by M. G. Herron
The scent of sulphur and dust mixed with the heavy rain, and Ming felt a cold sweat break out on his body.
Hands turned him about as they whole vanguard of police officers fought to keep their ground among the shoving, panicked crowd.
“Get the girl!” Ming cried. “Captain, we have to get Po.”
Captain Wallace shouted at his officers. God love them, the men held their ground against the rushing crowd. Ming pointed to where he had last seen Po in front of the drone, and together they pushed toward her.
CHAPTER 51
THE BRIDGE TO KING VALLEY
Po struggled to free her arms. They were trapped against her body in the jostling crowd. She gulped for air like a drowning rat. Rainwater poured down her face and into her open mouth, choking her.
The report of a dozen automatic rifles sounded from the direction of the fallen Capitol building. Po’s head knocked against the brick wall of a nearby building as the army pressed the crowd back down the choked avenue toward Telerethon Square. The smell of singed hair wafted over her. Nearby, a knot of soldiers used shock sticks to prod the nearest protestors.
And then a wave of blue uniforms surrounded her, and she gulped huge lungfuls of air through the rain as a small space was secured around her.
“Are you hurt?” A Chinese man with a deeply furrowed round face gripped Po’s shoulders. Neither he nor any of the officers with him had any rain gear.
“I’m fine,” she said after she caught her breath. “Now do you believe me, Kai?”
He sighed, and nodded. “I want to know everything. But first, we—”
A fresh salvo of screams cut Ming off mid-sentence. Po stood on her tiptoes. A line of armored cars and mechs encroached on the tangled mass of the crowd. A flashing siren whooped, and horns from the armored cars honked as they rolled slowly into the crowd.
“They’re going to force the crowd back!” Captain Wallace said. “We need to move. Now!”
As they pressed forward, an officer Po recognized—Officer Evans, the balding European man who had been fighting with his fellow officer in the precinct—worked the radio, searching for reinforcements. The noises coming through the radio confirmed the chaos Po and the others saw around them. The only available resources were watching the gate to King Valley.
The rain began to come down harder, which made the footing treacherous. The army continued to press the crowd back into Telerethon Square. When the mass of people jammed up at the edge of the square, tear gas canisters thumped and arced into the square. Po, Ming, and the officers managed to avoid the worst of the tear gas, but Po’s eyes stung horribly and she blinked into the rain to try to clear them as they crossed the square.
After what seemed like an eternity of small movements, their group reached the far end of the square, and Po, through tears, looked back to see the tent collapse in on itself as the mechs cut through the support beams.
Ming was looking in the same direction, and he swore under his breath. “Those idiots!”
The army continued to advance. The officers around Po pushed her ahead of them, out of the square. In the open space, Po lengthened her stride. The men and women around her followed suit and together they zigzagged through the chaotic streets. People ran in every direction. Women screamed the names of their missing children. Some protestors, wearing the bright neon bandannas or dark masks over their faces, ran toward the advancing army carrying clubs, hurled rocks or pieces of concrete, held the lids of trash cans up to use as shields.
Po slammed into Wallace’s back while she was gawking at the madness surging around her. He had come to a stop when they reached a restless group of men and women standing around several unmarked cars—police officers, Po realized.
Captain Wallace opened a door, and Po dove into the back seat. Ming slid in beside her with two other officers, and Captain Wallace got into the driver’s seat. A group of mechs and armored cars came around a nearby corner, klaxons blaring. The car’s tires spun, and then Po was thrown to the side as the vehicle jerked into motion.
As the car barreled out of the downtown core, Ming pored over a tablet and shouted directions to the captain.
“Take this turn! Go right!”
They went one direction first, but were forced to redirect again when they turned down a street and a row of hulking tanks—honest to god tanks!—rolling toward them.
“Dear God,” Po whispered.
Ming directed another series of zigzagging turns, and when they found an open road the driver opened the throttle. A motorcade of cars followed theirs.
“Where are we going?” Po said. “We can’t just run!”
“We don’t have a choice. Look, the army is taking the city,” Ming said.
He angled the tablet’s screen toward her. It was a map, zoomed in on the city’s core, and it seemed to crawl like a pit of snakes. A green pin marked their car’s location as they traveled—moving rapidly west. Looking closer, Po realized that the crawling movement was people, people covering the city’s streets like an infestation. She also saw other, neater lines closing in on the city’s core from the north and south—the army. They made a narrow alley and pushed the mass of protestors west out of Telerethon Square into Fields.
“It’s a pre-planned emergency response to a domestic attack,” Ming said. He sighed. “The bastard gets what he wanted after all.”
“What?”
“Senator Khan. The army has control now. They’ll declare martial law, if anyone survived the attack…”
Po swallowed. “Where’s my aunt and uncle?”
“After you left the police station,” Ming said, “your aunt took Jia back to their house in Rose Petal. Your uncle didn’t want them to stay downtown.”
Po nodded. “And uncle?”
“Your uncle…was supposed to be at his office in Congress.”
Po’s hands covered her mouth as tears sprang to her eyes. “No…”
Finally, they reached the bridge that crossed the Enshi river and led into King Valley. A fresh mob crowded the bridge. Apparently the news traveled faster than they did. Their motorcade stopped in sight of the double-helix entwined bridge. People as far as the eye could see littered the entire length of the road and poured onto the grass at the near end of the bridge, blocking their way. The river below roared, and ran high as rainwater poured out of the parched land of King Valley and flooded the riverbed.
“We’ll never get through that crowd,” Ming said.
Wallace radioed to the guards at the gate on the other side of the bridge.
“They’re pounding on the gate, sir!” someone said in the radio. Po could hear the deafening roar of the angry mob banging at the door of the valley. “I don’t know how much longer we can hold them.”
“Let them in,” Po said.
Wallace silenced the radio with a thumb on the button. “Are you out of your mind?”
“We can’t get into the valley unless we can get across the bridge, right? If you let these people into the valley, we’ll be able to get in as well.”
People covered the ground in every direction she looked, huddling together in the driving rain. She glanced back down at the tablet in Ming’s lap.
“Look,” she said, pointing. “If we don’t get in there, we’re going to be crushed by the army when they get here, along with everyone else stuck outside. The only safe place is in King Valley—for these people and for us.”
Captain Wallace stared straight ahead, shaking his head from side to side.
“We don’t have much choice, Captain,” Ming said.
“There’s always a choice.”
“Isn’t it the police’s job to protect the people?” Po asked. “Besides, you heard your man at the gate as well as I did. The gate won’t keep them out much longer.”
“But King Valley—”
“Is my home!” Po’s voice cracked out, and shocked even herself with its ferocity. She forced herself to take a measured breath. “Captain, these people have nowhere
else to go. They’re only here because they’re desperate. We can help them. Have faith.”
How would a soldier think about this? Po imagined what Ari might say—where was he?—and the answer came in a sudden flash of clarity.
“Listen,” she said. “Apart from all that, King Valley is a strategic position. If we can get in there and raise the bridge, it will be difficult for the army to cross—the bridge is a bottleneck. They need the valley for its resources, so they won’t attack or force their way into the valley as long as we can hold it.”
Captain Wallace scoffed. “We can’t hold the Valley by ourselves against the entire army! Even counting the men with us here, there are only a hundred officers in the valley. A few hundred if you count the farmers and their shotguns. We’re still outnumbered a thousand to one.”
“Are we?” Po gazed pointedly out the window at the sea of people.
“But they’re not even armed.”
“That’s the beautiful thing, Captain. They don’t have to be.”
Captain Wallace dropped his hands to his sides and leaned back in the seat. Ming leaned over into the front seat and took the radio from the man’s hands.
“This is Magistrate Ming,” he said into the radio. “Open the gate to King Valley.”
“What!” the officer on the other end cried. “Are you insane?”
Everyone in the car turned to look at Wallace. He took the radio back and held it close to his mouth. “Just do it!” he growled. “That’s an order.”
A moment later, a great cheer rose from the bridge, and the sea of people began to pour into the valley.
The motorcade inched across the bridge with the pedestrians. At the halfway mark, Po opened the door.
“What are you doing?” Ming’s tone was incredulous, frightened.
“Don’t worry,” Po said. “I’ll meet you at my parents’ farm.”
She got out, climbed up onto a stanchion nearby, and watched as thousands upon thousands of people flooded into King Valley. Wallace sent a handful of police officers after Po, and the officers set up at both ends of the bridge to help direct traffic in the driving rain. There seemed an unlimited amount of battered, soaking wet people, mostly young and mostly men. But Po saw women, kids, the elderly, the wounded, and the sick. Some walked heavily laden with packs. Most had nothing more than the clothes on their backs. They seemed beaten down, defeated, but every once in a while a face turned to the cold rain falling from the sky and smiled.
And more than a few recognized Po. As if compelled, they reached out and touched Po’s hands as they walked by.
How could she despair when hope was returning to King Valley? When so many faces showed visible relief upon seeing the gate open to them?
A small group of scrappy looking kids ran by her.
“Po, you’re alive!” one of them said. It was Nando. His dirty cheeks spread into a massive, shining grin as he looked up at her.
“I am,” she said.
The group of street kids gazed up at Po with an awed expression. Drenched from the rain, she felt like a drowned rat, but they looked up at her like she was some kind of minor deity.
“Go on!” she said. “You’re safe here.”
The kids walked on.
A flock of drones descended from the dark gray clouds in the distance and began to circle the bridge. The officer stationed at the far end of the bridge ran back. He demanded that Po retreat behind the gate with him. She refused, at first, but eventually saw reason and went with him to the gate.
“Keep the bridge down a little longer,” she told the men.
“The army is only a mile away. We have to raise it.”
“Not yet,” Po said, laying her hand on the controls.
The army infantry poured out of the shanty towns at the edge of fields. When the tanks began to roll down the hill toward the bridge, the officer in charge shoved Po’s hand off the control board, flipped a switch, and snapped a protective plastic cover down over it.
Po’s hands fell to her sides. The center of the bridge rose up, leaving thousands upon thousands of refugees naked and defenseless before the advancing army.
A tank rolled right into the mob. Lights flashed in the rainy dusk as shots were fired into the crowd. Hundreds jumped off the bridge and cliff into the raging brown and rushing river below rather than be run over by the army.
Tears tracked down Po’s cheeks, but she refused to turn away.
CHAPTER 52
SUSPECT
Ari woke on a slash of dirt in an otherwise green lawn when the ground heaved beneath him. His head felt blurry, like he’d woken up from a deep sleep. Incredible pain filled his mouth. He choked as he pushed himself to his knees, and spat pink foam on the ground.
He shoved himself to his feet and began to walk through a driving rainstorm. A rapid-fire series of explosion split the air. The ground shifted beneath him and as he turned, the white building that rose over his head began, impossibly, to slide sideways.
He tried to yell for help, but his voice only came out as a weak, wet gurgle, and was lost among the storm.
He ran, trying to keep his feet on the shifting ground. Chunks of cornice as large as his head impaled themselves upon the lawn near his feet, and then were carried down into the river as the lawn fell out and everything went down.
Ari sprinted toward a wrought iron gate he could see in the distance. Every breath burned like a mouthful of hot coals as he sucked air through his lips. A squadron of soldiers ran toward him.
They cornered him next to the wrought iron fence. Ari slowed and bent over to brace his hands on his knees, too tired and groggy to keep running. The soldiers fanned out around him, their guns trained on him. Their leader gestured the barrel of his rifle to the ground.
Ari raised his empty hands and fell to his knees on the grass. One of the soldiers got behind him. His vision exploded with red as the soldier jammed the butt of his rifle between Ari’s shoulder blades, forcing him to his stomach on the soaking wet grass. Two others roughly frisked him, yanked Ari’s arms behind his back, pulled zip ties around his wrists so tight they cut into his skin, and hauled him to his feet.
His head was still fuzzy, but Ari had collected his senses enough to realize that as they took him through a gate in the fence, he was being led into an army encampment. To his right, men leaped into awaiting mechs, then turned and stomped the machines toward the building where, now, survivors were crawling out of the wreckage and stumbling through a cloud of smoke and billowing dust that mixed with the driving rain.
Ari turned to the soldiers who had brought him here.
“Uh yuhmahn shu shee shumyum hough ish ahhn ch—” He coughed. His words weren’t coming out right.
A shiver like ice race down his body as he realized what had happened.
When he looked up, Senator Khan was standing before him, a broad umbrella poised above his head, held by a fat man with a horrible bristle mustache. An officer with a pockmarked face stood on Khan’s other side. Ari couldn’t tell his rank because he wore a rain jacket with a deep hood over his uniform.
“This man is a suspect,” Khan said. “Take him into custody.”
CHAPTER 53
MARTIAL LAW
While the rainstorm raged through the night, the army camped on the other side of the raised bridge, and the people they had let into the Valley scattered into the hills and trees in search of shelter from the storm. Wallace, Ming, Po, and a few other officers kept dry in the guard hut at the gate, and Po told them everything she knew.
She told them what she knew about Ari, about how Felix had kept them both prisoners underground, and how she had found the switchyard again with Nando’s help. She told them about Senator Khan, and compared the look of horror on Captain Wallace’s face, and the look of grim resolve that took over Ming’s. It was a shock to the captain, but no surprise to Ming. Po shared how Ari had warned her about the attack on the Capitol, although he didn’t know where it would take place at the time.
Wallace apologized for being so hard on Po. Although Po said she forgave him, she could still plainly see his guilt in his hangdog look. Po didn’t envy Wallace the job he had. He seemed to truly want to protect people, and the way he had treated Po while interrogating her was borne of that impulse. But even his police officers were divided about who they believed, and many secretly supported the rebels because they saw the corruption of the government officials, and the unfairness of the rations distribution—or failure thereof—first hand in their jobs. It meant that Wallace had to walk a very fine line. And now, having pulled back into the Valley, he had crossed that line and would be punished if the general or Senator Khan ever found out. She wouldn’t have wanted his job. No one in their right mind would have.
They slept little and woke early, and in the darkness before dawn, Wallace drove them in a police car they kept at the gate—one of only a few working vehicles the police had running—up into King Valley to get a better line of sight on the army encampment. They had to drive past and around groups of people, a few of whom had taken tarps out of their backpacks and set up makeshift camps. Po tried urging folks, as they passed, to go further back into the woods, to get out of the road and further away from the bridge, but most only responded with blank stares. They didn’t seem to see the point. Their spirits were visibly broken.
The car kept climbing.
“Turn here,” Po said.
They drove through the gate to Po’s farm, and stopped in the rain-dampened dirt driveway near the house. They got out of the car and hiked through the wooded hilltop and brush to the edge of the rise, with a view of the bridge and army beyond.
The army held their lines a half mile back from the raised bridge, at the edge of the urban sprawl called Fields.
“What are they waiting for?” Po asked.
“For our supplies to run out,” Ming said.
“My men took a headcount,” Wallace said. “There are anywhere between five hundred and six hundred thousand people in the valley now.”