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Dead Air.
I had planned this escape for months. Now, in the darkness, just before the sun comes up, it is time to make my move. These were my thoughts. These were the reasonings of an irrational man.
I had packed my supplies under the bed, carefully concealed from my family, and I had arranged for a cab to come by at exactly 4 am. I knew the cab might be seen, so I had also borrowed a set of over-alls, that made me look more like some sort of workman. Perhaps then a passing neighbour would notice only my clothes, and not my face. In that way my escape would be complete. I could not be identified.
Perhaps it was a paradox, that to love my family in the most real way I thought I had to leave them. But it was the only way to be sure they would be safe from the evil forces set out to destroy me, for that is how I saw the Law, the Police, the dogs which would soon be knocking on my door and stealing everything I own. They would come, it was only a matter of days now, and take me away, and take all that I had earned with my bare hands and my hard fists. I had built an empire for my lady, and there was no way they would take that from her. All that hard work.
I climbed down the fire escape stares, and looked back at the huge house. It was more like a castle really, with a huge front room and a turret rising from the left side of the building. It dominated the neighbourhood, and surely it frightened those passers by who dared to look up. I saw the 3 motorcycles parked in the open garage. (Who would dare to steal them, I had always thought?) The Triumph and the Indian, and of course the big Harley I had taken from Lenny when I had put him in the grave. I had won that bike, fair and square. I had won it, and Lenny, the leader of the Killer Wheels, he had lost big time. What did he think? That we would let him into our territory. No way. Not after all that hard work. Not after we had established ourselves as the only big dealers in this area of the state. We were the bosses. No punk from outside was going to take that away.
I looked back over it all, but I knew then that I had to head north, and get out before the pigs came rushing in. They would take everything, they were evil, and where would my Louise and little Joseph be without all the things I had given them? This way the cops would follow me; they would leave my family alone.
The cops are evil. They dress like evil and they smell like evil. What did they ever do for anyone? I thought.
Just then I heard a sound. It was a faint sound, a subtle tear in the fabric of the night. Then it came closer, like the thunder of an approaching storm. It was Lenny's bunch, I knew that sound anywhere, and I quicker than I knew my own self I knew they meant business.
I stopped in mid-stride, and turned back towards the garage. But that would be stupid. The bikes would be the first things they would check. I ran out into the street and across to the bus shelter on the north side. I laid low and waited.
In the damp corner of the bus shelter the smell finally reached my nose. It was like that dead smell rising out of an old swamp, but it didn't sit like stagnating water. It rose to meet me like the sharp hiss of a dragon. I knew that smell, as it wrapped around the back of my neck and rolled down my stomach to my groin. Somebody had been here. It was vomit. There were pills on the ground. There were old needles and there was blood. Somewhere somebody was crying; or, was it the wind. Were these needles one of ours? Did our gang sell those drugs.
The sound of the bikes approached, but then there was a sharp silence. They were coasting down the hill, coming closer, and I was alone. Would the rest of the gang come to my aid? Could I even find them? They'd be out doing deals. But even if they weren't, they wouldn't come. I was the man that made the deals, but the real rules of the game don't include defending their bread and butter with their lives. There was no way they'd come. Lenny's gang was out for revenge. It was going to be brutal, and there would be no one spared.
Just then, as if they had been entirely forgotten in the panic of the moment, I saw Louise and little Joseph and imagined them sleeping silently, unaware of the approaching danger. They were to be safe from the police, I had thought, but would they be safe enough to live? What would Lenny's boys do to them? I had a rush of fear crawl through me. I had to do something. But who would I call? And why, why was this happening? I stepped back, and felt the sharp point drive up through my foot and into my ankle bone. The needle I had probably sold was bringing me down; the hard cement approaching as I fell.
What have I done? It came up into me like hot flame. The idea struck me like the white heat of the sun. And it was because of me that my wife and child were about to suffer the most cruel of punishments, were about to meet real evil in the face. There was only one thing to do. It suddenly became clear, and there was a phone just outside the bus shelter, just out of sight.
I dragged myself up onto the bench. I could now begin to see the first bikers pushing their Harley's silently up the drive, slipping them in behind the bushes, pulling sacks of guns and knives out their leather saddle bags. I had to hurry now. I was alone now, no thugs to help me, no gun to swing or threats to make to anyone. I just wanted help. I edged around to the back of the shelter, the cold, resilient plastic holding itself hard against my face, the needle driving the entire blame of all that was about to happen deep into my heel. The phone was just there above me. If I could just raise myself to reach it, just enough to lift it off the hook to let it fall.
I looked around. The entire gang was silently surrounding the house, like sharks in the depths of a cold sea. The were showing their teeth, the knives and the chains or our trade, and you could see the effects of drugs and alcohol in their walk. They were more like animals than men, and all that had been mine was their food. Louise! Joseph!
I reached up for the phone. The end of my finger felt the lowest point of the receiver and I pushed it higher so that it flew into the air then fell towards me. I could just lift myself, just close enough to search the air for the only sound that could possibly save them now. But as I pressed my hear closer to listened for the dial tone, there was nothing. Only a cold emptiness on the wire. Nothing but clean, dead air.
