Someone had it and it was advancing up the stair. It got up, from hand to hand…
In a few seconds he would see a small, rounded object fly inside the Ring, roll somewhere, and if he was lucky he would have time to run away; but after the explosions, they would get in, go everywhere. Maybe he would manage to get inside the elevator, covering his escape by shooting left and right, but then? Once downstairs, he had no chance of saving himself.
There was another possibility: grab the bomb before it could explode and throw it back at them. It would be a great feat…
Or, exploiting that moment of stasis, he could run to one side of the Escape and start shooting down the ladder, towards all those who were grabbing on to it. They would fall one after the other. It was worthy of a war veteran, and…
His fantasies were stopped suddenly by a noise – a series of noises – approaching. Absorbed by his frantic plans of survival he didn’t perceive it until it was too evident to ignore it. Shots on shots on shots.
Patpatpatpatpatpatpatpat.
A drop of sweat got into his eye and Giovanni had to rapidly close it to ease the pain. It seemed the sound of quick steps, of people running. He imagined that elevator being called and coming up packed with angry revolutionaries. Or worse, the Shutter wide open, and from its glass maws man both alive and dead swarming out, like in his worst dreams…
The Ring was filled with that obsessive noise. He bit his lip again, and tasted the coppery blood.
Beyond the darkness of the door, where his death was being planned, now the screams of terrified men, screams that the sound (Patpatpatpatpatpatpatpat) was submerging with a thundering wave. A light appeared in the sky, a turbulent beam, white as snow, and the rumbling of engines filled everything. Giovanni laughed and tears started running down his cheeks.
A helicopter!
Powerful blades whipped the fresh, dark air, the blinding eye looking for preys. And as soon as it found them, an infernal fest of bullets and flames set the world on fire. Giovanni lowered his gun, astonished by the rectangle of lights, explosions, screams, rumbles and gunshots, endless gunshots. From his point of view he couldn’t see the enormous engine of death, but he could imagine his movements from the moving lights and sounds, the veers, the dives, while the machine guns spit flames and metal on falling bodies, amassing in hopeless escapes, decaying in red shreds feeding a constantly hungry soil. The whole structure of concrete and metal vibrated, shake by the artificial thunder. Hypnotized, Giovanni stood up and slowly walked towards the changing colors luring him. He wanted to see, fill his eyes and soul of that scene.
And he looked.
Nobody was on the ladder, of course. He could calm down. With a hand on the railing, he followed the agile maneuver with witch the vehicle – an AB-413 armed with machine-guns firing one-hundred and fifty round per minute – flew downwards and landed among the lifeless bodies. Everywhere, as far as the floodlight could go, there were corpses, or crawling shapes, some on all-four, other still standing.
A hatch opened outwards from one side of the chopper and six, seven soldiers came out, all with their rifles out. And they didn’t wait one second before unloading their ammunitions on anything that moved.
From above, Giovanni feasted on that show. His heart had calmed down and his mind started crawling out from the torpor it was in. He stared at the scene with a certain detachment, like watching a movie; but the tremor running through his body destroyed the simulacrum of indifference in which he was in.
When the soldiers stopped firing they they returned inside the helicopter – which was still buzzing, a sleeping beast ready to attack – ducking under the blades.
At the same time two other soldiers got out, with two heavy bags on their bags. Giovanni wondered what they were about to do, but as soon as he saw them aim their weapons forward he understood. And thanked that the LPG tank was on the other side of the Tank.
Two tongues of fire came out in perfect sync and, without separating the dead from the living, devoured clothes and flesh. In about thirty seconds a large bonfire at the feet of the Tank was all that remained of that revolutionary contingent. A black, stinking smoke rose from the flames, expanding in spirals; when Giovanni inhaled the stick of burning bodies he holstered his gun and put his hand on his mouth. He stepped backwards, groaning, distancing himself from the heat, but despite going back to the dark cool of the Ring he kept standing by the doorstep.
A devastating migraine plunged its fangs in his head, but in such a moment pain had no meaning. Outside, down there, among scarlet flashed evoking sombre visions from beyond, the helicopter’s rotors strengthened their roar. In a few seconds, with a take-off blowing away smoke and heat in the night, the AB-413 brought itself near the torn Escape and its eye impertinently started searching inside the building. Giovanni rose and arm, shielding his face from the blinding beam. Did they want to shoot him too? He couldn’t think of a reason why, but if that was how things would go, he had no intention of moving.
A cawing voice, amplified and distorted by a megaphone, fought the noise of the engine to be heard: “The alarm has ceased. Restore the elevator’s operability. We need to proceed with indoor controls. Do you understand, Keeper?”
“Yes”, whispered Giovanni. “I understand.”
“If you did, raise your right arm.”
Giovanni did so, then let it fall.
“Good. Proceed!”
With a noise similar to the explosion of a mortar the megaphone was turned off and the helicopter tilted sidewards before leaving for the Center, on the other side of the Tank.
Giovanni turned around towards the corpse-stinking shadows and, walking like a robot, reached the elevator. He felt empty. Every bit of energy, every ember of that beastly fury energizing him until few minutes before had cooled down, dying in a diffused malaise. He would take some pills. Then he would cry. He needed to. Later. He had orders.
He pulled the chair away, letting the invisible ray of the photocell reach his destination, and watched the doors close. A few seconds later the elevator was called downstairs. He stepped backwards and leant against the wall, waiting.
22 – After the Storm
Lots of people went upstairs several times.
Giovanni saw them, talked to the, listened to what they wanted to say or ask him… always walking with the utmost attention on the edge of the cliff. He was physically exhausted, and more than once he felt like could see himself talking and moving from one place to the other, as if he was but a spectator of that sad play.
He was questioned for about half and hour by lieutenant Raggi (the same soldier superintending the Cleansings, and whose name he had learnt only then), to write as many details as possible in the report. He talked without omitting anything, save for what had happened only in his mind.
Trying to make the most of that exceptional circumstance, so favorable to talking, he tried asking: “Have there been many dead? In our ranks, I mean…”
The officer looked at him from above the frame of the spectacles he had worn for writing. “No, Corte. Not many.”
“Somebody I knew?”
Raggi, sitting at kitchen table with a big memo book, kept on writing, and didn’t look up. But he answered. “Probably. Escort Guards.”
Giovanni looked down at his knuckles. He knew there was no way he could get to know the names and surnames, at least not in that moment. But he surely would sooner or later. There was another question he wanted to ask. “And… general Stevanich?”