Noise (17 page)

There was still plenty of gunfire coming from campus, but I hadn’t seen evidence of any more Guard. I didn’t think there were any more left to come.

“Do I need to explain it again?” he asked.

“No.” It hadn’t been necessary when I told him I was going west. It hadn’t been necessary when we ceased to be a family. It hadn’t been necessary when I told my mom and sisters what to do, when this happened, because I wouldn’t be coming for them.

I was going to start over.

He gave me a cigarette. We heard something down the pipe.

“To be a fly on the wall in that bathroom right now,” he said, staring away.

I laughed. I wondered which of them I would look at most. Which I wanted to look at most.

“At least we found some women,” I said. “It was going to be a hell of a sausage fest. Before.”

“Well”—he turned and batted his eyes at me—“I guess we would have gone sailor. Taking turns wearing the dress and all that.”

I could hear the Jacks, barely, laughing around the table. I guessed they found more beer. Which was all right. We weren’t leaving tonight.

We were quiet, while we smoked. It tasted terrible, and it made my head swim.

“Do you remember Charice?” he asked.

“Who?”

“That girl from my biology lab. Went bowling with her.”

“Right. What about her?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Just asking.”

When they brought her out, Circe smelled like sandalwood and amber. She was wearing a white sundress, and they had shorn her hair. I wondered, then, if we should change her name. Bathsheba, perhaps. After all, that name would be in the eye of the beholder—she couldn’t take it for herself. Someone had to see her, to lust after her, before she could
become
such. Someone like Luke had done, who could help her bear great children. She had already proven her affinity for explosives. Maybe she had a Solomon in the works, only instead of designing great temples it would blow them apart.

We were looking at her. I even called Matthew and Mark from their post on the porch, keeping watch. Four had come and told me they were bringing her out. It was most important that Matthew and Mark see her. That they saw what Luke no longer could. It had cleared things up for King David, after all—seeing Bathsheba. Mary was holding her hand, standing behind her.

I stood up. “Your sacrifice is ours, Circe.”

She looked at me, and smiled. “We will remember him with our first Monument,” she said.

I embraced her. Stepped aside so everyone else could. They each laid a hand on her, in turn.

Which
him
did she mean?

And then she lifted her dress and showed us the tattoo—slick with oil, to keep it from scabbing, its india-ink ridges puckered
and red over that womb-space between her navel and the low waistband of her underwear. There, the tattoo would expand, become something more, if she ever became pregnant.

…
should carry some mark …

The Jacks stared. She stood there, the hem of her dress in one fist, Mary’s hand in the other. She stared back.

I looked at the tattoo, at the wildstyle
A
, with one down-pointed chevron beneath it. Now, when she made grenades, when one of these other boys brought half of the necessary genes and gave her something to carry, she would birth them for us. For Amaranth.

“Hiram,” Mark said.

I didn’t look away from Circe because, really, I didn’t want to.

“We have something for you to read.”

I looked then. “What is it?”

He handed me a sheet of paper. “This has to come next. There has to be more.”

It was more about the Last Man. They’d written it, I guessed, when I was on the roof with Levi.

Circe lowered her dress.

“We think this is a good time,” Mark said. “With Circe’s bath and all.”

“Is it good?”

“It’s good.”

“Can we tag the street with it? For everyone else?”

Merlin had a bottle of vodka among his cook’s gear. With permission, he went and got it. Mary took them all, especially Circe, into the living room. Circe followed Mary’s examples, mannerisms. She touched the Jacks lightly. She knew what Amaranth could cost, and they needed to know what that felt like, especially at the fingertips of someone beautiful.

Penelope retrieved her tattoo gun, her battery, and the ink …
They should carry some mark….
, and she would give it to them. She would write their names in the sand.

I wasn’t going to be on watch rotation, so I went to my room. To sleep. Four came with me. She was exhausted, and she didn’t have a post in the rotation tonight, either.

We lay in the darkness, listening to the occasional sound of a sentry’s footsteps crunching on the gravel drive, outside my window. The cats organized themselves between us.

“How is Circe?” I asked.

“She’s fine. For now. She’ll be fucked up when she has the chance to. After.”

She laughed. “Mary
really
enjoyed bathing her.”

I hadn’t thought about that.

“Circe’s got this … thing,” Four said. “I don’t know. Those boyfriends of hers, they’re … symptomatic.”

I realized, now, that Four had reserved some of the oils for herself. I could smell cedar and vanilla. And body odor. From both of us.

“It’s the attention,” she said.

I was sure that made some kind of sense.

“By the way, she doesn’t want to wear red paint anymore. Is that allowed?”

We didn’t actually have rules about paint. About creating oneself in one’s own image, with the right color scheme. “Yeah, I guess. What does she want to wear instead?”

“White.”

“I see. What about you?”

“I still like black.”

I thought for a moment.

Me, too
.

“Where did she get that dress?” I asked.

There was a pause. “Christ, Hiram. Don’t you think we might pack something other than commando knives and survival blankets? What the hell is the point, otherwise?”

I turned on my side, upsetting Edmund, and offered her a dark smile.

“Did you? Pack something?”

I wondered. Four wore dark shirts, and heavy eyeliner, and jeans with holes and safety pins in them. What would she pack?

What would I?

She wasn’t going to answer. I didn’t realize until later, trying to fall asleep, how much better than an answer it was. How much better than hearing she had a thong bunched up in her duffel. Or a soft blouse, or dress that would admit sunlight at just the right angle.

“Are you—”

She interrupted me. “What were you going to do before?”

“What?”

“Before. Like, what’s your major?”

I thought that it should have been a funny question, but I wasn’t laughing. “Interdisciplinary studies.”

“Levi, too?”

“Yeah, both of us.”

“So what were you going to do?”

“You mean for a job?”

“Or whatever.”

I stared at her arm, with its serpents coiling, where I could see her bra strap slipping, in the wan light from the window.

“I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know.”

“I was going to own my own studio,” she said.

“There are acetylene torches and tanks and stuff at Amaranth.”

“Where’d you get them?”

“They’re just … there.”

She was quiet for a while, content to smell like vanilla and cedar.

“Can I ask you about your name?”

“Maybe.”

“Why ‘Hiram’?”

Sitting atop Four’s abdomen, Fluff purred. I reached out and stroked her head.

“He was a Phoenician king.”

“And that’s why?”

“No.”

“Then …?”

“When I was a kid, my dad and I built a remote-control robot. It was the first time I’d ever soldered metal before. The first time I’d followed blueprints. I loved it.”

Four watched me.

“We named it ‘Hiram’ because I’d just learned about the king, in Sunday school.

“My dad called me ‘Hiram’ sometimes—because I spent every waking minute with that thing.”

Four smiled. “Do you still have it?”

“No.”

“THREE”

SEC. “I,” SUBSEC. “B” (“MONUMENT”)

[1] (i) You should raise your first Monument on “Arrival Day”—under the circumstances, this work does not violate the terms of rest, and you may requisition Members with necessary skills to this end. (ii) Your Monument may take any of a number of forms: an edifice of new beginning, a cenotaph, an expression of the Place itself, etc. (iii) Avoid the use of religious Monuments, for later Additions may not share this faith, which can create division, unrest, and Failure. Religion should, under all circumstances, be a personal event, as should be the maintenance of its paraphernalia. (iv) Do not attach the Place itself to a religion. Doing so invites later fanaticism, which is almost certain to Fail your Place. (v) Do not enforce specific codes of morality. (vi) Do not practice racism, sexism, or other forms of prejudice. Doing so limits the development of prosperity and opportunity without question. (vii) Do not tolerate intolerance.

[2] (i) Your Monument is your Place. It is a version of yourself that resists age and recidivism, insofar as you maintain it. (ii) You must
be
and
think
your Place, and your Place must think you. (iii) Your first Monument is your existential compass, and your first Day, in projection, is your last.

“FOUR
”

“ADMINISTRATION SCHEMATIC”

[1] (i) With your resource-security apparatus in place, your temporary housing secure, the status of surrounding Groups
and Places mapped, your first Day established, and your first Monument erected, you must enact your Administration Schematic. This Schematic must consist of four critical elements: a civilian militia Leader, a popularly elected Administrative Senate, term limitation for elected Administrators, and mandatory militia training for all Members.

I.A.

“CIVILIAN MILITIA LEADERSHIP”

[1] (i) If you allow your militia Leader to govern his or her combatants with full autonomy, he or she will eventually establish a military dictatorship. (ii) To avoid this, make your militia Leaders accountable to your elected Administrative Senate. (iii) Militia men and women must swear loyalty and obedience to the civilian Leadership and to the Group that sustains them. (iv) In the event that your militia Leader attempts a coup, he or she must be removed from power and either banished or executed, as determined by popular vote. (v) The militia Leader’s life is, at all times, in the Group’s hands.

h
iram,” she said gently into the dawn, “wake up.”

I was on my side, my ass toward Four. The air in the room was cold—our old heater had been electric, not gas. Beneath the blankets, things were heavy and warm and dark. Four’s fingers on my shoulder, where she had planted them to lean into my ear, were heavy and warm. For a time, this place was all places.

“What?”

“Wake up.”

“Yeah.”

She leaned away and kicked off the blankets. My door was closed—she walked over to it, in her black baby tee and faded-pink underwear. Some of the snakes’ eyes, on the back of her arm, were blue. I could see that now. One, though—its eyes were pink, so I stared at her underwear.

“Thanks,” she said to the closed door. “We’ll be right out.”

I heard footsteps leaving.

“Who was that?” I asked, sitting up. I’d slept in my jeans.

“Voice, I think.”

I didn’t hear him?

“What’s up?”

She pulled her jeans over her stubbled legs.

“We have a prisoner.”

I watched her dress. It couldn’t have been real. This couldn’t have been real.

I was seeing what I wanted to.

Matthew and Mark had Zero at gunpoint, on the front porch. They’d bound his hands with the rope that had hanged the cat. They’d beaten the shit out of him.

I thought I’d gotten rid of that rope.

They had him duct-taped to one of the posts supporting the porch. Everyone was assembled.

“We found God,” Matthew said, smirking.

Mary and Circe and Penelope were clustered before the door to the 1890s half. Levi leaned against the giant sycamore in the front yard, just below the porch rails. Voice was out in the driveway with Silo, on duty.

I couldn’t see where anyone’s new tattoos were.

“We caught him trying to leave, last night,” Mark said.

Beyond them, in the road, was the new story about the Last Man. They’d tagged it with my wildstyle
A
. Smoke was climbing slowly, everywhere, like great, gray trees across town. It was very quiet. There were a few people, dead or sleeping, along the sidewalk across Broadway.

“Mary, get the paints, the masks.”

“Four, bring me my sword.”

•   •   •

“Look—I just—I’m done.”

“You’re not done.”

“Yes, I am. I won’t—I won’t—tell anyone. Anything.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I don’t want to go west. I’m done.”

“You’re done.”

“Please.”

Four looked like she was dressed for a show, wearing her black paint and her black mask.

There was a club in Dallas, a dance club that on Thursdays and Sundays was a retro-goth outfit. I had gone a few times, with Her, after we came back from the west. Before we were done.

I had seen girls there who looked like this. And by that point, I had looked at them, not at Her.

Zero was doughy-faced and freckled. I knew what was coming, so I needed something for him. A history. I imagined that he knew a lot about Ayn Rand, about Objectivism. That he played chess and said almost everything sarcastically. His favorite kind of pornography might have involved women wearing only their shoes.