Black Ink

It wasn't the first time somebody up and "vanished", Max knew.  That was just how it was. Standing up for what was right wasn't always easy, and it made you a lot more enemies than friends, more often than not. And when one of those enemies was as large and far reaching as the United Earth Government-- well, as much as Max hated to admit it, he could understand why some chose to walk away from it all.
So when the Party couldn't get ahold of Omar for days, some wanted to chalk it up to cold feet. Others feared something far worst. So the Boss called in Max to deal with it. 
He may have understood why these people did what they did-- but the Party couldn't just let them go free. If there was ever a time where they could have stepped away and wash their hands of all this, it was long gone. Omar knew too much, knew too many names, faces and secrets. If the UNSC ever caught him, that'd be the end of their little revolution then and there. Provided they hadn't caught him already.
So Max had to catch him first. One way or another, he was dragging Omar back.
"You sure that was the last time you saw your husband?" Max asked, the wood of the chair creaking as he leaned back. He dug a cigarette out from his coat pocket and would have lit it too if he hadn't spotted Julia glowering at him out of the corner of his eye. Later, he decided.
"Don't you go all interrogator on me, Max!" Julia snapped. She was pacing around the kitchen, gnawing on a fingernail that had already been bitten far too short. A bad habit she'd had for as long as Max knew her. It was her, of course, who had originally came to the party, looking for Omar after her husband failed to come home one night. 
"Easy, Julia." Max held up both hands palms facing outwards. "Just want to make sure I got all the facts is all." 
"I told you. He got in his truck Saturday and left. Said he had something important in town to take care of." Julia noticed the stub of her fingernail, and stuffed her hands into her armpits to hide her work. She wasn't pacing anymore, but she didn't take a seat either, preferring instead to just stand and stare out the window. At the dirt lot where Omar parked his Spade truck every day.
"'Something important in town', huh. Any clue what that would be?"
Julia scowled.
"Obviously, I thought he meant you, Max. You, and that damn Party."
"Well, he never came to us, I can tell you that much. Even before all this, it's been real hard to get ahold of your husband. Now, of all times." Max leaned forward. "You gotta understand, Julia. This doesn't look good."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
If it was anybody else, Max might have just come out and said it, but Julia was practically family. This far out in the sticks, you knew your neighbors, and Max and Julia's folks had been no exception. And that made Omar family, too.
And how do you tell family that their significant other was a suspected traitor? That they just left them holding the bag in order to save their own skin?
Before he could find the words, Julia's kitchen phone rang, it's shrill musical tone only made the uneasy tension worse. Julia's fingers wrapped around the receiver but she didn't seem sure she wanted to pick it up until the fifth ring.
Max couldn't hear the other end of the conversation. But then again-- he didn't need. He watched trepidation, hope, and grief play across her soft features as she answered the phone, thanked the person on the other end, and drop to the floor. The receiver dangled from the counter, forgotten.
They'd found him behind an abandoned strip mall. Even burnt to a crisp, there was no mistaking the Spade's rugged chassis. Nor the body inside. Omar had been a large man, with thick arms and a thicker gut, and the size of the charred and blackened form was all authorities had to go on. 
"You think they flipped him?"
Max had never much cared for the Boss's place. The man liked it dark and stuffy, shutters drawn and windows locked. The dim glow of his comm pad reflected the grim scene of Omar's murder in his inky black eyes, and under lit his face. His skin was cracked like old leather, and his greasy hair spilled from his shoulders in tangled waves. It was clear he hadn't left the compound in a long, long time. And why would he? There was no one else the UNSC wanted dead half as bad in this whole quadrant.
"If they did, they gave him one hell of a reward. See that? Two shots to the chest, one to the head. He was dead before they burned him." It was harder to say that than Max thought it'd be. Whatever Omar had been, it was pretty clear that he had gotten a bum deal. 
"Usually they take the ones who talk..." The Boss said, more to himself than Max. "Unless, this time, they couldn't. In any case, we are going to have to call off the 'demonstration' this weekend."
Max frowned.
"You sure about that, Boss? We pass up on this now, and there's no telling when another opportunity like this will pop up. It took a long time to get our men in the Governor's good graces."
"If Omar's talked, then it is in everybody's best interest that we all--"
A loud banging sound from out in the hall made both men freeze. Max thought he heard shouting at first, but he couldn't make out the words. The gunshots that followed, however, made it pretty clear what was happening.
Max drew his snub-nosed revolver, and was about to shout at the Boss to get behind him, but all he saw when he turned around was the man clawing at his own neck, legs kicking wildly-- and he seemed to hover a good couple feet off the ground. The comm pad discarded, it's flashing red screen painted the room in an angry hue. 
Except for around and behind the Boss, where the light seemed to shimmer and bend in the rough approximation of a man. The Boss's face was turning purple, he reached out a hand, his eyes begging.
Max thought it was all a bad dream, but only for a heartbeat. He moved to raise his weapon and fire, but the shimmer was faster and levelled a floating suppressed pistol. Aimed squarely between the eyes. 
He never heard the weapon fire. He never would. One moment, Max had been. And the next, it seemed like the dark room gave way to an even greater darkness, blacker than black. And it was there that he sank into the black. Into the ink of the shimmer's long list of vanished people.
Category:The Weekly
Category:Short stories