capitalism.txt

Abdurrahman

He was crouching under the desk. It wasn't much of a hiding place, and the wooden club he held wasn't much of a weapon, nor was the flimsy door much of a barrier. He had had the presence of mind to bolt it, but that would barely matter if the gang were determined to break it down. Arya was hiding together with with him, tail swishing, alternating between vicious barks and terrified whines. What a useless dog. And the good one had just got herself killed.

Now he was calling the police station for the fifth time, wondering why on earth they weren't answering. Was noone there at all? Were they playing mah jong or something, and had they unplugged the phone to make sure they weren't interrupted? Things were far more serious than he'd ever anticipated. He had switched off the light in his office, but with the racket Arya was making it wouldn't be long before they figured out which featureless door in the courtyard wall he was behind.

Then the most important noise of all sounded; the immense booming screech of the big metal gates being forced open. Months of inactivity had nearly welded them shut with rust. The gang were going in, and they were going to dismantle everything and carry it off, and the police wouldn't come until the morning, and as Abdurrahman would be intact and unwounded suspicion would naturally fall on him, and the cheap cellphone with the exonerating evidence would probably be confiscated and lost, and a bored judge would bang his gavel and send him to one of Jakarta's heaving prisons. He wondered if he could beat himself to an unconscious pulp with the club.

Men with no stake in the cause they served, he recalled from some movie he had seen about the war against the Dutch, would fight only when they feared their officers more than the enemy. A prison had thirty murderous inmates to a ten man cell, baton-happy guards, and rice-and-water meals once a day, and no job afterwards and no hope of going back to college; Untung's gang had a gun. The choice was clear. He crawled out from under the desk, turned the heavy key in the lock and opened the door a crack. Arya shrunk back further against the wall, his tail slack between his legs. Well, fine. Abdurrahman would do it alone.

No-one was in sight, but voices and noises were audible from the direction of the gate. He took the flashlight, thought he didn't need it; his eyes had adjusted to the gloom of the darkened office, and the diffuse glare of the streetlights filtering through the trees and over the great, black shape of the factory building were almost intolerably bright. He stepped forward, his club raised. His life was not flashing before his eyes, he did not feel a transcendent sense of meditative calm; he was merely apprehensive and annoyed.

There were two darkened shapes on the ground a dozen meters away; the smaller one was Kade's body surely, but the larger? He walked over, taking care that his footsteps didn't echo and alert the looters. There was a faint, keening moan coming from the larger pile. His eyes widened and his heart quickened; he saw it was Untung, in a growing pool of blood, a splintered and twisted mass of metal lying near him.

Untung recognized him, lifted his head. "Abdu," he whispered. "The gun..." Abdurrahman glanced over at it. The bent and splayed metal - copper pipe?! - culminated in some sort of gimcrack trigger mechanism. That was where the noise had come from; when Untung fired his first shot at the dog, the improvised weapon had exploded, riddling his thin and wiry body with shrapnel. It was sheer misfortune that Kade had been hit as well, and that none of Untung's gang had.

"Help me." said Untung. "I'm hurt. I need a doctor. Anyone." He was clutching at his shoulder blade, pressing with flagging strength, while the blood kept welling up between his clenched fingers. "Help me. We're friends."

"You're not my friend." said Abdurrahman. "You're an idiot and a punk. How many of them came with you?" Untung closed his eyes and shook his head. "How many?" Abdurrahman shoved him with the tip of the club and he howled. "Tell me or I'll hit you again."

Untung coughed and spat something out. "You should have been a pig." he said. "You act like one."

"They're on my side. And they'll be coming for you." said Abdurrahman, with scant conviction.

"No one's coming. They're all at the strike in Ciliwung. Haven't you heard?" Abdurrahman remembered rumors, half-heard talk on the radio he never had time to listen to, headlines in the newspapers he'd stopped buying ever since he'd started devoting so much effort to his English studies. But why? A few factory workers?

"You're alone, Abdu. Help me. I'll put in a good word for you." said Untung, his voice coming back by degrees. He wasn't so badly hurt after all; how else could he be so perky, Abdurrahman wondered. He gave up, shoved the man in the solar plexus and stalked off, club raised, in the direction of the gate. He ignored the squeals of pain from behind him; he was determined in all events to sell his life dearly. He was fairly sure Untung wouldn't die, and fairly sure he wouldn't care if he did.

Opportunity presented itself in the form of two men, face to face, walking out carrying a long conveyor belt, mechanical guts and all. They didn't see him until he whacked the first one in the side of the knee; it gave way with a crack. Lone Wolf And Cub. The man howled on the floor, trapped under the thing he'd been carrying; Abdurrahman gave him a quick kick in the head as an afterthought. Bleach. The other end of the conveyor belt dropped jarringly to the ground, things breaking inside. The second man had drawn a knife, a pitiful little thing, and Aburrahman gave him a blow to the face, then the rib cage. Jackie Chan. His own strength surprised him. The robber clasped his hand to his streaming nose, coming on with the knife; somehow Aburrahman reflexively gave another kick, high and from the hip, which knocked the knife out of his hand. Jet Li. It was over before he knew enough to feel astonished. And that was when something hit him on the head, and he felt no more.