by Sean Platt
Someone else started their engine, apparently inspired. Another crash. Another surge of angry retribution.
They had minutes. Seconds, maybe.
It was going to erupt. Very, very soon.
“Raj!” Meyer shouted. “You can’t do anything!”
The woman had stopped screaming, and could very well be dead. She might have been nearly cut in half by the collision, or stomped to death by the hands converging on the troublemaker. But the freeway’s motion wasn’t all altruistic. More engines were starting. More people were now trying to smash their way out, hoping to break clear and outrun the crowd’s ire by storming down the berm. Each time they did, people turned toward them, now instructed by the group mind as to a defector’s appropriate fate. And while some tried to run and others taught them bloody lessons, a third group began to creep around abandoned vehicles, toward trunks left open after weapons had been grabbed.
Looters. Opportunists. Apparently, not everyone felt they had enough after all.
Raj threw Meyer a final angry look, then sprinted into the crowd, headed for the epicenter. Meyer’s eyes met Lila’s. He dragged his two prisoners forward. He could see brainwashing taking hold in Lila’s brown eyes. She watched Raj depart. She watched her father.
Then she ran after Raj.
“Shit! Lila, get back here!”
But she couldn’t hear. A gun fired. It must have been to the right, because Meyer watched a bubble form as people scooted backward. But the bubble lasted only a moment before the bubble became a huddle. There was another shot before the pile formed, but then the crowd piled on, and if Meyer had to guess, he’d assume the shooter no longer held his weapon.
New movement in the line of cars had compressed the gaps to nothing in places, opening wide spots elsewhere. Lila was climbing over hoods, chasing Raj, who was far more nimble. She seemed to be shouting his name, but Raj either couldn’t hear or wouldn’t listen.
Meyer rushed forward, leaped over a hood, and nearly managed to get Lila by the back of the shirt. If he could grab her, he’d treat her like cargo, drag her back, kicking and screaming. He’d force them all away, and Raj could fend for his motherfucking self.
But he missed. She squirmed past.
Trevor was yelling from behind. Piper was behind him, her hands on his shoulders. Both had flinched to follow, but Meyer shouted and gestured for them to stay back, to stay far back.
The crowd surged like a monster. Meyer could feel the ebb and flow, its collective lack of intelligence like a swarm waiting for something to sting. Ripples had spread as far as he could see, and now nobody was really just standing around.
Some were stealing what they could.
Some were defending what they had.
Some were desperate for escape.
And some — perhaps obeying some deep-seated instinct of forced conformity — were chasing down the runners, taking them to the ground.
Nobody was just a mom or a dad anymore.
Nobody was just an office drone or an employee of the gas company.
Now they were fingers under the control of some collective beast.
“Lila!”
Her head twitched, but she surged forward. Ahead, Meyer saw Raj trip as he tried to cross a stopped car and fall. He’d be trampled. If he was, so be it. For Meyer, it was good news in a twisted way. She’d stop after reaching Raj.
Another gunshot.
Another broken window.
A small woman, perhaps in her late fifties, ran past with a flat of bottled water. She tripped. A moment later, two other women were over her, kicking and grabbing for bottles.
“Lila! Goddammit, forget him! We have to get out of here!”
Meyer had studied riot behavior, and knew he was doing exactly the wrong thing. You didn’t run toward the center. You didn’t go against the flow. You didn’t move more quickly than you had to. You were supposed to keep your head down, keep your emotions under control, and move steadily toward the surge until you could slip away. But he wouldn’t leave without Lila.
Something grabbed Meyer’s shoulder. He turned to see a man with three days’ stubble, a duffel over his shoulder. In one hand, he had Meyer. In the other, he had a knife. It looked like a kitchen knife, nothing meant for fighting.
Meyer didn’t hesitate. In a situation like this, logic and emotion were awful ideas. He didn’t look into the man’s soul and wonder if he was a good person who always donated generously to the local orphanage. He didn’t try to reason. The man was holding the knife as he probably always had: in preparation for cutting a steak. Meyer, however, had trained.
He grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted hard, then used his free hand to punch the man hard in the gut — the place that would incapacitate him most completely but do the least damage to Meyer’s hands, which he anticipated needing in the days ahead.
The man fell. Meyer plucked the knife from his hand and planted it in the side of a man approaching from the other side, wielding a pipe overhead.
He climbed over the last car between him and where Raj had fallen. But he didn’t have to leap the last vehicle; a brown streak was racing toward him. Meyer raised the knife again, its tip red, but the streak was Raj.
He didn’t seem to see Meyer. But he did have Lila by the hand.
“Raj!”
Raj scrambled. Climbed. Meyer climbed at him. Into another flow. Panicked. Not being invisible; not obeying the rules of a riot.
“Raj! Lila!”
Lila turned. She punched Raj’s arm, and for a moment he looked like he might keep pulling forward, ripping it off as he dragged her behind.
Then he stopped, chaos erupting around them.
“Keep your goddamned head down,” Meyer hissed. “Move with them, not against them. Don’t make eye contact. And don’t fucking run. You’ll make yourself a target.”
Raj nodded slowly. They followed the crowd like a river. Then, with an exhale of relief, they found themselves free, to the side of the road, safe to dart back through the noise barrier as soon as they found Trevor and Piper.
“Dad!”
Meyer looked up to see Trevor running at them. His eyes flicked to Raj, who was dirty and smudged with what might have been someone else’s blood, and at Lila, who seemed knocked about but unhurt.
Meyer swept Trevor forward, shepherding the three of them like sheep that might yet flee.
“Get back.” He pointed. “That way. Stop once you’re outside the wall, Understood?” Meyer stared into each of their eyes in turn, forcing them to acknowledge and nod. They were mere feet from the line of cars. So far, they weren’t interesting to the crowd. But that would change.
“Okay,” said Trevor.
“Where’s your stepmother?” Meyer’s eyes scanned the berm, the short grassy hill rising from the gravel’s surface, and finally the wall behind which Piper must have hidden.
A horrified look crossed Trevor’s face. He glanced into the growing riot.
“She went in after you,” he said.
CHAPTER 19
Day Three, Late Afternoon
Outside Chicago
Piper kept her arms close to her body, huddled tight around her core, trying to present a small and innocuous target. The surrounding crowd, in the two minutes or so she’d spent in its center, had grown into something alien and ugly. She’d listened to Meyer’s diatribes about human nature, rolling her eyes in a way he claimed to find charming. But now she believed every word.
Civilization was a slippery slope, built on a fragile consensus.
Everyone on the highway had behaved for as long as they thought everyone else was doing the same. No threat meant no need for defense. With everyone so obedient, there had been no need to question whether enough was enough. Society would continue. There would always be stores full of food and Starbucks with overpriced coffee.
But the bubble had popped. The first person had disobeyed, and one by one those around them had realized their security was thin gauze atop a gushing
cut.
A man came at Piper. She thought he might hit her, but he was only trying to pass. She turned to watch him, thinking that might have been the direction where Meyer and Lila had fled. But the man tripped in his rush and fell forward, racking his face on a car’s bumper. He didn’t miss a beat; he hadn’t fallen completely down and when he resumed running Piper thought he must not have struck the bumper after all. But then he turned to look back, his eyes vacant, and she saw that his mouth was a mask of blood, teeth black in his maw, tilted inward as if punched that way.
Her heart was beating like a hummingbird’s. She looked around, afraid to move, waiting for Meyer and Lila to show of their own accord. She didn’t see them, then stepped forward again and found the object the running man had tripped over: an old man, his white hair painted red, reclining in a small puddle of blood.
She resisted the urge to scream.
Stay calm. You have to stay calm, Piper.
But she couldn’t stay calm. Piper hadn’t meant to be a hero; she’d started forward only because she’d seen Meyer almost snatch Lila by the back of her blouse. He’d had her for a fraction of a second, and in that fraction Piper had meant to move forward and help, to grab her from another angle, to haul her back.
But then someone hit her from behind as they passed. She’d moved away, then moved away again as the crowd surged in a different direction. Behind Meyer, an opening formed, and she followed, feeling it safer to stay with him than attempt to cross the newly formed river of rioters to her rear. Piper thought he knew she was there, figured they’d stay together or at least fall together. But moments later, that proved untrue. She screamed for him to wait, but a wash of looters surged between them. Once they were through, Meyer was gone.
She’d turned, looking for the best way out. That had been a mistake.
She’d rotated back to front, and lost her orientation. She hadn’t noted the cars around her and had no landmarks. There were too many people, and Piper wasn’t tall enough to see above them.
Get up high.
But how?
The cars. Stand on one of the cars.
Piper clambered onto the trunk of a Chevy Delirium, pausing to let a family squeeze by.
Piper put one foot on the bumper, heaving upward, suddenly very aware of her own presence. She was a small woman, twenty-nine years old, not angry or even confrontational by nature. What if the other rioters noticed her, and saw that she didn’t belong?
The thought was bizarre enough to be funny. Nobody here belonged. There was a fat man in a cardigan to one side. A group of teens wearing concert tour shirts to the other. Screaming men and women who looked like accountants, clerks, out-of-shape office workers.
Her breath short, fighting panic, Piper climbed. She was above the crowd for less than two seconds before her ankles were grabbed. There was a yank, and she fell hard, landing mostly on her ass, feeling her teeth rattle.
“You’re on my car,” said the man who’d tugged her down. He looked as mild mannered as they came, wearing a light-blue shirt and a tie with cartoon dinosaurs, as if this were just another quirkily dressed day at the office. Piper found herself wondering about him, fascinated in spite of her terror. This morning, the world had awoken knowing ships were arriving from outer space. Had he not heard? Or was this how he dressed every day?
“I … I’m sorry.”
“You can’t ride with me.” His voice was uneven, as if throttling his terror. Behind him somewhere, a shot was fired. He wore small round glasses. His manner was precise, almost polite. This man had knocked her down? It was impossible to believe.
“I was just trying to get a look around.”
She edged back, nodding at him, their discussion over.
He moved forward. “I lost my wife.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know if she’s dead. I mean I lost her.”
This was bizarre. She wanted to flee. She wanted to find Meyer and Lila. She never should have come into the crowd. She’d been up for long enough to know the berm was behind her.
Piper glanced back to see if the way was clear, but when she looked forward again, the man was in front of her.
“You look like her.”
“Who?”
“My wife.”
Looking back. No openings. He took her by the hand, almost tenderly. She snatched it away, and a snarl formed on his face. But then it was gone.
“I can get you out of here,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“Really.”
Piper didn’t reply. She pushed forward, but was rebuked by a man with a bat. He didn’t come after her; he brushed past. Somewhere nearby, a new engine started, then roared.
His hands were back on her, harder. This time she couldn’t shake him off.
“You can ride with me. It’s okay. Come on.” He began to drag her backward.
“No.”
“Come on.” The car she’d stood on was either his or he thought it was. He took one hand off her wrist, then used the other to open the back. It was a smaller model where, in autodrive, the front seats could rotate backward to make a conversation space in the middle. The seats were that way now. Plenty of room for Piper in the middle.
She tried to kick at him. He dodged.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I have room for you. I’ll save you.”
“Let go of me!”
“Shh,” he said. “It will be okay.”
Something large barreled through the space. It hit the man full-on, hard. He fell to the ground under the newcomer, his head rapping hard on the concrete.
“Run!” Meyer shouted.
The man’s hands were flailing, trying to free himself. He landed a strike in Meyer’s crotch — cheap shot, but enough to give him a shoulder off the ground. They rolled. The hands struck at Meyer’s bigger form. Then they came out with something else — something the quiet man had found in the small of Meyer’s back, under his shirt.
The gun.
Meyer didn’t slow while the man raised the weapon, fingers fumbling in a knowing way at a switch Piper assumed was the safety. He raised an elbow and planted it hard in the man’s neck. The pistol skittered toward Piper. She picked it up — safety off and loaded, if she’d understood Meyer’s earlier instructions to Heather.
She remembered something else he’d said and racked the slide, moving a bullet into the chamber.
The man had moved atop Meyer, his forearm across Meyer’s throat, squeezing.
Piper got to her feet. She held the pistol forward with both hands.
“Get off him!”
Meyer kicked, moving the man’s forearm off his throat.
The man with the tie seemed to notice something he hadn’t seen before and reached for it: broken glass — from a bottle or something, not a car window. He snatched it and swiped at Meyer’s face, nicking the side of his neck, drawing a small red line.
“Shoot him!” Meyer shouted. He pushed with his foot, levered into the man’s chest, and raised him enough to present Piper with a clear target. She’d never fired a weapon and didn’t like them at all, but doubted she could possibly miss.
His arms were long enough to slash, despite his disadvantaged position. He opened a fresh wound on Meyer’s shoulder through his shirt, then barely missed stabbing his eye. The man’s face stayed strangely precise, as if he were trying to thread a needle rather than opening a throat.
“Shoot him, dammit!”
But she couldn’t.
Piper moved forward and kicked him instead. It was a poor strike, distracted by a crashing noise close by. It knocked the pinning hand away for a moment, but the hand was back a second later.
The man’s gravity must have shifted enough to give Meyer what he needed. He rolled his assailant to the side with a heave and slammed him against the car’s open door. Meyer scrambled up, glanced back to see if the man was down enough not to follow, then snatched Piper by the arm and dragged her into the current.
&n
bsp; Thirty seconds later, the fray was behind them. The man in glasses hadn’t followed. They were up the berm and through the gap in the sound wall after another thirty, their backs to the riot, temporarily safe.
Piper looked over, her breath coming in giant gasps.
“How did you find me?”
“I saw you stand up. On the car.”
She wanted to ask other questions, to say more. Instead her vision blurred with surprising tears. He’d found Lila and Raj. He’d retrieved Piper. He’d come back and saved her life. He’d done all he’d promised from the start, and more.
Piper gripped Meyer in a death hug, burying her face in the comforting smell of his shirt, his body, the adrenaline sweat of fear and aggression.
“Something you need to understand, Piper,” he said.
She looked up, her vision still blurred. His handsome face, his hard jaw line, his serious green eyes.
“The rules are different now,” he said. “Any time you hesitate, you fail. Any time you don’t do what you should at this point, someone dies.”
In her mind, she saw the man with the tie and glasses — an ordinary fellow driven to madness. He didn’t seem like he’d normally have hurt a fly, but if not for Meyer’s intervention, he would’ve hurt her plenty.
She hadn’t been able to pull the trigger. To end a life.
Even though he’d have ended hers, and almost ended Meyer’s.
It seemed for a moment as if Meyer would wait for her to agree, but instead he offered them each an echo of his earlier look, following the exit ramp argument. The look that asked if the group agreed to follow his orders, without second-guessing.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Piper looked at the group, somewhere between a second authority and a true follower. Raj had somehow lost his pack. Lila and Trevor had kept theirs, so had she despite all the tussling. But Meyer’s had been split and mostly emptied somewhere along the way.
He looked back once, his eyes repeating the summons.
Then they set off through the rundown neighborhood on the outskirts of Chicago, their supplies half-gone, as the first signs of evening brushed the sky’s light.
