Up The Tower (12 page)

Victor grabbed Ana and pulled her behind him—putting himself between her and Ore. This was a man prepared. Hell of a set of body armor on his chest. The gun on his hip—the incredible tech of it, layered with chrome and black leather. A force gun. She had seen their like several times.

Up close now, Ore examined the antenna—the height of it. As she had hoped, it was definitely possible that it could just make the distance to the Tower. They were twelve floors up off from the ground. But, with the way the earth still rumbled and swayed with the shocks and aftershocks, the makeshift bridge might still be a few feet short.

At any rate, the antenna was their only shot.

“Ore.”

“Or what?” asked Ana.

“My name. I’m Ore.” She pointed at the antenna. “If you shoot a few holes in the foundation here, I can take care of the rest.”

Victor took a look at her tech hand for a moment, considering. Then he shrugged. “All right.”

The shots were quiet, denting the metal but not quite piercing it through. The support struts twisted up tinfoil-style under the barrage, whining from the weight.

Below them, the quake had quieted somewhat—and the people had started gathering and yelling. They flooded out from the Tower in droves, screaming, calling out names. Thousands of men and women clogging the narrow streets, some clobbering into the sides of buildings, running over each other trying to get away, trying to get out. But there was no out. There was the Dam—no doubt about to let the Mississippi burst through—and there was, far away, the Divide into the suburbs, which were probably all broken to hell too.

“What kind of gun is that?” Ana asked.

No one answered her.

She laughed nervously after a moment. “I guess it’s one sort of like any of the others, huh?”

People continued to stream out from The Tower. Already they were latecomers to the riot, paying no mind to running over the trapped or fallen bodies of those who had already tried to run through the shifting waves of the quake. At first, Ore thought maybe they would have it a little easier, with the earth not swelling and breaking on top of them. But then she saw how many of them there were—how tight the corridors were that had been created by the upraised earth and lines of cars, all the jutting pipes and ceaseless explosions from exposed gas lines.

Over the loudspeakers posted on the outside of The Tower, Ore heard the tell-tale grizzle and slant of Petrov’s voice.

“Do not run. All Tower residents should stay where they are. The area outside The Tower is dangerous and full of fire and water. Stay where you are.”

Belatedly, alarms began to sound, whining out through the air. Ore couldn’t tell if they emanated from the Tower or elsewhere. Through the cacophony of the alarms, there was the unmistakable growing rumble of terror. The volume of the rioters raised in intensity and fear. Fires broke out all around them. Ore was not surprised to hear gunshots and screams.

Victor finished with the force gun. The supports now twisted and bent. Ore approached, tech hand clanged open, sharp pincer-claws chunking forward on her middle and ring fingers. Grabbing the pillar of metal, she pulled upward.

For a moment, it seemed as though nothing would happen. Then the metal, groaning, snapped apart. Instantly, the tall antenna shifted downward, stuttering out a series of moans.

Ana was on the ledge, looking at the antenna. “Is it long enough?” she asked. “Will it...will it hit those people?”

She did not sound altogether concerned. Interested, more like.

Ore ignored her, going after the next support. Like the first, it resisted for a moment and then snapped under the pressure of her tech. Ore could snap bone or slice through a skull if she needed to, if she had enough time. The hand just needed a little time to warm up. When it wasn’t in frequent use, the joints stiffened.

Once, she went almost a week without powering the tech hand up fully, and it had needed more than ten minutes to close—which had put her in a tough spot when she tried to lunge and rip open the back of a cash truck that had been rolling through her block. For almost ten minutes, she rode on the back of the truck, her hand jammed inside its metal sheeting, waiting for enough of the steel to be torn so she could slide away to safety. A close call—she had almost rolled right into a hack outpost by the highway.

Victor and Ore pushed up hard against the antenna, both of them grunting. Ana stood with her hands on her hips.

“You're going to hit those people, I think. I just want you to know.”

Ore kept pushing. There was only one way forward.

The antenna resisted at first, groaning as it had before. And then it fell.

Slowly, it fell. Taking its time, pushing downward like a giant kneeling down. The crowd beneath it swelled outward, people trampling over one another to get out the way.

The antenna crashed into the Tower with enough force to break windows surrounding the tip—but still it seemed to have landed just like a love tap, like a sounding strike with a hammer on an anvil.

Below the antenna’s entry point, glass showered down on the crowd. Ore saw blood spray out far below. She had expected this—and still it was not as bad as she thought it might have been. Caught in an insane situation, all you could really hope for was to limit the insanity of your own actions.

“You hurt them,” said Ana, shaking her head. “I told you that you would hurt them.”

“We all hurt them, girl,” said Ore. “Or are you staying behind?”

Ana raised her eyebrows, looking down.

“Oh,” she said. “One had his hand cut off. I've never seen that before.”

Her voice was flat, empty. She kept looking, not turning away. A stronger stomach than Ore.

“Okay,” said Victor. “Let’s do it.”

He clapped Ana on the back and pushed her up into the antenna's broken structure. But, Ore grabbed him and then Ana, tossing them back down.

“What are you doing?” Victor asked.

“My plan. I go first.”

“It was my plan before you got here.”

“You ain't no goddamn Junktown native. It was my plan all night long. It's just got complicated, that's all. I go first.”

Ore stepped up onto the antenna, feeling it groan beneath her weight.

“She goes first.” He pointed to Ana. “The structure's not stable.”

Victor’s tone was one well dried-out, dehydrated from years of expending itself on fools. Ore knew this tone, because hers was much the same.

“That looks dangerous,” Ana said. “I'm happy to go last.”

“Listen to your woman. I ain’t arguing anymore,” said Ore, taking another step up. “I’m telling. I go first.”

“I won’t argue either.”  Victor put a hand on his pistol.

She was ready to kill him. If today was the day, then it was the day.

“Hey, hey!” Ana said, gripping Victor’s forearm. “We’re not exactly surplusing time, here. Like I said, I don't want to go first. Victor, you want me to go before you?”

“That is safer.”

“Then I'll go second. Okay? And Ore, you have your whole...hissy-metal-hand thing going on. You can probably bend the antenna at the other end and secure it some, all right?”

Victor took a breath and backed away.

“Fine, okay. Go ahead.”

A moment ago, Victor had looked as though he would shoot Ore dead. Ore knew this look and his tone—it was one she had used in the past many times. One she had been on the opposite end of in more fights than she could remember.

And then, at a gentle suggestion from Ana, it was gone.

Wasting no more time, Ore nodded and hoisted up onto the antenna, swinging across the metal support. She worked from the underside, not trusting herself not to slip. She did not look down, did not think about the destination or how far off it was. Below her, she could hear the rumble of the crowd—even heard a few marveling at how fast she was going, how high up she was.

“Wrong way, idiot!”

“Don’t go in there, it’s a madhouse!”

That sort of thing.

If she fell, she would be trampled instantly. All those people running out, trying to get away from the Dam—probably they wouldn’t make it.

Ore had seen enough of life to know that a disaster like this wasn’t just going to let anyone get away.

Finally, scrambling, she hit the other side with her hands. It was a bedroom of some kind. Papers flying about inside, chopped by the wind. Carefully, metal straining beneath her, she slid up into the window, broken glass pushing into the leather of her vest. Some scratched into her arms. Nothing deep.

She grabbed the support pillar between the shattered windows. Using her tech hand, she bent the steel top of the antenna around the pillar. A rush job. Probably wouldn’t hold very long.

Ore watched Ana and Victor arguing minutely over who was next. Over and over, Ana pointed, until finally Victor picked Ana up into the antenna and pushed her along.

She made it across quickly—quicker than Ore, actually—facing no problems with the antennae’s spindly structure. Her muscles pulsed as she moved across, every limb a hook. She was a gymnast, maybe. Full of grace.

Even so, despite all her ability, the antenna sank and jerked as she crossed. The knife at her belt fell out of its sheath to the crowd below, inciting a round of shouts and curses.

Ore held out a hand for her as she crossed the final feet.

“Here we are,” Ana breathed, collapsing next to Ore. “Here we are. Oh my god. What the hell, today.”

Rain started to fall as Victor began his trek—a random splatter of wetness that Ore was used to by now in the region. Probably it wouldn’t last any longer than a few minutes, but every minute that they had, they had to use. Victor kept crossing.

Victor neared the end of the antenna, and then it buckled suddenly, all its weight surging back and up. The metal Ore wrapped around the Tower window frame tugged hard, the steel crunching outward against its concrete anchor. On top of Radio Place, more concrete lifted up—just one support actually left on the building. Victor banged down hard, almost losing his grip, and Ore shot out an arm and grabbed him.

No real reason for it. They were on a team, was all. Ore stuck by her team, so long as she had her way. And maybe if she couldn’t save anyone else today—if she couldn't save Samson—then at least she had saved this one. Ana grabbed his other arm, and Victor walked up the glass below and pulled inside with them. He gave Ore a quick pat on her shoulder and then pulled Ana in for a long hug.

Ana looked surprised, her hands swaying out in jazzy flexing motions. Victor’s hug was intimate, but not in the sense of lovers. It was different, it was—

Shouting out surprise, Ana pushed Victor away.

“Gary?”

Ore looked back across the gap and saw the boy from before—the jazzkid punk who had fought her. What the hell?

He scurried up over the planks adjacent to the radio building and stumbled onto the roof where the three of them had been just ten minutes before. Yelling excitedly, grinning like the fool Ore knew he was, he called out Ana's name, waving both hands. The rain still splattered down—he was rather wet.

Gary approached the antenna, examining it slow. He shuffled on his feet, one and then the other, prodding the antenna like it was a dead animal. The long metal structure dropped a few feet in the middle, shrieking out into the din of the riot below. The drop inspired him to hop up over its metal pipes and start his way over.

“No, Gary!” Ana put a hand to her face. “Oh god. Idiot.”

Unlike the rest of them—who just swung below the antenna—he tried walking and then crawling on top of it. His feet slid on the rain-wet surface of the pipes, hands waving all about even as he moved forward. They all three stood transfixed, watching his awkward struggle against gravity and his own body mass.

“Oh god,” Ana murmured. “We have to cheer him, right? That’s the thing to do since he’s doing it now.” Taking her own cue, she shouted, “Come on! You can make it, but you have to hurry!”

Drunks in the crowd beneath them echoed her cry in crass, long-winded oohs and bellows.

The antenna let out a long groan, swinging in the wind and rain. With an enormous creak, it sunk into its middle and snapped up like a gator’s jaw.

Gary swung wildly, his body slamming to the side. Ore found her tech hand wrapped around the antenna tip against the frame of the building—instinctively there, saving the boy.

He had, for whatever dumbass reason, tried to fight her. It was nothing to her whether he lived or died. But watching him struggle, trying to make it on the Tower...

She couldn’t explain it. She felt like they were all in this mess together now.

It seemed like Ana felt that way too. She grabbed a fire hose from out of the hallway and wrapped it around a pillar in the middle of the room. She tossed the nozzle to Victor.

“You’re gonna have to throw it. I’ll pull.”

He nodded, and began to whirl it overhead. With a grunt, he tossed the nozzle out—too short. Gary noticed the throw only after the nozzle had already fallen down, the antenna sinking a little bit lower.

Victor wrapped the hose up and whirled and threw the nozzle out again—too far to the right, and Gary tripped off the antenna trying to grab it. He landed on the struts hard, scooped on them with his armpit. He was close enough that Ore could see the sweat on his face, the thick lines of frustration and fear around his eyes.

Once again, Victor pulled in the nozzle without hurry or hesitation. Eyes narrowed, he tossed the nozzle out one more time, knocking Gary squarely in the face. Grip flailing, Gary tottered off the antenna, but somehow managed to attach himself to the nozzle and the hose.

Swinging hard, he plunged downward and slammed against the windows below them. Ana let out a hard breath, skidding around the room as she tried to steady herself. Ore let go of the antenna and pulled with her, tugging and letting Ana wrap the hose around her waist to keep it anchoring upward. At the window, Victor kept pulling—his face steady, empty. He swept his foot across the edge, clearing away the glass as Gary finally swung an arm up over the edge. Just as he did, the antenna swept past him, screaming down tip first to the street below.