The City, Not Long After

by Pat Murphy

  Danny-boy turned his head to ease the pressure on his windpipe. “I didn’t think I’d need it,” he said.

  “Hasn’t anyone told you there’s a war on?” She eased her hold and he turned to face her. “Look,” she said. “I didn’t spend weeks teaching you to shoot just so you could leave your weapon home. I’m willing to fight this war your way, but you’ve got to be prepared for other possibilities.”

  She studied him, her hands on her hips. She carried an Uzi slung over one shoulder, as she had for the past two weeks. Twin belts of ammunition crossed between her breasts.

  “I’m just checking the barricades,” he said. “They look good.” He could not see her eyes behind her mirrored sunglasses.

  “They’d better. We’ll need them soon enough.”

  He reached up and took her sunglasses from her face, folded them, and slipped them into her front pocket. She raised her eyebrows, frowning. “The sun’s almost down,” he said. “You don’t need them. Besides, I like to see your eyes.”

  “All right,” she said. “You can see them.” She pushed her hands into her pockets. When he started walking toward Hyde Street and the next barricade, she strolled beside him. “By the way, Tiger just finished another batch of smoke grenades. He wants to know where to stash them.”

  Danny-boy thought for a moment. They had been caching supplies and weapons at strategic locations throughout the city. “Behind the altar at Saint Patrick’s Church, I think. Ask Books to check the map to be sure.”

  They passed a barricade made of human bones and broken mirrors, a collaborative effort by Lily and Frank. A row of skulls stared at them from the steps of a nearby fire escape. On the white wall beneath the skulls, someone had painted in black: “ARRETE! C’EST ICI L’EMPIRE DE LA MORT.”

  Danny-boy frowned at the words. “What’s that mean?”

  “I asked Lily. She says it means—‘Stop! This is the Kingdom of the Dead.’ She says she took it from the entrance to the catacombs in Paris.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Jax shrugged. “I don’t know. Somewhere far away.” Jax stood looking at the barricade. Danny-boy could see her face reflected in the broken mirrors that were scattered among the bones. “I don’t like this one much. It bothers me,” she said.

  He put an arm around her shoulders. “With luck, the soldiers will feel the same way.

  “Yeah,” she said. “With luck.” Her voice was calm, but he could feel the tension in her body. “I’m scared. I’m afraid of what will happen. I want to hurt them before they can hurt us.”

  “I’m scared too,” he admitted.

  She shook her head. “Not as scared as you should be. Not as scared as I am.”

  “Do you want to leave?” he said. “You could still go up to Marin. There’s still time.” It hurt to say it, but he had to.

  She shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere. I can’t leave you idiots to try to do this by yourselves. Someone has to be practical.”

  “You’re here because you belong here,” he said.

  “Will you please carry your rifle?” she asked him suddenly. “I know you won’t use it, but at least carry it. I’d feel better if you did.”

  “All right,” he said. “I will.”

  “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “we could still blow the bridge up before they get here. Or better yet, blow it up when Fourstar’s on it.”

  “We can’t do that. If we did, we’d be no better than they are.”

  “I am no better,” she said. Then she shrugged. “I thought you’d say that. But I had to ask.”

  CHAPTER 21

  JAX HUNCHED HER SHOULDERS against the early morning cold. Through her binoculars, she could just make out the advance guard of Fourstar’s army. She and Danny-boy sat at the top of the Union 76 tower, where they had an excellent view of the Bay Bridge. As she watched, the lead horse in the advance guard began bucking and two others bolted. At the same time, a strange screeching sound emerged from the field radio at her side.

  “Must be the crickets,” Danny-boy muttered. At irregular intervals along the bridge, Gambit had rigged hidden trip wires that set off sirens, alarm bells, and recordings of various sounds. Gambit’s favorite was a recording of crickets mating. Played at top volume, it sounded like a train wreck.

  The riders got their horses under control. Through the binoculars, Jax could see the lead horse dancing nervously. She recognized the man on its back. Major Rodriguez looked no happier than his horse.

  Jax examined the procession following Rodriguez. Ten battered jeeps loaded with troops and supplies, forty or so mounted soldiers, a slow-moving transport truck, and a tank. The sun glinted on rifle barrels, but Jax could not identify the weapons at that distance. She hoped that the truck carried ammunition that the artists could use. “About a hundred and fifty of them, wouldn’t you say?” Danny-boy commented. “Not so bad.” “Only about fifty of us.”

  “Yeah, but we’re on our home ground.”

  Jax didn’t bother to respond. She didn’t want to hear another lecture about guerrilla warfare and the advantage gained by troops on their home ground. “They’ve almost reached the Ambassador,” she said.

  The Ambassador was a mannequin that The Machine had equipped with a radio transmitter and receiver. Using the field radio, Jax and Danny-boy could communicate with the army through the mannequin.

  The Ambassador was perched on an overhead sign where the freeway began to descend into the streets of the city. Lily had dressed the mannequin in a black leather jacket, a matching miniskirt, and fishnet stockings. Dangling from her ears were diamond earrings that caught the morning light; on her hands were delicate white lace gloves.

  “I doubt they’ll have much to say to us,” Jax said.

  “You never know.”

  “I know,” she said with certainty.

  The jeeps proceeded slowly over the cracked asphalt. An American flag flew from the lead jeep.

  “That’s Fourstar,” Jax said. “Right under that ugly flag.” He was staring straight ahead with fierce intensity.

  “Yeah? He doesn’t look very happy.”

  Jax shrugged. “Maybe he doesn’t like loud noises.”

  One of the mounted soldiers spotted the Ambassador and waved to Rodriguez. The procession stopped. Rodriguez went back to confer with Fourstar, and then rode on alone.

  Holding her binoculars in one hand, Jax picked up the microphone in the other. She had insisted that she be the first one to talk to Fourstar. Danny-boy had acquiesced reluctantly. “Take it easy,” he advised her. She ignored him.

  “Hello, Major Rodriguez,” she said.

  Rodriguez glared up at the Ambassador. “How do you know my name?”

  “We met last time you were here. I’m Jax, remember? I wanted to warn you and your pals. The city doesn’t like visitors unless they were invited. And you weren’t invited.”

  Through the binoculars, Jax watched him frown and study the sign’s supporting structure, looking for an easy way to climb up. “You’d look pretty silly trying to get me down,” Jax said. “Just tell Fourstar that I’m alone and unarmed. I’d like a word with him.”

  “Are you referring to General Miles?”

  “We call him Fourstar,” she said. “And you’re on our territory now.”

  Rodriguez wheeled his horse around and trotted back to the jeep for a lengthy conference. Then the jeep jounced forward over the potholes in the asphalt.

  Fourstar did not glare at the Ambassador as Rodriguez had. He examined her, judged her, and found her wanting. “I’m not in the habit of talking with machines,” he said.

  “As far as I’m concerned, we don’t have to talk at all,” she said. “My message is simple enough. Go home. You aren’t welcome here.” He studied the mannequin calmly. “And what do you plan to do if we don’t go home?”

  “We’ll declare war,” she said. Watching him, even through the binoculars, made her uneasy. She fought to keep her voice even and confident
. “Our kind of war, not yours.”

  “What’s your kind of war?” He was studying the mannequin with tolerant amusement.

  “We’ll kill you.” Her voice cracked a little. She felt Danny-boy’s reassuring hand on her shoulder. “One by one, we’ll kill you all.”

  Fourstar smiled and the granitic lines of his face shifted. Jax shivered and blamed it on the cold. “I don’t think so,” he said. “If you were going to kill me, you could have done it easily enough before now. A sniper at the entrance to the bridge, an explosive charge on the bridge itself.” Fourstar shook his head. “From what Rodriguez has told me, I’d guess that you don’t really plan to kill me. So I’d say that your threat is an empty one.”

  “You’ve been warned.” Jax turned off the microphone and glanced at Danny-boy. “Looks like we’ve got a war to fight.” “We’re ready for it,” he said.

  “I hope you’re right.”

  She studied the army through her binoculars. Two soldiers climbed onto the sign and picked up the Ambassador. As Jax watched, the mannequin’s right leg slid from its pivot, falling until the fishnet stockings pulled it up short. The leg dangled at a peculiar angle as the soldiers lowered the mannequin into the arms of the young man who was driving Fourstar’s jeep. He loaded her into the back of the jeep. Through the radio, Jax heard an unintelligible command from Fourstar, and the procession moved on.

  “Hey, Fourstar,” she said into the microphone. “I wouldn’t go that way if I were you.”

  No response. Just the growl of the jeep’s engine and the irregular bumping of the tires over the rough pavement. She switched off the radio.

  “There goes T.M.,” Danny-boy said. Jax looked up in time to see the gyrocopter pass overhead. She could barely hear the distant hum of its engine. The Machine dipped low over the soldiers and dropped three smoke bombs. As they fell, they trailed colored smoke: red, white, and blue.

  The horses spooked at the explosions and then disappeared behind clouds of smoke. The Machine climbed away from the sound of rifle fire. Jax watched as the smoke cleared and the army regrouped. They followed the skyway, then took the Civic Center exit, disappearing from view.

  “He didn’t look scared to me,” Jax said, lowering her binoculars. “Not a bit intimidated.”

  “It’s early in the game,” Danny-boy said. “Wait and see.”

  She shook her head. “That’s what I keep telling you—it’s not a game.” She listened to the sound of distant gunfire and wondered what the soldiers were shooting at.

  Lily and Zatch lay on the roof of a warehouse, their bellies flat against the gravel and tar paper. Down below them, the army was overreacting to a work of art.

  In a warehouse south of Mission, Zatch had found a couple of dozen life-sized plastic horses, intended for display at saddlery stores. He had saddled them with scavenged gear and arranged them on Ninth Avenue, facing toward the bridge. With great care he had mounted a human skeleton on each horse, wiring the bones together in lifelike riding postures.

  Lily had suggested the finishing touch. Working together, they replaced the human skulls with animal skulls, taken from the back rooms of taxidermy shops and the specimen boxes of the California Academy of Sciences. With empty eye sockets, the animal skulls stared down the street: a crocodile, a wolf, a saber-toothed cat, a gorilla, an assortment of dogs, a zebra, a buck with a full rack of antlers. When the wind blew, the heads nodded, as if in solemn judgment. Like the temple guardians of some forgotten faith, the skeletal horde greeted the army. The army met them with rifles. “Everyone’s a critic,” Lily muttered over the sound of gunfire.

  “I hope they don’t hurt that saber-toothed cat skull,” Zatch murmured. “I felt a little guilty taking it.”

  “It was for a good cause.” Cautiously, Lily peeked over the edge of the roof. Below her, the soldiers were still firing into the sculptures. The crocodile rider was down, knocked over by a spooked horse. As she watched, a man fired a burst at the wolf rider, apparently reacting to the movement of the skull in the wind. “Jesus,” she said, ducking down. “These guys shoot at everything that moves.”

  “Don’t move,” Zatch advised dryly. Taking his own advice, he lay still until the sound of gunfire faded in the distance.

  From a penthouse apartment in the Opera Plaza complex, Frank watched through a high-powered telescope as the army approached City Hall. Gambit sat in an easy chair beside him.

  “They’re coming up to Lily’s sculptures now,” Frank reported. Lily had built a life-size Tyrannosaurus Rex, constructing the giant reptile entirely of found objects: costume jewelry, high-heeled shoes, bits of linoleum, wads of tinfoil, cheese graters, wooden spoons, copper tubing, plastic toys. A twisted street sign formed its backbone and crystal doorknobs glittered malevolently in its eyesockets. Perched on a nearby lamppost was a Pterodactyl made of scraps of leather and old nylon stockings, hung on a framework of human bone. “Oh, my,” Frank said. “What a pity!”

  “What happened?”

  “A soldier just blew the head off the Pterodactyl,” Frank said. “Lily will be so upset.”

  “Where are they going?”

  “They’re parking in front of that ugly concrete building on Golden Gate Avenue. They certainly don’t have much taste in architecture.” Frank watched for a moment longer. –“I wonder where the monkeys are,” he said. “Usually there are a few hanging around by the library.”

  “Hiding like any sensible animal,” Gambit said. “No sense sticking around where people are shooting.”

  “They’re putting up the American flag on the flagpole in the plaza,” Frank observed. “You know, I’d never noticed it before, but that’s a rather ugly flag.”

  “Possibly that’s just the context,” Gambit said. “In the hands of storm troopers, any flag looks ugly.”

  Frank nodded, still watching the soldiers in the plaza. “I suppose you’re right. But it certainly is ugly.”

  At night the fog embraced the city like a lover. Mist from the Bay crept through the streets and alleys of the city, blending with the colored smoke that lingered from The Machine’s bombs and taking on an unnatural tint and an acrid scent.

  In Civic Center Plaza, soldiers huddled around their cooking fires. The fog clung to them, dampened their clothing and their spirits, hissed in the fires like whispering children. It was nasty, secretive sort of weather.

  With rolls of razor wire, the soldiers had blocked off the streets nearest the Civic Center Plaza. Harsh white spotlights illuminated the barriers. Within the soldiers’ camp, the generator that kept the spotlights bright growled loudly, an ugly and continuous noise. The fog drifted through the spotlight beams and glistened on the sharp barbs of the wire.

  The sentry at the corner of Golden Gate Avenue and Larkin Street pulled his coat more tightly around himself and yawned. He was inside the barricade, looking out into the dark city.

  Jax crouched in the shadows behind him. She had come up through the storm drains, slipping beneath their defenses. She was alone. Over Danny-boy’s protests, she had insisted on working by herself. She felt that Danny-boy would be a distraction to her. She would not be able to concentrate on fighting if he were along. After much grumbling, Danny-boy had joined Snake for the first evening of fighting.

  The sentry shifted his rifle, obviously bored. He tucked his weapon under one arm and fumbled in his pocket. Jax watched him roll a cigarette and light it. When the flame cast a brief glow on his face, she could see that he was no older than Danny-boy.

  Jax slipped a dart into her blowgun and aimed at his neck. She had been practicing for weeks, but tension spoiled her aim. Her first shot missed him entirely. She cursed herself silently and remained in the shadows. He straightened up, listening to something—perhaps the small sound of the dart falling onto the asphalt. After a moment, he relaxed again.

  The second dart struck the back of his neck, just above the collar

  Of his shirt. He slapped at the dart, as a man might slap at an in
sect, then slapped again and knocked it to the ground. Jax ducked farther back into the shadows, waiting for the tranquilizer that Tiger had concocted to take effect. The sentry fumbled for his rifle, but it slipped from his hands. He fell slowly to one knee, then collapsed.

  Jax ran into the light, grabbed him by the shoulders, and dragged his limp body into the shadows. Adrenalin sang in her veins and the night seemed colder than it had a moment before. Her senses were heightened: she noticed every detail of the scene. The fog made delicate patterns as it drifted through the spotlight; the cigarette that the sentry had dropped glowed like a firefly; the young soldier’s chin was marked by a small nick, where he had cut himself while shaving an inadequate beard.

  Working quickly, she turned him onto his back, crossed his arms neatly on his chest, and snapped open the pouch of indelible skin paints that she carried on her belt. She worked carefully, using only the red paint and the black. Simplicity, she felt, was best.

  In bold letters across his forehead, she wrote “DEAD” in black. On his right cheek she signed “by Jax” in red. Between his folded hands, she placed the Death Certificate, printed by Ms. Migsdale on the New City News press. The paper said:

  CERTIFICATE OF DEATH

  Please consider yourself removed from combat. Look at it this way—we could have killed you.

  If you don’t stop fighting, we really will kill you next time.

  Signed,

  The People of San Francisco

  Danny-boy, Ms. Migsdale, and Books had argued for weeks over the wording. Jax thought this draft was fine—but she had felt the same way about the last five.

  She took the sentry’s rifle and stripped him of ammunition, then lifted the grating from a storm drain and slipped through the opening. Weeks before, she had loosened the gratings in strategic areas, planning escape routes through the city’s subterranean tunnels. She set the grating into place above her and climbed down the rusting ladder set into one wall of the shaft. She stepped cautiously, wary of the slippery algae that coated the metal rungs. The tunnel she entered was wider than most; she could walk in a crouch, rather than crawling on her belly.