“Sissy—”
“We fight, Gene! We fight to the end. We never give in. Not while there are others depending on us. Not while there’s still a chance.”
“There is no chance! Okay? Even if we escape out to the streets, what then? Where do we go—”
“We’ll figure it out! We’ll improvise. We think quick on our feet, you and me together. That’s what we’ve always done, Gene. We go down fighting!” And now she grabs my arm, but there’s no tenderness in her grip. There’s only resiliency and determination.
“Okay,” I say to her. Let’s get out to the street, I’m about to say, but she’s already turned and is sprinting down the corridor.
———
It’s easier than we think to find an exit. At the end of the next corridor, we come across an exit sign. From that point on, it’s cake. We follow the arrows from one exit sign to the next until we’re jetting down a stairwell, then out a side exit that spills us onto the street.
It’s quiet, almost peaceful out here beneath the full moon. Everyone’s inside for the big show. The only sound is the faint music piped through the fountain speakers for the ongoing water show.
I think the unexpected tranquility catches Sissy by surprise as well. She stops, stares up at the sky, breathing hard. But only for a moment.
“No clouds,” she says. “Good. The moonlight glare will be tough on their eyes.” She starts running toward a row of horses parked street side. “C’mon, Gene!”
There’s got to be another way. This escape-on-horseback plan is fatally flawed. Anyone can see that. We reek. Our odor will leave a trail for them to easily follow. It’ll be over before we cover fifteen blocks.
Another way, another way, there’s got to be another way.
“Gene!” Sissy shouts, untethering two horses.
I glance across the street. Looming skyscrapers. Death traps, offering no escape at all. Useless as tombstones.
“Gene!”
But there is a way out. I can feel it in my bones. But I just can’t see it. Not yet. I need time.
“Get on, Gene!” She’s already sitting in the saddle of her horse, has trotted over another horse for me. “Gene!”
“Wait, give me time—”
“No! Gene, we have to—”
“Damn it!” I yell, and jump onto the horse. We start galloping down the street, the concrete beneath us turning into a blur. Past the corner, past the front of the Convention Center, past the water show.
“Which way, Gene?” Sissy shouts next to me.
And finally I see.
“Stop, Sissy!” I shout, pulling on the reins. “Do you trust me?” I say as she brings her horse around. I dismount the horse.
“What are you doing?”
“If you trust me, get off your horse.”
“Is this your idea of committing suicide ag—”
“This is my idea of surviving. It’s our only chance of seeing the sun rise tomorrow.”
“What are you—”
“There’s no time, just follow my lead.” And I rub my sweaty face, arms, against the horse, spit gobs of saliva onto it.
“What are you doing?”
“Just do what I do, Sissy!” I shout as I slap the haunches of the horse, sending it galloping away—leaving a trail of my odor. They’ll chase after it. So long as they don’t actually smell my real trail.Sissy jumps off her horse and does the same. Sweat, spit, rubbed on. She smacks the horse on the rump. It, too, gallops away, down a different street. Even better.
I start running. My direction takes Sissy by surprise because I’m not heading away from the Convention Center. But right back at it. As I sprint, I break out the handgun, remove the silencer. I let the handgun drop, clatter behind on the pavement.
“Your silencer, Sissy! Do you still have it?” She blinks, then pulls the silencer from her pocket, confusion and uncertainty written all over her face.
We reach the water fountain. But instead of running around it, I vault over the concrete edge and into the water. The water level reaches up to my shoulders. I spin around. Sissy is staring at me with incredulous eyes, then down at the silencer. Her mouth drops.
“It’s the only way, Sissy. The only way we hide our scent. They won’t think to look in here. The water splashing, the sprays, the ripples, the reflected moonlight, they’ll conceal us. As long as we stay submerged underwater.”
And again, she stares down at the silencer. The hollow, cylindrical silencer. About the length of a straw. “Until sunrise?”
I nod. Fine droplets of water mist down on us, soaking us.
“They’ll look here.”
“I don’t think so. This is how this plays out. They’ll chase after the horses, and it’ll be sheer pandemonium. Storefronts smashed in, dozens of injured. The horses will get ripped apart, their parts splattered across five city blocks. Afterward, nobody’s going to know what really went down. Hundreds are going to claim afterward to have devoured the two hepers. Or at least tasted a snippet of us. A nose, an ear. After that, everyone’s going to simply assume we’re dead. Nobody will think to look in here.”
“I don’t know.”
Sounds break out of the Convention Center. A rumbling, the smashing of glass, screams.
“No other choice now, Sissy. Here they come.”
She clenches her jaw, leaps over the edge and into the water. She glides right up next to me, takes my hand. Together we wade to the center of the fountain pool. We’re in the very heart of the network of water propulsion snouts, rows of them lined in front of and behind us, encircling us like digits of a clock. Water plummets onto us like hard rain. Through the curtain of falling water, I see the crowd bursting out of the Convention Center, smashing through the glass lobby.
Sissy and I look at each other one last time. Her clothes soaked, sticking to her skin in random folds, her plastered hair framing her face. Fear in her eyes. But she blinks and there is in its stead a determination. I open my mouth, helplessly. I suddenly have so much I need to tell her. So much to confess, to apologize for. But it is all falling apart too fast. There is no time left to say anything.
I do the only thing I have time for, the only thing that matters. I kiss her.
Her eyes widen. Then they close halfway as she kisses back, her lips velvet and sweet and tender.
Then we separate. We take one last gulp of air under the open, naked sky. Together, we duck underwater.
Thirty-three
THE WORLD UNDERWATER is hell. Jets of water—arching high into the sky before crashing down—shatter through the swirling ceiling above us, churning bubbles. A low murmur rumbles through the fountain pool.
It is too dark to see Sissy clearly. She is only a murky form next to me. We half-kneel on the floor, clinging to several propulsion snouts, watchful that the tops of our heads don’t break the surface. One end of the hollow cylindrical silencer placed in our mouths, the other end poking just out of the water. This is how we breathe. This is how we will survive. For the next eight hours. The length of time is unbearable; how we will endure, unimaginable.
Thousands pour out of the Convention Center and stampede down the streets. I feel their energy rumble through the water and quake the very foundation of the fountain pool. Their wails and screams and cries funnel into a collective deep moan that reverberates through the dark water. Several duskers are jostled into the water at the pool’s edge. I see them flail with lashing arms; then, as the water level passes their jawlines, their joints lock, their bodies suddenly go inert, and they sink to the bottom. A minute later, they float slowly to the surface, quite drowned. The ripples of water push the floating corpses away from us and keep them thankfully pressed against the rim of the fountain pool.
The rumbling gradually fades. The stampede has moved on, away from the Convention Center, chasing after the horses whose eyes are rolled back, ears tucked flat, froth sputtering out of their mouths.
Over the next hour, Sissy and I adapt. We hook our feet into curled piping and float parallel to the splattered ceiling. This position’s easier on our bodies, takes the pressure off our necks. And with other floating, dead bodies in the fountain—albeit around the rim—we don’t really stick out, if we’re even noticed at all in the glare and splash. We link our bodies by hooking our arms together.
Hours later, the crowds return. When I take a peek, slowly bringing my eyes just over the surface where the splashes are deepest, I see thousands milling about the open area of the Convention Center. The excitement of the evening’s event palpable, prickling the air. The media out in full force interviewing people, photographers everywhere snapping pictures.
I sink back underwater. We’ll take it one breath at a time, one second at a time. Try not to think about the cold sinking into our bones, or the stretch of hours ahead of us, the eternity it will be. Our arms hook tighter, her left leg snaking around mine. I close my eyes. The feel of her enfeebled, floating body next to me, her limp hand in mine, is like a silent lash of accusation.
If only I had taken the shot, I think. If only . . .
Then she wouldn’t be trapped in this watery hell. If only I’d put a bullet into Ashley June’s skull as I had vowed. Now, life and heat are draining out of Sissy, now her grip slackens by the hour.
I stare at the watery ceiling above me. I try to imagine the world past the swirl of froth where the moon and stars float free in the airy skies.
Thirty-four
DAYBREAK CREEPS FORWARD with agonizing slowness. The waterspouts finally turn off. The swirling, frothy surface quickly gives way to a windowed stillness. We do not worry about being seen. The floating corpses now drift across the fountain pool and offer us cover under a blanket of death. We watch the sky yield from tar black to light gray.
When the dawn siren sounds, it is to us the ringing bells of heaven.
Not a minute too soon. Especially for Sissy. Her skin has gone pale and marble cold. For hours now, she’s been trembling almost incessantly. I’ve wrapped my body around hers as best I could, but my own body is numb with cold. It’s been ice on ice.