency. Exhausted, he sat in the shade and ate a bowl of noodles. He saw scared, sad faces peer through dusty windows, but most buildings had their blinds drawn. At the end of a line of merchant stalls, a woman screamed. Wodan approached, but then a black and blue cruiser pulled up and several denim-clad Lawmen beat him to the scene. A young, sickly looking woman who was obviously a prostitute told the Lawmen something about a theft. She had been beaten by someone. Wodan could not make out the words, but eventually the Lawmen became angry, then the young woman was arrested herself. The cruiser rolled past and she and Wodan looked at one another as she was driven away. Her sadness stabbed into his heart. There was no justice here; Wodan was struck by the thought that this society was the exact opposite of what it should be.
A group of young Ugly slouching on the corner laughed at the scene.
* * *
Wodan escaped the cycle of No Home, No Job/No Job, No Home by dropping jewels for several months’ rent in an apartment building full of old people. The aging landlord treated him as if he was a messiah, but he noted that the man glared at the other tenants as they passed by. The building was in a run-down section of town so he was able to get two large rooms for very little. Unfortunately his rooms had no windows, and he did not feel safe when the sun set.
The first night was the hardest. He felt as if the walls were caving in slowly, ready to swallow him and erase the memories of his home and his family. Whether he burned candles or sat on the floor in darkness, nothing helped. He was alone and he heard strange shambling and grunts behind the walls and he felt as if he truly had sold his soul for some evil purpose and was now living in Hell.
He woke on the hard floor and saw light peeking through his back doorway. He went into the streets, head full of weary heaviness. He watched people with worn faces and worn-out clothes gather water at a well and he joined them and washed his face. He heard some old men talking about a place where their sons worked, a shipping and moving job. Wodan followed the trail and, by the end of the day, he had his first job in Pontius.
Wodan rode with other men in a diesel van in the middle of the night and moved boxed goods back and forth between businesses and wealthy individuals. He was incredibly nervous. The other workers seemed rough and loutish. Even the ones who were as small as he was looked at the others with an unfriendly, aggressive wasteland glare. Wodan kept to himself and even when he was very tired from moving boxes, when his arms felt like they were going to snap from the inside-out, he never complained. Instead, he always volunteered to help when the opportunity arose. The job distracted him at nights and he slept most of the day. He bought few things besides food, clothes, and a nest to sleep on, so he was able to save what little money he made.
Days turned into weeks. Wodan found that the men’s tough facade was just that. Soon they laughed at his jokes and respected his willingness to work and his inability to complain. The work made him stronger, and his exhaustion made it easier to sleep at night. When the men invited him to their secret smoke breaks in between shipping runs, he started smoking with them. Wodan declined their invitations to hang out in his off-hours, but he did continue to smoke the Pontius cigarettes even at home, watching the smoke coil over his head and gather in a warm, filthy cloud.
While he worked he saw the highlights of the city while its people slept. He saw Cathedralia, a giant square block of a building where the elected officials made the Laws and where the judges - mostly old, veteran Lawmen - made decisions regarding the Laws. Wodan thought that his coworkers were exaggerating when they said that the elected officials slept in shifts on cots so that they could draft and vote on Laws all day long and all night long and not be caught off guard by hastily-drafted Laws that could weaken their party, but then he saw food being dropped off in the middle of the night and picked up by haggard, bleary-eyed men in fine suits and he knew the rumors must be true.
He saw the homes of the wealthy in the center of the city, where shotgun-wielding mercenaries dipped their heads to the shipping crew and even smoked with them sometimes so that they could all complain about their bosses. A few of these homes were made of wood, and the men marveled at that; Wodan did not tell them about the wealth of wood in Haven. Wodan saw many businesses that the others whispered about and said were run by the Coil. They said that the Coil were arsonists, killers, grafters of money, dealers in illegal drugs and black-market business runners. He learned that they were sworn enemies of the Ugly. Wodan even got to see the great granite fortress of the Head of the Ugly from afar. Wodan felt his will shrink at the imposing structure, with its massive, segmented towers protruding into the air like the jawbone of an ancient leviathan. Then he saw their purple flags flying in the night, and his hatred was strengthened at this show of legitimacy.
Wodan learned of an opening at a printing press while they were on a delivery run. During a smoke break at the press he talked to a manager and learned of the books that were printed for the wealthy, how they needed to be organized neatly and boxed with care. Sweaty as he was, Wodan must have displayed some finesse lacking among his coworkers, for he had the job at the end of five minutes, then listened to the man ramble on for another ten before he had to break it to his crew that this run would be his last. A great cry went up and they practically forced Wodan to drink with them. Excited by the idea of a new job, and even by the idea of losing his current acquainta
nces, he accepted. While the rest of the city was shuffling off to work, Wodan had his first drink with the others in a dusty backyard, the owner of the yard having been overcome by some party himself. Wodan gagged on the drink as it shifted his vision and chopped up his awareness. His companions displayed raging curiosity about him. As he drank, it became easier to lie and distract with jokes. Before too long he even felt real concern for his coworkers and the men ended up singing about some dead politician as they clapped Wodan on his back. Before he knew it he was stumbling away, pissing against a building. He woke up at nightfall back in his nest, head pounding, thankful that he would never see his old acquaintances again.
The printers were giant, superheated behemoths that broke down constantly. Skilled laborers would bind the books, then pass them to Wodan and others who filed them for shipping. Contracted Smith Copywrights jogged about the grinding, humming machines and Wodan thought he even saw guns hidden on several of them. The Smiths mostly ignored him. In handling the books, something woke in Wodan, a sense of purpose that had nothing to do with revenge. As the months dragged on into the Hot Season, as the rent ate into his earnings and even into his jewels sometimes, he found his ideas of revenge blunted. He told himself that he was waiting for the right opportunity to strike; the truth of the matter was that he needed some distraction from the dark cobwebs gathering in his heart. He thought of stealing paper from the press, but it was impossible - Smiths were all over the reams, and none of them were susceptible to charm. He dipped further into his jewels and bought an expensive typewriter and paper of his own, then he wrote at night.
He wrote part of a short story on the creaky typewriter. That night he had intense dreams, and vaguely recalled one about a thousand bright suns charging into a black hole, then exploding in a raging inferno that gave birth to a brilliant neon-lit galaxy. The nightmarish dullness of his room, and even the blackness that had weighed on him for so long, shrank considerably. Upon waking he immediately pounded out the rest of the story and only later realized that the girl in his story was none other than “Dove” Langley. He thought of more stories continually. The less he cared about work, the better he became at it; all the little problems he met were sapped of vitality. He spent more money on more paper. He was able to borrow mis-printed books from the press before they were rendered for pulp, and as he read he became more and more convinced that many of the writers in Pontius were producing only tentative, formulaic pieces.
Demonworld Book 3: The Floyd Street Massacre Page 5
