Happy Policeman by Patricia Anthony

Author:Patricia Anthony [Anthony, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Event Horizon EBooks
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Torku driver peeled rubber down Main Street.

“My pocket.” DeWitt rolled over on his side. “I have handcuff keys in my pocket.”

Seresen reached into DeWitt’s trouser pocket, his pliable hand molding to the contour of DeWitt’s hip. The alien’s touch reminded him uncomfortably of adolescent gropings in darkened theaters.

After an awkward moment, Seresen brought the key out, turned DeWitt over, and opened the lock. DeWitt sat up and moved away from the Kol.

“Don’t hurt them,” he said.

Seresen’s eyes were mostly blue in the van’s light. An inexpressive, blank blue.

“What have you told your workers to do, Seresen?”

“We will take the gas.”

The back of the van was cold. DeWitt felt a chill as the sweat on his arms began to dry. “Is that all?”

“We will not give it back, either.”

The van hit a bump and nearly knocked DeWitt over. Seresen, with his lower center of gravity, didn’t budge.

“If you hurt anyone, I’ll turn against you.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s wrong to beat people into doing what you want.”

DeWitt pictured his father in that same downtown street, billy-club swinging, teaching uppity blacks the difficult lesson the city council wanted them to learn.

“Kill one of them, and you’ll have to kill them all. Down to every last teenager, every last baby. They’ll never forgive you. You’ll never be able to turn your back on them again.”

“You are stupid to say this. So stupid.”

“And that goes for me, too. I won’t be a traitor.”

“Traitor?’” There was an unfamiliar edge to Seresen’s voice. “Traitor means nothing. I wish you would not talk about these things. It makes the world ugly.”

“But . . .”

“Be quiet.” The alien hunched into a shapeless lump of disgust.

The van stopped. Seresen, as though anxious to get away from DeWitt, opened the back doors and jumped down.

Cautiously, DeWitt followed, and found himself in the brightly lit Torku garage. One last, poignant glimpse of the parking lot and the trees, and the wall slammed to with an end-of-the-world clunk.

The garage stank of exhaust and old oil. Loretta’s Buick was parked at the end of the long row of delivery vehicles. In testimony to how the revolution was faring, his own squad car was there, too.

Squinting in the cold glare of the fluorescents, DeWitt walked to it. The car had been messily hot-wired. He got out his keys.

In the trunk lay a flat, pink box marked BLUSH. A smaller box that had to be lipstick. With a fingernail he scraped some of the crusted blood off the cardboard. A lock of bleached blond hair was snagged in the spare’s balance weight. DeWitt had pushed Foster too far. He should have never given him the keys.

Exhausted, DeWitt crawled into the back seat, made himself a pillow of his jacket, and closed his eyes.

He dreamed he was climbing the Line again, only the energy was sticky as candy. His arm sunk into the glow, and when he pulled his hand out, he saw with horror that his flesh had been stripped to the bone.

A knock by his ear startled him awake.

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