Adam Levin - The Instructions

We kept sixteen chairs and dumped the rest in the pool. We locked down the B-Hall classrooms, locked down the gates at the B-Hall/2-Hall junction, and set half the chairs side-to-side to make barricades: one along the southern border of the Main Hall/B-Hall junction, another between the northern edge of the front entrance and the facing Main Hall-wall. The remaining eight chairs were to be wielded legs-forward by Ben-Wa’s soldiers, three at either barricade, two at the B-Hall fire alarm.

I opened the front doors and clicked out the stoppers. Wind blasted hailstones and rock salt onto the traction rug. The Side of Damage was shivering, big-eyed.

I told them: You’ll warm up fast.

“We’re not cold. We’re ready,” Nakamook said. “Listen up,” he told the soldiers. “Listen to Gurion.”

It was time for the blessing on the Damage Proper. If they were Israelites and I the Cohain Gadol, I would have told them, “Hear O Israel, you are coming near to the battle against your enemies. Let your heart not be faint, do not be afraid, do not panic, and do not break down before them, for Adonai, your God, is the One who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you,” but they were the Side of Damage and I was Gurion ben-Judah, so I said other things:

Strike all turned cheeks that aren’t hustling ass-cheeks. Anyone not with us is part of the Arrangement. Let the runners run, but continue to attack in the face of any retreat less definite. There are far more of them than there are of us, and numbers can embolden cowards. We must overwhelm them with ferocity.

Soldiers at the barricades: remain steadfast. Let no one breach your lines. If someone tries to move you, break him down with your chair. If someone gets past you, shoot him. If you miss, chase him down. Lay him out. Don’t miss.

Soldiers on alarms: an alarm will almost definitely be pulled at some point. The later that happens, the better, but once it does happen, there’s no need to hold position. If you’re in the gym, get behind Vincie and reinforce the frontline. If you’re in B-Hall, get with Ben-Wa at the Main Hall junction and hold the lines til further instructed. You’ll see more action soon enough.

Ben-Wa had a question: “What about phones? Everyone’s got phones.”

“Everyone’s phones’re in their lockers,” said Dingle. “That’s the rules. And isn’t it iron—”

“Not everyone follows the rules,” Ben-Wa said. “And those aren’t the rules for the teachers, anyway.”

Sweat the alarms, I said, don’t sweat the phones. Don’t get distracted trying to confiscate phones. Someone pulls out a phone: shoot him, hurt him, he’s trying to stop us, he has to suffer, but every cop and fireman in the county is over at the high school. One pulled alarm and they’re here in five minutes, but it’ll take a lot of calls to get any to leave Stevenson, and by the time those get made we’ll be ready or done for anyway.

Soldiers coming to the gym: If the lights are still on when we get to the gym, we go quiet through the east doors, get under the bleachers, wait for darkness, then position on my cue. If it’s already dark, they’ll see hall-light when we enter, so we’ll come through the center and rush our locations.

Frontline soldiers: be relentless. Project all you can before the hand-to-hand comes on, and know it’ll come on fast. Show them the color of their blood. Teach them the sound of their snapping limbs. Almost anything in the gym you can lift can be a weapon, and almost none of our enemies know that yet. Put the enemies down before they can learn.

All of you: Let no numberdrunk fool believe he can defy any of us without suffering. If they pin you at the elbows, put your knee in their sack. If you can’t move your knee, remember you can headbutt — go for the nose, the eyes, the mouth. If you can’t reach to headbutt, remember your teeth — bite arms, bite wrists, bite fingers, taste bones. If you can’t bite, spit. If you can’t spit, scream — blow out their eardrums. Bring all the pain you can til one of us rescues you.

One of us will always rescue you.

The Arrangement would grind us fine as salt if it could. Do not forget that, much less forgive it. Do not feel sympathy for those we’re attacking. Hear no pleas and look away from any tears that may endear you.

Don’t sweat the press — they’ll just be making movies. Protect June Watermark at all and any cost. Protect my weaponed brothers as if they were your own. Always protect each other. Last chance for questions.

There weren’t any questions. Some of the soldiers were doing the pogo. Others banged fists on their shoulders and thighs.

I strike first, then no more stealth. Damage, damage, and damage, the end. Amen? I said.

“Amen,” they said. PLATOONS VANGUARD

MACCABEE

Gurion ben-Judah

June Watermark

Eliyahu of Brooklyn

The Five

Ally’n’Googy

Josh Berman

Other armed Aptakisic Israelites

NAKAMOOK

Benji Nakamook

Jelly Rothstein

Leevon Ray

Mark Dingle

Salvador Curtis

Fulton Market

Jerry Throop REARGUARD

PORTITE

Vincie Portite

The Janitor

The Flunky

Ronrico Asparagus

Jennie Mangey

Ansul Entsry

WOLF

Ben-Wa Wolf

Chunkstyle

Anna Boshka

Forrest Kenilworth

Christian Yagoda

Jesse Ritter

Stevie Loop

Cody von Braker PIPELINE

GYMNASIUM at 10:38 AM on 11/17/0

We shut the door behind us and got beneath the bleachers. Chemicals were firing and blood was swelling muscles, lungs and arteries opened wide as runways, our joints and ligaments superelastic. Benji kept whispering, “Do not scream.” We pushed on the wall and pounded our fists, twetched ponds of gooze and touched the floor standing, not to let steam off but redistribute it, to stir the snat to delay the flood. Air-seal the spout and flip the boiling kettle. Potentiate, potentiate, potentiate potential.

“I give you… Boystar,” announced Chaz Black, and we gathered by the bleachers’ easternmost opening.

The gym went dark and I whispered to the soldiers: Wait for my go, then stay to the borders. Look away from the light.

“Do not scream.”

Feedback crackled.

Boystar spoke. “Whuddup ’Kisic.”

A spotlight revealed him.

He was outside the locker-rooms, tearing off an anorak. He flung it and stood there, touching his headset. Padlock for a buckle, his belt was a tirechain, the links hanging low between the loops and shining.

We averted our eyes as he dance-walked west, and soon our pupils were the widest in the gym.

Everyone above us stomped and clapped. Shirts came untucked. The floor shook its dust. On its own, the crowd-noise would have zeroed our footfalls, but with the enhancements effected by the man at the soundboard — machine-made enthusiasm booming at his keystrokes — we could have warcried our lungs flat and stayed undetected.

I gave my go.

Half of Portite trailed Nakamook west beneath the bleachers. The rest followed me out the same way we’d entered. We stealthed south and singlefile along the eastern border, our left arms brushing the wall.

On his unlit way from the locker-room to centercourt, Main Man tiptoed across our path. If he saw us, he pretended not to.