Chapter 2

School was only three days a week, back in the hood, and I was determined to go, mom would have wanted me to stay in classes. That meant I could train with General Li for several days a week too, but I would need to find a way to feed myself, so that meant a job of some kind.

When I left, over the objections of, oh, everyone, I found I had an escort whether I liked it or not. My first stop was the church where the Deacon had... where I had killed, the Deacon.

The church looked pretty run down on the outside, but I could see where someone had made an effort, at some point, to chop up downed branches and to move the worst of the debris away from the building. The front doors were slightly open and, when I slipped inside, past the rotting head of the Deacon where it sat, impaled on the wrought-iron fence, I found the remains of several squats.

It looked as though the place had been hastily abandoned. Clothes, bedding tools and even some luggage were left behind, things that most folks today would hang on to. These were not rags and discards, these were in decent shape and were trade fodder, if nothing else.

I kept to the walls when inside, circling the big chapel room, though I had to weave in and out of the stacked pews. They were piled haphazardly, near the walls, to clear the center of the room for living space. At the altar, I saw a door that led to a different part of the building and, all my senses straining, I eased it open.

“Let me.“

GOD DAMNIT! Fucking Wraith. I knew he was following me, with General Li flying around out there, circling like some demented vulture, but I had forgotten for a moment as I snuck through the church. He scared the shit out of me again, the prick. I think he liked scaring people!

He ghosted past me, almost completely invisible but for a slight, disturbed bit of air shaped vaguely like a man, and walked through the door. Through. Like, through the wood and metal, not through the doorway. That man was scary not even trying to be.

His head appeared through the door again, though his ghostly body was still in the room. “Clear, and creepy. But clear.“

Shit. If the ghost man says it is creepy, then ... I swallowed heavily and took a calming breath.

The room was filled with ... stuff. Cheap, gold-plated dishes and candle holders, bright, fake-jewel-encrusted trinkets, paintings of saints covered every inch of the walls and crosses, crucifixes, were, literally, everywhere. You could not step without stepping on one.

In one corner was a stack of old televisions, the tube kind and flatscreens, all piled up. In another, there were blankets, the thick, fleecy kind, and they appeared to be a big nest, maybe where the madman had slept. Money, old paper cash money, worthless in the world today when no one would accept it, was stacked in a pile taller than me, and in a round brazier I could see remnants of burned bills.

Near the far wall, centered, was a throne. It was literally a throne, like he had stolen a theater prop and place it in the center of the wall on a raised dais. What caught my eye, surprisingly dull and utilitarian among the riot of color and confusion in the room, were three racks of guns and gear.

There were rifles where you had to load them from the front, and there were rifles that had those box magazines. There were even machineguns, I mean, I think they were machine guns, one had bullets in a sort of belt thing that disappeared into the side of it. All I really knew about guns was what I saw on old movies. While there was no TV anymore, DVDs still exist.

Piled in, around and mixed up with the hundred or more long guns were handguns, knives, even a pair of shields. I counted at least a dozen full-on swords but even I could tell they were fakes, or display pieces. One sword, one of the Japanese ones the Samurai carried, was laying in a little stand with a second, smaller one. When I picked it up and gave it an experimental swing, I accidently hit it against the metal gun rack and the sword bent. Like, bent, not bent and sprung back. It now looked like a question mark.

General Li cleared his throat. I had heard him come in and voice his disgust and amazement at the hoarding.

“Ah, we have been confiscating and destroying any firearms we find beyond handguns for personal defense. I, myself, am a big fan of the Second Amendment but, since the constitution no longer really applies with the government gone, and since the chance for abuse is too great with no law enforcement, we made the uncomfortable decision to protect people from the predators.” He sounded embarrassed, but resolute.

“In another room, it appears that Deacon and his followers were sacrificing people in some bizarre rituals. There are body parts in piles, bizarre diagrams drawn in blood on the walls ... This place is defiled beyond redemption. If you wish any of this ... stuff, take it with you. The guns stay and the entire place will be a burning pit shortly after you are safely away.” This time there was real iron in his voice and I decided I really didn’t want to be on his bad side.

Wraith got our attention and pointed to a pile of steel behind one of the gun racks. Knives, lots and lots of knives!

Most were kitchen knives and survival knives and even a few diving knives, and all of them useless for what I wanted. Low quality, cheap steel, already rusting or were those stupid fantasy knives that some guys geek out over. There were a few that I liked though, including what looked like part of a set of solid throwing knives, only four of the six the box originally contained.

There was a machete-like blade with an odd curve, and it was heavy steel too, with hammer marks and file marks. It was wicked sharp, even if rusty, and I liked the feel of it.

“That’s a Kukri, though a homemade one, I’d guess. That looks like spring steel.” General Li said thoughtfully, then continued when he saw I had no idea what he was talking about. “Spring steel, in this case, means they made it from the leaf springs of an old car or truck. Very strong steel, lasts forever, takes a good edge. The Kukri was the traditional blade of a group of warriors called the Gurkha, from a place called Nepal. Very fearsome fighters, the blade was a machete in peace time, a very effective fighting knife during times of war.”

I liked it. I’d have to cobble together a sheath, but I wanted it.

Other than the blades, there was nothing there that I wanted or, at least, I thought so. I was ready to leave but Wraith had still been exploring and waved me over to the throne. Underneath the throne, once it was tipped on its side, was a footlocker filled with coins, jewelry, precious stones and, oddly enough, about three hundred unopened packs of Pokemon trading cards. When I held one up, both the General and Wraith shrugged. They had no more idea than I did.

Since the General was the man with the super strength, he got the job of hauling the box outside. Once we were far enough from the building to be safe, the General rose back into the air. He hovered over the church for a moment, then started to glow momentarily. Beams of blinding light shot from him, from his eyes, and where they struck, wood and stone burned and crumbled. Steel melted and dirt began to liquify. It was an awesome display of pure power and within minutes, the entire place was as he had predicted.

An empty, burning pit and a monument to the destructive power that PRIME had unleashed.

Back in my apartment, I found mama laid out in her best dress. She had been placed into a sort of metal coffin, but it had a glass top. Wraith explained that it was a stasis chamber, something invented decades ago by a bunch of folks who thought they could freeze people that were sick, to be cured later if medicine advanced enough.

There was a high-tech warehouse of sort here in Greenville and it was still working on a mixture of city power, which never went down completely, and a solar farm that the staff was still maintaining. Doc Optim had asked for, and gotten, five such containers for his own experiments, and they had used one for this. So that I could see her one more time.

It was strangely touching but, mostly, really, really morbid. There was no way they could know, but mom and I agreed on one thing. Cremation and scatter, no place for people to come back to, no shrine to the dead. It was creepy, in our eyes, the way people revered the dead, forgetting their faults and magnifying their best qualities. We were more pragmatic than that.

Still, they went to a lot of effort for me and I appreciated the thought. Even if it was, maybe, just a little bit aimed at recruiting me.

I asked, and the General agreed, for a cremation, and a scattering of her ashes into the river. She would have liked that, I think.

They were gone. I had spent the last three days in their company and somehow, in that short time, they had become ... familiar, friends, even family, sort of. The apartment was absolutely packed with memories and I have never felt more alone.

No tears. No time. I had wasted so much already. My first job was to back track mom’s route on that day. She did daycare so other parents could scrounge for a living, and she took in a percentage of whatever they found or earned. It didn’t pay much, per child, but she often had twenty kids there, in that old dance studio. She had filled the place with toys and games, pillows and blankets, books and magazines. There were crafts and projects galore, and she managed to keep them entertained and busy while moms and dads were gone.

She had five safe routes and I knew all five, just like she knew all of mine. It was a safety thing, and each route was taken at random. By the front door there was a bowl and, in the bowl, were twenty-five beads. Each bead was numbered one through five and colored. White, green, yellow, black and red.

The safe route you took was the number on the ball, except for the red balls. The red balls were routes that were sketchy, where there were more dangers, more things to worry about. The idea was that if you always took the same route, or always took the same rotation, you were easy to track. If you took several different routes at random, they had to cover all of them. The bad routes, well, things change and good routes go bad, but going that way every now and then threw off the pattern, see? And it kept us sharp.

On the calendar by the door, we always wrote what route we took so, if we were late, the other had the option of coming to look for us.

That day, mom had taken safe route four, which was out to David Francis street, left past the tiny, burned-out Baptist church, across McBee and through the old Sheriff’s department parking lot. Once she was across Washington, she was safe. There were people who kept Washington street between Church and East McBee safe. Half a block off, it was a mess, but actually living on Washington was prime real estate.

They had set up temporary buildings and tents on the road surface itself, and most of the buildings along the street were burned out and gutted, falling down, all except two. One used to be a law firm, but was now used as a clinic, the other was the old dance studio and now a daycare.

I hadn’t cobbled together a sheath for the Kukri yet, but I did take the time to scrub it down with steel wool and some Ajax, get the worst of the rust off. Heaven forbid I cut myself and get that lockjaw. When it was clean, and I had taken a file to the edge to sharpen it, I just carried it in my hand, with the blade up my forearm so it wasn’t so noticeable.

Out the door and down the stairs, I left the building and immediately started looking for eyes on me. There were people who did nothing but sit in their apartments or squats and watch other people. Those are the folks I wanted to talk to and I found one almost immediately.

Mrs. Hernandez had lived the neighborhood as long as I can remember. She used to sit on her doorstep in the mornings and we would wave to each other as I walked to the bus stop. Now, she had a steel door and she sat in a barred window to watch the world go by. She had survived the end of the world and would probably survive the next one too.

When I walked up the steps, a small hatch in the steel door opened, revealing a closely weaved steel grin still blocking the way.

“Whatchu want, girl? The bus late?” the old woman cackled behind her armored door.

“No, ma’am, Mrs. H. The bus decided this neighborhood ain’t safe no more.” I said with a smile. My mom walks to the daycare past your place sometimes. Five days ago, she walked this way, someone got her, Mrs. H. They hurt her bad, killed her, though it took a while for her to lay it down. I don’t suppose you saw anything?”

There was a long silence and, just when I was ready to turn and keep moving, Mrs. Hernandez said, “I seen her. I see everything, and I see nothing, got it? I didn’t see Lil’ Tony P. following her either, looking shifty. I never heard of him doing no rapes, but I alla time don’t hear about him stealin from folks. Go on now, girl, you gon’ miss your bus.”

The hatch slammed closed and I heard at least two bolts slam shut as well, securing it from the inside.

Little Tony P. Tony was Anthony Pacheco. His dad was Big Tony, and he used to run with the Locos, a local wanna-be gang that never got much traction. The gangs here in Greenville were brothers, mostly, and some Mexican gang trying to move in was a sketchy operation at best.

Little Tony had been known to rob outsiders, but he rarely did anything around the neighborhood, too many people knew where he lived. I had been hearing that he was pushing some new drug, but there is always a new drug. People will starve themselves to death just to pay for a hit, to get high for an hour. The end of the world hadn’t changed that.

I knew where he lived, and it was with a dozen other Mexicans and their families. There were five, five-story buildings, all owned by the state, all section eight, or low-income, before The Fall. The Mexicans owned one, the brothers three and the last one was half demolished and was occupied by whoever could hold on to one of the remaining apartments.

Me and Mom were from Louisiana, originally. Mom was born in New Orleans, but her family moved after the levees broke a few years before The Fall. They had talked about moving back, after the Army had fixed the levees again, but there was never the money available for the move.

Just as well, tidal waves and storms, the melted ice caps and rising waters had swallowed all of New Orleans and the rest of the gulf coast too, or so we hear. They said Florida is just gone. All of it to the Georgia state line. The whole state!

Making a decision that this was a good place to start, I turned back and headed over to the building the Mexes owned. It was the first in the row, closest to Church street, while the building mom and I lived in was third. I couldn’t walk directly there though, various barricades had been built, toppled, rebuilt, burned, consolidated and, finally, set in concrete. The footpaths were a man-made maze, watched over by jealous guardians.

Instead, I headed south to get to Broad street, then west to Church before cutting north again and approaching the building from the west side. Wasn’t safer, really, since they had guards there too, but it was faster than negotiating the maze and the assholes who thought they owned it.

I had almost made it to where Church Street passed overhead, it was an elevated road, and was rounding the rubble that used to be a liquor store, when a pair of guys sort of oozed out of the tumbled brick and concrete.

“Hey, baby. You new ‘round here, ain’tcha? Don’t remember seein’ you b’fore.” The left one said, a section of pipe idly tapping against his left leg. I dubbed him Tweedle Dumb.

“Yeah, you new!” piped up the second man, a smaller, ferret looking guy with several missing teeth. I named him Ferret.

“Whatchu doing on our street? We own this street and everybody pays a fee to pass, see?”

“Yeah, a fee!”

Man, this was ... I don’t know what this was, but I had shit to do.

“Well,” I said loudly to make sure they were watching me. I let the Kukri flip around so the blade was no longer hidden along my arm and let is slowly swing, back and forth in a figure eight at the end of my arm. “All I have is this. I would be glad to give you two a few inches of it.”

The two looked at each other in surprise. I don’t think anyone had actually challenged them before.

The two working braincells in Tweedle Dumb’s head managed that most unlikely of events and collided, again.

“I got more’n a few inches to give you, bitch. Now ya fee has just doubled,” he said, grabbing his crotch.

I smiled and ... and ... Oh holy fuck. I was trying to move into that slow-motion thing, that thing Doc said that wasn’t really slow, but my brain speeding up, and nothing was happening!

The two morons who ran this little trap were not smart, not by anyone’s measure, but they did have that feral instinct for vulnerability and little Ferret seemed to have that in spades. If he were a dog, I bet he would go for the groin.

He darted forward, a filthy, chipped and slightly bent carving knife in his hands and, as he swung the knife at my stomach, my shit finally found the right sock.

I barely had to think about it, my hips shifting half an inch, my stomach pulling in another half, and the blade in Ferret’s hand slid right past, only nicking my jacket. My Kukri, on the other hand, was in my right hand and freshly sharpened. I slid my right hand forward and brought the tip of the blade up.

He had swung hard enough to make that dull, shitty blade of his cut, so that was more than enough for his momentum to slide his forearm across the tip of my sharpened blade and completely sever the muscles and tendons that controlled his knife hand.

The blade, and his blood, kept going, one in a straight line towards the tumbled down building, the other in a crimson arch that was still airborne when I slid my right foot forward, my arm with the blade coming around like a softball pitcher and the blade catching Tweedle Dumb still holding his dick.

The blade sliced through the wrist, the dick, his pelvis, several layers of intestine and knicked the lung as it severed two inches of the bottom rib on that side when it exited the body.

I stepped back again and the slowness stopped again, the world speeding up in my eyes. To my right rear, there was the clatter of a cheap blade hitting the bricks and concrete, the splatter of an arc of blood landing on the ground and the scattered garbage and, last but certainly not least, a blood-curdling scream as Ferret realized I had destroyed his sex life.

Tweedle Dumb didn’t scream, he didn’t even whimper. He fell to his knees, his stump held up as if he was examining it, and then he tumbled forward, landing face first on a big hunk of concrete. I doubt he felt it.

I turned back to Ferret who was on one knee, his bleeding arm cradled to his sunken chest and his face turned to howl out his agony to the world. But the world didn’t care and I was made a forever Kukri convert when the heavy, oddly-curved blade took the man’s head off with one move.

It had taken me several minutes to take Deacon’s off with the Machete, and I had destroyed the machete blade doing it.

The fracas had attracted some attention, but I wanted none of it. I faded into the rubble of the downed building, crawling out the back side and hid among the tall brush. Behind me, building number one, my target, was easily visible and I could even see a couple of guys on the roof, looking over the edge at the bodies on the ground. It took fifteen minutes or more before they disappeared again, bored I guess, but I breathed a sigh of relief.

It was still early, only four in the afternoon, and sundown wasn’t until half past six or so. I might be better off finding a place to watch from, see if I could spot Little Tony, maybe follow him and catch him outside of the Mexican base.

Man, I felt foolish. I had charged out here, thinking ... what, exactly? That I would magically stumble across a clue that would lead right to who raped my mom? That the man, or men, would lay down and die for me? I couldn’t even go two blocks without getting into a fight and killing people. How the fuck did I expect to sneak up on anyone? I had no food, no water, not dressed for how cold it will get tonight.

Let’s face it, my first trip was a failure. It made me wonder if I should have stayed with the heroes, trained with them, and then ... betray them? I couldn’t do that. This was my trouble. This was my job to complete. If that means I can’t be a hero, then fuck it, I don’t give a fuck. I will kill every motherfucker in this neighborhood who raises a hand to women. I will make this a place where women and children can come and feel safe.

But I have to survive, first. I have to live, to make a difference. I need a plan.

With my figurative tail between my legs, I made it safely home again, showered and slept. The next morning, I was up with the dawn because I had left my curtains cracked, and I stayed up. I got paper and pencil and a map of the city and I started planning.

Three months. It took me three months to avenge my mother. Something I read, a tag on a building had been my starting place.

‘Think globally, act locally.‘

I started with my building. I put the word out that the building was mine now. I controlled who lived there and who didn’t. I protected those that stayed, and I had to prove it almost immediately.

In one of the apartments on the top floor, lived a man that I didn’t know. He moved in a few months ago when Mrs. Echevaria died, said he was her cousin from Guatemala.

We all knew he grew weed on the roof, but no one cared. What I learned after declaring the building a safe zone was that he was cooking some other drugs too. Another tenant on the fifth floor confided in me that she had been threatened into silence and that he had, more than once, forced her to have sex with him.

It had started as dating, but she broke it off when she found out what he did to get by. He told her that he was the one who decided if it was over or not, and raped her. It wasn’t a violent rape, and she even said he was a pretty considerate lover, but she hated him and hated being forced to pleasure him.

I girded myself for battle, Kukri in hand, and I followed her up to her floor. There were people on the stairs and in the halls but, when they saw me, saw my face and the blade I carried, they couldn’t get safely behind locked doors fast enough.

At the top landing, I had her go first and knock on the door. As soon as she knocked and called out, I pushed her to the side and had the point of my blade touching his throat before the door was completely open.

“Luis, I hear you are doing bad things up here. Didn’t you hear my announcement? Didn’t I see you in the entry to the building and tell you personally that this was my building, that I protect those who live here?”

“Si, si! Si, chica, I heard. I remember,” he stuttered, trying to move away from the blade that had pricked his skin. The drop of blood rolling down his neck from the puncture, as the blade moved and widened the hole a bit, was even more stark against his pale skin.

“Then why are you forcing yourself on your neighbors? Why are you cooking drugs up here, the marijuana on the roof is not enough?”

“I did nothing! I don’t force myself on anyone, these bitches throw themselves at me. I can show you, I can make you howl at the moon!” His eyes shifted, going from afraid to cocky, as if he thought I would swoon at his offer. When he shifted left and the corners of his eyes tightened, I knew he had changed his mind.

With a flick of my wrist, I opened a tiny slit, barely two inches, in the skin of his throat. Not deep enough to cause any real worry, but enough that the droplets of blood flung away by the blade made his eyes open really, really wide!

He gasped and fell backwards, his hands going to his throat and his thoughts from before, whatever they were, forgotten.

“You fucking puta! You killed me! You cut my throat!” he screamed and I had to laugh. If I had done those things, he would not be screaming at me, he would be, maybe, gurgling or something.

One step forward and I saw the gun on the counter. It was what he had been looking for, I think it was bigger than a pistol, but not as long as those rifles and stuff I had seen. It had a really long magazine and I think I remember it from some movie of moms. It was an Uzi!

I grabbed it and looked it over while Luis laid on the floor and tried not to die. Heh.

I found a button and the magazine popped out of the grip. On the side it said Ingram Mod. 10, so, maybe not an Uzi? Anyway, I would turn it over to the heroes, they seemed to want these off the streets. Maybe could trade for something.

Meanwhile, Luis!

Luis had figured out he wasn’t dying and he had come up with one of those little butterfly knives. They were pretty cool, I had one down in my apartment and I had cut myself more than once trying to get it to do the things Luis was doing with it. It was flipping and clacking and flashing and it was totally awesome to see, but when I slapped the back of his hand with the spine of my Kukri, I think I broke a couple of bones in his hand. The knife went flying and, after bouncing off a cabinet and the counter, wound up in the sink.

I stalked after Luis as he scrabbled backwards, holding his hand and whining about it hurting. The blood flow from the cut on his neck had mostly stopped, so that was good,

As we got deeper into the apartment, there was this ammonia smell that got worse and worse. I could see one bedroom door sealed off with plastic sheeting, and I had to guess that the drugs were in there.

Luis was on his feet, and he was between me in the door, screaming and yelling, calling me names, and clearly determined not to let me into that room. When he charged at me, I had enough and I didn’t even drop into that speed thing, I just clubbed him with the spine of my blade.

Man, that was a bad idea. See, the spine of this blade, this hand made from automotive leaf springs blade, is not rounded and smooth, not polished and pretty. No, someone took a file and made it rough, like a very dull saw blade, and the edges were jagged, but not sharp, sharp, you know? It would tear flesh, not cut it, and would dig in to and break bones, not slice them.

If you swing it hard at the back of someone’s skull, while they are rushing at you? Well, the back of his head crumbled and he dropped, dead before he hit the floor. His skull looked misshapen, his eyes bugging out a bit, and he shook for a second before becoming perfectly still.

Fuck.

The back bedroom had some kind of mad scientist chemistry experiment and, had I not found the mask Luis was using, I probably would have died trying to clean it out. Even with the mask, it had to be short stints, and it took me the better part of the week to make it sort of safe.

The apartment contained about twenty pounds of marijuana, which I let the other tenants split up and use or sell, whatever worked for them, and I even let them keep the roof-top pot garden, it was a cash crop, after all. The apartment also contained cases of canned food, more cases of military rations, a lot of guns and a nice stash of jewelry. This stuff I paid others to move down into the spare room in my apartment.

I had already been helping several families with food, so they trust me to be the keeper of the goods. Let’s be honest here, there wasn’t anyone in the building who would have or even could have challenged me if they didn’t agree, but it kept the peace to let them ‘decide‘.

Once my building was pacified, I recruited two families, both with teen boys and fathers present, to move into the building and act as my lieutenants. They were my muscle and this was my gang. It kind of burned me to start my own gang when I had railed against gangs in the past, but you work with what you have. They understood gangs, they understood power.

I expanded my operations area to the next building up the chain. That one only took two weeks, and I moved one of the lieutenants over, into a bigger apartment, and made that his building to watch, to protect. Both Lieutenants were now Captains with a whole building each. They were big men and I made sure they know what would happen if they were caught fucking it up. The building was family. The people were family. You don’t fuck with family, no one else does either.

Two and a half months is what it took to pacify the projects. Four of the five buildings were mine. Three and a half, anyway, though I had crews clearing and rebuilding on the other half of building four. The only building in the project left that was not mine, was Little Tony Pacheco’s.

I had learned a lot about Little Tony in the last couple of months. He had emerged. He was strong, stronger than just about anyone else in the projects, and fast too, though not as fast as Racer, who I finally got a chance to meet.