Excerpts Taken From Marcus P. Kellum's Personal Journal.
The bus ride was a revelation. I have always relied public transportation when living in large towns, but I have never journeyed in such a decrepit and daunting neighborhood. The ride I had taken was easily as forbidding as any voyage into some forgotten crypt or some bleak mountain pass. Everything on the bus, though brightly lit, seemed off, as if the whole contraption was vibrating on some other plane of existence. My worried expression alarmed Avi.
“What is it Mark…do you see something?”
I held back, I did not want her to know that I was alarmed; I did not want my own foolishness to spook her. I claimed that I might be coming down with a fever.
“There is Aspirin in one of the suitcases; I’ll get you some when we reach the hotel.”
The bus we traveled in was owned by the city, and what a city it was that flashed by in the dusky Chicago light. Old buildings, boarded up businesses and abandoned stockyards crept passed us as we journeyed forward. Finally, around 7 p.m. we reached the beaten and broken hotel. The streets were deserted, but the feeling they gave off was not just a feeling of vacancy…they felt as if they were not there. As I hefted the bags off the luggage rack and made my way to the bus’s pneumatic doorway, I caught something out of the corner of my eye. Something black. Something not quite there.
“Wha-wait, Avi!” I called after her.
“What is it? need some help?” She asked, but then she saw the look on my face. Her expression turned to one of severe resolve. “Let’s get inside, out of the wide open. We need to set up.” She quickly crossed the sidewalk and entered the hotel as I puffed along behind her.
We reached the check in counter and an old black man met us with a sly smirk. He seemed to know something about us and was not willing to share his knowledge. I paid very close attention to him. Something was just not quite right. Finally, after we had pre-paid for the week and we were signed in to the register, he broke out into a wide grin and handed us our keys. It dawned on me that the man was blind. I felt ashamed that I had not noticed such a handicap and the old man realized that I was caught in an awkward moment.
“Vietnam.” He said, answering my question before I had even asked it. “Grenades don’t care which side you is on, they just go off.” He said with a flourish. He then walked around the counter and gestured towards an old set of elevator doors. “Those is broken, you can use them to come down, but I wouldn’t try goin up. F’some reason the gears is locked up. Been that way for years.” He added a small chuckle.
Leaving him behind, we hauled our bags and cases up to the second floor. We had chosen a higher level than the ground floor for many reasons. First, they allowed us to see above the fence across the street into the abandoned stockyard that was located directly across from us. Secondly, we had decided on a second story room in this hotel because it would give us a reasonable amount of anonymity should we encounter people who were curious. Finally, it would be harder for anything to get into the room…it never occurred to us that it would be equally as difficult to get out.
Avi was unpacking equipment as I settled on one of the two twin beds. She handled her tools with an air of authority, checking to see if each individual apparatus was functional and clean. Finally, she took a rather large pistol out of her pack and began checking it for God knows what. She finally noticed my expression of wonder and shock.
“Hey,” she said with a clever grin, “it’s still Chicago Mark…the south side of Chicago…” With that, she slammed the magazine home in the butt of the pistol and then nestled it in the back of her slacks below her jacket. “C’mon, it’s time for some recon.”
