Cory Doctorow: Little Brother

We passed a lot of people in the road on the way to the Powell Street BART. They were running or walking, white-faced and silent or shouting and panicked. Homeless people cowered in doorways and watched it all, while a tall black tranny hooker shouted at two mustached young men about something.

The closer we got to the BART, the worse the press of bodies became. By the time we reached the stairway down into the station, it was a mob-scene, a huge brawl of people trying to crowd their way down a narrow staircase. I had my face crushed up against someone’s back, and someone else was pressed into my back.

Darryl was still beside me — he was big enough that he was hard to shove, and Jolu was right behind him, kind of hanging on to his waist. I spied Vanessa a few yards away, trapped by more people.

“Screw you!” I heard Van yell behind me. “Pervert! Get your hands off of me!”

I strained around against the crowd and saw Van looking with disgust at an older guy in a nice suit who was kind of smirking at her. She was digging in her purse and I knew what she was digging for.

“Don’t mace him!” I shouted over the din. “You’ll get us all too.”

At the mention of the word mace, the guy looked scared and kind of melted back, though the crowd kept him moving forward. Up ahead, I saw someone, a middle-aged lady in a hippie dress, falter and fall. She screamed as she went down, and I saw her thrashing to get up, but she couldn’t, the crowd’s pressure was too strong. As I neared her, I bent to help her up, and was nearly knocked over her. I ended up stepping on her stomach as the crowd pushed me past her, but by then I don’t think she was feeling anything.

I was as scared as I’d ever been. There was screaming everywhere now, and more bodies on the floor, and the press from behind was as relentless as a bulldozer. It was all I could do to keep on my feet.

We were in the open concourse where the turnstiles were. It was hardly any better here — the enclosed space sent the voices around us echoing back in a roar that made my head ring, and the smell and feeling of all those bodies made me feel a claustrophobia I’d never known I was prone to.

People were still cramming down the stairs, and more were squeezing past the turnstiles and down the escalators onto the platforms, but it was clear to me that this wasn’t going to have a happy ending.

“Want to take our chances up top?” I said to Darryl.

“Yes, hell yes,” he said. “This is vicious.”

I looked to Vanessa — there was no way she’d hear me. I managed to get my phone out and I texted her.

> We’re getting out of here

I saw her feel the vibe from her phone, then look down at it and then back at me and nod vigorously. Darryl, meanwhile, had clued Jolu in.

“ What’s the plan?” Darryl shouted in my ear.

“We’re going to have to go back!” I shouted back, pointing at the remorseless crush of bodies.

“It’s impossible!” he said.

“It’s just going to get more impossible the longer we wait!”

He shrugged. Van worked her way over to me and grabbed hold of my wrist. I took Darryl and Darryl took Jolu by the other hand and we pushed out.

It wasn’t easy. We moved about three inches a minute at first, then slowed down even more when we reached the stairway. The people we passed were none too happy about us shoving them out of the way, either. A couple people swore at us and there was a guy who looked like he’d have punched me if he’d been able to get his arms loose. We passed three more crushed people beneath us, but there was no way I could have helped them. By that point, I wasn’t even thinking of helping anyone. All I could think of was finding the spaces in front of us to move into, of Darryl’s mighty straining on my wrist, of my death-grip on Van behind me.

We popped free like Champagne corks an eternity later, blinking in the grey smoky light. The air raid sirens were still blaring, and the sound of emergency vehicles’ sirens as they tore down Market Street was even louder. There was almost no one on the streets anymore — just the people trying hopelessly to get underground. A lot of them were crying. I spotted a bunch of empty benches — usually staked out by skanky winos — and pointed toward them.

We moved for them, the sirens and the smoke making us duck and hunch our shoulders. We got as far as the benches before Darryl fell forward.

We all yelled and Vanessa grabbed him and turned him over. The side of his shirt was stained red, and the stain was spreading. She tugged his shirt up and revealed a long, deep cut in his pudgy side.

“Someone freaking stabbed him in the crowd,” Jolu said, his hands clenching into fists. “Christ, that’s vicious.”

Darryl groaned and looked at us, then down at his side, then he groaned and his head went back again.

Vanessa took off her jean jacket and then pulled off the cotton hoodie she was wearing underneath it. She wadded it up and pressed it to Darryl’s side. “Take his head,” she said to me. “Keep it elevated.” To Jolu she said, “Get his feet up — roll up your coat or something.” Jolu moved quickly. Vanessa’s mother is a nurse and she’d had first aid training every summer at camp. She loved to watch people in movies get their first aid wrong and make fun of them. I was so glad to have her with us.

We sat there for a long time, holding the hoodie to Darryl’s side. He kept insisting that he was fine and that we should let him up, and Van kept telling him to shut up and lie still before she kicked his ass.

“What about calling 911?” Jolu said.

I felt like an idiot. I whipped my phone out and punched 911. The sound I got wasn’t even a busy signal — it was like a whimper of pain from the phone system. You don’t get sounds like that unless there’s three million people all dialing the same number at once. Who needs botnets when you’ve got terrorists?

“What about Wikipedia?” Jolu said.

“No phone, no data,” I said.

“What about them?” Darryl said, and pointed at the street. I looked where he was pointing, thinking I’d see a cop or an paramedic, but there was no one there.

“It’s OK buddy, you just rest,” I said.

“No, you idiot, what about them , the cops in the cars? There!”

He was right. Every five seconds, a cop car, an ambulance or a firetruck zoomed past. They could get us some help. I was such an idiot.

“Come on, then,” I said, “let’s get you where they can see you and flag one down.”

Vanessa didn’t like it, but I figured a cop wasn’t going to stop for a kid waving his hat in the street, not that day. They just might stop if they saw Darryl bleeding there, though. I argued briefly with her and Darryl settled it by lurching to his feet and dragging himself down toward Market Street.