The subwoofers on the Acura caused waves of bass to echo out across sleeping Compton. The driver, Terrell, looked over his shoulder at Jamaal, one of the gang members sitting in the back seat, and turned the music down.

"We gonna be there soon. G'ahead, J Little, spit some licks for some bored brothers."

"I ain't feel like rappin right now."

"Man, don't be a slob. Just spit it. You know you is good, so just rhyme."

"Fine, whatever, man," He said, "Gimme a beat, Wild." Jamaal said to the big man sitting next to him.

The large gangbanger was called Wild for his often violent temper and his, 'I'll do anything for the set' mentality. He started up a slight rhythm.

Jamaal, called J Little by the Bloods, rocked himself to Wild's beat.

"Don't wanna battle, but my 9's gotta rattle,
this Crip cattle, I herd in dis saddle,
heard a tattle, now I gots ta paddle,
Wit dis gun willin, killin the villain
my eyes keeps fillin wit Blood thrills
as I fills a body with skills
these bullets that kills, from my 9 that I still
kiss to fulfill, revenge, with my will.
I'm gonna ride, not hide, for pride
they blue died, red dyed
laid out to dry on da side
they tried - to stride and slide
but I denied, they eyes wide
I'm gonna ride
Let's ride.
We gonna ride.
C-73 for life.”

"Snap, man," Yelled Terrell, "That's some dope rhymin right there!"

Wild punched him in the arm. “You should try to get a record deal sometime, J Little.”

Terrell motioned from the front as he shut off the head lights and turned the corner.

“Shut up, shut up! Hey man, these fools is standing out front like they waitin for us. Rock da glocks. RBD forever!”

The sound of racking guns filled the small car.

“Remember, we ain't doing no punk ass drive by. We gonna get out this car and light these crabs up. Ain't no mercy either. They killed Skinny D while he was using the bathroom at school. Now they gonna pay.”

Jamaal clicked the safety off on his semi-automatic 9MM. He wiped sweaty hands on his pants. This was gonna be his first blood, but let 'em all die, he thought. Kid killers didn't deserve to live.

Terrell rolled the car quietly up to a house a few down from where the Crips stood smoking and listening to loud music.

“This is it, boys, let's get these fools!”

They flung the doors open and ran toward their hated enemies. The three gangbangers started firing. Wild's MAC-11 was a .380 caliber fully automatic weapon and it sprayed death at the people standing in the next yard. Jamaal popped off shot after shot. The bang of the shotgun sitting in Terrell's hands thundered into the dark.

People screamed as bullets sliced through their chests and heads. Bodies fell to the ground lifeless, amidst growing pools of blood. Jamaal saw a little girl come running out of the front door of the house.

“Hey, fools, stop firing! Stop firing!” He screamed.

Wild and Terrell kept advancing, putting bullets into everything that moved.

“Stop firing! You guys gonna...” He stopped short as the little girl was gunned down.

Everything stopped. The guns went silent.

Terrell smiled wide in the moonlight and patted Jamaal on the back.

“Let's get back in the car, dog.” He motioned to Wild. “Let's go, man.”

They turned and started running back to the car.

Jamaal stood staring at the carnage.

Terrell stopped and turned to look at Jamaal who had started running toward the house.

“Hey, J Little, don't be stupid.” He shouted. “We gotta roll before the black and whites show up.”

Jamaal sprinted to the little girl. She had bullet holes in her chest and in her thigh, but she was still breathing. Her eye's were still open.

“Help me please.” She whispered.

Terrell called out again. “Last chance to get in this car, dog. Otherwise, we're rolling without you.”

“Go, man. She needs help.” Jamaal shouted back.

“You is being dumb, dog. We rolling.”

Terrell and Wild hopped into the Acura and peeled out down the road.

Jamaal took out his cell phone and dialed 911.

“Dispatch. What is your emergency?”

“A little girl is hurt. She was shot.”

“What is the address, sir?”

Jamaal looked at the house numbers.

“436 West Cherry Street,” He answered. “Get help fast.” He hung up.

The little girl looked up at Jamaal.

“Are you an angel?” She asked in a quiet voice.

Jamaal's eyes filled with tears.

“Hang on baby girl.” He said, stroking her hair. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

People were walking out of their homes. Pointing at the scene.

Sirens screamed in the distance.

Jamaal sat there in his red clothing, stroking her hair.

A man in blue ran toward Jamaal, gripping a baseball bat.

The three o'clock moon was heading for bed, vapor was oozing from the New York City sewer gratings, and Johnny Vitrioni was in trouble. He'd always known that the basement entrance to Charlie's club was not a strategically ideal place to be if the hammer was coming down. In the past, when he was the one swinging the hammer, life rapidly became very miserable for anyone unfortunate enough to be caught on the grimy steps between Charlie's locked door and Johnny Vitrioni's crowbar. Right now, Johnny was the one on the steps, and three goons with baseball bats had appeared at the top the moment he had let the self-locking door click shut. The hammer was coming down hard, and Johnny was pretty sure he knew why.
---
Two weeks prior, Johnny had been quietly watching the game and nursing a whiskey at the bar while Charlie held court at the no-limit poker table. Only a couple of regulars were there that night, and the game was being dominated by a newcomer. Johnny didn't know who this McFarland guy was, but he evidently had good connections- you couldn't just walk off the street into Charlie's poker club. Charlie didn't advertise for obvious reasons, and if you were the kind of player who knew about his place, you had to be the kind of player who could bank thirty grand for the buy-in if you wanted to sit at the no-limit table. There were few enough of the first kind; the second kind was a breed so scarce that Johnny had a couple of fingers left over when he counted them up.

The Mets were down by three and batting in the top of the seventh when Johnny heard the unmistakable sound of a hand violently scattering a tableful of high number poker chips followed by Charlie cussing up a storm. That sort of thing was usually a signal to Johnny that his services were required, and he looked up to see Charlie and the new kid McFarland both standing up and exchanging New York pleasantries with a ferocity that threatened to turn the green table surface blue. Cards and chips were everywhere, and McFarland chose that moment to emphasize his point by picking up a handful of thousands and hurling them at Charlie.

The house typically doesn't appreciate patrons who throw chips, and a sign posted over the bar announces that any chips that end up on the floor are automatically forfeit. What the sign doesn't say is that patrons who throw chips are in danger of forfeiting much more than their bankroll. Johnny's crowbar caught McFarland in a line that extended from his right ear to his left shoulder. Iron and flesh came together with a sharp crack and flesh gave way. Johnny's steel-toed boots joined the party and went to work on McFarland's ribs. When he woke up three days later, McFarland had two hundred seventeen separate pieces of bone in his body- rather uncomfortably more than the usual two hundred six.

The day after the beating, Charlie had a quiet word with Johnny.

"Turns out McFarland is Patrick O'Reilly's nephew. You took out the wrong guy for the right reason, and O'Reilly won't take kindly to getting the hospital bill. Watch your back."
---
One of the thugs was on his way down the steps with a dumb grin on his face that suggested violence was the only thing he knew anything about. The goon hefted his bat, and Johnny realized that if O'Reilly really wanted him taken care of, the gunfire would have started by now. Johnny figured that left him one way to get out of the basement stairwell in one piece. The goon didn't see the .45 come out from under Johnny's jacket and crumpled down the steps with two bullets in his chest and a look of blank surprise on his face. The other two heard the shots that signalled their late colleague's demise, and by the time the goon's body crunched against Charlie's door they had dropped their bats and were on their way out the alley. Johnny let them go; O'Reilly needed to know what was coming to him.
---
Two hours later, Johnny Vitrioni was sitting in a car across the street from O'Reilly's palatial estate. McFarland may have been the wrong guy, but his beating had been strictly business, and he'd had it coming. By going after Johnny, O'Reilly had made it personal. Johnny didn't handle personal very well. O'Reilly was almost certainly the wrong guy too, but the way Johnny figured it, it was going to take two wrong guys to make life right again. Johnny loaded a full magazine into his gun and pulled the slide back to chamber a round. He got out of the car and walked purposefully across the street. The hammer was about to come down.

Michael reached over and turned the radio up a little louder. He knew Ms. Furgeson next door would be giving him an evil eye through the wall before reaching over and turning up her T.V. a little louder. He enjoyed the music, but it was really to cover up the yapping of Ms. Furgeson’s precious “Bootsie”. The landlord wouldn’t ask Michael to turn down his radio any more than he would try to get that dog to stop barking.

Grabbing a slice of pizza, the cheese oozed from it as he pulled it away, leaving a trail running across the desk and onto his shirt. The one on the desk would blend in with the other residue that had been so “carefully” aged from previous pizzas. The stains on the shirt would never be seen around the punk slogans and sayings that populated the material. At least not with any more disgust than the punk slogans got anyway.

The computer silently hummed as the program continued to decrypt the bank’s fire wall access, trying dozens of combinations every second, and alternating IPs every three guesses to keep the trail cold. A deep, evil laugh would play when a connection was established, but he couldn’t resist keeping an eye on it anyway. If sniffers were detected, he would need to bail out quick, although his own security should prevent them from finding him, instead sending the FBI to “Alfred Newsome” over in the Southern part of the country somewhere.

Turning in his chair, he moved to one of the other computers on the network. This one was linked to an online first-person shooter. While he wasn’t an actual admin for this particular server or game, his modified code allowed him complete God-Like access to everything. He jumped back into the game and fragged a few dozen people. Getting bored, he switched to ghost mode and began to explore the game. Finding a few campers, he used a few of his own “special” admin powers to kick them off the system. Their screens would read “PREPARE TO DIE CAMPER! YOU ARE IN A 30 MINUTE TIME OUT!” before their system would crash. It was good to be an “illegitimate” king.

Suddenly the evil laugh sounded behind him. Turning back to the now hacked bank connection, he began to fire up all of his normal tools: Traffic trackers, password sniffers and trail erasers. He also added a few back doors for easier use later, instead of having to rehack it.

It was amazing to him how some people only cared about money. It was obvious from the number of transactions they had in a single day. Suddenly some of the numbers he was looking at changed. He considered that rather odd for two o’clock in the morning, especially for such a large withdrawal. The traffic tracker in the corner was showing some odd spikes accessing the account. Clicking on a few of the options, Michael began to sleuth out where the traffic was coming from. Amazingly enough, the IP numbers kept changing. He grinned to himself. Another “illegitimate” was in the system, and transferring funds.

It made Michael mad to see such pure greed and theft. He began to attach tracers to the connection, randomly pushing small programs that would auto-install and open the gates wider. He watched as the programs began to send back information about the attacking system including the type of box, what software was being used and a history log of everything it was doing. Michael kept a close eye on what they were currently doing though, but didn’t see their patterns change any meaning they didn’t know he was on to them. Sighing at the lack of challenge, he triggered his Armageddon program. He wished he could see them freaking out right now watching their system die, especially with the nice personal messages from Michael himself, basically thumbing his nose at them. The last act of the program before deleting itself with the rest of the hard drive was to e-mail the authorities complete logs, which should be happening now. Michael then carefully transferred all of the funds back where they were in the first place. It WAS good to be an “illegitimate” king.

He thought about notifying the bank itself about the intrusion, but they would just get mad at him for hacking them in the first place. They would never understand the difference between a hacker and cracker, that a hacker only looks, but doesn’t damage anything. It’s the crackers that are bad, not vigilante hackers like him. He went ahead and used some obscure CIA code to freeze the bank manager’s account for the next day. At least that would deliver a small message.

Finally getting tired of looking at everyone’s personal data, and not really finding anything noteworthy, he turned back to the online game and fragged a few more people, both in the game and as an admin. “Bootsie” started barking again. He wished he could frag that dog too. Instead, he reached out and cranked the radio some more.

We were three years into the Great Depression and I was working at the local auto factory, whenever I could. Every day I would get up before dawn, get dressed, kiss my wife good-bye, and head down to the factory. Anybody willing to work would line up at the fence, waiting to be called. Around 6:30, one of the foremen would come out and pick the workers for the day. The foreman’s relatives were sure to have work. The rest of us – well, we just waited and hoped. One day of work was better than one day in the bread line.

Working at the factory was hard work, but it was the only job around. Unfortunately, the owner knew it, and he made us pay dearly for the privilege. Each of us made a generous wage of $1 per day, and he was determined to get his money’s worth. Once you were on the line, you were there for the next twelve hours. If you couldn’t handle it – well, more than once I saw a man carried from the factory floor and dumped outside the gate, replaced by a healthy worker who could keep up the pace.

To be honest, I felt sorry for the guys who couldn’t cut it. I knew how hard it was to go that long without a break. When faced with the choice of feeding your family or leaving to empty your bladder, which one do you choose? For every worker chosen, four more stood at the fence, waiting for you to crack.

So when the word “union” started to be whispered along the line, I paid attention. It was a powerful idea, but a dangerous one. When I heard about a secret meeting, I knew I had to attend.

The meeting was held in the basement of one of the men’s home. Only six of us showed up. We all knew that if the owner found out, we could expect swift and brutal retaliation. But the promise it held – job security, fair pay, safer working conditions – outweighed the fear.

The next day, all six of us were back at the fence, hoping to be called. Again, one of the foremen came out to pick the crew. Strangely, all six of us were chosen for the line.

I was working the wheel station when I heard a buzz of voices. Looking up, I saw the owner making his way down the line with one of the foremen. Never a pleasant man, today he looked angry and vindictive. Could he have found out about our meeting?

He stopped when he got to my station.

“Wilson,” he said.

I just stared at him.

“I understand you want to be,” he paused and spit at my feet, “a union man.” He made it sound like I wanted to become the next Stalin.

I stayed silent.

“Let me show you how we treat union men,” he said.

He grabbed a thick piece of wood off the floor and handed it to the foreman.

“Teach him a lesson,” he said.

The first blow knocked me to the floor. I struggled to catch my breath, thinking of the day’s pay I was about to lose. I waited for the next strike, but it didn’t come.

“What are you waiting for?” the owner asked. “I’ll tell you when he’s had enough.”

The blows started to fall hard and fast. After the first five, I started to wonder if my wife would recognize me when I got home. A few more, and I wondered if I would ever see her again.

Then, when I thought that I couldn’t take any more, a strange thing happened. The foreman leaned a little closer to me, and I could see his lips moving.

“Curl up and groan a lot,” I heard him whisper.

I pulled my legs tight to my chest and started to groan. I heard the board move viciously through the air and heard it smash into soft flesh – but I barely felt anything. I groaned a little louder and looked at the foreman.

He had turned his back to the owner, and was preparing to deliver another blow. I watched as the board descended towards me. Just before it hit, I saw him move his hand underneath it, taking the brunt of the force.

Again and again the board descended, and again and again his hand softened the blow. I watched as his hand became covered with blood – his blood, not mine.

After what seemed like an eternity, the owner stopped the beating. I couldn’t walk, so he had the foreman and two others carry me to the gate. There, they dumped me in the dirt, with a warning to the others about what happens to union men.

I couldn’t walk for two weeks after that. The beatings in the factory continued, as the owner struggled against the people. The foremen, never well liked, became hated minions, trading their souls for a regular paycheck.

But I could never forget the day that, just once, a soul fought back.

He usually didn’t pull this kind of maneuver. It was 2 hours before the end of his shift on Q-day, however, and thus there was a certain necessity for this kind of technique. Nestled back in a weeded roadside, just meters back from a four-way stop, Officer Barston feverishly checked the license plate number of every passing car, praying for a hit.

A black Lincoln Navigator rolled in fast and then slammed on the brake as the driver spotted him. It did a full stop and sat an extra moment at the line for good measure, just to make sure Barston noted it was a full stop and not a “California Stop” or anything of that nature. Barston checked the license number. No dice.

A red Datsun with rust eating away at the rear quarter-panel and practically disintegrating the bumper slowed in with brakes that screamed. Barston had high hopes for this one. The Captain had him on warning from two months before. He hadn’t been filling his quota for moving violations. Ever since he’d joined the force, Barston had turned in the lowest number of citations on a steady basis, and he was starting to get serious flak from it from not just the administration but his fellow officers.

The Datsun was no good to him. No suspensions, no history. . . according to the computer the only thing the driver was guilty of was driving a hideous car.

“Damn it!” He was tempted to flip on the cherries and pull it over anyway. He could stretch that rusted out bumper into a violation if he really tried. As he considered it, though, the Datsun turned a corner and was out of sight.

In the next half hour he nailed a distracted elderly woman in a 1992 Park Avenue for rolling through the intersection instead of doing a full stop. It was difficult for him to write the ticket. She kept talking about her fixed income and looking up at him with sunken, pitiful eyes and a begging expression. He had to remind himself not to have mercy. Mercy was what was killing him in this job. He had to be a success at this. He had to be heartless. Just one more violation.

A blue Ford F-150 pulled up. Nothing on him. Then a Citation with a cracked right mirror. . . but the rear-view was intact and so there was no rightful offense. The cavern in Barston’s gut grew exponentially with a void of uncertainty and anxiety. He started visualizing the look of his Captain’s face, the way his name would look on the lounge bulletin board. He could hear the snickers in the locker room already. He considered what it would be like going back to the produce department at the supermarket and shuddered.

The unmistakable rumbling approach of a outdated muffler washed a sense of relief over him. Officer Barston would stay a cop for at least another month.