Blood of the innocents

Who: Janey and Dodge
Where: a street in the Sprawl
When: Late night

Sprawled on the crumbling brick steps of an abandoned shop, Janey dozed. Where blood (most of it not her own) had dried, her skin felt tight, as though the muscles beneath it were trying to escape. She'd wrapped a handkerchief tightly around the wound on her wrist to slow the bleeding, and held it stiffly against her chest, trying to keep it above the level of her heart. It was dark now, but it had been dark when the attack had begun, so she had no way of knowing what time it was. She knew the longer she sat there the closer the danger crept, yet she couldn't seem to find the strength to move. Where would she go? Why would it matter? She was haunted by the carnage she'd run from, poisoned by the guilt she felt in knowing she hadn't even tried to help any of the fallen. Times of crisis were meant to be when true character emerged--was this hers? She'd tried to help the girl, until they'd been separated. Then, she'd taken off running. Out of the park, and running in an unknown direction, running until she couldn't here the screams anymore.

Dodge was shaking. He’d tried to help the girl, tried to help others even if he wasn’t cut out for it, but as soon as the sirens could be hear in the distance he left. He couldn’t be there. Too much death, too much destructing and being around the authorities wasn’t something he wanted to do. How was he supposed to explain why he was there? He had other people’s things in his pockets still from when he’d been having fun picking pockets. Worst yet, he knew who did it. In the raw state he was in, hands shaking and eyes too wide, he’d never be able to lie his way through this.

There was a battle of morality inside himself over it. He probably should tell someone, tell the police, but he wasn’t the type to trust the police to do a damn thing. Who would suspect Eric anyway. Eric seemed to be a decent guy with a hot head. Not the type to do what Dodge had just witness that was for sure. Trotting home he’d gone the long way, weaving through the streets he grew up on, trying to wrap his head around what had happened, what it meant for him. He’d sold Eric those plans. He’d stood there and oohed and ahhed over the machine that just murdered a crowd of churchgoers. He was just as fucked as Eric was. It was chance that he happened upon the woman and given the night he’d already had he would have walked past, but when the street lamp glinted off the blood on her clothes he had to stop, pushing the fedora back on his head. “Hey, you okay?” he asked, inching closer to her.

The figure moving towards her should have worried her, but she couldn’t find it in her to be scared. She looked upwards, trying to distinguish anything about the person or their intentions, but the hat clouded his face in shadows. “Who are you?” she asked. Her voice sounded hollow to her own ears, and her throat was dry from all the screaming.

“Just a guy,” Dodge answered, moving so he was sitting next to her on the stoop. “Did you get hurt?” he asked, voice low, but clear, which surprised him. He wasn’t expecting to sound calm because he certain didn’t feel calm.

When the man sat down beside her and asked her that, Janey realized he probably wasn’t going to hurt her. Which was good, because she didn’t have it in her to put up a fight. She wondered if he’d been at the massacre too, but in the dark she couldn’t tell. She couldn’t even see him well enough to give a guess at his age. “Yeah, but it’s not that bad,” she said, raising her arm slightly from where it rested against her chest and wincing at the stinging in her wrist. “I mean, I’m alive.” She meant that to be a good thing, but it didn’t come across the way she meant in her tone. She sounded as if she didn’t want to be. And, at the moment, she felt so terrible about the situation that she almost wished she’d been a casualty.

Of course she knew if anything ever happened to her Danny would probably lose it. That was one reason to be glad she was a survivor. At the thought of Danny, she realized he was probably losing his head over her right now anyways. No doubt the entire force had been called to the scene. If only she’d thought to run home or to the station. But she hadn’t been thinking when she’d been running.

“We both are,” Dodge mused. “You sure you don’t need to get it looked at?” He shifted a little closer, trying to look at her wrist which seemed to have bled through the little bandage she had on it.

“Probably should,” she said, extending her arm to let him examine her wrist. What he’d said before that, though, had caught her attention more. “Were you there, too?” she asked. Silently she hoped for a yes. She needed human contact and connection, and she needed someone that might understand.

Dodge look a look at the haphazard bandage then reaching in his now rumpled suit pocket to pull out his own. “Yeah I was,” he answered softly, wrapping his around hers but pulling it into a neater bandage. It was tight though, probably necessary to staunch the flow of blood. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Janey. Thanks,” she said, taking her arm back and resting her wrist on her leg. “I hate the smell of blood.” She knew it was something nobody particularly liked, especially in large quantities. But even away from the scene it was still trapped in her nostrils, and the memories connected with it were not pleasant ones. Waking up next to Danny in bed, lying in it. That had been the first miscarriage. She gave her head a shake, trying to dislodge the memory, but then the image of the dead woman came to her. She shuddered.

“Pretty sure no one likes it,” Dodge said. He hated the smell of death. To him blood and death always seemed intermixed. Life on the streets he supposed. “Do you need a ride somewhere? This isn’t your building is it?” he asked looking up at the building behind them. Someone who looked like Janey didn’t look like she belonged in this dump.

Janey realized then that if she was hoping for a sympathetic ear, to commiserate over the horror of the experience, his wasn’t it. “I should find my husband, let him know I’m alive. But he’s probably back at the park, and I don’t want to go back there.”

Dodge frowned at that, looking at her curiously. “Was he with you?” She wouldn’t leave him would she? Eric’s horror machine didn’t yield that sort of reaction did it?

Janey shook her head hard. She may have abandoned strangers, but she wouldn’t have left her husband there. “He wasn’t with me, but he probably got called in. He’s on the police force.” She hesitated to say that to someone she met down here; he could very well have his own bones to pick with the law. But he was being respectful, and he’d asked, so she just wouldn’t tell him the details. He didn’t need to know Danny was a higher-ranking detective.

Oh fantastic. He’d left the park to avoid the cops and now he was sitting with some cop’s wife. Not letting it show on his face he reached up to tug at the fedora, bringing it down lower on his brow, not thinking about the stains he might be putting on it. It might have to be retired with the other, the one from his youth. Though he wouldn’t hold on to this one. This one he’d burn. “I’m guessing they called everyone in, so yes he probably is worried. Did he know you were there?”

“I think I mentioned it to him, but even if I didn’t, he’s a worrier. When it comes to me, that is,” Janey sighed. Though the tighter wrap on her wrist had slowed the bleeding more effectively, it had also started her hand throbbing painfully. “What’s your name, by the way?”

“You should find him then,” Dodge pointed out. He wasn’t one to help out a cop, but he did understand worrying about someone he cared about. That much no one should have to go through. When she asked his name he hesitated, not sure if he should give it to her or not. His name was known and though one crowd seemed to think he was gone, dead or worse. The last thing he really needed was to draw attention to himself. But at the same time, what could she do? “Dodge,” he told her finally. “Let me call my driver, maybe we can get a ride somewhere?”

His driver? That was a surprise. She wouldn’t have expected a man wandering the streets of the Sprawl to have enough money for a driver, but then again, she didn’t know much about what it was like down there. Maybe her interpretation was flawed. “Okay, sure.” She still wasn’t sure she could handle going back to Fontaine Park, even though she knew she had to let Danny know somehow that she was okay. Then again, she also knew she should probably go by the hospital to get her wrist looked at. Maybe she could call the station from there and have them let Danny know. Even though she desperately wanted to see him. Just not there. Not covered in blood.

Dodge shifted out of his jacket, something else that he might have to get rid of after tonight and dropped it across her shoulders. “Wait here,” he told her, getting up and jogging across the street to a pay phone. It wasn’t in good shape but at least he was able to make a call with the spare change in his pocket. He kept his eyes on her from where he was waiting on Jason to pick up the phone. When he did the instructions were curt and quiet, just a demand to bring the car over and fucking pick him up from this nightmare. Once the arrangements were made he hung up and jogged back to Janey, sitting with her again. “Should be here in just a few minutes.”

Janey nodded. She hadn’t realized she was shivering until Dodge had given her his jacket. It was partly the cold, partly just the shock. But she pulled it closer around her shoulders. “Thanks.” She chewed on her lip for a moment, thinking before she spoke. “You know what the worst part is?”

Dodge brushed his hands across his knees, then laced his fingers together, resting his elbows on his knees. “What’s the worst part?” he asked, turning his head to watch her.

“Whoever did this--they knew exactly what they were doing. And they knew that most of them--most of us there--would be the innocent ones. For whatever it is we’re being punished.” Her voice quavered, and she looked away. “I hope the bastard who did this burns in hell.” This last part was so soft that she wasn’t sure he would hear it, wasn’t sure she wanted him to. Wasn’t she one of the few people left in this city who was supposed to believe in forgiveness? In goodness?

Her words rang in Dodge’s ears. It was like she’d screamed at him even if her voice was quiet. Looking down at his hands he hoped to get himself in control, only to see the blood that stained them. That made the bile rise up in his throat and he had to close his eyes. “I know,” he said softly after swallowing back the worst of it. What have you done Eric? What have you done?