The Revival (17 page)

WHEN MY EARS CLEAR, I hear Imani, arrived from the front entrance, supervising her soldiers as they smash more of the diorama façades. Some of the captives need coaxing out, since all hope of rescue seemed to have evaporated before now, and it's hard for them to believe that we are not bringing some further torment to inflict on them. But here and there a familiar face, altered by time and hunger, appears, and we get our tribeswomen to reassure the others.

The girls we free from the ocean dioramas tell us there are more, many more, and we make our way through the vast building, making slow progress through the dark, doubling back again and again, interpreting the blueprint by flashlight and lighter.

The Hall of Mexico and Central America… the Hall of African Peoples… the Hall of Plains Indians. We work our way through all of them.

We come to a hall with two levels of dioramas and a herd of taxidermied elephants in the middle, the bull's trunk extended in a silent call. The slavers make their last stand here, and the elephants are gradually pocked with new bullet holes (the original ones were, presumably, repaired).

From behind the dead wildlife, the surviving people emerge blinking, crying, tearless, voiceless, screaming. Finally, we have a parade of hundreds.

The Uptowners are next.

Carolyn, Donna, and I make a tally of our tribe members: Kristy, Shannon, Ayesha, Olivia, all three of our Ashleys. More and more. It starts to feel like a victory and not just a slaughter the farther we get away from the gruesome room with the blue whale spattered with blood.

“You took long enough,” says Carolyn as she helps some girls out from where they were hiding behind a pair of black rhinos.

“I did,” I admit. “I'm sorry.”

“We thought you were dead when things broke up at the UN,” she says. “Glad you're not.”

“For now,” I say. For all I know, we may be joining the black rhinos soon enough.

We've lost a single fighter, a tall girl named Lanita. She is laid in state on a wooden bench in the Hall of African Peoples, beneath a Zulu chief's cowhide shield, with a knobkerrie and assegai at her side. The freed girls pass by in a silent line, each touching her face in a grateful tribute before moving on.

In the very last room we search, we find some old friends. Tricia and Sophie, who we knew as Psychedelic Cowgirl and Morticia. At first, we miss them because, with their usual aplomb in matters of clothing, they have torn off the hides of the buffalo they were penned up with and turned them into warm ponchos.

“OMFG,” says Cowgirl.

“WTAF,” says Morticia.

“'Sup, Buffalo Girls,” says Donna. “Won't you come out tonight?”

In the shadow of the herd of elephants, we try to decide what to do next.

Imani, flashing a rare smile, is all for keeping the momentum. “I say we roll on, take out the Uptowners. They're slippin' anyhow; that's what I hear.”

“You won't get any argument from me,” I say. “Let's hook up with our friends.” I've been avoiding contact for now, not wanting to give Peter and the others away with a transmission at the wrong time.

“Only—I'm after something in particular.”

Imani looks at me skeptically. “Go on.”

I've been wondering what I would tell Imani, but the possibility of getting killed before it was even an issue had allowed me to punt the question downfield. Now I can either lie to her or give her information that could end up, if she plays her cards right, making her the most powerful person in the world.

There's the way Chapel played it. There's the way I played it before, when I knew the most important thing there was to know—I lied to Imani and everyone else.

So I decide to do the opposite.

“The Uptowners have a device,” I say, “that controls the US nuclear arsenal.”

Imani blinks.

“Okay,” she says. “Explain.”

So I do.

Or at least, I get partway in before Rab's walkie-talkie chirps.

“Come in,” says Rab as we cluster around him.

Evan's voice comes over the line.

“To whom am I speaking?” The precision and formality of a true sadist.

“How did you get this?” says Rab. But I already know the answer. It's the channel we agreed on with Titch.

“I got it from your pet giant,” says Evan. “Afraid he didn't survive the procedure.”

Donna gasps and covers her mouth. She steps back, presumably to keep Evan from hearing her cry.

“Yeah, he took quite a while to finish off. Guy had a lot of guts. Anyhow. Let's talk.”

“What about the others? Is Peter alive?”

“Is that the queer? Yeah, he's still kicking, for now. The other Brit is gone, though.”

“I need proof that he's alive.”

“Well, I would only give you proof if I wanted something from you. But I don't.”

“You do,” I say. “You do want something.”

“What's that, Jeff?”

“You want to kill me.” Donna looks at me like I'm crazy.

“All in good time,” says Evan. “Remember, it's not really up to me. It's up to the guy in the sky.”

Kath grabs the walkie from Rab.

“Evan?” she says.

“Oh, hi, Sis,” says Evan.

“Evan, listen to me. If you let Peter go, I'll let you go.”

“Let
me
go?”

“Yes. Instead of putting you down. Like I plan to.”

“Words are air, Sis. Nice try, though. You've got balls. You should have been a dude. Well, gotta go. I'll be in touch.”

WELL, THAT WAS FUN.
I wish I could be there and just watch them, just enjoy the utterly fucked expressions on their faces.

Me and the boys are moving out, heading along a damp, smelly maintenance corridor.

In a way, it's a shame I can't wait for them to arrive, which they will no doubt do, being the kind of friend-rescuing dickheads they are.

I wonder, for a second, if anybody would rescue
me
.

Maybe not.

Still, I'd trade any amount of palling around and shooting the shit for the feeling I have now, being on top of it all, kicking ass and taking names. Am I lonely? Sure. But we all are.

Gunfire from up top. That'll be the old folks, either the Russians or the Chinese, depending on who got here first. They've come for the football, of course. Oh, they'll probably wrap it up in some bullshit, like they're trying to prevent catastrophe, or save us from ourselves, or something, but when it comes down to it, they want the power and they don't want anybody else to have it.

My boys will slow them down, but there's only so much they can do. It was definitely time to abandon the old HQ. The Bazaar is done.

I don't care. The way I see it, this was just small potatoes, just a stepping-stone. All that matters is me and the nukes and the deal I'm going to cut with the Reconstruction people so that I don't make a deal with the Resistance or the Chinese or the Russians. Or maybe I
will
make a deal, if they have a better offer.
Somebody's
got to have something better than what that bitch Chapel wanted. I'm not going to hand over control to some Resistance so they can let a bunch of losers and mud people come in and ruin the country even worse than it's been ruined.

I kick open the door to the stairwell that leads up to the street level. And I ponder my next move.

What this place needs is a straight shooter like me in charge. And if people aren't smart enough to see that, I'll have to make it apparent myself.

See, yours truly is not as much of a dumbfuck as his teachers used to say. All those fuckers who said I wasn't meeting my potential? Turns out, I can do the reading when it's something I'm
interested
in. Like, for instance, the section of the football's documents headed
Strike Option Packages
.

It took me a little while to work out, but the tl;dr is this: You can't just launch a nuclear missile like it was a video game or something. There were some military guys who, like, simulated a whole bunch of scenarios and then programmed in shortcuts so that you could respond with a code, depending on what places you wanted to nuke. Those are the “packages” they're talking about. Like a meal combo at McDonald's.

Except, instead of ordering Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese Meal, you're ordering St. Petersburg and Vyborg, or Beijing and Tianjin, or whatever. All you have to do is know the activation code and have the biscuit to do it.

The door opens onto the street. I hear the rattle of gunfire from inside the terminal. Some kids are fleeing out the front doors. Good. More cover for us. I heft the black briefcase along.

The shit is kind of out of date, and the entry process is slow, which I guess they did so that fools couldn't launch a strike by accident like they were butt-dialing or whatever.

Anyhow, after a suitable period of study, I've decided to dial in a strike, just to show people that I mean business.

This probably sounds like I'm some kind of shitty James Bond villain—like, they were always threatening to nuke Paris
if
you didn't pay up or whatever. But what's different is (a) I'm cutting to the chase and actually blowing the place up and (b) I'm not stupid enough to blow up Paris or London or something. I mean, if you did that, they'd definitely have to take you out.

No, I'm going to blow up someplace so they know I'm serious about killing people, but someplace that the Reconstruction Committee clearly don't give that much of a shit about. So after much consideration, I have settled on Damascus and someplace called Homs. Nobody really cares about a bunch of Syrians, which is obvious enough from, like, world history. I mean, people might even
thank
me.

At the very least, they will know that I am not a guy to fuck around with.

Yes
, I know that there are loads of, like, innocent people and women and children and whatever, but I've been getting along just fine without them, so I don't see why this should matter. And really, is it any different from how everybody else acts? I mean, if people cared more about the little kids and everything, at least more than all the other shit they care about, they would have done something about them already. Sure, when they die, they're all, like, boo-hoo. But up till then? Nothing.

I'm going to have to delay the launch, though, because I'm still waiting to hear back from the Reconstruction people. After I told them Chapel wasn't in charge anymore, they freaked out and said that they had to
form a response
, which I guess is their term for slow-playing and hoping that some of their commandos are still alive to try to kill me. I know they're going to reject my demand, which is to be acknowledged as the acting US head of state. Probably because of some bullshit like I don't command the allegiance of the populace or something. Which is true, except give me a second.

Uptown may be going through some hard times, but we're gonna stage a Bieber-level comeback. It's like when my man Adolf was back to the wall, hanging out in the bunker, and everybody was like,
The Führer has a secret weapon he's just waiting to use! It's gonna turn the whole war around!
Well, just imagine if he actually had nukes. Yeah. When people see that I brought the world powers to heel, you best bet they will kiss my ass.

Why else would that dude Kim Jong Whatever have made it as long as he did? He had a shitty haircut, he had zero charisma, but he had the nukes.

Now that I know I'm willing to kill, like, millions of people, it really puts everything else into perspective. I mean, what does it matter that I killed maybe twenty, thirty people personally, that my boys killed a lot more? It's refreshing to shake off any little vestiges of guilt that might have been floating around like toxins in my system. I mean, it's not like I ever
really
cared, but it's hard to shake the prejudices of your upbringing, right? Like the whole tiny-little-voice-that's-your-conscience bullshit. And maybe that's what growing up is: learning to be just who you are, not who other people want you to be.

Which is my way of saying that I don't feel bad about my plans to kill Chapel and the gay dude from the Square. Just satisfied that he came back for his little boyfriend. And I figure it's asking too much to bait the trap a second time, like expect to catch Jefferson the same way. So at this stage, the two 'mos are just an encumbrance.

But when I went back for them? They were gone. Bonds cut, no sign of them.

And I couldn't even take it out on the hides of the guys I left to guard them, because they're dead.

I'd like to do something about it, but it's not efficient at this stage to worry about how it all happened and how it's going to play out. I've got to keep my eyes on the prize. I can hear some kind of propaganda broadcast from inside the terminal, in English but with a telltale foreign accent.

“Put down your weapons. We mean you no harm. We have come to administer the Cure and restore order.”

Yeah, right.

Me and my posse—my top twenty soldiers, who'll be, like, my Praetorian Guard in the New Order—cross Lexington, and over to the Chrysler Building.

It's all fortified and rigged up for power on the sixty-seventh floor. They called it the Cloud Club, and I figured the name was awesome, so I didn't call it anything new. When they built this building in the olden days, they made a special spot for the ballers and shot callers, because if you could build the tallest building in the world (at the time), you know you would put in a nice place to get your drink on with other rich white people.

The old place is pretty cherry, with cool murals of Pre-Sickness New York seen from the air, marble columns, granite floors, and velvet chairs. A year ago, I had it stocked up with canned food and lots of booze so we can chill here for quite a while as the hoi polloi duke it out below. We even have an elevator powered by people, which is probably a major bummer if you have to spin the giant hamster wheel to get it up and down (not my problem).

After about half an hour in the damn elevator, we wedge open the doors to the club and breathe in the clean air, high, high above the burning and pillaging and rotting corpses. My chief mechanic, Tucker, sparks up the generator, and we set the champagne to chill in the fridges. I know people say you shouldn't celebrate in the fourth quarter, but they're all dead and I'm alive.

Chapel's phone thing beeps. I pick up.

“Yyyyello?” I say.

“Where is Chapel?” they say. It's the Reconstruction peeps.

“I told you, forget about Chapel. You're dealing with me.”

“Is Chapel dead?”

“Honestly? No. At least not yet.” No need to tell them much more than that.

There's a pause on the line. Then: “We will only negotiate with Chapel.”

“So you're saying you reject my deal.”

“We never considered any kind of deal with you. There is no negotiation.”

I'm wondering why they put it this way, and I figure that they're keeping an eye on the PR side of the thing, like,
How will history look at it?
If it all goes to shit, they won't want to get caught having negotiated with a sociopath.

(Yours truly.)

But so what? Like empathy is such a good thing? I read this book once (okay, I skimmed it) that said that lots of CEOs and stuff were sociopaths. But the author acted like that was a
problem
. The fact is that to get things done in life, you need to keep from having your viewpoint contaminated by other people's feelings. Would America have started if, like, George Washington was worried about how the British felt? No way. So I don't
feel
what other people are feeling. So I have to guess based on other factors. So I don't find emotions contagious. Does that make me a
thing
, the way Mom said it that last time? Fuck that noise.

However, the Reconstruction dudes clearly have no plans to deal with me. So as I expected, I'll have to convince them of my bona fides.

“Guys, I'm sorry to hear that. Looks like I'll have to demonstrate my goodwill or whatever. I'd check the news feed in about an hour or so if I were you.”

They think they have room to maneuver. But their soldiers are dead. And nobody else can get to me up here.

So I hang up. And I fetch out the football. And my magic satphone. And I get to raining death.