Children of the Underground

  In between shots, I heard one of the strange men shout, “That’s him.” They were shouting loud enough that they could be heard over the sound of the traffic and the bullets. They were crouching down now, moving away from each other to try to keep from giving Reggie too large a target. I could see dust swirl up as the bullets hit the ground around them. “Let’s get him,” said the man with the rifle. They had come for Reggie. Reggie kept firing, but none of his shots hit anything but the ground.

  “You guys get him,” the Middle Eastern man said, “I’ll finish this one and catch up.” He motioned toward Michael. I could see Michael still rummaging through Dorothy’s pockets. He’d found something but I couldn’t see what it was.

  The man with the handgun aimed it at Reggie. His gun was bigger than Reggie’s and had to be more accurate. He pulled the trigger. Concrete from the column above Reggie’s head crumbled and fell. Reggie didn’t move. He aimed his gun again but he wasn’t aiming at the men coming for him. Reggie was aiming his gun at the man going for Michael. The man was only five steps from the bench now. He hadn’t bothered to shoot his gun. It wasn’t necessary. He could walk right up to Michael and execute him. Reggie inhaled deeply and held his breath. He squeezed the trigger again. This time, he hit his target. It wasn’t a perfect shot. It didn’t even knock the Middle Eastern man off his feet, but Reggie hit him somewhere above his waist. The man grunted and stumbled for a second but didn’t fall. It would have to be enough. The other two men were closing in on Reggie. Reggie turned and aimed his gun at them. He pulled the trigger again. Another bullet whizzed by their heads. Then Reggie ducked behind the column as the men returned a blaze of fire. I stood out in the open, in the middle of the madness, feeling like a spectator in the world’s most awful game. No one even looked at me. It was like I didn’t exist.

  I looked over at Michael. The man Reggie had shot seemed to be regaining his balance. I saw a flash of light reflect off something in Michael’s hand. He had his knife out. Michael shifted Dorothy’s lifeless legs and rolled under the bench. Now he was only two steps away from his would-be executioner. The Middle Eastern man didn’t even notice Michael until Michael stood up. By then, it was too late. He tried to swing around so that he could fire one last shot at Michael, but Michael was already too close to him. Michael put all his weight on his good leg, the one without the bite wounds or bullet hole. He reached up with his left hand and grabbed the Middle Eastern man by his shoulder, near his neck. Michael was holding whatever it was that he’d found in Dorothy’s pocket in his left hand, but it didn’t stop him from getting a good grip on the man’s shoulder. Then Michael took his right hand and plunged it up toward the little man’s chin. The knife entered below the Middle Eastern man’s jaw and shot up, cutting through any skin, bone, or tendon that got in its way. Michael’s knife wasn’t a small knife, but all I could see of it now was the handle jutting out from below the man’s jaw. The rest of the blade had found its mark. The little man’s body seized for a moment, but it put up no more fight than that.

  Everything with Michael happened so quickly that, for a second, I’d forgotten about Reggie and the other two men with guns. Then I heard a popping sound near my feet. I looked down. I could see the spot on the ground, only three feet from me, where a bullet had hit. I looked up. I was still standing out in the open, not bothering to hide or duck while the men shot guns at each other around me. The gunfire had slowed down. Reggie had taken cover behind the column and, every few seconds, would turn and shoot wildly at one of the other men. Without the time to aim, his shots inevitably missed their mark. The two men had hunkered down, taking what cover they could find, hiding from Reggie’s bullets. They fired too. Their shots were more accurate, but Reggie moved too fast and they couldn’t master the timing.

  I felt helpless. I was only twenty feet from Reggie but I couldn’t think of anything to do that wasn’t suicidal. Reggie turned the corner and fired again. He was merely trying to keep the men at bay. He couldn’t hold them off forever. Reggie had only twelve bullets. He’d be lucky if he had three left. I hoped he’d been keeping track. I looked at Reggie. He was bouncing up and down on his toes. He looked back at me. Then I heard my name.

  “Maria.” The voice came out of the darkness. I looked over and saw Michael kneeling over the body of the Middle Eastern man. Michael placed something on the ground and flung it toward me with all his weight. I could hear whatever it was he had pushed toward me scraping along the concrete. It stopped about five feet in front of me. I stepped forward and looked down. I could barely make out its shape through the shadows. A gun. I bent down and picked it up. I remembered how scared I was the only other time in my life I’d held a gun. I wasn’t scared anymore.

  I looked at the gun in my hand. It wasn’t so different than the one Michael had given to Reggie. It was just bigger. I remembered what Michael had said to Reggie. There’s no safety on this one. It’s a double action, so all you have to do to fire it is pull the trigger. I turned and aimed the gun at the closer of the two men, the one with the rifle. He was crouched down on the ground, doing his best to squat behind an orange traffic cone. I began to squeeze the trigger. Before I finished, I heard a click. I don’t know how I heard it. I think maybe it was because the sound was so different from all the other sounds that night. It was so small and hollow. I looked at Reggie. He was still holding his gun but now he had a look of panic on his face. He was out of bullets. “Get him!” yelled the man lying on the ground. Both men stood up. They ran toward Reggie. To get to Reggie, the man with the rifle was going to have to run no more than five feet from me.

  I aimed the gun at him again. I held it in two hands. I’d have to hit a moving target now, but he was going to be so close. I aimed for the widest part of him. I waited until he was only about five feet in front of me and I pulled the trigger. The gun jerked in my hand. If I hadn’t been so nervous, if I hadn’t been holding on to the gun with both hands for dear life, it would have jumped from my grip. But I held on. I felt the gun’s heat. I wasn’t sure where I’d hit the man, but he fell to the ground, his body writhing. I walked over and looked down at him. He looked back up at me in shock, as if he didn’t understand where I’d come from. His shock only lasted for a second. Once it wore off, he reached for his rifle. If he’d had a handgun, he might have moved quickly enough to surprise me, but the rifle was cumbersome. I took aim again. I felt powerful. I felt like I was finally in control. I don’t know where I hit him the first time, but the second time I shot him in the head. His head jerked back and his body stopped moving. He was dead. I killed him.

  I took a breath and remembered that we still had to deal with the last man. I looked up. Reggie was running now, sprinting into the darkness down the long path. The last of the men was chasing him. Every chance Reggie could, he ran behind something that might absorb a bullet. The last man held his gun in his right hand as he chased after Reggie. Every few steps he reached forward and fired, but he couldn’t really aim while running. I lifted my gun again and aimed it at the man’s back. I fired once but missed. He and Reggie were getting farther and farther away. I started to chase after them. We’d become a strange chain of violence. I pulled the trigger two more times, trying to hit the man chasing Reggie. It was no use. They were too fast. It was too dark. I was too lightheaded. The bullets simply disappeared into the night.

  The last I saw of Reggie, he had turned and was running up the hill toward the Brooklyn Bridge. The last man chased him, but Reggie was faster. The distance between them seemed to be growing. The Brooklyn Bridge—if Reggie could get over it, he’d be on his home turf. If he could make it to Brooklyn, I was sure that he’d be safe for tonight. After that, who knows? Dorothy was Reggie’s ticket out of this mess, and now she was dead.

  I finally stopped running. I put my hands on my knees and tried to catch my breath. Then I heard the sirens. I pulled myself together and ran back to Michael. I could still help Michael. Reggie was gon
e.

  Michael was sitting on the ground when I got back to him. His legs were splayed out in front of him and he was leaning against the fence separating the sidewalk from the river. A pool of blood was collecting under his left leg. I took a quick look at the carnage around us. The body of the man I’d shot lay facedown on the concrete. The body of the man Michael stabbed sat hunched on the sidewalk, his shirt covered in his own blood. Then there was Dorothy, still sitting on the bench, her head dangling loosely in front of her. The sirens were getting louder. “We need to get out of here,” I said to Michael.

  “Where’s Reggie?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t keep up with them. He was too fast. He was heading for the bridge.”

  “And the guy chasing him?”

  “He was still chasing him, but I think Reggie is faster.”

  Michael nodded. “Okay, let’s move.” He looked up at me. For the first time that I could remember, he didn’t try to hide his pain. “I need you to help me up,” he said. I walked over to him and squatted down, throwing one of his arms over my shoulder. “You’ve been exercising, right?” he asked. I stood up, lifting his body with me.

  “You can lean on me the whole way,” I said. We walked together, heading north. A park was in front of us, full of trees and shadows. It would provide us with some cover. From there, it wasn’t far to my apartment. “Do you think those sirens are for us?” I asked Michael as he limped beside me.

  “Maybe,” he answered. “Maybe not. We’re probably not the only reason this city has for sirens.” I kept moving us forward. We made it to the shadows of the park and kept going. We made it back to the apartment before midnight. The apartment felt still and empty. Michael didn’t have the strength to make it back to his hotel. We were lucky that he made it as far as he did. Before we went to sleep, I had him take off his pants so that I could look at his wounds. The holes around his knee from the dog bite weren’t healing. They were still open, still leaking an ugly pus. “Your dog bite is infected,” I told him.

  “I’m not really worried about that right now,” he said, grimacing. I looked farther down his leg for the bullet wound. I found the entry and exit wound. That was good. It meant that there probably wasn’t any bullet left in Michael’s leg. I had purchased a virtual pharmacy after Michael had come back that first night with the burns on his back. I stacked the medical supplies on the couch next to where we sat on the floor. Michael looked over the pile of supplies with his eyes but he didn’t move any closer to them. I bought the supplies in case he ever stayed over and I needed to attend to his injuries. I always thought I’d be attending to old wounds, not new ones. “You weren’t pre-med at your college, were you?” he asked.

  “No,” I answered. “Nothing that practical.” I picked up some cotton swabs and the alcohol. I thought about how much time I’d already spent cleaning Michael’s wounds. I dabbed the alcohol on the bullet holes. He didn’t flinch at the burn from the alcohol. This time, I hadn’t expected him to. I took two pieces of gauze and held them against Michael’s leg. “Can you hold them in place while I wrap?” I asked. Michael didn’t say anything. He reached down and placed one hand on each piece of white gauze. The gauze wouldn’t be white for much longer. When I finished wrapping his calf, Michael took his hands away and leaned back, lying flat on the floor. His chest rose and fell with deep, deliberate breaths. I didn’t ask Michael if it hurt. I could feel his pain just by watching him.

  I looked at the clock. It was nearing one in the morning. “We’re going to have to get out of here, Michael. After what happened, we can’t stay here. They knew about Dorothy and Reggie. We’re going to have to go to Philadelphia.”

  “I know,” Michael said. “We’ll leave tomorrow night.”

  “Do you think we’ll be safe there?”

  “We’ll be safer there,” Michael said through gritted teeth. “The plan I had for the job—that’s out the window, though.” He looked down at his new injuries. “I can’t do it on this leg.” The blood was seeping through the bandages on Michael’s leg. It would stop eventually. It might lead to another scar. I was almost jealous of Michael’s wounds, jealous of the way his skin burned and the flesh tore away from his body. At least he had something to show for his pain.

  “That’s okay. I can help you this time.” I shot a man dead, I thought. I’m not useless.

  Michael shrugged. “If that’s what you want.” He didn’t say any more. He didn’t need to. The innocence had been leaking out of me for some time—maybe since the day I met your father—like the slow evaporation of perfume from a bottle. It had to. I know that. I don’t regret it. When I shot that man, I took the perfume bottle and smashed it. Now the stink was everywhere.

  Twenty-eight

  Evan and Addy kept moving. They kept running. They kept hiding. They found more moments alone in the darkness. Evan had more questions for Addy. Sometimes Addy had answers.

  “How do you know where we’re going?” Evan asked Addy. “How do you know where to find the people who are supposed to help us?”

  “When I was with the Underground,” Addy answered, “I used to work at a compound in Florida. I’m just trying to get us back there. I know people there. We just have to hope that the compound wasn’t raided like the houses in L.A.”

  “Has there been any more news?” Evan asked Addy. Addy checked her phone frequently. Evan watched her every time she did. Each time, he could feel his stomach churning.

  Addy shook her head. “Only more cryptic messages about the revolution still being alive, but the Underground was never part of the revolution anyway. They were too timid. We have to hope that’s what kept them safe.”

  “Nothing else?” Evan asked.

  “Nothing about any raids in Florida,” Addy answered, intentionally evading Evan’s question, intentionally neglecting to tell him about the rash of stories about the nationwide manhunt for the eighteen-year-old homegrown terrorist from Maine; intentionally neglecting to tell him about the interviews with people that knew Evan growing up. Evan’s old neighbors said that he was generally a good kid. He was good at sports and well liked, but he and his best friend—his ever-present, mysteriously unnamed best friend—were kind of loners. Addy also neglected to tell Evan about the man who was all over the news, claiming that he saw Evan somewhere in New Mexico. He claimed that he’d given Evan and a young woman a ride. The man said that he didn’t realize who Evan was until he saw Evan’s picture on the news later that day. Addy kept all that information to herself. It was a burden she was willing to carry on her own for Evan’s sake.

  “Even if we find the people you used to work for, how do you know that they’re going to help us?” Evan asked Addy. “I’m not even part of the War.”

  “Because Reggie doesn’t leave people behind,” Addy said, willing to leave it at that.

  But Evan wouldn’t let her. “Who’s Reggie?” he asked.

  “He’s in charge of the group I used to work for. He’s been with the Underground forever, ever since they pulled him out of the War almost twenty years ago, right around the time when things first started going crazy. Reggie’s always kept his head. He’s saved a lot of people during all the madness. He acts like he owes it to the world, for some reason.”

  “But how do you know you can trust him?”

  “Because he’s the person that recruited me,” Addy said. “He’s the one who pulled me out of War. He’s the one who taught me to hate the War to begin with.”

  “Why did he pull you out? I mean, why you?” Evan had thought about this for some time now, imagining that Addy had been someone important before she left the War. “Who were you when you were part of the War?”

  “I was nobody,” Addy confessed.

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Believe it,” Addy said, shooting him a look to try to prepare him for disappointment. “I was in the intelligence group. I was on
a team responsible for researching hospital records and birth announcements to try to connect lineage so that we could identify people on the other side. I was the youngest person on our team, which meant that I spent a lot of time fetching other people’s coffee.”

  “I don’t understand,” Evan said. “If you were a nobody who had to be taught to hate the War, why did this Reggie person bother to recruit you?”

  “I asked him the same question. He told me that he had spies working inside the assignment bureau in intelligence. They’re the guys who determine whether you’re going to be a soldier or a planner or an educator or a nobody. One of Reggie’s spies saw my profile.”

  “What did it say?” Evan looked at Addy. He had no idea what to expect. He had no idea what he was going to learn about her.

  “According to Reggie, my scores indicated that I had the aptitude and disposition that would have made me an excellent soldier. He said my scores in those areas were very near the top of the charts. That’s one of the main reasons why he recruited me.”

  Evan still didn’t understand. “He recruited you to the Underground because your test scores said you would have been good at killing people?”

  Addy shrugged. “According to Reggie, killing people and saving people require the same basic skill set. The only difference is perspective.”

  “If you would have made such a good killer, why didn’t they turn you into a soldier in the first place? Aren’t there a lot of woman soldiers?”

  “Yeah, there are tons of woman soldiers, but my test said something else too. My test scores also indicated that I had what they called an inclination toward independence.”

  “An inclination toward independence?” Evan repeated, feeling the hollow, clinical sound of the words as he said them.

  “Yeah,” Addy confirmed. “And, apparently, that’s not something that’s looked on very highly when handing weapons to eighteen-year-olds and ordering them to go out and kill.”