“In the old days, Burners were pretty sneaky.” Abbot puffs smoke away from his eyes as he scans the surrounding streets. “They’d spread themselves thin, hide out in basements with their napalm, and no one suspected a thing until Bark came on the loudspeaker. But that shit doesn’t work when the city’s empty. We’ve got rat patrols on every block. And from the sounds of it, they’re not after the ruins anyway.”
Abram looks back at the stadium, then toward the thick forests in the east. His eyes narrow.
“Yeah,” Abbot says, following his gaze. “If they were smart, they’d come at us through the woods. Spread their little ‘army’ as wide as they can and try to surround us.” He shrugs. “But Bark’s not a tactician. He’s a fucking showman. I’ll bet you my last bottle he comes right through there.” He sights his finger like a gun down the length of Corridor 1. “Bet you he marches right up Main Street and dumps his little bone collection right on our doorstep. And then we just”—he pulls the trigger—“sweep it up.”
Abram is still staring into the forest, but Abbot has misread his interest. Abram isn’t calculating the Ardents’ plan of attack. He is trying to imagine how this happened to them. How they drifted out so far, became so hopeless and desperate for purpose that they would rally around anyone who offered it, no matter what the cost. So angry and alone that the whole world became their enemy.
Abram tries to imagine all this, and he finds it easy. He can see it a dozen different ways in a dozen different places. Staring out into the forest and the countryside beyond, he wonders how many other towns like Bark’s are out there, shunned and forgotten by society, left to fester in their bitterness until they’re ready to erupt.
A thought creeps down his spine like a cold worm.
“Sir?” he says. “Do we know how many skeletons were in that siege three months ago?”
Abbot shrugs. “Reports say about nine hundred.”
“And they almost breached the stadium?”
“Well…‘almost’ is a slippery word.”
“What if there are more this time?”
Abbot frowns. “You saw the Burners’ warehouse. Couldn’t have been more than a thousand in there.”
“But that was four days ago. It’s a two hour drive.”
Abbot opens his mouth, then closes it.
“So where are they?” Abram’s tone is slipping out of proper deference but he doesn’t care. “If they had their army in tow when they escaped, why wouldn’t they come straight here and set it loose? Why give us time to prepare?”
“We rattled them,” Abbot says. “They had to regroup.”
He’s preaching to himself again. Abram can tell the idea has already taken hold, but he says it anyway:
“Or maybe they have other warehouses. Other armies.”
Abbot stares at the end of his cigarette. It glows like a tiny sun, or a tiny burning planet. “Shit,” he whispers, and marches back inside.
I
SURPRISINGLY FEW SOLDIERS have responded to our disruption. The handful who did show up are busy chasing the other escapees, and we slip into the streets unnoticed. I wince at the sound of gunshots. Did we push those people out of their chairs and into an execution? Even if we did, it may have been a favor.
We spread out to avoid notice, letting our group dissolve into the crowd of lonely strangers. Nora’s delirious stagger attracts some attention, but she’ll probably pass for drunk. Once we’re a few blocks away from the Orientation building, we regroup in an alley, and Julie rushes to her friend.
“Nora,” she says, squeezing her arms and leaning close. “Talk to me.”
Nora’s eyes drift back and forth, pausing only briefly on Julie’s. “What words?” she mumbles. “I’ll say…do…Tell me what.”
“Nora, where are you right now?”
“Don’t know.” Her voice is dull and distant. “Wherever you want.”
“Jesus,” Julie says, pulling away in worried disgust as if Nora is vomiting blood. “Why did it hit her so much harder?”
I’m not surprised. I know the things that feed the plague—confusion, loneliness, hurt, resignation—and Nora has been marinating in all of them.
“It’s just a little poison,” M says. “She’ll be fine.” He says it with such simple, stolid confidence that I find myself wondering how suggestible the universe really is. How loudly do we have to believe before reality agrees?
There’s a strained silence, then Tomsen whirls on me and Julie. “So what happened to you? How did you escape the raid? And how did you get in here? And also, why?”
Julie hesitates. “No time to answer all of those, but that last one’s easy: because we love you guys.”
Tomsen blinks.
“And because that’s a bomb.” She points at my briefcase. “And we’re going to blow up BABL.”
Tomsen grins like a birthday girl getting ready to open her last present, the big one in the back, hidden under a sheet.
The four actual children are listening intently, and I wonder how much they understand. Totalitarian takeovers and suppression of information are probably beyond their ken, but one thing is clear enough: there are bad people here. Blunt, cruel, selfish wretches, aligned to life’s lowest drives and scornful of anything higher. And we can’t keep letting them win.
“So how do we find the tower?” Tomsen says, fidgeting with excitement. “It’s a big stadium. Lots of buildings. Lots of guards. Do we have to take a hostage and torture them for information? I don’t like doing that. Maybe with enough cannabis…”
I notice Julie’s face hardening as Tomsen rambles. We have reached the end of my half of our plan. Before we left our house, I asked Julie for the first page of hers, and her eyes glazed like she was going far away, exploring old rooms and reading old books. And then they cleared to a glittering sharpness. They narrowed and began to smolder, and she answered through her teeth just like she does now:
“I know where it is.”
Tomsen gapes at her. Even Nora registers some surprise.
“You do?” M says, tossing up his hands.
Julie’s jaw muscles flex. She says it again, lower and almost vicious. “I know where it is.”
And with that, she storms into the streets.
There are advantages to living under an unstable government. Axiom is a belligerent drunk, fighting and flailing its way across the country with no regard for human life or long-term consequences, and if left unchecked it will gleefully repeat every mistake in history. But like most drunks, its vision is blurry and its punches swing wide, and our gang of terrorists moves freely through its headquarters under the gaze of a dozen cameras.
Where is Security? I see only a few teenage soldiers patrolling the streets, looking scared and uncertain. This should be reassuring, but instead I feel a chill. If the troops were reassigned, I have a guess as to where and why.
I force myself to focus. Here and now. Joan’s hand in my left, the briefcase in my right.
“My family lived in a nice house,” Julie says as we move along the edge of the street, where the crowds are thinner. Her voice is tight with bitterness. “It was already there when they found this place, before they built the enclave. It was the biggest and most secure building, so of course it’s where the leader had to live. And Dad was the leader.” Her lips twist like she’s trying to swallow something vile. “Four stories all to ourselves. It even had a basement.”
M looks at me with raised eyebrows. I shrug.