Near Enemy (29 page)

Hope it’s open.

Because I’ve got maybe five minutes left.

On the side panel of the minivan, the name of the rental company’s all but covered by the handiwork of vandals. Barely visible, though. If you squint.

Check-Off’s minivan. Waiting in the wings.

I flatten the pedal and drive.

Hit the bridge. No traffic.

Sail over unimpeded.

Then I spot them. Over the East River.

Four of them.

Flying in formation.

Noses down. For extra speed.

Rotors set the air to thrumming. Sound like a thousand hoof beats. Thundering toward Brooklyn.

Toward Atlantic Avenue.

Toward Shaban.

Attack copters.

Military. Look like well-armed wasps.

The pilots’ faces just barely visible in the windows of the choppers’ wide glass. Heading for their target.

Fingers on their triggers.

Waiting to pull.

Floor the magic wagon.

Exit the bridge.

Squeal past what few cars sit with startled drivers as I speed by.

Hit Atlantic.

Spin the wheel left.

Tires keening.

Keep the pedal jammed.

Crunch the brakes.

Pull up to the scent shop, van halfway up the curb.

Spot the Closed sign swinging on the locked door.

Jump out.

Shout and pound the glass.

In the silence of the street, the call to prayer is heard.

Sounded by the nearby mosque, newly reopened.

I’m standing, pounding on the glass door, shouting, sure that no one inside can hear me. From inside, I’m sure, I look like a crazy man, no sound, just fists pummeling and my mouth moving wildly.

And outside, the call to prayer is deafening, a low drone that rolls out and blankets Atlantic Avenue and muffles every other street noise.

Keep pounding.

One of the clerks finally appears inside, behind the counter.

I scream through the locked door.

Shaban!

Clerk looks startled. Walks slowly toward the door. Looks like he’s wondering whether he should bring the shotgun with him. This crazy man, outside, drumming on the glass.

Then behind him, Shaban appears, and he knows.

Behind me.

In the air.

Hoof beats. Rising louder. Getting closer.

Not hoof beats.

Helicopters.

The roar of the rotor blades shreds the morning air.

All but drowning out the call to prayer.

I motion to Shaban, who’s in some kind of long robe, like he’s probably on his way out to the mosque, hooking his wire-rimmed glasses around his ears so he can see better who’s at the door. And he walks up and unlocks the door and opens it and is about to ask me something but whatever look is on my face at that moment answers all his questions.

Then he barks something urgently over his shoulder to the clerk and motions the clerk to come, come, come, and when the clerk turns to go upstairs and retrieve a few things, Shaban barks again, no time, just come, and the clerk abandons his thought and follows us outside. And I hurry them both to the minivan parked halfway up on the curb, where I slide the side door open and they climb inside.

And after they climb in and I slide the door shut and I get into the driver’s seat, the second clerk appears up the block, turning a corner on his way to the mosque, and he stops in the street, sees the two of them being hurried into the van by me, and the second clerk startles, like he fears maybe they’re being arrested or kidnapped or worse. And the second clerk shouts something, and Shaban, inside the van, shouts something to me and slaps at the window from the inside, and the first clerk beside him reaches for the door, and slides it open again and we’re already moving but the first clerk jumps free, to run and warn his fellow clerk, to gather him up, but it’s too late, because I’ve jammed the gas and swerved into a wild U-turn into the center of Atlantic and turned the van the wrong way down a one-way side street, because there’s no more time, and I jack the gas and we’ve left the two clerks behind, there’s no time, there’s no time, and we’re gone, we’re gone, and Shaban looks back out of the gaping side door and shouts something but we have to leave them now, leave them in the street, and in the end, I can only take one.

Just one.

Just Shaban.

Just the target.

We drive quietly for a moment down a derelict block, side door still hanging wide-open, past dead brownstones, the two of us weirdly silent, like we’re in the first leg of some long dreary road trip we’re both dreading.

And then behind us we hear the first thump and then a great whoosh and the van jolts forward and we jolt forward too, straining against our seat belts, and Shaban won’t look behind but just slides the door quickly closed, but I can see it, behind us, this fiery tongue licking Atlantic Avenue clean, I can see it all behind us brightly in the rearview mirror of the van.

And then the next three copters follow.

Fire sidewinders into slumping tenements.

Each missile sinks into brick with a fiery orange blossom. The tired buildings sag and shudder, then buckle in a brick-dust cloud.

And in this loud crush of rubble, a billowing red cloud rises, and the rotors of the four copters suck up the red dust and send it swirling skyward, wild red dervishes loosed as the copters sweep low and speed down the block, skirting the avenue, their landing rails kissing asphalt and their up-tilted rotors thundering and swallowing any frail human sounds that aren’t already buried under the rumble of the blocks’ collapse.

Choppers sweep the street.

Then circle back.

Coming round for a second pass.

Sidewinders loosed with a finger-pull, once, twice, payloads sent spiraling, trailing corkscrew tails of smoke.

Hitting home.

And the four choppers unload the last of their munitions into
what’s left of Atlantic Avenue, a once-dead street that tried to rise, but which now slumps in a last sigh of fire and smoke like a gravely wounded dragon, found sleeping in its cave and slain for good.

I just drive.

Leave the carnage behind us. Playing out in the rearview.

The Atlantic Avenue sweep. The second one.

First one ended in riots.

Second one ended in fire.

Both end in rubble.

And we drive.

I take Shaban the long way round to Hoboken. Figure I can hide him there for now.

Hope they’ll think they killed him, at least for a little while.

That’s the upside of rubble.

Hides its secrets for weeks.

Persephone’s gone once we get back to my apartment, of course. I knew she wouldn’t be there but it still stings. Place is empty, save for two more bodies, Puchs and Luckner, to go with the two Pushbroom stiffs. All left behind for the host to take care of, which I do.

Bodies, I can deal with.

Dead ones, anyway.

Live bodies I’ve been having some trouble with lately.

Shaban told me too. The whole story. In the van.

While we were driving.

We didn’t take the Holland Tunnel. Holland’s closed again now, maybe for good. They’re all closed, all the tunnels and bridges, no one gets into the city and no one gets out. It’s all over the news. Mayor declared a lockdown in the chaos right after Bellarmine was killed. Called in the National Guard. Shutting everything down. Sealing the city off.

Shaban and I barely made it over the Verrazano Bridge in south Brooklyn before the soldiers closed that too. Hobbled minivan covered in spray paint, Shaban ducking down to the
floorboards in the back, inching past a roadblock that was only just being set up. Some peach-fuzzed private, no older than eighteen, stopped us and cupped his hands on the window but couldn’t see inside for all the graffiti, and the line of traffic behind us was honking and cursing, also eager to leave before the lockdown, so he waved us past.

After all, we were heading out of the city anyway, so why worry about us?

Honestly, it was just the confusion that saved us.

As we inched in traffic past cops arguing over conflicting commands. Past soldiers hastily assembling barricades. Past superiors shouting instructions at grunts. All of them still waiting for final orders that weren’t coming. Sorting through the confusion. Still struggling, while chaos spread.

Chaos.

Just like Boonce promised.

Though if we’d arrived ten minutes later, we would have been caught in the teeth of the siege, and Shaban would now be in prison or dead and who knows where I’d be.

But we didn’t, and we weren’t, and we slipped away.

And we drove.

Crossed the Verrazano to Staten Island, then took the long way round through south Jersey, then doubled back toward the north. Before long, we were deep into Jersey and well out of sight of the city. The towers of Manhattan are taller than any building for a hundred miles, but if you drive long enough, even they eventually drop out of sight.

Then it’s just Shaban and me out on a Sunday drive. Passing long pastoral stretches that still feel like farmland. Gas needle at one-eighth of a tank but there’s no way we’re stopping for gas.

Shaban tells me his story as we drive.

Says it softly. Starting with a confession.

I knew. What Lesser had. I knew.

Shaban is still in the backseat, while I’m up front like a chauffeur, glancing every so often in the rearview, while he sits and watches the farm fields pass.

How did you know, Shaban?

I was his roommate, after all. At Near Enemy. We shared everything. But it was more than that.

What do you mean?

I knew because I built it. At least in theory. I imagined it.

Imagined what? You’ll have to excuse me, Shaban, but I’m not an expert in IT.

He smiles. Watches more fields pass.

Please. Call me Sam.

Imagined what, Sam?

The code. That Lesser had. That Boonce used. The code that lets you live inside the limn. I wrote that code. Or, rather, I imagined that it might be possible. I wrote it, yes, but only on a blackboard. Then I erased it. I knew it was a mistake the moment it came out of the tip of the chalk. Lesser was the one who took it and tested it. Who made it real. Then Boonce took it from him.

So how does it work?

You know about the loop, yes?

Sure. The loop. People get trapped in their final moments in the limn if they’re killed out here.

Shaban starts to continue, and I can tell he is figuring out just how technical to get. So I help him out.

Just speak slowly, Sam. I’ll follow.

The theory of the loop is that your brain produces a last neural burst, right at the moment of your death. And that this burst can accidentally persist in the limn. Become part of the code of the construct. Even if your body is buried or carted away. Your
consciousness persists, perpetually experiencing that one last moment, forever.

Sure.

So that’s what I wrote on the blackboard. A question, in the form of numbers.

What was the question, Sam?

What if it wasn’t a loop?

But you’re dead out here. Your brain’s dead. Your body’s dead. You’re all dead. Just like Boonce.

Of course. But you can persist in there. In theory, anyway. And that’s all it was. A theory. I was just a brat, showing off. Then I gave that all up. But I left Lesser with the idea.

And Lesser took it.

Yes. He took it. Never tried it himself, as far as I know. I heard he got so spooked by the whole idea that he just went back to full-time hopping. He was always more comfortable doing that, just hovering unseen in other people’s dreams. Felt safer, just being someone else’s ghost. But Boonce knew Lesser had something, some new hack, but he didn’t know what, and he was determined to find out. And I knew Lesser. I knew the idea wasn’t safe with him.

Sure. But Lesser is dead now. And Boonce is dead.

Not really. Not in the limn.

How did Boonce do that? How did he tap in with no bed?

I have no idea, Spademan. I don’t know what Boonce is capable of now.

Well, at least you’re still alive, Shaban.

Yes. Thanks to you.

You’ll have to disappear, you know.

Shaban’s damaged voice barely even audible. His eyes still on the passing fields.

I know.

I’m serious, Sam. Anything you left back there, anyone, all
those things are gone. Because what they think you’re responsible for? They won’t stop coming after you. You’ll have to disappear. No trace. Like Salem Shaban never existed.

I know. Don’t worry. I understand.

And you can do that?

Oh yes. I’ve done it before.

When he says this, something in his damaged, sandpaper voice starts to change. Something drops away, that coarse edge to his voice that he’d blamed on burned vocal cords. So when he speaks again, it is his same voice, but different.

Softer. Like his true voice.

Unveiled.

When he says.

It was me. Who called you.

What?

I called you. To kill Lesser. It was me. I was the one who hired you. Because I knew what he knew, and I knew he could never be trusted with it. I tried to reason with him, but he called me a fanatic. Called me worse. And I knew that, no matter what, it could never get out. Not to someone like Boonce. So I called you. To kill Lesser. I guess in the end we both failed.