Pasha Malla - People Park

Oh.

He flipped his hood up and moved past Debbie, toward the door. Grab a flashlight, we should go, he said.

And Debbie went after him, trying to feel trusted, trying to feel good.

AT FIRST WHEN THE pickup and trailer pulled into Street’s Milk & Things, Pop assumed he’d only have to disappoint hopeful patrons of Mr. Ademus. In the doorway he held up his arms in a gesture meant to convey: Sold out, apologizations! But out stepped two men in the khaki uniforms of the NFLM, one carrying a briefcase, the other with a Citypass lanyard around his neck, both with terrific moustaches. At last the birds fly home to roast, said Pop.

He locked eyes with each of the men in turn, closed the door, turned the sign around so NOT OPEN faced out. The men looked at the NOT OPEN sign, at the proprietor posed defiantly behind it, one of them knocked, the other gestured at the pickup. Pop didn’t move. From the briefcase papers were produced and pressed to the glass. At last Pop addressed them as per their nametags: Bygone with yous, Misters Walters and Reed!

The Helpers exchanged words. Walters tore off a crinkly carbon copy, rolled it into a tube, and wedged it in the doorhandle. Then they got back in the pickup and pulled around behind the store. Pop’s breathing shallowed, a vein throbbed in his throat. Finally he threw the door open and in socked feet went waddling after the two men.

With Walters waving him along, Reed was reversing into the clearing. The trailer slid underneath the houseboat with a clang.

That’s my home! screamed Pop. What is your strategization?

It’s condemned, said Walters. We’re just picking it up. You’ve got a problem, go through the proper channels. We gave you the paperwork.

Just doing our job, called Reed from the cab.

Pop wailed, Injust, degenerational, vandalistic, totalitary! Unsuppositionant, predominary, predilicted, no, reprehensitory, no, unfoundational, no, declensionive, no, anti-popularly, no, not fair, not fair, not fuggin fug fuggin fair.

Meanwhile Walters secured his houseboat on the trailer, strapped it down, locked everything into place. Listen, he said, smoothing his moustache with thumb and forefinger, just check the paperwork. There are processes for this sort of thing.

Processes? roared Pop. I’ll tell you a processional thing or two. If it didn’t mean defiliating the hollowed ground of my establishment I’d process my foot through your cranial lobe right now, both of yous, evil ones!

Walters nodded at Pop’s stockinged feet. Would you now?

This is my home, Pop said. He fell to his knees. My home . A quartered century hencefrom. Whereupon am I supposed to sleep?

Reed honked the horn.

Read the paperwork, said Walters, and hopped into the cab.

Pop knelt in the gravel, watched the pickup pull onto Topside Drive, houseboat swinging behind atop the trailer, slid into traffic — and just like that his house was gone.

AS REED PILOTED them west toward the dump, Walters opened his briefcase and took out a packet of Redapples. He offered one to his partner. No, sir, said Reed, quit those things years ago.

Smart, said Walters, unrolled his window, lit the cigarette, took a long, deep drag, and blew smoke into the oncoming traffic. On the shoulder, someone had painted over the Guardian Bridge turnoff sign with a solid black rectangle.

Look at that, said Walters. Those fuggers are getting bold, coming this far east.

Try blacking out the Temple though, said Reed, and they’ll see what’s coming.

Or, you know, they won’t.

Won’t?

See what’s coming, sighed Walters. Hence the surprise, Reed, of whatever what is.

In the sideview mirror Reed checked the trailer. It rolled along steadily behind the pickup, a boxy shadow back there in the purple evening. From the cupholder he took a walkie-talkie, confirmed the seizure and signed off: D-Squad, Good lookin out.

Poor guy, said Walters between drags. You got to feel sorry for him.

Reed merged onto Lowell Overpass. How do you mean?

Oh, he’s a total applehead. I mean, what’s he doing, living in a parking lot? It’s amazing it took this long to get him out of there. Still though, he said. Still. .

Enh, said Reed. You heard the HG’s: this weekend’s supposed to go smooth, no hiccups. Who knows what trouble that guy might have had planned. What did Magurk call him? A genital wart on the dong of the city.

Walters ashed out the window, inhaled, blew smoke into traffic.

You think too much, Walters.

So what? We’re just doing our job?

Exactly. We’re just doing our job.

DURING THE DAY THE ZONE was a storybook of wonders: why did that person have a parrot on her shoulder? What was happening down that alleyway with three men arguing around a dolly heaped with copper? This litter of thousands of orange paper dots — who, how, when, what? But in the cold, still night with the only life her own jammering heart and the cloudpuffs of her breath, Debbie’s curiosity shrivelled. You bundled against the cold. You were wary. Any shadow could morph into a thief slinking at you with a blade.

After sunset the Zone always felt a little chillier, the air a little thinner, than the rest of the city. It didn’t help that the breakwater subdued the tides, or the lack of lights in the old stockyards cast the western side of F Street in gloom, or that UOT and Blackacres emptied at dusk: the soup kitchen and shelters and Golden Barrel began to admit their nocturnal clienteles, the shops lowered their shutters, families withdrew into their houses for the night. The only people out would be patrols of Helpers, whistling cheerfully as they strolled the streets, clubs hidden in their pantlegs. At night anything could happen here, and often it did: instead of a place of stories, it became a place where stories happened to you.

Following Calum up F toward Whitehall, Debbie talked unceasingly, if only to distract from their footfalls, calling out to be chased.

So you’re really in with these folks now, huh?

Sure.

They’re okay?

They’re okay.

You’re not worried about —

Calum clicked his tongue. There’s nothing to worry about. You have this idea that these people are like, not people. Maybe they just figured out something different than you. Maybe they look at what you think’s a normal life and are just like, that’s not for me. Maybe it’s too safe and boring and there’s nothing, there’s no edge to it. So they make something else. And maybe their something else isn’t for you.

Well why take me there then?

So you can see.

Does this mean you’ve been before? You’ve hung out with them lots? Calum?

He quickened his pace.

At F Street and Tangent 20 the Yellowline sloped downward and continued at streetlevel into the Whitehall Barns, and it was here that Calum veered inland. He led Debbie down a laneway between empty warehouses, through the hole in the chainlink, to the silos. In there? she said, and he told her, Yep — though he seemed to waver, and it was Debbie who went first.

Inside, the moon sliced through the shattered windows and played jagged patterns over the concrete floor. Flashlight, said Calum. Debbie turned it on: a dab of yellow quivered at their feet, down a flight of slatted metal stairs to the basement, where bunches of candles burned on either side of a door propped open with a chair.

Then they were in the service tunnels angling down beneath Whitehall, the temperature warmed, Debbie shed her coat and sweater, carried them heaped in her arms. An industrial noise came grinding up the tunnel. As they descended it intensified, a grating drone that set Debbie’s teeth on edge. On and on they went, deeper and deeper underground. Finally the tunnel released them into a sort of grotto, where the sound exploded: a terrible music that was huge and cruel and everywhere.