by Seth Fried
Inside, the lobby had checkerboard floors leading up to a reception desk that ran almost the length of the room. Two men in black suits sat behind the desk under a large banner of a red eagle. More Mozart was playing and the two men watched in silence as I approached. They were young and athletic with matching flattops.
I called out to them as I approached, “Bonan matenon, kolegoj.”
One of them nodded his head almost imperceptibly.
I lifted the duffel bag at my side and said, “Pli da materialo de la malsupra distrikto.”
I got the sentence out without a stammer. The man to my left was slightly heavier than the one directly in front of me, but otherwise the two looked identical. The thinner man nodded more aggressively now and began shuffling through a couple of folders in front of him, removing a form from one and handing it to me. I waved it off.
“Tio ne estos necesa,” I said.
This got their attention.
“Ĉi tiu aĵo devas esti aldonita sekrete kaj de mi persone,” I continued.
They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“Christ,” the heavier man said. “Your pronunciation is dog shit.”
“You have to go to the classes at least three times a week,” the thinner one said. “You’re only cheating yourself.”
When I tried to answer in Esperanto, he cut me off immediately.
“Speak English. Listening to you is going to make my Esperanto worse.”
Relieved, I held up the duffel again.
“Kirklin wants this package stored here.”
The thinner man held up the form again.
“He doesn’t want it cataloged? Could get lost.”
“Only I can know where the bag is and what’s in it. After last night, you’ll understand the need for discretion.”
“Sure,” he said. “Do you have a line where we can reach Mr. Kirklin so he can confirm?”
I had prepared for this.
“Neniuj komunikaĵoj devus esti senditaj.”
They both winced.
“Guy, I’m telling you,” the heavier one said. “You sound like pennies in a washing machine.”
“No transmissions of any kind should be sent regarding this bag,” I said. “If you need to clear this issue up with Kirklin, one of you can go over to Wilmington Avenue and take it up with him there. Ask him about la pakon and mention my name. Samuel. Pleased to meet you both.”
The two men looked at each other.
“I don’t know, man,” the heavier one said. “That’s all the way across town. Can’t we just let him through? It’s probably just more of Sarah’s stuff. I had to move a bunch of Kevlar to the crawl space just to make room for her fucking trumpets.”
The thinner man held up his hand for the other to stop talking.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Kolego Samuel. My name is Raphael. Let me apologize for Donald here,” he said. “The last twenty-four hours have had us all on edge.”
“Of course,” I said.
“But I have to agree it isn’t a good idea for either of us to leave. There are only two of us watching this entire facility. That might not have been a problem a week ago, but now that our inventory has changed—it’s not safe. You can store the bag here and we won’t hold you to any formalities, but if you have access to Kirklin or any admins, you need to tell him to send us more men.”
I could have kissed him.
“I can let Kirklin know that you need backup as soon as I’m done here. For the time being, I trust you’re both armed?”
Raphael reached just under his desk and produced the largest machine gun I had ever seen. Next to him Donald held up a repeating shotgun and a small box of grenades.
“Oh, good,” I said. “Good. Just checking.”
Donald nodded and tossed me a set of keys over the desk. “If you need any help back there, give us a shout.”
I waved my thanks to them both and walked quickly through the large pair of double doors into a long hallway at the far end of which was a frosted-glass door labeled MAIN INVENTORY. It opened on a storage space the size of a basketball court crowded with racks of assault rifles, handguns, and rocket launchers.
As I worked my way toward the middle of the room through a maze of shelves and stacked crates, I saw rising above the thick press of smaller arms what I could now confirm were three half-assembled artillery guns. I passed by open crates of ammunition with hastily drawn serial numbers written on their sides and unopened, unmarked boxes that only had the word DANGER printed in red letters across their lids. Where Kirklin’s people had run out of gun racks, they had stacked rifles like cordwood on shelves.
Farther in, I started to recognize pieces of Sarah Laury’s furniture I had seen on the train. Her writing desk was now wrapped in plastic and sandwiched between a dozen long metal cases labeled FIM-92A STINGER. Her canopy bed was similarly wrapped and piled high with crates labeled FLAMETHROWER ARRAYS. But just beyond the shelf holding Laury’s trumpets and a few riot helmets was an empty space, in the middle of which was a single crate with loose stalks of straw coming up from under its lid. It was surrounded by sawhorses, each of which bore a handwritten sign that read DO NOT MOVE OR HANDLE. As I had hoped, it was the last of the explosives from the museum demolitions, red sticks of dynamite stacked like cigars.
I grabbed some of Laury’s dresses from a rack and dropped them on top of the crate. I then removed one of the containers of lighter fluid from my bag and doused the fabric. I worked my way back the way I came in, steadily emptying out three containers of lighter fluid in order to leave a continuous trail leading to the dynamite. I propped the door to the hallway open with a rifle and continued the trail all the way to the double doors leading back out to the lobby. I dropped the third empty container of lighter fluid and paused for a moment at the head of the hallway before fishing the box of matches out from the duffel and lowering to a crouch. I struck the match against the box and was already turning to run when I saw the line of lighter fluid catch.
I practically fell out into the lobby.
“Don! Raph!” I said. “I need you to follow me outside for a minute.”
They both watched me with concern as I continued to walk quickly across the lobby.
“You still have your bag,” Donald said.
“This is an emergency. I need to show you both something outside right now.”
They stood up behind their desk.
“What are you talking about?”
I didn’t look back to see which of them said it.
“No time. Run.”
I wasn’t far out of the building before I heard them behind me. We made it less than a block before Donald grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop.
“What’s going on?” he said, out of breath. “What are you showing us?”
I looked over his shoulder at the building. Nothing yet.
“I thought you might be interested to know that the United States Municipal Survey just saved your lives.”
Raphael’s eyes lit up. He grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and called me a son of a bitch.
Donald pulled a handgun from his jacket and that, I suppose, was when the fire finally made its way into the crate.
* * *
I thrashed for a moment, convinced I was falling. I was facedown on the sidewalk in a thick cloud of gray dust. There was no sign of Donald or Raphael. I struggled to my feet and spotted my duffel bag wedged under the front wheel of a car with shattered windows. I stooped to pick it up, vomited, and then limped on down the street.
A series of muffled booms rang out behind me as the fire continued to eat through Kirklin’s stockpile. It was three blocks before the dust began to disperse. There was a throb in my knee and a pain in my chest when I breathed, but I felt ready to finish the job.
I headed toward 853 W
ilmington Avenue, doing my best to blend in with the panicked crowds fleeing the staggered booms of Kirklin’s arsenal burning. Along the way the pain in my chest grew more pronounced and I began coughing up small amounts of blood into my hand. When I reached the address, I found an expensive-looking office tower with SFEM etched above the lobby entrance. As I crossed the street toward the building, I barely recognized my reflection in the glass entrance. A limping man, covered in dust.
The lobby was all modern and bright. The light hurt my eyes as I entered. I made it a few steps toward the elevators before I was surrounded by several of Kirklin’s agents, who looked ready to grab me until they recognized the cut of my suit under the dust.
One of them barked something at me in Esperanto.
“We’re under attack,” I said.
When I spoke, my voice sounded oddly distant and I noticed an uncomfortable pressure behind my eyes.
The largest of the men took a step forward and said something to me in a deep, booming Esperanto. I cut him off.
“Your pronunciation is dog shit,” I said.
The men around him laughed in astonishment and he started to blush.
“How many classes are you going to per week?”
Before he could answer, I added, “You’re only cheating yourself.”
He tried to defend himself in Esperanto and I stopped him.
“Speak English. You sound like a washing machine.”
The men around me all exchanged worried looks.
“Who are you?” the big man said.
“We’ve been attacked,” I said again. “The arsenal at Clairmont is gone.”
“That’s impossible,” one of the men said.
I got on a coughing jag and then gestured toward my appearance. “I was there.”
“Do we know who’s responsible?” the big man said.
I took a step toward him and snapped my fingers in his face a few times.
“Wake up, you big idiot,” I said. “It was Don and Raph the whole time.”
He looked completely lost and turned to his compatriots for help.
One of the men to my right interjected, “Are you talking about the Delancey twins? Donald and Raphael?”
I addressed the man’s question without turning to face him.
“Of course it was the Delancey twins, you buffoon. You ridiculous clown.”
“Hey,” the man said, sounding hurt.
“They rolled over on us,” I said. “They rolled over hard. Now I need one of you rock-eating simpletons to take me up there to check on the rest of the inventory so I can report back that it’s secure. And I’m telling you right now, if I find so much as one bullet out of place I will come back down here and murder every single one of you with my bare hands.”
“Come on,” the big man said. “There’s no call for any of that.” He pointed to one of the men to his right. “Phil will take you up.”
Phil led me to an elevator, keeping his distance from me and occasionally looking back with envy at his colleagues who were allowed to remain downstairs. After I stepped into the elevator with him I called out across the lobby to the big man, “Three classes a week! That’s the only way to true proficiency.”
Phil frowned and placed a key card into a slot above the elevator’s panel of buttons, then hit 12. I waited until we were a few floors up, then said, “Is Carmichael still on seven?”
I pointed at the button when I said it and pushed it as if by accident.
“What?” he said. “I don’t know who that is.”
When the doors opened on seven, I punched him in the jaw, pulled his blazer up over his head, and threw him out of the elevator.
He fell to the floor, where he struggled to pull his coat down. The office around him was alive with activity. There were dozens of navigation consoles where Kirklin’s agents were piloting drones. One agent turned from his screen and noticed the man on the floor just as the doors to the elevator closed.
When they reopened on twelve, I was relieved to see no other agents. The space contained an open floor plan divided into cubicles containing desktop computers and multiline telephones, most of which were now pushed aside to make room for the rest of Kirklin’s arsenal. There were crates of ammo stacked up on either side of the elevator, one of which I placed in the closing doors to prevent the car from changing floors. I then followed the exit signs leading to the floor’s two stairwells, dead-bolting them and barricading them as best I could with whichever of the crates I could lift.
My knee was getting too stiff to bend and I had to more or less drag my left leg as I moved to the middle of the room. I climbed up onto a chair and removed my tie, knotting it around one of the ceiling’s sprinkler heads. Already I heard shouting from the stairwell and Kirklin’s agents banging against the doors.
That was it. There was no more plan left. And while I did not intend to kill myself, I had no thoughts of escaping that place as I began dragging whatever crates I could find beneath the blocked sprinkler. The crates were unlabeled, so I had to trust that whatever was inside would be incendiary enough to destroy the entire floor. The banging from the doors grew more intense. I emptied the remaining containers of lighter fluid and tossed the last one on the floor near the crates, letting it glug out onto the carpet.
I lit a match and dropped it. The floor around me went up in a rush. The fire climbed over a few cubicle walls and onto the crates. I pulled up a chair and watched the flames spread. The wooden crates hissed and popped.
To my right was a wall of windows. Outside, the city looked beautiful. I smiled, then doubled over with a powerful cough as the smoke hit my lungs. The other sprinklers came on in the same moment that one of the doors on the far side of the room flew open. I felt blood running through my fingers and my head becoming lighter. I was pulled from the chair and thrown to the ground. There was a foot on my chest and through a dark haze I saw a man in a black suit point the nozzle of a fire extinguisher in the direction of the crates. As I lost consciousness I heard a long blast of CO2, followed by the men around me shouting, “It’s out! It’s out!”
12 I woke up coughing and found myself once again tied to a chair. Someone said something in Esperanto. The room was bright and I was surrounded by unfamiliar shapes. I had to squint to make out that I was in a small, virtually featureless room with a cement floor and walls of unpainted cinder block. One of Kirklin’s agents tried a few more questions in Esperanto before addressing me in English.
“Are you awake? Can you understand me?”
I probably looked like I was about to say something until I threw up in my lap.
The man took a step back and began discussing something with another agent.
I rested my eyes and eventually heard a door open, followed by Kirklin’s voice.
“Henry?”
I opened one eye and nodded, feeling that same painful fullness in my head.
Kirklin looked back over his shoulder at the agents, who were still standing at attention, and spoke to them in English for my benefit.
“How am I supposed to talk to him if he’s half-dead?”
“None of us touched him,” one of the men said. “He seems to have done this to himself.”
Kirklin looked back to me. He took me in for a moment before shaking his head, then pulled a chair from the other side of the room and sat across from me.
“It was you at Clairmont?”
I nodded again.
Kirklin looked up to the ceiling. It was clear he was doing his best to hold back a massive welling up of rage. But there was also a strange gleam in his eye, as if the whole thing secretly pleased him. Eventually he let out a sigh and smiled sadly before leaning in close.
“You wanted to protect Metropolis so you leveled half a city block?”
“Yes.”
He ran a finger along the shoulder o
f my jacket, examining the dust on his fingertip.
“You’re a fine young man,” he said, softly. “You should have been one of mine.”
He stood up.
“No torture this time, Henry. You’ve earned a fast death.”
He spoke to his men in English again so I would understand. “Take him out to the platform. She wants to do it in front of the muster.”
As Kirklin left, two men approached me, tilting my chair back and carrying me out the door. I heard the noise of a distant crowd grow steadily louder. At first I saw only high ceilings with exposed rafters, but as that noise grew closer, I saw men and women in black suits all around me, cold faces looking down in disapproval. The room was dark except for a perimeter of bright lights at the edge of the crowd. I was taken up onto a raised platform that was otherwise empty. The crowd went quiet and I was left to sit there in silence with hundreds of Kirklin’s agents observing me.
I turned my head to avoid the blare of the lights and saw a stockpile of countless weapons arranged neatly in open crates. No one in the crowd seemed to be armed, but agents with clipboards were walking through the stacks of crates and making notes, conferring with one another and pointing toward the crowd as if discussing how best to disseminate those deadly wares.
Even this activity stopped when from the other side of the room came the sound of confident footsteps. There was an air of expectation and reverence. I turned to see Sarah Laury climb a rise of steps and join me up on the platform. She was wearing the same red dress from the night before, but with a green canvas army coat over it, the large sleeves rolled up over her delicate wrists. She was holding a rifle and her face was painted like a skull.