Pandemonium

Page 14

 

  CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS. SECURITY IS IN THE DETAILS. HAPPINESS IS IN THE METHOD.

  I allow a silver-haired woman to press a package into my hand.

  And then, finally, I’ve arrived. The drums are furiously loud here, and the chanting a rolling constant, like the sound of waves crashing on the shore.

  Once I saw a photo of Times Square: before the cure, before all the borders were closed off. Tack found it near Salvage, a homestead in New Jersey, just across the river from New York. We took refuge there while we were waiting for our forged papers to arrive. One day Tack found a whole photo album, perfectly intact, buried under a pile of limestone and charred timber. In the evenings, I would flip through it and pretend that these photographs—this life of friends and boyfriends and squinting, laughing sunshine shots—were mine.

  Times Square looks very different now than it did then. As I move forward in the crowd, my breath catches in my throat.

  A towering raised platform, a dais, has been built at one end of the enormous open plaza, underneath a billboard larger than any I have seen in my life. It is plastered all over with signs for the DFA: red and white squares, fluttering lightly in the wind.

  The Unified Church of Religion and Science has colonized one billboard and marked it huge with its primary symbol: a giant hand cupping a molecule of hydrogen. The other signs—and there are dozens of them, gigantic, bleached-white walls—are all faded to illegibility, so it’s impossible to tell what they once advertised. On one of them I think I can make out the ghostly imprint of a smile.

  And of course, all the lights are dead.

  The photograph I saw of Times Square was taken at night, but it could have been high noon: I’ve never seen so many lights in my life, could never even have imagined them. Lights blazing, glittering, lit up in crazy colors that made me think of those spots that float across your vision after you’ve accidentally looked directly at the sun.

  The lightbulbs are still here, but they’re dark. On many of them, pigeons are perching, roosting between the blacked-out bulbs. New York and its sister cities have mandatory controls on electricity, just like Portland did—and although there are a greater number of cars and buses, the blackouts are stricter and more frequent. There are just too many people, and not enough juice for all of them.

  The dais is wired with microphones and equipped with chairs; behind it is an enormous video screen, like the kind the DFA uses at its meetings. Uniformed men are making last-minute adjustments to the setup. That’s where Julian will be; somehow, I’ll have to get closer.

  I start to push my way slowly, painstakingly, through the crowd. I have to fight and elbow and say “Excuse me” every time I try to squeeze by someone. Even being five foot two isn’t helping. There simply isn’t enough space between bodies—there are no cracks to slip through.

  That’s when I start to panic again. If the Scavengers do come—or if anything goes wrong—there will be no place to run. We’ll be caught here like animals in a pen. People will trample one another trying to get out. A stampede.

  But the Scavengers won’t come. They wouldn’t dare. It’s too dangerous. There are too many police, too many regulators, too many guns.

  I squeeze my way past a series of bleachers, all roped off, where members of the DFA Youth Guard are sitting: girls and boys on separate bleachers, of course, all of them careful not to look at one another.

  At last I make it to the foot of the dais. The platform must be ten or twelve feet in the air. A series of steep wooden steps gives the speakers access from the ground. At the foot of the stairs, a group of people has gathered. I make out Thomas and Julian Fineman behind a blur of bodyguards and police officers.

  Julian and his father are dressed identically. Julian’s hair is slicked back, and curls just behind his ears. He’s shifting from foot to foot, obviously trying to conceal his nervousness.

  I wonder what’s so important about him—why Tack and Raven told me to keep an eye on him. He has become symbolic of the DFA, of course—sacrifice in the name of public safety—but I wonder whether he presents some kind of additional danger.

  I think back to what he said at the rally: I was nine when I was told I was dying.

  I wonder what it feels like to die slowly.

  I wonder what it feels like to die quickly.

  I squeeze my nails into my palms, to keep the memories back.

  The drumming is coming from behind the dais, a part of the square that’s blocked from view. There must be a marching band there. The chanting swells, and now everyone is joining in, the whole crowd unconsciously swaying along to the rhythm. Distantly, I make out some other rhythm, a disjointed staccato: DFA is dangerous for all… The cure should protect, not harm…

  The dissenters. They must be sequestered somewhere else, far away from the dais.

  Louder, louder, louder. The DFA’s chants soon drown out all other sound. I join in, let my body find the rhythm, feel the hum of all those thousands of people buzz up through my feet and into my chest. And even though I don’t believe in any of it—the words, the cause, the people around me—it amazes me, still, the surge I get from being in a crowd, the electricity, the sense of power.

  Dangerous.

  Just as the chanting reaches a crescendo, Thomas Fineman breaks away from the bodyguards and takes the steps up to the top of the dais, two at a time. The rhythm breaks apart into waves of shouting and clapping. White banners and flags appear from everywhere, unfurling, fluttering in the wind. Some of them are DFA-issue. Other people have simply cut up long strips of cloth. Times Square is full of slender white tentacles.

  “Thank you,” Thomas Fineman says into the microphone. His voice booms out over all of us; then a sharp screeching sound as the feed lets out a whine. Fineman winces, cups his hand over the microphone, and leans back to mutter instructions to someone. The angle of his neck shows off his procedural mark perfectly. The three-pronged scar is amplified by the video screen.

  I turn my eyes to Julian. He is standing with his arms crossed, watching his father, behind the wall of bodyguards. He must be cold; he’s only wearing a suit jacket.

  “Thank you,” Thomas Fineman tries again, and, when no feed kicks back, adds, “Much better. My friends—”

  That’s when it happens.

  Pop. Pop. Pop.

  Three miniature explosions, like the firecrackers we used to set off at Eastern Prom on the Fourth of July.

  One scream, high and desperate.

  And then: Everything is noise.

  Figures in black appear from nowhere, from everywhere. They’re climbing up out of the sewers, materializing from the ground, taking shape behind the foul-smelling steam. They swarm down the sides of the buildings like spiders, rappelling on long black ropes. They’re scything through the crowd with glittering, sharp blades, grabbing purses and ripping necklaces from around people’s necks, slicing rings from their fingers. Thwack. Thwack.

  Scavengers. My insides turn to liquid. My breath stops in my throat.

  People are pushing and shoving, desperately trying to find a way out. The Scavengers have us surrounded.

  “Down, down, down!”

  Now the air is filled with gunshots. The police have opened fire. One Scavenger has made it halfway down a building toward the ground. A bullet explodes in his back and he jerks once, quickly, and then hangs limp from the end of his rope, swaying lightly in the wind. Somehow one of the DFA banners has become entangled in his equipment; I see the stain of blood spreading slowly across the white fabric.

  I am in a nightmare. I am in the past. This isn’t happening.

  Someone shoves me from behind and I go sprawling to the pavement. The bite of the concrete snaps me into awareness. People are running, stampeding, and I quickly roll out of the way of a pair of heavy boots.

  I have to get back on my feet.

  I try to stand and get knocked down again. This time the air
goes out of me, and I feel someone’s weight on the middle of my back. And suddenly the fear turns me sharp and focused. I need to get up.

  One of the police barricades has already been broken, and a piece of splintered wood is lying in front of me. I grab it and jab behind me, into the crushing weight of people, of panic, and feel the wood connecting with legs, with muscle and skin. For a brief second I feel the weight shift, a slight release. I jump to my feet and sprint toward the dais.

  Julian is gone. I’m supposed to be watching Julian. No matter what happens.

  Piercing screams. The smell of fire.

  Then I spot him off to my left. He is being hustled toward one of the old subway entrances, which is, like all the other entrances, covered with plywood. But as he approaches, one of the bodyguards steps forward and pushes the plywood inward.

  Not a barrier. A door.

  Then they are gone, and the sheet of wood swings closed again.

  More gunshots. A massive surge in the screaming. A Scavenger has been shot just as he was beginning his descent. He is knocked clear off the balcony and tumbles down into the crowd below. The people are a wave: heads, arms, contorted faces.

  I run toward the subway entrance where Julian disappeared. Above it I can see an old series of letters and numbers, faded bare outlines: N, R, Q, 1, 2, 3, 7. And in the middle of all that panic and screaming, there is something comforting about it: an old-world code, a sign from another life. I wonder whether the old world could have possibly been worse than this—that time of dazzling lights and sizzling electricity and people who loved in the open—whether they also screamed and trampled one another to death and turned their guns on their neighbors.

  Then the air is knocked out of me again and I’m thrown backward. I land on my left elbow, hear it crack. Pain splinters through me.

  A Scavenger looms over me. Impossible to say whether it’s a man or a woman. The Scavenger is dressed all in black and has a ski mask pulled low, covering the neck.

  “Give me the bag,” the Scavenger growls. But the voice doesn’t fool me. It’s a girl. She’s trying to make her voice sound lower, but you can hear the melody running underneath it.

  For some reason, this makes me even angrier. How dare you? I feel like spitting at her. You’ve screwed everything for everyone. But I sit up, inching the backpack off my shoulders, feeling little explosions of pain radiating all the way from my elbow to my shoulder.

  “Come on, come on. Hurry up. ” She’s dancing from foot to foot, and as she does she fingers the long, sharp knife she has looped through her belt.

  I mentally weigh all the things I have in the bag: a tin water bottle, empty. Tack’s umbrella. Two granola bars. Keys. A hardcover edition of The Book of Shhh. Tack insisted I bring it, and now I’m glad I did. It’s nearly six hundred pages.

  Should be heavy enough. I take the shoulder straps in my right hand, tightening my grip.

  “I said move. ”

  The Scavenger, impatient, bends down to grab the bag, and as she does, I swing upward with all my strength, moving through the pain. The bag catches her in the side of the head with enough momentum to knock her off balance—she tumbles to one side, landing hard on the ground. I launch to my feet. She grabs for my ankles, and I kick her hard, twice, in the ribs.

  The priests and the scientists are right about one thing: At our heart, at our base, we are no better than animals.