Free The Dark Knight (Apocalypse Weird 2) by Nick Cole Page A

flatly.
    “Yeah, Daddy.  Just playing.”
    Colin is afraid.  Not of the thugs and gangbangers he busts
regularly.  No, he’ll chase them down a blind alley, often leaving his older
partner far behind.  He’s not afraid of them, or guys who beat their wives or
other guys with guns looking to settle a score.  No, Colin is afraid of the
world and how it treats Cory.  He won’t always be there for the kid.  His son. 
He won’t always be there.  He knows that and it frightens him to death.  Every
day.  Every night.
    All good parents know the feeling.
    “Cory?”  Colin bends down.  “I want to teach you how to play
with kids like Bryan.  Kids who want to play too rough.  Would that be okay?”
    “Yeah, Daddy.”
    Before Colin joined the marines, back when he’d been a poor
kid from the poor side of town, he’d been a golden gloves contender.  Not a
champion.  Just a contender.  He’d even boxed in the marines.  From that first
evening of early summer as the world changed despite Colin’s efforts to make it
stay the same safe place it had never been, that whole long summer, he taught
Cory how to “play” when others like Bryan Ratigan wanted to play.
    Cory wasn’t fast.  If you’d taken any kind of marital arts, or
been in enough fights, you could easily beat him.  But if you didn’t watch out,
his left hook became a devastating haymaker, and on occasion, he could land an
uppercut that once knocked Colin out cold.  Lights out.  When Colin awoke,
sitting up in the grass, he thought that day might just be the happiest day of
his life.  Because now he knew Cory could at least defend himself. 
    Now, Cory could do something in all Colin’s darkly imagined
scenarios.  The ones where Cory’s cornered as he walks home to an adult
assisted living facility long after Colin’s been killed in the line of duty by
some drunk driver late one night.  He knows Cory’s life won’t be one where
Colin’s always there.  Colin was still a cop after all.  Carrying a gun.  Going
into every situation where someone else might also be carrying a gun.  But now
Colin knows, hopes, that on that dark night when someone wants to mess with
Cory, that Cory has something he can use to defend himself.
    When Colin thought about his life and the bad breaks he’d had,
he still loved Cory’s mom though she’d been gone for years, he wasn’t mad or
sad or even angry.  When he thought about his life he was just worried.  A
lot.  Cory’s knockout uppercut that day helped Colin not to worry so much.
    Colin was very brave.  All the other cops knew that.  He
took risks out on the streets just to make sure everyone got home safely each
night.  That was a big thing to him, “just get home safely” he’d say, or remind
everyone else to, when he made sergeant.  Watch Commander.  His only worry
until that afternoon when Cory laid him out in the grass with a nice uppercut
into Colin’s jaw, was for Cory.  That someone, that someones, that all the
Bryan Ratigans of the world, might try hurt him one day.
    But now... there was that uppercut.
    He still worried...
    ... but the uppercut helped.

Chapter Eight
     
     
     
     
    “I’m going now, Cory,” said Colin
Morris the night the world began to end.  Sergeant Morris.  Cory sat in front
of the TV.  He was nineteen years old.  Still just a boy, though.  It was three
o’clock in the afternoon.  Cory attended an advanced adult education center in
the mornings and early afternoons.  Then he came home and it was time for
Batman.
    How does a young man, a simple man, come to be so devoted to
the Dark Knight?  It happened when Cory was very young and it started with a
question. 
    Cory had asked a question.
    As his father dressed for work, Cory would often watch from
the floor where he played nearby.  But you see, he really didn’t watch.  I
mean, you never really knew what was going on in Cory’s mind.  Maybe nothing,
is what most people supposed.  A few