I see it now. The pieces click.
We’re here to help.
High above, hovering like a book of divine wisdom, the Jumbotron blinks on. A handsome man in a yellow tie steps into view and sits in front of a microphone.
“Residents of Citi Stadium,” he says in a gentle baritone. “We invite you to feel calm. Careless storage of expired munitions has led to a terrible tragedy and loss of life from both enclaves, but as your new next-door neighbour, the Axiom Group is already working hard to minimise the damage.”
I notice men in unfamiliar uniforms—beige jackets over khaki pants—rushing through the streets with fire extinguishers and first aid kits.
“We will have the disaster contained momentarily, and in the days to come, we will work closely with your remaining leadership to help restore order. We invite you to feel calm, safe, and secure. Everything will be the way it was.”
Julie peeks through her fingers at the gigantic face grinning down on the city. The screen shows a brief flash of the logo I carved into the bar, plays a stock animation of a football player chugging a Bud Light, then goes black.
“What is happening?” she whispers into her palms.
The rumble of an approaching truck cuts through the noise of the stadium’s panic, which has in fact quieted noticeably following the Jumbotron’s announcement. It seems that an invitation to feel calm from a stranger on a screen is all these people needed to feel calm. Do they even care who’s in charge of their lives, or will any handsome face suffice? Any well-groomed head with a tie around its stump, any mouth that can lie with confidence?
Staring up at the helicopters, feeling the spray cool my flushed cheeks, I realise I’m still drunk. Or perhaps something even more debilitating. I have imbibed a terrible cocktail: whiskey, adrenaline, shock, and sorrow. I feel sick.
A beige Escalade pulls up next to us and six men in beige jackets emerge. It’s a nauseating colour, not a warm, sandy tan but the neutral green-grey-taupe of old office computers, cheap hotels, suburban strip malls, and municipal carpet. The men carry three empty body bags between them. They move toward the Armoury entrance and suddenly Julie is on her feet.
“What are you doing?” she snaps, wiping her red eyes and darting over to block their path. “Who are you and what are you doing?”
“Here to collect the bodies,” one of the men says without looking at her or stopping. He and the others move around her and begin to climb through the rubble, but she jumps in front of them again.
“I said who are you?”
The men slow their advance without quite stopping. “We’re with Axiom. We’re here to collect the bodies.”
“That’s my friend in there and I don’t know you people,” she says, glaring up at the much taller men. Her voice begins to tremble again. “You’re not taking him. Go away.”
“We have orders to collect all the bodies before they’re handled by enclave residents. Please step aside.” He pushes past her.
She grabs his jacket and yanks him backward and he falls, landing on jagged chunks of concrete.
“I said go away!” she shouts hoarsely, her eyes welling up again.
In my woozy perception, everything feels slow. I move toward Julie, but my feet are strapped with heavy weights. One of the men shoves her. She falls into the rubble. She gets up, wipes blood from a cut on her forehead, and lunges at him. Too short to reach his face, she punches him in the throat. He stumbles back, choking, and I hear Julie screaming.
“Get out of here! Get out!”
I’m almost there. The ground sucks at my feet like deep tar. I crawl up the rubble heap as four men converge on her. She takes a swing at the nearest one but he grabs her arm and twists her around, then kicks her hard between the shoulder blades. She flies clear of the mound and lands facedown on the asphalt.
I am full of dread because I know I’m going to kill this man. It’s required by Newtonian law, a reaction to his action, impossible to prevent. I ascend the rubble heap and seize his head and smash his face into a concrete corner and he dies in a bubbling foam of blood. The next man who comes at me doesn’t die but is certainly maimed when I throw him against a slab and hammer my fist into his shoulder joint, snapping the ligaments and effectively severing his arm. Thick limbs wrap around my throat and lift me off the ground, but my brain seems to have a course of action ready for every scenario; a well-aimed elbow breaks the man’s ribs and hopefully punctures his lung, and his grip melts off me.
A very distant voice asks: What am I doing? How am I doing it? Who is the man who acquired these skills and the reptilian coldness to use them?
Finally, someone relieves me of my momentum. The butt of a gun cracks into the side of my head and the already slow world spins into a rippling sludge. I am aware of myself falling, but I feel nothing when my face hits the pavement next to Julie’s. Our eyes meet, hers red and wet, mine simply open, staring. Where is the gold? Where is the impossible solar yellow that told us things were different, that we had changed and the world would change with us?
Dark spots begin to splatter across my vision. I try to speak to her: Keep breathing. We’re going to be okay. But my lips won’t obey. I try to say it with my eyes. I keep trying until my eyes roll up.
WE
WE DO NOT need to move. We are already everywhere. But omnipresence can be dull, so we indulge in locality. We condense ourself into points and roam the earth like those quaint old notions of spirits: ghosts, angels, and other things in white sheets.