Will the Sun Ever Come Out Again? (4 page)

No answer. The banger sits there like he’s in a trance.

“You want to talk about why you and your boy went certifiable this morning?”

Rawls sits and waits. He tries to read the banger’s face, but he finds nothing he can pull. Guy’s about as close to asleep as a body can be without snoring. Or maybe his mind’s just up and gone. Maybe he’s realized what he was chewing on back at the Edgar’s, and now his brain’s gone haywire trying to make some kind of sense of it all.

Or maybe the guy’s crashing from whatever drug put him sky high in the first place. Reality’s crashing in, and his body and brain are shutting down in order to deal with it.

Rawls rubs a hand over his face as he processes the thoughts and theories. He feels pressure at his temples. It’s all fine and dandy if this guy’s brain has turned to mush, but he needs to find out if there’s some seriously dangerous shit on the streets. If this is a new drug or the start of some serious dick-waving, he needs to know, needs to stomp it down before it gets out of control. He can’t let this piece of shit give him the silent treatment.

“Last chance, homie. You want to talk to me, or are you just gonna sit there like a sack of assholes?”

The banger doesn’t answer. If he’s even heard the words that echo through the tiny room, he gives no sign.

“All right. We’ll play it your way.” He pushes back his chair and stands. He steps to the wall and wraps his fingers around the cable that travels to the camera’s rear. He pulls, and the connection is severed. The cable coils sloppily on the ground.

He turns to face the Gray Streeter, who still refuses to move or even lift his eyes.

“For the record,” Rawls says, “I’m going to enjoy the hell out of this.”

2Bit nearly rips his mom’s screen door off the hinges as he charges into the house. It snaps back to bang against the frame, and his mom’s angry voice rips through the run-down home. 2Bit’s already in the bathroom, though. He throws the lock a split second before her fists rattle the doorknob.

“Darrel, where you been? You don’t slam my doors, you hear me?”

“Shit, Moms! I be out in a minute. Leave me alone!” He hears bravery in his voice, but he sure as hell don’t feel it. All he feels is cold and hollow and a growing terror like a feeling he’s being chased by something he can’t see yet. A dog that sticks to the shadows and growls just loud enough to tell you it’s there. It’s coming, though. He don’t know why, but he’s sure that dog’s coming.

He examines his hands. There’s still some blood on them, though not nearly as much. He wiped most of it off on his T-shirt, ditched the fucking thing in a trashcan four blocks away. He knows it wasn’t the smartest move, but his brain tells him he’s got other shit to worry about.

He turns the faucet on all the way and starts scrubbing. He works the soap into his hands until his skin aches and stings. He can’t seem to get all the blood, though. No matter how hard he scrubs, a few deep trails of the stuff just won’t come clean.

“Fuck!”

He balls his hands into fists and brings them down on the sink. Pain travels up his arms to find a home in his spine. He stares at himself in the mirror and tries to make sense of what he sees. Spatters and streaks of blood mark his face, his neck. His eyes are wide and much too white. He stares into them and watches his pupils grow smaller and smaller until they nearly disappear. His lip quivers, and tracks of sweat race each other down his forehead. He looks scared, crazy. He don’t recognize this terrified homeboy looking back at him.

Maybe the guy in the mirror is somebody new. Maybe the homeboy he used to be died last night. Maybe that’s why he don’t remember where he was or what he done.

2Bit clamps his eyes shut tight and watches stars burst behind his eyelids. He presses his fingers to his eyes, and the stars grow brighter. They dance in pulsing fields of green and blue and red. It all looks crazy, like something from a different world.

Then the stars disappear and an image flashes through his brain. He sees himself kicking a gagged and bound Mexican, a Loco, arms covered in ink. The man grunts into his gag, so he kicks him again. He has a knife in his hand. Other Gray Street Bangers stand next to him, blades in their fists. There’s laughter. And blood. And somebody starts screaming. Beneath it all he hears a voice, quiet and gentle and a little amazed.

“He stepped through.”

2Bit opens his eyes and gasps. He looks at his reflection and almost cries when he sees it pointing at him, smiling.

Ricky keeps shop in a shithole apartment off Rosecrans. Walker knows the dealer can afford better digs, but the building with the central courtyard offers good security. Ricky rents four additional one-rooms, and he keeps soldiers stashed in each. Anybody tries to come in and start shit, they have to climb three flights of stairs with bullets flying at them from four different directions. Going on five years, and Ricky hasn’t been knocked over yet.

Walker opens the iron gate and enters the courtyard. He doesn’t worry about catching a round. Ricky’s boys know he’s a friendly. Their boss owes him for more than a couple of in-roads to new markets.

The courtyard bakes with heat despite the overcast skies. The air presses against his skin. It feels wet and hot in his lungs, making breathing a fun little challenge. Maybe the air is the reason he doesn’t spot any kids out playing. Usually, the hole is a little more jumping.

He starts up the stairs. His footsteps echo like gunshots through the air. He stomps at the top of the stairwell to get Ricky’s attention, and the sound rings out like a shotgun blast. No reply comes. He hears no children or televisions or radios. The building even deflects the sounds of the Compton streets. He wonders if it’s always been that way and he just never noticed it. Something tells him it’s a new phenomenon. Weird fucking day.

He reaches the top floor without catching a hint of life in the building. Hairs rise on the back of his neck. He wants to draw his pistol or at least unsnap his holster, but he fears giving the soldiers anything that might violate his friendly status.

He keeps his eyes peeled as he reaches Ricky’s door. He delivers his knock, three and then two.

“Yeah,” comes the reply. Ricky’s voice, but a little off. Weak, maybe. “C’mon in.”

Walker turns the knob and opens the door.

“Holy shit,” Megan says through grit teeth. “Holy fucking shit.”

Beside her, Christian begins to cough and gag. She hears him stumble-run back outside and wretch, but she can’t peel her eyes off the scene in front of her.

The home’s living room is a slaughter pen. Parts of what must be a dozen Mexican men litter the floor. Heads and arms and torsos decorate the room in piles. Sightless eyes stare at ceilings, walls, and discarded flesh. The thick scents of blood and shit fill the room like a fog and force Megan’s hand to her mouth and nose. The soapy smell of her palm does next to nothing to improve the air.

She hears Christian coughing again. The sound provides a staccato counterpoint to the constant droning of the flies that fill the living room like a cloud. She hears sirens approaching from far away, and she guesses their backup is on its way.

She tries to make sense of the horrific sight in front of her. The tats covering the discarded arms mark the bodies as members of The Locos. The house is deep in Gray Street territory. The knowledge does not comfort her, though. This is hell and gone from any gang violence she’s seen in her three years on the job. If the Gray Street boys have decided to step up their game, they’ve done it in the most psychotic way possible.

“Megan!” Christian says as he enters the house again. “Backup’s a block away.”

“Good,” she says. She points at something with her toe, thirteen fleshy objects lined up in a neat row on the blood-sopping carpet. “Are those…”

“Jesus. Tongues.”

“This is some serious shit.”

“Can you read that?”

Christian points through the swirling mass of flies. The black cloud shifts, and Megan sees writing on the wall. Somebody has covered most of the living room wall with scrawled words. She can’t make out much through the shadows. The words are written in a sloppy scrawl, and she can only make out fragments. She tries to make sense of them but fails.

A Darkness Below…and All…Rises.

She makes out the phrase several times among the writing. As the writing approaches the lower right hand corner, it grows more and more erratic, almost desperate. It’s a scribble of words she’s never seen or heard, never even imagined. It pulls at her, and she takes a step forward before she realizes what she’s doing.

“Look,” Christian says. His voice startles her back into her head. He points to the opposite wall, and Megan follows with her eyes.

Only three words fill this wall. Somebody wrote them in huge letters, making great sweeps with a blood-soaked hand. They work together with the nonsense words to create a sense of dread deep in Megan’s chest. This isn’t a gang thing. This is something new and terrible, and it’s something she can’t mold into any kind of sense.

She reads the words again, and they spread through her mind like ice across a pane of glass.

HE STEPPED THRU

Rawls bounces the banger’s head off the steel table. The sound stabs at his ears a few times as it bounces around the tiny space. He expects the homeboy to follow it with some noise of his own: a scream, a grunt. Something. The Gray Streeter keeps quiet, though. Hell, he’s silent.

“You wanna talk to me now, you fuck?” He tightens his hand into a fist and slams it into the homeboy’s sternum. He hears the man’s air rush out in a violent burst, but again the banger doesn’t make any sound that would indicate pain.

Fuck it. He’s cracked thicker skulls in the past.

“We’re running out of chances, shithead. You keep giving me this silent treatment bullshit, and I’m going to have to do some serious damage.

“So what was that bullshit at the restaurant? New drug on the streets? Turf beef? Is this the start of a war? Tell me what we’re looking at.”

Nothing.

“Fucking answer me!”

The banger looks up at him and smiles. The corners of his mouth creep upward slowly, like an old man climbing stairs. His eyes brim with shadows and fire, and Rawls almost thinks he can see the insanity and desperate anger in them. It’s the first time the man has acknowledged his existence, and suddenly he wishes he was anywhere but interrogation room four.

He suppresses a shiver as he eyes the glittering teeth behind blood-caked lips. “Well? You have anything to tell me?”

The banger opens his mouth and speaks in a whispering voice. The unintelligible syllables sound like a broken speaker, all static and air.

Rawls blinks. He tries to say something, but his throat clicks and nothing else comes.

The banger’s smile widens.

“Everything and all. There is a darkness below, and it rises.”

“What?”

“But he stepped through.”

He stares as the banger juts his tongue past his teeth. The wiggling muscle is a dull non-color, and it extends farther than Rawls thinks should be possible, inches becoming a foot.

And then the Gray Street boy bites clean through.

Blood spills from the man’s lips like somebody’s cranked a faucet. Rawls watches in stunned silence for a moment, trying to figure out just what the fuck he’s supposed to do. He thinks of the camera and the cord he yanked free. They’ll think he did this. No one will believe him. They put him in here to get the truth, and now a gangbanger is going to bleed to death in an interrogation room while his tongue flops on the table like a dying fish.

He backs against the door and reaches for the knob. He almost turns it, but then he realizes the banger is still smiling. He stares at the dribbling mouth. He hears blood patter onto the tabletop. At the edge of his vision he can see the tongue writhing in a puddle of crimson. He shifts his gaze as the severed muscle rears back like a snake, and the sight gives him the strength he needs to leave the tiny room.

“Help! I need some help up here!”

Walker enters the apartment and closes the door behind him. Out of sight, he finally unsnaps his holster. It comforts him the slightest bit, but he still feels anticipation in his gut like a chunk of ice.

It stinks in Ricky’s place, stinks right to hell and back. He’s knocked down doors in houses full of dogs that didn’t smell this bad. How long has it been since he’s seen Ricky?

“Ricky? Where you at?”

Shadows clog the apartment. Shafts of diseased light pierce the cracked blinds, but darkness hides most of the living room. Walker makes out the couch he knows is always there, the coffee table piled high with empty beer cans and bottles. A glass bong sits in the middle of it all. Discarded foil rests nearby. Sloppy.

He reaches for the light switch and flips it on. Nothing. He toggles the switch a few times, and Ricky’s weakened voice creeps out of the bedroom.

“Broke the bulbs, man. Watch your step.”

Walker does as he’s told. Way it smells, he’s liable to plop a foot down in a pile of fresh shit. He fishes a lighter out of his pocket and flicks it. A tiny flame pops to life. He adjusts it—letting it grow a little—and he starts forward.