Dues of Mortality

by Jason Austin

  “Habit?”

  “Yeah, or tradition...whatever you want to call it. My family has a thing for acquiring careers in positions of life-threatening authority. My great-great-grandfather worked for the OSS during World War Two. My grandfather, on my mother’s side, did thirty-six years in the NYPD. My dad is in his fifth year of heading up the Wade County Sheriff ’s Department. My cousin, Nate, he wants to be in the NSA, CIA, or some shit like that. My cousin, Cosmo, is a bailiff in Detroit, and my second cousin, Tandy, she’s an amateur kickboxer working as a bouncer in Las Vegas.”

  “And all this time I thought it was because your initials were MP.”

  Max chuckled in his drink and his left ear wiggled in unison. Xavier nearly spit his beer at the sight. Three years of high school wrestling, had left Max with a pair of orbicular cauliflower ears so preeminent that they'd taken on a life of their own. Max was just this side of five-foot-seven and Xavier thought they made him look like some warped version of Princess Leia. However, to be fair, only the terminally brainless would let this disarmingly comical appearance fool them. Max was scrappy, agile and talented—everything the army was known for exploiting in a person. He had been signed on to a four-year hitch—two as an MP and another two as a trained sniper. There was never a guy whose future of being all he could be was more certain.

  “Hell, what was I going to do, you know?” Max said. “I’ve never really been good at anything else. Lot of my family served, said it could put me on a good career path. And I’ve seen too many people just drifting through life, jumping from job to job as if they’re looking for something that’s forever running away from them; looking for their big break. Fuck that. I figure as long as I stick to what I’m good at, and what I know,” he took a sip of his ginger ale as if it were a whiskey shot then gaveled his glass on the bar, “happiness and contentment will follow. Right?”

  Xavier chugged his last drop of beer in agreement. As he brought the bottle from his lips, he narrowly missed the bar itself and the bottle tipped off its rail. With a whip-snap of his uniform’s sleeve, Max snagged the bottle by its neck, firmly gripping it in all five fingers and then returned it to the bar. He'd caught it just a hair from the floor.

  “Speaking of happiness,” Max said. “I saw you last night, getting all smoochy with Elana Hatten, outside the colonel’s house.”

  “Stop it. I know where you’re going. It’s like I said before—the safety may be off but I'm keeping it holstered. We just like talking to each other. She’s really smart, man. She knows all about politics and spirituality and all that deep shit. She’s really opened my eyes about a lot of things.” Xavier paused, looking spacey. “Things I thought I’d never get over.”

  Max shook his head. “You are so full of it, man. There isn’t a guy on this base who hasn’t tented his bunk-sheets dreaming about that girl. Out of all of us, you’re the one within striking distance and you’re telling me you haven’t touched her?”

  “Damn right. Col. Hatten-the-Patton would chop off my head...then he'd decapitate me.”

  “Ha.”

  “Besides, she’s been messing with Derrick Moses, but don’t let it leave here.”

  “Moses? That dick from supply? Oh, thank you very much. Why the hell didn’t you just tell me a bomb went off at the Playboy mansion? Crush all my dreams?”

  “She’s one of those girls with a thing for wounded souls. I know the type. Sooner or later she’ll realize she can’t save him or he’ll dump her and that’ll be the end of it. She doesn’t want her father finding out. So keep a lid on it.”

  Yeah, keep a lid on it, Xavier thought now. If only we'd done that when it counted. And it must have been what, a half hour later that they received orders for the pickup? No. It was longer than that. It had to be. We reported on time. I wasn't drunk!

  “Here,” the officer said and he shoved Moses’s dead weight at the MP's like an overloaded rucksack. When Max and Xavier walked into the Alexandria station house the officer was already carting him out of the cell. “He’s pretty well fried. He wouldn’t shut up before you guys got here, but he shouldn’t be much of a problem now. H-ball makes you crash pretty hard.”

  “You sure that’s what it is?” Max asked.

  “We had to put him in isolation because he thought the occupied cells were filled with man-eating sea turtles. That’s the kind of shit the stuff makes you see. The skin on his face is spotting up from the broken capillaries. Now he can barely walk. Yeah, I’m sure.”

  The officer removed Moses’s cuffs and Moses hit the floor with a thunderous slap.

  “Aw, shit,” Max said reaching for his own cuffs.

  “Hold on,” Xavier said. “Let’s each take an arm. It’ll be easier to drag him out.”

  “Okay.”

  Outside, the two MPs looked like they were hauling a fresh corpse to a mass grave, with Moses’s toes scraping the ground the whole way.

  “God, I'm glad we're not doing this in armor,” Max said. “In this heat we'd be popping our turkey timers by now. I can’t believe Elana Hatten’s taste could be this bad. I bet she eats black jelly beans, too.”

  “Elanaaaaa,” Moses droned.

  “Careful, huh,” Xavier said, glancing at their baggage.

  “What?” Max said. “He’s not gonna remember anything tomorrow morning. Fucking loser.”

  “It’s her life, man. Like I said, she’ll wise up. She’s a lot like my momma, now that I think about it. She likes to give others the benefit of the doubt, but she’s not stupid. My guess is after this she won't want to see him anytime soon.”

  Max smiled. “Aha, already planning your opening salvo of studliness, huh? Or maybe you did that last night when you kissed her?”

  Moses’s eyes suddenly flared red as he stared at the ground.

  Xavier unlooped Moses' saggy arm from around his neck so he could retrieve the keys to the transport’s doors. “Ay, I didn’t kiss her. She kissed me and...”

  Before he knew it, a small serrated knife capable of gutting a shark was buried into Xavier’s chest. Moses had moved like lightning. He had fashioned a sheath and sewn the knife to the inside of his belt—easy for the local boys to miss, especially if they didn’t think him much of a threat. Xavier dropped the keys where he stood. Moses then spun and caught Max Porter with a kick that cracked a rib. He filched Xavier’s gun from its holster and laughed at the blatant confoundedness that had appeared to overtake the MP. Xavier had heard of the phenomena before: fight, flight or freeze, analysis paralysis; it could happen even to the most hardened of military vets. In this case, the four inch handle sticking out of his chest had sent Xavier into temporary brain-lock.

  Max reached for his own sidearm, but was too late to keep Moses from firing a shot into his knee. Moses then snatched up the keys to the transport, jumped into the driver's seat and burned out with the tires’ squeal ripping the night air.

  Elana Hatten had never quite known what hit her. One moment, she was having a drink with friends at her apartment and the next she was laying in a pool of her own blood, her head barely attached to her body by shreds of skin and sinew. The bastard had shot her at close range with nary a word. She just opened the door and...

  Xavier felt the trigger give a bit against his finger. He raised the revolver, and placed it against his lips. The smell of gun oil seeped into in his nostrils. His eyes puddled with tears. He closed them and drew the gun under his chin. He planted the barrel at the spot where the lump in his throat was tightest. He then placed his thumb over the trigger. He started to shiver and beads of sweat bubbled down his face, stinging his lip with the salty taste of regret. He gripped the handle with both hands and used a forefinger to push back the hammer. Then taking a deep and quite literally last breath...pulled the trigger.

  If this was Hell, Xavier thought, after opening his eyes, then it needs a maid. He glanced from left to right and it took him a moment before he remembered hearing a “clack” instead of “bang”. He thumbed the gun's catch
and the cylinder fell open, revealing the single hollow chamber in the twelve o'clock position. What a shock, he thought. Something else he couldn’t do right. “Well, if at first you don’t succeed,” he said and stuck the barrel in his mouth.

  Again, nothing happened. But this time it was definitely his fault. Apparently, attempting to fire a bullet into your head leaves you kind of drained after the first try. Now, he could more easily push an elephant uphill than pull the trigger. He needed a drink, he thought...or a nap; something, anything that rendered him as close to dead as possible. He gazed over, once more, to the glassless window. The rain had stopped and a brusque wind had cleansed some of the house of its foulness, stirring up a hunger for fresh air. He shoved the gun back into his pocket, coerced himself to his feet, and trudged out of the house, patting at the hard metal bulge. Don’t worry. Next time, we’ll get it right.

  Chapter 5

  Glenda Jameson had been up since 6:30 a.m. pounding the pastel pavement. She’d filled out four applications, roamed through a half-dozen office buildings and left her references at the regional employment agency, before ending her morning with a resentful trip through a pricey downtown grocer. Stupid-ass, she thought, cursing herself. A painful heel spur had instigated the most exceptional course of self-invectives this morning. As did the calls to her parents to borrow money and the unpaid bill that got her comwatch cut off. But most of all, she cursed the sex! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! From the very night she lost her virginity to Gunner, the golden-blonde dishwasher with the ass of an Olympic swimmer, Glenda promised herself never to regret giving her body to a man. And never to fall into the trappings of making her virtue a puritanical treasure hunt. Gunner had been the one who ingeniously brought Glenda to her first orgasm resulting from a team effort, revealing sex as something to be cherished and appreciated as a human being, not feared and repudiated as a woman. Now, for the first time, she wished she could trade in her vagina for a newer model, or at least for one that hadn’t been with that man!

  If it weren't for the weekend birthday getaways in the Poconos and the trips to the Caribbean that were so...“Oh, just forget about it, girl,” Glenda thought out loud. “They’re a dime a dozen.” Besides, she couldn’t have stayed at her old job. SiPlus was really circling the drain thanks to Peter, or “Simple” Simonton as he was referred to in the lines at the unemployment office. Or was it just Peter “Simpleton?” Either would do, given that so many people were going to have problems putting food on the table because of one man’s obsession with having it all. What was he thinking? There were thirty-year veterans at that plant. The union was never going to stand for the ax being taken to their benefits like that; naturally, they were going to strike.

  Glenda picked up her pace as the groans and growls of an empty stomach deafened her to the bustle of street and pedestrian traffic alike. She couldn't wait to strip off her high collared blouse and conservative business skirt and slip into her tank top and jeans. No more buses, she thought joyfully. She’d get her Civic out of the shop at four and be on her well-deserved, lone girl’s night out by 4:15. She waded through the harried clumps of downtowners and the annoying holographic salespeople floating in storefronts offering her perfume samples and free makeovers. Rounding the corner of another building, she collided with an adolescent powerboarder blatantly ignoring the powerboard prohibition signs posted every other block. The boy glided off and left her with no more of an acknowledgment than a heartfelt “whoops” and a squished loaf of raisin bread. As she picked herself up, she glimpsed an apartment window across from her, its curtain seeming to whip closed almost defensively. Not that she could be certain of what she was seeing from that distance without her glasses. They had been foolishly left in the overhead visor of her car, which was sitting in a repair shop in Ohio City. She only wore the damn things when she drove anyway. Or wanted to impress a man with a vocabulary longer than the ingredients on a milk jug.

  Her apartment building in sight, Glenda blindly crossed a narrow divide between structures and a rancorous chainsaw of a voice crackled from the darkened space. “Hey, ma’am, spur some chain a day?”

  She jumped, trying to catch up with her flesh. The voice belonged to a man who’d sluiced from the alley, looking like a six-foot smear of grunge and soot. He wore and abundance of ratty clothes and she thought he had to be roasting in the late summer heat. He practically fell on top of her as he skidded forward shaking a large plastic cup in her face. She was so startled she’d nearly backed into oncoming traffic.

  “Ah, oh my god!” she screamed.

  Coincidentally, a police patrol car was circling the area and screeched to the scene with a yawp of the siren as it scraped the curb. An agitated policeman broke from the car like an enraged bull from its pen. “Hey,” he yelled.

  The vagrant paid no attention to the officer and continued shaking his cup, just a toxic breath from Glenda’s face. “Come, o’ miss. Got some chain? I jus’ nee’ some chain. Please?” His words were horribly slurred through his desiccated lips.

  Glenda was about to tell him that she had nothing to spare, but before she could say a word, the policeman had flattened the vagrant against the nearest wall. The action loosed an object from somewhere on the vagrants person and it clacked onto the pavement. It was a hyposhot: a programmable, oblong, syringe with a retractable self-cleaning needle. It was about four inches long by an inch wide. When ran over the skin, it detected a healthy vein a lot like a carpenter's stud-finder. It was a virtually perfect delivery system for Halloxiphen (H-ball), which was highly susceptible to overdosing.

  “H-ball burnout,” the officer groused. “Jesus! It never ends with this trash! We flush it and it floats right back to the surface!”

  Glenda creased openly. How could anybody go near that stuff? From everything she knew, H-ball was no less than nuclear waste on the brain. A few years back, when it first started surpassing the meth trade, most users were intrigued by the high that made your average opiates look like cough medicine. It was only after the first couple trips that they became aware of its hardcore reality-warping effects, the potent hallucinations. Under such circumstances, dosages were easily and often misjudged, resulting in permanent insanity or death. If an addict was ever caught with an old fashioned syringe it was usually sticking out of his week-old corpse.

  “Are you okay, ma’am?” the officer asked Glenda.

  “Uh, yes. Yes, I’m fine,” she answered. She could almost swear the officer was holding back a come-hither. In fact, the only thing missing, Glenda thought, was the nigh sparkle of his teeth.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m sure.”

  The officer aimed his lips at the vagrants ear. “You know, I can’t believe I have to touch you,” he shouted. “God only knows where you’ve been!” He lilted back. “On second thought, I think I can smell where you’ve been.”

  With the right side of his face scraping the wall, the vagrant’s barren eyes aligned with Glenda’s. It gave her the prickly chill of a December wind. The way he looked at her. It was as if his soul was trying to siphon a piece of hers for its very survival. She stood frozen to the sidewalk. She didn't move until the officer stowed the vagrant into the back of the patrol car and it faded from view.

  Minutes later, Glenda approached her apartment door doing a juggling act with her grocery bags. She just had to get her mind off the past few days, she thought. It had all been like a roaring freight train on her nerves. If she wasn't careful she'd end up just like her mother, storing up all the stress until it evolved into a single body-wide migraine. Glenda didn’t care how much her mother denied it; the majority of Louise Jameson's chronic ills were stressed related. Her doctor had told her as much. You couldn’t just spend a lifetime repressing anger and the stockyard of querulous instincts that were synonymous with marriage and motherhood, and not expect physiological repercussions. Louise needed a good psychiatrist, better friends or a dog; some responsive means of getting things off her chest.
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  “A plausible excuse to complain, you mean,” Louise said once. “Leave that crap to the crotchety old cows in church and at the beauty shop—depressed, middle-aged women actually trying to outdo each other. One always has to have bigger bunions, a cheating husband, or a kid strung out on drugs. Who needs it?”

  Glenda entered her apartment with a sharp toe to the door's kick-plate. The second that same foot hit the carpet, her bladder gave a nudge. It reminded her that it had taken three cups of Columbia's finest to get her engine going this morning. She kicked the door closed, trotted to the kitchen and plopped the bags onto the counter. She then cut the corner to the bathroom like a motocross racer.

  After two minutes, Glenda was back in the kitchen, holding in her hand, the hearty, seasoned pork roast she’d splurged on. This baby would go a long way in making a weeks' worth of crap worth the struggle. As a matter of fact, there was no pain in the world a perfectly-sized piece of meat couldn't cure, she thought. From time to time.

  She set the roast to boil and then went out to the living room. She gave a noteworthy sigh as she regarded the drab peach-colored walls of her abode. Glenda was always grateful to have a place to lay her head, but that ever-ambitious teenager inside couldn't wait for the day she'd move up from this plain, contemporary little place. She'd have to find a way to take the walk-in closet with her, though. No woman could go back to picking out a dress from the outside once they'd experienced standing in the same room with all of her shoes. But I'll have one the size of this whole place, soon enough, she thought. She kicked off her pumps and curled into the corner of her sofa. In three weeks she’d be back in school, and one year closer to her degree in business management. She'd be the head of her own company in less than ten years and maybe make the really hot men wear Speedos during the holiday season. She aimed her chin at the stereo.

  “Play Deanna Robinson track thirteen,” she said and promptly recoiled. She then switched the command to Hayden's concertos. They would be better for her mood. Deanna Robinson songs only depressed her now that the poor girl was dead. Shame, what happened to her. She was so young. Minutes later, the orchestral lullaby of violins and soothing flutes distended about the air, while a soft throw pillow massaged Glenda's neck. It was hard to stay awake.