“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.