by Max Barry
“No!” she screamed. “No! No!” Then she just screamed.
80 Reciprocity
Billy and the coupon girl were cowering in a doorway a few shops down from the McDonald’s. This wasn’t so bad, since he got to snuggle right up close to her, but there were also a lot of bullets flying around. Billy wasn’t so comfortable with that.
“This kind of shit never happens in Colorado,” the coupon girl said. “Never.”
“It doesn’t happen so often in Texas, either.” There were about thirty feet between them and the road, with the US Alliance building rising beyond that. Billy weighed their chances of making that distance without intercepting a bullet. So far he wasn’t confident. The Police were strafing this whole side of the mall with a machine gun, and he didn’t think the coupon girl’s employment history would make any difference.
“This city,” the coupon girl said. “I swear.”
“You know, this is all your fault. Why couldn’t you just say McDonald’s had better burgers?”
She glared at him. “Why should I let them intimidate me? You let people push you around, you spend your life trying to keep everybody happy.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Billy said. “Yeah, you’re right! That’s what’s been happening to me for weeks.”
“I don’t believe anyone could push you around,” the coupon girl said, and her lips curved. Billy smiled back. Then a line of bullets scored the wall a few feet above their heads and the storefront window imploded. Billy shielded the coupon girl from the falling glass. “Thanks,” she said.
He looked up. “We really have to get out of here.”
“No shit,” she said, and then there was a whooshing and the Burger King across the mall exploded. It felt like an earthquake.
“Now!” Billy said. He hauled the coupon girl to her feet. “Come on!”
He took her hand and they ran blindly through the black smoke. The coupon girl stumbled over a piece of rubble and Billy caught her from falling: it was just like a movie. They cleared the smoke and there were NRA soldiers everywhere, but no one was paying any special attention to Billy. Then someone familiar came out of the US Alliance building. Billy stopped in surprise. It was John Nike, the dude who’d ordered him to shoot the Government President in London.
For a second he was tempted to walk up to the guy and slug him. But Billy had other priorities, like getting the hell away, so he started running again. John pulled over a cab and got inside.
He heard a scream, and turned. For a second he didn’t know who the figure stumbling out of the smoke was. Then he realized. It was Jennifer Government.
“Billy! Stop him!”
He looked after John’s cab. It was a bit late for that, he thought. He looked back at Jennifer.
“Please!”
“Aw, shit…” He looked around. “I need a gun.”
“Um…okay.” The coupon girl bent over and picked up a piece of rubble from the gutter. “Here, use this.”
“No, a gun. Something to shoot with.” But the coupon girl was already hurrying to an NRA soldier. Billy looked at the chunk of rubble. It didn’t offer any clues to him.
The coupon girl grabbed the soldier’s shoulders and screamed into his face. “Help me, help me!”
“Hey! Calm down! Miss!”
“Please, please!” She tugged him in a half-circle, so his back was to Billy.
“Oh,” Billy said, understanding. He stepped forward and hit the soldier on the head with the rock. The soldier yelled and clutched his head. Billy grabbed his rifle.
“Geez,” the coupon girl said. “I thought you were never going to get it.”
“Shh,” he said. He spread his feet, balancing himself, and lined up the retreating cab. It was a ridiculous shot, really: the car was already a block and a half away and there were about a million people running in and out of the way. “Just…be quiet.”
She fell silent. Billy inhaled. You had to fire during a slow, controlled exhale: it was when your body was steadiest. You had to squeeze the trigger between your own heartbeats. The world dropped away. He fired.
“Holy shit!” the coupon girl said.
The tire blew: he saw the spray of rubber. The cab veered ninety degrees, was clipped by a delivery van, and rammed into a storefront. Billy lowered the rifle. The girl was staring at him.
“How good are you?”
He looked back for Jennifer, but the smoke had obscured her again. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Yeah, good idea.” She took his hand. “Where to?”
He smiled. “You like skiing?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Why?”
“I live in Aspen,” she said. “Aspen, Colorado. In the winter I work as a ski instructor.” She shifted. “What? It’s not so weird.”
He found his voice. “I…”
“You like skiing?”
“Yes,” Billy said. “I really do.”
“Cool,” she said. “Let’s split.”
81 Fortitude
Today is a great day, Buy thought.
The funny part was that only a month or two ago he’d been ready to kill himself. He was still walking around only because he didn’t know enough about guns to locate the safety on a Colt .45. Everything since then, you could argue, was borrowed time.
I am a great person.
His legs were shaking as he entered the Chadstone Wal-Mart mall, and he felt like he might throw up soon. That was funny, too. He wasn’t scared of dying, not even a little, but the idea of taking the escalator up to level four terrified him. He couldn’t believe that when he got there he wouldn’t see a girl sprawled on the floor in a spreading pool of blood.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
He realized he’d swayed; almost fallen. A girl was looking at him with big, concerned eyes.
Buy turned away. “I’m…fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yes,” he said, and it was a gasp. He couldn’t breathe. He felt her eyes on his back as he pushed through the crowd. The elevators rose before him, a fusion of steel and shopper.
Every obstacle is an opportunity.
He wasn’t expecting to see Violet on this level, and so he stared at her for entire seconds before he realized who he was looking at. Then he started toward her.
She saw him. “Oh-oh,” she said. She produced a gun. Buy almost laughed. “Okay, you just stop there.”
“Gun!” somebody shouted. The shoppers around him scattered. Buy kept walking.
“Hey! I’m not kidding. Look, I’m sorry about your kid and all—hey! Stop! You want me to shoot you?”
“Where is Kate?”
“Stop!” she screamed, and he saw her finger tightening on the trigger. The realization swept through him: if he died, he couldn’t save Kate. He stopped. The gun was two feet away from his chest.
“Violet?” said a young man beside her. Buy thought that was probably Hack Nike. “Come on, put the gun down.” “Shut up! You don’t care about me!” “Where’s Kate?” Buy said again.
“She’s upstairs,” Hack said. “John’s got her. On level four, in the Ni—”
“Shut up!” Violet yelled.
“Violet,” Hack said carefully. “Mall security is probably on the way. Don’t make this worse.”
“I know what you’re all doing. Everyone’s going to get what they want except me! I’m getting screwed over!”
“Nobody’s getting screwed.”
“Please,” Buy said. “I need to find Kate.”
“What’s in it for me?” Violet said.
“Please.”
“I just wanted to be an entrepreneur. I just wanted to sell my software and make a little money. Is that so wrong?”
“Violet, you’re holding a gun!” Hack said. “You kidnapped a child! You want to know why things haven’t worked out for you, start there!”
There was a long pause. Then Violet said, “There is no justice.” Buy realized her intent a second before she did it. H
e started to twist out of the way. Then the bullet kicked him and he was lying on his back, looking at the mall’s fluorescent lights.
There was some screaming, and people’s feet thudding by his head. It seemed like a good idea to lie still, so Buy did that. His bicep was throbbing. He touched it gingerly, and looked at his fingers. They seemed to confirm that he’d been shot.
Hack’s face appeared above him. “Oh, shit, are you all right?”
“I…don’t know,” Buy said.
“Um… I don’t think you are. You better not move. It’s okay, Violet’s gone.”
Buy sat up. It didn’t hurt as much as he’d thought. Maybe he was in shock. “My name is Buy Mitsui. I need you to help me find Kate. She’s Jennifer Government’s daughter.”
“Oh, man…” Hack glanced at Claire. “Look, we really need to get out of here. We’re kind of wanted. I’m sorry.”
“Oh,” Buy said. “Okay.” He tried to get to his feet. Hack helped him.
“I’m really sorry,” Hack said. “It’s just, if Nike catches me…”
Buy’s vision glazed white, but he could see the elevators. He began to walk toward them. His arm was starting to hurt.
He reached the second level before Hack and Claire came back. “Okay,” Hack said. “I’ll help.”
“Thank you.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“Distract him,” Buy said.
82 Ancestry
Jennifer was running in one direction and about ten thousand people were running in the other, streaming out of a strip mall. She guessed there was nothing to clear an area like a missile strike.
When she got inside, the place was almost drained of shoppers. She was struck by familiarity: the layout was the same as the Chadstone Wal-Mart mall. There were even two sports cars being raffled. But then, these places were probably all built to the same plan. They were standardized.
She spotted John just as he reached two NRA soldiers. He gasped to them, “Help me! I’m a US Alliance Liaison, there’s a woman with a gun after me!” He pointed at her.
They drew their weapons. “Hold it there, ma’am.”
Jennifer dropped to a walk. She pointed her gun skywards.
“Shoot her!” John shouted.
“Ma’am, you need to drop the weapon, right now.”
She kept walking.
“Ma’am—”
“She’s not going to stop, you dumb fucks! Shoot the bitch!” John began to edge away.
“We’re not kidding! This is your last chance!”
“All right,” she said. She holstered her pistol. A soldier reached for her. She took his arm and twisted. He gasped in surprise, and she rammed his head into the second soldier’s face. They fell to the floor and she kicked their weapons away
“You morons!” John screamed. He ran for the escalators. He was surprisingly fleet: he didn’t appear to have been injured in the cab crash. She took careful aim.
The bullet clanged off the escalator’s steel sides. John stopped running. He leaned over the railing. “Are you stupid?” In the empty mall, his voice echoed. “Do you want me to hurt Kate?”
She corrected her aim, but this time he read her intent and ducked. She missed everything. She jogged toward the escalators.
“If my man doesn’t hear from me, he’ll kill her!” John shouted. But Jennifer didn’t believe that. There was a note of rising panic in his voice, and besides, John wasn’t the sort to make plans in the event of his own death. She caught a glimpse of him scrambling from one escalator to the next. “You better back off, right now!”
He tried to give her the slip on level five, but she saw him reflected in a store window, trying to hide behind a pillar. He was doing something with his hands. She raised her gun and carefully moved toward him.
John heard her coming. “Jen! Don’t do anything stupid!”
“Come out, John.”
“I’m on the phone!” he yelled. “I’m on the fucking phone, do you want me to kill her?”
She stopped.
“That’s right, Jen, I have a live connection here. You better think very clearly.” He stepped out into the open. His cellphone was pressed to his left ear. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. His business shirt was soaked through. “Put down the gun.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You want me to make him hurt her? I can do that!”
Jennifer looked at her gun. It seemed a pity.
“Do it!”
She put the gun on the floor. “Hang up.”
“Kick your gun over here first.”
“You hang up, I’ll give you the gun.”
“Not your place to bargain, Jen. It’s really not.”
Jennifer considered. It would be a bad move for her to give John her gun; very bad. She was pretty sure he’d just shoot her. She put her foot on the gun.
“Careful, Jen. Nice and slow.”
“I don’t suppose you ever saw any of the kids you had killed,” she said. “I did. It was in a mall like this one.”
“Oh, please,” John said. “Don’t start moralizing. I’ve had about as much of that as I can take. Give me the gun.”
She pushed it with her foot. It spun across the floor, the barrel describing lazy ellipses, until it disappeared off the edge of the level. She heard it hit one of the cars on the ground floor with a bang.
John’s eyes bulged. “Was I not clear?”
“Hang up the phone.”
“You couldn’t let me go, could you? You had to chase me across half the world. It’s pathetic, Jen. You’re obsessed. You think you changed when you left Maher? You think you grew a conscience when you got pregnant? Bullshit. You were a corporate bitch at Maher and you haven’t changed, same as that tattoo. You’re not doing your job. You don’t give a shit about those Nike teenagers. You’re after me for what I wouldn’t give you eight years ago. This is personal.”
Jennifer didn’t think that was a fair characterization. She was going to debate it. But then her cellphone rang.
83 Redemption
A lot of people were hurrying out of the mall, courtesy of Violet discharging a firearm. The Nike Town was just up ahead, and Buy saw a man poke his head out and look at the people scurrying past. As a head, it was nothing to boast about. It looked like Buy felt.
From behind, Hack yelled, “Hey! Asshole!”
The man’s face whipped around. Hack and Claire were by the escalators, waving their arms.
“John, you ugly prick! Hey!”
John stepped out of the store. He was dragging Kate with him. Buy’s heart leapt. Kate’s face was streaked with dried tears. Just another minute, honey, he thought.
“What?” John called. “I can’t hear you!” His free hand slipped inside his jacket pocket.
Buy staggered up to him. His arm was bleeding profusely. “Excuse me.”
“Hey.” John’s face wrinkled. “What the hell do you want?”
“Forgiveness,” Buy said, and wrapped his arms around him. “Kate, run!”
“What the fuck?” John said. Kate stared at him, frozen. Then she ran. Buy had never seen anything more beautiful than her retreating back and bouncing hair. “Get off me!”
“Sorry,” Buy gasped. “No can do.”
“Let—me—go!” John slammed Buy against the Nike Town door, and he lost all his air in a rush. John pulled back for another attempt. Buy suddenly realized that the Nike Town door handles were long metal swooshes, tapered to fine points. That was kind of dangerous, he thought. Someone could get hurt on those.
John slammed him backwards again. Buy heaved himself to the left and swung John around. John hit the door, and Buy lost his grip. He fell to the floor and coughed.
He almost expected to start feeling John’s business shoes connecting with his ribs. But not really. It had been a good swing: a very good swing.
“Buy?”
“Every obstacle is an opportunity,” Buy said. He tried to laugh, but it came out
as a hacking cough.
Blurry faces appeared above him. “Somebody call an ambulance! Call nine-one-one!”
“Use my American Express card,” Buy said. He was full of witticisms; he couldn’t stop.
“Buy, just stay still.”
“Kate. Where is—”
“I don’t know if you want Kate to see this,” Hack said. “John is…he’s on the swoosh.”
“Please, I must see her.” Hack started to leave. Buy grabbed him with his good hand. “Hack. Thank you.”
Hack looked embarrassed. “No problem.”
Buy closed his eyes. He was going to faint soon, and that wasn’t good. There was something he had to do first. He had to hold out.
“Buy! Buy!”
He opened his eyes. Everything was hazy: he couldn’t see Kate properly. Then something wet fell on his face and he realized she was crying.
“Hey. I will be fine. Really.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m really sure.”
“Okay.”
“Now, Kate…” Someone started wrapping something around Buy’s arm. He felt dimly grateful, but it was starting to hurt a lot. “There’s something I need you to do. It’s very important. You have to do it straight away. All right?”
“What?”
“Call your mother,” he said, and passed out.
84 Procurance
Jennifer looked down at her pocket. Her cellphone trilled again.
“Don’t answer that,” John said. “Just—just slide it over here. Come on.”
She pulled out her phone.
“I’m serious! Drop the phone!” He was spraying spittle. “Don’t fuck with me, Jen. I’ll do it!”
She considered. Then she flipped open her phone. “Hello?”
“Mommy?”
A surge of emotion rocked her. She couldn’t speak. She looked at John. “Hi, sweetie.”
