I found the dead man on my morning walk to the bus stop.
He lay on his back next to the sidewalk. A fringe of gray hair blended into the dirty snow that pillowed his head. His chin tipped up and his face held a pinched expression of surprise or maybe embarrassment at being caught at the side of the road in nothing but a dress shirt and skivvies. His socks didn't have any holes. Someone had probably made off with his pants and shoes. He looked like the kind of older man who would wear nice shoes. A grandfather, maybe, teaching his grandson the lost art of polishing nice shoes.
I usually don't notice the bodies. Nobody does, except for the ones who wander the streets. Wives and husbands, fathers and mothers searching, dropping to their knees and screaming when they find what they're looking for.
The old man caught my attention because he was so pristine. Usually a body has marks on it or is missing parts. His white shirt wasn't even smudged.
I can remember seeing my first body. I can almost remember the shock.
I remember a time when death was a hidden thing, shut behind swinging hospital doors and overpriced coffins.
They said it couldn't happen again, especially not here. They told us we'd come too far, made too many strides into the future and away from our past. They said that we were a beacon of light in a dark world.
They are all dead now.
Checks and balances only work when everyone plays the same game. It took one weekend, a two-day orgy of assassination, to clear the playing field.
Most people were cowed into silence. The surviving members of the High Court didn't squawk. The Court has the power of veto. The Constitution says so, but it's just a piece of paper. It can't shield your wife and family. As Justices of the Court, they've been appointed for life and life is so tenuous.
I'm not a political man. My wife clings to this fact like a totem, as if my lack of political acumen could ward off the men in gray suits.
I'm sure the dead man lying in the snow wasn't an insurgent. What sort of dangerous thoughts ever bounced around inside that fragile old head?
We watched the first news feeds in disbelief. My wife said it was like watching a science fiction movie rolling in real time. The events sounded so familiar. The litany of atrocities usually attached to faraway places went on and on, but this time we recognized all the city names.
It took a week for the news feeds to dwindle down to two. Pirate broadcasters and rogue satellites fell. Rumors of foreign intervention came and went. The extremist wackos in the hills lasted a week. Their caches of rifles and home-brew explosives didn't hold a candle to VX and neutron bombs.
How do we know their fate? The New State staged a presentation, at least with the VX. Have you ever hit a mass of ants with bug spray and watched them twitch and die? That's just what they did to whole communities, filmed it, showed it in theaters, in schools, on TV… an object lesson. You can't hear ants scream.
So one dead old man at the side of the road wasn't a big deal. Shouldn't have been.
I stood there as the noise of the morning traffic picked up. I stood there too long as the tears froze on my cheeks.
Pakeha