Rule of Capture

by Christopher Brown

  One of the executioners offered him some ice chips, but he shook his head like that wasn’t what he needed.

  “Tell them,” said Jerome, more audibly now, looking at Donny as if he were the only one who could hear. “Tell them to follow the water.”

  He no longer looked pained. He looked relieved.

  Jerome had opted for the opioids to be administered before the procedure. Donny knew, because he got copied on all the morbid memos.

  “I didn’t try to kill that son of a bitch,” said Jerome. “But I wish I had. Because if I had, he’d be dead.” He took a few long, slow breaths. “I am here because I decided to talk back. And teach others how to stand up and take care of themselves. Not fighting each other like they want us to, tearing up our own streets and hurting our own families and neighbors. Fighting the city, the state, the whole country. Standing up for the people, for real democracy, against the people with the power and money who know democracy is no longer on their side. Standing up for the land they brought our ancestors here to steal from our other ancestors, and then to make the whole place their slave the way they made people their slaves. The only rebellion I called for was mental. Teaching people how to take care of themselves and their people. Now I know it really is time. Time to make our own new country with our own rules, based on real democracy and human rights and love for the land that feeds us. So my only crime is that I am the future they want to abolish. You are that future, too, a future they can’t stop any more than they can keep the sky they have poisoned from drowning their mansions, or the bodies of their grandchildren from carrying the seeds of a whole planet finally coming together to build a new model of community. It’s coming, and they can’t stop it. See y’all in the future. The real future. Not the one these assholes are trying to kill by killing me. They don’t know they’re just making it come sooner.”

  You could see the exhaustion in his eyes, but you could also see the pride, the courage. Donny tried to project his admiration, through the overpowering shame of his failure. They held each other’s gaze for what seemed a very long time, and what Donny felt through the mostly vicarious stress of the moment and the unexpected evocation of Jerome’s words and the layers of simultaneously clarifying and clouding intoxicants Donny had ingested was the sense of some tenuous mental connection through the space between them, almost like a handoff had just occurred. Jerome’s case wasn’t over. The price of losing was that Donny was now bound to carry on Jerome’s fight, on his own terms. If he could discharge that duty, it could make everything that had happened to this moment worth it. Acts of liberation, Jerome once said to him, are illegal until the liberators win and rewrite the laws. The feeling of forgiveness and purpose that came over him did not make what followed any easier to watch.

  Szabo recited the sentence in the rigid prose of the state. He read the time on the clock on the wall, checking it against his wristwatch. Then he authorized the executioners to proceed. Each released a catch valve on the I.V. bladders on either side, one the real deal and the other a placebo so no one would know who was the true executioner. Death by medical science and industrial chemistry dripped into Jerome’s veins.

  The minute it took for the concoction to effect its seizure of Jerome’s corpus felt like one in which the forward movement of time had stopped. Even the aiding and abetting assholes standing there in the viewing chamber with Donny seemed to sense it. And then Jerome grunted, convulsed visibly in his tight restraints, and finally snorted just as the essence of his life left his body.

  Just when you thought it was done, this insane belch emitted through Jerome’s mouth, and then the discolored spittle dripped down his chin.

  They stood there watching the dead body for ten minutes, in a kind of funereal trance, until the doctor came in, checked Jerome’s vitals, and pronounced him dead. Szabo noted the time of death.

  When the lady guard came to escort them out, Jerome’s eyes were still open, but he was not there. Except for the words he had said, which were still echoing in Donny’s head, a spell whose incantation he did not yet understand.

  14

  When he got in his car after the execution, Donny wasn’t sure where to go. So he just went. The traffic was light at 2:00 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, and he could really open up the throttle.

  He had gotten halfway to the airport when he realized he had someplace to go other than nowhere. Maybe it was the lingering effects of that thing Ward gave him, but somehow the plane icon marking the route reminded him of his promise to Xelina. The way the plane looked like a bird. A free bird like Xelina. Or like she had been, before she got caught in the net. It was Donny’s job to get her back to that. Her and all the others. That’s what Jerome would want him to do.

  He had seven hours until her hearing. It had been a while since he pulled an all-nighter on a case. Time to suck it up.

  He got off the freeway and found the nearest Pronto Mart. While his thirsty Geely sedan drank the dinosaur juice from the pump, he went inside for provisions. They had everything you could need in there: food, oil, water, beer, wiper fluid, booze, hardware, antifreeze, edibles, pornography, money cards, phone cards, burner phones, rubber boots, ponchos, chewing tobacco, lottery tickets, weird movies, weirder art, and guns. The guns were kind of a new thing, part of the suspension of the licensing laws that had been justified by the general breakdown in law and order as local police forces ran out of money and people got used to never leaving the house unready for a gunfight. That suited most Texans. Donny wasn’t one of them.

  Jerome was.

  So was Joyce.

  As he stood there looking at the guns in the case, most of which were the cheap-ass 3-D printed plastic disposables popular at the corner stores, Donny wondered if maybe this was the time to break his no guns rule. Especially where he was going.

  “You need to get yourself one of those,” said the clerk, whose worn Cornhuskers cap and the vowels that went with it marked him as a member of the Midwestern diaspora. The Nebraskans of the Platte River plains had taken over many of the corner stores in recent years, relying on kinship networks and the informal credit systems they had brought from back home and refined in the resettlement centers. The Texans loved the way they brought their foul-weather self-reliance into the shops, even if they talked a little funny and were not always super friendly.

  “Thinking about it,” said Donny. “Just afraid that if I start using it I won’t be able to stop.”

  The guy gave him a weird look. Maybe he could tell Donny meant it.

  “Do those things work?” asked Donny, pointing at the little metal phone cases next to the guns.

  “Guaranteed,” said the clerk. “Block all known modes of electronic surveillance. And all incoming signals.”

  “I’ll take one.”

  At that moment, it was a more powerful weapon than a gun would ever be.

  The loot Donny loaded in the car ten minutes later included a big metal flashlight that could work as a blunt instrument in a pinch, extra batteries, latex gloves, one of those super-detailed Houston road maps, a shrink-wrapped bean burrito with Day-Glo salsa, a red-eye coffee, a Rebel bar, a cheap face mask, a cheaper folding knife with the logo of the store, a five-pack of money cards pre-loaded with twenty dollars each, and a crowbar that was probably too small for the job but better than nothing. He wondered if there was a joke already about the lawyer with the crowbar. But that only reminded him of the lawyer jokes Jerome used to tell. The memory cut, maybe because of the way the jokes did, especially in the hindsight of that moment.

  He spent a few minutes with the map locating the address Xelina had given him, and then figuring out a good route, one that would avoid the known checkpoints. The destination was close to a section of the Evac Zone, so armed checkpoints were likely, as were unexpected road closures and the kinds of potholes you don’t come back out of.

  As he sipped the coffee before starting the car, he saw the attendant in there under the fluorescents watching him and talking on
the phone. It made Donny wonder if, on second thought, he should go back in and buy one of those guns. Jerome probably would have teased him and told him he wasn’t cut out for shooting, just for talking. Joyce would not have given a shit what Donny did, but she would totally have bought herself one if not two of those guns.

  That’s when Donny remembered she had called earlier that day, which was now yesterday, and he had not had time to call her back. So he sent her a message saying “sorry I missed you.” Then he put the phone in its new case.

  He looked for the attendant again but couldn’t see him. Then the lights went out inside the store. Donny put the car in gear and hit it, taking side streets through industrial zones and bombed-out neighborhoods to avoid attention. It was Houston, so you never knew when you might stumble upon a couple of blocks of higher-end uses, the kind of blocks wired with surveillance and maybe even private paramilitaries on patrol. If it came to that, he would have to talk his way out of it.

  As he brainstormed possible cover stories and evasions, he opened the windows to the stench of the industrial swamp, and heard the distant booms in the direction he was headed.

  15

  After Joyce bought her first gun, she started dragging Donny to target practice with her. They went most Thursdays, as a date night.

  “Bullets and barbeque,” she’d called it.

  Big Red’s Maximum Range was an old warehouse off I-10 that had most recently served as the meeting place of the Assembly of the Rapturous Ascension, until Pastor Roger Loving’s TV show went national and he moved to a former basketball arena closer to downtown. When he first started tagging along, Donny asked Big Red Jr. if they had any images of Satan or Caesar left over as targets, but no one else thought that was funny, if they even knew he was joking. The targets they had were traditional bullseyes, and if you wanted to pay a few bucks extra you could have a street hoodlum, a Central American soldier, or one of the new domestic terrorists, who looked a lot like a farmer.

  Donny stuck with the bullseyes, which made him appreciate what a very bad shot he was. Joyce liked the hoodlums. Her favorite was the guy with the fedora. She said it made the experience more noir. It worked, because Big Red himself started coming to watch her, saying you’re pretty dang good at this, Professor, and encouraging her to sign up for some competitions. Joyce modestly credited the quality of the Austrian equipment she had invested in, but you could tell she liked the compliment.

  Big Red did not ever think to talk politics with Joyce, which might have changed his opinion. If he could have understood her. Joyce tended to speak in fully formed scholarly paragraphs, complete with footnotes. Donny told her it was a shield from feelings, and she didn’t argue. He thought maybe that’s why she found the pure tactile intensity of shooting a gun so refreshing.

  “Bullets have their own language,” she said. “America’s true language.”

  One time Big Red set up one of those cubes of ballistic gelatin for Joyce, after Donny asked him if he had any. It was what the crime lab guys used to re-create shootings, and Donny had learned about them while working as a prosecutor. The gelatin was designed to replicate human flesh. When you heard the sound of one of Joyce’s hollowpoints hitting that block of goop, you never forgot it.

  When they went for their walks after dinner, Joyce would open carry in this crazy designer holster she bought. Armed and probably more dangerous to themselves than any assailant, they strolled places you were told to avoid after dark, and talked freely in the unsurveilled open air about the kind of things that were normally kept coded. Or never discussed at all.

  Joyce developed a philosophy of the gun, a crazy variant of the radical theory she wrote about in academic journals that many libraries were increasingly scared to even carry on their shelves. It was a theory of revolutionary empowerment, charged with phrases like “the sovereign body,” “zones of autonomy,” and “cordite-based consent.” Donny said the only thing scarier than a philosophy professor with a gun is one who talks about actually using it. But when the time came for him to defend Jerome giving guns to the refugees in the resettlement camps, Joyce’s theories came in handy.

  Now he wondered if maybe he should have kept the far-out Second Amendment arguments out of it. It obviously hadn’t worked for Jerome.

  Donny was thinking about that as he sat there at the end of a dark dead-end street trying to figure out which turn he had missed when the phone rang.

  As he opened the case that was supposed to block all signals, he cursed the clerk who sold it to him. But then he was glad, when he saw who was calling.

  “Hey,” said Donny, holding the phone to his head.

  “Hey,” said Joyce.

  “Sorry I missed your call,” said Donny. “I was at the courthouse.”

  “I saw you on the news. Your picture at least.”

  “Is that what you were calling about?”

  “No. The news was later. I called about something else.”

  “I’m driving,” said Donny, as he turned around and headed south. “Let me know if the noise gets too bad.”

  “I can hear you,” said Joyce. “Are you crying?”

  “They did it, Joyce. They fucking killed him.”

  “I saw that, too. I’m sorry.”

  “I blew it,” said Donny.

  “You can’t win, Donny. It’s like I keep telling you. There is no real law. Just raw power, dressed up in a tie. It’s always been that way. And it’s starting to get a whole lot worse.”

  “I know, but I have to do something for these people. There’s still some law, and so there’s still some hope.”

  She sighed. “Look, I didn’t call to rehash our favorite argument.”

  “I thought maybe if I gave them a political reason to do it, to stay the execution, they would bite.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I saw on the news. Good idea. Too bad they spun it the other way. Now they’re talking about you the way they talk about your clients.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She paused. “It’s late, maybe you should just watch it yourself after you get some sleep. Are you fucked up?”

  “No,” he lied, telling himself the effects had mostly passed. He drank another sip of coffee.

  “Well, keep it buttoned up, Kimoe. Because you seem to have gotten their full fucking attention.”

  “Good,” said Donny.

  “Just remember those of us who get tagged by the algorithms whenever they look you up in the database, counselor. I had two of those goons come see me today. Before the latest news, even.”

  “That’s why you called.”

  “Yeah. They came by my office on campus, no less. Not good, Donny.”

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Not exactly what the tenure committee needs to see,” said Joyce.

  “Sorry. Who were they?”

  “Feds. In suits. Said they were updating your background check, but the questions they were asking seemed like more than that.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Loyalty questions, like they always have. But a lot more specific. Questions about your cases. The kind of questions you’d ask about a co-conspirator, more than a lawyer. I told them to fuck off.”

  “Joyce—”

  “I was polite at first, since it was at school, but I lost my patience.”

  “It should be over soon,” said Donny. “Once they call the election for the candidate who actually won.”

  “God, for someone who sees the things you see, how can you be such a sucker?”

  “Miles is on it. Him and a bunch of other good, smart lawyers from around the country, including in government and on the bench. They won’t let that happen. They won’t let someone steal the presidency.”

  “You really believe that, don’t you? I guess the White-Out is making you forget all that history you used to read. You better keep those smart lawyers’ numbers handy for when they lock you up. I’m outta here.”

  Donny laughed.

&
nbsp; “I’m not joking,” she said. “I’m leaving.”

  “Leaving the country?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “What do you think I’m doing awake at 2:30 in the morning while you’re driving around wasted texting old girlfriends? I’m packing.”

  Donny processed it.

  “It’s just hard going through all these fucking books,” she continued.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Someplace I can drive,” she said.

  “Vamos a la playa,” said Donny.

  “No beach. I need Metropolis. Mexico City. I have friends there. It’s where everybody’s going.”

  “Who’s everybody?”

  “Jesus, you’re so wrapped up in your work you don’t even know what’s going on. You better get one of those new passports while you can.”

  “With the biometrics?”

  “Yes, on your phone. Super creepy. Makes you take a little patriotic quiz every time you open it. Go ahead, ask me the names of the presidents.”

  “So I guess you didn’t burn yours with the kids after all.”

  “Sorry, no, I’m too selfish in the end. But you already knew that.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “My travel pass is for a week from Friday.” There was a pause on the line. “You should come with me.”

  It surprised him. And caused a flutter in his stomach. Just not one of anticipation.

  “I can’t. My clients—”

  “You can’t help them, Donny. The system is rigged. You’re banging your head against the wall. It’s hard to watch. I’m not saying we should get back together. Just share the ride.”

  Donny considered it. “You just want a lawyer with you when you cross the border.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt,” said Joyce, and he could hear the shrug. “But I would enjoy your company.”

  Donny looked out at the landscape around him. A helicopter was moving low over a tank farm in the near distance, searchlight scanning the ground.

  “Can I think about it?”