He nearly tripped and fell down the last few steps, his legs not used to an end to the descent, a flat piece of ground rather than one more tread to sink to. As his knees buckled, and Shirly caught him, he finally noticed the jam of people at the security station leading into Mechanical.
The crew that had stayed behind while the rest marched up to fight had been busy. Steel plates had been welded solid across the wide security entrance. The diamond-studded sheeting stood from floor to ceiling, wall to wall. Sparks hissed along one edge as someone worked to complete the job from the inside. The sudden flurry of refugees and wounded amassed in a crowd desperate to get in. Mechanics shoved and jostled against the barrier. They screamed and beat on the steel plates, mad with fear.
“What the hell?” Marck cried. He followed Shirly as she pressed into the back of the crowd. At the front, someone was crawling on the floor, wiggling on their belly through the tightest of gaps, a rectangle left open below the security turnstile wide enough to slide through, easy enough to defend.
“Easy! Wait your turn,” someone ahead of them shouted.
Yellow overalls were mixed in with the others. Some were mechanics who had donned disguises—some seemed to be from Supply, helping the wounded, mixed up in the wrong crowd or not trusting their own level for safety.
As Marck attempted to usher Shirly toward the front, a shot rang out, the thwack and clatter of a hot ball of lead striking nearby. He changed direction and pulled her back toward the stairs. The crush around the impossibly small entrance grew frantic. There was a lot of yelling back and forth through the hole, people on this side shouting that they were being shot at, those on the other side yelling, “One at a time!”
Several were on their bellies, scrambling for the tiny hole. One got his arms inside and was pulled through, sliding across the steel grating and disappearing into the dark space. Two others tried to be next, jostling for position. They were all exposed to the open stairwell above. Another shot rang out, and someone fell, clutching a shoulder and screaming, “I’m hit!” The throng dispersed. Several ran back to the stairs, where the overhang of the treads protected them from the gunfire. The rest were in chaos, all trying to fit through a space expressly designed to allow no more than one at a time.
Shirly screamed and squeezed Marck’s arm as another person was shot nearby. A mechanic fell to the ground and doubled over in pain. Shirly yelled at her husband, asking him what they should do.
Marck dropped his rucksack, kissed her cheek, and ran with his rifle back up the stairs. He tried to take them two at a time, but his legs were too sore. Another shot rang out, the ricochet of a miss. His body felt incredibly heavy, slow like in a bad dream. He approached the landing of one-thirty-nine with his gun level, but the shooters were further up, peppering the crowd from higher above.
He checked that he had a fresh round in the home-built gun, cocked it, and edged out onto the landing. Several men in the gray of Security were leaning out over the railing above, barrels trained down toward the ground floor of Mechanical. One of the men tapped his neighbor and pointed toward Marck. Marck watched all this down the length of his own barrel.
He fired a shot, and a black rifle tumbled toward him from above, the arms of its wielder slumping over the railing before sagging down and disappearing.
Gunfire erupted, but he was already diving back toward the stairs. The shouting grew furious both above and below him. Marck went to the other side of the stairs, away from where he’d last been seen, and peered down. The crowd was thinning by the security barrier. More and more people were being pulled through. He could see Shirly looking up, shielding her eyes against the stairway lights above.
Boots rang out behind him. Marck reloaded, turned, and aimed at the highest step he could see along the upward spiral. He waited for whatever was heading down toward him.
When the first boot appeared, he steadied himself, allowed more of the man to sink before his barrel, and then he pulled the trigger.
Another black rifle clattered against the steps and bounced through the railing; another man sagged to his knees.
Marck turned and ran. He lost his grip on his own gun, felt it bang against his shins as it skittered away from him, and he didn’t stop to retrieve it. He slid down the steps, lost his footing, landed on his ass, and bounced back up. He tried taking the steps two at a time, was running as if in a dream, not fast enough, legs like rusted steel—
There was a bang, a muffled roar behind him, and somehow, someone had caught up, had punched him in the back, had hit him.
Marck sprawled forward and bounced down the steps, his chin striking the steel treads. Blood poured into his mouth. He tried to crawl, got his feet beneath him, and stumbled forward.
Another roar, another punch to the back, the feeling that he’d been bitten and kicked at the same time.
This is what it feels like to be shot, he thought numbly. He spilled down the last few steps, lost sensation in his legs, crashed to the grating.
The bottom floor was nearly empty. One person stood beside the tiny hole. Another was half in and half out, boots kicking.
Marck saw that it was Shirly, on her belly, looking back at him. They were both lying on the floor. So comfortable on the floor. The steel was cool against his cheek. There were no more steps to run down, no bullets to load, nothing to shoot.
Shirly was screaming, not as happy as he was to be lying there.
One of her arms extended back out of that small black rectangle, reached for him past the rough cuts in the steel plates. Her body slid forward, pulled by some force beyond, pushed by this nice person in yellow still standing by the strange wall of steel where the entrance to his home used to be.
“Go,” Marck told her, wishing she wouldn’t scream. Blood flecked the floor before him, marking his words. “I love you—”
And as if by command, her feet slid into the darkness, her screams swallowed by that rectangular, shadowy maw.
And the person in yellow turned. The nice man’s eyes grew wide, his mouth fell open, and then his body jerked from the violence of gunfire.
It was the last thing Marck saw, this man’s deathly dance.
And he only distantly felt, but for a tremble of time, the end of him that came next.
55
Walker remained in his cot and listened to the sounds of distant violence. Shouts echoed down his hallway, emanating from the entrance to Mechanical. The familiar patter of gunfire came next, the pop pop pop of the good guys followed by the ratatatat of the bad.
There was an incredible bang, the roar of blasting powder against steel, and the back-and-forth crackle ended for a moment. More shouting. Boots clomping down his hallway, past his door. The boots were the constant beat to the music of this new world. He could hear this music from his cot, even with the blankets drawn over his head, even with his pillow on top, even as he begged, out loud, over and over, for it to please stop.
The boots in the hallway carried with them more shouting. Walker curled up into a tight ball, knees against his chest, wondering what time it was, dreading that it was morning, time to get up.
A brief respite of silence formed, that quiet of tending to the wounded, their groans too faint to penetrate his sealed door.
Walker tried to fall asleep before the music was turned back up. But, as always, the quiet was worse. During the quiet, he grew anxious as he waited for the next patter of gunfire to erupt. His impatience for sleep often frightened that very sleep away. And he would grow terrified that the resistance was finally over, that the bad guys had won and were coming for him—