Frightened Boy

Chapter Thirteen, part two - The Fall of Men

The train station we popped up out of was on the outskirts of town, and it didn’t take long before we were under the nearest freeway and within the safe confines of an Orange Zone. The moment we passed the marker designating the upcoming socio-economic wasteland as hazardous, Escher relaxed. Homeless men roasted garbage in trashcans; they smiled and waved at him. Street urchins ran away from their games of catch and peeked out from behind corners to see him pass.

As the day wore on, I noticed that for the first time in my life, I was walking through an Orange Zone and wasn’t afraid. This was nothing like the Blue areas of Downtown, or even the Green safety of my suburban neighborhood. This was lawless, the police did not patrol here. No one gathered the trash, or powered the generators.

Were these really just people trying to get back on their feet? I spied three men standing on the corner together and know that before, I would’ve guessed they were a gang looking for someone to rob.

An old car drove past, and I wondered if the driver was going to throw gasoline-soaked rags at us. I heard a crying baby and wondered if it was a tape recording made to lure women to their deaths.

Were there really thieves with loaded syringes who’d rob you and leave you with a some incurable disease? Gang initiations that required robbing, stealing, killing, beating people, or running over pedestrians? Did some gangs really require new members to knock on the door of a stranger and kill them when they opened the door?

Could there be LSD and Strychnine on the pay phone buttons? AIDS-infected syringes glued to gas-pump handles? Nails in the fruit? Staged medical emergencies? Wolves at the door? Blood in the river of souls? Was it really such diabolical times?

We walked for several hours. My feet ached, and each time Erika began to voice a complaint, I squeezed her hand to remind her we were the uneasy guests of two armed murderers. “I forbid it,” I murmured into her ear.

She seemed to accept that.

At last, Escher stepped up to an abandoned auto shop and pounded at the door. An elderly Mexican man opened it. As he realized who knocked, his look of disgust dissipated and was replaced by an apologetic stumbling over his own speech. Escher didn’t say a word, but rather put a hand down on the man’s shoulder and stepped inside. He motioned for us to follow.

The inside of his shop was transformed into a haphazard living room, constructed of gutted cars. Car seats were made into beds and chairs, and reconstructed air conditioning units and fans pumped air in from outside; a sedan in the corner purred softly, a host of wires running from underneath its hood to the fans and lights. An exhaust system led from the car-turned-generator and pumped out the open window.

“We’ll be safe here,” Escher said. “It’s been a long day for all of us. I think you should rest.”

He jumped into a disemboweled convertible and laid across the back seat, combat boots in the air. Whisper moved to the furthest corner from the main entrance and sat cross-legged on the bare cement.

Erika and I found space on the floor together.

Whisper had focused all her attention on a white cat that bore a single black stripe from its nose to tail—like a reversed skunk. Escher was dismantling his gun and cleaning it. Erika and I mainly tried not to look at each other or the dirty old man who was fiddling with some car parts in a separate, much smaller room.

“Tell me about your parents,” Escher said suddenly, cracking the silence several hours after we’d arrived.

“Who?” I asked. If Whisper heard, she didn’t bother to respond.

“You first,” he said to me.

“They were liberals. They hated this country and loved it at the same time.”