Noise by Darin Bradley Page A

Panhandling, playing music. Trading crib sheets for baggies and cigarettes.
    “Party, do you copy?”
    He wasn’t getting up. Just rolling into better, flatter positions on the asphalt. A living cipher, straight from the derelict heart of Slade Salvage. Trying to get his esoteric shit together.
    I wanted his information.
    “Give us your clothes,” I said.
    “What?”
    “Give us your fucking clothes.”
    “Fuck you, man. Give me your fucking car. I need a ride.”
    He was drunk.
    “You can give us your clothes, or we can take them.”
    “Party, do you copy?”
    “I don’t, I don’t …”
    I knelt to take hold of his foot. To remove the boots so I could get the pants. “If you don’t cooperate—”
    He kicked at me, just enough to wobble me out of my stance.
    “Neutralize this,” I told Mary.
    She had already drawn the gun, was already, in her own mind, shooting him over and over and over. She was standing, breathing, a ghost with a gun in the darkness.
    Bloody Mary, quite contrary
.
    He made a go of getting up.
    “I need you to neutralize this.”
    I could do it. But I needed her to do it. She needed to do it.
    “Party, what’s your situation?”
    “Jo! What are you doing?”
    I stood, too, pacing him up. He stuck his hand in his pocket. He wasn’t even a sword’s-length away.
    “Mary.”
    Its fleece was white as snow
.
    “You did the right thing.”
    “HOC, this is Party.”
    “Go ahead, Party.”
    “Saying again, last lines from the Wall.”
    “Copy. Go ahead.”
    “‘Follow the grid to the yellow-brick road.’”
    He paused. Swearing out loud into the House of Cards, our house, for the both of us. Northern Lights were not good—neither was the yellow-brick road. Slade was on a timer now. Chisolm’s last go before getting out of town. Pitting the Salvage hive-mind against itself. Phantom Cell Structure. Against Slade itself.
    Because once called out like that, by any one Salvager to all others, to really, really get things going, they would all play along. They’d waited so long—some preparing, some fomenting, each with eyes only for the Event. And what they’d be allowed to do,once the old rules were really gone. Chisolm was setting them after the municipal infrastructure—after the electrical substations. Salvagers would obey—each alone, and all together. The drone of their disconnected ideas too loud to realize they’re all one thought. The ghost in the Salvage machine.
    That was the thing about Salvage—it knew something about everything, but it had no idea what it was doing.
    “Copy. Is everything okay?”
    “We’re coming back.”
    “You did the right thing,” Levi said. Shutting the laundry room door behind me. I walked past him with Ruth’s packs.
    Ruth stood in the kitchen behind Mary, looking at Levi. She hadn’t wanted to stay in the car—had wanted us to let her out, to let her go—but we ignored her. Drove her. Passing a pair of brawling gangs on State Street seemed to explain things to her well enough. She was quiet the rest of the way.
    “I know,” Mary said.
    I stepped up behind him. “Look, now, Mary. Look at us.”
    She looked, her blue eyes black in the darkened kitchen.
    “We needed you, and you came through.”
    “Well, I needed you—”
    “You don’t understand. ‘We’ includes you.”
    We all stood there. Levi and I had only rehearsed this on each other. To make sure Members knew their acts of violence were necessary. Were appreciated. Were Group and Place and staying alive.
    I cleared my throat. “Let’s get out of these paints. Take your mask off, Mary.”
    We weren’t violent then. There is a difference between paint and not.
    “You can have the first shower, Mary,” Levi said. “You earned it.”
    “Don’t ask her about tonight,” I told Ruth. “Don’t bring it up when she’s not wearing paint. Don’t bring any of it up.”
    I opened the fridge. “How about a beer?”
    “Yeah. Thanks.”
    I smiled, looking, I imagined,