Noise (14 page)

Jon and I made sure to get to school early—an hour, at least—so we could secure one of the closest parking spots to the long, gravel trail that led from the overflow lot to the back entrance. We would sleep in the car, in turns. Keeping watch. Waiting to be first inside, once the vice principal unlocked the doors.

But we had others with us. Mary drove the other truck, Four riding shotgun beside her. Voice, Pump, and Merlin awaited orders in the bed, under the other camper shell.

Mary’s truck had been Penelope’s. I didn’t know why she drove a truck, why she picked a truck, newer than Circe’s, when her father had said “Choose.” Penelope did not have the look of the FFA—I didn’t know what history to imagine for her. But it didn’t matter—she had offered the keys readily when Mary asked for them.

“Park there,” Circe directed. This was her lot, and she knew its secrets.

“THREE” (“ARRIVAL”)

[1] (i) When you reach your Place, consider it enemy territory. Nearby Groups may very likely have already begun surveillance operations, scouting others’ likely Places and lying in wait to Forage their lives and materials when Group vigilance will naturally be at its lowest since the Event. (ii) Arriving successfully at your Place is, indeed, a time for celebration, but you have not Arrived until you have secured the area. (iii) Leadership will not be reassigned or decentralized until the Place is secure.

[2] (i) In the event that your Place belonged to an Outsider under the premises of Old Trade, you will need to remove him or her. (ii) If your Place contains arable land, it will be to your benefit to first approach the once-owner and attempt to Add him or her to your Group, as his or her expertise with the land will be to your benefit. (iii) In the unfortunate event that the once-owner objects, you will need to eliminate him or her and his or her family, for requisitioning land from those that still believe they own it will only lead to rebellion, revenge, or warfare. (iv) Though you may feel vestigial guilt for “stealing” this land, remember that Old Trade “ownership” was underwritten by now unstable law enforcement and military personnel. (v) Under the premises of New Trade, “ownership” is the ability to deter Outsiders from acquiring what you do not wish them to acquire.

[3] (i) When you have secured your Place, your primary Group concerns are food, water, shelter, and reconnaissance. (ii) As soon as possible, designate a new task-based engineering Leader. (iii) He or she must begin immediately securing the
necessary apparatus for resource security, such as wells, shadoofs, irrigation channels, Foraging Parties, etc.

[4] (i) The engineering Leader’s other primary task is the construction of temporary shelter—tents, natural shelters, or other forms of simple housing will suffice at this point. (ii) Your inclination will be simply to rest once you Arrive. (iii) Disregard your inclination.

[5] (i) Muster a number of your combatant Members for defense and reconnaissance. Theirs will be the task of ensuring the safety of the engineering operations as well as scouting for nearby Groups. (ii) Unless presented with a life-or-death defense situation, your reconnaissance Party should not engage other Groups or Parties.

w
alking toward the school doors, Luke treated Circe like she was pregnant. She had taken her hair out of its braid, on Mary’s orders, before we left the HOC. Unbound, it was long and straight and chestnut-colored, the same color as her boots. It was less
severe
, Mary had explained to me. This was not operations hair—this was girlfriend hair, and it would help to disarm the Outsiders in the school. Circe
looked
like she needed to be worried about. Like she was a liability and we knew it, but we weren’t
hard
enough to have devoted ourselves so fully to our Plan that we would have left her behind like we should have because she was an unnecessary expenditure of energy.

Luke walked on her pregnant side, her right side, where she carried two emptied cans of condensed milk in a sling. The cans had been soldered together and filled with iron filings and other bits of shrapnel. They had also been packed with dynamite.

Luke hovered his hand over the grenade’s homespun womb, and Matthew watched Mark, watching Luke. And the thing was, Circe let them watch, because the important question, if the
Jacks had all been Secondary—Auxiliary Demolitions—was where their Primaries were. Where was “Ishmael” while Luke stayed with her in the darkness?

Levi and I had talked about families and couples. We approved, because they were insurance. They kept people motivated.

And children even more so, if we could figure out how to deliver them.

Which is why, when we first got back to the HOC after Foraging the Humvee, after Levi and I had a chance to see what was among the Jacks’ meager equipment, in the backs of their trucks, I ordered Circe to bring a grenade. I intended to see it delivered.

She would be the mother of many more.

“What the fuck you want?” the sentry asked.

He wasn’t being combative. He spoke with a Latino accent, and he had tied a traditional paisley-and-filigree bandanna across his face. A black one. A junior in the high school, my guess. Before.

I didn’t flinch when his partner raised a .40-cal lackadaisically. I didn’t let anyone else flinch, either. This one was wearing the same type of bandanna. His hair was dyed blond, and it was spiked.

I sized them up for a minute. Made a show of it. “You two Salvage?”

“What’s it matter?” the second sentry asked, milder of voice.

Good Cop, Bad Cop.

I looked, with Four and Mary, at the football field. We could see it now, this close to the school, beyond the walnut trees that had blocked it from view in the parking lot. There were two or three clusters of people working the field, lit by car-battery-powered utility lights. They were tilling it by hand, five-gallon
buckets—of herbicide, no doubt—waiting on the sidelines. They hadn’t gotten very far.

I looked back at the sentries.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Just looking to set some things up.”

“What kinds of things?” the first sentry asked.

“Are you petitioning Addition?” the second one added.

Mary lit a cigarette, made a show of looking around. Let them
see
her.

“Just Trade,” I said. “Intel. We come from the university. From the firefight. Picked a few things up from the Rats and from the Wall on our way out.”

They watched Mary.

“Haven’t heard any of it coming through what’s fucking left of Salvage, so thought we’d try to set some things up, with whoever’s staying. Spread the Good Word.”

“You’re Group?” the first sentry asked.

“Party. Some of us. Found these others running from the Guard.”

They looked at the Jacks. At Circe.

“Hey, fuck,” First said. “You’re ‘Sons of Man.’”

Matthew and Mark stopped watching Luke. They watched the gun in the hands of the second sentry, waiting, waiting.

I watched them. They’d named themselves, their Group. Not their Place. They’d thought ahead—they would be nomads, Bedouins. A Place in constant movement, expecting, I’d guess, from before the get-go that if they’d simply tried to name their Place, the school, it wouldn’t take. The borders would be redrawn too often, sharing the Place with Outside Groups. Who knew what underground culture had grown from Salvage, in the school, among the frustrated students. They would have planned,
cooperatively, the contestation, the multiple Placing of the school, post-Event.

Whatever was going on inside, it’s what the high school hive-mind had always intended. Phantom Cell Structure. Noise.

A bad idea.

“Why the fuck you got
A’S
on your faces?” Second asked.

“Guard put them there,” Merlin said. “‘Asylum,’ the shitheads said.”

“You went
to
the Guard?” Second asked.

“Your
A’S
are wildstyle,” First said. “Fucking Guard write wildstyle?”

“Weren’t you supposed to blow them up?” Second asked.

“We didn’t have any fucking choice,” Matthew said. He was the odd one out—the ugliest of the three. He had a habit of watching Mark watch Luke. “We’re not Ishmael’s Primaries. They never came. We were left to the fucking wind.”

Ishmael’s Primaries. A Final Leader. A new self born, perhaps, from AP English classes, reading
Moby-Dick
, and attending Sunday school.

Circe had been watching First quietly. “You’re Prometheus, right?” she asked him, tucking her chestnut hair behind her ears.

I looked at him, wondering what he’d done, what Boy Scout troop he’d been in, what tasks he’d carried out under adolescent orders, to earn the name? Who, like me, had given it to him?

“Promo, now,” he said.

Circe could have known him from English class. They might have read
A Separate Peace
, and
Julius Caesar
, and Aeschylus at the same time. He might have looked at her, over the corners of his books, during those times when he didn’t care that she was FFA. That she was rich, and white.

I looked at her, the way he might have, and I remembered
flowers—from
Mythology
. Promo, with that heat in his eyes, remembered the fire, smoldering those years between seventh grade, when the school system made students read it, and now.

“Does CLO.WN still hold?” she asked. “You still CLO.WN?”

“Wait,” I said. Mary and Four took a step back with me, from the Jacks. This was rehearsed. “You’re CLO.WN?”

The second one raised his gun again.

“What the fuck?”

“No,” I said. “This is your Place. We’ll bug out.”

“No, what the hell?”

“Hold up.”

“No, it’s cool. Good luck.”

The second sentry thrust his gun forward. Pulled it back. “What
the fuck?
You’re not just afraid of CLO.WN.”

I traded looks with Four. Mary was making a show of watching the perimeter. She looked at the workers in the field, unprotected.

I looked around, too. Watching for eavesdroppers. “All right, look. You’ve been called out. CLO.WN’s been called out. It’s on the Wall. Showed up sometime after Chisolm’s sign-off. After the hive had already been set to start Clearing the town.”

“What?” Promo said.

“No fucking way.”

“No one knows us.”

I raised my hands. Took another step away from the gun. Some of the Jacks sidestepped slowly. Those that weren’t Sons of Man. Backing away on their own.

I shrugged. “Somebody must know your Place. Somebody who wants to Clear you out. Remove some competition, I’m guessing. You’ll go when the mobs go, unless you’ve got a hell of a lot of Primaries in there.”

I gestured toward the field. “Your Secondaries are going to get eaten alive out here.”

They didn’t know what to do.

“So, take that for free,” I said, waving Four and Mary farther back. “We don’t want in on the mess. Won’t join the hive.”

“No, wait,” the second sentry said. He lowered his gun. “What else you got?”

I shook my head. “I got plenty, but what in hell you got to justify the risk of coming in and getting Cleared along with you?”

“We got some lab gear.” He looked at Circe. “It was stashed here when their operation began.”

I let my fingers touch the hilt of the sword. Let the wan light wink on the blade’s dark blood.

“All right.”

I stepped forward.

“Make it fucking quick. You bastards are on a timer now.”

They admitted us without a search. Which was the Plan.

“Hey,” the first one said to Circe as she preceded Luke inside. “Ishmael came back. I guess after bugging out on you. He’s still got a Place, on the second floor.”

Circe said “Good.”

I was fifteen when I left. It was in the summer after my sophomore year, which meant I’d already studied the Celestial Spheres, but I hadn’t yet met Her. I hadn’t yet received my car. The knighthood was at its height. I left Jon and Adam, which screwed the summer’s D&D campaigns, since they’d be a man down, and I went overseas. Exchange program. Spending my parents’ money and trying to live with honor in foreign countries.

This was before we ceased to be a family.

In Italy, outside Rome, we toured the catacombs. We went underground, into the dark of the earth, but unlike Orpheus, we
could look back. The wrong corridors had been roped off to keep us on course, to keep us in line on our way to the bottom, to have a chat with Odysseus and eat a few pomegranate seeds. I spent a lot of my time ignoring the displayed skulls and tucked femurs to look askance at the girls in our group. Some I knew, from other schools near Dallas. The others came from Indianapolis, so I worried less about the repercussions with these. I already knew, after I looked back at them in the darkness, that I would lose them. I was foredamned, fucked from the get-go, so it didn’t matter what I did during my three days in the underworld.

I tried to keep that in mind.

Promo led us through a hallway, through his Group’s wing. The other sentry, the blond one, had gone to corral the Secondaries.

By flashlight, black-masked workers used crowbars to open the lockers along the wall. They’d already torn open the majority, leaving books, mirrors, boxes of tampons, and cans of body spray in categorized piles, like snowdrifts. A few of the unopened lockers, dented and bent along their hinges and near the lock, had been greasepainted with sigils. One of the workers was pasting sheets from some
Book
on these lockers with a paintbrush and a bowl of egg whites—

You weren’t supposed to do anything to the vaults, you weren’t even supposed to take pictures of the corpses behind the Plexiglas, but we did it anyway, our fingers over our cameras’ flashes, creating momentary pulses of red light as the bulbs shone through our flesh
.

—We marched all the way through, following the barricades, going where we were supposed to in the dark, following our guide, following Promo. I kept one eye on him and the other on the Jacks, watching for the sign. I needed to know when Promo
was going to become a problem. When he was going to lead us in a direction to
actually
trade intel with his Final Leader.