Rage: The Reckoning

by Christopher C. Page

  “John . . . ” he began but apparently thought better of it because he turned their prisoner towards the door and walked him out.

  “I didn’t want to get him arrested,” the bartender said nervously.

  “You didn’t, he got himself arrested. Speaking of which,” John took the knife from the bar and slipped it into his pocket. Then he motioned for the bartender to follow him to the opposite end where the bar opened onto the main floor. When they got there, John stood and stared into the man’s eyes for a minute, neither of them spoke, he pointed at the bartender’s stomach. “I’m in no mood to disarm two people in one call.”

  The bartender sighed and pulled the small black strap out from his waistband revealing the SAP he had secreted there. Commonly referred to as a Blackjack, it was made of ground lead, tightly bound in black leather wrapped in a steel spring. It didn’t look like much, but in reality, you could cave a man’s face in with it, crack his skull or even kill him with it.

  “We get a lot of rough customers in here.” he explained as he handed it over reluctantly.

  “They’re illegal.” John added the weapon to the growing collection in his pocket and headed for the door. As he pushed through the double doors and stepped back into the bright afternoon sun, Doug was just closing the rear door of the cruiser on their prisoner when a second patrol car came tearing into the lot, coming to a screeching halt in a cloud of dust.

  The man who came bounding out of the driver’s seat reminded John of every young, arrogant, power tripping jerk off he had ever had the displeasure of dealing with in his years of service. He was the perfect cliché; the large sunglasses, the heavy Kevlar vest, and enough spare magazines attached to his belt to reload his 9 mm six times over. He came charging up to Doug like a bull, demanding to know what was going on. Briar Boyd stared cursing like a mad man, throwing himself around the back of the cruiser.

  “Pete, get me the fuck out of here!”

  “Relax!” the cop snapped at him. Then he turned his anger towards Doug. “I thought I told you to wait!”

  “Yeah well, I don’t answer to you,” he shot back, holding his own. “Besides, if we didn’t arrest friends of yours we’d have nobody left, Pete!”

  “What’s the charge?” he demanded.

  John intervened on his behalf, “Public intoxication, creating a disturbance and carrying a concealed weapon. We’re taking him in.”

  John opened the passenger side door of the cruiser and was about to climb in when the young cop grabbed his arm. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” he said, turning John around. “This isn’t how we do things around here.”

  “How’s that?” John said, folding his arms across his chest patiently.

  “This guys is kind of a friend of mine,”

  “Congratulations,” John interrupted. “You hear that Briar? I think this gentleman wants to post your bail.”

  And with that, John and Doug coolly climbed into the cruiser and left the younger cop standing in their dust. They were almost back to the station before either of them spoke.

  “Sorry I stepped in like that Doug,” John said sincerely. “Just an old reflex.”

  “That’s okay,” he replied. “I was a little pissed at first, but then, when I saw the knife, I’m glad you did.”

  From the back seat, Briar gave them his opinion. “I think you two should fuck each other.”

  Six

  Mark thought he had finished his first day at school without further incident, he couldn’t have been more wrong. Kyle’s last class of the day was English while Mark was in Math, and they were forced to separate. It was the first time since their meeting in the school office that morning that Mark found himself totally vulnerable and alone.

  When the final bell rang, he headed straight for Kyle’s locker but there was no sign of him. Trying to avoid another confrontation with the locals, Mark headed outside and tried to find his bus. They were lined up in front of the school like a chorus line and damned if he knew which one was his. He was about to give up and use his cell to call his father when Kyle finally appeared.

  “Know which bus to take?” he asked.

  “No clue,” Mark said, breathing a sigh of relief.

  “Where do you live?”

  Mark had to think for a moment, then he remembered, “Elm Street.”

  “That’d be bus twelve, same as me. But, I didn’t see you this morning.”

  “Yeah,” Mark shrugged. “I slept in.”

  They were walking along the long line of school buses, dozens of students and teachers were scrambling to get out of the lot before the buses did. Some chose to wait for them to clear out, rather than spending the next half an hour inching their way out to the highway only to find themselves trapped behind one of the buses as it made its stops. Lingering now, even for a few minutes, could add almost an hour to the long commute. It was either; get out now, or hang back for half an hour. Strangely, many chose the latter.

  “Ours is normally up near the front,” Kyle informed him absently as he hefted his way through the sporadic crowds. “There’s only ten stops before ours. We’re lucky, I know people on twenty or thirty!”

  Mark resisted the urge to point out that where he was from anything short of an hour-long commute was considered next door. There was no point in contradicting him. He considered himself fortunate to have someone willing and eager to show him where the landmines were, at the same time the pain accrued from losing his real friends was still fresh in his mind. He didn’t see any point in putting himself out there anymore than he had to.

  He wasn’t going to be in town for long.

  The two hundred and forty dollars sitting in his checking account should just about cover his transportation back down to Toronto. A couple of transfers on the TTC and could be anywhere in the city he needed to be. Where ever his mother was.

  Something rippled through the herd, a disturbance, like free graze cattle sensing a predator nearby. First one head turned in their direction, then several, after a few seconds, the entire crowd of kids seemed to stop mid-sentence and look right at him. For a moment, Mark found himself hoping they were looking at Kyle but somehow he knew better. As the crowd separated, they revealed Randy, flanked by his girlfriend and his goons, leaning against the hood of a pick-up.

  “Shit,” Mark heard Kyle remark. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you may want to run.”

  But he couldn’t. He just stood there stupidly as Randy charged over to him, fists clenched at his sides, followed by close to two hundred bloodthirsty students. “You!” he barked, raising a powerful arm and pointing at him. “Let’s go.”

  Mark tried to summon every bit of his will and strength to turn around and run as fast as he could. But something, perhaps fear or humiliation or a combination of the two, wouldn’t allow him to. Like a deer caught in the path of an oncoming semi-truck, he just stood there until Randy reached him and shoved him hard enough to rattle his brain.

  “Come on!” he screamed, shoving him again, even harder. “What’s the matter, you lose your balls?”

  “Hey man,” Mark said defiantly. “I’m not looking for any trouble.”

  “You’ve got trouble, you little faggot,” he snarled.

  “I don’t even know you guys . . . ” Mark began. But before he could finish the thought. Randy had slapped Mark across the face hard enough to knock his glasses off. Stunned by the blow, his left ear rang like the morning bell and tears welled up in his eyes.

  The Boy awoke.

  Mark felt heat. It started in his forehead before flashing down his upper extremities before finally reaching his torso where it slowed but continued to fill his entire being, hardening him, as if he were suddenly not standing alone. Now he was an army, a tiny piece of a larger mass of thousands that could not be cut down by an atomic blast, let alone a slap.

  “Does your daddy slap you like that?” The Boy said to Randy.

  All at once, two hundred voices went silent. A vigil was underway. Some poor cre
ature had strayed from the herd, possibly lame, and needed to be cut from the ranks to serve a greater good. But rather than fleeing in a panic, this strange animal was standing his ground and actually inviting destruction.

  Randy looked at him in total disbelief, “What . . . did . . . you . . . say?”

  Mark saw a flash of movement as the arm with the cobra tattoo struck out and seized him by the collar. Three sharp blasts of quick pain exploded through his face, the taste of blood filled his mouth. The other animals stopped retreating. Now that the lion had a meal within arms reach, the rest could enjoy a brief reprieve. Many of them were cheering.

  The Boy smiled.

  Still in Randy’s grip, his legs gone to rubber, he smiled at the lion through bloody teeth. “What makes you so angry, Randy, the fact he makes you suck his dick, or because you like it?”

  Mark was met with such a flurry of punches, he thought that maybe Randy’s cohorts, Bob, Mike, maybe even Lisa had joined in the melee. Most of the blows were thrown hastily, glancing off the top side of Mark’s skull, but every third or fourth shot would land square with the front of his face with a THAP that made Mark think he’d been hit by a bus.

  The rest of the herd huddled in, no longer afraid of the lion, their bloodlust overpowering any sense of self-preservation. Mark felt another wild swing graze against the side of his face, not really hurting, then another. Then there was a pause and he knew. A big one was coming, a Tsunami of a shot that would rattle the fillings from his teeth and turn his brain into Jello. The blow never came. When Mark opened his eyes, another boy, about the same size as Randy, had him doubled over, one arm shoved up behind his back, like a jailer from one of those prison movies taking an inmate to “The Hole”.

  “Now Randy,” he heard the boy say to him patiently. “Don’t you ever get tired of playing tough-guy with kids half your size?”

  Randy went wild, or tried to, but the other boy seemed to have control over his every move. With only one hand, he twisted Randy’s wrist, pointing his fingers toward the sky and effortlessly walked him back to the pick-up where his girlfriend and his dumbfounded friends were frozen in shock.

  “Mind your own business!” Randy cried pathetically.

  “What’s the matter,” the other boy teased. “I thought you wanted a fight? Well, here I am, do your worst.”

  The boy delivered Randy to his friends, still doubled over in pain as his arm was raised and twisted behind him until he had to drop to his knees to keep his shoulder from dislocating. Then, in front of what had to be two hundred fellow students, the boy kicked Randy in the ass with a big black engineer styled boot, sending him sprawling face down on the asphalt. Mark wished he hadn’t let him go, now that he had, Randy and his friends would surely gang up on him. Instead, the boy stood patiently while Randy picked himself up and turned on him angrily.

  “Fuck you, Taylor!” he spat. “I’ll kick your fucking ass!”

  “Go ahead,” he replied calmly. “I’ll tell you what, just to make it fair, your friends can help. I won’t call the cops or anything.”

  The boy’s head turned to Randy’s friends, Mike and Bob, standing behind him, who both began shaking their heads comically, drawing a huge laugh from the crowd watching them.

  “I guess not huh?” Taylor said, sounding a little disappointed. “You know where to find me if you change your mind.” And with that, he turned his back on them and walked off into the crowd without a care in the world.

  “You alright?” Kyle asked, handing him his glasses.

  But Mark didn’t hear him. His ear was still ringing from Randy’s initial slap and his entire face felt flushed and hot with humiliation. At least of a third of the school populous had just witnessed the event and he had never felt so small in his entire life. Even Kyle was suddenly speechless as they made their way onto the bus, taking the last two seats on the driver’s side. Several students already on the bus were whispering and laughing at him and Mark could tell the utter humiliation that he felt at that moment would stay with him for the rest of his life.

  Just as the bus was about to make the turn out of the driveway, several pick up trucks followed by an old black Oldsmobile cut the bus off, peeling out in a cloud of smoke bringing the bus to a sudden halt. “What the heck was that?” Mark said, straining to see through the smoke.

  “Guess.” Kyle snorted.

  “Randy?”

  “He’s got a Harley but he’s not allowed to ride it to school anymore. That’s Mike’s pickup he’s driving and Bob is in the Cutlass.”

  “Your brother? Why don’t you ride with him?”

  “Yeah, right, I’d rather walk backwards the whole way with toilet brush up my ass. And it’s foster brother.”

  They arrived at their stop at the end of the block from Mark’s house. Consulting his watch, he saw it was only 4:15 pm, his father wouldn’t be home for about an hour and he didn’t relish the idea of going back to that pigsty.

  “You live far from here?” Mark asked.

  “I’m over on Granite, other side of Main,” Kyle replied, pointing in the general direction. “But I can’t go home until after five.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s when my foster parents get home. We’re locked out of the house until they get there, none of us are allowed to have keys.”

  Mark almost laughed. After a few seconds, he realized that Kyle wasn’t joking.

  “They keep a padlock on the fridge too,” he continued. “They said we were overeating.”

  Mark couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He wasn’t sure about the law but there was no question in his mind that morally, there was something out of whack. “How many of you are there anyway?”

  “Used to be four, but the oldest, Jerry, moved out last year when he turned eighteen. Now it’s just three of us.”

  “So there’s you, Bob, and . . .”

  “My little brother, Sean. He’s in grade school,” Kyle explained.

  Mark couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. These people take him in and then don’t even have the decency to let them in the house when they’re not home? Locks on the fridge? Suddenly his own parent’s separation and the temporary move to Mayberry seemed insignificant by comparison.

  “You wanna do something?” Kyle asked excitedly, as if struck by an idea.

  Consulting his watch again, Mark shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

  Mark followed Kyle along the road behind the businesses and led him to a beaten path that stretched out into a large wooded area. A steep hill brought them down to a narrow creek and they followed it to the north, through an open field and eventually to another patch of woods. Mark followed him but the feeling of being lost was beginning to weigh on him. “Where the heck are we?” he asked finally.

  “It’s not far now,” Kyle said, huffing to catch his breath in the afternoon sun.

  “What’s not far?” Mark said, stopping momentarily.

  “You’ll see.”

  A long while later, they reached their destination; the old high school. They had approached it from the rear so Mark hadn’t realized where they were until he was standing in front of it. Large trees surrounded the building and weeds grew from broken asphalt cracked by decades of neglect. The place was massive, dwarfing even Mark’s old school in Toronto by three times. Thousands of windows faced the rear of the school, it was hard to find one that wasn’t broken, but all the windows one the ground floor had been covered by plywood. The double sets of doors were all chained shut and beside each entrance a hazardous materials placard had been fastened to the side of the building.

  Mark followed Kyle across the lot towards the building, feeling apprehensive and suddenly wishing that he hadn’t come along. “I ought to be getting back,” he said finally, stopping in his tracks. “My dad will be expecting me home from school.”

  “Don’t worry, I come here all the time!” Kyle insisted, motioning to Mark to follow him.

  Mark followed hesitantly, joining Kyle at th
e loading dock and entering the school through a disconnected exhaust vent.

  He had to admit the place was actually kind of cool, in a creepy sort of way. It had obviously been used as a hangout for years, maybe decades. There was hardly a bare spot on the walls within arms reach that wasn’t spray painted with graffiti of some sort. Empty beer cans and liquor bottles were shattered all over the place, the broken glass crunched under their feet with every step. They followed a twisting set of corridors until they reached a massive, long since emptied, swimming pool. At the far end of the room, a concrete diving tower stood menacingly over the hundred foot long pool which looked like the back of a recycling truck for all the shattered glass lying at the bottom of it.

  Mark followed Kyle across the room and thought he meant to pass by the diving tower, to his horror, Kyle began to climb.

  “Come on, up this way,” Kyle urged him.

  “Are you nuts?” Mark exclaimed. “That doesn’t look too safe.”

  “I told you, I do it all the time. Everybody does!”

  Mark supposed he had a point. They built stuff to last, back in the old days, and people clearly frequented the place on a regular basis. He dropped his backpack at the base of the tower and looked up to where Kyle was. It was easily forty feet to the bottom, more than enough to kill or cripple him if he fell or if the ladder broke free. He supposed that if the ladder supported Kyle, if should hold him. Just the same, Mark waited until he reached the top and disappeared out of sight on the platform before beginning his ascent. Unaccustomed to heights, he felt his heart rate double as he climbed higher and higher from pool deck. First, ten feet, twenty, then thirty feet, more than high enough to kill him if he fell. Finally he reached the top and quickly dropped to a sitting position the instant he was clear of the ladder. At the end of the platform, Kyle was sitting with his legs dangling over the edge, he appeared to have a joint hanging out of his mouth and he was waving Mark over.

  “Come on, dude. Don’t be a pussy.”