DIRE : BORN (The Dire Saga Book 1) (27 page)

“Dire,” she said, as I was walking away.

I glanced over my shoulder. “Yes?”

“When I die, you help Susan take care of Anya.”

I opened my mouth, shut it again. And I simply nodded, before walking away. This time she didn't call after me.

I found myself sitting back at my armor, looking it over. There wasn't much left to do, but I was reluctant to move on to the next phase of things. The discussion with Minna had been... heavy. I thought perhaps it had done her good, but there was no way to tell.

Disturbed, I decided to see Roy's advice through and go talk with Martin. After a brief walk, I found him outside his tent. He appeared to be taking inventory.

“Hey.” He nodded to me as I approached, and I waved back. “Look at this shit.” He pointed, and I traced the bullet-holes that seemed to riddle the northern side of the tent. “This. This is what I get for having a big-ass tent. People hide behind it and fuckin' Bloods lit it up like a goddamn Christmas tree.”

“How inconsiderate,” I said, keeping my voice dry.

“Speaking as one of the motherfuckers who was hiding behind it, eh. At least they were shitty shots.” He scowled as the flaps of the tent rustled, and Tooms emerged. He was dragging the television. It was holed by at least three shots, and left fragments of glass in its wake. “You want another TV?” He asked me. “Barely used, like new, comes with free bullets.”

“Sure.” I smiled, trying to think of the best approach. “Got a minute to talk?”

“Depends.” His face stilled, lost expression as he studied me. “This is about responsibility, isn't it? Holdin' me accountable for Tugs like I agreed.”

I opened my mouth, and shut it again.

That had completely slipped my mind.

Did I hold him responsible?

I studied the dark circles around his eyes. He hadn't slept a bit since last night, I'd wager. “No,” I decided. “You didn't know Tugs would get that stupid.”

He took a breath, let it out. “I should've.” He rubbed his eyes, jammed his hand back into his pocket. “Fuckin' piece of shit junkie.”

I decided that the simplest way was probably the best. “Who are you, Martin? Who were you? Why are you here?”

“Told you once that people don't ask that around here.”

“Then she's being rude. Don't care. Has she earned your story, yet?”

He walked back a few steps, started pacing. Finally he looked out to sea. “Naw, I get it. Things getting worse, you need to make sure you can count on people to have your back. Shit, sure.” He took a deep breath. “What do you know about Icon's Southside?”

“Very little.”

“Awright. I was born in the Mews. Place was pretty bad before it got all gentrified and shit. Drugs and gangs and grinding fucking poverty. It was me and my bro Luther against the world, but we swore we'd get out. But you needed money for that. So along the way, we started selling for this shitty-ass little gang, the Stompers.”

He pulled his hands out of his pockets, looked at them. Held the left one up towards me. “Got this scar when an Eight-eighter caught me sellin' on their corner. Called ourselves the Stompers, he stomped my ass pretty damn good. If Luther hadn't shown up and lured him off, I wouldn't be here today.”

“Eight-eighter?”

“Shitty-ass skinhead gang. Eight Eight stood for HH which stood for Heil Hitler which stood for 'I'm a dumbass loser with closet homosexual tendencies.'” He snorted. “They're gone now.  Devil's Due finished off the last of them.”

“Devil's Due?”

“One of the first big dark vigilante hero types. Ask me, he and folks like him were worse than the villains. Villains, at least you know they bad news. Dark heroes? Un-pre-fucking-dictable. Save your ass one day, shoot through you to kill bad guys the next. Yeah, Tomorrow Force brought his ass in back in '96. Good riddance, I say.”

“We're getting off track,” I said.

He laughed. “Sorry. Gonna get into some painful shit here. Guess I been delaying.”

Silence for a bit, and I wondered if he was going to continue. But finally he rubbed his eyes, and started talking again. “Me and Luther, we made money, but it was all going to the guys up top. We kept other gangs out, said we were protecting our hood, but the guys in charge ignored it when our boys fucked around with the locals. It was so fucking pointless, and it never got better. Never changed. That didn't sit well with Luther. Didn't sit well at all.”

“He was older than you?” I guessed.

“Yeah.” Tears threatened at the corners of his eyes, and I looked away.

After a bit, he continued. “So, with the state of affairs un-fucking conducive to a good retirement plan, we decided to shake things up. We decided to
be
the guys up top, instead of working for them.”

He knelt, picked up a stone, and skipped it out into the water. It crunched off a little ice, kept going until it slipped into the dark water beyond.

“Didn't go well?” I asked.

“Better than you'd think. Pretty good, at first. We had the connections. Luther was a badass. I was good at talking folks into seeing our way of things. We took over the Stompers, practically a non-violent coup. The more we did, the more people came to us. We were makin' a difference. We were doing business, targeting the worst gangs, actually protecting the hood like most gangs lie and say they do. He had a map, Luther did. He drew a circle 'round our turf. And every day, we'd go out and make it bigger. And the time came when we couldn't call ourselves Stompers no more, so we chose a different name. We were the Ess See Kay.”

SCK? “What's that stand for?”

“Stands for Stone-Cold-Killers. Also you could say it like 'Sick', which was a word that was like cool at the time. For a few years, man, we were rockin' the Southside. Got the Mews, cut deals with the local villains, grabbed up all the trade down there. Colombians, Cartels, Vory, everyone with shit to sell, they came to us.”

“Vory.” I frowned. That had come up in Minna's story, too.

“Scary Russian mafia motherfuckers. All the things I miss about my old life, I don't miss dealing with those motherfuckers one bit. Fuckers be vile.”

“So what happened?” I asked.

Tooms brought out part of his tape collection, and Martin knelt, sorting through them. “Shot to shit, shot to shit, shot to shit, intact. Oooh, intact?” He popped the case open. “Nope. Fuck a duck. Well, I hoped.” He tossed it aside, looked back to me. “What happens when you go from nothing to pretty much everything you could want in a year or so? And there ain't no one to tell you no, stop, slow down bitches?”

“You don't slow down, bitches,” I guessed. He laughed.

“Yeah. Bitches don't slow down. We were the biggest goddamn bitches. Coke every night, finest grade. Bed full of women, all sorts. Money enough for anything I felt like buying. Fucking mansion on the Hill that I shared with Luther. Eh, not in like the old part of the Hill, but for a couple of black guys in the late 90s, it was fucking impressive. I got used to it. I liked it. And we lost sight of shit, because things were awesome. Lost sight of how people were acting down below.”

“And how was that?”

“Back to the old ways. Stopped protecting the hood. Started feeding off of it. We'd gotten bigger, unified all the little gangs into the SCK, but people always gonna want more. So it was politics and shooting and beatings and turf wars all over again. We were just the guys on top this time.” He sighed. “I would've made my peace with that, I guess. Said eh, just all part of the game, son. Except for one thing. Luther.”

“He didn't like it?”

“I wish he didn't like it. I wish it had bothered him. But as time went on, he started hittin' the shit more and more. Coke wasn't enough. Weed wasn't enough. He started getting into the heavier shit. And it fucking destroyed him.” He sighed, picked up a broken tape, and tossed it out into the bay. “Had a guy helpin' us run shit, by the name of Coate. In the end, Coate showed up in the middle of the night with about twenty of the guys behind him. Dragged us out of bed at gunpoint, took us to the basement. Luther'd had that shit soundproofed, you see. For business.” He barked laughter, and rubbed his eyes again. “They offered us a deal. Out of respect for our past, he said. Get gone, or get an unmarked grave. Luther tried to fight.” His hands were shaking. “Dumbass. Fucking dumbass. He was flying so high must have thought he was Crusader. He was always into that costume shit. Think maybe he thought he'd get his power surge, then, in that fuckin' basement.”

When he lowered his hands, he looked me in the eye, challenging. I held my tongue, and finally he dropped his eyes. “I saw the writing on the wall, next to Luther's brains. I gave them the keys to the house and the cars and left. Weren't nothing for me there, no more.”

“And so you came here?”

“No degrees, no experience, no cash, no job that you can put on a tax form... shit, yeah. Thought about running like hell, but Coate don't play that way. It's business, he said. We were running things down, he said. Don't have to get off the board, but you can't stay here no more. But I still got contacts and shit, and I can still deal. Though honestly?” He frowned. “My moms is the only thing keeping me in city. She's old. Lived hard, her heart's bad. We got her set up okay in a good neighborhood way the fuck across town, but I don't know how much longer she got. Weren't for her I'd get out, try Baltimore, or New York. Get in with Dos Hermanos, or the Crays. Done too much shit to go straight. But I can't start over by myself. I ain't a leader. That was mostly Luther's deal.” He looked down. “I told you how that worked out.”

“You truly have no other options?” I asked.

He snorted. “Inform to the FBI and get my ass shot when witness protection fails. Try to do remedial adult stuff, get a degree of some sort, spend my life flippin' burgers. Assuming one of the warrants on me don't drop. Become a priest and— Heh. Heh, heh, heh. Yeah, I ain't seeing it neither. Not much for me in this country that's legal, and I ain't got ID to travel that won't get me arrested.”

“So why are there no options for people in your situation?” I asked. “It seems to Dire that  society should always offer a way out for all but the worst. That's just common sense.”

He laughed, loud and long. “Oh shit man. You had me going for—” He took a closer look. “You mean that. Shit. You got a weird naive streak, Dire lady. It's all part of the game, this shit. Born poor, die poor, rich get richer. Cops are there to protect the rich, everyone else can go to hell. Government? Assholes are all rich and on coke or worse. Heroes? Fuckers put on costumes and punch villains. If it ain't brightly-colored, monologuing, and punchable, they don't do shit. Don't even get me started on the war on drugs and that whole joke.”

He was actually making me angry. “It can't actually be that bad. How does this sort of society actually work?”

“The worst guys up top keep the guys down low distracted with shit, while the real business goes on behind closed doors. They buy the media so you only read what they want you to, they hype up television and movies and shit so you don't see how bad it gets. They buy the politicians, and make the laws they want. Nobody who ain't rich knows the score. Not until they're down in it.” He looked around the camp. “Now the whole city's down in it, for a while at least. Now they're poor too. Lost their shelter, lost their power, lost their security, and here they are. But if the power went on tomorrow? How many you think would care? Most of them would head back home, never give it no thought except 'oh thank god that's over.' And so it goes, pretty much damn near everywhere.”

“That is not right.” Fury was racing through me, heating the blood in my face, making my fists clench and unclench. “It should not be so.”

“Well, it is. Always will be. Can't change it. Human. Fucking. Nature.”

“There must be a way...” I muttered.

“You find one, let me know. I'll have your back. Until then, I'll keep selling product to rich yuppies, and enjoyin' my pay-per-view.”

I nodded. “Your deal is acceptable. Done.”

He laughed. “Well, you already done better than I thought. So you got my help for now, anyway. You need anything I got, or want anything I can do done, I'm your homey.”

“Homey?” I squinted in confusion.

He held up his hands. “I don't fuckin' make the slang, alright? Means like... ese. Or friend.”

“Friends.” I smiled, and offered him a hand. He took it, shook, then glanced back as Tooms came out with two heavy boxes, one of which was torn, and spilling magazines.

“Aw fuck, they shot the porn? Assholes!”

I chewed over what he'd told me, as I walked back to my armor. He was cynical. Bitter. It filled him, though he hid it well most of the time. And the things he had told me... how did a nation, a world, make the glorious buildings and inventions I saw around me, yet be so crude and uncaring at the core of it? How was technology so advanced, and culture so behind?

I growled. Plenty of frustration, no real answers. Well. No help for it, I had to get on to other matters.

A giggle ahead of me, and I paused. Anya and a couple of the other children were clustered around my armor. What the heck? That wasn't exactly safe, and I moved forward to disperse them... and stopped about thirty feet back as I saw what they were doing.

They had found some colored chalk, from who knows where. They were drawing on the armor. Hearts, and thank yous, and smiley faces, as far up as they could reach.