Noise (6 page)

It is the history I’ve created for Jo: her first date with a boy named Leslie—an idea that had promise: switching the names around, coming at the confusion from a different direction. It is a forced smile at the hand on her thigh. An accelerator-mindtrip out of the past, out of his car. It is what I think it was like, being Jo, being gay.

It is a day trip to Slade, before Adam and I graduated. It is the long, long trips out west, where I went instead to follow Her. I left Adam in Slade. I watched tumbleweeds and contrails and come-and-go dust devils in the red, red dirt.

It was the loitering mob, a many-legged thing without a brain, with only one long, spinal nerve. The sense of being from ass to forehead.

It was the will of our Place, drawing us across 327 Texas miles.

“Now,” I said to Mary.

She lit the rag in one of her bottles and rolled down the window. My ears followed the breeze, sucked of their pressure by the force of the wind. Mary touched the burning rag to another and undid her seat belt.

“One per side.”

She knelt on the seat, and I jammed my fingers beneath her waistband, grabbing a fistful of fatigues and underwear to keep her steady. She stood up completely, out the window, swayed by the wind, and my arm thrummed.

I was not thinking. I was White Mary’s tensed ass as she gave her guttering bottles to the loitering mob. The shambling thing underfoot.

I was the splintered fence-board in my fists at the fort. I had been dipped in a coffee can full of gasoline, and I was a flaming torch in a swordfight with Chuck—

Mary fell into the seat when I jerked her back in.

—Jon made the mistake of emptying the can onto Chuck’s last flame. A recharge. A suddenly thrown thing disking gasoline fire onto the dead leaves around us
.

I did not follow Jon when he ran to the culvert. I stood with Chuck and looked for the first time on a wall of fire
.

Gunning the engine was Dopplered screaming as we compacted and vanished down the road through campus. They hadn’t laid spikes. But if they had, at least they couldn’t mob the car anymore.

I picked up some speed before we rounded the turn to Ruth’s apartment. At the corner, I slipped the car out of gear and cut the lights. I had the .38 in my lap. Mary had a bottle in one hand, a lighter in the other.

This street was darkness, deep in Cement City, the low-income underworld where college students took advantage of rent-controlled housing. Ruth lived in the Zodiac Arms. In a building called Taurus. It looked as if the grid had already died here. No one on foot, no one else driving. We were being cased.

Mary directed me to the building. I drove right up onto the
lawn, right outside Ruth’s door. We weren’t taking any fucking chances.

I turned the car around, pointed it back at the parking lot. Mary waited for me to get out and lock the door. She followed me, bottles tucked under her arm. We planted our backs against Ruth’s door.

“Try calling first,” I told her. “It’s quieter.”

Mary turned, ducking, as if even I needed to be kept from the conversation. I watched the other apartments, looking for that dark-on-dark blink, the giveaway that someone was looking back.

“Okay, we’re here,” Mary whispered.

I could hear Ruth’s digital murmur in Mary’s earpiece.

“No, it’s just us.”

“Okay.”

Mary turned and looked at me. Her eyes were blue, like Levi’s, simple and staring. As blue here as they’d been between her roadside fires on Mulberry Street.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary
.

“She’s coming,” she said.

I nodded. “Pull the mask off your face, so she can see you.”

She tugged it free.

“Look at me.”

She looked.

“What you did was right.”

Ruth’s apartment was a studio. The popcorned ceiling was peeling free. The baseboards were misaligned, that mystery rental-unit grime scummed into their cracks. Formica. Dark fluorescent
bulbs. A futon and a papasan chair. She and Mary were whispering hurriedly in the bed nook, assembling Ruth’s pack.

There were textbooks everywhere with yellow stickers on the spines that read
USED SAVES
. Easels. Soldering irons and rivet punchers and a small jeweler’s torch.

I checked again through the window and slipped toward the nook.

“You work with metals?” I asked.

They stopped and looked.

“Yeah,” Ruth said. “I’m in sculpture.”

She was thicker than Mary. Long hair with untrimmed taillike ends. She wore a labret. Her left arm had been fully sleeved with tattoos.

I looked at Mary. “Two packs. One for her, one for her metals gear.”

Mary nodded and went back to stuffing underwear into a messenger bag.

I looked at a Monet print over Ruth’s bed. The only flowers in this cement underworld.

“Hey,” she said. “Thanks.”

“Hurry.”

“TWO”

SEC. “I,” SUBSEC. “C”

(“EVENT EXIT STRATEGY”)

(cont’d)

[5] (i) If your Group is sufficiently large that Cells of three or more members share urban centers, then each Cell should independently execute the First Phase of your Event Exit Strategy prior to Evacuation. (ii) Otherwise, only one Cell should attempt the First Phase.

[6] (i) Do not ignore signs of the impending Event. (ii) It is far better to gather in the first-place, preparing for the Event, and find yourselves mistaken than not to gather at all. (iii) Should you find that you are not with your Cell or Group when the Event occurs, collect yourself and any others for whom you are responsible and proceed immediately. (iv) Arm yourself before you make your way to the first-place. (v) Once you begin the journey to the first-place, do not stop. (vi) Do not render aid to Outsiders. (vii) Do not gather supplies, no matter how available they appear. (viii) Do not be alarmed by civil disorder. (ix) Do not be alarmed by violence. (x) Alter your route to avoid areas of obvious risk. (xi) Remain in your vehicle as long as possible. (xii) If Old Trade has completely Collapsed by this point, do not hesitate to use your vehicle as a weapon. (xiii) In the event of complete Collapse, law enforcement and military personnel are likely not to be the social allies they once were. (xiv) Regard them and their instructions with trepidation.

[7] (i) The first-place is your priority. (ii) It is your identity. (iii) “You” do not exist. (iv) You are an extension of its
consciousness. (v) Only the journey to reach it is real. (vi) The journey is only a synaptic ribbon. (vii) All roads lead to the first-place. (viii) Do not panic.

[8] (i) If you must reach the first-place on foot, pay constant attention to your surroundings. (ii) Avoid open areas. (iii) Do not let Outsiders come within reach. (iv) Run, if you must. (v) Use violence if you must. (vi) Do not let weapons fire discourage you. (vii) Do not run in straight lines.

[9] (i) Avoid public transportation unless you are capable of seizing and operating the vehicle. (ii) Under these circumstances, remove or incapacitate other occupants. (iii) Do not take Outsiders to the first-place.

h
ouse of Cards, this is Party. Do you copy?”

“Who the fuck is this?”

“Party, this is HOC. Go ahead.”

“Target is in custody.”

“Spook? Are those ours?”

“What fucking target?”

“Channel cue.”

“Cue-back.”

I jumped channels.

“HOC, this is Party. Do you copy?”

“Copy, Party. Go ahead.”

“Coming home.”

“Copy. Code check.”

I pinged Levi with a flurry of dots and dashes. “S E C U R E,” so he knew. So he knew we weren’t under duress.

“Copy. Did you encounter resistance?”

“Affirmative. We neutralized a mob at WHIS.PER’s Rule and Mulberry Street.”

“Did you take casualties?”

“Negative.”

“Copy. Look twice. Over.”

“Copy, HOC. Over.”

I started a different route back. We couldn’t take chances with the Mulberry mob. Likely, they’d be lying in wait now. More road spikes—real ones. Some guns. Something bad.

Those that hadn’t burned.

I could see Ruth looking at my sword in the backseat. I hadn’t cleaned the blood from it yet. The edge had taken a severe curve when it hit that girl’s shins.

I could see, in my rearview mirror, that she had spacers in her earlobes.

Mary was holding the gun, staring through her window. In the glow of the dashboard instrumentation, she looked spectral. A ghost-face hovering, something you could see only in reflection. Like in the dark, if you said
Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary
into the mirror. Late at night, or in the afternoon with towels shoved under the doors.

You had to say it alone. You had to stand alone with the dark and the mirror, knowing that what you couldn’t see was you not seeing. You saw yourself not seeing yourself, seeing Bloody Mary, a ghost in the darkness.

But you never did it alone. You cheated, took a friend, took Jon, since it was his house, the corridor bathroom between his room and his little sister’s. You saw Jon not-seeing, which was better than not-watching yourself.

Mary stared through her reflection, not seeing Ruth in the dark seat behind her, staring at the blood.

Maybe Mary never knew about the
Bloody
. She was just Mary, seeing things in the dark.

I braked. Hard. Our collective guts clinched. Gunning the engine was everything in the right direction. Braking was never good.

There was something new on the Wailing Wall.

I pulled alongside the cracked parking lot and cut the lights.

“Keep a watch,” I told Mary.

She rolled down her window.

“What’s wrong?” Ruth asked.

Mary waved a hand, eyes on the dark. “Hush, Ruthie.”

Mary had a little lamb
.

I picked up the walkie-talkie, turned it down, since Mary’s window was open.

“HOC, this is Party. Do you copy?”

“This is HOC. Go ahead.”

We had a quiet channel.

“I’ve got some new material on the Wailing Wall. We’re going to have a look.”

“Any activity on your perimeter?”

I looked at Mary. She shook her head.

“None so far. We’ll be on watch.”

“Copy. Be quick.”

“Get a pen. I’m going to read it to you.”

“Stand by.”

I looked out my window. Without the instrumentation glaring against the glass, I could see pretty clearly. Earthmovers and excavators and piles of concrete lay arranged at right angles. Sundered rebar clawed at the air. The developer hadn’t broken up The Noodle House’s old foundation yet, though the building itself had been cleared a month ago.

I turned and looked sideways at Ruth, speaking through my mask. “Hand me the binocs.”

“What?”

“Binoculars. Give them to me.”

She did.

“Party, this is HOC. Go ahead.”

I could see through the gaps in the old block, see the mid-century buildings on the other side of University Strip. The coffeehouses and bookstores and the bank that had been spared demolition and gentrification by a zoning debate. Most were closed. No doubt Big Red, the tavern around the corner, would still be open. One-dollar wells, two-dollar domestic drafts. “You call it” special—half off for the end of the world. Ladies get in free.

But we were out of sight, and the Strip’s parking lot had been gnawed to shards last week. Amid protest. There had been a candlelight vigil for the 1920s-era brickwork nested in haphazard patches throughout the asphalt. Like continents. Those that made it right up to the end of things.

The bricks would be repurposed downtown. Twenty dollars to donate one with your inscription to the city.

The burned-out shell of Marco’s was ahead to our right. Students had chained themselves and made short films and ultimately burned the place down. In protest. Taking their bar before it could be stolen by the developers. Salvagers had quickly cleared out what paneling and tables had survived the fire. Marco’s was a grimoire of codes and stencils, carved and markered everywhere inside. Some on top of others. A Salvage speakeasy. Adam and I had bought our first crib sheet at Marco’s.

It had one wall left, which would be the last to go before the faux-colonial prefab came in. Before gas lamps and fake stucco made ghost stories out of the old muggings and vandalism. The fights. Mainly, it would be last because it was a single condemned
wall—thanks to the arson—and needed special civil architects before it could be brought down.

The Wall had once been a mural. Civilly funded graffiti art, when a crop of liberal city planners replaced the old conservative farming guard. Eventually, it became several murals. Then a paint-and-mortar notepad for taggers and Salvagers. We’d relied on it often, getting frequency shifts, ’cast schedules, and heads-ups. We were Masonic, gazing through layers of useless tags at an esoteric palimpsest, finding what we needed in pieces, looking through the Salvager’s camera obscura for perspective on the impending Collapse.

“It’s from Chisolm, HOC. A signing-off. Stencil and crib-speak.”

“Copy, Party. What’s the message?”

I translated the vowel-less script: “‘Northern Lights on the Nine. Follow the grid—’”

Something slammed into my door hard enough to pop my ears. I ducked and gunned the engine, the wheel already arced to turn us around. The wrong way down a one-way road. The right way now.…
Motivated perception, in turn, delimits the construction of your world…
.

I realized, as our car tailed itself around, tires screaming—announcing itself through the gaps in the Strip, straight through to the shambling crowd outside Big Red—that there hadn’t been an explosion.

Breaker
.

Whatever it was had been thrown, or launched somehow.

Breaker
.

I flipped the headlights back on as I overcorrected. There was somebody in front of the car. We weren’t moving fast enough to do any real damage yet, but I pushed him off his footing—the baseball bat in his fists followed him down. By the time I slammed
again on the brakes, we’d already passed him a body’s-length under the axles.