You wake up and some craggy looking kid with a mop is prodding you, saying something through his acne and braces. You have an overwhelming sort of need to punch the kid's coke bottle glasses off his face. You didn't know that stereotypes even existed in real life like this. You poke your lips out a little and try to tune into what the kid is talking about, squinting with the effort until your eyes close again...
"I said stop falling asleep at the fucking bar, man!" The kid says, the front of his shirt adorned with some ridiculous band logo. Here we fucking go. He jabbed you right in the ribs with his mop, so you twist the thing out of his hands and hurl it across the bar. The two other patrons present, old guys who have no kinda drive, they lazily watch the thing fly into some poster for a sports team that hasn't won jack shit in years. The kid's stammering now, but you just sort of walk out of the place, blinking in the midday sun.
You can't say how long it's been since you incinerated the body at that old steel factory, in fact, you can't really say you know what day of the week it is. There's a ringing in your ears and a thumping in your head that indicate that you've hungover as well as freshly drunk and by the way your fingertips pulse you know that you're probably a little dehydrated from eating nothing but chips and beer nuts. The sun is bright today, bright enough to be a complete bother, bright enough to make you want to climb to the highest building and try punching it in the face. You want to challenge Apollo to a bear knuckles brawl, you want to see how good he'll drive that chariot of his with a couple dislocated shoulders. You're not aware you were just standing there looking vaguely at the sky until someone coming out (into?) the bar thumps into you and mutters some kind of curse hinging on the fact that by this point, your clothes are pretty much rotting off your body. You haven't visited your apartment since that night, you cleaned up all that blood and left again. You suddenly wonder how every bad guy you guys deal with, how they get cleaned up. Do their kin come and deal with the body? How does that work?
No, don't think of that. That line of thinking might cause you to regard those people as something more than just bodies, that might make you a less effective killer. If there's something you need to keep in this world, it is your lack of hesitation to fire a weapon.
Speaking of weapon, Barney hasn't called you. Nobody's called you. Usually when you're gone this long they come and find you and drag you out of whatever bar you're in and clean you up a little. Guess times are a little bit busy for that. You hike up your pants and look for trouble in some other bar.
Thing is, even if you don't know how long its been since shit got real, you can say that you're pretty sure no one's heard hide nor hair of Yin Yang. You're pretty sure because Barney is quieter and quieter, this look plastered on his face that's a mixture of sad and focused. It's a look you don't especially like much because it's also a look of a man who's mind might just break from that sort of stress. You could recount a couple war stories about that sort of shit, about commanders and what not getting that look and offing themselves, shooting up their squad, going Colonel Kurtz on everyone's ass and turning into some kind of megalomaniac. That look, it burned you so much just in the first couple of times you saw it, you had to get out of there. Drowning yourself in drink is a hell of a lot better than sitting there and waiting for Barney to break down and do something insane. Yeah, the life gets to everyone every now and again, it's true. It got to you when you shat all over the Vilena mission. Now it's getting to Barney.
The day after, see, the day after you were all in Tool's while the man himself worked on Barney's back a little bit. You all had to meet up of course, you all had to get together and try to talk this out a little. Thing is though, between Lee texting that girl constantly, the little clicks and clacks of the buttons on his phone, between Toll Road acting like everyone was out to get him, Barney making that fucking face... no one said much of anything. When he explained it all to the people that weren't there to take part in that mess, well, they just sorta stayed quiet too. So it goes.
Have you ever heard a joke so many times you've forgotten why it's funny? The thing is, the entire human race, we all have the same punchline. We're all part of one huge joke that ends in death. At one point it could have been amusing but now it's just a part of the reality everyone wants to escape, the reality that everyone's hiding from. Because reality, that means you live until you die and no one wants that.
Now, you're all back in Barney's garage where he's finally got that fucking truck sort of in working order. You're looking out of the corner of your eye at Toll Road.
"And just what are you looking at?" he stands up. Everyone's on edge a little bit, maybe except for Christmas who's head is too far up his own ass to care about much. You see the semi-familiar white and blue of that facebook site everyone's on. His cellphone is more expensive than a lot of things you own.
You part your lips and offset your jaw a little, looking up and over at him. Barney nudges you a little with the hand that's holding the cigar. Seems like he's always smoking one these days, more than usual. More and more it seems like you're just doing some sort of bad impersonation of yourself. You fix your face and look over at Barney and you can tell he doesn't want to deal with the shit today. Toll Road, his angry avoidant issues, you know they come from some sense of worthlessness that goes more than skin deep. The thing is, how people are, it doesn't happen on accident. Every time he tells the story of how he fucked up another kid until he had clotted ears of his own, you feel a little worse for the poor guy. Maybe your self image isn't what it used to be, but there's more pride knocking around in the space between your ears than in Barney's or Toll Road's. That's something. That's enough to keep you above them.
"Nothing." you grunt. Caesar is eating something that looks like a grilled sandwich and smells like the inside of an Italian person's colon. Everyone's sitting in this semi circle, everyone's waiting for something to just fucking happen already.
"Yin's not back from poking around Asia yet. In fact, we haven't heard from him since before he left. But we already know all that." says Barney, his tone is dry and simple. There's not a lot going on there, it looks like. He's just saying things. Prop him up, put peanut butter in his mouth. Same effect, sort of.
"So are we gonna go look for him?" asks Caesar over his butt sandwich.
"Can't right now." Barney says sounding even more dejected. Hell, his face, his tone, it's hurting you more than the absence of the little midget ever would.
"And just why not?" asks Toll Road, standing again. His fists are clenched. For sure, everyone handles stress in their own sort of way. You hear the clacks of Lee's cellphone in your right ear.
"Do you know how much it costs to tramp around and entire continent looking for one man?" you inquire loudly, maybe a little bit too loud. After a tense bit of eye contact between you and Toll, he sits. Barney nods, agreeing with you. He's exasperated though, not very impressed with how you chose to get the word across. So it goes.
You don't notice Tool sitting and smoking on his pipe until he says something.
"There's a job in South America for you, transporting a box, same people as last time. 'Cept more pay, you guys got their trust."
"We'll use what we get with that to try and locate Yin if he's not in contact by then." says Barney, not even waiting for Tool's words to die completely to say it. You feel like even if you do find Yin, nothing will come of it. You're stuck in one of those dark ditches where everything seems futile and the pointlessness of it all makes you want to go to sleep in a puddle of liquor and never wake up again. This is the stuff relapses are made of.
Then there's the intense craving, so great it punches you right in the gut. Your entire face tingles with the want, you break out into a sweat. Only Tool seems to know just of what's happening to you, how much you would pay to get down and get something good in you. You scratch your face, as if the effect will bring forth the cause. Nope, nothing. Everything seems tunneled out, far away, you can hear some slight conversation but it all seems like the same shit anyway. A wave of nausea, a little shake of your hands. Heroin, it wouldn't have been as bad, you think. But meth? At least you got off it before it ruined your complexion, you're thinking. Then again, on a long enough timeline, everyone's complexion is ruined one way or another.
By the time you've snapped back it seems like everyone's making an effort to pretend that you weren't practically keeling over with the want of crank.
"We're leaving tomorrow at 0500 hours." says Barney in a way that makes you think he's repeating it again just for you. Your shirt is moist around the armpits so you take it off, sling it over your shoulder. Your pecs, they're still in pristine condition. The shitty weights in your apartment make sure of that, the hour a day you sometimes have to fight for does too. The gut though, not the flabby kind that hangs over the waistband of pants, the taught and stiff kind that just sort of... pokes out... that doesn't go away no matter how many push-ups you do. For a while there you thought it was just you getting a little older. Now you've started to wonder if your liver isn't swelling or changing to accommodate all the stuff you make it cycle out of your blood. The idea scares you a little. You suck in, look down, let it out.
When you get on your bike you watch it fold in half like a little butt stuck to your torso.
The next day, before the sun's even rose up yet, you're in the seaplane with Barney at the helm and Christmas stuck up his ass, like usual. Toll's reading War Games, Hale is looking at a picture of those kids. You've never seen 'em, you've never really heard him talk about them. You can't help wonder if they're dead or something. You're drinking even though it's the asscrack of dawn, just a little coffee and Bailey's. Usually a little too refined for your tastes, but hell, Caesar had the coffee and you had the Bailey's cream stashed somewhere on this metal lug. A time when you stayed in a compartment for hours is not too far in the past. You're no badass, you're a horrorshow. Ha-ha. Where the hell did you get that one?
Everyone's nice and quiet during the flight and nice and quiet when you get off too. This isn't a "black clothes and kevlar vest" kind of mission. You're dressed in a hideous patterned button down, everyone else is wearing what they usually wear. If you thought New Orleans was hot, this buggy shithole is so much worse. And humid too.
Step, step, look both ways, step step, look both ways. That's how the guarding thing goes and the carriers aren't on edge enough to bitch at you for tying your shoe, which you didn't notice until you damn near tripped on it. The thing about being tall, is that when you inevitably fall down at some point, you fall from so much higher up. You going down, that's the worst.
Seven miles you walk in that blistering heat, swigging from a water bottle that tastes more and more like the inside of your mouth. Barney might be scowling, but you can't really know. The emotional range of his face is very, very limited. When you get to the destination? There's a case of cash waiting and a van to drive you all back. Yes, a fucking van. It's such an easy job it wouldn't have been so hard to let Christmas drive the plane over to the destination while the rest of you left. At least he wouldn't be feeling for his phone's vibrations every couple of minutes. That aside, why the fuck do these idiots insist on carrying the case, the trunk, on foot? Damned if you know.
Flying back? That ain't so hard. This mission wasn't a victory, it wasn't even a mission. It was a fucking test of patience and that's all it was. By the time you get to Tool's you just sort of want a drink and to climb back into fucking bed. Going to sleep at the bar and annoy that kid doesn't seem like such a bad idea either.
Barney's jamming his key into the lock of Tool's parlor. Even if the man himself isn't there, the key should work.
"Let me try mine." you say. Barney's about to object, you don't have a key. Before his slow moving face can open and spew out words, you're already in. Kicking down doors used to be a lot easier.
Dark. Signs were off, which almost never happens. Lights are killed. You notice the door flew off its hinges instead of on the side you open. There are three chain locks still attached. No sign of a struggle. A note on the floor. No liquor taken, nothing changed. You're picking up the note as Christmas trickles in after Toll and Hale, looking at his phone, the phone illuminating his face with a friendly glow.
"Going to Vegas." -Tool
That's all he wrote. Rushed, scrawled, pencil rolled under the wheel of a bike. No bike missing, not Tool's. It's his handwriting though, you know it. Barney's snatching the keno ticket that served as the note's paper from your hand. Just something Tool would have knocking around in his pocket. Folded and rumpled a million times, all out of color. Probably went through the wash.
Toll's looking at you and you're looking at him. Christmas is looking at his phone and now you're looking at Hale. All three of you have a pretty good idea of what happened while you were gone.
"He went to Vegas, then." Barney says in a monotone voice. You feel your face turning very, very red. Everyone knows damn well what's going on. Barney wants to stick his fucking head in the sand.
"You really think he's at fucking Vegas?!" you scream, a little. Before you can even elaborate, Barney's hand is on your throat and you've been backed into the nearest wall. Everyone's face is a mask of shock. He's stronger than he looks, that Barney Ross. You're pretty sure you could take him, could throw him across the room and break his back on some pole. Despite it all, you respect him though. You can't hit him. You just sort of stand there while a man practically a foot shorter than you chokes you up against the wall. He looks in your eyes.
"He's at Vegas then, right?"
"Right." Christmas sort of whispers.
When your neck is released, you massage it. Barney ain't in on it. He'd never turn on his own fucking team. He knows the same as you though, he knows what went on. Stress though, self preservation, he ain't gonna pursue it. You pour yourself some straight tequila, you're gonna need it.
When you look up pathetic in the dictionary, there's a picture of a man too afraid to say what needs to be said.