A Different Sort of Operation

“You need to get out,” Vance said.

I grimaced. I didn’t turn to look back at him, standing behind me, but I could feel his dark gaze on my back. I ignored it. Just kept loading the flats into the van. Heave, stack, shift into place. One after another.

Get out. That’s all I’d been hearing for nearly a week now. All the way down the ladder. Starting with the Big Dog, passing the warning down as a type of professional courtesy, then spreading among the crews like wildfire in mere days. The Big Dog himself had been gone first. He knew his business was done for, and he certainly hadn’t stuck around to sink with his ship, but at least he was noble enough to make sure his crew didn’t have to, either.

Then, abruptly, everyone was gone. Everyone had gotten out.

But I hadn’t.

Vance had ran, too, or so I’d thought, but evidently he hadn’t either. And for some bloody reason he felt the need to drop in, pushing his luck so close to the red date, to tell me something I obviously already knew.

Get out.

I heaved a flat to the top of the stack, grunting, shifting it into place, then stepped back. The van was half full. The rest of the flats still stood a short distance away, an island of shadow in the empty warehouse. Ready to be loaded.

A lot of work.

The red date closing in.

Get out.

Do I run? Or do I stay?

I finally turned to look at Vance. He was middle-aged, grizzled and going gray, same as me, but he was grayer and more grizzled. His face was lined beyond his years and his messy stubble was salted silver. Hands stuffed firmly in his pants pockets. In the dim light of the warehouse, his sunken eyes looked black, and almost hostile.

My imagination, I told myself. I was too on edge, lately. The red date.

Get out.

I should run, even after everything. Vance was right. And it wasn’t too late. But yet…

Vance continued eyeing me. Then he glanced at the van, loaded half-full of flats. His expression twitched, like they peaked his interest. But that couldn’t be—he was just here to warn me, tell me one more time to flee—right? A friendly, if concerned, note of advice. One coworker to another.

The sunken eyes shifted back to me. “The red date’s comin’, Hayes,” Vance rasped. “You shouldn’t be here anymore. They’ll be comin’ for you.”

I met his gaze, almost defiant. Trying to steel myself. Trying to convince myself that my decision was the right one.

“I thought you left days ago,” I said, ignoring his warning.

“I did.” Vance looked almost mournful. He dragged his hands out of his pockets, hands that were wizened and shaking. One hand went up to rub irately at the back of his neck. The hollow eyes flicked to the van again.

A sudden chill tingled my veins.

Part of me began to think that Vance wasn’t just here to give friendly advice.

“The business is dead, Hayes,” he said. There was a definite gleam of aggression in the sunken eyes now. Focused on me again. “Everything collapsed, from the top down. You don’t need to be here anymore. Run, like everyone else. Retire. Find something new.”

Why did that sound like a threat?

“I’m going to finish loading this van,” I said firmly. “There’s an important—”

“No,” Vance growled. He looked contemplatively at the stacked flats. “That seems like just about the right amount to me. Twelve cases? That’ll last me nearly a year.”

I swallowed. So all pretenses were gone, then. I glanced at Vance’s shaking hands. And the black of his eyes—it wasn’t just from the shadow.

Withdrawal.

He was here for juice.

“Vance,” I said cautiously. “This isn’t what it looks like. I’m—”

“This is exactly what it looks like,” he snarled. “The Jobbers stopped supplying us new juice, but everything else stopped too, and before he got out, the Big Dog declared all current stock was… collateral damage.”

He took a step towards me, and unconsciously I took a step back. What if he had a weapon shoved somewhere in those pockets?

“Everyone else was skipping out of here too quick to care,” Vance continued. He looked like a raving madman. “But most everyone else isn’t on the bloody stuff. I ran out in days. But I knew the raids hadn’t gone down yet, back in the city. The red date is yet to come. I knew the juice would still be here. But look what I find instead. A little rat trying to take it all for himself.”

The sunken eyes glinted black. Dangerous.

Just run, a part of me screamed. The logical part. The self-preserving part. Get out of the city. It’s not too late.

Get out.

But the hesitation still stabbed at me. A small hesitation, but it was enough to keep me where I was. To keep me grounded in my mission.

“Vance, I’m not stealing the juice. This isn’t what you—”

He lunged, with surprising quickness. The wizened hands struck me as I had just began to stumble away, and we both went down hard on the pockmarked floor of the warehouse.

He lay over me, teeth clenched and eyes wide, and even in the shadow of the warehouse I could make out the splotches of black spreading in the whites of his eyes. His body was killing him, for want of the juice.

A bad business, we were in. I’m glad it’s crumbling.

I strained and bucked under his weight, trying to roll him off me, but he held firm despite my efforts, wizened hands and bony arms pinning me on the cold ground.

“Where’s the keys?” he snarled. “Where?”

“My—my pocket. Left.” The words came in gasps.

Vance grabbed roughly at my coat, yanking me around like a predator tearing at its fallen catch until he finally located the pocket and snatched out the jangle of keys. Then he leapt off me and darted to the van.

He appeared to head for the driver’s seat, but hesitated, turning instead to the open sliding door. “Now,” he whispered hoarsely. He scrabbled at the flats.

I pushed myself to my feet, stumbling nearer to him. “It’s not what you’re looking for,” I pleaded. “You have to listen, man. There’s no juice there.”

He ignored me. Then finally succeeded at unclasping the lid of the topmost flat, flinging it aside and staring down at the contents. I watched his lined face fall from anticipation, to surprise, to confusion, to anger.

He whirled to me. “What is this?” he demanded, teeth bared.

I watched him, wary. “It’s… a different sort of operation,” I said. “An op within an op. You remember where my dealing route is?”

A hint of realization began to dawn on his face. His anger simmered down to frustration, and confusion. Disbelief. “It’s for the people?”

I nodded.

He stared at me for a long moment, eyes black in the shadow. “But you’re still on the list, Hayes,” he said. “Doesn’t matter what kind of side gig you were running out of here. You still dealed for us. They’re still coming for you.”

“I know,” I said. “But all my life I’ve only ever given thought for myself. Now I’m trying to do something more than that.”

“You’re a fool,” Vance interjected.

“Maybe. I know I should run, but I just…” I met his shadowed eyes. “I can’t justify it. I can’t. I have to stay.”

He stared me down for another long moment. Then sagged into himself, despairing. “I shoulda knowns you were a… a good guy. You always were acting all superior to the rest of us. Even in this business. You didn’t have pride, not exactly, just…”

“I’m just full of regret,” I said. “And trying to do better.”

He nodded weakly. Then staggered over to the shadowed stack of the remaining flats, almost collapsing against them. “Then… let’s load the rest of these. If they’re for the people.”

I gaped, but quickly stepped over to join him. “Thank you,” I said genuinely.

He said nothing.

So we set about loading the flats. Heave, stack, shift into place. Eventually the van was full, and the shadowed stack was no more.

Vance collapsed to his knees in the spot where it had been. He dropped his head between viciously shaking hands. “It’s done,” he said. “Go do your good, fool as it may be.”

I paused, then went around to the back of the van and pulled out a single flat. It was lighter than the others we had loaded, because what it carried was the goods it had been made for.

It clattered to the ground beside Vance, and he looked up slowly. His eyes glinted black.

“There’s your juice,” I grunted. “You need it to live, for now. But you won’t always. You can wean yourself off of it. Slowly, but it can be done. You can be whole again.”

Vance stared at the flat, his sunken eyes shifting with blackness. Then a single wizened, shaking hand darted out and clasped it.

“Trying… trying to do better,” he rasped.

The flat’s lid was flung aside, revealing foam padding lined with small vials of a thin yellow liquid, dimly luminescent. Vance’s shaking fingers struggled to draw one of the vials from the foam. He finally grasped one, hurriedly raising it to the back of his neck and sliding the whole length of it into the metal cavity at the base of his skull. It clicked into place and he sighed in relief, doubling over on the floor of the warehouse, letting the waves of the high wash over him at last.

I slammed the van doors shut, securing my own different sort of cargo, and left without another word.

As I steered out into the depths of the city streets, with rain beginning to patter, neon lights glowing, smog floating above, the clock ticked to midnight.

The red date was now. Today. I had sealed my fate. No running.

I traced my old familiar route through the bowels of the city. Deeper and deeper into filth and ruin I traveled, but it was filth and ruin I was accustomed to. Then I was sliding on dank, wet roads under crumbling bridges littered with trash and debris and smashed juice vials. It was even darker than midnight down here, and chill, everything dripping with water. And not fresh rainwater, either—it was the liquid runoff of an entire city.

I threw the van into park.

One by one, pale faces emerged from the darkness around me. Creeping, searching. Many of them with dark, sunken eyes like Vance, but many of them without, too.

Then there was a face I recognized: Old Duds. Long, tangled gray hair, a leathery, lined, dirty face that looked not a day older than one hundred years old, but there was no trace of black in his eyes, nor quivering of his hands. Old Duds was a man who had put his mind to a goal, and conquered it. He was a man who was taking responsibility for himself. He was putting his life back together.

I greeted him with a smile as he drifted from the blackness. His leathery old face cracked to return a gap-toothed grin. “Hayes, Hayes,” he croaked. “You’re here. I can’t believe it. He’s come to us again.”

“What, you old fart,” I said. “You didn’t think I’d give up on you this easily, did I?”

He wheezed softly with laughter, the gap-toothed grin widening.

I climbed down out of the van, throwing open the doors, and the faces from the dark solidified into solid forms, and the people began to surround me.

Conversation broke out, friendliness and cheer, brightening the dimness of the place they resided. Many of the people I recognized, and they looked healthier than they ever had. Eyes brighter, skin clearer, a little more spring to their step.

One man jostled against my side. He, too, had the look of one who was once heavily sweetened by juice, but the look of one who had come out of it. “Friend says me his dealer dipped,” the guy said. “Out the city. He said there’s a big bust coming. They all running.”

He fixed me with a solemn stare. “Why ain’t you running?”

“Hayes ain’t nah ordinary dealer,” Old Duds said, glimmer in his eye. “And he ain’t nah ordinary man, neither.”

He gestured grandly around himself. At the people. “Just think it,” he said with amusement. “Most us all got here m’cause the juice, but someday… we might get out, m’cause a juice dealer. You’re a good man, Hayes, and that ain’t ordinary.”

I stood, fighting back emotion. Then we set about unloading the flats.

The lids unclasped to display not juice, but assortments of canned foods, drink, medicine, toiletries. Necessities of life that the people so often lacked.

The metal cavities at the bases of their skulls went empty in most cases, but their bellies were filled with nourishment.

And their souls, given a chance of hope.

Somewhere above us, in the city, in the red mists, the hunt had began for any crew that had dared remain. They would track us down by name and number. Eventually, they would find me. But it didn’t matter anymore. I had begun something bigger than myself. My many mistakes in life had, somehow, led to the opportunity to spread blessings among those in even darker places.

Seeing the hope spreading among the people, any doubt over my choice to stay had faded. I was where I was meant to be.