Adam Levin - The Instructions

“But we shouldn’t get shot.”

Right, I said.

And we all went east.

We entered Main Hall slow and steady, June and I the center of both of the lines, and as Ben-Wa Wolf unlocked the doors, Boystar was yanked to his feet and held by an Israelite guard at each of his elbows. From over his shoulder, he showed us a face no language I know has a word for. The hyper-dilated eyes were full of black wonder, the battered lips twisted as if in disgust, one eyebrow was skeptical, the other determined, and the nostrils were contracted so hard that the nosetip, diagonally gashed by the keys of his mother, bent itself low enough to touch the swollen philtrum. It wasn’t a face that signified anything other than a random set of malfunctions. Maybe he was trying to express some feeling, or maybe he was trying to hide some feeling, or maybe he was feeling contradictory feelings, one of which he was trying to hide beneath an expression that signified the other. But nutmeg, nerve-damage, or the combination had made of him a kind of shadow-world Slokum whose visage, for all that was scrawled on its features, was so illegible it might as well have been blank. Boystar was broken and Boystar was crazy. The rubber robot had popped.

At two steps’ distance, his legs gave out

and, on his knees, still gripped at the elbows, still showing us the face, he said, “Protect me.”

He was talking to June.

She stepped up beside me.

“I love you,” he said.

She looked away.

“I love you,” he said. “Remember?” he said. “I know you,” he said. “I know you and love you.”

She caught him on the chin with the bell of the soundgun, an overhanded blow. He collapsed, knocked out. June got behind me.

I said, Wake him up. He can’t look dead.

The guards started slapping him. Boystar came to. Botha’s phone buzzed. Persphere’s number. I let it buzz twice, hit TALK, then END.

Tighten his bindings and stand him up.

They tightened the bindings at his wrists and his ankles. The phone buzzed again.

TALK. END.

Boystar was vertical.

Again the phone buzzed.

This time I answered.

You can see us, I said, and you want us to stop. You’re calling to warn us to stop, I said. So what? I said. I’m warning you to stop.

I ended the call, took two steps forward, and the soldiers followed. With my right arm, I reached around Boystar’s right shoulder. I seized him by the throat and pulled him against me, dug the thumb of my left hand deep in his armpit. His knees went weak, and he began to get lower. I clawed his throat hard and he rose.

You stay on your feet, I said. We’re taking this slow. You walk when I push you, stop when I don’t. Do anything other than what I want, and I’ll tear your windpipe clear off its moorings. Even if they save you, you’ll never sing again.

“I’ll do what you say,” he said, vocal cords grinding.

Now, I told the soldiers.

They opened the doors.

Outside was near freezing, but the wind blew warmer. The sky hung low and greenish. Ten scholars stood the hillcrest, Emmanuel foremost, the others out of sight in the valley behind them, four cops and five news crews on the slope before them. Midway between the front entrance and the scholars, the hundred-cop barricade, facing the field, stretched north-to-south in two even rows. To the barricade’s south was the parking lot cordon; thirty cops strong, ten to a side, bracketing off two-hundred-some people — evacuated students and staff and faculty, Aptakisic parents and Stevenson truants, a few jobless locals and newspaper journalists. West of the cordon, where the lot got wider, cruisers and firetrucks, strobing blue and red, were jammed fender to fender with hospital-, news-, and armored police-vans.

The hailstones we stepped on squeaked as they crunched. The rock salt skittered and pecked at our ankles, caught in our treads, jumped into our shoes. We’d traveled a yard when the scholars started shouting, and the cops of the barricade’s west row revolved, nightsticks drawn, faces obscured — the spinners on the cruisers glaring their visors. Boystar’s face was dripping on my knuckles. A helicopter, white, hovered high above the high hill, its flank stenciled black with a stylized eye; it wasn’t police but the CBS News. A magnifed voice that might have been Persphere’s crackled from a speaker on one of the cruisers, giving orders in a code that didn’t sound real: “BLUE ALPHA BLUNTBACK DOMINO CANOPY.” A mom behind the cordon wailed, “Please don’t shoot!” Other parents in the parking lot took up the cry. No one seemed sure who was being addressed.

We stopped moving forward three yards out the door. All the scholars in the field were shouting my name. Emmanuel revolved and quieted them.

Resting her elbow on the edge of my shoulder, chest pressed to my back, her breath on my ear, June held the soundgun in front of my head.

Trigger, I said.

She triggered the soundgun.

GOOD YONTIF, I said. PUT YOUR WEAPONS AWAY.

“Good yontif!” yelled the scholars, and they pocketed their weapons. Rather, those on the crest did; those in the valley weren’t able to hear me. Emmanuel turned and relayed my instruction.

“Good yontif!” the scholars in the valley all shouted.

I NEED YOU TO HELP ME PERFORM A GREAT MITZVAH. I NEED YOU TO HELP ME PROTECT US, I said.

“We will!” said the scholars atop the hill.

Emmanuel turned, relayed what I’d said.

“We’ll help!” shouted those in the valley.

KEEP YOUR HANDS IN PLAIN VIEW AND COME DOWN THE HILL. STOP WHEN EMMANUEL GETS TO THE ROAD.

Emmanuel turned, performed one last relay. The cops on the hillside unholstered their clubs. In columns, the scholars descended the slope, their hands at their sides, palms bare as newborns. The hillside cops backpedaled, kept shouting, “Halt!” til one of them stumbled, another one caught him, and all four fled west to the road’s farther shoulder. The newsmen tread slower, continuing to report, aiming mikes at Emmanuel, getting no comment.

“TEACUP NINER WINE NIGHTINGALE CRAYON,” came the voice through the speaker that was mounted on the cruiser. The code incited nothing from the cops of the barricade; nothing, at least, that was visible.

As the news crews backed up into Rand’s middle lanes, the cops from the hillside — now on the shoulder farther from Emmanuel — ordered them south to the cordon. The news crews faked deafness, or were slow to react, or weren’t slow to react and didn’t fake deafness, but were slow enough to react, or deaf-seeming enough, for the cops on the shoulder to vacate the path between the scholars and the barricade to enforce their orders without looking as if they were running away, or so they must have thought, for that’s what they did. They escorted the news crews over to the cordon, and once that was finished, they didn’t return.

“FIVE-TEN FORTY-NINE BALSAM CLANDESTINE.”

The barricade held. It didn’t even twitch.

Emmanuel arrived at the side of the road. The scholars stretched back past the high hill’s west foot. The columns were three rows deep up the incline.

PERSPHERE, I said, OR WHOEVER’S IN CHARGE: THIS IS NO KIND OF SHOWDOWN. ELOHEINU IS WITH US. YOU’VE GOT THIRTY SECONDS OF VOLITION REMAINING. PART THE BARRICADE AND NO ONE GETS HURT.