The Dead Slam: A Tale of Benevolent Assasination (43 page)

The teams: Dumpster Fire, GateKeepers, Money Changers, Clerks & Tellers, StuxFux, Lulzabye, The Makers, The Commons, and The Bed Bugs were consumed in their tasks. The situation unfolding in New York was just a rumor here.

“Please, ladies and gentlemen,” said Tuke, and the cavern settled. “We’ve mobilized several million veterans, sympathetic civilians, local volunteers and most of our own staff to stop an armed attack on the
Sunday in America
show.”

An uncertain grumble filled the air.

“This attack, initiated by reactionaries within the NPF, must be prevented. If it isn’t, all our plans will go down the drain in the ensuing catastrophe.”

The grumble turned to groaning dread.

* * *

G
eneral Joe Scaletta
put the final touches on his outfit and agreed with the man in the mirror: full dress blues are always the right choice. He certainly did look snappy and self-satisfied. Pre-empting whatever nonsense Tuke had cooked up was a no-brainer. When the government overreaches, the military steps in and saves the day. That’s how it is, was, and always will be. Nothing was going to change that. History repeats itself, and history has proven the military coup a necessity, lest tyrants rule. Of course, every time history repeats itself it gets a bit more expensive, but in General Scaletta’s mind, Tuke was a tin-pot tyrant, out to make un-American changes to absolutely everything. He had to be stopped.

A sharp knock came to his door. “Yes!”

Aide-de-camp Elvgren entered. “Captain Wunchel and his team are saddled up and ready for your orders, sir.”

“I want them to arrive a few minutes after the show begins, so everyone can see us taking over.” He blanched. “Not taking over, taking over. But . . . oh, hell, you know what I mean.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What time is it?”

“Oh-eight-hundred, sir.”

“They should take off in forty minutes, oh-eight-forty.”

“Yes, sir.”

General Scaletta stepped back from the floor-length mirror, and frowned. “The full dress . . . not too much, is it?”

“No, sir. Spot-on and max-impact.”

“Yes it is, isn’t it?”

Once Corporal Elvgren had gone, General Joe struck a domineering pose and mouthed the words he feared to say aloud: “Representative Joseph Scaletta.”

A
n unseasonably warm
sun had burned off the heavy fog surrounding Central Park, and no sooner had Max and Lily landed on the Great Lawn than Airship Two was spotted by the jubilant crowd. The weather had become extremely unpredictable as the water level crept up the island’s pricey shoreline.

O
n that same shore
, at the western end of 42nd Street, Jon Replogle and company were forming up in the Manhattan/Weehawken Ferry Station. Captain Banjo was halfway back to New Jersey for his second of many shuttles. They headed out for a two-mile hike, straight across Manhattan Island, to the UN Complex at the opposite end of 42nd Street, on the East River. Simple as that.

F
red milled
about the Village of Buses while the locals tended to the veterans, after dusting the vile debris from them. He’d gone nose-blind, but could tell by the faces of the Bus Villagers how revolting they all were. But the festive mood in the improvised village raised everyone’s spirits, especially Fred’s.

A contingent of nearly fifty young people in tattered pin-striped suits and knee-high rubber boots arrived, with mobiles displaying Fred’s picture, which he found amusing. Even he knew the rubber boots meant they lived on streets where the water was knee deep, or deeper, and he guessed pinstriped suits were in surplus. And they were looking for him! In New York. He liked that.

He followed them to a U-shaped courtyard between three buses parked close together and covered with an awning made of expertly rolled and woven plastic garbage bags. Fred eyed a small group of people in shiny dusters waiting there with two nondescript corporate IT guys. There were many factions here, and they were all waiting on him. A large monitor at the deep end offered a quick face-to-face with Levi Tuke. “Mr. Burdock, congratulations on that miraculous feat of excava . . .”

“Where’s Max?” barked Fred.

“He’s heading out of Central Park with his friends, who outnumber his enemies ten thousand to one. He’s safe. We’re reevaluating our estimates. Seems there are far more of us than we ever knew, and far fewer of them than we were led to believe. They really had us fooled.”

“And Lily’s there too?” asked Fred.

“Lovely as always. They’re joined at the hip. If you leave now, you’ll arrive in Times Square about the same time they do. Thousands of other groups are converging there also. We have no idea of where all these people came from. Wildcards. Damn wildcards. Social games . . . the wildcard always gets you.”

That was enough for Fred. Max and Lily were on their way to the UN. His face hardened into an incandescent resolve that sent chills up the spines of the young people gathered here, in the city, on their own for whatever sad reason. None had ever seen a grown man whose every last fear had disappeared. His boy was OK. He was free. He had actually come to the end of something. He could now claim the dignity he’d lost in his broken promise. He would have his revenge, or at least be there when it got served.

He sensed that everyone was waiting on him. For what? He looked at all their faces. And he said what he would have said to Max, if he were here. “Be careful, OK?” and he headed up 7th Avenue.

Brave hearts and hipster snark melted. Suddenly Fred was everybody’s dad, and the whole family was off to Times Square.

B
ishop Virginia McWilliams Hendrix
was in one of her twelve classically themed shower rooms, Venus on a Half Shell, revving herself up for a performance. Although she rarely sought company before a show, she usually bumped into Petey around the coffee pot, but not this morning. She chalked it up to Petey’s work on his floating greenhouses and today’s all-important maiden voyage. She clapped three times, the water stopped, and she swung the Venetian glass doors open. She gathered her dripping hair and reached for her Turkish towel bathrobe just as a knock came on her door.

“What is it?” She began drying her hair with a fluffy towel.

A boyish voice she vaguely recognized whispered, “There’s been some kind of disturbance.”

“What?”

“Some kind of disturbance. An electrical discharge. All our communication systems are down.”

Her nostrils flared and she sucked in all the misty air around her. “Why are you telling me this, now?” But before the boy could answer, she screeched, “Where’s Petey?!”

The young man, who’d come only to deliver a message, could scarcely restrain his glee at her distress. “No one’s seen him all morning, ma’am,” he said, in a voice tinged with suspicion.

She hurled the towel at the floor as though struck by a horrifying possibility. “We’re not cancelling the show!? Are we?”

“No. Whatever it is, it’s not affecting the broadcast systems. At least that’s what they say.” His suspicion grew sinister. “The blackout is unaccountably . . . selective.”

The Bishop moved to an enormous sink basin carved out of a single boulder from Mt. Sinai. She stood ramrod proud, exhaled slowly, and with the palm of her hand wiped away a swatch of mist from its mirror. “Then it doesn’t matter. I’ll be on stage!”

* * *

A
fter a tremendous organizational
effort at the Great Lawn, local New Yorkers led the veterans, hackers, ITs and their new plus-ones down a winding path toward the UN Complex, two miles away. Max could see the outline of a tumbledown wonderland that once was Central Park. The crowd lurched forward as the cobblestone path sloped down, and Max took Lily’s hand. He couldn’t tell where her joy began and his ended. She did a little skip that yanked him up to speed, and down they turned onto a beautifully paved walkway bordered with benches and drinking fountains in the same intricate style as the Brewery. The skeleton of an elaborate playground ran up to a huge carousel with a hundred painted ponies. Max had never imagined such a place. This, he could clearly see, was an attempt at paradise.

It reminded him of Fred. His heart sank.

The walkway grew wider as it curved around a gentle slope, where Max saw through the naked trees a large open area at the edge of a lake and the magnificent retaining walls that carved Bethesda Plaza out of the hillside. With the lake licking at one end, the plaza stretched across a full acre of herringbone pavers to an elaborate, extremely wide staircase divided by three stone arches over a massive portico. At the back of the portico, a set of even wider stairs rose and blended seamlessly into the others. It was the most complicated piece of architecture Max had ever seen.

But he could tell that this place was all about the enormous circular fountain. The Bethesda Fountain. Its sculpted bronze pedestal of vines and water lilies stood forty feet high and cast an enchanted spell over the entire plaza. Unfortunately, The Angel of the Waters who had stood atop this national treasure for two hundred years had been privatized, and there was no water in the fountain. Water in public fountains was considered a waste by those who had their own fountains.

Under the three arches and up the Grand Staircase they marched, past the little amphitheater and down the incredibly broad expanse of the Literary Mall. Max couldn’t see the far end of it, but he noted sadly that the marble plinths lining the walk that once bore bronze statues of Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Shakespeare, Schiller, Fitz-Greene Halleck and others had been moved to Petey’s collection.

By the thousands they poured out onto 59th Street in front of the Plaza Hotel, where liveried doormen scrambled to lock their tipsters in limousines that seemed sure to miss today’s
Sunday in America
show. Both passengers and doormen grumbled in frustration, poking and shaking their cell phones, trying to erase the acid green screens that had shut them down. The marchers crossed Pulitzer Square and turned down Fifth Avenue at the Trump Tower.

There was no leader, but someone, most likely a former drill sergeant, began calling cadence, “Boom, chucka lucka, boom chucka luck!” Thousands fell into the foot stomping double-time with a shuffling two-step that would certainly get them to Times Square in half the time. Step step clap . . . step step clap! Some of the more agile fellows grabbed their new plus-ones and fancy-danced in time as they went down Fifth Avenue. Easy as pie. The thundering stomp with a syncopated clap echoed through the architectural canyons.

“I don’t know but I bin told!”

The multitude answered, “I don’t know but I bin told!”

“You can rent me by the hour but I can’t be sold.”

“You can rent me by the hour but I can’t be sold.”

Max could feel the determination in these people who’d never thought they could do anything about anything. And having a plus-one to share this moment with multiplied the effect tenfold. They were delivering themselves from despair. Faded hopes transformed by the possibility of endless affection. A reason to fight.

“I don’t know but I bin told!”

“I don’t know but I bin told!”

“Banker’s heart black as a coal!”

“Banker’s heart black as a coal!”

The drill sergeant’s call, always sardonic, the throng’s reply always jubilant. The seventeen blocks from Central Park to Times Square melted away in a little more than ten minutes; they were moving quickly and as one.

And now the crowd grew thick as the city’s perfect grid of streets and avenues met Broadway, midtown’s only diagonal street, which slashes through the grid on a steep angle here — carving out the large triangles that make Times Square.

Max was dazzled, but had no idea Fred was only a few steps away, separated by a hundred thousand angry citizens.

* * *

T
he reluctant Representative Al Thomka
was lying low, but getting antsy. He put on his suit pants and went exploring. Astoria Studios, once the largest building in America, has dozens of extensions and sprawls into five blocks on the highest point in the borough of Queens, a whopping 182 feet above the rising sea level, looking across the East River at Manhattan, and the UN Complex.

He strolled through the vast maze and soon found the cheese and other goodies on a craft’s service table. He loaded up a paper plate with bagels, salted cashews, and as many chocolate chip cookies as he could balance on top. He stuffed his face as he strolled past racks of wardrobe, light stands and cables, props and set decorations, and finally wandered into a gargantuan room filled with kids.

Surprised at how young these children were, and the incredible number of them, he snooped around for an explanation. These were not… Movie People. The kids were working at a clip obviously faster than they were used to, running wire, draping large silver screens, setting up speakers and bickering. Several screen cubes were projecting the pre-broadcast feed of the
Sunday in America
show. Others featured what he assumed to be out-takes from the
Brian Stahl Show
: a huge crowd marching into Times Square with raised fists and banners; angry men rushing off ferry boats; a madman in a cave. But these images were not slick enough for Stahl. They were smeary and hand-held and made him a little queasy.

He jammed the last stub of a bagel into his mouth, and upon finding an empty chair, nodded hello to a sullen teenaged girl fitting herself out with small bits of wearable hardware: metallic finger tips, belt with a glowing buckle, headband with a pinpoint projector. He tossed his empty plate into her trashcan, flashing a belated mother-may-I frown.

“Be my guest,” she said. A strand of torture ran through her voice. She turned to a silvery screen hanging from a gobo-stand and touched her metallic finger tips together. When she pulled them apart, the screen came on and she began a warm-up routine of machine-relatable gestures. The screen calibrated itself to her moves. She swiped down, and the interface for a spreadsheet app appeared. Thomka studied the app for a second before realizing it did only one thing — delete.

He chewed his last cookie and tried to estimate how many kids were here, maybe a thousand, all cranking up the same interface and wiggling their wrists and rotating their necks like Olympians. “What’s up?” he asked, sincerely miffed.