by Riley Flynn
“Maybe I should have tapped out,” he suggested. “Do they still call it that?”
“You got him in the chest though, man. Final shot. Boom. Then the siren. It was poetic. Honestly. Never seen anything so cool. Wish I’d done that well on my first time.”
Trying his shoulder again, still expecting the pain, Alex didn’t have the heart to tell his friend that the so-called poetic shot had been a last, desperate move, the product of not knowing what to do. Terror was not a good look, not these days.
In the locker were his familiar clothes, blue jeans and a shirt fixed with the faded logo of a company he couldn’t remember. Someone else’s store-bought nostalgia. Normality was rushing back to him, the pain in his shoulder and the rolled-up pair of socks tucked neatly into his shoe a pointed reminder to Alex of why he was destined to sit in an office all his life.
“You coming for a beer later?” Timmy asked. “We can stop by my place.”
Alex shrugged. A mistake. Wincing, he shook his head.
“Smarts, does it? One evening here and you think you’re in Korea. You should see it when a blackout hits. Twice the fun. Kids these days, I tell ya.”
Timmy was a year older than Alex, he knew. They both knew. But in certain worlds, in certain ways, Timmy seemed two hundred years old. Ask him about the news, the wars, the state of the world today–as Alex knew all too well—and Timmy would take on a morbid tone.
No one else at work made that mistake any more. No one but Alex. To him, Timmy’s well-ripened pessimism was a soothing break from the grinning idiots who anchored the news, splashed across every screen. It was nice to have a little doom and gloom in the world once in a while.
Adjusting his socks, sliding into his canvas sneakers, Alex felt a rush of air as his locker slammed shut. He looked up. A weathered hand was holding the door closed, pressing so tight that the knuckles and joints were white. He followed the hand, up the wrist and the hirsute arm, past a faded green tattoo and over a gnarled shoulder, all the way up the turkey neck to see a man, seething, staring down.
“What the hell was that?” said the man. “What the hell?”
Words stumbled on his tongue.
Alex, his hands still trying to tie a shoelace, found his thoughts had deserted him. He felt a twinge in his shoulder. He understood. This must be the man from the arena. Wordless, he dropped the laces and tried to stand, but the man pushed him back down, finger pointing right into the aching shoulder.
“I had you down, maskless, and wrapped up. You should have tapped out. Given up. I shoulda won.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Alex.
The red paint was dried, speckled across the man’s chest. His mask hung from his hip, his pistol holstered. It wasn’t the regulation, company-owned kind that Alex had tried. The metal gleamed, he could see, even when it was tucked away. It was twice the size of the regulation-issue guns, fitted with an extra-long clip and all sorts of bells and whistles.
“You know damn well. Now, what are you gonna do about it?” the man said, leaning down hard and close in front of Alex’s face.
A hand split the air between them. It was Timmy, insinuating himself into the conversation with the care and guile of a drunken lover.
“Freddy, buddy, listen. This was Alex’s first time. We know you got this.” Timmy dusted off the man’s shoulder. “That was a hell of a hold you put on him there, nearly wiped him out. Just telling me how close to tapping out he was. You been practicing? I know you weren’t that good last time we played.”
The anger fell off the man, like fall leaves from the trees. The rushing red skin gave way to a gentler auburn, and Freddy blew a long snort through his nose. He cocked a head.
“Well, you know, Ratz,” he said, “I been thinking about the service again. Got to get myself in shape.”
Timmy patted the muscle on the man’s arm. “Looks it, my friend. They’d be lucky to have a man like you. I’ve never seen you in such good form.”
Smirking, Freddy turned away from Alex. Timmy slipped an arm over the man’s shoulders, guiding him away and out of Alex’s orbit. Even from here, Alex could overhear them talking. They’d switched into gun chatter, regaling each other with weapons and specs. Soon enough, Freddy had his pistol out of his holster and Timmy was turning it over in greedy fingers.
Now that the man was out of his face, Alex could see him as a whole. The arms might have been strong, the fury potent and fresh, but there was a sag about Freddy which had set in for good. A paunch hung over his tactical belt, and there was a slight limp when his attention slipped. The tattoo on his arm was real, probably from the service. But if the forces were welcoming back vets like Freddy, then things in the world must have taken a turn.
They’d nearly recruited Alex once. See the world, they said, get out of Virginia. For a farm boy with a broken heart, it had been more than tempting. Alex got all the way to the parking lot in front of the recruitment office when he’d overheard something on the radio. All the news came out of China and Korea, even back then.
But it had been enough. The sharp slap of awareness hit him hard across the face. Alex had driven home right away and packed up his possessions. It had been a long drive to Detroit, but the flight to the far east would have been much longer. They tried to recruit everyone, really.
Men like Freddy went back for a second bite.
Alex fiddled with his socks as he watched Timmy talk. He smelled an armpit; his shirt wasn’t the freshest. Neither was he, for that matter. Once upon a time, these kinds of places had showers. Soap. Shampoo. The lot.
Nowadays, they had safety codes to cover all that. Couldn’t have running water at a business like this. Pipes carry all sorts of things. Who knows what’s in the water? That was what they said, anyway. Alex wondered whether it was just the company trying to save money. It sure made trips on the bus less tempting.
The pistol had been returned to Freddy’s holster. Alex watched Timmy–Ratz, as they called him here –stroll back across the changing rooms. Timmy had been quick to change, though had hardly changed at all. He’d switched out one set of tactical-looking pants for another, his skinny legs bolstered by the extra padding. The man had more pockets than he had possessions. Black trousers, a gray T-shirt, and a khaki waistcoat worn over the top, it must have taken Timmy ten minutes to find his keys. Probably not. The man probably had a specific place to store them; a plan for every pocket.
“He was not pleased with you,” Timmy announced.
“I did something wrong?” Alex knotted his shoelaces. “You told him this was my first time, right?”
“Sure. Everyone’s a bit on edge now, especially round here. You see the news? Crazy stuff. Anyway, I smoothed it all out. This wouldn’t have happened if you’d just bought more bullets. That thing with the mask though? Still love it.”
“You saw that?” said Alex, gathering his possessions together, ready to leave.
“You kidding me? We were all watching, couldn’t believe it. Taking your mask off in a paintball fight? Takes balls, man. Those things can have your eye out.”
Alex had not considered this.
“It kept misting up on me.”
“You gotta spit in it, man.” Timmy mimicked spitting into an imaginary mask. “Deals with that no problem.”
The pair closed their lockers. Following the labyrinth corridors out of the warehouse, Alex felt like an ant all over again. Losing an eye? That was never the plan. Getting punched in the face was never the plan, either. He’d just reacted, trying to escape the boiling water being poured down the hole behind him. Better than being set in a molten metal museum piece.
“So we’re going for that beer, then?” Timmy asked.
“Sure, I guess.”
“You won, Alex. First time and you won,” Timmy said, slapping Alex across the back. “Or you didn’t lose, at least. We’re drinking tonight.”
“Work tomorrow, you know that.”
Timmy pushed open the l
ast door, bringing the two men out into the cool air of a Detroit autumn.
“Tomorrow can wait, my friend. Let’s live a little.”
3
The wind was brittle. It cut up and under the shirt sleeves, around the ears, and across the parking lot. There was an ice on the air, a sign that Michigan was already thinking of winter. This part of Detroit was hardly paradise; there were plenty of warehouses, factories, and other empty spaces out here, waiting to be snapped up by companies looking to make a quick buck. It was a long way to the city center. Together, Timmy and Alex walked across the asphalt. They were quiet but in a comfortable sort of way.
“Back to my place?” Timmy asked. “Want to follow me?”
Timmy’s place was in Grosse Pointe, almost on the shore. Alex lived in Forest Park. From their position in Riverside, that meant driving out twice as far and back again to get home. But what damage could a few miles do?
“Sure.” Alex shrugged. “Let me just get my car.”
He pressed the button on his keys, expecting a flash of amber lights from the darkened row of cars in the lot. Nothing happened. Timmy had already found his spot, an all-black SUV with worn-down tires. Walking along the row, Alex arrived at his Lincoln. It was beaten up. It was busted. But it was his. It was the same car he’d driven up from Virginia.
Inside were the same seats where he’d sat with Sammy and they’d driven around together for years. Stuffed up in the wheel arches, Alex assumed, there were still chunks of farmyard life: mud and corn husks and everything else that never seemed to shift. Once a car got driven onto the farm, it’d never be clean again.
He could still hear his father’s words.
With a longer, harder press at the key fob, the car finally woke up. The turn signals blinked, the interior light spluttered into life. Too many things were breaking these days. Opening the passenger door, Alex threw his bag into the spare seat. Riding solo tonight. Timmy pulled his car around, waving from the window. He was pointing at something uncomfortably close to Alex’s car.
Down on the wheel.
The clamp was painted yellow, striped with black. Like a wasp, a warning. It was the last thing Alex needed. He searched around the lot. There were no signs, no warnings against parking in this particular place. Could be a fine from somewhere else. He already had a stack of parking tickets as high as an elephant’s eye. They must have finally caught up with him. He walked across to Timmy’s window.
“Rain check for me.”
“They get everyone, man,” Timmy agreed. “Got me just last week. You need a ride?”
“Nah, I’ll walk. It’s not far. I can eat on the way. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
They argued back and forth, as friends do. When Timmy finally took no for an answer, driving out into the night, Alex returned to the clamp. There was a number fixed down the side. Call for help, it said. Fishing out his phone, he dialed. An error message appeared on the screen. The phone went dark. The long, familiar reboot. These Chinese models were glitchy as hell. Alex knew he should have sprung for something local.
Without the phone, there was no way the car was moving tonight. Alex didn’t want to wander back into the warehouse. That was Timmy’s world. He might as well leave the car. What was the worst that could happen, he thought, they’ll clamp me again? Double negative. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Either way, he’d need to start walking soon. His stomach rumbled.
Retrieving his bag from the car, he locked the doors. The lights shut off. Dead for the night. He’d have to come back the next day. Timmy would already be using it as an excuse to play again. Checking his wallet, Alex wondered about cab fare. But there was no cash. Out here, in Riverside, at this time of night? Cash was the only thing that would get him home. With an empty wallet, he started walking instead.
The city had changed in the last five years, even Alex knew. When he’d arrived, fresh from the farm, the very thought of the city was enough to excite him. Then he’d grown used to the sights and the smell, grown used to how the people moved and how the sidewalks felt beneath his feet, and he’d settled in.
Once he’d become acquainted, he could see how the world changed.
Even here, China was the name on everyone’s lips. They’d knocked down half of Detroit and put up new factories on the same old spots. Spending dollars and yuan on empty space. Alex was walking through them now. There’d been a boom, a time when people were flocking to the city to get a job alongside an army of foreign robots, building pretty much anything that could be sold to Americans. Alex had done just that. Now he worked in an office. Times change.
The warehouses, the factories, and pretty much everything else in Riverside were both incredibly new and unbelievably old. The cheap buildings had been thrown up in a boom, weathered almost instantly, and now lay–mostly–abandoned. As Alex walked farther and farther from the warehouse, the style of the street started to change.
Because that’s how cities grow, he’d come to learn; they moved about like the oceans. People throw around money, somewhere upstairs, and then there’s different signs above the doors, different names above the buzzers. Ships in the night. The previous people left, or were pushed, and a new wave of people washed ashore.
Then they’d go, chasing the tide in some other direction. What was left behind was the high water mark, a pile of sticks and stones and wet detritus which told the world how high the sea had been and how far it had crawled back. Detroit, right now, felt caught in a rip tide, the money streaming out to sea.
Sink or swim.
Halfway home, Alex noticed how hungry he was. Shoulder hurting, adrenaline dried up, he needed to eat. He was out of Riverside now, the streets changing their shape. He was passing shops, more and more, restaurants and all the other signs of civilization as he’d come to know it. But first, he knew, he’d need cash. This was a problem. Most places got picky when you tried to pay with anything else.
The first ATM he found, the line was ten deep. That was too long, too much of a risk. So Alex walked on. The next one was being waited for by only five people. He joined them, becoming the sixth person.
This was a different future than the one which had been promised to the world, up on all those billboards and brochures. A wireless future. A paperless future. A cashless future. Never underestimate people’s desire to feel the raw assurance of paper in their hand, Alex thought. There’s nothing quite like it.
Add in the unreliable machines, the rolling blackouts, and the data hijacking, and lines at ATMs were now a fact of life.
He watched the people waiting for the machine. They seemed the same, on a surface level. They had their differences. Skin color, gender, the shape of their hair. But they were united in their quest to line up in front of a machine and draw out whatever cash they could. United by a common goal, Alex smiled to himself. It was nice to share. He’d read that in a kid’s book. Possibly. Memory was a tricky thing.
There were three people left in front of Alex now. The woman at the ATM was finishing, waiting for her money. The machine was providing an orchestra of dings, chirps, and announcements. There was no way to ignore it. Complete, she snatched her cash and strode away into the Detroit night. She was out of sight in seconds.
The next man to step up to the plate was forty something, and on the wrong side of a receding hairline. His shearling jacket stretched down to his knees, cut from the same color cloth as his sandy combover. The man readied his finger to be scanned as he arrived in front of the machine. He was met with an error message.
“Hey,” he yelled, turning around, “you coulda saved some for the rest of us.”
Empty. No cash inside. Please try again later. The man tried to trick the machine, pressing his finger against every surface. It refused to function. The man spun around, facing the teenage girl in front of Alex, shouting in her face.
“You see that? She took it all. Drained it dry. Hey buddy! Hey buddy! We’re all tryna survive here. What the hell is the use?”
The as
phalt bore the brunt of his rage, the man stamping away down the street unsatisfied. This ATM was done for the night. Nothing to do but wander on and find the next one.
The next ATM was nothing but a smashed screen, but the one after that seemed to be working. Alex joined the line, waited his turn, and took his dollar bills. He had heard people in the line talking, chatting to one another. The same stories seemed to be bouncing back and forth between everyone he overheard. It was like trying to piece together current events by standing on newspaper scraps blown down the street by the wind. Half a headline here, a few sentences of comment there.
Along one street, Alex found himself outside of an electronics shop. It wasn’t one of the upmarket American ones. People here still resented the Riverside factories after they’d shut down. But most people, at least on this side of the city, imported. Chinese phones, TVs, computers, and all the rest. The pieces were cheap, tacky, and almost disposable. But they were all most people could get their hands on.
Alex watched through the store window. They’d turned the TV screens to different channels. There was no sound and trying to watch through the barred windows was inconvenient at best. North Korea, one screen read. Boats at sea, said another. Floods, swarms, strikes, sickness. They only talked about one Korea these days. They only talked about the boats when they sank.
One screen was leading with the story of a plane. Sick pilot lands plane, the headline read, scrolling across the bottom of the screen. A news anchor smiled from ear to ear as she read the story. Alex couldn’t hear the words but he could see the photographs of the sick pilot. The man seemed close to death, his skin a pallid sweaty gray, but he’d managed a grin. Why fly at all if you’re sick? There was no mention of what illness he had.
Flying too close to the sun.
Crowds were gathered at the foot of the staircase beneath the plane, hands waving as the man stepped down. Those same hands reached out, touching his back, cheering, and congratulating the pilot. So many people were smiling, Alex left them alone.