by M. G. Herron
She supposed that no matter if he disagreed with the policy, her father was a big enough man—a Great Man, perhaps—not to hold hate in his heart toward people who were only trying to make the best of a bad situation.
Her chest ached for her father and mother. She missed them desperately and wished they could be here now. They would know how to find Jia.
Po looked up at the crowd gathered in the plaza. The stone square smelled of rancid sweat and dried piss, and the crowd milled about restlessly. Apart from being mostly young and mostly men, they were all deplorably thin, skin and bones with hollow cheeks and dark circles under their eyes. As if to echo the sentiment, her own stomach growled.
Her parents had always made sure that Po and her sister had enough food to eat. She wondered how many of these people were lucky enough to have that privilege. For the first time, she began to consider her father’s apparent hypocrisy as what it more likely was—compassion.
The crowd began to flow toward a big tent that had been set up in the middle of the gathering of protestors as smoke rose from one side of it. Po tensed, uncertain what was happening, but relaxed when she saw people walking away from the tent and shoving food into their mouths. The tent must have been a kitchen of some kind which explained why it was so crowded. If she wasn’t waiting for Ari, she would have gone over there herself.
A couple of wiry young men carrying a rolled-up carpet between them entered the square near the statue where Po sat. A pair of armed soldiers guarding that entrance stopped them and made them unroll the carpet to search it. One of them, a fit young black man with an easy smile, pointed toward the tent and gestured while he explained something to the soldiers. The one who seemed to be in charge finally nodded and motioned the two on, and the young men rolled the carpet up and moved off toward the tent again.
The tent was more than a kitchen, Po thought. It seemed to be the semi-permanent headquarters of this occupation.
That made sense to her, as Telerethon Square was at the heart of downtown, and only a couple miles from the Capitol building.
Ari appeared, weaving around a crowd of milling people with his hands tucked into his pockets. When he reached Po, he pressed two rectangular smart devices into her hand.
She inhaled sharply. “Where did you get these?”
“I borrowed them. Can you make one of them work?”
She flashed him a grin, and then pressed her nail into the seam in one glass rectangle, separating it into two pieces with a pop. Then she pulled out a small microchip from the back and swapped it with another from a different device of a similar shape. When she turned the device back on, it prompted her for a new password, and she was in.
“What did you just do?” Ari asked.
“I reset the firmware.”
“Useful.”
“You don’t know how to do that?”
“Never thought about it.”
“When you visited our farm, you showed me how to hotwire your electric car.”
“Did I? You didn’t tell me that.”
“I forgot until now.”
Ari stood suddenly, grabbed Po’s wrist, and yanked her around to the other side of the statue.
Po flushed and swallowed her sudden fear. “What’s the matter?” Po whispered.
“I thought I saw one of the rebels.” Ari bent over to see around the statue, but he pulled back and cursed under his breath.
“What?” Po asked.
“I can’t see anything.”
“Let me look.”
“Hey, wait!”
Ignoring Ari’s admonition, Po stood and stuck her head around the pedestal of the statue. She gazed out over a sea of people packed so tight their heads formed a calico quilt made of patches of blonde, sandy brown, black, artificial blue, ashy blonde, cue-tip white…there. An unnatural bright red, like radioactive flames, spiked up among a patch of blacks and greys. The woman the hair belonged to folded a bandanna and tied it back over her head hair so she blended in with the rest of the dark patch that surrounded her.
Tied to her waist was a clear plastic mask. What looked like a soda can with holes cut in the bottom was placed sideways at the mouthpiece. It was the same color black as the plastic straps hanging loose.
Another tall man with dark hair stood beside Sasha, with his back to Po. He looked around, then bent down and fitted an identical mask over his head. Apparently satisfied, he took it off again and hid it in an inside pocket of his jacket then turned to look in Po’s direction.
She gasped, stepped back and spun off the statue’s pedestal.
As she pivoted, her elbow smashed into Ari’s nose with a sickening crunch.
“Oh!” Po said. Then, in a taut whisper, “Ari? Are you okay? What’s the matter?”
Ari’s fingers stiffened and bent like he was clutching an invisible ball. The tendons in his neck stood out like ropes and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Po swallowed a sharp, nervous breath.
“Ari, talk to me! What is happening?” She didn’t understand. He curled into himself. She brushed the back of her hand in front of his mouth, searching for breath.
It was there. It came fitfully, in gasps.
He pitched to one side. Her hands darted out and she grabbed his shoulder to keep him from pitching to the ground. With a startled grunt of effort, she heaved his big frame back into a seated position on the statue’s pedestal.
After a long minute of helplessness, Po watched as his hands slowly unclenched. He swallowed with difficulty. A long minute passed while Ari took shallow but even breaths with his eyes closed.
Po rubbed her hands and glanced around, searching for someone that looked trustworthy in case she needed to run for help. The only ambulances were parked on the army’s side of the barricade, and she couldn’t rely on the kindness of strangers twice in one day. Police patrolled the edges of the plaza, but they didn’t look too friendly.
When Ari finally spoke, Po trembled with relief.
“My head,” he said. “I think it’s getting worse. The doctor gave me medicine for it, but since we escaped … well, I didn’t exactly have time to ask for a prescription on the way out.”
With a pained grimace Ari gained his feet, using the statue’s pedestal to steady himself. “I think I’m okay now. Let’s hide in the crowd while I look at this phone.”
“Felix is right over there with Sasha,” she blurted. She ground her teeth and made an angry noise deep in her throat. “We should have killed him when we had the chance.”
“It’s crowded. Come on, we can lose them if we move quick. Are they still over that way?” He pointed to their right.
Po nodded. Ari grunted, then readjusted the bandanna around his face. Po did the same, double knotting hers at the base of her neck.
Despite the frightening episode, Ari seemed to have recovered his poise. He stepped into the crowd and moved casually but quickly in the opposite direction from where the slight redhead and the dangerous rebel leader had been standing. Po followed, trying to imitate his nonchalance.
One of the soldiers watched her. She thought about telling them about Felix. But what would she say? That bastard murdered my parents, you’ve got to believe me? No.
She followed Ari into the thick of the crowd. The soldiers remained at the edge of the plaza.
Po glanced over her shoulder, but could see only a collage of faces crossing and blending into each other. No sign of Felix or Sasha. Deep within the heart of the crowd, Ari stopped and turned to her, holding the cell phone between them. The device registered no service, but a cached and slightly blurry map of Enshi filled the screen.
“Where we are now?” Ari asked.
Po pressed a button on the side of the device and a holograph of the map popped out of the screen between them. She pointed her thumb and pointer finger down like a claw, and as if turning an invisible knob, rotated the grid of streets until she had King Valley on the left hand side. She spread her fingers to zoom in on the city’s core.
“We’re here,” Po said. “Telerethon Square.”
“Is this the Capitol?” Ari pointed to a domed structure to the east.
“Exactly. It’s about two miles away on the southeastern side of the city, right up against the edge of the cliffs over the Enshi river.”
Ari nodded. “Now I understand why they set the barricade up here.”
Pi nodded enthusiastically. “They’re protecting the government. Of course.”
Po wondered what her father would say about that. She could hear his gruff tone clearly in her mind, if not the exact words, grumbling something about reaping what you sow. Po didn’t want to go down that road, so she hurried to change the subject.
“My aunt lives over here somewhere. I’m sorry, I don’t remember her address, but it’s in Rose Petal, which is the district separated by this street, north of Thorn Avenue.”
“About five miles away.“ Ari pressed his lips together. “We’ll find her, if we can figure out how to get on the other side of that barricade. Let me see…” He frowned at the map for a minute, twisting it as he studied the city. “Maybe we can backtrack and go around. Or travel through the sewer system?”
The idea made her skin break out in a cold sweat. She shook her head. “No thanks.”
A hush washed over the crowd. Po and Ari looked around for the source of the change. “What is it?” Po asked. “Can you see it?” She stood on her tiptoes to look in the direction the others were turning to face. An armored vehicle rolled down the alley between two squadrons of soldiers into the no-man’s land, and stopped near the spine of the barricade. Out stepped a uniformed officer who climbed onto the hood of the vehicle and spoke to the crowd.
“You are gathered unlawfully.” His voice echoed across the square, intensified by an unseen amplifier. “Disperse immediately.”
“Fuck you!” someone near Po shouted.
The officer ignored the insult and spoke again. “If you stay here, you’ll be arrested and prosecuted for disturbing the peace.” He kept talking, but the rest of his words, despite their artificial amplification, were swallowed by the chant that Po heard before.
“We pay the price! Where’s our rice? We pay the price! Where’s our rice?”
A hollow thunk sounded from across the barricade. Po cast her eyes skyward as a small oblong object tracing a contrail of smoke arced overhead. It fell into the crowd about fifty yards away. Two, then three, then four more canisters launched into the crowd in rapid succession.
People shouted. Someone shoved them from behind. A great wave of flesh rolled toward them. Po dropped the phone as someone knocked into her. Ari pulled her close, and they gripped each other tight, like human shields, blocking a small space between them so that they didn’t get crushed in the press of bodies.
Clouds of smoke rose up from the area where the canisters had landed. It dawned on Po why the rebels had gas masks with them—and, frankly, why the army thought the barricade was necessary in the first place. Or was that her father’s voice in her head?
She didn’t have the luxury of time to sort out her thoughts. Nor did they have gas masks. The wind blew the smoke around, and Po’s eyes burned. She coughed.
“We have to get out of here!” she shouted to Ari. Even though his face was inches from hers, her voice barely carried.
Those caught in the worst of the gas clouds yelled in pain and clutched their faces. Nearby, others picked up rocks and the canisters still spewing smoke and hurled them back toward the barricade. Po couldn’t tell if any of the volleys struck their targets, but the mood of the crowd had shifted from confusion to outrage.
Several more canisters arced into the crowd. Thunk. Thunk. Hhhhsssss.
For all the commotion, the chant only gained in volume and intensity. “WE PAY THE PRICE! WHERE’S OUR RICE? WE PAY THE PRICE!”
The officer got into his vehicle again. The vehicle reversed and the front line of soldiers raised rifles to their shoulders and stepped forward in lock step.
“Get down!” Ari shouted, shielding Po with his body and folding them both toward the ground.
A staccato burst of shots. High-pitched cries of betrayal broke through the chanting and gunfire. The noise of the mob echoed off the plaza walls like the surging roar that rebounds across a stadium when the home team is losing.
Ari jerked forward and drew a hissing intake of breath. He reached back to rub his shoulder. A cold stream of fear tied Po’s stomach in knots.
“Rubber bullets,” he explained. “They’re trying to scare us off.”
The barking of dogs joined the cacophony from behind them. Po couldn’t see them, but the movement of the crowd around her became more frantic as people recognized the noise.
Po’s eyes burned and she struggled to make sense of the blurs streaking past her. People scattered in every direction. Her instinct screamed to flee before it got worse. She would have if it wasn’t for Ari’s iron grip around her shoulders. A scant foot away from Po in the crowd, an older woman pitched to the ground and was trampled by countless pairs of feet. Po was suddenly very glad Ari prevented her from listening to her instincts.
From out of a cloud of smoke, a petite woman emerged with a gas mask covering her face. She pointed forward and three dozen similarly masked bystanders pushed by her, moving in small, tightly coordinated groups.
Ari grabbed Po’s wrist and pulled her toward them.
“What are you doing? What if she recognizes us?” Po yelled into the din.
He shook his head, but before Ari could answer, an explosion from across the barricade rocked the cobblestones of the plaza.
The barbed wire of the barricade was only thirty yards in front of them now. The crowd had pushed them toward it even as they had tried to move away.
They fell in behind the last group wearing gas masks. Ahead of them, Sasha pulled the pin from a metal canister, and tossed it into no-man’s land. It expelled a billowing cloud of smoke that spread like a heavy curtain over the barricade, and then washed over Po. Po braced, expected more tear gas, but it didn’t burn her throat in the same way. It was just regular smoke.
“Oh no,” Po said, understanding in a flash what was about to happen.
The even lines of soldiers broke as they scrambled to respond to the explosion behind them. Sasha threw another smoke grenade. The curtain thickened.
“Shift!” Sasha shouted.
Po and Ari kept pace with their group and sidestepped to the left twenty paces.
“Charge!”
The groups of masked rebels hurled themselves into the cloud of smoke. Po pumped her legs as she hurried to keep up. Only once did she glance back at the stampeding mob pounding along behind them. She coughed, her lungs burning from the smoke and tear gas she couldn’t keep away.
Though the line of soldiers was nearly half what it was a moment ago, they recovered quickly and fired at the attacking groups as they broke through the curtain of smoke. Po and Ari were far enough from the front of the formation so that they didn’t get chewed up by the first barrage of rubber bullets.
Two men tripped and went down before her. Po jumped over them and ducked behind a larger man to avoid a direct line of fire from a rifle muzzle pointing out of the smoke.
The coil of razor wire was suddenly there. The two men she had seen earlier with the carpet now wore gas masks, too. They unrolled the carpet and flung it over top of the wire and dozens of people scrambled over. Po followed, the carpet shredding on the razor wire as the weight of bodies pressed it down. The tiny blades caught on her jeans, ripped another hole in them, and she cut her hand
pulling it free. Blood smeared into her hair as she tried to rub her stinging eyes with the back of her bloody hands.
A rubber bullet struck Po in the side of the head. She stumbled. A large body jostled her from the direction she was falling—was it Ari?—righting her.
Another dozen steps and Po smashed against a hard wall of plastic shields as the second wave of rebels came up fast behind.
CHAPTER 17
CAGE OF BODIES
Her world became a whirl of flashing shapes, hoarse voices, the smell of smoke with a hint of sulfur, and a ringing deafness in her ears. A black baton whipped down and struck her shoulder. She cried out and turned to look at her attacker, but all she saw was a tangle of limbs and bandanna-clad heads and gas masks and crisp dark green soldiers’ uniforms. Another blow shocked her elbow and sent cold tingles racing toward her fingertips.
She struggled to escape the cage of bodies, cringing from plastic shields and the unforgiving hardness of swinging batons while digging her heels in to resist the continuous pressure from behind. The air was less saturated with smoke here, but still thick enough that breathing felt like sucking fumes through dirty cloth. A baton slashed down, whizzed by Po’s head, and cracked the arm of a man next to her. Saliva splattered across Po’s cheeks when he screamed.
Po forgot to panic until something caught her shirt and pulled her off balance. She flailed as she was ripped backward—into Ari’s chest. His good eye glimmered, and Po had the distinct thought that he was, impossible though it seemed, enjoying this. He wrapped an arm around her waist, and, his grim face twisted with effort, towed them both out of the fray.
Ari shouted something insensible into the din and pointed. Po moved in that direction into the thickest cloud of smoke. The coil of razor wire they had so recently braved death to surmount materialized in the haze and several squat lines became two masked figures working at the coil with gloved hands and bolt cutters.