10. House of Stairs

“Not if you get me that hard drive,” the Voice said.

“Alright, alright. Just keep me alive, and it’s all yours,” I lied. The city streets were crowding with workers on their way to the grind, and the nearly empty bus was crawling along slowly.

“I’ve had time to do a little prep,” the Voice said. “There’s a small store across the street from the bus stop. I need both of you to run there. I left a gift for you in the back. There will be Strangers all over the city, so move fast.”

I told Guts. He pointed out the window at the bus stop. Amongst the crowd of people waiting to get on the bus, was a man in a trench coat. It could have been anyone, really, but not someone you’d walk up and talk to unless you knew him first, so it was probably a Stranger.

“So what do we do?” I asked. “There’s one right at the bus stop.”

Tall towers raked the sky like clawed hands and rose above me, caging me in. Their tips stretched out of sight even if I craned my neck. Trapped again.

“I’ll handle it,” the Voice said. There was a long moment in which nothing happened, in which I waited for the Voice to follow through on his promise.

And then, the buildings lit up. Shrill sirens filled the air, and warning lights flashed blindingly. The bus was stalled maybe fifty feet from the stop where the Stranger waited.

“I called in a bomb threat,” the Voice said. “To them all.”

Workers just arriving to their jobs were rushed out to the streets, spilling off the sidewalks and into traffic. The traffic lights signaled a complete stop for all vehicles as emergency services swept the scene.

Fairly routine for a Monday morning. There was always a threat, rarely an attack.

“Make a break for it,” the Voice said. “Get out of the bus and cross two blocks over. You’ll see a little magazine shop. Go inside.”

The bus driver opened the doors for me well before our stop, and I could see that the cloaked figure trying to make his way through the crowd toward me. I ducked in front of the hot, roaring engine of the bus and squeezed my way through the peeved hordes trying to reach their destinations despite the threat of eminent death. Glad I was still wearing my work clothes; I blended in perfectly.

Guts barreled through the civilians. The people around us were soft and small like me, and he towered over them.

Before long, the threat of the bomb would be diffused. Firemen would return from the buildings and tell its denizens to head back inside; tell them that today would not be the next in a too-long list of days infamous enough to be referred to only by mm/dd.

I reached the shop door and ducked inside. I stepped to the back and stooped down below an aisle with Guts. Guts motioned at the phone, then covered his mouth; I put the phone on mute.

“You think it’s a good idea to go to that tower? You’re gonna be trapped. You really trust whoever’s on the other end of that phone?”

No. I shook my head, looking at the mammoth man helplessly.

“So you gotta take destiny in your own hands. You need to get out of the city. You got two people way bigger and way meaner than you, the Strangers and this Voice, and their only interest in you is something you don’t even have. When you get to the tower and they find out, you’re fucked either way.”

“So where do I go? What do I do with the police and the Strangers after me.”

Guts stood. “You bluff, and you pray. Come on, get a backpack.”

Obediently, I grabbed a Princess backpack from the closest rack. Pink wasn't exactly my color, but beggars can't be choosy.

"Come on, we’re making a bomb,” Guts instructed. “Or something that looks like a bomb. We need something electronic.”

“Electronic? Like what? This is a convenience store.”

“Is there a phone in the back?”

I pushed my way through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, fear of the Strangers overcoming my usual anxieties about doing things that signs say not to do. A small beige service telephone hung from the wall.

The Voice meeped weakly from my pocket, and I ignored it. Guts was right. I yanked the convenience store phone from the wall and placed it in the backpack, making sure the bundle of cord and wires were visible.

Guts followed me with two 2-liter bottles of soda in his hands – one red and the other, green. The labels had been stripped back. He stuffed the bottles into the backpack then left the wires strung loosely over them, and left the backpack half open. It looked like I imagined a homemade bomb would, having only seen them on TV. I reasoned that since most people had ever seen one either, it would probably look pretty convincing.

“Now what?” I asked Guts.

Guts nodded. “The subway,” he said. “It moves, it’s crowded, and the Strangers won’t want to be trapped there with the police waiting for them at the next stop.”

“Right,” I said. “The subway, good idea. I can get out of the city, I guess, or hide somewhere. Shit.”

Not a hard decision to make when you don’t have any choice. Besides, I didn’t know if I could go back to a home without Erika.

Guts looked at the fake bomb on my back and then at my pale, bloodless face. . “C’mon… we’re about to get shot.”

The twin barrels of a shotgun pointed in my general direction, gripped in the white knuckles of a trembling shopkeeper. Rather than try to explain to him that I wasn’t dangerous, I rushed out of the store, ignoring his protests.

Shocked by how the city had come alive again. Cars zipped by, people stepped around me like I was a rock in a river, even with the little girl’s backpack on my shoulders. With Guts’s imposing frame next to me, I must have looked like a bona fide Stranger.

But even amidst this stream of organized chaos, I could sense two bodies walking directly toward me. I moved in the opposite direction.

In an attempt to look casual, I put the cell phone up to my ear.

“What are you doing? Where are you going?” the Voice asked. “That’s not the right way.”

“I’m sorry, man,” I said. “I really am. I have to go. I, uh… I just don’t have the tapes. Thanks for your help so far, but I can’t help you. I’m sorry, really.” I hung up.

Now, truly helpless. I dashed across the street blindly, fear leading me to take more risks. A bus blasted its horn in an angry attempt to reprimand me, freezing me in my tracks.

Guts took the lead and pulled me quickly down a street-side escalator, forcing his way through the mounds of blubber spilling from the sides of fatter pedestrians.

We reached the open station floor just in time to see the tail of a train disappearing down the tunnel. Shit. Minutes to the next one.

I pulled the children’s backpack from my back and placed it under the bench at my feet as I sat down. I seemed to be moving unnoticed in the crowds of Banlo Bay, who attempted at all costs to avoid contact with fellow human beings. Even if I were naked and waving a sword, I would probably have met no resistance.

With the pretend bomb out of sight, I scrunched myself up behind a column, hoping to remain undetected. Guts was too large to do even this and simply sat on the bench, hoping to look as normal as possible despite the sweat dripping from his brow.

“You there,” a voice behind us said in an authoritative way, “take your hands out of your pockets.”

I peeked out from behind the pillar. A policeman was standing behind Guts, one hand near the holster of his gun and the other on his radio.

“Officer, thank God,” Guts said. “We need your help.”

“We?” he asked. “Stay right there.”

“There are Strangers after us,” Guts said. “Look… there’s one right over there.”

He pointed up and behind the officer at the staircase, where I could indeed see a faceless trench coat descending the stairs.

The officer did not look behind himself however and seemed to be paying more attention to the familiar voice coming over the police intercom. “Large black male, six-five, dreadlocks, white tank top, wanted for assaulting a police officer last night.”

"Whoa!” Guts said. “I didn’t do anything like that. I love the police. You’ve got the wrong guy.”

The officer took a step backwards.

“Suspect should be bleeding… I repeat, bleeding,” the radio crackled again.

It suddenly dawned on me why the voice sounded familiar. It was The Voice.

“Voice!” I shouted from behind the pillar. “I’ll do what you want. Just let us go.”

Suddenly, the officer turned in the direction of my voice. I peeked out from behind the pillar and could see the nervous fear in his eyes. It was a fear I was familiar with myself—the fear of Strangers. It was this fear that led him to draw his gun and point it at the pillar.

As Guts took a step backwards, he nodded toward the tunnel where a train was quickly approaching.

“Step out into the open,” the officer commanded.

I did as I was told, and immediately the situation intensified.

“Backup! I need backup,” the policeman said into his radio. “We’ve got the SSS here.”

“Roger. They’re already on the way,” the Voice said over the radio.

“No backup!” I yelled, somehow hoping the Voice would hear me. “I’m sorry I hung up on you, Voice! Please just give me another chance.”

“Sir, calm down. I need you to lie down on the ground and interlace your fingers behind your head.”

“Man, this isn’t what it—”

Before I could finish, Guts took a step toward the officer, which made him turn suddenly and point his gun at the large man. The cop stopped giving directions and seemed more concerned with staying alive until backup arrived.

“Confirmed. I have the suspects here in… in custody. Requesting backup again.” Then he started shouting.

“Down on the ground, right now! Both of you! DOWN NOW!” Another officer arrived behind him, gun already drawn. Guts obeyed and lifted his hands into the air.

The train had stopped behind us. We were only a few feet from safety. People were pouring out of the train just as another policeman arrived and began guiding people away from our standoff.

“Go, Clark,” Guts said. “I’ll get arrested. You can come bail me out later. Deal? We’ll explain the whole thing.”

“Neither of you are going anywh—“

I lunged toward the bench and swung the backpack up from under it, holding it in my hands. “I have a bomb,” I whispered quietly, not believing my own ears.

No one seemed to hear me. I unzipped the backpack, revealing the red and green bottles and bundle of wires.

“Bomb!” Guts’s booming voice echoed up and down the underground chamber.

I could sense the door to the train closing behind me even as he yelled. Guts turned suddenly and shoved me with one hand as he grabbed the backpack with the other, sending me flying into the train car.

“I have a bomb!” Guts screamed again, holding the backpack into the air. The doors in front of me slid shut.

Pandemonium swept like a shockwave out from the suspicious-looking object, filling every onlooker with an urgent need to do the only thing we were ever taught to do to protect ourselves: run.

The train started moving just as I heard a series of loud popping noises. I crawled over to the glass doors and peered out them just in time to see Guts’s body fall backwards onto the tracks, bullets piercing his gargantuan frame.

*

By the time I looked up again and wiped the hot sweat from my face, my subway car was empty. I crawled up into a seat and curled into the fetal position.

I was pretty much dead, I knew. I would try to run because it was all I knew, but even during the worst of the Collapse things weren’t this bad. I was never a target, I was always one of the herd.

I was on death row, and the subway car was the last mile to the electric chair. This burned itself into my brain as the metal box raced through the tunnels of Banlo Bay. Without realizing it, I feel asleep to the mantra, just waiting to be executed.