Siege on Harding Street

The streets stunk of panic. It filled the air like the sickening stench of a guilty corpse. All it took was one remark, one simple phrasing of a bad thought, and the entire city collapsed into pandemonium. Verrico was a wretched town, and its mayor was a conniving bum. We all knew what he was into, but we never expected him to get on stage in that press conference and mutter those infamous words.

            “This city is suffering because of its resistance to my office. You don’t like what I’m trying to do here? You don’t approve of my political performance? Then, come find me and do something about it.”

            What kind of a high-level public servant tosses low-class bravado and disrespect to the office and his constituency like that? The mayor of Verrico – that’s who. And it wasn’t more than twelve hours before the entire city decided to take him up on his suggestion. The bum’s crooked entourage whisked him off to his undisclosed rural retreat upstate. Most of us on the inside of his nauseating circus knew exactly where this haven was located, though. Yes, I was once a part of this catastrophe of a political staff. I was only a bottom-rung accountant, but somehow, all the dirty numbers seemed to slither across my tattered desk. It was an easy out for the bum and his special cronies, the ones that lurked through the city every day like the rat blobs they were. I should have walked away earlier than I did, but I was glued to the slick mirage of urban politics. For a short, delusional spell, I fantasized about a life exactly like the one the bum enjoyed for too long at the top. That mirage dried up after a few months, and a nauseating taste in my throat took its place. So, I left the job, that is. The city was another story. I was a piss ant like the rest of the populace. The bum and his crooked friends could easily take refuge in their clandestine rural estates, but suckers like me had nothing to save us. Now, I was stuck among the turbulence of a furious and violent citizenry, a giant cauldron of animosity that had been ready to boil over for a good five years or more. The city had always been crap, but the last half a decade was the final straw.

            I knew it was coming. Anybody with half a brain could see that the bum was ready to give the finger to the city. The pure hell that would then rain down on Verrico was inevitable. I did a pretty decent job of boarding up the windows and reinforcing the doors of my little shack on Harding Street, on the north side of town. It wasn’t much, but it was mine, and I wanted something left to show for my years of bleeding for this godforsaken hole of a metropolis. Along with the wooden fortifications, I also managed to pick up some cheap firearms from a street dealer downtown. A simple Glock 9mm and a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, both used, were a real steal at $300 – of course, they probably were stolen at some point in their travels. What do I care? An ant like me has to do what he has to do, especially during a plague of dangerous mayhem like the one that was spreading through the city at a rapid rate, following the bum’s last hurrah of disregard. The screams of terror and brutality blended unsettlingly with the sounds of gunfire, explosions, and general destruction in my streets, on my block, in the air that I breathed since my youth on these nasty streets. Nothing would ever be the same again. My grandfather would have been disgusted. A rugged Czech immigrant, he came to this city back when it had promise and integrity. For fifty years, and until the day he died, he provided for his family by selling peanuts. That tough buster fought for everything he had, and no excuses were ever tolerated in his home. The whirlwind of contempt and immorality that devoured his city would have broken his heart. Now, it was my problem. He had the luxury of watching it all from six feet under the dirt.

            I slipped into an uneasy slumber in the worn recliner I had parked right in the middle of the shabby living room. A deep explosion went off somewhere down the street and snapped me back awake. A half-drank can of Heineken was in my hand. At my feet were my mechanical friends, fully loaded and ready for action. I had hoped that maybe the plague would pass right over my place, without incident, like a tornado that already had too much to eat. Damn was I wrong. Three loud knocks shook my front door. I held still and waited. A few moments passed, and there were three more knocks, this time, even harder.

            “Please, we need help! My brother was shot! He was just trying to get home to check on my cousin! Please, let us in! He needs to treat this wound!” a shaken male voice pleaded from the other side of the door.

            My intuition told me to stay frozen and lock my lips, but the stupid part of me with the guilty conscience thought that maybe this was my chance at modest penance for knowingly helping the bum cook his slimy books. No moron would have opened that door, but I guess that’s what a soft heart and a couple of cans of Heineken will do to a confused man. I unlatched the bolts and chains and pulled the rickety door open just enough to snatch a look at the mysterious visitors at my doorstep. It was two white guys, a tall black dude, and a pudgy Hispanic fellow. The main white guy, the one who called out for help, propped up the other white guy. This other white guy, younger than the main one, was weak and visibly wounded. His tattered jeans were absorbing the blood of a serious gunshot to the upper hip area.

            “Who shot him?” I asked.

            “Hell if I know, man! Look, we need to get inside before he bleeds out!” The main guy replied.

            “Why don’t you take him to a hospital?” I questioned with irritation.

            The guy answered, “In case you haven’t looked around out here recently, it ain’t exactly easy getting around town right now.”

            I wasn’t sure what to make of it all. Something looked familiar about these folks, at least the main two. I swore I saw them around town somewhere at some point, but I couldn’t place where or when. I stood silently, still thinking. The foursome grew impatient as the chaos fired up throughout the neighborhood.

            “Come on, pal! Are you gonna help us or what?” the main man asked.

            Just before I opened my mouth and my door, each more fully, I exchanged awkward glances with the black guy. I couldn’t even explain it. It happened so fast, and there were so many thoughts crammed into those mere milliseconds of eye contact, but they were enough to tell me all I needed to know. The black guy took a step back and reached into the back of his waistline. Miraculously, the injured white dude recovered from his supposed severe gunshot wound and joined the main guy in pushing against my door to try and force their way inside. The pudgy Hispanic man jogged away from the porch, and I lost sight of him when I conquered the shoving match and managed to get my door closed and locked once again. I won a mere battle in a war that these four assailants were not even close to ceding yet.

            I stepped back away from the door and to the middle of the room again. Surprisingly, there was no attempt to crash inside and take me down. I had anticipated an immediate barrage of heavy impact on the door to bust it down, but there was no fight. Then, I remembered. The hazy recollection of those faces dribbled back into my mind. I had indeed seen the faces of these four scumbags before this day. Every so often, this foursome of deceptive creeps would linger around City Hall, both inside and outside the building, but I never gave a real thought as to their actual purpose for being there.

            My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I tugged it out and answered hesitantly, “Yeah?”

            It was the main thug’s voice on the other end. He was eerily calm. “Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way, man. I’m good with either road. It’s a real mess out here right now, so no one is gonna notice a thing if we have to go the hard way. Catch my drift… Mr. Mittles? Hey, maybe we can be less formal, and I can just call you Mack.”

            “How did you know my name? How did you get this number?”

            “Don’t you worry about that, Mack. We have our ways,” the creep replied.

            “What do you want from me?” I asked.

            “You took something real important from my employer, and we’re gonna need that back right now,” he answered. “Toss it outside, and we’ll just merrily roll right away like none of this ever happened.”

            It all instantly dawned on me. Back when I worked for the bum downtown, doing his dirty math, I made sure to secretly save copies of all the accounting files and spreadsheets to a pocket-sized external hard drive that I kept for whatever future purpose it might serve me. The only other person who knew was a receptionist down the hall from my office. The spell her green eyes put on me was enough to make this sturdy male spill his little secret, in an ill-conceived attempt to impress the dame. Little did I know her lips were as loose as her legs. After his inflammatory press conference, the bum bolted out of town and needed to tie up loose ends, so he sent out his goons to shake me down. But I wasn’t having any of it. That hard drive wasn’t going anywhere.

            Before I could say another word to the threatening thug on the other end, I dropped my cell phone. I wasn’t sure why, but my hand lost all strength and began trembling. My arm then dropped to my side and went limp as a sharp ringing swallowed my eardrums. Finally, my eyes scanned over my right shoulder, and I noticed a bullet wound straight through the back and out the front. A trickle of blood dripped out and ran down my quivering arm. I was still in shock and couldn’t assess the situation quickly enough. Did they shoot through my reinforcements and land a lucky strike? As I turned around to duck away from the front of the house, I witnessed the pudgy Hispanic creep leaning down at the top of the narrow staircase in the corner of the room. The sneaky bastard found the only visible exterior vulnerability – an old, unused air-duct access point in the brick wall on the alley side, between the first and second floors. I remembered him rushing away from the others, but I had no clue that he was planning such a sly penetration of my fortress.

The intruder held out a thick, silver revolver and fired off another loud round. His first shot was unseen and unexpected, but his next one would not be without a challenge. I dropped back behind my recliner and snatched the 12-gauge, fighting through my injury, with pure adrenaline. After double-checking for ammo in the chamber, I pumped and prepared for the worst. He fired off another shot in my direction, but the bullet missed and grazed the top of the coffee table. The guy’s position was an awkward one, and he made it tough on himself to be accurate from where he was nestled. I poked the barrel of the shotgun around the recliner and took aim at the top of the stairs, where there was a sliver of wall that covered him. A pull of the trigger sent a powerful slug at the wall and blew it apart, exposing my enemy. In a panic, he sloppily fired off the rest of his chamber of ammunition in random, reactionary directions until his weapon clicked with a troubling emptiness. I seized the opportunity and rose tall from behind the recliner. Raising the shotgun, I took aim once more. With decisiveness, I pulled the trigger and blew the creep away. His lifeless body tumbled down the stairs and into a lowly heap at the bottom.

I wasted no time celebrating. Now was the moment to escape. After dropping the shotgun, I dabbed my wound with a stray T-shirt and darted to the kitchen, where a backside departure awaited me. Once there, I was visually reminded of the strong fortifications I installed over the back door, making it too difficult to flee through that way, without a noticeable ruckus. Instead, I looked over at the window above the sink, where I had a much better chance. I pushed the window open anxiously and easily punched out some particleboard I had nailed over it for protection. Delicately, I leaned my upper half out the window to prepare to slide away, but my plans were foiled fast. The tall black guy jumped out at me from around the window, outside, like a snake waiting in the grass. His strength was impressive, but I summoned my adrenaline yet again. We tussled vigorously, and I wrestled him back inside the house. As my heart beat like a jackhammer, my wound bled out faster than it did right after being shot. But I had to keep going. Our battle grew more intense with each strike and every hold. For a brief moment, we unlocked, and I instinctively grabbed the toaster that was lying on the floor nearby after getting knocked off the counter during the action. He whipped out a switchblade and charged at me, ready to make some deadly cuts. Just when he got close enough, I swung the toaster and clocked him right in the skull. The thug crumpled to the floor and shook his head in a painful daze. I crawled over to him, out of breath, and wrapped the toaster’s power cord around his neck. He pulled at the tightening line and wriggled to break free, but I only dug deeper and increased the tension. It took less than fifteen seconds before his neck snapped, and he went completely limp. I then released the cord and puked on the floor. Everything was happening so quickly, and it was overwhelming. My juices were racing. I was a desperate madman. I had no clue how much more of this punishment my body could handle, but the bum was never going to lay his lousy hands on that hard drive.

Bullets tore menacingly through the front of the house at a rapid rate. Rounds from a pair of automatic weapons peppered my modest home and broke down my fortifications. I slithered out to the living room again with an acquired fearlessness. On the way there, I peered up at an old, framed photograph of my grandfather that hung on the wall. His bold eyes gazed down at me with pride on this day. Sneaking over to a wide bullet hole in the wall, I peeked out as the assailants reloaded on the sidewalk. The two remaining white dudes refreshed their APS-95s, with new magazines and overconfident smirks.

“You ain’t getting outta here, Mittles! Come outside and make it easy on yourself!” the main guy hollered to me.

Even with surrendering the hard drive, there was no chance of survival. I tiptoed over to the recliner and retrieved the 9mm handgun. With urgency, I hurried back to the hole in the wall and positioned the firearm through it. On a sharp pull of the trigger, I fired a shot that ripped straight through the younger white creep’s head. His partner watched in total shock as the punk dropped dead to the hard concrete. He then rushed to ready his gun as he tried to break out of his stunned state.

Once more, I took advantage of the opportunity and fired another round. The bullet hit the thug in the abdomen, causing him to yelp and drop his weapon. I was eager to finish him off, but my gun jammed up and locked. I guess that was what I got for a $300 two-for-one combo deal. I tossed the handgun aside and went for the front door. It was time to take charge of this nonsense.

The villain stumbled back onto the street and watched me emerge from my house. His cocky grin had already melted into a twitchy façade of uncertainty and regretful mortality. Now weaponless, injured, and with no more ruthless cohorts, the man had to face his heinous deeds.

“Listen, Mack. I didn’t want to do this. It wasn’t me. I just follow my orders,” he rambled.

I marched slowly toward him, backing him farther out into the street.

“You came to the wrong place, pal. You think I’d keep that hard drive here? It’s tucked away in a safety deposit box that you won’t ever get the chance to see,” I explained.

“Heh, you don’t get it, do you? This is way bigger than you’ll ever know. You won’t last. Someone else will come for you. They’ll just keep coming, and they won’t stop until they get the device,” the guy said.

“Bring it on. And when you see your bum boss in Hell soon, tell him Mack Mittles said he can kiss my number-crunching ass.”

The creep just stood in the middle of Harding Street and stared at me with a look of exhausted disbelief as the urban pandemonium kicked up a notch around us. Suddenly, a war-ready, teal 1970s Dodge Challenger, sporting a bizarre, black moon-face symbol on its doors, screeched around the corner of 22nd Avenue, up three blocks away, and raced down Harding Street toward us with a roaring engine and a flaming tailpipe. Like a sadistic death machine, the vehicle sped up and mowed the cunning villain down effortlessly. Maniacal laughter bellowed from inside the custom muscle car as it flew by me in the blink of an eye. I watched the vehicle speed away up my street, only to disappear into a cloud of chaotic dust.

With the fierce blood of my grandfather flowing through me, I survived the siege. But this city, in its deteriorating state, was no place for a guy like me to inhabit anymore. I knew that my safety was fleeting. The main thug was right – the bum would send more goons for me. It was only a matter of time. For now, I had to gear up again and move the hard drive to its new home, at the city news bureau. The world needed to know the dirt, and I needed to get ready for the storm. Welcome to Hell. Welcome to Verrico.