Story code: ST-001055
Part 2: The Federal Mandate
Vance swept the heavy flashlight beam lower, trying to pierce the dense, waxy tangle of oleander branches. The dragging sound stopped, replaced by a shallow, ragged wheezing. “Come out of the bushes,” Vance commanded, keeping his voice strictly regulated, projecting the flat authority his uniform demanded. His right hand remained firmly snapped over his holstered sidearm. The darkness offered no compliance, only the wet, choking sound of someone struggling to breathe.
He shoved his way into the outer layer of the hedge. Dry twigs snapped loudly against his duty belt, and the bitter scent of the toxic oleander leaves filled his nose. The beam of his flashlight caught a dirty white sneaker, then a denim jacket soaked dark and heavy with blood. The driver was wedged beneath the thickest roots, curled into a tight, trembling ball, trying to bury himself in the dirt. It was a young man, barely out of his teens, his face slick with blood from a deep laceration across his forehead and another along his cheekbone.
Vance reached down, grabbing the collar of the heavy denim jacket. “I’ve got you. Stop moving.” He pulled, dragging the kid backward out of the thorns. The young man cried out-a weak, reedy sound of absolute panic-and his hands frantically clawed at the manicured turf to stop his forward momentum. Vance hauled him fully onto the wet Bermuda grass, pinning him with a heavy knee against the kid’s shoulder to keep him from thrashing back into the dark.
“Dispatch, 4-Bravo,” Vance breathed into his shoulder mic, his chest heaving slightly from the exertion. “I have the driver. One male, severe lacerations. Requesting that ambulance step it up.”
The radio crackled, but it wasn’t the usual night-shift dispatcher. The voice was sharper, clipped, lacking the tired local drawl. “4-Bravo, this is Federal Transport Unit 7. Cancel the local bus. We have a medical unit on board our rig. We are taking the primary on this hit. Three minutes out from your location. Maintain visual and physical control of the subject. Do not allow local EMS to transport.”
Vance stared down at the black plastic of his radio. “Copy, Unit 7.”
Three minutes. Vance looked down. The kid’s eyes were wide, the whites glowing starkly in the spill of the flashlight. He was clutching his ribs, gasping for air, but his gaze was fixed in sheer terror on the radio clipped to Vance’s shoulder. He understood what that transmission meant. The kid weakly raised his hands, wrists pressed together in a gesture of surrender, but his head shook side to side in a frantic, silent plea.
“Stay still,” Vance said, his voice involuntarily dropping in volume. He kept his knee on the kid’s shoulder, but he eased up on the pressure. He shone his light on the lacerations. They were deep, pumping a steady, sluggish rhythm of dark blood onto the expensive lawn. The kid wasn’t a cartel runner or a hardened fugitive. He smelled of industrial degreaser, stale sweat, and the ruined fast food from the Corolla.
Vance thought about the mortgage statement sitting on his kitchen counter exactly three streets over. Three thousand, four hundred and twenty dollars due on the first of the month. The overtime from this very shift was already mentally allocated to the soaring utility bills. The new city mandate was brutally clear: any interference with federal custody transfers was immediate grounds for termination, loss of pension, and potential criminal obstruction charges. The brass had made a public spectacle of a patrolman in the North Sector just last month to prove the point. The bank didn’t care about terrified kids bleeding on grass. The bank only cared about the direct deposit hitting the account on the 15th and the 30th.
The kid reached into his blood-soaked jacket with a trembling hand. Vance tensed, his hand dropping back to his holster, but the kid slowly pulled out a small, cracked smartphone. The screen was smashed into a spiderweb of glass, but it was lit up, showing a picture of a little girl in a pink dress, standing in front of a cheap, peeling apartment door. The kid tapped the screen with a bloody thumb, leaving a red smear over the girl’s smiling face, and held it up toward Vance’s chest.
“Por favor,” the kid whispered, his voice bubbling with fluid. “Mi hija. They… they send me back… she has nobody.”
Vance swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry. The cold, artificial security lights of the surrounding McMansions felt suffocating. The pristine lawns, the perfect hedges, the silent, empty streets-it all felt like a massive, expensive trap closing in on him. He had spent ten years working the worst shifts, absorbing the worst of humanity, just to buy his way into this enclave. He had built a financial wall between himself and the misery of the city. Now, the misery was bleeding out under his knee, looking up at him with desperate, wet eyes.
The radio chirped again, loud in the quiet night. “4-Bravo, Unit 7. We are turning onto Willow Lane now. Have the subject cuffed and ready on the curb.”
Vance looked up. Down at the far end of the long, dark street, heavy LED headlights swept across the manicured trees. The deep rumble of a heavy diesel engine broke the silence of Oak Creek Estates, growing louder and more dominant by the second.
A porch light flicked on at the house next door. The heavy oak front door opened a crack, a homeowner peering out into the dark to see what was disturbing their perfect, guaranteed peace.
Vance looked back at the kid. The young man was weeping silently now, staring at the approaching headlights like they were the end of the world. The heavy steel handcuffs rattled softly on Vance’s duty belt as he reached back for them. His fingers brushed the cold metal. The federal transport vehicle was two blocks away, closing fast. If he pulled the kid up and walked him to the curb, his job was safe. His house was safe. His life remained unbroken.
The kid’s cracked phone slipped from his trembling grip, landing face-up in the blood-stained grass. The blinding headlights of the federal rig began to cast long, sweeping shadows across the lawn, illuminating Vance’s hand as his fingers closed tightly around the steel chain of his cuffs.