Jennifer Government: A Novel (41 page)

“I’ll take that risk, sir.”

“I have two hundred dollars,” John said. “Right here in my pocket. Go on, take it.” They entered the lobby: the glass revolving doors loomed. He tried to dig in his heels, but his business shoes slipped on the polished floor.

“Please, sir,” the soldier said. The lobby doors slid apart, and then there was sunshine, and people. “You’re demeaning not only yourself, but the entire US Alliance organization.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” John said.

The NRA soldiers marched Jennifer out onto the street. She was so numb from the news of Kate’s kidnapping that at first she didn’t realize what was happening around her. Then the NRA soldier nudged her and said, “Ma’am? You should go now.”

She looked up and shook her head, trying to clear it. She felt slow and stupid. She felt beaten.

“Ma’am? Please.”

“Right,” she said. There was a mall across the road, with a McDonald’s on one side and a Burger King on the other. In between the two was a riot. A bunch of kids in baggy clothes were looting the Burger King: pulling down posters, smashing cash registers. She caught a glimpse of Calvin trying to separate a fight, then lost him.

She stepped onto the road. A horn blared somewhere, but by the time she realized she should turn her head, it had stopped and the driver was yelling at her. Jennifer kept walking. When she reached the other side, two black vans jumped the curb and flung open their doors. Police officers spilled out, jostling past her. They ran toward the rioters.

“Jen!”

She saw Calvin again and tried to head for him. Calvin would help her.

“Move away from the store!” one of the Police shouted, and then somebody fired a gun, either the looters or the Police, either the US Alliance people or the Team Advantage people; she didn’t know which and it didn’t matter anyway. A lot of people hit the deck, which made it easier for her to spot Calvin. She wound her way toward him between red and yellow plastic tables and chairs.

“For fuck’s sake,” Calvin said when she reached him. “Get your ass down!” He pulled her into the doorway of a stationery
store. It had a sign on the door which said
PROUDLY INDEPENDENT
, and another below that that said
GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE!
“What’s the matter with you?”

“He took Kate.”

“What?”

There was another, longer rattle of gunfire. The Police had formed a cordon around the Burger King. The looters were retreating to the McDonald’s. NRA soldiers were reinforcing them, taking positions behind the counter and cash registers. There was a lot of shouting going on. Then someone fired again, and a bullet ricocheted off a Burger King cash register with a
clang
.

“Kate,” she said. “He took my daughter.”

Calvin stared. “Kate’s here?”

She shook her head. “In Melbourne. He says he’ll kill her unless I let him go.”

“Oh, Jen.”

“Calvin, I don’t know what to do.”

“Okay,” he said. “It’s okay, Jen, we—we’ll arrest him. We’ll make him let her go. We can—” His words were lost in one of the loudest sounds Jennifer had ever heard. The Police had mounted a machine gun on the Burger King counter and it was chewing up the McDonald’s store. Shreds of red and yellow plastic spiraled into the air like confetti.

“I’m going back in.”

“Jen, you can’t! Get down! We’ll work something out!”

“I should have shot him,” she said. “When I had the chance.”

“Jen, wait! Did you see Billy?”

“What? Billy’s here?”

“I had to bring him. Then I lost him. For Christ’s sake, get
down!”

“I have to go,” she said, and stood.

She’d taken ten steps when she heard it: a spitting sound, like air hissing out of a tire. She noticed a puff of white smoke at the
top of the US Alliance tower, like the world’s smallest cloud. Then something sleek and metallic drew a white line from the cloud to the Burger King and an invisible fist hit Jennifer in the chest and she was deaf.

She wasn’t sure if she passed out. She became aware that Calvin was above her, shouting. She read
missile
from his lips. The Burger King was on fire. Everything was drenched in black smoke. She looked around. She could barely see the base of the US Alliance building. She could barely see the glass lobby doors open. She could barely see John Nike come out of them.

“Calvin?” she said. “Can I have your gun, please?”

His lips said:
What?

“Just—” she said, and through the smoke John saw her.

She tore Calvin’s gun from his holster and started running. She leapt over bits of ex—Burger King and dodged stunned Police officers. The smoke curled and drifted, hiding John from view and revealing him again.

John stepped onto the road and held up his hands. She thought he was surrendering.
Too late for that
, she thought. Then she saw the cab. John flung open the door and jumped inside. He must have said something highly motivational, because the cab took off, its tires smoking. She was too far away to stop it. She was much too far.

“No!” she screamed.
“No! No!”
Then she just screamed.

Billy and the coupon girl were cowering in a doorway a few shops down from the McDonald’s. This wasn’t so bad, since he got to snuggle right up close to her, but there were also a lot of bullets flying around. Billy wasn’t so comfortable with that.

“This kind of shit never happens in Colorado,” the coupon girl said.
“Never.”

“It doesn’t happen so often in Texas, either.” There were about thirty feet between them and the road, with the US Alliance building rising beyond that. Billy weighed their chances of making that distance without intercepting a bullet. So far he wasn’t confident. The Police were strafing this whole side of the mall with a machine gun, and he didn’t think the coupon girl’s employment history would make any difference.

“This city,” the coupon girl said. “I swear.”

“You know, this is all your fault. Why couldn’t you just say McDonald’s had better burgers?”

She glared at him. “Why should I let them intimidate me? You let people push you around, you spend your life trying to keep everybody happy.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Billy said. “Yeah, you’re right! That’s what’s been happening to me for
weeks.”

“I don’t believe anyone could push
you
around,” the coupon girl said, and her lips curved. Billy smiled back. Then a line of bullets scored the wall a few feet above their heads and the storefront window imploded. Billy shielded the coupon girl from the falling glass. “Thanks,” she said.

He looked up. “We really have to get out of here.”

“No shit,” she said, and then there was a whooshing and the Burger King across the mall exploded. It felt like an earthquake.

“Now!” Billy said. He hauled the coupon girl to her feet.
“Come on!”

He took her hand and they ran blindly through the black smoke. The coupon girl stumbled over a piece of rubble and Billy caught her from falling: it was just like a movie. They cleared the smoke and there were NRA soldiers everywhere, but no one was paying any special attention to Billy. Then someone familiar came out of the US Alliance building. Billy stopped in surprise. It was John Nike, the dude who’d ordered him to shoot the Government President in London.

For a second he was tempted to walk up to the guy and slug
him. But Billy had other priorities, like getting the hell away, so he started running again. John pulled over a cab and got inside.

He heard a scream, and turned. For a second he didn’t know who the figure stumbling out of the smoke was. Then he realized. It was Jennifer Government.

“Billy! Stop him!”

He looked after John’s cab. It was a bit late for that, he thought. He looked back at Jennifer.

“Please!”

“Aw, shit…” He looked around. “I need a gun.”

“Um…okay.” The coupon girl bent over and picked up a piece of rubble from the gutter. “Here, use this.”

“No, a
gun
. Something to shoot with.” But the coupon girl was already hurrying to an NRA soldier. Billy looked at the chunk of rubble. It didn’t offer any clues to him.

The coupon girl grabbed the soldier’s shoulders and screamed into his face.
“Help me, help me!”

“Hey! Calm down! Miss!”

“Please, please!” She tugged him in a half-circle, so his back was to Billy.

“Oh,” Billy said, understanding. He stepped forward and hit the soldier on the head with the rock. The soldier yelled and clutched his head. Billy grabbed his rifle.

“Geez,” the coupon girl said. “I thought you were never going to get it.”

“Shh,” he said. He spread his feet, balancing himself, and lined up the retreating cab. It was a ridiculous shot, really: the car was already a block and a half away and there were about a million people running in and out of the way. “Just…be quiet.”

She fell silent. Billy inhaled. You had to fire during a slow, controlled exhale: it was when your body was steadiest. You had to squeeze the trigger between your own heartbeats. The world dropped away. He fired.

“Holy
shit!”
the coupon girl said.

The tire blew: he saw the spray of rubber. The cab veered ninety degrees, was clipped by a delivery van, and rammed into a storefront. Billy lowered the rifle. The girl was staring at him.

“How good are
you?”

He looked back for Jennifer, but the smoke had obscured her again. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Yeah, good idea.” She took his hand. “Where to?”

He smiled. “You like skiing?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Why?”

“I live in Aspen,” she said. “Aspen, Colorado. In the winter I work as a ski instructor.” She shifted. “What? It’s not so weird.”

He found his voice. “I…”

“You like skiing?”

“Yes,” Billy said. “I really do.”

“Cool,” she said. “Let’s split.”

Today is a great day
, Buy thought.

The funny part was that only a month or two ago he’d been ready to kill himself. He was still walking around only because he didn’t know enough about guns to locate the safety on a Colt .45. Everything since then, you could argue, was borrowed time.

I am a great person
.

His legs were shaking as he entered the Chadstone Wal-Mart mall, and he felt like he might throw up soon. That was funny, too. He wasn’t scared of dying, not even a little, but the idea of taking the escalator up to level four terrified him. He couldn’t believe that when he got there he wouldn’t see a girl sprawled on the floor in a spreading pool of blood.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

He realized he’d swayed; almost fallen. A girl was looking at him with big, concerned eyes.

Buy turned away. “I’m…fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” he said, and it was a gasp. He couldn’t breathe. He felt her eyes on his back as he pushed through the crowd. The elevators rose before him, a fusion of steel and shopper.

Every obstacle is an opportunity
.

He wasn’t expecting to see Violet on this level, and so he stared at her for entire seconds before he realized who he was looking at. Then he started toward her.

She saw him. “Oh-oh,” she said. She produced a gun. Buy almost laughed. “Okay, you just stop there.”

“Gun!” somebody shouted. The shoppers around him scattered. Buy kept walking.

“Hey! I’m not kidding. Look, I’m sorry about your kid and all—hey! Stop! You want me to shoot you?”

“Where is Kate?”

“Stop!”
she screamed, and he saw her finger tightening on the trigger. The realization swept through him: if he died, he couldn’t save Kate. He stopped. The gun was two feet away from his chest.

“Violet?” said a young man beside her. Buy thought that was probably Hack Nike. “Come on, put the gun down.” “Shut up! You don’t care about me!” “Where’s Kate?” Buy said again.

“She’s upstairs,” Hack said. “John’s got her. On level four, in the Ni—”

“Shut up!”
Violet yelled.

“Violet,” Hack said carefully. “Mall security is probably on the way. Don’t make this worse.”

“I know what you’re all doing. Everyone’s going to get what they want except me! I’m getting screwed over!”

“Nobody’s getting screwed.”

“Please,” Buy said. “I need to find Kate.”

“What’s in it for me?” Violet said.

“Please.”

“I just wanted to be an entrepreneur. I just wanted to sell my software and make a little money. Is that so wrong?”

“Violet, you’re holding a
gun!”
Hack said. “You kidnapped a child! You want to know why things haven’t worked out for you, start there!”

There was a long pause. Then Violet said, “There is no justice.” Buy realized her intent a second before she did it. He started to twist out of the way. Then the bullet kicked him and he was lying on his back, looking at the mall’s fluorescent lights.

There was some screaming, and people’s feet thudding by his head. It seemed like a good idea to lie still, so Buy did that. His bicep was throbbing. He touched it gingerly, and looked at his fingers. They seemed to confirm that he’d been shot.

Hack’s face appeared above him. “Oh, shit, are you all right?”

“I…don’t know,” Buy said.

“Um… I don’t think you are. You better not move. It’s okay, Violet’s gone.”

Buy sat up. It didn’t hurt as much as he’d thought. Maybe he was in shock. “My name is Buy Mitsui. I need you to help me find Kate. She’s Jennifer Government’s daughter.”

“Oh, man…” Hack glanced at Claire. “Look, we really need to get out of here. We’re kind of wanted. I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” Buy said. “Okay.” He tried to get to his feet. Hack helped him.

“I’m really sorry,” Hack said. “It’s just, if Nike catches me…”

Buy’s vision glazed white, but he could see the elevators. He began to walk toward them. His arm was starting to hurt.

He reached the second level before Hack and Claire came back. “Okay,” Hack said. “I’ll help.”