by Isamu Fukui
“If you don’t mind me saying, you didn’t seem very interested in the movie,” the employee observed.
“I wasn’t.”
“Then why all this?”
“I was hoping to see someone here.”
“Well, did he show up?”
“Oh yes, and I think he knows that I did too.” Umasi stood up and reached into his pocket, his tone suddenly businesslike. “Our deal was half to let me into the projector room, and half when the movie was over. You kept your end of the bargain; here’s the rest of mine.”
The employee gratefully accepted the other half of the bribe and quickly counted it to make sure it was all there. Satisfied, he looked back up at Umasi, who was waiting with his arms crossed.
“Is everything in order?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Good. Then remember, if anyone asks, I was never here.”
“No problem, man.”
With a nod, Umasi slipped out of the projector room and into the hallway outside. He’d been generous with the bribe; the boy now had enough to make his next summer vacation a memorable one, and neither knew nor cared what Umasi’s motivations were. That was just the way Umasi wanted it.
As Umasi made his way down to the actual theater, the last of the audience filed out and made for either the exit or the bathrooms. Zen, Umasi knew, would be long gone by now. Neither of them intended to have their final showdown here, not in the middle of a crowded cinema. Yet Zen had left something for him, and Umasi knew what it would be before he even spotted it, taped to the wall of the theater. Without his glasses the small script appeared blurred, and Umasi tore it down from the wall in order to read it properly.
The message was concise, yet said all that needed to be said.
Brother,
The District 1 School. Tomorrow at 4:00 pm.
See you there,
Zen
Umasi contemplated the note for a moment, then shoved it into his pocket and exited the theater with the rest of the crowd.
It took Zen a couple of hours to return to the flower shop unnoticed. By the time he arrived, the dark streets were already filled with Truants, gathered together for one mission from every abandoned district in the City. Their complete numbers could not be discerned in the darkness, though Zen knew that there were precisely two hundred of them, divided up into divisions of twenty and then into groups of five. Each group had a captain, and every Truant was equipped with weapons and radios. They knew the plan, and now only awaited their orders.
It was the first time that the Truancy had ever undertaken an operation like this, and seeing the magnitude of it took Zen’s breath away.
Noni was waiting for him as he entered the flower shop. She, like him, had garbed herself all in black, her hair drawn back into a simple ponytail. The scarf remained firmly wrapped around her lower face, though her icy eyes blazed with determination. Zen could see knives tucked away in her belt, and a gun holstered at her side.
“Are you ready, Noni?” Zen asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then join the others outside. You’re with group one. You’ll be coming with me.”
Zen could see a spark of delight flash in her eyes, and a moment later she was gone out the door. Zen strode over to the corner where the old crowbar rested, and he flipped it up into the air with his foot and caught it as it came down. Just then the door opened again, and Zen spoke without turning around.
“Is there a problem, Gabriel?”
“None on this end, Zyid. Is everything all right with Alex?”
“There were no complications. We move as planned. Are the preparations complete?”
“Just about,” Gabriel replied. “The Truants await only your word.”
“Then they shall have it.”
Gabriel respectfully held the door open as Zen strode back outside into the darkness, where a soft but vast murmur had begun. The Truants were getting restless, and like a thousand leaves rustling together their whispers were each insignificant alone, but unable to be ignored when put together.
Zen smiled. Then he spoke, and hundreds fell silent. No school principal had ever commanded such genuine attention in the City. Even the Mayor himself could not claim to ever have had such a willing audience. Zen did not need to yell or bluster to be heard. His voice rang out through the silence, soft but strong, slick but genuine, powerful in its conviction, unwavering, uncompromising. It was the voice of one who would never allow himself to be an inferior again, and as the Truancy listened, it made that voice its own.
“Truants, think back to a few months ago, when every one of us here was nothing,” Zen said. “We were capable only of what the Educators told us we were. ‘Freedom is dangerous,’ they said. ‘This is for your own good.’ Well, they were right about freedom—it is a dangerous thing indeed, for would-be oppressors above all. Their rule over us was not for our own good, but for their benefit. Not for our security, but for their convenience.
“In school nothing was ever expected of us but immaturity and grudging obedience. For the longest time I myself believed that students as a whole were capable of little else. But since I started the Truancy and fought by your sides, I came to realize that though some of us may have been expelled, none of us ever failed school. No, school failed us. It failed to treat us with respect, and so encouraged us to act as though we deserved none.
“We are capable of so much more than anyone ever suspected, and today we will prove it,” Zen continued. “We will strike at the heart of the Mayor’s City, and all of its Enforcers may be waiting for us. This does not frighten me. I anticipate it. I want all of our enemies to see what I have; I want everyone to know the power of the Truancy. I want there to be no doubt left in their minds about who we are and what we can do. Rothenberg, with all his brutality, could not stop us, and the Mayor must know that he will fare no better.”
With that, Zen raised his crowbar and spun around, leading the way into the fading night. Behind him the Truancy, two hundred strong, surged forward as one united shadow in the dark. There was no cheering. There was no celebration. Here was an army at march, single-minded in its purpose, like a black wave come to sweep the Educators out of power.
“Mark the calendar, Mayor,” Zen said as he walked, “today is the beginning of the end of school.”
Umasi hung up the receiver, marveling that the pay phone still worked in District 19. Stepping out of the booth, he saw that the sun was beginning to rise as a yellow fleck upon the horizon. He watched his breath rise in swirls—there was just enough light for him to see it crystallize in the air—and crumpled up the paper that Zen had left for him, tossing it to the chilly winds. The message had been passed on, as Umasi knew Zen had intended all along. Umasi idly wondered if the Mayor would act on the warning, but knew that was no longer his concern. Either the Educators would save their school or they wouldn’t.
Umasi began walking back to his lemonade stand. He wasn’t entirely sure why he felt like playing into Zen’s hands, but somehow it felt proper. Their family would have one last reunion before the end. Umasi turned a corner, and the lemonade stand came into view. In the middle of the street was a large heap, a mound of weaponry and explosives seized from the Truancy. Umasi paused to take in the sight. The pile was a testament to his campaign against the Truancy, but he knew it represented only a fraction of what the Truancy had become, and not even a speck of what it could become. Umasi knew what his responsibility was. He would do the duty no one else could. Umasi would destroy Zen, and without his leadership the Truancy, still in its infancy, could only wither like a plant pulled up by its roots.
Umasi knew that he could take his pick from the weapons in the pile, that there was enough firepower there to contend with anything that his brother’s army might throw at him. Instead he pulled a simple switch out of his pocket, one that would detonate all the explosives in the pile, and the weapons along with it. Umasi had come a long way from being the weak and foolish boy that the Educato
rs expected. He needed to rely on no strength but his own.
Umasi paused with his thumb over the switch, sparing a moment to acknowledge the three companions he had come to know during his adventures in the City. Each of them had helped shaped him in their own ways. Red’s sacrifice had ignited the fight in his spirit. The nameless girl’s discipline had helped him discover his own. Even Edward had taught him a valuable lesson; Umasi now knew to present the world with a cold and efficient face. Umasi did not know what lessons Zen had learned during their time apart, but for the first time in his life he felt that he was a match for his brother.
“Thanks, all three of you,” Umasi said, tilting his head up to the lightening sky. “You’ve given me the strength to face him.”
With that, Umasi thumbed the switch, and casually spun around as the pile was consumed by a fiery explosion. Silhouetted against the flames, Umasi strode forward into the sunrise, now blazing a bright orange. It was still early, but he wanted to get a head start on the day. It wouldn’t do to fall behind.
After all, he had an appointment to keep.
How could it have come to this?
The Mayor lifted the lighter with a trembling hand as he lit the cigarette in this mouth. It was a new habit for the Mayor, but lately nothing else seemed able to distract him. Blowing the flame out, the Mayor clicked the lighter shut and relished the sharp click, audible even over the air conditioner. That damn machine got louder every day. It was falling apart, just like the rest of the City.
The Mayor took a ragged breath and let the smoke fill his lungs. Rothenberg had failed, but the Mayor now knew that he himself was to blame for trusting the man in the first place. The Enforcer had been found unconscious on the border of District 19, shot in both legs. When he had come to in the hospital, all he would babble about was some blond kid. The doctors said that Rothenberg would be able to walk again with surgery, but the Mayor had ordered them not to perform it. Rothenberg would remain a cripple, and the Mayor had half a mind to throw him in jail to boot.
There’d been no sign of his sons. Nothing at all. In the past few days the doubt had nearly killed him, but now at least he knew that they still lived. Several hours ago his answering machine had recorded a call telling him so.
The Mayor blew smoke from his lungs, then turned to eye the phone on his desk. For a moment he wondered if the message that it had received might not have been some sort of desperate hallucination of his; already he had forgotten most of its contents. The Mayor flicked the lighter open in agitation. There was only one way to find out.
For the second time that morning, the Mayor leaned forward and pressed a button on the machine. A painfully familiar voice immediately began to issue forth from it.
“I know that you’ve been looking for me,” Umasi said. “I saw one of your people in District 19. Zen and I are both alive. He has assembled an army, the Truancy. He intends to overthrow you, and will destroy the entire City if he has to. I don’t think that you can stop him. I’m not sure that anyone can . . . but I will try.”
The Mayor clicked the lighter shut, and to him it was the sound of a magazine being loaded into a gun. An image sprung to his mind, so vivid that his drab office vanished from sight. Instead he saw grim-faced children gathered around lanterns and flashlights in the darkest corners of the City. They polished guns by lamplight, assembled and disassembled them. They were ready to kill, ready to die. The worst nightmare of every Educator brought to life.
“He is strong, Father—stronger than you ever suspected. But so am I, and tomorrow the two of us will decide who is better. There is so much that you don’t understand about us, so much that you adults have forgotten. You are entirely too confident in wisdom that you do not have.”
The Mayor recalled the report of the attack on the District 18 Enforcer Station, and for the first time pictured the scene in flames as his son fought Rothenberg. The Mayor cursed himself as he watched the struggle unfold; blinded by anxiety, he had unleashed this menace upon his City and sons. He was a fool. War had escalated before his very eyes, and yet he’d done nothing, pretended to notice nothing.
“Your search has failed. Tomorrow Zen will make his first move against you. You must protect the District 1 School. I will be the one to stop him. I am not on your side, nor am I on his. I fight for what both of you have abandoned. Someone must stand for the people of this City, and I will do it alone if I must.”
The voice was so clearly Umasi’s, and yet it was not the one the Mayor had known. There was strength and conviction in every syllable, and yet no warmth. The Mayor imagined what Umasi must look like now, a mature and noble figure shrouded in bright mist. The Mayor felt a surge of pride, along with an undercurrent of shame. Umasi had grown up not because of him, but in spite of him.
“Whenever I was troubled, you used to ask me if there was something wrong. I always insisted that there wasn’t. I lied. There is something wrong with this City, Mayor, and all three of us know it now. If I die, Zen will recreate your nightmare in his own image. But if he is the one to fall, then I will see to it that you answer for your sins.”
I’m your father. Call me Father, the Mayor thought in vain. The Mayor now saw the boys as they were the last time he had seen them, seated at the dinner table. It was a scene that had replayed in his mind many times before, but this time when the boys bade him farewell it carried an entirely new meaning, one that brought tears to his eyes. His lighter flicked open, and for one dark moment he was entirely lost in grief.
“Protect your school, Mayor. I will protect the City.”
Those words jerked the Mayor up in his chair and out of his reverie. Being addressed by his title reminded him of his duty and cut through his grief like a bolt of lightning. His head unnaturally clear, the Mayor sprang into action. Seizing the phone from his desk, he quickly pressed the emergency button that would put him in touch with Enforcer Headquarters.
“Yes, Mr. Mayor, what can we do for you?”
The Mayor took a deep, steadying breath. The lighter clicked shut.
“Get every available patrol out to the District 1 School within the hour. Evacuate the immediate area. Prepare for war.”
33
BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER
Even on the weekend, it was rare for any part of District 1 to be silent in the afternoon. But on this day, one part of it was as eerily quiet as an abandoned district. No one walked the streets of the nine blocks that had been sealed off, though countless Enforcers stood silent behind concrete barricades and parked patrol cars. They had been working all morning, first to evacuate the area, and then to seal it off with portable wooden fencing. All businesses and traffic had been shut down, the monolithic school at the very center of the area towering over the proceedings like a condemnatory giant.
Then came the defense preparations. The Enforcers didn’t know anything about what they were supposed to be defending against, other than that the Mayor thought it was especially dangerous. Still they continued to dutifully erect the waist-high concrete barriers. Once the defenses were finished, the Enforcers stood quietly behind them, waiting for the war they had been promised.
When it began, not even an hour later, the Enforcers discovered that for all their efforts they were still unprepared. A patrol car at the western barricade was the first to explode, instantly throwing all the defenders into confusion. Though the attack was expected, the Enforcers found it difficult to grasp the idea of full-scale war in the City that they had dominated for so long. As the battle began in earnest, the Enforcers were shocked to find that their enemies were children. Their hesitation would prove fatal.
The initial attack came from the windows and roofs of the evacuated buildings, the Truancy somehow having managed to stealthily occupy them. Truants fired down at the Enforcer positions and tossed explosive cocktails between the rows of concrete. Trapped by their own defenses, the Enforcers tumbled over each other in their haste to abandon their position. As they fled, more Truants began emerging f
rom other buildings, side alleys, even manholes.
The Enforcers had set up a strict perimeter around the area, but among the Truants were students from the District 1 School, unmatched in their knowledge of the neighborhood and its shortcuts. By the time the fleeing Enforcers had reached a second line of defense surrounding the school, a good ten percent of them had fallen, many having been outflanked by the Truancy. By now the Enforcers knew that they were fighting for their lives, and newly fortified with superior numbers, they were ready for a long fight.
As the Truants advanced and the battle wore on, it became clear that while the Enforcers had many advantages over the Truancy, what they lacked was the Truancy’s leader. Black like the shadows, he swept through the battlefield like fear incarnate, firing with impeccable aim and brutally striking down stragglers with his crowbar. He knew that the Enforcers had been strictly ordered not to kill him, and he used it against them. As Zen leapt down from the roof of a truck and struck an Enforcer on the head, he noticed that some of the other squad leaders were finally arriving on the scene.
Gabriel was dual-wielding stolen pistols, and had taken cover behind a white van as he fired at the Enforcer barricades. The school took up the entire block, and the Enforcers had set up more concrete walling all around it. Like Gabriel, however, many Truants were now taking cover behind whatever they could and besieging the Enforcers from all sides. Zen wondered how well Gabriel could aim with his left hand, but even as he watched one, two, and then three Enforcers crumpled from Gabriel’s shots.
Frank and his team of former vagrants had gotten a stroke of inspiration after seeing that one of the streets was on a downwards slant. They hotwired a car and set it to neutral, then drenched it with gas, set it on fire, and sent it rolling down the hill towards the Enforcer barricades. Enforcers dived out of the way as the car crashed and exploded spectacularly, and other Truants hastened to imitate Frank’s idea. As the Enforcer lines were broken by the explosions, it became increasingly clear that the Truancy was winning the fight.