400 Boys and 50 More (6 page)

I catch a shine of silver down the Strip. A cognibot is stalled with scanners down, no use to the shave-heads who sit in the Pylon and watch the streets.

I point it out, thinking there can’t be many shave-heads left.

“No more law,” goes Jade.

“Nothing in our way,” goes Slash.

We start down the Strip. On our way past the cog, Vave stops to unbolt the laser nipples on its turret. Hooked to battery packs, they will make slick snappers.

We grab flashlights from busted monster marts. For a while we look into the ruins, but that gets nasty fast. We stick to finding our way through the fallen mountains that used to be pyramids and block-long hives. It takes a long time.

There is fresh paint on the walls that still stand, dripping red-black like it might never dry. The stench of fresh death blows at us from center city.

Another alley cat pissed our bloc.

I wonder about survivors. When we send our minds out into the ruins, we don’t feel a thing. There were never many people here when times were good. Most of the hives emptied out in the fever years, when the oldies died and the kiddy kids, untouched by disease, got closer together and learned to share their power.

It keeps getting darker, hotter; the smell gets worse. Bodies staring from windows make me glad I never looked for Ma or my brother. We gather canned food, keeping ultraquiet. The Strip has never seen such a dead night. Teams were always roving, smashing, throwing clean-fun free-for-alls. Now there’s only us.

We cross through bloc after bloc: Bennies, Silks, Quazis, Mannies, and Angels. No one. If any teams are alive they are in hideaways unknown; if they hid out overground they are as dead as the rest.

We wait for the telltale psychic tug—like a whisper in the pit of your belly—that another team gives. There is nothing but death in the night.

“Rest tight, teams,” Jade goes.

“Wait,” goes Slash.

We stop at two hundred sixty-fifth in the Snubnose bloc. Looking down the Strip, I see someone sitting high on a heap of ruined cement. He shakes his head and puts up his hands.

“Well, well,” goes Slash.

The doob starts down the heap. He is so weak he tumbles and avalanches the rest of the way to the street. We surround him, and he looks up into the black zero of Slash’s gun.

“Hiya, HiLo,” Slash goes. He has on a grin he must have saved with the silver bullet. It runs all the way back to his ears. “How’s Soooooots?”

HiLo doesn’t look so slick. His red-and-black lightning-bolt suit is shredded and stained, the collar torn off for a bandage around one wrist. The left lens of his dark owlrims is shattered, and his buzzcut is scraped to nothing.

HiLo doesn’t say a word. He stares up into the gun and waits for the trigger to snap, the last little sound he will ever hear. We are waiting, too.

There’s one big tear dripping from the shattered lens, washing HiLo’s grimy cheek. Slash laughs. Then he lowers the gun and says, “Not tonight.”

HiLo does not even twitch.

Down the Strip, a gas main blows up and paints us all in orange light.

We all start laughing. It’s funny, I guess. HiLo’s smile is silent.

Slash jerks HiLo to his feet. “I got other stuff under my skin, slicker. You look like runover skud. Where’s your team?”

HiLo looks at the ground and shakes his head slowly.

“Slicker,” he goes, “we got flattened. No other way to put it.” A stream of tears follows the first; he clears them away. “There’s no Soooooots left.”

“There’s you,” goes Slash, putting a hand on HiLo’s shoulder.

“Can’t be a slicker without a team.”

“Sure you can. What happened?”

HiLo looks down the street. “New team took our bloc,” he goes. “They’re giants, Slash —I know it sounds crazy.”

“No,” goes Jade, “I seen ‘em.”

HiLo goes, “We heard them coming, but if we had seen them I would never have told the Soooooots to stand tight. Thought there was a chance we could hold our own, but we got smeared. “They
threw
us. Some of my buds flew higher than the Pylon. These boys. . . incredible boys. Now 400th is full of them. They glow and shiver like the lights when you get clubbed and fade out.”

Vave goes, “Sounds like chiller-dillers.”

“If I thought they were only boys I wouldn’t be scared, Brother,” goes HiLo. “But there’s more to them. We tried to psych them out, and it almost worked. They’re made out of that kind of stuff: It looks real, and it will cut you up, but when you go at it with your mind it buzzes away like bees. There weren’t enough of us to do much. And we weren’t ready for them. I only got away because NimbleJax knocked me cold and stuffed me under a transport.

“When I got up it was over. I followed the Strip. Thought some teams might be roving, but there’s nobody. Could be in hideaways. I was afraid to check. Most teams would squelch me before I said word one.”

“It’s hard alone, different with a team behind you,” goes Slash. “How many hideaways do you know?”

“Maybe six. Had a line on JipJaps, but not for sure. I know where to find Zips, Kingpins, Gerlz, Myrmies, Sledges. We could get to the Galrog bloc fast through the subtunnels.”

Slash turns to me. “What have we got?”

I pull out the beat-up list and hand it to Jade, who reads it. “JipJaps, Sledges, Drummers, A-V-Marias, Chix, Chogs, Dannies. If any of them are still alive, they would know others.”

“True,” goes Slash.

Jade nudges me. “Wonder if this new team has got a name.”

He knows I like spelling things out. I grin and take back the list, pull out a pencil, and put down
400 BOYS
.

“Cause they took 400th,” Jade goes. I nod, but that is not all. Somewhere I think I read about Boys knocking down the world, torturing grannies. It seems like something these Boys would do.

Down the street the moon comes up through smoke, making it the color of rust. Big chunks are missing.

“We’ll smash em,” goes Vave.

The sight of the moon makes us sad and scared at the same time, I remember how it had been perfect and round as a pearl on jewelrymart velvet, beautiful and brighter than streetlights even when the worst smogs dyed it brown. Even that brown was better than this chipped-away bloody red. Looks like it was used for target practice. Maybe those Boys tossed the Bridge at Base English.

“Our bloc is gone,” goes HiLo. “I want those Boys. It’ll be those doobs or me.”

“We’re with you,” goes Slash. “Let’s move fast. Cut into pairs, Brothers. We’re gonna hit some hideaways. Jade, Croak, you come with me and HiLo. Well see if those Galrogs will listen to sense.”

Slash tells the other Brothers where to look and where to check back.

We say good-bye. We find the stairs to the nearest subtunnel and go down into lobbies full of shadow, where bodies lie waiting for the last train.

We race rats down the tunnel. They are meaner and fatter than ever, but our lights hold them back.

“Still got that wicked blade?” goes Slash.

“This baby?” HiLo swings his good arm, and a scalpel blade drops into his hand.

Slash’s eyes frost over, and his mouth tightens.

“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.