Noise (10 page)

But White had just started the story—“The Last Man”—with her last ’cast. How the hell would we get the rest of it? Crack its code?

If this was real—if Chance had laundered that money …

I made myself write another note.

… then they took their …
infantile steps criminally…
.

The Plan
was supposed to be a reaction—not a catalyst, not a revolution
.

I wanted to hit the news anchor. “Anarchist.” I wanted to hit her. She didn’t know what it meant.

…
Pre-Event, take the time to learn the whereabouts of nearby paramilitary Groups, which may include religious or philosophical sects, racial supremacists, or other paralegal organizations. Avoid routes that will take your Group past these Places…
.

Chance’s ’casting campaign had been preemptive. Spreading the Good Word about the dangers of churches. In the South. Chance had mobilized the rest of Salvage—it got everyone to Clear its competitors. Tricked other Salvagers into avoiding the roads that would lead others to Chance’s Promised Land. Which was real, though: Chance or Redemption?

Had we been complicit? Or was this bullshit? Of course we weren’t our-fucking-selves when in Party. Not if we were fulfilling someone else’s Plan—Chance’s Plan—without fucking knowing it.

We’d be just as clueless as all these Outsiders,
Books
or not.

I pulled the earpiece out. Four turned and looked at me.

“Any more Guard?” I asked.

“No.”

“Wake them up.” I handed her the stenographer’s pad. “Give Levi the report. Do it calmly. Don’t wake them in a panic.”

“Where are you going?”

“Just outside. A check.”

I picked up one of the walkie-talkies and the .38. I was careful, slipping out the back door. Anyone could be waiting among the palisades of bamboo obscuring the fence. I moved slowly, across the gravel lot, through the stalks, toward the fence.
We taught ourselves ninjutsu and tried it out in the fort. In the field between us and the grocery store
. Against the fence, I could hear the bell tower better, but I still couldn’t tell what they were saying.

They’d taken the campus for White. For Fat Chance.

I tuned the walkie-talkie to Channel 19. The Salvage Channel. The most popular, anyway. What came through matched the mumbled bell tower broadcast in cadence. Someone was standing close enough to pick up what was coming from those hidden speakers. Close enough to give it to the rest of Slade. ’Casters would piggyback it. Take it from their own walkie-talkies, and
pump it straight into their amps, into their modded antennae. Word would spread.

I listened.

It was White’s voice, cut off. Probably the last portion to make it out of New York. Out of Georgia. Chance must’ve been real. It had to be.

Somebody local had gotten the last portion. Whoever it was, they weren’t ’casting the story like they were supposed to. They were asserting it. Moving it from the Salvage airwaves to something physical. Speaking into a microphone atop the bell tower, or jacking a portable data player into whatever mixing deck controlled the volume, the pitch, the timbre of the school’s artificial bells. Whoever this was, they were creating an oracle. A call to prayer. You had to come out of the dark places, out of Salvage-hiding to listen to the rest of the story.

And they’d been cut off. I didn’t hear any weapons fire. Even at this distance, I’d hear it if they’d shelled the tower.

A sniper, though, could have done it quietly. Silenced the speakers, severed the nerve thinking the mob.

Except, if I was right—if those were Cells or Groups on campus—there wasn’t a nerve to sever. Just Phantom Cell Structure. It wasn’t a mob. It was the confluence of different Places, all thinking across their distances. Shooting one kid in a tower or destroying the device playing the story into the speakers wouldn’t demoralize the Salvage on campus. It would light it on
fire. It would make the campus into all Places at once. It would make it a terrain that looked different, looked safe in different ways to everyone with something to throw or shoot at the Guard.

…
When you reach your Place, consider it enemy territory…
.

Now was our chance. The government had accelerated things. It wasn’t supposed to be this unstable for weeks. The country was starting to burn. I’d guess the whole world was starting to burn.

Now was our chance. We needed to get the jump. We were going to need more than just the four of us. To be strong.

We needed the rest of White’s story.

“Because we need the rest of the story,” I said. “We need some fucking answers.”

Four was being calm. I’d told Levi and Mary about Four. She was asking sound questions, which was good. We hadn’t assigned a Party Leader yet, so asking questions was still good.

“You don’t understand,” Levi said.

“White’s story, ‘The Last Man,’ is going to be a part of Salvage.”

“Whatever it’ll be like now,” Mary said.

I looked at her. “Yeah.”

“We’re going to need the rest of that story,” I said. “It’ll be a stock in trade. It’ll be a thing between Salvagers.”

“Do you even know what it means?”

“It’s just a story,” I said.

“It’s a story about survival,” Levi said. “It’s a metaphor. A code.”

“Like the crib sheets?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not just about ‘survival,’” Mary said. “It’s about ‘self,’ too.” She tied her bandanna over her head. It would be under her mask.

“‘The Last Man,’” Four said. “It’s a religion. You’re chasing after your own grail.”

I smirked. She didn’t get it. “It isn’t a religion.”

“It’s
about
a Group with one brain,
from
a Group with one brain. One brain to rule them all,” she said.

She didn’t get it.

Mary reached for the polish, for her face. Levi stayed her hand. There wasn’t a Party yet. No Leader meant no paint.

“No one
believes
in the Last Man,” I said. “He doesn’t
get
you anything. No heavens, no blessings, no bread from the sky. It’s just a story.”

“About being last,” Levi said.

“That’s what a religion is,” Four said. She took the can of polish from Levi. “The perfect, final, static self. I read the
Book
. I get it. It’s fine. We’re going after the new religion. That’s fine. We’re going after some others, who don’t know yet what they’re going after. After some answers.”

I looked at her. She was ready to paint Mary white. She was holding the can so she could paint Mary with her other hand.

“That’s fine,” Four said. “We should all go. This is important.”

“I think Hiram should Lead the Party,” Four said.

“You Lead, Hiram?” Levi asked.

They all looked at me.

…
You are not yourselves…
.

She doesn’t get it.

“I’ll Lead.”

Ruth started painting Mary. “I need a mask.”

Levi and I exchanged looks.

“I thought you wanted to be Secondary.”

“Yes.”

“You want in on this?” I asked. “You want a mask?”

She closed Mary’s eyelids, gently. “I have to have
something.
”

“TWO”

SEC. “I,” SUBSEC. “C,” PROCEDURE
“I” (“THE FIRST PHASE”)

(cont’d)

[7] (i) It is better for the Party to use the energy of others to its advantage. (ii) The key to the First Phase of the Event Exit Strategy is to execute the maneuver before too much time passes. (iii) In the early period following the Event, when civil unrest outpaces law enforcement, great numbers of urban Outsiders will flock to places such as grocery stores, pharmacies, feed suppliers, and hardware stores. (iv) Some will waste their energy at electronics stores and other commodity suppliers. Avoid these facilities.

[8] (i) The Party is watching for disorder. (ii) The most conservative Forage occurs outside facilities wherein chaos reigns. The reason behind this is that the situation offers the greatest capitalization on the personal energies of others. (iii) Those that do successfully negotiate internal facility disorder will have expended great amounts of personal energy in doing so (indeed, they may already have sustained injuries), which makes them ideal targets.

[9] (i) The maneuver does not begin until you have established surveillance. (ii) The surveillance officer’s primary duty is to watch for signs of risk—approaching mobs, rogue military patrols, or competing Parties endanger your Party, necessitating abortion and reassignment.

[10] (i) In the theater of violence itself is the acquisitions team. (ii) Ideally, they are three. (iii) If your Party has only three Members, then the surveillance operation must
necessarily be rolled into their tasks. (iv) Under these circumstances, the tolerance for risk is higher, for the Party must acquire the supplies it needs, risk or not.

[11] (i) The most conservative form of the maneuver involves three roles for the acquisitions team: diplomat, mule, and escort. (ii) The diplomat approaches Outsiders as they exit the facility, having successfully negotiated the disorder inside. (iii) The diplomat requests the supplies in question from the target. (iv) If the target declines, the diplomat threatens force. (v) If the target reciprocates, the three incapacitate the target and Forage the supplies. (vi) The mule moves the Foraged goods out of the immediate theater and into a nearby cache. (vii) The escort monitors surrounding activity and will defend the mule and his or her payload, should either come to risk. (viii) The Party must remember that its behavior is not its own. (ix) You are not yourselves. (x) The Place is thinking, and it requires vicious behavior.

[12] (i) Repeat this process until it becomes infeasible.

i
wasn’t Senior Patrol Leader then. I think I might have been Assistant Patrol Leader. I might have just been in a patrol. I can’t remember.

We were lost. Doing our duty to God and our country. Remembering the Boy Scout Law. Being Prepared. But we were on the wrong trail. Our dads had gone ahead, driving the pickup trucks and vans and SUVs to the campsite off the state park road. They had set up their camp, percolated coffee over the fire in blue-enameled steel pots. Sat in camp chairs in Boy Scout cargo shorts. They wore their socks up to their shins. It was regulation. They were setting good examples.

There were twenty-three of us, and we each carried a compass. There was only one map, however. One SPL, two Assistant SPLs, four Patrol Leaders, four Assistant Patrol Leaders. I was one of these, somewhere in the ranks, one of the youngest in the troop. I’d been allowed in early because of my Arrow of Light. Earning the Arrow of Light, in the Webelos, got you in early. Got you the training earlier than others.

We had aluminum-frame packs, hiking boots, Sierra cups on
our belts. Pocketknives, waterproof matches, flashlights with belt clips and buttons for signaling in Morse code. We had all these things lost with us, standing in a mob on the hiking trail. We were earning our Orienteering Merit Badges, arguing directions beneath black oaks. Among creepers and ferns and tiny signs identifying other plants.

The SPL’s name was an anagram. All things were anagrams, some without vowels. I’d learned this from the back-page puzzles in
Boys’ Life
magazine. A subscription came with your dues to the troop, and it told stories of loyalty, Christianity, and service. The magazines featured pictures of concept cars and kits for turning vacuums into hovercrafts. There were ads for throwing-knife targets, for air rifles, for gun camps. There were articles on how to make bridges out of rope.

I didn’t speak into the mob. Into the noise. Everyone else was older than me. We were tired. We were lost. One of the boys was crying. I couldn’t do orienteering. Not well. I could do fires. I won awards for starting fires with wet wood, for starting them at competitions in artificial winds blown from rented industrial fans.

I stuck with what I knew. I learned how to make all kinds of fires all kinds of ways. To do my duty to God and my Country.

We were walking to the square. That was something. I didn’t want to chance the Mulberry Mob again, though they’d likely dispersed when the Guard rolled through. Those that Mary hadn’t burned. The Oak Street intersection wasn’t much farther down Broadway. We stayed away from the road, moving when we could through office buildings and parking garages. I didn’t want to chance the truck, or the car. There was too high a chance that we wouldn’t have open roads. We’d be an obvious target,
and if we hit a roadblock, we didn’t have the artillery to get ourselves out.

Four had helped Levi rig some more cocktails, with motor oil and gas from a can that we used to fill the lawn mower. We carried two each, on lariats I’d tied for the purpose. Four carried six. She would replace what we used. I assigned the .38 to Mary because she couldn’t use a sword.

Later, when I was SPL, when everyone was younger than me, after the troop’s first Eagle Scout had gone to prison, after the second had joined the police force, I told them that we weren’t lost. There wasn’t any discussion. I allowed only Patrol Leaders to carry compasses. Everyone had jobs. Orient, read. Carry the matches. Be important to the troop.
We need you to do this
. I had my Assistant SPLs run checks, talk with Patrol Leaders about fatigue, morale, backaches. I called stops for rest before the others had to ask. They voted me into the Order of the Arrow for this, and I spent a weekend without talking, among other Order initiates, sleeping on the ground without a tent. I kept the secrets from the rest of the troop. Like I was supposed to. When someone cried, I put him in charge of something. Made him responsible to something other than being twelve years old and tired. Made him somebody. Promised him I’d show him how to make fire. I’d call him Prometheus, like calling him “Sport.” I’d learned it at his age, reading
Mythology
. They didn’t know what it meant, but they liked taking a new name.