me and drowned out everything else. Their faces were burned, their clothing charred off their bodies. Some were bleeding; some were missing arms or legs, stumps flailing as they clawed their way past; some were impaled with pieces of metal, with their skin, bones, and guts torn away. They were screaming as they ran, screaming with eyes wide and blind with fear.
Pieces of glass and metal began raining down from the sky as they fought, pushing tighter and tighter against each other until they could no longer even punch or kick their way forward. They piled around me until there was nothing left but the stinking, shoving, and screaming, and I squeezed my eyes shut, clamping my hands over my ears.
“This isn’t real!” I shrieked, but it was and I knew it. It was real, and everyone was going to die, and everything was going to burn. Karen and me and Wachalowski and the dead woman …none of it mattered because it was all going to burn.
Calliope Flax—Bullrich Heights
By the time we got close to my place, I was so goddamn cold, Luis must have been freezing his second-tier nuts off. The buildings were jammed close together down my way, and no one ever came to plow any road except the main one, so snow was piled up in the places where people bothered to dig out. Down most side streets, the cars were buried ass to nose on both sides, stuck in ice until spring.
I took a left down Iranistan and steered the bike down the narrow path between the stuck cars. The building fronts were covered in graffiti, and half the windows were boarded up.
“How do they get to work?” Luis asked. I didn’t answer.
Up ahead was the old gun shop, or what was left of it, and for the first time in months, there were some guys in front of it. The Turkish guy who ran the market next to it was there in his wool hat, talking to two patrol cops with rifles. A third cop shoved the gun shop’s bent gate open and went in, while a black patrol car with tinted windows idled nearby. The shop used to deal stolen guns under the table and other shit too, but that was a long time ago. Since then it had been torched.
“Are there always so many patrols down here?” Luis asked.
“No.”
The black car gunned its engine when we got closer, and moved into the road to block our path.
We were stuck, so I hit the brakes and we slid to a stop a foot away from the armored front door. One of the two guys with the Turk came up to us with his hand out.
“Hands up,” he said as he came around the side of the car.
“What the hell?” I said. “What now? We’re just—”
“Hands over your heads! Do it!”
Luis’s went up the first time, I think, and I put mine up there too. This guy was tense, one hand on his gun when he came up. The other one was calling in.
“One vehicle, two passengers. Vehicle ID …”
The first one looked Luis over, then me.
“Where’s your ID?”
“In my jacket—”
I went to reach for it, and as soon as I moved my hand the gun went right in my face.
“Hands over your head!”
“Alright! Jesus—”
“Quiet!”
He unzipped the front of my coat and stuck his hand in, right to the lined pocket. He fished in there and pulled out my ID and both sets of knuckles. He checked the ID and scanned it, then looked back at his partner and shook his head.
“Negative,” the other guy said in the radio. “Both passengers were processed earlier today, and were stopped again across town less than an hour ago….”
The goon held out my ID and both pairs of brass knuckles as the black car slammed into reverse and rolled back out of the way. It took a second for me to get that he was giving me my shit back, even the brass. I took it and stuck the lot back in my coat.
“Move along,” he said. Just like that; no fine, no ticket, no speech, just beat it. He stepped back and I went through.
“What was that all about?” Luis asked when they were out of earshot.
“No idea.”
“Something must have happened. They’re looking for someone.”
“Not us.”
He shut up and didn’t talk again until we got to my street. The buildings were mostly dark there, the concrete black from smog and the windows broken or boarded. Rusted chain link leaned around empty lots where new graffiti covered old graffiti. One titty bar-slashwhorehouse had some of the last lit neon, along with some shit-hole martial arts dojo to the left and up. I took us through the concrete pylons holding up the maglev rails that crossed between the housing units, then down between the huge piles of brown ice and snow, mixed with piles of trash bags and dead cars.
“This is where you live?”
“Down here.”
I pulled into my unit and down the ramp to the underground parking area that held two cars that ran, one that didn’t, and my bike. I cut the engine, kicked it, locked it, and armed it.
“Come on,” I said, climbing off and heading up.
The kid looked like he changed his mind, but it was too late for that now. He held up okay in jail, but now he looked twitchy.
“Take it easy,” I told him. “You’re okay.”
He didn’t look sure, but he tagged along after me when I buzzed in the back door and turned the bolt. Another badge at my unit, two more bolts, then the security bar slammed down in its track behind the door and I shoved it open.
“Come on in.”
He made a face when he went in, like he just saw a rat or worse. He stood right inside in front of the couch and stared.
“This is where you live?” he asked again.
“Yeah. Fuck you.”
“No, I know. It’s just—”
“Whatever,” I said. “You want the tour? That’s the kitchen, this is the TV room, the can is through there, and through there is where I sleep.”
“It’s so small,” he said.
I thought of his bathroom and how huge it was. You could see my whole place from the front door. The kitchen had a half fridge, two burners, a sink, and that was it. The TV area had the couch, the TV, a weight bench, and a heavy bag in the corner. The can had a shitter, a shower with industrial plastic sheeting, and a sink with all plain metal and no colored soap.
“Can I use your TV?” he asked.
“Knock yourself out.”
He turned it on and flipped. Not long after, he found what he was looking for.
“…the site of what witnesses describe as a suicide bombing, in broad daylight, right in the center of one of the city’s restaurant districts.”
It was total mayhem. The camera looked over the crowd, where cops were pushing people back. People all up
