Authors: Allen Steele
I slipped and skittered and fell down the muddy slope, blinded by smoke and darkness, deafened by the sound of helicopters, my face lashed by low tree branches as I tripped over fallen limbs. As I neared the bottom of the hill I heard the gurgle of a rain-swollen drainage ditch and veered away from it; I didn’t need to get more wet than I already was.
I can barely recall how I escaped from the riot; my flight from the Muny comes to me only in snatches. Falling on my face several times. Grabbing my jacket pocket to make sure that I hadn’t lost Joker, feeling vague reassurance when I felt its small mass. Jogging down Government Road around the lake, passing the old 1904 World’s Fair Pavilion, slowing down to catch my breath and then, in the next instant, spotting the headlights of more armored cars approaching from the opposite direction and ducking off the road into the woods. Hearing monkeys howling in the treetops above me. Crashing through a tent village erected on the fairway of what used to be the municipal golf course, hearing babies screaming, having a clod of mud thrown at me by an old man …
Then I was in the woods again, climbing another steep slope on all fours, my breath coming in animal like gasps as I clutched at roots and decaying leaves, all in an atavistic impulse to flee from danger.
Not the best night I’ve ever had at the opera. Lots of singing and dancing, but in terms of artistic merit the show kinda sucked.
The next thing I knew, I was halfway across the park, my breath coming in wet, ragged gasps as I lay against the base of the statue of Louis XIV, the French monarch after whom the city had been named. His bronze skin dully reflected the light from the distant flames of the tent village that had once existed around the Muny.
From my lonely hilltop perch, I could see the searchlights of helicopters as they circled the amphitheater, hear the occasional echoing report of semiauto gunfire. Up here, though, all was supernaturally quiet and uncrowded, as if I was removed in time and space from the chaos that reigned not far away. The rain had finally ceased. Night birds and crickets made nocturnal harmony in the hilltop woods, undeterred by the paramilitary action not far away.
Somehow, in my mad rush for safety, I had made it to the summit of Art Hill, the highest point in Forest Park. The Sun King sat on his stallion above me, larger than life, his broadsword raised in defiance to the empty sky. The statue had been the symbol of the city long before the Arch had been erected; by miracle, he had not been toppled by the quake, and his eternal courage made me all the more ashamed of my own cowardice.
On the other hand, I had become accustomed to being a coward. It wasn’t anything new to me. Call it an instinct for self-preservation; all us chickenshit types use that term. Just ask my wife. Or my son …
Turning my head to look behind me, my eyes found the half-collapsed stone edifice of the St. Louis Art Museum. Despite being reinforced during the nineties against quakes, the museum had suffered extensive damage. Now its doors were chained shut, its windows sealed with pine boards, its treasures long since moved to Chicago. Inscribed above the bas-relief classical portico, held aloft by five Corinthian columns, were seven words:
DEDICATED TO ART AND FREE TO ALL
“No shit,” I mumbled. “Where do I sign up?”
I caught my breath, then I slowly rose to my feet and began to stagger across the driveway and down Art Hill, following the sidewalk toward the Forest Park Boulevard entrance on the north side of the park.
It was time to go home.
T
ELL ME ABOUT FREEDOM
. I’m willing to listen. Hell, I’ll listen to anything, so long as you’ll pardon me if I nod off in the middle of the lecture.
Wet, cold, muddy, and confused, I began the long hike out of the park, following the sidewalk down the hill toward the Forest Park Boulevard entrance. Although a couple of Piranhas and Hummers passed me on the road, their crews were too busy to stop and harass a lone individual on foot. Nonetheless, I crossed the golf course at the bottom of Art Hill to avoid a roadblock at the Lindell Boulevard entrance; two Hummers were parked in front of the gate, and I didn’t care to explain myself to the soldiers manning the barricade. Sure, I had my press card and I could point out that I was a working reporter on assignment, but these days that sort of argument would just as likely earn me a trip down to Busch Stadium, and not for a baseball game either. The ERA grunts didn’t spot me, though, and I managed to leave the park unmolested.
Grabbing a ride on the MetroLink was another problem. After I trudged the rest of the way through the park, I passed through the main gate at Forest Park Boulevard. The MetroLink platform was at the bottom of a narrow railway trench a block away; it was almost completely vacant, but an ERA trooper was standing guard at the top of the stairs leading down to the tracks, a riot baton cradled in his arms.
I glanced at my watch. It was already a quarter to ten. No choice but to tough it out; I was in no shape to slog all the way back to my digs. Trying not to look like I had just mud-wrestled a gorilla, I strode toward the turnstile, reaching into my pants pocket to fish out my fare card.
The trooper studied me as I walked under the light. I gave him a quick nod of my head and started to pass my card in front of the scanner when he took a step forward and barred my way with his stick.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but do you know what time it is?”
In the old days, I might have just looked at my watch, said “Yes,” and walked on, but these guys were notorious for having no sense of humor. My mind flipped through a half-dozen preconcocted ploys, ranging from pretending to be drunk to simply acting stupid, and realized that none of them would adequately explain why I looked as disheveled as I did. Telling the truth was out of the question; the average ERA trooper had less respect for a reporter than he would for a suspected looter, and screw the First Amendment.
“Is it after nine already?” I feigned embarrassed surprise, then pulled back my sleeve and glanced at my watch. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was so—”
“May I see some ID, please?” Below us, several people sitting on plastic benches beneath the platform awning watched with quiet curiosity. No doubt they had been forced to go through the same ordeal.
“Hmm? Sure, sure …” I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket, found my driver’s license, and passed it to him. The trooper’s nameplate read
B. DOUGLAS
; he passed my license under a handscanner, then flipped down a monocle from his helmet and waited for the computers at the city’s records department to download my file.
It gave me a chance to size him up as well. What I saw was scary: a kid young enough to be my little brother—twenty-one at most—wearing khaki combat fatigues, leather lace-up boots, and riot helmet, with the sword-and-tornado insignia of the Emergency Relief Agency sewn on the left shoulder of his flak jacket. An assault rifle hung from a strap over his right shoulder, a full brace of Mace and tear gas canisters suspended from his belt. He had the hard-eyed, all-too-serious look of a young man who had been given too much authority much too soon, who believed that the artillery he carried gave him the right to kick butt whenever he wished. In another age he might have been a member of Hitler Youth looking for Jews to beat up or a Young Republican wandering a college campus in search of a liberal professor to harass. Now he was an ERA trooper, and by God this was
his
light-rail station.
“Are you aware that you’re in a curfew zone, Mr. Rosen?” He pulled my driver’s license out from under his scanner but didn’t pass it back to me.
I pretended to be appalled. “I am? This is University City, isn’t it? There isn’t a curfew here.”
He stared back at me. “No, sir, you’re downtown now. Curfew starts here at nine o’clock sharp.”
I shrugged off-handedly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that was the situation.” I tried an apologetic smile. “I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m down here.”
“You look awful muddy, old-timer,” he said condescendingly. “Fall down someplace?”
Old-timer, indeed. I was thirty-three and Lord of the Turnstiles knew it. If there were the first few gray streaks in my hair, it was because of what I had seen in the past eleven months. I wanted to tell him that I was old enough to remember when the Bill of Rights still meant something, but I kept my sarcasm in check. Li’l Himmler here was just looking for an excuse to place me under arrest for curfew violation. My police record was clean, and he didn’t have anything on me, but my occupation was listed as “journalist.” I could see it in his face: reporters for the
Big Muddy Inquirer
didn’t get cut much slack on his beat.
“Sort of,” I said noncommittally, careful to keep my voice even. B. Douglas didn’t reply; he was waiting for elaboration. “I tried to jump over a storm drain a few blocks away,” I added. “Didn’t quite make it.” I shrugged and managed to assay a dopey gee-shucks grin. “Accidents happen, y’know.”
“Uh-huh.” He continued to study me, his monocle glinting in the streetlight. “Where did you say you were?”
“U-City,” I said. “Visiting some friends. We were having a little get-together and … y’know, kinda got sidetracked.”
It was a good alibi. The U-City neighborhood was only a few blocks west of the station; that’s where all us liberal types hung out, listening to old Pearl Jam CDs while smoking pot and fondly reminiscing about Bill Clinton. It fit. Maybe he’d pass me off as a stoned rock critic who had fallen in a ditch after going into conniptions upon seeing an American flag.
Off in the distance I could hear the first rumble of the approaching train, the last Red Liner to stop tonight at Forest Park Station. If Oberleutnant Douglas was going to find a good reason for busting me, it was now or never. After all, he would have to file a report later.
The kid knew it, too. He flipped my license between his fingertips, once, twice, then slowly extended to me as if he was granting a great favor. “Have a good evening, Mr. Rosen,” he said stiffly. “Stay out of trouble.”
I resisted the mighty impulse to salute and click my heels. “Thank you,” I murmured. He nodded his helmeted head and stood aside. The train’s headlights were flashing across the rails as I swept my fare card in front of the scanner, then pushed through the turnstile and trotted down the cement stairs to the platform.
The train braked in front of the station, bright sparks of electricity zapping from its overhead powerlines. A couple of my fellow riders looked askance at me as they stood up. One of them was an old black lady, wearing a soaked cloth coat, carrying a frayed plastic Dillards shopping bag stuffed with her belongings.
“What did he stop you for?” she asked as the train doors slid apart and we moved to step aboard.
I thought about it for a moment. “Because of the way I look,” I replied.
It was an honest answer. She slowly nodded her head. “Same here,” she murmured. “Now you know what it’s like.”
And then we found our seats and waited for the train to leave the station.
I rode the Red Line as it headed east into the city. Quite a few people got on or off the train at Central West End, most of them patients or visitors at Barnes Hospital, but my car only remained half-full. Most of the passengers were soaking wet. The train was filled with the sound of sneezing and coughing fits, making the train’s computerized voice hard to hear as it announced each stop. The Red Line sounded like a rolling flu ward; despite the fact we had just stopped at a hospital, somehow all those free vaccinations we were supposed to receive courtesy of ERA seemed to have missed everyone on this train. On the other hand, this wasn’t unusual; most of the people in the city had somehow missed receiving a lot of the federal aid that had been promised to us.
Through the windows, I could see dark vacant lots filled with dense rubble where buildings made of unreinforced brick and mortar had once stood; streets blocked by sawhorses because ancient sewer tunnels and long-extinct clay mines beneath them had caved in; shanties made of scraps of corrugated steel and broken plywood. Armored cars were the only vehicles on the streets, but here and there I spotted figures lurking in the doorways of condemned buildings. Night brought out the scavengers, the teenagers with tire-irons who prowled through destroyed warehouses and demolished storefronts in search of anything to be sold on the black market.
The train left the midtown combat zone and rumbled toward the downtown area. It stopped briefly beneath Union Station, but it passed Auditorium because the platform there no longer existed. Kiel Auditorium itself had survived, but where the old City Hall building and the city jail once stood were now vast lots filled with crumbled masonry, broken cinderblock, bent copper pipes, and shattered glass. Giant piles which had once been buildings, waiting to be hauled away.
By now the downtown skyscrapers were clearly visible, their windows shining with light; the Gateway Arch, seen above the spired dome of the old state courthouse, reflected the city lights like a nocturnal rainbow. For a minute or two there was no wreckage to be seen. It seemed as if the city had never suffered a quake, that all was sane and safe.
Then the train hurtled toward Busch Stadium, and the illusion was destroyed. Silence descended as everyone turned to gaze out the left-side windows at the stadium. Busch Stadium still stood erect; bright spotlights gleamed from within its bowl, and one could almost have sworn that a baseball game was in progress, but as the train slowed to pull into Stadium Station, the barbed-wire fences and rows of concrete barriers blocking the ground-level entrances told a different story.
A group of ERA soldiers were sitting on benches at the subsurface train platform; a couple of them glanced up as the train came to a halt, and everyone in the train quickly looked away. The doors opened, but no one got on, and nobody dared to get off. There was dead quiet within the train until the doors automatically closed once again. The train moved on, and not until it went into a tunnel and the station vanished from sight did everyone relax.