Charlie Huston - No Dominion

I crawl over and take a look. One is more than enough.

I smoke while we wait.

I think while I smoke. I think about how I got here, how I got to be in this van with Hurley, doing exactly the kind of job for Terry that I told myself I’d never do again. I think about how this got started.

I think about The Spaz at Doc Holiday’s, one of my regular hangouts. That kid spazzing on Evie’s night off, a night I could be expected to be there. I think about hotshots and how easy it is to slip one to a junkie. About how the jobs had all dried up, how I couldn’t score a gig to save my life, how the only place to go looking for a job was Terry. And that little confrontation between Tom and Terry the day Terry gave me the gig. The hostility in the air. The smell of the young wolf circling the old. The threat to Terry sprayed in the air. I think about the job Terry offered me, looking into the shit that was going around. A job like that, sooner or later I’m going to be squeezing Phil for scraps. And everyone knows Phil is my snitch. And Phil, I think about how he knew The Count, already. How that slimy Renfield had been let inside the biggest secret on the street. Like maybe someone wanted him to see it.

I think.

I think about how I ended up with Tom’s name. Tom the zealot. Tom the patriot. Tom the Coalition-hating fanatic. I try to square that up with Tom the spy. I think about setups and betrayals and backstabbing and power plays, and being a tool.

I think, and the back of the van fills with smoke.

And then Hurley flips a coin to see who has to use the shovel. I lose.

The sun is bad. I’ve gotten far too much of it today. It’s gonna age me. Getting sun, it always sticks another year or two on your face. But that’s not the bad part. The bad part is what I shovel off the ground and dump in a pile on top of the shredded Hefty bags.

What I would have done to die without seeing that, it’s a long list.

Hurley has another list.

Seven names. It could have been worse. It could have been longer. Or some of them could have been friends. That’s happened. Back in the day, working for Terry, I’ve had a piece of paper in my hands with friends’ names on it. But not this time. Could have something to do with my not keeping friends anymore. Whatever. We still have to go to work.

None of them are expecting anything. Middle of the day. Sun in the sky. They’re all fully pledged members of the Clan and they’re in tight with the head of security. What do folks like these got to worry about? Except folks like me and Hurley. And really, nobody’s expecting folks like me and Hurley.

It’s all pretty easy and clean. As these things go. Double park the van a few times, run across the sidewalk, get into whatever squat or tenement these guys are jungled up in. The ones who even have their eyes open, the ones who see us coming, they wish they hadn’t. No one wants to take the last trip seeing the two of us coming for them. But we don’t make it any worse than it has to be. Say that for Hurley, he’s a professional. And me, I just don’t see any sense in making a mess that you’re gonna have to clean up yourself.

When it’s over, we make one last stop. We wheel over to Tom’s favorite safe house, the old Society headquarters on C, the basement he still used for meetings of his Anarchists.

And we leave him there. In the middle of the floor. For them to find. For them to see should any of them meet down here to talk about options and retaliations. A look at that, they’ll be lining up to stop by Terry’s one by one and pay their respects. One look at that, they’ll be A-OK with anything Terry Bird has to say.

How nice for Terry, the way things turned out.

It’s well after sundown by the time we’ve finished the last of it. Every name is checked off the list, Hurley licking the tip of a pencil as he draws a line through each one, one by one. They’ve all been gotten rid of, mortal, or not so mortal, remains tucked away.

Hurley’s behind the wheel now. He bums one of my smokes and takes a huge drag.

– Keerist, but dat is lovely.

I nod, smoke my own.

– Got some place you want ta be, Joe?

– Just drop me back at headquarters. I should have a quick word with Terry.

– Sure, sure.

He drives me over.

– Say, Joe.

– Un-huh?

– A little like old times, eh? Me an you deliverin’ da mail, like.

– Uh-huh.

– Fer da record.

– Yeah?

– It ain’t true what some people say.

– What’s that?

– Ya ain’t gone soft. Shite, ya ain’t no softer dan a fookin’ stone.

– Thanks.

– Cheers.

And off he drives.

Me, I go up the steps and hit the buzzer.

Terry answers the door himself.

– Hey, Joe. Everything go alright?

He’s not surprised at all when I punch him in the mouth. Just gets off the floor and wipes the blood from his lips and walks down the hall away from me.

– Come on in, Joe. If we’re going to talk personal, we should do it inside.

– Everybody needs something at some time or another. That’s just the way it is. And, you know, sometimes, you can’t always get what you want, but you can get what you need. So we may work at cross-purposes, some of the Clans. You know, especially when it comes to the majors, the Society, the Hood, the Coalition. We all have different mission statements, opposing philosophies. So there’s conflict. But, you know, everybody knows it’s no good for anybody if the balance is agitated. What I’m trying to do down here, what we’re trying to achieve, that’s very long term, man. It requires some finesse. I truly believe in radicalism, we wouldn’t have broken free of the Coalition without it, but it has its place and time. A guy like Tom, an avowed Anarchist, he doesn’t necessarily have the right attitude for the times. That was my bad, I thought he did. I thought he was a natural for security. I was wrong. Hey, power corrupts. The guy didn’t take to it. He started seeing some things he didn’t like, started thinking he could do better. Next thing you know, he’s got all these new faces turning up under his wing. New fish. Too many of them. I mean, can you imagine, Joe, the guy was infecting them on his own? When I realized what he was doing, I was, man, I was blown away. Unthinkable. To hell with the threat it posed, you know, to me. Predo or Digga or any of the Clans finds out about that, we would have all been in the shit. That could have started an all out arms race. Clans infecting left and right to keep the balance of power. Man, something had to be done. But it had to be done, you know…with finesse. So. I started putting out feelers. Just kind of looking to see if I could catch the vibe. There are, I don’t know, back channels for this kind of thing. Ways for Clans to communicate without it being a big deal. Just rapping, kind of. Seeing how things are, checking the weather. And the vibe I was getting? It was unhealthy, man. Things were agitated all over. And, you know, like I say, sometimes, everybody needs something.

He takes off his glasses, sets them aside.

– Safety. Stability. Security. That’s what was needed. I, we, the Society, needed Tom discredited. And, when you get down to it, killed. And we needed it to happen before he could start making trouble with all his new fish. Digga, as Luther X’s handpicked successor and the voice of the Hood, needed Papa Doc off his ass so he could continue to consolidate his position. Dexter Predo, acting for the Secretariat of the Coalition, needed Mrs. Vandewater’s secret campaign to destabilize and invade the Hood crushed. All the major Clans needed to remove a threat to their integrity and the integrity of their members. Not to mention the infected population at large. Any one of those threats could have started open hostilities like we haven’t seen since the sixties and seventies. Back then, we had protests and riots and high crime rates to kind of disguise what was going on. If it happened again? We would all be at risk. The climate out there in the world today? The distrust and hostility between peoples? Imagine if they found out there were people they might be able to claim weren’t really people at all. People who feed on other people. That ground needs to be seeded with great care, man. I mean, that’s what I’m all about. War between the Clans is unthinkable today. Revolutions like the one we had, never gonna happen again. So once we had a chance to talk, once we got it out there in front, we all put something in to make it happen. We needed a, I don’t know, man, we needed a catalyst. All these people, Tom, Papa, Mrs. Vandewater, they all have followers. That’s why they’re a threat in the first place. So it has to look like the weather, like something that just happened. And, this time out, you were the weather, man.