Pipe Dreams by Destiny Allison Read Free Book Online

furtively between buildings. Outside the Zone, night came alive and brought with it a tingle of hope. People there still pitted themselves against the scourge of nature and the ravages of time. The Fallen had salvaged something from the destruction that made their survival nobler than his own. His stomach soured. In the green tinted window, his sickly reflection wore the unmistakable color of cowardice.
    He opened the folder on Vanessa Kovalic and stared at her sad eyes. What world did he live in that made compassion a crime?  The magnitude of what had been lost overwhelmed him. All the richness, beauty, and even ugliness of human endeavor had been reduced to a pasty, gray pulp. The daily tramping of a society rendered automaton throbbed in his head like a never-ending migraine. Where were the teenagers, dope peddlers, prostitutes, and johns?  Where was music, a flashing billboard, or fresh paint?  In dull monotony and haggard fear, the people of the NSO marched to keep marching – waking, sleeping, eating, and shitting without reason or drive, passion or tears.
    He searched the blank faces on the bus for anything that might make living mean something and found only sordid complicity. The passengers sat upright, staring stiffly ahead or out the windows. Like him, they were single, older, and not part of the population permitted to inhabit the Zone. There was no touching, sagging, or resting of weary heads against cool glass. No one coughed, sneezed, or hurled a thick wad of phlegm onto the floor. In the absence of laughter and insult, babies wailing, papers rattling, and the bass beat of music playing loudly on different headphones, the bus was silent. The workers were drones.
    The bus pulled to a stop near Ramirez’s building and he shuffled off with the rest. Little groups formed and drifted away. Left alone, he wanted cold, rain, anything that would break the tightness in his chest and make him feel alive.
    Relishing the heat of movement, Ramirez did not stop walking when he reached his apartment building. Instead, he wound his way through streets and alleys deep into the bowels of the inner-city. No ghosts stalked the shadows, no lurking eyes preyed. Blackened buildings, stark against an inky sky, were apathetic to his plight.
    “Hey!” he called out. His voice echoed back to him and he tried again. “Hey!! I know you ’re there. Come out and get me! Come on you bastards!! Show yourselves!”  Like a footstep in new snow, the impassive night swallowed his rage. “Ahhhhhhh!” he screamed. “Ahhhhhhh!” Hot tears seeped from his eyes. Bent over, he sobbed under a pressure too great to bear.
    When spent, he wiped the last drips of snot on his uniform sleeve and retraced his footsteps. Quiet now and sobered, the absence of people was jarring. Loneliness gripped him like a vise. Ramirez wanted someone to talk to, someone who would understand and not judge, someone who knew compassion. Suddenly, the rabbi ’s words came back to him and he knew where he wanted to go.
    It took him slightly more than an hour to traverse the distance to Vanessa Kovalic ’s apartment. The dark streets were mostly empty, but in the distance he heard screams. He should have been afraid. Instead, he relished the little bit of company. The Fallen couldn’t do anything to him he wasn’t already doing to himself. That realization warmed the cold center of his heart.
    When he arrived at Vanessa ’s building, he hesitated. Then, he pressed the buzzer inside the vestibule door and waited for a response. Finally, a small, scared voice came through the intercom.
    “Yes. ”
    “Ms. Kovalic, this is Detective Ramirez from the Watch Tower. Please let me in. I have some questions for you I’m sure you would not want to answer at your office.” 
    “How do I know you ’re a watcher?” Vanessa asked.
    “You are Ms. Kovalic, age 25. You have been assigned as a sorter for the past year. You were recently observed consorting with one of the