Noise (18 page)

It was the best I could do.

“You can’t
leave,
” they said.

They said, “That’s, like, spitting on Luke’s grave.”

“He doesn’t have a fucking
grave
, you assholes!” Zero shouted. He was crying. “That’s the point! Don’t you get it?”

After last night, after the toasts, after Circe and the ink and the names in the sand, Matthew and Mark were taking things seriously. They were the ones who caught Zero trying to leave.

They didn’t have many options here. The alternative was not good, and with Circe still around, they had a choice: resent her, or resent something else.

Would Four also take a tattoo? Another one? Would I?

Would she let me see it?

“I just want to go home.”

“You know where Amaranth is,” I said. “You know we took the Humvee, that we didn’t use it to help. On campus.”

“You
helped
take the Humvee,” Levi said.

“Please.”

They needed a sacrifice.

“Where would you go, anyway?”

“Home.”

If she were a lesbian, how come Jo had never told stories about her? On the porch, when we smoked out and ate that terrible pasta and talked about “enforcing a sexual politic” and “heteronormativity”?

She told stories about her other lesbian friends, after all.

“Don’t you guys want to go back to your parents?”

“Don’t ask about our parents.”

“To see if they’re okay? They
need
us.”

“My parents are dead, asshole.”

“I hate my father. And my uncle.”

“They don’t need us.”

“Whatever!” Zero said. “What about me? Mine are five fucking miles across town!”

He was spitting as he spoke. Maybe he was good at video games. Had a crush on a girl named Amanda, or Tiffany, or Trish.

Somebody had to pay for Luke’s death, and we weren’t going to waste the ammunition. The sword
meant
something. You always equipped every first-level fighter, in every campaign, with a longsword. You bought them at Ren Faires, and ordered them from catalogs, because you knew all of their names and measurements, and you thought about those days when men carried swords. When you could still live by your wits, and make communities your own way, with your own rules, because there wasn’t a system to keep you down.

“We’re going to take a vote, which is the voice of the Group. And then one of you will speak for us. Will give the order one way or the other.”

“And the sword?” Matthew asked.

“The sword is mine.”

“Eliminate him,” Four said.

I hadn’t realized, originally, that she was beautiful.

•   •   •

“Now cut it down,” I said.

Mark spat onto the porch. “Why?”

I looked at him. “Cut. Him. Down.”

They obeyed.

“We’re going to keep that rope.”

Within an hour, we left Slade.

“FOUR”

SEC. “I,” SUBSEC. “A”

(“CIVILIAN MILITIA LEADERSHIP”)

(cont’d)

[2] (i) A militia Leader must be permitted to perform his or her job however he or she can. (ii) Militia Leaders must offer full operation transparency to the Administrative Senate (even if a Final Leader serves over them). These reports need not be disclosed to the Group at large. (iii) Your militia Leaders will necessarily order acts of violence, sabotage, and Old Trade inhumanity in the pursuit of Group prosperity.

[3] (i) Though militia service creates a fellowship among its men and women, it is wise to assign certain trustworthy and discreet militia men and women the task of Secret Service. (ii) The Secret Service reports directly to the Administrative Senate.

[4] (i) Your militia must be civilian-led, for military objectives are a means to an end, and never an end themselves.

I.B.

“ADMINISTRATIVE SENATE”

[1] (i) Your Administrative Senate should represent the varied concerns of your Group. (ii) Allow your Members to elect their Senators directly. The use of intermediary voting schematics will generate distrust, which will eventually lead to unrest and Failure.

[2] (i) Make all Senate decisions by majority rule. (ii) If you choose
to elect a Final Leader, the Senate must have the power to overturn his or her decisions with a sufficient majority.

[3] (i) The use of Final Leaders is attractive, and your Group will likely call for one. (ii) Final Leaders are characters of Place, and as such, increase morale.

[4] (i) Any Member should be eligible for election as either Senator or Final Leader. (ii) Do not impose registration fees, taxes, or rites. (iii) Despite your best efforts, any Administration will lead to intermittent frustration and disappointment among your Membership. This is the nature of compromise, and it should be celebrated. (iv) Prosperity arrives piecemeal. Content the frustrated with that. Content yourself with that.

i
n Drop Bay, on Highway 380 (which was a risk we had to take for a while), they had hanged people from trees. My ears were still ringing from the sound of the Humvee’s massive tires buzzing across the grooved concrete on the bridge across Lake Bridgeport, on the way into the town. I had burns on my knuckles. We’d broken a roadblock on Highway 209 with the RPG and the .50-caliber. I had to get out of the Humvee to help clear the barricades, after we’d neutralized Them. After we had left them burning.

Mary was riding shotgun with me.

“What’s it like?” she asked. “At Amaranth?”

Circe and Silo leaned forward, behind her. They were tasked to the .50-cal, but they wanted to hear, too.

“It has everything we need.”

We could see a posse. Between the few main-street buildings in Drop Bay. It moved like a shambling horde.

“We’ll do things our way there.”

Really, though, it was a mob. Something brainless, that had eaten some of its own extremities to feed the spinal nerve that
generated the twitches and shakes that enabled it to
go somewhere
. To do anything at all without a proper brain.

“We’ll be safe.”

When the woman ran into the street, arms up and screaming, I didn’t have any choice. There was a tow truck parked askew on the right side of the two-lane street. I could only go through the left lane, which is where she ran. I would not stop the caravan. I did …
not hesitate to use my vehicle as a weapon…
.

“Are there trees?”

“Yes, there’s an orchard,” I said into the walkie-talkie. The other unit was in what had been Penelope’s truck, with Four and Penelope and Voice. Voice was driving because Penelope didn’t want to, and Four wasn’t primary, so we couldn’t give her a truck. Voice was bringing up the rear because, save for the Humvee, that truck was the most powerful.

We got intel, over the walkie-talkies, on Channel 19, about an ambush along Highway 83 in Meermont. Where the highway ran through town, they called it “Broadway.” We knew there was one on 6, too, back the other way, up and around, because some ’caster had left a small rig with a generator on the roof of a rest stop. It repeated the news, over and over.

Before then, it had been quiet, on all channels. I think that was what interested Truck 12 in talking. In also asking about the trees. In hearing someone other than themselves as we drove toward the towering clouds. West, west.

We wanted it to sound like we had more than four trucks, in case anyone was listening, so we called that one “12.”

“Where will we all stay?” Four asked. She was copiloting. Penelope hadn’t wanted much to do with her truck since she’d surrendered it to the Group.

“We’ll have rooms,” I said. “There’re rooms.”

The ambushes were not Salvage. They were not Party. They were mob, which is why Salvage would tell itself about them. This was not Salvage country, it was just something in the way, a wandering consideration as Places did their thinking, sounding distances to their Members across the collective unconscious of the Salvage hive-mind. It was a dark spot in the synaptic ribbon.

There was silence for a time. Then Four asked, “Who will assign the quarters?”

I smiled.

We stopped in Reign and bivouacked along the loading bays of the municipal post office. We had hoped to get as far as Snyder before stopping, but the Humvee burned fuel faster than I expected. We picked Snyder because we weren’t taking a direct route. Too much time on the same highway could lower our guard, we knew.

We were still about two hours from our second-place: a lay-in, in case we needed it. An old Project Nike facility. We had plenty of intel on it. It had Outsiders, already, as best we could tell, but it was worth the risk. That facility could weather anything we might need it to. The clouds were becoming more fierce, out west, and their green underbellies meant they were carrying hail. When I’d been out here, when I’d followed Her and learned about Amaranth without realizing it, I came to know dust storms. If there was one, it would be behind the storm clouds, chasing. Being dragged.

We didn’t see many people in town as we drove through, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I let Circe and Silo expend a few rounds tearing apart the chain-link fence that secured the post office’s motor yard. It was unnecessary, but the sound might keep people away.

•   •   •

Even in North Texas, which is its own kind of Texas—just like South and East and West, or the Hill Country, or the Panhandle—even there, we got the storms. I would stand with my dad on our porch, listening to the civil alert sirens and watching the rain blow sideways. It didn’t matter if a tornado tried to suck us up, to draw us in. Because it couldn’t. My father wouldn’t let it. So I watched the green clouds spin while he smoked his pipe.

The motor yard’s fuel pump had plenty to offer. If there’d been any hoarding, or any runs out here, I’m sure the people went straight to their few gas stations. Or, more likely, all these farmers had their own drums full of stabilized diesel and gasoline. They were usually as prepared as Salvage. For anything.

Only Four and Penelope and I were not on watch. Levi had one squad, and Mary had the other, patrolling the premises as we refueled the convoy.

The back doors of some of the postal Jeeps weren’t locked. Four opened a mailbag.

Mostly, all she found were bills, but while I watched, she pulled something strange out of the sack. It was some kind of religious scam. There was a foldout paper “prayer mat.” You were supposed to kneel on it and pray for fortune. And if you were chair-bound, or couldn’t kneel, draping it over your knees would work “just as well.”

There was a large picture of a Caucasian Jesus, in some baroque printed frame. You could see the dots of color that whatever bullshit cheap printer had used to form the image. It was like looking at an old comic book.

We laughed at it. I wondered if the operation mailing these
things out was like Fat Chance. If the ten-dollar “Love Offering” you were supposed to mail in (to cover print costs for the mats, as well as postage for further outreach) had funded some Group’s palisade. Some diesel-powered work lights. A few carbines, or rain barrels, or bottles of whiskey.

Levi’s party shot at something, but I could hear their laughter. Everything was fine.

“We know so little about them,” Four said, folding up the mat and cramming it into my pocket.

“Who?”

“The Jacks.”

“We’ll know them soon enough,” I said.

The pumping diesel fumed between us.

“More importantly”—
and much worse
—“I know so little about you,” I said.

“But you know Mary,” she said.

I looked over my shoulder and snorted. The Jacks in Mary’s squad still remembered that dark office in the bookstore along Meyer Street. They remembered White Mary in the darkness, making everything all right, when the first of them had killed for her. She was Mary, all right. They followed her like dogs, and she touched their faces and told them that what they were doing was right.

But she owed us everything. And she knew it.

What I knew about her, Before, didn’t matter of course. It would be better if I didn’t know anything about anyone.

“I know enough.”

Four walked far enough away to light a cigarette without blowing us up.

“Me, too.”

•   •   •

I was about to call them back anyway, when Matthew and Mark lifted one of the loading bay doors. They had a woman between them. Circe followed behind, the muzzle of one of her pistols jammed between the woman’s shoulder blades. Mary followed last, her eyes on everything around her squad.

“What’s this?” Four asked. She ground her cigarette underfoot and came to stand beside me.

“Penelope, get that launcher armed,” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Take up a position between Trucks Eight and Twelve, in case we need a diversion.”

Matthew and Mark came to a halt about six feet away. They looked proud, but they were looking at Mary. Waiting for some cue.

Mary trailed a finger over the woman’s head as she walked past and took up position on my other side.

“She’s petitioning for Addition.”

“Let her go,” I told the Jacks. “Go bring Levi up to speed. Order him back.”

They looked at Mary.

“Do it now,” I said. “Or I’ll let her go for you.”

They went. I glanced over at Penelope. She was set up. I smiled when I saw Edmund stand up on his back legs, safe beneath the shell on Truck 12, and peer out the window. I saw him meow silently.

“Did you find out?” I asked Mary.

“Yes,” she said. “No dietary, no medical, but she has a son, a twelve-year-old, who is allergic to peanuts.”

The woman was dirty. Her clothes were torn. She had dirt in the folds in her skin, which is the opposite of what happened when you wore paint: The folds always ended up clean, unpainted. I couldn’t tell if there were highlights in her hair, or if it was streaked with gray.