Punktown: Shades of Grey (29 page)

“Have fun.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

Kloud picked out two suspicious figures sitting on the backrest of a bench. They were watching the transaction. Probably vultures, Kloud concluded. Vultures being victims of the depression who watched drug sales in parks or wherever, then jumped the buyer once he, she, or it was alone. Some needed the drugs; others sold them to buy a day’s meal.

Kloud felt his fingers curling back the cuff of his pant leg, curling denim back like a snarling dog lip to expose the knife’s handle. Vultures for sure—he rose from his squat, parkerized blade in the breeze—they were following Dennison across the park.

The silhouette transformed into Dennison; the one behind him turned into Kloud. They resumed their spots around Murphy.

“Don’t look now,” Kloud said, dipping his short-bladed weapon into his leather pocket. “Two vultures ten yards behind us.”

The two shadows froze at the sight of the four veterans.
Four gravestone-crest figures of menace.
There was no future in that. They were turning around when Murphy turned on his bench and pointed at them.

“Hey, c’mere, I want to kill you,” he stated.

The figures jogged off.

“Hey, come back.” He turned around with a sour sneer-smile. “Dick licks.”

««—»»

It was very dark in Dennison’s small flat. A streetlight tossed the image of a tree branch across the window. It was a neurotic bone-bodied hydra with demon-leaf wings. The occasional gust of wind made the branch tap against the glass.

“I think the tree wants a puff,” Kloud said, releasing a lungful of spicy seaweed smoke.

They sat on floor pillows around the low circular card table.

A hookah and a candle sat before them.

They resembled
ghosts,
smoke faded, emphasized by the blue flame of the lone gas candle. Music played in the background as they drew deeply from the hookah’s arms.

Even without his glasses, his eyes were lost to darkness. Casper held his thumb over his hookah nozzle; his free hand rubbed thoughtfully at his head dome.

“Miserable scum,” Murphy mumbled deeply.

“What?” Dennison nearly choked on his hit.

Murphy stared at the Klu-Koza flag on the opposite wall.

“The government.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“They’re useless. Useless flesh.”

Silence.

“I mean look at us.” Murphy turned to include each man with an intense look. He drew in their eyes.

“What have we got?
A shit job at a car hospital, armpit apartments, enough money to buy toilet paper.
We got shit.” The Captain’s voice was fatherly.

“We’re nothing, nowhere. We don’t exist. Uncle Earth gave us the royal fist fuck. We’re
gonna
end up as bums. We’ll be sittin’ in the Post for the rest of our lives dreamin’ into our beers, boozin’ our brains out. And it’s all ’cause of Uncle Earth’s gratitude, or lack thereof.”

Dennison wagged his head. “No way, I’m not gonna end up like those old guys. Fuck that, those guys are wasting away.”

“We are those guys. The only difference between them and us is age.
Gov’s screwing
them too.”

“They get a pension,” Kloud spoke up.

“They get shit for pension.” Murphy’s voice was always low-key; he explained things as though his audience were children. “The Prime Minister’s gonna cut back on half of what they get, too. Those poor old guys aren’t shit. Hell, they served their government, but nobody remembers that. They’ll die without the little pension they get now.”

Dennison agreed. “They don’t make much, that’s true. A lot of ’em can’t work, either.”

“Government can’t afford to feed them, with this depression, but they can afford to give ten billion to the Klu-Kozi.”

Murphy watched the enemy flag; blue smoke filtered up between it and his face.

“Weasel McGurn told me that the ghouls got a safe in their embassy with over five million in it,” Kloud injected into the silence.

Murphy stared across the table.

“Five million in our money,” Dennison said. “They take it out of our taxes and give it to them. Real farce, man. Imagine that.”

“It is our money,” Murphy said. “I’d like to go in there and take it.”

Kloud laughed. Casper smiled thinly.

Kloud said, “That’d be somethin’, huh?”

Murphy nodded solemnly.

««—»»

Over the weekend, they drove out to Lougis Cemetery to visit some friends. The robot-legged dog stood in the cool fall sunlight, close as if on guard duty, impassive eyes effectively disguising the chronic pain enemy war-gas had burned into its lungs. No veterinary medicines seemed capable of diminishing the beast’s suffering.

The four men stood at attention. Murphy gave Major Gattle’s grave a stiff salute. His “at ease” command was all but psychic.

The cemetery was huge, row after tooth-like row of white. One modern and expensive grave projected a life-size hologram specter in military dress forever marching in place. Murphy watched the blue ghost from the corner of his eye.

There were several great trees in the oldest section of the burial field. The veterans sat in the shade on crunchy red leaves, sharing a seaweed cigarette.

“Number Five,” Murphy called his dog.

The handsome black beast sprinted over and stood respectfully. He stroked the animal’s shiny crewcut back with vague compassion.

The leaves came down like feather-motion mortar shells. A breeze-strewn wall of hair obscured half of Murphy’s face. He sat frozen, head bent forward, shoulders hunched.

“What do you think?” he mumbled.

Kloud was gawking at the distant piled buildings of Paxton. Dennison drew pensively at the joint. Casper was meticulously tying knots in the stem of a felled leaf.

“They’d never expect it,” Dennison concluded finally. “I mean, security-wise they can’t be too good.”

“We don’t got a lot to lose. The idea sits pretty well with me,” said Kloud.

Casper nodded his approval.

“Then we all agree,” Murphy said. “Good, we could use a war.”

He looked off at the neat rows of monuments, at that translucent blue soldier marching into eternity.

««—»»

The library was a large stone affair, somewhat medieval. A solemn out-of-place structure when compared with the other buildings on K Block. Four men walked up the walkway, which was cluttered with empty beer bottles and dried purple fanult leaves. Murphy pushed open the polished black plastic doors and led them inside.

It was quiet. Two women sat at elevated desks amidst row after row of massive bookshelves. There was a study section at the huge
room’s
right extreme.

Murphy, Kloud and Casper stood by a glass display case filled with stuffed birds while Dennison approached the two librarians’ desks. Casper looked over at the study area where three schoolgirls sat with piles of homework at a corner table. One was a slim blond in a short black dress; one was chubby with a stylish
bald head
; the last was a Choom with thick glasses and a thick woolly sweater outfit. The girls momentarily ceased their studying to observe the men. Casper noticed the pretty blond was smiling at him, simultaneously spreading her legs apart beneath the table. He also noticed that her crotch was naked of panties and hair.

One librarian was a middle-aged alien woman with a horse-like head and thick gorilla arms. Two acorn eyes blinked at the end of her long wrinkled snout. The other woman was caped and wore a wide-brimmed black hat. She was a mid-thirtyish human with straight blue hair.

“Mag…” Dennison said with a smile.

“Hello, Dennison.” She had ultra-charm on tap.

The alien woman was engulfed in her work, yet they were careful in their word choices, lest she overhear.

“Do you think you could help me find that book you told me about?” the man asked.

“I can try; come upstairs.”

Dennison glanced back at Murphy, who in turn looked sternly at Kloud and Casper, who nodded in reply. Murphy, Dennison, and the librarian went upstairs.

Darkness welcomed them. Morgue-silent rows of dusty hardcovers formed a maze of literature. There was a thickness to the air, possibly from the rotting pages of ancient volumes.

“Place is pretty spooky at night,” Dennison noted, glancing down various aisles as Mag led them towards the back of the vast room.

“Sometimes I hear weird things up here.”

“Yeah, such as…”

“Such as footsteps when I know nobody’s up here.”

Dennison let a nervous smile flicker on his long face. “Great.”

Near-naked fall fingers drummed erratically at a window.

“One time I heard a thump and I came up to find a bible lying on the floor.”

“No shit?”

“Seriously. Doesn’t scare me, though; ghosts can’t hurt anybody.”

Dennison’s friend spoke softly. “I wouldn’t say that.”

Mag looked back at him and smirked. “Here we are, fellas.”

It was a particularly dust-splashed bookcase. Dennison read some of the titles:
Alcot’s Guide to Murder, Combat Techniques, Guns of War, Guerrilla Mayhem, The Art of Bayonet Fighting, Tactics of Destruction, Morrison’s Book of Home Torture Devices.

Mag reached to one side of the bookshelf and worked some type of mechanism; she pushed the shelf and it swivelled open, revealing a hidden room.

“Holy shit, just like in the movies.”

“What’s a haunted library,” asked Mag, “without a secret passage?”

Once inside, the shelf was swung back into place and Mag flicked on a light. It was a virtual library of guns. One wall displayed a vast assortment of long arms; there were tables covered with pistols. A small shelf held piles of ammunition cartons.
A true armory.

Murphy studied the walls, nodding his approval.

Mag was pleased by the men’s expressions.

“Not bad, huh?”

“Not at all,” Murphy answered. He bent over a collection of revolvers.

“You’ve got some pretty obscure shit here, lady,” Murphy said, reaching out to stroke steel.

“We’ve got just about everything. So what did you have in mind? Shotguns? Revolvers? Autos?”

“Military guns. No shit guns, no revolvers. Military.”

Mag swept an arm across the room. “Look around.”

Dennison hefted a 30-shot fully automatic carbine. “A Huston Brain Rainer,” he noted.

Murphy quietly chose two forty-fives and two nine-millimeter pistols and put them aside. Mag watched him as he switched his attention to a wall of rifles. She seemed amused by his intense sense of selection.