gonna stop me. I'll whole wild card problem
bank when they show them my forty- just wipe 'em out.
jumped the woman. five caliber wild card. Real simple. Just take
They gunned down Shove it right - down the whole frigging
my own nephew. Man, their slimy joker useless lot of them and
it's gonna give me throats bury 'em
pleasure to pay that
back
I grated out Kafka's name. I felt the joker's mind shaking off his own dreams. He asked me if I was having a nightmare again. I told him one thing only. "They're coming."
Kafka didn't answer, but I knew he understood. He snapped his fingers at my guards, making sure they were alert, then scuttled away. A few moments later, I heard the low growling of a siren from the roof of the building. The wail throbbed along the girders and walls; I could feel it shivering everywhere in my body, like a howling banshee.
In the darkness, I tried to push back with my Wall, tried to bring it under conscious control and focus its strength where it was being penetrated. I think it almost worked too.
But I'd already made my mistake. I just didn't know it. It sounds like something Latham would throw back at me, but, man, I'd never had to run a battle before except when I played D&D. Maybe I should have known better.
But I am just a kid.
I could have handled it myself. I still think that. Hey, they were just a bunch of cops and park rangers. They weren't really trained for this; they'd never worked together.
They didn't even really hate us-they were just doing what they'd been told to do: Go get the joker squatters and teenage delinquents off Ellis.
I could've_ sent them back. Yes. Hell, they were just plain people, like my dad or Uncle George or Mr. Niemann next door back in Brooklyn.
I know from the news reports that two of the boats and one of the choppers did turn tail. I did that much at least. But whoever was in charge had been at least a little smart. They'd made some plans to get through the Wall. The pilots were those with a strong sense of duty and a violent antijoker prejudice, the ones already boiling mad at the way the Rox thumbed its collective nose at the "normal" world. The pilots were all guarded by like souls, so that even if the cops and rangers panicked, they couldn't overpower those in charge. None of the weapons, from what I understand, were to be given out until the Wall had been breached.
Even so ... Even so, I don't think more than one or two boats would have made it. The papers said several cops jumped overboard. Three rangers leapt from their copters into the bay. If only one or two made it past the Wall, they would've had to turn back simply 'cause there wouldn't have been enough of them.
It would have been a bloodless rout. Except that I'd already been stupid.
Kafka's alarm had roused the island. Lights snapped on in the Administration Building; I found myself staring full at the Bosch triptych. Jokers were rushing all over the lobby floor and along the high balcony. There was lots of yelling, internal and external, and all of us could hear the sullen thut-thut-thut of the helicopters.
The nats were still circling, though, still hitting the Wall and retreating again, like wasps butting against a glass door. They weren't moving in toward the Rox anymore. They couldn't get past my Wall. I could feel the paranoia and fear rising among them, like some infection. A few more minutes, and they would have turned tail and run back to New York or Jersey or wherever they'd come from.
I wasn't paying too much attention to the voices of the Rox. Look, no one can make sense of hundreds of people all yammering at you at once. No, you have to shut some of it out, or you just go crazy. I'd let the Rox fade to a background static while my powers stalked the Wall.
Another mistake.
I felt it happen behind