Children of the Uprising (14 page)

“Yes,” Christopher answered him and then Addy pulled the trigger.

What started as thirty versus seven ended when it hit twenty to none, although none of them ever knew for sure how many of their own side they lost, since their evacuation was sloppy and people randomly jumped into vehicles. All they knew was that their victory was not without its costs. When Dutty, Christopher, Evan, Addy, and Soledad stepped out of the building, Kevin was waiting for them in his SUV. He had picked up an additional passenger from the now disabled van that had been hit by the grenade. There wasn't time to evenly distribute the survivors. “We've got three minutes,” Kevin yelled to them as they stepped outside. Christopher could see the fire reflected in the SUV's windshield and he counted six bullet holes in the vehicle's side.

They all piled into the SUV. Kevin slammed his foot on the gas pedal. All of Christopher's friends had survived this time. He supposed that was an improvement. He wasn't sure that they hadn't survived by pure luck.
Better to be lucky than dead,
he thought and made a miserable attempt at forcing out a chuckle. The additional passenger that they'd picked up was covered in the splatter of someone else's blood. He didn't say a word the whole trip back to L.A. He didn't look at Christopher like all the others had. Instead, he stared out the window in a daze.

They made it back to their base in Los Angeles before sunrise—the ones who survived, that is. It was strange for Christopher, Evan, and Addy, walking around the compound after returning from the attack, because since they didn't know anyone anyway, they had no idea who was missing. They didn't know where the gaps were. They had no way of knowing who was mourning and who was simply tired or in shock. Every death means more to some than to others. They can't mean something to everyone. There aren't enough tears or time for that.

Dutty showed the three of them where they were meant to stay, noting as he did that they probably wouldn't be here for more than another few days. He expected it to be a good few days. Christopher had led them to their first victory, and the Web site would be roiling with the news in a matter of hours. Dutty would make sure of that. It wouldn't be long before people everywhere, regardless of what side they were on, would know that the Uprising had begun.

Dutty had organized the building so that women slept on one side and men slept on the other. He first showed Evan and Christopher to the room they would be sharing. It was at the far end of the compound. Inside the room were two beds with a single nightstand between them. Only one wall had a window, looking out across a desolate, dirt-strewn hill along the side of a highway. “You two need to rest,” Dutty said to Christopher and Evan. “Don't let anyone bother you. I'll go back to the apartment and get your things. You'll have them before you wake up.” Christopher took the bed by the windowless wall, giving Evan what little natural light came into the room. “We'll celebrate tonight,” Dutty added. Then he led Addy down the hallway toward the room she would be sharing with Soledad and two other women that she'd never met.

Evan and Christopher didn't talk as they pulled back the sheets on their beds. Before climbing into the bed, Christopher, as was his habit, walked over to the window. “You mind?” he asked Evan before he passed Evan's bed.

“Go ahead,” Evan said. He knew what Christopher was doing, knew that Christopher had to do it. Evan knew that Christopher couldn't go to bed without first looking out any windows to see if anyone was out there. “You know I used to think it was so weird when you did that,” Evan said to Christopher. “It was like the toughest kid I ever met was checking under his bed for monsters before he went to sleep.”

“And what do you think now?”

“I think I'd do it if you didn't. How's it look?” Evan asked as Christopher peered out into the slowly coming dawn.

“Like hell,” Christopher answered. “It doesn't look like L.A. out there. It looks like a scene from a Mad Max movie.”

“But no people?” Evan asked, not trying to hide the tinge of fear in his voice.

“No people,” Christopher confirmed. He looked down at his friend. “You know you don't have to do this,” he said to Evan. “You can go home.”

“What about you?”

“You know I can't go back.” Christopher stared at the wasteland outside and thought about the faces of his mother and father—his real mother and father, the ones who raised him. “Maybe this dump is all there is for me.”

“I'm not going back if you're not going back,” Evan said. The fear in his voice was gone. “So drop it, okay?”

“Okay,” Christopher said. What Evan didn't tell Christopher was that he didn't want to go home. Not only because of Christopher but because of Addy too and for the sheer adventure of it all. His life was bigger now and he had always wanted it to be bigger. Besides, it was different here for Evan than for Christopher. No one looked at Evan funny. He was already becoming more accepted by these people than Christopher would ever, could ever, be. “I'm glad you're here,” Christopher said.

Then, somehow, they slept.

Christopher could hear
music when he woke up. It wasn't loud, but he could hear it drifting in from one of the building's other rooms. It was still light outside, but the shadows were growing long. Christopher checked the clock. He'd been in bed for almost twelve hours. The bed next to him was unmade but empty. Evan must have already gotten up.

Christopher sat up in bed. He put his feet on the floor and his hands on the bed next to him. He listened. Under the sound of the music, he could hear people talking. He could hear spots of laughter. He didn't want to go out there.

His bag, with what little in the world that he owned, was sitting at the end of his bed. Dutty must have dropped it off there while Christopher slept. Christopher slid down to the end of the bed and rifled through the bag. He found his jeans and a clean T-shirt. He took his time getting dressed. The room had no mirror, so he just ran his fingers through his hair a few times to try to make sure that it wasn't too knotted or messy and that there was no soot or blood in it. Then, knowing that he was running out of reasons to delay the inevitable, he walked out of the room.

For a few seconds, Christopher was able to stand unnoticed and watch the others. Some of them had bottles of beer in their hands. The music was coming from a laptop computer somebody had set on a table outside the kitchen. Evan was standing in one corner of the room, drinking a beer and talking to two men that Christopher barely recognized from the night when everyone introduced themselves to him. He felt more than a little guilty for not remembering them all better, for not remembering each of their names.

Addy saw Christopher first. She was standing near the table with the computer on it. They made eye contact and after a moment's hesitation, Addy walked toward him. He was frozen, unsure of where to walk or who to talk to. He was relieved to see Addy coming toward him. He awkwardly pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I need to show you something,” Addy said before leading him to the computer. When they got near the computer the music was loud enough that it drowned out the other sounds of the evening and all they could hear was the music and each other. “Look at this,” Addy said, an unconquerable smile spreading across her face. She opened up a Web browser and pasted in the current URL for the Uprising's Web site. It loaded quickly, but Addy noticed with satisfaction that it loaded a little slower than normal because so many people were viewing it. Though Addy immediately recognized the colors, the bright yellow background and the dark green font, it was all new to Christopher.

“What are you showing me?” Christopher asked.

“Wait,” she said. When the page finished loading, Addy scrolled down until the center of the screen was almost entirely filled with a picture. It was the first picture ever posted on the site. It was a picture taken at night but with enough light to see every detail. It was a picture of Christopher, holding a gun, aiming it at a man standing in the open window of a dark building on the edge of the desert. It was a picture of Christopher taken the moment before he shot the man who nearly shot Evan. The picture was somehow taken from over Christopher's shoulder so that you couldn't see much of the man in the window except for his gun and his silhouette. But you could see Christopher. Nearly half of the picture was taken up by the side of Christopher's face. You could see his pores. You could see the sweat dripping down his forehead. You could see the smudges of dirt already on his face. You could see in his face that he was about to pull the trigger.

“How the hell?” Christopher began to ask.

“Kevin took it from the car,” Addy said. “He's got a really great zoom lens. It's great, isn't it?”

“Scroll down,” Christopher ordered.

She scrolled down so that Christopher could see the caption Dutty had given the picture. The words below Christopher's picture read: BE YOU WOLF OR LAMB,
THE CHILD
SHALL LEAD US ALL. “Do you want to read what Dutty wrote?” Addy asked Christopher.

“No,” Christopher answered, to her surprise. “Is this on the Internet? Aren't people going to see this? What's going to happen when people see this?”

Addy didn't understand Christopher's reaction. She thought he had come around. “That's why we're celebrating. We want people to see this. We're not celebrating what happened last night. We're celebrating the fact that everyone knows what happened last night and everyone knows that you were part of it. That was Dutty's plan. That's how it all starts.”

“But what about regular people? What about my parents? What about the police?”

“You can't hide a revolution in the darkness. If you try, it'll die like a flame without oxygen.” A deep voice spoke from behind Addy and Christopher. Christopher turned to see Dutty standing there. Dutty put his hand on Christopher's shoulder. “That's how they've kept us down for generations, for centuries—they've made us afraid, not only of each other but of the world too.”

“And this helps somehow?” Christopher asked, looking at his own picture again on the screen. He barely recognized himself.

“People need a point of light to follow,” Dutty said to Christopher. “You're that point of light. But they can't follow you if they can't see you.”

“Yeah, but the people trying to kill me can't find me if they can't see me either.”

“Have a beer,” Dutty ordered Christopher. “Talk to your people. We can talk more about this some other time.” Christopher was too confused to respond. So he walked into the kitchen and grabbed a beer. Then, beer in hand, he turned back toward the room. He thought about going to Evan, but Evan seemed to be fitting in so well, Christopher didn't want to ruin it. Instead, he began to walk through the building's rooms alone.

They still looked at him, all those people who merely wanted to touch him and introduce themselves to him. They still watched him without speaking to him. He walked from one room to the next. Each room was the same, the people in small groups trying their best to look happy and unafraid. A few of them smiled at Christopher as he walked by, but none of them talked to him. The faces of the people melted into each other. Christopher thought he recognized some of the faces from either the battlefield or the first night that he met Dutty, but he couldn't be sure. Then he spotted the one face that he was sure he remembered: the face of the old black man whose hand he shook on that first night. Suddenly, even though he couldn't remember the man's name, he remembered what the man had said to him.

Christopher walked up to the man. He was sitting alone in a chair in the corner of one of the rooms. The old man smiled at Christopher when Christopher got close to him. “You said to me that you knew my father,” Christopher said.

The old man nodded. “I did say that and I did know your father.”

“I forgot your name,” Christopher confessed.

“You heard a lot of names that night,” the older man said, excusing him. “Mine is Brian.”

Christopher thought back to his father's journal, trying to remember all of the names his father had written in it. Christopher had read the whole thing cover to cover at least three times since it was first dropped into his hands. Then it dawned on him. “You were his intelligence contact.”

Brian nodded and laughed easily. “Until they took him away from me. I liked your father. He tried to be a good person. He sure as hell wouldn't have wanted any of this for you.”

“Yeah, well, I don't suppose he has much say in the matter.”

“Do you want to know more about him?” Brian asked.

Christopher shook his head. “Not really,” he answered. He wasn't in the mood to hear old stories about the War. “Not now.”

“Then what do you want to know about?” Brian asked him.

Something in Brian's voice made Christopher think that this strange old man didn't really fit in with Dutty's people. He had an air of skepticism that set him apart from everyone else here. “What are you doing here?” Christopher asked him.

Brian leaned toward Christopher, who was still standing in front of him. He glanced around them before he spoke to make sure no one was listening to their conversation. “Reggie asked me to keep an eye on you.”