Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Nothing is secret from us.
Malone stared at the flashing cursor as it urged him to reply, while the little voice deep in the reptilian part of his brain screamed at him to run far, far away. Instead, his fingers went to the keyboard.
Why’d you kill the girl?
Tsk, tsk, tsk. So much more predictable than we hoped.
Fuck you.
Ah, now that’s better. We didn’t kill the girl, Detective Malone. But if you find us, you might find out who did.
The room was stifling, and sweat dripped down Malone’s neck, staining his collar. This was no joke, no prank. This was something more.
You’re Limbus.
Strike two, Detective. No one is Limbus. Limbus is not a person. Limbus employs persons. It employs them to do the job only they can do, at a time when they have nothing else left. Is that you Detective? What do you have left to live for? Just how lucky do you feel? And just how far down the rabbit hole are you willing to go?
All the way. All the way down to the bottom of this.
We shall see, detective. We shall see.
Before Malone could say another word, the message box went gray; the other person, whomever he or she was, had left. Malone said a silent curse
His phone buzzed. He slipped it out of his pocket, saw that he had a message. Absentmindedly opened it. The sender was blocked, and there was an attachment with a one-word name—Infamous. He would have deleted it out of hand were it not for the message.
You’ve just started down the rabbit hole, Detective. Time to take the plunge.
-Jack Rabbit
Infamous
By
David Liss
More than anything else, Chip wanted beer, and though the gas station was—now famously—within walking distance to his mother’s house, he wasn’t sure he wanted to risk the trip out there, even after eleven o’clock at night. Three years on, and still the world wouldn’t let him be. Other people made mistakes and were forgiven, but not Chip. Punks held up liquor stores or raped children or broke into houses and slit the throats of old married couples sleeping quietly in their beds, and some soft-hearted judge would talk about first offenses and rehabilitation. Hordes of marauding drug dealers walked across the border, firing their pistols into the air like banditos, and they got a big Welcome to America! and virtual permission to set up shop selling heroin to toddlers. Then, if they got sick or hurt, they got free medical care. They got unemployment even though they’d never had an American job. Their kids got to go to Harvard for free.
Everyone got a free pass or a second chance—everyone but Chip, who hadn’t broken a single law.
The newspapers and TV shows and the internet blogs that liked to shit on the Second Amendment had turned him into a villain. He’d been through the horrors of the legal system, and he’d walked away exonerated, though it cost him every penny his mother could scrape together. The overwhelming majority of Americans understood that he’d done nothing wrong, but he still had to live like a prisoner in his mom’s house, like an outcast, like—and this is what burned him up—like a criminal. He, Chip Dunston, who had been convicted of nothing, had to spend the rest of his life skulking in the shadows while rapists and drug-pushers and illegal immigrants were getting bottle service in the VIP rooms at clubs all over America.
That was the world he was living in. That was reality.
It was also reality that he wanted another six pack. Possibly more, and maybe some Doritos. Doritos would be good. So, he reasoned, fuck it. He was going to walk to the gas station. If anyone wanted to give him lip, he could take it. If anyone wanted to give him more than lip, well that’s why he carried his Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm pistol, which was easy to fit in his jacket pocket. He liked this time of year, when it was cool enough to wear a jacket. The Kel-Tec was small, designed for maximum concealability—it said so right on the manufacturer’s web page—but you still needed to put it somewhere. For much of the year in Florida, that meant a holster over shorts and under a baggy shirt. A jacket was better.
The jacket was new—larger than anything he’d owned before the attack in which he’d been forced to defend himself. He’d never been thin, but he’d put on a lot of weight since then. Now he was topping out over 300 pounds, but he supposed it didn’t much matter. It wasn’t like he was going to get a date any time soon. It wasn’t like he was going to get a job. Maybe in five years or ten or more, the world would have forgotten, would have forgiven him for daring to protect his own life, but not now. Chip was unemployed and unemployable. He was a social reject, buried under mountains of debt.
He still got the occasional donation though his online legal defense fund, but that amounted to only a few drops into an almost bottomless bucket. Only one source, a company called Versteckt Labs, still sent sizable checks, and it was a good thing too. Without them, his mother would have lost the house by now. He still managed a speaking event now and again, but they paid a lot less than they used to. He’d done every local group and event imaginable, and the fact was his speaking skills left much to be desired. He got nervous in front of crowds and tended to mumble and perspire in a way that made the audience uncomfortable. Anyhow, given how he’d changed, he didn’t like to get on airplanes anymore. The seats were so small, and he hated the feeling of walking down the airplane aisle, every passenger eying him, silently chanting Please, not next to me. Even when he was anonymous, people still hated him.
*
Sometimes he felt gratitude to his mom for letting him with live with her, but not often. Sometimes he imagined her dying in her sleep. That happened more frequently. He liked to picture waking up and finding her dead—he wasn’t sure how this would happen, since if she were late emerging from her room, he wasn’t about to go looking for her—and then spend the morning drinking coffee in his bathrobe, watching TV while EMTs carted out her body and asked him sympathetic questions.
Even his mother had turned against him. She’d never praised Chip for defending himself, and her neighborhood, from a clearly-menacing teenager. He’d been visiting her for Thanksgiving when the incident happened, and he’d been restless and bored, and he’d just had a feeling—a twinge in his gut—that somewhere out there was a punk up to no good. He’d gone for a walk and found that punk, and the punk had done what punks do. He got lippy. He didn’t like being told what to do. He didn’t like it when Chip, whose own mother lived less than a mile away, had put a hand on his shoulder—admittedly a rough hand. He’d called Chip names. He’d taken a step forward and given Chip that gangster glare. That’s why things had turned ugly. Not because of anything Chip had done.
Now his mom sighed when she looked at Chip. She shook her head. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d hugged him or told him she was proud of him or called him her “miracle baby.” He still remembered being her little boy, when she treated him like he was something special. He remembered sitting at the kitchen table while she served him grilled cheeses and tomato soup. He remembered her kissing his cheek and saying he was proof of what happened when people had faith and love in their hearts. Those days—when she would tell anyone about how the doctors said she couldn’t conceive, but God doesn’t listen to doctors—were gone forever.
And his father? Chip had never even met the guy. Chip didn’t know his name. The media had searched for him, of course. They’d have loved to drag his presumably drunk ass before the cameras so he could say that he knew Chip was bad news from conception. The media had come up empty handed, though, and it was for the best. Chip didn’t need another parent to be disappointed in him.
Now, as he collected his keys and his firearm, his mother stood by her bedroom door in her bathrobe and slippers, her gray hair pulled back into a ponytail, that pinched look on her face. The words miracle baby were not about to cross those lips. Chip felt pretty sure about that.
“Where you off to?” she asked, already judging him.
“Walking to the gas station to get something,�
� he said.
“You’re not taking my car,” she said.
“Don’t need to take your car to walk somewhere,” he retorted, thrilling in the cleverness of his comeback.
“Last thing you need is more beer,” she told him. “This place stinks of your beer farts.”
“Didn’t say anything about beer,” he replied—rather deftly, he thought—as he opened the door.
“If I stay up, what are the chances I won’t see you carrying beer when you get back?”
“If you don’t stay up, the chances are pretty good,” he told her, closing the door behind him. He was pleased with himself for shutting her down. Who was she to judge him, after all he’d been through? All those stories she used to tell about how much she wanted a child—well, she didn’t seem to want one anymore. It was like she’d lost the ability to care about anyone but herself.
The fact was, after the incident, she had not been on his side. Even she—his own mother—thought he’d been wrong to defend himself, and she’d always resented being made to deal with the reporters and haters, and even the fans, who still occasionally came by the house. Plus she was mad because while she’d helped him with his legal fees, the trial and the lawsuit had all but cleaned her out. She’d worked her whole life as an elementary school cafeteria lunch lady, and she’d socked most of that income away for decades. She’d been a Lady Scrooge, that was for sure, skimping on birthday and Christmas presents for years just so she could pad her stupid bank account. Now that money was gone. Chip wasn’t sure what she’d been saving it for. She was almost seventy, so any worthwhile part of her life was over. She still managed to find money for cigarettes, which stank up the place way worse than any supposed beer farts that supposedly blasted from his supposed anus. That cigarette smoke was real, though. You’d think the cancer sticks would have taken her down by now, but she was too mean to go anywhere. The hard-hearted lived forever, he supposed.
Chip had his head down and his hands in his pockets, feeling the comforting weight of his gun, just like he’d done that night three years ago. You never knew when someone was going to come at you. It was true for everyone all the time, and his life had proved that. People wanted to believe it wasn’t true, that they were safe, but they were kidding themselves. And it wasn’t just the minorities, either. People thought he was some kind of a racist, and that bothered Chip about as much as anything else. He didn’t care if someone was a minority or not. If they came at him, acting all tough and swaggering, then they should be prepared for Chip to defend himself. That was as far as it went with him. He’d have shot a white guy just as quickly. He knew that in his heart. That thug had gotten in his face. He’d made Chip to feel like he didn’t have any options, and Chip hated to feel that way. The gun he’d had on him had given him some options, though.
The gas station was only a mile up the road, and the cool December air felt good. He’d still rather be sitting on his mother’s threadbare couch, watching that reality show about a lady who liked to get plastic surgery, but it was less fun without the beer, and these days he needed a few drinks if he was going to get any sleep. It was the anxiety.
People talked all the time about being anxious. He saw that on television. People were anxious about their jobs or about their money or their futures, but what did they really have to be anxious about? If some asshole with a job didn’t get a promotion, he was still employed, or he could find another place to work. Chip had put in five years in the electronics department at the Best Buy—five years!—and that counted for nothing now. Every place he went turned him away. They made up excuses, but he knew the truth. He was bad for business. If he worked in a store, they said, the minorities wouldn’t shop there—as if their money was better than anyone else’s!
He’d tried some other ideas. He’d been willing to think outside the box. He’d applied for jobs at gun and liquor stores and pawn shops, places where a guy who could handle himself would be a real asset. Still, no luck. People hated him. They hated him more now that he was fat.
Things were going to get better though. Sometimes he felt himself sinking into a gloom so dark and deep it threatened to devour him, but after a few beers, he started to see that he was just being negative. The world wouldn’t hate him forever. They would forget, or something would happen—more ordinary people would get attacked while going about their business—and they would suddenly realize that Chip had been right all along. He’d lose some weight and get new clothes, and then finding a job would be no problem. Places would come begging him to work for them.
Or maybe that reality show would happen. For a while it had seemed like it was going to be a real thing, but his mother had stubbornly refused to participate, and they said Chip didn’t have enough secondary characters to make the show interesting. Still, they could change their minds, and then people would get to know who he truly was, and they would see he was a decent guy who had been put in a difficult situation—and stepped up.
Chip wandered into the glow of the gas station, passed a guy filling up his truck. He thought maybe he’d get a nod of recognition—that happened a lot from concerned citizens—but this truck belonged to a minority, one of the Hispanic variety, and it was better if people like that didn’t recognize him. Chip kept his head down and his shoulders hunched.
He went into the store and saw Kelly Watkins working behind the counter. They’d gone to high school together, and she used to be friendly with him. It had only been eight years since graduation and she used to greet him by name and start up some small talk, but now she pretended she didn’t know him. She acted like she was too good for him, but she was no big deal herself. Kelly had always been fat, and he’d been nice to her even when he’d been pretty close to normal weight, but now she couldn’t even bother to be polite. That was how the world worked. She probably thought he was bad for business, just like everyone else, though he didn’t know why she’d care. It wasn’t like she owned the Mobil station or anything. She just worked there.
On the other hand, he’d heard that she liked to date minority guys, so maybe that was it. Maybe she was one of those people who believed whatever the fake ladies on the cable news said. She’d never been smart, that’s for sure.
Chip wandered into the back and decided that after all this exertion, maybe it was a good idea to invest in the future. He grabbed one of those cases of beer with the handle for easy carrying. It was a long walk with something that heavy, but he believed in planning ahead, and this way he wouldn’t have to go out for beer tomorrow or maybe even the day after. He could hide some of the extras under his bed, then pretend he was out, and ask his mother to pick up some beer. Then he’d be okay for a little while. It would be nice not to have to worry about stuff.
With this sort of forward thinking in mind, he grabbed two bags of Doritos and another of spicy cheese puffs, and then headed over to the counter. Kelly let her mud-colored eyes go unfocused so she wouldn’t have to look at him while she silently rang up his purchases. When she was done, she gestured with a nod toward the register, like actually telling him the total would be beneath her dignity. Chip handed over his money, got his change, and then dropped a few pennies into the charity jar for crippled kids. He didn’t have much, but he was still always thinking about helping others. That’s just the kind of man he was.
Chip turned, and there was a black guy standing right in front of him. It wasn’t like the only thing he noticed was the guy’s skin color. That would have been racist, which Chip knew he was not. It happened that this particular person, whose skin happened to be dark, was all dressed out in ghetto clothes and wearing that big, flashy jewelry, and had that don’t-fuck-with-me look on his face that basically told the entire world he was a thug. Plenty of white people sported the same look, and Chip didn’t like those guys either. Maybe the world wanted him to believe that it was racist not to like a look, but he knew better. If you made yourself up to look like a tough guy itching for trouble, you couldn’t blame decent people for thinking
you were up to no good.
Chip was polite, because he liked to avoid confrontations. “Excuse me, sir,” he said.
The black guy raised his chin and glowered at him. “I think enough people have already done that.”
Chip tried to move away from the guy, but he shifted, blocking Chip’s path to the exit.
“What’s the hurry?” the guy said. “You don’t want to talk?”
“I don’t want no trouble in here,” Kelly said, looking toward the phone like she was prepared to use it if necessary. “Take it outside.”
Take it outside. That was very helpful, Kelly. She wanted Chip to just step outside so this thug could beat him or kill or do whatever he wanted.
“Maybe you could call the cops,” Chip said wearily. He hated getting the cops involved in these conflicts, and they clearly hated it just as much, but he didn’t see that he had much of a choice.
“It ain’t my business,” Kelly said, clearly having indulged him as far as she was able. “I just don’t want it going on in here.”
The thug pushed Chip toward the door, and he found his feet moving, like he had no choice. He guessed that this must be what it’s like to walk to your own execution. You’d know you shouldn’t do it, but you’d also have no choice.
Who was this thug? Maybe a nephew or cousin of his attacker? Maybe some guy whose mind had been poisoned by the unfair portrayal of events in the media? It didn’t matter. Chip had been confronted in public before—by relatives, friends, and the fired-up ignorant—and these confrontations never ended well. In the middle of the night, outside a deserted gas station, it was likely that things would be even worse.
When they got outside, the thug turned to face Chip, glowering at him. He kept his hands away from his jacket, knowing that Chip could outdraw him. If he even looked like he was reaching for a piece, Chip would drop his bag of snacks and have his Kel-Tec PF-9 maximumly unconcealed in a heartbeat. Then this guy would get that thug expression off his face. He’d have that expression that says, Hey, there’s a hole in my chest. Chip had seen that look, up close and personal. Yes, he had.
Limbus, Inc., Book III Page 9