Naomi escaped through the boardroom doors. She ran through the waiting room to the elevator. The doors closed. The elevator moved. The doors slid open with a ding. Naomi stepped out and recognized the corridor where she and Sammy had parted.
Arrows were painted on walls with big block letters stenciled over them. An arrow pointed right towards Areas A—Z. An arrow pointed left towards Areas AA—ZZ and AAA—ZZZ, the way Sammy went. Naomi began running.
Arrows and letters flew by. BB. FFF. ZDT. BR, but she just kept running. She had to get to Sammy before the white people did.
Panicked, she made wild turns. A right. A left. Two rights, then another. She jumped down an impossibly long flight of stairs, turned right, stumbled, and skidded against the white linoleum floor before falling onto her back. She lay staring up at the flickering ceiling lights, listening to the pounding of her heart. Then she realized the pounding was not her heart at all.
She got up and paced the hallway. She followed the sound up stairs and down stairs, around corners and past numbered doors until everything seemed to be roaring. She found herself in front of the Sector 349 doors. Naomi shoved them open.
“Sammy?”
He stood in front of her on the half bridge that was suspended over the big room she had seen on the CEO’s screen. The bridge was only four feet wide but it was a couple hundred feet long. The room was square, very big, with walls made from TV’s like the room outside of Naomi’s fake house. These walls gave off a gentle light as they swirled with images, flashes of white and green.
“The horses!” she shouted.
Sammy extended his hand. She took it in her own. He said, “We’ve found them.” Sammy pulled her to the railing.
Naomi leaned over and her breath left her—not in panic, but in joy.
The horses ran below. As the turbine spun under their feet, their backs rose and fell in rhythm, like water in a whirlpool chasing the center.
Naomi moved away from the railing and walked a few hundred feet to the end of the bridge.
“Be careful,” Sammy said, as he inched up next to her. From where she was Naomi could look down right into the center of the room, around which all the horses ran.
“You see that?” she asked him. She pointed towards the middle of the floor where there was a small hole. Sparks licked it like fiery tongues.
“Yeah,” he said, “I was trying to figure out what that was when you came in here.”
“Sammy,” she said, “that’s electricity. This is where the paste factory generates all the power.”
“How you figure that?” Sammy asked.
“I met the CEO.”
“CEO? What’s that?”
“Look,” she said, “I don’t have time to explain. This place…” she stammered. “This place…this place is bad. Paste is made from horse poop!”
“I know,” he said. “I saw it with my own eyes. A room full of green sludge and those white people pushing it with mops.” He shuddered. “Disgusting. I can’t ever eat again.”
There was a flash below. One of the horses faltered, tripped, and sprawled across the floor. As it fell, it knocked down the horses around it. Their bodies crumpled together like a fist and were thrown outward towards the walls. The tangle came to rest in the corner where the floor did not spin. Some horses stood but others could not get up and they raised their heads and kicked at the air.
The wall unzipped like a jacket. White people came out and approached the horses slowly, lassos and whips raised. The horses neighed and shivered. The people surrounded the horses. The horses that could still stand fought against the white people, kicking their front legs. More white people came out and threw their ropes around the horses’ necks, pulling them through the wall. New horses came out of another hole on the other side of the room. The walls closed.
Naomi shouted, “We have to stop this!”
Sammy pointed at the sparking hole below them. “If we can get something in that hole, I think we can gum it up.”
“What can we do?”
“I been thinking about that.” He took paste from his overalls. “Still got this from the Pastery,” he said, smiling. But then the color drained from his face. “They’re here.”
Naomi turned. The doors opened at the far end of the bridge and white people spilled out, quickly filling it.
“What do we do?” she yelled.
Sammy unwrapped the paste. The wad stuck to the paper and Sammy had to smear it off. He let the paper go. Clutching the paste in one hand, Sammy grabbed the railing with the other. He tilted over the railing.
Naomi yelled, “Hurry!” Thirty or forty white people were already on the bridge. Sammy let go of the paste. For a split second it stuck to his hand. Just before the wad fell, the bridge gave a sickening jolt. The white people’s weight was pulling the bridge loose from its supports. Naomi fell across the railing, knocking into Sammy. Sammy fluttered. The paste dropped from his hand, and he jumped backwards so as to not fall over the railing.
“Missed!” he shouted above the roar of the horses’ hooves. The paste had landed a foot from the hole.
The bridge gave another sickening lurch. “They’re still coming,” she said. Now there must be fifty or sixty of them.
Sammy reached into his overalls and pulled out more paste. “Last chance,” he said. “If this floor wrenches again, it won’t work.”
White people were half way down the bridge. Naomi shuddered at the thought of their puffy, bloated bodies.
She turned to Sammy.
“Leave the wrapper on this time,” she said. “Don’t drop it until I stop them.”
Sammy nodded.
Naomi stretched her arms across the railings. She walked towards the white people, their faces as slack as curtains, their mouths turned in frowns, and their eyes cloudy. Naomi pitied them. She took a breath and pushed into them.
Naomi held tightly to the railings but they pushed her backwards like a slingshot. Her fingers slipped. She took one step back, and then with all her strength pushed forward. The people in front stumbled and stopped. There was a ripple effect as they bumped into each other.
“Sammy!” she yelled. “Drop it! Drop it now!”
Sammy sighted the paste over the hole. He exhaled and let go. The paste left his hand. Naomi held her breath.
“Yee hah!” Sammy yelled.
Then the people grabbed Naomi and she tried to escape their doughy grip. She screamed, “Sammy!” and then a hand closed over her mouth.
Sammy yelled, “Get off her!”
Sammy ran down the bridge and lunged towards the people.
Grabbing her hands, Sammy yanked her with all his strength and the white hands let go. Naomi threw her arms around him and held him close. Fear flowed through her like ice on a frozen river. She felt herself shivering and she could not catch her breath. She gulped, “Sam…” but couldn’t finish saying his name.
“We’re cornered,” he said.
The room shuddered. The walls rippled and the white people swayed. Naomi and Sammy fell backwards into the bridge. Naomi felt hands on her once more. She opened her mouth to scream but she couldn’t even hear herself as the whole room roared with grinding fury. The lights dimmed and flickered. She heard a thunderclap and saw a blue tongue of lightning shoot up to the ceiling. The pictures in the walls faded and there was another huge crack of lightning. This time the flash sent blue sparks to all corners of the room. Another flash blinded Naomi. The hands around her let go.