Five
Mortimer Braggs screamed. It didn't seem likely that
his reputation among his friends would be damaged any. He was suddenly
and completely alone. There was nobody to hear, and nobody to know how
much he feared the dark.
In time, he would have recovered his initial moment
of panic. The cat never gave him a chance. It attacked from the dark.
Mort heard it snarl. He heard the crackle of twigs on the ground as it
launched itself. And then he saw the dark shape arc through the
moonlight. He brought his arms up in time to keep the animal from tearing
his face off.
He tried to toss the hot, wiry body of the animal
away. First, he had to dislodge its claws from his face. He could not.
And then he got angry and filled with rage. The
whole world was against him. He was a misfit. Everywhere he turned, he
was attacked.
He fought back. His screams of fear turned to
screams of anger. He found the cats neck with both hands and he
squeezed. The cat squirmed in his arms like the wild animal it was. Its
claws dug even deeper into his flesh. But Mort felt himself squeezing the
life out of the animal. His fingernails dug into its skin. He felt its
blood on his hands.
In time, the cat quivered and went limp. Mort felt
the heat of its body drain away. When the claws let loose from his skin,
he flung the carcass into the darkness and shoved his way through the
underbrush. If he stayed in the jungle, he'd be attacked again.
In an instant, he stumbled into the open. The ground
was now concrete beneath his feet. He looked up in surprise, down a city
street lit by rows of glowing streetlights.
He felt no safer. This, too, was the jungle. He had
been hurt just as bad in dark alleys. There were men here far more
dangerous than the cat that had attacked him.
He ran down the middle of the unfamiliar streets.
Gang-bangers hooted and laughed at him from the sidewalk and alleys. A
bottle smashed at his feet. A rock bounced off a car as he passed.
Lost, he ran through the city streets, turning every
corner at random until his breath burned in his lungs, and a sharp pain
stabbed in his side. At the very moment he was ready again to drop to his
knees and let fate take its course, he recognized the street he was on.
He was home.
As if home was a place of sanctuary against the
jungle and the night.
Exhausted, he went up the stairs to the main entrance
of a windowless building, keyed in his ID number, and went down the hall
to the end apartment. He paused at the door. Inside, he heard his father
knock something to the floor. Whatever it was, it shattered, and his
father cursed.
Mort tapped out another security code on the lock,
hoping his father hadn't changed it. Mort had no other place to go, but
sometimes his father locked him out. Sometimes, his father changed the
code in a drunken rage and locked himself out as well.
The door opened. Mort turned just inside and tried
to slip unnoticed to his own room.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Gunther Braggs
muttered at him.
The lights were out everywhere except the kitchen.
His father stood backlit in the doorway, leaning heavily against the
frame.
Gunther had a bottle in his hand. His eyes were
bloodshot, and he looked about ready to pass out. Mort wished he'd hurry
up and get it over with.
"I said what are you doing here?" Gunther said.
"I live here, too, pops," Mort said. He wished his
voice didn't sound so whiny.
"Well, you won't for much longer."
His father staggered and turned away.
Mort thought about it. He'd be out of school next
year. He still didn't know where he would go, or what he would do. He
was failing most of his classes. If he got into trouble again, they'd put
him in the Army. For the young and the healthy, the prison system and the
Army had become one and the same. It was the only thing society figured
it could do to get people to follow rules and finish their education.
There wasn't enough money for the old style prison system, and the world
had no use for the infantry anymore. Wars were fought by machines to keep
down the bloodshed, their operators secure in underground bunkers, or in
high orbit around the world.
His father drank up the money that would have put him
through vocational school. Gunther called it room and board. He rambled
on in the kitchen. "You'll be out in the streets next year, running with
the gangs."
What would his father say if he knew he ran with them
now? They were the only friends he had outside school. They hadn't let
him in yet, not a kid with a cop for a father.
Mort took a moment to look around the dirty
apartment. They'd get the health department called on them if this kept
up. Gunther refused to do any housework. Mort sometimes cleaned up while
Gunther was passed out. As often as not, having lost face, Gunther would
loose his temper and trash the place again.
Mort went to his bedroom. His father's badge
glimmered on the living room wall alongside the door, a constant reminder
of the past. Gunther was still proud of what he had been. Mort closed
his bedroom door behind him, backed into a corner and squatted in the
dark, wondering if things could have been different.
Gunther Braggs had been a lieutenant on the police
force. Gunther's wife, Bernice, Mort's mother, had been a sergeant
working undercover. She had been no better a mother than Gunther had been
a father. Mort had been a mistake in an overcrowded world. Babies had
been out of vogue when he was born. In a world of fifteen billion, they
still were.
Gunther had never told him exactly how his mother had
died, or why he had been kicked off the force. Mort had heard on the
streets that Gunther had cornered a young hood. The boy had pulled a
gun. Gunther had been trying to talk the young gang-banger out of the gun
when Bernice made an unexpected appearance. Thinking he was being
outflanked, the kid had panicked and shot her.
And in the rage that followed, Gunther had emptied
his gun into the boy.
Gunther had never been the same afterwards. He had
turned mean, and the department had been forced to retire him early.
Gunther hadn't wanted to retire. He had moved into the ghetto with his
young son to be close to his old precinct.
But his former friends and partners abandoned him.
He didn't make any new ones. And Gunther started drinking. Mort had gotten as tough and mean as his
old man trying to survive on the streets. He could hardly get along at
Armstrong High anymore. According to his counselor, he lacked the proper
social skills. Rather, he had picked up bad ones. His counselor didn't
seem to understand that bad ones were needed to get to school in one piece
every morning.
Mort had one decent friend left in the whole world.
Rick Kaiser. And Rick was afraid of him. If Rick had an ounce of courage
in his bones, Mort would have no friends at all.
A cricket chirped somewhere in the dark. The sound
reminded him that he was still in the jungle. Danger surrounded him.
He heard his father fall in the kitchen. It sounded
like he took the table and a chair or two with him. Mort crawled in bed
and slept while he could. The silence never lasted long.
Gunther's cry from his own bedroom propelled Mort out
of bed in the middle of the night.
"Bernice! No!"
Mort pulled his pillow over his head and tried not to
hear his father yelling in his dreams. He needed sleep. He had school in
the morning.
But Gunther came crashing into his room. "Get out!
Get out of here!"
Mort always slept dressed in defense against
Gunther's blind rages. He dived past a wild swing of the fist and was out
the front door in a flash. Inside the apartment, a tormented man let out
a bellow of anguish that never diminished in volume. Gunther Braggs would
die grieving for his lost wife.
Mort ran from the apartment building with tears
running from his face. A drunk blocked his way on the sidewalk. Mort
shouldered him aside, sending him crashing to the pavement.
A car squealed tires as it came around the corner.
Young men Mort had never seen before hurtled insults. Mort picked up a
piece of broken pavement and threw it. He bounced the five pound piece of
concrete off the hood and left a dent.
Tires squealed. The car nose-dived and stopped.
Doors flew open, and four men charged out.
Four were not enough to deal with Mort's hurt and
anger. Mort barreled past two to get to the boy who had yelled the
insults at him. As soon as three had managed to drag Mort off their
injured friend, they all retreated, battered and bleeding. Mort knelt in
the middle of the street when the car roared away, sobbing and trying to
catch his breath.
Only in the silent aftermath of the fight did he
notice the gun that had been lost in the scuffle. It was an illegal
antique, a forty-five caliber semiautomatic, chrome-plated pistol,
identical to the one his father kept locked away in the apartment. For as
long as he could remember, Mort had wanted to get his hands on that gun.
New guns had gadgets in them and couldn't be fired except by their owners,
nor could ownership be transferred except at the City Hall Tech Department
after a thorough background check. Illegal antiques that could be fired
by anyone were as rare as gold nuggets.
Antique or not, the gun would silence his enemies.
The gun would earn him respect on the street. It would be worth the
risk.
A gun would make him a man.
