The guns of Nakamook were obsolescing anyway. For each of their projectiles that hit its mark, four or five went wild. Even twenty seconds earlier — when the Indians, clustered, were still a big static target — this hadn’t been much of a problem: the novices’ wild shots had often struck lucky. But as the target moved apart, reflexively at first, becoming multiple targets with alleys between them, the currency and fasteners blew through the spaces, failing to damage, and the soldiers, frustrated, aimed worse and worse, and the Indians began to move with more purpose. Slokum flipped a chair and held it like a shield, dragged Baxter by an ankle toward halfcourt. Desormie crossed halfcourt and gave a chair to Lonnie. Maholtz grabbed a chair and they all crouched together, holding their chairs before them by the legs, shouting for their teammates to help form a bulwark. It was half a good strategy and, before it got whole, Benji needed to rush them with all of his soldiers, but he stayed in the corner, married to his strategy.
“A rammer,” Scott sang, “a rammer, a rammer.”
A misfired wingnut smashed part of a lightpanel, CHUCKETA-CRACKETA-CRACKETA-CHUCKETA. Plastic and glass got splintered and whirled. The burst bulbs retarding the stutter of the photons, the strobe effect slackened, devolved to mere flashing. Eliyahu of Brooklyn limped south to the wall, leaned on a gym mat, mumbled in Hebrew. In search of Big Ending’s remaining three chubniks, Beauregard and Isadore roamed the west bleachers.
“…and if you end this, now—”
Pockets, Mr. Brodsky.
“…I can tell the police that you saw the error—”
I see no error.
“But if you—”
I see no error and you’re wrong either way. Look, I said, at this.
I whipped out Monitor Botha’s claw.
In the bleachers, the robots had all come unstunned. Some made attempts to evacuate their students, others cleared paths to get the fallen out first, and others yet shouted for everyone to sit. The few who tried to stop fights took hits. At first, the hits, however predictable — the robots kept stepping between kids who swung blindly — were completely accidental, and for the most part glancing: knees banged shins and elbows grazed asses, not personal at all, no harm no foul. But as the skirmishes spread, the hits came harder and they came more frequently: kids saw kids who hit robots go unstepped, and they began to manufacture their accidents = friends shoving friends so the shoved could bump robots, a tactic inspired by the pervs who pulled sly-gropes on girls in the hallways who didn’t like flirting. “I’m sorry, Melissa. I had to hold something. If I didn’t hold something, I’d have fallen — John tripped me.” “I tripped him, Melissa, and I’m sorry you got held, but you saw how he tripped me when I fell onto Kelly.” Actual sly-gropes were happening, too. Big Ending reunited behind the sitting bandkids, exchanging high-fives, and huddling to plot. “I’ve got to reach Mt. Zion,” sang Main Main.
“You fantasize, infantalize, romantacize what I mentalize: it’s not your eyes, girl, it’s not your eyes.” This was the last of Boystar’s whispers. Half another measure and the speakers went dead: running from the soundboard to the northeast exit, Chaz Black kicked cords and wires tore out. “Jah put I around,” sang Scott. Starla spotted her boyfriend and jumped on a Jenny crushed by the avalanche, ran up the sideline, achieved Western Portite, got pecked on the cheek and pinched and armed. “This thing won’t hit who I aim at,” said the Flunky. “…what look to be coins,” one newsman was saying. “…writing on their foreheads,” the other one said. Ori the cameraman: back on his feet.
High-speed currency deflecting off seatpads sounds like knuckles getting cracked through sleeves. In an effort to overcome the bulwark from a distance, Western Portite and Nakamook tilted their weapons like infantry archers so their shots would rain down from above on the Indians, but Benji and Vincie were both out of nibs, and while a few of the fasteners and coins reached their targets, their impact was weak, and the damage inflicted was minor at best, though Maholtz, when crown-struck did yelp “Jeendzus!”
I was brandishing the monitor’s claw at the principal. Before understanding, he reached for it—thwick—and then he was cradling his wrist.
What’d I say?
“He’s our prisoner,’” Berman said. “And I know, but he was trying—”
No he wasn’t.
“Well he isn’t cooperating.”
He was just about to.
“Stop this, Gurion.”
“See?” said Berman.
Don’t—
Bad shadow. I grabbed onto Berman and brought us down sideways, twanging my humerus. The base of the mike-stand splintered the hardwood — Boystar’s mother, back like a slasher.
Big Ending shoved a teacher and the teacher said, “Careful.” They shoved him again, and he told them, “Watch out.” Beauregard Pate warned the teacher, “You should fear us,” and the teacher turned away, as if he hadn’t heard. Big Ending rammed the teacher into another. Both teachers fell on three bandkids and Mussel. All six involved hit the floor in a heap, the clattering instruments bruising their softparts. Next to the heap stood the atheist seventh-grade Shover, Trent Vander. Vander extended his pointer and laughed, and Seamus Fitzsimmons, who played the bassoon, who the Shovers, since the fifth, had called “Faggot Shitzlemons,” stood where he’d sat on the bottom bleacher: above moaning friends atop their bent horns, over bandleader Mussel who’d always brought donuts, before the pointing Shover paralytic with mirth. Seamus held his woodwind by the boot-joint and swung it. When he pulled it back to swing again, its reed was chunked with earlobe. Vander blacked out and dropped on the heap. Thirty-odd bandkids understood they held weapons.
The mother hauled back to swing once more, got stopped from above by a nib through the jaw muscle. Instant bloodstar under the hairline. Holding her cheek, she began to sit down, and the stand, as she collapsed, dropped from her grasp, and its base struck the foot of the principal edgewise, right above the tongue of his shoe. He buckled, went fetal, and let out a choked sound. Snapped was the tendon connecting his bigtoe. My girlfriend the deadeye showed me a powerfist. I showed her the palm on the arm that wasn’t fizzing = Stay high, I love you, keep sniping, protect us. Berman crawled over to see the mother’s face.
The untapped rage of the bullied musician, mounting for years, suddenly loosed.
Seamus Fitzsimmons led his band upward, stalking for Shovers in the western bleachers, but anyone who stood in their way got clouted, and anyone clouted who dropped got stomped, and anyone stomped who kept laying there… stomped.
Mangey caught an elbow from a runner in the forehead. Ronrico dragged the runner to the floor by the shirt. A Shover bolted over to help them kick the runner. They pinned him to the wall between the doors of the locker-rooms, the lightswitches mounted there got flipped to ON, and the whole gym was lit by the overhead fixtures. Ronrico cracked the Shover on the eye while Mangey held him. “Do not try to be us.” “Do not try to be us.” “Do not try to be us do not try to be us.”
When the lights came up, Seamus and a flautist, atop the western bleachers, along their eastern edge, held a broken Blake Acer by all four limbs, and Acer shrieked, “Please!” and he was louder than anyone. Nearly all of the spectating everykid no-ones****** revolved to locate the source of the shriek, yet few of their eyes ever got to Acer; the trail of the stomped left behind by the bandkids captured their attention first. That trail was becoming wider and wider, and except for the wealth of bare necks among the stomped (or, inversely, the scarcity of scarved ones), there was nothing more conspicuous than the spatters of blood that beaded the brass and stained the white bibbers: nothing more striking than who was stomping except for who it was that was getting stomped. The implications for the everykid no-ones were huge. Under whose gaze hadn’t the bandkids suffered the undeserved enmity of Shovers? No one’s. Yet who’d ever protected a bandkid from a Shover? Who’d ever defended a bandkid but a bandkid? Who’d ever done other than laugh when one fell, let alone offered a hand to help him up? No one and no one and no one and no one. The everykid no-ones fled the bleachers in droves.