Lynn Coffey (Journalist): You study any pretty democracy, from the ancient Greeks forward, and you'll see that the only way each system functions is with a working class of slaves. Peons to haul the garbage so the upper crust can campaign and vote. Nighttimers had become that—an effective and efficient method to sweep the slave class out of sight.
Forgive me, but after two decades of reporting on local politics, I guess I've earned the right to finally tell the truth. And the truth is, no Nighttimer has ever been elected President.
Officer Romie Mills: Wade Morrison was another story. Age: twenty-four. A born Nighttimer. Middle of one night, he collapsed, just as dead as the Libby victim. Granted, we weren't treating these deaths as homicides per se, not until they began to form a pattern.
Lynn Coffey: It's still segregation, only not by space—the backseat of a bus or the balcony of a movie theater. It's segregation by time. Go ahead, call it a social contract, like speed limits or building codes, but it's still living on the graveyard shift. One clock tick past that curfew, and you'll find out just how equal you are.
The fallback argument is that Nighttimers can always leave an urban area and live in a rural district not subject to the I-SEE-U Act. But that takes money. Plus, the majority of jobs and education opportunities are in cities.
Officer Romie Mills: With the Morrison killing, we had testimony that the victim had been subject to mood swings and aggressive outbursts. In a typical outburst, the deceased had been denied service by a Daytimer after the morning curfew. A key method of curfew enforcement is to levy fines against businesses that serve or sell merchandise to people who prove to be out of their domiciles in violation of their time status. In the case of Wade Morrison, a clerk at a corner grocery asked to see his status card. When Morrison turned out to be a Nighttimer, the daytime clerk refused to sell him cigarettes, and witnesses report Morrison made verbal threats and left the store.
Irene Casey: While all this went on, Buddy's squiring that girl with her lopsided face.
Oh, they had his fingerprints recorded, the government, from when he sent in his application to go be a night person. They knowed every detail they needed to set him up as a patsy. A boy like that, somebody coming from nowhere and nothing, they needed to find themselves a nobody, and that's what happened.
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Among the protest elements of Nighttime culture, my favorite is the faction that seeks to outlaw the sun. They market clothing and bumper stickers emblazoned with their slogans. For example: "Ban the Sun." Or "Moonlight Is Enough Light." Unfortunately, I can see how this might worry the powers that be. The last ordeal this nation needs is a civil war pitting night against day.
Another common bumper sticker says: "Take Back the Day!"
One man's joke can very easily become another's call to arms. Historians speculate that Mein Kampf was created as a rather cunning satire, a parody that the general public interpreted far too literally.
Lynn Coffey: It was Thomas Jefferson who warned us that any nation would always need a frontier as an escape valve or a place to store the perennial tide of lunatics and idiots. That's not anywhere in the official propaganda, but nighttime is the big trash bin for your mental defectives. Your angry loners. Your cripples. Nighttimers get free health care. It's part of the incentive program. The clinics are shitty and crowded, but they're free. The housing is subsidized. The jobs are more likely to be low-skilled, but they offer a wage differential of a couple bucks over the same dead-end job in the daytime. It's no surprise the misfits of society wash up as Nighttimers.
From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: In hindsight, we had no idea of the events taking shape. Naturally, one read about the deaths in the newspaper, but I never gave them a second thought. We were far more concerned about preparing for the next Honeymoon Night, or decorating a Christmas tree for the upcoming Tree Night. An ominous shadow was falling over Rant, and we were debating whether to hang white or multicolor lights on our tree. Pontiac versus Dodge? Pine or spruce?
Officer Romie Mills: The third victim died in the same manner as the first two. An autopsy turned up encephalitis and myelitis of the brain, including Negri bodies in the pyramidal cells of the hippocampus, and Purkinje cells of the cerebellum. The short and sweet version of that is rabies. All three of the victims died of undiagnosed, untreated rabies.
Irene Casey: Buster wrote to us, saying he was so in love and courting somebody. His dad and me, we only prayed it was the girl, not the boy.
Officer Romie Mills: According to the Centers for Disease Control, the most recently diagnosed case of rabies in the area had been a twenty-six-year-old male named Christopher Dunyun.
It was during our preliminary investigation that the fourth victim collapsed and died of previously undiagnosed rabies-related encephalitis. Our fear was that the disease might be spreading exponentially. We could be looking at a hundred or ten thousand people unaware they'd been infected.
Shot Dunyun: It could've been an earthquake that got Rant Casey. Or a fire. Or a bullshit strain of some killer flu.
It's comforting to know, after all the Party Crash accidents I've survived, that, the day I finally meet Death, the two of us will be old, long-lost friends.
Me and Death, separated at birth.
26–In Denial
Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): How weird is this? The last night I go out with Rant Casey, we waste our whole window Mercy Crashing. The more front-end damage your car has, the better you look in Party Crashing. Teams I know, they'll take a sledgehammer to the bumper and front fenders of any new ride, just whale away on their headlights and grille so they won't look like newbies.
The opposite of status is rear-end damage from getting tagged. First, because it marks you as a loser, you've been nailed so many times. Second, because after too much damage nobody bothers to even stalk you. The damage Sharks inflict, they want it to show. Any team looks for something pristine to ram into. You might take half the night to stalk a battered car, but if something with a perfect paint job and a showroom body drives by flying the flag, you'll go for the cherry.
Neddy Nelson (Party Crasher): In Party Crashing, you know what a For Sale Night means? You know the flag is to write big prices painted in white across your windshield and rear window? To keep the flag exclusive, you know you have to always make the price thirteen thousand dollars and fifty cents? Can you imagine the mess if the flag was just any price?
Shot Dunyun: For one Dead Deer Night, we're cruising with our Styrofoam deer tied to the roof and a bullshit Park Avenue charges out of nowhere. It slams into our right headlight, breaks a radiator hose, and our coolant goes down a storm drain. The Park Avenue backs off with nothing but body damage. Even with their windows rolled up, you can hear them laughing. Rant climbs out of our backseat, walks over to the team in the other car. Mr. Money Bags, he leans into the driver's window, and out of his back pocket he pulls a wad of bills. They signed over their pink slip, and took their dead deer home on the bus. We moved our deer to their car, and played the rest of the window in that Park Avenue.