Rule of Capture

by Christopher Brown

  “Do you think we’re going into the Zone?”

  She shrugged. “Those kids said it was okay. This is definitely the way. I can tell.”

  Donny nodded, looked around again, sniffed the air as if he were more tracker than lawyer. Then he stepped over the fence and walked on in.

  Pretty soon the weeds were up to their shoulders, and it did start to smell funny, like some gas from beneath the earth was leaking out. He was about to say they should turn around, when the path abruptly ended and they found themselves staring into the mouth of a huge pipe. It was an enclosed concrete storm culvert that drained out into the creek. Damp, very dark, and a little slimy-looking. There was a small but steady flow of water pouring off. Instinctively, Donny put his hands up to catch it. And then he drank some.

  “Are you nuts?” said Percy.

  “Maybe,” he said. “I just know it’s clean. I don’t know how.”

  They looked at the dog, who was lapping the water up where it hit the ground, oblivious to the plastic bottles and other trash that had collected around the puddles.

  “This has to be the place,” said Percy, still shaking her head. “It’s just like they said.”

  “Yeah, but they didn’t seem like they really wanted us to find it.”

  “They just didn’t think we could follow their directions. That we would get lost.”

  That’s when the dog scrambled around them, and soon was standing up there in the mouth of the culvert looking back.

  “Look,” said Percy, pointing at the tunnel. “You can see it through there.”

  Donny looked to the far side, into the light. She was right. He climbed up and followed the dog into the storm sewer, which was big enough that you could walk in it only slightly crouched. It was a short distance before it opened back up, and there it was: a big apartment complex behind a chain-link fence covered with dense green vines and flowers that looked like blood orange trumpets. There was an engineered drainage terrace connecting it to the creek, overgrown with weirdly beautiful thirsty grasses coming up through the wire mesh and landscaped rocks of the gabion. Inside the fence was all green, too, with retama and fan palms popping up in a yard gone wild. The building looked abandoned, four stories of beat-up stucco under a mansard roof that had been fighting the elements longer than its designers had in mind, some of the windows boarded up and others broken, big graffiti tags on the walls that looked like a menagerie of fantastic animals and an alphabet of hieroglyphics from the future. But when you watched for a while it looked weirdly like maybe there were people living in there. Donny noticed one nearby window that was cracked open. Inside you could see some furniture, something hung on the wall, a mug on a table. A gun.

  Donny looked back at Percy, half-expecting her to be gone, but she was smiling and giving him the thumbs-up.

  They climbed over the gabion, under the fence, and into the yard. The foliage was even thicker than it looked. Percy shushed him as Donny led the way through, snapping twigs and stepping on a fallen branch. Then they were through, by an old paved path that led between the building they had seen from the outside and another one that was identical but at a different angle, facing a third path that made a central courtyard with an old playground and an empty swimming pool. The courtyard had been turned into a giant garden. And there were people, two women and some kids.

  And then they heard a click, metal on metal, and turned.

  “Howdy,” said Clint, rifle trained on them.

  “Have you heard the one,” said Xelina, from behind them, “about what happened to the lawyers who tricked the people?”

  47

  “You’re hard to find,” said Donny.

  “When your attorney lets them lock you up, you have to make your own sanctuary,” said Xelina.

  “I got that order vacated,” said Donny.

  “Too late,” said Xelina. “Someone more reliable beat you to it.”

  Clint looked a little sheepish. He also looked injured, with a gash on his face, a bandage over his forearm, and exhaustion in his stance.

  “Can you put that down?” said Donny, nodding at Clint’s AK-47. “And can we sit down and talk?”

  “This place is cool,” said Percy, looking around at the complex while the dog guarded her.

  “Come on,” said Xelina, sizing up Percy and smiling. “I’ll show you around.”

  Sabine Waters Apartments was the name on the old sign up front at the street, but the people who were squatting there had other names for it, names they didn’t tell Donny.

  There were forty-three people living there, they said, but Donny didn’t see that many. He saw about fifteen people, including the three little kids. But from what they had done with the place, you could believe the energy of a much bigger group than that had been put into it.

  The buildings had been put back to use, with dwellings, a little school, a television studio, a group kitchen, and an arsenal, energy provided by solar panels on the roof, water provided by rainwater collection and by the springs they had somehow managed to bring back to life back there by the creek. They showed them the old signal oak that had been bent hundreds of years ago to mark the springs, one of the few trees that had been left when they built the complex, and the way they first knew to look for the springs when they found the place. Now the zone around the springs had been transformed into some relic of a healthier past, a yard gone wild.

  “It’s so beautiful,” said Donny, meaning it.

  “This happened on its own,” said Xelina. “Wait until you see it after we help it.”

  “I want to help,” said Percy.

  Xelina smiled at her. “Good,” she said. “You can help us spread it.” She reached into her pocket and tossed Percy a small plastic bag. Percy held it up and saw a mix of seeds.

  “Those ones go close to the water. I’ll show you how to find more, so you can collect them for us. Come on, let’s talk.”

  They sat back there, under the trees, at a table made from an old cable spool.

  “Those were a lot of guns back there,” said Donny.

  “They have more,” said Xelina.

  “What are you planning?”

  “Why should we trust you?” said Xelina.

  “I’m your lawyer.”

  “I fired you.”

  “You never told me.”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  “Let me in. Let me know what you want to do, see if I can’t help you achieve your goals by lawful means.”

  “There’s no more time for lawyer bullshit,” said Clint. “Now is when we fight back, the only way that gets their attention.”

  “There are still a few levers we can pull without shooting anyone. It just takes some work to find them. Not as much work as finding you all. If you had stuck with me, you would be free. Now Xelina really is a felon, and they have probable cause to round up the rest of you. If we want to build a better future, we need to build it on law.”

  “If we want to build a better future, we need to take it,” said Clint. “Break it, break it down, blow it up, hang some of these Earth-eating fascists from streetlamps like they have their secret squads doing to the people who want to do it your way.”

  “Sounds like a blast,” said Donny. “I’ll put my money on the guys with the tanks and drones.”

  “If you’d ever been on the other side of asymmetrical warfare,” said Clint, “you might have a different opinion.”

  “And if you’d been with me in the room when they executed Jerome Hardy, you might have a different opinion.”

  “Listen,” said Xelina. “Here’s the deal. The FRO is a figment of the government’s imagination. It never existed, other than as a bunch of different people trying to figure out a way to have an actual future, or just have some fun in the meantime. There is no underground. Or I should say there was no underground, until now, until they showed us that we don’t have a choice. I was an observer, and they taught me I need to be a participant. If you want to help us, you need
to do the same thing.”

  Donny wasn’t sure if it was the words or the thing with her eyes that made him certain she was right, even though what she was pushing on him went against everything he had been taught. He broke her gaze, only to find himself looking at the gun on her hip, as he considered his next move.

  Another couple walked up just then. A burly little brown guy in work pants and a hoodie, and a tall, straight-haired blond woman with a black T-shirt, patched bell bottoms, and goatskin boots, white skin tanned the color of an endless summer, both carrying rifles, his a beat-up Armalite, hers a high-end Italian shotgun with metal inlays.

  “Hey, Clint,” said the woman. “We may have a problem.”

  “What’s that?” said Clint.

  “Listen.”

  Donny listened with the rest of them, but only heard birds and faraway cars.

  “Fuck,” said Clint. “Get everybody inside. These idiots got followed. I knew we shoulda just shot ’em.”

  Percy heard it, and then she pointed at the sky like she saw it.

  Then they heard the sirens, outside, a lot closer.

  48

  They were better prepared for this than Donny would have expected.

  Clint said the stateside drones weren’t armed. Not yet.

  He said I’ve seen what it looks like when they aim a Hellfire missile at the middle of a city, and you don’t want to see that.

  He said everybody get your radios on and go to your spots, just like we practiced.

  Donny got winded following them up to the top floor of the building closest to the street.

  Percy said I’m going to the basement.

  They stepped into an open floor, all the walls torn out, some of the debris still there piled up over to the side. There were holes in the ceiling, and patches where old green carpet was still stapled in, getting greener. Most of the windows had been taped or boarded over, but other viewholes had been punched through. And through them, they could see what was coming: two teams of fugitive-hunting U.S. Marshals and a squad of Coast Guard DOGs, ready to rumble. One of the squads was suiting up in its battle armor, while the snipers took positions, and one tough-looking lady Coastie loaded a grenade launcher. The first drone was already in the air, hovering and watching them right through the walls.

  “This isn’t as bad as I expected,” said Clint, binoculars up against a slit in the wall.

  Donny put his hand on the wall. It felt like he could push right through. A bullet sure as hell could, and they were ready to bring down a lot more than that.

  “You think?” said Xelina, looking through a broken window.

  “They didn’t come ready for the kind of fight we got.”

  “What are you going to do?” said Donny.

  “Soon as they start coming, hit ’em hard from five points. You watch, they won’t even send a second wave.”

  Donny looked at Xelina. “This is nuts,” he said. “They’re going to shred us.”

  “You got a better idea?” said Clint.

  “Surrender,” said Donny.

  “Fuck that,” said Clint.

  “Not all of us. Just let me go talk to them. See if I can get them to take one of us.”

  “He’s right,” said Xelina. “We should try it. We didn’t plan this very well.”

  “Yes we did. We are ready to light the fuse.”

  “I’m not ready to die, baby. I’m going out there with Donny.”

  “The fuck you are.”

  “You can stay here and cover me.”

  “Nope. If you’re gonna be your stubborn-ass self then you are going to stay here and watch me go out there and make sure this weasel doesn’t give us all up.”

  “Up to you all, but I’m going,” said Donny.

  White flag hanging from a top-floor window, Donny hollered the deal, we’re coming out, we want to talk, don’t shoot. The Texas-twanged robot voice of a loudspeaker said roger that, exit this door, we will send negotiators.

  Donny followed Clint down to the ground floor. Clint set his weapons there just inside the double doors.

  “I wish I’d never seen you,” he said. “But I’m keeping an open mind.”

  Then he threw the doors open, and Donny stepped through, hands on his head.

  That was when he finally saw the sign, out in front of the complex. It had a picture of some big machine that looked like a cross between a drill, a refinery, and a water park. It had a fancy corporate logo. And a legend:

  COMING SOON

  A NEW PROJECT FROM NEW FRONTIER DEVELOPMENT GROUP

  49

  The first class they taught them in law school was called Property.

  The first case they taught them in Property was about how you make the things in nature your property through kill or capture.

  The specific example they used to teach this lesson was one about a real estate investor chasing a fox across an empty lot.

  Of course it took place in the Hamptons. The Hamptons in 1800, when a rich dude could still roam on horseback across “waste and uninhabited land.”

  “Waste and uninhabited land” was the New York Supreme Court’s term for the commons—land no one owned and everyone shared. Every thing shared, if you counted the fox, and its fellow forest creatures that had inhabited the uninhabited land for longer than the humans that were there when the Anglo-American real estate investors showed up.

  The dude on the horse was named Lodowick, which Donny thought was kind of an awesome name. Lodowick was new in town, having moved there to buy and sell real estate. When he read cases like that, Donny always got distracted by wanting to imagine what those people were really like, what they looked like, what the details were that the judges didn’t think were relevant to their opinions. Donny imagined a guy who looks like a realtor, complete with whitened teeth, dressed up like the opposite of a Pilgrim, riding a horse that’s like if horses could be like new BMWs.

  What happened was Lodowick chased the fox, and just as he was about to shoot, another guy beat him to it. Lodowick sued, asserting that by initiating the chase he acquired ownership of the animal. The trial court agreed, but the New York Supreme Court reversed, digging out ancient authorities from the likes of Puffendorf, Babeyrac, and Blackstone to explain that the way you make an animal your property is to mortally wound it or get it in a net or a trap.

  The rule of capture, as they called it, worked well for other things. Oil, gas, and water, for example. The early Texans used one variant to reclaim the cattle that had strayed from their former Spanish masters and gone feral. Wandering bovines ready to be herded like found money, worth so much dough it was profitable to drive them overland all the way to Kansas, where they could be taken by freight car to the big cities for slaughter and consumption.

  Take ’em to Missouri, Matt.

  They had sucked Texas and most of the rest of the country so dry that they were working on figuring out ways to suck the water from the deep crust of the Earth. Now they wanted to export the rule of capture into outer space. Donny imagined John Wayne on Mars.

  Take ’em to Jupiter, computer.

  Donny imagined John Locke on Mars. The guy who really gave the first-generation American judges their self-serving ideas of property. Viewing the recently discovered Americas through the prism of an English gentleman, Locke cooked up a theory of individual ownership of the things we take from the Earth by imagining a “state of nature” that never actually existed, a world of natural bounty to which no prior claims exist. If you own your own body, you own your labor. And when you apply your labor to nature, by carving a piece of wood, or drilling a hole in the ground, or capturing a fox, you become the owner of that, too, because your labor is now embodied in it.

  Joyce called that the view from nowhere, the assumption that one’s own perspective is neutral and objective, when in fact it is totally skewed by self-interest. Locke’s principal example for the state of nature was America as discovered by the English. And thanks to Locke, the English created a f
antastic real estate empire, selling off pieces of a continent on the other side of the ocean that had been occupied by others for millennia.

  The same kind of theory was how the early American Supreme Court was able to rule that the guy who bought his land from the U.S. government had superior title to the guy who bought the same land years earlier from the Indians who had lived there since before the Pilgrims.

  It was how people could capture other people, and enslave them to work the land they had captured on the other side of the planet.

  And now it was how these guys thought they could capture water trapped down there so deep it was underneath everybody. Take things that belonged to the whole world, make them your own, and sell them to the poor and thirsty for the highest price you could get them to pay.

  The men who invented this system said it was natural law. And it was, in a way, the same way that it was no law at all. It was the law of the apex predator, the creature who takes what nature lets it.

  Donny’s job, he realized as he sat there buried in casebooks trying to figure out how to deliver on his promise to Xelina after he had saved his own ass by bringing her back in, was to rewire that system, on its own terms. Before there was nothing left to take.

  Good luck with that, said the dead white guys on the wall of the law library, laughing their asses off.

  Donny thought they didn’t know there was a whole army ready to change the law by other means. Then he realized they knew better than everybody. That they had set up the whole system to prevent that from happening. And that if it did, they were ready to show the real power that backs up the law.

  PART THREE

  JUDGMENT

  50

  On hearing days they airlifted the lawyers to the courtroom. Check-in was at the uncivilized hour of 6:00 a.m. at the Coast Guard staging area, an old auto salvage yard east of downtown where they parked those orange armored trucks that sent people scurrying when they rolled through the neighborhood. Donny arrived late, almost on principle, and because of that it took even longer to pass him through security at the gate and again at the pad. They inspected, scanned, and logged his ID, phone, and bar card, and then they put them in a metal box and told him they would be returned to him at the end of the day. They searched his files by hand, removing and discarding each metal object they found bigger than a staple. They even took his pens, including the old fountain pen he liked to use, the one his mom had given him when he graduated from law school. In their defense, it would have made a decent stiletto in a pinch. As replacement, they gave him two one hundred percent plastic ballpoints to use, with blue ink. He asked them how you could kill someone with paperclips, but they ignored him. Then they asked him a series of weird verification questions they read from a screen, several of which related to motor vehicles he once owned, and two of which Donny declined to answer, to the immense annoyance of the guard. When he finally stepped through the fence lugging his litigation bag, the big chopper was already rotored up and loaded with cranky young prosecutors looking impatiently through the windows at him.