Charlie Huston - Sleepless

Rose, you’re right not to talk to me. I left you alone.

And I am going to leave you alone again.

I can’t take care of the baby, you said.

But I have to try. They’ve used me to help them bury the old world. Our world. The baby’s world. The one she deserves. The one we promised her. I can’t let that happen. I can’t protect her in the world they’re trying to make. You could. I can’t. I can’t take care of her there. But I can take care of her in the world they want to kill. I have to live in that world. If I step into theirs, try to live by their rules, I’ll lose her.

I can’t lose you both.

I remember everything you said.

“How am I going to be able to look after you?” you asked.

I shook my head and told you that you didn’t have to. And you kind of sighed like you always did when you thought I wasn’t getting something. “No, I mean, really, how am I gonna look the fuck after you?”

I told you that I was okay.

You were staring at the ceiling.

“You’re such a, God I hate to use the word, but you’re such an innocent. I mean, how am I supposed to walk away from that?”

Don’t walk away from me, Rose.

I am not innocent.

But do not walk away from me.

BEENIE WASN’T ANSWERING HIS PHONE.

He hadn’t gone with Park to the gallery. When Cager had made a point of not inviting him along, Park had been about to insist, but Beenie had shook his head. His long day was over. He had miles to ride to get back home. He was looking forward to smoking a little of the opium before the ride. Taking a bicycle in and out of the stalled and abandoned cars of L.A. was a surreal pleasure. He wanted to compound that enjoyment. And he was looking forward to sleep. He knew his sleep would not be truly dreamless, but with a little luck he wouldn’t remember the dreams when he woke.

He’d told Park not to worry, he didn’t want to go to the gallery. He didn’t want to be driven home. He wanted to ride and to sleep. Outside Denizone, when Park had reached out to shake hands, Beenie had given him a one-arm embrace that was too brief for Park to return.

“If you’re around the farm tomorrow, I’ll maybe see you there, bro.”

Park had wanted to tell him not to go to the farm. Stay away. But Cager was nearby, Twittering, texting, messaging, sending his thoughts into the night.

He planned to call Beenie early. Tell him he’d heard there was trouble at the farm. Keep clear. It could wait until then.

But then everything had gone wrong. Too much time had passed. And Beenie wasn’t answering his phone. The Washington suits had photographs of Park and Cager at the club. They had to have photos of Cager and Beenie as well.

And Beenie wasn’t answering his phone. Park pictured him with his wrists chained to ankle restraints, a bag over his head, in the air somewhere between Los Angeles and Guantanamo.

Driving southwest on Washington Boulevard, Park hit redial again, and again it flipped over to voice mail. He’d tried the call fifteen times. For half of the attempts he’d not been about to get service at all. The network was jammed.

Waiting in line at a new checkpoint just east of the PCH, Park looked back toward Hollywood. Above the north-south border of the Santa Monica Freeway, the sky was thick with gunship searchlights. Smoke rose, lit from below in flickering yellow, orange, and red. Without any elevation, it was difficult to pinpoint which areas had been blacked out, but it was clear from the quality of the ground light that entire neighborhoods were without power. Whether that was by design of SoCal TOC, caused by the usual unannounced easing of strain on the grid, or the result of an attack like the rocket Bartolome had told him about, was impossible to know.

What was clear, the only thing that was clear, was that a great deal of hell was breaking out. If he needed any further evidence, he could simply look at one of the lighted signs that loomed at intervals all over the city. The usual traffic advisories, long become a local joke, had been replaced by a single flashing message:

MARTIAL LAW HAS BEEN INVOKED IN THE FOLLOWING AREASLOS ANGELES COUNTYSANTA MONICAMALIBUWEST HOLLYWOOD

And so on. The list was long. It ended with a scrolling notice that if you were reading the message, you should go immediately to someplace where you could no longer read it. Get the hell inside. Advice that most people seemed to be heeding. The traffic had not flowed so smoothly even before the outbreak of SLP.

Park had seen the LAPD directives for martial law. He knew the extraordinary police powers invoked through Patriot II. Knowing what the police were empowered to do, he assumed the military had a weapons-free policy that would allow them to shoot at the least provocation, without regard for consequences mortal or legal.

Long before it was his turn at the checkpoint, he had hung his badge from his neck and done a mental inventory of the car to assure himself that there were no drugs or weapons anywhere but in the spare tire. When he pulled forward to the barrier of abandoned cars resting on blown-out tires and bent rims, he realized that the greatest danger was not that he would be shot as a suspected looter, but that one of the terrified young Guards might flinch at the sound of distant gunfire and riddle his car with an entire M4 clip.

A very young black man with sergeant’s bars and a drawl from well below the Mason-Dixon approached the car.

“Sir, turn off your vehicle, please, sir.”

Keeping his left hand visible on the steering wheel, Park switched off the engine with his right and brought it immediately back into view of the Guards.

“Sir, your ID, please, sir.”

Again leaving his left on the wheel, Park lifted the badge from his chest, ducked his head out of the lanyard, and offered it to the young man.

There was a pause while the sergeant raised a hand in the air, flashed several fingers at his squadmates in quick succession, like a catcher running through his signals, and stepped forward, reaching for something on his belt. Park almost ducked as the RFID interrogator was raised, a gesture that surely would have required a few rounds fired, but he recognized the device at the last moment and remained still as the Guard aimed it at the badge, pulled the trigger, read the results, and flashed another series of signals that resulted in most of the weapons in the immediate vicinity being aimed in other directions.

“Sir, Officer Haas, sir, I need to ask what your business is, sir.”

Park dropped the badge back around his neck and replaced his hands on the wheel.

“I’m on assignment, Sergeant. Venice Beach.”

“Sir, I have to ask if this assignment is urgent business, sir. If it is not, I have to request that you return to your home or domicile.”

Park knew it wasn’t by chance that this Deep South native had found his Guard unit dropped in California. Patriot II policy was to deploy the Guard away from their native states when suppressing civil unrest. The fewer the connections the soldiers had to the locals, the more easily they would pull the trigger when necessary.

Park looked at the other Guards. All as young as this one, nearly all black or brown, arrayed behind the barricade of cars that they knew would do little to stop any remotely decent firepower. Let alone provide cover from an RPG or, God forbid, a car bomb. Neither of the two Humvees parked behind the barricade had been up-armored, and only one was equipped with a heavy machine gun. The young woman behind the machine gun kept pushing her helmet up as it repeatedly tilted down over her eyes.

“Yes, Sergeant, my investigation is urgent.”

The NCO pulled a logbook from one of the side pockets of his fatigues.