If it was morphine, or something like, he’d die shitfaced and weightless.
Be prepared, our fathers had taught us.
Outside, in the middle of Meyer, one of the Humvees was a burning shell. The blast had blown the wheels off, which meant it had come from underneath. There was a hole in the asphalt under the truck. Someone had moved through the crawl space under the Auditorium Building and blown the shit out of the Guard. The smoke looked like a hydra, streaming out from under the Humvee in cohesive pillars. It smelled like smoke and sulfur. The brimstone from the underground sewer.
Demolitions cooks were usually Secondary Party Members. Somebody had cooked the shit out of something before they stuck it under that Humvee.
I thought about Four, staring at the mirror, dark snakes in the darkness. We had given her a black mask, and she wore black paint, like us.
If the kid on the floor had been wearing a mask, the glass had torn it away.
A different Humvee, farther up Meyer, opened fire on the Auditorium Building. There was a Guard in a riot mask firing the .50-caliber machine gun from the top of the truck’s frame.
I saw two other Guards standing behind the Humvee, loading a rocket-propelled grenade launcher—an RPG, which was the same acronym we used for “role-playing game.” For D&D.
I stepped away from the kid.
• • •
They’d retreated to the store’s office, on my orders.
“We’re going to need the assault Humvee,” I told Levi.
“Why?”
I looked at him. I thought about that image on the Wailing Wall. It couldn’t have been real. I had nothing to worry about.
But if it wasn’t, what else hadn’t been real?
There would be nothing more from Fat Chance. White would never be Hope again. The Last Man was fucked from the get-go. After all, last implies the slow and eventual removal. Of everybody. Otherwise, he’d just be called “The Man.”
If it was real, then it wasn’t going to go that way. Not if I could get that Humvee. Not if I had that .50-cal, and that RPG, and those nerve agents. If I had them, I could make them burn—anybody who wanted to make that message real.
“No questions. Not in Party.”
He remembered. Nodded.
“What’s the complement?” he asked.
I told him.
“Armament?”
I told him.
I looked down. “Who’s this corpse?”
In the back of the office, there were others, still alive. Mary was on her knees, writing something down—something one of them was saying. There were about ten of them. They looked scared. They were looking at Mary. At White Mary. At a new Hope.
Four was kneeling against the other wall, whispering into one’s ear. A girl. She had her hands on the girl’s shoulders. The girl was nodding.
“The corpse took a forty-four blast to the spine,” Levi said, “from the one with Four.”
I looked at Four’s girl.
“The corpse made a go at Mary when she stepped in to secure the room. The girl with the forty-four over there knew what the corpse was up to. Perfect angle. Knew the Plan. Overtake the Outsiders, I’m guessing.”
“Didn’t seem to like the idea,” I said.
I looked again at Mary. She had untied her mask. Four had painted her entire face and neck white before we left. She looked porcelain, a doll. The virgin queen.
I smirked. “Four’s girl saw a pure, white Mary step into the darkness.”
“White Mary.”
“She liked that Plan better.”
“They’re one Party, but different Groups.”
“What?”
Levi turned back to look at them. “It was a coordinated operation—some of the best cooks around, sent to task by their Leaders.”
Organized Salvage?
“The hell?”
“They aren’t Primary. Were only here to wait on their escort out.”
Jesus. The kid with the syringe had been their sentry.
“Leaders wouldn’t risk them running around town on their own.”
“Where’s the escort?” I asked.
“An hour late.”
I turned to leave. “Line them up.”
“Where are you going?”
“Stop asking questions.”
• • •
Mary was standing next to me. They’d lined them up.
“Did you get the last line of White’s story? From one of them?”
“Yes.”
“Read it.”
Last made his goggles with cobalt-blue Depression bottles. He filed the shattered bases smooth and wore them with wire. He printed a trowel inside the shanty …
Mary looked at me. That was where it had cut off—where our version of the story had originally ended.
“Read the rest.”
… and ground his spare glass into the earth.
The water it made gave him the mud. Last worked in the sun. Last made bricks to build walls for his dead.
“How many Groups are you?” I asked the line. Eight male, two female—
I was fifteen the first time I created a secret society. With Chuck and Adam. We created a knighthood.
—Mary looked at me. I nodded.
“This isn’t an interrogation,” she said.
“We don’t want your Groups’ intel. Just the details of this operation.”
By-laws. Codes of conduct. An entire philosophy for secret life. Salvage had rites and contests and ways for determining Leadership.
“Six,” Four’s girl said.
Six. Christ.
“Who’s Party Leader, then?” I asked.
A couple of them looked at each other. Most were looking at Mary.
“Gong,” one said. “The sentry by the Meyer door.”
“Dead,” I told them.
“We had a rendezvous point here, in the bookstore,” Four’s girl said. “It was planned once White’s last broadcast came through.”
She looked down at her hands. “They were going to get us out. Take us back”—
In our knighthood, we wore key rings on chains around our necks. A circle, our symbol. We wore them at all times. I wore mine that summer, on an exchange trip. Italy, Austria, Hungary. Trying to live with honor in foreign countries.
—“What happened?”
“We don’t know.”
“You’re cooks,” I said. “All of you?”
“Yes”—
In the order, in the knighthood, we had new names. Titles and epithets. Designations of rank.
—“You cooked the trap under the Humvee?”
“Yes.”
“But your Leaders wouldn’t let you detonate it.”
“Too much risk, they said,” one of the males said. “Even running like fuck, through the service tunnels under the road.”
“Your escort is probably up to its ass in artillery, on campus.”
“You can’t stay here,” Mary said.
“Are you staying with your families?” Four asked.
“Don’t ask about their families.”
“Ishmael was supposed to come,” Four’s girl said.
I looked at Levi.
• • •
“Mary, talk to them. Find out.”
I signaled Levi: Make the offer.
I walked away. To do Something Important, as far as they were concerned.
I came back.
“Dietary restrictions?” I asked Mary.
“No.”
“Medical?”
“No.”
One of the cooks had worked the grenade-launcher mod for his 20-gauge. He had at least ten shells and dowel mounts around his waist, under his belt. But he didn’t have any cocktails. Levi and I had thought about the modification before, but we didn’t have shotguns.
We had plenty of cocktails.
I handed Four a pile of T-shirts, all the same color. Red was all I could find—it was the school color. Levi gave Mary tubes of p
aint from the school spirit section, also red. They were for painting your face—for football games.
The first kid stood still. Rigid.
I pushed the cap off a black marker. I didn’t have any other way of doing this. On his left cheekbone, I drew a wildstyle A and one down-pointing chevron beneath. Mary painted around it. Ruth cut the shirts for their masks. They would look like Imperial Guard, I realized—
When it’s your turn, when it’s you in the Boy Scouts, inducting initiates, giving them the secrets of the Order of the Arrow, you don’t have to keep quiet. It’s your job to listen for discussion. You cut chips in their arrows—the ones the inductees have carved and wear on lariats around their necks—when they speak. You tell them secrets, Indian stories, and make them work.
—I went down the line.
“Your first-place is the House of Cards.”
They were well armed. Each of them. Outfitted like Primaries. Probably the best their Groups could give them.
“Our objective is the Humvee firing on the Auditorium Building, and the equipment carried by its Guard. This will be, primarily, an exercise in vigilance.”
They liked being told what to do. They weren’t in the corners anymore. They had White Mary now. A mother and a whore, carrying a gun. It was the hyperbolic Freudian dream, and she was wearing the paint for the role.
“The Group is everything. If Outsiders’ survival interests interfere with the Group’s, then, morally, these Outsiders are natural enemies. They are predators.”
I finished the last one and stepped back. Let Mary and Four work their way down the line.
“You do not have names. You will take new names. For now, until we’ve reached the HOC, you will be referred to as Jacks. You will follow orders. At the HOC, we will give you a new Book.”
I waved Levi forward.
“We will take you to a Place,” he said, “where we will be safe—where we will be strong.”
If I can get the fire from the Humvee.
I looked at him for a long time.
To make them burn.
The thing about wildstyle graffiti is that no one writes it the same way. No one wrote A’S just the way I did, or used chevrons underneath.
But it was my tag on the Wall.
I’d never tagged anything.
So it couldn’t have been real—
We had disbanded the knighthood one year later because we wanted to kill it before we stopped believing it was real.
—“You are not yourselves,” I said. I looked away, toward Mary. I wanted her to cinch this.
“Mary, divide them up. Two Parties. Secure this building.
“Four, get that grenade launcher armed.
“Levi, get some graph paper.”
THE BOOK:
“TWO”
SEC. “I,” SUBSEC. “C,” PROCEDURE “II”
(“THE SECOND PHASE”)
[1] (i) The Second Phase assumes the successful execution of the First. (ii) It assumes the Group has reconvened in toto at the first-place, Party casualties notwithstanding. (iii) If the First Phase is forgone, proceed directly to the Second Phase, the Evacuation.
[2] (i) You may Evacuate by a number of different means.
(a) (i) If one of your Members is a qualified pilot, travel by air; however, be prepared to Forage wheeled vehicles from the areas around your Place after you Arrive—you will need them during later Place operations.
(b) (i) Rely on trains only if you must and only if one of your Members can operate a locomotive. (ii) Trains’ dependence upon their tracks makes them vulnerable.
(c) (i) If you must reach your Place via boat, rely on smaller, faster craft—use several if you can. (ii) When traveling by water, keep other craft at a distance—if they draw near, disable them, either by weapons fire or by the use of incendiary devices. (iii) Risk tolerance approaches zero when traveling via watercraft.
(d) (i) Evacuating by car, truck, or diesel transport is your most likely method. (ii) Take the time to secure fuel. (iii) Do not secure all of your supplies or fuel in one vehicle. (iv) Use at least enough vehicles that if one is compromised, its crew, supplies, and passengers can be adequately transferred to the other vehicles. (v) Off-road-capable trucks are advised. (vi) Where possible, avoid the use of highways and other roads. (vii) Avoid traveling through urban centers at absolutely all cost.
[3] (i) When the terrain requires you to travel by road, organized shipping lane, or established flight path, attempt to keep an Outsider’s vehicle in sight at all times. (ii) You may need to disable this other vehicle in order to Forage parts, should one of yours require repair. (iii) When possible, avoid “roadside” repairs and simply confiscate other vehicles. (iv) Expect resistance.
[4] (i) Your vehicles should not drive so closely together upon the open roads that they would be disabled simultaneously by anti-vehicle fire, roadside bombs, or other devices. (ii) If one vehicle is compromised, the other(s) should travel far enough ahead to double back and safely neutralize the roadside threat before attempting a rescue.
CHAPTER TEN
they took their paint off, Mary and Four. Used some blood from the corpse in the office to distress their shirts. They ran tangentially toward the Humvee, so they wouldn’t surprise the Guard. Mary had her gun tucked under her waistband, up against her ass.
The Guard didn’t shoot the girls when they ran—panicking, yelling, bloodied, and wide-eyed—toward them. For help. For sanctuary. Five of the Jacks were watching from the roof, from the corner nearest the Humvee—Aleph Party. There was definitely another firefight deeper into campus, they reported. Around the bell tower.
Two of the other Jacks were at the far corner, looking the other way down Meyer. We’d given one, the leader, my walkie-talkie. He would coordinate between his Party, Beta, and the last Party, Chi, who were at the other end of the roof, watching over Oak Street. He reported to Levi, whom I put in charge of the operation. To call it off, to redirect as needed. I was the free agent. I wanted it that way, for this. The Jacks would see Mary, their bloodied Mary, take the risk. Get things moving.
They needed to see one of us seal the deal—me or Levi. See us save her and take what we needed. She was their Mary, had been so from that first white moment, bringing light to the darkness in the office, where they had been abandoned.
One of the Guards, the one with the nerve-agent cannon, sent two canisters at the Auditorium Building, their basso grunts like hooting owls as their ejecta smokestreamed toward the building. As I’d thought, the agent clouds were cohesive. They vented up into the opened windows, before the wind dispersed them, on the second and third floors, through which Salvage was firing. The break in the firefight bought the Guard a minute to address the girls.
Aleph Party, on Levi’s command, fired the grenade launcher over the Humvee toward the building, between the Guard and Salvage, to divert their attention.
We had to hurry. There might have been another demolitions squad worming through the underground. The Jacks had made enough for several vehicles, but they didn’t know how much would be used. If there was another squad, they’d blow a new hole in the road, taking people down into the darkness to live dead forever with flowers that wouldn’t die. Zunis and Greeks and kids from Slade, trading all the final answers with the oracle. Giving them back, maybe, at Delphi. Asynchronously. Offering answers from the future, when things Collapsed, to the classical ancients waiting patiently to be as intelligent as we were, at twelve years old, in our seventh-grade classroom, reading Mythology and Native Americans.
The answers hadn’t made sense to the ancients because they’d been for us, in the future. They just built meaning from the abstracta. It was a trick psychics used.
Mary was ready. She got the jump. She shot one Guard through the back of the neck when he turned around to flinch at Aleph Party’s exploding cocktail. When he turned around to help other people at all times.
If I could, I would have just made them the offer. To give us what we
want, or die. But they would have just killed us. We could … take no chances….
Four grabbed the other Guard’s gun, the one who loaded the RPG and the nerve-agent cannon, just so he couldn’t use it. She wasn’t hurting him, which was Secondary.
The driver slid out of his cockpit, taking a moment to help while Salvage battled the gas in the building. When he turned to shoot Four, to shoot Mary, I ran through the burning-Humvee-smoke-hydra. I emerged from underground, wearing goggles and a respirator from the art section in the bookstore. I wore all-black, was painted black, to be part of the smoke, the power-outage darkness. I was not myself in the tall grass outside the fort.
On the roof, everyone had become Primary. The Jacks opened fire on the gunner in the back of the Humvee. I opened fire on the driver. When Four let go, Mary opened fire on the other Guard. We all brought fire, unbound. Prometheus, every one.
It was a tight fit, the four of us and one Jack in the Humvee. The other Jacks had trucks in the parking lot on the Oak Street side of the bookstore. They had shells over the beds. They had a half-assed mobile lab, which they had used to finish priming the explosives once they were on site.
They looked too young for this. Eighteen, tops.
“Did you have another rendezvous point? A Place for falling back?” I asked our Jack. “Where your Primaries would have gone when they split?”
“No,” he said, flushed and breathing firm. Safe and confident in here with us. “It was just back to our Place. Our Group’s Place. It was agreed on by the Leaders.”
We were going to need the rest of their equipment, their full labs. Their Primaries were probably just as young as these.
I drove the Humvee away from the Auditorium Building, up Meyer. It made sense. Now Salvage could come together in the heart of campus, to do away with whoever, whatever, had killed White’s last words. But not us. We had the last words, were strong now. I wouldn’t throw resources away on a fight that didn’t even need us.
Now, with the Humvee, I had what I needed to make sure it didn’t become real. We were strong now. No one would end up alone. It was just more noise.
Noise Page 9
