Adam Levin - The Instructions

“Now?” he said.

Now, I said. But do it calm. Once you get to the junction, the cops’ll be able to see you through the window. Just act like you’re going to the bathroom or something.

“When should I bring them out?” he said.

I said, Once you get Benji onto his feet, come out to Main Hall and wait with Ben-Wa. He’ll be watching us outside, and as soon as the line breaks he’ll call up Cody and the soldiers in the library, and all of you will head out to join us together.

Pate looked worried.

What? I said.

“His feet?” said Pate.

Whose feet? I said.

“Nakamook’s, Gurion. You said I have to get him onto his feet?”

He’s passed out on drugs.

“And I’m supposed to wake him?”

So what? I said.

“What if I say, ‘Benji, wake up,’ and he doesn’t wake up?”

Shake him, I said.

“Shake Nakamook ?” he said.

You’re right, I said. I said, Don’t shake Nakamook. Have Jelly shake Nakamook. And here, I said.

“Here?” said Pate.

Hold on, I said.

I was searching my pockets for the mint-tin of pills. I searched three times and couldn’t find it.

I said, Somewhere in the nurse’s, probably on the desk, there’s a mint-tin of pills. The blue ones are spedspeed. If Benji needs shaking, he’ll be really groggy. Crush two with the mint-tin and make him snort the powder.

“Make him?” said Pate.

Tell Jelly I said to make him snort the powder.

Pate went calmly, just like I’d told him, and I turned to the soldiers, ready to go, to lead them out, when Vincie said, “Aren’t you getting behind us?” and suddenly a portion of Berman’s logic, despite its cowardly origins, rang sound:

The cops would endanger hostages or wouldn’t, and though I was all but certain they wouldn’t, on the off-chance they would, it wouldn’t matter how many hostages were present, so there wasn’t any need to bring so many out front. I could knock out Boystar, drop him outside the door, set my foot above his throat as I had done earlier, and raise the soundgun, and call the scholars forward. The Side could wait in B-Hall, west of the junction, til the scholars got close, and Ben-Wa could shout out when the copline broke. There wasn’t any reason to endanger them at all.

I explained the change of plans.

Vincie said, “Fuck that.”

June yanked my hood.

My head jerked back.

Vincie said, “I’ll go — you stay here.”

They won’t listen to you, I said.

“They might listen to me,” Eliyahu said. “I’m convincing.”

You are, I said, but they’re not gonna listen to anyone else. Not when there’s that many cops to walk through.

“Listen,” said Vincie. “There’s snipers out there. We saw on TV. They’ve got at least two. If you go out there and the cops decide to shoot you—”

They’re not gonna shoot me live on TV.

“You don’t know that, Gurion. Just please fucken listen.” His volume kept lowering. “I’m not playing the dumb one. You’re the leader, and they know you’re the leader, and they keep on saying ‘the terrorist, Maccabee.’ You’re the one person they can shoot and stay goodguys. Even if it means risking Boystar’s life.”

They haven’t taken a single shot at me yet.

“They might just not have had any clear shots to take.”

I’ve been in front of a million different windows. Not a single shot.

“You haven’t been near a window in at least twenty minutes, and you don’t know you were clear. Anyway, the stakes, like you said, are much higher now. Those kids on the hill change everything. You need us to go out there to flank you at least.”

I can’t die, Vincie.

“No you can’t,” Vincie said, “or we’ll all be fucked.”

That’s not what I meant.

“I know what you meant, and it’s as fucken crazy a thing to say now as it’s always been, so I’m ignoring it like always, for the same reason as always, because you’re my friend and it doesn’t matter anyway — You don’t have to die to fuck this up, anyway. They don’t have to kill you. They just have to — what’s the word?”

“Neutralize,” Starla said — she’d come up next to June.

“Neutralize. Thank you. All they have to do is get you all neutralized. That’s all it’ll take. Shoot you in the leg, and you’re down, and we’re fucked. We go back inside that gym? — Those kids fucken hate us. You heard fucken Berman. They want to be feared . They’ll tie us up and say that they overcame us at the last minute or something, all badass heroic and—”

Okay, I said.

“Okay what?”

Okay, you’re right.

And he was. Maybe not about the Israelites waiting in the gym — who knew what they would do if they saw me go down? — but about the rest. My kidness, to the cops, probably was eclipsed by my ringleaderness, my terroristness, and if any one of us could be shot with impunity, that one was me, and the fewer kids available to take a stray bullet, the greater the odds that the cops would shoot. Above all, he was right that I didn’t need to die in order to fail. My father, June, maybe all the world’s Israelites — I could fail them just fine if I got shot in the leg. Neutralized, I couldn’t deliver the prayer.

I instructed the soldiers to form two lines.

The hostages stood with their hands behind their backs, their wrists tied loosely with shoelaces. Each was held by the hair and the shirt by a terrorist behind him, and to each one’s right stood a second terrorist aiming an unloaded gun at his carotid.

The cops will shoot me or they won’t, I told them. If they shoot me, you immediately surrender. You drop your weapons and raise your hands high and sob if you can, smile if you can’t — you act full of gratitude, full of relief. If I don’t get shot, you don’t break formation. Not for anything. The cops might give orders and they might make gestures, but they probably won’t shoot if we stay close together. After the scholars break through the copline, we’ll rush their center and we’ll all head east. I don’t know exactly how far we’ll be going. It might take a while, might start to feel safe. Don’t get bold, though — stay to the center and stay right behind me. Do not stray.

“What about teargas?” Chunkstyle said.

You saw the way the hail was slanting before. It’s windy outside and the parking lot’s packed. Too many civilians in breathing range.

“What about tazers?” Salvador said.

By the time they’d be close enough to use their tazers, the scholars’ll already be on their heels. Someone gets tazed, we pick him up and continue. I’m telling you, though: they’re either gonna shoot me or part for the scholars. Those are the only two moves that make sense.

“What if they shoot and they miss you?” said Boshka.

That’s a good question.

“Thank you,” said Boshka. “What is the answer?”

It all depends on how close the scholars are, what the copline’s doing, if the shot hits someone else… we’ll have to see. I’ll tell you when it happens, if it happens, so if it does happen, be ready to listen. We ready? I said.

“Do you think that they’ll shoot?” Main Man said.

Do you? I said.

It was Scott I was asking, but they all answered: “No.”

I believe you, I said, cause I don’t either. I think we’ll be safe as long as we’re dangerous. I think God will protect us as long as we’re dangerous. I think we’ll forget that one day when we’re old — the second we forget it, we’ll be old, I said. We might even be right when we’re old, I said, but we can’t know now, and we won’t know then. Do you understand me?

“We might get shot.”

Right, I said.