Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (27 page)

“And if he doesn't go for any of this, and just tries to stab me to death?”

Armando said, “If he makes a move, hit the deck. Go flat on the ground, don't get between Molech and the many bullets that are going to be flying in his direction.”

Zoey took a breath and said, “All right. And we don't know when he's going to show up?”

Will said, “Or if he's even going to show at all.”

“Well … how long does the memorial last?”

“All night.”

“Okay. So what do I do the rest of the time?”

From behind her, Andre said, “It's a party. You're rich and famous. You mingle and have fun.”

Zoey felt a sinking in her gut. “Well, let's just hope he shows up and tries to kill me near the start.”

Armando put a hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eye. “Hey. You will be fine. Let's go do it.”

Zoey sighed and said, “All right. I have to go say good-bye to my cat.”

 

TWENTY-SIX

The traffic was the kind you'd expect to see five minutes before the utter breakdown of civilization. As they inched nearer to the park, they saw more and more work crews in reflective vests, sometimes dragging huge black canvas sheets across the street, or trying to direct traffic around delivery trucks disgorging kegs of beer and cases of liquor.

Zoey said, “This was Arthur's dying wish. To make everyone else's life miserable for an entire night.”

Andre raised an eyebrow and said, “Not everyone. Only the few million people who aren't going to be at the party. And that's their own fault, isn't it?”

Zoey said, “Is it snowing? I mean is it only snowing around the park and nowhere else?”

“There are snow machines on top of all the buildings downtown. They run every night for the couple of weeks leading up to Christmas. Made possible by a generous donation from, uh, you.”

They arrived at a roped-off staging area packed with freezer trucks and stacks of supplies. Zoey had a good view of the park for the first time and even though the celebration hadn't technically started yet, the park was already more crowded than Zoey was comfortable with. She felt social-anxiety alarms buzzing deep in her gut. She wondered if she could just hide back here the whole time, maybe make herself a fort out of beer kegs.

The most prominent feature in the park itself was an inexplicable thirty-foot-tall mountain of white near the center. Some college-age kids were digging into the side.

“Beer Mountain,” said Andre. “Twenty tons of chipped ice, ten thousand bottles of beer embedded throughout. Partiers just dig 'em out as the night goes on. Can't tell from here, but it's in the shape of Mt. Rushmore, only all four heads are Arthur.”

“Thank god, for a second I thought it was cocaine.”

Near Beer Mountain was a pink and yellow inflatable castle, with a few kids bouncing around inside it. Nearby was the bandstand, now lined with amplifiers and roadies doing a sound check.

A flash of firelight caught Zoey's eye, flaring up from a nearby stand that was about ten feet tall, with a stone firepot at the top. A staff member was up on a ladder, he punched a button and with a
whoosh,
a dozen jets of blue/orange flame roared to life. They flashed and pulsed and danced, creating patterns and designs sculpted out of fire. The pot burped a flaming letter “A” that vanished into the sky a moment later, then the jets re-aimed themselves and a fiery angel appeared, wings outstretched. Satisfied, the man climbed down and moved his ladder to another, identical stand nearby—dozens of these firepots encircled the park.

And then, the smell of food hit her. The entire park was ringed in tents with black awnings trying and failing to signify the somber, dignified tone of the event (it didn't help that they bore the yellow Livingston Enterprises logo, which was a letter “L” superimposed over a cartoon handlebar mustache). One massive tent housed a row of barbecue smokers, a guy flipping racks of ribs covered in a glistening bark of caramelized sugar and sauce. The tent next to it had a flashy sign promising Danish hot dogs and deep-fried lasagna balls. Under the next was a guy sweating over a giant cast-iron caldron bubbling over an open fire, the man standing on a stepladder and using a boat paddle to stir seventy-five gallons of chili (Zoey figured by the end of the night, at least a gallon of that would be that man's sweat). Next to him was a stand with a series of festively colored vats, manned by a huge guy with a waxed mustache who was dipping flavored popcorn in liquid nitrogen, cold steam rising as he poured it into red-and-white-striped boxes.

“Good, you're here.” Zoey was jolted out of her junk-food trance by Echo. She and the rest of the Suits were suddenly standing in a circle around her. “Welcome to the Arthur Livingston Street Obstruction Festival.”

Armando said, “Security is in plainclothes, mingling through the crowd. You won't know who they are, but you don't need to. Everyone will be listening in and monitoring your vital signs. If you panic, four dozen men with guns will come running. There are spotters on the rooftops there”—he started pointing to buildings surrounding the park—“there, there, and there.”

Echo said, “You see those firepots around the perimeter? Those are actually hiding backscatter scanners—unfortunately we can't pat down everyone who comes to the party since it's open to the public and crowds will be drifting in and out, but these will scan in real time for anything, uh, mechanical. We should know within seconds if something tries to slip in.”

Will said, “Now, never take your eyes off the DQ, it's over there in the southwest corner. See the flowers?”

Zoey followed Will's gesture and saw an explosion of color—a dais, straining under flowers piled on top of flowers, wreathes and bouquets and arrangements as tall as a house. At the center of it all was a ten-foot-tall stack of logs, and on top of that, a body in repose.

Zoey said, “Wait, is that … I thought there was no body?”

Will said, “There wasn't. We had a wax replica made, getting it done on such short notice only cost a mere thirty thousand dollars. But you need it for the DQ.”

It was the creepiest thing Zoey had ever seen. “Now what's DQ stand for again?”

Andre said, “You know how you get ice cream from Dairy Queen, and it's always got that little curl at the top? What's the first thing you do when they hand it to you?”

“You bite it off.”

“Right, you can't resist it. Back when we were doing, uh, the job we used to do before this, the DQ was the equivalent of that, something you knew the enemy would go right for, first thing. See how we got the speakers sitting right there? We're trying to keep the crowds sparse around it, that's why.”

They were starting to lose her. Zoey thought,
This is just another Saturday afternoon for these people.

Will said, “Speaking of which, try to eat something. Do it out somewhere where you're easily visible. And laugh, make it a point to laugh during conversations, even if they're not funny. And when you're talking to people, put your hands on your hips like you do when you're angry. Yeah, like that, elbows at a ninety-degree angle. Not like you're angry, though, but like you're confident, making yourself bigger. Any questions?”

She had so many. But instead, she asked, “Where are the bathrooms?”

Echo said, “Don't use any of the public toilets. They're disgusting. We have our own, behind the first-aid tent. Armando knows where it is.”

“Good, because I think I'm going to be sick.”

Zoey walked away from the group, trying to quell the riot that was breaking out in her abdomen. Someone was following her. It was Echo. Zoey stopped, and tried to breathe.

She asked Echo, “Do you have cats?”

“What?”

“Do you own any cats. As pets. Or are you good with them, I guess is what I'm asking.”

“I have dogs.”

“Oh. Nevermind.”

“Come on, Zoey, don't fall apart on us. You've handled all of this with aplomb so far, we're all impressed.”

“This is just … it's all hitting me at once. My mom told me one time that everybody thinks they're the star of their own movie, and I don't think I knew what she meant until now, this exact moment. Because Arthur thought
he
was the star, that he would be the hero who would see this whole crazy thing to the end. Then just like that, he was gone. And it's just now hitting me that I'm probably not the star of the story, either. I'll be that girl who dies halfway through the movie to give the real hero motivation to beat the bad guy. My movie could end tonight and … that would be it … just, nothing…”

Zoey was hyperventilating. She bent over and tried to steady her breathing.

Echo kneeled by her. She put a hand on Zoey's elbow and said, “Come on. Stand up. Rule One, we don't let them see us like this.”

“Who?”

“You know what I mean. Look around. Stand up.”

Zoey stood, and nodded. “It's okay. I think I'm okay.”

“Here.”

Echo pressed a bright blue capsule into Zoey's palm.

“What's that?”

“Plaxodol. Antianxiety. Don't tell anyone.”

“Where'd you get it?”

“My doctor, obviously. I have two other prescriptions in my purse if this one doesn't work.”

Zoey swallowed the pill, along with all of the follow-up questions she had been about to ask.

Echo said, “Hey. Look at me. This is what he wants. This is what they always want. That's why he told you he was coming. It was all about making you feel like this. Don't give him that. Whatever he does when he arrives, you have control over this part. You all right?”

She nodded, let out a breath.

“Yeah. Let's do this.”

Zoey ventured out into the rapidly thickening crowd, Armando right behind her. She immediately felt like a thousand pairs of eyes had all turned toward her at once, then realized that if you factored in Blink, that was probably only a tiny fraction of the real total. She considered going back to get a second pill from Echo. Zoey thought that it was like she had a bull's-eye on her back, but then she heard the sudden chatter of voices in her earpiece from the rooftop snipers announcing her movement to each other, and realized that she actually had a dozen bull's-eyes on her back.

That she knew about.

 

TWENTY-SEVEN

Overload.

Rushing flames lashed and danced from the firepots, perfect girls giggled in tiny dresses and garish wigs, guys screamed jokes and laughter at each other, a terrible band angrily stabbed power ballads into the night. The buildings overlooking the park were lit up so that they were like the bars on an equalizer, vertical lights pulsing up and down in time with the music. Zoey felt each beat pulse across her throbbing cranium.

Oh, and there were ghosts. They had these stupid holograms roaming randomly through the park, depicting a translucent Arthur Livingston doing ghost things—conversing with Gandhi, fistfighting Hitler, high-fiving Jesus. The projectors were mounted on little remote control buggies that rolled around in the snow, to make it look like the ghosts were mingling with the crowd—Stench Machine would have hated it. Then Zoey started noticing these weird little green, glowing orbs floating around the crowd, and finally got close enough to one to realize it was this glow-in-the-dark ice cream people were eating out of little cups. Even the food here screamed for attention—she was surprised they hadn't modified it to make a loud noise the whole time you were eating it. She was looking forward to seeing one of the drunks spray glow-vomit everywhere.

Under all of this were the electronic voices coming from the earpiece—useless cross-chatter from rooftop spotters, perimeter guards, and undercover gunmen mingling with the crowd. Spotting threats, dismissing them, throwing around jargon that imparted no helpful information to Zoey about whether or not she was about to die.

Through it all, she just kept moving, through the noise, and the little clouds of steam from people puffing on vaporizers that would probably give her a contact high by the end of the night. They say humans, and many other herd animals, will wander in a counterclockwise motion if left to their own devices—grocery store floor plans are set up to accommodate this, for instance. And sure enough, after a couple of hours, that's what Zoey found herself doing—circling the park, aimlessly, only because she couldn't stand to be still. Her feet were already killing her. She glanced behind her for the five hundredth time in the last two hours to find that, yes, Armando was still back there, following her around like a puppy. He was wearing a black pinstripe suit over a deep, blood-red shirt with no tie, sunglasses with dark wraparound lenses that flashed crimson when light hit them. She assumed they were wired up to feed him real-time security scans, but it was no accident that they also looked cool. It was also no accident that it was very easy to see the chrome-plated gun in his shoulder holster every time his jacket shifted. Armando was not undercover.

A sorority-looking girl passed them, wearing what appeared to be a fur coat and absolutely nothing else. She and a lot of the girls here had gotten that eye-widening surgery celebrities kept getting. Zoey thought it made them look like cartoon characters. Yet Armando watched her pass, apparently his glasses feeding him intel that the potential assassins were all young girls in slutty clothes (on at least three occasions, the rooftop spotters in Zoey's earpiece had called out “targets” to Armando that amounted to, “Ruiz, we got a blonde bending over in a skirt, three o'clock, good god would you look at that”). Earlier Zoey saw a size zero blonde wiggle by wearing nothing but a men's button-up shirt and panties, her hair mussed like she had just rolled out of bed. Then she saw six more girls dressed like that over the course of the next hour and realized it was a common party outfit in Tabula Ra$a. Tre had been right: Zoey's outfit was dowdy in comparison to the girls who'd come to mourn Arthur Livingston's passing with free drinks and bumps of cocaine, along with the copious party drugs that were making them think the temperature was forty degrees warmer than it actually was.