Demolition Love

29. RHYTHM

  Aidan—

  The round-faced A leads me to the Ashram, like I need his help to find the place where I’ve lived for years. He’s trying to look good for D-town, pretending to care now so they don’t tear him apart. Everyone gathers in the street below the entry while Lawson and the A pick up the fallen ladder and prop it against the building.

  I have to say the A’s name, have to say it now, to make up for my earlier lapse in compassion before I can face my tribe, before I can witness their deaths.

  “—vens,” I croak. I did it! Well, sorta, but that will have to be good enough.

  Sevens jerks around to stare at me, and I wet my lips. I didn’t plan anything else to say. There’s only one thing I really want to know.

  Deep breath. “Whydoyouhateme?”

  Pause. “Who says I hate you?”

  “Um, your fists?”

  Sevens cocks his head to the side, for all the world like he’s actually thinking. One of his pudgy hands rests on the ladder, so close to Lawson’s, who stands tense, watching me. The whole thing’s surreal.

  “You make yourself a target,” Sevens says. “It makes me sick. My mom—my dad always said…Well, it wasn’t like he hit her himself. The GeeGee killed her.”

  I risk a step closer. “They killed my parents, too.”

  “Yeah, join the club.” Sevens looks away and makes an unnecessary adjustment to the ladder.

  Lawson is staring. I nod to him. Yeah, I know. Something big just about happened there.

  My guy tests the ladder then gives the okay for me to climb up. He holds it steady, and a too-short minute later I crawl through the hole in the Ashram wall into a circle of moonlight.

  Bee bodies lie on the floor like the discarded dolls of some bored god. No blood. Of course not. The GeeGee wouldn’t want to risk contact with our contaminants. There’s the inevitable smell of shit but that’s not what makes my stomach turn over. What gets me is what’s missing. These aren’t people, aren’t friends; they’re just bags of flesh. Gorge rises and I swallow it back, wrapping my arms around my middle.

  Karen was in lotus position when it happened and folded forward at the hips, head hitting the floor at the end. Blood still leaks out of that one’s ear.

  Lawson’s boots clang on the ladder. It has to be him, because he’d never let anyone else follow me up.

  Sandra’s brown eyes are closed; she could be sleeping. The GeeGee will be back to dispose of her in the morning. My vision seems to be pulling back, farther from everything as I scan faces.

  Tanner. I’m looking for Tanner. My stomach heaves again and I close my eyes. Tanner is the only one who won’t be here, and if he is I don’t want to know. This is sick enough already.

  The GeeGee used blasters. Blasters to avoid our blood. Blasters mean a slow death as the eardrums, then lungs, then nervous system break down. I turn for the ladder, brushing past Lawson, who has just climbed up, on my way to the exit.

  I manage to get my head out the opening just on time to puke the contents of my stomach all over the ladder and the guy standing next to it in the alley.

  “Bloody G-spot!” Sevens splutters, scrambling back and ripping off his shirt to mop my vomit from his face.

  “I thought he was going to spit the First Consensus at us, for sure,” Lawson says, still chortling.

  We’re back at the Barracks, resting together on his sleeping bag. Lawson’s room is a square space with thin walls. A cubicle; the word filters up from memory. He’s created a door out of PVC and patched canvas. The door hangs askew, giving us only partial privacy. Lawson leans on his elbows, ankles stacked, while I sit in lotus position by his knees. Tab sleeps curled on a second sleeping bag by his other side, unaware.

  I try to smile back—under different circumstances seeing Sevens dance around trying to wipe off my puke would have been pretty funny—but I can’t do it.

  “Naw,” I say. “He knows it’d never hold up in Council. He’s had my blood all over his hands.”

  Lawson’s face falls and I realize he was trying to lift my mood. Now the question hangs between us: Is there even a Council anymore?

  The New Dance pounds on from across D-town, but it’s not loud enough, doesn’t quite fill the air like the old Dance used to. Heat presses down. My shirt clings and Lawson is already bare-chested in the flickering lantern light. His once-blue, now blood-stained tank top lies balled up in a corner, and metal peeks from under the balled up t-shirt at the head of the bed. Lawson’s gun. How did he escape GeeGee custody with that?

  But I don’t have to ask to know he doesn’t want to talk about it. Not about his time in GeeGee custody. Not about the bomb inside of him. Not right now, at least. And I’m in no mood to hear about it either. I lie back on my elbows, extending my legs so my feet are next to his hips, and the persistent ache in my knees eases a bit.

  The GeeGee will be back tomorrow to continue work on the recycling center, and soon they will take down the New Dance as well. It’s nothing but a waiting game now, and I’m the last Bee, the only one left to resist the pulses. Assuming Lawson is right and I can.

  “I guess that’s true,” he says.

  I blink, having already forgotten what we were talking about. He rubs his fingers through his hair, leaving it messy, then reaches out and runs his hand over my stubbly scalp.

  “So, what do you want to do?”

  I rest my head in his palm. “Now or in general?”

  “Tonight. Let’s leave tomorrow for when the sun’s up, don’t you think?”

  I nod and smooth the sleeping bag in front of me. “We could—” It would take my mind off things.

  “No. Not when you’re hurt.”

  “But it won’t be long now, will it?” I whisper.

  “I don’t know.” But he’s lying.

  I scrub at the sleeping bag. “We could, I’d like to—if it’s okay—I want—” I can’t meet his eyes. Why is this so difficult? “Could we just snuggle?”

  “Come ‘ere.” There’s a smile in his voice; not a smirk, a real smile.

  I force myself to look up, and he’s sitting there with arms open wide.

  “I’m here,” I say and scramble into his embrace.

  He falls back to the sleeping bag, pulling me with him, cushioning my fall, so that the top of my head rests under his chin and my ear presses to his collarbone. He kisses my head softly, and then his lips move against my scalp, a silent, wordless promise.

  I nod. Me too. He tightens his hold.

  I tilt up my chin. Our lips brush together, once, twice. Then I lay my heavy head back down. His heart pounds under my ear, closer than the New Dance and growing louder as I focus. Lawson’s rhythm expands, filling my ear, my skull, my chest, filling me, and I fall asleep to that beat.

  I struggle to wake. The fingers of sleep hold me down and try to drag me further under, but I strain against them and manage to slit one heavy eyelid. Too-bright light pierces into my brain, and my eye flinches shut.

  Noontime sun?

  Sitting is usually so simple. Now? I lay palms on the floor. Press down. Lift head. Curl shoulders off sleeping bag. Press harder.

  I breathe in, breathe out. Inhale. Exhale. Make it to sitting and sway there, threatening to topple. If I fall, that’s it; I won’t be able to get back up for a while, not until I’ve slept some more. The sleeping bag is right there, offering soft oblivion, and I groan but force my eyelids into a squint. First there’s just that horrible, piercing light and pain stabbing through my head. After a minute, shapes clarify. Then, finally, colors.

  Lawson lies sprawled beside me, more on the floor than on the sleeping bag, with the dirty red t-shirt under his head. One tanned, muscular arm is flung out over the empty green sleeping bag beside us. I swear I can still hear Lawson’s heartbeat, slow and measured. His even breathing seems loud in the silence.

  Silence.

  Oh crap.

  D-town silence is not golden. Where there is quiet, a pulse canno
t be far behind.

  I jolt into action. My limbs haven’t become any lighter; the weight just matters less as I grab Lawson’s shoulder and shake him. He flops like a huge, dead fish.

  “Lawson!” I shake again.

  No reaction.

  I was wrong about the pulse—it’s not behind at all. It’s already come and gone. Something like the midnight signal that drops the GeeGee citizens into deep sleep, but stronger. Because I wasn’t awake and meditating when it hit, I couldn’t resist. Did they put the entire GeeGee population under all morning or are they using some sort of portable unit? Doesn’t matter. First things first—I need to wake Lawson.

  My gaze goes to on the t-shirt under his head. Intuitively I know he sleeps like that so no one can take his gun while he’s unconscious. Like I did before, I slip my hand into the fabric and find the too-familiar grip of the gun, warm from his body heat. My thumb slides to the safety.

  Click.

  Another memory rushes back. Lawson lying bloody in the square. Then on the GeeGee stretcher. Tab’s wide eyes. The gun in my shaking hand. Dart’s fingers closing over mine. The guard falling; the stretcher falling; Lawson falling.

  I jump when he grabs my bruised wrist.

  “Ai? Wha?” The same headache that pounds in my head is evident behind his pained squint.

  “Wake up,” I say, letting go of the gun. “There’s been a pulse.”

  His fingers continue to bite into my arm. “Huh?”

  “There’s been a pulse,” I repeat, wincing. “I had to wake you.”

  “Oh.” His hand drops from my wrist. He turns his head slowly, then sits in a rush and grabs onto my shoulders, using his grip on me to stay upright. “Tab?”

  Oh shit. “I don’t know.”

  He blinks at me. “Why’m I so tired?”

  “Pulse.”

  “Foot of bag,” he orders.

  “Huh?”

  “In the foot of the sleeping bag. Sack. Get it.” He rubs his temples.

  I find the zipper on the side of the bedding, wrestle it open under Lawson’s weight, and wiggle my hand around inside until my fingers connect with rough fabric. I tug out the small hemp sack and pass it over. Lawson’s hands shake, but he manages to open it and pour three sonic earbuds onto the bedding between us.

  I eye them. “Where’d those come from?”

  “Kept em.”

  Oh. From the ones the spies had. I shake my head. My guy, collector of all things GeeGee.

  He fiddles with the dial on the side of one, slips it into his ear and closes his eyes. After a long moment he opens them again, pockets the second earbud, and deftly adjusts the third.

  “My turn to wake you up.” He extends it to me. “It’s not going to bite you,” he adds, when I make no move to take it.

  “I’m awake enough.”

  He fixes me with a one-hundred-percent Real Dealer glare. “So help me, if you do not put this in your ear right now, I’m going to pin you down and do it for you.”

  I draw away. If this is the effect of the stimulating sounds from the earbud, I like it less by the second.

  He frowns. “Sorry, but my sister’s out there, you know? I need your help.” He holds up the earbud and leans in, eyes wide and glazed. “Just this once, Aidan, please, let’s use the GeeGee wea—stuff against them. So Tab doesn’t end up like the Bees.”

  The Bees. I see them again in my inner eye, crumpled on the Ashram floor. Like Sam, Kylie, Mom and Dad after the nail bomb. No life left, just flesh. I can’t let that happen to Tab. My fingers fumble for the earbud, and I jam it into my ear, hoping I’m not making a terrible mistake.