by Chris Weitz
“Theo’s right,” I say. I turn to Imani. “It’s your show.”
“All right, then,” says Imani. “Three teams. One in front. You from the side. And the final team does their thing from above. We good?”
“We good,” say the girls in one voice. The Slayer Queens (their term, not mine) are a formidable bunch, even with their Day-Glo equipment. Done up in everything from skirts to flak jackets, helmets and berets.
“Listen up,” says Imani, and the girls go quiet. Steam trails up from fifty mouths.
“We go in strong. Anything got a beard, kill it. Anyone female, you get them out of there alive.”
She looks around at her troops, her face set in a scowl.
“Now make ’em feel you.”
We leave the pickups under guard and head to our rallying points. Me, Kath, the twins, Theo, Donna, and Rab pass a bodega, restaurants, a pharmacy, a liquor store, and then cut over to Columbus, aiming to slip along the side of the museum out of view of the front.
Rab is looking down at a strange little letter-opener-looking thing in his hands.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Oh, this,” he says. “A gift from my employers. It’s a special sort of knife.”
“Show me,” I say. He hesitates, then hands it over.
It’s a wickedly sharp little thing, triangular in cross section.
“Nice,” I say. “But hopefully you won’t get close enough to use it.”
“You never know,” he says.
“Better to use the pistol. Trust me.”
“I haven’t… This must make me seem terribly innocent to you, but I’ve never killed anyone. Never even tried.”
“You’ll manage,” I say, “if you have to.”
“I suppose,” he says. The look in his eye is hard to read. “But how will I know if I have to?”
“Depends,” I say. “Depends what you want.”
“Yes,” he says. Then, a little shyly, “Are you afraid? To die?”
The honest answer would be Not as much as I used to be. Because I have been in the middle realm, I have let go of my body, I have faced the bardos that test the soul’s attachment. And the only thing that really tied me to the earth was Donna.
But that’s too much of a mouthful, and besides, saying no might just sound like bragging.
So I say, “Yes. Of course. Who isn’t?” And I give him back his knife.
“SO WHAT’S ’APPENING UP THERE?” asks Titch when Guja and I get out of the crawl space and meet up with him again underground. He’s pacing back and forth like a bear in a zoo, occasionally thumping his meaty hands against the white tiles of the station walls. I figure he must be real tired of waiting in the subway.
“It’s pretty nuts up in that bitch, I won’t lie,” I say. “Fortunately, that made it easy for us to get back. It’s not like we’re that much out of the ordinary because there is no ordinary.”
The truth is, I don’t know what to make of everything, except that things are looking pretty unpromising vis-à-vis world peace, if such a thing exists. We’ve tangled with Evan plenty, and he is my candidate for Person Least Likely to Be Responsible with a Nuclear Arsenal at His Command. So some Shit Definitely Has to Get Done. The question is, what shit exactly?
I have a sort of sinking feeling, like I’m in a scary new school or something. I realize how much I’ve been sustained by my friends, as if I only knew how to locate myself relative to other people—school, tribe, friendship, relationship. Now I’m on my own.
Well, that’s not quite true. I have a killer giant and a lethal shrimp on my side. And, in a manner of speaking, I am still defined relative to another, which is to say, Chapel. I’m still in his gravitational pull.
Titch, however, seems a lot more positive than me.
“Right, then, Peter!” he says, clapping his massive hands together. I think he’s trying to impress upon me a certain need for vigor. “Tell me what you know, and we’ll see what we can do.”
So we make our plan to defeat the Uptowners.
It’s weird that everything seems to have conspired to make the Uptowners even more what they were. That is to say, these were the kids of the bankers, the lawyers, the hedge funders, the money people. The people everyone used to call the Masters of the Universe, way back in the day. They were raised to go to the best schools, get into the best colleges, get the best jobs at the best firms. They probably assumed they’d run things. And now it looks like they will.
But not if a black queen, a pint-size assassin, and the Cockney Mountain That Rides (the subway) have anything to do about it!
Fifteen minutes on, we’re perched in the shadows near a line of chugging diesel generators. They’re guarded by two Uptowners in camo, smoking up. Big cables run from the gennies along the ramp to the vaulted lower levels, where there’s a chaos of junction boxes and extension cords and lamps that light the labyrinth. Kids are always stealing power without regard for the consequences to the rest of the grid, hence the technicians running to and fro trying to tweak the electrical flow.
I don’t actually understand this stuff. Brainbox explained it to me when we escaped from here the first time, after the gladiatorial combat and the arms deal and cocktails at the Campbell Apartment. I miss those cocktails. I could have gotten used to the Bazaar, if it wasn’t run by fascists.
I pat the sheet of paper in my pocket, where I wrote down Brainbox’s final message. The launch codes. A farewell to the world, if one had the football and wanted to use it.
I walk over to the Uptowners. They eye me with suspicion and a soupçon of contempt, on account of I’m black and also because of their sophisticated gaydar, which is ever powerful in latent-homosexual private-school white boys.
“You boys know you shouldn’t be smoking around these things,” I say, walking past them and running my hand along the cowling of the foremost genny.
“Get your hands off that,” says one.
“Diesel’s not flammable, bitch,” says the other.
“Oh, it’s not flammable,” I say, “but it is combustible. Which is almost the same thing. People think that diesel can’t catch on fire. They’re wrong.” More science from poor Brainbox, to baffle these fools.
I’m doing a fairly good job of drawing attention my way, and I decide to amp it up a little by doing a spin and flourish, as if I were demo’ing the genny for a game show.
“What do you want, fag?” says the beefier of the two Uptowners.
I was almost feeling sorry for these chumps. So it’s good that he said that because it makes it easier to live with what Guja does next. There’s a tinny little hiss as his knife comes out of its scabbard, then a blur as he brings it down on the neck of the first guard. His head actually comes off, bounces on the shoulder of the other as he turns, which is worse for him, since he actually sees the blade as it sweeps through his neck in Guja’s backhand cut. I half expect him to keep going and chop me apart, too—the look in his eyes is of somebody doing exactly what he always wanted to do—but instead, he whips the blade to the side, spattering a fine line of blood against the sandstone wall, which sucks it up like a wood stain.
“Jesus,” I say. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
“Very good, sir!” says Guja, and snaps to a sharp salute, his boots crashing together.
Titch emerges from hiding, hands out the goggles from his kit bag. They’re the same kind we used long ago, back in the library. Hope it goes better this time.
“Right, then.” Titch shuts down the first genny, and the lights start to go out. “Do the honors, Guja.”
Guja goes down the rest of the line, and I can barely make out the figure of the Gurkha, bringing his blade down again and again, this time on the cables leading from the gennies, chopping off power for good. As they go offline, a localized quiet sets in.
I fire up the night-vision goggles, see Titch and Guja in their green irradiance as they do the same.
Shouts and cursing from below, down the length
of the ramp. Some techs are already making their way to the first genny, flashlights in hand.
Guja strides down the corridor toward them, and I grab his arm. It’s like a gnarled hardwood tree stump.
“They’re just civilians, Guja,” I say. “Get it? Just like you and me. Well. Just like me. Only the ones in camo are soldiers.” I’m worried Guja is going to go buck-wild, take mad revenge for his homeboy he saw get shot.
“Them’s the rules of engagement, Private,” says Titch. “Let’s not wear out our welcome, right?”
“I will be the best of guests, sah!” says Guja.
Titch and I slip past the techs, who are preoccupied with the generator anyway. It’s pretty unlikely they’ll be able to fix it, unless they have replacement cables, and Guja’s role in the plan is to keep the lights out should that or anything else unforeseen happen. He’ll monitor the lower-level floor and create enough havoc with the guards to take the heat off us, at least in theory.
In the ghost light of the goggles, the crowd at the lower level looks like the souls of the dead in Hades or something. Or that big poem where the Italian guy Dante goes through hell. Jefferson would know what I’m talking about. Which I guess makes me Virgil or whatever, and Titch is the guy who has to cross the river of hell in that Chris de Burgh song.
Flashlights are popping up here and there, but mostly it’s people wandering around and bumping into each other. I slink between them, but Titch just barrels right through, knocking them on their butts.
We make our way through the lower level of the Bazaar to the far side, where two guards are waiting at the entrance to the Oyster Bar. Though the guards can’t see better than anyone else, they’re between us and the door, so we have to deal with them.
Behind us, we hear shouts and gunshots, which must mean that Guja is doing his thing. I say a little prayer for whoever is on the wrong end of that curved knife.
The guards start to drift toward the sound, which is bad news for them, since it gives Titch the chance to seize their heads, one face enveloped in each gigantic hand, lift them up, and slam them to the ground. He mashes them repeatedly into the tiles, and other than the cracking of their skulls, they don’t make a sound.
We’re through the doors and in the vaulted main chamber of the restaurant when we see the body hanging there. It’s upside down, hanging from its ankles, a steady drip-drip from the top of its head. Titch gets hold of it and spins him round to face us. It’s Wakefield.
Or it was Wakefield.
“Who’s there?” someone hisses from the doorway to the barroom nearby.
We turn, and Titch puts his finger to his lips. Then, with surprising agility, he slides over to the Uptowner making his way from the bar and brings his elbow down on the top of his head. The guy falls to the ground like the proverbial sack of potatoes. Actually, he seems to accordion downward rather than topple over. It’s an uncanny, weirdly Slinky motion that reminds me of how the towers fell that day.
If Titch is sentimental about Wakefield, he definitely isn’t letting it slow him down. He makes his way over to the glass porthole of the bar door and peeks through. Then he gestures to me to cover him. At least, I think that’s what he does. He’s using those cool hand gestures that people used to do in old movies about SEAL Team Six and whatnot. I figure it can mean only a few things, and the most likely is Cover me. So I raise my rifle and try to look like I know what I’m doing.
Titch abandons the quiet approach and slams through the door, his bulk taking it off the hinges.
There’s only one person in the room, though. It’s Chapel. He’s tied to a chair, his hands behind his back. Next to him sits the football. Chapel is making silly trying-to-speak-through-a-gag noises, like he really wants to tell us something.
I rush over to him—and then stop.
Something’s wrong.
He looks up at me and shakes his head, as far as the rope will allow him to. His mouth is stuffed with rags secured with twisted wire.
Titch leans over the football and picks it up.
He turns the briefcase upside down, and more rags fall out.
Something’s very wrong.
I’ve fallen for the whole blinded-by-the-light thing before, a million years ago at the public library. So I rip off my goggles before they come on.
But Titch isn’t so lucky. I can hear him grunt as the goggles overload and his eyeballs get clouded with information. He rips the goggles from his head and blinks as the Uptowner guards pop up from behind the bar and fire.
They’ve clearly been told to take out the biggest threat first. Titch staggers backward as the bullets pock his body. Then, as the Uptowners leap over the counter, he actually gets up and charges them, even though he’s been hit maybe a dozen times. Titch seizes the first Uptowner to reach him and slams the guy against the bar, sending his gun flying. Someone swings a bat at him, but he catches it in his hands and yanks it away. But then he’s stabbed from behind.
I shoot the kid who did it and try to run to Titch, but I’m tackled by a guard I hadn’t seen come through the bar door. Another arrives and cracks me over the head with something unpleasantly hard.
As my head hits the ground, I see Titch among a crowd of Uptowners. They’re bashing him with rifle butts and baseball bats, hacking at him with machetes. Like dogs around a bear, until finally he falls to his knees. Then they push him over and keep hitting him when he’s on the ground, past the rattling of his breath, until he is quiet for good.
WE’RE AROUND THE SIDE OF the front façade of the Museum of Natural History when the flare goes up, and Imani and half her team open fire on the front steps. The three guards at the entry are down in seconds. Half of Imani’s Slayer Queens scramble across the street to flank the doorway, while the rest stay behind the park wall.
Bitchin’.
More guards issue from the front, beneath the weird-ass giant scorpion thing perched over the entryway. They fire back at the girls in the park, failing to see the girls to the side. More go down. The ones following them learn from their friends’ mistake, duck back inside, and fire from the cover of the doorway.
Imani’s team is doing its job, occupying the attention of the slavers. I have to admit I thought Imani, who seems kind of a bookish type, was going to leave the fighting to her all-female muscle, but she’s leading the charge at the entrance, purple gun in one hand, loudspeaker gripped in the other.
She issues commands to the girls taking cover behind the parked cars across the street. The cars get riddled with little holes as someone in the recesses of the lobby opens up with a machine gun. Imani fetches a glitter-deco’ed hand grenade from her belt, pulls the pin with her teeth, and chucks it through the doorway. There’s a blast, and smoke, and then Imani and her girls charge in.
That’s our cue to sprint to the side door, about halfway down the block.
There’s a chain and padlock threaded through the door handles, but Theo makes short work of it with a massive pair of bolt cutters. The chain pops and slithers to the ground.
The twins are in first, running ahead of us like it’s a game. They won’t even listen to Kath. Theo follows Kath, and then me, Jeff, and finally Rab, who does not look happy to be here. His pistol is clutched in his hands, his eyes darting around.
Me: “Watch it with that thing. I don’t want any of us to get shot in the back.”
He gives me a funny look, like I’ve caught him in something, then nods.
The lights are off in this part of the building, and Theo’s headlight carves an angle into the blackness. The twins have climbed up the narrow stairs, and their voices bounce loudly back to us, giving us away to anybody who might be watching the entrance. We discover them twisting and turning a big metal doorknob with no success.
“I got this,” says Theo, and slaps the C-4 onto the doorframe, the clay-like block resting above the lock. Then he jabs an end of wire fuse into it and starts spooling it backward, making us turn and shuffle back the way we came. Down and a
round the corner of the stairs.
“Cover your ears,” he says. “And scream when I tell you. Don’t want the air pressure exploding your eyeballs or something.”
This sounds bad, so we do as he says, and the boom of the explosive is preceded by a fearful caterwauling. Still, the abused air slaps down the stairwell and hits me like a full-body punch.
We get up from the ground, where we’ve been toppled onto each other, an awkward mingling of various love triangles that would take some working out if there weren’t more important things to do.
We scamper as fast as we can in the darkness, along the cool marble corridor toward the Whale Room. Our footfalls echo in snaps and pings off unseen vaulting. Then, far ahead of us, a portico vomits light into the blackness.
There’s a crowd of bearded slavers in the middle of the room, guns up, alerted by the attack on the front steps and our C-4 blast.
Behind them, girls are up at the windows of their enclosures, smacking their hands against the glass.
We back off, and I fire blind through the doorway, hoping I don’t hit any of the display cases. We have to keep the slavers in the center of the room.
Perched at my shoulder, Jefferson slides a telescoping metal rod with a mirror on the end past the threshold of the portico. He’s able to take a good look before a bullet smashes the mirror and sends the rod spinning along the floor, where it hits Rab, huddled against the wall with his hands over his ears.
It doesn’t make me think less of him. If anything, seeing his usual above-it-allness brought low floods my heart with sympathy. No time for that.
Jefferson looks at the broken mirror.
Jefferson: “Bad luck for them.”
He nods to Kath, who fires up the flare and tosses it into the room. It’s NYPD traffic-division standard issue, glowing fuchsia, a nice touch.
