The Good Citizen

The Good CitizenA Novel Marc Ross First published in 2023 by Milton Books an imprint of Milton Books Limited Based in the United Kingdom www.miltonpublishing.com Copyright © 2023 Marc Ross / Milton Books Limited The moral rights of the author have been asserted by him All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from both the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and otherwise fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent out, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on any subsequent purchaser ISBN: 978-1-8380665-3-6 (paperback) ISBN: 978-1-8380665-2-9 (ebook) For rights and permissions, contact the publisher at [email protected] Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. — George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four Contents Chapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 14Chapter 15Chapter 16Chapter 17Chapter 18Chapter 19Chapter 20Chapter 21Chapter 22Chapter 23Chapter 24Chapter 25Chapter 26Chapter 27Chapter 28Chapter 29Chapter 30Chapter 31Chapter 32Chapter 33EpilogueA Note from the AuthorAbout the Author Chapter 1 The day had started like any other cold and colorless November morning. But all that changed when the bus pulled in at the next stop. He saw the first gunman come forward from the gloom of the alleyway between the row of houses, the second close behind, their ball caps pulled low about their eyes and their masks pulled high to their mouths as they came alongside the waiting bus like bandits on the prowl. The coal black steel of their snub-nosed revolvers cut an evil shape in the gray dawn murk. He lowered the book he was reading and watched from the back seat through the filthy windows as the gunmen stepped on, pointing their weapons. From the patches of bare skin around their eyes, all he could tell was that one was a white boy, the other black. Both dressed in clothes ill-fitting for their rake-like frames. The white gunman—and the bigger of the two—came on cursing and hollering for the driver to kill the engine as he took aim with his revolver, and the wearied woman sat slanted in the front row with the nameless bulk in her belly screamed at the sight of them. The driver raised a hand, then all eyes turned to see his head rock back on his neck. Sudden. Violent. Without mercy. The report of the gun was short but deafening. The white gunman stood stock-still, the short barrel still leveled at the driver’s forehead as the body tipped forwards against the wheel, the window behind his fresh corpse sprayed with gray matter and gore as it slid down the glass. The gunman turned to face the passengers, his wild eyes darting back and forth between the faces of his focus. “Watch the doors,” he said as his counterpart came behind him, leaving him free to work the floor. The black gunman nodded, following orders as he put his body between the open doors of the bus. Another holler went up somewhere. Then another. But not Alice. She was silent, and yet he watched the tremble of her hand as she closed the cover of the textbook rested on her knees, and the rise and fall of her chest with every quickening breath. He didn’t know her real name. She was a stranger to him and nothing more, but she looked like an Alice and reminded him of a woman he perhaps used to know but could no longer place. She sat alone, her pallid face lost amongst the weight of dark tresses that framed yet darker eyes. She wore a delicate smile and carried the look of a young woman who had yet to find her place in the world. And yet, hidden beneath her homespun manner, lied the certain glimpse of an unembellished beauty whose dark eyes yearned for something more than these simple ways. Alice sat on the row in front of him, just like every other morning, and from where he could watch her read her textbooks before she left him at her usual stop opposite the bank on Main Street, carrying with her the faint smell of honeyed perfume. They had never uttered a word to one another, and yet, for the past two weeks of riding the same bus, he felt like he knew her, or a part of her at least, between the morning smiles of common strangers on his way to his ordinary job in this ordinary town. A strange familiarity between the unfamiliar. His friends called him Jack, but the name on the faded patch on his greased coveralls said Jacob. On any other day, he was a man of no particular proclivities. A man who wore the long, hard miles of life on an otherwise handsome face. A man as forgettable as any other in this godforsaken town. Until today. The white gunman moved down the gangway, past the sitting passengers with their heads turned aside, his revolver trained on the pregnant woman in the front row as he tossed an empty duffel bag beside her swollen feet. “Put whate’er you got in there.” The pregnant woman looked up at him, eyes burning, the buttons on her blouse straining about her midriff as she placed a palm over her bulging belly. “You gonna kill me too?” she said as she spat on his mask. “Sonofabitch.” The gunman held the barrel level with her eyes, unflinching,