Children of the Uprising (41 page)

Christopher stepped into the file room. This room alone had to contain thousands upon thousands of names. He placed the gas canisters in the middle of the room and turned the nozzles on each so that the gas began to leak out. Then he began opening the drawers to all of the file cabinets. This time he didn't bother to look at the papers inside. He knew what they would say anyway. He could still hear the gas hissing out of the canisters when he left the file room to begin opening doors and drawers all over the top floor. He was making progress now, real progress, attacking cabinets and closets in every office and every room. He was about halfway done when Evan first warned him. “Chris,” Evan said, “they've got a helicopter. They're heading for the roof. I'll try to hold them off, but I'm not going to be able to stop them.” Christopher glanced up at the closest window. He could see the lights from the helicopter flash by as it swooped down toward the building. They were going to come down from the roof. Reggie's plan to protect Christopher by assigning him to the top floor had backfired. The last will be first, and the first will be last. Christopher sped up, rushing into offices and overturning desks and pulling open doors like a man possessed.

Addy and Evan hadn't thought that they'd have any need for more than one rifle. The plan required them to take only one shot. Even so, Evan took his gun and aimed it at the helicopter. He remembered for a second those days that he and Christopher spent in the woods, each shooting his rifle at rocks that the other threw as high into the air as he could. Christopher was always the better shot, but Evan hadn't been far behind him. Before pulling the trigger, Evan looked down over the edge of the building toward the street, trying to estimate how much damage he would do if he took the whole helicopter down. The street was still flooded with people staring into the sky, waiting for something else to amaze them. Evan aimed the gun at the helicopter again and pulled the trigger.

At first, Evan had aimed his rifle at the helicopter pilot. He could make that shot. It wouldn't even be hard with the scope he had on his rifle. One shot, he thought, and he could bring the helicopter crashing down. But then he had seen all those people down in the street. So instead of taking out the pilot, Evan aimed in front of the helicopter, firing a warning shot. He hoped that they would be sensible. He hoped that they were regular people, people smart enough to react to fear. He hoped that they weren't people who had grown up with paranoia. “Fly away,” he whispered to himself, and at first the helicopter turned up and away from the roof as if it would go. Before it was too far off, though, the helicopter turned back to make another pass at landing on the roof.

“Chris!” Evan shouted into his radio. “You've got to get out of there, Chris. You've done enough.” Christopher didn't answer him, but then he couldn't answer him, not with the gas mask on. Evan shot a panicked glance at Addy, unwilling to take his eyes off the helicopter for more than a split second. “Can you see what Christopher is doing? Tell me what he's doing. Is he running?”

Addy lifted the binoculars and scanned the windows, looking for Christopher. Then she spotted him, still moving through the building. The hose from his gas mask hung down in front of him like an alien appendage. He didn't look human, and still, Addy could tell from the way that he moved that it was Christopher. “No,” she said to Evan. “He's not running.”

Christopher heard Evan telling him to run. Evan's wasn't the only voice Christopher heard, though. He also kept hearing Jared's. “Open every drawer. Make sure the gas gets everywhere. Make sure everything burns.” Christopher couldn't leave this job half done. He couldn't risk waking up tomorrow in an unchanged world.
Every drawer. Every closet. Every door. Make sure everything burns.
He only had a few offices left anyway. Then he would be done. Then he could run.

The helicopter swooped down for a second pass and Evan fired again, another warning shot. This time the helicopter did not heed his warning. Instead, it pulled its nose up, aiming the landing skids at the roof. In that position, the helicopter looked to Evan like a cornered animal, rearing up its head before a strike. Evan fired again—no warning shot this time—but from the new angle, all Evan could hit was the helicopter's white underside. He saw the bullet puncture the metal, creating a tiny hole in the bottom of the helicopter but the hole did nothing to stop its landing. Evan wanted to shout at Christopher again, but he didn't. Evan knew that Christopher would leave when he was ready to leave, and Evan didn't want to waste any more time distracting him. The helicopter came down now, the skids bouncing only slightly on the roof of the building before the machine settled. Evan aimed and fired again. This time he had a clear shot. The pilot's head jerked back and he was gone, but it was too late. The others were already stepping out of the helicopter onto the roof. Evan tried to get his sights on another one of them. He felt no remorse for killing the pilot. He felt nothing. He wouldn't feel any remorse if he shot another one too. He would be too numb to feel until he had shot them all, and then all he would feel was relief.

Evan's next shot missed. Five people ran out of the helicopter. They were hard to hit. They ran on the roof in zigzag patterns, like people trained to run from bullets while searching for cover. He missed only once. His next shot hit one of them in the leg. The man fell to the ground. Evan moved the gun imperceptibly higher and fired again, ending the man's life with a bullet to his chest.

“I can't get them all,” Evan said, realizing the truth.

“I think he's only got one office left,” Addy reported, following Christopher as he moved quickly but methodically across the office floor. “There in the corner.” She didn't take her eyes off Christopher. “Just hold them off for another minute or two.”

Evan fired another shot. This time he missed, but the bullet still served its purpose. One of the men had lurched out from his hiding spot on the roof, squatting behind an exhaust fan, and the shot scared him back into his hiding place. They were all hunkered down now, trying to avoid Evan's bullets. Evan knew he could manage another minute or two.

Christopher ran into the last office. It was a large corner office with a big desk on one side, a small table in one corner, and a closet with the door closed in a third corner. All the blinds were down. This was the first office Christopher had entered where the blinds were down. In case it was meant to hide something, Christopher violently ripped each set of blinds down, exposing the office to the world. He was so close to being finished. He went to the desk first. He pulled open each drawer. The bottom drawer was locked, but he broke the lock with a single hard tug. Jared had been right. The papers were everywhere. Name after color-coded name, but they were out now. They were open. They would burn and every horrible thing linked to those names would be forgotten. Christopher stepped toward the closet door. He opened it, expecting to see more papers. Then he froze.

“What's he doing?” Evan asked after three minutes and then four minutes went by and Addy still didn't say that Christopher was running.

“I don't know,” Addy answered. “He's just standing there.”

Christopher stood, staring into the closet, trying to make sense of what he saw. In trying to make sense of it, Christopher forgot where he was. He forgot what he was doing. He lost his ability to move.
Why
, he wondered,
is a bloody, dead body in the closet, a pen still sticking out of the body's neck?
Even in a place where so little made sense, this really didn't make any sense. Who was he? How did he get there? Christopher grabbed the stiff body by the wrists and slid it out of the closet, stretching it out on the floor.

The men from the helicopter up on the roof finally came out of their hiding places all at once, all running for the door that would lead them downstairs. They finally thought to coordinate, to work together, to sacrifice a few for the larger cause. Evan began aiming and firing—shot after shot. He hit two of them quickly, but the other two made it all the way to the door. They stood in a single-file line, one in front of the other, the first blocking Evan's view of the second. The one in front pulled the door open. Evan fired again, hitting the second man in the back, between his shoulder blades. Then he planned on shooting the man in front. The man Evan shot bent backward and fell to his knees. When he fell, no one was in front of him. The door was open. One man had made it inside. “Chris! They're inside! Please!” Evan shouted.

Inside the building, Christopher was still in a strange trance. He wanted to get one clear look at the dead man, so he reached up and pulled the gas mask off his face. He could smell the gas spreading everywhere around him, but only vaguely. You weren't supposed to be able to smell it at all, but that didn't mean it wasn't everywhere. Christopher breathed, pulling the gas into him, into his lungs and his body. It made him feel the slightest bit giddy. He would put the gas mask back on in a moment, but first he needed to look at the dead man's face. He thought that the dead man deserved it before his body and all the evidence around it were incinerated.

Christopher looked at the body. The man had been ugly, but it was hard to tell if it was his life or his death that had made him ugly. Seeing his face was enough for now. Christopher lifted up his gas mask, intending to pull it back over his face. Then, slowly emerging from his trance, Christopher finally heard Evan shouting something into his earpiece. The sound of Evan's voice was followed by a small sound coming from behind Christopher. So instead of pulling his gas mask on, Christopher slowly turned around to face whatever it was that was behind him that Evan had been trying to warn him about.

Addy and Evan had seen the man from the roof as he ran past the office windows. After he had reached Christopher's floor, Evan aimed his rifle, ready to shoot the man through the window, until Addy yelled, “Stop!”

“Why?” Evan asked.

“Because your bullet will make a spark and the whole place will burst into flames with Christopher still inside.” So Evan couldn't shoot. They could only watch, impotent to help.

“He's coming for you,” Evan said into his radio, hoping Christopher could still hear him. This time Christopher did hear him, but it was already too late.

The man had a gun—a handgun—that he was pointing at Christopher's back before Christopher turned around. “Don't shoot,” Christopher said to the man. “If you shoot, we'll both die and everything that you're trying to protect will burn.”

“What do you mean?” the man asked Christopher, confused by this tactic.

“Can you smell the gas?” Christopher asked the man.

“I don't smell anything,” the man said, almost certain that Christopher was bluffing.

“It's all around you,” Christopher warned the man, “and there's nothing you can do about it.”

In response to the dire warning, the man lifted up his gun and aimed it at Christopher's head. The man had to shoot. He had orders to clear everyone out of the offices, to protect the information at all costs. He didn't smell anything anyway. The man hesitated for only a second as Christopher spoke, seemingly into the air, as if he were praying. “I'm sorry I didn't run soon enough,” Christopher said out loud.

“That's okay.” Evan forgave him, speaking loud enough so that Christopher would hear.

Christopher looked into the eyes of the man who was pointing a gun at him but Christopher kept speaking to Evan. “I want you to shoot him before he shoots me,” Christopher said to Evan. His voice was calm. “I want you to be the one to end the War.”

End the War,
as if that was all Evan was going to have to do. Evan trained his rifle on the man who was pointing a gun at Christopher. Evan watched the man's trigger finger. He wasn't going to shoot unless he saw that trigger finger twitch. He wasn't going to shoot unless he had no other choice. Neither Evan nor Addy bothered looking for any of the others. They didn't have the chance to see that two of them had already made it out and were heading down the stairs. They didn't see how close the woman was to getting out. They didn't see Reggie, still inside, as he headed up the stairs to try to make sure that Christopher was safe. Reggie was still trying to make good on the promise that he'd made to Maria all those years ago.

The man started to pull the trigger. Evan was faster. Evan pulled the trigger on his rifle and then . . . fire. The fire was everywhere, instantly. All five floors were bathed in flames, hot, bright flames that ate everything. Then a moment later, the fire went out and everything was gone. The papers were all gone. The color-coded names were gone. The dead body from the closet was gone. The man with the gun was gone. Reggie was gone. Christopher was gone. Everything was gone in the flash of fire, and Evan and Addy were witnesses to it.

Evan and Addy stood on the roof together, dumb with shock. It would take them hours to finally accept what had happened. They used those hours to decide what they needed to do next. It couldn't just be over. Not for them. Not like that.

The next day, as the sun slowly rose throughout the world, the children of paranoia woke up to a new reality. At first they didn't know what had changed. Some of them found out in weeks. Some in months. They saw the stories on the news about the terrorist attacks in different cities and countries all over the world, but they had no way of immediately knowing what these attacks had accomplished. It took time. They knew for sure that the War had ended only when time went by and no one tried to kill them. They knew for sure that the War had ended only when time went by and they weren't given new orders about who to kill. From that night forward, all over the world, thousands upon thousands of people no longer knew who it was that they were supposed to hate.

The War was over. No more sons and no more daughters would die in this War. No more blood would be spilled. It ended in flames and bombs and bullets and blood, but the War ended all the same. The children of paranoia were finally free.