Lexicon

by Max Barry

  “Wil?”

  He looked at Cecilia. “What?” He began to feel unsure, because her face was strange. And then it came to him, in a fountain of dread that began somewhere unidentifiable and ended in his testicles: He should not be here. He should not have led men with guns to his girlfriend. That was a stupid thing to do. He felt furious with himself, and dismayed, because it had been so hard to get here, and now he had to run again.

  “Wil, what’s wrong?” Her fingers came at him. “Your nose is bleeding.” There was a tiny furrow in her brow, which he knew very well and was sad to leave.

  “I ran into a pole.” He reached for the latch. The longer he sat here, the closer the fog pressed.

  “Wait! Where are you going?”

  “Away. Have to—”

  “Sit down!”

  “Have to go.”

  “Then I’ll drive you somewhere! Stay in your seat!”

  That was an idea. Driving. “Yes.”

  “You’ll stay if I drive?”

  “Yes.”

  She reached for the ignition. “Okay. Just . . . stay. I’ll take you to a hospital or something. All right?”

  “Yes.” He felt relief. Weight stole through his body. He wondered if it was okay to slide into unconsciousness. It seemed out of his hands now. Cecilia would drive to safety. This car was a tank; he had mocked it before, because it was so big and she was so tiny but they were equally aggressive, and now it would save them. He might as well close his eyes a moment.

  When he opened them, Cecilia was looking at him. He blinked. He had the feeling he’d fallen asleep. “Why . . .” He sat up.

  “Shhh.”

  “Are we moving?” They were not moving. “Why aren’t we moving?”

  “Just stay in your seat, until they get here,” Cecilia said. “That’s the important thing.”

  He turned in his seat. The glass was fogged over. He couldn’t see what was out there. “Cecilia. Drive. Now.”

  She tucked a wisp of hair behind one ear. She did that when she was remembering something. He could see her across a room, talking to somebody, and know she was relating a memory. “Remember the day you met my parents? You were freaking out because you thought we were going to be late. But we weren’t. We weren’t late, Wil.”

  He rubbed condensation from the window. Through the whiteout, men in brown suits jogged toward him. “Drive! Cil! Drive!”

  “This is just like then,” she said. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  He lunged across her, groping for the ignition. “Where are the keys?”

  “I don’t have them.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t have them anymore.” She put a hand on his thigh. “Just sit with me a minute. Isn’t the snow beautiful?”

  “Cil,” he said. “Cil.”

  There was a flash of dark movement and the door opened. Hands seized him. He fought the hands, but they were irresistible, and pulled him into the cold. He threw fists in all directions until something hard exploded across the back of his head, and then he was being borne on broad shoulders. Some time seemed to have passed in between, because it was darker. Pain rolled through his head in waves. He saw blacktop and a flapping coattail. “Fuck,” said someone, with frustration. “Forget the plane. They can’t wait for us any longer.”

  “Forget the plane? Then what?”

  “Other side of those buildings, there’s a fire path, take us to the freeway.”

  “We drive? Are you kidding? They’ll close the freeway.”

  “Not if we’re fast.”

  “Not if we’re . . . ?” said the shorter man. “This is fucked! It’s fucked because you wouldn’t leave when I said!”

  “Shush,” said the tall man. They stopped moving. The wind blew awhile. Then there was some running, and Wil heard an engine, a car stopping. “Out,” said the tall man, and Wil was manhandled into a small vehicle. The short man came in behind him. A disco ball dangled from the mirror. A row of stuffed animals with enormous black eyes smiled at him from the dash. A blue rabbit held a flag on a stick, championing some country Wil didn’t recognize. He thought he might be able to stab that into somebody’s face. He reached for it but the short man got there first. “No,” said the short man, confiscating the rabbit.

  The engine revved. “How’d it go with the girlfriend, Wil?” the tall man said. He steered the car around a pillar marked D3, which Wil recognized as belonging to the parking garage. “Are you ready to consider that we know what we’re doing?”

  “This is a mistake,” said the short man. “We should stay on foot.”

  “The car is fine.”

  “It’s not fine. Nothing is fine.” He had a short, angry-looking submachine gun in his lap. Wil had somehow not noticed that. “Wolf was on us from the start. They knew.”

  “They didn’t.”

  “Brontë—”

  “Shut up.”

  “Brontë fucked us!” said the short man. “She’s fucked us and you won’t see it!”

  The tall man aimed the car at a collection of low hangars and warehouse-like buildings. As they drew nearer, the wind picked up, spitting ice down the funnels made by their walls. The car shook. Wil, jammed between the two men, leaned on one, then the other.

  “This car sucks,” said the short man.

  A small figure loomed out of the gloom ahead. A girl, wearing a blue dress. Her hair danced in the wind, but she was standing very still.

  The short man leaned forward. “Is that Rain?”

  “I think so.”

  “Hit her.”

  The engine whined. The girl grew in the windshield. Flowers on her dress, Wil saw. Yellow flowers.

  “Hit her!”

  “Ah, fuck,” said the tall man, almost too quietly to hear, and the car began to scream. The world shifted. Weight forced Wil sideways. Things moved beyond the glass. A creature, a behemoth with searing eyes and silver teeth, fell upon them. The car bent and turned. The teeth were a grille, Wil realized, and the eyes headlights, because the creature was an SUV. It chewed the front of the car and bellowed and shook and ran into the brick wall. Wil put his arms around his head, because everything was breaking.

  He heard groans. Shuffling. The tick of the engine cooling. He raised his head. The tall man’s shoes were disappearing through a jagged hole where the windshield had been. The short man was fumbling with his door latch, but in a way that suggested to Wil that he was having trouble making his hands do what he wanted. The interior of the car was oddly shaped. He tried to push something off his shoulder but it was the roof.

  The short man’s door squealed and jammed. The tall man appeared on the other side and wrenched it open. The short man crawled out and looked back at Wil. “Come on.”

  Wil shook his head.

  The short man breathed a curse. He went away and the tall man’s face dipped into view. “Hey. Wil. Wil. Take a look to your right there. Lean forward a little. That’s it. Can you see?”

  The side window was a half-peeled spiderweb, but beyond that he could see the vehicle that had attacked them. It was a white SUV. Its front was crumpled against the wall. Steam issued from around its bent front wheels. The sticker on the rear window said: VIRGINIA IS FOR LOVERS.

  “Your girlfriend just tried to kill us, Wil. She drove right at us. And I’m not sure if you can see from there, but she didn’t even stop to put on a seat belt. That’s how focused she was. Can you see her, Wil?”

  “No,” he said. But he could.

  “Yes, and you need to get out of the car, because there are more where she came from. There are always more.”

  He got out of the car. He was intending to punch the man in the jaw, knock him down and maybe choke the life out of him, watch those eyes go dim, but something snared his wrists. By the time he realized the short man was handcuffing him in white plastic, it was done. The tall man pushed him forward. “Walk.”

  “No! No! Cecilia!”

  “She’s dead,” said the tall
man. “Faster.”

  “I’ll kill you,” Wil said.

  The short man jogged ahead of them, cradling his submachine gun. His head moved from side to side. He was probably looking for that girl, the one they’d called Rain. The girl who had stood like she was nailed to the blacktop, like she could stare down a car. “Utility van in the hangar there,” said the short man. “May have keys.”

  Some men in hard hats and overalls approached. The short man screamed at them to lie down and not fucking move. The tall man pulled open the door of a white van and put Wil in it. Wil swung around so that when the tall man followed him in, Wil could kick his teeth down his throat, but a flash of blue in the side mirror caught his eye. He peered at it. There was something blue crouched under a refueling truck. A blue dress.

  The van’s side door was pulled open and the short man came in. He looked at Wil. “What?”

  Wil said nothing. The tall man started the engine. He had slid into the van without Wil noticing.

  “Wait up,” said the short man. “He’s seen something.”

  The tall man glanced at him. “Did you?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Shit,” said the short man, and tumbled out of the van. Wil heard his footsteps. He didn’t want to look at the side mirror, because the tall man was watching, but he glanced once and there was nothing there anymore. A few moments passed. There was a noise. The girl in the blue dress burst past Wil’s window, startling him, her blond hair streaming. There was a hammer of gunfire. She fell bonelessly to the concrete.

  “Don’t move,” the tall man said to Wil.

  The short man came around the van and looked at them. The barrel of his gun was smoking. He looked at the girl and gave a short, barking laugh. “I got her!”

  Wil could see the girl’s eyes. She was sprawled on her stomach, hair sprayed across her face, but he could still see that her eyes were the same blue as her dress. Dark blood stole across the concrete.

  “Fucking got her!” said the short man. “Holy shit! I nailed a poet!”

  The tall man revved the engine. “Let’s go.”

  The short man gestured: Wait. He moved closer to the girl, keeping his gun trained on her, as if there was some chance she might get up. She didn’t move. He reached her and proddel her with his shoe.

  The girl’s eyes shifted. “Contrex helo siq rattrak,” she said, or something similar. “Shoot yourself.”

  The short man brought the tip of his gun to his chin and pulled the trigger. His head snapped back. The tall man kicked open the van door and raised his shotgun to his shoulder. He discharged it at the girl. Her body jerked. The tall man walked forward, ejected the spent cartridge, and fired again. Thunder rolled around the hangar.

  By the time the tall man returned to the van, Wil was halfway out the door. “Back,” said the tall man. His eyes were full of death and Wil saw clearly that they were now dealing in absolutes. This knowledge passed between them. Wil got back in the van. His bound hands pressed into his back. The tall man put the van into reverse, navigated around the two bodies, and accelerated into the night. He did not speak or look in Wil’s direction. Wil watched buildings flit by without hope: He might have had a chance to escape, but that was over now.

  AIRPORT GUNMAN “HAD NOTHING TO LIVE FOR”

  PORTLAND, OR: The maintenance worker who fatally shot two people before taking his own life, triggering an eight-hour shutdown of Portland International Airport, suffered from depression following the breakup of his marriage, friends and family said yesterday.

  Amelio Gonzalez, 37, told a friend he had nothing left to live for after a court decision awarded full custody of his two children, 11 and 7, to his ex-wife, Melinda Gonzalez, three months ago.

  It is believed Mr. Gonzalez sought medical assistance and was prescribed antidepression medication.

  Colleagues remain in disbelief at Mr. Gonzalez’s actions, describing him as a friendly, generous man who often went out of his way to help others.

  “Amelio was a flat-out nice guy,” said Jerome Webber, who worked with Mr. Gonzalez in aircraft maintenance for two years prior to the incident. “A little quiet, but anyone would be knocked around by [his circumstances]. He’s just the last guy you’d expect to ever do anything like this.”

  Airport management defended their hiring practices, saying all employees were subject to regular psychological checkups. Mr. Gonzalez passed such a check as recently as four weeks ago.

  “We are doing everything we can to get to the bottom of this,” said George Aftercock, manager of security for Portland International Airport. “We want to know how a model employee can suddenly snap.”

  Amelio Gonzalez shot two people on Saturday. A third person, a woman, is believed to have died in a car accident while trying to flee. Their names have not yet been released.

  An earlier disturbance in which a man ran through the Arrivals hall in an agitated state, initially thought to be connected to the shooting, has since been found to be unrelated.

  Post #16

  In reply to: http://nationstates.org/pages/topic—8724511-post-16.html

  In my city we spent $1.6 billion on a new ticketing system for the trains. We replaced paper tickets with smartcards and now they can tell where people get on and off. So, question: how is that worth $1.6 billion?

  People say it’s the government being incompetent, and ok. But this is happening all over. All the transit networks are getting smartcards, the grocery stores are taking your name, the airports are getting face recognition cameras. Those cameras, they don’t work when people try to avoid them. Like, they can be fooled by glasses. We KNOW they’re ineffective as anti-terrorism devices, but we still keep installing them.

  All of this stuff—the smartcards, the ID systems, the “anti-congestion” car-tracking tech—all of it is terrible at what it’s officially supposed to do. It’s only good for tracking the rest of us, the 99.9% who just use the smartcard or whatever and let ourselves be tracked because it’s easier.

  I’m not a privacy nut, and I don’t care that much if these organizations want to know where I go and what I buy. But what bothers me is how HARD they’re all working for that data, how much money they’re spending, and how they never admit that’s what they want. It means that information must be really valuable for some reason, and I just wonder to who and why.

  [TWO]

  “Hmm,” said the man in the trucker cap. “I think . . . no . . . just a second here . . .”

  “Take your time, sir,” said Emily. “The queen isn’t going nowhere. She’s quite comfortable under there, in all her skirts. She’ll wait for you all day.” She smiled at a man standing behind the trucker. The man smiled back, remembered his wife, frowned. Forget that guy, then.

  “On the left,” said a woman in an I ❤ SAN FRANCISCO sweater. Her eyes darted at Emily. “I think.”

  “You think?” said the trucker.

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  Emily slipped the woman a wink. You got it. The woman’s lips tightened, pleased.

  “I dunno,” said the trucker. “I was thinking middle.”

  “The queen is quick on her feet, sir. No shame in not being able to follow her. Take a guess.”

  “Middle,” said the trucker, because Take a guess meant, That’s enough, Benny. Benny wasn’t a trucker, of course. He had found that cap in an alley. With it pulled low, and his straggly sand-colored beard, he could pass.

  “You sure, now? You got some advice from this lady here.”

  “Naw, definitely middle.”

  “As you say, sir.” Emily flipped the middle card. The crowd murmured. “Sorry, sir. She got away from you.” It took a little work to shift the queen from right to left, a Mexican Turnover, but she made it. “On the left, just like the lady said. Should have listened. Quick eye you have there, ma’am. Very quick.” She spread the cards, scooped them up, and flipped them from hand to hand, fast but not too fast. Sections of the crowd began to move away. Emily tucke
d a strand of blond hair behind her ear. She was wearing a big floppy hat with colored panels, which she had to keep pushing back to keep it from falling over her eyes. “Care to try, ma’am? Only two dollars. Simplest thing in the world, if you’ve got the eye for it.”

  The woman hesitated. Only one game in her. Sometimes Emily would let a mark win the first game so they’d want to play again, and again, and again. But that only worked on a certain type of person. Still, two dollars. Two dollars was fine.

  “I’ll play.”

  The speaker was a young man with long hair in a cheap, not-quite-black suit and a pale yellow tie. A plastic ID hung from his shirt pocket. There were four of them, two more boys and a girl, all with that look, like college students on summer jobs. Salespeople, maybe, of something cheap and devious. Not cops. She could tell that. Cops were a constant hazard on the pier. She grinned. The woman in the sweater was moving away, but that didn’t matter. Cheap-suit guy was better. A lot better. “All right, sir. Step on up. You did me a favor, I think. That lady may have cleaned me out.”

  “I may clean you out,” said the guy.

  “Ho, ho. A big talker. That’s fine, sir. Talk as much as you like. No price tag on talking. The game, though, that’s two dollars.”

  He dropped two bills onto Emily’s card table. She found him irritating, although wasn’t sure why: Guys like this, arrogant, an audience watching, they were gold. They would lose and double up forever. You had to throw them a win here and there, so they wouldn’t blow up, accuse you of cheating. But if you were smart, they would play all day. They would do it because once they were in the hole, their pride wouldn’t let them out. She’d taken $180 from a guy like this not two months ago, most of it on the last game. His neck had bulged and his eyes had watered and she saw how much he wanted to hit her. But there was a crowd. She had eaten that night.