The New Order Read online

  To their credit, or discredit, some of the hippier students and ballsier of the outsiders have just been relieving themselves right here in the market square, which solves one problem but creates several more, which is to say it kind of smells. Plus, it’s hard to win over the populace when you piss on their town.

  It all started so well. Rab and Michael and Soph had welcomed me into their world of covert action, or rather, a bunch of students and political organizers getting together and drinking beer and complaining about the government. Up with the 99 percent, down with the Reconstruction Committee, etc., etc. To be honest, I was more excited by the fact that they trusted me than by the plans for the demonstration, which seemed to me kind of wimpy. Like, let’s give the cops an excuse to beat the shit out of us. But to them, it was a big step, what with my being, as far as they knew, a daughter of the Reconstruction and all that entailed.

  Standing in the square, happy to be risking my comfort and convenience and maybe neck in defense of individual liberty, especially to bond closer with my new friends, I’m aware that I have been badly influenced by my environment, which is to say the chronic guerrilla warfare of Manhattan. Once you’ve traded gunfire with rival gangs, it’s kind of hard to get jazzed about shouting “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Restrictions on movement have got to go!” over and over again for hours on end. If the aim is to bore the authorities to death, I kind of get it. But basically it seems to be a lot of parading by news cameras and waiting to get clubbed on the head.

  Anyhow, it makes me love Rab and Michael and Soph, who care so much about the World and the People and Politics, so I go along with all of it. Plus, they’re right—that has to count for something.

  And the beginning of the demonstration really had its inspiring moments. Maybe a thousand of us students, who had a higher freedom of movement than lots of other people since we were basically monitored 24/7, trooped down to the edge of the Liberties. There, we looked across the invisible barrier that kept out the hoi polloi (hoi polloi means “the mob,” which basically means that when you’re saying “the hoi polloi,” you’re saying “the the mob,” but whatevs). A couple thousand people who didn’t have the right to enter the town center without permission were waiting there. We crossed over the line, and then, which was the cool part, we escorted everybody else back over to our side. All sorts of sirens started going off, and you could tell that it was messing with the cops’ data systems, because phones were ringing all over the place, a cacophony like a crazy dawn chorus of birdcalls and pinging and bleeping. By now, of course, the cops were onto us, but they didn’t do anything, just hung back and watched us break the law en masse.

  The difficulty started when we tried to head down Trumpington Street from Trumpington Road, aiming to process past the colleges where the news vans were waiting. The cops blocked our way but left us the option of heading down Lensfield Road and then jigging back toward the market square. The crowd took the way that was offered. Along Tennis Court Road, the ways to the side were closed down, and we found ourselves shunted along, away from the cameras and the colleges. Finally, we spilled into the market, like a liquid composed of people, stopped up by a particularly unfriendly looking contingent of paramilitary types who we hadn’t realized were shadowing our route.

  So here we are in the square, trying to keep up our spirits while the average-Joe-looking police are gradually being replaced by hard-faced mofos with riot shields and long batons.

  If these guys are scared by our well-rhymed chants, they are not showing it.

  Me: “Rab, I don’t like the looks of these guys.”

  Rab: “What guys?”

  Me: “Look at him, over there. And that guy.”

  Rab takes this in.

  Rab: “He’s got a shield, okay. So they’re riot cops.”

  Me: “Yeah, so where’s the riot? And besides. They’re not like the other cops. Look at the haircut. And the cauliflower ear. He’s military. And the scars on his knuckles. The guy’s a bruiser. He’s here for a fight.”

  Rab: “They won’t start anything with all the cameras.”

  And it’s true, some cameras have managed to worm their way into the buildings above the square, despite the police blockade. But when I look farther up the buildings, I can see heads peeking over the roof edges—and here and there, the blunt end of a rifle. Snipers taking aim.

  Me: “Rab, get Michael and Soph. We’ve got to figure a way out of here.”

  Rab: “What? We can’t just go.”

  Me: “We’re going one way or another, on our feet or on a stretcher.”

  Rab: “But they can’t just do that in front of everybody—people will see…”

  He looks like he’s trying to convince himself. The idea was to embolden the populace by violating the Safe Cities Act in the full light of day, in front of God and everybody, but it seems to me like neither God nor everybody cares, particularly. To the shoppers and shop owners around the market, all we’re doing is fucking up their day. The few members of the People I’ve seen who aren’t us seem to be annoyed rather than inspired. They’d rather go back to their daydream about everything being okay.

  Me: “Let’s get out of here, kid.”

  I take out my phone.

  Rab: “What are you doing?”

  Me: “I’m turning myself in. Titch’ll come and get us. They’ve got pull with the authorities.”

  Rab looks at me like I’m canceling Christmas. Why am I drawn to these idealist types?

  Rab reins in his emotions, puts his hand on my elbow.

  Rab: “Donna. I’m not going to judge you. I understand you’re in a bad position because your parents are Reconstruction. It’s easier for me. Get yourself out. I’ll be okay.”

  Honestly. He’s worried about me.

  Me: “You’re not coming with me?”

  Rab: “I can’t.”

  Me: “Shit. Fine. I’m staying.”

  I put away the phone.

  And at that moment, somebody from our side, a guy with a bandanna over his face, takes something out of his bag. It’s a bottle with a bit of rag sticking out of the neck.

  Me: “Rab, step back.”

  Rab: “What’s happening?”

  Me: “Molotov cocktail.”

  The last time I saw one of those, I was firing a rifle out of the front doorway of the main branch of the New York Public Library on Forty-Second Street. Jefferson had gone out to the forecourt to help SeeThrough get back in. One of the Uptowners heaved a bottle with a flaming spout at the truck, and in a few moments it exploded.

  Rab: “No—no way—”

  Everybody had been crystal clear at the organizational meetings. No weapons. No violence.

  Me: “Something’s wrong. Come on.”

  I pull Rab deeper into the crowd as the bottle soars into the air and crashes in front of the police, a puddle of liquid flame spilling out and onto the boots of the first rank.

  Rab keeps saying, “An agent provocateur—he’s an agent provocateur—” and I wonder why he’s talking about lingerie, but then I realize that he means the guy who threw the cocktail has to be working for the cops. Well, stranger things have happened. And it definitely seems like the cops were ready, since fire extinguishers put the blaze out within moments. But the first blow has been recorded by the cameras above the square. And now the cops are slipping gas masks over their heads, and tear gas launchers are poking through their ranks—

  POOM! POOM! The canisters are launched, and suddenly they’re coming from all sides. The crowd wrenches and contracts, everyone trying to take off at once, nobody knowing where to go.

  “Donna!” I hear, and I see Michael and Soph making their way to us, faces pale. I realize that for most of the kids in the crowd, this was a fun day out with friends and a way to feel good about themselves. They didn’t have a cop riot in mind. Maybe the worst they imagined was being escorted to jail for a night of camaraderie and protest songs.

  Now the paramilitaries are setting out, wading into
the crowd with batons swinging. Some of the protesters are fighting back, but most of them are reeling backward, with no backward to reel to. Soph falls to her knees and for a moment looks to be churned up under the feet of a wave of retreating protesters, but Rab shoulders people out of the way and picks her up.

  I’m a pretty experienced runner-awayer, having been chased in my time by cannibals, fascists, and bears, so I figure it’s time to take charge.

  We have been well and truly kettled. Columns of paramilitaries and police are plugging every street out of the market square. It’s time for some lateral thinking.

  Me: “This way.”

  I lead Rab, Michael, and Soph to a sporting goods store on the edge of the square.

  Rab: “It’s locked.”

  I pay that no mind, of course, and kick the door in. Practice makes perfect—the aluminum housing of the dead bolt gives way with one blow, and we’re in. An alarm goes off, which would be a problem if the entire square behind us weren’t a riot of activity. Like, literally a riot. There’s even a helicopter hovering above, though whether it’s for the news or for surveillance or both, it’s hard to say. Clouds of tear gas are lowering visibility in the square, so nobody has noticed our maneuver, and we’re able to slink through the store and out the back to Rose Crescent just ahead of the fumes.

  Here, shopping continues unabated, the sound of the market a curious distraction.

  We walk along the street with a careless saunter, practically whistling our innocence.

  We needn’t have tried. By some form of social geography, once we’re out of the market, we seem to be of no interest to the police, who are pushing toward the square as if there were an invisible piston behind them urging them forward. Now we’re no different from early-evening shoppers, but for a few cuts and bruises from the jostling of the crowd.

  At King’s Street, Michael and Sophie split off toward their college, and Rab offers to walk me back to Trinity, but I wonder if I’m actually the one walking him back. He’s jittery, sweating, and gaunt, adrenaline spent. At first, we can hear shouts and screams and orders and the explosive pops of tear gas launchers, but a minute down Trinity Street, there’s no sign of any disturbance.

  Rab: “They didn’t have to do that. The gas and the clubs.”

  Me: “No, they didn’t. They wanted to say something, though. It’s a kind of language.”

  Rab: “How do you know so much? About violence and all.”

  Me: “It’s… I guess it’s the military background.”

  I feel sick of myself. I want to tell him who I am. Because I’m used to fighting, and he’s not, but he’s willing to put himself in harm’s way anyhow. And that takes more courage than my doing it.

  Rab: “And what did we say? By running away?”

  Me: “We live to fight another day. Right?”

  Rab treads along unhappily.

  Rab: “Are you on our side, Donna?”

  Me: “I’m on your side, Rab.”

  And I mean you singular, but it’s ambiguous. Language is funny that way.

  When we get back, Rab sort of lingers by my stairway. I don’t really know what post-riot etiquette demands. I think of asking him up for tea, which is what you do at various moments, but the air is charged with emotion, and it might head the wrong way. It feels like it might sound too much like hey, come upstairs, and let’s make out. And yet I linger, too. Rab has recovered his usual calm demeanor, and after all the shouting and running and shared danger, there’s a sort of woozy, bonded feeling.

  Rab: “Are you okay?”

  Me: “What? Yeah. Sure. What do you mean?”

  Rab: “Just…” He doesn’t seem to know what to say, which is rare. “I just feel, occasionally, that there’s a whole lot of stuff you’re not telling me. Us.”

  A stone of guilt in my throat. I think of the millions of things I’m hiding.

  Me: “No.”

  Rab smiles and nods. “Okay. But… I want you to know that if you ever needed to talk about anything… you could trust me. I mean… I could just listen. Not judge you or anything.”

  I feel suddenly like crying, though with relief or shame I can’t tell.

  Me: “Thanks, Rab. If I ever… have something to talk about. I mean, other than what we talk about. I mean we talk all the time, don’t we? We’re buds, right?” I wonder if I’m going to lose the sustenance of his and Soph and Michael’s friendship.

  Rab: “Buds, yeah.”

  I turn to go up the stairs, but he says, “Have you ever considered—”

  I’m a couple of stairs up, practically level with him.

  Rab: “Have you ever considered, right, that we could be something much better than friends?”

  He’s looking right into my eyes, honest and forthright as ever.

  “Because…” he continues, when I don’t say anything back, “I have. And past a certain point, it’s dishonest for me to hide it.”

  I guess he means past this point. And what’s my honest response? Am I not attracted to him? Am I not alone in the world? I am.

  Me: “Rab.”

  Rab: “That doesn’t sound good.”

  Me: “I’m scared. Know why? Because you and Michael and Soph are… all that connect me to the world.”

  Rab: “But how is that possible—”

  Me: “And I don’t want to lose you.”

  Rab: “But.”

  Me: “But… there was somebody. He died. I loved—I love him.”

  Rab: “Oh.”

  Rab takes a deep breath, like he’s inhaling the poison gas of this news. He’s beautiful. I want to kiss him to make it better. I could. I can’t.

  Rab: “What was his name?”

  Me: “Why?”

  Rab: “I want to deal with this. I want to deal with reality, not a mystery.”

  Me: “Jefferson.”

  Rab: “He was back on the ship you lived on?”

  Me: “Yes.” That much at least is true.

  Rab nods.

  Rab: “I’m sorry. I am. I’m also sorry for myself. But… I think you can’t… make people feel the way you want them to. So.”

  He smiles sadly at me, then turns around and leaves.

  THE FENCE IS JACKED, so it’s easy enough to figure a way in. And the moon is only a little gouge in the sky, so we slip close to the hangar pretty easily. There’s a dull glow smearing through the windows. Somebody is keeping a fire going in there.

  Anna, Abel, Curtis, and I crawl on our bellies until we reach the metallic walls of the hangar. From inside, a low murmur of talk. I hear a man’s—not a boy’s—voice—and a woman’s. Something, something “make contact.” Then another voice, different from the first two, lower in tone but younger, strangely familiar. The male voice cuts off the low-timbred one with a sharp “shut up!” Then the man and the woman keep talking, at a lower volume.

  “Curtis!” I hiss. “Take a look through the window—carefully. Tell me what you see.”

  Curtis nods, and slowly peeks his eyes over the edge of the window. I’m hoping it’s too dark for anybody to see him.

  “Three people,” he whispers. “Wait. Four. Two old guys like you said and an old lady and a kid. The oldest guy is tied up. So is the kid.”

  “Good work,” I say to him, and he smiles at me. Then there’s a POP and his head jerks back. He collapses onto the tarmac, and blood starts pooling around his head.

  I’m not overly emotional about these things. Curtis is dead. I am not, and I intend to keep it that way. I’m half expecting Abel and Anna to lose their shit and run for it, but, in fact, they’re just crouching there, utterly unfussed. Anna hikes her smock out of the way of Curtis’s blood, but that’s about the extent of their reaction.

  “Take off!” I say. “Go!”

  They look at me, confused, and finally shift when I wave my hands at them. Myself, I scurry over Curtis’s body and around the back corner of the hangar. I hear the door on the other side rasp open.

  “What is it?”
says a woman’s voice from inside. No response from the guy with the beard, who shortly appears around the far edge of the hangar. He has on a pair of night-vision goggles, metallic cylinders projecting from his sockets. If he was wearing them inside, looking out, it means that he could see Curtis as plain as day, which also means I got him killed. Whoops.

  The guy with the beard scans the horizon with his goggles, sees something—presumably Anna and Abel trying to hide. He raises a snub little machine gun with a chunky silencer on the end.

  He still hasn’t seen me. It’s either let the rest of the kids get shot or take him out. All in all, given the fluidity of the situation, there’s not much that I can do other than perforate him with a burst from my AR-15.

  He rag-dolls onto the ground, wheezing. From inside, the woman’s voice again. “Dooley? Dooley, what’s going on? Report!”

  Yeah, what’s going on, Dooley? I crab over to him and pry his knife out of his hands. He’s still alive, but not much, blinking up glassily at me.

  I barely know where to begin, given that there’s not much time before he bleeds out.

  “Dooley? You don’t know me, but I need some answers. Where are you from? Were you at the lab?”

  Dooley looks up at me, blinks tears from his eyes.

  “You can still make it,” I lie. “Just give me some answers.”

  He fixes me in his gaze, and I can see that he can see I’m lying. He takes a deep breath—as deep a breath as he can manage, that is—and rasps, “Fuck you.”

  Well, that’s just rude.

  “Get your hands up where I can see them!” says somebody behind me. And it appears that I have allowed myself to be blindsided just the way Dooley was. I do as the lady says and stretch my fingers up to the empty sky.

  “Turn around,” she says. I find myself looking at a powerfully built chick in some sort of uniform. Like Dooley, she’s impossibly old, maybe late twenties, but her face has a sort of well-fed roundness that is maybe the most alien thing about her. She’s got a snub-nosed pistol pointed at me.

  “I think your friend needs help,” I say. “Somebody shot him.”