Down in the Zero

Each word. One at a time. Over and over again.

Facing it.

I went into that house. Me. I knew what I was going to do in there.

In Africa, I served with this Aussie. Malcolm, his name was. A cheerful guy, I once saw him greet a man in a bar by butting heads with him. An old mate, he told me, from Rugby days. I didn't know what he was doing in the middle of that miserable war— one of the rules was that you didn't ask. Malcolm was telling a story once, about someone who had done something to him. When he was just a kid, in Sydney. 'I got my own back,' he said. I finally figured out what he meant. Revenge. Get your own back.

I went into that house to get my own back. When I was done, I left a dead kid as a monument to my hate.

I told myself all the stories. Ever since. Every damn dead day. They were going to kill the kid anyway…had him all trussed up for the film they were getting ready to shoot. Shoot…a funny word for making a film. Not the films they were making, though. The right word, for them, what they were doing.

Words. More bullshit, cold–comfort words.

It was a gunfight, a shooting war— I told myself that too. But I went into that house to kill every last one of them. Whatever, whoever I found there, it was going down.

I did it to defoliate the jungle of my childhood. To rip out the roots.

I went in shooting.

I wasn't trying to rescue the kid— I didn't know he was there. They were going to sacrifice him. Kill him and film it. Sell the films.

Killing them, I sacrificed the kid myself.

I got shot, getting out, took one in the shoulder. It didn't seem like enough.

The kid was a casualty of war. Very casual. Gone.

He didn't have a life to live anyway— I told myself that. Probably would have killed himself if he had the chance. Committed suicide. Gone over.

That's how this last business started. With kids killing themselves.

The old street dog shook himself and snarled at Spring, knowing he'd beat the odds for another year. In a wild pack, Winter takes them. He looked like his ancestors had been German shepherds, but a dozen generations later, he was a City Dog: lean, dirt–colored and sharp–eyed.

I was his brother, hunting. I was watching the tall redhead— covered to her ankles with a long, quilted coat, but moving with the confidence that said she was packing something potent under it. Her hips, probably, from the brassy–sassy look on her face. On the other side of the street, a black kid, with a geometric design cut into the side of his fade. Wearing a white leather jacket with a big red STOP sign on the back. He was walking just behind her, tapping his heart, making sure the pistol was still there.

A dead giveaway, no matter how it played out.

He wasn't my problem— I was there for the redhead.

'I want to see if she's cheating on me,' the client had said, looking me dead in the eye. 'I'm a hard–core bottom, but whoever owns me, I own that, understand?'

She was a short, delicate little brunette with improbable–violet eyes. Probably contacts.

'Rena disciplined me with this,' she said, brushing her close–cropped hair back from her forehead. 'It used to be shoulder–length. You understand?'

I nodded, holding her eyes.

'I'm pierced too. Down there.' Looking at her leather–wrapped lap.

I didn't follow her eyes, waiting.

'I want to know where she goes, who she meets, what she does. And I want to know soon.'

'Okay.'

'I don't need pictures, tapes, anything like that. Not legal proof. This is a lot of money for just watching— I expect you to watch close, agreed?'

'Yeah.'

'I don't like dealing with men,' the brunette said. 'But Michelle said you were all right.'

'Michelle tell you I get paid for what I do?'

'Yes, she told me everything.'

If I had a sense of humor left, I would have laughed at that.

She slid an envelope across the tabletop. 'There's five thousand dollars in there,' she said. 'What am I buying for that?'

'What you said you wanted,' I told her.

Michelle came back a few months after I killed the kid. I don't know how she knew, but she did. She stayed with me for a couple of weeks. Pansy was still up at Elroy's, trying to get pregnant, so it was safe for Michelle to live in my office. Days, she visited Terry and the Mole in the junkyard bunker— nights, with me.

I was up on the roof, looking into the Zero. She came up behind me, one red–taloned hand on my forearm, tracer–bullet perfume all around her. I had forgotten how pure–beautiful she was. I'd never asked her if she'd gone through with the surgery when she came back— never asked her why she came back at all.