Authors: Daniel H. Wilson
Amped (26 page)
Vaughn kicks an empty can, sends it rattling down the alley. “Get this amp on his way. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Lyle’s eyes never leave mine. “Whatever you say, boss,” he says.
The laughing cowboy drags me onto my feet. I try to swallow through a half-collapsed throat and choke on it. I’m seeing the world through gauze as Lyle shoves me out of the alley. I stand there, swaying on my feet.
“You’re letting me go?” I ask, incredulous.
The tang of far-off smoke stings my nostrils.
“Sorta,” says Lyle, shrugging. He opens the car door and gets in. Slams it shut on my disbelief.
“You smell that?” Vaughn asks, leaning over the hood of the car. His voice seems to come from far away. “You better run home, my friend. Eden is burning.”
United States Capitol, Washington, D.C.
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, I come to this house of the people to speak to you and all Americans at a defining moment—as the impact of a volatile new technology rends at our union and tears at the bonds of human kinship—as our nation stands on the very precipice of civil war.
Yesterday, a coalition of extremists known as Astra, their bodies implanted with advanced technology, launched a series of coordinated, premeditated attacks on three American cities.
The attack yesterday posed a direct challenge to the constitutional rights of Americans to assemble and freely express their beliefs. Many innocent lives were lost to fanaticism. By choosing to reject rational discourse and to take the lives of their fellow citizens, these extremists have abandoned everything except for the will to power, and they have therefore abandoned their own cause.
I want to speak tonight directly to the hundreds of thousands of implanted individuals who are peaceful and who bear no ill will toward our union. We respect your decision to undergo medical implantation. We understand that over the last tumultuous months, tensions have run high between implanted and nonimplanted citizens. Debates have raged in our courts, our halls of Congress, and in our churches and homes. We ask that you be patient. Peace will come in time.
Tonight, however, we must seek to maintain the compact of our union that was sealed in the flames of a catastrophic civil war that took place more than a century and a half ago.
As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for the defense of the American people from the extremists who are in our midst. We will use every resource to hunt these extremists down, turn them against one another, and drive them from safe shelter and into the arms of the law. Likewise, we will not hesitate to use
any
means
necessary
to protect innocent individuals with implants.
A great task awaits us—a rectification of human nature itself. The continued existence of our union depends upon our success in this endeavor.
We must seek the unity of natural man with the artificial world that he has built—with the technology that can save or destroy him, with new capabilities that can bring about great good or great harm, and with the technological devices that can nourish or starve his spirit.
We must seek and find an ultimate harmony between body and machine, a common ground from which every citizen is free to contribute toward improving the quality of our entire civilization.
This is the search that we begin tonight.
Smoke is rising from Eden—thin black ribbons braiding themselves in the sky. I stumble and try to run harder. I’m sucking air in ragged breaths, my throat and ribs and fingers bruised and hurting. The breeze carries the sharp chemical smell of a whole lot of unnatural, man-made shit burning up fast.
Cancer on the wind.
The war has really started now. Jim told me it was coming.
They’re just waiting for an excuse,
he said. Maybe my dad even saw a twinkle of it on the horizon fifteen years ago when he healed me and gave me something extra while he was at it. Deep down, they must have feared that one day it would come to this: the new against the old.
Even Samantha saw it.
In my imagination, I envisioned a heroic battle. Guns and guts and glory. Instead, I’m sneaking into a burning trailer park to find a goofy kid and a woman who may have pretended to like me as a favor to her psychopath brother.
I hesitate a moment at the tree line, watching the glint of sun off Eden’s unwanted chain-link fence. No movement. Then I sprint across the muddied field, keeping my eyes on the swivel. The spotlighter brawl has left its mark here: wadded-up shirts that got ripped from Priders’ backs; glinting debris from smashed-up folding chairs; and that rusted, bullet-riddled generator slumped over like bloated roadkill.
But clear so far.
I climb over the rattling chain-link fence and stop on the other side, leaning against it. At least one trailer is burning for real. I don’t remember who lives there. But an honest-to-God blaze is going, with feral tongues of fire roaring up the sides of the yellowed old box. Waves of ash-specked wind surge off the flames, oven hot, tossing the branches of the pecan trees around. The plastic is withering, softening and falling in on itself.
I notice the paint blackening and curling away on the outside of the boxes next door. These trailers are too damn close to each other. At this rate, the whole trailer park will go up.
And there are no police. I don’t see or hear any fire trucks. Nobody is around. The authorities must be busy with the riots. The amps must have all run away.
Someone hoots loudly. A familiar-sounding “yee-haw.” I curl my fingers into the fence behind me, tense up, and freeze in place.
Three men stomp together through an intersection between trailers. The one in front has a gasoline can and a cap pulled low over his eyes. The other two follow, slouching along with sunken chests and shotguns low and leveled. All their faces are red and sweaty as if sunburned. But it’s from the fire. These men have gotten too close to the blaze, and it sure hasn’t bothered them any. I can see their feverish grins as they pass by.
They cross the intersection and are gone. An answering hoot echoes from somewhere on the other side of the trailer park. Glass shatters, followed by peals of drunken laughter.
Lucy’s trailer is too close to the spreading flame. I unwrap my fingers from the fence. Try to estimate where the Priders are from their catcalls.
I double over and scramble down the main path toward Lucy’s trailer. Glancing left and right, I notice lots of half-open doors. I
step over clothing and kitchen utensils and kids’ toys. Dropped and left behind in the dirt after whatever mass exodus must have just happened.
Maybe Lucy and Nick made it out already. This attack is no surprise; it’s been coming for a long time.
I hear a scratching sound behind me and spin around so fast I nearly fall. Instead of the barrel of a shotgun, I see a flowery window covering fall back into place behind a rust-kissed screen. My breath eases out in a hiss. There are still people here in the burning trailer park.
Amps hiding from Priders.
I trot over to the occupied trailer. Knock lightly on the window. “Fire’s coming,” I whisper. “You’ve gotta run for it.”
Nobody answers.
Someone laughs loudly nearby. I turn to see the round lid of a cement birdbath pinwheeling through the nearest intersection. It crunches into the porch across the street. I press myself flat against the trailer. As the voices grow louder, I count down in my head. Visualizing my fingers. Already going back, eager for the taste of the Zenith in my mind.
Three, two, one, zero—
level
four
and
the
world
becomes
bright
and
crisp
as
newly
fallen
snow
.
Two men stride around the corner, joking with each other. They see me and pause. I nonchalantly raise a hand and wave at a scowling, bearded guy holding a shotgun. He’s wearing a sling around his right arm from the last time we met.
Collarbones can take such a long time to heal.
“Hey, Billy,” I say. “Long time no see.”
The shotgun blast tears a messy hole in the siding of the trailer behind me, but I’m already moving. Head down, allowing the Zenith’s tendrils of control to flicker into my limbs. I’m off the ground, on a porch, then beyond it. Running, scrambling on
all fours, climbing, and leaping. Sights rush past in fits, fast and slow, playing out on a broken projector.
I hear a woman screaming from the trailer I left behind. That shotgun slug wasn’t harmless after all. It must have torn through metal siding and insulation and flesh.
Guttural shouts ring out behind me, met by more hooting coming from somewhere in front. Now I’m on Lucy’s porch and headed for the flimsy door, reaching, fingers outstretched.
And then, somehow, I’m on my knees.
The world’s gone bright as a solar flare. Overexposed. I’m seeing angels dance, white spots brighter than heaven. I hear the sputtering boom of an explosion in the distance, echoes racing each other between the trailers.
Blinking at the light, I cover my ears and watch. Two doors down, a cylindrical propane tank the size of a doghouse has detonated. It jets a sputtering plume of blue-purple flame, rolling loose over the dirt. The blistering clouds of flame push the tank, swiveling it toward me in vicious inching pirouettes.
I shove myself up and grab the handle of Lucy’s front door. The stuttering eruption grows louder. With numb fingers I claw at the door handle. A sudden surge of heat rolls over my back and the world boils as I stumble into the cool trailer.
Before my eyes can adjust, sharp fingers grab my shirt and yank me off-balance. A pair of thin pale arms twists me in a circle and throws me. I bounce off the wall and collapse onto my stomach. Instantly, a knee drops into my back and pins me. A barrage of punches cascade across my shoulder blades. I twist to get free.
“Quit struggling,” says a familiar voice. “You’re on fire, for Chrissake. Let me put you out.”
These are pats, I realize. Not punches.
I roll over and look up into Lucy’s face. Her eyes are red. She’s been crying recently, but she isn’t now. At this moment, she looks sad and afraid and relieved. I want to lay into her, question her
about everything Lyle said. I want to give her a hug and kiss her cheeks. I want to curl up into a ball and grieve for Jim.
I do none of those things.
“Where’s Nick?” I ask.
The boy crawls out from behind the couch. Puts his arms around my neck. Hugs me awkwardly. He steps back, and I take him by the shoulders and inspect him. The kid’s got soot around his nostrils, sweat beading on his cheeks, but he’s fine. There is a Band-Aid over his temple.
“Sharks came,” he says, simply.
“I know, Nicky,” I respond. “You were right.”
“We were waiting for Jim,” says Lucy. “Got trapped.”
I work hard to keep my face empty. My sight hums from the Zenith.
Boom. A hole explodes in the front door. It sounds like the tire of an 18-wheeler blowing out. A shotgun slug moves past my face and keeps going through the far wall. Daylight shines in through both gaps, illuminating fast-moving smoke outside.
“Door’s on fire,” says Billy, faintly from outside. “Y’all go around. They’ll be out the back. I guarantee it.”
Smoke is pouring into the trailer. The propane tank must have ignited the siding. Billy throwing gasoline on it probably hasn’t helped, either.
No thinking. No time. I wrap my arms around Lucy and Nick, hustle them toward the back hallway of the trailer. We lean together and crawl, coughing through the acrid black smoke already gathering at the ceiling.
Flames are consuming the trailer from the outside in. The sound has changed from a wind-fueled whoosh to a meaty chuckle. I can hear Billy outside, yelling at me over the din of the blaze: “Where you gonna go now, amp?”
I cringe as another fist-sized hole punches through the wood paneling, spraying me with laminated splinters. As Billy reloads, I
urge Lucy and Nick forward until we reach the end of the hallway. We crouch together. On my right is the door to the bathroom. On my left is the back door that leads outside.
“Don’t go outside until I say it’s okay,” I say.
I don’t have to look out there. I know that on the other side, two men with shotguns are waiting for Billy to flush us out like rabbits from the brush. Lucy tries to say something and I shake my head. I wrap her hands around Nick’s grimy little hands. I push them both down until they are lying flat on the floor. Raise a finger—wait here one second.
A shout comes from outside: “Thought you beat Gunnin’ Billy?”
Gently I push open the hollow bathroom door. Billy’s voice rings loud and clear through frosted plastic window slats. Cheap snowflake-patterned laminate curls up around the edges of the bathroom window, turning yellow from the heat outside. Fake plastic tiles line the floor and walls, blooming with mildew around the shower. A gray cinder block holds up the sink.