Part II – The Border

Chapter 1

By the glassless window of an abandoned apartment in Sniper Alley, with the wind blowing from the direction of the ocean and the heat shimmering on the broken pavement, the Manskinner said, "You have to make yourself bereft of everything."

Glad for an excuse to lift his sweat-stung eye from the sighting scope, Frank glanced over at him. The Manskinner knelt, unmoving, leaning into his rifle, the barrel of which rested, equally motionless, on the window frame. He had taken his canvass jacket off in the heat of the day, and his bare arms were twisted with faded tattoos. The Hydra – bottle-green, multi-headed, coiled - dominated the arm that Frank could see. For as long as Frank had known him, the Manskinner had not concerned himself with anything less practical or more extravagant than weapons caches and safehouse addresses, and so the tattoos seemed like scars left behind by a different, older life.

Frank was fascinated by them, but he tried not to let on. He was deeply conscious of looking young and frivolous, though the tattoos were evidence enough that even his incorruptible commanding officer had once been both of those things.

He was quiet for a long time, waiting for the Manskinner to continue, but he seemed to have forgotten that he had spoken in the first place. Frank sighed, and turned back to his scope. The joint at the nape of his neck creaked in protest. His shoulders ached from being so long in the stiff attitude of alertness, and his legs throbbed from kneeling on the uncarpeted floor. But he was afraid to complain, afraid to shift positions. Afraid, even, to feel frustrated. The Manskinner had not moved at all over the course of the last few hours, and he had spoken only in clipped critical half-sentences when Frank did not perform his duties as spotter to his expectations.

"Everything," the Manskinner said. And then, grudgingly, "Even the revolution."

This time, Frank didn't look at him. He kept focused on the empty, sweltering street below. But he was listening.

"You know why you are here," the Manskinner said. "And I know why I'm here. But it's all just platitudes when the time comes to kill someone. And you will kill plenty, Frank. You'll kill them for me, but not because of me. I only point the way. You are the one who has to point the gun. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

The Manskinner's lips stirred into a grim and ironic smile. "I never asked you how old you were,. I doubt you'd tell me the truth if I did. You're not eighteen – I can see that – but you're old enough. With what you've seen, you're plenty old."

But the Manskinner had never asked that either, what he had seen. Frank doubted he even knew that he had not. He had simply made of him a mathematical formula: one young man, with the addition of hunger and fear, with the subtraction of home and family, equaled one cog in the great machine that produced social upheaval. A machine so complex that the Manskinner alone considered himself skilled to operate it.

Frank did not have an opportunity to say more. It was then that he detected movement at the far end of the Alley. He brought the sighting scope into focus with small recalibrations. It came to him easily; he had been trained briskly, competently, and under the terrifying shadow of the impermissibility of failure.

"Six man patrol," he said. "Fifteen hundred meters."

The Manskinner's hand twitched on the trigger guard of his rifle. "Good. Do the rest."

"Wind is coming from due west at 7 knots. Air visibility at 65 percent. The external temperature is 98 degrees, so you should expect to have to correct for heat distortion."

He glanced up. The Manskinner had pivoted his rifle on the windowsill, so silently that Frank had not even been aware of the movement. They were both watching them now, the half dozen men on the deserted street below them. There was little to offer cover on Sniper Alley, and so they hugged the building fronts. Only three of them had their rifles unslung, and they all had their faces covered, so that it was impossible to tell whether their expressions were ones of fear, or contempt, or bored indifference. That made it a little easier.

At the throat of one stained white uniform, Frank spotted a triangle of glossy black.

"They're wearing body armor," he said. "So aim high."

"Yes," the Manskinner said. He slid his thumb over the safety, a small catch above the trigger, flicking it off. "Now tell me which one."

"What…?"

"Which one is our target?"

Here, Frank hesitated. He had not expected the question, and the longer he thought on it, the more he grasped the full horror of what the Manskinner was asking him. "I don't see a commanding officer. None of them are wearing insignia."

"That's right," the Manskinner said. His finger quivered, eager, on the trigger. When Frank did not reply right away, he hissed. "Now. Decide."

"The lead man," Frank gasped, his voice squeaking out around the knot in his throat. He felt a cold weightlessness balloon in his stomach. "He's closing. He's at 900 meters."

"I see him," the Manskinner said. And then, reluctantly, he added, "You can look away now if you want."

Frank could no longer say what he wanted, but when he tried to turn away he could not. He was transfixed; his burning eye pressed to the sweat-slick view of the scope. Do it, he thought, with such viciousness that at first he worried that he had spoken aloud. What point is there in living in a place like this, if you can't kill a man like that?

The Manskinner pulled the trigger. A deafening roar filled the enclosed apartment. At first, Frank thought that the round had missed completely; it was a full five seconds before the bullet reached its target. It pierced through his throat, just left of the Adam's apple, and Frank saw his head tilt, illusory and impossible, to one side. His ear touched his shoulder, and then slid off, the skin of his neck spilling in a horizontal line, tearing like damp tissue, as his head fell sideways against his breast.

His helmet tumbled off then, and a gout of blood leapt from his mouth, followed by one from his throat. He took two more jerking steps, and then he fell.

Frank could not see his face; he told himself that there had been no chance at all to see it before the blood had obscured it.

The Manskinner stood and unscrewed the sight and the barrel from his rifle and put them in his pocket. He collected his jacket, and slung the rifle over his shoulder and said, "Quickly now. Let's go."

And then, Ghoul opened his eyes. The Manskinner dispersed, and Poison's voice, soft and uninflected out of the low light, came to fill the space he had left.

"…the Battle of Pea Ridge, the Battle of Hampton Roads, the Battle of New Bern, the First Battle of Kernstown…"

"Poison?" Ghoul said. But his voice did not carry, and Poison went on. Monotonous, but somehow not droning; somehow sweet and pleasant to hear.

"…the Battle of Glorieta Pass, the Battle of Shiloh, the Battle of Williamsburg – no, wait – the Siege of Corinth, the Battle of Williamsburg, the Battle of McDowell, the First Battle of Whinchester, the Battle of Hanover Court House, the Battle… the Battle of Cross Keys…"

"Poison," Ghoul said again, and this time Poison quieted. There was a long silence, a long hesitation, before he came around the side of the cot where Ghoul lay. He brushed away the mosquito netting that hung around the bed, and then he stood there, looking down, holding the curtain awkwardly to one side.

"You look tired."

"I feel all right," Poison said.

"Yeah, me too. I feel much better."

"I'm relieved."

"Do you want to sit down or anything?" Ghoul asked.

"Oh." Poison glanced back, as if he suspected someone was watching, and then he said, "Yes, I do."

He sat on the edge of the bed, letting the mosquito net fall back to enshroud them. Ghoul was more amused then annoyed when Poison made no move to touch him, and he reached out and snatched Poison's pale, ungloved hand out of his lap. His fingers were stiff and numb, and there was no strength in his grip at all.

"What happened?" he said, but he wasn't sure he was ready for the answer to that, and so he quickly corrected, "Where are we?"

"A clinic," Poison said. "I wanted better, but we couldn't afford it. I'm sorry."

"I can smell the ocean."

"Five minutes from the beach."

"Then it can't be that bad, can it?"

Poison gave him a startled look, which Ghoul did not know how to interpret. "At least they let you in to see me," he sighed.

"I said I was your brother."

"Did anyone actually believe that?"

"Why shouldn't they?"

Ghoul laughed. It made his ribs hurt, and he quieted quickly. "Poison… you're always doing shit for me. I'm sorry."

"It's all right."

"Is it?"

"If I didn't want to do things for you, then I would stop," Poison said. "Though you would likely be dead by now if I hadn't been looking after you a little."

Ghoul paled, and he felt his skin chill under a sheen of cold sweat. He let Poison's hand slip from his grip, so that he would not feel it too. Poison's expression tightened. "Is something wrong?"

"No," Ghoul whispered. "I just had a dream. Just a second ago."

"A bad one?"

"Yeah." Ghoul hesitated, and then shook his head. "No. But, do you know how sometimes you can dream about the most familiar, comforting things, but in the dream they seem awful and wrong? This was like the opposite of that."

Poison reached for him again. Though Ghoul did not take hand, he allowed Poison to set it over his own. "I had something I needed to tell you," Poison said.

"While I was asleep, right?"

"No. Now, if you'll listen."

Ghoul still felt hazy, translucent, as if he had not yet gotten around to waking up fully. As if only a sliver of him were here with Poison while the rest still crouched on the floor of the sweltering apartment beside the Manskinner, slaughtering endless waves of nameless men, for unnamable reasons. He looked up at Poison's profile; his flattened nose, demurely downcast eyes, tatters of red hair. They acted as an axis, a center around which he could revolve.

"Actually, I had something I wanted to tell you, too," he said.

"Oh?" Tired, pretty, composed, and frayed, Poison looked at him. There was still a chance that he could have shed his leather jacket and gaudy hair color, exchanged them for a suit and tie, and the metamorphosis, the return to his old form, would have been convincing. But that part of him was quickly fading, worn away by sand and wind and no water. It was as if he really were becoming a new person, as if that which was Gerard really was being subsumed by that which was Party Poison.

"You go first," Ghoul said.

"It's about when we first met," Poison said. "I've been thinking about it some. A lot. About what madness gripped me at that moment, and made me want so badly to do those things with you. I had never wanted like that before, to the exclusion of all else, though I had chances in the past, with all manner of people."

He looked again at Ghoul's eyes, as if to make sure he was following along. "What I need you to know," he said, "is that it was not you. It was what you stood for. My first and only real chance to leave that place. That was what I longed for, so much that it hurt."

Ghoul said nothing at first, he only lay very still, his body humming and alert. Entirely awake at last, and unable to return to the dream, to even recall it in full here in the harsh light of day. He felt his throat tighten, his eyes burn with unshedable tears. It no longer took any effort at all to not cry in front of Poison.

"What did you want to tell me?" Poison said.

"It's weird," Ghoul gasped. "I was pretty much going to say the same thing as you."

He watched Poison's eyes, willing him to believe and daring him to disbelieve at the same time. Though it was not the truth, it might as well have been. Ghoul himself was not so sure of his own motivations; he knew only the indelible effect the action had left upon him. But he lacked Poison's ability to dive back through the slippery mutable streams of time, to observe himself dispassionately, coldly, from without. The truth might as well have been that he loved his independence, loved freedom, for those were the only things he could say with any certainty that he had.

"Well, then…" Poison said.

"Yeah, well."

"Are you tired," Poison said. "You sound strange. Does anything hurt?"

"No," Ghoul replied. "I think I'm pretty well awake now. I think I'd like to shut my eyes and rest for a while, though."

"Yes, of course." Poison stood up, passing into the shadows that hovered around the low ceiling. "Is there anything you need? Want?"

"No," Ghoul whispered. "Nothing."

"A book? Something to read. No, I guess you wouldn't…"

There was a low note of pity in his voice that made Ghoul flinch. Poison had known almost from the first that he was unlettered, but he had never seemed to mind. It had never seemed to influence his opinion at all.

"A radio," Ghoul said quickly, just so Poison would not imagine him laying here alone, unmoving, unthinking, unfeeling. Experiencing nothing save that which was immediately before him.

"Yes, I can bring you that."

Poison lingered a moment more, and then he let the mosquito netting fall back into place. He was nothing but a shadow when he turned to go.