by Jacy Morris
"You think that guy feels safe?" Rudy pointed at the corpse on the lawn.
Nike looked at the corpse, as if seeing it for the first time. "I knew that man. He used to be a software engineer. He would make all sorts of wonderful, Nike-themed apps for us. He invented a pair of shoes that would keep track of how far and how fast you ran. You ask me if he feels safe? I tell you he did. That's why all these people are here... because we promised to keep them safe. Many of these people could have gone anywhere else, but they chose to come here. When things got bad, we sent out the word that we were building a wall, that we had security, and that we would weather this storm together, the Nike family."
Nike blinked once, the memory of those days fading away. "He felt safe, but we let him down. I don't foresee that happening again. I think with the help of your friends, and the help of people like yourself, we can make this place great again."
It was then that Rudy realized just how out of touch and insane Nike was. Here he was surrounded by the dead, and he believed that everything was going to be ok. Somewhere in that soft brain of his he probably believed this place would probably start making shoes again. "You actually believe what you're saying, don't you?"
Nike just laughed. He reached down and patted Rudy on his shoulder. "I like you. You have no filter. I'm going to call you Perry. Do you like that name?"
"No..."
"Do you want to know why I'm going to call you Perry?" Rudy didn't even have a chance to answer before Nike began again. "Your lack of filter puts me in mind of a delicious unfiltered pear cider I had in Corvallis some years back. At first look it was ugly, unattractive, but when I spent some time with it, I found it refreshing and unlike anything I had ever drank before. It also gave me quite a buzz." Nike laughed as he walked away from Rudy. "See you around, Perry."
Rudy shook his head and gripped the shovel with his aching hands. The hole wasn't going to dig itself.
****
Allen and Epps helped digging graves as well. Of the soldiers, they were easily the most personable. When Whiteside came over to help out, Allen waved him away. Whiteside was a good guy and all, but he had a way of putting his foot in his mouth. He never shut up, and he always seemed obsessed with pushing people's buttons. Whiteside just shook his head and turned the other way.
The soil at his feet was dark and thick. It was hard clay, harder than a dream unrealized. Allen smiled in the hole, though his hands and back were straining.
"You think that's deep enough?" Epps asked.
"You bring a measuring tape?" Allen asked.
"No."
"Then it's deep enough."
They hoisted themselves out of the hole and stood on the edge of it, flexing their backs and dropping the shovels like they were live snakes. The smoke from the fire had died down some, and the sun was finally able to make it through. To Allen, the hole looked like a mouth sprung from the earth. "Feed me," he imagined it saying.
They lifted the grave's unfortunate occupant, Allen standing by the man's legs and Epps at his feet. They swung the body from side to side, ready to deposit the body in the earth's maw, where it would be digested and transformed into nutrients.
"You're not just going to toss him in their like that? Like a sack of garbage?"
Allen looked at the woman who had spoken. She was attractive, like a sparkling crystal bowl filled with peanut M&Ms. She had personality; he could sense it... that or he just really needed to eat something.
"No ma'am," he said. "Wouldn't think of it."
Allen nodded at Epps, and they set the body on the ground. He hopped into the hole, his earlier metaphor making the earthen walls around him feel somewhat dangerous. Epps lowered the body down to him, and he fumbled the heavy corpse until he was able to lay it down gently on the bottom of the grave. Then he pushed himself out of the grave, wishing he could just lie down on the grass and soak up the sun. But a soldier's work was never done. You learned that early once you enlisted. You thought you were going to be able to take a nap and then bam, there was someone ordering you to do some mundane task. Being a soldier wasn't difficult because you had to kill people and maybe be killed; it was difficult because you never had enough damn sleep.
He stood upright, and he looked down at the shovel on the ground. He imagined that when he went to pick it up, it would be like Thor's hammer, immovable, no matter how hard he strained. No such luck though. He picked the blasted shovel right up as if it were comprised of air.
"Thank you," the woman said.
He wiped some sweat of his brow and then set about filling in the hole. This was the easy part. "Not a problem," Allen said.
"You know, the first thing we lost was civility."
Allen cocked an eyebrow at the woman. Epps just kept his head down and filled in the hole. "Civility?"
"Civility is humanity. Without it, we're just animals that can manipulate objects, nothing more than chimps in a forest of our own making."
Allen liked this chick. "There are some that would say civility is a luxury, and that it was just a game we played to fool ourselves into thinking that we are somehow nobler and more important than apes."
The lady smiled at him. "Do you believe that?"
Allen stopped and leaned on his shovel. "Beliefs are straightjackets for the mind. They keep you safe, and make you feel comfortable, but in reality, you're imprisoned for the sake of safety and reason."
The lady nodded and approached. She stuck out a dirty hand to him. She had clearly been helping out with burying the dead. "My name is Diana." Allen shook her hand.
"This is my man Epps." Epps waved at her. "My name is Allen. Well that's my last name actually. My real name is Izzy."
"Pleased to meet you. Perhaps, after you're done here, we could grab a bite to eat."
"I think I'd like that," Allen said.
"How very civil of you," she said with a smile. Then she turned and walked away inside the Ken Griffey Jr. building. Allen watched her the whole way. The sway of those hips did things to him that even his poet's mind couldn't put to words.
"You want to come eat with us?" he said over his shoulder to Epps.
"Nah, man. That weirdo is yours, man. All yours."
"You think she's weird?"
"I think you two will get along just fine. Now stop watching that ass, and help me fill in this hole."
Allen did so, but in his mind, he replayed Diana's walk over and over again. The work wasn't all that bad.
****
Tejada had never been one to be bullied. It wasn't in his nature. As the bodies turned to ash and the smoke cleared the sky, he caught Nike's head of security, a force that seemed to consist of one lone security guard with a face like a troll, looking at him with that look in his eye. It was the look that said, "Listen, asshole. I'm the big kid on the block, and sooner or later I'm going to pound that reality into you."
Tejada had always been short, but he had always carried himself like he was the largest man in the world. It wasn't pride or cockiness. It was just that he didn't have the patience or the time to waste on something as worthless as fear. Life was too short for that bullshit. And as he stalked across the trampled grass of the Nike campus, headed right for the security guard, he could see the man tense up.
He barely came up to the man's flabby chest, but he came as close to the man as he could without touching him. "I see you looking at me."
"Yeah. So?" the man said.
"The only real question is are you looking at me because you want to or because someone else wants you to?" Tejada looked at the man's face. He had a bulbous nose and his lower teeth looked like the underbitten maw of a bulldog. His balding head was covered in black hair swept over the top of a shiny pate.
"What's it matter?"
Tejada got so close to the man that he could smell the fabric of his shirt. "It matters because once I'm done pounding the shit out of you, I need to know if I have to pound the shit out of someone else as well."
The security guar
d tried to push Tejada away and get out of the situation, but Tejada kept his proximity, daring the man to take a swing at him. "Get the fuck off of me," the man said.
Tejada didn't back up. "Answer the question."
The security guard cocked his arm back, and then Tejada sprung into action, jumping upwards and bashing the top of his head into the man's bulldog jaw. As the man fell backwards, Tejada grabbed his arm, swung his legs up around the man's chest and took him to the ground. With his legs wrapped around the man's torso, he yanked his arm backwards. The security guard was going to tell him what he wanted or he was going to break the man's arm.
"Tell me what I want to know." The man strained against Tejada's hold, and Tejada sensed the other people around him. The entire campus had stopped working. They watched the confrontation between the two of them, but no one came to the man's aid. The man had no friends; men like him never did. He pulled tighter on the arm, holding it at the point where it hurt real bad but wouldn't break.
The security guard strained. His pale face had turned red, and the top of his head looked like the bulbous end of a thermometer.
"Gentlemen," a voice said, "this is unnecessary. Stop this."
Tejada turned and looked at the placid face of Nike. He was like a father chiding two unruly children. In his face, Tejada saw pity. If Nike hadn't held a low opinion of Tejada before, he did now. Tejada gave one quick jerk to the security guard's arm, and he screamed in pain. Then Tejada untangled his legs and popped to his feet as if nothing had happened.
"Are you ok, Harper?" Nike asked. The security guard, Harper, rose to his feet, flexing his arm. It would be sore for a week or two. Tejada had made sure that the security guard would remember this little lesson. "Sergeant, what is this all about?"
A crowd had gathered around them. "I think you know."
Nike laughed at this. "I haven't the slightest idea what could have caused you to resort to such barbarism. Is this how the army trains its soldiers?"
The slight was a weak one, and it had no effect on Tejada, but he could see the other residents of the campus tense up at this. Nike was a man that was used to getting his way, used to being able to say whatever he wanted to say. Even though Tejada had showed the man how piss-poor his security was, he was still the same man. Cockiness or stupidity? Tejada didn't know, and he didn't particularly care either. "The army trains us to do a lot of things. Listen to mouthy old men with a superiority complex isn't one of them. If you'll excuse me."
Tejada turned his back on the man, knowing that this was the ultimate knife in the ribs for Nike. A man like that was used to having his questions answered. No one ever turned their back on Nike, but Tejada had, and he smiled as he stepped into the Ken Griffey Jr. building.
"Back to work people!" Nike yelled. Tejada could hear the anger in the man's voice. He wished he could turn around and see that smug look gone from his face, but that would ruin everything.
Inside, he headed to the cafeteria. He wanted a cup of coffee, so he ordered one. One by one, his soldiers returned. They sat at a table all their own as the people of the Nike campus came and went, grabbing food and drink and staying far away. That was good. He had set himself up as the heavy now. Fear was good. It kept people from doing stupid shit, up to a point. Sooner or later, he was going to have to show these people that he and his men were the good guys, but for right now, that fear suited him just fine.
Epps and Allen strolled in grabbed some food and then sat down at the table. "You guys hear anything?" Tejada asked.
"No," Epps said. "But Allen here got himself a date."
Allen blushed, and Tejada's eyes wrinkled at the edges as he smiled. "It's a start I guess. Anyone see which way Nike and his pet gorilla went?"
Brown said, "I saw Nike heading up to the offices upstairs. Harper went with him. He looked like a whipped dog."
Tejada nodded. "Brown, Masterson, I want one of you two on those people at all times. They want to watch us, then we're damn sure going to watch them. Don't turn your back on them for even a second. If, what's his name?"
"Harper," Brown supplied.
Tejada snapped his fingers in recognition. "If Harper walks off and leaves Nike alone, stick with Harper. He's Nike's hands. If Nike's up to something, it's Harper that's going to be carrying it out. That's how these rich fucks work."
Tejada watched as Amanda and Rudy walked in. They followed a wormy looking fellow in spectacles across the cafeteria, got some food, and then sat down at the same table. "Everybody, Rudy and Amanda are officially off limits. They're still with us, but I don't want it to look that way. Walt, you look the least like one of us, so I want you to talk to them when they're alone sometime and see if they've learned anything."
"You got it, sir."
"Alright, let's eat up and get some rest here. I'm sure we've got a long day tomorrow of dealing with some more bullshit. Each of you give Masterson and Brown some of your food; they've already had a long day, and it's about to be longer."
Tejada spooned his food into his mouth. It was flavorless. His mind was on other things.
****
The tiled floor of the locker room was cold. Diana said that the locker room used to be used by athletes who came to visit the Nike campus. The lockers themselves were tall, metallic, and a bright green. Diana stirred, her head resting in the crook of his arm. They had rutted passionately. There was very little foreplay before they had gotten down to business. She was older than him by some ten years, but in bed they were perfectly matched.
When they were done, they had fallen into a quiet rest, and Allen had basked in post-coital clarity for the first time in months. He was no fool; there was no relationship here, just two ships looking for a night's portage during a storm.
"So are you guys good guys or bad guys?" Diana asked.
"Good guys, obviously. Why?"
"It's just that, the people we had here earlier, we thought they were good, but it turns out they were bad. Even Nike's weirdness was more preferable than their... brutality."
Allen could feel Diana's words as they fell from her lips, like syrup dripping slowly from a tapped maple tree. She had the words, but it was hard for her to let them leave.
"What happened?"
Diana sat up then, placing her arms on her knees. Her breasts hung down, and Allen resisted the urge to grab them. That wasn't what he was here for, though their coupling had been a pleasant interlude from all the death and dying.
"At first, the people here were overjoyed at having found a place to be safe. When things went bad, and they went bad fast out here, the company sent out a mass email saying that they had some sort of contingency plan. Our families were invited. The campus was going to be safe."
She looked off into the distance, seeing the past in her mind. "It was for a while. The company hired a security firm to protect everyone and to man the wall. Of course, while they were looking outside the wall, someone neglected to keep an eye inside the wall. One of our older employees passed away in their sleep, and this led to a chain reaction of death. Before we knew it, the security team was running the show. They were brutal."
Diana swallowed hard. There was a sorrow there. He imagined it like a knot in a piece of wood, an imperfection that grew from some wound, some irritant, and created something beautiful, even though it was a scar. He could see that the events of the campus' early days had left these knots in her, both beautiful and sad at once.
"They executed many of the older people. If someone became sick, they would kill them too. We became like prisoners. But Nike knew what to do. He recruited his caveman, Harper, to do his dirty work for him. At night, Harper killed them while they slept, but he didn't "kill them" kill them. He left them to rise. Nike had Harper lock the doors to the security building, and in one night, all the security team was gone, except for Harper and a handful of others who were on duty. But they're gone now too."
"What happened to the others?" Allen asked.
"Harper killed them too.
There's no proof of it. Nike keeps the door to the security room locked, but we all know he ordered it. Now Harper is the biggest goon on the block, and people are too afraid to do anything."
"Why?"
"Because Nike knows all. He sees everything. The locker rooms and the bathrooms are the only places on the campus where Nike can't watch what we do and what we say."
She lapsed into silence then, and Allen sat up as well. He placed a naked arm over her bare shoulders, and then pressed his lips to hers. They were cold and dry. He thought they were going to go for round two, but she pushed him away, not roughly, but enough to let him know his cock wasn't needed at the moment. "That's not why I brought you here," she said.
"Well, it was nice the first time."
She bit her lower lip before saying, "Nike will kill you all."
This sent Allen's disappointed libido into hibernation. "What are you talking about?"
"He's all smiles now, but he doesn't want what happened before to happen again."
"How do you know this?"
She smiled at him, an ironic sort of thing with a hint of sadness. "Because I'm his daughter."
Allen's head hit the wall behind him, and he began to wonder just what he had gotten himself into.
"He won't allow you to take over, but he needs you. Without you, we're not safe. But he also knows that with you and your friends here, we're not totally safe either."
"So how is he going to do it?" Allen asked.
"He's going to use you until he gets what he needs, and then he'll throw you away."
"And the people? They'll go for this?"
"They're afraid. They lost family members, co-workers, children to the last men with guns. That memory doesn't go away. Sometimes, even I wonder if my father might be right."
"But you know he's not."
Diana shook her head. "I'm just guessing here. If I'm wrong, then it's my ass."
Allen closed his eyes, his head still leaning against the cool locker room wall.
"Are you going to sleep?"
He shook his head.
"Then what are you doing?"
"I'm thinking about a time when people didn't fear each other, a time when you could trust that the person across from you wasn't out to screw you over. I'm thinking about a time when a woman didn't fuck you because she wanted you to kill for her."