Assault on Sunrise (The Extra Trilogy) (6 page)

We were all individually guilty of homicide, but not just common everyday run-of-the-mill garden-variety homicide. Noooo. This was special circumstances stuff, the slaughter of “Law Enforcement Officers in the Performance of their Duty.”

However, though now we were all officially felons, this didn’t mean that some of us couldn’t keep possession of our land here. Oh no! The state wasn’t going to be inhuman about this. It recognized good plot as well as the studio did, and was going to give us “choices” to keep things interesting. After all, not everyone here had pulled the trigger on those tragically misunderstood arresting officers. In fact, we had two options that would let some of us keep living.

Option A: seventy percent of us could voluntarily enter into terms of life imprisonment. Option B: thirty-five percent of us could surrender ourselves for capital punishment.

But this didn’t exhaust the state’s generosity. There was actually a Third Alternative: no one suffered either penalty, if every one of us vacated Sunrise’s acreage, immediately and forever, and all its fifty thousand acres reverted to state ownership.

The state gave us four days to choose A, B, or C. If we didn’t … well, I loved this part so much, I just have to quote it directly: “Failing acceptance by Sunrise, Inc. of one of the three sentencing options, a correctional force, contracted by the State of California, will inflict capital punishment on the residents of Sunrise Inc., until the requisite percentage thereof have been dispatched.”

People howled, they raged and wept, but in the end, most of them got busy. For the next two days the streets swarmed with preparations. Panel trucks and pickups were pulling out in a steady stream for weapon and provision runs down in the valley, some of them bound as far as Bakersfield and L.A. A lot of these vehicles were also carrying the very young or the very old or the very afraid away to safe havens.

Now, with two days down and two to go, Jool was still up at Momma and Auntie’s building barricades for their windows and doors, and Gillian was helping her. We were all going to be joining the main fight in town, and were battening down all our homesteads, but no one knew what we were facing. I was with Chops and Japh and we were headed to the Majestic for a gathering of the “effectives”—meaning everyone of fighting age and/or inclination.

As we passed Cap’s Hardware we saw our gold-toothed friend out front taping a big hand-lettered sheet to his display window: T
AKE
W
HAT
Y
OU
N
EED
.

“Hold up!” he called, and came down to join us, grinning. “Just like old times, ’ey, Homes?”

“Watchoo mean
Homes?
” Japh said. “You Zoo-meat, we ’Risers!”

“We all Sunrisers now, fool,” he laughed.

Cap housed down here in his shop—the man loved being a storekeeper, and loved the town. Here he was living the dream that all Zoo-folk cherished as they scammed and struggled down in their mean streets. It was a full-on, serious hardware store, with a deeper selection of goods than the former owner’s, all agreed.

But Cap’s personality was also in evidence. He’d installed a modified dentist’s chair in one nook where he did tats for his clientele or they could do them on each other. In his display window he’d stationed three female manikins—of the busty hoochie-koochie type—all booted and belted and hard-hatted and jump-suited and hung with so many implements and other butch gear it was a wonder they stayed vertical. There were women in town who didn’t know whether to be amused or irked at some sly feminist satire.

“So how are the numbers shaking out?” I asked him.

“Word out from Smalls is it looks like eighty percent stayin’ right here for the fight.”

Man, that moved us all. It seemed we might field four or five hundred soldiers to protect those less able to fight, but who just wouldn’t leave their homes. “Hallelujah,” I said.

“Hey,” said Cap, “the Studio wouldn’t have settled for less meat than that in its grinder.”

“So we know it’s a studio?”

“Come see Smalls’ show, an’ you tell me.”

The Majestic was full again, and Sandy and Smalls were on the stage when we arrived. Up on the big tattered screen a link from the holo wall was projected—same wall of features in every ’Rise in the state, the morning edition. Smalls had it frozen on its opening frame, some pretty-faced Suit. With all our denim and trail boots and back-holstered shotguns, we looked like ghosts from a bygone era—mountain men watching a vid of the Future.

“First,” the sheriff told us, “this is some talkin head from one of the networks, one that’s owned—no surprise—by Panoply, which a lot of you’ve had some dealins with. The man has some beautiful teeth, you gotta give him that.”

Sandy spoke up. “People. Before we run it, I just want to get you to notice the scripting here. He exaggerates the number of extras up here, people from the Zoo that beat the odds, faced death, and won their freedom. He’s pitching a big sympathy factor. Meanwhile he questions the state, calls the cops at fault—the whole town is innocent. We’re the Good Guys, not just some random population like in all other vids. This whole clip is aimed at building box office.”

Smalls started the loop, and the head spoke in a plummy voice. “A mountain town is trapped by the state’s mishandling. Sunrise, California, is a beautiful community amid the pines in the Trinity Mountains. Two thirds of the town are retired extras, an irony it would seem, because now fate has scripted them into another dangerous and dramatic dilemma. Four days ago, residents of the town gunned down three of six officers contracted by the State of California to serve a murder warrant on two Sunrise residents. But it appears these residents didn’t know these were corp-cops contracted by the state, so inept were the officers in discharging their mission.

“That these residents of Sunrise responded so violently to the would-be arresting officers is perhaps a tragic echo from their pasts, when they fought for their lives on live-action sets. If this is the case, the same violence that won their safety up in this mountain hamlet, now has trapped them in a new and lethal arena of conflict.

“Can anyone be surprised that most of these Sunrisers are now arming to defend themselves against arrest? After all, so many of them have faced death to get where they are, how likely would they be to yield without a fight?”

Smalls stopped the feed. An extra himself, his heavy face was dark with anger. “There’s more of the same kinda crap. Now here’s the clincher from another prime news slot this morning. You’ll notice the shots of Sunrise, like it’s practically a preview we got here. My favorite part is where he says he couldn’t have written a script like this one. The sonofabitch did write it!”

A close-up of a craggy, handsome face opened the clip. “My name is Val Margolian, of Panoply Studios. I have just learned that the appeal of Sunrise, California, against a charge of corporate homicide of three state police agents has been denied, and a capital sentence pronounced upon the town. I am here to tell you I feel the deepest respect and sympathy for this community.”

He continued as an aerial shot of the tree-studded town came on-screen, a traveling shot that slowly scoped our outlying homesteads constellated all over the slopes, our reservoir and its little dam, our new water tower, our old mercury mine, the river in its foaming curves along our southern boundary, the handsome little bridges across that river … all this unspooling to Margolian’s voice-over:

“A great number of this beautiful community’s residents are men and women who bought their citizenship there through work as extras in my own and other studios’ live-action videos. My deepest admiration and affection is theirs. How could anyone deny them this respect and admiration? They have won their freedom in these mountains through a baptism of fire, through courage and determination of the rarest kind.

“What tragic ineptitude the state has shown in the serving of a routine warrant! What a cruel irony! We who, in our studios, trade in wild imaginings, could never have written so grim a script as this one! Unsurprisingly, these heroes—against all odds—have declared their will to resist; to fight. Once again they stand at risk of violent death.

“Thus it is that now, we here at Panoply search our hearts and minds for some means to ameliorate this nightmare that has captured the citizens of Sunrise—some way to lighten, compensate the dire hardship they must now unavoidably suffer.”

What a mellow voice he had, pouring out this silky shit! It was pure titillation. A tease for the vid-watcher’s bloodlust all sugared with pity. “Liable once again to violent death”! It was a sales pitch. There was our beautiful town, like a clip for the vid.

Smalls killed the feed.

“It’s pretty plain, folks. Panoply’s already got the state contract for execution of our sentence.”

Gunfire erupted right outside the theater. It sounded like a shotgun. We all went pouring out into the street.

And there in the middle of it, Iris Meyer sat in her motorized chair, a shocked crowd seething round her. She had a twelve-gauge across her lap, and was rubbing her right shoulder, which apparently the stock of the gun had bruised when she fired it.

People were shouting protests at her, while Ricky Dawes was trying to calm them down. On the pavement in front of them was a bleeding dog, a big black-Lab mix, its torso seriously wounded and its legs pumping. To all the protests around her, Miss Meyer was repeating what sounded like: “It’s not a dog, dammit!”

“She’s right!” Ricky was shouting. “She’s right! Just everyone try ta calm down an’ stand back!” Ricky was generally liked and trusted. The uproar dwindled. He asked, “Can I do it, Miz Iris? You already”—an embarrassed little smile here—“bruised yourself.”

He put the stock to his shoulder. Racked up a new shell, and shot the dog again very carefully center-mass, making a much bigger wound. The animal’s movements were now reduced to just a slight twitching of the paws.

Sheriff pulled a pair of latex gloves from his vest, always particular about keeping his bionic hand clean. He knelt, reached into the wound, and began to spread it.

A long minute passed, quiet enough for those of us nearest to hear the wet little noises his exploration made.

“By God, she’s right!” he shouted. “It’s hydraulics an’ power packs everywhere, feedin a live-skin envelope! The damn thing’s bionic!”

I spoke up. “That means two things, people, just like that moss we saw up in our draw. First, something like this … it has to be Studio-made! Too expensive to be anything else! And second, if it’s Studio, the thing’s a walking camera. It’s been scoping everything in town for days!”

“It’s not just this one,” Ricky said. “Miz Iris been seeing strange dogs around town all week. Near a dozen, she says.”

A purge started then and there. Iris described six other dogs she was sure were interlopers in town. Four-score and seven rifles were mustered in a blink, and half the town went dog-hunting. I like dogs, and didn’t like the idea of shooting them, but in the end I never fired at all because Miss Iris, within fifteen minutes, had spotted three she was sure of, and all three were gunned down. All were opened. All bionic.

But after that, nothing. It dawned on us soon. Why had we got even three? If they were all uplinked to camera feeds, wouldn’t all of them have booked once the first one was nailed?

It was like that moss in the draw: we were meant to see, and to be afraid. The Studio was teasing us, building up the tension.

The sheriff passed the word for a reassembly, and as dusk drew down, as many as could fit crowded back into the Majestic.

Sandy Devlin confronted us. “There’s a new development, friends. I’ve been talking to the four new pilots that just brought us our anti-grav Air Force.” Some cheering went up here, and she waited to let us enjoy it. “It seems that a lot of people connected to them—directly or indirectly—just got fired from Panoply Studios, and we’re already beginning to hear from some of them. It’s beginning to look like some inside information about what’s in store for us might be had. Because that’s what we’re facing here, isn’t it? We’re all going to be in a vid. A live-action vid. And it will sure as shit be Panoply that shoots it.”

She let that settle in. Since those vid clips, it came as no surprise to most. “So these firings,” she went on, “could mean some luck to us, because what we especially need is information about what kind of APPs we’re going to be facing in this vid.

“Now we’ve got lots of land here, and I think we’re all agreed to offer membership in Sunrise for that kind of information—” A mighty roar of confirmation rose from every throat, and Sandy had to wait again till we had all enjoyed that outburst too.

“But some people,” she went on, “might just want plain old money for what they know. We’re pretty good for cash—especially those of us who’re ex-extras or ex-studio—and let’s face it, it may be our presence here that’s made Margolian bring his little roadshow to Sunrise. We’ll put up all we can, but the more you all contribute, the better.”

And this suggestion too received a shout of assent, though perhaps not quite so wild as the first.

IX

WE LIKE HOW YOU FORK A BIKE

The next morning,
Panoply went global with the news. A grave Margolian told the world that his studio had accepted from the State of California the Contract of Execution upon the “tragically condemned” community of Sunrise, Inc.

“We pray that its population will yet accept the option of abandoning their homes, heartbreaking though such a choice must seem. But the independent spirit of this community makes this as unlikely as their surrender to incarceration.

“Thus Panoply has undertaken the grim duty of their sentence’s enforcement. Compassion for them is our motive, to render them some compensation for their sufferings. Not least of these will be the fact that their ordeal will not go unwitnessed. No. What they endure, and the war they wage against it, will be seen by the world.

“Moreover, for each of our Anti-Personnel Properties they destroy, they will receive the highest kill-bonus ever dispensed by any studio.