“No,” Kay said finally.
The expression in her blue eyes had twisted something inside of him. She leaned forward and kissed him, her lips brushing lightly against his. He slipped his hand behind her neck, holding her to him.
“All right,” she said when they pulled apart. She cleared her throat. “Yes. I’ll marry you.”
As it happened, he’d gotten on a train less than an hour after he and Kay had said their vows, so he still had no idea what it was like to wake up with her. But he knew what it was like to talk to her – to be accepted – to not see his own guilt in her eyes.
The train sped across a plain. Collis gazed unseeingly at a herd of grazing elk, hoping like hell that Mac and the others were all right. He hadn’t meant for Mac to get shot. The guy was his best friend, or had been.
Maybe Mac would understand.
He grimaced. Like with Kay, he could be himself with Mac…except that around Mac, he was constantly striving to be better. Constantly aware of how far he still had to go.
Sometimes a fellow got sick of never measuring up.
Finally the train slowed. In the distance, Collis could see the munitions factory, its tall chimneys grey against the blue sky. Somewhere behind the spread of trees to the east, he knew Harmony Two sprawled. Its workers laboured in the factory.
He’d already showered and packed. He glanced in the mirror and combed his hair, and then hunched into a jacket; it would be cold outside.
How well he knew it.
Collis shuddered to be so near a camp again, but hid his anxiety. He grabbed his case and made his way down the train’s narrow corridor, with its patterned carpet and gleaming wood panelling. There weren’t many others aboard – just a few camp officials who greeted him warmly.
When the train had stopped and Collis stepped onto the platform, two men were waiting for him. “Ah, Mr Reed!” exclaimed one. They hurried over; hands were shaken all around. “We’re so glad you could make it. The situation is worrying, to say the least.”
Collis tried to forget the barbed-wire fences that lay out of sight. But forgetting them was impossible and his voice was brusque. “Don’t worry, we’ll get defences in place,” he said. “If the troops make it this far, we’ll be prepared.”
As they started off towards the auto, he added, “Can you put a call through to Atomic Harmony Devices for me? I need to set up a meeting with them as soon as possible.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
September, 1942
The tunnels were in as chaotic a state as Ingo had said. He got us to the north side of the city through them anyway.
At exactly six thirteen that evening, an armed group of us entered the Majestic Building – the tallest skyscraper in New Manhattan. High overhead, the giant Harmony flag flew from its iconic needle.
Ingo and the six snipers who’d come were dressed as high-up Guns; from the people back in the Garden, we’d cobbled together grey business suits. The dead Guns in the office had provided the Harmony armbands.
My spine felt slick with fear. I had a small handbag from one of the women; I gripped it tightly. Just as we entered the Majestic’s marble and mahogany lobby, I muttered to Ingo, “Are you sure I can’t convince you to go back to the tunnels?”
He didn’t look at me. His fingers were tense on my arm. “I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.”
Even with the rebellion sweeping the city, nobody dared stop a group of armed high-up Guns. They pushed aside the elevator girl and shoved me on board.
NMB – New Manhattan Broadcasting – was on the top floor. We got inside in a flurry of shouting, with the “Guns” barking that they’d captured Wildcat – that I was going to give an on-air confession.
“She goes on now,” snarled one of the snipers, slapping his hand on an executive’s desk. She flinched and shot me a fearful look. I could see her sorrow that Wildcat had been caught.
“Yes…yes, of course,” she said.
Five minutes later, I was in the studio.
The large space had a desk sitting incongruously at its centre. Two shiny black telio cameras – huge, ungainly things on spindly legs – crouched nearby. A woman with a Virgo brooch had been reading the news. She stopped short as we advanced.
A few of our number hustled her aside. “We’re commandeering this station! We’ve got Wildcat. She’s making an announcement.”
“Do it,” a quavering voice ordered. “I’ve just had a phone call. Keep rolling.”
“You’re up,” muttered Ingo. His fingers slowly left my arm. “Good luck.”
I gave a nervous nod and started forward. In the sudden silence, people stood gaping at me.
As if in a dream, I slid behind the vacated desk.
The lights were so bright that I couldn’t see anyone’s faces; just a pool of darkness, black as the tunnels. One of the cameras had a steady red light. I fixed my gaze on it.
I hadn’t planned what I’d say, but somehow the words were there. “I’m Amity Vancour, the voice of the Resistance.” I managed a smile. “I guess the face of the Resistance too, now that you can see me. For the past six days myself and a group of rebels have occupied Henderson Square Garden. Now I’m in the Majestic.”
It hit me again, forcibly: I was urging people to fight a battle that I doubted they could win, just to cause a distraction.
Ingo would understand exactly how I felt. Knowing he was somewhere out there in the darkness steadied me.
“We’re taking this building,” I said levelly. “We need to take the whole northern part of the island – the uppermost sections of Capricorn and Pisces. It’s vital for the Resistance. Help us! If you’ve been fighting, this is where to do it.”
As I spoke, a stirring came from the shadows beyond the desk. “What the hell…” I heard someone murmur. Someone else gave a gasp that sounded joyful and quickly stifled it.
A grease pencil lay on the desk. There was a backdrop behind me – a giant photo of New Manhattan. I took the pencil and rose. In the utter silence of the room, I scrawled a V over the city in broad, harsh strokes.
Please, World United, don’t let us down.
I turned back to the cameras. I clenched the desk and leaned forward. “V for Victory,” I said, emotion thickening my voice. “Fight – with everything you have!”
As if coming out of a trance, the director yelped, “Cut! Get the cameras off! Somebody call security, now!”
The lights came on. Suddenly everything was hustle, motion. Our group quickly surrounded the set, rifles aloft. “Don’t move! Nobody move!”
Ingo came sprinting over. I snatched up the handbag and lunged from the desk. He grabbed my arm, hurrying me along.
Our group rushed out the doors, holding rifles on the studio until the last moment. I caught a mix of stunned and exultant expressions. Several people were crying. Some made covert V signs at me.
As we left, I glimpsed a woman racing to a wall phone.
We made it back out to the elevator. The door to the stairwell was beside it. As planned, half of us took the steps. We were on the top floor – a hundred and two floors up.
But there was a short flight of stairs that led up further still.
“What do you think?” I hissed to Ingo, staring tensely up them.
We’d discussed this – had agreed it was insane, but might be worth a try. Ingo gave me a terrible grin, breathing hard. “Might as well. Let’s be fools to the last hurrah.”
We pelted up the stairs. The three remaining snipers, as arranged, started racing downwards. With luck, at least some of us would make it out and could rally people from the ground.
The door at the top was locked. “Can you pick it?” asked Ingo hurriedly.
I shook my head. “I don’t have anything.”
“Stand back.”
I took a shaky step or two backwards, and he levelled his rifle at the doorknob. He shot. We didn’t wait to see if anyone would come running. Ingo wrenched the door open, and we rushed through.
We were on the roof. The wind had picked up; New Manhattan lay below us, spread out in a golden sunset – so beautiful, despite everything. The famous needle of the Majestic Building spiked above, with the giant Harmony flag stirring in the breeze.
Ingo and I climbed up to the needle’s base using a series of metal ladders and found the flag chain. We rattled it downwards. The giant flag made a snapping noise like the sail of a tall ship as it dropped. Its red-and-black swirls were taller than I was.
Before we’d left, Harlan had given me his hip flask. “Take it, Vancour – you might need it more than me,” he’d said.
I drew it from the handbag and hurriedly uncapped it. The peaty odour of whiskey floated out. “What is it you say again?”
Ingo knew what I meant. For the first time since I’d seen him again, his smile looked real.
“Prost,” he said.
I toasted him with the flask and took a quick swig. “Prost.”
I handed it to him and he did the same, echoing the toast back. Then he poured the rest of the whiskey over the flag in great, sweeping arcs. “Prost to you too, you bastard…long may you burn.”
The matches I’d brought caught instantly. In seconds, the grey corner of the flag was blazing. As heat poured from it, I felt fierce and giddy at the same time.
“Back up you go,” I said to the flag.
It was heavy, but with both of us working the chain we hoisted it again. I knew we should run, try to escape the building – yet for a few snatched seconds we just gazed at our handiwork in awe.
The flames had devoured a small corner already. The blaze was eerily bright against the sunset-streaked sky. Sparks and scraps of burning cloth floated on the wind.
Ingo gave a soft, unbelieving noise. “If this doesn’t get every Gun in the city over here, nothing will.”
“I almost don’t care,” I murmured. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Minutes later, we were running down the stairwell.
The concrete silence cloaked us – the only sound was our footsteps as we spiralled down, down, down. If it hadn’t been for a sign on each landing – 97th floor, 92nd floor, 88th floor – I’d have lost count.
Just past the eighty-third floor, we stopped abruptly. A cry escaped me.
The three snipers who’d gone before us lay sprawled on the stairs. One was Joe, who’d helped empty the makeshift chamber pots. Blood glistened on the concrete floor. There was a streaked red handprint on the wall.
I gaped numbly at them. Then we both started, staring upwards.
The clang of a metal door closing above. A second later came the echo of heavy boots heading down.
Five floors above us? Ten?
I was trembling. We sidestepped the bodies. Ingo’s hand was briefly firm under my elbow. We kept rushing down, as silently and quickly as we could, staying close against the wall.
I gripped Ingo’s arm suddenly. We froze, chests heaving.
“…on fire,” said a hushed female voice from below. “My boyfriend called me – he said you can see it for miles!”
“You can see riots starting already out the window.”
“Are you going to fight?”
The pounding footsteps drew closer. Ingo and I kept going, hurtling one more flight, two, before we reached the speakers – a woman and two men.
They’d gone quiet as they heard us approach. When we came into view the woman’s hand flew to her mouth. The men straightened slowly, staring. I realized what we must look like – me with my still-bruised face; Ingo with his scar and gripping his rifle.
“Wildcat?” whispered the woman.
Then they heard the footsteps behind us and flinched. “Can you help?” said Ingo in an urgent undertone.
“We don’t want to endanger you,” I added. “But—”
One of the men took a step backwards. He was as big as Harlan, with slicked-back hair. “Hey, listen, I don’t want any trouble…”
Fire sparked in the woman’s eyes. She opened the stairwell door and motioned us in.
“Hurry,” she whispered, glancing quickly upwards. “You can take the service elevator. I know where the key is.”
Out on the street, the traffic had stopped.
The service entrance led out to an alleyway. A few cigarette butts lay on the ground – some only half-smoked, still glowing.
As Ingo and I emerged from the alley, we saw long lines of autos, their chrome fenders glinting in the sunset. Horns echoed. Shouts churned the air. From somewhere I heard breaking glass.
My emotions were in chaos. I had set this in motion. Now I had to see it through.
Ingo looked as if he knew what I was thinking. He’d been carrying my veiled hat in his inner jacket pocket; he handed it over.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “We’re too close here to see it – we need to get a few blocks away.”
I realized what he meant. I braced myself and nodded. On the street, we joined a tide of people heading north like I’d told them. Some were punching the air, yelling: “V for Victory! V for Vancour!”
“Come and get us, Guns!” shouted someone else.
Once we got a few streets away, people stood in thick clusters, staring raptly upwards. Some were even perched on the roofs of their autos.
The last scrap of the Harmony flag was still burning.
The flames had already devoured the blood-and-night swirl. Now there was only a long, thin line of grey material left against the Majestic’s famous needle, fire consuming it, like a lit matchstick against the sunset.
“Oh, my word, if that ain’t just the prettiest sight I’ve ever seen,” murmured a man next to me. He had his hat off, clutched against his chest.
“You’re all crazy!” cried an old woman, her voice cracking. “She’s brought the Guns right down on us! She’s brought ’em right down on us!”
I stared silently up at the still-lit flag, knowing that she was right.
Finally the last of it sizzled and died. Smoke rose up in a beacon. Triumphant cheers rose up. Exultation was on almost every face around me. The horn-honking had faded. There was only this moment, this street, with hundreds of people gazing upwards.
In a soft voice, someone started to sing: Oh, Appalachia…my Appalachia… Others joined in, growing louder, their voices carrying in the twilight. The national anthem of the annexed country had been forbidden by death under Kay Pierce’s rule.
I heard my own national anthem, that of the Western Seaboard, coming from my lips in a low murmur. My fists were tight.
Most people were sane. Most people were good. They just wanted quiet, happy lives. They didn’t want Kay Pierce’s regime to continue. They didn’t want what my father had made possible to continue. That was worth fighting for, wasn’t it?
It has to be, I thought. Please.
Beside me, Ingo was softly singing too – a song in his harsh-sounding native Germanic, which sounded less harsh to me the more I heard him speak it. The song had a quiet lilt – less like a national anthem and more like a lullaby.
Slowly, people went silent. An unearthly hush fell.
I swallowed, studying Ingo. “What was that?” I asked softly.
At first I thought he hadn’t heard. He still stood looking upwards, his face expressionless.
“Something my father used to sing to us,” he said finally.
I started to respond, then my head jerked up at a crunching, mechanical noise. The rock crusher at Harmony Five came back in a rush of memory. I stared down the street…and my veins iced.
In the distance, a long line of tanks was heading towards us in a rolling wave. They came right over the parked autos, crushing them like tin cans.
I watched dumbly. Back at the Garden, I’d thought that if I were Kay Pierce, I’d bring in outside troops.
Now they’d arrived.
Suddenly, screams filled the air. A roar of fear and rage rose from the crowd. Some people started hurriedly snatching things out of their autos an
d running off into the side streets.
Others raced towards the tanks, their faces distorted with fury. “Yeah, come on, you bastards!” shouted the man who’d said what a pretty sight the burning flag was.
The old woman stood yelling, unmoving in the tide of people, her face frantic. “I told you! I told you! She’s brought ’em down on us! She’s brought ’em right down!”
Ingo and I moved hastily against the side of a building. He still held his rifle; his long fingers were white as he gripped it. He gave me a wolfish grin that was more like a baring of teeth.
“Well, I’d say that we’ve caused a pretty big fucking distraction. If World United can’t take the airport now, they’ll never be able to.”
I nodded, breathing hard. The grating, crumpling noise was louder now, battling the sound of screams. The line of tanks looked endless, gleaming away down the long avenue.
“I made this happen,” I whispered. “On purpose.” I flashed Ingo a quick look and tried to smile. My voice was ragged. “Let’s just hope Mr Buzet wasn’t full of hot air, right?”
Ingo didn’t respond, but the expression on the good half of his face changed as he gazed down at me. Something flickered in his almost-black eyes that made my heart twist. He looked abruptly away and cocked his rifle.
I started to say his name – to put my hand on his arm. I stopped in confused despair. Not now, not like this.
Ingo straightened and studied the oncoming tanks. “I won’t insult you by trying to protect you,” he said quietly. “Ready to fight?”
I nodded, fear and regret coursing through me. At the same time came a surge of adrenalin that I knew well from Peacefighting. Gazing at the tanks, I slowly pulled off my hat with its covering veil. I tossed it to the ground.
From the handbag, I took out my pistol.
“Ready,” I said softly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
When we were a block away from the first tank, it fired into the oncoming crowd. The explosion took out part of the sidewalk – people were thrown through a department store window as the ground under our feet trembled. Smoke billowed upwards. A woman lay motionless, her eyes open as she lay in a display of household goods.