All Dogs Go To Heaven/Part 1
Part 1
Madison Malholtra  |
Lunchmeat  |
Julie Skels  |
Duncan Slade  | |
Milwaukee. Where the epic blue of big sky country gave way to a horizon of steel and glass. Where it became harder (but not impossible) to find good country music on the radio. The city had an undeniable energy – an American edge. Hell, even the street prostitutes were something special here; like they had their own kind of pioneer spirit to them.
After days trapped in the car – days of road food and Duncan’s theories on the "Deep State" – Lunchmeat could feel it. They were close. Close to Haven.
Close to answers.
The past month wasn’t just a blur – it had all started to feel fake to him. Like a blackout your mates recapped for you. Maybe a night where you drank too much vodka and couldn’t remember punching out a pimp’s teeth.
This was like that. Different in some ways. But like that.
And it shook him a bit because Lunchmeat had a great memory. And he hadn’t had a sip of vodka since he went to prison.
So why was it all so damn hard to remember?
He remembered being locked up – that would never fade. And he remembered the visit from the man in the suit – Mal said his name was Martin. Lunchmeat remembered the question he asked:
Do you consider yourself a survivor?
Of course he did! And of course he had taken the offer to fight in their game. What did he have to lose? He was days away from getting shiv’d in the shower anyway. This was his chance.
He didn’t actually believe anything would happen. Not really. In fact, Lunchmeat wasn’t certain it was real even when he woke up on the plane with the taste of blood in his mouth and a parachute on his back.
Shit, if he hadn’t had the scars from those two days on Sanhok, he might already be thinking the whole thing was a dream. Or an implanted memory. That was a thing, right? He’d been thinking about that a lot. Who could be sure what the chips Mal had cut from their skulls actually did...
The only thing they knew for certain was the chips had been broadcasting. Not just their position – they were beaming out some kind of signal. Lunchmeat had heard Mal use the word "biometric" a dozen times but that didn’t mean anything to him.
What mattered was that these people – if they were actually people – were sending his info to a small industrial island off the coast of Milwaukee. And this was where they were going to get answers.
It should have been all four of them.
Mal had bailed. She’d gotten some phone call at the eleventh hour and decided that more than anything, she suddenly needed to go to the jungles of Peru.
Peru!?
The more Lunchmeat thought about it, the more he was certain the call wasn’t real. Who had that number anyway? Who’d be calling them to give anonymous tips? Did she make the whole thing up just to ditch them?
It was bullshit. And he was right to be angry. Maybe he shouldn’t have called her what he did, but it didn’t matter now. She was gone. And they had done just fine without her. Duncan got them to the states like he said he would. Hooked them up with a friend of his, a former marine named Eddie Denim. The guy lived out on a huge ranch in Nevada where he hoarded guns and blogged about how much he hated the government.
Denim gave them cash, guns, and a car. Most important, Denim put them in touch with another contact. This guy wasn’t a marine. His name was Ramon Riggs.
And apparently, he was a cannibal.
"This is it," Duncan said as they pulled up to the condemned Milwaukee tenement. The place looked like hell. Windows all boarded up or broken. Easily a decade’s worth of graffiti. A young man, shirtless and heavily tattooed, played lookout from the front steps. He had a mean-looking pitbull on a leash and a handgun sticking out of his joggers.
God Bless America, Lunchmeat thought.
"This guy’s gonna get us into Haven?" Julie asked, clearly skeptical.
Duncan watched, nervous, as the man with the dog approached the car. Julie reached for her shotgun but Lunchmeat gestured for her to be cool.
"We’re looking for Ramon Riggs," Duncan called out before the man could get too close. "Eddie Denim sent us."
"Lemme see the scars," said the man.
"The what?" Duncan sent a confused look to Lunchmeat. The former marine could hit a target half a mile away, but Lunchmeat was quickly realizing he wasn’t that sharp.
"Ramon said to expect a couple weirdos with guns. Said you’d all have holes in the back of y’alls heads." The man indicated the three of them. "So lemme see those scars."
Duncan leaned forward and exposed the back of his neck where Mal had made the incision.
It wasn’t healing well.
"That work for you?" Duncan said.
The young man was trying to act tough but Lunchmeat could tell the scar unnerved him.
"Alright, yeah. I’ll take you up."
Inside, the tenement hallways stank of bleach. It reminded Lunchmeat of prison. The smell after someone got killed.
They found Ramon in a third-floor apartment retrofitted to be a gangland war room. He was a broad-shouldered black man, head shaved with a narrow beard that made him look like a Pharaoh. He was inspecting a cache of weaponry. Three fully-kited automatic rifles. An RPG. A case full of what might have been flashbangs.
"You check them for scars?" Ramon asked as they entered, barely taking his eyes off the guns.
"Yeah," said the man, pit bull still by his side. "Hook this guy up with some hydrogen peroxide or some shit. That scar don’t look too good."
Duncan instinctively popped up his collar and shot the man a mean look. Ramon stepped away from the weapons, scanning the trio.
"So you’re the ones that wanna get into Haven..."
"Look I’m not gonna tell you that Haven was ever nice. But at least when we were running things… man, we didn’t leave bodies out to rot in the streets."
They were in a backroom, talking over beer and bowls of boiled chicken stew. The beer was warm and flat and as far as Lunchmeat was concerned, worked just fine. Ramon sat by the window, exhaling smoke from a hand-rolled cigarette out into the warm night air.
Lunchmeat couldn’t get a read on the leader of the Bridge Street Cannibals. He had charm, sure. And he was smart. But he was always smiling. This grin that went ear to ear. Lunchmeat didn’t like that smile. It made everything seem like a sarcastic joke. Even when he talked about his fellow gang members being shot in the streets by a private military corporation…
"These Pillar guys are psychopaths. Ain’t no quarter for them. They use our wounded like bait. What are we supposed to do with that? This ain’t Cambodia – it’s motherfucking Milwaukee."
"You said Pillar?" Duncan asked. Lunchmeat couldn’t be certain, but Duncan looked like he just went four shades paler.
"Yeah, Pillar Securities. What, you know these guys?" Ramon said.
"I thought Pillar ran out of Europe. Why would they be here in America?" Duncan put down his beer – Lunchmeat could see his hands were shaking.
"After I uh… after the marines, I was looking for work," Duncan continued. "I had a meeting lined up with those guys. Plane ticket in hand and everything."
Ramon gave him a long look and said nothing.
Duncan crossed his arms over his chest, defensive. When they discharged me they didn’t leave me a whole lot of options. I needed work. But I didn’t even take the meeting. I didn’t get on the plane. I did my homework and yeah, these guys are exactly what you said. They’re straight killers for hire. You pay them when you want something done that no one else will do. They bill themselves as like a, like a... a one-stop coup in a box. The guy who runs the outfit, Bogdan-
"Bogdan the Boogeyman," Ramon cut him off.
"I don’t believe in the boogeyman," Julie chuckled. Lunchmeat tried to make eye contact with her but she looked to the floor. He had spent enough time with Julie to know the difference between when she was fearless and when she was acting fearless.
This was an act – she had noticed Duncan’s response too.
"Believe in this guy," Ramon said. "The rest of his men, they’re there for the paycheck. Sociopaths, everyone of them. But for them it’s a job. Not for Bogdan."
"What’s it for him?" Lunchmeat asked.
"A fucking calling," Ramon said, shaking his head. The man clearly had stories he could tell. Instead he just took a moment to smoke. It was awkward, the way no one was talking.
"Look," Ramon finally said, ashing his cigarette. "These guys are loaded up with heavy ordinance. Incendiary rounds. Explosives. Advanced optics the likes of which I ain’t never seen. They got helicopters over the place twenty-four seven. All on this little island so small you gotta zoom all the way in on Google Maps..."
"And my crew, we’re all asking the same question. Why? What’s going on? And what the hell’s this have to do with Tythonic?"
"What’s Tythonic?" Julie asked. She shot a look to Duncan. He didn’t seem to know either.
"It’s a tech company, I think," Ramon said. "They put up billboards all over the island before they brought Pillar in. I looked them up – they’re one of those companies, you don’t know what they sell. Like Lockheed Martin."
"Lockheed sells jets to the military," Duncan said.
"Alright whatever. You know what I’m talking about. Like Nestle sells water, right? But some companies, I don’t know what they do. What’s Cisco do? Well Tythonic’s like that. All I know is they’re ‘there for you so you can be there for them’ or some shit. I don’t know, that’s what it says on their website."
He tapped his finger on the back of his neck. "Only now it finally makes sense. These are the guys who hacked you."
Lunchmeat didn’t like the way that sounded.
"Why?" Duncan asked. "What’s a tech company and a PMC have to do with what happened to us on Sanhok?"
Cigarette finished, Ramon closed the window and gestured for them to follow him back into the kitchen. Another gang member, a woman with her head shaved and two lip piercings, was working on the RPG.
"Maybe y’all figure that out for me," Ramon said. My guys can get you in. Could be as soon as tonight if you’re ready to move."
Ramon picked up the RPG. "This gonna shoot straight?" he asked the woman.
"It’ll shoot..." she responded, flat.
Ramon nodded. He turned and offered the weapon to Lunchmeat. "You ever shoot one of these?"
Lunchmeat took the RPG. It was lighter than he expected. Felt almost like a toy. He popped the sight out and took a look out through the tenement window.
"Nope," he said.
Duncan snatched the RPG from Lunchmeat. He set it – carefully – back on the kitchen table.
"Keep it. You need it."
"Not as much as you do," Ramon said.
Lunchmeat wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Ramon’s smile had grown even wider.
"I haven’t told you about the kill truck yet..."