A Song Called Youth (47 page)

Claire popped up from behind a crate like a jack-in-the-box, the machine pistol blazing, rattling in her hands. She sprayed wildly at the door—both men went down.

The flashlight was lying in the doorway, still shining, making a reflecting pool of puddling blood.

Hard-Eyes was shaking, his heart hammering in his chest.

He told himself,
Get calm, get calm.
Rickenharp was alive, his head bleeding, trying to get up. “Lay still, ya damn fool,” Hard-Eyes told him. He walked on wobbly legs to the door, picked up the flashlight, wiped warm slick wetness from it on a SA uniform. He straightened—and the flashlight beam fell over Yukio. He seemed to be embracing someone.

He was lying facedown atop an SA regular, his right hand still on a knife stuck in the dead man’s throat. His side was bloody. His left arm was shot through, a welter of blood and protruding bone splinters. But he was breathing.

Claire walked up from behind. She said, “Kurland went to look out the window. Yukio told him to go back inside. They argued, and then the SA men came. Yukio shot one of them. Another one shot Yukio, and Yukio dropped his gun and fell down. But when the guy came to check him, Yukio jumped up, stabbed him, and they fell down together . . . And then some more SA came and Kurland surrendered . . . And then you came . . . ” She shrugged.

Her voice was dead; her face was expressionless.

Hard-Eyes looked at Rickenharp. Kurland was there, spraying a dressing on Rickenharp’s wounds from the first-aid kit in his backpack. Claire took another medikit from a belt pouch and bent down to see what she could do for Yukio.

Hard-Eyes went to the door, looked down the streets. “They were probably just a patrol. Maybe we’re okay here.”

He went back inside. Kurland and Bonham were carrying Rickenharp into the back room. They laid him down by the chemheater. He was unconscious, bleeding from the right temple.

“Lad took a ricochet, maybe just a fragment, from the size of the entry wound,” Kurland said. “That second salvo, after he shot at them . . . maybe not too bad, though . . . Might be just badly stunned.”

Hard-Eyes and Claire—she was stone-faced, efficient—dragged the dead SA patrol to the back of the main room, hid them behind the flattened piano.

They laid Yukio beside Rickenharp. Yukio stared at the ceiling, ground teeth against the pain but making no other sound. Hard-Eyes injected him with synthmorph from the medical kit, and he gave out a long, soft sigh, and went almost immediately to sleep. Hard-Eyes used a field cast-kit to set Yukio’s broken arm in a temporary plaster brace. The wound in Yukio’s side was superficial.

It was about four a.m. when Rickenharp woke and asked Hard-Eyes to shine the flashlight in his eyes. His voice was raspy. Hard-Eyes shrugged, got up, and shone the light in Rickenharp’s eyes.

“Do it, Hard-Eyes. Shine the light on me . . . ”

“I’m doin’ it already, man.”

And then they knew he’d gone blind.

“Bone splinter probably,” Rickenharp said, trying to sound clinical. “Severed the ol’ optical nerve. Or maybe a blood clot.”

“Shit, man, we’ll get you out; they’ll operate . . . ”

Rickenharp said, “Blind.” Tasting the word. More amazed than horrified at first. “Blind. What a scene, man. An Anti-scene, really.
Blind.
”

The bullets Rickenharp had taken in the leg had made flesh wounds, and missed the arteries. But he was weakened and lay on his back near the chem-heater, head pillowed on Hard-Eyes’ rolled-up jacket, playing the Telecaster, listening to himself on the earphones. A little behind him stood the small amp, its red light glowing like a supernatural eye, as if Rickenharp’s demon crouched protectively near.

After a while, he stopped playing but, smiling faintly, seemed still to be listening to something. “Hey, Hard-Eyes,” he rasped.

Hard-Eyes went to crouch near him. “Yeah?”

“Take the earphones off me. Put ’em on. Listen.” Hard-Eyes took the earphones and listened. He heard static and, very faintly, a voice.

Hard-Eyes burst out, “It’s Willow! Willow’s voice! . . . This thing picks up one of our frequencies!”

“Yeah, they do that sometimes. You hear what he said?”

“Yeah, he’s repeating it over and over. All units meet at rendezvous twenty, oh-nine-hundred. Damn—What was R-twenty?”

“You’re supposed to have it memorized, expert! It’s the southbound platform at Metro Franklin Roosevelt. That’s on the Champs-Élysées—not far from the arch. Oh-nine-hundred. Tomorrow morning. You know, things happen real symmetrically, Hard-Eyes. We get a little good luck, a little bad luck, a little good luck. Latest good luck, we snag this regroup message. Latest bad luck, we’re on the wrong side of the fucking arch. Nazi shit-heads’re camped all around it. We could get
to
the arch but not past it. On one side is the yellow-dust zone, on the other side they got their headquarters. The streets are blocked off unless we go right under the arch . . . So how do we get through to regroup at Frankie Roosevelt?”

“We’ll figure something.”

“Hey—that was a rhetorical question. ’Cause I got something figured, man. I want you to promise you won’t fuck me up on this. Give this to me. My last gig, Hard-Eyes. Listen . . . ”

“This is bloody stupid.” Kurland muttered.

It was an hour before dawn. They were trudging through the gouged streets, through blue-black shadows and silver-limned patches of fog, through rubble and char and the cold smell of ashes. And they were carrying sound equipment on their backs.

Hard-Eyes could hardly believe it himself. But when Kurland kept complaining, Hard-Eyes said, “There’s no talking him out of it. We’re gonna do it. So shut the fuck up.”

Rickenharp, leaning on Claire, grinned at that. “Good to hear you say that to somebody else, Hard-Eyes.”

“You shut the fuck up, too.”

Claire was carrying a guitar and medical kit. Kurland had the PA horns. Yukio carried weapons—and a rhythm box. Bonham had cords and mikes, miscellaneous hardware, and Rickenharp’s shotguns. Hard-Eyes had two portable amps strapped to his back and the assault rifle in his arms, the M-83 over one shoulder. They carried their gear through the twisted stub of a skyscraper, between fantastic shapes of melted glass and plastic; through the ribbed remains of a cathedral; through a field of ravaged mannequins where a department store had stood. All the time sweat was running icy under their clothes.

“Fucking absurd, I’m telling you,” Kurland growled, as he shifted the weight of an amplifier.

Claire said, “The war is absurd. Racism is absurd. This—” She gestured at the wreckage of Paris. She didn’t have to finish the sentence.

“I just hope I don’t get rained out,” Rickenharp said.

They hid from passing patrols twice, and then crept on, concealed by mist and the night and the megalomaniac overconfidence of the fashes.

And then they’d reached the Étoile. The Star. The arch stood at the center of the twelve-pointed star where the avenues met. It had been decreed by Napoleon in 1808, begun by Chalgrin the same year, not completed until 1836. Made of massive stone blocks, the Arc de Triomphe was fifty yards high, forty-four across the front, twenty-two on the side. Its facades were intricately carved, its arch sheltering the flame of the unknown soldier. Long since gone out, overwhelmed by the wind of a thousand thousand unknown soldiers passing on . . . 

On the face of the arc facing the Champs-Élysées was the high-relief group, a carving representing the departure of the war volunteers. The central figure was the Marseillaise with her wings spread, her out-thrust sword pointing the way, her mouth opened in an eternal shout, a shout carved in stone.

The Arc de Triomphe was bullet-scarred but still standing.

Nearly dawn. The night sky relented a little, admitting some blue. Most of the fashes were encamped on the far side of the arch. To rendezvous with the NR, Hard-Eyes had to get past them.

There were a few sentries on this side of the arch—but between Hard-Eyes and the sentries was the cover of overturned trucks, crashed hovercars, gouted tanks, rubble, and long shadows.

Aching under their burdens, they crossed the Étoile; crouching, darting through the twisted wreckage, Kurland and Bonham with their thoughts written on their faces:
This is irrational, this is insane.

Just inside the door that led to the stairwell, in one of the arch’s massive legs, two neofashes squatted by a sickly-yellow chem-fire.

Hunched down behind a truck, Hard-Eyes screwed the sound suppressor onto his assault rifle. He crept around the circular curbing surrounding the arch till he was out of the line of sight of the sentries, and then dashed back to the arch’s support, pressed himself flat against the stone. He listened, heard soft, unconcerned voices from inside. A trapezoid of sulfur-colored light projected onto the concrete from the door to his left.

Don’t let ’em get off a shot,
he told himself. Quiet, got to be fast and quiet.

He edged up to the door.

“The bloody resistance is a bloody fucking joke,” said someone inside. “Waste of time to be sitting out here for a bunch of ticked off frogs and wogs.”

Hard-Eyes smiled. He pivoted, turning to step through the door, tracking to center his sights as the men looked up, gaping. The rifle’s suppressor hushed the report of the bullets, as one man fell over backward, his chest opening up with faucets of blood, while the second was training a submachine gun at the intruder, at Hard-Eyes, who was thinking,
Right through the brain so he doesn’t get a shot when he goes down.
Letting his trained fingers do the work, the HK spitting flame, hissing, licking away the top of the guy’s head; the man spun, blood spiraling from his shattered skull, the gun clattering to the floor. That was the only sound the gun made.

And they had taken the Arc de Triomphe.

They carried the equipment up piece by piece. Up the stairwell inside the arch; up to the observation deck at the crown. Claire and Hard-Eyes helped Rickenharp climb the stairs. They set up the equipment, jacked in Rickenharp’s guitar. Rickenharp sat on the amp, to everyone’s amazement meticulously tuning up the guitar in the earphones, the chill, damp wind whipping his hair. Charcoal-edged, silver-hearted clouds flowed behind him. Rickenharp smiled crookedly, as he tinkered with the guitar settings, looking weaker, paler than ever. Yukio sat beside him setting up the grenade launcher, the automatics.

Hard-Eyes made them up two shots apiece with the syringes from the medikit; each shot contained a solution of one part blue mesc, one part synthmorph, one part energizing vitamins. Just to see them through. He made it in a tin mess cup belonging to the dead sentries.

Kurland stared but said nothing.

“It’s funny, the arch being the symbol of the NR,” Rickenharp whispered. “I mean—seems like I remember it was all about Napoleon. A fucking tyrant.”

“Became a symbol of the French Republic,” Yukio said, finishing setting up the weapons. He sat back, resting, his voice distant, eyes closed. “Democracy. Anyway, we appropriated it. Gave it our own meaning. Fascism is anti-traditional. What’s good in tradition is what makes people want to fight Nazis . . . Arc celebrates culture, tradition, for us. Not tyranny . . . for us it’s not about tyranny . . . ”

“Rickenharp,” Hard-Eyes said, as he pulled back on the syringe plungers to suck the solution through the needle, “an operation might restore your eyesight. Or a transplant or a prosthetic.”

“Come off it, man. That whole side of my body’s going numb. I still got strength in my arms, my fingers. But it won’t last long. Something’s busted in my brain, Hard-Eyes. Always was—” He grinned. “But now it’s fucked up for good. You guys won’t get through unless Yukio and me create a diversion. And Yukio and me—we’re screwed anyway. He ain’t gonna leave his arch. Made up his mind when our compadres got flattened. These Japanese motherfuckers are crazy!” Said admiringly. “And Yukio feels bad, man, that he didn’t get it, too. With all of his friends. And . . . ” He gave a crooked smile.

“It’s the band, though, really. Isn’t that it, Rickenharp? You got it in your mind your career is dead. And that’s your whole identity. So you think you got to die, too. Rickenharp, buddy, it’s
dumb
to—”

“No, Hard-Eyes,” Rickenharp broke in. “Don’t tell me my big moment is dumb. No, you don’t see. This
feels
right. It’s like I been rehearsing my whole life for this gig . . . ”

“Harpie . . . ”

“No, I mean it. I ain’t hopin’ for nobody to talk me out of it. Now scan this, man . . . ” His voice got some of its old excitement back in it. “The Jægernauts, they got cameras on ’em, at the stationary part of the axle, right? You can see ’em pop out of the slot when they want a good TV-shot to show the troops for the Triumph-of-the-Will scam. You know? They’ll show us getting plowed under and they’ll send it back—with sound, man! Back to that neofash hometown in California and show it to the kids and the young ones, and the kids’ll see me, they hear the tunes, they might react differently than what the fashes expect, right?”

“Maybe so, Harpie.” Not believing it for a moment. But let the guy have his fantasy.

“Anyway, I always wanted a live gig on TV. They made us lip-synch.”

He grinned and there was blood on his teeth.

So Hard-Eyes gave the primed syringes to Yukio, embraced Yukio and Rickenharp, and went to the stairs without a word. When he looked back, just before going through the door, he saw Yukio taking a red ribbon from his jacket, winding it around his head, kneeling in preparation for a Shinto ceremony.

Hard-Eyes and the refugees hid themselves in a tangle of cold, twisted black armor and waited for daylight. They were in the back of what had been an old half-track. Once, Bonham tried to hold Claire’s hand. She jerked it away from him and shut her eyes. His expression went hard, but he said nothing. After a while he climbed off the back of the half-track and went around the front, where, in the cover of an overturned truck, he pissed against the half-track’s engine.

Hard-Eyes could see only a bluish section of Claire’s face, enough to see she was awake. “Suppose we get through,” he said. “What will you do? If you could go anywhere, do anything? Dumb question, I guess: You’ll try to get back to the States.”