23. SMEAR
A metallic shriek fills the air. My head turns toward the sound. That first glimpse is of nothing but shadow play, a yellow light outlining a sprinting shadow. Someone trying to outrun the sun.
Then images snap into focus. The blinding headlight of the train barreling forward. A person running out in front, legs and arms pumping, blaster protruding over one shoulder; the unmistakable outline of a GeeGee guard sprinting from the railway crossing.
In the glare, the guard’s uniform looks commander-black. So I imagine it’s the Captain racing toward Lawson, risking life and limb to yank him off the tracks. A silent explosion goes off in the center of my chest, like my heart breaking all the way open, violently.
Heat floods outward from my heart to my limbs as the brakes squeal, metal on metal. The engineer has spotted the guard, is trying to stop the train. From up here the outcome is already clear. It’s too late.
The Captain is fast, so fast, but it looks like she runs in slow motion as the train closes in. The whistle screams again and again. The overwhelming brightness of the headlight eclipses her and, an instant later, Lawson, erasing them from sight.
My throat closes.
One last note on the whistle, then the train is rushing by like floodwater.
In the next cruel, windy minutes, there’s time to pretend that Lawson dragged himself up and out of the way, that he escaped both the train and the GeeGee.
Please, please, please.
I squint into the lightening-fast spaces between train cars, hoping for a glimpse of him sprawled in the gravel beside the tracks. It’s like trying to notice the gaps between my breaths. Impossible. I catch glimpses of motion beyond the train only to be sure I imagined them.
I press my forehead to the metal links, and I don’t care about the future. Whether Lawson is mine. Whether the Bees kick me out. If the GeeGee tears down the New Dance. If D-town falls, and we’re all assimilated.
Just let him be alive.
The train passes on, leaving me teetering on the edge of an emotional cliff. Don’t look down.
I do, and there are no bodies on the tracks. Conflicting sensations boil through me, blurring my vision and weakening my grip on the chain-link.
What happened to him?
I hate the night because it won’t let me see if there’s a smear of gore on the tracks. Not that I want to, but I need the finality. I have to know if Lawson and the Captain are both dead. If she survived and took his body. Or if she managed to pull him from the tracks in time to save him.
I slide back to the ground and sit against the Boundary with my arms around my knees all through the dark. When the sun rises, casting a pink, then orange glow over the broken edifices of D-town, I begin to climb.
I’ve seen blood. People beaten to a pulp. Death. Even guts—my last memory of Jane surfaces, from just after the earthquake, right before I ran. The toes of my wet sneakers slip from a notch between the bricks, and my numb fingertips lose their grip on the wall, leaving skin behind. I can’t do this without Lawson to boost me.
But I have no choice. I attack the Boundary again. It’s slow going and peels more skin off my fingers, but I reach the links and pull my head above the top layer of bricks.
The veil of dawn lifts, exposing the tracks. No smear.
My heart pounds. The train didn’t get him.
So the Captain did.
I tremble, fingers weaving through the chain-link as I gaze across the Boundary to Three Street. No one talks about it, but we all know. You get older and older and then one day you go on a supply run and never come back. D-towners don’t grow up; we go missing.
We don’t even leave a smear behind.
I picture how it must have happened for Lawson. The Captain, expression grim, yanked him off the tracks at the last moment. Instead of sheltering with him in the gravel, she slung him over her shoulder in a fireman’s lift, trusting GeeGee medicine to heal his broken back. She must have ignored her own fear, if she felt any, as she carried him beside the speeding train. She wanted that badly to capture him alive.
She must plan to torture him for information.
I half climb, half fall down the wall, and my feet run away with me, toward the opening in the Boundary.
“Hey!” I shout. “GeeGee! Hey! Take me, instead.”
No answer.
I make the opening, turn into it and skid to a stop on my side of the tracks, filling my lungs to yell again.
Someone beats me to it. “You!”
I turn and find myself facing a group of Real Dealers and A. Black jeans; blue denim. White shirts; red shirts. Tattooed knuckles; red anarchy symbols. Side-by-side, like in the early days, before the anarchist tribe split in two.
The round-faced A stands out front, next to the brawny Real Dealer who introduced Lawson to be punished for breaking the Second Consensus. Xavier—the Real Dealer’s name floats up from somewhere. And for some reason in that moment it hits me that my stolen clothes are damp, and my jaw aches from clenching, and snow dusts the ground.
And I probably have hypothermia, because I don’t give a shit.
“Where’s Lawson?” Xavier demands.
I shake my head. That Guy’s name brings shards of ice to my throat. I couldn’t speak even if I wanted to.
The anarchists crowd closer, enveloping me. They’re warm, so warm. I all but cuddle Xavier, trying to soak up his body heat, and my eyelids droop.
“Where’s Lawson?” he asks again. “Is he one of them?”
“One of who?” I mumble.
“The traitors.”
That rouses me. They know.
Somehow news of the spies has spread. Something went down while Lawson and I were away. I clench my teeth, blocking my tongue before it can flick out over my lips. Now would be a very bad time to look nervous.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
Either that’s the wrong thing to say or I never had a hope. With the A here, it’s probably door number two. The round-faced guy jabs his fist into my middle, rolls back casually on his heel, and strikes me in the mouth.
“Traitor!”
The word pains me more than the blows to my already-numb body. Faces swim as I drag air into lungs like lead balloons. A foot stomps on the back of my knee, and I drift to concrete.
I’ve been knocked out enough times that I never wake wondering where I am. I always assume I’m lying in the street in so much of my own blood that even my fellow Bees won’t touch me. So if I wake in my own bed at the Ashram, or in a pile of kids at The Dance, it’s a pleasant surprise.
This isn’t.
The wet plants under my cheek, so much softer than concrete, mean I’m in the worst part of D-town. The Arena is the only place where anything grows. It’s also the only place where D-towners kill each other on purpose. Here, where Old-worlders once played sports, D-towners punish the worst criminals. Like rapists and, apparently, traitors.
My lungs shrink. Each sip of air gets spit right back out, until my vision turns grainy. I’m not a traitor. I don’t want to die a traitor’s death.
Someone screams.
Again, rather. Someone screams again, because it was a cry that woke me. I remember now. I struggle to sit, blinking blurry eyes, but it’s like moving through sludge, and my hands won’t cooperate.
Manacles bite into my wrists, pinning them together behind my back. The chains holding me are Bee chains because, a few feet in front, connected to me by metal links, rests the shackle the GeeGee cut off of me two days ago. The sun is up full force. Yesterday’s cold snap—was that just yesterday?—could have been a figment. If only….
No! I can’t think about That Guy right now.
I tune in to my body. Sweat slicks my skin, and mud sticks to that. I itch, but I’m not going to die of hypothermia. Unfortunately. Hypothermia would be a better way to go.
Stop. Whatever you do, do not think about the last time you were in the Arena.
So of course memory bu
bbles up to splatter across my inner eye.
Everyone younger. Sam clung to Kylie, beside me in the stands. The Real Dealers and A were still one tribe, the Anarchists. Xavier’s pit bull terrier, never quite right after the earthquake, stood in the field, jowls dripping blood.
Stop!
I wrestle my mind back to the present and lift my head. The retractable glass roof remains stuck partway open, letting in precipitation, while still creating a mini greenhouse effect. No wonder the GeeGee wants to fix the dome and turn this into a massive bee farm. It’s even round already.
Across the expanse of greenery and garbage, a good chunk of the population of D-town crowds into the stadium seats with the best view of...Bloody shit.
Lawson’s sibling.
I know this scene all too well—a kid in the middle, tormentors all around—but usually it’s me or another Bee at the mercy of the A. This time, Real Dealers surround Lawson’s sibling. There are no Bees in the stands at all. Of course not, Bees don’t watch stuff like this for entertainment. Another anguished wail, and somehow I’m on my feet, lunging to the limit of the chain.
“Stop!” My voice croaks. “No.”
A shadow moves in the weeds. Click, a gun hammer draws back. Sun-heated metal presses into the hollow below my left ear.
“G-spot,” a familiar voice accuses.
My eyes cut to the left, giving me a glimpse of red and black. “Lin?”
“Tell me who the other traitors are, and we’ll let Tab go.”
As if in emphasis, Tab screams again. I can’t help it; I try to separate my hands. Metal cuts into my skin. The bitch of it is that I know who the spies are. I could put a stop to this right now. Lawson would, without hesitation, to spare me. But then I’d be responsible for the suffering, probably death, of four more people. I have to try to find another way.
“What’s going on? Why do you think I’m a traitor?”
Lin presses the gun harder. “Not think. Know. We found your stash.”
Huh?
“Don’t play games.”
“Lin, I really have no idea what you’re talking about.” I flinch at the sounds coming from the other side of the field. “Please let Tab go, and we’ll talk.”
“We’re talking now.”
“Fine, okay. What stash?”
The gun eases back from my jaw, and I flinch, expecting a blow to the side of the face, but instead Lin jerks my bound wrists, spinning me to face the other way.
Bloody shit.
There in the grass rests a mound of GeeGee military issue weaponry. Blasters, handguns, knives, and various explosives. Three anti-blaster vests. A little bag just like the sack of earbuds the Love Child femme had that day in the alley.
My scalp prickles. Lawson must have taken that from her the night he beat up Dart. Did he hurt her? Threaten her? Make out with her again? I really need to get my priorities in order if I’m worrying about that right now.
“See,” Lin says. “We know. You, the kid, Lawson—all traitors.” The bitterness with which she speaks his name says it all.
She doesn’t give a shit about me, but Lawson being a traitor? She can’t live with that. If she thought about it calmly for half a second, she’d realize how Lawson it is to have all this stuff. He’s magnetic, things practically fall into his lap, but he trusts himself a thousand times more than he trusts anyone else. He feels secure having all this, but he’d never just pass it around without some control over its use. His sense of responsibility is too strong for that. And now he’s just screwed us over.
Because there’s a chance I can get Lin to stop and think, but the kids in the bleachers, bouncing in their seats and waving arms as they jeer, are hot for blood. The Real Dealers terrorizing Tab are just as obviously beyond reason. They can’t bear the idea of Lawson’s betrayal any more than Lin can.
There’s only one thing I can say right now to help Tab. The one thing they’ll all want to believe, because it means Lawson is innocent, explains our romance, and still leaves them with a target.
I wet my mouth and enjoy how relatively good my body feels in this moment, then I speak. “It’s mine.”
The muzzle of the gun presses against my temple, daring me to say it again.
I fill my lungs. “It’s all mine,” I holler, so I’ll be heard across the Arena. “I’m the spy!”
It’s almost too easy. The Real Dealers turn, Tab all but forgotten. That one can’t be much sport, anyway—all that screaming, without even having to work for it.
Lawson’s tribe heads toward me.
“I know what you’re doing,” Lin hisses.
“What else was I supposed to do? You know Lawson’s not a spy!”
Her eyes widen. “Where is he?”
But it’s too late. The Real Dealers are almost here, and the rest of D-town pours out of the bleachers. The Love Child femme hangs back, and our gazes lock across the field. I think in that moment she knows that I know she’s a spy.
“Protect Tab,” I whisper to Lin.
Lin nods, shoves her hands in her pockets and stares at me, then turns away.
After a step, she turns back, yanks something out of her jeans, and leans close to drop the object into my pocket. Not that I can get at whatever it is with my hands bound, and she must realize this, because she grimaces as she jogs away.
The advancing D-towners part around her. Then they’re on me.
Pain blossoms everywhere, catapulting me out of sensation into thought. The thing with beatings is that if they get too angry, too many blows land too fast, and it’s over “too soon.” So most attackers prefer to hold back a little, to stretch the beating out.
But this is a mob. Mobs don’t savor; they rampage.