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Escape

Paul Galarraga

    “Do you have it?” Asked Donne swaying his head, sliding out from under the rain hood trying to look into the eyes of the tall man.
    The tall man did not say a word.
    “My comrade is Torin. Do you know him?”
    The tall man remained silent.
    “He said you might have a... Package?”
    The rain was falling steadily in great rivers of black sooty slag that threatened to bury the streets and made everyone look dirty, like survivors of a terrific mud fight.
    The young man ducked his head back under the hood.
    The weather report on TV had declared the chemical content safe that morning, but the young man had long ago stopped believing in any of the state sponsored television programs. The pirate stuff was better when you could get it.
    He could feel the rain washing down his back and was having second thoughts, but there was something in the tall man’s stance, or was it in his eyes? His eyes were almost expectant in the way they waited.
    “my name is Donne Morri,” no response, “I told you I am a friend of Torin, Torin Stihel.”
    The tall man stared at Donne through hooded eyes. His features were angular and harsh, like a bust made from granite. Donne thought no race would claim those eyes.
    He wore a pointed chinese coolie hat and a long, nearly floor length black raincoat. His arms were crossed in front of him and his feet were wide apart as if ready for action at a notice. The nature of his gaze changed and Donne became expectant.
    “You say you know Torin?”
    “Yes.” The silence hung for a moment, the only sound was the rain drowning out the rest of the world, like they had all of creation to themselves. The alley way they were standing in might as well have been in outer space.
    For a moment Donne became unsure again. He could kill me here and just walk away, Donne thought, he could do it.
    The tall man looked up, as if consulting the black rain clouds. “Do you have money?”
    “Yes,” Donne pulled out two million new dollars in coins from his pocket. The eight little plastic coins looked forlorn in his grubby hands.
    The tall man reached out a skeletal hand. It took the coins from his hand so fast that to Donne it seemed like a conjuring trick. Those hands were lizards, fast for the stealing. Fast for the killing.
    He has my money now, Donne thought. The tension was now an iron cauldron, hot and heavy in Donne’s gut. When the tall man reached into his voluminous black rain slicker Donne’s heart sank.
    I’m dead.
    The tall man produced a tiny card, no bigger than the coins Donne had given him, wrapped in plastic and sealed with a piece of electrical tape. Like a tiny body bag.
    “You will tell Torin that I have given you a special deal.” His lower lip curled, something between a sneer and a smile, it never made it to his eyes.
    All Donne wanted to do now was run, the cauldron was boiling over. If he did not leave now he was sure he was going to throw up on that black slicker.
    “Thank you—”
    “No.”
    The curt reply cut through Donne like electricity. The smile was gone from the tall man. Departing like a lightning flash. The hooded eyes remained unchanged. Donne knew those eyes, a life on the street had taught him those eyes.
    Killer.
    He saw the lizards, knives in them, slitting throats and snatching babies. The bile began to rise.
    “The money is thanks enough.”
    And like that it was over, the transaction done.
    “You go home now,” the tall man said. One of the lizards slithered out of a black sleeve and made a sweeping gesture, fingers slightly apart, like a broom.
    Donne ran.

* * *

    He dodged and slipped his way down the narrow streets. Through the milling traffic of human infestation. The city spires, hidden by the dark clouds, could never hold all the people. Even in the worst weather, some preferred the crowded streets to the suffocating apartments. The cluster of humanity was like a sea around him and Donne swam among it like an expert. He was of the street and had grown up not far from here. The cracked, slippery pavement under his feet was the familiar ground that held his childhood and the dirty faces were the population of his nightmares.
    Donne made it, by force of will and pushing, to the tube station. He showed his ID badge to the Police Friend at the door and was allowed to descend the stairs with only a five hundred dollar bribe. He was relieved to be out of the rain. The chemical smell on the street was nauseating. By comparison the urine and vomit smell of the tube station was a welcome respite.
    He went to the master display board and between the graffiti, the complex patina of scratches and cracks he was just able to make out the arrival time of his train.
    He looked around the crowded station for a hiding spot but all the good ones were taken. He would not be able to pull out his book.
    The Police Friends were everywhere and if any of them caught him reading they would make sure it was entered on his record and being literate brought too much attention from the Government Friends.
    He walked to a long wall after shoving for only twenty minutes he reached the wall, at least now he could lean. The tube train was due in an hour.
    The train arrived about four hours later. Only three hours behind schedule, he thought, the new schedule improvement plan by the Government Friends must be working.
    The train was tight and so hot Donne thought of the Inferno. Dante would have recognized this place. He would have lamented how low humanity had sunk. Donne knew why education was illegal. If they only knew what they had lost... weeping would not be enough.
    Donne opened his raincoat and loosened his collar, careful not to let anyone lean over him or touch his bare skin. He was almost thirty two and might not survive the plague at his age.
    It was only twenty minutes before the train began lurching down the bent track, by then it was so full that Donne had to tilt his head and raise it to take a breath.
    Not very crowded today, he thought.
    He noticed the young man standing by the gate, chain smoking marijuana cigarettes. His skin was pale and he had the red marks on him.
    Plaguer, Donne thought. He brought his hand to his chest pocket, reassuring himself that the package was still there.
    “Everything all right?” the voice was behind him, loud, too loud.
    “What?” Oh no!
    It was a Police Friend, wearing a grin that was too wide and toothy. It was a bad sign.
    He noticed me touching my pocket, Donne thought trying his best to not hyperventilate or throw up. It was a good thing he didn’t eat today. Cold sweat was forming on his eyelids.
    “I asked you if everything is all right; that’s all.” the cop was staring with that who’s-your-daddy look that always got people to talk. That and the certain knowledge that to even look at a Police Friend sideways would get you tortured to death, or worse.
    “Nothing off— err— friend.”
    “Oh. Okay, that’s all right,” the cop wasn’t taking his eyes off him and he knew it most assuredly wasn’t “Okay.”
    “DEATH!”
    The whole train seemed to turn at once, everyone looking to see who yelled. Who would dare to yell in public with Police Friends on the train.
    “Death to the oppressive Police State!” It was the pale kid from the doorway. The joint was still dangling from his lower lip. It had gone out and was forgotten, there were other things on his mind.
    He was holding a gun.
    It was one of those revolver types Donne’s father had told him about, and despite the rust and the wire wrapped around part of the barrel it looked like it just might fire. The gun looked menacing, like it was growing in Donne’s vision and it was pointed straight at him.
    The cop behind Donne began yelling, hard. Spittle began hitting the back of Donne’s neck and he forgot all about the gun as he covered up with his hood. Cops rarely died of the plague, they had access to doctors, but many of them were carriers.
    “You put that gun down NOW citizen!” He was pointing at the kid with his finger and Donne could feel his other hand against his back, the cop was reaching for his gun. Donne was trying to get out of his way and get down at the same time. The situation was going out of control. The cop was trying to bring his gun to bear before the confused kid could get that antique to fire, and Donne was in the way.
    BANG!
    The kid was knocked against the train door, a woman next to him was covered in blood spray and began screaming. Everyone else backed off, she now had the plague for sure. But the cop never got his gun over Donne’s shoulder.
    “Are you all right Comrade Sargent?” It was another Police Friend, this one in plain clothes. He had just shot the kid at nearly point blank range.
    The sergeant barreled his way through the crowd. Pushing people out of his way like a reaper through dry wheat ripping a path to the fallen kid.
    Donne, for the moment, was forgotten.
    He closed his eyes and slowly let out a breath. I was dead, he thought, I know— I was dead.

* * *

    The tube train arrived at his stop two hours later, only one unreported delay while the Police Friends were forced to step off the train and eliminate some tunnel dwellers.
    Donne swam his way through the bodies towards the cracked exit gate. The rain had not let up and he ran, half sliding, as fast as he could to his tenement.
    The apartment smelled familiar. Marihuana, sweat, urine and feces all combined for him to make the particular stink of his house. Some of his house mates were not home and he wondered if anyone was sober enough to watch him go into his room.
    He stepped over some of the heroin girls in the hallway.
    “Hey Donne,” her sleepy eyes tilted up not really seeing him, “want some company. I know you got money.”
    “Not today Marhi.”
    She let her head drop back to the floor like it was too heavy to hold up and went back to sleep in a nest of her once beautiful blonde hair.
    He came to what at one time would have been the master bedroom closet of the apartment. He undid the reinforced locks and snuck inside. He locked himself in. When he pulled the string on the fixture the light came on a gave a greasy, flickering, yellow glow.
    Thank god the power is working today, he thought.
    He sat down and took in the silence. By the standards of his time his room was quite luxurious. He could, with some effort, recline on the floor and sleep in privacy. This was a commodity rarer than gold. He sank into the foam rubber mats and stained blankets scrounged from a lifetime of hoarding. He had an old sofa throw pillow for his head and a chamber pot for when the leather boys were in the bathroom. You either went somewhere else or risked getting stabbed, raped or both.
    He also had a fantastic thing, a Personal Digital Assistant. It was a little bigger than his hand and it could pick up WiFi without logging into the Network. It was great for going on the pirate sites because it couldn’t be tracked. It also played video files and the little memory card he bought today was full of banned video files.
    He reached into his jacket pocket and took out the package. He carefully remove the electrical tape and unwrapped the black plastic. The gleaming little white plastic card looked brand new, and he took a moment to examine it’s beauty. There were so few things left that were brand new.
    He felt hot tears burning behind his eyes and pushed them away, this was a time for celebration. He suddenly got an idea and stood up. He took off his raincoat and hung it up on it’s rusty nail, ignoring the chemical smell that always lingered on the plastic. He dug in some blankets and pulled out, like hidden treasure, a plastic pouch of peaches.
    Now the tears came.
    He lay back and ripped the top of the preserved peaches. The aroma was ambrosia. He slid the little white card into the PDA and put in his earbuds as it booted up. The tiny screen began to glow and soon he heard the far away sound of singing in his ears.
    He slurped a piece of peach and watched the words on the screen.
    Words.
    It had been a long time since the programs had any writing on them. Most of the world was illiterate and the Government Friends liked that just fine.
    The words were new to him, but Turin had told him that this was a movie, and a very old one at that; hundreds of years old.
    He lovingly read the words on the screen.
    Frank Capra’s Production of:
    “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
    The music played and he tried watching the whole movie through hot tears.

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