Chimpanzee (38 page)

There are Renewal workers everywhere, I report to Rosie.

“Can you see anything?” I say to Dimitri. I've got a hold of his shoulder. The crowds seep like water, massaging things apart. Moving people in organic directions. I'm fighting the motion.

I know, Rosie messages.

All I can see is this smoky, Art Deco architecture. You can tell the smoke from the tear gas because one is darker than the other. It doesn't matter which.

The Renewal workers keep the people moving. The march is mechanical. The chants, the shouts. It's orchestral. The voice of God in the machine. The wardens watch their crews. Checking the herd.

Where did they all come from?

Recent enlistees, Rosie messages. Lot of them were yours. Demonstrators, too.

“Look,” Dimitri shouts ahead of me. “They've set up checkpoints.”

I look. Renewal workers pat and frisk. They issue civilians in safe directions.

Are you safe? Rosie messages.

Are you safe?

Cade?

The workers turn their riot shields on the police. The wardens. Shock and awe gone wrong. There is no reversing the insurgence. Wardens shout and gesture and shoot holes through people's chests. The shots are harder to hear than I would expect. They're less impressive than I imagine everyone wants them to be. And the workers kill them anyway, mostly with blunt-force trauma they deliver through the edges of their polyvinyl shields and the crush of their thousand, thousand fists.

The dead lie in piles with workers in blood-red vinyl. Like a protest. A taking of space to make us all pay attention. They've each got uniforms for this. Police, wardens, workers. It makes it easier to sort the corpses. Civilians shove and drag, pulling bodies
into even lines along the sidewalk, as if they know a better way to arrange people on pavement.

The shields look reptilian in their scattering. Like scales. Slick and fractured. A sloughing.

Dimitri shouts something at me, but they're chanting now, and I can't hear him. He steers us through a different corridor of smoke, and we stop in some corner while a cluster of people thunder past. In a hurry. Places to be.

I'm safe. The citizens want food. They're shouting about grain. Workers have turned.

Stay safe, Cade. I said you'd be safe.

I stop Dimitri before he marches into a cluster of workers. They have a warden on his knees. One of them has stolen his shotgun. Has it at his face.

Where are you, Cade?

I can't tell. I shout into Dimitri's ear: “The fuck are we?”

He watches them. The warden cries.

Dimitri points, and I see the gazebo, just through a bank of haze. Sentinel Park.

They're shouting addresses. All those houses.

The fires make it downtown. The human crush is more than Dimitri and I can fight. We move away from each other, like continental drift or glacial crawl. Things we can't help. There are more shots. Chimpanzee masks. Renewal workers with bandanas around their mouths.

I'm leaving. Fires downtown now. Chimpanzee masks. I'm leaving.

You see now, Cade.

There aren't supposed to be chimpanzee masks. It wasn't a movement. Just people making noise. Distraction.

Distraction from what, Cade?

Cade?

All of it.

Ideas have consequences.

Like me.

Things work out, Cade.

Goodbye, Rosie.