Two figures stalked across the docklands, lingering in shadows and slipping predator-swift through the blistering patches of artificial lighting which pockmarked this black corner of the city. The two-strong pack patrolled the waterside, a pair united the common goal of their hunt. They were partners in their alleged crime of vigilantism, and they were searching for careless criminals to be left trussed up on the doorstep of the local precinct before dawn.
It was difficult terrain to defend. Unlike back-alleys and side-streets, which channelled the filth into brick-lined confinement like a blocked sewer system, this place was more open and riddled with boltholes and shadows. Everywhere there were barrels, drums, crates, containers, vehicles, machinery and other choice, potential ambush points. Attack could come from anywhere. The best plan would always be to Rorschach was lean, silent and deftly capable of remaining unseen, and although Nite Owl was also highly competent, two moving objects attracted more attention than one, and his partner was considerably taller and broader. Unfortunately, if the tip-off from the unhelpful degenerate now sporting a broken wrist was correct, a large shipment of drugs, arms and illegally imported Cuban cigars was due in the docks in the early hours, and the hired muscle had been particularly expensive this time. Nite Owl's size gave him a brutally powerful punch, and extra fists were going to come in handy.
They entered their chosen warehouse, selected for its height and commanding view of the suspected drop-off point. It was also derelict, required no lock-picking and had plenty of escape routes to make a silent exit if needed. The pair ascended to a high floor, entered a lofty, windy room with smashed windows and exposed ironwork, and waited.
Poised and alert, Rorschach absorbed the finer details of their surroundings and the piers, taking stock of their environment. There were lighter, finer chains than the ship-mooring gauge piled beside a collection of metal drums. Coils of rope were spotted and plotted on his mental map. Potential weapons, tools and escape routes were catalogued. The dark water reeked of chemical sludge and slopped against the concrete wharf, likely frigidly cold at this time of year. Successfully casting an enemy over the side would quickly render them removed from the fight via incapacitation or drowning.
A sharp slap of a droplet thicker in consistency than water to his left brought his attentions closer to his immediate location. Upon inspection, a white smear mottled with random shapes in black now decorated the floor beside his left shoe.
Daniel was looking his way, with a silly, pleased smile plastered between the edges of his facial armour. He nodded upward. "Pigeons."
Rorschach could now see their shapes, crammed along the iron rafters, unsleeping, beady orange eyes gleaming in the dark. He wrinkled his nose under the mask, sneering "Feathered rats."
Predictably, Daniel managed to look hurt despite the armour and goggles that were supposed to mask his face. His soft face was too expressive and his soft heart too liberal with emotions. His blind obsession with any and all feathered creatures seemed to mistakenly extend to the winged filth perched above them. "Vermin, Daniel. Have seen them swarm on the warm vomit spilled in the gutter outside bars." They were not like his beloved owls. He was too indistinct and indiscriminate, he needed to draw more definite lines between good and evil. People and birds alike.
His partner frowned. "I kept some pigeons when I was a child. They are not vermin, Rorschach."
He grunted. It was true that people had kept pigeons for hundreds of years, since biblical times, to carry messages and for food, but they were not the same. "Different."
Daniel, as Nite Owl was slipping back to, went quiet. He disagreed, but said nothing for a time, languishing in cowardly silence or an inability to defend his excessively accepting attitude towards the mangy birds. Rorschach left him to stew in it and returned to surveying the waterfront.
"They aren't different."
He returned some of his attention to the case his partner posed in defence of the filthy creatures. He would listen.
"They aren't different at all. These birds have nobody to care for them, of course they are in poor condition, sick and parasite-ridden. They are the same species as the birds I kept and loved and fed, just born... hatched... into a different, less privileged situation."
His partner paused there, and if Rorschach didn't know any better he might have thought Daniel had finished, but there was more to come. Dan was collecting his thoughts, his liberal mind hadn't already decided upon its course of action. Or, it was his intellectual, academic way, used to measured debates in rooms lined with bookshelves where it was polite to leave gaps for their equally calm 'opponent' to get a few jabs in. Not like having good, firm preconceptions or like boxing. It was strange, but it was Daniel's way.
"Their name is Columba livia. They were wild once, called Rock Doves, living in the harsh environment of sea cliffs and mountains. Man domesticated them, bringing them into his hands for food, sport and utility, then he spread them round the world. We built cities, and those birds which were abandoned or turned away from their captors took to our tall, sheer buildings like their ancestors to their cliffs. They had lost their fear of man, and stayed. They breed continually, so long as sufficient food is available, and the excess of our lifestyles ensures there's always plenty of food to go round. So they do what their biology dictates of them. They breed and breed into dense populations, where disease spreads like wildfire. We brought this upon ourselves.
I can't say we don't deserve it, anyway. The most common bird ever to populate our country was the Passenger Pigeon, a beautiful bird with a rosy neck and a tapering tail. Flocks were millions strong and in flight, they say stretched a mile wide, three hundred long and blotted out the sun, taking up to three days to pass. They didn't live in cities, they roamed as nomads, migrating massive distances in the Eastern States. Some estimate that there was as many as three billion or more of them before white settlers landed on these shores.
A man called Schorger wrote a book just over a decade ago, pinning their fall into extinction down in literature. We used them as food. Shot them in their thousands and brought them to cities salted or iced in barrels. So many were harvested, they were worth virtually nothing and were commercialized as food for slaves. Gluts of them caused their bodies to change hands for no cost, given away for free and used as pigfeed. Their corpses accumulated into worthless heaps of rubbish. They declined until 1870, when they passed a tipping point. They needed to be in big flocks to thrive. When we took that away from them, they suddenly crashed. They became uneconomical to hunt, but still they hurtled head-first towards oblivion and by the late eighteen hundreds, it was considered noteworthy to see a flock of one hundred and seventy-five of the birds. Then the last, lonely caged specimen, a female called Martha, died in an Ohio zoo in 1914. We managed to take a pigeon so inconceivably numerous into the abyss of extinction within decades, purely through stupidity and greed.
The Passenger Pigeon isn't alone. The Dodo was a pigeon, a large one and flightless, but still a pigeon. Despite what people say, it wasn't a stupid bird. When its ancestors landed on Mauritius and found a life free from predators, they were free to spend all the time they wanted foraging on the ground. Birds fly to safety. If there is no threat, why waste energy flying? They had nothing to fear. Their bodies grew large whilst their wings withered away, nesting on the ground and taking their long lives at a slow pace. Instead of clutches they laid a single egg, investing their time in a single offspring. They must have been living that innocent life for hundreds of thousands of years, until sailors found their island and clubbed the naive birds to death while joking about their 'stupid' lack of fear. They were just birds; they didn't understand, and they all died for it, little more than a century later."
The rare passion and vehemence with which Daniel had spoken was good. Too often he stuttered and fumbled or remained silent. Rorschach might have acknowledged a twitch of guilt at the slew he'd provoked, but he could only approve of the tone of disgust in his all-too-soft partner's reference to human excess, gluttony, greed and fundamental malice. It was for Daniel's own good, and his lidded anger would come in handy when the shipment came and Nite Owl would dispense greater justice. He left his partner to simmer in silence.
Dawn came, whereas the shipment didn't. Rorschach would catch up with his unhelpful informant within the next four days and give him a matching partner to complete that broken wrist set. Nothing was said between the vigilantes as they deserted their lookout and slunk back to their daily lives. No friendly banter. No invitation to morning coffee. No offer of the cot in the basement.
Later that day a grizzled, freckled ginger man in beaten clothes sat hunkered down over a stale sandwich on a park bench. His apocalyptic sign stood propped up against the wrought iron arm, in its usual place, ready to swat at the swarm of birds that inevitably descended. As ever, the birds were here, staring with yellow-orange eyes, limping around on red, twisted, clubbed, rotting feet and flashing the greasy, oil-slick purples and greens of their scale-like, matted neck-feathers. They eyed the rustling paper of the food-wrapper, and a pair of hard, blue eyes stared right back, daring any one of the ratty creatures to attempt to get at his food.
When finished, the wrapper was normally balled up tight around the crumbs and firmly deposited in the deepest reaches of a trash can, but not today. Walter thoughtfully chewed his last bite, then shook the paper clean onto the floor, leaving the birds to scrap amongst each other for the measly morsels.
Daniel would not hold a grudge this minimal against him, Walter knew, and things would be back to normal tonight. Nothing more would be said, but this was his miss-aimed apology. The wrapper went in the trash can empty.