It is a single team, the Fun City team, and all the names mean the same thing.
We Brothers walk shoulder to shoulder, with the last Soooooot among us.
Up the substairs we march to a blasted black surface. It looks like the end of the world, but we are still alive. I can hardly breathe for a minute, but I keep walking and let my anger boil.
Up ahead of us the Four Hundred Boys quiet down to a furnace roar.
By 395th we have scattered through cross streets into the Boys’ bloc.
When we reach 398th fire flares from hives ahead. There is a sound like a skyscraper taking its first step. A scream echoes high between the towers and falls to the street.
At the next corner, I see an arm stretched out under rubble. Around the wrist the cuff is jagged black and red.
“Go to it,” goes HiLo.
We step onto 400th and stare forever. I’ll never forget.
The streets we knew are gone. The concrete has been pulverized to gravel and dust, cracked up from underneath. Pyramid hives are baby volcano cones that hack smoke, ooze fire, and burn black scars in the broken earth. Towers hulk around the spitting volcanoes like buildings warming themselves under the blanked-out sky.
Were the Four Hundred Boys building a new city? If so, it would be much worse than death.
Past the fires we can see the rest of Fun City. We feel the team on all sides, a pulse of life connecting us, one breath.
HiLo has seen some of this before, but not all. He sheds no tears tonight.
He walks out ahead of us to stand black against the flames. He throws back his head and screams:
“Heeeeeey!”
A cone erupts between the monster buildings. It drowns him out; so he shouts even louder.
“Hey, you Four Hundred Boys!”
Shattered streetlights pop half to life. Over my head one explodes with a flash.
“This is our bloc, Four Hundred Boys!”
Galrogs and Trimtones beat on overturned cars. It gets my blood going.
“So you knocked in our hives, you Boys. So you raped our city.”
Our world. I think of the moon, and my eyes sting.
“So what?”
The streetlights black out. The earth shudders. The cones roar and vomit hot blood all over those buildings; I hear it sizzle as it drips.
Thunder talks among the towers.
“I bet you will never grow UP!”
Here they come.
All at once there are more buildings in the street. I had thought they were new buildings, but they are big Boys. Four hundred at least.
“Stay cool,” goes Slash.
The Four Hundred Boys thunder into our streets.
We move back through shadows into hiding places only we can reach.
The first Boys swing chains with links the size of skating rinks. Off come the tops of some nearby hives. The Boys cannot quite get at us from up there, but they can cover us with rubble.
They look seven or eight years old for all their size, and there is still baby pudge on their long, sweaty faces. Their eyes have a vicious shine like boys that age get when they are pulling the legs off a bug—laughing wild but freaked and frightened by what they see their own hands doing. They look double deadly because of that. They are on fire under their skin, fever yellow.
They look more frightened than us. Fear is gone from the one team. We reach out at them as they charge, sending our power from all sides. We chant, but I do not know if there are any words; it is a cry. It might mean, “Take us if you can, Boys; take us at our size.”
I feel as if I have touched a cold, yellow blaze of fever; it sickens me, but the pain lets me know how real it is. I find strength in that; we all do. We hold onto the fire, sucking it away, sending it down through our feet into the earth.
The Boys start grinning and squinting. They seem to be squeezing inside out. The closest ones start shrinking, dropping down to size with every step.
We keep on sucking and spitting the fever. The fire passes through us. Our howling synchronizes.
The Boys keep getting smaller all the time, smaller and dimmer. Little kids never know when to stop. Even when they are burned out, they keep going.
As we fall back the first Boy comes down to size. One minute he is taller than the hives; then he hardly fills the street. A dozen of his shrinking pals fill in on either side. They whip their chains and shriek at the sky like screaming cutouts against the downtown fires.
They break past HiLo in the middle of the street and head for us. Now they are twice our size… now just right.
This I can handle.
“Smash!” yells Slash.
One Boy charges me with a wicked black curve I can’t see till it’s whispering in my ear. I duck fast and come up faster where he doesn’t expect me.
He goes down soft and heavy, dead. The sick, yellow light throbs out with his blood, fades on the street.
I spin to see Jade knocked down by a Boy with an ax. There is nothing I can do but stare as the black blade swings high.
Shrill whistle. Wheels whirring.
A body sails into the Boy and flattens him out with a footful of razors and ballbearings. Purple-blond topknot and a big grin. The Galrog skips high and stomps his hatchet hand into cement, leaving stiff fingers curling around mashed greenish blood and bones.
Shell laughs at Jade and takes off.
I run over and yank him to his feet. Two Boys back away into a dark alley that lights up as they go in. We start after, but they have already been fixed by Quazis and Drummers lying in wait.
Jade and I turn away.
HiLo still stares down the street. One Boy has stood tall, stronger than the rest and more resistant to our power. He raps a massive club in his hand.
“Come on, slicker” HiLo calls. “You remember me, don’t you?”
The biggest of the Boys comes down, eating up the streets. We concentrate on draining him, but he shrinks more slowly than the others.
His club slams the ground. Boom! Me and some Galrogs land on our asses. The club creases a hive, and cement sprays over us, glass sings through the air.
HiLo does not move. He waits with red-and-black lightning bolts serene, both hands empty.
The big slicker swings again, but now his head only reaches to the fifth floor of an Rx. HiLo ducks as the club streaks over and turns a storefront window into dust.
The Soooooot’s scalpel glints into his hand. He throws himself at the Boy’s ankle and grabs on tight.
He slashes twice. The Boy screams like a cat. Neatest hamstringing you ever saw.
The screaming Boy staggers and kicks out hard enough to flip HiLo across the street into the metal cage of a shop window. HiLo lands in a heap of impossible angles and does not move again. Slash cries out. His gun shouts louder. One blood-silver shot. It leaves a shining line in the smoky air.
The Boy falls over and scratches the cement till his huge fingertips bleed. His mouth gapes wide as a manhole, his eyes stare like the broken windows all around. His pupils are slit like a poison snake’s, his face long and dark, hook-nosed.
God or boy, he is dead. Like some of us.
Five Drummers climb over the corpse for the next round, but with their slickie dead the Boys are not up to it. The volcanoes belch as though they too are giving up.