The Block

by Ben Oliver

  Pod and Igby come back from the storeroom.

  “Pander, you’re up,” Akimi says, appearing from the ceiling, pulling on a rope that lowers her and the suspended office chair to the floor of the library.

  “Great,” Pander says, moving eagerly to the lookout seat. “I need a rest.” She pulls a second rope, propelling herself skyward, where she stares out at the city.

  “So,” Igby says, “what happened out there?”

  “We went to that depot on Brooke Street,” Pander calls down from the crow’s nest. “Got one step inside the door and three bright-eyed hosts were waiting with an army of Alts. They gave the order and the soldiers opened fire.”

  “We ran,” Sam adds, focusing intently on sewing up the deep cut. “To the old parliament buildings. Pander knew about these secret tunnels that run underneath. We thought we’d lost the soldiers, but they followed us down there. We got out near the river and managed to lose them in the hospital. We waited for about an hour and then came back. The city is crawling with them.”

  “We need that processor,” Igby hisses. “We need it. If Malachai and Woods are still alive, it’s the only way we’re going to save them.”

  “Well, we’ll go again,” I say, standing up, suddenly ready to run into danger at the mention of my friends. “I’ll go; tell me what you need, I’ll get it.”

  Igby nods. “All right,” he says, “but we do it fairly.”

  “How’s that?” I ask.

  “Last alphabetically go into the city,” Akimi says, walking over to the fiction section of the library.

  “Wait,” I say, “you’ve lost me.”

  “Close your eyes and pick a book,” Pod says, joining Akimi in the fiction section. “A mission like this will require … how many?”

  “Three,” Igby replies. “Two to go for the processor, one to try and get some supplies.”

  I watch as Akimi and Igby stand in front of a shelf of books, close their eyes, and grab one each.

  “Throw me one,” Sam calls, snipping the thread and examining the closed wound. Pod tucks one book under his arm and then throws another one toward Sam. It misses her outstretched arm by a yard, and she rolls her eyes before retrieving it from the floor.

  I join the others, close my eyes, run my hand along the spines of the books, and—before I select one—I smile. I love the feeling of books; they remind me of all the hundreds of hours I escaped prison without ever leaving my cell. I stop on one and pull it from the shelf, and then open my eyes. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. I’ve never read this one, but I have read others by her and loved them.

  “All right,” Akimi says, holding her book up, “first letter of the first word of chapter one.”

  “Yours is T,” I say, recognizing her book as A Wizard of Earthsea, a fantasy classic.

  “What?” she asks.

  “The Island of Gont,” I say. “Those are the first words of that book.”

  Akimi flips to chapter one, looks at the first word, and nods her head. “Yep, I got T,” she says, and then looks at me. “How the hell did you know that?”

  “I’ve just read that book a bunch of times, that’s all.”

  “I got I,” says Sam, and then begins to read her book, a Victoria Schwab classic.

  I flip my book past the opening poem and on to chapter one. “Mine starts with I too,” I say.

  Pod hands his book to Igby, who reads the first word. “Z,” he says.

  “That wasn’t funny the first ten times,” Pod mutters.

  “Fine, it’s a D, mine is H, which means Luka, Akimi, and Sam are heading into the city,” Igby says. He closes his book and points it at me. “I need a SilverWave quantum processor—you’ll find them inside almost any SoCom unit and all LucidVision headsets. They’re silver and about the size of your thumbnail. If you don’t have time to remove the processor, just bring me the whole unit and I’ll do it.”

  “I’ll try my best,” I tell him, already feeling apprehensive about sneaking into a city full of soldiers who want to take me back to the Block.

  “You better,” Igby says, “and then get back here safe, understand?”

  I nod. He hugs me, and then Akimi and Sam.

  “All right,” Sam says, pulling her bloodstained T-shirt back on. “No point in wasting time. Let’s go.”

  I’m about to ask if someone else should go in her place seeing as she’s just been on a mission and stitched up a wound on her pregnant belly, but I stop myself, remembering how that went last time.

  The rest of the group hug us and wish us luck. Pod walks to the door marked STAFF ROOM, now the library’s armory. I go with him and look inside.

  “Whoa,” I say, looking at the array of ancient guns and knives. There’s even a sword, five proximity mines, and three round metal things the size of tennis balls. “What are these?” I ask, grabbing one.

  “That,” Pod replies, deftly removing it from my hand, “is a grenade. An ancient explosive from the Second World War. It’s very dangerous, don’t play with it.”

  “How does it work?” I ask.

  “You pull the pin and four seconds later, boom!” he says, grinning. “I found them in a museum—they were decommissioned but I fixed them. Before the city was swarming with soldiers I tested one. They’re pretty awesome.”

  He puts the grenade carefully back on the shelf and hands me an old handgun, smiling apologetically. “It’s from, like, the twentieth century, I guess. Takes bullets. We got it from the museum too, and I managed to get it working again. You have eighteen rounds of ammo, so be careful—it’s not like a USW where you can just keep on firing. And it’s loud, really loud, so only fire it if you absolutely have to. Happy will hear it and will come for you.”

  “Thanks,” I say, turning the weapon over in my hands. I’m surprised by how light it is. It seems to be made of some kind of primitive polymer. “How do I fire it?”

  As Pod gives me a quick demonstration, Akimi grabs a much more modern Ultrasonic Wave rifle from the armory. “How come she gets a USW?” I ask.

  “Because she’s the best shot,” Sam says, walking past us and taking her own gun out of her backpack. Hers is an early model USW. Better than my antique, but not great.

  We head back into the main room, and Pander waves from the crow’s nest. “All clear,” she calls, and then we leave, back through the bathroom. I touch Kina’s hand before climbing down into the sewer.

  * * *

  We make it to the street by the courthouse, and I follow Sam and Akimi toward the center of town.

  The sun is low in the sky as evening falls, but it’s still bright and I’m wondering if broad daylight is the best time to be raiding a city full of Alt soldiers and hosts who want to capture us and use us as batteries. I doubt it helped Sam and Pander earlier.

  We move quietly to an old, abandoned office block and slip inside through a broken window. The three of us crouch down behind an upturned desk.

  “All right,” Akimi says, whispering, “I’ll go to the depot on Marwick Street, about a mile northwest of here. You guys go to City Level Two; there’s plenty of rich-people houses up there that’ll have Igby’s processy thing.”

  “Shouldn’t we stick together?” I ask.

  “No,” Sam says, “if we’re going to die it’s better they don’t get all of us.”

  “Meet back here in four hours—that’ll be quarter to ten—and we’ll go back to the library together,” Akimi says. She heads off, running low through the old office building.

  I’m struck at how cold everyone has become, how hardened against the notion of death. They move headfirst into danger, knowing that every trip into the city could be their last, putting their lives on the line for provisions so that the others can survive a little longer.

  How long can this go on? I wonder, and I think about Igby’s plan: Find the Missing, build an army … then what?

  “This way,” Sam says, leading the way along several corridors and down a flight of stairs t
o a fire escape. She pushes the door open a crack and looks out into the fading daylight, aiming her USW first left and then right. “Clear,” she says, and then we’re running toward the graphene stilts that hold up City Level Two.

  As we dash across the street, I look up toward the Black Road Vertical, my old home, but something else catches my eye: far off in the distance I see one enormous, thick black cloud. I slow and turn in a circle, trying to find the edge of the cloud, but I can’t. It’s as though the entirety of Region 86 is surrounded by a storm cloud, and we’re at the center of it as it closes in.

  “Hurry!” Sam’s voice calls from up ahead.

  “Sam, what the hell is that?” I call, pointing up to the sky.

  She glances up and I see a momentary look of surprise on her face, but she turns back to me and shrugs. “Big cloud.”

  “Yeah,” I reply, looking up one more time, “I guess.”

  I try to forget the colossal circular storm cloud and focus on the mission.

  I sprint and catch up with Sam. We rest behind one of the stilts and assess our options. There is a ladder to the top that maintenance workers use, or the spiral road that leads to the gates of the luxury real estate.

  “The ladder is quicker,” Sam says, “but there’s nowhere to hide if they spot us.”

  “So, we take the road?” I ask.

  Sam nods and then takes off toward the spiral tarmac. I take a deep breath, trying to beat the exhaustion, and run after her.

  The spiral road is steeper than it looked from a distance and sweat is pouring off me by the time I reach the gates. Sam is already halfway up and acrobatically vaulting over as I start climbing.

  I have a second to remember, as I climb, that I used to sneak into this place when I was a kid. Me and my friends, we would knock on rich people’s doors and run away. That was a million years ago. We drop down into the gated neighborhood and run toward the first house we come to that isn’t a burned-out shell. The reflecting pools either side of the walkway that leads to the front door are full of ash, and the water has turned black. We’re in luck, as one of the long windows at the side of the front door is broken. Sam knocks out the remaining shards and we step inside.

  The size of the place is absurd; the entrance hall alone is bigger than the apartment I grew up in. It has an enormous water feature in the center with a slab of granite at an artistic angle protruding from a mosaic pool. The water that sits stagnant in this pool is not black, but red.

  “Come on,” Sam says, and we move into the house.

  “Do you know how to get a SilverWave processor thing out of a SoCom unit or a LucidVision?” I ask.

  “No,” Sam whispers back. “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Then I guess we take the whole thing back, like Igby suggested.”

  “Right,” I agree. “I’ll go upstairs and try to get a LucidVision headset, you try to find a SoCom?”

  “All right,” Sam says.

  I change direction and head for the stairs while Sam moves deeper into the house.

  It doesn’t take me long to find a bedroom and, above the headboard, a LucidVision headset. I had always wanted one of these growing up. The Barker Projectors that cast holographic advertisements made them look so cool. Choose your dream! Be the hero! Fly through the air! Do whatever you want! LucidVision: Make it happen!

  I look at the metal arm that holds the headset and follow it to the wall, where it’s bolted firmly in place. I shrug and remind myself that the thing doesn’t have to be in perfect working order, that I just need to get it back to Igby. I grab the arm and pull as hard as I can; it holds firm, but I hear a crunching sound from inside the wall. I pull again and feel the arm give a little. One more hard tug and it comes free, wires trailing in the brick dust. It takes seconds for me to pull the wires free from the casing, and I’m about to call down to Sam to let her know that we don’t need the SoCom unit when I hear a scream.

  I move quickly, running toward the sound, sprinting downstairs into the main space.

  Sam cries out again and I see her, on her back in the middle of the massive flagstone kitchen floor. A Smiler—blinking and grinning a set of yellow teeth—is on top of her. Sam’s shaking arms are holding the Smiler’s weight as he bears down on her with all his strength. A shard of glass clasped in his hands, pushing closer and closer toward Sam’s chest, blood dripping from his shredded fingers.

  I move toward them, turning sideways to gain more momentum as I swing the LucidVision headset as hard as I can, gripping the metal arm like a baseball bat. It connects with the Smiler’s head with a sickening, hollow thunk, and he falls limp on top of Sam.

  She struggles under his weight. I drop the LucidVision and drag him off her.

  Sam stands up, breathing hard, tears in her eyes. “He … he … God, he almost killed me.”

  Her hand moves to her stomach as she looks into my eyes.

  “We should go,” I say, bending to pick up the piece of equipment that houses Igby’s processor. Sam grabs my hand. I stop and look at her once again.

  “That messed me up, Luka. That was … that was scary. I’ve been shot at before, I’ve been chased by Smilers, but that was … that was too close … He almost …”

  “It’s okay,” I tell her. “You’re okay. You’re alive.”

  She hugs me, suddenly and ferociously. “Thank you,” she whispers.

  I hug her back, and in that moment I hear the sound of the Smiler stirring on the floor beside us. In one smooth movement, Sam pulls away from me, grabs the gun from my waistband, and aims it at the Smiler.

  “No!” I cry, trying to grab the gun from her.

  The explosion is deafening. The way my eardrums contract feels as though all the air has been sucked out of the room. The bullet ricochets off the stone floor and I feel it buzz past my ear like some enormous insect as it bounces around the room.

  All I can hear is a high-pitched whistling. I can see Sam’s mouth moving but can’t hear her words.

  “What?” I ask, yelling over the tinnitus that is already beginning to subside.

  “What are you doing? He’s going to kill us!” Sam screams.

  “The gun,” I say, my own voice sounding like it’s coming from far away. “Happy will hear it!”

  “Fine,” she says, grabbing her USW gun off the floor. “I’ll use this.”

  I’m about to stop her, about to explain that this is someone’s brother, or father, or son, and he’s been poisoned by Happy to act in this way, but we both freeze.

  A new sound fills the silent evening: a humming, insectile sound.

  “What is that?” I ask, but I don’t need to wait for an answer as three attack drones, identical to the ones that used to guard the Loop during our exercise hour, float into view through the enormous kitchen window.

  The thin strip of light encircling the closest drone turns from green to red, and the low-hanging cannons take aim.

  As the first dart pierces the windowpane, sending raindrops of glass shimmering down, I know that I am doomed. The darts will be filled with a combination of hallucinogens and a drug called Crawl. Crawl slows down all bodily functions: heart rate, respiration, and brain chemistry. It’s what they used in the Loop to stop us trying to climb the walls. Drone poison is a hellish cocktail that leaves the victim in a nightmare world of terrifying visions that feel like they last a hundred years.

  I close my eyes, waiting for the impact of the dart, but it doesn’t come. In the commotion of the drones, I hadn’t noticed the Smiler had gotten to his feet and lunged at me. The dart has struck him above the temple, and he is wavering on his feet.

  Sam and I don’t wait around to see what happens next. She grabs my hand and runs, dragging me toward the front door. As I haul it shut behind us, I hear two more darts thudding into the heavy wood.

  “They must’ve heard the gunshot,” Sam pants, running fast, still holding my hand as I grip the headset in the other.

  The whirring sound of the
drones grows once more as we sprint toward the spiral road. They have moved up and flown over the house in seconds, and now they’re tracking us, lowering down to our level to fire again.

  Sam hands me the heavy old pistol and draws her USW gun from her backpack. She stops running, turns and drops to one knee, firing four rounds at the nearest drone. The relentless whirring sound stutters and chokes and the drone falls from the sky.

  I turn and aim the pistol at the drone closest to me. I fire five times, hitting it twice, which is enough to damage one of its rotors. It dips to the left as it fires another dart, this one so close that it tugs at the shoulder of my prison jumpsuit.

  I fire four more rounds and hit it again. It loses control and thunders into the ground, smashing into pieces.

  We stand on the lawn of the mansion, waiting in the charged silence for whatever comes next.

  “We have to move,” Sam whispers.

  And, again, the silence is broken by the sound of engines, this time louder, like rolling thunder.

  Over the edge of City Level Two, a large military vehicle hovers up and four soldiers disembark.

  “Go!” I yell, and push Sam away from the Alt soldiers.

  USW rounds begin to flash past us, and we dive behind a parked car. I drop the LucidVision headset to the road beside me and lean around the bumper of the Eon 14. I see the four soldiers spreading out and taking tactical positions. Two are at the corner of the house we just left and two more are ducked down behind vehicles across the road.

  I lean out farther and take one shot. The bullet sparks off the corner of the house, sending a cloud of debris into the air.

  How many bullets is that? I think, trying to add them up.

  Sam leans out and fires seven, eight rounds. Around thirty rounds come back, rocking the car on its suspension.

  “Got one,” she breathes.

  I slide the magazine out of the pistol and see that I have six bullets remaining, plus one in the chamber.

  “Jesus, these old guns suck!” I hiss as Sam fires again.

  “They’re getting closer,” she says, and leans her head against the door of the car. “Fuck it.”