Pandemonium (13 page)

The drumming is coming from behind the dais, a part of the square that’s blocked from view. There must be a marching band there. The chanting swells, and now everyone is joining in, the whole crowd unconsciously swaying along to the rhythm. Distantly, I make out some other rhythm, a disjointed staccato:
DFA is dangerous for all… The cure should protect, not harm…

The dissenters. They must be sequestered somewhere else, far away from the dais.

Louder, louder, louder. The DFA’s chants soon drown out all other sound. I join in, let my body find the rhythm, feel the hum of all those thousands of people buzz up through my feet and into my chest. And even though I don’t believe in any of it—the words, the cause, the people around me—it amazes me, still, the surge I get from being in a crowd, the electricity, the sense of power.

Dangerous.

Just as the chanting reaches a crescendo, Thomas Fineman breaks away from the bodyguards and takes the steps up to the top of the dais, two at a time. The rhythm breaks apart into waves of shouting and clapping. White banners and flags appear from everywhere, unfurling, fluttering in the wind. Some of them are DFA-issue. Other people have simply cut up long strips of cloth. Times Square is full of slender white tentacles.

“Thank you,” Thomas Fineman says into the microphone. His voice booms out over all of us; then a sharp screeching sound as the feed lets out a whine. Fineman winces, cups his hand over the microphone, and leans back to mutter instructions to someone. The angle of his neck shows off his procedural mark perfectly. The three-pronged scar is amplified by the video screen.

I turn my eyes to Julian. He is standing with his arms crossed, watching his father, behind the wall of bodyguards. He must be cold; he’s only wearing a suit jacket.

“Thank you,” Thomas Fineman tries again, and, when no feed kicks back, adds, “Much better. My friends—”

That’s when it happens.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

Three miniature explosions, like the firecrackers we used to set off at Eastern Prom on the Fourth of July.

One scream, high and desperate.

And then: Everything is noise.

Figures in black appear from nowhere, from everywhere. They’re climbing up out of the sewers, materializing from the ground, taking shape behind the foul-smelling steam. They swarm down the sides of the buildings like spiders, rappelling on long black ropes. They’re scything through the crowd with glittering, sharp blades, grabbing purses and ripping necklaces from around people’s necks, slicing rings from their fingers.
Thwack. Thwack.

Scavengers. My insides turn to liquid. My breath stops in my throat.

People are pushing and shoving, desperately trying to find a way out. The Scavengers have us surrounded.

“Down, down, down!”

Now the air is filled with gunshots. The police have opened fire. One Scavenger has made it halfway down a building toward the ground. A bullet explodes in his back and he jerks once, quickly, and then hangs limp from the end of his rope, swaying lightly in the wind. Somehow one of the DFA banners has become entangled in his equipment; I see the stain of blood spreading slowly across the white fabric.

I am in a nightmare. I am in the past. This isn’t happening.

Someone shoves me from behind and I go sprawling to the pavement. The bite of the concrete snaps me into awareness. People are running, stampeding, and I quickly roll out of the way of a pair of heavy boots.

I have to get back on my feet.

I try to stand and get knocked down again. This time the air goes out of me, and I feel someone’s weight on the middle of my back. And suddenly the fear turns me sharp and focused. I need to get up.

One of the police barricades has already been broken, and a piece of splintered wood is lying in front of me. I grab it and jab behind me, into the crushing weight of people, of panic, and feel the wood connecting with legs, with muscle and skin. For a brief second I feel the weight shift, a slight release. I jump to my feet and sprint toward the dais.

Julian is gone. I’m supposed to be watching Julian. No matter what happens.

Piercing screams. The smell of fire.

Then I spot him off to my left. He is being hustled toward one of the old subway entrances, which is, like all the other entrances, covered with plywood. But as he approaches, one of the bodyguards steps forward and pushes the plywood inward.

Not a barrier. A door.

Then they are gone, and the sheet of wood swings closed again.

More gunshots. A massive surge in the screaming. A Scavenger has been shot just as he was beginning his descent. He is knocked clear off the balcony and tumbles down into the crowd below. The people are a wave: heads, arms, contorted faces.

I run toward the subway entrance where Julian disappeared. Above it I can see an old series of letters and numbers, faded bare outlines: N, R, Q, 1, 2, 3, 7. And in the middle of all that panic and screaming, there is something comforting about it: an old-world code, a sign from another life. I wonder whether the old world could have possibly been worse than this—that time of dazzling lights and sizzling electricity and people who loved in the open—whether they also screamed and trampled one another to death and turned their guns on their neighbors.

Then the air is knocked out of me again and I’m thrown backward. I land on my left elbow, hear it crack. Pain splinters through me.

A Scavenger looms over me. Impossible to say whether it’s a man or a woman. The Scavenger is dressed all in black and has a ski mask pulled low, covering the neck.

“Give me the bag,” the Scavenger growls. But the voice doesn’t fool me. It’s a girl. She’s trying to make her voice sound lower, but you can hear the melody running underneath it.

For some reason, this makes me even angrier.
How dare you?
I feel like spitting at her.
You’ve screwed everything for everyone.
But I sit up, inching the backpack off my shoulders, feeling little explosions of pain radiating all the way from my elbow to my shoulder.

“Come on, come on. Hurry up.” She’s dancing from foot to foot, and as she does she fingers the long, sharp knife she has looped through her belt.

I mentally weigh all the things I have in the bag: a tin water bottle, empty. Tack’s umbrella. Two granola bars. Keys. A hardcover edition of
The Book of Shhh
. Tack insisted I bring it, and now I’m glad I did. It’s nearly six hundred pages.

Should be heavy enough. I take the shoulder straps in my right hand, tightening my grip.

“I said move.”

The Scavenger, impatient, bends down to grab the bag, and as she does, I swing upward with all my strength, moving through the pain. The bag catches her in the side of the head with enough momentum to knock her off balance—she tumbles to one side, landing hard on the ground. I launch to my feet. She grabs for my ankles, and I kick her hard, twice, in the ribs.

The priests and the scientists are right about one thing: At our heart, at our base, we are no better than animals.

The Scavenger moans, doubling up, and I jump over her, dodging all the police barricades, which are lying in a tumbled, broken ruin. The screaming is still a crest of sound around me: It has turned into one tremendous wail, like a gigantic, amplified siren.

I make it to the old subway entrance. For just a second I hesitate with my hand on the wooden plank. Its texture is comforting—weather-beaten, warmed by the sun—a bit of normalcy in the middle of all this madness.

Another rifle shot: I hear a body thud to the ground behind me. More screaming.

I lean forward and push. The door swings open a few feet, revealing murky darkness and a pungent, musty smell.

I don’t look back.

I push the door shut again and stand for a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the dimness, listening for the sound of voices or footsteps. Nothing. The smell is sharper in here; it is the smell of old death, animal bones and rotting things. I bring my jacket cuff to my nose and inhale. There’s a steady dripping off to my left. Other than that, it’s quiet.

There are stairs in front of me, covered in bits of crumpled newspaper, mashed-up Styrofoam cups, cigarette butts, all dully illuminated by an electric lantern, like the kind we used in the Wilds. Someone must have planted it here earlier.

I move toward the stairs, on high alert. Julian’s bodyguards might have heard me shoving open the door. They might be lying in wait, ready to jump me. Mentally I curse the metal detectors and all the body scans. I would give anything to have a knife, a screwdriver, something.

Then I remember my keys. I once again ease my backpack off my shoulders. When I bend my elbow, the pain makes me suck in my breath. I’m thankful I landed on my left arm—with my right arm immobilized, I’d be pretty much useless.

I find my keys at the bottom of my bag, moving agonizingly slowly so I don’t make too much noise. I thread the keys through my fingers, like Tack showed me how to do. It’s not much of a weapon, but it’s better than nothing. Then I go down the stairs, scanning the shadows for anything mobile, any sudden shapes rising through the darkness.

Nothing. Everything is perfectly still, and very quiet.

At the bottom of the stairs, there is a dingy glass booth, still smudgy with fingerprints. Beyond it, rusted turnstiles line the tunnel, a dozen of them, like miniature windmills that have been stilled. I ease myself over one of them and land softly on the other side. From here, various tunnels branch out into the darkness, each marked with different signs, more letters and numbers. Julian might have gone down any one of them. And all of them are swallowed in shadow: The lantern doesn’t penetrate this far. I consider going back to retrieve it, but that would only give me away.

Again, I stop and listen. At first there is nothing. Then, I think I hear a muffled thud from the tunnel on my left. As soon as I start toward the sound, however, there is silence once again. Now I’m sure I only imagined the noise, and I hesitate, frustrated, unsure about what to do next. I’ve failed in my mission, that’s obvious—my first real mission of the movement. At the same time, Raven and Tack can’t blame me for losing Julian when the Scavengers attacked. I couldn’t have predicted or prepared for that chaos. No one could have.

I figure my best bet is to wait down here for a few hours, at least until the police have restored order, which I have no doubt they will. If necessary, I’ll camp out for the night. Tomorrow I’ll deal with getting back to Brooklyn.

Suddenly, a darting shadow from my left. I whirl around, fist extended, and connect with nothing but air. A giant rat scurries in front of me, a bare inch from my sneaker. I exhale, watching the rat darting off down another tunnel, its long tail dragging in the filth. I’ve always hated rats.

That’s when I hear it, distinct and unmistakable: two thuds, and a low groan, a voice moaning out, “Please…”

Julian’s voice.

My body goes prickly all over. Now the fear draws my insides hard and taut. The voice came from somewhere farther down the tunnel.

I ease back against one wall, pressing myself flat, feeling moss and slick tile under my fingers as I move forward slowly, careful not to make any noise when I step, careful not to breathe too loudly. After every few paces I stop and listen, hoping for another sound, hoping Julian will say something again. But the only thing I hear is a steady
drip
,
drip
,
drip
. There must be a pipe leaking somewhere.

Then I see it.

The man is strung from a grate in the ceiling, a belt looped tightly around his bulging neck. Above him, water condenses on a metal pipe, dripping onto the tunnel floor.
Drip
,
drip
,
drip
.

It’s so dark I can’t make out the man’s face—the grate permits only a trickle of gray light from above—but I recognize him from the heaviness of his shoulders as one of Julian’s bodyguards. At his feet, another bodyguard is lying curled up in the fetal position. There is a long-handled blade protruding from his back.

I stumble backward, forgetting to be quiet. Then I hear Julian’s voice again, fainter: “Please…”

I’m terrified. I don’t know which direction the voice is coming from, can’t think of anything but getting out, out, out. I’d rather face the Scavengers in the open than trapped here, like a rat, in the dark. I will not die underground.

I run blindly, keeping my arms in front of me, collide first with a wall before groping my way into the center of the tunnel. Panic has made me clumsy.