Wu let Zoey up and she took a cautious step forward, noting the logo on the side of the tanker. It was a dancing cartoon cow over the words, REAL MILK, FROM REAL COWS!
Will walked up and the three of them stared at it.
Finally, Zoey said, “Oh, right. They were playing off the whole cow thing. That makes sense.”
A fast-talking man was approaching from behind. Zoey thought she recognized the voice. She turned to see Charlie Chopra and his entourage, his eyes wide, a big smile on his face, Cammy the camera drone hovering in front of him.
“Incredible turn of events, my lovely disciples. And I want to reiterate, if someone tries to sell you a personal flying apparatus, it’s not the flying part that’s hard. It’s the landing. Gravity is what keeps our children and pets from flying off into space, but it is a jealous, jealous mistress.”
Will walked calmly over to a stopped Mercedes being driven by a middle-aged man who looked like a stockbroker. Will opened the door and stared wordlessly at the driver for five seconds. The driver, also never saying a word, exited the vehicle.
Will got behind the wheel and said to him, “Buy any model you want, send us the bill.”
Wu was talking to Zoey, urging her toward the car. Her head felt like it was full of bees. There were faces everywhere, bystanders, people recording, pointing, muttering. Charlie Chopra moved toward her, smiling over his braided beard, clearly hoping to get a comment from her. He was saying something. She wasn’t able to process the sounds. He stopped talking and seemed to be waiting for a response. Zoey stared at him, then felt something in her jacket pocket, the plastic tube.
She pulled it out and said, “Hey, everybody, buy this … daisy-flavored skin cream. Thanks.”
Then she vomited tiny eggs onto the pavement.
14
Drones tracked the borrowed Mercedes back to their neighborhood, but no one was making an effort to stop them. Zoey told herself not to watch the feeds about the incident on the way back, that she could get more actually useful information in other ways. She made it less than five minutes before pulling out her phone. From the back seat, she watched the string of live camera feeds, blinking from one to the next as the software detected new developments, mostly about crews rushing to the aftermath. The chat streams flowed alongside the feed and a single message was getting reposted thousands of times:
TOMORROW NIGHT, WE STORM THE WALLS
They made it back to the estate and pulled into the underground garage. Echo and Andre were standing there waiting next to Andre’s Bentley, rushing to greet them as they exited the car.
Andre said, “We watched the whole thing. So now they have to throw out all that milk, right? Got bullets in it.”
“He had all of these people,” muttered Zoey. “These regular people. Just … acting like human shields. Ready to die. Just to screw me. Kids. Some of them. Just kids…”
She was shaking all over. Cold.
Wu was behind her, now clutching a towel to his bleeding scalp with the hand that wasn’t in a cast.
“Wu, go to the hospital again.”
“It is fine, cuts to the scalp always look worse than they are. The leg hurts but I have full range of movement and an elaborate collection of painkillers in my room.”
Echo said, “The city’s Unrest Index is at six point five.”
Zoey said, “The what?”
“It’s the index that measure’s the city’s unrest,” elaborated Andre.
“Same system that predicted the riot,” said Echo. “You go over seven and you get multiple riots across the city in specific hot spots. An eight is general chaos that shuts down entire neighborhoods, a ten means all social norms are gone and your city is no longer a city.”
Zoey tried to keep it together. “But why? Who was Tilley to them? Was he like their president?”
Will shook his head. “It’s not about him. These things take on a life of their own. It’s a self-sustaining reaction.”
Echo said, “And they can always find fuel to keep it going. This morning, a homeless man was found dead around the encampment in the park. Natural causes, he was sixty years old and sleeping outdoors. But the city has the stray dogs problem…” She apparently grew alarmed at Zoey’s appearance and stopped herself. “Hey? Are you okay?”
“Yes. Great.” Zoey didn’t feel like she had complete control over any part of her body at the moment.
“Anyway,” said Andre, picking up the story, “corpse lays out long enough, dogs will get at it. Chew off parts. Well, somehow through the grapevine, by noon the chunks bitten off by canines became ‘all organs missing’ and ‘lifelong homeless dude’ became ‘valued member of The Blowback community.’ Guess he got kicked out of a Livingston Foundation shelter last month and—”
“Why would we kick out a homeless person?”
“Bit a member of the staff. Anyway, that was enough of a connection for the conspiracy crowd. Counting the two dead from the situation you just came from, the narrative is that you’re on a rampage. Just eating enemies left and right.”
Zoey had a sudden, vivid memory of a bullet brushing past her right ear and found her legs would not support her any longer. She decided to sit down on the concrete floor, and then lie down. It was nice down there. Cool. She curled up. She could not stop shivering.
She vaguely sensed everyone above her going nuts, running to her. She felt Echo’s hand on her arm. Even with her eyes squeezed closed, she knew it was hers.
“I’m okay. I’m okay. I just need a minute. Just … continue the meeting. I’ll listen from down here.”
Will, amazingly, did just that. “All right, the good news is we’re much better informed now than when we left this morning. We know everything we need to know aside from the exact manner of Tilley’s death, and that was always irrelevant. We need to map the anatomy of this group and find where it’s weak.”
A pair of cowboy boots approached. Budd had arrived. From the floor, Zoey said, “Hey, Budd.”
Echo said, “She’s in shock.”
Andre said, “What’s the thing they’re all saying in the chat? About storming the walls? They think they’re comin’ here?”
Zoey decided she was done with this meeting. She got up and shuffled away, muttering something about needing the bathroom, saying not to follow her, that she’d be right back.
15
Zoey took the elevator up to the library, emerged from a hidden door behind a sliding bookshelf, and made her way to her room. She stumbled into the bathroom, splashed water on her face, and concentrated on her breathing. She stared into the vanity mirror. There was something hard and lumpy in her hair, a splatter of molten glass or plastic that had landed there and solidified. She cut it out with scissors. Her jacket and both shirts had burn holes around the shoulder. She took them off and tossed the shirts in the trash. This revealed pink burns on her shoulder and arm, overlapping with the rainbow-shaped scar on her back left by that stovetop all those years ago.
There was a chair in front of her vanity. Before she knew she was doing it, Zoey picked it up and swung it at the mirror, shattering it. Stench Machine went sprinting away. She hadn’t even known he was in the room. She found him crouched in a corner, his hackles raised. She got down on the floor with him, put him in her lap, apologized.