Blood Zero Sky (30 page)

Now his hand is on the door knob. We all breathe one last breath together, listening to the brittle crackle of gunfire calling us from without.

“Go!”

Ethan throws the door open, and suddenly we’re all charging through the smoke.

At first, all is quiet. Then, through the haze comes the crackle of gunshots and the flashbulb blinks of muzzle flares. We run faster. The ground trembles under our feet with the concussion of explosions. The sky melts with the shrieks of streaking drones. My shoulders already ache, but I hold the flag high and it snaps in the wind as I bear it forward.

“Fire!” Ethan shouts, and the air around me sounds as if it will split in two as our guns report as one.

Bullets whistle everywhere, death like swarming locusts. Our calls cut the air, sharp, fierce, piercing. We do not hold back. We run as fast as our legs will go, fire until our clips are empty.

I think,
This is the longest two hundred yards imaginable
.

Then, things get worse. There’s a succession of explosions behind us, one, two, three, four, five, six of them, each one closer than the last. The ground beneath us bucks with each detonation. I look over my shoulder and am horrified to see a squadron of low-flying drones racing toward us, their bombs coming closer and closer.

I look forward again and run even faster.

Now, through the grayness, black hulks of the squad trucks grow larger, and in the next instant, we are upon them. Several squadmen lay dead beside their vehicles. I watch two more get shot to pieces as we approach.

“Dive!” Ethan calls as we reach the trucks, and without slowing, I throw myself headfirst under the nearest squad truck.

Instantly, I explode. My eardrums shatter. My eyelids melt. My lungs burn.

Then, all is silence.

Slowly, I open my eyes and peer out from my hiding place. A few yards away, a squad member’s body lies sizzling on the pavement. There’s another, and another and another. The smell of burning explosives stings my nose. Slowly, with trembling arms, I pull myself out from under the squad truck, and am amazed by what I see. The pavement all around is littered with dead squadmen—hundreds of them. The truck I just dove beneath is a charred, burning shell, but somehow I’m unharmed.

The bombing drones, having locked on to us, must’ve followed us to their own line and wiped out their own men. Ethan is a genius.

McCann, Michel, and two other rebels emerge from beneath one squad truck. Ethan crawls out from beneath another.

I tilt my head back and scream in triumph. We’ve taken the squadmen line! We did it! But when I turn back, looking for someone to celebrate with, looking for the one hundred Order members who followed us, I see no one.

Ethan steps toward me as I look around, confused.

“Where are the others?” I ask.

Ethan is silent. I glance at McCann. No one answers me.

“Didn’t they follow us?” For a second, I’m flooded with a wave of bitterness, thinking they were too cowardly to come. Then, I glance back at the parking lot just as the wind shifts, lifting the veil of smoke. And there lies the Protectorate.

Their shredded bodies lie in various postures, some facedown and alone, others in jumbled piles of tangled limbs. Some lie in twos, as close to one another as lovers.

“Oh, God,” I whisper.

Michel clings to McCann, his little face buried in his father’s chest.

The other two survivors, both young men, look around with flickering, frightened glances. The afternoon has grown quiet, a silence that holds greater horror than the preceding din. Ethan climbs down from the seat of one of the few intact squad trucks.

“Ignition is coded. You have to have a cross to use it, and without Randal to tweak the coding, our pocket transmitters are worthless. We’ll have to go on foot.”

“What about the others?” says one of the young men. “There might still be some alive back there.” He glances at the still-rolling wall of black smoke.

Ethan shakes his head. “If anyone’s alive, they’ll find their way. We have to find ours.”

McCann takes the nearly shredded flag from my hands (I discover I’m still stupidly holding it). He pulls it from its pole, and drapes it over my shoulders. “Don’t lose it,” he says.

“Yeah,” I reply, failing at my intended smile.

“Let’s move,” Ethan says, and we take off on foot.

~~~

Five minutes later we’re running through a rundown neighborhood. The houses are all abandoned, of course, but somehow the colors of the paint cracking and peeling from the walls are still vivid, beautiful. Dandelions and other flowering weeds poke up from brown grasses in overgrown yards. The flag around my shoulders smells musty and strangely sweet, old and good. Death might come from anywhere, and I guess part of me wants to soak up the last ounces of beauty I can, before it’s too late. Even now, after all these years of strangling it, the romantic in me won’t quite die.

As we run, I keep glancing at the sky, half expecting a lightning bolt like the one that struck Randal to blast from the heavens and fry us all. Maybe without crosses in our cheeks they can’t target us, I tell myself, but I’m terrified anyway.

“When we reach the next block,” Ethan says breathlessly, “look for a good building to hole up in. We have to get out of the open.”

No sooner have the words left his lips than the jittering, chugging sound of a chopper grows from nothing to a blasting roar. Seconds later, the helicopter appears above one of the buildings behind us. McCann scoops Michel up into his arms and quickens his pace, sprinting a step behind Ethan and me. From behind us I hear the two young rebels firing on the chopper, trying to cover our retreat. After a second, the sound of their gunshots is punctuated with a low, hollow-sounding explosion. Without breaking stride, I glance back.

Behind me, a curtain of green smoke rises, ghostlike, and swoops toward us. I drop my gun, letting it hang from its strap, and run my hardest. Instinctively, I am terrified of the rising gas. A moment later, when I glance over my shoulder again, I can see only one of the guys covering our retreat. He’s still running, but unsteadily, weaving first left, then right, then finally going limp and falling like a rag doll, skidding across the pavement face first. Behind him, the other rebel is already sprawled out in the street, twitching violently. And the poison gas is coming closer.

“Don’t look back,” Ethan wheezes in front of me. “Just run.”

I follow Ethan. We sprint hard for one more block before taking cover behind a row of old, burned-out cars.

Only then do we look back and see that the unthinkable has happened.

There, in the middle of the street, stands McCann. With one hand, he holds Michel’s little body clasped to his chest.
Oh, God, Michel!
I think. Could he have inhaled some of the poison gas? Did a bullet intended for McCann strike him?

Either way, he’s gone, his limbs hanging limply from his father’s embrace. And McCann is getting revenge. His white machine gun blazes, unleashing an unrelenting hail of lead at the helicopter. Even from here, the sound of McCann’s scream is piercing. Slowly, the chopper turns its massive machine gun toward him.

“Stay here!” Ethan growls to me, and he’s gone, dashing across the pavement, firing on the chopper. McCann’s and Ethan’s bullets clatter off the helicopter’s armored body, with no effect.

“McCann!” Ethan screams. “Retreat!”

But I know already, McCann isn’t going anywhere.

From my position behind the car, I watch as the chopper’s side door slides open. I watch as a squad member takes position at that door. I see the muzzle flare from his gun, and I see Ethan fall mid stride.

Now, it’s my turn to dash down the street, screaming, “Ethan!”

But he is already back on his feet, rushing toward McCann, toward the chopper.

The helicopter finishes rotating and faces them now. The African warrior stands, his son clasped to his chest, his feet planted wide, tears streaming down his cheeks, his gun rattling away at its target.

The helicopter’s huge machine gun opens fire. Instantly, McCann falls.

Ethan screams in fury and skids to a halt. He sets his feet and shoulders his gun, firing mercilessly. I come up next to him, firing too.

It must be my imagination, but I think I can hear the laughter of the squadmen inside even over the roar of the chopper. But our relentless barrage is too much for the helicopter’s armor, and we manage to damage the back rotor. The squad chopper spins around once, buzzing like an injured fly, then slams into a large office building. Dust belches toward us as the wall crumbles and the roof of the place caves in.

I want to go to McCann and little Michel, but Ethan is already dragging me onward. I want to weep, but there are no tears left in me.

There’s an explosion where the helicopter crashed, and bits of shattered rotor skitter across the road toward us. Dodging, ducking, leaping over flying debris, we run two more blocks before finally coming to a gray, stone office building with a marquis on the front that says:
Fox Theatre
. Ethan leads me inside.

—Chapter Ø23—

The drones pass over again,
rattling the front doors of the theater.

I’m staring out the dirt-streaked glass while Ethan sits with his back to the door of an old ticket booth, gazing in at the darkened theater. The lobby of the place is like an art deco palace, arrayed with columns, ornate plaster work and beautiful (though dusty) marble floors—but we aren’t here for the décor.

“How long was that?” I ask.

Ethan glances at his watch. “Sixty-five seconds,” he says. “They’re homing in again. The satellites must’ve picked up on our body heat.”

With each blink, the day’s horrific events flash through my mind: Grace stewing in her own blood, Randal fried by lightning, McCann and poor Michel cut down by the chopper’s gun—and of course, Kali. But I fight to push these images from my thoughts. In a day, the Company has reduced the glorious rebellion to two solitary people. And if we’re not smart, there will be no one left.

I glance at Ethan and notice for the first time that he sits with one hand pressed to his side. In the dim light, I can see no blood, but his teeth are on edge.

“You okay?” I ask. “It looked like you were hit going after McCann.”

“Fine,” he says. He grunts as he takes an IC from his pocket.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Checking on the other Protectorate groups.”

Staring at the screen, his expression grows even darker.

“How are they doing?” I ask.

He snorts. “No worse than us.”

Above, the drones roar past again. This time when the bombs fall, dust rains down on us.

Suddenly, I realize something.

“Ethan,” I say, “let me see that IC. Randal gave me a data stick—”

Ethan’s eyes widen. “The Protectorate Education Initiative. He must have finished it.” I hold my hand out for his IC, but he shakes his head. “It won’t work on this thing—it has to be tied into the Company network, and this one isn’t. Besides, Randal betrayed us. That damn data stick probably doesn’t even work.”

One more flicker of hope, lost. I shove the data stick back into my pocket, and Ethan and I fall silent again. As the minutes drag on, I find myself thinking of Randal. I remember his cryptic and feverish talk of digital coding, of reducing all things to their common denominator. Were his words empty, just the product of his brilliant but drug-addled mind, or was there meaning behind them? Was he talking about the human propensity for creating abstract systems: language, mathematics, digital coding? Or was he referring to the codes inherent in nature, like those in DNA? Was his message one of bleak empiricism, a reminder that in the end, we’re all just a combination of molecular elements, stuck together in semi-unique combinations? Or—my mind returns to the writings I’ve read from the first Revolutionary War—did he mean that in the end, when reduced to our common denominator, we’re all actually the same. Equal. Could Randal have meant that after final analysis, when all the codes are broken and the variables reduced, we are all truly alike? Truly one? Could he, in his troubled, gifted mind, have found the proof of a real God after all?

I think again of the tiny card in my pocket. Despite Ethan’s skepticism, maybe Randal did leave us a final scrap of hope. . . .

We hear the drones coming around again. This time, they’re even louder than before.

Reflexively, I look up. “Uh-oh,” I say.

That’s when the ceiling caves in.

~~~

When the dust settles, all that remains above us is a sky of the purest blue.

“Ethan!”

I am buried in the rubble, immobilized, staring heavenward.

The sound of the explosion still rings in my ears. Tiny bits of shattered masonry and drywall dribble down my arms, tickling like the march of ants across my skin.

Trapped.

“May.”

The sun, warm on my face, is eclipsed. The silhouetted figure above me stoops, grunts as it heaves away pieces of rubble. The pressure on my body lessens.

“How bad are you hurt?”

When he stoops to pick up another brick, I see Ethan’s face above me, black with dust, streaked with sweat and blood.

“I don’t know. Everything is tingling.”

Above, I can see that most of the building is still intact—it was just the lobby roof and the marquis that tumbled down onto our heads. Still, it’s a miracle that we’re alive. If we’re still here when the next drone pass happens, we won’t be. . . .

“May Fields,” Ethan says, casually tossing a brick. “Your name has always cracked me up. Sounds like a scent for laundry detergent.”

“Bite me,” I say. “You want to hurry up?”

After a minute, Ethan has cleared most of the debris off me and offers me a hand. I wince as he pulls me up and the last bits of rubble fall away from my body.

“I feel like I’ve been sleeping in a waffle iron,” I mutter, but neither of us has the energy to laugh. As if to punctuate my sentence, the sound of sirens rises, first to our left, then to our right. I hear a helicopter coming up from behind us, though it’s not yet visible over the buildings.

I struggle to my feet. Automatically, my hand goes to my holster but finds it empty. I’ve lost my gun.

Clumsily, I climb down from the heap of rubble, ready to run. But when I look over for Ethan, he’s no longer at my side. I find him sitting on the top of the rubble heap, lighting a cigar.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

He looks at me. “Smoking.”

Smoking, a violation of Company policy. He’s a rebel to the end.

Ethan reaches over and gingerly pulls the flag that had been draped over my shoulders from the rubble. He presses it against the wound on his side, wincing. Instantly, it is soaked through with blood.

I climb back up toward him.

“Let me see.”

He waves me off. “I’m fine,” he says. “Go on. Run. Who knows, maybe Randal’s program will work after all, right?”

All around, the sirens grow louder. I glance over my shoulder, desperate to keep moving.

“Go,” he repeats.

“I’m not leaving you,” I say.

He smiles. “Well you don’t want to go where I’m going, believe me.”

He takes another drag off his cigar and clenches the flag tighter to his side.

“You can’t give up!” I say. “This isn’t about you, or me, or McCann or Clair! This is about the Protectorate! Since seventeen eighty-three—”

Ethan laughs bitterly.

“What?”

He smiles at me, shakes his head. “Of all the strong, brave, jaded people I know, you have the biggest heart of them all, you know that?” He pauses. “George Washington didn’t start the Protectorate, May. Randal and I did.”

The silence that passes between us is filled by the chuckling approach of a still-unseen chopper. I suddenly feel ill.

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

Ethan sighs. “I was with the N-Corp psych evaluation division. We decided which criminals were unprofitables and which were redeemable,” he says, looking off into the distance, remembering. “Every day, people would tell me these stories of all the horrible things the Company did to them. After a while, I had to do something about it. Randal was my friend. He felt the same way. We wanted to find a way to rally people to the cause. I guess the story of the Protectorate just sounded better than the truth.”

A moment passes while I try to process this new realization.

“So . . . you lied to us? There was no Protectorate?”

“Not until we started it.”

I’m shaking, furious. I open my mouth, but it takes a second for me to make words come out. “So you lied to us,” I say again.

To my surprise, a glimmer of hurt passes through Ethan’s face, and he inhales on his cigar, long and slow. An instant later, his expression becomes unreadable again. Sirens are all around us now. Any minute now, they’ll be upon us.

“If you’re telling me this to make me leave,” I say, “it won’t work.”

Ethan seems hardly to hear me. He winces in pain. “All those lives,” he murmurs to himself. “Who’s even going to remember them?”

He looks up at me suddenly, a hint of a smile crossing his lips. “At least we tried,” he says. “We did something, May. That’s a lot more than most people can say.”

Even if I knew what to say, I would have no chance to respond.

Shadows pass overhead and a swarm of Ravers wheels and dips toward us. The screech of sirens becomes deafening as, from around the corners of buildings on both sides of us, squad trucks appear, rumbling and skidding to at halt.

Neither Ethan nor I run as the doors of the black trucks open and the squadmen pour out. The Ravers swoop down and encircle us, hovering. Despair clamps my heart and nausea twists my stomach.

Ethan gives a mighty sigh as he rises to his feet. “Here we go,” he says wearily.

With one hand, he nonchalantly slides his gun to his back and raises his hands—the American flag hanging from one, his cigar in the other.

From among the ranks of squadmen, Blackwell appears. “Don’t hit the woman,” he calls out. “They want her alive. Take the other one out on my order.”

This, of course, infuriates me. I step in front of Ethan.

“No!” I shout at Blackwell. “You want him, you shoot me first! Go ahead, Blackwell! Do it!”

A hundred gun barrels gape at us.

“Do it!”

From behind, I feel Ethan’s hand on my shoulder. Gently, he turns me around to face him. His face is pale. Blood drenches his shirt. He smiles at me wanly.

“Step aside, Blackie,” he says.

I open my mouth to protest, but he shakes his head. “That’s an order.”

This time, I obey and move away from him.

“Standby for the kill order,” Blackwell says, then puts one finger to his ear, listening intently for the order from his unseen commander.

Ethan steps slowly forward, his expression a cipher. He takes one last drag from his cigar, then flicks it away. With the other hand, he raises the bloodstained flag high over his head. It stirs in the breeze.

Ethan’s voice booms over the silent squadmen: “In the words of Patrick Henry,” he says, “Give me liberty, or give me—”

With incredible speed, he draws his gun and fires one shot. Below, Blackwell stumbles and falls.

Instantly, then squadmen open fire.

Ethan falls backward, his body already limp, and slides down a few feet before coming to rest in a pocket of debris. The flag, still clutched in his fist, settles down over his head and face.

Not a bird calls. No one speaks. No one moves. My mouth is open, but I haven’t the breath to scream.

Ethan is dead.

All now is indistinct, the world blurred with my rage. I jump forward, snatch a hovering Raver from the air and fling it down on the bricks, stomp on it once, then sprint toward the squad trucks.

From the corner of my eye, I see Blackwell rising, waving off a squad member who tries to help him. “I’m fine,” Blackwell mutters. “Hold your fire!”

I am pure fury. I slam into the nearest squad member, sending him sprawling to the concrete. My hands are already gripping his heavy, black gun, yanking it, trying to tear it free with desperate force, but its strap holds. I squeeze the trigger, but the weapon won’t recognize my palm print and refuses to fire, so instead I slam the butt into the squad member’s startled face.

Then, breath departs my lungs as I’m tackled to the pavement.

Several huge squadmen are on top of me now, crushing me with their weight. I struggle to get free, to push myself up to my knees and fight, but strong hands grab my wrists and twist my hands behind my back. I scream, bite, spit like an animal, but it’s no use. They lift me, drag me, throw me in the backseat of a squad truck and slam the door in my face.

No matter how hard I kick the window, it will not budge.

The Protectorate never existed.

Kali, Ethan, McCann, Randal, Michel, Ada, all dead.

Even I, all that I have been and all that I ever hoped to be, have passed away.

It’s all over.