Amped (18 page)

The electric generator for the spotlights is on two wheels with a muddy trailer hitch jutting out. Looks like it used to be that trademark John Deere green color, but now it’s rusted and caked with sooty exhaust from spending long nights keeping an eye on us. It supports a leaning aluminum tower about twelve feet tall, sprouting four glowing spotlights like metal flowers.

To his credit, Nick tried to stick to the shadows. Stepped carefully. Kept an eye on the pool of light and scanned the grass for that familiar cube shape. He stayed in the darkness, but it wasn’t enough.

A handheld spotlight hits him and he freezes. Puts his palm out against the light and squints. All he can see is that acid burn of brightness from the dark. Looks like somebody says something to him, because he turns and starts to move away fast. Toward home and safety.

He doesn’t make it far.

Flashlights strafe back and forth across the grass. Nick is running now. His sneakers slash through shadow and light. The last thing I can make out clearly is Nick looking toward Eden. One small trailer with warm light spilling out. Home. He twists
violently as someone grabs him from behind. A hairy forearm closes over his chest and then confusion. The image is blurred by hair and dirt and flashlight streaks, and then finally, tears.

Our world here is getting smaller every day.

I can feel the vise closing in. Those men in the fields. And an army of them beyond the field. A nation of reggies locked arm in arm and taking one step closer to us every night. Closing ranks around us and all the other Uplift sites, compressing our crowded neighborhoods into ghettos.

Lucy squeezes my hand tight but never turns away from the screen. Her teeth are clenched but she doesn’t look scared. She just looks sad.

“Animals,” she says, “a bunch of animals.”

“We’ve got to do something,” I say. “Go out there.”

“What then?” asks Jim. “Start shooting? Nothing to be done except sit tight. The kid will be okay. Things will go back to normal.”

“How can you believe that?” I ask.

“Because most people are good,” says Jim. “But not when they’re afraid.”

I glare out the open front door toward the field. The spotlighters are still out there. Getting drunk. Hooting and hollering. Raking their lights over our trailers. I’d love to go out there and seek retribution. I know how to activate my Zenith. But I have no idea what I’m capable of.

“The assholes who did this don’t seem afraid,” I say.

“They’re terrified. Waiting for an excuse to start shooting. If we set one angry foot in that field, it won’t end out there. It will end here, in Eden. We have to swallow this. Nick is safe. It’s a small price to pay.”

“It’s a price we shouldn’t have to pay.”

Jim kicks the coffee table, shouts. “We’re
lucky
to pay it! Because Joseph Vaughn will take
any
excuse
. Any excuse, Owen.
His Priders would love to come in here tonight and shoot us down like dogs. We are sitting on gasoline-drenched kindling from sea to shining sea. You want to be the match that lights the fire?”

I blink at Jim, surprised. His sudden rush of anger has sapped the venom from my veins.

“Owen,” says Lucy, softly, “we have a bigger problem.”

A wiry hand clamps onto my shoulder from behind. Gently, I’m shoved out of the doorway. A skinny cowboy walks past me and into the trailer, boots clomping on the linoleum. He smells like gasoline and beer.

“My nephew all right?” asks Lyle, impassive.

“He’ll be fine,” says Jim, moving to block Lyle’s sight of Nick’s temple. He’s too late.

“Spotlighters did that?”

Jim says nothing. None of us do.

“You with me, Gray?”

“We can’t go into that field. Not tonight.”

“Okay then,” he says and turns on his heel. He strides out the door and into the warm night. Just the ghost smell of gasoline left behind. Gone so fast it’s like he wasn’t even here.

Except we all know where he’s going.

Thirty seconds later I’m trotting down the empty main street of Eden, listening to my own whistling breath, and I can’t help but picture it: the end of Lyle’s sad, furious life. Inescapable as the sunset.

The skinny cowboy strides into that dry field, talking about war and new worlds and retribution. Takes a shotgun spray to the belly. Goes down cackling and firing his pistol, guts in the grass. Nails one or two of those beer-soaked morons and they go down like sacks of mud. Then, spotlighters flood into Eden on a rampage.

The scene plays out in my mind so clearly, it’s got the familiar feel of a memory. I jog faster down the dirt path, past dark trailers and buzzing streetlights.

The shouts are already starting from beyond the fence. Rising on the breeze, thin and shrill. Lyle must have marched straight into the field. He’s pure anger and military trained, but he’s alone and the spotlighters have firepower.

Five Zeniths left and it looks to be four real soon.

Coming around Lucy’s trailer I have to push past gawkers. People stand in clumps, keeping away from the porch lights. Some of their faces are familiar in the twilight, but many more are newcomers. The stream of cars packed with blankets and groceries hasn’t let up. Every day it’s another family, another car parked
in the lot, another dog leashed to a tree. And now just about all of them are watching the field, worried.

I see why pretty quick: it’s just Lyle out there.

From behind the fence, I make out a semicircle of maybe two dozen spotlighters standing two or three deep around Lyle.

Thankfully, none of Lyle’s soldiers in Astra have figured out what’s happening. Otherwise this wouldn’t be a fight. It would be a war.

Guns and beer bottles and clenched fists. The mounted spotlights blaze down on Lyle’s thin frame and a flurry of handheld spotlights hit him from odd angles. In a wifebeater and dusty jeans, he’s a prizefighter slouched in the ring, outmatched. There’s nothing to the guy, just that thin silhouette burned in crisp detail. A dozen narrow shadows splaying out behind him like knife blades.

The fighting hasn’t started yet, but I can see in the angle of Lyle’s shoulders that it’s close.

A twinkle of light flutters past Lyle’s head and he doesn’t flinch. An empty whisky bottle bounces into the grass, thunks into the fence a few yards from me.

“You ready to fuckin’ die, Frankenstein?” calls somebody.

I clamber over the fallen wooden fence, scale the new shiny chain-link, and jog into the field. My breathing isn’t coming easy. Moving toward Lyle, I’m having to concentrate on pushing my breaths out. Each pant squeezes out of my mouth as a strained, grunting curse.

Fuck
me. Fuck me. Fuck this.

As I cross the field, a few lights swing my way and shove my shadow out behind me. Light-kissed moths flutter overhead. For one absurd second, it feels like Little League baseball. Like I’m trotting onto the field for a night game. Must’ve left my glove on the bench.

Then someone fires a shotgun into the air, and a cold tickle of fear crests my scalp and cascades down the back of my neck.

“Here comes your girlfriend, cowboy,” calls a voice from behind the lights.

Laughter.

I get close to him, but Lyle doesn’t turn around. He’s swaying in place. I can hear him humming a tuneless song. I grab his shoulder and turn him around. Thank God he doesn’t have a weapon in his hands.

“This isn’t happening,” I hiss.

Now that I see Lyle up close, I get the feeling he isn’t seeing me back. His eyes are black and dead, half lidded, like they were in that rotten trailer. Just a pair of lifeless doll eyes anchoring an idiot grin to his face.

Lyle has gone inside his own mind. Letting the machine step in and do the work. Now I know we’re in real fucking trouble.

“Where are you, Lyle?” I whisper. “Come back.”

The circle of spotlighters is closing in. Catcalls coming louder. Another bottle flies past.

Lyle’s eyes finally flicker to life, speckled with lights. With an effort, he focuses on my face. A ghost of a smile surfaces. His eyes are shining with tears.

“We’re gonna change the world,” he whispers.

“Don’t do this, Lyle,” I say.

“I’m whole hog, man,” he replies. “Level five. It’s fuckin’ beautiful.”

One hand clamped to Lyle’s shoulder, I turn and face the circle. Try to smile while I pull him away. “We don’t want any trouble,” I say.

Lyle starts humming again, like a slack-jawed escapee from a mental ward. He’s taking deep breaths, savoring the breeze. For just this one second, it’s nearly silent in the field. Only the far-off puttering of the generator and thousands of pounds of cool night air sighing, dropping down onto our shoulders out of the infinite black sky.

The circle of men around us is complete, closing in like wild dogs. Reflexive group movements unfolding according to an ancient script. Everybody knows his part. These guys have probably all been practicing since grade school.

“He’s just drunk and wandered off,” I say. Lyle smiles at them, still humming. “We’re going.”

A flannel-shirted guy steps out, and my legs go numb with adrenaline. This is him. The guy who watched, laughing, while those teenagers worked me over with dirt clods. The one with the tattoo. Gunnin’ Billy.

“Hey, buddy,” he says, “we’re
all
drunk. That ain’t getting you nowhere.”

He’s flashing a strained smile through a week’s growth of stubble. He holds a black pump-action shotgun with the butt propped on his hip, casual. The weapon’s not tucked under his armpit with the muzzle down, like a hunter, but arrogantly aimed at the sky. More like a bank robber.

Watching me, Billy digs a cherry-red shotgun shell out of his jeans pocket. Shoves it into his shotgun, then rams it forward with the ball of his thumb. Digs out another shell. And another.

Snick. Snick. Snick.

“Told you not to come back, didn’t I? Already gave you the score and here you are again. You ain’t just getting beat down this time, amp,” he says.

Somehow, the oxygen has rushed out of the field. The main spotlight is behind Billy and his face is in shadow. Except for his teeth. Straight and long and yellow. His teeth glint as he talks quietly.

“Y’all got to know your place. We’re here for the safety of the town. We men are the only thing standing between you animals and our wives and families. Our kids.”

I can’t hold back. “You nearly killed a helpless kid tonight.”

Those yellow teeth wink at me from the beard. “He ain’t a kid,” says Billy. “He’s an amp. There’s a difference. Besides, we was trying to help him out. Did a little surgery. Tried to make him into a human being. It was a goddamn favor.”

“Little shit’s lucky we let him keep his robot eye,” says a man and nudges the guy next to him. They snicker.