Janey hugged Tyler close, not wanting to let go.
“I’m gonna miss you too, little lady.” He mounted a black and chrome hog and started the engine. “Now I left my rifle and some ammo for you, handsome. Little lady, I found an extra clip for the forty-five.” He revealed a thirty-eight at the small of his back. “And don’t you worry about Tyler, he’s gonna be fine.” He steered the hog down the bullet train’s exit ramp and looked back. “Ain’t never been no one like you two ever…`cept for maybe that last kid…the one who started Be Nice.” He wiped his eyes. “And you, uh…you make sure you try to see your folks when you get back. They gotta be worried sick about you.”
Crying, Janey buried her face in Wallis’s chest.
A white cloud of exhaust…and Tyler was gone.
Big Larry and Wallis, driving in Big Larry’s SUV, led a column of hogs out of the bullet train and up through a trail cut into the side of the mountain.
Becky and Abe entered the last car. The smell was overpowering. Ms. Fallings had been propped against the far wall. Pete’s corpse was duct taped to her, his rotting face stuck together with her face. Her hands were duct taped behind her.
Becky snapped open Mr. Dylon’s baton.
Ms. Fallings and Pete acknowledged her.
Abe cupped his hand over his ear. “What? Hold on. What was that? Did you say somethin’?” He smiled at Becky. “Y’know, I think she…yep…I’m damn sure she said you were a—”
Janey walked in behind them. “You guys can go on up front.”
Becky handed over the baton. “Here. You gonna beat on her?”
“Nah, I’m ice. Maybe later on.”
Becky and Abe exited the car.
Janey waited, then squatted in front of Ms. Fallings.
Her voice muffled by Pete’s mouth, Ms. Fallings said, “Whatever you’re doing, give it up. You and Wallis, you’ve got no chance.”
Janey inched a kitchen knife out of her jacket sleeve and cut Ms. Fallings’s mouth free of Pete’s.
“You’re insane. You know that? The both you, you need help.”
Janey sat on the floor.
“And what do you think’s going to happen to you, to all of these kids, if you do make it back to Santa Monica?”
Janey smiled. “We’re gonna raise some hell.”
“What do you want?”
“Nothin’. I just wanted to come eff with the person who started all this nonsense—the person who had my mom stomped and busted up.”
“You got an A in your World History class last semester.”
“What?”
“I checked your records, Janey. Yours and Wallis’s. You received an A in World History. You received top marks in all your classes. Wallis, he’s the one with the artsy talent, but you, you’re the one with the brains.”
Janey leaned forward. “Let’s talk about what you did to my mom.”
“Janey. Listen to me. I’m smart.
“Yeah. Maybe. But, right now…you ain’t shit.”
“Janey, do you think I’m going to let Be Nice put me on the meds and the W Line when I turn thirty-five?”
“How should I know? You really think I give a—”
“I’m going to end up in New York, or maybe even Chicago, in a big office somewhere, and I am going to be running the show.”
“Woman, please.”
“Janey, I’m smart! Like you! And I didn’t give up on life just because my father beat the shit out of me every day! You see, I decided to kill him instead.”
“You what?”
“I decided to kill him when I realized I didn’t need a man in my life telling me what to—”
“You’re crazy!”
“Really? Am I? So who’s crazier? The crazy person, or the person who follows him around like a puppy? You’re nothing but a throwback. You’re a submissive woman who does whatever her man—”
“Yeah, I’m a woman! So effin’ what? I can’t say what I want, I can’t do what I want…”
“You’re right. It’s tough out there. No one can do anything. But at least we’re equal.”
Janey snatched Ms. Fallings by the shirt collar. “It’s effed up! Everything’s effed up! I’m tired of it! If there’s nowhere to go, no safe place to run, no safe place to live, then we burn everything down and we start over! And this time, we do it right!”
“Be Nice is order, it’s discipline! Without it, with the changes that are coming, with the new people from all over the world that are coming, you’ll be second class, you’ll be—” Janey held the kitchen knife to her throat. “You can’t kill me. I’m a hostage.”
“Pay real close. When we don’t need your ass anymore, me an’ you are gonna—”
“I liked Wallis’s drawings, by the way. You know, the ones he keeps hidden up in his bedroom?”
Janey glared at her.
“Those big, muscular, superhero types, they’re really quite good.”
“You’re a liar.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Janey. You mean, Wallis didn’t tell you about it? Yes, I saw his drawings when I was in his bedroom. And while I was there…fucking him good…”
Janey pressed the knife to her throat.
Ms. Fallings quickly bent down and bit her on the hand. Janey screamed. Ms. Fallings bit her on the bottom lip. Janey tried to scream again, to pull away, but Ms. Fallings delivered a headbutt. Janey flopped to the floor. Carrying Pete’s body, Ms. Fallings rose from her seated position and dropped on top of her. The back of Pete’s head hit Janey in the face and knocked her out.
Ms. Fallings rolled to her back. She inched across the floor until her hands grasped the kitchen knife.
Becky opened the door to the last car. “Hey, girl, they’re—” She stopped.
Ms. Fallings finished cutting herself free of Pete.
Before Becky could call for help, her windpipe was sliced open.
In the corridor, a kid near the exit in the next car stiffened as a knife lodged in his spine.
Ms. Fallings tossed him aside and leaped off the train.
Big Larry punched his horn as he and Wallis and the others returned.
Abe opened the exit ramp, ran outside, and screamed, “She’s gone! She escaped!”
The bullet train skimmed across the rails at 266 mph. A glow peppered the horizon; the casino lights of Las Vegas.
Wallis and Janey were in bed in their cabin. Janey held a bag of ice to her lip.
“She’s a therapist,” Wallis said, comforting her. “It’s what they do. They try to mess with your head. But she’s gone, we left her back there in the middle of nowhere. She can’t hurt us.”
Janey lowered the bag of ice from her lip. “I was stupid. It was my fault. And now Becky and that other kid…”
“Girl, they’re casualties.”
“They’re what?”
“They’re casualties. It’s what you call people who die—”
“I know what the eff it means. I’m not an idiot.”
“Who said you were an—”
The train lurched and came to a sudden stop.
Janey lowered a window shade and looked outside. The train was parked near the Vegas rail yard, close enough to make out the hotel and casino ad signs. “I just hope you have a good plan—”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m serious.”
“We didn’t have shit before, and now look, we got a bullet train, John Tom and Abe—”
“Baby...are we doin’ the right thing?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean...are you sure what we’re doin’ is right?”
“It needs to get done. That’s the only thing I know.”
“Just promise me no more casualties, okay?”
Without responding, Wallis kissed her.
&n
bsp; He moved off the bed, opened the door, and stepped out of the cabin.
Frank indicated a red line on his map. “If it were me, I’d put everything I had at the Santa Monica Lowell Station. Right about here. It’s only a few blocks away from the Thirty-Third Street Promenade.”
John Tom studied the map. “But we left from here, out of L.A.”
“But since the other four trains that left with us are already halfway across the country by now, the Be Nice higher-ups know we can’t get in touch with them. They’re probably expecting us to head straight for Santa Monica.”
“Somethin’ ain’t right,” Big Larry said. “Be Nice, they shoulda tried to stop us by now. I mean, it ain’t like they don’t know what we’re doin’, that we took over this b-train.”
Frank put on his glasses. “They’ll have us pinned down, our backs to the ocean in Santa Monica. Out here, if they attempted to cut the rail power, we’ve got places to run to, places to hide.”
Big Larry shook his head. “Be Nice, they’re gonna hit us right here in Vegas.”
In a condescending tone, Frank said, “No disrespect…but I believe they’re going to come after us when we get closer to the ocean.”
Wallis faced Big Larry. “Make the call.”
“I say we send out the viddi, and we wait a bit. See if Be Nice Vegas makes any moves. See if they try and follow us from the Vegas station. If they do, we’ll lead them away.”
“Which’ll give us enough time to get another train.”
Abe raised his hand. “But who’s gonna drive this train?”
“I talked to the engineer,” Frank said. “I’ve got it taken care of.”
A fat kid ran into the car and yelled, “We’re done! The viddi’s finished!”
The dining car was full of kids. The train porter ladies were whipped, exhausted. Wallis, Janey, and Frank entered the car.
The kids stopped eating and straightened in their chairs.
Wallis grabbed one of the porters and led her to the online systems behind the bar. Frank handed her a thumb drive.
“Okay,” he said, “I want you to upload this to every website you can think of.” He stood beside Wallis and Janey. “These trains have their own routers. Which means the internet can’t be disconnected or blocked. Now once this viddi’s out there, it’s out there—worldwide. There’s absolutely no way to pull it back.”
Everyone in the car stared at Wallis.
He took Janey’s hand and nodded to the porter.
It was a busy morning in downtown Tokyo. The millions of over-thirty-five residents went about their daily routines, either commuting to their day jobs on the W Line, or trying to make it back home from the night shift. Salesmen, restaurateurs, and club owners enticed the under-thirty-fives on the moving peddie walks. Cars, trucks, and stylish hogs sped past on the congested streets.
A carefree gathering of under-thirty-fives click-clacked on their laptops and sellies in the NOODLES NOODLES NOODLES BAR when the viddi popped up.
There was a deafening hush. It was immediately followed by a symphony of laptop keyboard and selli-screen punches.
In less than an hour, members of Be Nice Tokyo had arrived and taken over the bar; other members gathered in restaurants and gambling parlors and bowling alleys around the city.
The viddi opened with images of Ms. Garner as she tortured John Tom, Becky, Pete, and Abe on the train. Ms. Fallings, with her pink truth serums, came up next. Mr. Dylon, with his collapsible baton, and Pete’s fatal beating followed.
Frank’s voice narrated over the white supremacist biker attack in the desert, the Dead work farms, Rev. Brown and his Christ-ees followers, and the three crucifixions. The torture of John Tom and the others was set on a loop and intercut with footage of the bombings carried out by the blue-masked Natives, along with shots of the spray painted words, THE BLUE.
John Tom and Abe spoke, telling of what they’d seen. They told of the golden oldies in Manhattan Prime, and said that they were using Be Nice; the organization was a joke. They finished as Pete’s murder played in a continuous loop.
Be Nice Paris and Be Nice London had left the nightclubs and the breakfast bars and were on their way home when they first saw the viddi on their handheld gadgets. Cars, trucks, and hogs stopped on the motorways, the drivers hooked to their selli and newspad screens.
Be Nice Mombasa, Soweto, Tripoli, and Cairo picked up the viddi, as did Be Nice Melbourne, Honk Kong, and Beijing.
Wearing their blue masks, Wallis and Janey appeared at the end.
Wallis held Tyler’s rifle and forty-five. “The Be Nice higher-ups, they lied! They lied to all of us! They let oldies make profits off the Dead, they let crazy-ass Christ-ees burn people up! They use us to keep control while they sit in their big offices and count their money! And there’s no meds! No meds for anyone who lives on the outside!”
Janey stepped forward. “On the outside, Be Nice lets the race haters do whatever they want! They let them rape people! They let them kill people!”
“If Be Nice lies to us now, what will they do to us later?”
“And when the foreign people come here, the ones who bought up all the land, they want Be Nice to keep runnin’ things! But if space is the only thing that matters, and the stars and the sun don’t stomp stomp, then why should we?”
“Put on a blue mask and help us! Help us tear this world apart! Help us start over! Help us rebuild! And this time, let’s do it right!”
Pictures of The Mighty Morphon and Janey’s charcoal sun dissolved over their faces.
The engineer kneeled and crawled forward. He ducked behind a box car and sneaked into the rail yard. He spotted a lone bullet train.
Wallis met him a half mile up the rails.
“I saw one. I can handle it,” the engineer said.
Wallis raised his hand in the air and made a fist.
Not far behind him, John Tom, Abe, and Frank motioned the rest of the students forward. It was an army of blankets, pillows, sellies, and grab bags of snack food. Forcibly pushed along, the train car porters did their best to follow.
Headlights flashed as Big Larry’s SUV parked. Be Nice Denver followed on their hogs. Janey took Wallis’s hog from one of the Be Nice Denver members and climbed on. She drove to Wallis. Wallis jumped on in front of her and waved at Big Larry. Big Larry’s SUV and the Be Nice Denver hogs took off toward the Vegas lights.
Excited, checking a selli screen, Frank ran up to Wallis and Janey. “Mother-I fucked you!” he said. “We’re hot! We’re on fire! The viddi’s already up to thirty-thousand hits on Pace and Bleep!”
Big Larry and the Be Nice Denver hogs stopped in front of the Vegas train terminal.
Big Larry and two Be Nice Denver members huddled in the backseat of Big Larry’s SUV. A crate of cooking oil-filled liquor bottles, stoppered with strips of cloth, was set between their legs.
They ducked as a fleet of cars and trucks arrived, one after another, and parked around them. Young men and women wearing Be Nice masks and carrying baseball bats and shock wands stormed inside the terminal.
Big Larry selected one of the liquor bottles. He slid out of his SUV and flashed his brights.
Be Nice Vegas spotted him from inside the terminal and rushed out to the parking lot.
Big Larry and his crew lit their liquor bottles and let them fly.
Explosions of orange flames and hot cooking oil forced Be Nice Vegas to duck behind their cars and trucks.
The Nation Star Line bullet train suddenly rocketed out of the terminal.
Big Larry yelled to Be Nice Vegas, “Wallis and Janey are gone! They just got away! Eff you and eff Be Nice!”
Big Larry dived back in his SUV, started it, and drove past them.
The hogs followed on his tail.
Be Nice Vegas started their cars and trucks and raced away
in the direction of the Nation Star Line train.
In the rail yard, Wallis and Janey, along with the female porters, herded the ragged assortment of students aboard the bullet train the engineer promised he could drive. The engineer, last up, gave Wallis and Janey a dopey grin.
Big Larry and the hogs drove up and skidded into the train’s storage area.
In their cars and trucks, Be Nice Vegas chased after the Nation Star Line train. The window shades had been drawn on each car. Loud techno music boomed from inside.
The engineer’s control room was abandoned. An LED display on the instrument panel flashed the word AUTOMATIC.
As their train pulled out of the yard, Wallis and Janey jumped up on the seats. The kids shouted and cheered. John Tom and Big Larry high-fived. The Hollywoodies and Abe lifted Frank on their shoulders and carried him up and down the aisles.
After the celebration, a conference table was arranged in the first car. Frank sat behind a wall of laptop screens and piled-up sellies.
At the other end, Wallis and Janey talked with Big Larry, John Tom, and Abe.
Frank looked over the laptop screens. “Be Nice Tokyo, they just posted something about the viddi on Bleep!” His eyes switched from laptop to laptop. “Be Nice Copenhagen and Prague, it looks like they’re—”
John Tom pounded his fist on the table. “But what about Cali?”
“The west coast is asleep! And everyone else is still out partying!”
Janey kicked the table. “We’ll be Santa Monica in one hour! Don’t we have anybody with us yet?”
“Got-damn, woman! We need to give it more time!”
Janey shot a look across the table.
“Ma’am! I meant, ma’am!”
An old man and woman stared at Ms. Fallings.
She paced around the couple’s living pod, repeatedly checking the time on her wrist implant.
The old man lit a cigarette and said with a gravelly voice, “I like to smoke. I been smoking for years. Smoking is really good for you.”
His wife puffed a cigar. “I like cigars. I like to smoke them when I work at the Java Java Java shop. What about you, ma’am? Do you like to smoke?”
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