Heavy Storm (Begining)

Marx Halberd ran as silently as possible down the rain-stricken road-sides of inner Manhattan with three of the New NYPD’s finest right behind him.  He turned down a quiet alleyway and tried to further quiet his footsteps.  The labyrinth of paths the high-standing buildings allowed Marx to wind through them and elude his pursuers that would otherwise bring him in.  But he still didn’t feel safe and continued sprinting between the buildings until coming to Broadway and decideing to take refuge in a market.  He walked inside and enjoyed the dry air until judging it safe enough to return to the streets.

         Marx stepped to the clear glass door streaked with the eternal rain that hadn’t stopped in four years—since 2009.  The gun at his side under the long, black coat was heavy and he hated to have to wear it around, but it was a dangerous world.  In 2009 on July 4 the United States’ enemies dropped a bomb on it and the skies had cried ever since.  Scientists generally called it an “atmospheric phenomenon.”  Everyone questioned the rain—rational minds tried to explain it but no explanation came.  Children often said God was crying because of how sadistic His creations had become.  Marx tried hopelessly to ignore the bitter downpour as it made his short, black hair fall in wet strands and cling to his forehead.  Everyone had grown to hate the rain and it was just one more reminder that New York residents lived so close to so much death.

         A faint glow emanated from the pink neon of a smoke bar to Marx’s side that contrasted with the bleakness of everything else and he stepped into it.  In mid-2008 smoking had been abolished in nearly all public restaurants and gathering places and the constant torrents of the outside allowed for none there either, so a few industrialists started making “smoke bars” where people could succumb to their addictions in a dry environment.  Marx lit a cigarette and set it to his lips at the bar where a brunette in a red halter top asked him if he wanted a drink.  He shook his head.  “No thanks, Carol.”
         
         “What’s wrong?  Melancholy again?”
         He smirked in a condescending way.  “Everyone’s melancholy here.”  She nodded in agreement, then turned to tend to another customer.  Marx sat in relative silence for a quarter of an hour, glancing at the faded pictures and the visually appealing bartenders.  Patrons of all social classes and walks of life sucked on cigarettes, some played what looked like poker, and many drank various alcoholic drinks until the door of the establishment barged open and everyone looked up.

         Two men in modern body armor and facemasks walked in with all the authority they could muster.  Each held what looked like a collapsible baton until they flicked out the length of them and a node hanging out to the side of each end sent a crack of electricity to another near the handles.  The binding of bluish white energy jumped and cracked and danced between the two points and Marx knew what it meant.  He slid his right hand under the coat and took the handle of his weapon.  Marx didn’t want to kill anyone, but prisons were bad now, and he didn’t want to be in one.

         “Marx Halberd is in here,” the man in front said in a commanding voice.  “I want to know where he is.”
         Carol, the strong, but well-figured young woman from behind the bar walked out to face them.  “What business do you have with this Halberd?  And what makes you think he’s in here?”  Her brown eyes flashed anger.  No one liked the police since the near-martial law was enacted.  The cop in back coughed from the smoke he wasn’t used to breathing that ran thick in the air.
         
         “He’s wanted for murder.”
         She was adamant.  “There is no Marx Halberd in here.  Now if you wouldn’t mind, please lea—”
         The officer in front backhanded her with his gloved hand, covered in hard plastic polymer that made the usually viscous blow even more painful.  Marx stood up form his seat immediately.

         “So you fascists hit women now, too?” he asked.  His hand was still in the coat.
         “Are you Marx Halberd?  You’ll be coming with us.”
         Marx could see the eyes of the officer in back.  He was uncertain and nervous and went down to help the stricken woman up.           
“Apologize to her,” Marx said.  “Apologize to the woman you hit.”
         “Why should I do that?  She was obstructing justice so she needed to be punished.”
         “Carol, are you all right?”  She was helped up by the unusually courteous officer and glared up at the other.  “I’m fine.”

         Marx pulled his weapon, a small automatic pistol, from its place and aimed it at the head of the front police officer.  “What’s stopping me from shooting you right where you stand?”
         He laughed.  “A room full of witnesses?”
         “Apologize to her or I shoot.”  His smirk could practically be heard in his voice.
         The officer laughed again and adjusted a knob on his baton, increasing the voltage the electric coil was generating.  “You’re not going to shoot me.”

         Marx shook his head sadly, told everyone to cover their ears, and the officer’s eyes widened as he heard the creaking of the trigger.  Before he could reach for his own pistol a cataclysmic explosion rang from the muzzle and the officer dropped to the floor with a dull thud.  Burnt gunpowder mixed with the nicotine in the air and the patrons of the bar all had their hands over their ears, but still jumped with the loud crack.  Marx slid his weapon into its place and leaned against the bar, facing the second officer.  “It was a rubber bullet and he’ll wake up in a little while.  Just bring him out to your car.  Or do I have to kill to get my point across?  I’d rather not,” he said, pulling a large revolver from under the coat and letting the light hit it.

         The officer shook his head.  “He needed to learn a lesson.  I’m supposed to arrest you, but if you were as ruthless as they say... you wouldn’t have pulled a stunt like that.”           The man apologized to Carol for his partner’s rudeness and violence, then struggled to heave his partner out into the rain—one of the bar patrons helped him as the others returned to their activities without word.  This wasn’t a terribly rare kind of thing to happen.  Marx took the officer’s left behind taser/baton combination, known as an Enforcer, and found his seat at the bar again.

         Marx took a deep breath and let it out, then looked at the bruise on Carol’s face from the officer.  She saw his eyes trained on it.
         “It’s nothing.  I’ll be okay.  But what did he mean murder?”  Her thin, red lips drew into a curious smile.  “Who did you kill?”
         Marx hesitated like he didn’t want to answer the question.  “Just... someone.”
         She raised an eyebrow.  “‘Someone’?”
         “I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” he said calmly, but forcefully.
         Her smile softened from playful and wondering to apologetic.  “I’m sorry.”
         He shook his head.  “No, it’s all right.  I need to be going again, though.”  He took a final drag of the cigarette and extinguished its last embers in a cheap ashtray stuffed with ones like it.  “Take care of yourself, Carol.”  He smiled, straightened and pulled his coat taught, and walked to the door ready for the rain’s onslaught.

* * *
         Peace Commander Frank Prior sat in his swiveling chair in the dark room plastered with thin computer monitors when his phone rang.
         “Yes?”
         “It’s Al.  Marx Halberd hasn’t been picked up yet.  Rick Matthews and his partner found him in a smoke bar called Carol’s, but he shot John and escaped.”
         “Shot him!”
         “Yes, sir, but... with a rubber bullet.  It only knocked him unconscious.”
         “What?  What’s this guy thinking?  He’s got some nerve...”
         “What should we do, Commander?”
         Frank typed through a few monitor screens to find a map of the New York area with red dots in various places scattered across it.  “There’s a Patrol Chopper close to that bar.  Have it search the area.”
         “Yes, sir.”

         Frank set the phone in its cradle and stood to exit the room.  Along the way he took a pocket computer from a clasp on his belt and scanned through it until finding the file on Marx.  “Marx Halberd: male, age twenty-four, black hair, brown eyes, born in New York to James and Lucille Halberd.  Only one offense to his name—first-degree murder.  That’s not too common.”  He shook his head and put the machine back at his belt, then went through another gray door in the station to come to a large room filled with cubicles, computers, and officers.  A few lights flickered on an off and the paint was peeling, but it was still a reliable base of operations.
         “Commander Prior,” someone called out from across the room.  Frank turned to find a young officer walking towards him.  “We’ve got the feed of the helicopter’s camera and it’s got a fix on Halberd’s position.”
         “Great,” Frank said, following him over to the monitor to watch the soon-to-be arrest.

* * *
         The constant drear of the rain, blackened by the night sky it reflected, served well to diminish the spirits of everyone that lived in the area.  Everyone wore a coat or held an umbrella.  Children seldom played outside because the rain was almost always cold and brought them illness.  Parents hated having to keep them inside because of it.  Of course it wasn’t a constant downpour, though.  Sometimes it would sprinkle lightly and the residents would get a tantalizing taste of sweet sunlight.  But often enough black clouds would blot out the entire sky and the rain’s fury would spatter the city.  Marx’s collar clung to the back of his neck and his hair matted wetly over it.  He passed a few all-night coffee shops and markets that were open even in the dead of night.  Several people passed, but none of them smiled.  Marx heard an ominous metallic fluttering and gazed up to see a helicopter flying low over the city with blinding spotlights searching.  Large air-to-ground hellfire missiles clung to the stubby underside wings and a 20mm Vulcan cannon was mounted near the nose.

         “That’s for me, isn’t it?” Marx asked himself under the blades’ roar as the spotlights fixed on him and the chopper banked until facing its target.  He’d never been happier to have his Helicopter Gun.  The Helicopter Gun, as it was called, was the revolver he used.  A six shot rotating cylinder weapon of the caliber of the 500 Magnum 3x.  3x because of the bullet’s three phases.  The marketing campaign said you could, theoretically, take out any light armor vehicle with six shots.  Too bad Marx only had five loaded.  Nevertheless he lined up the fiber-optic sights and waited until the green dot sat neatly in between the two red and he let loose the cannon’s fury.  The recoil jolted both arms up and the bullet pierced the air and rain.  Its hollow tip billowed outward in the air and pulled back to make the bullet in the shape of a mushroom and the steel core was able to poke out.  The wide mass of the lead mushroom slammed hard against the steel body as the core continued penetrating.  Spectators were running now and the billow of the rotors flung noise and a horizontal spray of water everywhere.

         A panel on the side of the helicopter swung open and two officers leapt out.  It was no longer a winnable fight.  Marx spent his second bullet on eliminating the irksome spotlight and the world flashed back into darkness.  He still had spots in his eyes and struggled to find an alleyway to escape capture in.  He slung his weapon into his coat, dried it somewhat, and snapped it into its thigh holster that the black coat draped well over to keep it safe and dry.  Water bogged down the long coat and did its job, its unintended job, of slowing Marx down, though.  He fought the weight and continued trudging through the slush and spray and rain.  The police wouldn’t shoot him with real bullets, but they would not hesitate to tranquilize him.  He turned a corner and another and wound through the maze of back-alleys and back-streets and back-ways.  As luck would have it he stumbled upon a large overhang sidling an abandoned gas station that shielded him from the rain.

         Marx threw off his coat and flicked his wrist to release the oscillating sections of the baton.  The node at its end and its guard sent across an electric binding once again and he swung it around into the body of the officer in front.  The man’s muscles twitched and convulsed and he fell hard, but his armor took the bulk of the damage.  The second officer was right there, trying to shoulder his battle rifle when Marx lifted the Helicopter Gun and aimed it at the man’s head.  “Please stop, officer.”  The rain was pouring now, but they were drying under the overhang.  The officer did, indeed, stop.
         
“You’re... you’re under arrest,” he stammered.
         Marx shook his head.  “No one’s getting arrested here.  Not today.  Take your hand off that gun.”
         “Are you going to kill me?”
         “You got any kids?”
         “I’ve got a wife... we’re kinda thinking about it.  I’d like to have a boy.”
         Marx smiled.  “Then we’ve got to make sure you get back to her.  There’s all kinds of fun to be had in baby-making.  Please drop the gun.”
         The officer did as Marx commanded and even sat down his Enforcer and held his hands high.

         “Very good, mister...”
         “Luke.  Luke Allen.”
         “Luke.  Could you lend me your vest?  I’m sure they’ll give you another.”
         “Um, all right.”  He removed the vest, walked halfway between them, laid it down, and walked back.  Marx strapped on the bulletproof armor, then squeezed water from his jacket and slung it over his body.  “Can you do something for me, Luke?”
         “S-sure...”
         “First, stop being so afraid—I’m not going to kill you.  Next, I need you to close your eyes, count to ten, and then open them.  Okay?”
         “Okay...”
         The man started counting and Marx deactivated and closed the Enforcer before stashing it in his coat and running off into the darkness away from his would-have-been captor.  “I love getting the smart ones,” he said to himself and continued jogging through back-alleys.

         With the time nearing five A.M. the sun would soon rise and Marx was somewhat of a night owl.  Somewhat in the way that he slept when normal people woke up.  The nights were his days and the days his nights.  For a man on the run that’s just how it had to be—no daylight.  So he began to step lightly toward his home.  With New York City in the state that it was after the bomb, population decreased drastically.  Not just because of loss of life from the explosion, but because most people simply don’t want to live in a city where it rains constantly. 

The subways were shut down after the attack because roads were clear enough to get around in a car without problem and money spent on them would be better elsewhere.  So an industrious homeless man named Paul Richter found some under-the-table dynamite and a hammer and chisel and went to work carving out a decent home for himself.  He was even able to feed free electricity from the power rail that had never shut off.  Eventually people got interested and more and more tunnel domiciles were carved out until Richter made it into a business and acted as a landlord over the steadily expanding set of homes for the poor, the vagabonds, the exiles, and the outlaws.  It was a peaceful place, though, and everyone either got along or kept to themselves.

         Marx was nearing the old terminal and he checked around carefully, making sure he wasn’t followed.  He walked down into it and stepped down between the rundown tram and the side wall to take the short walk to his “apartment.”  After a few minutes out of the darkness a string of light beacons illuminated the drear from the walls.  Each tunnel-house, as they were called, was about the same size—twenty feet deep from the wall of the tunnel and spaced about ten feet apart.  They were mostly one room and bathrooms were spaced about one each ten homes and ran with private plumbing installed by Richter and his helpers.  It was quite a sufficient little system.  Marx passed several strong wooden doors along the sides until finding his with a number 17 etched above it.  He was about to turn in his key when he felt a hand on his shoulder.  He turned to see the landlord himself, Mister Paul Richter.
         “Marx, how are you doing?”

         Marx shook the man’s hand in a warm greeting.  Mr. Richter stood at about six feet and was around forty years old, though he was strong and fit and surprisingly healthy for a formerly homeless man.  His eyes gleamed warmly in the soft light of the electric torches lining the tunnel.
         “I’m fine.  Staying alive.”
         “Staying out of trouble?”
         He laughed.  “Trying my best.  Do you need rent because right now...”
         “No, no.  I know you’re good for it.  Take care of yourself.”  Richter continued along the tunnel with a flashlight, making sure there was no trouble.

         Marx turned his key in and pulled the door closed behind him, locked it, and clicked the deadbolt into place.  Throwing his coat onto a chair he went about his nightly routines—cleaning his guns, which was necessary with all the moisture, reloading them, checking and treating any injuries from the past day, and taking a moment of silence and security.  He hung up his shirt on a clothesline above a drying drain, which was standard for all of the tunnel-homes, and dropped onto a small bed.  In minutes Marx had slipped away into the peaceful blackness of sleep.