“May need it,” he goes.
“Right, Brother.” HiLo makes the blade disappear.
I see that is how it has to be.
We pass a few more lobbies before going up and out. We’ve moved faster than we could have on ground; now we are close to the low end of Fun City.
“This way.” HiLo points past broken hives. I see codes scripted on the rubbled walls: Galrog signals?
“Wait,” goes Jade. “I’m starved.”
There is a liquor store a block away. We lift the door and twist it open, easy as breaking an arm. Nothing moves inside or on the street as our lights glide over rows of bottles. Broken glass snaps under our sneakers. The place smells drunk, and I’m getting that way from breathing. We find chips and candy bars that have survived under a counter, and we gulp them down in the doorway.
“So where’s the Galrog hideaway?” goes Jade, finishing a Fifth Avenue bar.
Just then we feel that little deep tug. This one whispers death. A team is letting us know that it has us surrounded.
HiLo goes, “Duck back.”
“No,” goes Slash. “No more hiding.”
We go slow to the door and look through. Shadows peel from the walls and streak from alley mouths. We’re sealed tight.
“Keep your blades back, Brothers.”
I never smashed with Galrogs; I see why Slash kept us away. They are tanked out with daystars, snappers, guns, and glory-stix. Even unarmed they would be fierce, with their fire-painted eyes, chopped topknots a dozen colors, and rainbow geometries tattooed across their faces. Most are dressed in black; all are on razor-toed roller skates.
Their feelings are masked from us behind a mesh of silent threats.
A low voice: “Come out if you plan to keep breathing.”
We move out, keeping together as the girls close tight. Jade raises his flashlight, but a Galrog with blue-triangled cheeks and purple-blond topknot kicks it from his hand. It goes spinning a crazy beam through his dark. There is not a scratch on Jade’s fingers. I keep my own light low.
A big Galrog rolls up. She looks like a cognibot slung with battery packs, wires running up and down her arms and through her afro, where she’s hung tin bells and shards of glass. She has a laser turret strapped to her head and a snapper in each hand.
She checks me and Jade over and out, then turns toward the slickers.
“Slicker HiLo and Slicker Slash,” she goes. “Cute match, but I thought Soooooots were hot for girlies.”
“Keep it short, Bala,” goes Slash. “The blocs are smashed.”
“So I see.” She smiles with black, acid-etched teeth. “Hevvies got stomped next door, and we got a new playground.”
“Have fun playing for a day or two,” goes HiLo. “The ones who squelched them are coming back for you.”
“Buildings squashed them. The end of the ramming world has been and gone. Where were you?”
“There’s a new team playing in Fun City,” HiLo goes.
Bala’s eyes turn to slits. “Ganging on us now, huh? That’s a getoff.”
“The Four Hundred Boys,” goes Jade.
“Enough to keep you busy!” She laughs and skates a half-circle. “Maybe.”
“They’re taking Fun City for their bloc—maybe all of it. They don’t play fair. Those Boys never heard of clean fun.”
“Skud,” she goes, and shakes her hair so tin bells shiver. “You blew cirks, kids.”
Slash knows that she is listening. “We’re calling all teams, Bala. We gotta save our skins now, and that means we need to find more hideaways, let more slickers know what’s up. Are you in or out?”
HiLo goes, “They smashed the Soooooots in thirty seconds flat.”
A shock wave passes down the street like the tail end of a whiplash from center city. It catches us all by surprise and our guards go down; Galrogs, Brothers, Soooooot—we are all afraid of those wreckers. It unites us just like that.
When the shock passes we look at one another with wide eyes.
All the unspoken Galrog threats are gone. We have to hang together.
“Let’s take these kids home,” goes Bala.
“Yeah, Mommy!”
With a whisper of skates, the Galrogs take off.
Our well-armed escort leads us through a maze of skate trails cleared in rubble.
“Boys, huh?” I hear Bala say to the other slickers. “We thought different.”
“What did you think?”
“Gods,” Bala goes.
“Gods!”
“God-things, mind-stuff. Old Mother looked into her mirror and saw a bonfire made out of cities. Remember before the blister tore? There were wars in the south, weirdbombs going off like firecrackers. Who knows what kind of stuff was cooking in all that blaze? “Old Mother said it was the end of the world, time for the ones outside to come through the cracks. They scooped all that energy and molded it into mass. Then they started scaring up storms, smashing. Where better to smash than Fun City?”
“End of the world?” goes HiLo. “Then why are we still here?”
Bala laughs. “You doob, how did you ever get to be a slicker? Nothing ever ends. Nothing.”
In ten minutes we come to a monster-mart pyramid with its lower mirror windows put back together in jigsaw shards. Bala gives a short whistle, and double doors swing wide.
In we go.
The first thing I see are boxes of supplies heaped in the aisles, cookstoves burning, cots, and piles of blankets. I also spot a few people who can’t be Galrogs—like babies and a few grownups.
“We’ve been taking in survivors,” goes Bala. “Old Mother said that we should.” She shrugs.
Old Mother is ancient, I have heard. She lived through the plagues and came out on the side of the teams. She must be upstairs, staring in her mirror, mumbling.
Slash and HiLo look at each other. I cannot tell what they are thinking. Slash turns to me and Jade.
“Okay, Brothers, we’ve got work to do. Stick around.”
“Got anywhere to sleep?” Jade goes. The sight of all those cots and blankets made both of us feel tired.
Bala points at a dead escalator. “Show them the way, Shell.”
The Galrog with a blond topknot that’s streaked purple speeds down one aisle and leaps the first four steps of the escalator. She runs to the top without skipping a stroke and grins down from above.
“She’s an angel,” goes Jade.
There are more Galrogs at the top. Some girls are snoring along the walls.
Shell cocks her hips and laughs. “Never seen Brothers in a monstermart before.”
“Aw, my ma used to shop here,” goes Jade. He checks her up and over.
“What’d she buy? Your daddy?”
Jade sticks his thumb through his fist and wiggles it with a big grin. The other girls laugh but not Shell. Her blue eyes darken and her cheeks redden under the blue triangles. I grab Jade’s arm.
“Don’t waste it,” goes another Galrog.
“I’ll take the tip off for you,” goes Shell, and flashes a blade. “Nice and neat.”
I tug Jade’s arm, and he drops it.
“Come on, grab blankets,” goes Shell. “You can bed over there.”
We take our blankets to a corner, wrap up, and fall asleep close together. I dream of smoke.
It is still dark when Slash wakes us.
“Come on, Brothers, lots of work to do.”
Things have taken off, we see. The Galrogs know the hideaways of more teams than we ever heard of, some from outside Fun City. Runners have been at it all night, and things are busy now.
From uptown and downtown in a wide circle around 400th, they have called all who can come.
The false night of smoke goes on and on, no telling how long. It is still dark when Fun City starts moving.
Over hive and under street, by sewer, strip, and alleyway, we close in tourniquet-tight on 400th, where Soooooots ran a clean-fun bloc. From 1st to 1000th, Bayview Street to Riverrun Boulevard, the rubble scatters and the subtunnels swarm as Fun City moves. Brothers and Galrogs are joined by Ratbeaters, Drummers, Myrmies, and Kingpins, from Piltdown, Renfrew, and the Upperhand Hills. The Diablos cruise down with Chogs and Cholos, Sledges and Trimtones, JipJaps and A-V-Marias. Tints, Chix, RockoBoys, Gerlz, Floods, Zips, and Zaps. More than I can remember.